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Twelve
Roland looked at Eddie, and as their eyesmet, both mouthed the same word: King.
Thirteen
“Trampas told me that the Crimson Kinghas tried to kill this man, but ka has ever protected his life. ‘They say hissong has cast the circle,’ Trampas told me, ‘although no one seems to knowexactly what that means.’ Now, however, ka—not the Red King but plain oldka—has decreed that this man, this guardian or whatever he is, shoulddie. He’s stopped, you see. Whatever song it was he was supposed to sing, he’sstopped, and that has finally made him vulnerable. But not to theCrimson King. Trampas kept telling me that. No, it’s ka he’s vulnerableto. ‘He no longer sings,’ Trampas said. ‘His song, the one that matters, hasended. He has forgotten the rose.’”
Fourteen
In the outer silence, Mordred heard thisand then withdrew to ponder it.
Fifteen
“Trampas told me all this only so I’dunderstand I was no longer completely indispensable. Of course they want tokeep me; presumably there would be honor in bringing down Shardik’s Beam beforethis man’s death could cause Gan’s Beam to break.”
A pause.
“Do they see the lethal insanity of arace to the brink of oblivion, and then over the edge? Apparently not. If theydid, surely they wouldn’t be racing to begin with. Or is it a simple failure ofimagination? One doesn’t like to think such a rudimentary failing could bringabout the end, yet…”
Sixteen
Roland, exasperated, twirled his fingersalmost as if the old man to whose voice they were listening could see them. Hewanted to hear, very well and every word, what the can-toi guard knew aboutStephen King, and instead Brautigan had gotten off onto some rambling,discursive sidetrack. It was understandable—the man was clearlyexhausted—but there was something here more important than everythingelse. Eddie knew it, too. Roland could read it on the young man’s strainedface. Together they watched the remaining brown tape—now no more than aneighth of an inch deep—melt away.
Seventeen
“… yet we’re only poor benighted humies,and I suppose we can’t know about these things, not with any degree ofcertainty…”
He fetches a long, tired sigh. The tapeturns, melting off the final reel and ru
“I asked this magic man’s name andTrampas said, ‘I know it not, Ted, but I do know there’s no magic in himanymore, for he’s ceased whatever it was that ka meant him to do. If we leavehim be, the Ka of Nineteen, which is that of his world, and the Ka ofNinety-nine, which is that of our world, will combine to—”
But there is no more. That is where thetape runs out.
Eighteen
The take-up reel turned and the shiny browntape-end flapped, making that low fwip-fwip-fwip sound until Eddieleaned forward and pressed STOP. He muttered “Fuck!” under his breath.
“Just when it was getting interesting,”Jake said. “And those numbers again. Nineteen… and ninety-nine.” He paused, thensaid them together. “Nineteen-ninety-nine.” Then a third time. “1999. TheKeystone Year in the Keystone World. Where Mia went to have her baby. WhereBlack Thirteen is now.”
“Keystone World, Keystone Year,” Susa
“Gan created time,” Roland said.“This is what the old legends say. Gan rose from the void—some tales sayfrom the sea, but both surely mean the Prim—and made the world.Then he tipped it with his finger and set it rolling and that was time.”
Something was gathering in the cave. Somerevelation. They all felt it, a thing as close to bursting as Mia’s belly hadbeen at the end. Nineteen. Ninety-nine. They had been haunted by these numbers.They had turned up everywhere. They saw them in the sky, saw them written onboard fences, heard them in their dreams.
Oy looked up, ears cocked, eyes bright.
Susa
“You told us,” Eddie said.
She shook her head violently. “Not allof it, I didn’t. Because some of it didn’t seem to make any sense. Hearing DaveGarroway say that President Ke
They shook their heads. Jake was not evensure of whom Susa
“But he did. In the Keystone World,and in a when beyond any of ours. I bet it was in the when of ‘99. So dies theson of the last gunslinger, O Discordia. What I think now is that I was kind ofhearing the obituary page from The Time Traveler’s Weekly. It was alldifferent times mixed together. John-John Ke
Roland and Eddie nodded.
“Father Callahan told us his story.”
“Yeah,” Jake said. “But what—”
She overrode him. Her eyes were hazy,distant. Eyes just a look away from understanding. “And then comes Brautigan tothe Ka-Tet of Nineteen, and tells his tale. And look! Look at the tapecounter!”
They leaned over. In the windows were
1999.
“I think King might have written Ted’sstory, too,” she said. “Anybody want to take a guess what year thatstory showed up, or will show up, in the Keystone World?”
“1999,” Jake said, low. “But not the partwe heard. The part we didn’t hear. Ted’s Co
“And you met him,” Susa
They nodded again.
“He made the Pere, he made Brautigan, hemade us,” she said, as if to herself, then shook her head. “No. ‘Allthings serve the Beam.’ He… he facilitated us.”
“Yeah.” Eddie was nodding. “Yeah, okay.That feels just about right.”
“In my dream I was in a cell,” she said. “Iwas wearing the clothes I had on when I got arrested. And David Brinkley saidStephen King was dead, woe, Discordia—something like that. Brinkley saidhe was…” She paused, frowning. She would have demanded that Roland hypnotizethe complete recollection out of her if it had been necessary, but it turnedout not to be. “Brinkley said King was killed by a minivan while walking nearhis home in Lovell, Maine.”
Eddie jerked. Roland sat forward, his eyesburning. “Do you say so?”
Susa
“He bought the house on Turtleback Lane!”the gunslinger roared. He reached out and took hold of Eddie’s shirt. Eddieseemed not to even notice. “Of course he did! Ka speaks and the windblows! He moved a little further along the Path of the Beam and bought thehouse where it’s thin! Where we saw the walk-ins! Where we talked to JohnCullum and then came back through! Do you doubt it? Do you doubt it so muchas a single goddam bit?”
Eddie shook his head. Of course he didn’tdoubt it. It had a ring, like the one you got when you were at the carnival andhit the pedal just right with the mallet, hit it with all your force, and thelead slug flew straight to the top of the post and rang the bell up there. Yougot a Kewpie doll when you rang the bell, and was that because Stephen King thoughtit was a Kewpie doll? Because King came from the world where Gan started timerolling with His holy finger? Because if King says Kewpie, we allsay Kewpie, and we all say thankya? If he’d somehow gotten the idea that theprize for ringing the Test Your Strength bell at the carnival was a Cloopiedoll, would they say Cloopie? Eddie thought the answer was yes. Hethought the answer was yes just as surely as Co-Op City was in Brooklyn.