The Dark Tower

“No, of course he didn’t,” she said,smiling. “He never would. He had a yard of guts, our Jake. Did you take care ofhim? Did you do him right? I’d hear that part.”

So he told her, not failing to includeIrene Tassenbaum’s promise of the rose. She nodded, then said: “I wish we coulddo the same for your friend, Sheemie. He died on the train. I’m sorry, Roland.”

Roland nodded. He wished he had tobacco,but of course there was none. He had both guns again and they were seven Orizaplates to the good, as well. Otherwise they were stocked withlittle-going-on-none.

“Did he have to push again, while you werecoming here? I suppose he did. I knew one more might kill him. Sai Brautigandid, too. And Dinky.”

“But that wasn’t it, Roland. It was hisfoot.”

The gunslinger looked at her, notunderstanding.

“He cut it on a piece of broken glassduring the fight to take Blue Heaven, and the air and dirt of that place was poison!”It was Detta who spat the last word, her accent so thick that the gunslingerbarely understood it: Pizen! “Goddam foot swole up… toes like sausages…then his cheeks and throat went all dusky, like a bruise… he took fever…” Shepulled in a deep breath, clutching the two blankets she wore tighter aroundher. “He was delirious, but his head cleared at the end. He spoke of you, andof Susan Delgado. He spoke with such love and such regret…” She paused, thenburst out: “We will go there, Roland, we will, and if it isn’tworth it, your Tower, somehow we’ll make it worth it!”

“We’ll go,” he said. “We’ll find the DarkTower, and nothing will stand against us, and before we go in, we’ll speaktheir names. All of the lost.”

“Your list will be longer than mine,” shesaid, “but mine will be long enough.”

To this Roland did not reply, but the robothuckster, perhaps startled out of its long sleep by the sound of their voices,did. “Girls, girls, girls!” it cried from inside the batwing doors ofthe Gaiety Bar and Grill. “Some are humie and some are cybie, but who cares,you can’t tell, who cares, they give, you tell, girls tell, you tell…” Therewas a pause and then the robot huckster shouted one final word—“SATISFACTION!”—andfell silent.

“By the gods, but this is a sad place,” hesaid. “We’ll stay the night and then see it no more.”

“At least the sun’s out, and that’s arelief after Thunderclap, but isn’t it cold!”

He nodded, then asked about the others.

“They’ve gone on,” she said, “but there wasa minute there when I didn’t think any of us were going anywhere except to thebottom of yonder crevasse.”

She pointed to the end of the Fedic highstreet furthest from the castle wall.

“There are TV screens that still work insome of the traincars, and as we came up on town we got a fine view of thebridge that’s gone. We could see the ends sticking out over the hole, but thegap in the middle had to be a hundred yards across. Maybe more. We could seethe train trestle, too. That was still intact. The train was slowing down bythen, but not enough so any of us could have jumped off. By then there was notime. And the jump would likely have killed anyone who tried. We were going, ohI’m go

“Yes.”

“But we could hear the trestle gettingready to let go even over that. Then everything started shaking from side toside. A voice—very calm and soothing—said, ‘We are experiencingminor difficulties, please take your seats.’ Dinky was holding that littleRussian girl, Dani. Ted took my hands and said, ‘I want to tell you, madam,that it has been a pleasure to know you.’ There was a lurch so hard it dam

“The next thing I knew, we were coastinginto the station. And here comes that same soothing voice, this time telling usto look around our seats and make sure we’ve got all our personals—ourgu

Then she brightened.

“There’s one good thing—at speeds ofup to three hundred miles an hour, which is what that ain’t-we-happy voice saidthe Spirit of Topeka was doing, we must have left Master Spider-Boy inthe dust.”

“I wouldn’t count on it,” Roland said.

She rolled her eyes wearily. “Don’t tell methat.”

“I do tell you. But we’ll deal withMordred when the time comes, and I don’t think that will be today.”

“Good.”

“Have you been beneath the Dogan again? Itake it you have.”

Susa

“If it had just been me, I’d still bewandering around down there,” Roland admitted. “Oy found the way out. I assumedhe was following your scent.”

Susa

Roland nodded, but the fading sign paintedon the wall had meant little to him. He had identified the passage which theWolves took at the begi

“So,” he said. “You got off thetrain—how many were you?”

“Five, with Sheemie gone,” she said. “Me,Ted, Dinky, Dani Rostov, and Fred Worthington—do you remember Fred?”

Roland nodded. The man in the bankerlysuit.

“I gave them the guided tour of the Dogan,”she said. “As much as I could, anyway. The beds where they stole the brains outof the kids and the one where Mia finally gave birth to her monster; theone-way door between Fedic and the Dixie Pig in New York that still works;Nigel’s apartment.

“Ted and his friends were pretty amazed bythe rotunda where all the doors are, especially the one going to Dallas in1963, where President Ke

Roland thought a lot of people might,actually, but knew better than to say so.

“It’s all very old,” she said. “And veryhot. And very fucking scary, if you want to know the truth. Most of themachinery has quit, and there are puddles of water and oil and God knows whateverywhere. Some of the puddles gave off a glow, and Dinky said he thought itmight be radiation. I don’t like to think what I got growin on my bones or whenmy hair’ll start fallin out. There were doors where we could hear those awfulchimes… the ones that set your teeth on edge.”