The Dark Tower (Page 93)

"All right," she said. "It’s Second Avenue and Forty-sixth Street you want to go to first, correct?"

"Yes." Susannah hadn’t had a chance to tell them much about her adventures after Mia had hijacked their shared body, but the gunslinger knew there was a tall building-what Eddie,

Jake, and Susannah called a skyscraper-now standing on the site of the former vacant lot, and the Tet Corporation must surely be inside. "Will we need a tack-see?"

"Can you and your furry friend walk seventeen short blocks and two or three long ones? It’s your call, but I wouldn’t mind stretching my legs."

Roland didn’t know how long a long block or how short a short one might be, but he was more than willing to find out now that the deep pain in his right hip had departed. Stephen King had that pain now, along with the one in his smashed ribs and the right side of his split head. Roland did not envy him those pains, but at least they were back with their rightful owner.

"Let’s go," he said.

THREE

Fifteen minutes later he stood across from the large dark structure thrusting itself at the summer sky, trying to keep his jaw from coming unhinged and perhaps dropping all the way to his chest. It wasn’t the Dark Tower, not his Dark Tower, at least (although it wouldn’t have surprised him to know there were people working in yon sky-tower-some of them readers of Roland’s adventures-who called 2 Hammarskjold Plaza exactly that), but he had no doubt that it was the Tower’s representative in this Keystone World, just as the rose represented a field filled with them; the field he had seen in so many dreams.

He could hear the singing voices from here, even over the jostle and hum of the traffic. The woman had to call his name three times and finally tug on one sleeve to get his attention.

When he turned to her-reluctantly-he saw it wasn’t the tower across the street that she was looking at (she had grown up just an hour from Manhattan and tall buildings were an old story to her) but at the pocket park on their side of the street.

Her expression was delighted. "Isn’t it a beautiful little place? I must have been by this corner a hundred times and I never noticed it until now. Do you see the fountain? And the turtle sculpture?"

He did. And although Susannah hadn’t told them this part of her story, Roland knew she had been here-along with Mia, daughter of none-and sat on the bench closest to the turtle’s wet shell. He could almost see her there.

"I’d like to go in," she said timidly. "May we? Is there time?"

"Yes," he said, and followed her through the little iron gate.

FOUR

The pocket park was peaceful, but not entirely quiet.

"Do you hear people singing?" Mrs. Tassenbaum asked in a voice that was hardly more than a whisper. "A chorus from somewhere?"

"Bet your bottom dollar," Roland answered, and was sorry immediately. He’d learned the phrase from Eddie, and saying it hurt. He walked to the turtle and dropped on one knee to examine it more closely. There was a tiny piece gone from the beak, leaving a break like a missing tooth. On the back was a scratch in the shape of a question mark, and fading pink letters.

"What does it say?" she asked. "Something about a turde, but that’s all I can make out."

"’see the TURTLE of enormous girth.’" He knew this without reading it.

"What does it mean?"

Roland stood up. "It’s too much to go into. Would you like to wait for me while I go in there?" He nodded in the direction of the tower with its black glass windows glittering in the sun.

"Yes," she said. "I would. I’ll just sit on the bench in the sunshine and wait for you. It’s… refreshing. Does that sound crazy?"

"No," he said. "If someone whose looks you don’t trust should speak to you, Irene-I think it unlikely, because this is a safe place, but it’s certainly possible-concentrate just as hard as you can, and call for me."

Her eyes widened. "Are you talking ESP?"

He didn’t know what ESP stood for, but he understood what she meant, and nodded.

"You’d hear that? Hear me?"

He couldn’t say for sure that he would. The building might be equipped with damping devices, like the thinking-caps the can-toi wore, that would make it impossible.

"I might. And as I say, trouble’s unlikely. This is a safe place."

She looked at the turde, its shell gleaming with spray from the fountain. "It is, isn’t it?" She started to smile, then stopped.

"You’ll come back, won’t you? You wouldn’t dump me without at least…" She shrugged one shoulder. The gesture made her look very young. "Without at least saying goodbye?"

"Never in life. And my business in yonder tower shouldn’t take long." In fact it was hardly business at all… unless, that was, whoever was currently running the Tet Corporation had some with him. "We have another place to go, and it’s there Oy and I would take our leave of you."

"Okay," she said, and sat on the bench with the bumbler at her feet. The end of it was damp and she was wearing a new pair of slacks (bought in the same quick shopping-run that had netted Roland’s new shirt and jeans), but this didn’t bother her.

They would dry quickly on such a warm, sunny day, and she found she wanted to be near the turtle sculpture. To study its tiny, timeless black eyes while she listened to those sweet voices.

She thought that would be very restful. It was not a word she usually thought of in connection with New York, but this was a very un-New York place, with its feel of quiet and peace. She thought she might bring David here, diat if they could sit on this bench he might hear the story of her missing three days without thinking her insane. Or too insane.

Roland started away, moving easily-moving like a man who could walk for days and weeks without ever varying his pace. I wouldn’t like to have him on my trail, she thought, and shivered a little at the idea. He reached the iron gate through which he would pass to the sidewalk, then turned to her once more. He spoke in a soft singsong.

"See the TURTLE of enormous girth!

On his shell he holds the earth.

His thought is slow but always kind;

He holds us all within his mind.

On his back all vows are made;

He sees the truth but mayn’t aid.

He loves the land and loves the sea,

And even loves a child like me."

Then he left her, moving swiftly and cleanly, not looking back. She sat on the bench and watched him wait with the others clustered on the corner for the WALK light, dien cross with them, the leather bag slung over his shoulder bouncing lightly against his hip. She watched him mount the steps of 2 Hammarskjold Plaza and disappear inside. Then she leaned back, closed her eyes, and listened to the voices sing. At some point she realized that at least two of the words they were singing were the ones that made her name.

FIVE

It seemed to Roland that great multitudes of folken were streaming into the building, but this was the perception of a man who had spent the latter years of his quest in mostly deserted places.

If he’d come at quarter to nine, while people were still arriving, instead of at quarter to eleven, he would have been stunned by the flood of bodies. Now most of those who worked here were settled in their offices and cubicles, generating paper and bytes of information.

The lobby windows were of clear glass and at least two stories high, perhaps three. Consequently the lobby was full of light, and as he stepped inside, the grief that had possessed him ever since kneeling by Eddie in the street of Pleasantville slipped away. In here the singing voices were louder, not a chorus but a great choir. And, he saw, he wasn’t the only one who heard them. On the street, people had been hurrying with their heads down and looks of distracted concentration on their faces, as if they were deliberately not seeing the delicate and perishable beauty of the day which had been given them; in here they were helpless not to feel at least some of that to which the gunslinger was so exquisitely attuned, and which he drank like water in the desert.

As if in a dream, he drifted across the rose-marble tile, hearing the echoing clack of his bootheels, hearing the faint and shifting conversation of the Orizas in their pouch. He thought, People who loork here wish they lived here. They may not know it, exactly, but they do. People who work here find excuses to work late.

And they will live long and productive lives.

In the eenter of the high, echoing room, the expensive marble floor gave way to a square of humble dark earth. It was surrounded by ropes of wine-dark velvet, but Roland knew that even die ropes didn’t need to be there. No one would transgress that litde garden, not even a suicidal can-toi desperate to make a name for himself. It was holy ground. There were diree dwarf palm trees, and plants he hadn’t seen since leaving Gilead:

Spathiphyllum, he believed they had been called there, although they might not have the same name in this world.

There were other plants as well, but only one mattered.

In the middle of the square, by itself, was the rose.

It hadn’t been transplanted; Roland saw that at once. No. It was where it had been in 1977, when the place where he was now standing had been a vacant lot, filled witfi trash and broken bricks, dominated by a sign which announced die coming of Turtle Bay Luxury Condominiums, to be built by Mills Construction and Sombra Real Estate Associates. This building, all one hundred stories of it, had been built instead, and around the rose. Whatever business might be done here was secondary to that purpose.