The Dark Tower

Roland gave her a grateful (if distracted)smile—he seemed to have gone away from her somehow during these last fewdays—and then turned back to Bill. “I wonder if you have a cart I couldpull? For we’ll have to take at least some gu

Patrick looked indignant. He cocked an armin front of him, made a fist, and flexed his muscle. The result—a tinygoose-egg rising on the biceps of his drawing-arm—seemed to shame him,for he dropped it quickly.

Susa

“I’m sure I have such a thing,” Bill said,“and a battery-powered version for Susa

Roland was calculating. “If we leave herewith five hours of daylight ahead of us, we might be able to make twelve wheelsby sunset. What Susa

And the voice inside—that deepvoice—whispered: Four nights. Four nights to dream. That should beenough. Maybe more than enough. Of course, ka would have to intervene. Ifthey had indeed outrun its influence, that wouldn’t—couldn’t—happen.But Susa

“That’s fine,” she told him in a faintvoice.

“Patrick?” Roland asked. “What do you say?”

Patrick shrugged and flipped a hand intheir direction, hardly looking up from his pad. Whatever they wanted, thatgesture said. Susa

He’s not meant to go, either. Not him,not Oy, not me. But what is to become of us, then?

She didn’t know, but she was queerlyunworried about it. Ka would tell. Ka, and her dreams.

Four

An hour later the three humes, the bumbler,and Bill the robot stood clustered around a cut-down wagon that looked like aslightly larger version of Ho Fat’s Luxury Taxi. The wheels were tall but thin,and spun like a dream. Even when it was full, Susa

“If you’ll give me another half an hour, Ican smooth this off,” Bill said, ru

“We say thankya, but it won’t benecessary,” Roland said. “We’ll lay a couple of hides over it, just so.”

He’s impatient to be off, Susa

“Well, if you say so, let it be so,” Billsaid, sounding unhappy about it. “I suppose I just hate to see you go. Whenwill I see humes again?”

None of them answered that. They didn’tknow.

“There’s a mighty loud horn on the roof,”Bill said, pointing at the Federal. “I don’t know what sort of trouble it wasmeant to signal—radiation leaks, mayhap, or some sort of attack—butI do know the sound of it will carry across a hundred wheels at least. More, ifthe wind’s blowing in the right direction. If I should see the fellow you thinkis following you, or if such motion-sensors as still work pick him up, I’ll setit off. Perhaps you’ll hear.”

“Thank you,” Roland said.

“Were you to drive, you could outrun himeasily,” Bill pointed out. “You’d reach the Tower and never have to see him.”

“That’s true enough,” Roland said, but heshowed absolutely no sign of changing his mind, and Susa

“What will you do about the one you callhis Red Father, if he really does command Can’-Ka No Rey?”

Roland shook his head, although he haddiscussed this probability with Susa

“Well, there’ll be water if God wills it,”said the robot formerly known as Stuttering Bill, “or so the old people didsay. And mayhap I’ll see you again, in the clearing at the end of the path, ifnowhere else. If robots are allowed to go there. I hope it’s so, for there’smany I’ve known that I’d see again.”

He sounded so forlorn that Susa

“Long days and pleasant nights, Bill,” shesaid. “May you do well, and we all say so.”

“Thank you, madam,” he said and put herdown. “I say thudda-thank, thumma-thank, thukka—” Wheep! And hestruck his head, producing a bright clang. “I say thank ya kindly.” He paused.“I did fix the stutter, say true, but as I may have told you, I am notentirely without emotions.”

Five

Patrick surprised them both by walking foralmost four hours beside Susa

When they finally stopped for the night,Roland gathered enough brush for a fire and Patrick, who had dozed off, woke uplong enough to eat an enormous meal of Vie

When di