The Dark Tower

Some new Earth, perhaps, but Pimliwasn’t even sure of that.

Two can-toi security guards, Beeman andTrelawney, stood at the end of the hall, guarding the head of the stairs goingdown to the basement. To Pimli, all can-toi men, even those with blond hair andski

“Hile,” said Beeman.

“Hile,” said Trelawney.

Pimli and Finli returned the greeting, theyall fisted their foreheads, and then Pimli led the way downstairs. In the lowercorridor, walking past the sign which read WE MUST ALL WORK TOGETHER TO CREATEA FIRE-FREE ENVIRONMENT and another reading ALL HAIL THE CAN-TOI, Finli said,very low: “They are so odd.”

Pimli smiled and clapped him on the back.That was why he genuinely liked Finli o’ Tego: like Ike and Mike, they thoughtalike.

Six

Most of the Damli House basement was alarge room jammed with equipment. Not all of the stuff worked, and they had nouse for some of the instruments that did (there was plenty they didn’t evenunderstand), but they were very familiar with the surveillance equipment andthe telemetry that measured darks: units of expended psychic energy. TheBreakers were expressly forbidden from using their psychic abilities outside ofThe Study, and not all of them could, anyway. Many were like men and women soseverely toilet-trained that they were unable to urinate without the visualstimuli that assured them that yes, they were in the toilet, and yes, it wasall right to let go. Others, like children who aren’t yet completelytoilet-trained, were unable to prevent the occasional psychic outburst. Thismight amount to no more than giving someone they didn’t like a transientheadache or knocking over a bench on the Mall, but Pimli’s men kept carefultrack, and outbursts that were deemed “on purpose” were punished, firstoffenses lightly, repeat offenses with rapidly mounting severity. And, as Pimliliked to lecture to the newcomers (back in the days when there had beennewcomers), “Be sure your sin will find you out.” Finli’s scripture was evensimpler: Telemetry doesn’t lie.

Today they found nothing but transientblips on the telemetry readouts. It was as meaningless as a four-hour audiorecording of some group’s farts and burps would have been. The videotapes andthe swing-guards’ daybooks likewise produced nothing of interest.

“Satisfied, sai?” Finli asked, andsomething in his voice caused Pimli to swing around and look at him sharply.

“Are you?”

Finli o’ Tego sighed. At times like thisPimli wished that either Finli were hume or that he himself were truly taheen.The problem was Finli’s inexpressive black eyes. They were almost theshoebutton eyes of a Raggedy Andy doll, and there was simply no way to readthem. Unless, maybe, you were another taheen.

“I haven’t felt right for weeks now,” Finlisaid at last. “I drink too much graf to put myself asleep, then drag myselfthrough the day, biting people’s heads off. Part of it’s the loss ofcommunications since the last Beam went—”

“You know that was inevitable—”

“Yes, of course I know. What I’m saying isthat I’m trying to find rational reasons to explain irrational feelings, andthat’s never a good sign.”

On the far wall was a picture of NiagaraFalls. Some can-toi guard had turned it upside down. The low men consideredturning pictures upside down the absolute height of humor. Pimli had no ideawhy. But in the end, who gave a shit? I know how to do my facking job,he thought, re-hanging Niagara Falls rightside up. I know how to do that,and nothing else matters, tell God and the Man Jesus thank ya.

“We always knew things were going to getwacky at the end,” Finli said, “so I tell myself that’s all this is. This… youknow…”

“This feeling you have,” the former PaulPrentiss supplied. Then he gri

“Yar. Certainly I know that the BleedingLion hasn’t reappeared in the north, nor do I believe that the sun’s coolingfrom the inside. I’ve heard tales of the Red King’s madness and that theDan-Tete has come to take his place, and all I can say is ‘I’ll believe it whenI see it.’ Same with this wonderful news about how a gunslinger-man’s come outof the west to save the Tower, as the old tales and songs predict. Bullshit,every bit of it.”

Pimli clapped him on the shoulder. “Does myheart good to hear you say so!”

It did, too. Finli o’ Tego had done a hellof a job during his tenure as Head. His security cadre had had to kill half adozen Breakers over the years—all of them homesick fools trying toescape—and two others had been lobotomized, but Ted Brautigan was theonly one who’d actually made it “under the fence” (this phrase Pimli had pickedup from a film called Stalag 17), and they had reeled him back in, byGod. The can-toi took the credit, and the Security Chief let them, but Pimliknew the truth: it was Finli who’d choreographed each move, from begi

“But it might be more than just nerves,this feeling of mine,” Finli continued. “I do believe that sometimesfolk can have bona fide intuitions.” He laughed. “How could one not believethat, in a place as lousy with precogs and postcogs as this one?”

“But no teleports,” Pimli said. “Right?”

Teleportation was the one so-called wildtalent of which all the Devar staff was afraid, and with good reason. There wasno end to the sort of havoc a teleport could wreak. Bringing in about fouracres of outer space, for instance, and creating a vacuum-induced hurricane.Fortunately there was a simple test to isolate that particular talent (easy toadminister, although the equipment necessary was another leftover of the oldpeople and none of them knew how long it would continue to work) and a simpleprocedure (also left behind by the old ones) for shorting out such dangerousorganic circuits. Dr. Gangli was able to take care of potential teleports inunder two minutes. “So simple it makes a vasectomy look like brain-surgery,”he’d said once.

“Absa-fackin-lutely no teleports,” was whatFinli said now, and led Prentiss to an instrument console that looked eerilylike Susa

“We don’t know exactly what these dialswere actually meant to measure,” he said, “but one thing they do measureis teleportation potential. We’ve had Breakers who’ve tried to shield thetalent and it doesn’t work. If there was a teleport in the woodpile, Pimli o’New Jersey, these needles would be jittering all the way up to fifty or eveneighty.”

“So.” Half-smiling, half-serious, Pimlibegan to count off on his fingers. “No teleports, no Bleeding Lion stalkingfrom the north, no gunslinger-man. Oh, and the Greencloaks succumbed to acomputer virus. If all that’s the case, what’s gotten under your skin? Whatfeels hinky-di-di to ya?”