The Waste Lands (Page 30)

“Even now?” Susannah asked, a trifle uneasily. He nodded. “The directions of the world are also in drift.” “Christ,” Eddie said. He tried to imagine a world where true north was slipping slyly off to the east or west and gave up almost at once. It made him feel a little ill; the way looking down from the top of a high building had always made him feel a little ill.

“This is just a needle, but it is steel and it should serve our purpose as well as a compass. The Beam is our course now, and the needle will show it.” He rummaged in his purse again and came out with a poorly made pottery cup. A crack ran down one side. Roland had mended this artifact, which he had found at the old campsite, with pine-gum. Now he went to the stream, dipped the cup into it, and brought it back to where Susannah sat in her wheelchair. He put the cup down carefully on the wheelchair’s arm, and when the surface of the water inside was calm, he dropped the needle in. It sank to the bottom and rested there. “Wow!” Eddie said. “Great! I’d fall at your feet in wonder, Roland, but I don’t want to spoil the crease in my pants.”

“I’m not finished. Hold the cup steady, Susannah.” She did, and Roland pushed her slowly across the clearing. When she was about twelve feet in front of the door, he turned the chair carefully so she was facing away from it.

“Eddie!” she cried. “Look at this!”

He bent over the pottery cup, marginally aware that water was already oozing through Roland’s makeshift seal. The needle was rising slowly to the surface. It reached it and bobbed there as serenely as a cork would have done. Its direction lay in a straight line from the portal behind them and into the old, tangled forest ahead. “Holy shit—a floating needle. Now I really have seen everything.” “Hold the cup, Susannah.”

She held it steady as Roland pushed the wheelchair further into the clearing, at right angles to the box. The needle lost its steady point, bobbed randomly for a moment, then sank to the bottom of the cup again. When Roland pulled the chair backward to its former spot, it rose once more and pointed the way. “If we had iron filings and a sheet of paper,” the gunslinger said, “we could scatter the filings on the paper’s surface and watch them draw together into a line which would point that same course.” “Will that happen even when we leave the Portal?” Eddie asked. Roland nodded. “Nor is that all. We can actually see the Beam.” Susannah looked over her shoulder. Her elbow bumped the cup a little as she did. The needle swung aimlessly as the water inside sloshed . . . and then settled firmly back in its original direction.

“Not that way,” Roland said. “Look down, both of you—Eddie at your feet,

Susannah into your lap.”

They did as he asked.

“When I tell you to look up, look straight ahead, in the direction the needle points. Don’t look at any one thing; let your eye see whatever it will. Now—look up!”

They did. For a moment Eddie saw nothing but the woods. He tried to make his eyes relax . . . and suddenly it was there, the way the shape of the slingshot had been there, inside the knob of wood, and he knew why Roland had told them not to look at any one thing. The effect of the Beam was everywhere along its course, but it was subtle. The needles of the pines and spruces pointed that way. The greenberry bushes grew slightly slanted, and the slant lay in the direction of the Beam. Not all the trees the bear had pushed down to clear its sightlines had fallen along that camouflaged path—which ran southeast, if Eddie had his direc-tions right—but most had, as if the force coming out of the box had pushed them that way as they tottered. The clearest evidence was in the way the shadows lay on the ground. With the sun coming up in the east they all pointed west, of course, but as Eddie looked southeast, he saw a rough herringbone pattern that existed only along the line which the needle in the cup had pointed out.

“I might see something” Susannah said doubtfully, “but—” “Look at the shadows! The shadows, Suze!” Eddie saw her eyes widen as it all fell into place for her. “My God! It’s there! Right there! It’s like when someone has a natural part in their hair!” Now that Eddie had seen it, he could not unsee it; a dim aisle driving through the untidy tangle which surrounded the clearing, a straight-edge course that was the way of the Beam. He was suddenly aware of how huge the force flowing around him (and probably right through him, like X-rays) must be, and had to control an urge to step away, either to the right or left. “Say, Roland, this won’t make me sterile, will it?”

Roland shrugged, smiling faintly.

“It’s like a riverbed,” Susannah marvelled. “A riverbed so over-grown you can barely see it … but it’s still there. The pattern of shadows will never change as long as we stay inside the path of the Beam, will it?” “No,” Roland said. “They’ll change direction as the sun moves across the sky, of course, but we’ll always be able to see the course of the Beam. You must remember that it has been flowing along this same path for thousands—perhaps tens of thousands—of years. Look up, you two, into the sky!” They did, and saw that the thin cirrus clouds had also picked up that herringbone pattern along the course of the Beam . . . and those clouds within the alley of its power were flowing faster than those to either side. They were being pushed southeast. Being pushed in the direction of the Dark Tower. “You see? Even the clouds must obey.”

A small flock of birds coursed toward them. As they reached the path of the Beam, they were all deflected toward the southeast for a moment. Although Eddie clearly saw this happen, his eyes could hardly credit it. When the birds had crossed the narrow corridor of the Beam’s influence, they resumed their former course.