The Dark Tower (The Dark Tower #7)

The Dark Tower (The Dark Tower #7) Page 18

ONE

It was a day later and not long before the horn signaled the morning change of shift. The music would soon start, the sun would come on, and the Breaker night-crew would exit The Study stage left while the Breaker day-crew entered stage right.

Everything was as it should be, yet Pimli Prentiss had slept less than an hour the previous night and even that brief time had been haunted by sour and chaotic dreams. Finally, around four

(what his bedside clock in fact claimed was four, but who knew anymore, and what did it matter anyway, this close to the end),

he'd gotten up and sat in his office chair, looking out at the darkened Mall, deserted at this hour save for one lone and poindess robot who'd taken it into its head to patrol, waving its six pincertipped arms aimlessly at the sky. The robots that still ran grew wonkier by the day, but pulling their batteries could be dangerous, for some were booby-trapped and would explode it you tried it. There was nothing you could do but put up with their antics and keep reminding yourself that all would be over soon, praise Jesus and God the Fauier Almighty. At some point the former Paul Prentiss opened the desk drawer above the kneehole, pulled out the.40 Peacemaker Colt inside, and held it in his lap.

It was the one with which the previous Master, Humma, had executed the rapist Cameron. Pimli hadn't had to execute anyone in his time and was glad of it, but holding the pistol in his lap, feeling its grave weight, always offered a certain comfort.

Although why he should require comfort in the watches of the night, especially when everything was going so well, he had no idea. All he knew for sure was that there had been some anomalous blips on what Finli and Jenkins, their chief technician, liked to call the Deep Telemetry, as if these were instruments at the bottom of the ocean instead of just in a basement closet adjacent to die long, low room holding the rest of the more useful gear. Pimli recognized what he was feeling-call a spade a spade-as a sense of impending doom. He tried to tell himself it was only his grandfather's proverb in action, that he was almost home and so it was time to worry about the eggs.

Finally he'd gone into his bathroom, where he closed die lid of the toilet and knelt to pray. And here he was still, only something had changed in the atmosphere. He'd heard no footfall but knew someone had stepped into his office. Logic suggested who it must be. Still without opening his eyes, still with his hands clasped on the closed cover of the toilet, he called:

"Finli? Finli O'Tego? Is that you?"

"Yar, boss, it's me."

What was he doing here before the horn? Everyone, even the Breakers, knew what a fiend for sleep was Finli the Weasel.

But all in good time. At this moment Pimli was entertaining die Lord (although in truth he'd nearly dozed off on his knees when some deep sub-instinct had warned him he was no longer alone on the first floor of Warden's House). One did not snub such an important guest as the Lord God of Hosts, and so he finished his prayer-"Grant me die grace of Thy will, amen!"-before rising with a wince. His damned back didn't care a bit for the belly it had to hoist in front.

Finli was standing by the window, holding the Peacemaker up to the dim light, turning it to and fro in order to admire die 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 heebiejeebies, 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 exacdy 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 Chiefs shoulder. He was surprised (and a little alarmed) to feel the flesh beneath Finli's fine Turnbull amp; 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 notiiing 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'oeuweat the end of a dinnerparty.

In the bottom of the Rod's basket was a litde 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 litde 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 die 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'tbeen 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 bum bier 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 widi 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 folia. And while the gunslingers had had no luck finding any sort of radio-controlled weaponry, they had discovered diat three of the more science-fictiony rifles were equipped with switches marked INTERVAL. Eddie said he thought diese 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 train cars 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-n

"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-yougrew?"

"Can you not bring back a box of tins yourself?" he asked, taking his own step forward; now they were nearly nose-tonose, and although the woman was large and the young man was willowy, the Master's houseboy showed no sign of fear.

Tammy blinked, and for the first time since Tassa had shuffled into the kitchen-wanting no more than a cup of coffee, say thanks-an expression that was not irritation crossed her face.

It might have been nervousness; it might even have been fear.

"Are you so weak in die arms, Tammy of wherever-^ow-grew, that you can't carry a box of soup-tins out of Stores?"

She drew herself up to her full height, stung. Her jowls

(greasy and a-glow with some sort of night-cream) quivered with self-righteousness. "Fetching pantry supplies has ever been the houseboy'sjob! And thee knows it very well!"

"That don't make it a law that you can't help out. I was mowing his lawn yest'y, as surely you know; I spied you sitting a-kitchen with a glass of cold tea, didn't I, just as comfortable as old Ellie in your favorite chair."

She bristled, losing any fear she might have had in her outrage. "I have as much right to rest as anyone else! I'd just warshed the floor-"

"Looked to me like Dobbie was doing it," he said. Dobbie was the sort of domestic robot known as a "house-elf," old but still quite efficient.

Tammy grew hotter still. "What would you know about house chores, you mincy little queer?"

Color flushed Tassa's normally pale cheeks. He was aware that his hands had rolled themselves into fists, but only because he could feel his carefully cared-for nails biting into his palms.

It occurred to him that this sort of petty bitch-and-whistle was downright ludicrous, coming as it did with the end of everything stretching blackjust beyond them; they were two fools sparring and catcalling on the very lip of the abyss, but he didn't care. Fat old sow had been sniping at him for years, and now here was the real reason. Here it was, finally naked and out in the open.

"Is that what bothers thee about me, sai?" he enquired sweetly. "That I kiss the pole instead of plug the hole, no more than that?"

Now there were torches instead of roses flaring in Tammy Kelly's cheeks. She'd not meant to go so far, but now that she had-that they had, for if there was to be a fight, it was his fault as much as hers-she wouldn't back away. Was damned if she would.

"Master's Bible says queerin be a sin," she told him righteously.

"I've read it myself, so I have. Book of Leviticracks, Chapter Three, Verse-"

"And what do Leviticracks say about the sin of gluttony?" he enquired. "What do it say about a woman with tits as big as bolsters and an ass as big as a kitchen ta-"

"Never mind the size o' my ass, you little cocksucker!"

"At least I can get a man," he said sweetly, "and don't have to lie abed with a dustclout-"

"Don't you dare!" she cried shrilly. "Shut your foul mouth before I shut it for you!"

"-to get rid of the cobwebs in my cunny so I can-"

"I'll knock thy teeth out if thee doesn't-"

"-finger my tired old pokeberry pie." Then something which would offend her even more deeply occurred to him.

"My tired, dirty old pokeberry pie!"

She balled her own fists, which were considerably bigger than his. "At least I've never-"

"Go no further, sai, I beg you."

"-never had some man's nasty old... nasty... old..."

She trailed off, looking puzzled, and sniffed the air. He sniffed it himself, and realized the aroma he was getting wasn't new. He'd been smelling it almost since the argument started, but now it was stronger.

Tammy said, "Do you smell-"

"-smoke!" he finished, and they looked at each other with alarm, their argument forgotten perhaps only five seconds before it would have come to blows. Tammy's eyes fixed on the sampler hung beside the stove. There were similar ones all over Algul Siento, because most of the buildings which made up the compound were wood. Old wood, WE ALL MUST WORK TOGETHER TO CREATE A FIRE-FREE ENVIRONMENT, it Said.

Somewhere close by-in the back hallway-one of the still-working smoke detectors went off with a loud and frightening bray. Tammy hurried into the pantry to grab the fireextinguisher in there.

"Get the one in the library!" she shouted, and Tassa ran to do it without a word of protest. Fire was the one thing they all feared.

FIVE

Gaskie O'Tego, the Deputy Security Chief, was standing in the foyer of Feveral Hall, the dormitory directly behind Damli House, talking with James Cagney. Cagney was a redhaired cantoi who favored Western-style shirts and boots that added three inches to his actual five-foot-five. Both had clipboards and were discussing certain necessary changes in the following week's Damli security. Six of the guards who'd been assigned to the second shift had come down with what Gangli, die compound doctor, said was a hume disease called "momps." Sickness was common enough in Thunderclap-it was the air, as everyone knew, and die poisoned leavings of the old people-but it was ever inconvenient. Gangli said they were lucky there had never been an actual plague, like the Black Death or the Hot Shivers.

Beyond them, on the paved court behind Damli House, an early-morning basketball game was going on, several taheen and can-toi guards (who would be officially on duty as soon as the horn blew) against a ragtag team of Breakers. Gaskie watched Joey Rastosovich take a shot from way downtown-swish. Trampas snared the ball and took it out of bounds, briefly lifting his cap to scratch beneath it. Gaskie didn't care much for Trampas, who had an entirely inappropriate liking for the talented animals who were his charges. Closer by, sitting on the dorm's steps and also watching the game, was Ted Brautigan. As always, he was sipping at a can of Nozz-A-La.

"Well fuggit," James Cagney said, speaking in the tones of a man who wants to be finished with a boring discussion. "If you don't mind taking a couple of humies off the fence-walk for a day or two-"

"What's Brautigan doing up so early?" Gaskie interrupted.

"He almost never rolls out until noon. That kid he pals around with is the same way. What's his name?"

"Earnshaw?" Brautigan also palled around with that halfbright Ruiz, but Ruiz was no kid.

Gaskie nodded. "Aye, Earnshaw, that's the one. He's on duty this morning. I saw him earlier in The Study."

Cag (as his friends called him) didn't give a shit why Brautigan was up with the birdies (not that there were many birdies left, at least in Thunderclap); he only wanted to get this roster business settled so he could stroll across to Damli and get a plate of scrambled eggs. One of the Rods had found fresh chives somewhere, or so he'd heard, and-

"Do'ee smell something, Cag?" Gaskie O'Tego asked suddenly.

The can-toi who fancied himself James Cagney started to enquire if Gaskie had farted, then rethought this humorous riposte. For in fact he did smell something. Was it smoke?

Cag thought it was.

SIX

Ted sat on the cold steps of Feveral Hall, breathing the badsmelling air and listening to the humes and the taheen trash-talk each other from the basketball court. (Not the can-toi; they refused to indulge in such vulgarity.) His heart was beating hard but not fast. If there was a Rubicon that needed crossing, he realized, he'd crossed it some time ago. Maybe on the night the low men had hauled him back from Connecticut, more likely on the day he'd approached Dinky with the idea of reaching out to the gunslingers that Sheemie Rviiz insisted were nearby. Now he was wound up (to the max, Dinky would have said), but nervous?

No. Nerves, he thought, were for people who still hadn't entirely made up their minds.

Behind him he heard one idiot (Gaskie) asking t'other idiot (Cagney) if he smelled something, and Ted knew for sure that Haylis had done his part; the game was afoot. Ted reached into his pocket and brought out a scrap of paper.

Written on it was a line of perfect pentameter, although hardly Shakespearian: GO SOUTH WITH YOUR HANDS UP, YOU WON'T BE HURT.

He looked at this fixedly, preparing to broadcast.

Behind him, in the Feveral rec room, a smoke detector went off with a loud donkey-bray.

Here we go, here we go, he thought, and looked north, to where he hoped the first shooter-the woman-was hiding.

SEVEN

Three-quarters of the way up the Mall toward Damli House,

Master Prentiss stopped with Finli on one side of him and Jakli on the other. The horn still hadn't gone off, but there was a loud braying sound from behind them. They had no more begun to turn toward it when another bray began from the other end of the compound-the dormitory end.

"What the devil-" Pimli began.

�Cis that was how he meant to finish, but before he could,

Tammy Kelly came rushing out through the front door of Warden's House, with Tassa, his houseboy, scampering along right behind her. Both of them were waving their arms over their heads.

"Fire!" Tammy shouted. "Fire!"

Fire? But that's impossible, Pimli thought. For if that's the smoke detector Fm hearing in my house and also the smoke detector I'm hearing from one of the dorms, then surely-

"It must be a false alarm," he told Finli. "Those smoke detectors do that when their batteries are-"

Before he could finish this hopeful assessment, a side window of Warden's House exploded outward. The glass was followed by an exhalation of orange flame.

"Gods!" Jakli cried in his buzzing voice. "It wfire!"

Pimli stared with his mouth open. And suddenly yet another smoke-and-fire alarm went off, this one in a series of loud, hiccuping whoops. Good God, sweet Jesus, that was one of the Damli House alarms! Surely nothing could be wrong at-

Finli O'Tego grabbed his arm. "Boss," he said, calmly enough. "We've got real trouble."

Before Pimli could reply, the horn went off, signaling the change of shifts. And suddenly he realized how vulnerable they would be for the next seven minutes or so. Vulnerable to all sorts of things.

He refused to admit the word attack into his consciousness.

At least not yet.

EIGHT

Dinky Earnshaw had been sitting in the overstuffed easy chair for what seemed like forever, waiting impatiently for the party to begin. Usually being in The Study cheered him up-hell, cheered everybody up, it was the "good-mind" effect-bvit today he only felt the wires of tension inside him winding tighter and tighter, pulling his guts into a ball. He was aware of taheen and can-toi looking down from the balconies every now and again, riding the good-mind wave, but didn't have to worry about being progged by the likes of them; from that, at least, he was safe.

Was that a smoke alarm? From Feveral, perhaps?

Maybe. But maybe not, too. No one else was looking around.

Wait, he told himself. Ted told you this would be the hard part, didn't he? And at least Sheemie's out of the way. Sheemie's safe in his room, and Corbett Hall's safe from fire. So calm down. Relax.

That was the bray of a smoke alarm. Dinky was sure of it.

Well... almost sure.

A book of crossword puzzles was open in his lap. For the last fifty minutes he'd been filling one of the grids with nonsenseletters, ignoring the definitions completely. Now, across the top, he printed this in large dark block letters: GO SOUTH WITH YOUR HANDS UP, YOU WON'T BE HU

That was when one of the upstairs fire alarms, probably the one in the west wing, went off with a loud, warbling bray. Several of the Breakers, jerked rudely from a deep daze of concentration, cried out in surprised alarm. Dinky also cried out, but in relief. Relief and something more. Joy? Yeah, very likely it was joy. Because when the fire alarm began to bray, he'd felt the powerful hum of good-mind snap. The eerie combined force of the Breakers had winked out like an overloaded electrical circuit. For the moment, at least, the assault on the Beam had stopped.

Meanwhile, he had a job to do. No more waiting. He stood up, letting the crossword magazine tumble to the Turkish rug, and threw his mind at the Breakers in the room. It wasn't hard; he'd been practicing almost daily for this moment, with Ted's help. And if it worked? If the Breakers picked it up, rebroadcasting it and amping what Dinky could only suggest to the level of a command? Why then it would rise. It would become the dominant chord in a new good-mind gestalt.

At least that was the hope.

(IT's A FIRE FOLKS THERE's A FIRE IN THE BUILDING)

As if to underscore this, there was a soft bang-and-tinkle as something imploded and the first puff of smoke seeped from the ventilator panels. Breakers looked around with wide, dazed eyes, some getting to their feet.

And Dinky sent:

(DON'T WORRY DON'T PANIC ALL IS WELL WALK UP THE)

He sent a perfect, practiced image of the north stairway, then added Breakers. Breakers walking up the north stairway.

Breakers walking through the kitchen. Crackle of fire, smell of smoke, but both coming from the guards' sleeping area in the west wing. And would anyone question the truth of this mental broadcast? Would anyone wonder who was beaming it out, or why? Not now. Now they were only scared. Now they were wanting someone to tell them what to do, and Dinky Earnshaw was that someone.

(NORTH STAIRWAY WALK UP THE NORTH STAIRWAY WALK OUT ONTO THE BACK LAWN)

And it worked. They began to walk that way. Like sheep following a ram or horses following a stallion. Some were picking up the two basic ideas

(NO PANIC NO PANIC)

(NORTH STAIRWAY NORTH STAIRWAY)

and rebroadcasting them. And, even better, Dinky heard it from above, too. From the can-toi and the taheen who had been observing from the balconies.

No one ran and no one panicked, but the exodus up the north stairs had begun.

NINE

Susannah sat astride the SCT in the window of the shed where she'd been concealed, not worrying about being seen now.

Smoke detectors-at least three of them-were yowling. A fire alarm was whooping even more loudly; that one was from Damli House, she was quite sure. As if in answer, a series of loud electronic goose-honks began from the Pleasantville end of the compound. This was joined by a multitude of clanging bells.

With all that happening to their south, it was no wonder that the woman north of the Devar-Toi saw only the backs of the three guards in the ivy-covered watchtowers. Three didn't seem like many, but it was five per cent of the total. A start.

Susannah looked down the barrel of her gun at the one in her sights and prayed. God grant me true aim... true aim... Soon.

It would be soon.

TEN

Finli grabbed the Master's arm. Pimli shook him off and started toward his house again, staring unbelievingly at the smoke that was now pouring out of all the windows on the left side.

"Boss!" Finli shouted, renewing his grip. "Boss, never mind that! It's the Breakers we have to worry about! The Breakers!"

It didn't get through, but the shocking warble of the Damli Hovise fire alarm did. Pimli turned back in that direction, and for a moment he met Jakli's beady litde bird's eyes. He saw nothing in them but panic, which had the perverse but welcome effect of steadying Pimli himself. Sirens and buzzers everywhere. One of them was a regular pulsing honk he'd never heard before. Coming from the direction of Pleasantville?

"Come on, boss!" Finli O'Tego almost pleaded. "We have to make sure the Breakers are okay-"

"Smoke!" Jakli cried, fluttering his dark (and utterly useless) wings. "Smoke from Damli House, smoke from Feveral, too!"

Pimli ignored him. He pulled the Peacemaker from the docker's clutch, wondering briefly what premonition had caused him to put it on. He had no idea, but he was glad for the weight of the gun in his hand. Behind him, Tassa was yelling-

Tammy was, too-but Pimli ignored the pair of them. His heart was beating furiously, but he was calm again. Finli was right. The Breakers were the important thing right now. Making sure they didn't lose a third of their trained psychics in some sort of electrical fire or half-assed act of sabotage. He nodded at his Security Chief and they began to run toward Damli House with Jakli squawking and flapping along behind them like a refugee from a Warner Bros, cartoon. Somewhere up there,

Gaskie was hollering. And then Pimli o' New Jersey heard a sound that chilled him to the bone, a rapid chow-chow-chow sound. Gunfire! If some clown was shooting at his Breakers, that clown's head would finish the day on a high pole, by the gods.

That the guards rather than the Breakers might be under attack had at that point still not crossed his mind, nor that of the slighdy wilier Finli, either. Too much was happening too fast.

ELEVEN

At the south end of the Devar compound, the syncopated honking sound was almost loud enough to split eardrums.

"Christ!" Eddie said, and couldn't hear himself.

In the south watchtowers, the guards were turned away from them, looking north. Eddie couldn't see any smoke yet.

Perhaps the guards could from their higher vantage-points.

Roland grabbed Jake's shoulder, then pointed at the soo LINE boxcar. Jake nodded and scrambled beneath it with Oy at his heels. Roland held both hands out to Eddie-Stay where you are!-and then followed. On the other side of the boxcar the boy and the gunslinger stood up, side by side. They would have been clearly visible to the sentries, had the attention of those worthies not been distracted by the smoke detectors and fire alarms inside the compound.

Suddenly the entire front of the Pleasantville Hardware Company descended into a slot in the ground. A robot fire engine, all bright red paint and gleaming chrome, came bolting out of the hitherto concealed garage. A line of red lights pulsed down the center of its elongated body, and an amplified voice bellowed, "STAND CLEAR! THIS IS FIRE-RESPONSE TEAM BRAVO! STAND CLEAR! MAKE WAY FOR FIRE-RESPONSE

TEAMBRAVOr There must be no gunfire from this part of the Devar, not yet. The south end of the compound must seem safe to the increasingly frightened inmates of Algul Siento: don't worry, folks, here's your port in today's unexpected shitstorm.

The gunslinger dipped a 'Riza from Jake's dwindling supply and nodded for the boy to take another. Roland pointed to the guard in the righthand tower, then once more at Jake. The boy nodded, cocked his arm across his chest, and waited for Roland to give him the go.

TWELVE

Once you hear the horn that signals the change of shifts, Roland had told Susannah, take it to them. Do as much damage as you can, but don't let them see they're only facing a single person, for your father's sake!

As if he needed to tell her that.

She could have taken the three watchtower guards while the horn was still blaring, but something made her wait. A few seconds later, she was glad she had. The rear door of the Queen Anne burst open so violently it tore off its upper hinge. Breakers piled out, clawing at those ahead of them in their panic (these are the would-be destroyers of the universe, she thought, these sheep), and among them she saw half a dozen of the freakboys with animal heads and at least four of those creepy humanoids with the masks on.

Susannah took the guard in the west tower first, and had shifted her aim to the pair in the east tower before the first casualty in the Batde of Algul Siento had fallen over the railing and tumbled to the ground with his brains dribbling out of his hair and down his cheeks. The Coyote machine-pistol, switched to the middle setting, fired in low-pitched bursts of three:

Chow! Chow! Chow!

The taheen and the low man in the east tower spun widdershins to each other, like figures in a dance. The taheen crumpled on the catwalk that skirted the top of the watchtower; the low man was driven into the rail, flipped over it with his bootheels in the sky, then plummeted head-first to the ground. She heard the crack his neck made when it broke.

A couple of the milling Breakers spotted this unfortunate fellow's descent and screamed.

"Put up your hands!" That was Dinky, she recognized his voice. "Put up your hands if you're a Breaker!"

No one questioned the idea; in these circumstances, anyone who sounded like he knew what was going on was in unquestioned charge. Some of the Breakers-but not all, not yet-put their hands up. It made no difference to Susannah.

She didn't need raised hands to tell the difference between the sheep and the goats. A kind of haunted clarity had fallen over her vision.

She flicked the fire-control switch from BURST to SINGLE SHOT and began to pick off the guards who'd come up from The Study with the Breakers. Taheen... can-toi, get him... a hume but don't shoot her, she's a Breaker even though she doesn't have her hands up... don't ask me how I know but I do...

Susannah squeezed the Coyote's trigger and the head of the hume next to the woman in the bright red slacks exploded in a mist of blood and bone. The Breakers screamed like children, staring around with their eyes bulging and their hands up. And now Susannah heard Dinky again, only this time not his physical voice. It was his mental voice she heard, and it was much louder:

(GO SOUTH WITH YOUR HANDS UP. YOU WON'T BE HURT)

Which was her cue to break cover and start moving. She'd gotten eight of the Crimson King's bad boys, counting the three in the towers-not that it was mvich of an accomplishment, given their panic-and she saw no more, at least for the time being.

Susannah twisted the hand-throttle and scooted the SCT toward one of the other abandoned sheds. The gadget's pickup was so lively that she almost tumbled off the bicycle-style seat.

Trying not to laugh (and laughing anyway), she shouted at the top of her lungs, in her best Detta Walker vulture-screech:

"Git outta here, muthafuckahs! Git south! Hands up so we knoiu youfum the bad boys! Everyone doan have their hands up goan get a bullet in the haid! Y'all trus' me on it!n In through the door of the next shed, scraping a balloon tire of the SCT on the jamb, but not quite hard enough to tip it over. Praise God, for she never would have had enough strength to right it on her own. In here, one of the "lazers" was set on a snap-down tripod. She pushed the toggle-switch marked ON and was wondering if she needed to do something else with the INTERVAL switch when the weapon's muzzle emitted a blinding stream of reddish-purple light that arrowed into the compound above the triple run offence and made a hole in the top story of Damli House. To Susannah it looked as big as a hole made by a point-blank artillery shell.

This is good, she thought. I gotta get the other ones going.

But she wondered if there would be time. Already other Breakers were picking up on Dinky's suggestion, rebroadcasting it and boosting it in the process:

(GO SOUTH! HANDS UP! WON'T BE HURT!)

She flicked the Coyote's fire-switch to FULL AUTO and raked it across the upper level of the nearest dorm to emphasize the point. Bullets whined and ricocheted. Glass broke. Breakers screamed and began to stampede around the side of Damli House with their hands up. Susannah saw Ted come around the same side. He was hard to miss, because he was going against the current. He and Dinky embraced briefly, then raised their hands and joined the southward flow of Breakers, who would soon lose their status as VTPs and become just one more bunch of refugees struggling to survive in a dark and poisoned land.

She'd gotten eight, but it wasn't enough. The hunger was upon her, that dry hunger. Her eyes saw everything. They pulsed and ached in her head, and they saw everything. She hoped that other taheen, low men, or hume guards would come around the side of Damli House.

She wanted more.

THIRTEEN

Sheemie Ruiz lived in Corbett Hall, which happened to be the dormitory Susannah, all unknowing, had raked with at least a hundred bullets. Had he been on his bed, he almost certainly would have been killed. Instead he was on his knees, at the foot of it, praying for the safety of his friends. He didn't even look up when the window blew in but simply redoubled his supplications.

He could hear Dinky's thoughts

(GO SOUTH)

pounding in his head, then heard other thought-streams join it,

(WITH YOUR HANDS UP)

making a river. And then Ted's voice was there, not just joining the others but amping them up, turning what had been a river

(YOU WON'T BE HURT)

into an ocean. Without realizing it, Sheemie changed his prayer. Our Father and P'teck my pals became go south with your hands up, you won't be hurt. He didn't even stop this when the propane tanks behind the Damli House cafeteria blew up with a shattering roar."

FOURTEEN

Gangli Tristum (that's Doctor Gangli to you, say thankya) was in many ways the most feared man in Damli House. He was a cantoi who had-perversely-taken a taheen name instead of a human one, and he ran the infirmary on the third floor of the west wing with an iron fist. And on roller skates.

Things on the ward were fairly relaxed when Gangli was in his office doing paperwork, or off on his rounds (which usually meant visiting Breakers with the sniffles in their dorms), but when he came out, the whole place-nurses and orderlies as well as patients-fell respectfully (and nervously) silent. A newcomer might laugh the first time he saw the squat, darkcomplected, heavilyjowled man-thing gliding slowly down the center aisle between the beds, arms folded over the stethoscope which lay on his chest, the tails of his white coat wafting out behind him (one Breaker had once commented, "He looks like John Irving after a bad facelift"). Such a one who was caught laughing would never laugh again, however. Dr. Gangli had a sharp tongue, indeed, and no one made fun of his roller skates with impunity.

Now, instead of gliding on them, he went flying up and down the aisles, the steel wheels (for his skating gear far predated rollerblades) rumbling on the hardwood. "All the papers!" he shouted. "Do you hear me?... If I lose one file in this fucking mess, one gods-damned file, I'll have someone's eyes with my afternoon tea!"

The patients were already gone, of course; he'd had them out of their beds and down the stairs at the first bray of the smoke detector, at the first whiff of smoke. A number of orderlies-gutless wonders, and he knew who each of them was, oh yes, and a complete report would be made when the time came-had fled with the sickfolk, but five had stayed, including his personal assistant, Jack London. Gangli was proud of them, although one could not have told it from his hectoring voice as he skated up and down, up and down, in the thickening smoke.

"Get the papers, d'ye hear? You better, by all the gods that ever walked or crawled! You better!"

A red glare shot in through the window. Some sort of weapon, for it blew in the glass wall that separated his office from the ward and set his favorite easy-chair a-smolder.

Gangli ducked and skated under the laser beam, never slowing.

"Gan-a-damn!" cried one of the orderlies. He was a hume, extraordinarily ugly, his eyes bulging from his pale face. "What in the hell was th-"

"Never mind!" Gangli bawled. "Never mind what it was, you pissface clown! Get the papers! Get my motherfucking papers!"

From somewhere in front-the Mall?-came the hideous approaching clang-and-yowl of some rescue vehicle. "STAND CLEAR!" Gangli heard. "THIS IS FIRE-RESPONSE TEAM BRAVO!"

Gangli had never heard of such a thing as Fire-Response Team Bravo, but there was so much they didn't know about this place. Why, he could barely use a third of the equipment in his own surgical suite! Never mind, the thing that mattered right now-

Before he could finish his thought, the gas-pods behind the kitchen blew up. There was a tremendous roar-seemingly from directly beneath them-and Gangli Tristum was thrown into the air, the metal wheels on his roller skates spinning.

The others were thrown as well, and suddenly the smoky air was full of flying papers. Looking at them, knowing that the papers would burn and he would be lucky not to burn with them, a clear thought came to Dr. Gangli: the end had come early.

FIFTEEN

Roland heard the telepathic command

(GO SOUTH WITH YOUR HANDS UP. YOU WON'T BE

begin to beat in his mind. It was time. He nodded at Jake and the Orizas flew. Their eerie whistling wasn't loud in the general cacophony, yet one of the guards must have heard something coming, because he was beginning to pivot when the plate's sharpened edge took his head off and tumbled it backward into the compound, the eyelashes fluttering in bewildered surprise. The headless body took two steps and then collapsed with its arms over the rail, blood pouring from the neck in a gaudy stream. The other guard was already down.

Eddie rolled effortlessly beneath the soo LINE boxcar and bounced to his feet on the compound side. Two more automated fire engines had come bolting out of the station hitherto hidden by the hardware store facade. They were wheelless, seeming to run on cushions of compressed air. Somewhere toward the north end of the campus (for so Eddie's mind persisted in identifying the Devar-Toi), something exploded. Good.

Lovely.

Roland and Jake took fresh plates from the dwindling supply and used them to cut through the three runs of fence.

The high-voltage one parted with a bitter, sizzling crack and a brief blink of blue fire. Then they were in. Moving quickly and without speaking, they ran past the now-unguarded towers with Oy trailing closely at Jake's heels. Here was an alley running between Henry Graham's Drug Store amp; Soda Fountain and the Pleasantville Book Store.

At the head of the alley, they looked out and saw that Main Street was currently empty, although a tangy electric smell (a subway-station smell, Eddie thought) from the last two fire engines still hung in the air, making the overall stench even worse. In the distance, fire-sirens whooped and smoke detectors brayed. Here in Pleasantville, Eddie couldn't help but think of the Main Street in Disneyland: no litter in the gutters, no rude graffiti on the walls, not even any dust on the plate-glass windows.

This was where homesick Breakers came when they needed a little whiff of America, he supposed, but didn't any of them want anything better, anything more realistic, than this plastic-fantastic still life? Maybe it looked more inviting with folks on the sidewalks and in the stores, but that was hard to believe. Hard for him to believe, at least. Maybe it was only a city boy's chauvinism.

Across from them were Pleasantville Shoes, Gay Paree Fashions, Hair Today, and the Gem Theater (COME IN IT'S KOOL INSIDE said the banner hanging from the bottom of the marquee). Roland raised a hand, motioning Eddie and Jake across to that side of the street. It was there, if all went as he hoped (it almost never did), that they would set their ambush.

They crossed in a crouch, Oy still scurrying at Jake's heel. So far everything seemed to be working like a charm, and that made the gunslinger nervous, indeed.

SIXTEEN

Any battle-seasoned general will tell you that, even in a smallscale engagement (as this one was), there always comes a point where coherence breaks down, and narrative flow, and any real sense of how things are going. These matters are re-created by historians later on. The need to re-create the myth of coherence may be one of the reasons why history exists in the first place.

Never mind. We have reached that point, the one where the Battle of Algul Siento took on a life of its own, and all I can do now is point here and there and hope you can bring your own order out of the general chaos.

SEVENTEEN

Trampas, the eczema-plagued low man who inadvertently let Ted in on so much, rushed to the stream of Breakers who were fleeing from Damli House and grabbed one, a scrawny excarpenter with a receding hairline named Birdie McCann.

"Birdie, what is it?" Trampas shouted. He was currently wearing his thinking-cap, which meant he could not share in the telepathic pulse all around him. "What's happening, do you kn-"

"Shooting!" Birdie yelled, pulling free. "Shooting! They're out there!" He pointed vaguely behind him.

"Who? How m-"

"Watch out you idiots it's not slowing dozun!" yelled Gaskie O'Tego, from somewhere behind Trampas arid McCann.

Trampas looked up and was horrified to see the lead fire engine come roaring and swaying along the center of the Mall, red lights flashing, two stainless-steel robot firemen now clinging to the back. Pimli, Finli, and Jakli leaped aside. So did Tassa the houseboy. But Tammy Kelly lay facedown on the grass in a spreading soup of blood. She had been flattened by Fire-Response Team Bravo, which had not actually scrambled to fight a fire in over eight hundred years. Her complaining days were over.

And-

"STAND CLEAR!" blared the fire engine. Behind it, two more engines swerved gaudily around either side of Warden's House. Once again Tassa the houseboy barely leaped in time to save his skin. "THIS IS FIRE-RESPONSE TEAM BRAVO!" Some sort of metallic node rose from the center of the engine, split open, and produced a steel whirligig that began to spray highpressure streams of water in eight different directions. "MAKE WAY FOR FIRE-RESPONSE TEAM BRAVO!"

And-

James Cagney-the taheen who was standing with Gaskie in the foyer of the Feveral Hall dormitory when the trouble started, remember him?-saw what was going to happen and began yelling at the guards who were staggering out of Damli's west wing, red-eyed and coughing, some with their pants on fire, a few-oh, praise Gan and Bessa and all the gods-with weapons.

Cag screamed at them to get out of the way and could hardly hear himself in the cacophony. He saw Joey Rastosovich pull two of them aside and watched the Earnshaw kid bump aside another. A few of the coughing, weeping escapees saw the oncoming fire engine and scattered on their own. Then Fire-

Response Team Bravo was plowing through the guards from the west wing, not slowing, roaring straight for Damli House, spraying water to every point of the compass.

And-

"Dear Christ, no," Pimli Prentiss moaned. He clapped his hands over his eyes. Finli, on the other hand, was helpless to look away. He saw a low man-Ben Alexander, he was quite sure-chewed beneath the firetruck's huge wheels. He saw another struck by the grille and mashed against the side of Damli House as the engine crashed, spraying boards and glass, then breaking through a bulkhead which had been partially concealed by a bed of sickly flowers. One wheel dropped down into the cellar stairwell and a robot voice began to boom,

"ACCIDENT! NOTIFY THE STATION! ACCIDENT!"

No shit, Sherlock, Finli thought, looking at the blood on the grass with a kind of sick wonder. How many of his men and his valuable charges had the goddamned malfunctioning firetruck mowed down? Six? Eight? A motherfucking dozen?

From behind Damli House came that terrifying chow-chowchow sound once again, the sound of automatic weapons fire.

A fat Breaker named Waverlyjostled him. Finli snared him before Waverly could fly on by. "What happened? Who told you to go south?" For Finli, unlike Trampas, wasn't wearing any sort of thinking-cap and the message

(GO SOUTH WITH YOUR HANDS UP, YOU WON'T BE HURT)

was slamming into his head so hard and loud it was nearly impossible to think of anything else.

Beside him, Pimli-struggling to gather his wits-seized on the beating thought and managed one of his own: That's almost got to be Brautigan, grabbing an idea and amplifying it that way. Who else could?

And-

Gaskie grabbed first Cag and then Jakli and shouted at them to gather up all the armed guards and put them to work flanking the Breakers who were hurrying south on the Mall and the streets that flanked the Mall. They looked at him with blank, starey eyes-panic-eyes-and he could have screamed with balked fury. And here came the next two engines with their sirens whooping. The larger of the pair struck two of the Breakers, bearing them to the ground and running them over. One of these new casualties was Joey Rastosovich. When the engine had passed, beating at the grass with its compressed-air vents,

Tanya fell on her knees beside her dying husband, raising her hands to the sky. She was screaming at the top of her lungs but Gaskie could barely hear her. Tears of frustration and fear prickled the corners of his eyes. Dirty dogs, he thought. Dirty ambushing dogs!

And-

North of the Algul compound, Susannah broke cover, moving in on the triple run offence. This wasn't in die plan, but the need to keep shooting, to keep knocking them down, was stronger than ever. She simply couldn't help herself, and Roland would have understood. Besides, the billowing smoke from Damli House had momentarily obscured everything at this end of the compound. Red beams from the "lazers" stabbed into it-on and off, on and off, like some sort of neon sign-and Susannah reminded herself not to get in the way of them, not unless she wanted a hole two inches across all the way through her.

She used bullets from the Coyote to cut her end of the fence-outer run, middle run, inner run-and then vanished into the thickening smoke, reloading as she went.

And-

The Breaker named Waverly tried to pull free of Finli. Nar, nar, none of that, may it please ya, Finli thought. He yanked the man-who'd been a bookkeeper or some such thing in his pre-

Algul life-closer to him, then slapped him twice across the face, hard enough to make his hand hurt. Waverly screamed in pain and surprise.

"Who the fuck is back there!" Finli roared. "WHO THE FUCK IS DOING THIS?" The follow-up fire engines had halted in front of Damli House and were pouring streams of water into the smoke. Finli didn't know if it could help, but probably it couldn't hurt. And at least the damned things hadn't crashed into the building they were supposed to save, like the first one.

"Sir, I don't knozv!" Waverly sobbed. Blood was streaming from one of his nostrils and the corner of his mouth. "I don't know, but there has to be fifty, maybe a hundred of the devils! Dinky got us out! God bless Dinky Earnshaw Gaskie O'Tego, meanwhile, wrapped one good-sized hand around James Cagney's neck and the other around Jakli's.

Gaskie had an idea son of a bitching crowheadjakli had been on the verge of running, but there was no time to worry about that now. He needed them both.

And-

"Boss!" Finli shouted. "Boss, grab the Earnshaw kid! Something about this smells!"

And-

With Cag's face pressing against one of his cheeks and Jakli's against the other, the Wease (who thought as clearly as anyone that terrible morning) was finally able to make himself heard.

Gaskie, meanwhile, repeated his command: divide up the armed guards and put them with the retreating Breakers. "Don't try to stop them, but stay with them! And for Christ's sake, keep em from getting electrocuted! Keep em off the fence if they go past Main Stree-"

Before he could finish this admonishment, a figure came plummeting out of the thickening smoke. It was Gangli, the compound doctor, his white coat on fire, his roller skates still on his feet.

And-

Susannah Dean took up a position at the left rear corner of Damli House, coughing. She saw three of die sons of bitches-

Gaskie, Jakli, and Cagney, had she but known it. Before she could draw a bead, eddying smoke blotted them out. When it cleared, Jakli and Cag were gone, rounding up armed guards to act as sheepdogs who would at least try to protect their panicked charges, even if they could not immediately stop them. Gaskie was still there, and Susannah took him with a single headshot.

Pimli didn't see it. It was becoming clear to him that all the confusion was on the surface. Quite likely deliberate. The Breakers"

decision to move away from the attackers north of the Algul had come a little too quickly and was a litde too organized.

Never mind Earnshaw, he thought, Brautigan's the one I want to talk to..

But before he could catch up to Ted, Tassa grabbed the Master in a frantic, terrified hug, babbling that Warden's House was on fire, he was afraid, terribly afraid, that all of Master's clothes, his books-

Pimli Prentiss knocked him aside with a hammer-blow to the side of his head. The pulse of the Breakers' unified thought

(bad-mind now instead of good-mind), yammered

(WITH YOUR HANDS UP YOU WON'T BE)

crazily in his head, threatening to drive out all thought.

Fucking Brautigan had done this, he knew it, and the man was too far ahead... unless...

Pimli looked at the Peacemaker in his hand, considered it, then jammed it back into the docker's clutch under his left arm.

He wanted fucking Bravitigan alive. Fucking Brautigan had some explaining to do. Not to mention some more goddamned breaking.

Choio-chow-chow. Bullets flicking all around him. Running hume guards, taheen, and can-toi all around him. And Christ, only a few of them were armed, mosdy humes who'd been down for fence-patrol. Those who guarded the Breakers didn't really need guns, by and large the Breakers were as tame as parakeets and the thought of an outside attack had seemed ludicrous until...

Until it happened, he thought, and spied Trampas.

"Trampas!" he bawled. "Trampas! Hey, cowboy! Grab Earnshaw and bring him to me! Grab Earnshaw!"

Here in the middle of the Mall it was a litde less noisy and Trampas heard sai Prentiss quite clearly. He sprinted after Dinky and grabbed the young man by one arm.

And-

Eleven-year-old Daneeka Rostov came out of the rolling smoke that now entirely obscured the lower half of Damli House, pulling two red wagons behind her. Daneeka's face was red and swollen; tears were streaming from her eyes; she was bent over almost double with the effort it was taking her to keep pulling Baj, who sat in one Radio Flyer wagon, and Sej, who sat in the other. Both had the huge heads and tiny, wise eyes of hydrocephalic savants, but Sej was equipped with waving stubs of arms while Baj had none. Both were now foaming at the mouth and making hoarse gagging sounds.

"Help me!" Dani managed, coughing harder than ever.

"Help me, someone, before they choke!"

Dinky saw her and started in that direction. Trampas restrained him, although it was clear his heart wasn't in it. "No,

Dink," he said. His tone was apologetic but firm. "Let someone else do it. Boss wants to talk to-"

Then Brautigan was there again, face pale, mouth a single stitched line in his lower face. "Let him go, Trampas. I like you, dog, but you don't want to get in our business today."

"Ted? What-"

Dink started toward Dani again. Trampas pulled him back again. Beyond them, Baj fainted and tumbled headfirst from his wagon. Although he landed on the soft grass, his head made a dreadful rotten splitting sound, and Dani Rostov shrieked.

Dinky lunged for her. Trampas yanked him back once more, and hard. At the same time he pulled the.38 Colt Woodsman he was wearing in his own docker's clutch.

There was no more time to reason with him. Ted Brautigan hadn't thrown the mind-spear since using it against the walletthief in Akron, back in 1935; hadn't even used it when the low men took him prisoner again in the Bridgeport, Connecticut, of 1960, although he'd been sorely tempted. He had promised himself he'd never use it again, and he certainly didn't want to throw it at

(smile when you say that)

Trampas, who had always treated him decently. But he had to get to the south end of the compound before order was restored, and he meant to have Dinky with him when he arrived.

Also, he was furious. Poor little Baj, who always had a smile for anyone and everyone!

He concentrated and felt a sick pain rip through his head.

The mind-spear flew. Trampas let go of Dinky and gave Ted a look of unbelieving reproach that Ted would remember to the end of his life. Then Trampas grabbed the sides of his head like a man with the worst Excedrin Headache in the universe, and fell dead on the grass with his throat swollen and his tongue sticking out of his mouth.

"Come on!" Ted cried, and grabbed Dinky's arm. Prentiss was looking away for the time being, thank God, distracted by another explosion.

"ButDani...andSej!"

"She can get Sej!" Sending the rest of it mentally:

(now that she doesn't have to pull Baj too)

Ted and Dinky fled while behind them Pimli Prentiss turned, looked unbelievingly at Trampas, and bawled for them to stop-to stop in the name of the Crimson King.

Finli O'Tego unlimbered his own gun, but before he could fire, Daneeka Rostov was on him, biting and scratching. She weighed almost nothing, but for a moment he was so surprised to be attacked from this unexpected quarter that she almost bowled him over. He curled a strong, furry arm around her neck and threw her aside, but by then Ted and Dinky were almost out of range, cutting to the left side of Warden's House and disappearing into the smoke.

Finli steadied his pistol in both hands, took in a breath, held it, and squeezed off a single shot. Blood flew from the old man's arm; Finli heard him cry out and saw him swerve. Then the young pup grabbed the old cur and they cut around the corner of the house.

"I'm coming for you!" Finli bellowed after them. "Yar I am, and when I catch you, I'll make you wish you were never born!"

But the threat felt horribly empty, somehow.

Now the entire population of Algul Siento-Breakers, taheen, hurae guards, can-toi with bloody red spots glaring on their foreheads like third eyes-was in tidal motion, flowing south. And Finli saw something he really did not like at all: the Breakers and only the Breakers were moving that way with their arms raised. If there were more harriers down there, they'd have no trouble at all telling which ones to shoot, would they?

And-

In his room on the third floor of Corbett Hall, still on his knees at the foot of his glass-covered bed, coughing on the smoke rfiat was drifting in through his broken window, Sheemie Ruiz had his revelation... or was spoken to by his imagination, take your pick. In either case, he leaped to his feet. His eyes, normally friendly but always puzzled by a world he could not quite understand, were clear and full of joy.

"BEAM SAYS THANKYA!" he cried to the empty room.

He looked around, as happy as Ebenezer Scrooge discovering that the spirits have done it all in one night, and ran for the door with his slippers crunching on the broken glass. One sharp spear of glass pierced his foot-carrying his death on its tip, had he but known it, say sorry, say Discordia-but in his joy he didn't even feel it. He dashed into the hall and then down the stairs.

On the second floor landing, Sheemie came upon an elderly female Breaker named Belle O'Rourke, grabbed her, shook her.

"BEAM SAYS THANKYA!" he hollered into her dazed and uncomprehending face. "BEAM SAYS ALL MAY YET BE WELL! NOT TOO LATE! JUST IN TIME!"

He rushed on to spread the glad news (glad to him, anyway), and-

On Main Street, Roland looked first at Eddie Dean, then at Jake Chambers. "They're coming, and this is where we have to take them. Wait for my command, then stand and be true."

EIGHTEEN

First to appear were three Breakers, running full out with their arms raised. They crossed Main Street that way, never seeing Eddie, who was in the box-office of the Gem (he'd knocked out the glass on all three sides with the sandalwood grip of the gun which had once been Roland's), or Jake (sitting inside an engineless Ford sedan parked in front of the Pleasantville Bake Shoppe), or Roland himself (behind a mannequin in the window of Gay Paree Fashions).

They reached the other sidewalk and looked around, bewildered.

Go, Roland thought at them. Go on and get out of here, take the alley, get away while you can.

"Come on!" one of them shouted, and they ran down the alley between the drug store and the bookshop. Another appeared, then two more, then the first of the guards, a hume with a pistol raised to the side of his frightened, wide-eyed face. Roland sighted him... and then held his fire.

More of the Devar personnel began to appear, running into Main Street from between the buildings. They spread themselves wide apart. As Roland had hoped and expected, they were trying to flank their charges and channel them. Trying to keep the retreat from turning into a rout.

"Form two lines!" a taheen with a raven's head was shouting in a buzzing, out-of-breath voice. "Form two lines and keep em between, for your fathers' sakes!"

One of the others, a redheaded taheen with his shirttail out, yelled: "What about the fence, Jakli? What if they run on the fence?"

"Can't do nothing about that, Cag, just-"

A shrieking Breaker tried to run past the raven before he could finish, and the raven-Jakli-gave him such a mighty push that the poor fellow went sprawling in the middle of the street. "Stay together, you maggots!" he snarled. "Run if ee will, but keep some fucking order about it!" As if there could be any order in this, Roland thought (and not without satisfaction)

Then, to the redhead, the one called Jakli shouted: "Let one or two of em fry-the rest'll see and stop!"

It would complicate things if either Eddie or Jake started shooting at this point, but neither did. The three gunslingers watched from their places of concealment as a species of order rose from the chaos. More guards appeared. Jakli and the redhead directed them into the two lines, which was now a corridor running from one side of the street to the other. A few Breakers got past them before the corridor was fully formed, but only a few.

A new taheen appeared, this one with the head of a weasel, and took over for the one called Jakli. He pounded a couple of running Breakers on the back, actually hurrying them up.

From south of Main Street came a bewildered shout: "Fence is cut!" And then another: "I think the guards are dead!" This latter cry was followed by a howl of horror, and Roland knew as surely as if he had seen it that some unlucky Breaker had just come upon a severed watchman's head in the grass.

The terrified babble on the heels of this hadn't run itself out.

when Dinky Earnshaw and Ted Brautigan appeared from between the bakery and the shoe store, so close to Jake's hiding place that he could have reached out the window of his car and touched them. Ted had been winged. His right shirtsleeve had turned red from the elbow down, but he was moving-with a little help from Dinky, who had an arm around him. Ted turned as the two of them ran through the gauntlet of guards and looked directly at Roland's hiding place for a moment. Then he and Earnshaw entered the alley and were gone.

That made them safe, at least for the time being, and that was good. But where was the big bug? Where was Prentiss, the man in charge of this hateful place? Roland wanted him and yon Weasel-head taheen sai both-cut off the snake's head and the snake dies. But they couldn't afford to wait much longer.

The stream of fleeing Breakers was drying up. The gunslinger didn't think sai Weasel would wait for the last stragglers; he'd want to keep his precious charges from escaping through the cut fence. He'd know they wouldn't go far, given the sterile and gloomy countryside all around, but he'd also know that if there were attackers at the north end of the compound, there might be rescuers standing by at the-

And there he was, thank the gods and Gan-sai Pimli Prentiss, staggering and winded and clearly in a state of shock, with a loaded docker's clutch swinging back and forth under his meaty arm. Blood was coming from one nostril and the corner of one eye, as if all this excitement had caused something to rupture inside of his head. He went to the Weasel, weaving slightly from side to side-it was this drunken weave that Roland would later blame in his bitter heart for the final outcome of that morning's work-probably meaning to take command of the operation. Their short but fervent embrace, both giving comfort and taking it, told Roland all he needed to know about the closeness of their relationship.

He leveled his gun on the back of Prentiss's head, pulled the trigger, and watched as blood and hair flew. Master Prentiss's hands shot out, the fingers spread against the dark sky, and he collapsed almost at the stunned Weasel's feet.

As if in response to this, the atomic sun came on, flooding the world with light.

"Hile, you gunslingers, kill them all!" Roland cried, fanning the trigger of his revolver, that ancient murder-machine, with the flat of his right hand. Four had fallen to his fire before the guards, lined up like so many clay ducks in a shooting gallery, had registered the sound of the gunshots, let alone had time to react. "For Gilead, for New York, for the Beam, for your fathers! Hear me, hear me! Leave not one of them standing! KILL THEM ALL!"

And so they did: the gunslinger out of Gilead, the former drug addict out of Brooklyn, the lonely child who had once been known to Mrs. Greta Shaw as 'Bama. Coming south from behind them, rolling through thickening banners of smoke on the SCT (diverting from a straight course only once, to swerve around the flattened body of another housekeeper, this one named Tammy), was a fourth: she who had once been instructed in the ways of nonviolent protest by young and earnest men from the N-double A-C-P and who had now embraced, fully and with no regrets, the way of the gun. Susannah picked off three laggard humie guards and one fleeing taheen. The taheen had a rifle slung over one shoulder but never tried for it. Instead he raised his sleek, fur-covered arms-his head was vaguely bearish-and cried for quarter and parole.

Mindful of all that had gone on here, not in the least how the pureed brains of children had been fed to the Beam-killers in order to keep them operating at top efficiency, Susannah gave him neither, although neither did she give him cause to suffer or time to fear his fate.

By the time she rolled down the alley between the movie theater and die hair salon, the shooting had stopped. Finli and Jakli were dying; James Cagney was dead with his hume mask torn half-off his repulsive rat's head; lying with these were another three dozen, just as dead. The formerly immaculate gutters of Pleasantville ran with their blood.

There were undoubtedly other guards about the compound, but by now they'd be in hiding, positive diat they had been set upon by a hundred or more seasoned fighters, landpirates from God only knew where. The majority of Algul Siento's Breakers were in the grassy area between the rear of Main Street and die south watchtowers, huddled like the sheep they were. Ted, unmindful of his bleeding arm, had already begun taking attendance.

Then the entire northern contingent of the harrier army appeared at the head of the alley next to the movieshow: one shor'leg black lady mounted on an ATV. She was steering with one hand and holding the Coyote machine-pistol steady on the handlebars with die other. She saw the bodies heaped in the street and nodded with joyless satisfaction.

Eddie came out of the box-office and embraced her.

"Hey, sugarman, hey," she murmured, fluttering kisses along the side of his neck in a way that made him shiver. Then Jake was there-pale from the killing, but composed-and she slung an arm around his shoulders and pulled him close. Her eyes happened on Roland, standing on die sidewalk behind the three he had drawn to Mid-World. His gun dangled beside his left thigh, and could he feel the expression of longing on his face? Did he even know it was there? She doubted it, and her heart went out to him.

"Come here, Gilead," she said. "This is a group hug, and you're part of the group."

For a moment she didn't think he understood the invitation, or was pretending not to understand. Then he came, pausing to re-holster his gun and to pick up Oy. He moved in between Jake and Eddie. Oyjumped into Susannah's lap as though it were the most natural thing in the world. Then the gunslinger put one arm around Eddie's waist and the other around Jake's. Susannah reached up (the bumbler scrabbling comically for purchase on her suddenly tilting lap), put her arms around Roland's neck, and put a hearty smack on his sunburned forehead. Jake and Eddie laughed. Roland joined them, smiling as we do when we have been surprised by happiness.

I'd have you see them like this; I'd have you see them very well. Will you? They are clustered around Suzie's Cruisin Trike, embracing in the aftermath of their victory. I'd have you see them this way not because they have won a great battle-they know better than that, every one of them-but because now they are ka-tet for the last time. The story of their fellowship ends here, on this make-believe street and beneath this artificial sun; the rest of the tale will be short and brutal compared to all that's gone before. Because when ka-tet breaks, the end always comes quickly.

Say sorry...

NINETEEN

Pimli Prentiss watched through blood-crusted, dying eyes as the younger of the two men broke from the group embrace and approached Finli O'Tego. The young man saw that Finli was still stirring and dropped to one knee beside him. The woman, now dismounted from her motorized tricycle, and the boy began to check the rest of their victims and dispatch the few who still lived. Even as he lay dying with a bullet in his own head, Pimli understood this as mercy rather than cruelty. And when the j ob was done, Pimli supposed they'd meet with the rest of their cowardly, sneaking friends and search those buildings of the Algul that were not yet on fire, looking for the remaining guards, and no doubt shooting out of hand those they discovered. You won'tfind many, my yellowback friends, he thought. You ve wiped out two-thirds of my men right here. And how many of the attackers had Master Pimli, Security Chief Finli, and their men taken in return? So far as Pimli knew, not a single one.

But perhaps he could do something about that. His right hand began its slow and painful journey up toward the docker's clutch, and the Peacemaker holstered there.

Eddie, meanwhile, had put the barrel of the Gilead revolver with the sandalwood grips against the side of Weasel-boy's head. His finger was tightening on the trigger when he saw that Weasel-boy, although shot in the chest, bleeding heavily, and clearly dying fast, was looking at him with complete awareness.

And something else, something Eddie did not much care for. He thought it was contempt. He looked up, saw Susannah and Jake checking bodies at the eastern end of the killzone, saw Roland on the far sidewalk, speaking with Dinky and Ted as he knotted a makeshift bandage around the latter's arm. The two former Breakers were listening carefully, and although both of them looked dubious, they were nodding their heads.

Eddie returned his attention to the dying taheen. 'You're at the end of the path, my friend," he said. "Plugged in the pump, it looks like to me. Do you have something you want to say before you step into the clearing?"

Finli nodded.

"Say it, then, chum. But I'd keep it short if you want to get it all out."

"Thee and thine are a pack of yellowback dogs," Finli managed.

He probably was shot in the heart-so it felt, anyway-but he would say this; it needed to be said, and he willed his damaged heart to beat until it was out. Then he'd die and welcome the dark. "Piss-stinking yellowback dogs, killing men from ambush. That's what I'd say."

Eddie smiled humorlessly. "And what about yellowback dogs who'd use children to kill the whole world from ambush, my friend? The whole universe)"

The Weasel blinked at that, as if he'd expected no such reply. Perhaps any reply at all. "I had... my orders."

"I have no doubt of that," Eddie said. "And followed them to the end. Enjoy hell or Na'ar or whatever you call it." He put the barrel of his gun against Finli's temple and pulled the trigger.

The Wease jerked a single time and was still. Grimacing,

Eddie got to his feet.

He caught movement from the corner of his eye as he did so and saw anotfier one-the boss of the show-had struggled up onto one elbow. His gun, the Peacemaker.40 that had once executed a rapist, was leveled. Eddie's reflexes were quick, but there was no time to use them. The Peacemaker roared a single time, fire licking from the end of its barrel, and blood flew from Eddie Dean's brow. A lock of hair flipped on the back of his head as the slug exited. He slapped his hand to the hole that had appeared over his right eye, like a man who has remembered something of vital importance just a little too late.

Roland whirled on the rundown heels of his boots, pulling his own gun in a dip too quick to see. Jake and Susannah also turned. Susannah saw her husband standing in the street with the heel of his hand pressed to his brow.

"Eddie? Sugar?"

Pimli was struggling to cock the Peacemaker again, his upper lip curled back from his teeth in a doglike snarl of effort.

Roland shot him in the throat and Algul Siento's Master snaprolled to his left, the still-uncocked pistol flying out of his hand and clattering to a stop beside the body of his friend the Weasel.

It finished almost at Eddie's feet.

"Eddie!" Susannah screamed, and began a loping crawl toward him, thrusting herself on her hands. He's not hurt bad, she told herself, not hurt bad, dear God don't let my man be hurt bad-

Then she saw the blood running from beneath his pressing hand, pattering down into the street, and knew it was bad.

"Suze?" he asked. His voice was perfectly clear. "Suzie, where are you? I can't see."

He took one step, a second, a third... and then fell facedown in the street, just as Gran-pere Jaffords had known he would, aye, from the first moment he'd laid eyes on him. For the boy was a gunslinger, say true, and it was the only end that one such as he could expect.