The Dark Tower

Finli o’ Tego grabbed his arm. “Boss,” hesaid, calmly enough. “We’ve got real trouble.”

Before Pimli could reply, the horn wentoff, signaling the change of shifts. And suddenly he realized how vulnerablethey would be for the next seven minutes or so. Vulnerable to all sorts ofthings.

He refused to admit the word attackinto his consciousness. At least not yet.

Eight

Dinky Earnshaw had been sitting in theoverstuffed easy chair for what seemed like forever, waiting impatiently forthe party to begin. Usually being in The Study cheered him up—hell,cheered everybody up, it was the “good-mind” effect—but today heonly felt the wires of tension inside him winding tighter and tighter, pullinghis guts into a ball. He was aware of taheen and can-toi looking down from thebalconies every now and again, riding the good-mind wave, but didn’t have toworry about being progged by the likes of them; from that, at least, he wassafe.

Was that a smoke alarm? From Feveral,perhaps?

Maybe. But maybe not, too. No one else waslooking around.

Wait, he told himself. Ted toldyou this would be the hard part, didn’t he? And at least Sheemie’s out of theway. Sheemie’s safe in his room, and Corbett Hall’s safe from fire. So calmdown. Relax.

That was the bray of a smoke alarm.Dinky was sure of it. Well… almost sure.

A book of crossword puzzles was open in hislap. For the last fifty minutes he’d been filling one of the grids withnonsense-letters, ignoring the definitions completely. Now, across the top, heprinted this in large dark block letters: GO SOUTH WITH YOUR HANDS UP, YOUWON’T BE HU

That was when one of the upstairs firealarms, probably the one in the west wing, went off with a loud, warbling bray.Several of the Breakers, jerked rudely from a deep daze of concentration, criedout in surprised alarm. Dinky also cried out, but in relief. Relief andsomething more. Joy? Yeah, very likely it was joy. Because when the firealarm began to bray, he’d felt the powerful hum of good-mind snap. The eeriecombined force of the Breakers had winked out like an overloaded electricalcircuit. For the moment, at least, the assault on the Beam had stopped.

Meanwhile, he had a job to do. No morewaiting. He stood up, letting the crossword magazine tumble to the Turkish rug,and threw his mind at the Breakers in the room. It wasn’t hard; he’d beenpracticing almost daily for this moment, with Ted’s help. And if it worked? Ifthe Breakers picked it up, rebroadcasting it and amping what Dinky could onlysuggest to the level of a command? Why then it would rise. It would become thedominant chord in a new good-mind gestalt.

At least that was the hope.

(IT’S A FIRE FOLKS THERE’S A FIREIN THE BUILDING)

As if to underscore this, there was a softbang-and-tinkle as something imploded and the first puff of smoke seeped fromthe ventilator panels. Breakers looked around with wide, dazed eyes, somegetting to their feet.

And Dinky sent:

(DON’T WORRY DON’T PANIC ALL ISWELL WALK UP THE)

He sent a perfect, practiced image of thenorth stairway, then added Breakers. Breakers walking up the north stairway.Breakers walking through the kitchen. Crackle of fire, smell of smoke, but bothcoming from the guards’ sleeping area in the west wing. And would anyonequestion the truth of this mental broadcast? Would anyone wonder who wasbeaming it out, or why? Not now. Now they were only scared. Now they were wantingsomeone to tell them what to do, and Dinky Earnshaw was that someone.

(NORTH STAIRWAY WALK UP THE NORTHSTAIRWAY WALK OUT ONTO THE BACK LAWN)

And it worked. They began to walk that way.Like sheep following a ram or horses following a stallion. Some were picking upthe two basic ideas

(NO PANIC NO PANIC)

(NORTH STAIRWAY NORTH STAIRWAY)

and rebroadcasting them. And, even better,Dinky heard it from above, too. From the can-toi and the taheen who had beenobserving from the balconies.

No one ran and no one panicked, but theexodus up the north stairs had begun.

Nine

Susa

With all that happening to their south, itwas no wonder that the woman north of the Devar-Toi saw only the backs of thethree guards in the ivy-covered watchtowers. Three didn’t seem like many, butit was five per cent of the total. A start.

Susa

Soon.

It would be soon.

Ten

Finli grabbed the Master’s arm. Pimli shookhim off and started toward his house again, staring unbelievingly at the smokethat was now pouring out of all the windows on the left side.

“Boss!” Finli shouted, renewing his grip.“Boss, never mind that! It’s the Breakers we have to worry about! The Breakers!”

It didn’t get through, but the shockingwarble of the Damli House fire alarm did. Pimli turned back in that direction,and for a moment he met Jakli’s beady little bird’s eyes. He saw nothing inthem but panic, which had the perverse but welcome effect of steadying Pimlihimself. Sirens and buzzers everywhere. One of them was a regular pulsing honkhe’d never heard before. Coming from the direction of Pleasantville?

“Come on, boss!” Finli o’ Tego almostpleaded. “We have to make sure the Breakers are okay—”

“Smoke!” Jakli cried, fluttering his dark(and utterly useless) wings. “Smoke from Damli House, smoke from Feveral, too!”

Pimli ignored him. He pulled the Peacemakerfrom the docker’s clutch, wondering briefly what premonition had caused him toput it on. He had no idea, but he was glad for the weight of the gun in hishand. Behind him, Tassa was yelling—Tammy was, too—but Pimliignored the pair of them. His heart was beating furiously, but he was calmagain. Finli was right. The Breakers were the important thing right now. Makingsure they didn’t lose a third of their trained psychics in some sort ofelectrical fire or half-assed act of sabotage. He nodded at his Security Chiefand they began to run toward Damli House with Jakli squawking and flappingalong behind them like a refugee from a Warner Bros. cartoon. Somewhere upthere, Gaskie was hollering. And then Pimli o’ New Jersey heard a sound thatchilled him to the bone, a rapid chow-chow-chow sound. Gunfire! If someclown was shooting at his Breakers, that clown’s head would finish the day on ahigh pole, by the gods. That the guards rather than the Breakers might be underattack had at that point still not crossed his mind, nor that of the slightlywilier Finli, either. Too much was happening too fast.

Eleven

At the south end of the Devar compound, thesyncopated honking sound was almost loud enough to split eardrums. “Christ!”Eddie said, and couldn’t hear himself.

In the south watchtowers, the guards wereturned away from them, looking north. Eddie couldn’t see any smoke yet. Perhapsthe guards could from their higher vantage-points.

Roland grabbed Jake’s shoulder, thenpointed at the SOO LINE boxcar. Jake nodded and scrambled beneath it with Oy athis heels. Roland held both hands out to Eddie—Stay where you are!—andthen followed. On the other side of the boxcar the boy and the gunslinger stoodup, side by side. They would have been clearly visible to the sentries, had theattention of those worthies not been distracted by the smoke detectors and firealarms inside the compound.