The Waste Lands (Page 129)

Her eyes softened. For a moment she thought about telling him the secret she might or might not be keeping, but of course the time and place were wrong—she could no more tell him she might be pregnant now than she could pause to read the words written on the sculpted Portal Totems. “It’s enough, Eddie,” she said.

“You’re the best thing that ever happened to me.” His hazel eyes were totally focused on her. “It’s hard for me to say stuff like that— living with Henry made it hard, I guess—but it’s true. I think I started loving you because you were everything Roland took me away from—in New York, I mean—hut it’s a lot more than that now, because I don’t want to go hack anymore. Do you?” She looked at the Cradle. She was terrified of what they might find in there, but all the same . . . she looked back at him. “No, I don’t want to go back. I want to spend the rest of my life going forward. As long as you’re with me, that is. It’s funny, you know, you saying you started loving me because of all the things he took you away from.”

“Funny how?”

“I started loving you because you set me free of Detta Walker.” She paused, thought, then shook her head slightly. “No—it goes further than that. I started loving you because you set me free of both those bitches. One was a foul-mouthed, cock-teasing thief, and the other was a self-righteous, pompous prig. Comes down to six of one and half a dozen of the other, as far as I’m concerned. I like Susannah Dean better than either one . . . and you were the one who set me free.”

This time it was she who did the reaching, pressing her palm to his stubbly cheeks, drawing him down, kissing him gently. When he put a light hand on her breast, she sighed and covered it with her own. “I think we better get going,” she said, “or we’re apt to be laying right here in the street . . . and getting wet, from the look.” Eddie stared around at the silent towers, the broken windows, the vine-encrusted walls a final time. Then he nodded. “Yeah. I don’t think there’s any future in this town, anyway.”

He pushed her forward, and they both stiffened as the wheels of the chair passed over what Maud had called the dead-line, fearful that they would trip some ancient protective device and die together. But nothing happened. Eddie pushed her into the plaza, and as they approached the steps leading up to the Cradle, a cold, wind-driven rain began to fall.

Although neither of them knew it, the first of the great autumn storms of Mid-World had arrived.

ONCE THEY WERE IN the smelly darkness of the sewers, Gasher slowed the killing pace he’d maintained aboveground. Jake didn’t think it was because of the darkness; Gasher seemed to know every twist and turn of the route he was following, just as advertised. Jake believed it was because his captor was satisfied that Roland had been squashed to jelly by the deadfall trap. Jake himself had begun to wonder.

If Roland had spotted the tripwires—a far more subtle trap than the one which followed—was it really likely that he had missed seeing the fountain? Jake supposed it was possible, but it didn’t make much sense. Jake thought it more likely that Roland had tripped the fountain on purpose, to lull Gasher and perhaps slow him down. He didn’t believe Roland could follow them through this maze under the streets—the total darkness would defeat even the gunslinger’s tracking abilities—but it cheered his heart to think that Roland might not have died in an attempt to keep his promise.

They turned right, left, then left again. As Jake’s other senses sharp-ened in an attempt to compensate for his lack of sight, he had a vague perception of other tunnels around him. The muffled sounds of ancient, laboring machinery would grow loud for a moment, then fade as the stone foundations of the city drew close around them again. Drafts blew intermittently against his skin, sometimes warm, sometimes chilly. Their splashing footfalls echoed briefly as they passed the intersecting tunnels from which these stenchy breaths blew, and once Jake nearly brained himself on some metal object jutting down from the ceiling. He slapped at it with one hand and felt something that might have been a large valve-wheel. After that he waved his hands as he trotted along in an attempt to read the air ahead of him.

Gasher guided him with taps to the shoulders, as a waggoner might have guided his oxen. They moved at a good clip, trotting but not run-ning. Gasher got enough of his breath back to first hum and then begin singing in a low, surprisingly tuneful tenor voice.

“Bibble-ti-tibble-ti-ting-ting-ting,

I’ll get a job and buy yer a ring,

When I get my -mitts

On yerjiggly tits,

Ribble-ti-tibble-ti-ting-ting-ting!

O ribble-ti-tibble,

I just wanter fiddle,

Fiddle around with your ting-ting-ting!” There were five or six more verses along this line before Gasher quit. “Now you sing somethin, squint.”

“I don’t know anything,” Jake puffed. He hoped he sounded more out of breath than he actually was. He didn’t know if it would do him any good or not, but down here in the dark any edge seemed worth trying for. Gasher brought his elbow down in the center of Jake’s back, almost hard enough to send him sprawling into the ankle-high water running sluggishly through the tunnel they were traversing. “Yon better know sominat, ‘less you want me to rip your ever-lovin spine right outcher back.” He paused, then added: “There’s haunts down here, boy. They live inside the f**kin machines, so they do. Singin keeps em off . . . don’t you know that? Now sing!” Jake thought hard, not wanting to earn another love-tap from Gasher, and came up with a song he’d learned in summer day camp at the age of seven or eight. He opened his mouth and began to bawl it into the darkness, listening to the echoes bounce back amid the sounds of running water, falling water, and ancient thudding machinery.