The Dark Tower

“Armitage told me, ‘You’ll be travelingfar, Ted, but it will also be right next door. And for the time being, that’sall I can say. Except to keep your mouth shut about our arrangement during theeight weeks before you actually… mmm… ship out. Remember that loose lips sinkships. At the risk of inculcating you with paranoia, assume that you are beingwatched.’

“And of course I was watched.Later—too later, in a ma

“The low men.”

Eight

“Armitage and two other humes met usoutside the Mark Hopkins Hotel,” said the voice from the tape recorder. “Iremember the date with perfect clarity; it was Halloween of 1955. Five o’clockin the afternoon. Me, Jace McGovern, Dave Ittaway, Dick… I can’t remember hislast name, he died about six months later, Humma said it was pneumonia and therest of the ki’cans backed him up—ki’can sort of means shit-people orshit-folken, if you’re interested—but it was suicide and I knew itif no one else did. The rest… well, remember Doc Number Two? The rest were andare like him. ‘Don’t tell me what I don’t want to know, sai, don’t mess up myworldview.’ Anyway, the last one was Tanya Leeds. Tough little thing…”

A pause and a click. Then Ted’s voiceresumed, sounding temporarily refreshed. The third tape had almost finished. Hemust have really burned through the rest of the story, Eddie thought, andfound that the idea disappointed him. Whatever else he was, Ted was a hell of agood tale-spi

“Armitage and his colleagues showed up in aFord station wagon, what we called a woody in those charming days. They droveus inland, to a town called Santa Mira. There was a paved main street. The restof them were dirt. I remember there were a lot of oil-derricks, looking likepraying mantises, sort of… although it was dark by then and they were reallyjust shapes against the sky.

“I was expecting a train depot, or maybe abus with CHARTERED in the destination window. Instead we pulled up to thisempty freight depot with a sign reading SANTA MIRA SHIPPING hanging askew onthe front and I got a thought, clear as day, from Dick whatever-his-name was. They’regoing to kill us, he was thinking. They brought us out here to kill usand steal our stuff.

“If you’re not a telepath, you don’t knowhow scary something like that can be. How the surety of it kind of… invadesyour head. I saw Dave Ittaway go pale, and although Tanya didn’t make asound—she was a tough little thing, as I told you—it was brightenough in the car to see there were tears standing in the corners of her eyes.

“I leaned over her, took Dick’s hands inmine, and squeezed down on them when he tried to pull away. I thought at him, Theydidn’t give us a quarter of a mill each, most of it still stashed safe in theSeaman’s Bank, so they could bring us out to the williwags and steal ourwatches. And Jace thought at me, I don’t even have a watch. Ipawned my Gruen two years ago in Albuquerque, and by the time I thought aboutbuying another one—around midnight last night, this was—all thestores were closed and I was too drunk to climb down off the barstool I was on,anyway.

“That relaxed us, and we all had a laugh.Armitage asked us what we were laughing about and that relaxed us even more,because we had something they didn’t, could communicate in a way they couldn’t.I told him it was nothing, then gave Dick’s hands another little squeeze. Itdid the job. I… facilitated him, I suppose. It was my first time doing that.The first of many. That’s part of the reason I’m so tired; all thatfacilitating wears a man out.

“Armitage and the others led us inside. Theplace was deserted, but at the far end there was a door with two words chalkedon it, along with those moons and stars. THUNDERCLAP STATION, it said. Well,there was no station: no tracks, no buses, no road other than the onewe’d used to get there. There were windows on either side of the door andnothing on the other side of the building but a couple of smallerbuildings—deserted sheds, one of them just a burnt-out shell—and alot of scrub-land littered with trash.

“Dave Ittaway said, ‘Why are we going outthere?’ and one of the others said, ‘You’ll see,’ and we certainly did.

“ ‘Ladies first,’ Armitage said, and heopened the door.

“It was dark on the other side, but not thesame kind of dark. It was darker dark. If you’ve seen Thunderclapat night, you’ll know. And it sounded different. Old buddy Dick there had somesecond thoughts and turned around. One of the men pulled a gun. And I’ll neverforget what Armitage said. Because he sounded… kindly. ‘Too late to back outnow,’ he said. ‘Now you can only go forward.’

“And I think right then I knew thatbusiness about the six-year plan, and re-upping if we wanted to, was what myfriend Bobby Garfield and his friend Sully-John would have called just ashuck and jive. Not that we could read it in their thoughts. They were allwearing hats, you see. You never see a low man—or a low lady, for thatmatter—without a hat on. The men’s looked like plain old fedoras, thesort most guys wore back then, but these were no ordinary lids. They werethinking-caps. Although anti-thinking-caps would be more accurate; theymuffle the thoughts of the people wearing them. If you try to prog someonewho’s wearing one—prog is Dinky’s word forthought-reading—you just get a hum with a lot of whispering underneath.Very unpleasant, like the todash chimes. If you’ve heard them, you know.Discourages too much effort, and effort’s the last thing most of the telepathsin the Algul are interested in. What the Breakers are mostly interested in,lady and gentlemen, is going along to get along. Which only shows up for whatit is—monstrous—if you pull back and take the long view. One morething most Breakers are not into. Quite often you hear a saying—a littlepoem—around campus, or see it chalked on the walls: ‘Enjoy the cruise, turnon the fan, there’s nothing to lose, so work on your tan.’ It means a lot morethan ‘Take it easy.’ The implications of that little piece of doggerel areextremely unpleasant. I wonder if you can see that.”

Eddie thought he could, at least,and it occurred to him that his brother Henry would have made an absolutelywonderful Breaker. Always assuming he’d been allowed to take along his heroinand his Creedence Clearwater Revival albums, that was.

A longer pause from Ted, then a rueful sortof laugh.

“I believe it’s time to make a long story alittle shorter. We went through the door, leave it at that. If you’ve done it,you know it can be very unpleasant, if the door’s not in tip-top working order.And the door between Santa Mira, California, and Thunderclap was in bettershape than some I’ve been through since.

“For a moment there was only darkness onthe other side, and the howl of what the taheen call desert-dogs. Then acluster of lights went on and we saw these… these things with the headsof birds and weasels and one with the head of a bull, horns and all. Jacescreamed, and so did I. Dave Ittaway turned and tried to run, but Armitagegrabbed him. Even if he hadn’t, where was there to go? Back through the door?It was closed, and for all I know, that’s a one-way. The only one of us whonever made a sound was Tanya, and when she looked at me, what I saw in her eyesand read in her thoughts was relief. Because we knew, you see. Not all thequestions were answered, but the two that mattered were. Where were we? Inanother world. When were we coming back? Never in life. Our money would sit inthe Seaman’s of San Francisco until it turned into millions, and no one wouldever spend it. We were in for the long haul.

“There was a bus there, with a robot drivernamed Phil. ‘My name’s Phil, I’m over the hill, but the best news is that Inever spill,’ he said. He smelled like lightning and there were all sorts ofdiscordant clicking sounds coming from deep in his guts. Old Phil’s dead now,dumped in the train and robot graveyard with God alone knows how many others,but they’ve got enough mechanized help to finish what they’ve started, I’msure.