Song of Susannah (Page 69)

Farther along, at the end of the town’s single street, loomed the castle wall. It was so high and so wide it blotted out most of the sky.

Susannah abruptly knocked her fist against the side of her head. Then she held her hands out in front of her and snapped her fingers.

"What are you doing?" Mia asked. "Tell me, I beg."

"Making sure I’m here. Physically here."

"You are."

"So it seems. But how can that be?"

Mia shook her head, indicating that she didn’t know. On this, at least, Susannah was inclined to believe her. There was no dissenting word from Detta, either.

"This isn’t what I expected," Susannah said, looking around. "It’s not what I expected at all."

"Nay?" asked her companion (and without much interest). Mia was moving in that awkward but strangely endearing duck-footed waddle that seems to best suit women in the last stages of their carry. "And what was it ye did expect, Susannah?"

"Something more medieval, I guess. More like that." She pointed at the castle.

Mia shrugged as if to say take it or leave it, and then said, "Is the other one with you? The nasty one?"

Detta, she meant. Of course. "She’s always with me. She’s a part of me just as your chap is a part of you." Although how Mia could be pregnant when it had been Susannah who caught the f**k was something Susannah was still dying to know.

"I’ll soon be delivered of mine," Mia said. "Will ya never be delivered of yours?"

"I thought I was," Susannah said truthfully. "She came back. Mostly, I think, to deal with you."

"I hate her."

"I know." And Susannah knew more. Mia feared Detta, as well. Feared her big-big.

"If she speaks, our palaver ends."

Susannah shrugged. "She comes when she comes and speaks when she speaks. She doesn’t ask my permission."

Ahead of them on this side of the street was an arch with a sign above it:

FEDIC STATION

MONO PATRICIA DISCONTINUED

THUMBPRINT READER INOPERATIVE

SHOW TICKET

NORTH CENTRAL POSITRONICS THANKS YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE

The sign didn’t interest Susannah as much as the two things that lay on the filthy station platform beyond it: a child’s doll, decayed to little more than a head and one floppy arm, and, beyond it, a grinning mask. Although the mask appeared to be made of steel, a good deal of it seemed to have rotted like flesh. The teeth poking out of the grin were canine fangs. The eyes were glass. Lenses, Susannah felt sure, no doubt also crafted by North Central Positronics. Surrounding the mask were a few shreds and tatters of green cloth, what had undoubtedly once been this thing’s hood. Susannah had no trouble putting together the remains of the doll and the remains of the Wolf; her mamma, as Detta sometimes liked to tell folks (especially horny boys in road-house parking lots), didn’t raise no fools.

"This is where they brought them," she said. "Where the Wolves brought the twins they stole from Calla Bryn Sturgis. Where they – what? – operated on them."

"Not just from Calla Bryn Sturgis," Mia said indifferently, "but aye. And once the babbies were here, they were taken there. A place you’ll also recognize, I’ve no doubt."

She pointed across Fedic’s single street and farther up. The last building before the castle wall abruptly ended the town was a long Quonset hut with sides of filthy corrugated metal and a rusty curved roof. The windows running along the side Susannah could see had been boarded up. Also along that side was a steel hitching rail. To it were tied what looked like seventy horses, all of them gray. Some had fallen over and lay with their legs sticking straight out. One or two had turned their heads toward the women’s voices and then seemed to freeze in that position. It was very un-horselike behavior, but of course these weren’t real horses. They were robots, or cyborgs, or whichever one of Roland’s terms you might like to use. Many of them seemed to have run down or worn out.

In front of this building was a sign on a rusting steel plate. It read:

NORTH CENTRAL POSITRONICS, LTD.

Fedic Headquarters

Arc 16 Experimental Station

Maximum Security

VERBAL ENTRY CODE REQUIRED

EYEPRINT REQUIRED

"It’s another Dogan, isn’t it?" Susannah asked.

"Well, yes and no," Mia said. "It’s the Dogan of all Dogans, actually."

"Where the Wolves brought the children."

"Aye, and will bring them again," Mia said. "For the King’s work will go forward after this disturbance raised by your friend the gunslinger is past. I have no doubt of it."

Susannah looked at her with real curiosity. "How can you speak so cruel and yet be so serene?" she asked. "They bring children here and scoop out their heads like…like gourds. Children, who’ve harmed nobody! What they send back are great galumphing idiots who grow to their full size in agony and often die in much the same way. Would you be so sanguine, Mia, ifyour child was borne away across one of those saddles, shrieking for you and holding out his arms?"

Mia flushed, but was able to meet Susannah’s gaze. "Each must follow the road upon which ka has set her feet, Susannah of New York. Mine is to bear my chap, and raise him, and thus end your dinn’s quest. And his life."

"It’s wonderful how everyone seems to think they know just what ka means for them," Susannah said. "Don’t you think that’s wonderful?"

"I think you’re trying to make jest of me because you fear," Mia said levelly. "If such makes you feel better, than aye, have on." She spread her arms and made a little sarcastic bow over her great belly.