The Dark Tower (The Dark Tower #7)

The Dark Tower (The Dark Tower #7) Page 22

ONE

On the morning of Monday the 21st of June in the year of '99, the sun shone down on New York City just as if Jake Chambers did not lie dead in one world and Eddie Dean in another; as if Stephen King did not lie in a Lewiston hospital's Intensive Care ward, drifting out into the light of consciousness only for brief intervals; as if Susannah Dean did not sit alone with her grief aboard a train racing on ancient, chancy tracks across the dark wastes of Thunderclap toward the ghost-town of Fedic.

There were others who had elected to accompany her on her journey at least that far, but she'd asked them to give her space, and they had complied with her wish. She knew she would feel better if she could cry, but so far she hadn't been able to do that-a few random tears, like meaningless showers in the desert, was the best she had been able to manage-although she had a terrible feeling that things were worse than she knew.

Fuck, dat ain't no "feelin," Detta crowed contemptuously from her place deep inside, as Susannah sat looking out at the dark and rocky wastelands or the occasional ruins of towns and villages that had been abandoned when the world moved on. You havin a jenna-wine intuition, girl! Only question you cain't answer is whether it be ole long tall and ugly or Young Master Sxveetness now visitin wit'yo man in the clearin.

"Please, no," she murmured. "Please not either of them,

God, I can't stand another one."

But God remained deaf to her prayer, Jake remained dead, the Dark Tower remained standing at the end of Can'-Ka No Rey, casting its shadow over a million shouting roses, and in New York the hot summer sun shone down on the just and the unjust alike.

Can you give me hallelujah?

Thankee-sai.

Now somebody yell me a big old God-bomb amen.

TWO

Mrs. Tassenbaum left her car at Sir Speedy-Park on Sixty-third Street (the sign on the sidewalk showed a knight in armor behind the wheel of a Cadillac, his lance sticking jauntily out of the driver's window), where she and David rented two stalls on a yearly basis. They kept an apartment nearby, and Irene asked Roland if he would like to go there and clean up... although the man actually didn't look all that bad, she had to admit.

She'd bought him a fresh pair of jeans and a white button-up shirt which he had rolled to the elbows; she had also bought a comb and a tube of hair-mousse so strong its molecular makeup was probably closer to Super-Glue than it was to Vitalis. With the unruly mop of gray-flecked hair combed straight back from his brow, she had revealed the spare good looks and angular features of an interesting crossbreed: a mixture of Quaker and Cherokee was what she imagined. The bag of Orizas was once more slung over his shoulder. His gun, the holster wrapped in its shell-belt, was in there, too. He had covered it from enquiring eyes with the Old Home Days tee-shirt.

Roland shook his head. "I appreciate the offer, but I'd as soon do what needs doing and then go back to where I belong." He surveyed the hurrying throngs on the sidewalks bleakly. "If I belong anywhere."

"You could stay at the apartment for a couple of days and rest up," she said. "I'd stay with you." And fuck thy brains out, do it please ya, she thought, and could not help a smile. "I mean, I know you won't, but you need to know the offer's open."

He nodded. "Thankee, but there's a woman who needs me to get back to her as soon as I can." It felt like a lie to him, and a grotesque one at that. Based on everything that had happened, part of him thought that Susannah Dean needed Roland of Gilead back in her life almost as much as nursery bah-bos needed rat poison added to their bedtime bottles.

Irene Tassenbaum accepted it, however. And part of her was actually anxious to get back to her husband. She had called him last night (using a pay phone a mile from the motel, just to be safe), and it seemed that she had finally gotten David Seymour Tassenbaum's attention again. Based on her encounter with Roland, David's attention was definitely second prize, but it was better than nothing, by God. Roland Deschain would vanish from her life soon, leaving her to find her way back to northern New England on her own and explain what had happened as best she could. Part of her mourned the impending loss, but she'd had enough adventure in the last forty hovxrs or so to last her for the rest of her life, hadn't she? And things to think about, that too. For one thing, it seemed that the world was thinner than she had ever imagined. And reality wider.

"All right," she said. "It's Second Avenue and Forty-sixth Street you want to go to first, correct?"

"Yes." Susannah hadn't had a chance to tell them much about her adventures after Mia had hijacked their shared body, but the gunslinger knew there was a tall building-what Eddie,

Jake, and Susannah called a skyscraper-now standing on the site of the former vacant lot, and the Tet Corporation must surely be inside. "Will we need a tack-see?"

"Can you and your furry friend walk seventeen short blocks and two or three long ones? It's your call, but I wouldn't mind stretching my legs."

Roland didn't know how long a long block or how short a short one might be, but he was more than willing to find out now that the deep pain in his right hip had departed. Stephen King had that pain now, along with the one in his smashed ribs and the right side of his split head. Roland did not envy him those pains, but at least they were back with their rightful owner.

"Let's go," he said.

THREE

Fifteen minutes later he stood across from the large dark structure thrusting itself at the summer sky, trying to keep his jaw from coming unhinged and perhaps dropping all the way to his chest. It wasn't the Dark Tower, not his Dark Tower, at least (although it wouldn't have surprised him to know there were people working in yon sky-tower-some of them readers of Roland's adventures-who called 2 Hammarskjold Plaza exactly that), but he had no doubt that it was the Tower's representative in this Keystone World, just as the rose represented a field filled with them; the field he had seen in so many dreams.

He could hear the singing voices from here, even over the jostle and hum of the traffic. The woman had to call his name three times and finally tug on one sleeve to get his attention.

When he turned to her-reluctantly-he saw it wasn't the tower across the street that she was looking at (she had grown up just an hour from Manhattan and tall buildings were an old story to her) but at the pocket park on their side of the street.

Her expression was delighted. "Isn't it a beautiful little place? I must have been by this corner a hundred times and I never noticed it until now. Do you see the fountain? And the turtle sculpture?"

He did. And although Susannah hadn't told them this part of her story, Roland knew she had been here-along with Mia, daughter of none-and sat on the bench closest to the turtle's wet shell. He could almost see her there.

"I'd like to go in," she said timidly. "May we? Is there time?"

"Yes," he said, and followed her through the little iron gate.

FOUR

The pocket park was peaceful, but not entirely quiet.

"Do you hear people singing?" Mrs. Tassenbaum asked in a voice that was hardly more than a whisper. "A chorus from somewhere?"

"Bet your bottom dollar," Roland answered, and was sorry immediately. He'd learned the phrase from Eddie, and saying it hurt. He walked to the turtle and dropped on one knee to examine it more closely. There was a tiny piece gone from the beak, leaving a break like a missing tooth. On the back was a scratch in the shape of a question mark, and fading pink letters.

"What does it say?" she asked. "Something about a turde, but that's all I can make out."

"'see the TURTLE of enormous girth.'" He knew this without reading it.

"What does it mean?"

Roland stood up. "It's too much to go into. Would you like to wait for me while I go in there?" He nodded in the direction of the tower with its black glass windows glittering in the sun.

"Yes," she said. "I would. I'll just sit on the bench in the sunshine and wait for you. It's... refreshing. Does that sound crazy?"

"No," he said. "If someone whose looks you don't trust should speak to you, Irene-I think it unlikely, because this is a safe place, but it's certainly possible-concentrate just as hard as you can, and call for me."

Her eyes widened. "Are you talking ESP?"

He didn't know what ESP stood for, but he understood what she meant, and nodded.

"You'd hear that? Hear me?"

He couldn't say for sure that he would. The building might be equipped with damping devices, like the thinking-caps the can-toi wore, that would make it impossible.

"I might. And as I say, trouble's unlikely. This is a safe place."

She looked at the turde, its shell gleaming with spray from the fountain. "It is, isn't it?" She started to smile, then stopped.

"You'll come back, won't you? You wouldn't dump me without at least..." She shrugged one shoulder. The gesture made her look very young. "Without at least saying goodbye?"

"Never in life. And my business in yonder tower shouldn't take long." In fact it was hardly business at all... unless, that was, whoever was currently running the Tet Corporation had some with him. "We have another place to go, and it's there Oy and I would take our leave of you."

"Okay," she said, and sat on the bench with the bumbler at her feet. The end of it was damp and she was wearing a new pair of slacks (bought in the same quick shopping-run that had netted Roland's new shirt and jeans), but this didn't bother her.

They would dry quickly on such a warm, sunny day, and she found she wanted to be near the turtle sculpture. To study its tiny, timeless black eyes while she listened to those sweet voices.

She thought that would be very restful. It was not a word she usually thought of in connection with New York, but this was a very un-New York place, with its feel of quiet and peace. She thought she might bring David here, diat if they could sit on this bench he might hear the story of her missing three days without thinking her insane. Or too insane.

Roland started away, moving easily-moving like a man who could walk for days and weeks without ever varying his pace. I wouldn't like to have him on my trail, she thought, and shivered a little at the idea. He reached the iron gate through which he would pass to the sidewalk, then turned to her once more. He spoke in a soft singsong.

"See the TURTLE of enormous girth!

On his shell he holds the earth.

His thought is slow but always kind;

He holds us all within his mind.

On his back all vows are made;

He sees the truth but mayn't aid.

He loves the land and loves the sea,

And even loves a child like me."

Then he left her, moving swiftly and cleanly, not looking back. She sat on the bench and watched him wait with the others clustered on the corner for the WALK light, dien cross with them, the leather bag slung over his shoulder bouncing lightly against his hip. She watched him mount the steps of 2 Hammarskjold Plaza and disappear inside. Then she leaned back, closed her eyes, and listened to the voices sing. At some point she realized that at least two of the words they were singing were the ones that made her name.

FIVE

It seemed to Roland that great multitudes of folken were streaming into the building, but this was the perception of a man who had spent the latter years of his quest in mostly deserted places.

If he'd come at quarter to nine, while people were still arriving, instead of at quarter to eleven, he would have been stunned by the flood of bodies. Now most of those who worked here were settled in their offices and cubicles, generating paper and bytes of information.

The lobby windows were of clear glass and at least two stories high, perhaps three. Consequently the lobby was full of light, and as he stepped inside, the grief that had possessed him ever since kneeling by Eddie in the street of Pleasantville slipped away. In here the singing voices were louder, not a chorus but a great choir. And, he saw, he wasn't the only one who heard them. On the street, people had been hurrying with their heads down and looks of distracted concentration on their faces, as if they were deliberately not seeing the delicate and perishable beauty of the day which had been given them; in here they were helpless not to feel at least some of that to which the gunslinger was so exquisitely attuned, and which he drank like water in the desert.

As if in a dream, he drifted across the rose-marble tile, hearing the echoing clack of his bootheels, hearing the faint and shifting conversation of the Orizas in their pouch. He thought, People who loork here wish they lived here. They may not know it, exactly, but they do. People who work here find excuses to work late.

And they will live long and productive lives.

In the eenter of the high, echoing room, the expensive marble floor gave way to a square of humble dark earth. It was surrounded by ropes of wine-dark velvet, but Roland knew that even die ropes didn't need to be there. No one would transgress that litde garden, not even a suicidal can-toi desperate to make a name for himself. It was holy ground. There were diree dwarf palm trees, and plants he hadn't seen since leaving Gilead:

Spathiphyllum, he believed they had been called there, although they might not have the same name in this world.

There were other plants as well, but only one mattered.

In the middle of the square, by itself, was the rose.

It hadn't been transplanted; Roland saw that at once. No. It was where it had been in 1977, when the place where he was now standing had been a vacant lot, filled witfi trash and broken bricks, dominated by a sign which announced die coming of Turtle Bay Luxury Condominiums, to be built by Mills Construction and Sombra Real Estate Associates. This building, all one hundred stories of it, had been built instead, and around the rose. Whatever business might be done here was secondary to that purpose.

Hammarskjold Plaza was a shrine.

SIX

There was a tap on his shoulder and Roland whirled about so suddenly that he drew glances of alarm. He was alarmed himself.

Not for years-perhaps since his early teenage years-had anyone been quiet enough to come within shoulder-tapping distance of him without being overheard. And on this marble floor, he surely should have-

The young (and extremely beautiful) woman who had approached him was clearly surprised by the suddenness of his reaction, but the hands he shot out to seize her shoulders only closed on thin air and then themselves, making a soft clapping sound that echoed back from the ceiling above, a ceiling at least as high as that in the Cradle of Lud. The woman's green eyes were wide and wary, and he would have sworn there was no harm in them, but still, first to be surprised, then to miss like that-

He glanced down at the woman's feet and got at least part of the answer. She was wearing a kind of shoe he'd never seen before, something with deep foam soles and what might have been canvas uppers. Shoes that would move as softly as moccasins on a hard surface. As for the woman herself-

A queer double certainty came to him as he looked at her: first, that he had "seen the boat she came in," as familial resemblance was sometimes expressed in Calla Bryn Sturgis; second, that a society of gunslingers was a-breeding in this world, this special Keystone World, and he had just been accosted by one of them.

And what better place for such an encounter than within sight of the rose?

"I see your father in your face, but can't quite name him,"

Roland said in a low voice. "Tell me who he was, do it please you."

The woman smiled, and Roland almost had the name he was looking for. Then it slipped away, as such things often did: memory could be bashful. "You never met him... although I can understand why you might think you had. I'll tell you later, if you like, but right now I'm to take you upstairs, Mr. Deschain.

There's a person who wants..." For a moment she looked self-conscious, as if she thought someone had instructed her to use a certain word so she'd be laughed at. Then dimples formed at the corners of her mouth and her green eyes slanted enchantingly up at the corners; it was as if she were thinking If it's a joke on me, let them have it. "... a person who wants to play with you," she finished.

"All right," he said.

She touched his shoulder lightly, to hold him where he was yet a moment longer. "I'm asked to make sure that you read the sign in the Garden of the Beam," she said. "Will you do it?"

Roland's response was dry, but still a bit apologetic. "I will if I may," he said, "but I've ever had trouble with your written language, although it seems to come out of my mouth well enough when I'm on this side."

"I think you'll be able to read this," she said. "Give it a try."

And she touched his shoulder again, gently turning him back to the square of earth in the lobby floor-not earth that had been brought in wheelbarrows by some crew of gifted gardeners, he knew, but the actual earth of this place, ground which might have been tilled but had not been otherwise changed.

At first he had no more success with the small brass sign in the garden than he'd had with most signs in the shop windows, or the words on the covers of the "magda-seens." He was about to say so, to ask the woman with the faindy familiar face to read it to him, when the letters changed, becoming the Great Letters of Gilead. He was then able to read what was writ diere, and easily.

When he had finished, it changed back again.

"A pretty trick," he said. "Did it respond to my thoughts?"

She smiled-her lips were coated with some pink candylike stuff-and nodded. 'Yes. If you were Jewish, you might have seen it in Hebrew. If you were Russian, it would have been in Cyrillic."

"Say true?"

"True."

The lobby had regained its normal rhythm... except, Roland understood, die rhythm of this place would never be like that in other business buildings. Those living in Thunderclap would suffer all their lives from little ailments like boils and eczema and headaches and ear-styke; at the end of it, they would die (probably at an early age) of some big and painful trum, likely the cancers that ate fast and burned die nerves like brushfires as they made their meals. Here was just the opposite: health and harmony, goodwill and generosity. These folken did not hear the rose singing, exactly, but they didn't need to.

They were the lucky ones, and on some level every one of them knew i t... which was luckiest of all. He watched them come in and cross to the lift-boxes that were called ele-vaydors, moving briskly, swinging their pokes and packages, their gear and their gunna, and not one course was a perfecdy straight line from the doors. A few came to what she'd called the Garden of the Beam, but even those who didn't bent their steps briefly in that direction, as if attracted by a powerful magnet. And if anyone tried to harm the rose? There was a security guard sitting at a little desk by the elevators, Roland saw, but he was fat and old.

And it didn't matter. If anyone made a threatening move, everyone in this lobby would hear a scream of alarm in his or her head, as piercing and imperative as that kind of whistle only dogs can hear. And they would converge upon the would-be assassin of the rose. They would do so swiftly, and with absolutely no regard for their own safety. The rose had been able to protect itself when it had been growing in the trash and the weeds of the vacant lot (or at least draw those who would protect it), and that hadn't changed.

"Mr. Deschain? Are you ready to go upstairs now?"

"Aye," he said. "Lead me as you would."

SEVEN

The familiarity of the woman's face clicked into place for him just as they reached the ele-vaydor. Perhaps it was seeing her in profile that did it, something about the shape of the cheekbone.

He remembered Eddie telling him about his conversation with Calvin Tower after Jack Andolini and George Biondi had left the Manhattan Restaurant of die Mind. Tower had been speaking of his oldest friend's family. They like to boast that they have the most unique legal letterhead in New York, perhaps in the United States.

It simply reads "DEEPNEAU."

"Are you sai Aaron Deepneau's daughter?" he asked her.

"Surely not, you're too young. His granddaughter?"

Her smile faded. "Aaron never had children, Mr. Deschain.

I'm the granddaughter of his older brother, but my own parents and grandfather died young. Airy was the one who mosdy raised me."

"Did you call him so? Airy?" Roland was charmed.

"As a child I did, and it just kind of stuck." She held out a hand, her smile returning. "Nancy Deepneau. And I am so pleased to meet you. A litde frightened, but pleased."

Roland shook her hand, but the gesture was perfunctory, hardly more than a touch. Then, with considerably more feeling

(for this was the ritual he had grown up with, the one he understood), he placed his fist against his forehead and made a leg. "Long days and pleasant nights, Nancy Deepneau."

Her smile widened into a cheerful grin. "And may you have twice the number, Roland of Gilead! May you have twice the number."

The ele-vaydor came, they got on, and it was to the ninetyninth floor that they went.

EIGHT

The doors opened on a large round foyer. The floor was carpeted in a dusky pink shade that exacdy matched the hue of the rose. Across from the ele-vaydor was a glass door with THE TET CORPORATION lettered on it. Beyond, Roland saw another, smaller lobby where a woman sat at a desk, apparendy talking to herself. To the right of the outer lobby door were two men wearing business suits. They were chatting to each other, hands in pockets, seemingly relaxed, but Roland saw they were anything but. And they were armed. The coats of their suits were welltailored, but a man who knows how to look for a gun usually sees one, if a gun is there. These two fellows would stand in this foyer for an hour, maybe two (it was difficult for even good men to remain totally alert for much longer), falling into their little justchatting routine each time the ele-vaydor came, ready to move instandy if they smelled something wrong. Roland approved.

He didn't spend much time looking at the guards, however.

Once he had identified them for what they were, he let his gaze go where it had wanted to be from the moment the ele-vaydor doors opened. There was a large black-and-white picture on the wall to his left. This was a photograph (he had originally thought the word was fottergraf) about five feet long and three wide, mounted without a frame, curved so cunningly to the shape of the wall diat it looked like a hole into some unnaturally still reality. Three men in jeans and open-necked shirts sat on the top rail of a fence, their boots hooked under the lowest rail.

How many times, Roland wondered, had he seen cowboys or pastorillas sitting just that way while they watched branding, roping, gelding, or the breaking of wild horses? How many times had he sat so himself, sometimes with one or more of his old tet-Cuthbert, Alain, Jamie DeCurry-sitting to either side of him, as John Cullum and Aaron Deepneau sat flanking the black man with the gold-rimmed spectacles and the tiny white moustache? The remembering made him ache, and this was no mere ache of the mind; his stomach clenched and his heart sped up. The three in the picture had been caught laughing at something, and the result was a kind of timeless perfection, one of those rare moments when men are glad to be what they are and where they are.

"The Founding Fathers," Nancy said. She sounded both amused and sad. "That photo was taken on an executive retreat in 1986. Taos, New Mexico. Three city boys in cow country, how about that. And don't they look like they're having the time of their lives?"

"You say true," Roland said.

"Do you know all three?"

Roland nodded. He knew them, all right, although he had never met Moses Carver, the man in the middle. Dan Holmes's partner, Odetta Holmes's godfather. In the picture he looked to be a robust and healthy seventy, but surely by 1986 he had to be closer to eighty. Perhaps eighty-five. Of course, Roland reminded himself, there was a wild card here: the marvelous thing he'd just seen in the lobby of this building. The rose was no more a fountain of youth than the turtle in the little pocket park across the street was the real Maturin, but did he think it had certain beneficent qualities? Yes he did. Certain healing qualities? Yes he did. Did he believe that the nine years of life Aaron Deepneau had gotten between 1977 and the taking of this picture in 1986 had just been a matter of the /-torn-replacing pills and medical treatments of the old people? No he did not.

These three men-Carver, Cullum, and Deepneau-had come togetiier, almost magically, to fight for the rose in their old age.

Their tale, the gunslinger believed, would make a book in itself, very likely a fine and exciting one. What Roland believed was simplicity itself: the rose had shown its gratitude.

"When did they die?" he asked Nancy Deepneau.

"John Cullum went first, in 1989," she said. "Victim of a gunshot wound. He lasted twelve hours in the hospital, long enough for everyone to say goodbye. He was in New York for the annual board meeting. According to the NYPD, it was a streetside mugging gone bad. We believe he was killed by an agent of either Sombra or North Central Positronics. Probably one of the can-toi. There were other attempts that missed."

"Both Sombra and Positronics come to the same thing,"

said Roland. "They're the agencies of the Crimson King in this world."

"We know," she said, then pointed to the man on the left side of the picture, the one she so strongly resembled. "Uncle Aaron lived until 1992. When you met him... in 1977?"

"Yes," Roland said.

"In 1977, no one would have believed he could live so long."

"Did the fayen-folken kill him, too?"

"No, the cancer came back, that's all. He died in his bed. I was there. The last thing he said was, 'Tell Roland we did our best.' And so I do tell you."

"Thankee-sai." He heard the roughness in his voice and hoped she would mistake it for curtness. Many had done their best for him, was it not true? A great many, beginning with Susan Delgado, all those years ago.

"Are you all right?" she asked in a low, sympathetic voice.

"Yes," he said. "Fine. And Moses Carver? When did he pass?"

She raised her eyebrows, then laughed.

"What-?"

"Look for yourself!"

She pointed toward the glass doors. Now approaching them from the inside, passing the desk-minding woman who had apparently been talking to herself, was a wizened man with fluffy fly-away hair and white eyebrows to match. His skin was dark, but the woman upon whose arm he leaned was even darker. He was tall-perhaps six-and-three, if the bend had been taken out of his spine-but the woman was even taller, at least six-and-six.

Her face was not beautiful but almost savagely handsome. The face of a warrior.

The face of a gunslinger.

NINE

Had Moses Carver's spine been straight, he and Roland would have been eye-to-eye. As it was, Carver needed to look up slightly, which he did by cocking his head, birdlike. He seemed incapable of actually bending his neck; arthritis had locked it in place. His eyes were brown, the whites so muddy it was difficult to tell where the irises ended, and they were full of merry laughter behind their gold-rimmed spectacles. He still had the tiny white moustache.

"Roland of Gilead!" said he. "How I've longed to meet you, sir! I b'lieve it's what's kept me alive so long after John and Aaron passed. Let loose of me a minute, Marian, let loose!

There's something I have to do!"

Marian Carver let go of him and looked at Roland. He didn't hear her voice in his head and didn't need to; what she wanted to tell him was clear in her eyes: Catch him if he falls, sai.

But the man Susannah had called Daddy Mose didn't fall.

He put his loosely clenched, arthritic fist to his forehead, then bent his right knee, taking all of his weight on his trembling right leg. "Hile you last gunslinger, Roland Deschain out of Gilead, son of Steven and true descendent of Arthur Eld. I, the last of what was called among ourselves the Ka-Tet of the Rose, salute you."

Roland put his own fisted hand to his forehead and did more than make a leg; he went to his knee. "Hile Daddy Mose, godfather of Susannah, dinh of the Ka-Tet of the Rose, I salute you with my heart."

"Thankee," said the old man, and then laughed like a boy.

"We're well met in the House of the Rose! What was once meant to be the Grave of the Rose! Ha! Tell me we're not! Can you?"

"Nay, for it would be a lie."

"Speak it!" the old man cried, then uttered that cheery goto-

hell laugh once again. "But I'm f gettin my manners in my awe, gunslinger. This handsome stretch of woman standing beside me, it'd be natural for you to call her my granddaughter,

"cause I was sem'ty in the year she was born, which was nineteenand-

sixty-nine. But the truth is"-But'na troof is was what reached Roland's ear-"that sometimes the best things in life are started late, and having children"-Chirrun-"is one of m, in my opinion. Which is a long-winded way of saying this is my daughter, Marian Odetta Carver, President of the Tet Corporation since I stepped down in '97, at the age of ninety-eight.

And do you think it would frost some country-club balls, Roland, to know that this business, now worth just about ten billion dollars, is run by a Negro?" His accent, growing deeper as his excitement and joy grew, turned the last into Dis bid'ness, now wuthjus 'bout tin binnion dolla, is run bah NEE-grow?

"Stop, Dad," the tall woman beside him said. Her voice was kind but brooked no denial. 'You'll have that heart monitor you wear sounding the alarm if you don't, and this man's time is short."

"She run me like a ray'road!" the old man cried indignantly.

At the same time he turned his head slightly and dropped Roland a wink of inexpressible slyness and good humor with the eye his daughter could not see.

As if she wasn't onto your tricks, old man, Roland thought, amused even in his sorrow. As if she hasn't been on to them for many and many a year-say delah.

Marian Carver said, "We'd palaver with you for just a litde while, Roland, but first there's something I need to see."

"Ain't a bit o' need for that!" the old man said, his voice cracking with indignation. "Not a bit o' need, and you know it!

Did I raise ajackass?"

"He's very likely right," Marian said, "but always safe-"

"-never sorry," the gunslinger said. "It's a good rule, aye.

What is it you'd see? What will tell you that I am who I say I am, and you believe I am?"

"Your gun," she said.

Roland took the Old Home Days shirt out of the leather bag, then pulled out the holster. He unwrapped the shell-belt and pulled out his revolver with the sandalwood grips. He heard Marian Carver draw in a sharp, awed breath and chose to ignore it. He noticed that the two guards in their well-cut suits had drawn close, their eyes wide.

"You see it!" Moses Carver shouted. "Aye, every one of you here! Say God\ Might as well tell your gran-babbies you saw Excalibur, the Sword of Arthur, for't comes to the same!"

Roland held his father's revolver out to Marian. He knew she would need to take it in order to confirm who he was, that she must do this before leading him into the Tet Corporation's soft belly (where the wrong someone could do terrible damage), but for a moment she was unable to fulfill her responsibility.

Then she steeled herself and took the gun, her eyes widening at the weight of it. Careful to keep all of her fingers away from the trigger, she brought the barrel up to her eyes and then traced a bit of the scrollwork near the muzzle:

"Will you tell me what this means, Mr. Deschain?" she asked him.

"Yes," he said, "if you will call me Roland."

"If you ask, I'll try."

"This is Arthur's mark," he said, tracing it himself. "The only mark on the door of his tomb, do ya. 'Tis his dinh mark, and means WHITE."

The old man held out his trembling hands, silent but imperative.

"Is it loaded?" she asked Roland, and then, before he could answer: "Of course it is."

"Give it to him," Roland said.

Marian looked doubtful, the two guards even more so, but Daddy Mose still held his hands out for the widowmaker, and Roland nodded. The woman reluctandy held the gun out to her father. The old man took it, held it in both hands, and then did something that both warmed and chilled the gunslinger's heart: he kissed the barrel with his old, folded lips.

"What does thee taste?" Roland asked, honestly curious.

"The years, gunslinger," Moses Carver said. "So I do." And with that he held the gun out to the woman again, butt first.

She handed it back to Roland as if glad to be rid of its grave and killing weight, and he wrapped it once more in its belt of shells.

"Come in," she said. "And although our time is short, we'll make it as joyful as your grief will allow."

"Amen to that!" the old man said, and clapped Roland on the shoulder. "She's still alive, my Odetta-she you call Susannah.

There's that. Thought you'd be glad to know it, sir."

Roland was glad, and nodded his thanks.

"Come now, Roland," Marian Carver said. "Come and be welcome in our place, for it's your place as well, and we know the chances are good that you'll never visit it again."

TEN

Marian Carver's office was on the northwest corner of the ninety-ninth floor. Here the walls were all glass unbroken by a single strut or muntin, and the view took the gunslinger's breath away. Standing in that corner and looking out was like hanging in midair over a skyline more fabulous than any mind could imagine. Yet it was one he had seen before, for he recognized yonder suspension bridge as well as some of the tall buildings on this side of it. He should have recognized the bridge, for they'd almost died on it in another world. Jake had been kidnapped off it by Gasher, and taken to the Tick-Tock Man. This was the City of Lud as it must have been in its prime.

"Do you call it New York?" he asked. 'You do, yes?"

"Yes," Nancy Deepneau said.

"And yonder bridge, that swoops?"

"The George Washington," Marian Carver said. "Or just the GWB, if you're a native."

So yonder lay not only the bridge which had taken them into Lud but the one beside which Pere Callahan had walked when he left New York to start his wandering days. That Roland remembered from his story, and very well.

"Would you care for some refreshment?" Nancy asked.

He began to say no, took stock of how his head was swimming, and changed his mind. Something, yes, but only if it would sharpen wits that needed to be sharp. "Tea, if you have it," he said. "Hot, strong tea, with sugar or honey. Can you?"

"We can," Marian said, and pushed a button on her desk.

She spoke to someone Roland couldn't see, and all at once the woman in the outer office-the one who had appeared to be talking to herself-made more sense to him.

When the ordering of hot drinks and sandwiches (what Roland supposed he would always think of as popkins) was done, Marian leaned forward and captured Roland's eye.

"We're well-met in New York, Roland, so I hope, but our time here isn't... isn't vital. And I suspect you know why."

The gunslinger considered this, then nodded. A trifle cautiously, but over the years he had built a degree of caution into his nature. There were others-Alain Johns had been one, Jamie DeCurry another-for whom a sense of caution had been inbred, but that had never been the case with Roland, whose tendency had been to shoot first and ask questions later.

"Nancy told you to read the plaque in the Garden of the Beam," Marian said. "Did-"

"Garden of the Beam, say Gawd!" Moses Carver interjected.

On the walk down the corridor to his daughter's office, he had picked a cane out of a faux elephant-foot stand, and now he thumped it on the expensive carpet for emphasis. Marian bore this patiently. "Say Gawd-bomb!"

"My father's recent friendship with the Reverend Harrigan, who holds court down below, has not been the high point in my life," Marian said with a sigh, "but never mind. Did you read the plaque, Roland?"

He nodded. Nancy Deepneau had used a different word-sign or sigul-but he understood it came to the same. "The letters changed into Great Letters. I could read it very well."

"And what did it say?"

"GIVEN BY THE TET CORPORATION, IN HONOR OF EDWARD CANTOR DEAN AND JOHN "JAKE" CHAMBERS." He paused. "Then it said 'Cam-a-cam-mal, Pria-toi, Gan delah,' which you might say as WHITE OVER RED, THUS GAN WILLS EVER."

"And to us it says GOOD OVER EVIL, THIS IS THE WILL OF GOD," Marian said.

"God be praised!" Moses Carver said, and thumped his cane. "May the Prim rise!"

There was a perfunctory knock at the door and then the woman from the outer desk came in, carrying a silver tray.

Roland was fascinated to see a small black knob suspended in front of her lips, and a narrow black armature that disappeared into her hair. Some sort of far-speaking device, surely. Nancy Deepneau and Marian Carver helped her set out steaming cups of tea and coffee, bowls of sugar and honey, a crock of cream. There was also a plate of sandwiches. Roland's stomach rumbled. He thought of his friends in the ground-no more popkins for them-and also of Irene Tassenbaum, sitting in the little park across the street, patiently waiting for him. Either thought alone should have been enough to kill his appetite, but his stomach once more made its impudent noise. Some parts of a man were conscienceless, a fact he supposed he had known since childhood. He helped himself to a popkin, dumped a heaping spoonful of sugar into his tea, then added honey for good measure. He would make this as brief as possible and return to Irene as soon as he could, but in the meantime...

"May it do you fine, sir," Moses Carver said, and blew across his coffee cup. "Over the teeth, over the gums, look out guts, here it comes! Hee!"

"Dad and I have a house on Montauk Point," said Marian, pouring cream into her own coffee, "and we were out there this past weekend. At around five-fifteen on Saturday afternoon, I got a call from one of the security people here. The Hammarskjold Plaza Association employs them, but the Tet Corporation pays them a bonus so we may know... certain things of interest, let's say... as soon as they occur. We've been watching that plaque in the lobby with extraordinary interest as the nineteenth of June approached, Roland. Would it surprise you to know that, until roughly quarter of five on that day, it read GIVEN BY THE TET CORPORATION, IN HONOR OF THE BEAM FAMILY, AND IN MEMORY OF GILEAD?"

Roland considered this, sipped his tea (it was hot and strong and good), then shook his head. "No."

She leaned forward, eyes gleaming. "And why do you say so?"

"Because until Saturday afternoon between four and five o'clock, nothing was sure. Even with the Breakers stopped, nothing was sure until Stephen King was safe." He glanced around at them. "Do you know about the Breakers?"

Marian nodded. "Not the details, but we know the Beam they were working to destroy is safe from them now, and that it wasn't so badly damaged it can't regenerate." She hesitated, then said: "And we know of your loss. Both of your losses.

We're ever so sorry, Roland."

"Those boys are safe in the arms of Jesus," Marian's father said. "And even if they ain't, they're together in the clearing."

Roland, who wanted to believe this, nodded and said thankya. Then he turned back to Marian. "The thing with the writer was very close. He was hurt, and badly. Jake died saving him. He put his body between King and the van-mobile that would have taken his life."

"King is going to live," Nancy said. "And he's going to write again. We have that on very good authority."

"Whose?"

Marian leaned forward. "In a minute," she said. "The point is, Roland, we believe it, we're sure of it, and King's safety over the next few years means that your work in the matter of the Beams is done: Ves'-Ka Gan."

Roland nodded. The song would continue.

"There's plenty of work for us ahead," Marian went on,

"thirty years' worth at least, we calculate, but-"

"But it's ourwork, not yours," Nancy said.

"You have this on the same 'good authority'?" Roland asked, sipping his tea. Hot as it was, he'd gotten half of the large cup inside of him already.

"Yes. Your quest to defeat the forces of the Crimson King has been successful. The Crimson King himself-"

"That wa'n't never this man's quest and you know it!" the centenarian sitting next to die handsome black woman said, and he once more thumped his cane for emphasis. "His quest-"

"Dad, that's enough." Her voice was hard enough to make the old man blink.

"Nay, let him speak," Roland said, and they all looked at him, surprised by (and a little afraid of) that dry whipcrack. "Let him speak, for he says true. If we're going to have it out, let us have it all out. For me, the Beams have always been no more than means to an end. Had they broken, the Tower would have fallen. Had die Tower fallen, I should never have gained it, and climbed to the top of it."

"You're saying you cared more for the Dark Tower than for the continued existence of the universe," Nancy Deepneau said. She spoke in a just-let-me-make-sure-I've-got-this-right voice and looked at Roland with a mixture of wonder and contempt.

"For the continued existence of all the universes."

"The Dark Tower is existence," Roland said, "and I have sacrificed many friends to reach it over the years, including a boy who called me father. I have sacrificed my own soul in the bargain, lady-sai, so turn thy impudent glass another way. May you do it soon and do it well, I beg."

His tone was polite but dreadfully cold. All the color was dashed from Nancy Deepneau's face, and the teacup in her hands trembled so badly that Roland reached out and plucked it from her hand, lest it spill and burn her.

"Take me not amiss," he said. "Understand me, for we'll never speak more. What was done was done in both worlds, well and ill, for ka and against it. Yet there's more beyond all worlds than you know, and more behind them than you could ever guess. My time is short, so let's move on."

"Well said, sir!" Moses Carver growled, and thumped his cane again.

"If I offended, I'm truly sorry," Nancy said.

To this Roland made no reply, for he knew she was not sorry a bit-she was only afraid of him. There was a moment of uncomfortable silence that Marian Carver finally broke.

"We don't have any Breakers of our own, Roland, but at the ranch in Taos we employ a dozen telepaths and precogs.

What they make together is sometimes uncertain but always greater than the sum of its parts. Do you know the term "good-mind'?"

The gunslinger nodded.

"They make a version of that," she said, "although I'm sure it's not so great or powerful as that the Breakers in Thunderclap were able to produce."

"B'cause they had hundreds," the old man grumped. "And they were better fed."

"Also because the servants of the King were more than willing to kidnap any who were particularly powerful," Nancy said, "they always had what we'd call 'the pick of the litter.' Still, ours have served vis well enough."

"Whose idea was it to put such folk to work for you?"

Roland asked.

"Strange as it might seem to you, partner," Moses said, "it was Cal Tower. He never contributed much-never did much but elect his books and drag his heels, greedy highfalutin whitebread sumbitch that he was-"

His daughter gave him a warning look. Roland found he had to struggle to keep a straight face. Moses Carver might be a hundred years old, but he had pegged Calvin Tower in a single phrase.

"Anyway, he read about putting tellypaths to work in a bunch of science fiction books. Do you know about science fiction?"

Roland shook his head.

"Well, ne'mine. Most of it's bullshit, but every now and then a good idear crops up. Listen to me and I'll tell you a good

"un. You'll understand if you know what Tower and your friend Mist' Dean talked about twenty-two years ago, when Mist' Dean come n saved Tower from them two honky thugs."

"Dad," Marian said warningly. 'You quit with the nigger talk, now. You're old but not stupid."

He looked at her; his muddy old eyes gleamed with malicious good cheer; he looked back at Roland and once more came that sly droop of a wink. "Them two honky dago thugs!"

"Eddie spoke of it, yes," Roland said.

The slur disappeared from Carver's voice; his words became crisp. "Then you know they spoke of a book called The Hogan, by Benjamin Slightman. The title of the book was misprinted, and so was the writer's name, which was just the sort of thing that turned old fatty's dials."

"Yes," Roland said. The title misprint had been The Dogan, a phrase that had come to have great meaning to Roland and his tet.

"Well, after your friend came to visit, Cal Tower got interested in that fella all over again, and it turned out he'd written four other books under the name of Daniel Holmes. He was as white as a Klansman's sheet, this Slightman, but the name he chose to write his other books under was the name of Odetta's father. And I bet that don't surprise you none, does it?"

"No," Roland said. It was just one more faint click as the combination-dial of ka turned.

"And all the books he wrote under the Holmes name were science fiction yarns, about the government hiring tellypaths and precogs to find things out. And that's where we got the idea." He looked at Roland and gave his cane a triumphant thump. "There's more to the tale, a good deal, but I don't guess you've got the time. That's what it all comes back to, isn't it? Time. And in this world it only runs one way." He looked wistful.

"I'd give a great lot, gunslinger, to see my goddaughter again, but I don't guess that's in the cards, is it? Unless we meet in the clearing."

"I think you say true," Roland told him, "but I'll take her word of you, and how I found you still full of hot spit and fire-"

"Say God, say Gawd-bombl" the old man interjected, and thumped his cane. "Tell it, brother! And see that you tell her!"

"So I will." Roland finished the last of his tea, then put the cup on Marian Carver's desk and stood with a supporting hand on his right hip as he did. It would take him a long time to get used to the lack of pain there, quite likely more time than he had. "And now I must take my leave of you. There's a place not far from here where I need to go."

"We know where," Marian said. "There'll be someone to meet you when you arrive. The place has been kept safe for you, and if the door you seek is still there and still working, you'll go through it."

Roland made a slight bow. "Thankee-sai."

"But sit a few moments longer, if you will. We have gifts for you, Roland. Not enough to pay you back for all you've done-whether doing it was your first purpose or not-but things you may want, all the same. One's news from our good-mind folk in Taos. One's from more..." She considered. "... more normal researchers, folks who work for us in this very building. They call themselves the Calvins, but not because of any religious bent. Perhaps it's a little homage to Mr. Tower, who died of a heart attack in his new shop nine years ago. Or perhaps it's only a joke."

"A bad one if it is," Moses Carver grumped.

"And then there are two more... from us. From Nancy, and me, and my Dad, and one who's gone on. Will you sit a little longer?"

And although he was anxious to be off, Roland did as he was asked. For the first time since Jake's death, a true emotion other than sorrow had risen in his mind.

Curiosity.

ELEVEN

"First, the news from the folks in New Mexico," Marian said when Roland had resumed his seat. "They have watched you as well as they can, and although what they saw Thunder-side was hazy at best, they believe that Eddie told Jake Chambers something-perhaps something of importance-not long before he died. Likely as he lay on the ground, and before he... I don't know..."

"Before he slipped into twilight?" Roland suggested.

"Yes," Nancy Deepneau agreed. "We think so. That is to say, they think so. Our version of the Breakers."

Marian gave her a little frown that suggested this was a lady who did not appreciate being interrupted. Then she returned her attention to Roland. "Seeing things on this side is easier for our people, and several of them are quite sure-not positive but quite sure-that Jake may have passed this message on before he himself died." She paused. "This woman you're traveling with, Mrs. Tannenbaum-"

"Tassenbaum," Roland corrected. He did it without thinking, because his mind was otherwise occupied. Furiously so.

"Tassenbaum," Marian agreed. "She's undoubtedly told you some of what Jake told her before he passed on, but there may be something else. Not a thing she's holding back, but something she didn't recognize as important. Will you ask her to go over what Jake said to her once more before you and she part company?"

"Yes," Roland said, and of course he would, but he didn't believe Jake had passed on Eddie's message to Mrs. Tassenbaum.

No, not to her. He realized that he'd hardly thought of Oy since they'd parked Irene's car, but Oy had been with them, of course; would now be lying at Irene's feet as she sat in the little park across the street, lying in the sun and waiting for him.

"All right," she said. "That's good. Let's move on."

Marian opened the wide center drawer of her desk. From it she brought out a padded envelope and a small wooden box.

The envelope she handed to Nancy Deepneau. The box she placed on the desktop in front of her.

"This next is Nancy's to tell," she said. "And I'd just ask you to be brief, Nancy, because this man looks very anxious to be off."

"Tell it," Moses said, and thumped his cane.

Nancy glanced at him, then at Roland... or in the vicinity of him, anyway. Color was climbing in her cheeks, and she looked flustered. "Stephen King," she said, then cleared her throat and said it again. From there she didn't seem to know how to go on. Her color burned even deeper beneath her skin.

"Take a deep breath," Roland said, "and hold it."

She did as he told her.

"Now let it out."

And this, too.

"Now tell me what you would, Nancy niece of Aaron."

"Stephen King has written nearly forty books," she said, and although the color remained in her cheeks (Roland supposed he would find out what it signified soon enough), her voice was calmer now. "An amazing number of them, even the very early ones, touch on the Dark Tower in one way or another.

It's as though it was always on his mind, from the very first."

"You say what I know is true," Roland told her, folding his hands, "I say thankya."

This seemed to calm her even further. "Hence the Calvins,"

she said. "Three men and two women of a scholarly bent who do nothing from eight in the morning until four in the afternoon but read the works of Stephen King."

"They don't just read them," Marian said. "They crossreference them by settings, by characters, by themes-such as they are-even by mention of popular brand-name products."

"Part of their work is looking for references to people who live or did live in the Keystone World," Nancy said. "Real people, in other words. And references to the Dark Tower, of course." She handed him the padded envelope and Roland felt the corners of what could only be a book inside. "If King ever wrote a keystone book, Roland-outside the Dark Tower series itself, I mean-we think it must be this one."

The flap of the envelope was held by a clasp. Roland looked askance at both Marian and Nancy. They nodded. The gunslinger opened the clasp and pulled out an extremely thick volume with a cover of red and white. There was no picture on it, only Stephen King's name and a single word.

Red for the King, White for Arthur Eld, he thought. White over Red, thus Gan wills ever.

Or perhaps it was just a coincidence.

, "What is this word?" Roland asked, tapping the title.

"Insomnia," Nancy said. "It means-"

"I know what it means," Roland said. "Why do you give me the book?"

"Because the story hinges on the Dark Tower," Nancy said,

"and because there's a character in it named Ed Deepneau. He happens to be the villain of the piece."

The villain of the piece, Roland thought. No wonder her color rose.

"Do you have anyone by that name in your family?" he asked her.

"We did," she said. "In Bangor, which is the town King is writing about when he writes about Derry, as he does in this book.

The real Ed Deepneau died in 1947, the year King was born. He was a bookkeeper, as inoffensive as milk and cookies. The one in Insomnia is a lunatic who falls under the power of the Crimson King. He attempts to turn an airplane into a bomb and crash it into a building, killing thousands of people."

"Pray it never happens," the old man said gloomily, looking out at the New York City skyline. "God knows it could."

"In the story the plan fails," Nancy said. "Although some people are killed, the main character in the book, an old man named Ralph Roberts, manages to keep the absolute worst from happening."

Roland was looking intently at Aaron Deepnau's grandniece.

"The Crimson King is mentioned in here? By actual name?"

"Yes," she said. "The Ed Deepneau in Bangor-the real. Deepneau-was a cousin of my father's, four or five times removed. The Calvins could show you the family tree if you wanted, but there really isn't much of a connection to Uncle Aaron's part of it. We think King may have used the name in the book as a way of getting your attention-or ours-without even realizing what he was doing."

"A message from his undermind," the gunslinger mused.

Nancy brightened. "His subconscious, yes! Yes, that's exactly what we think!"

It wasn't exactly what Roland was thinking. The gunslinger had been recalling how he had hypnotized King in the year of 1977; how he had told him to listen for Ves'-Ka Gan, the Song of the Turtle. Had King's undermind, the part of him that would never have stopped trying to obey the hypnotic command, put part of the Song of the Turde in this book? A book the Servants of the King might have neglected because it wasn't part of the

"Dark Tower Cycle"? Roland thought that could be, and that the name Deepneau might indeed be a sigul. But-

"I can't read this," he said. "A word here and a word there, perhaps, but no more."

"You can't, but my girl can," Moses Carver said. "My girl Odetta, that you call Susannah."

Roland nodded slowly. And although he had already begun to have his doubts, his mind nevertheless cast up a brilliant image of the two of them sitting close by a fire-a large one, for the night was cold-with Oy between. In the rocks above them the wind howled bitter notes of winter, but they cared not, for their bellies were full, their bodies were warm, dressed in the skins of animals they had killed themselves, and they had a story to entertain them.

Stephen King's story of insomnia.

"She'll read it to you on the trail," Moses said. "On your last trail, say God!"

Yes, Roland thought. One last story to hear, one last trail to follow.

The one that leads to Can '-Ka No Rey, and the Dark Tower. "Or it would be nice to think so," Nancy said, "In the story, the Crimson King is using Ed Deepneau to kill one single child, a boy named Patrick Danville.

Just before the attack, while Patrick and his mother are waiting for a woman to make a speech, the boy draws a picture, one that shows you, Roland, and the Crimson King, apparently imprisoned at the top of the Dark Tower."

Roland started in his seat. "The top? Imprisoned at the top?"

"Easy," Marian said. "Take it easy, Roland. The Calvins have been analyzing King's work for years, every word and every reference, and everything they produce gets forwarded to the good-mind folken in New Mexico. Although these two groups have never seen each other, it would be perfectly correct to say that they work together."

"Not that they're always in agreement," Nancy said.

"They sure aren't!n Marian spoke in the exasperated tone of one who's had to referee more than her share of squabbles. "But one thing that they are in agreement about is that King's references to the Dark Tower are almost always masked, and sometimes mean nothing at all."

Roland nodded. "He speaks of it because his undermind is always thinking of it, but sometimes he lapses into gibberish."

"Yes," Nancy said.

"But obviously you don't think this entire book is a false trail, or you would not want to give it to me."

"Indeed we do not," Nancy said. "But that doesn't mean the Crimson King is necessarily imprisoned at the top of the Tower.

Although I suppose it might."

Roland thought of his own belief that the Red King was locked out of the Tower, on a kind of balcony. Was it a genuine intuition, or just something he wanted to believe?

"In any case, we think you should watch for this Patrick Danville," Marian said. "The consensus is that he's a real person, but we haven't been able to find any trace of him here.

Perhaps you may find him in Thunderclap."

"Or beyond it," Moses put in.

Marian was nodding. "According to the story King tells in Insomnia-you'll see for yourself-Patrick Danville dies as a young man. But that may not be true. Do you understand?"

"I'm not sure I do."

"When you find Patrick Danville-or when he finds you-he may still be the child described in this book," Nancy said, "or he could be as old as Uncle Mose."

"Bad luck Fhim if that be true!" said the old man, and chortled.

Roland lifted the book, stared at the red and white cover, traced the slighdy raised letters that made a word he could not read. "Surely it's just a story?"

"From the spring of 1970, when he typed the line The man in black fled across the desert and the guns linger followed," Marian Carver said, "very few of the things Stephen King wrote were

"just stories.' He may not believe that; we do."

But years of dealing with the Crimson King may have left you with a way of jumping at shadows, do it please ya, Roland thought.

Aloud he said, "If not stories, what?"

It was Moses Carver who answered. "We think maybe messages in bottles." In the way he spoke this word-boh'uls, almost-Roland heard a heartbreaking echo of Susannah, and suddenly wanted to see her and know she was all right. This desire was so strong it left a bitter taste on his tongue.

"-that great sea."

"Beg your pardon," the gunslinger said. "I was wool-gathering."

"I said we believe that Stephen King's cast his botdes upon that great sea. The one we call the Prim. In hopes that they'll reach you, and the messages inside will make it possible for you and my Odetta to gain your goal."

"Which brings us to our final gifts," Marian said. "Our true gifts. First..." She handed him the box.

It opened on a hinge. Roland placed his left hand splayed over the top, meaning to swing it back, then paused and studied his interlocutors. They were looking at him with hope and suspenseful interest, an expression that made him uneasy. A mad

(but surprisingly persuasive) idea came to him: that these were in truth agents of the Crimson King, and when he opened the box, the last thing he'd see would be a primed sneetch, counting down the last few clicks to red zero. And the last sound he'd hear before the world blew up around him would be their mad laughter and a cry of Hile the Red King! It wasn't impossible, either, but a point came where one had to trust, because the alternative was madness.

If ka will say so, let it be so, he thought, and opened the box.

TWELVE

Within, resting on dark blue velvet (which diey might or might not have known was the color of the Royal Court of Gilead), was a watch within a coiled chain. Engraved upon its gold cover were three objects: a key, a rose, and-between and slightly above them-a tower with tiny windows marching around its circumference in an ascending spiral.

Roland was amazed to find his eyes once more filling with tears. When he looked at the others again-two young women and one old man, the brains and guts of the Tet Corporation-he at first saw six instead of three. He blinked the phantom doubles away.

"Open the cover and look inside," Moses Carver said. "And there's no need to hide your tears in this company, you son of Steven, for we're not the machines the others would replace us with, if they had their way."

Roland saw that the old man spoke true, for tears were slipping down the weathered darkness of his cheeks. Nancy Deepneau was also weeping freely. And aldiough Marian Carver no doubt prided herself on being made of sterner stuff, her eyes held a suspicious gleam.

He depressed the stem protruding from the top of the case, and the lid sprang up. Inside, finely scrolled hands told the hour and the minute, and with perfect accuracy, he had no doubt. Below, in its own small circle, a smaller hand raced away the seconds. Carved on the inside of the lid was this:

To the Hand of ROLAND DESCHAIN

From Those of MOSES ISAAC CARVER

MARIAN ODETTA CARVER

NANCY REBECCA DEEPNEAU

With Our Gratitude White Over Red,Thus GOD Wills Ever

"Thankee-sai," Roland said in a hoarse and trembling voice.

"I thank you, and so would my friends, were they here to speak."

"In our hearts they do speak, Roland," Marian said. "And in your face we see them very well."

Moses Carver was smiling. "In our world, Roland, giving a man a gold watch has a special significance."

"What would that be?" Roland asked. He held the watch-easily die finest timepiece he'd ever had in his life-up to his ear and listened to the precise and delicate ticking of its machinery.

"That his work is done and it's time for him to go fishing or play with his grandchildren," Nancy Deepneau said. "But we gave it to you for a different reason. May it count the hours to your goal and tell you when you near it."

"How can it do that?"

"We have one exceptional good-mind fellow in New Mexico,"

Marian said. "His name is Fred Towne. He sees a great deal and is rarely if ever mistaken. This watch is a Patek Philippe,

Roland. It cost nineteen thousand dollars, and the makers guarantee a full refund of the price if it's ever fast or slow. It needs no winding, for it runs on a battery-not made by North Central Positronics or any subsidiary thereof, I can assure you-that will last a hundred years. According to Fred, when you near the Dark Tower, the watch may nevertheless stop."

"Or begin to run backward," Nancy said. "Watch for it."

Moses Carver said, "I believe you will, won't you?"

"Aye," Roland agreed. He put the watch carefully in one pocket (after another long look at the carvings on the golden cover) and the box in another. "I will watch diis watch very well."

"You must watch for something else, too," Marian said.

"Mordred."

Roland waited.

"We have reason to believe that he's murdered the one you called Walter." She paused. "And I see that does not surprise you. May I ask why?"

"Walter's finally left my dreams, just as the ache has left my hip and my head," Roland said. "The last time he visited them was in Calla Bryn Sturgis, the night of the Beamquake." He would not tell them how terrible those dreams had been, dreams in which he wandered, lost and alone, down a dank castle corridor with cobwebs brushing his face; the scuttering sound of something approaching from the darkness behind him

(or perhaps above him), and, just before waking up, the gleam of red eyes and a whispered, inhuman voice: "Father."

They were looking at him grimly. At last Marian said:

"Beware him, Roland. Fred Towne, the fellow I mentioned, says

"Mordred be a-hungry.' He says that's a literal hunger. Fred's a brave man, but he's afraid of your... your enemy."

My son, why don't you say it? Roland thought, but believed he knew. She withheld out of care for his feelings.

Moses Carver stood and set his cane beside his daughter's desk. "I have one more thing for you," he said, "on'y it was yours all along-yours to carry and lay down when you get to where you're bound."

Roland was honesdy perplexed, and more perplexed still when the old man began to slowly unbutton his shirt down the front. Marian made as if to help him and he motioned her away brusquely. Beneath his dress-shirt was an old man's strap-style undershirt, what the gunslinger thought of as a slinkum.

Beneath it was a shape that Roland recognized at once, and his heart seemed to stop in his chest. For a moment he was cast back to die cabin on the lake-Beckhardt's cabin, Eddie by his side-and heard his own words: Put Auntie's cross around your neck, and when you meet with sai Carver, show it to him. It may go a long way toward convincing him you 're on the straight. But first...

The cross was now on a chain of fine gold links. Moses Carver pulled it free of his slinkum by this, looked at it for a moment, looked up at Roland widi a little smile on his lips, then down at the cross again. He blew upon it. Faint and faint, raising the hair on the gunslinger's arms, came Susannah's voice:

"We buried Pimsey under the apple tree..."

Then it was gone. For a moment there was nothing, and Carver, frowning now, drew in breath to blow again. There was no need. Before he could, John Cullum's Yankee drawl arose, not from the cross itself, but seemingly from the air just above it.

"We done our best, partner"-paaa't-nuh-"and I hope 'twas good enough. Now, I always knew this was on loan to me, and here it is, back where it belongs. You know where it finishes up, I... "Here the words, which had been fading ever since here it is, became inaudible even to Roland's keen ears. Yet he had heard enough. He took Aunt Talitha's cross, which he had promised to lay at the foot of the Dark Tower, and donned it once more. It had come back to him, and why would it not have done? Was ka not a wheel?

"I thank you, sai Carver," he said. "For myself, for my ka-tet that was, and on behalf of the woman who gave it to me."

"Don't thank me," Moses Carver said. "ThankJohnny Cullum.

He give it to me on his deathbed. That man had some hard bark on him."

"I-" Roland began, and for a moment could say no more.

His heart was too full. "I thank you all," he said at last. He bowed his head to them with the palm of his right fist against his brow and his eyes closed.

When he opened them again, Moses Carver was holding out his thin old arms. "Now it's time for us to go our way and you to go yours," he said. "Put your arms around me, Roland, and kiss my cheek in farewell if you would, and think of my girl as you do, for I'd say goodbye to her if I may."

Roland did as he was bid, and in another world, as she dozed aboard a train bound for Fedic, Susannah put a hand to her cheek, for it seemed to her that Daddy Mose had come to her, and put an arm around her, and bid her goodbye, good luck, good journey.

THIRTEEN

When Roland stepped out of the ele-vaydor in the lobby, he wasn't surprised to see a woman in a gray-green pullover and slacks the color of moss standing in front of the garden with a few other quietly respectful folken. An animal which was not quite a dog sat by her left shoe. Roland crossed to her and touched her elbow. Irene Tassenbaum turned to him, her eyes wide with wonder.

"Do you hear it?" she asked. "It's like the singing we heard in Lovell, only a hundred times sweeter."

"I hear it," he said. Then he bent and picked up Oy. He looked into the bumbler's bright gold-ringed eyes as the voices sang. "Friend of Jake," he said, "what message did he give?"

Oy tried, but the best he could manage was something that sounded like Dandy-o, a word Roland vaguely remembered from an old drinking song, where it rimed with Adelina says she's randy-o.

Roland put his forehead down against Oy's forehead and closed his eyes. He smelled the bumbler's warm breath. And more: a scent deep in his fur that was the hay into which Jake and Benny Slightman had taken turns jumping not so long before. In his mind, mingled with the sweet singing of those voices, he heard the voice of Jake Chambers for the last time:

Tell him Eddie says, "Watch for Dandelo. "Don't forget!

And Oy had not.

FOURTEEN

Outside, as they descended the steps of 2 Hammarskjold Plaza, a deferential voice said, "Sir? Madam?"

It was a man in a black suit and a soft black cap. He stood by the longest, blackest car Roland had ever seen. Looking at it made the gunslinger uneasy.

"Who's sent us a funeral bucka?" he asked.

Irene Tassenbaum smiled. The rose had refreshed her-excited and exhilarated her, as well-but she was still tired. And concerned to get in touch with David, who would likely be out of his mind with worry by this time.

"It's not a hearse," she said. "It's a limousine. A car for special people... or people who think they're special." Then, to the driver: "While we're riding, can you have someone in your office check some airline info for me?"

"Of course, madam. May I ask your carrier of choice and your destination?"

"My destination's Portland, Maine. My carrier of choice is Rubberband Airlines, if they're going there this afternoon."

The limousine's windows were smoked glass, the interior dim and ringed with colored lights. Oy jumped up on one of the seats and watched with interest as the city rolled past. Roland was mildly amazed to see that there was a completely stocked liquorbar on one side of the long passenger compartment. He thought of having a beer and decided that even such a mild drink would be enough to dim his own lights. Irene had no such worries. She poured herself what looked like whiskey from a small bottle and then held the glass toward him.

"May your road wind ever upward and the wind be ever at your back, me foine bucko," she said.

Roland nodded. "A good toast. Thankee-sai."

"These have been the most amazing three days of my life. I want to thankee-sai you. For choosing me." Also for laying me, she thought but did not add. She and Dave still enjoyed the occasional snuggle, but not like that of the previous night. It had never been like that. And if Roland hadn't been distracted?

Very likely she would have blown her silly self up, like a Black Cat firecracker.

Roland nodded and watched the streets of the city-a version of Lud, but still young and vital-go by. "What about your car?" he asked.

"If we want it before we come back to New York, we'll have someone drive it up to Maine. Probably David's Beemer will do us. It's one of the advantages of being wealthy-why are you looking at me that way?"

"You have a cartomobile called a Beamer?"

"It's slang," she said. "It's actually BMW. Stands for Bavarian Motor Works."

"Ah." Roland tried to look as if he understood.

"Roland, may I ask you a question?"

He twirled his hand for her to go ahead.

"When we saved the writer, did we also save the world? We did, somehow, didn't we?"

"Yes," he said.

"How does it happen that a writer who's not even very good-and I can say that, I've read four or five of his books-gets to be in charge of the world's destiny? Or of the entire universe's?"

"If he's not very good, why didn't you stop at one?"

Mrs. Tassenbaum smiled. "Touche. He is readable, I'll give him that-tells a good story, but has a tin ear for language. I answered your question, now answer mine. God knows there are writers who feel that the whole world hangs on what they say.

Norman Mailer comes to mind, also Shirley Hazzard and John Updike. But apparently in this case the world really does. How did it happen?"

Roland shrugged. "He hears the right voices and sings the right songs. Which is to say, ka."

It was Irene Tassenbaum's turn to look as though she understood.

FIFTEEN

The limousine drew up in front of a building with a green awning out front. Another man in another well-cut suit was standing by the door. The steps leading up from the sidewalk were blocked with yellow tape. There were words printed on it which Roland couldn't read.

"It says CRIME SCENE, DO NOT ENTER," Mrs. Tassenbaum told him. "But it looks like it's been there awhile. I think they usually take the tape down once they're finished with their cameras and little brushes and things. You must have powerful friends."

Roland was sure the tape had indeed been there awhile; three weeks, give or take. That was when Jake and Pere Callahan had entered the Dixie Pig, positive they were going to their deaths but pushing ahead anyway. He saw there was a little puddle of liquor left in Irene's glass and swallowed it, grimacing at the hot taste of the alcohol but relishing the burn on the way down.

"Better?" she asked.

"Aye, thanks." He reset the bag with the Orizas in it more firmly on his shoulder and got out with Oy at his heel. Irene paused to talk to the driver, who seemed to have been successful in making her travel arrangements. Roland ducked beneath the tape and then just stood where he was for a moment, listening to the honk and pound of the city on this bright June day, relishing its adolescent vitality. He would never see another city, of that much he was almost positive. And perhaps that was just as well. He had an idea that after New York, all others would be a step down.

The guard-obviously someone who worked for the Tet Corporation and not this city's constabulary-joined him on the walk. "If you want to go in there, sir, there's something you should show me."

Roland once more took his gunbelt from the pouch, once more unwrapped it from the holster, once more drew his father's gun. This time he did not offer to hand it over, nor did that gentleman ask to take it. He only examined the scrollwork, particularly that at the end of the barrel. Then he nodded respectfully and stepped back. "I'll unlock the door. Once you go inside, you're on your own. You understand that, don't you?"

Roland, who had been on his own for most of his life, nodded.

Irene took his elbow before he could move forward, turned him, and put her arms around his neck. She had also bought herself a pair of low-heeled shoes, and only needed to tilt her head back slightly in order to look into his eyes.

"You take care of yourself, cowboy." She kissed him briefly on the mouth-the kiss of a friend-and then knelt to stroke Oy. "And take care of the little cowboy, too."

"I'll do my best," Roland said. "Will you remember your promise about Jake's grave?"

"A rose," she said. "I'll remember."

"Thankee." He looked at her a moment longer, consulted the workings of his own inner instincts-hunch-think-and came to a decision. From the bag containing the Orizas, he took the envelope containing the bulky book... the one Susannah would never read to him on the trail, after all. He put it in Irene's hands.

She looked at it, frowning. "What's in here? Feels like a book."

"Yar. One by Stephen King. Insomnia, it's called. Has thee read that one?"

She smiled a bit. "No, thee hasn't. Has thee?"

"No. And won't. It feels tricksy to me."

"I don't understand you."

"It feels... thin." He was thinking of Eyebolt Canyon, in Mejis.

She hefted it. "Feels pretty goddamned thick to me. A Stephen King book for sure. He sells by the inch, America buys by the pound."

Roland only shook his head.

Irene said, "Never mind. I'm being smart because Ree doesn't do goodbyes well, never has. You want me to keep this, right?"

"Yes."

"Okay. Maybe when Big Steve gets out of the hospital, I'll get him to sign it. The way I look at it, he owes me an autograph."

"Or a kiss," Roland said, and took another for himself.

With the book out of his hands, he felt somehow lighter. Freer.

Safer. He drew her fully into his arms and hugged her. Irene Tassenbaum returned his strength with her own.

Then Roland let her go, touched his forehead lightly with his fist, and turned to the door of the Dixie Pig. He opened it and slipped inside with no look back. That, he had found, was ever the easiest way.

SIXTEEN

The chrome post which had been outside on the night Jake and Pere Callahan had come here had been put in the lobby for safekeeping. Roland stumbled against it, but his reflexes were as quick as ever and he grabbed it before it could fall over. He read the sign on top slowly, sounding the words out and getting the sense of only one: CLOSED. The orange electric flambeaux which had lit the dining room were off but the battery-powered emergency lights were on, filling the area beyond the lobby and the bar with a flat glare. To the left was an arch and another dining room beyond it. There were no emergency lights there; that part of the Dixie Pig was as dark as a cave. The light from the main dining room seemed to creep in about four feet-just far enough to illuminate the end of a long table-and then fall dead. The tapestry of which Jake had spoken was gone. It might be in the evidence room of the nearest police station, or it might already have joined some collector's trove of oddities.

Roland could smell the faint aroma of charred meat, vague and unpleasant.

In the main dining room, two or three tables were overturned.

Roland saw stains on the red rug, several dark ones that were almost certainly blood and a yellowish curd that was... something else.

H'rozv it aside! Nasty bauble of the 'heep-God, h'row it aside if you dare!

And the Pere's voice, echoing dimly in Roland's ears, unafraid: / needn't stake my faith on the challenge of such a thing as you, sai The Pere. Another of those he had left behind.

Roland thought briefly of the scrimshaw turde that had been hidden in the lining of the bag they had found in the vacant lot, but didn't waste time looking for it. If it had been here, he thought he would have heard its voice, calling to him in the silence. No, whoever had appropriated die tapestry of the vampire-knights at dinner had very likely taken the skoldpadda as well, not knowing what it was, only knowing it was something strange and wonderful and otherworldly. Too bad. It might have come in handy.

The gunslinger moved on, weaving his way among the tables with Oy trotting at his heel.

SEVENTEEN

He paused in die kitchen long enough to wonder what the constabulary of New York had made of it. He was willing to bet diey had never seen another like it, not in this city of clean machinery and bright electric lights. This was a kitchen in which Hax, the cook he remembered best from his youth (and beneath whose dead feet he and his best friend had once scattered bread for die birds), would have felt at home. The cookfires had been out for weeks, but the smell of the meat that had been roasted here-some of the variety known as long pork-was strong and nasty. There were more signs of trouble here, as well

(a scum-caked pot lying on the green tiles of the floor, blood which had been burned black on one of the stovetops), and Roland could imagine Jake fighting his way through the kitchen.

But not in panic; no, not he. Instead he had paused to demand directions of the cook's boy.

What's your name, cully?

Jochabim, that be I, son of Hossa.

Jake had told them this part of his story, but it was not memory that spoke to Roland now. It was the voices of the dead.

He had heard such voices before, and knew them for what they were.

EIGHTEEN

Oy took the lead as he had done the last time he had been here.

He could still smell Ake's scent, faint and sorrowful. Ake had gone on ahead now, but not so very far; he was good, Ake was good, Ake would wait, and when the time came-when the j ob Ake had given him was done-Oy would catch up and go with him as before. His nose was strong, and he would find fresher scent than this when the time came to search for it. Ake had saved him from death, which did not matter. Ake had saved him from loneliness and shame after Oy had been cast out by the tet of his kind, and that did.

In the meantime, there was this j ob to finish. He led the man Olan into the pantry. The secret door to the stairs had been closed, but the man Olan felt patiently along the shelves of cans and boxes until he found the way to open it. All was as it had been, the long, descending stair dimly lit by overhead bulbs, the scent damp and overlaid with mold. He could smell the rats which scuttered in the walls; rats and other things, too, some of them bugs of the sort he had killed the last time he and Ake had come here. That had been good killing, and he would gladly have more, if more were offered. Oy wished the bugs would show themselves again and challenge him, but of course they didn't. They were afraid, and they were right to be afraid, for ever had his kind stood enemy to theirs.

He started down the stairs with the man Olan following behind.

NINETEEN

They passed the deserted kiosk with its age-yellowed signs (NEW YORK SOUVENIRS, LAST CHANCE, a n d VISIT SEPTEMBER 11, 2001), and fifteen minutes later-Roland checked his new watch to be sure of the time-they came to a place where there was a good deal of broken glass on the dusty corridor floor. Roland picked Oy up so he wouldn't cut the pads of his feet. On both walls he saw the shattered remains of what had been glass-covered hatches of some kind. When he looked in, he saw complicated machinery. They had almost caught Jake here, snared him in some kind of mind-trap, but once again Jake had been clever enough and brave enough to get through. He survived everything but a man too stupid and too careless to do the simple job of driving his bucka on an empty road, Roland thought bitterly. And the man who brought him there-that man, too. Then Oy barked at him and Roland realized that in his anger at Bryan Smith (and at himself), he was squeezing the poor little fellow too tightly.

"Cry pardon, Oy," he said, and put him down.

Oy trotted on without making any reply, and not long after Roland came to the scattered bodies of the boogers who had harried his boy from the Dixie Pig. Here also, printed in the dust that coated the floor of this ancient corridor, were the tracks he and Eddie had made when they arrived. Again he heard a ghost-voice, this time that of the man who had been the harriers' leader.

I know your name by your face, and your face by your mouth. 'Tis the same as the mouth of your mother, who did suck John Farson with such glee.

Roland turned the body over with the toe of his boot (a hume named Flaherty, whose da' had put a fear of dragons in his head, had the gunslinger known or cared... which he did not) and looked down into the dead face, which was already growing a crop of mold. Next to him was the stoat-head taheen whose final proclamation had been Be damned to you, then, chary-ka. And beyond the heaped bodies of these two and their mates was the door that would take him out of the Keystone World for good.

Assuming that it still worked.

Oy trotted to it and sat down before it, looking back at Roland. The bumbler was panting, but his old, amiably fiendish grin was gone. Roland reached the door and placed his hands against the close-grained ghostwood. Deep within he felt a low and troubled vibration. This door was still working but might not be for much longer.

He closed his eyes and thought of his mother bending over him as he lay in his little bed (how soon before he had been promoted from the cradle he didn't know, but surely not long), her face a patchwork of colors from the nursery windows, Gabrielle Deschain who would later die at those hands which she caressed so lightly and lovingly with her own; daughter of Candor the Tall, wife of Steven, mother of Roland, singing him to sleep and dreams of those lands only children know.

Baby-bunting, baby-dear,

Baby, bring your berries here.

Chussit, chissit, chassit!

Bring enough to fill your basket!

So far I've traveled, he thought with his hands splayed on the ghostwood door. So far I've traveled and so many I've hurt along the way, hurt or killed, and what I may have saved was saved by accident and can never save my soul, do I have one. Yet there's this much: I've come to the head of the last trail, and I need not travel it alone, if only Susannah loillgo with me. Mayhap there's still enough to fill my basket.

"Chassit," Roland said, and opened his eyes as the door opened. He saw Oy leap nimbly through. He heard the shrill scream of the void between the worlds, and then stepped through himself, sweeping the door shut behind him and still without a backward look.