The Dark Tower

Now, instead of gliding on them, he wentflying up and down the aisles, the steel wheels (for his skating gear farpredated rollerblades) rumbling on the hardwood. “All the papers!” he shouted.“Do you hear me?… If I lose one file in this fucking mess, one gods-damnedfile, I’ll have someone’s eyes with my afternoon tea!”

The patients were already gone, of course;he’d had them out of their beds and down the stairs at the first bray of thesmoke detector, at the first whiff of smoke. A number oforderlies—gutless wonders, and he knew who each of them was, oh yes, anda complete report would be made when the time came—had fled with thesickfolk, but five had stayed, including his personal assistant, Jack London.Gangli was proud of them, although one could not have told it from his hectoringvoice as he skated up and down, up and down, in the thickening smoke.

“Get the papers, d’ye hear? You better, byall the gods that ever walked or crawled! You better!”

A red glare shot in through the window.Some sort of weapon, for it blew in the glass wall that separated his officefrom the ward and set his favorite easy-chair a-smolder.

Gangli ducked and skated under the laserbeam, never slowing.

“Gan-a-damn!” cried one of the orderlies.He was a hume, extraordinarily ugly, his eyes bulging from his pale face. “Whatin the hell was th—”

“Never mind!” Gangli bawled. “Never mindwhat it was, you pissface clown! Get the papers! Get my motherfuckingpapers!”

From somewhere in front—theMall?—came the hideous approaching clang-and-yowl of some rescue vehicle.“STAND CLEAR!” Gangli heard. “THIS IS FIRE-RESPONSE TEAM BRAVO!”

Gangli had never heard of such a thing asFire-Response Team Bravo, but there was so much they didn’t know about thisplace. Why, he could barely use a third of the equipment in his own surgicalsuite! Never mind, the thing that mattered right now—

Before he could finish his thought, thegas-pods behind the kitchen blew up. There was a tremendousroar—seemingly from directly beneath them—and Gangli Tristum wasthrown into the air, the metal wheels on his roller skates spi

Fifteen

Roland heard the telepathic command

(GO SOUTH WITH YOUR HANDS UP, YOUWON’T BE HURT)

begin to beat in his mind. It was time. Henodded at Jake and the Orizas flew. Their eerie whistling wasn’t loud in thegeneral cacophony, yet one of the guards must have heard something coming,because he was begi

Eddie rolled effortlessly beneath the SOOLINE boxcar and bounced to his feet on the compound side. Two more automated fireengines had come bolting out of the station hitherto hidden by the hardwarestore façade. They were wheelless, seeming to run on cushions ofcompressed air. Somewhere toward the north end of the campus (for so Eddie’smind persisted in identifying the Devar-Toi), something exploded. Good. Lovely.

Roland and Jake took fresh plates from thedwindling supply and used them to cut through the three runs of fence. Thehigh-voltage one parted with a bitter, sizzling crack and a brief blink of bluefire. Then they were in. Moving quickly and without speaking, they ran past thenow-unguarded towers with Oy trailing closely at Jake’s heels. Here was analley ru

At the head of the alley, they looked outand saw that Main Street was currently empty, although a tangy electric smell(a subway-station smell, Eddie thought) from the last two fire engines stillhung in the air, making the overall stench even worse. In the distance, fire-sirenswhooped and smoke detectors brayed. Here in Pleasantville, Eddie couldn’t helpbut think of the Main Street in Disneyland: no litter in the gutters, no rudegraffiti on the walls, not even any dust on the plate-glass windows. This waswhere homesick Breakers came when they needed a little whiff of America, hesupposed, but didn’t any of them want anything better, anything more realistic,than this plastic-fantastic still life? Maybe it looked more inviting withfolks on the sidewalks and in the stores, but that was hard to believe. Hardfor him to believe, at least. Maybe it was only a city boy’s chauvinism.

Across from them were Pleasantville Shoes,Gay Paree Fashions, Hair Today, and the Gem Theater (COME IN IT’S KOOLINSIDE said the ba

Sixteen

Any battle-seasoned general will tell youthat, even in a small-scale engagement (as this one was), there always comes apoint where coherence breaks down, and narrative flow, and any real sense ofhow things are going. These matters are re-created by historians later on. Theneed to re-create the myth of coherence may be one of the reasons why historyexists in the first place.

Never mind. We have reached that point, theone where the Battle of Algul Siento took on a life of its own, and all I cando now is point here and there and hope you can bring your own order out of thegeneral chaos.

Seventeen

Trampas, the eczema-plagued low man whoinadvertently let Ted in on so much, rushed to the stream of Breakers who werefleeing from Damli House and grabbed one, a scrawny ex-carpenter with areceding hairline named Birdie McCa

“Birdie, what is it?” Trampas shouted. Hewas currently wearing his thinking-cap, which meant he could not share in thetelepathic pulse all around him. “What’s happening, do you kn—”

“Shooting!” Birdie yelled, pulling free. “Shooting!They’re out there!” He pointed vaguely behind him.

“Who? How m—”

“Watch out you idiots it’s not slowingdown!” yelled Gaskie o’ Tego, from somewhere behind Trampas and McCa

Trampas looked up and was horrified to seethe lead fire engine come roaring and swaying along the center of the Mall, redlights flashing, two stainless-steel robot firemen now clinging to the back.Pimli, Finli, and Jakli leaped aside. So did Tassa the houseboy. But TammyKelly lay facedown on the grass in a spreading soup of blood. She had beenflattened by Fire-Response Team Bravo, which had not actually scrambled tofight a fire in over eight hundred years. Her complaining days were over.

And—

“STAND CLEAR!” blared the fireengine. Behind it, two more engines swerved gaudily around either side ofWarden’s House. Once again Tassa the houseboy barely leaped in time to save hisskin. “THIS IS FIRE-RESPONSE TEAM BRAVO!” Some sort of metallic noderose from the center of the engine, split open, and produced a steel whirligigthat began to spray high-pressure streams of water in eight differentdirections. “MAKE WAY FOR FIRE-RESPONSE TEAM BRAVO!”

And—

James Cagney—the taheen who wasstanding with Gaskie in the foyer of the Feveral Hall dormitory when thetrouble started, remember him?—saw what was going to happen and beganyelling at the guards who were staggering out of Damli’s west wing, red-eyedand coughing, some with their pants on fire, a few—oh, praise Gan andBessa and all the gods—with weapons.