The Waste Lands (Page 56)

“No—not quite.” He ran his thumb into the third notch, and then over the s-shape at the end of the last notch. “There’s a little more to do on this notch, and the curve at the end isn’t right yet. I don’t know how I know that, but I do.” “This is your secret.” It wasn’t a question. “Yes. Now if only I knew what it meant.” Roland looked around. Eddie followed his gaze and saw Susannah. He found some relief in the fact that Roland had heard her first. “What you boys doin up so late? Chewin the fat?” She saw the wooden key in Eddie’s hand and nodded. “I wondered when you were going to get around to showing that off. It’s good, you know. I don’t know what it’s for, but it’s damned good.”

“You don’t have any idea what door it might open?” Roland asked Eddie. “That was not part of your khef?”

“No—but it might be good for something even though it isn’t done.” He held the key out to Roland. “I want you to keep it for me.” Roland didn’t move to take it. He regarded Eddie closely. “Why?” “Because . . . well. . . because I think someone told me you should.” “Who?”

Your boy, Eddie thought suddenly, and as soon as the thought came he knew it was true. It was your goddamned boy. But he didn’t want to say so. He didn’t want to mention the boy’s name at all. It might just set Roland off again.

“I don’t know. But I think you ought to give it a try.”

Roland reached slowly for the key. As his fingers touched it, a bright glimmer seemed to flash down its barrel, but it was gone so quickly that Eddie could not be sure he had seen it. It might have been only starlight. Roland’s hand closed over the key growing out of the branch. For a moment his face showed nothing. Then his brow furrowed and his head cocked in a listening gesture.

“What is it?” Susannah asked. “Do you hear—” “Shhhh!” The puzzlement on Roland’s face was slowly being replaced with wonder. He looked from Eddie to Susannah and then back to Eddie. His eyes were filling with some great emotion, as a pitcher fills with water when it is dipped in a spring.

“Roland?” Eddie asked uneasily. “Are you all right?” Roland whispered something. Eddie couldn’t hear what it was. Susannah looked scared. She glanced frantically at Eddie, as if to ask, What did you do to him?

Eddie took one of her hands in both of his own. “I think it’s all right.” Roland’s hand was clamped so tightly on the chunk of wood that Eddie was momentarily afraid he might snap it in two, but the wood was strong and Eddie had carved thick. The gunslinger’s throat bulged; his Adam’s apple rose and fell as he struggled with speech. And suddenly he yelled at the sky in a fair, strong voice:

“GONE! THE VOICES ARE GONE!”

He looked back at them, and Eddie saw something he had never expected to see in his life—not even if that life stretched over a thousand years. Roland of Gilead was weeping.

THE GUNSLINGER SLEPT SOUNDLY and dreamlessly that night for the first time in months, and he slept with the not-quite finished key clenched tightly in his hand.

IN ANOTHER WORLD, BUT beneath the shadow of the same ka-tet, Jake Chambers was having the most vivid dream of his life. He was walking through the tangled remains of an ancient forest— a dead zone of fallen trees and scruffy, aggravating bushes that bit his ankles and tried to steal his sneakers. He came to a thin belt of younger trees (alders, he thought, or perhaps beeches—he was a city boy, and the only thing he knew for sure about trees was that some had leaves and some had needles) and discovered a path through them. He made his way along this, moving a little faster. There was a clearing of some sort up ahead.

He stopped once before reaching it, when he spied some sort of stone marker to his right. He left the path to look at it. There were letters carved into it, but they were so eroded he couldn’t make them out. At last he closed his eyes (he had never done this in a dream before) and let his fingers trace each letter, like a blind boy reading Braille. Each formed in the darkness behind his lids until they made a sentence which stood forth in an outline of blue light: TRAVELLER, BEYOND LIES MID-WORLD.

Sleeping in his bed, Jake drew his knees up against his chest. The hand holding the key was under his pillow, and now his fingers tightened their grip on it. Mid-World, he thought, of course. St. Louis and Topeka and Oz and the World’s Fair and Charlie the Choo-Choo.

He opened his dreaming eyes and pressed on. The clearing behind the trees was paved with old cracked asphalt. A faded yellow circle had been painted in the middle. Jake realized it was a playground basketball court even before he saw the boy at the far end, standing at the foul line and shooting baskets with a dusty old Wilson ball. They popped in one after another, falling neatly through the netless hole. The basket jutted out from something that looked like a subway kiosk which had been shut up for the night. Its closed door was painted in alternating diagonal stripes of yellow and black. From behind it—or perhaps from below it—Jake could hear the steady rumble of powerful machinery. The sound was somehow disturbing. Scary.

Don’t step on the robots, the boy shooting the baskets said without turning around. I guess they’re all dead, but I wouldn’t take any chances, if I were you.

Jake looked around and saw a number of shattered mechanical devices lying around. One looked like a rat or mouse, another like a bat. A mechanical snake lay in two rusty pieces almost at his feet. ARE you me? Jake asked, taking a step closer to die boy at the basket, but even before he turned around, Jake knew that wasn’t the case. The boy was bigger than Jake, and at least thirteen. His hair was darker, and when he looked at Jake, he saw that the stranger’s eyes were hazel. His own were blue. What do you think? the strange boy asked, and bounce-passed the ball to Jake. No, of course not, Jake said. He spoke apologetically. It’s just that I’ve been cut in two for the last three weeks or so. He dipped and shot from mid-court. The ball arched high and dropped silently through the hoop. He was delighted . . . but he discovered he was also afraid of what this strange boy might have to tell him.