2004 The Dark Tower VII The Dark Tower

Steven and true descendent of Arthur Eld. I, the last of what was called among ourselves the Ka-Tet of the Rose, salute you.”

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

“Thankee,” said the old man, and then laughed like a boy. “We’re well met in the House of the Rose! What was once meant to be the Grave of the Rose! Ha! Tell me we’re not! Can you?”

“Nay, for it would be a lie.”

“Speak it!” the old man cried, then uttered that cheery go-to-hell laugh once again. “But I’m f’gettin my manners in my awe, gunslinger. This handsome stretch of woman standing beside me, it’d be natural for you to call her my granddaughter, ’cause I was sem’ty in the year she was born, which was nineteen-and-sixty-nine. But the truth is”—But’na troof iswas what reached Roland’s ear—“that sometimes the best things in life are started late, and having children”—Chirrun—“is one of’m, in my opinion. Which is a long-winded

way of saying this is my daughter, Marian Odetta Carver, President of the Tet Corporation since I stepped down in ’97, at the age of ninety-eight. And do you think it would frost

some country-club balls, Roland, to know that this business, now worth just about ten billion dollars, is run by a Negro?” His accent, growing deeper as his excitement and joy grew, turned the last intoDis bid’ness, now wuth jus ’bout tin binnion dolla, is run bah

NEE-grow?

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

“She run me like a ray’road!” the old man cried indignantly. At the same time he turned his head slightly and dropped Roland a wink of inexpressible slyness and good humor with the eye his daughter could not see.

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

Marian Carver said, “We’d palaver with you for just a little while, Roland, but first there’s something I need to see.”

“Ain’t a bit o’ need for that!” the old man said, his voice cracking with indignation. “Not a bit o’ need, and you know it! Did I raise a jackass?”

“He’s very likely right,” Marian said, “but always safe—”

“—never sorry,” the gunslinger said. “It’s a good rule, aye. What is it you’d see? What

will tell you that I am who I say I am, and you believe I am?”

“Your gun,” she said.

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

“You see it!” Moses Carver shouted. “Aye, every one of you here! SayGod ! Might as well tell your gran-babbies you saw Excalibur, the Sword of Arthur, for’t comes to the same!”

Roland held his father’s revolver out to Marian. He knew she would need to take it in order to confirm who he was, that she must do this before leading him into the Tet Corporation’s

soft belly (where the wrong someone could do terrible damage), but for a moment she was unable to fulfill her responsibility. Then she steeled herself and took the gun, her eyes widening at the weight of it. Careful to keep all of her fingers away from the trigger, she brought the barrel up to her eyes and then traced a bit of the scrollwork near the muzzle:

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

“Yes,” he said, “if you will call me Roland.”

“If you ask, I’ll try.”

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

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

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

“Give it to him,” Roland said.

Marian looked doubtful, the two guards even more so, but Daddy Mose still held his hands out for the widowmaker, and Roland nodded. The woman reluctantly held the gun out to

her father. The old man took it, held it in both hands, and then did something that both warmed and chilled the gunslinger’s heart: he kissed the barrel with his old, folded lips.

“What does thee taste?” Roland asked, honestly curious.

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

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

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

“Amen to that!” the old man said, and clapped Roland on the shoulder. “She’s still alive, my Odetta—she you call Susannah. There’s that. Thought you’d be glad to know it, sir.”

Rolandwas glad, and nodded his thanks.

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

Ten

Marian Carver’s office was on the northwest corner of the ninety-ninth floor. Here the

walls were all glass unbroken by a single strut or muntin, and the view took the gunslinger’s breath away. Standing in that corner and looking out was like hanging in

midair over a skyline more fabulous than any mind could imagine. Yet it was one he had

seen before, for he recognized yonder suspension bridge as well as some of the tall buildings on this side of it. Heshould have recognized the bridge, for they’d almost died on

it in another world. Jake had been kidnapped off it by Gasher, and taken to the Tick-Tock Man. This was the City of Lud as it must have been in its prime.

“Do you call it New York?” he asked. “You do, yes?”

“Yes,” Nancy Deepneau said.

“And yonder bridge, that swoops?”

“The George Washington,” Marian Carver said. “Or just the GWB, if you’re a native.”

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

“Would you care for some refreshment?” Nancy asked.

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

“We can,” Marian said, and pushed a button on her desk. She spoke to someone Roland couldn’t see, and all at once the woman in the outer office—the one who had appeared to

be talking to herself—made more sense to him.

When the ordering of hot drinks and sandwiches (what Roland supposed he would always think of as popkins) was done, Marian leaned forward and captured Roland’s eye. “We’re well-met in New York, Roland, so I hope, but our time here isn’t…isn’tvital . And I suspect you know why.”

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

“Nancy told you to read the plaque in the Garden of the Beam,” Marian said. “Did—”

“Garden of the Beam, sayGawd! ” Moses Carver interjected. On the walk down the corridor to his daughter’s office, he had picked a cane out of a faux elephant-foot stand, and

now he thumped it on the expensive carpet for emphasis. Marian bore this patiently.

“SayGawd -bomb!”

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

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

“And what did it say?”

“GIVEN BY THE TET CORPORATION, IN HONOR OF EDWARD CANTOR DEAN

AND JOHN “JAKE” CHAMBERS.”He paused. “Then it said ‘Cam-a-cam-mal, Pria-toi, Gan delah,’ which you might say asWHITE OVER RED, THUS GAN WILLS EVER .”

“And to us it saysGOOD OVER EVIL, THIS IS THE WILL OF GOD ,” Marian said.

“God be praised!” Moses Carver said, and thumped his cane. “May thePrim rise!”

There was a perfunctory knock at the door and then the woman from the outer desk came in, carrying a silver tray. Roland was fascinated to see a small black knob suspended in front of her lips, and a narrow black armature that disappeared into her hair. Some sort of far-speaking device, surely. Nancy Deepneau and Marian Carver helped her set out

steaming cups of tea and coffee, bowls of sugar and honey, a crock of cream. There was also a plate of sandwiches. Roland’s stomach rumbled. He thought of his friends in the

ground—no more popkins for them—and also of Irene Tassenbaum, sitting in the little park across the street, patiently waiting for him. Either thought alone should have been enough to kill his appetite, but his stomach once more made its impudent noise. Some parts of a man were conscienceless, a fact he supposed he had known since childhood. He helped

himself to a popkin, dumped a heaping spoonful of sugar into his tea, then added honey for

good measure. He would make this as brief as possible and return to Irene as soon as he could, but in the meantime…

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

“Dad and I have a house on Montauk Point,” said Marian, pouring cream into her own coffee, “and we were out there this past weekend. At around five-fifteen on Saturday

afternoon, I got a call from one of the security people here. The Hammarskjöld Plaza

Association employs them, but the Tet Corporation pays them a bonus so we may know…certain things of interest, let’s say…as soon as they occur. We’ve been watching

that plaque in the lobby with extraordinary interest as the nineteenth of June approached, Roland. Would it surprise you to know that, until roughly quarter of five on that day, it

readGIVEN BY THE TET CORPORATION, IN HONOR OF THE BEAM FAMILY,

AND IN MEMORY OF GILEAD ?”

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

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

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

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

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

Roland, who wanted to believe this, nodded and said thankya. Then he turned back to

Marian. “The thing with the writer was very close. He was hurt, and badly. Jake died saving him. He put his body between King and the van-mobile that would have taken his life.”

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

“Whose?”

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

Roland nodded. The song would continue.

“There’s plenty of work for us ahead,” Marian went on, “thirty years’ worth at least, we calculate, but—”

“But it’sour work, not yours,” Nancy said.

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

“Yes. Your quest to defeat the forces of the Crimson King has been successful. The Crimson King himself—”

“That wa’n’tnever this man’s quest and you know it!” the centenarian sitting next to the handsome black woman said, and he once more thumped his cane for emphasis. “His

quest—”

“Dad, that’s enough.” Her voice was hard enough to make the old man blink.

“Nay, let him speak,” Roland said, and they all looked at him, surprised by (and a little afraid of) that dry whipcrack. “Let him speak, for he says true. If we’re going to have it out,

let us have it all out. For me, the Beams have always been no more than means to an end.

Had they broken, the Tower would have fallen. Had the Tower fallen, I should never have gained it, and climbed to the top of it.”

“You’re saying you cared more for the Dark Tower than for the continued existence of the universe,” Nancy Deepneau said. She spoke in a just-let-me-make

-sure-I’ve-got-this-right voice and looked at Roland with a mixture of wonder and contempt. “For the continued existence ofall the universes.”

“The Dark Toweris existence,” Roland said, “and I have sacrificed many friends to reach it over the years, including a boy who called me father. I have sacrificed my own soul in the

bargain, lady-sai, so turn thy impudent glass another way. May you do it soon and do it well, I beg.”

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

“Take me not amiss,” he said. “Understand me, for we’ll never speak more. What was done was done in both worlds, well and ill, for ka and against it. Yet there’s more beyond

all worlds than you know, and more behind them than you could ever guess. My time is short, so let’s move on.”

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

“If I offended, I’m truly sorry,” Nancy said.

To this Roland made no reply, for he knew she was not sorry a bit—she was only afraid of him. There was a moment of uncomfortable silence that Marian Carver finally broke. “We don’t have any Breakers of our own, Roland, but at the ranch in Taos we employ a dozen

telepaths and precogs. What they make together is sometimes uncertain but always greater than the sum of its parts. Do you know the term ‘good-mind’?”

The gunslinger nodded.

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

“B’cause they had hundreds,” the old man grumped.“And they were better fed.”

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

“Whose idea was it to put such folk to work for you?” Roland asked.

“Strange as it might seem to you, partner,” Moses said, “it was Cal Tower. He never contributed much—never did much but c’lect his books and drag his heels, greedy

highfalutin whitebread sumbitch that he was—”

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

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

Roland shook his head.

“Well, ne’mine. Most of it’s bullshit, but every now and then a good idear crops up. Listen to me and I’ll tell you a good ’un. You’ll understand if you know what Tower and your friend Mist’ Dean talked about twenty-two years ago, when Mist’ Dean come n saved Tower from them two honky thugs.”

“Dad,” Marian said warningly. “You quit with the nigger talk, now. You’re old but not stupid.”

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

“Eddie spoke of it, yes,” Roland said.

The slur disappeared from Carver’s voice; his words became crisp. “Then you know they

spoke of a book calledThe Hogan, by Benjamin Slightman. The title of the book was mis-printed, and so was the writer’s name, which was just the sort of thing that turned old fatty’s dials.”

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

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

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

“And all the books he wrote under the Holmes name were science fiction yarns, about the government hiring tellypaths and precogs to find things out. And that’s wherewe got the idea.” He looked at Roland and gave his cane a triumphant thump. “There’s more to the tale, a good deal, but I don’t guess you’ve got the time. That’s what it all comes back to, isn’t it? Time. And in this world it only runs one way.” He looked wistful. “I’d give a great lot, gunslinger, to see my goddaughter again, but I don’t guess that’s in the cards, is it? Unless we meet in the clearing.”

“I think you say true,” Roland told him, “but I’ll take her word of you, and how I found you still full of hot spit and fire—”

“SayGod, sayGawd -bomb!” the old man interjected, and thumped his cane. “Tell it, brother! And see that you tellher! ”

“So I will.” Roland finished the last of his tea, then put the cup on Marian Carver’s desk

and stood with a supporting hand on his right hip as he did. It would take him a long time to get used to the lack of pain there, quite likely more time than he had. “And now I must take my leave of you. There’s a place not far from here where I need to go.”

“We know where,” Marian said. “There’ll be someone to meet you when you arrive. The

place has been kept safe for you, and if the door you seek is still there and still working, you’ll go through it.”

Roland made a slight bow. “Thankee-sai.”

“But sit a few moments longer, if you will. We have gifts for you, Roland. Not enough to pay you back for all you’ve done—whether doing it was your first purpose or not—but things you may want, all the same. One’s news from our good-mind folk in Taos. One’s

from more…” She considered. “…more normal researchers, folks who work for us in this

very building. They call themselves the Calvins, but not because of any religious bent.

Perhaps it’s a little homage to Mr. Tower, who died of a heart attack in his new shop nine years ago. Or perhaps it’s only a joke.”

“A bad one if it is,” Moses Carver grumped.

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

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

Curiosity.

Eleven

“First, the news from the folks in New Mexico,” Marian said when Roland had resumed his seat. “They have watched you as well as they can, and although what they saw

Thunder-side was hazy at best, they believe that Eddie told Jake Chambers

something—perhaps something of importance—not long before he died. Likely as he lay on the ground, and before he…I don’t know…”

“Before he slipped into twilight?” Roland suggested.

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

Marian gave her a little frown that suggested this was a lady who did not appreciate being interrupted. Then she returned her attention to Roland. “Seeing things on this side is easier

for our people, and several of them are quite sure—not positive but quite sure—that Jake may have passed this message on before he himself died.” She paused. “This woman you’re traveling with, Mrs. Tannenbaum—”

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

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

“Yes,” Roland said, and of course he would, but he didn’t believe Jake had passed on Eddie’s message to Mrs. Tassenbaum. No, not to her. He realized that he’d hardly thought of Oy since they’d parked Irene’s car, but Oy had been with them, of course; would now be lying at Irene’s feet as she sat in the little park across the street, lying in the sun and waiting

for him.

“All right,” she said. “That’s good. Let’s move on.”

Marian opened the wide center drawer of her desk. From it she brought out a padded envelope and a small wooden box. The envelope she handed to Nancy Deepneau. The box she placed on the desktop in front of her.

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

“Tell it,” Moses said, and thumped his cane.

Nancy glanced at him, then at Roland…or in the vicinity of him, anyway. Color was climbing in her cheeks, and she looked flustered. “Stephen King,” she said, then cleared her throat and said it again. From there she didn’t seem to know how to go on. Her color

burned even deeper beneath her skin.

“Take a deep breath,” Roland said, “and hold it.”

She did as he told her.

“Now let it out.”

And this, too.

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

“Stephen King has written nearly forty books,” she said, and although the color remained

in her cheeks (Roland supposed he would find out what it signified soon enough), her voice was calmer now. “An amazing number of them, even the very early ones, touch on the Dark Tower in one way or another. It’s as though it was always on his mind, from the very first.”

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

This seemed to calm her even further. “Hence the Calvins,” she said. “Three men and two

women of a scholarly bent who do nothing from eight in the morning until four in the afternoon but read the works of Stephen King.”

“They don’t just read them,” Marian said. “They cross-reference them by settings, by

characters, by themes—such as they are—even by mention of popular brand-name products.”

“Part of their work is looking for references to people who live or did live in the Keystone

World,” Nancy said. “Real people, in other words. And references to the Dark Tower, of