The Waste Lands (Page 64)

“It looks okay,” Eddie said. “Is that possible, Roland? Could it still be pretty much intact. Did the old-timers build that well?” “Anything is possible in these times,” Roland said, but he sounded doubtful. “You shouldn’t get your hopes up, though, Eddie.” “Huh? No.” But Eddie’s hopes were up. That dimly sketched skyline had awakened homesickness in Susannah’s heart; in Eddie’s it kindled a sudden blaze of supposition. If the city was still there—and it clearly was—it might still be populated, and maybe not just by the subhuman things Roland had met under the mountains, either. The city-dwellers might be (Americans, Eddie’s subconscious whispered) intelligent and helpful; they might, in fact, spell the difference between success and failure for the quest of the pilgrims … or even between life and death. In Eddie’s mind a vision (partly cribbed from movies like The Last Starfighter and The Dark Crystal) gleamed brightly: a council of gnarled but dignified City Elders who would serve them a whopping meal drawn from the unspoiled stores of the city (or perhaps from special gardens cradled within environmental bubbles) and who would, as he and Roland and Susannah ate themselves silly, explain exactly what lay ahead and what it all meant. Their parting gift to the wayfarers would be an AAA-approved Tour Guide map with the best route to the Dark Tower marked in red. Eddie did not know the phrase deus ex machina, but he knew—had now grown up enough to know—that such wise and kindly folk lived mostly in comic books and B-movies. The idea was intoxicating, all the same: an enclave of civilization in this dangerous, mostly empty world; wise old elf-men who would tell them just what the f**k it was they were supposed to be doing. And the fabulous shapes of the city disclosed in that hazy skyline made the idea seem at least possible. Even if the city was totally deserted, the population wiped out by some long-ago plague or outbreak of chemical warfare, it might still serve them as a kind of giant toolbox—a huge Army-Navy Surplus Store where they could outfit themselves for the hard passages Eddie was sure must lie ahead. Besides, he was a city boy, born and bred, and the sight of all those tall towers just naturally got him up. “All right!” he said, almost laughing out loud in his excitement. “Hey-ho, let’s go! Bring on those wise f**kin elves!”

Susannah looked at him, puzzled but smiling. “What you ravin about, white boy?” “Nothing. Never mind. I just want to get moving. What do you say, Roland? Want to—“

But something on Roland’s face or just beneath it—some lost, dreaming thing—caused him to fall silent and put one arm around Susan-nah’s shoulders, as if to protect her.

AFTER ONE BRIEF, DISMISSIVE glance at the city skyline, Roland’s gaze had been caught by something a good deal closer to their current posi-tion, something that filled him with disquiet and foreboding. He had seen such things before, and the last time he’d come across one, Jake had been with him. He remembered how they had finally come out of the desert, the trail of the man in black leading them through the foothills and toward the mountains. Hard going, it had been, but at least there had been water again. And grass. One night he had awakened to find Jake gone. He had heard stran-gled, desperate cries coming from a willow-grove hard by a narrow trickle of stream. By the time he had fought his way through to the clearing at the center of the grove, the boy’s cries had ceased. Roland had found him standing in a place exactly like the one which lay below and ahead. A place of stones; a place of sacrifice; a place where an Oracle lived . . . and spoke when it was forced to … and killed whenever it could.

“Roland?” Eddie asked. “What is it? What’s wrong?” “Do you see that?” Roland pointed. “It’s a speaking ring. The shapes you see are tall standing stones.” He found himself staring at Eddie, whom he had first met in the frightening but wonderful air-carriage of that strange other world where the gunslingers wore blue uniforms and there was an endless supply of sugar, paper, and wonderful drugs like astin. Some strange expression—some foreknowledge—was dawning on Eddie’s face. The bright hope which had lit his eyes as he surveyed the city whiffed out, leaving him with a look both gray and bleak. It was the expression of a man studying the gallows on which he will soon be hanged.

First Jake, and now Eddie, the gunslinger thought. The wheel which turns our lives is remorseless; always it comes around to the same place again. “Oh shit,” Eddie said. His voice was dry and scared. “I think that’s the place where the kid is going to try and come through.” The gunslinger nodded. “Very likely. They’re thin places, and they’re also attractive places. I followed him to such a place once before. The Oracle that kept there came very close to killing him.” “How do you know this?” Susannah asked Eddie. “Was it a dream?” He only shook his head. “I don’t know. But the minute Roland pointed that goddamn place out . . .” He broke off and looked at the gunslinger. “We have to get there, just as fast as we can.” Eddie sounded both frantic and fearful. “Is it going to happen today?” Roland asked. “Tonight?” Eddie shook his head again, and licked his lips. “I don’t know that, either. Not for sure. Tonight? I don’t think so. Time … it isn’t the same over here as it is where the kid is. It goes slower in his where and when. Maybe tomorrow.” He had been battling panic, but now it broke free. He turned and grabbed Roland’s shirt with his cold, sweating fingers. “But I’m supposed to finish the key, and I haven’t, and I’m supposed to do something else, and I don’t have a clue about what it is. And if the kid dies, it’ll be my fault!” The gunslinger locked his own hands over Eddie’s and pulled them away from his shirt. “Get control of yourself.”