The Dark Tower (Page 102)

She sits up, slapping puffs of dust out of her shirt, and a shadow falls over her. She looks up but at first cannot see Roland’s face. His head is directly in front of the sun, and it makes a fierce corona around him. His features are lost in blackness.

But he’s holding out his hands.

Part of her doesn’t want to take them, and do ya not kennit?

Part of her would end it here and send him into the Badlands alone. No matter what Eddie wanted. No matter what Jake undoubtedly wanted, too. This dark shape with the sun blazing around its head has dragged her out of a mosdy comfortable life

(oh yes, she had her ghosts-and at least one mean-hearted demon, as well-but which of us don’t?). He has introduced her first to love, then to pain, then to horror and loss. The deal’s run pretty much downhill, in other words. It is his balefully talented hand that has authored her sorrow, this dusty knighterrant who has come walking out of the old world in his old boots and with an old death-engine on each hip. These are melodramatic thoughts, purple images, and the old Odetta, patron of The Hungry i and all-around cool kitty, would no doubt have laughed at them. But she has changed, he has changed her, and she reckons that if anyone is entitled to melodramatic thoughts and purple images, it is Susannah, daughter of Dan.

Part of her would turn him away, not to end his quest or break his spirit (only death will do those things), but to take such light as remains out of his eyes and punish him for his relentless unmeaning cruelty. But ka is the wheel to which we all are bound, and when the wheel turns we must perforce turn with it, first with our heads up to heaven and then revolving hellward again, where the brains inside them seem to burn. And so, instead of turning away-

TWO

Instead of turning away, as part of her wanted to do, Susannah took Roland’s hands. He pulled her up, not to her feet (for she had none, although for awhile a pair had been given her on loan) but into his arms. And when he tried to kiss her cheek, she turned her face so that his lips pressed on hers. Let him understand it’s no halfway thing, she thought, breathing her air into him and then taking his back, changed. Let him understand that if I’m in it, I’m in to the end. God help me, I’m in with him to the end.

THREE

There were clothes in the Fedic Millinery amp; Ladies’ Wear, but they fell apart at the touch of their hands-the moths and the years had left nothing usable. In the Fedic Hotel (QUIET ROOMS, GUD BEDS) Roland found a cabinet with some blankets that would do them at least against the afternoon chill. They wrapped up in them-the afternoon breeze wasjust enough to make their musty smell bearable-and Susannah asked about Jake, to have the immediate pain of it out of the way.

"The writer again," she said bitterly when he had finished, wiping away her tears. "God damn the man."

"My hip let go and the… and Jake never hesitated."

Roland had almost called him the boy, as he had taught himself to think of Elmer’s son as they closed in on Walter. Given a second chance, he had promised himself he would never do that again.

"No, of course he didn’t," she said, smiling. "He never would. He had a yard of guts, our Jake. Did you take care of him? Did you do him right? I’d hear that part."

So he told her, not failing to include Irene Tassenbaum’s promise of the rose. She nodded, then said: "I wish we could do the same for your friend, Sheemie. He died on the train. I’m sorry, Roland."

Roland nodded. He wished he had tobacco, but of course there was none. He had both guns again and they were seven Oriza plates to the good, as well. Otherwise they were stocked with little-going-on-none.

"Did he have to push again, while you were coming here? I suppose he did. I knew one more might kill him. Sai Brautigan did, too. And Dinky."

"But that wasn’t it, Roland. It was his foot."

The gunslinger looked at her, not understanding.

"He cut it on a piece of broken glass during the fight to take Blue Heaven, and the air and dirt of that place was poison!" It was Detta who spat the last word, her accent so thick that the gunslinger barely understood it: Pizen! "Goddam foot swole up… toes like sausages… then his cheeks and throat went all dusky, like a bruise… he took fever…" She pulled in a deep breath, clutching the two blankets she wore tighter around her.

"He was delirious, but his head cleared at the end. He spoke of you, and of Susan Delgado. He spoke with such love and such regret…" She paused, then burst out: "We will go there,

Roland, we will, and if it isn’t worth it, your Tower, somehow we’ll make it worth it!"

"We’ll go," he said. "We’ll find the Dark Tower, and nothing will stand against us, and before we go in, we’ll speak their names. All of the lost."

"Your list will be longer than mine," she said, "but mine will be long enough."

To this Roland did not reply, but the robot huckster, perhaps startled out of its long sleep by the sound of their voices, did.

"Girls, girls, girls.1" it cried from inside the batwing doors of the Gaiety Bar and Grill. "Some are humie and some are cybie, but who cares, you can’t tell, who cares, they give, you tell, girls tell, you tell… "There was a pause and then the robot huckster shouted one final word-"SATISFACTION!"-and fell silent.

"By the gods, but this is a sad place," he said. "We’ll stay the night and then see it no more."

"At least die sun’s out, and that’s a relief after Thunderclap, but isn’t it cold!"

He nodded, then asked about the others.

"They’ve gone on," she said, "but there was a minute there when I didn’t think any of us were going anywhere except to the bottom of yonder crevasse."

She pointed to the end of the Fedic high street furthest from the castle wall.

"There are TV screens that still work in some of the traincars, and as we came up on town we got a fine view of the bridge that’s gone. We could see the ends sticking out over the hole, but the gap in the middle had to be a hundred yards across.

Maybe more. We could see the train trestle, too. That was still intact. The train was slowing down by then, but not enough so any of us could have jumped off. By then there was no time. And the jump would likely have killed anyone who tried. We were going, oh I’m gonna say fifty miles an hour. And as soon as we were on the trestle, the f**king thing started to creak and groan. Or to queel and grale, if you’ve ever read your James Thurber, which I suppose you have not. The train was playing music. Like Blaine did, do you remember?"

"Yes."

"But we could hear the trestle getting ready to let go even over that. Then everything started shaking from side to side. A voice-very calm and soothing-said, ‘We are experiencing minor difficulties, please take your seats.’ Dinky was holding that little Russian girl, Dani. Ted took my hands and said, ‘I want to tell you, madam, that it has been a pleasure to know you."

There was a lurch so hard it damn near threw me out of my s e a t would have, if Ted hadn’t been holding onto me-and I thought ‘That’s it, we’re gone, please God let me be dead before whatever’s down there gets its teeth into me,’ and for a second or two we were going backward. Backward, Roland! I could see the whole car-we were in the first one behind the joco-tilting up. There was the sound of tearing metal. Then the good old Spirit of Topeka put on a burst of speed. Say what you want to about the old people, I know they got a lot of things wrong, but they built machines that had some balls.

"The next thing I knew, we were coasting into the station.

And here comes that same soothing voice, this time telling us to look around our seats and make sure we’ve got all our personals-our gunna, you ken. Like we were on a damn TWA flight landing at Idlewild! It wasn’t until we were out on the platform that we saw the last nine cars of the train were gone. Thank God they were all empty." She cast a baleful (but frightened) eye toward the far end of the street. "Hope whatever’s down there chokes on em."

Then she brightened.

"There’s one good thing-at speeds of up to three hundred miles an hour, which is what that ain’t-we-happy voice said the Spirit of Topeka was doing, we must have left Master Spider-

Boy in the dust."

"I wouldn’t count on it," Roland said.

She rolled her eyes wearily. "Don’t tell me that."

"I do tell you. But we’ll deal with Mordred when the time comes, and I don’t think that will be today."

"Good."

"Have you been beneath the Dogan again? I take it you have."

Susannah’s eyes grew round. "Isn’t it something) Makes Grand Central look like a train station someplace out in Sticksville, U.S A. How long did it take you to find your way up?"

"If it had just been me, I’d still be wandering around down there," Roland admitted. "Oy found the way out. I assumed he was following your scent."

Susannah considered this. "Maybe he was. Jake’s, more likely. Did you cross a wide passage with a sign on the wall reading SHOW ORANGE PASS ONLY, BLUE PASS NOT ACCEPTED?"

Roland nodded, but the fading sign painted on the wall had meant litde to him. He had identified the passage which the Wolves took at the beginning of their raids by the sight of two motionless gray horses far down the passage, and another of those snarling masks. He had also seen a moccasin he remembered quite well, one that had been made from a chunk of rubber.

One of Ted’s or Dinky’s, he decided; Sheemie Ruiz had no doubt been buried in his.