Wolves of the Calla (The Dark Tower #5)

Wolves of the Calla (The Dark Tower #5) Page 24

ONE

Rising up from the darkness, dolorous and accusatory, came the voice of Henry Dean, the great sage and eminent junkie. "I'm in hell, bro! I'm in hell and I can't get a fix and it's all your fault !"

"How long will we have to be here, do you think?" Eddie asked Callahan. They had just reached the Doorway Cave, and the great sage's little bro was already shaking a pair of bullets in his right hand like dice - seven-come-eleven, baby need a little peace n quiet. It was the day after the big meeting, and when Eddie and the Pere had ridden out of town, the high street had seemed unusually quiet. It was almost as if the Calla was hiding from itself, overwhelmed by what it had committed itself to.

"I'm afraid it'll be awhile," Callahan admitted. He was neatly (and nondescriptly, he hoped) dressed. In the breast pocket of his shirt was all the American money they'd been able to put together: eleven crumpled dollars and a pair of quarters. He thought it would be a bitter joke if he turned up in a version of America where Lincoln was on the single and Washington on the fifties. "But we can do it in stages, I think."

"Thank God for small favors," Eddie said, and dragged the pink bag out from behind Tower's bookcase. He lifted it with both hands, began to turn, then stopped. He was frowning.

"What is it?" Callahan asked.

"There's something in here."

"Yes, the box."

"No, something in the bag . Sewn into the lining, I think. It feels like a little rock. Maybe there's a secret pocket."

"And maybe," Callahan said, "this isn't the time to investigate it."

Still, Eddie gave the object another small squeeze. It didn't feel like a stone, exactly. But Callahan was probably right. They had enough mysteries on their hands already. This one was for another day.

When Eddie slid the ghostwood box out of the bag, a sick dread invaded both his head and his heart. "I hate this thing. I keep feeling like it's going to turn on me and eat me like a... a taco-chip."

"It probably could," Callahan said. "If you feel something really bad happening, Eddie, shut the damn thing."

"Your ass would be stuck on the other side if I did."

"It's not as though I'm a stranger there," Callahan said, eyeing the unfound door. Eddie heard his brother; Callahan heard his mother, endlessly hectoring, calling him Donnie. He'd always hated being called Donnie. "I'll just wait for it to open again."

Eddie stuffed the bullets into his ears.

"Why are you letting him do that, Donnie?" Callahan's mother moaned from the darkness. "Bullets in your ears, that's dangerous!"

"Go on," Eddie said. "Get it done." He opened the box. The chimes attacked Callahan's ears. And his heart. The door to everywhere clicked open.

TWO

He went through thinking about two things: the year 1977 and the men's room on the main floor of the New York Public Library. He stepped into a bathroom stall with graffiti on the walls (BANGO SKANK had been there) and the sound of a flushing urinal somewhere to his left. He waited for whoever it was to leave, then stepped out of the stall.

It took him only ten minutes to find what he needed. When he stepped back through the door into the cave, he was holding a book under his arm. He asked Eddie to step outside with him, and didn't have to ask twice. In the fresh air and breezy sunshine (the previous night's clouds had blown away), Eddie took the bullets from his ears and examined the book. It was called Yankee Highways .

"The Father's a library thief," Eddie remarked. "You're exactly the sort of person who makes the fees go up."

"I'll return it someday," Callahan said. He meant it. "The important thing is I got lucky on my second try. Check page one-nineteen."

Eddie did. The photograph showed a stark white church sitting on a hill above a dirt road. East Stoneham Methodist Meeting Hall , the caption said. Built 1819 . Eddie thought: Add em, come out with nineteen. Of course .

He mentioned this to Callahan, who smiled and nodded. "Notice anything else?"

Of course he did. "It looks like the Calla Gathering Hall."

"So it does. Its twin, almost." Callahan took a deep breath. "Are you ready for round two?"

"I guess so."

"This one's apt to be longer, but you should be able to pass the time. There's plenty of reading matter."

"I don't think I could read," Eddie said. "I'm too fucking nervous, pardon my French. Maybe I'll see what's in the lining of the bag."

But Eddie forgot about the object in the lining of the pink bag; it was Susannah who eventually found that, and when she did, she was no longer herself.

THREE

Thinking 1977 and holding the book open to the picture of the Methodist Meeting Hall in East Stoneham, Callahan stepped through the unfound door for the second time. He came out on a brilliantly sunny New England morning. The church was there, but it had been painted since its picture had been taken for Yankee Highways , and the road had been paved. Sitting nearby was a building that hadn't been in the photo: the East Stoneham General Store. Good.

He walked down there, followed by the floating doorway, reminding himself not to spend one of the quarters, which had come from his own little stash, unless he absolutely had to. The one from Jake was dated 1969, which was okay. His, however, was from 1981, and that wasn't. As he walked past the Mobil gas pumps (where regular was selling for forty-nine cents a gallon), he transferred it to his back pocket.

When he entered the store - which smelled almost exactly like Took's - a bell jingled. To the left was a stack of Portland Press-Heralds , and the date gave him a nasty little shock. When he'd taken the book from the New York Public Library, not half an hour ago by his body's clock, it had been June 26th. The date on these papers was the 27th.

He took one, reading the headlines (a flood in New Orleans, the usual unrest among the homicidal idiots of the mideast) and noting the price: a dime. Good. He'd get change back from his '69 quarter. Maybe buy a piece of good old Made in the U.S.A. salami. The clerk looked him over with a cheerful eye as he approached the counter.

"That do it?" he asked.

"Well, I tell you what," Callahan said. "I could use a point toward the post office, if that does ya."

The clerk raised an eyebrow and smiled. "You sound like you're from these parts."

"Do you say so, then?" Callahan asked, also smiling.

"Ayuh. Anyway, post office is easy. Ain't but a mile down this road, on your left." He pronounced road rud , exactly as Jamie Jaffords might have done.

"Good enough. And do you sell salami by the slice?"

"I'll sell it just about any old way you want to buy it," the clerk said amiably. "Summer visitor, are you?" It came out summah visitah , and Callahan almost expected him to add Tell me, I beg .

"You could call me that, I guess," Callahan said.

FOUR

In the cave, Eddie fought against the faint but maddening jangle of the chimes and peered through the half-open door. Callahan was walking down a country road. Goody gumdrops for him. Meantime, maybe Mrs. Dean's little boy would try having himself a bit of a read. With a cold (and slightly trembling) hand, he reached into the bookcase and pulled out a volume two down from one that had been turned upside down, one that would certainly have changed his day had he happened to grab it. What he came up with instead was Four Short Novels of Sherlock Holmes . Ah, Holmes, another great sage and eminent junkie. Eddie opened to A Study in Scarlet and began to read. Every now and then he found himself looking down at the box, where Black Thirteen pulsed out its weird force. He could just see a curve of glass. After a little bit he gave up trying to read, only looking at the curve of glass, growing more and more fascinated. But the chimes were fading, and that was good, wasn't it? After a little while he could hardly hear them at all. A little while after that, a voice crept past the bullets in his ears and began to speak to him. Eddie listened.

FIVE

"Pardon me, ma'am."

"Ayuh?" The postmistress was a woman in her late fifties or early sixties, dressed to meet the public with hair of a perfect beauty-shop blue-white.

"I'd like to leave a letter for some friends of mine," Callahan said. "They're from New York, and they'd likely be General Delivery customers." He had argued with Eddie that Calvin Tower, on the run from a bunch of dangerous hoods who would almost certainly still want his head on a stick, wouldn't do anything so dumb as sign up for mail. Eddie had reminded him of how Tower had been about his fucking precious first editions, and Callahan had finally agreed to at least try this.

"Summer folk?"

"Do ya," Callahan agreed, but that wasn't quite right. "I mean ayuh. Their names are Calvin Tower and Aaron Deepneau. I guess that isn't information you're supposed to give someone just in off the street, but - "

"Oh, we don't bother much about such things out in these parts," she said. Parts came out pahts . "Just let me check the list... we have so many between Memorial Day and Labor Day..."

She picked up a clipboard with three or four tattered sheets of paper on it from her side of the counter. Lots of handwritten names. She flicked over the first sheet to the second, then from the second to the third.

"Deepneau!" she said. "Ayuh, there's that one. Now...just let me see if I can find't'other 'un..."

"Never mind," Callahan said. All at once he felt uneasy, as though something had gone wrong back on the other side. He glanced over his shoulder and saw nothing but the door, and the cave, and Eddie sitting there cross-legged with a book in his lap.

"Got somebody chasin ya?" the postlady asked, smiling.

Callahan laughed. It sounded forced and stupid to his own ears, but the postlady seemed to sense nothing wrong. "If I were to write Aaron a note and put it in a stamped envelope, would you see that he gets it when he comes in? Or when Mr. Tower comes in?"

"Oh, no need to buy a stamp," said she, comfortably. "Glad to do it."

Yes, it was like the Calla. Suddenly he liked this woman very much. Liked her big-big.

Callahan went to the counter by the window (the door doing a neat do-si-do around him when he turned) and jotted a note, first introducing himself as a friend of the man who had helped Tower with Jack Andolini. He told Deepneau and Tower to leave their car where it was, and to leave some of the lights on in the place where they were staying, and then to move somewhere close by - a barn, an abandoned camp, even a shed. To do it immediately. Leave a note with directions to where you are under the driver's side floormat of your car, or under the back porch step , he wrote. We'll be in touch . He hoped he was doing this right; they hadn't talked things out this far, and he'd never expected to have to do any cloak-and-dagger stuff. He signed as Roland had told him to: Callahan, of the Eld . Then, in spite of his growing unease, he added another line, almost slashing the letters into the paper: And make this trip to the post office your LAST. How stupid can you be ???

He put the note in an envelope, sealed it, and wrote AARON DEEPNEAU OR CALVIN TOWER, GENERAL DELIVERY On the front.

He took it back to the counter. "I'll be happy to buy a stamp," he told her again.

"Nawp, just two cent' for the envelope and we're square."

He gave her the nickel left over from the store, took back his three cents change, and headed for the door. The ordinary one.

"Good luck to ye," the postlady called.

Callahan turned his head to look at her and say thanks. He caught a glimpse of the unfound door when he did, still open. What he didn't see was Eddie. Eddie was gone.

SIX

Callahan turned to that strange door as soon he was outside the post office. Ordinarily you couldn't do that, ordinarily it swung with you as neatly as a square-dance partner, but it seemed to know when you intended to step back through. Then you could face it.

The minute he was back the todash chimes seized him, seeming to etch patterns on the surface of his brain. From the bowels of the cave his mother cried, "There-now, Donnie, you've gone and let that nice boy commit suicide! He'll be in purgie forever, and it's your fault!"

Callahan barely heard. He dashed to the mouth of the cave, still carrying the Press-Herald he'd bought in the East Stoneham General Store under one arm. There was just time to see why the box hadn't closed, leaving him a prisoner in East Stoneham, Maine, circa 1977: there was a thick book sticking out of it Callahan even had time to read the title, Four Short Novels of Sherlock Holmes . Then he burst out into sunshine.

At first he saw nothing but the boulder on the path leading up to the mouth of the cave, and was sickeningly sure his mother's voice had told the truth. Then he looked left and saw Eddie ten feet away, at the end of the narrow path and tottering on the edge of the drop. His untucked shirt fluttered around the butt of Roland's big revolver. His normally sharp and rather foxy features now looked puffy and blank. It was the dazed face of a fighter out on his feet. His hair blew around his ears. He swayed forward... then his mouth tightened and his eyes became almost aware. He grasped an outcrop of rock and swayed back again.

He's fighting it , Callahan thought. And I'm sure he's fighting the good fight, but he's losing .

Calling out might actually send him over the edge; Callahan knew this with a gunslinger's intuition, always sharpest and most dependable in times of crisis. Instead of yelling he sprinted up the remaining stub of path and wound a hand in the tail of Eddie's shirt just as Eddie swayed forward again, this time removing his hand from the outcrop beside him and using it to cover his eyes in a gesture that was unmeaningly comic: Goodbye, cruel world .

If the shirt had torn, Eddie Dean would undoubtedly have been excused from ka's great game, but perhaps even the tails of homespun Calla Bryn Sturgis shirts (for that was what he was wearing) served ka. In any case the shirt didn't tear, and Callahan had held onto a great part of the physical strength he had built up during his years on the road. He yanked Eddie back and caught him in his arms, but not before the younger man's head struck the outcrop his hand had been on a few seconds before. His lashes fluttered and he looked at Callahan with a kind of stupid unrecognition. He said something that sounded like gibberish to Callahan: Ihsay ahkin fly-oo ower .

Callahan grabbed his shoulders and shook him. "What? I don't understand you!" Nor did he much want to, but he had to make some kind of contact, had to bring Eddie back from wherever the accursed thing in the box had taken him. "I don't... understand you ?

This time the response was clearer: "It says I can fly to the Tower. You can let me go. I want to go!"

"You can't fly, Eddie." He wasn't sure that got through, so he put his head down - all the way, until he and Eddie were resting brow to brow, like lovers. "It was trying to kill you."

"No..." Eddie began, and then awareness came all the way back into his eyes. An inch from Callahan's own, they widened in understanding. "Yes ."

Callahan lifted his head, but still kept a prudent grip on Eddie's shoulders. "Are you all right now?"

"Yeah. I guess so, at least. I was going along good, Father. Swear I was. I mean, the chimes were doing a number on me, but otherwise I was fine. I even grabbed a book and started to read." He looked around. 'Jesus, I hope I didn't lose it. Tower'll scalp me."

"You didn't lose it. You stuck it partway into the box, and it's a damned good thing you did. Otherwise the door would have shut and you'd be strawberry jam about seven hundred feet down."

Eddie looked over the edge and went completely pale. Callahan had just time enough to regret his frankness before Eddie vomited on his new shor'boots.

SEVEN

"It crept up on me, Father," he said when he could talk. "Lulled me and then jumped." "Yes."

"Did you get anything at all out of your time over there?"

"If they get my letter and do what it says, a great deal. You were right. Deepneau at least signed up for General Delivery. About Tower, I don't know." Callahan shook his head angrily.

"I think we're gonna find that Tower talked Deepneau into it," Eddie said. "Cal Tower still can't believe what he's gotten himself into, and after what just happened to me - almost happened to me - I've got some sympathy for that kind of thinking." He looked at what Callahan still had clamped under one arm. "What's that?"

"The newspaper," Callahan said, and offered it to Eddie. "Care to read about Golda Meir?"

EIGHT

Roland listened carefully that evening as Eddie and Callahan recounted their adventures in the Doorway Cave and beyond. The gunslinger seemed less interested in Eddie's near-death experience than he was in the similarities between Calla Bryn Sturgis and East Stoneham. He even asked Callahan to imitate the accent of the storekeeper and the postlady. This Callahan (a former Maine resident, after all) was able to do quite well.

"Do ya," said Roland, and then: "Ayuh. Do ya, ayuh." He sat thinking, one bootheel cocked up on the rail of the rectory porch.

"Will they be okay for awhile, do you think?" Eddie asked.

"I hope so," Roland replied. "If you want to worry about someone's life, worry about Deepneau's. If Balazar hasn't given up on the vacant lot, he has to keep Tower alive. Deepneau's nothing but a Watch Me chip now."

"Can we leave them until after the Wolves?"

"I don't see what choice we have."

"We could drop this whole business and go over there to East Overshoe and protect him!" Eddie said heatedly. "How about that? Listen, Roland, I'll tell you exactly why Tower talked his friend into signing up for General Delivery: somebody's got a book he wants, that's why. He was dickering for it and negotiations had reached the delicate stage when I showed up and persuaded him to head for the hills. But Tower... man, he's like a chimp with a handful of grain. He won't let go. If Balazar knows that, and he probably does, he won't need a zip code to find his man, just a list of the people Tower did business with. I hope to Christ that if there was a list, it burned up in the fire."

Roland was nodding. "I understand, but we can't leave here. We're promised."

Eddie thought it over, sighed, and shook his head. "What the hell, three and a half more days over here, seventeen over there before the deal-letter Tower signed expires. Things'll probably hold together that long." He paused, biting his lip. "Maybe."

"Is maybe the best we can do?" Callahan asked.

"Yeah," Eddie said. "For the time being, I guess it is."

NINE

The following morning, a badly frightened Susannah Dean sat in the privy at the foot of the hill, bent over, waiting for her current cycle of contractions to pass. She'd been having them for a little over a week now, but these were by far the strongest. She put her hands on her lower belly. The flesh there was alarmingly hard.

Oh dear God, what if I'm having it right now? What if this is it?

She tried to tell herself this couldn't be it, her water hadn't broken and you couldn't go into genuine labor until that happened. But what did she actually know about having babies? Very little. Even Rosalita Munoz, a midwife of great experience, wouldn't be able to help her much, because Rosa's career had been delivering human babies, of mothers who actually looked pregnant. Susannah looked less pregnant now than when they'd first arrived in the Calla. And if Roland was right about this baby -

It's not a baby. It's a chap, and it doesn't belong to me. It belongs to Mia, whoever she is. Mia, daughter of none .

The cramps ceased. Her lower belly relaxed, losing that stony feel. She laid a finger along the cleft of her vagina. It felt the same as ever. Surely she was going to be all right for another few days. She had to be. And while she'd agreed with Roland that there should be no more secrets in their ka-tet, she felt she had to keep this one. When the fighting finally started, it would be seven against forty or fifty. Maybe as many as seventy, if the Wolves stuck together in a single pack. They would have to be at their very best, their most fiercely concentrated. That meant no distractions. It also meant that she must be there to take her place.

She yanked up her jeans, did the buttons, and went out into the bright sunshine, absently rubbing at her left temple. She saw the new lock on the privy - just as Roland had asked - and began to smile. Then she looked down at her shadow and the smile froze. When she'd gone into the privy, her Dark Lady had stretched out nine-in-the-morning long. Now she was saying that if noon wasn't here, it would be shortly.

That's impossible. I was only in there a few minutes. Long enough to pee.

Perhaps that was true. Perhaps it was Mia who had been in there the rest of the time.

"No," she said. "That can't be so."

But Susannah thought it was. Mia wasn't ascendant - not yet - but she was rising. Getting ready to take over, if she could.

Please , she prayed, putting one hand out against the privy wall to brace herself. Just three more days, God. Give me three more days as myself, let us do our duty to the children of this place, and then what You will. Whatever You will. But please  -

"Just three more," she murmured. "And if they do us down out there, it won't matter noway. Three more days, God. Hear me, I beg."

TEN

A day later, Eddie and Tian Jaffords went looking for Andy and came upon him standing by himself at the wide and dusty junction of East and River Roads, singing at the top of his...

"Nope," Eddie said as he and Tian approached, "can't say lungs, he doesn't have lungs."

"Cry pardon?" Tian asked.

"Nothing," Eddie said. "Doesn't matter." But, by the process of association - lungs to general anatomy - a question had occurred to him. "Tian, is there a doctor in the Calla?"

Tian looked at him with surprise and some amusement. "Not us, Eddie. Gut-tossers might do well for rich folks who have the time to go and the money to pay, but when us gets sick, we go to one of the Sisters."

"The Sisters of Oriza."

"Yar. If the medicine's good - it usually be - we get better. If it ain't, we get worse. In the end the ground cures all, d'ye see?"

"Yes," Eddie said, thinking how difficult it must be for them to fit roont children into such a view of things. Those who came back roont died eventually, but for years they just... lingered.

"There's only three boxes to a man, anyro'," Tian said as they approached the solitary singing robot. Off in the eastern distance, between Calla Bryn Sturgis and Thunderclap, Eddie could see scarves of dust rising toward the blue sky, aluiough it was perfecdy still where they were.

"Boxes?"

"Aye, say true," Tian said, then rapidly touched his brow, his breast, and his butt. "Headbox, titbox, shitbox." And he laughed heartily.

"You say that?" Eddie asked, smiling.

"Well... out here, between us, it does fine," Tian said, "although I guess no proper lady'd hear the boxes so described at her table." He touched his head, chest, and bottom again. "Thoughtbox, heartbox, ki'box."

Eddie heard key . "What's that last one mean? What kind of key unlocks your ass?"

Tian stopped. They were in plain view of Andy, but the robot ignored them completely, singing what sounded like opera in a language Eddie couldn't understand. Every now and then Andy held his arms up or crossed them, the gestures seemingly part of the song he was singing.

"Hear me," Tian said kindly. "A man is stacked, do ye ken. On top is his thoughts, which is the finest part of a man."

"Or a woman," Eddie said, smiling.

Tian nodded seriously. "Aye, or a woman, but we use man to stand for both, because woman was born of man's breath, kennit"

"Do you say so?" Eddie asked, thinking of some women's-lib types he'd met before leaving New York for Mid-World. He doubted they'd care for that idea much more than for the part of the Bible that said Eve had been made from Adam's rib.

"Let it be so," Tian agreed, "but it was Lady Oriza who gave birth to the first man, so the old folks will tell you. They say Can-ah, can-tah, annah, Oriza : 'All breath comes from the woman.' "

"So tell me about these boxes."

"Best and highest is the head, with all the head's ideas and dreams. Next is the heart, with all our feelings of love and sadness and joy and happiness - "

"The emotions."

Tian looked both puzzled and respectful. "Do you say so?"

"Well, where I come from we do, so let it be so."

"Ah." Tian nodded as if the concept were interesting but only borderline comprehensible. This time instead of touching his bottom, he patted his crotch. "In the last box is all what we'd call low-commala: have a fuck, take a shit, maybe want to do someone a meanness for no reason."

"And if you do have a reason?"

"Oh, but then it wouldn't be meanness, would it?" Tian asked, looking amused. "In that case, it'd come from the heart-box or the head-box."

"That's bizarre," Eddie said, but he supposed it wasn't, not really. In his mind's eye he could see three neatly stacked crates: head on top of heart, heart on top of all the animal functions and groundless rages people sometimes felt. He was particularly fascinated by Tian's use of the word meanness , as if it were some kind of behavioral landmark. Did that make sense, or didn't it? He would have to consider it carefully, and this wasn't the time.

Andy still stood gleaming in the sun, pouring out great gusts of song. Eddie had a vague memory of some kids back in the neighborhood, yelling out I'm the Barber of Seville-a, You must try my fucking skill-a and then running away, laughing like loons as they went.

"Andy!" Eddie said, and the robot broke off at once.

"Hile, Eddie, I see you well! Long days and pleasant nights!"

"Same to you," Eddie said. "How are you?"

"Fine, Eddie!" Andy said fervently. "I always enjoy singing before the first seminon."

"Seminon?"

"It's what we call the windstorms that come before true winter," Tian said, and pointed to the clouds of dust far beyond the Whye. "Yonder comes the first one; it'll be here either the day of Wolves or the day after, I judge."

"The day of, sai," said Andy. " 'Seminon comin, warm days go runnin.' So they say." He bent toward Eddie. Clickings came from inside his gleaming head. His blue eyes flashed on and off. "Eddie, I have cast a great horoscope, very long and complex, and it shows victory against the Wolves! A great victory, indeed! You will vanquish your enemies and then meet a beautiful lady!"

"I already have a beautiful lady," Eddie said, trying to keep his voice pleasant. He knew perfectly well what those rapidly flashing blue lights meant; the son of a bitch was laughing at him. Well , he thought, maybe you'll be laughing on the other side of your face a couple of days from now, Andy. I certainly hope so .

"So you do, but many a married man has had his jilly, as I told sai tian jaffords not so long ago."

"Not those who love their wives," Tian said. "I told you so then and I tell you now."

"Andy, old buddy," Eddie said earnestly, "we came out here in hopes that you'd do us a solid on the night before the Wolves come. Help us a little, you know."

There were several clicking sounds deep in Andy's chest, and this time when his eyes flashed, they almost seemed alarmed. "I would if I could, sai," Andy said, "oh yes, there's nothing I like more than helping my friends, but there are a great many things I can't do, much as I might like to."

"Because of your programming."

"Aye." The smug so-happy-to-see-you tone had gone out of Andy's voice. He sounded more like a machine now. Yeah, that's his fallback position , Eddie thought. That's Andy being careful. You've seen em come and go, haven't you, Andy ? Sometimes they call you a useless bag of bolts and mostly they ignore you, but either way you end up walking over their bones and singing your songs, don't you ? But not this time, pal. No, I don't think so .

"When were you built, Andy? I'm curious. When did you roll off the old LaMerk assembly line?"

"Long ago, sai." The blue eyes flashing very slowly now. Not laughing anymore.

"Two thousand years?"

"Longer, I believe. Sai, I know a song about drinking that you might like, it's very amusing - "

"Maybe another time. Listen, good buddy, if you're thousands of years old, how is it that you're programmed concerning the Wolves?"

From inside Andy there came a deep, reverberant clunk, as though something had broken. When he spoke again, it was in the dead, emotionless voice Eddie had first heard on the edge of Mid-Forest. The voice of Bosco Bob when ole Bosco was getting ready to cloud up and rain all over you.

"What's your password, sai Eddie?"

"Think we've been down this road before, haven't we?"

"Password. You have ten seconds. Nine... eight... seven..."

"That password shit's very convenient for you, isn't it?"

"Incorrect password, sai Eddie."

"Kinda like taking the Fifth."

"Two... one... zero. You may retry once. Would you retry, Eddie?"

Eddie gave him a sunny smile. "Does the seminon blow in the summertime, old buddy?"

More clicks and clacks. Andy's head, which had been tilted one way, now tilted the other. "I do not follow you, Eddie of NewYork."

"Sorry. I'm just being a silly old human bean, aren't I? No, I don't want to retry. At least not right now. Let me tell you what we'd like you to help us with, and you can tell us if your programming will allow you to do it. Does that sound fair?"

"Fair as fresh air, Eddie."

"Okay." Eddie reached up and took hold of Andy's thin metal arm. The surface was smooth and somehow unpleasant to the touch. Greasy. Oily. Eddie held on nonetheless, and lowered his voice to a confidential level. "I'm only telling you this because you're clearly good at keeping secrets."

"Oh, yes, sai Eddie! No one keeps a secret like Andy!" The robot was back on solid ground and back to his old self, smug and complacent.

"Well..." Eddie went up on tiptoe. "Bend down here."

Servomotors hummed inside Andy's casing - inside what would have been his heartbox, had he not been a high-tech tinman. He bent down. Eddie, meanwhile, stretched up even further, feeling absurdly like a small boy telling a secret.

"The Pere's got some guns from our level of the Tower," he murmured. "Good ones."

Andy's head swiveled around. His eyes glared out with a brilliance that could only have been astonishment. Eddie kept a poker face, but inside he was grinning.

"Say true, Eddie?"

"Say thankya."

"Pere says they're powerful," Tian said. "If they work, we can use em to blow the living bugger out of the Wolves. But we have to get em out north of town... and they're heavy. Can you help us load em in a bucka on Wolfs Eve, Andy?"

Silence. Clicks and clacks.

"Programming won't let him, I bet," Eddie said sadly. "Well, if we get enough strong backs - "

"I can help you," Andy said. "Where are these guns, sais?"

"Better not say just now," Eddie replied. "You meet us at the Pere's rectory early on Wolf's Eve, all right?"

"What hour would you have me?"

"How does six sound?"

"Six o' the clock. And how many guns will there be? Tell me that much, at least, so I may calculate the required energy levels."

My friend, it takes a bullshitter to recognize bullshit , Eddie thought merrily, but kept a straight face. "There be a dozen. Maybe fifteen. They weigh a couple of hundred pounds each. Do you know pounds, Andy?"

"Aye, say thankya. A pound is roughly four hundred and fifty grams. Sixteen ounces. 'A pint's a pound, the world around.' Those are big guns, sai Eddie, say true! Will they shoot?"

"We're pretty sure they will," Eddie said. "Aren't we, Tian?"

Tian nodded. "And you'll help us?"

"Aye, happy to. Six o' the clock, at the rectory."

"Thank you, Andy," Eddie said. He started away, then looked back. "You absolutely won't talk about this, will you?"

"No, sai, not if you tell me not to."

"That's just what I'm telling you. The last thing we want is for the Wolves to find out we've got some big guns to use against em."

"Of course not," Andy said. "What good news this is. Have a wonderful day, sais."

"And you, Andy," Eddie replied. "And you."

ELEVEN

Walking back toward Tian's place - it was only two miles distant from where they'd come upon Andy - Tian said, "Does he believe it?"

"I don't know," Eddie said, "but it surprised the shit out of him - did you feel that?"

"Yes," Tian said. "Yes, I did."

"He'll be there to see for himself, I guarantee that much."

Tian nodded, smiling. "Your dinh is clever."

"That he is," Eddie agreed. "That he is."

TWELVE

Once more Jake lay awake, looking up at the ceiling of Benny's room. Once more Oy lay on Benny's bed, curved into a comma with his nose beneath his squiggle of tail. Tomorrow night Jake would be back at Father Callahan's, back with his ka-tet, and he couldn't wait. Tomorrow would be Wolfs Eve, but this was only the eve of Wolf's Eve, and Roland had felt it would be best for Jake to stay this one last night at the Rocking B. "We don't want to raise suspicions this late in the game," he'd said. Jake understood, but boy, this was sick. The prospect of standing against the Wolves was bad enough. The thought of how Benny might look at him two days from now was even worse.

Maybe we'll all get killed , Jake thought. Then I won't have to worry about it .

In his distress, this idea actually had a certain attraction.

"Jake? You asleep?"

For a moment Jake considered faking it, but something inside sneered at such cowardice. "No," he said. "But I ought to try, Benny. I doubt if I'll get much tomorrow night."

"I guess not ," Benny whispered back respectfully, and then: "You scared?"

" 'Course I am," Jake said. "What do you think I am, crazy?"

Benny got up on one elbow. "How many do you think you'll kill?"

Jake thought about it. It made him sick to think about it, way down in the pit of his stomach, but he thought about it anyway. "Dunno. If there's seventy, I guess I'll have to try to get ten."

He found himself thinking (with a mild sense of wonder) of Ms. Avery's English class. The hanging yellow globes with ghostly dead flies lying in their bellies. Lucas Hanson, who always tried to trip him when he was going up the aisle. Sentences diagrammed on the blackboard: beware the misplaced modifier. Petra Jesserling, who always wore A-line jumpers and had a crush on him (or so Mike Yanko claimed). The drone of Ms. Avery's voice. Outs at noon - what would be plain old lunch in a plain old public school. Sitting at his desk afterward and trying to stay awake. Was that boy, that neat Piper School boy, actually going out to the north of a farming town called Calla Bryn Sturgis to battle child-stealing monsters? Could that boy be lying dead thirty-six hours from now with his guts in a steaming pile behind him, blown out of his back and into the dirt by something called a sneetch? Surely that wasn't possible, was it? The housekeeper, Mrs. Shaw, had cut the crusts off his sandwiches and sometimes called him 'Bama. His father had taught him how to calculate a fifteen percent tip. Such boys surely did not go out to die with guns in their hands. Did they?

"I bet you get twenty!" Benny said. "Boy, I wish I could be with you! We'd fight side by side! Pow! Pow! Pow! Then we'd reload!"

Jake sat up and looked at Benny with real curiosity. "Would you?" he asked. "If you could?"

Benny thought about it. His face changed, was suddenly older and wiser. He shook his head. "Nah. I'd be scared. Aren't you really scared? Say true?"

"Scared to death," Jake said simply.

"Of dying?"

"Yeah, but I'm even more scared of fucking up."

"You won't."

Easy for you to say , Jake thought.

"If I have to go with the little kids, at least I'm glad my father's going, too," Benny said. "He's taking his bah. You ever seen him shoot?"

"No."

"Well, he's good with it. If any of the Wolves get past you guys, he'll take care of them. He'll find that gill-place on their chests, and pow!"

What if Benny knew the gill-place was a lie? Jake wondered. False information this boy's father would hopefully pass on? What if he knew -

Eddie spoke up in his head, Eddie with his wise-ass Brooklyn accent in full flower. Yeah, and if fish had bicycles, every fuckin river'd be the Tour de France .

"Benny, I really have to try to get some sleep."

Benny lay back down. Jake did the same, and resumed looking up at the ceiling. All at once he hated it that Oy was on Benny's bed, that Oy had taken so naturally to the other boy. All at once he hated everything about everything. The hours until morning, when he could pack, mount his borrowed pony, and ride back to town, seemed to stretch out into infinity.

"Jake?"

"What, Benny, what ?"

"I'm sorry. I just wanted to say I'm glad you came here. We had some fun, didn't we?"

"Yeah," Jake said, and thought: No one would believe he's older than me. He sounds about... I don't know... five, or something . That was mean, but Jake had an idea that if he wasn't mean, he might actually start to cry. He hated Roland for sentencing him to this last night at the Rocking B. "Yeah, fun big-big."

"I'm gonna miss you. But I'll bet they put up a statue of you guys in the Pavilion, or something." Guys was a word Benny had picked up from Jake, and he used it every chance he got.

"I'll miss you, too," Jake said.

"You're lucky, getting to follow the Beam and travel places. I'll probably be here in this shitty town the rest of my life."

No, you won't. You and your Da' are going to do plenty of wandering... if you're lucky and they let you out of town, that is. What you're going to do, I think, is spend the rest of your life dreaming about this shitty little town. About a place that was home. And it's my doing. I saw . . . and I told. But what else could I do ?

"Jake?"

He could stand no more. It would drive him mad. "Go to sleep, Benny. And let me go to sleep."

"Okay."

Benny rolled over to face the wall. In a little while his breathing slowed. A little while after that, he began snoring. Jake lay awake until nearly midnight, and then he went to sleep, too. And had a dream. In it Roland was down on his knees in the dust of East Road, facing a great horde of oncoming Wolves that stretched from the bluffs to the river. He was trying to reload, but both of his hands were stiff and one was short two fingers. The bullets fell uselessly in front of him. He was still trying to load his great revolver when the Wolves rode him down.

THIRTEEN

Dawn of Wolf's Eve. Eddie and Susannah stood at the window of the Pere's guest room, looking down the slope of lawn to Rosa's cottage.

"He's found something with her," Susannah said. "I'm glad for him."

Eddie nodded. "How you feeling?"

She smiled up at him. "I'm fine," she said, and meant it. "What about you, sugar?"

"I'll miss sleeping in a real bed with a roof over my head, and I'm anxious to get to it, but otherwise I'm fine, too."

"Things go wrong, you won't have to worry about the accommodations."

"That's true," Eddie said, "but I don't think they're going to go wrong. Do you?"

Before she could answer, a gust of wind shook the house and whistled beneath the eaves. The seminon saying good day to ya, Eddie guessed.

"I don't like that wind," she said. "It's a wild-card."

Eddie opened his mouth.

"And if you say anything about ka, I'll punch you in the nose."

Eddie closed his mouth again and mimed zipping it shut. Susannah went to his nose anyway, a brief touch of knuckles like a feather. "We've got a fine chance to win," she said. "They've had everything their own way for a long time, and it's made em fat. Like Blaine."

"Yeah. Like Blaine."

She put a hand on his hip and turned him to her. "But things could go wrong, so I want to tell you something while it's just the two of us, Eddie. I want to tell you how much I love you." She spoke simply, with no drama.

"I know you do," he said, "but I'll be damned if I know why."

"Because you make me feel whole," she said. "When I was younger, I used to vacillate between thinking love was this great and glorious mystery and thinking it was just something a bunch of Hollywood movie producers made up to sell more tickets back in the Depression, when Dish Night kind of played out."

Eddie laughed.

"Now I think that all of us are born with a hole in our hearts, and we go around looking for the person who can fill it. You... Eddie, you fill me up." She took his hand and began to lead him back to the bed. "And right now I'd like you to fill me up the other way."

"Suze, is it safe?"

"I don't know," she said, "and I don't care."

They made love slowly, the pace only building near the end. She cried out softly against his shoulder, and in the instant before his own climax blotted out reflection, Eddie thought: I'm going to lose her if I'm not careful. I don't know how I know that... but I do. She'll just disappear .

"I love you, too," he said when they were finished and lying side by side again.

"Yes." She took his hand. "I know. I'm glad."

"It's good to make someone glad," he said. "I didn't use to know that."

"It's all right," Susannah said, and kissed the corner of his mouth. "You learn fast."

FOURTEEN

There was a rocker in Rosa's little living room. The gunslinger sat in it naked, holding a clay saucer in one hand. He was smoking and looking out at the sunrise. He wasn't sure he would ever again see it rise from this place.

Rosa came out of the bedroom, also naked, and stood in the doorway looking at him. "How're y'bones, tell me, I beg?"

Roland nodded. "That oil of yours is a wonder."

'"Twon'tlast."

"No," Roland said. "But there's another world - my friends' world - and maybe they have something there that will. I've got a feeling we'll be going there soon."

"More fighting to do?"

"I think so, yes."

"You won't be back this way in any case, will you?"

Roland looked at her. "No."

"Are you tired, Roland?"

"To death," said he.

"Come back to bed a little while, then, will ya not?"

He crushed out his smoke and stood. He smiled. It was a younger man's smile. "Say thankya."

"Thee's a good man, Roland of Gilead."

He considered this, then slowly shook his head. "All my life I've had the fastest hands, but at being good I was always a little too slow."

She held out a hand to him. "Come ye, Roland. Come commala." And he went to her.

FIFTEEN

Early that afternoon, Roland, Eddie, Jake, and Pere Callahan rode out the East Road - which was actually a north road at this point along the winding Devar-Tete Whye - with shovels concealed in the bedrolls at the backs of their saddles. Susannah had been excused from this duty on account of her pregnancy. She had joined the Sisters of Oriza at the Pavilion, where a larger tent was being erected and preparations for a huge evening meal were already going forward. When they left, Calla Bryn Sturgis had already begun to fill up, as if for a Fair-Day. But there was no whooping and hollering, no impudent rattle of firecrackers, no rides being set up on the Green. They had seen neither Andy nor Ben Slightman, and that was good.

"Tian?" Roland asked Eddie, breaking the rather heavy silence among them.

"He'll meet me at the rectory. Five o'clock."

"Good," Roland said. "If we're not done out here by four, you're excused to ride back on your own."

"I'll go with you, if you like," Callahan said. The Chinese believed that if you saved a man's life, you were responsible for him ever after. Callahan had never given the idea much thought, but after pulling Eddie back from the ledge above the Doorway Cave, it seemed to him there might be truth in the notion.

"Better you stay with us," Roland said. "Eddie can take care of this. I've got another job for you out here. Besides digging, I mean."

"Oh? And what might that be?" Callahan asked.

Roland pointed at the dust-devils twisting and whirling ahead of them on the road. "Pray away this damned wind. And the sooner the better. Before tomorrow morning, certainly."

"Are you worried about the ditch?" Jake asked.

"The ditch'll be fine," Roland said. "It's the Sisters' Orizas I'm worried about. Throwing the plate is delicate work under the best of circumstances. If it's blowing up a gale out here when the Wolves come, the possibilities for things to go wrong - " He tossed his hand at the dusty horizon, giving it a distinctive (and fatalistic) Calla twist. "Delah ."

Callahan, however, was smiling. "I'll be glad to offer a prayer," he said, "but look east before you grow too concerned. Doya, I beg."

They turned that way in their saddles. Corn - the crop now over, the picked plants standing in sloping, skeletal rows - ran down to the rice-fields. Beyond the rice was the river. Beyond the river was the end of the borderlands. There, dust-devils forty feet high spun and jerked and sometimes collided. They made the ones dancing on their side of die river look like naughty children by comparison.

"The seminon often reaches the Whye and then turns back," Callahan said. "According to the old folks, Lord Seminon begs Lady Oriza to make him welcome when he reaches the water and she often bars his passage out of jealousy. You see - "

"Seminon married her sissa," Jake said. "Lady Riza wanted him for herself - a marriage of wind and rice - and she's still p.o.'d about it."

"How did you know that?" Callahan asked, both amused and astonished.

"Benny told me," Jake said, and said no more. Thinking of their long discussions (sometimes in the hayloft, sometimes lazing on the bank of the river) and their eager exchanges of legend made him feel sad and hurt.

Callahan was nodding. "That's the story, all right. I imagine it's actually a weather phenomenon - cold air over there, warm air rising off the water, something like that - but whatever it is, this one shows every sign of going back where it came from."

The wind dashed grit in his face, as if to prove him wrong, and Callahan laughed. "This'll be over by first light tomorrow, I almost guarantee you. But - "

"Almost's not good enough, Pere."

"What I was going to say, Roland, is that since I know almost's not good enough, I'll gladly send up a prayer."

"Tell ya thanks." The gunslinger turned to Eddie, and pointed the first two fingers of his left hand at his own face. "The eyes, right?"

"The eyes," Eddie agreed. "And the password. If it's not nineteen, it'll be ninety-nine."

"You don't know that for sure."

"I know," Eddie said.

"Still... be careful."

"I will."

A few minutes later they reached the place where, on their right, a rocky track wandered off into the arroyo country, toward the Gloria and Redbirds One and Two. The folken assumed that the buckas would be left here, and they were correct. They also assumed that the children and their minders would then walk up the track to one mine or the other. In this they were wrong.

Soon three of them were digging on the west side of the road, a fourth always standing watch. No one came - the folken from this far out were already in town - and the work went quickly enough. At four o'clock, Eddie left the others to finish up and rode back to town to meet Tian Jaffords with one of Roland's revolvers holstered on his hip.

SIXTEEN

Tian had brought his bah. When Eddie told him to leave it on the Pere's porch, the farmer gave him an unhappy, uncertain stare.

"He won't be surprised to see me packing iron, but he might have questions if he saw you with that thing," Eddie said. This was it, the true beginning of their stand, and now that it had come, Eddie felt calm. His heart was beating slowly and steadily. His vision seemed to have clarified; he could see each shadow cast by each individual blade of grass on the rectory lawn. "He's strong, from what I've heard. And very quick when he needs to be. Let it be my play."

"Then why am I here?"

Because even a smart robot won't expect trouble if I've got a clodhopper like you with me was the actual answer, but giving it wouldn't be very diplomatic.

"Insurance," Eddie said. "Come on."

They walked down to the privy. Eddie had used it many times during the last few weeks, and always with pleasure - there were stacks of soft grasses for the clean-up phase, and you didn't have to concern yourself with poison flurry - but he'd not examined the outside closely until now. It was a wood structure, tall and solid, but he had no doubt Andy could demolish it in short order if he really wanted to. If they gave him a chance to.

Rosa came to the back door of her cottage and looked out at them, holding a hand over her eyes to shield them from the sun. "How do ya, Eddie?"

"Fine so far, Rosie, but you better go back inside. There's gonna be a scuffle."

"Say true? I've got a stack of plates - "

"I don't think Rizas'd help much in this case," Eddie said. "I guess it wouldn't hurt if you stood by, though."

She nodded and went back inside without another word.

The men sat down, flanking the open door of the privy with its new bolt-lock. Tian tried to roll a smoke. The first one fell apart in his shaking fingers and he had to try again. "I'm not good at this sort of thing," he said, and Eddie understood he wasn't talking about the fine art of cigarette-making.

"It's all right."

Tian peered at him hopefully. "Do ya say so?"

"I do, so let it be so."

Promptly at six o'clock (The bastard's probably got a clock set tight down to millionths of a second inside him , Eddie thought), Andy came around the rectory-house, his shadow trailing out long and spidery on the grass in front of him. He saw them. His blue eyes flashed. He raised a hand in greeting. The setting sun reflected off his arm, making it look as though it had been dipped in blood. Eddie raised his own hand in return and stood up, smiling. He wondered if all the thinking-machines that still worked in this rundown world had turned against their masters, and if so, why.

"Just be cool and let me do the talking," he said out of the corner of his mouth.

"Yes, all right."

"Eddie!" Andy cried. "Tian Jaffords! How good to see you both! And weapons to use against the Wolves! My! Where are they?"

"Stacked in the shithouse," Eddie said. "We can get a wagon down here once they're out, but they're heavy... and there isn't much room to move around in there..."

He stood aside. Andy came on. His eyes were flashing, but not in laughter now. They were so brilliant Eddie had to squint -  it was like looking at flashbulbs.

"I'm sure I can get them out," Andy said. "How good it is to help! How often I've regretted how little my programming allows me to..."

He was standing in the privy door now, bent slightly at the thighs to get his metallic barrel of a head below the level of the jamb. Eddie drew Roland's gun. As always, the sandalwood grip felt smooth and eager against his palm.

"Cry your pardon, Eddie of New York, but I see no guns."

"No," Eddie agreed. "Me either. Actually all I see is a fucking traitor who teaches songs to the kids and then sends them to be - "

Andy turned with terrible liquid speed. To Eddie's ears the hum of the servos in his neck seemed very loud. They were standing less than three feet apart, point-blank range. "May it do ya fine, you stainless-steel bastard," Eddie said, and fired twice. The reports were deafening in the evening stillness. Andy's eyes exploded and went dark. Tian cried out.

"NO !"Andy screamed in an amplified voice. It was so loud that it made the gunshots seem no more than popping corks by comparison. "NO, MY EYES, I CAN'T SEE, OH NO, VISION ZERO, MY EYES, MY EYES - "

The scrawny stainless-steel arms flew up to the shattered sockets, where blue sparks were now jumping erratically. Andy's legs straightened, and his barrel of a head ripped through the top of the privy's doorway, throwing chunks of board left and right.

"NO, NO, NO, I CAN'T SEE, VISION ZERO, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME, AMBUSH, ATTACK, I'M BLIND, CODE 7, CODE 7, CODE 7!"

"Help me push him, Tian!" Eddie shouted, dropping the gun back into its holster. But Tian was frozen, gawking at the robot (whose head had now vanished inside the broken doorway), and Eddie had no time to wait. He lunged forward and planted his outstretched palms on the plate giving Andy's name, function, and serial number. The robot was amazingly heavy (Eddie's first thought was that it was like pushing a parking garage), but it was also blind, surprised, and off-balance. It stumbled backward, and suddenly the amplified words cut off. What replaced them was an unearthly shrieking siren. Eddie thought it would split his head. He grabbed the door and swung it shut. There was a huge, ragged gap at the top, but the door still closed flush. Eddie ran the new bolt, which was as thick as his wrist.

From within the privy, the siren shrieked and warbled.

Rosa came running with a plate in both hands. Her eyes were huge. "What is it? In the name of God and the Man Jesus, what is it ?"

Before Eddie could answer, a tremendous blow shook the privy on its foundations. It actually moved to the right, disclosing the edge of the hole beneath it.

"It's Andy," he said. "I think he just pulled up a horoscope he doesn't much care f - "

"YOU BASTARDS !" This voice was totally unlike Andy's usual three forms of address: smarmy, self-satisfied, or falsely subservient. "YOU BASTARDS! COZENING BASTARDS! I'LL KILL YOU I'M BLIND, OH, I'M BLIND, CODE 7! CODE 7!" The words ceased and the siren recommenced. Rosa dropped her plates and clapped her hands over her ears.

Another blow slammed against the side of the privy, and this time two of the stout boards bowed outward. The next one broke them. Andy's arm flashed through, gleaming red in the light, the four jointed fingers at the end opening and closing spasmodically. In the distance, Eddie could hear the crazy barking of dogs.

"He's going to get out, Eddie!" Tian shouted, grabbing Eddie's shoulder. "He's going to get out!"

Eddie shook the hand off and stepped to the door. There was another crashing blow. More broken boards popped off the side of the privy. The lawn was scattered with them now. But he couldn't shout against the wail of the siren, it was just too loud. He waited, and before Andy hammered the side of the privy again, it cut off.

"BASTARDS !" Andy screamed. "I'LL KILL YOU! DIRECTIVE 20, CODE 7! I'M BLIND, ZERO VISION, YOU COWARDLY - "

"Andy, Messenger Robot!" Eddie shouted. He had jotted the serial number on one of Callahan's precious scraps of paper, with Callahan's stub of pencil, and now he read it off. "DNF-44821-V-63! Password!"

The frenzied blows and amplified shouting ceased as soon as Eddie finished giving the serial number, yet even the silence wasn't silent; his ears still rang with the hellish shriek of the siren. There was a clank of metal and the click of relays. Then: "This is DNF-44821-V-63. Please give password." A pause, and then, tonelessly: "You ambushing bastard Eddie Dean of New York. You have ten seconds. Nine..."

"Nineteen," Eddie said through the door.

"Incorrect password." And, tin man or not, there was no mistaking the furious pleasure in Andy's voice. "Eight... seven..."

"Ninety-nine."

"Incorrect password." Now what Eddie heard was triumph. He had time to regret his insane cockiness out on the road. Time to see the look of terror which passed between Rosa and Tian. Time to realize the dogs were still barking.

"Five... four..."

Not nineteen; not ninety-nine. What else was there? What in the name of Christ turned the bastard off?

"... three..."

What flashed into his mind, as bright as Andy's eyes had been before Roland's big revolver turned them dark, was the verse scrawled on the fence around the vacant lot, spray-painted in dusty rose-pink letters: Oh SUSANNAH-MIO, divided girl of mine, Done parked her RIG in the DIXIE PIG, in the year of -

"... two..."

Not one or the other; both . Which was why the damned robot hadn't cut him off after a single incorrect try. He hadn't been incorrect, not exactly.

"Nineteen-ninety-nine !"'Eddie screamed through the door.

From behind it, utter silence. Eddie waited for the siren to start up again, waited for Andy to resume bashing his way out of the privy. He'd tell Tian and Rosa to run, try to cover them -

The voice that spoke from inside the battered building was colorless and flat: the voice of a machine. Both the fake smarminess and the genuine fury were gone. Andy as generations of Calla-folken had known him was gone, and for good.

"Thank you," the voice said. "I am Andy, a messenger robot, many other functions. Serial number DNF-44821-V-63. How may I help?"

"By shutting yourself down."

Silence from the privy.

"Do you understand what I'm asking?"

A small, horrified voice said, "Please don't make me. You bad man. Oh, you bad man."

"Shut yourself down now ."

A longer silence. Rosa stood with her hand pressed against her throat. Several men appeared around the side of the Pere's house, armed with various homely weapons. Rosa waved them back.

"DNF-44821-V-63, comply!"

"Yes, Eddie of New York. I will shut myself down." A horrible self-pitying sadness had crept into Andy's new small voice. It made Eddie's skin crawl. "Andy is blind and will shut down. Are you aware that with my main power cells ninety-eight per cent depleted, I may never be able to power up again?"

Eddie remembered the vast roont twins out at the Jaffords smallhold - Tia and Zalman - and then thought of all the others like them this unlucky town had known over the years. He dwelled particularly on the Tavery twins, so bright and quick and eager to please. And so beautiful. "Never won't be long enough," he said, "but I guess it'll have to do. Palaver's done, Andy. Shut down."

Another silence from within the half-busted privy. Tian and Rosa crept up to either side of Eddie and the three of them stood together in front of the locked door. Rosa gripped Eddie's forearm. He shook her off immediately. He wanted his hand free in case he had to draw. Although where he would shoot now that Andy's eyes were gone, he didn't know.

When Andy spoke again, it was in a toneless amplified voice that made Tian and Rosa gasp and step back. Eddie stayed where he was. He had heard a voice like this and words like this once before, in the clearing of the great bear. Andy's rap wasn't quite the same, but close enough for government work.

"DNF-44821-V-63 IS SHUTTING DOWN! ALL SUBNUCLEAR CELLS AND MEMORY CIRCUITS ARE IN SHUTDOWN PHASE! SHUTDOWN IS 13 PER CENT COMPLETE! I AM ANDY, MESSENGER ROBOT, MANY OTHER FUNCTIONS! PLEASE REPORT MY LOCATION TO LAMERK INDUSTRIES OR NORTH CENTRAL POSITRONICS, LTD! CALL 1-900-54! REWARD IS OFFERED! REPEAT, REWARD IS OFFERED!" There was a click as the message recycled. "DNF-44821-V-63 IS SHUTTING DOWN! ALL SUBNUCLEAR CELLS AND MEMORY CIRCUITS ARE IN SHUTDOWN PHASE! SHUTDOWN IS 19 PER CENT COMPLETE! I AM ANDY - "

"You were Andy," Eddie said softly. He turned to Tian and Rosa, and had to smile at their scared-children's faces. "It's all right," he said. "It's over. He'll go on blaring like that for awhile, and then he'll be done. You can turn him into a... I don't know... a planter, or something."

"I think we'll tear up the floor and bury him right there," Rosa said, nodding at the privy.

Eddie's smile widened and became a grin. He liked the idea of burying Andy in shit. He liked that idea very well.

SEVENTEEN

As dusk ended and night deepened, Roland sat on the edge of the bandstand and watched the Calla-folken tuck into their great dinner. Every one of them knew it might be the last meal they'd ever eat together, that tomorrow night at ths time their nice little town might lie in smoking ruins all about them, but still they were cheerful. And not, Roland thought, entirely for the sake of the children. There was great relief in finally deciding to do the right tiling. Even when folk knew the price was apt to be high, that relief came. A kind of giddiness. Most of these people would sleep on the Green tonight with their children and grandchildren in the tent nearby, and here they would stay, their faces turned to the northeast of town, waiting for the outcome of the battle. There would be gunshots, they reckoned (it was a sound many of them had never heard), and then the dust-cloud that marked the Wolves would either dissipate, turn back the way it had come, or roll on toward town. If the last, the folken would scatter and wait for the burning to commence.

When it was over, they would be refugees in their own place. Would they rebuild, if that was how the cards fell? Roland doubted it. With no children to build for - because the Wolves would take them all this time if they won, the gunslinger did not doubt it - there would be no reason. At the end of the next cycle, this place would be a ghost town.

"Cry your pardon, sai."

Roland looked around. There stood Wayne Overholser, with his hat in his hands. Standing thus, he looked more like a wandering saddle-tramp down on his luck than the Calla's big farmer. His eyes were large and somehow mournful.

"No need to cry my pardon when I'm still wearing the dayrider hat you gave me," Roland said mildly.

"Yar, but..." Overholser trailed off, thought of how he wanted to go on, and then seemed to decide to fly straight at it. "Reuben Caverra was one of the fellas you meant to take to guard the children during the fight, wasn't he?"

"Aye?"

"His gut busted this morning." Overholser touched his own swelling belly about where his appendix might have been. "He lays home feverish and raving. He'll likely die of the bloodmuck. Some get better, aye, but not many."

"I'm sorry to hear it," Roland said, trying to think who would be best to replace Caverra, a hulk of a man who had impressed Roland as not knowing much about fear and probably nothing at all about cowardice.

"Take me instea', would ye?"

Roland eyed him.

"Please, gunslinger. I can't stand aside. I thought I could -  that I must - but I can't. It's making me sick." And yes, Roland thought, he did look sick.

"Does your wife know, Wayne?"

"Aye."

"And says aye?"

"She does."

Roland nodded. "Be here half an hour before dawn."

A look of intense, almost painful gratitude filled Overholser's face and made him look weirdly young. "Thankee, Roland! Say thankee! Big-big!"

"Glad to have you. Now listen to me a minute."

"Aye?"

"Things won't be just the way I told them at the big meeting."

"Because of Andy, y'mean."

"Yes, partly that."

"What else? You don't mean to say there's another traitor, do'ee? You don't mean to say that?"

"All I mean to say is that if you want to come with us, you have to roll with us. Do you ken?"

"Yes, Roland, Very well."

Overholser thanked him again for the chance to die north of town and then hurried off with his hat still in his hands. Before Roland could change his mind, perhaps.

Eddie came over. "Overholser's coming to the dance?"

"Looks like it. How much trouble did you have with Andy?"

"It went all right," Eddie said, not wanting to admit that he, Tian, and Rosalita had probably all come within a second of being toast. In the distance, they could still hear him bellowing. But probably not for much longer; the amplified voice was claiming shutdown was seventy-nine per cent complete.

"I think you did very well."

A compliment from Roland always made Eddie feel like king of the world, but he tried not to show it. "As long as we do well tomorrow."

"Susannah?"

"Seems fine."

"No... ?" Roland rubbed above his left eyebrow.

"No, not that I've seen."

"And no talking short and sharp?"

"No, she's good for it. Practiced with her plates all the time you guys were digging." Eddie tipped his chin toward Jake, who was sitting by himself on a swing with Oy at his feet. "That's the one I'm worried about. I'll be glad to get him out of here. This has been hard for him."

"It'll be harder on the other boy," Roland said, and stood up. "I'm going back to Pere's. Going to get some sleep."

"Can you sleep?"

"Oh, yes," Roland said. "With the help of Rosa's cat-oil, I'll sleep like a rock. You and Susannah and Jake should also try."

"Okay."

Roland nodded somberly. "I'll wake you tomorrow morning. We'll ride down here together."

"And we'll fight."

"Yes," Roland said. He looked at Eddie. His blue eyes gleamed in the glow of the torches. "We'll fight. Until they're dead, or we are."