by Stephen King
“Yes. But who’s Finli?”
“Finli o’ Tego. The top security guy, Prentiss’s number one boy, also known as The Weasel. A taheen. Whatever your plans are, you’ll have to go through him to make them work. And he won’t make it easy for you. Seeing him stretched out dead on the ground would make me feel like it was a national holiday. By the way, my real name’s Richard Earnshaw. Pleased as hell to meetcha.” He put out his hand. Eddie shook it.
“I’m Eddie Dean. Known as Eddie of New York out here west of the Pecos. The woman’s Susannah. My wife.”
Dinky nodded. “Uh-huh. And the boy’s Jake. Also of New York.”
“Jake Chambers, right. Listen, Rich—”
“I salute the effort,” he said, smiling, “but I’ve been Dinky too long to change now, I guess. And it could be worse. I worked for awhile at the Supr Savr Supermarket with a twentysomething guy known as JJ the Fuckin Blue Jay. People will still be calling him that when he’s eighty and wearing a pee-bag.”
“Unless we’re brave, lucky, and good,” Eddie said, “nobody’s gonna see eighty. Not in this world or any of the others.”
Dinky looked startled, then glum. “You got a point.”
“That guy Roland used to know looks bad,” Eddie said. “Did you see his eyes?”
Dinky nodded, glummer than ever. “I think those little spots of blood in the whites are called petechiae. Something like that.” Then, in a tone of apology Eddie found rather bizarre, under the circumstances: “I don’t know if I’m saying that right.”
“I don’t care what you call them, it’s not good. And him pitching a fit like that—”
“Not a very nice way to put it,” Dinky said.
Eddie didn’t give a shit if it was or wasn’t. “Has it ever happened to him before?”
Dinky’s eyes broke contact with Eddie’s and looked down at his own shuffling feet, instead. Eddie thought that was answer enough.
“How many times?” Eddie hoped he didn’t sound as appalled as he felt. There were enough pinprick-sized blood-spots in the whites of Sheemie’s eyes to make them look as if someone had flung paprika into them. Not to mention the bigger ones in the corners.
Still without looking at him, Dinky raised four fingers.
“Four times?”
“Yuh,” Dinky said. He was still studying his makeshift mocs. “Starting with the time he sent Ted to Connecticut in 1960. It was like doing that ruptured something inside him.” He looked up, trying to smile. “But he didn’t faint yesterday, when the three of us went back to the Devar.”
“Let me make sure I’ve got this right. In the prison down there, you guys have all sorts of venial sins, but only one mortal one: teleportation.”
Dinky considered this. The rules certainly weren’t that liberal for the taheen and the can-toi; they could be exiled or lobotomized for all sorts of reasons, including such wrongs as negligence, teasing the Breakers, or the occasional act of outright cruelty. Once—so he had been told—a Breaker had been raped by a low man, who was said to have explained earnestly to the camp’s last Master that it was part of his becoming—the Crimson King himself had appeared to this fellow in a dream and told him to do it. For this the can-toi had been sentenced to death. The Breakers had been invited to attend his execution (accomplished by a single pistol-shot to the head), which had taken place in the middle of Pleasantville’s Main Street.
Dinky told Eddie about this, then admitted that yes, for the inmates, at least, teleportation was the only mortal sin. That he knew of, anyway.
“And Sheemie’s your teleport,” Eddie said. “You guys help him—facilitate for him, to use the Tedster’s word—and you cover up for him by fudging the records, somehow—”
“They have no idea how easy it is to cook their telemetry,” Dinky said, almost laughing. “Partner, they’d be shocked. The hard part is making sure we don’t tip over the whole works.”
Eddie didn’t care about that, either. It worked. That was the only thing that mattered. Sheemie also worked…but for how long?
“—but he’s the one who does it,” Eddie finished. “Sheemie.”
“Yuh.”
“The only one who can do it.”
“Yuh.”
Eddie thought about their two tasks: freeing the Breakers (or killing them, if there was no other way to make them stop) and keeping the writer from being struck and killed by a minivan while taking a walk. Roland thought they might be able to accomplish both things, but they’d need Sheemie’s teleportation ability at least twice. Plus, their visitors would have to get back inside the triple run of wire after today’s palaver was done, and presumably that meant he’d have to do it a third time.
“He says it doesn’t hurt,” Dinky said. “If that’s what you’re worried about.”
Inside the cave the others laughed at something, Sheemie back to consciousness and taking nourishment, everyone the best of friends.
“It’s not,” Eddie said. “What does Ted think is happening to Sheemie when he teleports?”
“That he’s having brain hemorrhages,” Dinky said promptly. “Little tiny strokes on the surface of his brain.” He tapped a finger at different points on his own skull in demonstration. “Boink, boink, boink.”
“Is it getting worse? It is, isn’t it?”
“Look, if you think him jaunting us around is my idea, you better think again.”
Eddie raised one hand like a traffic cop. “No, no. I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on.” And what our chances are.
“I hate using him that way!” Dinky burst out. He kept his voice pitched low, so those in the cave wouldn’t hear, but Eddie never for a moment considered that he was exaggerating. Dinky was badly upset. “He doesn’t mind—he wants to do it—and that makes it worse, not better. The way he looks at Ted…” He shrugged. “It’s the way a dog’d look at the best master in the universe. He looks at your dinh the same way, as I’m sure you’ve noticed.”
“He’s doing it for my dinh,” Eddie said, “and that makes it okay. You may not believe that, Dink, but—”
“But you do.”
“Totally. Now here’s the really important question: does Ted have any idea how long Sheemie can last? Keeping in mind that now he’s got a little more help at this end?”
Who you tryin to cheer up, bro? Henry spoke up suddenly inside his head. Cynical as always. Him or yourself?
Dinky was looking at Eddie as if he were crazy, or soft in the head, at least. “Ted was an accountant. Sometimes a tutor. A day-laborer when he couldn’t get anything better. He’s no doctor.”
But Eddie kept pushing. “What does he think?”
Dinky paused. The wind blew. The music wafted. Farther away, thunder mumbled out of the murk. At last he said: “Three or four times, maybe…but the effects are getting worse. Maybe only twice. But there are no guarantees, okay? He could drop dead of a massive stroke the next time he bears down to make that hole we go through.”
Eddie tried to think of another question and couldn’t. That last answer pretty well covered the waterfront, and when Susannah called them back inside, he was more than glad to go.
Four
Sheemie Ruiz had rediscovered his appetite, which all of them took as a good sign, and was tucking in happily. The bloodspots in his eyes had faded somewhat, but were still clearly visible. Eddie wondered what the guards back in Blue Heaven would make of those if they noticed them, and also wondered if Sheemie could wear a pair of sunglasses without exciting comment.
Roland had gotten the Rod to his feet and was now conferring with him at the back of the cave. Well…sort of. The gunslinger was talking and the Rod was listening, occasionally sneaking tiny awed peeks at Roland’s face. It was gibberish to Eddie, but he was able to pick out two words: Chevin and Chayven. Roland was asking this one about the one they’d met staggering along the road in Lovell.
“Does he have a name?” Eddie asked Dink and Ted, taking a second plate of food.
&nb
sp; “I call him Chucky,” Dinky said. “Because he looks a little bit like the doll in this horror movie I saw once.”
Eddie grinned. “Child’s Play, yeah. I saw that one. After your when, Jake. And way after yours, Suziella.” The Rod’s hair wasn’t right, but the chubby, freckled cheeks and the blue eyes were. “Do you think he can keep a secret?”
“If no one asks him, he can,” Ted said. Which was not, in Eddie’s view, a very satisfactory answer.
After five minutes or so of chat, Roland seemed satisfied and rejoined the others. He hunkered—no problem doing that now that his joints had limbered up—and looked at Ted. “This fellow’s name is Haylis of Chayven. Will anyone miss him?”
“Unlikely,” Ted said. “The Rods show up at the gate beyond the dorms in little groups, looking for work. Fetching and carrying, mostly. They’re given a meal or something to drink as pay. If they don’t show up, no one misses them.”
“Good. Now—how long are the days here? Is it twenty-four hours from now until tomorrow morning at this time?”
Ted seemed interested in the question and considered it for several moments before replying. “Call it twenty-five,” he said. “Maybe a little longer. Because time is slowing down, at least here. As the Beams weaken, there seems to be a growing disparity in the time-flow between the worlds. It’s probably one of the major stress points.”
Roland nodded. Susannah offered him food and he shook his head with a word of thanks. Behind them, the Rod was sitting on a crate, looking down at his bare and sore-covered feet. Eddie was surprised to see Oy approach the fellow, and more surprised still when the bumbler allowed Chucky (or Haylis) to stroke his head with one misshapen claw of a hand.
“And is there a time of morning when things down there might be a little less…I don’t know…”
“A little disorganized?” Ted suggested.
Roland nodded.
“Did you hear a horn a little while ago?” Ted asked. “Just before we showed up?”
They all shook their heads.
Ted didn’t seem surprised. “But you heard the music start, correct?”
“Yes,” Susannah said, and offered Ted a fresh can of Nozz-A-La. He took it and drank with gusto. Eddie tried not to shudder.
“Thank you, ma’am. In any case, the horn signals the change of shifts. The music starts then.”
“I hate that music,” Dinky said moodily.
“If there’s any time when control wavers,” Ted went on, “that would be it.”
“And what o’clock is that?” Roland asked.
Ted and Dinky exchanged a doubtful glance. Dinky showed eight fingers, his eyebrows raised questioningly. He looked relieved when Ted nodded at once.
“Yes, eight o’clock,” Ted said, then laughed and gave his head a cynical little shake. “What would be eight, anyway, in a world where yon prison might always lie firmly east and not east by southeast on some days and dead east on others.”
But Roland had been living with the dissolving world long before Ted Brautigan had even dreamed of such a place as Algul Siento, and he wasn’t particularly upset by the way formerly hard-and-fast facts of life had begun to bend. “About twenty-five hours from right now,” Roland said. “Or a little less.”
Dinky nodded. “But if you’re counting on raging confusion, forget it. They know their places and go to them. They’re old hands.”
“Still,” Roland said, “it’s the best we’re apt to do.” Now he looked at his old acquaintance from Mejis. And beckoned to him.
Five
Sheemie set his plate down at once, came to Roland, and made a fist. “Hile, Roland, Will Dearborn that was.”
Roland returned this greeting, then turned to Jake. The boy gave him an uncertain look. Roland nodded at him, and Jake came. Now Jake and Sheemie stood facing each other with Roland hunkered between them, seeming to look at neither now that they were brought together.
Jake raised a hand to his forehead.
Sheemie returned the gesture.
Jake looked down at Roland and said, “What do you want?”
Roland didn’t answer, only continued to look serenely toward the mouth of the cave, as if there were something in the apparently endless murk out there which interested him. And Jake knew what was wanted, as surely as if he had used the touch on Roland’s mind to find out (which he most certainly had not). They had come to a fork in the road. It had been Jake who’d suggested Sheemie should be the one to tell them which branch to take. At the time it had seemed like a weirdly good idea—who knew why. Now, looking into that earnest, not-very-bright face and those bloodshot eyes, Jake wondered two things: what had ever possessed him to suggest such a course of action, and why someone—probably Eddie, who retained a relatively hard head in spite of all they’d been through—hadn’t told him, kindly but firmly, that putting their future in Sheemie Ruiz’s hands was a dumb idea. Totally noodgy, as his old schoolmates back at Piper might have said. Now Roland, who believed that even in the shadow of death there were still lessons to be learned, wanted Jake to ask the question Jake himself had proposed, and the answer would no doubt expose him as the superstitious scatterbrain he had become. Yet still, why not ask? Even if it were the equivalent of flipping a coin, why not? Jake had come, possibly at the end of a short but undeniably interesting life, to a place where there were magic doors, mechanical butlers, telepathy (of which he was capable, at least to some small degree, himself), vampires, and were-spiders. So why not let Sheemie choose? They had to go one way or the other, after all, and he’d been through too goddam much to worry about such a paltry thing as looking like an idiot in front of his companions. Besides, he thought, if I’m not among friends here, I never will be.
“Sheemie,” he said. Looking into those bloody eyes was sort of horrible, but he made himself do it. “We’re on a quest. That means we have a job to do. We—”
“You have to save the Tower,” said Sheemie. “And my old friend is to go in, and mount to the top, and see what’s to see. There may be renewal, there may be death, or there may be both. He was Will Dearborn once, aye, so he was. Will Dearborn to me.”
Jake glanced at Roland, who was still hunkered down, looking out of the cave. But Jake thought his face had gone pale and strange.
One of Roland’s fingers made his twirling go-ahead gesture.
“Yes, we’re supposed to save the Dark Tower,” Jake agreed. And thought he understood some of Roland’s lust to see it and enter it, even if it killed him. What lay at the center of the universe? What man (or boy) could but wonder, once the question was thought of, and want to see?
Even if looking drove him mad?
“But in order to do that, we have to do two jobs. One involves going back to our world and saving a man. A writer who’s telling our story. The other job is the one we’ve been talking about. Freeing the Breakers.” Honesty made him add: “Or stopping them, at least. Do you understand?”
But this time Sheemie didn’t reply. He was looking where Roland was looking, out into the murk. His face was that of someone who’s been hypnotized. Looking at it made Jake uneasy, but he pushed on. He had come to his question, after all, and where else was there to go but on?
“The question is, which job do we do first? It’d seem that saving the writer might be easier because there’s no opposition…that we know of, anyway…but there’s a chance that…well…” Jake didn’t want to say But there’s a chance that teleporting us might kill you, and so came to a lame and unsatisfying halt.
For a moment he didn’t think Sheemie would make any reply, leaving him with the job of deciding whether or not to try again, but then the former tavern-boy spoke. He looked at none of them as he did so, but only out of the cave and into the dim of Thunderclap.
“I had a dream last night, so I did,” said Sheemie of Mejis, whose life had once been saved by three young gunslingers from Gilead. “I dreamed I was back at the Travellers’ Rest, only Coral wasn’t there, nor Stanley, nor Pettie, nor Sheb
—him that used to play the pianer. There was nobbut me, and I was moppin the floor and singin ‘Careless Love.’ Then the batwings screeked, so they did, they had this funny sound they made…”
Jake saw that Roland was nodding, a trace of a smile on his lips.
“I looked up,” Sheemie resumed, “and in come this boy.” His eyes shifted briefly to Jake, then back to the mouth of the cave. “He looked like you, young sai, so he did, close enough to be twim. But his face were covert wi’ blood and one of his eye’n were put out, spoiling his pretty, and he walked all a-limp. Looked like death, he did, and frighten’t me terrible, and made me sad to see him, too. I just kept moppin, thinkin that if I did that he might not never mind me, or even see me at all, and go away.”
Jake realized he knew this tale. Had he seen it? Had he actually been that bloody boy?
“But he looked right at you…” Roland murmured, still a-hunker, still looking out into the gloom.
“Aye, Will Dearborn that was, right at me, so he did, and said ‘Why must you hurt me, when I love you so? When I can do nothing else nor want to, for love made me and fed me and—’ ”
“ ‘And kept me in better days,’ ” Eddie murmured. A tear fell from one of his eyes and made a dark spot on the floor of the cave.
“ ‘—and kept me in better days? Why will you cut me, and disfigure my face, and fill me with woe? I have only loved you for your beauty as you once loved me for mine in the days before the world moved on. Now you scar me with nails and put burning drops of quicksilver in my nose; you have set the animals on me, so you have, and they have eaten of my softest parts. Around me the can-toi gather and there’s no peace from their laughter. Yet still I love you and would serve you and even bring the magic again, if you would allow me, for that is how my heart was cast when I rose from the Prim. And once I was strong as well as beautiful, but now my strength is almost gone.’ ”
“You cried,” Susannah said, and Jake thought: Of course he did. He was crying himself. So was Ted; so was Dinky Earnshaw. Only Roland was dry-eyed, and the gunslinger was pale, so pale.