29

IN HIS DREAM THAT night, Eddie again went walking down Second Ave-nue toward Tom and Gerry's Artistic Deli on the corner of Second and Forty-sixth. He passed a record store and the Rolling Stones boomed from the speakers:

"I see a red door and I want to paint it black,

No colours anymore, I want them to turn black,

I see the girls walk by dressed in their summer clothes,

I have to turn my head until my darkness goes ..."

He walked on, passing a store called Reflections of You between Forty-ninth and Forty-eighth. He saw himself in one of the mirrors hang-ing in the display window. He thought he looked better than he had in years - hair a little too long, but otherwise tanned and fit. The clothes, though... uh-uh, man. Square-bear shit all the way. Blue blazer, white shirt, dark red tie, gray dress pants ... he had never owned a yuppie-from-hell outfit like that in his life.

Someone was shaking him.

Eddie tried to burrow deeper into the dream. He didn't want to wake up now. Not before he got to the deli and used his key to go through the door and into the field of roses. He wanted to see it all again - the endless blanket of red, the overarching blue sky where those great white cloud-ships sailed, and the Dark Tower . He was afraid of the darkness which lived within that eldritch column, waiting to eat anyone who got too close, but he wanted to see it again just the same. Needed to see it.

The hand, however, would not stop shaking. The dream began to darken, and the smells of car exhaust along Second Avenue became the smell of woodsmoke - thin now, because the fire was almost out.

It was Susannah. She looked scared. Eddie sat up and put an arm around her. They had camped on the far side of the alder grove, within earshot of the stream babbling through the bone-littered clearing. On the other side of the glowing embers which had been their campfire, Roland lay asleep. His sleep was not easy. He had cast aside his single blanket and lay with his knees drawn up almost to his chest. With his boots off, his feet looked white and narrow and defenseless. The great toe of the right foot was gone, victim of the lobster-thing which had also snatched away part of his right hand.

He was moaning some slurred phrase over and over again. After a few repetitions, Eddie realized it was the phrase he had spoken before keeling over in the clearing where Susannah had shot the bear: Go, then - there are other worlds than these. He would fall silent for a moment, then call out the boy's name: "Jake! Where are you? Jake!"

The desolation and despair in his voice filled Eddie with horror. His arms stole around Susannah and he pulled her tight against him. He could feel her shivering, although the night was warm.

The gunslinger rolled over. Starlight fell into his open eyes.

"Jake, where are you?" he called to the night. "Come back!"

"Oh Jesus - he's off again. What should we do, Suze?"

"I don't know. I just knew I couldn't listen to it anymore by myself. He sounds so far away. So far away from everything."

"Go, then," the gunslinger murmured, rolling back onto his side and drawing his knees up once more, "there are other worlds than these." He was silent for a moment. Then his chest hitched and he loosed the boy's name in a long, bloodcurdling cry. In the woods behind them, some large bird flew away in a dry whirr of wings toward some less exciting part of the world.

"Do you have any ideas?" Susannah asked. Her eyes were wide and wet with tears. "Maybe we should wake him up?"

"I don't know." Eddie saw the gunslinger's revolver, the one he wore on his left hip. It had been placed, in its holster, on a neatly folded square of hide within easy reach of the place where Roland lay. "I don't think I dare," he added at last.

"It's driving him crazy."

Eddie nodded.

"What do we do about it? Eddie, what do we do?"

Eddie didn't know. An antibiotic had stopped the infection caused by the bite of the lobster-thing; now Roland was burning with infection again, but Eddie didn't think there was an antibiotic in the world that would cure what was wrong with him this time.

"I don't know. Lie down with me, Suze."

Eddie threw a hide over both of them, and after a while her trembling quieted.

"If he goes insane, he may hurt us," she said.

"Don't I know it." This unpleasant idea had occurred to him in terms of the bear - its red, hate-filled eyes (and had there not been bewilderment as well, lurking deep in those red depths?) and its deadly slashing claws. Eddie's eyes moved to the revolver, lying so close to the gunslinger's good left hand, and he remembered again how fast Roland had been when he'd seen the mechanical bat swooping down toward them. So fast his hand had seemed to disappear. If the gunslinger went mad, and if he and Susannah became the focus of that madness, they would have no chance. No chance at all.

He pressed his face into the warm hollow of Susannah's neck and closed his eyes.

Not long after, Roland ceased his babbling. Eddie raised his head and looked over. The gunslinger appeared to be sleeping naturally again. Eddie looked at Susannah and saw that she had also gone to sleep. He lay down beside her, gently kissed the swell of her breast, and closed his own eyes.

Not you, buddy; you're gonna be awake a long, long time.

But they had been on the move for two days and Eddie was bone-tired. He drifted off ... drifted down.

Back to the dream, he thought as he went. I want to go back to Second Avenue... back to Tom and Gerry's. That's what I want.

The dream did not return that night, however.

30

THEY ATE A QUICK breakfast as the sun came up, repacked and redistrib-uted the gear, and then returned to the wedge-shaped clearing. It didn't look quite so spooky in the clear light of morning, but all three of them were still at pains to keep well away from the metal box with its warning slashes of black and yellow. If Roland had any recollection of the bad dreams which had haunted him in the night, he gave no sign. He had gone about the morning chores as he always did, in thoughtful, stolid silence.

"How do you plan to keep to a straight-line course from here?" Susannah asked the gunslinger.

"If the legends are right, that should be no problem. Do you remem-ber when you asked about magnetism?"

She nodded.

He rummaged deep into his purse and at last emerged with a small square of old, supple leather. Threaded through it was a long silver needle.

"A compass!" Eddie said. "You really are an Eagle Scout!"

Roland shook his head. "Not a compass. I know what they are, of course, but these days I keep my directions by the sun and stars, and even now they serve me quite well."

"Even now?" Susannah asked, a trifle uneasily.

He nodded. "The directions of the world are also in drift."

"Christ," Eddie said. He tried to imagine a world where true north was slipping slyly off to the east or west and gave up almost at once. It made him feel a little ill; the way looking down from the top of a high building had always made him feel a little ill.

"This is just a needle, but it is steel and it should serve our purpose as well as a compass. The Beam is our course now, and the needle will show it." He rummaged in his purse again and came out with a poorly made pottery cup. A crack ran down one side. Roland had mended this artifact, which he had found at the old campsite, with pine-gum. Now he went to the stream, dipped the cup into it, and brought it back to where Susannah sat in her wheelchair. He put the cup down carefully on the wheelchair's arm, and when the surface of the water inside was calm, he dropped the needle in. It sank to the bottom and rested there.

"Wow!" Eddie said. "Great! I'd fall at your feet in wonder, Roland, but I don't want to spoil the crease in my pants."

"I'm not finished. Hold the cup steady, Susannah."

She did, and Roland pushed her slowly across the clearing. When she was about twelve feet in front of the door, he turned the chair carefully so she was facing away from it.

"Eddie!" she cried. "Look at this!"

He bent over the pottery cup, marginally aware that water was already oozing through Roland's makeshift seal. The needle was rising slowly to the surface. It reached it and bobbed there as serenely as a cork would have done. Its direction lay in a straight line from the portal behind them and into the old, tangled forest ahead. "Holy shit - a floating needle. Now I really have seen everything."

"Hold the cup, Susannah."

She held it steady as Roland pushed the wheelchair further into the clearing, at right angles to the box. The needle lost its steady point, bobbed randomly for a moment, then sank to the bottom of the cup again. When Roland pulled the chair backward to its former spot, it rose once more and pointed the way.

"If we had iron filings and a sheet of paper," the gunslinger said, "we could scatter the filings on the paper's surface and watch them draw together into a line which would point that same course."

"Will that happen even when we leave the Portal?" Eddie asked.

Roland nodded. "Nor is that all. We can actually see the Beam."

Susannah looked over her shoulder. Her elbow bumped the cup a little as she did. The needle swung aimlessly as the water inside sloshed... and then settled firmly back in its original direction.

"Not that way," Roland said. "Look down, both of you - Eddie at your feet, Susannah into your lap."

They did as he asked.

"When I tell you to look up, look straight ahead, in the direction the needle points. Don't look at any one thing; let your eye see whatever it will. Now - look up!"

They did. For a moment Eddie saw nothing but the woods. He tried to make his eyes relax... and suddenly it was there, the way the shape of the slingshot had been there, inside the knob of wood, and he knew why Roland had told them not to look at any one thing. The effect of the Beam was everywhere along its course, but it was subtle. The needles of the pines and spruces pointed that way. The greenberry bushes grew slightly slanted, and the slant lay in the direction of the Beam. Not all the trees the bear had pushed down to clear its sightlines had fallen along that camouflaged path - which ran southeast, if Eddie had his direc-tions right - but most had, as if the force coming out of the box had pushed them that way as they tottered. The clearest evidence was in the way the shadows lay on the ground. With the sun coming up in the east they all pointed west, of course, but as Eddie looked southeast, he saw a rough herringbone pattern that existed only along the line which the needle in the cup had pointed out.

"I might see something" Susannah said doubtfully, "but - "

"Look at the shadows! The shadows, Suze!"

Eddie saw her eyes widen as it all fell into place for her. "My God! It's there! Right there! It's like when someone has a natural part in their hair!"

Now that Eddie had seen it, he could not unsee it; a dim aisle driving through the untidy tangle which surrounded the clearing, a straight-edge course that was the way of the Beam. He was suddenly aware of how huge the force flowing around him (and probably right through him, like X-rays) must be, and had to control an urge to step away, either to the right or left. "Say, Roland, this won't make me sterile, will it?"

Roland shrugged, smiling faintly.

"It's like a riverbed," Susannah marvelled. "A riverbed so over-grown you can barely see it ... but it's still there. The pattern of shadows will never change as long as we stay inside the path of the Beam, will it?"

"No," Roland said. "They'll change direction as the sun moves across the sky, of course, but we'll always be able to see the course of the Beam. You must remember that it has been flowing along this same path for thousands - perhaps tens of thousands - of years. Look up, you two, into the sky!"

They did, and saw that the thin cirrus clouds had also picked up that herringbone pattern along the course of the Beam... and those clouds within the alley of its power were flowing faster than those to either side. They were being pushed southeast. Being pushed in the direction of the Dark Tower .

"You see? Even the clouds must obey."

A small flock of birds coursed toward them. As they reached the path of the Beam, they were all deflected toward the southeast for a moment. Although Eddie clearly saw this happen, his eyes could hardly credit it. When the birds had crossed the narrow corridor of the Beam's influence, they resumed their former course.

"Well," Eddie said, "I suppose we ought to get going. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, and all that shit."

"Wait a minute." Susannah was looking at Roland. "It isn't just a thousand miles, is it? Not anymore. How far are we talking about, Roland? Five thousand miles? Ten?"

"I can't say. It will be very far."

"Well, how in the hell we ever goan get there, with you two pushing me in this goddam wheelchair? We'll be lucky to make three miles a day through yonder Drawers, and you know it."

"The way has been opened," Roland said patiently, "and that's enough for now. The time may come, Susannah Dean, when we travel faster than you would like."

"Oh yeah?" She looked at him truculently, and both men could see Detta Walker dancing a dangerous hornpipe in her eyes again. "You got a race-car lined up? If you do, it might be nice if we had a damn road to run it on!"

"The land and the way we travel on it will change. It always does."

Susannah flapped a hand at the gunslinger; go on with you, it said. "You sound like my old mamma, sayin God will provide."

"Hasn't He?" Roland asked gravely.

She looked at him for a moment in silent surprise, then threw her head back and laughed at the sky. "Wt-11, I guess that depends on how you look at it. All I can say is that if this is providin, Roland, I'd hate to see what'd happen if He decided to let us go hungry."

"Come on, let's do it," Eddie said. "I want to get out of this place. I don't like it." And that was true, but that wasn't all. He also felt a deep eagerness to set his feet upon that concealed path, that highway in hiding. Every step was a step closer to the field of roses and the Tower which dominated it. He realized - not without some wonder - that he meant to see that Tower ... or die trying.

Congratulations, Roland, he thought. You've done it. I'm one of the converted. Someone say hallelujah.

"There's one other thing before we go." Roland bent and untied the rawhide lace around his left thigh. Then he slowly began to unbuckle his gunbelt.

"What's this jive?" Eddie asked.

Roland pulled the gunbelt free and held it out to him. "You know why I'm doing this," he said calmly.

"Put it back on, man!" Eddie felt a terrible stew of conflicting emo-tions roiling inside him; could feel his fingers trembling even inside his clenched fists. "What do you think you're doing?"

"Losing my mind an inch at a time. Until the wound inside me closes - if it ever does - I am not fit to wear this. And you know it."

"Take it, Eddie," Susannah said quietly.

"If you hadn't been wearing this goddamn thing last night, when that bat came at me, I'd be gone from the nose up this morning!"

The gunslinger replied by continuing to hold his remaining gun out to Eddie. The posture of his body said he was prepared to stand that way all day, if that was what it took.

"All right!" Eddie cried. "Goddammit, all right!"

He snatched the gunbelt from Roland's hand and buckled it about his own waist in a series of rough gestures. He should have been relieved, he supposed - hadn't he looked at this gun, lying so close to Roland's hand in the middle of the night, and thought about what might happen if Roland really did go over the high side? Hadn't he and Susannah both thought about it? But there was no relief. Only fear and guilt and a strange, aching sadness far too deep for tears.

He looked so strange without his guns.

So wrong.

"Okay? Now that the numb-fuck apprentices have the guns and the master's unarmed, can we please go? If something big comes out of the bush at us, Roland, you can always throw your knife at it."

"Oh, that," he murmured. "I almost forgot." He took the knife from his purse and held it out, hilt first, to Eddie.

"This is ridiculous!" Eddie shouted.

"Life is ridiculous."

"Yeah, put it on a postcard and send it to the fucking Reader's Digest." Eddie jammed the knife into his belt and then looked defiantly at Roland. "Now can we go?"

"There is one more thing," Roland said.

"Weeping, creeping Jesus!"

The smile touched Roland's mouth again. "Just joking," he said.

Eddie's mouth dropped open. Beside him, Susannah began to laugh again. The sound rose, as musical as bells, in the morning stillness.