The Dark Tower (Page 135)

shiny-headed robot who looked quite a lot like Nigel from the Arc 16 Experimental Station and Andy from Calla Bryn Sturgis.

He cocked his metal arms and put his metal hands on his hips in a way that would likely have reminded Eddie of George Lucas’s C3P0, had Eddie been there. The robot spoke in an amplified voice that rolled away across the snowfields:

"HELLO, J-JOE! WHAT DO YOU NUH-NUH-KNOW? HOW ABE TRICKS INKUH-KUH-KOKOMO?"

Roland stepped out of the late Lippy’s quarters. "Hile, Bill,"

he said mildly. "Long days and pleasant nights."

The robot turned. His eyes flashed bright blue. That looked like surprise to Susannah. He showed no alarm that she could see, however, and didn’t appear to be armed, but she had already marked the antenna rising from the center of his head-twirling and twirling in the bright morning light-and she felt confident she could clip it with an Oriza if she needed to. Easy-peasyjapaneezy, Eddie would have said.

"Ah!" said the robot. "A gudda-gah, gunna-gah, g-g-g-" He raised an arm that had not one elbow-joint but two and smacked his head with it. From inside came a litde whisding noise-Wheeep!-and then he finished: "A gunslinger!"

Susannah laughed. She couldn’t help it. They had come all this way to meet an oversized electronic version of Porky Pig.

T’beya-t’beya-t’beya, that’s all, folks!

"I had heard rumors of such on the 1-1-1-land," the robot said, ignoring her laughter. "Are you Ruh-Ruh-Roland of GGilead?"

"So I am," Roland said. "And you?"

"William, D-746541-M, Maintenance Robot, Many Other Functions. Joe Collins calls me Stuh-huttering B-Bill. I’ve got a f-f-fried sir-hirkit somewhere inside. I could fix it, but he fuh-fuhforbade me. And since he’s the only h-human around… or was…" He stopped. Susannah could quite clearly hear die clitter-

clack of relays somewhere inside and what she thought of wasn’t C3P0, who she’d of course never seen, but Robby the Robot from Forbidden Planet.

Then Stuttering Bill quite touched her heart by putting one metal hand to his forehead and bowing… but not to either her or to Roland. He said, "Hile, Patrick D-Danville, son of S-SSonia!

It’s good to see you out and in the c-c-clear, so it is!" And Susannah could hear the emotion in Stuttering Bill’s voice. It was genuine gladness, and she felt more than okay about lowering her plate.

TWELVE

They palavered in the yard. Bill would have been quite willing to go into the hut, for he had but rudimentary olfactory equipment.

The humes were better equipped and knew that the hut stank and had not even warmth to recommend it, for the furnace and the fire were both out. In any case, the palaver didn’t take long. William the Maintenance Robot (Many Other Functions) had counted the being that sometimes called itself Joe Collins as his master, for there was no longer anyone else to lay claim to the job. Besides, Collins/Dandelo had the necessary code-words.

"I w-was nuh-not able to g-give him the c-code wuh-wuhhurds when he a-asked," said Stuttering Bill, "but my p-programming did not pruh-prohibit bringing him cer-hertain m-manuals that had the ih-information he needed."

"Bureaucracy is so wonderful," Susannah said.

Bill said he had stayed away from "JJ-Joe" as often (and as long) as he could, although he had to come when Tower Road needed plowing-that was also in his programming-and once a month to bring provisions (canned goods, mostly) from what he called "the Federal." He also liked to see Patrick, who had once given Bill a wonderful picture of himself that he looked at often (and of which he had made many copies). Yet every time he came, he confided, he was sure he would find Patrick gone-killed and thrown casually into the woods somewhere back toward what Bill called "the Buh-Buh-Bads," like an old piece of trash. But now here he was, alive and free, and Bill was delighted.

"For I do have r-r-rudimentary em-m-motions," he said, sounding to Susannah like someone owning up to a bad habit.

"Do you need the code-words from us, in order to accept our orders?" Roland asked.

"Yes, sai," Stuttering Bill said.

"Shit," Susannah muttered. They had had similar problems with Andy, back in Calla Bryn Sturgis.

"H-H-However," said Stuttering Bill, "if you were to c-ccouch your orders as suh-huh-hugestions, I’m sure I’d be huhhuh-

huh-huh-" He raised his arm and smacked his head again. The Wheep! sound came once more, not from his mouth but from the region of his chest, Susannah thought. "-happy to oblige," he finished.

"My first suggestion is that you fix that f**king stutter,"

Roland said, and then turned around, amazed. Patrick had collapsed to the snow, holding his belly and voicing great, blurry cries of laughter. Oy danced around him, barking, but Oy was harmless; this time there was no one to steal Patrick’s joy. It belonged only to him. And to those lucky enough to hear it.

THIRTEEN

In the woods beyond the plowed intersection, back toward what Bill would have called "the Bads," a shivering adolescent boy wrapped in stinking, half-scraped hides watched the quartet standing in front of Dandelo’s hut. Die, he thought at them.

Die, why don’tyou all do me a favor and just die? But they didn’t die, and the cheerful sound of their laughter cut him like knives.

Later, after they had all piled into the cab of Bill’s plow and driven away, Mordred crept down to the hut. There he would stay for at least two days, eating his fill from the cans in Dandelo’s pantry-and eating something else as well, something he would live to regret. He spent those days regaining his strength, for the big storm had come close to killing him. He believed it was his hate that had kept him alive, that and no more.

Or perhaps it was the Tower.

For he felt it, too-that pulse, that singing. But what Roland and Susannah and Patrick heard in a major key, Mordred heard in a minor. And where they heard many voices, he heard only one. It was the voice of his Red Father, telling him to come. Telling him to kill the mute boy, and the blackbird bitch, and especially the gunslinger out of Gilead, the uncaring White Daddy who had left him behind. (Of course his Red Daddy had also left him behind, but this never crossed Mordred’s mind.)

And when the killing was done, the whispering voice promised, they would destroy the Dark Tower and rule todash together for eternity.

So Mordred ate, for Mordred was a-hungry. And Mordred slept, for Mordred was a-weary. And when Mordred dressed himself in Dandelo’s warm clothes and set out along the freshly plowed Tower Road, pulling a rich sack of gunna on a sled behind him-canned goods, mostly-he had become a young man who looked to be perhaps twenty years old, tall and straight and as fair as a summer sunrise, his human form marked only by the scar on his side where Susannah’s bullet had winged him, and the blood-mark on his heel. That heel, he had promised himself, would rest on Roland’s throat, and soon.

Part Five:THE SCARLET FIELD OF CAN’-KA NO REY

Chapter I:THE SORE AND THE DOOR (GOODBYE, MY DEAR)

ONE

In the final days of their long journey, after Bill-just Bill now, no longer Stuttering Bill-dropped them off at the Federal, on the edge of the White Lands, Susannah Dean began to suffer frequent bouts of weeping. She would feel these impending cloudbursts and would excuse herself from the others, saying she had to go into the bushes and do her necessary. And there she would sit on a fallen tree or perhaps just the cold ground, put her hands over her face, and let her tears flow. If Roland knew this was happening-and surely he must have noted her red eyes when she returned to the road-he made no comment.

She supposed he knew what she did.

Her time in Mid-World-and End-World-was almost at an end.

TWO

Bill took them in his fine orange plow to a lonely Quonset hut with a faded sign out front reading

FEDERAL OUTPOST amp;

TOWER WATCH

TRAVEL BEYOND THIS POINT IS FORBIDDEN!

She supposed Federal Outpost 19 was still technically in the White Lands of Empathica, but the air had warmed considerably as Tower Road descended, and the snow on the ground was little more than a scrim. Groves of trees dotted the ground ahead, but Susannah thought the land would soon be almost entirely open, like the prairies of the American Midwest. There were bushes that probably supported berries in warm weather-perhaps even pokeberries-but now they were bare and clattering in the nearly constant wind. Mostly what they saw on either side of Tower Road-which had once been paved but had now been reduced to little more than a pair of broken ruts-were tall grasses poking out of the thin snow-cover. They whispered in the wind and Susannah knew their song: Commalacome-come, journey’s almost done.

"I may go no furdier," Bill said, shutting down the plow and cutting off Little Richard in mid-rave. "Tell ya sorry, as they say in the Arc O’The Borderlands."

Their trip had taken one full day and half of another, and during that time he had entertained them with a constant stream of what he called "golden oldies." Some of these were not old at all to Susannah; songs like "Sugar Shack" and "Heat Wave" had been current hits on the radio when she’d returned from her little vacation in Mississippi. Others she had never heard at all. The music was stored not on records or tapes but on beautiful silver discs Bill called "ceedees." He pushed them into a slot in the plow’s instrument-cluttered dashboard and the music played from at least eight different speakers. Any music would have sounded fine to her, she supposed, but she was especially taken by two songs she had never heard before. One was a deliriously happy little rocker called "She Loves You." The other, sad and reflective, was called "Heyjude." Roland actually seemed to know the latter one; he sang along with it, although the words he knew were different from the ones coming out of the plow’s multiple speakers. When she asked, Bill told her the group was called The Beetles.