by Stephen King
Finli was standing by the window, holding the Peacemaker up to the dim light, turning it to and fro in order to admire the delicate scrollwork on the butt-plates.
“This is the one that said goodnight to Cameron, true?” Finli asked. “The rapist Cameron.”
Pimli nodded. “Have a care, my son. It’s loaded.”
“Six-shot?”
“Eight! Are you blind? Look at the size of the cylinder, for God’s love.”
Finli didn’t bother. He handed the gun back to Pimli, instead. “I know how to pull the trigger, so I do, and when it comes to guns that’s enough.”
“Aye, if it’s loaded. What are you doing up at this hour, and bothering a man at his morning prayers?”
Finli eyed him. “If I were to ask you why I find you at your prayers, dressed and combed instead of in your bathrobe and slippers with only one eye open, what answer would you make?”
“I’ve got the jitters. It’s as simple as that. I guess you do, too.”
Finli smiled, charmed. “Jitters! Is that like heebie-jeebies, and harum-scarum, and hinky-di-di?”
“Sort of—yar.”
Finli’s smile widened, but Pimli thought it didn’t look quite genuine. “I like it! I like it very well! Jittery! Jittersome!”
“No,” Pimli said. “ ‘Got the jitters,’ that’s how you use it.”
Finli’s smile faded. “I also have the jitters. I’m heebie and jeebie. I feel hinky-di-di. I’m harum and you’re scarum.”
“More blips on the Deep Telemetry?”
Finli shrugged, then nodded. The problem with the Deep Telemetry was that none of them were sure exactly what it measured. It might be telepathy, or (God forbid) teleportation, or even deep tremors in the fabric of reality—precursors of the Bear Beam’s impending snap. Impossible to tell. But more and more of that previously dark and quiet equipment had come alive in the last four months or so.
“What does Jenkins say?” Pimli asked. He slipped the .40 into his docker’s clutch almost without thinking, so moving us a step closer to what you will not want to hear and I will not want to tell.
“Jenkins says whatever rides out of his mouth on the flying carpet of his tongue,” said the Tego with a rude shrug. “Since he don’t even know what the symbols on the Deep Telemetry dials and vid screens signify, how can you ask his opinion?”
“Easy,” Pimli said, putting a hand on his Security Chief’s shoulder. He was surprised (and a little alarmed) to feel the flesh beneath Finli’s fine Turnbull & Asser shirt thrumming slightly. Or perhaps trembling. “Easy, pal! I was only asking.”
“I can’t sleep, I can’t read, I can’t even fuck,” Finli said. “I tried all three, by Gan! Walk down to Damli House with me, would you, and have a look at the damned readouts. Maybe you’ll have some ideas.”
“I’m a trailboss, not a technician,” Pimli said mildly, but he was already moving toward the door. “However, since I’ve nothing better to do—”
“Maybe it’s just the end coming on,” Finli said, pausing in the doorway. “As if there could be any just about such a thing.”
“Maybe that’s it,” Pimli said equably, “and a walk in the morning air can’t do us any ha—Hey! Hey, you! You, there! You Rod! Turn around when I talk to you, hadn’t you just better!”
The Rod, a scrawny fellow in an ancient pair of denim biballs (the deeply sagging seat had gone completely white), obeyed. His cheeks were chubby and freckled, his eyes an engaging shade of blue even though at the moment alarmed. He actually wouldn’t have been bad-looking except for his nose, which had been eaten away almost completely on one side, giving him a bizarre one-nostril look. He was toting a basket. Pimli was pretty sure he’d seen this shufflefoot bah-bo around the ranch before, but couldn’t be sure; to him, all Rods looked alike.
It didn’t matter. Identification was Finli’s job and he took charge now, pulling a rubber glove out of his belt and putting it on as he strode forward. The Rod cringed back against the wall, clasping his wicker basket tighter and letting go a loud fart that had to have been pure nerves. Pimli needed to bite down on the inside of his cheek, and quite fiercely, to keep a smile from rising on his lips.
“Nay, nay, nay!” the Security Chief cried, and slapped the Rod briskly across the face with his newly gloved hand. (It did not do to touch the Children of Roderick skin to skin; they carried too many diseases.) Loose spit flew from the Rod’s mouth and blood from the hole in his nose. “Speak not with your ki’box to me, sai Haylis! The hole in thy head’s not much better, but at least it can give me a word of respect. It had better be able to!”
“Hile, Finli o’ Tego!” Haylis muttered, and fisted himself in the forehead so hard the back of his head bounced off the wall—bonk! That did it: Pimli barked a laugh in spite of himself. Nor would Finli be able to reproach him with it on their walk to Damli House, for he was smiling now, too. Although Pimli doubted that the Rod named Haylis would find much to comfort him in that smile. It exposed too many sharp teeth. “Hile, Finli o’ the Watch, long days and pleasant nights to’ee, sai!”
“Better,” Finli allowed. “Not much, but a little. What in hell’s name are you doing here before Horn and Sun? And tell me what’s in thy bascomb, wiggins?”
Haylis hugged it tighter against his chest, his eyes flashing with alarm. Finli’s smile disappeared at once.
“You flip the lid and show me what’s in thy bascomb this second, cully, or thee’ll be picking thy teeth off the carpet.” These words came out in a smooth, low growl.
For a moment Pimli thought the Rod still would not comply, and he felt a twinge of active alarm. Then, slowly, the fellow lifted the lid of the wicker basket. It was the sort with handles, known in Finli’s home territory as a bascomb. The Rod held it reluctantly out. At the same time he closed his sore-looking, booger-rimmed eyes and turned his head aside, as if in anticipation of a blow.
Finli looked. For a long time he said nothing, then gave his own bark of laughter and invited Pimli to have a peek. The Master knew what he was seeing at once, but figuring out what it meant took a moment longer. Then his mind flashed back to popping the pimple and offering Finli the bloody pus, as one would offer a friend left-over hors d’oeuvre at the end of a dinner-party. In the bottom of the Rod’s basket was a little pile of used tissues. Kleenex, in fact.
“Did Tammy Kelly send you to pick up the swill this morning?” Pimli asked.
The Rod nodded fearfully.
“Did she tell you that you could have whatever you found and fancied from the wastecans?”
He thought the Rod would lie. If and when he did, the Master would command Finli to beat the fellow, as an object-lesson in honesty.
But the Rod—Haylis—shook his head, looking sad.
“All right,” Pimli said, relieved. It was really too early in the day for beatings and howlings and tears. They spoiled a man’s breakfast. “You can go, and with your prize. But next time, cully, ask permission or you’ll leave here a-hurt. Do’ee ken?”
The Rod nodded energetically.
“Go on, then, go! Out of my house and out of my sight!”
They watched him leave, him with his basket of snotty tissues that he’d undoubtedly eat like candy nougat, each shaming the other into keeping his face grave and stern until the poor disfigured son of no one was gone. Then they burst into gales of laughter. Finli o’ Tego staggered back against the wall hard enough to knock a picture off its hook, then slid to the floor, howling hysterically. Pimli put his face in his hands and laughed until his considerable gut ached. The laughter erased the tension with which each had begun the day, venting it all at once.
“A dangerous fellow, indeed!” Finli said when he could speak a little again. He was wiping his streaming eyes with one furry paw-hand.
“The Snot Saboteur!” Pimli agreed. His face was bright red.
They exchanged a look and were off again, braying gales of relieved laughter until they woke the housekeeper way up on the third floor.
Tammy Kelly lay in her narrow bed, listening to yon ka-mais bellow below, looking disapprovingly up into the gloom. Men were much the same, in her view, no matter what sort of skin they wore.
Outside, the hume Master and the taheen Security Chief walked up the Mall, arm in arm. The Child of Roderick, meanwhile, scurried out through the north gate, head down, heart thumping madly in his chest. How close it had been! Aye! If Weasel-Head had asked him, ‘Haylis, didjer plant anything?’ he would have lied as best he could, but such as him couldn’t lie successfully to such as Finli o’ Tego; never in life! He would have been found out, sure. But he hadn’t been found out, praise Gan. The ball-thing the gunslinger had given him was now stowed away in the back bedroom, humming softly to itself. He’d put it in the wastebasket, as he had been told, and covered it with fresh tissue from the box on the washstand, also as he had been told. Nobody had told him he might take the cast-away tissues, but he hadn’t been able to resist their soupy, delicious smell. And it had worked for the best, hadn’t it? Yar! For instead of asking him all manner of questions he couldn’t have answered, they’d laughed at him and let him go. He wished he could climb the mountain and play with the bumbler again, so he did, but the white-haired old hume named Ted had told him to go away, far and far, once his errand was done. And if he heard shooting, Haylis was to hide until it was over. And he would—oh yes, nair doot. Hadn’t he done what Roland o’ Gilead had asked of him? The first of the humming balls was now in Feveral, one of the dorms, two more were in Damli House, where the Breakers worked and the off-duty guards slept, and the last was in Master’s House…where he’d almost been caught! Haylis didn’t know what the humming balls did, nor wanted to know. He would go away, possibly with his friend, Garma, if he could find her. If shooting started, they would hide in a deep hole, and he would share his tissues with her. Some had nothing on them but bits of shaving soap, but there were wet snots and big boogies in some of the others, he could smell their enticing aroma even now. He would save the biggest of the latter, the one with the jellied blood in it, for Garma, and she might let him pokey-poke. Haylis walked faster, smiling at the prospect of going pokey-poke with Garma.
Two
Sitting on the Cruisin Trike in the concealment afforded by one of the empty sheds north of the compound, Susannah watched Haylis go. She noted that the poor, disfigured sai was smiling about something, so things had probably gone well with him. That was good news, indeed. Once he was out of sight, she returned her attention to her end of Algul Siento.
She could see both stone towers (although only the top half of the one on her left; the rest was concealed by a fold of hillside). They were shackled about with some sort of ivy. Cultivated rather than wild, Susannah guessed, given the barrenness of the surrounding countryside. There was one fellow in the west tower, sitting in what appeared to be an easy chair, maybe even a La-Z-Boy. Standing at the railing of the east one were a taheen with a beaver’s head and a low man (if he was a hume, Susannah thought, he was one butt-ugly son of a bitch), the two of them in conversation, pretty clearly waiting for the horn that would send them off-shift and to breakfast in the commissary. Between the two watchtowers she could see the triple line of fencing, the runs strung widely enough apart so that more sentries could walk in the aisles between the wire without fear of getting a lethal zap of electricity. She saw no one there this morning, though. The few folken moving about inside the wire were idling along, none of them in a great hurry to get anywhere. Unless the lackadaisical scene before her was the biggest con of the century, Roland was right. They were as vulnerable as a herd of fat shoats being fed their last meal outside the slaughtering-pen: come-come-commala, shor’-ribs to folla.
And while the gunslingers had had no luck finding any sort of radio-controlled weaponry, they had discovered that three of the more science-fictiony rifles were equipped with switches marked INTERVAL. Eddie said he thought these rifles were lazers, although nothing about them looked lazy to Susannah. Jake had suggested they take one of them out of sight of the Devar-Toi and try it out, but Roland vetoed the idea immediately. Last evening, this had been, while going over the plan for what seemed like the hundredth time.
“He’s right, kid,” Eddie had said. “The clowns down there might know we were shooting those things even if they couldn’t see or hear anything. We don’t know what kind of vibes their telemetry can pick up.”
Under cover of dark, Susannah had set up all three of the “lazers.” When the time came, she’d set the interval switches. The guns might work, thus adding to the impression they were trying to create; they might not. She’d give it a try when the time came, and that was all she could do.
Heart thumping heavily, Susannah waited for the music. For the horn. And, if the sneetches the Rod had set worked the way Roland believed they would work, for the fires.
“The ideal would be for all of them to go hot during the five or ten minutes when they’re changing the guard,” Roland had said. “Everyone scurrying hither and thither, waving to their friends and exchanging little bits o’ gossip. We can’t expect that—not really—but we can hope for it.”
Yes, they could do that much…but wish in one hand, shit in the other, see which one fills up first. In any case, it would be her decision as to when to fire the first shot. After that, everything would happen jin-jin.
Please, God, help me pick the right time.
She waited, holding one of the Coyote machine-pistols with the barrel in the hollow of her shoulder. When the music started—a recorded version of what she thought might be “ ’At’s Amore”—Susannah lurched on the seat of the SCT and squeezed the trigger involuntarily. Had the safety not been on, she would have poured a stream of bullets into the shed’s ceiling and no doubt queered the pitch at once. But Roland had taught her well, and the trigger didn’t move beneath her finger. Still, her heartbeat had doubled—trebled, maybe—and she could feel sweat trickling down her sides, even though the day was once again cool.
The music had started and that was good. But the music wasn’t enough. She sat on the SCT’s saddle, waiting for the horn.
Three
“Dino Martino,” Eddie said, almost too low to hear.
“Hmmm?” Jake asked.
The three of them were behind the SOO LINE boxcar, having worked their way through the graveyard of old engines and traincars to that spot. Both of the boxcar’s loading doors were open, and all three of them had had a peek through them at the fence, the south watchtowers, and the village of Pleasantville, which consisted of but a single street. The six-armed robot which had earlier been on the Mall was now here, rolling up and down Main Street past the quaint (and closed) shops, bellowing what sounded like math equations at the top of its…lungs?
“Dino Martino,” Eddie repeated. Oy was sitting at Jake’s feet, looking up with his brilliant gold-ringed eyes; Eddie bent and gave his head a brief pat. “Dean Martin did that song originally.”
“Yeah?” Jake asked doubtfully.
“Sure. Only we used to sing it, ‘When-a da moon hits-a yo’ lip like a big piece-a shit, ’at’s amore—’ ”
“Hush, do ya please,” Roland murmured.
“Don’t suppose you smell any smoke yet, do you?” Eddie asked.
Jake and Roland shook their heads. Roland had his big iron with the sandalwood grips. Jake was armed with an AR-15, but the bag of Orizas was once more hung over his shoulder, and not just for good luck. If all went well, he and Roland would be using them soon.
Four
Like most men with what’s known as “house-help,” Pimli Prentiss had no clear sense of his employees as creatures with goals, ambitions, and feelings—as humes, in other words. As long as there was someone to bring him his afternoon glass of whiskey and set his chop (rare) in front of him at six-thirty, he didn’t think of them at all. Certainly he would have been quite astounded to learn that Tammy (his housekeeper) and Tassa (his houseboy) loathed each other. They treated each other with perfect—if chilly—
respect when they were around him, after all.
Only Pimli wasn’t around this morning as “ ’At’s Amore” (interpreted by the Billion Bland Strings) rose from Algul Siento’s hidden speakers. The Master was walking up the Mall, now in the company of Jakli, a ravenhead taheen tech, as well as his Security Chief. They were discussing the Deep Telemetry, and Pimli had no thought at all for the house he had left behind for the last time. Certainly it never crossed his mind that Tammy Kelly (still in her nightgown) and Tassa of Sonesh (still in his silk sleep-shorts) were on the verge of battle about the pantry-stock.
“Look at this!” she cried. They were standing in the kitchen, which was deeply gloomy. It was a large room, and all but three of the electric lights were burned out. There were only a few bulbs left in Stores, and they were earmarked for The Study.
“Look at what?” Sulky. Pouty. And was that the remains of lip paint on his cunning little Cupid’s-bow of a mouth? She thought it was.
“Do’ee not see the empty spots on the shelves?” she asked indignantly. “Look! No more baked beans—”
“He don’t care beans for beans, as you very well know—”
“No tuna-fish, either, and will’ee tell me he don’t eat that? He’d eat it until it ran out his ears, and thee knows it!”
“Can you not—”
“No more soup—”
“Balls there ain’t!” he cried. “Look there, and there, and th—”
“Not the Campbell’s Tamater he likes best,” she overrode him, drawing closer in her excitement. Their arguments had never developed into outright fisticuffs before, but Tassa had an idea this might be the day. And if it were so, it were fine-oh! He’d love to sock this fat old run-off-at-the-mouth bitch in the eye. “Do you see any Campbell’s Tamater, Tassa o’ wherever-you-