The Dark Tower

Roland had gotten the Rod to his feet andwas now conferring with him at the back of the cave. Well… sort of. Thegunslinger was talking and the Rod was listening, occasionally sneaking tinyawed peeks at Roland’s face. It was gibberish to Eddie, but he was able to pickout two words: Chevin and Chayven. Roland was asking this one about the onethey’d met staggering along the road in Lovell.

“Does he have a name?” Eddie asked Dink andTed, taking a second plate of food.

“I call him Chucky,” Dinky said. “Becausehe looks a little bit like the doll in this horror movie I saw once.”

Eddie gri

“If no one asks him, he can,” Ted said.Which was not, in Eddie’s view, a very satisfactory answer.

After five minutes or so of chat, Rolandseemed satisfied and rejoined the others. He hunkered—no problem doingthat now that his joints had limbered up—and looked at Ted. “Thisfellow’s name is Haylis of Chayven. Will anyone miss him?”

“Unlikely,” Ted said. “The Rods show up atthe gate beyond the dorms in little groups, looking for work. Fetching andcarrying, mostly. They’re given a meal or something to drink as pay. If theydon’t show up, no one misses them.”

“Good. Now—how long are the dayshere? Is it twenty-four hours from now until tomorrow morning at this time?”

Ted seemed interested in the question andconsidered it for several moments before replying. “Call it twenty-five,” hesaid. “Maybe a little longer. Because time is slowing down, at least here. Asthe Beams weaken, there seems to be a growing disparity in the time-flowbetween the worlds. It’s probably one of the major stress points.”

Roland nodded. Susa

“And is there a time of morning when thingsdown there might be a little less… I don’t know…”

“A little disorganized?” Ted suggested.

Roland nodded.

“Did you hear a horn a little while ago?”Ted asked. “Just before we showed up?”

They all shook their heads.

Ted didn’t seem surprised. “But you heardthe music start, correct?”

“Yes,” Susa

“Thank you, ma’am. In any case, the hornsignals the change of shifts. The music starts then.”

“I hate that music,” Dinky said moodily.

“If there’s any time when control wavers,”Ted went on, “that would be it.”

“And what o’clock is that?” Roland asked.

Ted and Dinky exchanged a doubtful glance.Dinky showed eight fingers, his eyebrows raised questioningly. He lookedrelieved when Ted nodded at once.

“Yes, eight o’clock,” Ted said, thenlaughed and gave his head a cynical little shake. “What would be eight,anyway, in a world where yon prison might always lie firmly east and not eastby southeast on some days and dead east on others.”

But Roland had been living with thedissolving world long before Ted Brautigan had even dreamed of such a place asAlgul Siento, and he wasn’t particularly upset by the way formerlyhard-and-fast facts of life had begun to bend. “About twenty-five hours fromright now,” Roland said. “Or a little less.”

Dinky nodded. “But if you’re counting onraging confusion, forget it. They know their places and go to them. They’re oldhands.”

“Still,” Roland said, “it’s the best we’reapt to do.” Now he looked at his old acquaintance from Mejis. And beckoned tohim.

Five

Sheemie set his plate down at once, came toRoland, and made a fist. “Hile, Roland, Will Dearborn that was.”

Roland returned this greeting, then turnedto Jake. The boy gave him an uncertain look. Roland nodded at him, and Jakecame. Now Jake and Sheemie stood facing each other with Roland hunkered betweenthem, seeming to look at neither now that they were brought together.

Jake raised a hand to his forehead.

Sheemie returned the gesture.

Jake looked down at Roland and said, “Whatdo you want?”

Roland didn’t answer, only continued tolook serenely toward the mouth of the cave, as if there were something in theapparently endless murk out there which interested him. And Jake knew what waswanted, as surely as if he had used the touch on Roland’s mind to find out(which he most certainly had not). They had come to a fork in the road. It hadbeen Jake who’d suggested Sheemie should be the one to tell them which branchto take. At the time it had seemed like a weirdly good idea—who knew why.Now, looking into that earnest, not-very-bright face and those bloodshot eyes,Jake wondered two things: what had ever possessed him to suggest such a courseof action, and why someone—probably Eddie, who retained a relatively hardhead in spite of all they’d been through—hadn’t told him, kindly butfirmly, that putting their future in Sheemie Ruiz’s hands was a dumb idea.Totally noodgy, as his old schoolmates back at Piper might have said. NowRoland, who believed that even in the shadow of death there were still lessonsto be learned, wanted Jake to ask the question Jake himself had proposed, andthe answer would no doubt expose him as the superstitious scatterbrain he hadbecome. Yet still, why not ask? Even if it were the equivalent of flipping acoin, why not? Jake had come, possibly at the end of a short but undeniablyinteresting life, to a place where there were magic doors, mechanical butlers,telepathy (of which he was capable, at least to some small degree, himself),vampires, and were-spiders. So why not let Sheemie choose? They had togo one way or the other, after all, and he’d been through too goddam much toworry about such a paltry thing as looking like an idiot in front of hiscompanions. Besides, he thought, if I’m not among friends here, Inever will be.

“Sheemie,” he said. Looking into thosebloody eyes was sort of horrible, but he made himself do it. “We’re on a quest.That means we have a job to do. We—”

“You have to save the Tower,” said Sheemie.“And my old friend is to go in, and mount to the top, and see what’s to see.There may be renewal, there may be death, or there may be both. He was WillDearborn once, aye, so he was. Will Dearborn to me.”

Jake glanced at Roland, who was stillhunkered down, looking out of the cave. But Jake thought his face had gone paleand strange.

One of Roland’s fingers made his twirlinggo-ahead gesture.

“Yes, we’re supposed to save the DarkTower,” Jake agreed. And thought he understood some of Roland’s lust to see itand enter it, even if it killed him. What lay at the center of the universe?What man (or boy) could but wonder, once the question was thought of, and wantto see?

Even if looking drove him mad?

“But in order to do that, we have to do twojobs. One involves going back to our world and saving a man. A writer who’stelling our story. The other job is the one we’ve been talking about. Freeingthe Breakers.” Honesty made him add: “Or stopping them, at least. Do youunderstand?”

But this time Sheemie didn’t reply. He waslooking where Roland was looking, out into the murk. His face was that ofsomeone who’s been hypnotized. Looking at it made Jake uneasy, but he pushedon. He had come to his question, after all, and where else was there to go buton?

“The question is, which job do we do first?It’d seem that saving the writer might be easier because there’s no opposition…that we know of, anyway… but there’s a chance that… well…” Jake didn’t want tosay But there’s a chance that teleporting us might kill you, and so cameto a lame and unsatisfying halt.