The Dark Tower

He could hear the singing voices from here,even over the jostle and hum of the traffic. The woman had to call his namethree times and finally tug on one sleeve to get his attention. When he turnedto her—reluctantly—he saw it wasn’t the tower across the streetthat she was looking at (she had grown up just an hour from Manhattan and tallbuildings were an old story to her) but at the pocket park on their side of thestreet. Her expression was delighted. “Isn’t it a beautiful little place? Imust have been by this corner a hundred times and I never noticed it until now.Do you see the fountain? And the turtle sculpture?”

He did. And although Susa

“I’d like to go in,” she said timidly. “Maywe? Is there time?”

“Yes,” he said, and followed her throughthe little iron gate.

Four

The pocket park was peaceful, but notentirely quiet.

“Do you hear people singing?” Mrs.Tassenbaum asked in a voice that was hardly more than a whisper. “A chorus fromsomewhere?”

“Bet your bottom dollar,” Roland answered,and was sorry immediately. He’d learned the phrase from Eddie, and saying ithurt. He walked to the turtle and dropped on one knee to examine it moreclosely. There was a tiny piece gone from the beak, leaving a break like amissing tooth. On the back was a scratch in the shape of a question mark, andfading pink letters.

“What does it say?” she asked. “Somethingabout a turtle, but that’s all I can make out.”

“ ‘See the TURTLE of enormous girth.’” Heknew this without reading it.

“What does it mean?”

Roland stood up. “It’s too much to go into.Would you like to wait for me while I go in there?” He nodded in the directionof the tower with its black glass windows glittering in the sun.

“Yes,” she said. “I would. I’ll just sit onthe bench in the sunshine and wait for you. It’s… refreshing. Does that soundcrazy?”

“No,” he said. “If someone whose looks youdon’t trust should speak to you, Irene—I think it unlikely, because thisis a safe place, but it’s certainly possible—concentrate just as hard asyou can, and call for me.”

Her eyes widened. “Are you talking ESP?”

He didn’t know what ESP stood for, but heunderstood what she meant, and nodded.

“You’d hear that? Hear me?”

He couldn’t say for sure that he would. Thebuilding might be equipped with damping devices, like the thinking-caps thecan-toi wore, that would make it impossible.

“I might. And as I say, trouble’s unlikely.This is a safe place.”

She looked at the turtle, its shellgleaming with spray from the fountain. “It is, isn’t it?” She started to smile,then stopped. “You’ll come back, won’t you? You wouldn’t dump me without atleast…” She shrugged one shoulder. The gesture made her look very young.“Without at least saying goodbye?”

“Never in life. And my business in yondertower shouldn’t take long.” In fact it was hardly business at all… unless, thatwas, whoever was currently ru

“Okay,” she said, and sat on the bench withthe bumbler at her feet. The end of it was damp and she was wearing a new pairof slacks (bought in the same quick shopping-run that had netted Roland’s newshirt and jeans), but this didn’t bother her. They would dry quickly on such awarm, su

Roland started away, movingeasily—moving like a man who could walk for days and weeks without evervarying his pace. I wouldn’t like to have him on my trail, she thought,and shivered a little at the idea. He reached the iron gate through which hewould pass to the sidewalk, then turned to her once more. He spoke in a softsingsong.

“See the TURTLE of enormous girth!

On his shell he holds the earth.

His thought is slow but always kind;

He holds us all within his mind.

On his back all vows are made;

He sees the truth but mayn’t aid.

He loves the land and loves the sea,

And even loves a child like me.”

Then he left her, moving swiftly andcleanly, not looking back. She sat on the bench and watched him wait with theothers clustered on the corner for the WALK light, then cross with them, theleather bag slung over his shoulder bouncing lightly against his hip. Shewatched him mount the steps of 2 Hammarskjöld Plaza and disappear inside.Then she leaned back, closed her eyes, and listened to the voices sing. At somepoint she realized that at least two of the words they were singing were theones that made her name.

Five

It seemed to Roland that great multitudesof folken were streaming into the building, but this was the perceptionof a man who had spent the latter years of his quest in mostly deserted places.If he’d come at quarter to nine, while people were still arriving, instead ofat quarter to eleven, he would have been stu

The lobby windows were of clear glass andat least two stories high, perhaps three. Consequently the lobby was full oflight, and as he stepped inside, the grief that had possessed him ever sincekneeling by Eddie in the street of Pleasantville slipped away. In here thesinging voices were louder, not a chorus but a great choir. And, he saw, hewasn’t the only one who heard them. On the street, people had been hurryingwith their heads down and looks of distracted concentration on their faces, asif they were deliberately not seeing the delicate and perishable beauty of theday which had been given them; in here they were helpless not to feel at leastsome of that to which the gunslinger was so exquisitely attuned, and which hedrank like water in the desert.

As if in a dream, he drifted across therose-marble tile, hearing the echoing clack of his bootheels, hearing the faintand shifting conversation of the Orizas in their pouch. He thought, Peoplewho work here wish they lived here. They may not know it, exactly, but they do.People who work here find excuses to work late. And they will live long andproductive lives.

In the center of the high, echoing room,the expensive marble floor gave way to a square of humble dark earth. It wassurrounded by ropes of wine-dark velvet, but Roland knew that even the ropesdidn’t need to be there. No one would transgress that little garden, not even asuicidal can-toi desperate to make a name for himself. It was holy ground.There were three dwarf palm trees, and plants he hadn’t seen since leavingGilead: Spathiphyllum, he believed they had been called there, although theymight not have the same name in this world. There were other plants as well,but only one mattered.

In the middle of the square, by itself, wasthe rose.

It hadn’t been transplanted; Roland sawthat at once. No. It was where it had been in 1977, when the place where he wasnow standing had been a vacant lot, filled with trash and broken bricks,dominated by a sign which a