The Dark Tower

“One more minute, do it please ya,” Rolandsaid, and stepped toward Stanley. Stanley looked down at his feet, but hisbeard-scruffy cheeks once more flooded with color. And—

He’s shivering, Susa

Stanley looked perhaps thirty-five, but hecould have been older; his face had the carefree smoothness Susa

Dinky started to speak. Ted silenced himwith a gesture.

“Will’ee not look me in the face?” Rolandasked. He spoke with a gentleness Susa

Susa

The man raised his face slowly. Tears werestreaming from his eyes.

“Good old Will Dearborn,” he said. Hisvoice was hoarse, and jigged up and down through the registers as a voice willdo when it has lain long unused. “I’m so sorry, sai. Were you to pull your gunand shoot me, I’d understand. So I would.”

“Why do’ee say so, Sheemie?” Roland askedin that same gentle voice.

Stanley’s tears flowed faster. “You savedmy life. Arthur and Richard, too, but mostly you, good old Will Dearborn whowas really Roland of Gilead. And I let her die! Her that you loved! And I lovedher, too!”

The man’s face twisted in agony and hetried to pull away from Roland. Yet Roland held him.

“None of that was your fault, Sheemie.”

“I should have died for her!” he cried. “Ishould have died in her place! I’m stupid! Foolish as they said!” He slappedhimself across the face, first one way and then the other, leaving red weals.Before he could do it again, Roland seized the hand and forced it down to hisside again.

“ ‘Twas Rhea did the harm,” Roland said.

Stanley—who had been Sheemie an eonago—looked into Roland’s face, searching his eyes.

“Aye,” Roland said, nodding. “ ‘Twas theCöos… and me, as well. I should have stayed with her. If anyone wasblameless in the business, Sheemie—Stanley—it was you.”

“Do you say so, gunslinger? Truey-true?”

Roland nodded. “We’ll palaver all you wouldabout this, if there’s time, and about those old days, but not now. No timenow. You have to go with your friends, and I must stay with mine.”

Sheemie looked at him a moment longer, andyes, Susa

Sheemie put his arms around Roland’s neckand hugged him tight. Roland smiled and stroked his curly hair with hisdisfigured right hand. A loud, honking sob escaped Sheemie’s throat. Susa

“Aye,” Roland said, speaking in a voicealmost too low to hear. “I always knew you were special; Bert and Alain did,too. And here we find each other, well-met further down the path. We’rewell-met, Sheemie son of Stanley. So we are. So we are.”

Chapter VI:

The Master of BlueHeaven

One

Pimli Prentiss, the Algul Siento Master, wasin the bathroom when Finli (known in some quarters as The Weasel) knocked atthe door. Prentiss was examining his complexion by the unforgiving light of thefluorescent bar over the washbasin. In the magnifying mirror, his skin lookedlike a grayish, crater-pocked plain, not much different from the surface of thewastelands stretching in every direction around the Algul. The sore on which hewas currently concentrating looked like an erupting volcano.

“Who be for me?” Prentiss bawled, althoughhe had a pretty good idea.

“Finli o’ Tego!”

“Walk in, Finli!” Never taking his eyesfrom the mirror. His fingers, closing in on the sides of the infected pimple,looked huge. They applied pressure.

Finli crossed Prentiss’s office and stoodin the bathroom door. He had to bend slightly in order to look in. He stoodover seven feet, very tall even for a taheen.

“Back from the station like I was nevergone,” said Finli. Like most of the taheen, his speaking voice reeled wildlyback and forth between a yelp and a growl. To Pimli, they all sounded like thehybrids from H. G. Wells’s The Island of Dr. Moreau, and he keptexpecting them to break into a chorus of “Are we not men?” Finli had pickedthis out of his mind once and asked about it. Prentiss had replied with completehonesty, knowing that in a society where low-grade telepathy was the rule,honesty was ever the best policy. The only policy, when dealing with thetaheen. Besides, he liked Finli o’ Tego.

“Back from the station, good,” Pimli said.“And what did you find?”

“A maintenance drone. Looks like it wentrogue on the Arc 16 side and—”

“Wait,” Prentiss said. “If you will, if youwill, thanks.”

Finli waited. Prentiss leaned even closertoward the mirror, face frowning in concentration. The Master of Blue Heavenwas tall himself, about six-two, and possessed of an enormous sloping bellysupported by long legs with slab thighs. He was balding and had the turnip noseof a veteran drinker. He looked perhaps fifty. He felt like about fifty(younger, when he hadn’t spent the previous night tossing them back with Finliand several of the can-toi). He had been fifty when he came here, a good manyyears ago; at least twenty-five, and that might be a big underestimation. Timewas goofy on this side, just like direction, and you were apt to lose bothquickly. Some folken lost their minds, as well. And if they ever lostthe sun machine for good—

The top of the pimple bulged… trembled…burst. Ah!

A glut of bloody pus leaped from the siteof the infection, splattered onto the mirror, and began to drool down itsslightly concave surface. Pimli Prentiss wiped it off with the tip of a finger,turned to flick it into the jakes, then offered it to Finli instead.

The taheen shook his head, then made thesort of exasperated noise any veteran dieter would have recognized, and guidedthe Master’s finger into his mouth. He sucked the pus off and then released thefinger with an audible pop.

“Shouldn’t do it, can’t resist,” Finlisaid. “Didn’t you tell me that folken on the other side decided eatingrare beef was bad for them?”

“Yar,” Pimli said, wiping the pimple (whichwas still oozing) with a Kleenex. He had been here a long time, and there wouldnever be any going back, for all sorts of reasons, but until recently he hadbeen up on current events; until the previous—could you call it ayear?—he’d gotten The New York Times on a fairly regular basis. Hebore a great affection for the Times, loved doing the daily crosswordpuzzle. It was a little touch of home.

“But they go on eating it, just the same.”