2004 The Dark Tower VII The Dark Tower

then gave it up as a bad job. They finally emerged about fifty yards from a clapboard-sided hut with the alliterative message LADING/LOST LUGGAGE over the door. The intervening distance was an apron of cracked concrete scattered with abandoned luggage-carts, stacks of crates, and two dead Wolves.No, Susannah thought,make that three . The third one was leaning against the wall in the deeper shadows just around the corner from LADING/LOST LUGGAGE.

“Come on,” said the old man with the mop of white hair, “not much further, now. But we have to hurry, because if the taheen from Heartbreak House catch us, they’ll kill you.”

“They’d kill us, too,” said the youngest of the three. He brushed his hair out of his eyes. “All except for Ted. Ted’s the only one of us who’s indispensable. He’s just too modest to say so.”

Past LADING/LOST LUGGAGE was (reasonably enough, Susannah thought)

SHIPPING OFFICE. The fellow with the white hair tried the door. It was locked. This seemed to please rather than upset him. “Dinky?” he said.

Dinky, it seemed, was the youngest of the three. He took hold of the knob and Susannah heard a snapping sound from somewhere inside. Dinky stepped back. This time when Ted tried the door, it opened easily. They stepped into a dim office bisected by a high counter. On it was a sign that almost made Susannah feel nostalgic:TAKE NUMBER AND WAIT , it said.

When the door was closed, Dinky once more grasped the knob. There was another brisk snap.

“You just locked it again,” Jake said. He sounded accusing, but there was a smile on his face, and the color was coming back into his cheeks. “Didn’t you?”

“Not now, please,” said the white-haired man—Ted. “No time. Follow me, please.”

He flipped up a section of the counter and led them through. Behind it was an office area containing two robots that looked long dead, and three skeletons.

“Why the hell do we keep finding bones?” Eddie asked. Like Jake he was feeling better and only thinking out loud, not really expecting an answer. He got one, however. From Ted.

“Do you know of the Crimson King, young man? You do, of course you do. I believe that

at one time he covered this entire part of the world with poison gas. Probably for a lark. Killed almost everyone. The darkness you see is the lingering result. He’s mad, of course. It’s a large part of the problem. In here.”

He led them through a door markedPRIVATE and into a room that had once probably belonged to a high poobah in the wonderful world of shipping and lading. Susannah saw

tracks on the floor, suggesting that this place had been visited recently. Perhaps by these same three men. There was a desk beneath six inches of fluffy dust, plus two chairs and a couch. Behind the desk was a window. Once it had been covered with venetian blinds, but these had collapsed onto the floor, revealing a vista as forbidding as it was fascinating. The land beyond Thunderclap Station reminded her of the flat, deserty wastes on the far side of the River Whye, but rockier and even more forbidding.

And of course it was darker.

Tracks (eternally halted trains sat on some of them) radiated out like strands of a steel spiderweb. Above them, a sky of darkest slate-gray seemed to sag almost close enough to touch. Between the sky and the Earth the air wasthick, somehow; Susannah found herself squinting to see things, although there seemed to be no actual mist or smog in the air.

“Dinky,” the white-haired man said.

“Yes, Ted.”

“What have you left for our friend The Weasel to find?”

“A maintenance drone,” Dinky replied. “It’ll look like it found its way in through the

Fedic door, set off the alarm, then got fried on some of the tracks at the far end of the

switching-yard. Quite a few are still hot. You see dead birds around em all the time, fried to a crisp, but even a good-sized rustie’s too small to trip the alarm. A drone, though…I’m pretty sure he’ll buy it. The Wease ain’t stupid, but it’ll look pretty believable.”

“Good. That’s very good. Look yonder, gunslingers.” Ted pointed to a sharp upthrust of rock on the horizon. Susannah could make it out easily; in this dark countryside all

horizons seemed close. She could see nothing remarkable about it, though, only folds of deeper shadow and sterile slopes of tumbled rock. “That’s Can Steek-Tete.”

“The Little Needle,” Roland said.

“Excellent translation. It’s where we’re going.”

Susannah’s heart sank. The mountain—or perhaps you called something like that a

butte—had to be eight or ten miles away. At the very limit of vision, in any case. Eddie and

Roland and the two younger men in Ted’s party couldn’t carry her that far, she didn’t believe. And how did they know they could trust these new fellows, anyway?

On the other hand,she thought,what choice do we have?

“You won’t need to be carried,” Ted told her, “but Stanley can use your help. We’ll join hands, like folks at a séance. I’ll want you all to visualize that rock formation when we go through. And hold the name in the forefront of your mind: Steek-Tete, the Little Needle.”

“Whoa, whoa,” Eddie said. They had approached yet another door, this one standing open on a closet. Wire hangers and one ancient red blazer hung in there. Eddie grasped Ted’s shoulder and swung him around. “Go through what? Go through where? Because if it’s a

door like the last one—”

Ted looked up at Eddie—had to look up, because Eddie was taller—and Susannah saw an amazing, dismaying thing: Ted’s eyes appeared to beshaking in their sockets. A moment later she realized this wasn’t actually the case. The man’s pupils were growing and then shrinking with eerie rapidity. It was as if they couldn’t decide if it was light or dark in here.

“It’s not a door we’re going through at all, at least not of the kinds with which you may be familiar. You have to trust me, young man. Listen.”

They all fell silent, and Susannah could hear the snarl of approaching motors.

“That’s The Weasel,” Ted told them. “He’ll have taheen with him, at least four, maybe

half a dozen. If they catch sight of us in here, Dink and Stanley are almost certainly going to die. They don’t have tocatch us but onlycatch sight of us. We’re risking our lives for you. This isn’t a game, and I need you to stop asking questions andfollow me!”

“We will,” Roland said. “And we’ll think about the Little Needle.”

“Steek-Tete,” Susannah agreed.

“You won’t get sick again,” Dinky said. “Promise.”

“Thank God,” Jake said.

“Thang-odd,” Oy agreed.

Stanley, the third member of Ted’s party, continued to say nothing at all.

Four

It was just a closet, and an office closet, at that—narrow and musty. The ancient red blazer had a brass tag on the breast pocket with the words HEAD OF SHIPPING stamped on it.

Stanley led the way to the back, which was nothing but a blank wall. Coathangers jingled and jangled. Jake had to watch his step to keep from treading on Oy. He’d always been

slightly prone to claustrophobia, and now he began to feel the pudgy fingers of the Panic-Man caressing his neck: first one side and then the other. The ’Rizas clanked softly

together in their bag. Seven people and one billy-bumbler crowding into an abandoned office closet? It was nuts. He could still hear the snarl of the approaching engines. The one in charge called The Weasel.

“Join hands,” Ted murmured. “And concentrate.”

“Steek-Tete,” Susannah repeated, but to Jake she sounded dubious this time.

“Little Nee—” Eddie began, and then stopped. The blank wall at the end of the closet was gone. Where it had been was a small clearing with boulders on one side and a steep, scrub-crusted hillside on another. Jake was willing to bet that was Steek-Tete, and if it was a way out of this enclosed space, he was delighted to see it.

Stanley gave a little moan of pain or effort or both. The man’s eyes were closed and tears were trickling out from beneath the lids.

“Now,” Ted said. “Lead us through, Stanley.” To the others he added: “And help him if you can! Help him, for your fathers’ sakes!”

Jake tried to hold an image of the outcrop Ted had pointed to through the office window and walked forward, holding Roland’s hand ahead of him and Susannah’s behind him. He

felt a breath of cold air on his sweaty skin and then stepped through onto the slope of Steek-Tete in Thunderclap, thinking just briefly of Mr. C. S. Lewis, and the wonderful wardrobe that took you to Narnia.

Five

They did not come out in Narnia.

It was cold on the slope of the butte, and Jake was soon shivering. When he looked over his shoulder he saw no sign of the portal they’d come through. The air was dim and smelled

of something pungent and not particularly pleasant, like kerosene. There was a small cave folded into the flank of the slope (it was really not much more than another closet), and from it Ted brought a stack of blankets and a canteen that turned out to hold a sharp, alkali-tasting water. Jake and Roland wrapped themselves in single blankets. Eddie took

two and bundled himself and Susannah together. Jake, trying not to let his teeth start chattering (once they did, there’d be no stopping them), envied the two of them their extra

warmth.

Dink had also wrapped himself in a blanket, but neither Ted nor Stanley seemed to feel the cold.

“Look down there,” Ted invited Roland and the others. He was pointing at the spiderweb of tracks. Jake could see the rambling glass roof of the switching-yard and a green-roofed structure next to it that had to be half a mile long. Tracks led away in every direction.Thunderclap Station, he marveled.Where the Wolves put the kidnapped kids on

the train and send them along the Path of the Beam to Fedic. And where they bring them back after they’ve been roont.

Even after all he’d been through, it was hard for Jake to believe that they had been down there, six or eight miles away, less than two minutes ago. He suspected they’d all played a part in keeping the portal open, but it was the one called Stanley who’d created it in the first

place. Now he looked pale and tired, nearly used up. Once he staggered on his feet and Dink (avery unfortunate nickname, in Jake’s humble opinion) grabbed his arm and

steadied him. Stanley seemed not to notice. He was looking at Roland with awe.

Not just awe,Jake thought,and not exactly fear, either. Something else. What?

Approaching the station were two motorized buckas with big balloon tires—ATVs. Jake assumed it was The Weasel (whoever he was) and his taheen buddies.

“As you may have gleaned,” Ted told them, “there’s an alarm in the Devar-Toi Supervisor’s office. Thewarden’s office, if you like. It goes off when anyone or anything

uses the door between the Fedic staging area and yon station—”

“I believe the term you used for him,” Roland said dryly, “wasn’t supervisor or warden but ki’-dam.”

Dink laughed. “That’s a good pickup on your part, dude.”

“What does ki’-dam mean?” Jake asked, although he had a fair notion. There was a phrase folks used in the Calla: headbox, heartbox, ki’box. Which meant, in descending order, one’s thought processes, one’s emotions, and one’s lower functions. Animal functions, some might say; ki’box could be translated asshitbox if you were of a vulgar turn of mind.

Ted shrugged. “Ki’-dam means shit-for-brains. It’s Dinky’s nickname for sai Prentiss, the Devar Master. But you already knew that, didn’t you?”

“I guess,” Jake said. “Kinda.”

Ted looked at him long, and when Jake identified that expression, it helped him define how Stanley was looking at Roland: not with fear but with fascination. Jake had a pretty

good idea Ted was still thinking about how much he looked like someone named Bobby, and he was pretty sure Ted knew he had the touch. What was the source of Stanley’s

fascination? Or maybe he was making too much of it. Maybe it was just that Stanley had never expected to see a gunslinger in the flesh.

Abruptly, Ted turned from Jake and back to Roland. “Now look this way,” he said.

“Whoa!” Eddie cried. “What thehell? ”

Susannah was amused as well as amazed. What Ted was pointing out reminded her of

Cecil B. DeMille’s Bible epicThe Ten Commandments, especially the parts where the Red Sea opened by Moses had looked suspiciously like Jell-O and the voice of God coming from the burning bush sounded quite a bit like Charles Laughton. Still, itwas amazing. In a cheesy Hollywood-special-effects way, that was.

What they saw was a single fat and gorgeous bolt of sunlight slanting down from a hole in

the sagging clouds. It cut through the strangely dark air like a searchlight beam and lit a compound that might have been six miles from Thunderclap Station. And “about six miles” was really all you could say, because there was no more north or south in this world,

at least not that you could count on. Now there was only the Path of the Beam.

“Dinky, there’s a pair of binoculars in—”

“The lower cave, right?”

“No, I brought them up the last time we were here,” Ted replied with carefully maintained patience. “They’re sitting on that pile of crates just inside. Get them, please.”

Eddie barely noticed this byplay. He was too charmed (and amused) by that single broad

ray of sun, shining down on a green and cheerful plot of land, as unlikely in this dark and sterile desert as…well, he supposed, as unlikely as Central Park must seem to tourists from

the Midwest making their first trip to New York.

He could see buildings that looked like college dormitories—niceones—and others that

looked like comfy old manor houses with wide stretches of green lawn before them. At the far side of the sunbeam’s area was what looked like a street lined with shops. The perfect

little Main Street America, except for one thing: in all directions it ended in dark and rocky desert. He saw four stone towers, their sides agreeably green with ivy. No, make that six. The other two were mostly concealed in stands of graceful old elms. Elms in the desert!

Dink returned with a pair of binoculars and offered them to Roland, who shook his head.

“Don’t hold it against him,” Eddie said. “His eyes…well, let’s just say they’re something

“Pretty nice, all right,” Eddie agreed. He had at least a thousand questions, and guessed Suze and Jake probably had another thousand between them, but this wasn’t the time to ask

them. In any case, he kept looking at that wonderful little hundred-acre oasis down there. The one sunny green spot in all of Thunderclap. The onenice place. And why not? Nothing but the best for Our Breaker Buddies.

And, in spite of himself, one questiondid slip out.

“Ted, why does the Crimson King want to bring the Tower down? Do you know?”

Ted gave him a brief glance. Eddie thought it cool, maybe downright cold, until the man smiled. When he did, his whole face lit up. Also, his eyes had quit doing that creepy in-and-out thing, which was abig improvement.

“He’s mad,” Ted told him. “Nuttier than a fruitcake. Riding the fabled rubber bicycle. Didn’t I tell you that?” And then, before Eddie could reply: “Yes, it’s quite nice. Whether you call it Devar-Toi, the Big Prison, or Algul Siento, it looks a treat. Itis a treat.”

“Very classy accommos,” Dinky agreed. Even Stanley was looking down at the sunlit community with an expression of faint longing.

“The food is the best,” Ted went on, “and the double feature at the Gem Theater changes twice a week. If you don’t want to go to the movies, you can bring the movies home on DVDs.”

“What are those?” Eddie asked, then shook his head. “Never mind. Go on.”

Ted shrugged, as if to sayWhat else do you need?

“Absolutely astral sex, for one thing,” Dinky said. “It’s sim, but it’s still incredible—I made it with Marilyn Monroe, Madonna, and Nicole Kidman all in one week.” He said this with a certain uneasy pride. “I could have had them all at the same time if I’d wanted to. The only way you can tell they’re not real is to breathe directly on them, from close up. When you do, the part you blow on…kinda disappears. It’s unsettling.”

“Booze? Dope?” Eddie asked.

“Booze in limited quantities,” Ted replied. “If you’re into oenology, for instance, you’ll experience fresh wonders at every meal.”

“What’s oenology?” Jake asked.

“The science of wine-snobbery, sugarbun,” Susannah said.

“If you come to Blue Heaven addicted to something,” Dinky said, “they get you off it.

Kindly. The one or two guys who proved especially tough nuts in that area…” His eyes met Ted’s briefly. Ted shrugged and nodded. “Those dudes disappeared.”

“In truth, the low men don’tneed any more Breakers,” Ted said. “They’ve got enough to finish the job right now.”

“How many?” Roland asked.

“About three hundred,” Dinky said.

“Three hundred and seven, to be exact,” Ted said. “We’re quartered in five dorms,

although that word conjures the wrong image. We have our own suites, and as much—or as little—contact with our fellow Breakers as we wish.”

“And you know what you’re doing?” Susannah asked.

“Yes. Although most don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it.”

“I don’t understand why they don’t mutiny.”

“What’s your when, ma’am?” Dinky asked her.

“My…?” Then she understood. “1964.”

He sighed and shook his head. “So you don’t know about Jim Jones and the People’s Temple. It’s easier to explain if you know about that. Almost a thousand people committed

suicide at this religious compound a Jesus-guy from San Francisco set up in Guyana. They

drank poisoned Kool-Aid out of a tub while he watched them from the porch of his house and used a bullhorn to tell them stories about his mother.”

Susannah was staring at him with horrified disbelief, Ted with poorly disguised impatience. Yet he must have thought something about this was important, because he held silence.

“Almost a thousand,” Dinky reiterated. “Because they were confused and lonely and they

thought Jim Jones was their friend. Because—dig it—they had nothing to go back to. And it’s like that here. If the Breakers united, they could make a mental hammer that’d knock

Prentiss and The Weasel and the taheen and the can-toi all the way into the next galaxy.

Instead there’s no one but me, Stanley, and everyone’s favorite super-breaker, the totally eventual Mr. Theodore Brautigan of Milford, Connecticut. Harvard Class of ’20, Drama

Society, Debate Club, editor ofThe Crimson, and—of course!—Phi Beta Crapper.”

“Can we trust you three?” Roland asked. The question sounded deceptively idle, little more than a time-passer.

“You have to,” Ted said. “You’ve no one else. Neither do we.”

“If we were on their side,” Dinky said, “don’t you think we’d have something better to

wear on our feet than moccasins made out of rubber fuckin tires? In Blue Heaven you get everything except for a few basics. Stuff you wouldn’t ordinarily think of as indispensable, but stuff that…well, it’s harder to take a powder when you’ve got nothing to wear but your

Algul Siento slippers, let’s put it that way.”

“I still can’t believe it,” Jake said. “All those people working to break the Beams, I mean.

No offense, but—”

Dinky turned on him with his fists clenched and a tight, furious smile on his face. Oy

immediately stepped in front of Jake, growling low and showing his teeth. Dinky either didn’t notice or paid no attention. “Yeah? Well guess what, kiddo? Itake offense. I take offense like a motherfucker. What doyou know about what it’s like to spend your whole

life on the outside, to be the butt of the joke every time, to always be Carrie at the fuckin prom?”

“Who?” Eddie asked, confused, but Dinky was on a roll and paid no attention.

“There are guys down there who can’t walk or talk. One chick with no arms. Several with hydrocephalus, which means they have heads out to fuckinNew Jersey .” He held his hands

two feet beyond his head on either side, a gesture they all took for exaggeration. Later they would discover it was not. “Poor old Stanley here, he’s one of the ones who can’t talk.”

Roland glanced at Stanley, with his pallid, stubbly face and his masses of curly dark hair.

And the gunslinger almost smiled.“I think he can talk,” he said, and then: “Do’ee bear your father’s name, Stanley? I believe thee does.”

Stanley lowered his head, and color mounted in his cheeks, yet he was smiling. At the same time he began to cry again.Just what in the hell’s going on here? Eddie wondered.

Ted clearly wondered, too. “Sai Deschain, I wonder if I could ask—”

“No, no, cry pardon,” Roland said. “Your time is short just now, so you said and we all feel it. Do the Breakers know how they’re being fed?What they’re being fed, to increase their powers?”

Ted abruptly sat on a rock and looked down at the shining steel cobweb of rails. “It has to do with the kiddies they bring through the Station, doesn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“They don’t know andI don’t know,” Ted said in that same heavy voice. “Not really. We’re fed dozens of pills a day. They come morning, noon, and night. Some are vitamins. Some are no doubt intended to keep us docile. I’ve had some luck purging those from my system, and Dinky’s, and Stanley’s. Only…for such a purging to work, gunslinger, you