by Stephen King
“Because until Saturday afternoon between four and five o’clock, nothing was sure. Even with the Breakers stopped, nothing was sure until Stephen King was safe.” He glanced around at them. “Do you know about the Breakers?”
Marian nodded. “Not the details, but we know the Beam they were working to destroy is safe from them now, and that it wasn’t so badly damaged it can’t regenerate.” She hesitated, then said: “And we know of your loss. Both of your losses. We’re ever so sorry, Roland.”
“Those boys are safe in the arms of Jesus,” Marian’s father said. “And even if they ain’t, they’re together in the clearing.”
Roland, who wanted to believe this, nodded and said thankya. Then he turned back to Marian. “The thing with the writer was very close. He was hurt, and badly. Jake died saving him. He put his body between King and the van-mobile that would have taken his life.”
“King is going to live,” Nancy said. “And he’s going to write again. We have that on very good authority.”
“Whose?”
Marian leaned forward. “In a minute,” she said. “The point is, Roland, we believe it, we’re sure of it, and King’s safety over the next few years means that your work in the matter of the Beams is done: Ves’-Ka Gan.”
Roland nodded. The song would continue.
“There’s plenty of work for us ahead,” Marian went on, “thirty years’ worth at least, we calculate, but—”
“But it’s our work, not yours,” Nancy said.
“You have this on the same ‘good authority’?” Roland asked, sipping his tea. Hot as it was, he’d gotten half of the large cup inside of him already.
“Yes. Your quest to defeat the forces of the Crimson King has been successful. The Crimson King himself—”
“That wa’n’t never this man’s quest and you know it!” the centenarian sitting next to the handsome black woman said, and he once more thumped his cane for emphasis. “His quest—”
“Dad, that’s enough.” Her voice was hard enough to make the old man blink.
“Nay, let him speak,” Roland said, and they all looked at him, surprised by (and a little afraid of) that dry whipcrack. “Let him speak, for he says true. If we’re going to have it out, let us have it all out. For me, the Beams have always been no more than means to an end. Had they broken, the Tower would have fallen. Had the Tower fallen, I should never have gained it, and climbed to the top of it.”
“You’re saying you cared more for the Dark Tower than for the continued existence of the universe,” Nancy Deepneau said. She spoke in a just-let-me-make-sure-I’ve-got-this-right voice and looked at Roland with a mixture of wonder and contempt. “For the continued existence of all the universes.”
“The Dark Tower is existence,” Roland said, “and I have sacrificed many friends to reach it over the years, including a boy who called me father. I have sacrificed my own soul in the bargain, lady-sai, so turn thy impudent glass another way. May you do it soon and do it well, I beg.”
His tone was polite but dreadfully cold. All the color was dashed from Nancy Deepneau’s face, and the teacup in her hands trembled so badly that Roland reached out and plucked it from her hand, lest it spill and burn her.
“Take me not amiss,” he said. “Understand me, for we’ll never speak more. What was done was done in both worlds, well and ill, for ka and against it. Yet there’s more beyond all worlds than you know, and more behind them than you could ever guess. My time is short, so let’s move on.”
“Well said, sir!” Moses Carver growled, and thumped his cane again.
“If I offended, I’m truly sorry,” Nancy said.
To this Roland made no reply, for he knew she was not sorry a bit—she was only afraid of him. There was a moment of uncomfortable silence that Marian Carver finally broke. “We don’t have any Breakers of our own, Roland, but at the ranch in Taos we employ a dozen telepaths and precogs. What they make together is sometimes uncertain but always greater than the sum of its parts. Do you know the term ‘good-mind’?”
The gunslinger nodded.
“They make a version of that,” she said, “although I’m sure it’s not so great or powerful as that the Breakers in Thunderclap were able to produce.”
“B’cause they had hundreds,” the old man grumped. “And they were better fed.”
“Also because the servants of the King were more than willing to kidnap any who were particularly powerful,” Nancy said, “they always had what we’d call ‘the pick of the litter.’ Still, ours have served us well enough.”
“Whose idea was it to put such folk to work for you?” Roland asked.
“Strange as it might seem to you, partner,” Moses said, “it was Cal Tower. He never contributed much—never did much but c’lect his books and drag his heels, greedy highfalutin whitebread sumbitch that he was—”
His daughter gave him a warning look. Roland found he had to struggle to keep a straight face. Moses Carver might be a hundred years old, but he had pegged Calvin Tower in a single phrase.
“Anyway, he read about putting tellypaths to work in a bunch of science fiction books. Do you know about science fiction?”
Roland shook his head.
“Well, ne’mine. Most of it’s bullshit, but every now and then a good idear crops up. Listen to me and I’ll tell you a good ’un. You’ll understand if you know what Tower and your friend Mist’ Dean talked about twenty-two years ago, when Mist’ Dean come n saved Tower from them two honky thugs.”
“Dad,” Marian said warningly. “You quit with the nigger talk, now. You’re old but not stupid.”
He looked at her; his muddy old eyes gleamed with malicious good cheer; he looked back at Roland and once more came that sly droop of a wink. “Them two honky dago thugs!”
“Eddie spoke of it, yes,” Roland said.
The slur disappeared from Carver’s voice; his words became crisp. “Then you know they spoke of a book called The Hogan, by Benjamin Slightman. The title of the book was misprinted, and so was the writer’s name, which was just the sort of thing that turned old fatty’s dials.”
“Yes,” Roland said. The title misprint had been The Dogan, a phrase that had come to have great meaning to Roland and his tet.
“Well, after your friend came to visit, Cal Tower got interested in that fella all over again, and it turned out he’d written four other books under the name of Daniel Holmes. He was as white as a Klansman’s sheet, this Slightman, but the name he chose to write his other books under was the name of Odetta’s father. And I bet that don’t surprise you none, does it?”
“No,” Roland said. It was just one more faint click as the combination-dial of ka turned.
“And all the books he wrote under the Holmes name were science fiction yarns, about the government hiring tellypaths and precogs to find things out. And that’s where we got the idea.” He looked at Roland and gave his cane a triumphant thump. “There’s more to the tale, a good deal, but I don’t guess you’ve got the time. That’s what it all comes back to, isn’t it? Time. And in this world it only runs one way.” He looked wistful. “I’d give a great lot, gunslinger, to see my goddaughter again, but I don’t guess that’s in the cards, is it? Unless we meet in the clearing.”
“I think you say true,” Roland told him, “but I’ll take her word of you, and how I found you still full of hot spit and fire—”
“Say God, say Gawd-bomb!” the old man interjected, and thumped his cane. “Tell it, brother! And see that you tell her!”
“So I will.” Roland finished the last of his tea, then put the cup on Marian Carver’s desk and stood with a supporting hand on his right hip as he did. It would take him a long time to get used to the lack of pain there, quite likely more time than he had. “And now I must take my leave of you. There’s a place not far from here where I need to go.”
“We know where,” Marian said. “There’ll be someone to meet you when you arrive. The place has been kept safe for you, and if the
door you seek is still there and still working, you’ll go through it.”
Roland made a slight bow. “Thankee-sai.”
“But sit a few moments longer, if you will. We have gifts for you, Roland. Not enough to pay you back for all you’ve done— whether doing it was your first purpose or not—but things you may want, all the same. One’s news from our good-mind folk in Taos. One’s from more …” She considered. “… more normal researchers, folks who work for us in this very building. They call themselves the Calvins, but not because of any religious bent. Perhaps it’s a little homage to Mr. Tower, who died of a heart attack in his new shop nine years ago. Or perhaps it’s only a joke.”
“A bad one if it is,” Moses Carver grumped.
“And then there are two more …from us. From Nancy, and me, and my Dad, and one who’s gone on. Will you sit a little longer?”
And although he was anxious to be off, Roland did as he was asked. For the first time since Jake’s death, a true emotion other than sorrow had risen in his mind.
Curiosity.
ELEVEN
“First, the news from the folks in New Mexico,” Marian said when Roland had resumed his seat. “They have watched you as well as they can, and although what they saw Thunder-side was hazy at best, they believe that Eddie told Jake Chambers something—perhaps something of importance—not long before he died. Likely as he lay on the ground, and before he … I don’t know …”
“Before he slipped into twilight?” Roland suggested.
“Yes,” Nancy Deepneau agreed. “We think so. That is to say, they think so. Our version of the Breakers.”
Marian gave her a little frown that suggested this was a lady who did not appreciate being interrupted. Then she returned her attention to Roland. “Seeing things on this side is easier for our people, and several of them are quite sure—not positive but quite sure—that Jake may have passed this message on before he himself died.” She paused. “This woman you’re traveling with, Mrs. Tannenbaum—”
“Tassenbaum,” Roland corrected. He did it without thinking, because his mind was otherwise occupied. Furiously so.
“Tassenbaum,” Marian agreed. “She’s undoubtedly told you some of what Jake told her before he passed on, but there may be something else. Not a thing she’s holding back, but something she didn’t recognize as important. Will you ask her to go over what Jake said to her once more before you and she part company?”
“Yes,” Roland said, and of course he would, but he didn’t believe Jake had passed on Eddie’s message to Mrs. Tassenbaum. No, not to her. He realized that he’d hardly thought of Oy since they’d parked Irene’s car, but Oy had been with them, of course; would now be lying at Irene’s feet as she sat in the little park across the street, lying in the sun and waiting for him.
“All right,” she said. “That’s good. Let’s move on.”
Marian opened the wide center drawer of her desk. From it she brought out a padded envelope and a small wooden box. The envelope she handed to Nancy Deepneau. The box she placed on the desktop in front of her.
“This next is Nancy’s to tell,” she said. “And I’d just ask you to be brief, Nancy, because this man looks very anxious to be off.”
“Tell it,” Moses said, and thumped his cane.
Nancy glanced at him, then at Roland … or in the vicinity of him, anyway. Color was climbing in her cheeks, and she looked flustered. “Stephen King,” she said, then cleared her throat and said it again. From there she didn’t seem to know how to go on. Her color burned even deeper beneath her skin.
“Take a deep breath,” Roland said, “and hold it.”
She did as he told her.
“Now let it out.”
And this, too.
“Now tell me what you would, Nancy niece of Aaron.”
“Stephen King has written nearly forty books,” she said, and although the color remained in her cheeks (Roland supposed he would find out what it signified soon enough), her voice was calmer now. “An amazing number of them, even the very early ones, touch on the Dark Tower in one way or another. It’s as though it was always on his mind, from the very first.”
“You say what I know is true,” Roland told her, folding his hands, “I say thankya.”
This seemed to calm her even further. “Hence the Calvins,” she said. “Three men and two women of a scholarly bent who do nothing from eight in the morning until four in the afternoon but read the works of Stephen King.”
“They don’t just read them,” Marian said. “They cross-reference them by settings, by characters, by themes—such as they are—even by mention of popular brand-name products.”
“Part of their work is looking for references to people who live or did live in the Keystone World,” Nancy said. “Real people, in other words. And references to the Dark Tower, of course.” She handed him the padded envelope and Roland felt the corners of what could only be a book inside. “If King ever wrote a keystone book, Roland—outside the Dark Tower series itself, I mean—we think it must be this one.”
The flap of the envelope was held by a clasp. Roland looked askance at both Marian and Nancy. They nodded. The gunslinger opened the clasp and pulled out an extremely thick volume with a cover of red and white. There was no picture on it, only Stephen King’s name and a single word.
Red for the King, White for Arthur Eld, he thought. White over Red, thus Gan wills ever.
Or perhaps it was just a coincidence.
“What is this word?” Roland asked, tapping the title.
“Insomnia,” Nancy said. “It means—”
“I know what it means,” Roland said. “Why do you give me the book?”
“Because the story hinges on the Dark Tower,” Nancy said, “and because there’s a character in it named Ed Deepneau. He happens to be the villain of the piece.”
The villain of the piece, Roland thought. No wonder her color rose.
“Do you have anyone by that name in your family?” he asked her.
“We did,” she said. “In Bangor, which is the town King is writing about when he writes about Derry, as he does in this book. The real Ed Deepneau died in 1947, the year King was born. He was a bookkeeper, as inoffensive as milk and cookies. The one in Insomnia is a lunatic who falls under the power of the Crimson King. He attempts to turn an airplane into a bomb and crash it into a building, killing thousands of people.”
“Pray it never happens,” the old man said gloomily, looking out at the New York City skyline. “God knows it could.”
“In the story the plan fails,” Nancy said. “Although some people are killed, the main character in the book, an old man named Ralph Roberts, manages to keep the absolute worst from happening.”
Roland was looking intently at Aaron Deepnau’s grandniece. “The Crimson King is mentioned in here? By actual name?”
“Yes,” she said. “The Ed Deepneau in Bangor—the real Ed Deepneau—was a cousin of my father’s, four or five times removed. The Calvins could show you the family tree if you wanted, but there really isn’t much of a connection to Uncle Aaron’s part of it. We think King may have used the name in the book as a way of getting your attention—or ours—without even realizing what he was doing.”
“A message from his undermind,” the gunslinger mused.
Nancy brightened. “His subconscious, yes! Yes, that’s exactly what we think!”
It wasn’t exactly what Roland was thinking. The gunslinger had been recalling how he had hypnotized King in the year of 1977; how he had told him to listen for Ves’-Ka Gan, the Song of the Turtle. Had King’s undermind, the part of him that would never have stopped trying to obey the hypnotic command, put part of the Song of the Turtle in this book? A book the Servants of the King might have neglected because it wasn’t part of the “Dark Tower Cycle”? Roland thought that could be, and that the name Deepneau might indeed be a sigul. But—
“I can’t read this,” he said. “A word here and a word there, perhaps, but no more
.”
“You can’t, but my girl can,” Moses Carver said. “My girl Odetta, that you call Susannah.”
Roland nodded slowly. And although he had already begun to have his doubts, his mind nevertheless cast up a brilliant image of the two of them sitting close by a fire—a large one, for the night was cold—with Oy between. In the rocks above them the wind howled bitter notes of winter, but they cared not, for their bellies were full, their bodies were warm, dressed in the skins of animals they had killed themselves, and they had a story to entertain them.
Stephen King’s story of insomnia.
“She’ll read it to you on the trail,” Moses said. “On your last trail, say God!”
Yes, Roland thought. One last story to hear, one last trail to follow. The one that leads to Can’-Ka No Rey, and the Dark Tower. Or it would be nice to think so.
Nancy said, “In the story, the Crimson King is using Ed Deepneau to kill one single child, a boy named Patrick Danville. Just before the attack, while Patrick and his mother are waiting for a woman to make a speech, the boy draws a picture, one that shows you, Roland, and the Crimson King, apparently imprisoned at the top of the Dark Tower.”
Roland started in his seat. “The top? Imprisoned at the top?”
“Easy,” Marian said. “Take it easy, Roland. The Calvins have been analyzing King’s work for years, every word and every reference, and everything they produce gets forwarded to the good-mind folken in New Mexico. Although these two groups have never seen each other, it would be perfectly correct to say that they work together.”
“Not that they’re always in agreement,” Nancy said.
“They sure aren’t!” Marian spoke in the exasperated tone of one who’s had to referee more than her share of squabbles. “But one thing that they are in agreement about is that King’s references to the Dark Tower are almost always masked, and sometimes mean nothing at all.”
Roland nodded. “He speaks of it because his undermind is always thinking of it, but sometimes he lapses into gibberish.”
“Yes,” Nancy said.
“But obviously you don’t think this entire book is a false trail, or you would not want to give it to me.”