The Waste Lands (Page 89)

“My dad used to say it all the time.” Susannah smiled at Eddie—a stronger smile this time. “And anyway, whatever it was is gone now. I’m fine.” “What do you know about the city, and the lands between here and there?” Roland asked, picking up his coffee cup and sipping. “Are there harriers? And who are these others? These Grays and Pubes?”

Aunt Talitha sighed deeply.

“YE’D HEAR MUCH, GUNSLINGER, and we know but little. One thing I do know is this: the city’s an evil place, especially for this youngster. Any youngster. Is there any way you can steer around it as you go your course?” Roland looked up and observed the now familiar shape of the clouds as they flowed along the path of the Beam. In this wide plains sky, that shape, like a river in the sky, was impossible to miss. “Perhaps,” he said at last, but his voice was oddly reluctant. “I suppose we could skirt around Lud to the southwest and pick up the Beam on the far side.” “It’s the Beam ye follow,” she said. “Ay, I thought so.” Eddie found his own consideration of the city colored by the steadily strengthening hope that when and if they got there, they would find help—abandoned goodies which would aid them in their quest, or maybe even some people who could tell them a little more about the Dark Tower and what they were supposed to do when they got there. The ones called the Grays, for instance—they sounded like the sort of wise old elves he kept imagining. The drums were creepy, true enough, reminding him of a hundred low-budget jungle epics (mostly watched on TV with Henry by his side and a bowl of popcorn between them) where the fabulous lost cities the explorers had come looking for were in ruins and the natives had degen-erated into tribes of blood-thirsty cannibals, but Eddie found it impossible to believe something like that could have happened in a city that looked, at least from a distance, so much like New York. If there were not wise old elves or abandoned goodies, there would surely be books, at least; he had listened to Roland talk about how rare paper was here, hut every city Eddie had ever been in was absolutely drowning in books. They might even find some working transportation; the equivalent of a Land Rover would be nice. That was probably just a silly dream, but when you had thousands of miles of unknown territory to cover, a few silly dreams were undoubtedly in order, if only to keep your spirits up. And weren’t those things at least possible, damn it?

He opened his mouth to say some of these things, but Jake spoke before he could. “I don’t think we can go around,” he said, then blushed a little when they all turned to look at him. Oy shifted at his feet. “No?” Aunt Talitha said. “And why do ye think that, pray tell?” “Do you know about trains?” Jake asked.

There was a long silence. Bill and Till exchanged an uneasy glance. Aunt Talitha only looked at Jake steadily. Jake did not drop his eyes. “I heard of one,” she said. “Mayhap even saw it. Over there.” She pointed in the direction of the Send. “Long ago, when I was but a child and the world hadn’t moved on … or at least not s’far’s it has now. Is it Blaine ye speak of, boy?” Jake’s eyes flashed in surprise and recognition. “Yes! Blaine!” Roland was studying Jake closely.

“And how would ye know of Blaine the Mono?” Aunt Talitha asked. “Mono?” Jake looked blank.

“Ay, so it was called. How would you know of that old lay?” Jake looked helplessly at Roland, then back at Aunt Talitha. “I don’t know how I know.”

And that’s the truth, Eddie thought suddenly, but it’s not all the truth. He knows more than he wants to tell here . . . and I think he’s scared. “This is our business, I think,” Roland said in a dry, brisk administra-tor’s voice. “You must let us work it out for ourselves, Old Mother.” “Ay,” she agreed quickly. “You’ll keep your own counsel. Best that such as us not know.”

“What of the city?” Roland prompted. “What do you know of Lud?” “Little now, but what we know, ye shall hear.” And she poured herself another cup of coffee.

IT WAS THE TWINS, Bill and Till, who actually did most of the talking, one taking up the tale smoothly whenever the other left off. Every now and then Aunt Talitha would add something or correct something, and the twins would wait respectfully until they were sure she was done. Si didn’t speak at all—merely sat with his untouched coffee in front of him, plucking at the pieces of straw which bristled up from the wide brim of his sombrero. They knew little, indeed, Roland realized quickly, even about the history of their own town (nor did this surprise him; in these latter days, memories faded rapidly and all but the most recent past seemed not to exist), but what they did know was disturbing. Roland was not surprised by this, either. In the days of their great-great-grandparents, River Crossing had been much the town Susannah had imagined: a trade-stop at the Great Road, modestly prosperous, a place where goods were sometimes sold but more often exchanged. It had been at least nominally part of River Barony, although even then such things as Baronies and Estates o’ Land had been passing.

There had been buffalo-hunters in those days, although the trade had been dying out; the herds were small and badly mutated. The meat of these mutant beasts was not poison, but it had been rank and bitter. Yet River Crossing, located between a place they simply called The Land-ing and the village of Jimtown, had been a place of some note. It was on the Great Road and only six days travel from the city by land and three by barge. “Unless the river were low,” one of the twins said. “Then it took longer, and my gran’da said there was times when there was barges grounded all the way upriver to Tom’s Neck.” The old people knew nothing of the city’s original residents, of course, or the technologies they had used to build the towers and turrets; these were the Great Old Ones, and their history had been lost in the furthest reaches of the past even when Aunt Talitha’s great-great-grandfa-ther had been a boy. “The buildings are still standing,” Eddie said. “I wonder if the machines the Great Golden Oldies used to build them still run.” “Mayhap,” one of the twins said. “If so, young fella, there don’t be ary man or woman that lives there now who’d still know how to run em … or so I believe, so I do.”