by Stephen King
“But he did. In the Keystone World, and in a when beyond any of ours. I bet it was in the when of ’99. So dies the son of the last gunslinger, O Discordia. What I think now is that I was kind of hearing the obituary page from The Time Traveler’s Weekly. It was all different times mixed together. John-John Kennedy, then Stephen King. I’d never heard of him, but David Brinkley said he wrote ’Salem’s Lot. That’s the book Father Callahan was in, right?”
Roland and Eddie nodded.
“Father Callahan told us his story.”
“Yeah,” Jake said. “But what—”
She overrode him. Her eyes were hazy, distant. Eyes just a look away from understanding. “And then comes Brautigan to the Ka-Tet of Nineteen, and tells his tale. And look! Look at the tape counter!”
They leaned over. In the windows were
1999.
“I think King might have written Ted’s story, too,” she said. “Anybody want to take a guess what year that story showed up, or will show up, in the Keystone World?”
“1999,” Jake said, low. “But not the part we heard. The part we didn’t hear. Ted’s Connecticut Adventure.”
“And you met him,” Susannah said, looking at her dinh and her husband. “You met Stephen King.”
They nodded again.
“He made the Pere, he made Brautigan, he made us,” she said, as if to herself, then shook her head. “No. ‘All things serve the Beam.’ He…he facilitated us.”
“Yeah.” Eddie was nodding. “Yeah, okay. That feels just about right.”
“In my dream I was in a cell,” she said. “I was wearing the clothes I had on when I got arrested. And David Brinkley said Stephen King was dead, woe, Discordia—something like that. Brinkley said he was…” She paused, frowning. She would have demanded that Roland hypnotize the complete recollection out of her if it had been necessary, but it turned out not to be. “Brinkley said King was killed by a minivan while walking near his home in Lovell, Maine.”
Eddie jerked. Roland sat forward, his eyes burning. “Do you say so?”
Susannah nodded firmly.
“He bought the house on Turtleback Lane!” the gunslinger roared. He reached out and took hold of Eddie’s shirt. Eddie seemed not to even notice. “Of course he did! Ka speaks and the wind blows! He moved a little further along the Path of the Beam and bought the house where it’s thin! Where we saw the walk-ins! Where we talked to John Cullum and then came back through! Do you doubt it? Do you doubt it so much as a single goddam bit?”
Eddie shook his head. Of course he didn’t doubt it. It had a ring, like the one you got when you were at the carnival and hit the pedal just right with the mallet, hit it with all your force, and the lead slug flew straight to the top of the post and rang the bell up there. You got a Kewpie doll when you rang the bell, and was that because Stephen King thought it was a Kewpie doll? Because King came from the world where Gan started time rolling with His holy finger? Because if King says Kewpie, we all say Kewpie, and we all say thankya? If he’d somehow gotten the idea that the prize for ringing the Test Your Strength bell at the carnival was a Cloopie doll, would they say Cloopie? Eddie thought the answer was yes. He thought the answer was yes just as surely as Co-Op City was in Brooklyn.
“David Brinkley said King was fifty-two. You boys met him, so do the math. Could he have been fifty-two in the year of ’99?”
“You bet your purity,” Eddie said. He tossed Roland a dark, dismayed glance. “And since nineteen’s the part we keep running into—Ted Stevens Brautigan, go on, count the letters!—I bet it has to do with more than just the year. Nineteen—”
“It’s a date,” Jake said flatly. “Sure it is. Keystone Date in Keystone Year in Keystone World. The nineteenth of something, in the year of 1999. Most likely a summer month, because he was out walking.”
“It’s summer over there right now,” Susannah said. “It’s June. The 6-month. Turn 6 on its head and you get 9.”
“Yeah, and spell dog backward, you get god,” Eddie said, but he sounded uneasy.
“I think she’s right,” Jake said. “I think it’s June 19th. That’s when King gets turned into roadkill and even the chance that he might go back to work on the Dark Tower story—our story—is kaput. Gan’s Beam is lost in the overload. Shardik’s Beam is left, but it’s already eroded.” He looked at Roland, his face pale, his lips almost blue. “It’ll snap like a toothpick.”
“Maybe it’s happened already,” Susannah said.
“No,” Roland said.
“How can you be sure?” she asked.
He gave her a wintry, humorless smile. “Because,” he said, “we’d no longer be here.”
Nineteen
“How can we stop it from happening?” Eddie asked. “That guy Trampas told Ted it was ka.”
“Maybe he got it wrong,” Jake said, but his voice was thin. Trailing. “It was only a rumor, so maybe he got it wrong. And hey, maybe King’s got until July. Or August. Or what about September? It could be September, doesn’t that seem likely? September’s the 9-month, after all…”
They looked at Roland, who was now sitting with his leg stretched out before him. “Here’s where it hurts,” he said, as if speaking to himself. He touched his right hip…then his ribs…last the side of his head. “I’ve been having headaches. Worse and worse. Saw no reason to tell you.” He drew his diminished right hand down his right side. “This is where he’ll be hit. Hip smashed. Ribs busted. Head crushed. Thrown dead into the ditch. Ka…and the end of ka.” His eyes cleared and he turned urgently to Susannah. “What date was it when you were in New York? Refresh me.”
“June first of 1999.”
Roland nodded and looked to Jake. “And you? The same, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Then to Fedic…a rest…and on to Thunderclap.” He paused, thinking, then spoke four words with measured emphasis. “There is still time.”
“But time moves faster over there—”
“And if it takes one of those hitches—”
“Ka—”
Their words overlapped. Then they fell quiet again, looking at him again.
“We can change ka,” Roland said. “It’s been done before. There’s always a price to pay—ka-shume, mayhap—but it can be done.”
“How do we get there?” Eddie asked.
“There’s only one way,” Roland said. “Sheemie must send us.”
Silence in the cave, except for a distant roll of the thunder that gave this dark land its name.
“We have two jobs,” Eddie said. “The writer and the Breakers. Which comes first?”
“The writer,” Jake said. “While there’s still time to save him.”
But Roland was shaking his head.
“Why not?” Eddie cried. “Ah, man, why not? You know how slippery time is over there! And it’s one-way! If we miss the window, we’ll never get another chance!”
“But we have to make Shardik’s Beam safe, too,” Roland said.
“Are you saying Ted and this guy Dinky wouldn’t let Sheemie help us unless we help them first?”
“No. Sheemie would do it for me, I’m sure. But suppose something happened to him while we were in the Keystone World? We’d be stranded in 1999.”
“There’s the door on Turtleback Lane—” Eddie began.
“Even if it’s still there in 1999, Eddie, Ted told us that Shardik’s Beam has already started to bend.” Roland shook his head. “My heart says yonder prison is the place to start. If any of you can say different, I will listen, and gladly.”
They were quiet. Outside the cave, the wind blew.
“We need to ask Ted before we make any final decision,” Susannah said at last.
“No,” Jake said.
“No!” Oy agreed. Zero surprise there; if Ake said it, you could take it to the bumbler bank, as far as Oy was concerned.
“Ask Sheemie,” Jake said. “Ask Sheemie what he thinks we should do.”
Slowly, Roland nodded.
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Chapter IX:
Tracks on the Path
One
When Jake awoke from a night of troubled dreams, most of them set in the Dixie Pig, a thin and listless light was seeping into the cave. In New York, that kind of light had always made him want to skip school and spend the entire day on the sofa, reading books, watching game-shows on TV, and napping the afternoon away. Eddie and Susannah were curled up together inside a single sleeping-bag. Oy had eschewed the bed which had been left him in order to sleep beside Jake. He was curled into a U, snout on left forepaw. Most people would have thought him asleep, but Jake saw the sly glimmer of gold beneath his lids and knew that Oy was peeking. The gunslinger’s sleeping-bag was unzipped and empty.
Jake thought about this for a moment or two, then got up and went outside. Oy followed along, padding quietly over the tamped dirt as Jake walked up the trail.
Two
Roland looked haggard and unwell, but he was squatting on his hunkers, and Jake decided that if he was limber enough to do that, he was probably okay. He squatted beside the gunslinger, hands dangling loosely between his thighs. Roland glanced at him, said nothing, then looked back toward the prison the staff called Algul Siento and the inmates called the Devar-Toi. It was a brightening blur beyond and below them. The sun—electric, atomic, whatever—wasn’t shining yet.
Oy plopped down next to Jake with a little whuffing sound, then appeared to go back to sleep. Jake wasn’t fooled.
“Hile and merry-greet-the-day,” Jake said when the silence began to feel oppressive.
Roland nodded. “Merry see, merry be.” He looked as merry as a funeral march. The gunslinger who had danced a furious commala by torchlight in Calla Bryn Sturgis might have been a thousand years in his grave.
“How are you, Roland?”
“Good enough to hunker.”
“Aye, but how are you?”
Roland glanced at him, then reached into his pocket and brought out his tobacco pouch. “Old and full of aches, as you must know. Would you smoke?”
Jake considered, then nodded.
“They’ll be shorts,” Roland warned. “There’s plenty in my purse I was glad to have back, but not much blow-weed.”
“Save it for yourself, if you want.”
Roland smiled. “A man who can’t bear to share his habits is a man who needs to quit them.” He rolled a pair of cigarettes, using some sort of leaf which he tore in two, handed one to Jake, then lit them up with a match he popped alight on his thumbnail. In the still, chill air of Can Steek-Tete, the smoke hung in front of them, then rose slowly, stacking on the air. Jake thought the tobacco was hot, harsh, and stale, but he said no word of complaint. He liked it. He thought of all the times he’d promised himself he wouldn’t smoke like his father did—never in life—and now here he was, starting the habit. And with his new father’s agreement, if not approval.
Roland reached out a finger and touched Jake’s forehead…his left cheek…his nose…his chin. The last touch hurt a little. “Pimples,” Roland said. “It’s the air of this place.” He suspected it was emotional upset, as well—grief over the Pere—but to let Jake know he thought that would likely just increase the boy’s unhappiness over Callahan’s passing.
“You don’t have any,” Jake said. “Skin’s as clear as a bell. Luck-ee.”
“No pimples,” Roland agreed, and smoked. Below them in the seeping light was the village. The peaceful village, Jake thought, but it looked more than peaceful; it looked downright dead. Then he saw two figures, little more than specks from here, strolling toward each other. Hume guards patrolling the outer run of the fence, he presumed. They joined together into a single speck long enough for Jake to imagine a bit of their palaver, and then the speck divided again. “No pimples, but my hip hurts like a son of a bitch. Feels like someone opened it in the night and poured it full of broken glass. Hot glass. But this is far worse.” He touched the right side of his head. “It feels cracked.”
“You really think it’s Stephen King’s injuries you’re feeling?”
Instead of making a verbal reply, Roland laid the forefinger of his left hand across a circle made by the thumb and pinky of his right: that gesture which meant I tell you the truth.
“That’s a bummer,” Jake said. “For him as well as you.”
“Maybe; maybe not. Because, think you, Jake; think you well. Only living things feel pain. What I’m feeling suggests that King won’t be killed instantly. And that means he might be easier to save.”
Jake thought it might only mean King was going to lie beside the road in semi-conscious agony for awhile before expiring, but didn’t like to say so. Let Roland believe what he liked. But there was something else. Something that concerned Jake a lot more, and made him uneasy.
“Roland, may I speak to you dan-dinh?”
The gunslinger nodded. “If you would.” A slight pause. A flick at the left corner of the mouth that wasn’t quite a smile. “If thee would.”
Jake gathered his courage. “Why are you so angry now? What are you angry at? Or whom?” Now it was his turn to pause. “Is it me?”
Roland’s eyebrows rose, then he barked a laugh. “Not you, Jake. Not a bit. Never in life.”
Jake flushed with pleasure.
“I keep forgetting how strong the touch has become in you. You’d have made a fine Breaker, no doubt.”
This wasn’t an answer, but Jake didn’t bother saying so. And the idea of being a Breaker made him repress a shiver.
“Don’t you know?” Roland asked. “If thee knows I’m what Eddie calls royally pissed, don’t you know why?”
“I could look, but it wouldn’t be polite.” But it was a lot more than that. Jake vaguely remembered a Bible story about Noah getting loaded on the ark, while he and his sons were waiting out the flood. One of the sons had come upon his old man lying drunk on his bunk, and had laughed at him. God had cursed him for it. To peek into Roland’s thoughts wouldn’t be the same as looking—and laughing—while he was drunk, but it was close.
“Thee’s a fine boy,” Roland said. “Fine and good, aye.” And although the gunslinger spoke almost absently, Jake could have died happily enough at that moment. From somewhere beyond and above them came that resonant CLICK! sound, and all at once the special-effects sunbeam speared down on the Devar-Toi. A moment later, faintly, they heard the sound of music: “Hey Jude,” arranged for elevator and supermarket. Time to rise and shine down below. Another day of Breaking had just begun. Although, Jake supposed, down there the Breaking never really stopped.
“Let’s have a game, you and I,” Roland proposed. “You try to get into my head and see who I’m angry at. I’ll try to keep you out.”
Jake shifted position slightly. “That doesn’t sound like a fun game to me, Roland.”
“Nevertheless, I’d play against you.”
“All right, if you want to.”
Jake closed his eyes and called up an image of Roland’s tired, stubbled face. His brilliant blue eyes. He made a door between and slightly above those eyes—a little one, with a brass knob—and tried to open it. For a moment the knob turned. Then it stopped. Jake applied more pressure. The knob began to turn again, then stopped once again. Jake opened his eyes and saw that fine beads of sweat had broken on Roland’s brow.
“This is stupid. I’m making your headache worse,” he said.
“Never mind. Do your best.”
My worst, Jake thought. But if they had to play this game, he wouldn’t draw it out. He closed his eyes again and once again saw the little door between Roland’s tangled brows. This time he applied more force, piling it on quickly. It felt a little like arm-wrestling. After a moment the knob turned and the door opened. Roland grunted, then uttered a painful laugh. “That’s enough for me,” he said. “By the gods, thee’s strong!”
Jake paid no attention to that. He opened his eyes. “The writer? King? Why are you mad at him?”
Roland sighed and cast away the smolderi
ng butt of his cigarette; Jake had already finished with his. “Because we have two jobs to do where we should have only one. Having to do the second one is sai King’s fault. He knew what he was supposed to do, and I think that on some level he knew that doing it would keep him safe. But he was afraid. He was tired.” Roland’s upper lip curled. “Now his irons are in the fire, and we have to pull them out. It’s going to cost us, and probably a-dearly.”
“You’re angry at him because he’s afraid? But…” Jake frowned. “But why wouldn’t he be afraid? He’s only a writer. A tale-spinner, not a gunslinger.”
“I know that,” Roland said, “but I don’t think it was fear that stopped him, Jake, or not just fear. He’s lazy, as well. I felt it when I met him, and I’m sure that Eddie did, too. He looked at the job he was made to do and it daunted him and he said to himself, ‘All right, I’ll find an easier job, one that’s more to my liking and more to my abilities. And if there’s trouble, they’ll take care of me. They’ll have to take care of me.’ And so we do.”
“You didn’t like him.”
“No,” Roland agreed, “I didn’t. Not a bit. Nor trusted him. I’ve met tale-spinners before, Jake, and they’re all cut more or less from the same cloth. They tell tales because they’re afraid of life.”
“Do you say so?” Jake thought it was a dismal idea. He also thought it had the ring of truth.
“I do. But…” He shrugged. It is what it is, that shrug said.
Ka-shume, Jake thought. If their ka-tet broke, and it was King’s fault…
If it was King’s fault, what? Take revenge on him? It was a gunslinger’s thought; it was also a stupid thought, like the idea of taking revenge on God.
“But we’re stuck with it,” Jake finished.
“Aye. That wouldn’t stop me from kicking his yellow, lazy ass if I got the chance, though.”
Jake burst out laughing at that, and the gunslinger smiled. Then Roland got to his feet with a grimace, both hands planted on the ball of his right hip. “Bugger,” he growled.