by Stephen King
Mia dug her fingernails into the skin of a pokeberry, stripped it away in one quick gesture, and ate the fruit down greedily. She considered opening another, then simply rolled it between her palms (those disconcertingly white palms), warming it. After enough of this, Susannah knew, the fruit would split its skin on its own. Then she began.
Three
“How many Beams do there be, Susannah of New York?”
“Six,” Susannah said. “At least, there were. I guess now there are only two that—”
Mia waved a hand impatiently, as if to sayDon’t waste my time. “Six, aye. And when the Beams were created out of that greater Discordia, the soup of creation some (including the Manni) call the Over and some call thePrim, what made them?”
“I don’t know,” Susannah said. “Was it God, do you think?”
“Perhaps there is a God, but the Beams rose from thePrim on the airs of magic, Susannah, the true magic which passed long ago. Was it God that made magic, or was it magic that made God? I know not. It’s a question for philosophers, and mothering’s my job. But once upon a time all was Discordia and from it, strong and all crossing at a single unifying point, came the six Beams. There was magic to hold them steady for eternity, but when the magic left from all there is but the Dark Tower, which some have called Can Calyx, the Hall of Resumption, men despaired. When the Age of Magic passed, the Age of Machines came.”
“North Central Positronics,” Susannah murmured. “Dipolar computers. Slo-trans engines.” She paused. “Blaine the Mono. But not in our world.”
“No? Do you say your world is exempt? What about the sign in the hotel lobby?” The pokeberry popped. Mia stripped it and gobbled it, drizzling juice through a knowing grin.
“I had an idea you couldn’t read,” Susannah said. This was beside the point, but it was all she could think of to say. Her mind kept returning to the image of the baby; to those brilliant blue eyes. Gunslinger’s eyes.
“Aye, but I know my numbers, and when it comes to your mind, I read very well. Do you say you don’t recall the sign in the hotel lobby? Will you tell me that?”
Of course she remembered. According to the sign, the Plaza—Park would be part of an organization called Sombra/North Central in just another month. And when she’d saidNot in our world, of course she had been thinking of 1964—the world of black-and-white television, absurdly bulky room-sized computers, and Alabama cops more than willing to sic the dogs on black marchers for voting rights. Things had changed greatly in the intervening thirty-five years. The Eurasian desk clerk’s combination TV and typewriter, for instance—how did Susannah know that wasn’t a dipolar computer run by some form of slo-trans engine? She did not.
“Go on,” she told Mia.
Mia shrugged. “You doom yourselves, Susannah. You seem positively bent on it, and the root is always the same: your faith fails you, and you replace it with rational thought. But there is no love in thought, nothing that lasts in deduction, only death in rationalism.”
“What does this have to do with your chap?”
“I don’t know. There’s much I don’t know.” She raised a hand, forestalling Susannah before Susannah could speak. “And no, I’mnot playing for time, or trying to lead you away from what you’d know; I’m speaking as my heart tells me. Would you hear or not?”
Susannah nodded. She’d hear this…for a little longer, at least. But if it didn’t turn back to the baby soon, she’d turn it back in that direction herself.
“The magic went away. Maerlyn retired to his cave in one world, the sword of Eld gave way to the pistols of the gunslingers in another, and the magic went away. And across the arc of years, great alchemists, great scientists, and great—what?—technicians, I think? Great men of thought, anyway, that’s what I mean, great men ofdeduction —these came together and created the machines which ran the Beams. They were great machines but they weremortal machines. They replaced themagic withmachines, do ya kennit, and now the machines are failing. In some worlds, great plagues have decimated whole populations.”
Susannah nodded. “We saw one of those,” she said quietly. “They called it the superflu.”
“The Crimson King’s Breakers are only hurrying along a process that’s already in train. The machines are going mad. You’ve seen this for yourself. The men believed there would always be more men like them to make more machines. None of them foresaw what’s happened. This…this universal exhaustion.”
“The world has moved on.”
“Aye, lady. It has. And left no one to replace the machines which hold up the last magic in creation, for thePrim has receded long since. The magic is gone and the machines are failing. Soon enough the Dark Tower will fall. Perhaps there’ll be time for one splendid moment of universal rational thought before the darkness rules forever. Wouldn’t that be nice?”
“Won’t the Crimson King be destroyed, too, when the Tower falls? Him and all his crew? The guys with the bleeding holes in their foreheads?”
“He has been promised his own kingdom, where he’ll rule forever, tasting his own special pleasures.” Distaste had crept into Mia’s voice. Fear, too, perhaps.
“Promised? Promised by whom? Who is more powerful than he?”
“Lady, I know not. Perhaps this is only what he has promised himself.” Mia shrugged. Her eyes wouldn’t quite meet Susannah’s.
“Can nothing prevent the fall of the Tower?”
“Not even your gunslinger friend hopes toprevent it,” Mia said, “only to slow it down by freeing the Breakers and—perhaps—slaying the Crimson King. Save it!Save it, O delight! Did he ever tell you that was his quest?”
Susannah considered this and shook her head. If Roland had ever said that, in so many words, she couldn’t remember. And she was sure she would have.
“No,” Mia went on, “for he won’t lie to his ka-tet unless he has to, ’tis his pride. What he wants of the Tower is only tosee it.” Then she added, rather grudgingly: “Oh, perhaps to enter it, and climb to the room at the top, his ambition may strike so far. He may dream of standing on its allure as we hunker on this one, and chant the names of his fallen comrades, and of his line all the way back to Arthur Eld. Butsave it? No, good lady! Only a return of the magic could possibly save it, and—as you yourself well know—your dinh deals only in lead.”
Never since crossing the worlds had Susannah heard Roland’s trade of hand cast in such a paltry light. It made her feel sad and angry, but she hid her feelings as best she could.
“Tell me how your chap can be Roland’s son, for I would hear.”
“Aye, ’tis a good trick, but one the old people of River Crossing could have explained to you, I’ve no doubt.”
Susannah started at that. “How do you know somuch of me?”
“Because you are possessed,” Mia said, “and I am your possessor, sure. I can look through any of your memories that I like. I can read what your eyes see. Now be quiet and listen if you would learn, for I sense our time has grown short.”
Four
This is what Susannah’s demon told her.
“There are six Beams, as you did say, but there are twelve Guardians, one for each end of each Beam. This—for we’re still on it—is the Beam of Shardik. Were you to go beyond the Tower, it would become the Beam of Maturin, the great turtle upon whose shell the world rests.
“Similarly, there are but six demon elementals, one for each Beam. Below them is the whole invisible world, those creatures left behind on the beach of existence when thePrim receded. There are speaking demons, demons of house which some call ghosts, ill-sick demons which some—makers of machines and worshippers of the great false god rationality, if it does ya—call disease. Many small demons but only six demon elementals. Yet as there are twelve Guardians for the six Beams, there are twelve demonaspects, for each demon elemental is both male and female.”
Susannah began to see where this was going, and felt a sudden sinking in her guts. From the naked bristle of rocks beyond the al
lure, in what Mia called the Discordia, there came a dry, feverish cackle of laughter. This unseen humorist was joined by a second, a third, a fourth and fifth. Suddenly it seemed that the whole world was laughing at her. And perhaps with good reason, for it was a good joke. But how could she have known?
As the hyenas—or whatever they were—cackled, she said: “You’re telling me that the demon elementals are hermaphrodites. That’s why they’re sterile, because they’re both.”
“Aye. In the place of the Oracle, your dinh had intercourse with one of these demon elementals in order to gain information, what’s calledprophecy in the High Speech. He had no reason to think the Oracle was anything but a succubus, such as those that sometimes exist in the lonely places—”
“Right,” Susannah said, “just a run-of-the-mill demon sexpot.”
“If you like,” Mia said, and this time when she offered Susannah a pokeberry, Susannah took it and began to roll it between her palms, warming the skin. She still wasn’t hungry, but her mouth was dry. So dry.
“The demon took the gunslinger’s seed as female, and gave it back to you as male.”
“When we were in the speaking ring,” Susannah said dismally. She was remembering how the pouring rain had pounded against her upturned face, the sense of invisible hands on her shoulders, and then the thing’s engorgement filling her up and at the same time seeming to tear her apart. The worst part had been the coldness of the enormous cock inside her. At the time, she’d thought it was like being fucked by an icicle.
And how had she gotten through it? By summoning Detta, of course. By calling on the bitch, victor in a hundred nasty little sex-skirmishes fought in the parking lots of two dozen roadhouses and county-line honky-tonks. Detta, who had trapped it—
“It tried to get away,” she told Mia. “Once it figured out it had its cock caught in a damn Chinese finger-puller, it tried to get away.”
“If it had wanted to get away,” Mia said quietly, “itwould have.”
“Why would it bother fooling me?” Susannah asked, but she didn’t need Mia to answer that question, not now. Because it had needed her, of course. It had needed her to carry the baby.
Roland’sbaby.
Roland’s doom.
“You know everything you need to know about the chap,” Mia said. “Don’t you?”
Susannah supposed she did. A demon had taken in Roland’s seed while female; had stored it, somehow; and then shot it into Susannah Dean as male. Mia was right. She knew what she needed to know.
“I’ve kept my promise,” Mia said. “Let’s go back. The cold’s not good for the chap.”
“Just a minute longer,” Susannah said. She held up the pokeberry. Golden fruit now bulged through ruptures in the orange skin. “My berry just popped. Let me eat it. I have another question.”
“Eat and ask and be quick about both.”
“Who areyou ? Who are you really? Are you this demon? Does she have a name, by the way? She and he, do they have a name?”
“No,” Mia said. “Elementals have no need of names; they are what they are. Am I a demon? Is that what you’d know? Yar, I suppose I am. Or I was. All that is vague now, like a dream.”
“And you’re not me…or are you?”
Mia didn’t answer. And Susannah realized that she probably didn’t know.
“Mia?” Low. Musing.
Mia was hunkering against the merlon with her serape tucked between her knees. Susannah could see that her ankles were swollen and felt a moment’s pity for the woman. Then she squashed it. This was no time for pity, for there was no truth in it.
“You ain’t nothing but the baby-sitter, girl.”
The reaction was all she’d hoped for, and more. Mia’s face registered shock, then anger. Hell,fury. “Youlie! I’m this chap’smother! And when he comes, Susannah, there will be no more combing the world for Breakers, for my chap will be the greatest of them all, able to break both of the remaining Beams all by himself!” Her voice had filled with pride that sounded alarmingly close to insanity. “My Mordred! Do you hear me?”
“Oh, yes,” Susannah said. “I hear. And you’re actually going to go trotting right to those who’ve made it their business to pull down the Tower, aren’t you? They call, you come.” She paused, then finished with deliberate softness. “And when you get to them, they’ll take your chap, and thank you very much, and then send you back into the soup you came from.”
“Nay! I shall have the raising of him, for so they have promised!” Mia crossed her arms protectively over her belly. “He’s mine, I’m his mother and I shall have the raising of him!”
“Girl, why don’t you getreal? Do you think they’llkeep their word?Them? How can you see so much and not see that?”
Susannah knew the answer, of course. Motherhood itself had deluded her.
“Why would they not let me raise him?” Mia asked shrilly. “Who better? Who better than Mia, who was made for only two things, to bear a son and raise him?”
“But you’re not just you,” Susannah said. “You’re like the children of the Calla, and just about everything else my friends and I have run into along the way. You’re atwin, Mia! I’m your other half, your lifeline. You see the world through my eyes and breathe through my lungs. I had to carry the chap, because you couldn’t, could you? You’re as sterile as the big boys. And once they’ve got your kid, their A-bomb of a Breaker, they’ll get rid of you if only so they can get rid of me.”
“I have their promise,” she said. Her face was downcast, set in its stubbornness.
“Turn it around,” Susannah said. “Turn it around, I beg. If I were in your place and you in mine, what would you think if I spoke of such a promise?”
“I’d tell you to stop your blabbering tongue!”
“Who are you, really? Where in the hell did they get you? Was it like a newspaper ad you answered, ‘Surrogate Mother Wanted, Good Benefits, Short Term of Employment’? Who are you, really?”
“Shut up!”
Susannah leaned forward on her haunches. This position was ordinarily exquisitely uncomfortable for her, but she’d forgotten both her discomfort and the half-eaten pokeberry in her hand.
“Come on!” she said, her voice taking on the rasping tones of Detta Walker. “Come on and take off yo’ blindfold, honeybunch, jus’ like you made me take off mine! Tell the truth and spit in the devil’s eye!Who the fuck are you? ”
“I don’t know!”Mia screamed, and below them the jackals hidden in the rocks screamed back, only their screams were laughter.“I don’t know, I don’t know who I am, does that satisfy?”
It did not, and Susannah was about to press on and press harder when Detta Walker spoke up.
Five
This is what Susannah’s other demon told her.
Baby-doll, you need to think bout this a little, seem to me.Shecain’t, she stone dumb, cain’t read, cain’t cipher more than just a little, ain’t been to Morehouse, ain’t been to nohouse, but youhave, Miss Oh-Detta Holmes been to Co— lum-bee-ya, lah-de-dah, de Gem ob de Ocean, ain’t we jus’ so fine.
You need to think bout how she pregnant, for one thing. She say she done fucked Roland out of his jizz, then turn male, into the Demon of the Ring, and shot it into you, and den you carryin it, you tossin all those nasty things she made you eat down yo’ throat, so whereshein all this now, dat what Detta like to know. How come shesettin there pregnant under dat greaser blanket she wearin? Is it more of dat…what you call it…visualization technique?
Susannah didn’t know. She only knew that Mia was looking at her with suddenly narrowed eyes. She was doubtless picking up some of this monologue. How much? Not much at all, that was Susannah’s bet; maybe a word here and there, but mostly it was just quack. And in any case, Mia certainlyacted like the baby’s mother. Baby Mordred! It was like a Charles Addams cartoon.
Dat she do,Detta mused.She acklike a Mommy, she wrapped around it root and branch, you right bout dat much.
But maybe, Su
sannah thought, that was just her nature. Maybe once you got beyond the mothering instinct, therewas no Mia.
A cold hand reached out and seized Susannah’s wrist. “Who is it? Is it that nasty-talking one? If it is, banish her. She scares me.”
She still scared Susannah a little, in all truth, but not as much as when she’d first come to accept that Detta was real. They hadn’t become friends and probably never would, but it was clear that Detta Walker could be a powerful ally. She was more than mean. Once you got past the idiotic Butterfly McQueen accent, she was shrewd.
Dis Mia make a mighty pow’ful ally her ownself, if you c’d get her on yo’ side. Ain’t hardly nothin in the world as pow’ful as a pissed-off Mommy.
“We’re going back,” Mia said. “I’ve answered your questions, the cold’s bad for the baby, and the mean one’s here. Palaver’s done.”
But Susannah shook off her grip and moved back a little, out of Mia’s immediate reach. In the gap between the merlons the cold wind knifed through her light shirt, but it also seemed to clear her mind and refresh her thinking.
Part of her is me, because she has access to my memories. Eddie’s ring, the people of River Crossing, Blaine the Mono. But she’s got to bemorethan me as well, because…because…
Go on, girl, you ain’t doin bad, but youslow.
Because she knows all thisotherstuff, as well. She knows about the demons, both the little ones and the elementals. She knows how the Beams came into being—sort of—and about this magical soup of creation, the Prim.As far as I ever knew, prim’s a word you use for girls who are always yanking their skirts down over their knees. She didn’t get that other meaning from me.
It occurred to her what this conversation was like: parents studying their new baby. Their new chap. He’s got your nose, Yes but he’s gotyour eyes, and But my goodness,where did he get that hair?
Detta said:And she also got friens back in New York, don’t forget dat.Least she want to thinkthey her friens.
So she’s someone or something else, as well. Someone from the invisible world of house demons and ill-sicks. But who? Is she really one of the elementals?