19

EDDIE ALSO DREAMED - DREAMED he was back in New York, walking along Second Avenue with a book in his hand.

In this dream it was spring. The air was warm, the city was blooming, and homesickness sobbed within him like a muscle with a fishhook caught deep within it. Enjoy this dream, and make it go on as long as you can, he thought. Savor it... because this is as close to New York as you're going to get. You can't go home, Eddie. That part's done.

He looked down at the book and was utterly unsurprised to find it was You Can't Go Home Again, by Thomas Wolfe. Stamped into the dark red cover were three shapes; key, rose, and door. He stopped for a moment, flipped the book open, and read the first line. The man in black fled across the desert, Wolfe had written, and the gunslinger followed.

Eddie closed it and walked on. It was about nine in the morning, he judged, maybe nine-thirty, and traffic on Second Avenue was light. Taxis honked and wove their way from lane to lane with spring sunshine twinkling off their windshields and bright yellow paintjobs. A bum on the corner of Second and Fifty-second asked him for a handout and Eddie tossed the book with the red cover into his lap. He observed (also without surprise) that the bum was Enrico Balazar. He was sitting cross-legged in front of a magic shop. HOUSE OF CARDS, the sign in the window read, and the display inside showed a tower which had been built of Tarot cards. Standing on top was a model of King Kong. There was a tiny radar-dish growing out of the great ape's head.

Eddie walked on, lazing his way downtown, the street-signs floating past him. He knew where he was going as soon as he saw it: a small shop on the corner of Second and Forty-sixth.

Yeah, he thought. A feeling of great relief swept through him. This is the place. The very place. The window was full of hanging meats and cheeses. TOM AND GERRY'S ARTISTIC DELI, the sign read. PARTY PLATTERS OUR SPECIALTY!

As he stood looking in, someone else he knew came around the corner. It was Jack Andolini, wearing a three-piece suit the color of vanilla ice cream and carrying a black cane in his left hand. Half of his face was gone, lopped off by the claws of the lobstrosities.

Go on in, Eddie, Jack said as he passed. After all, there are other worlds than these and that fuckin train rolls through all of them.

I can't, Eddie replied. The door is locked. He didn't know how he knew this, but he did; knew it beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Dad-a-chum, dud-a-chee, not to worry, you've got the key, Jack said, not looking back. Eddie looked down and saw he did have a key; a primitive-looking thing with three notches like inverted Vs.

That little s-shape at the end of the last notch is the secret, he thought. He stepped under the awning of Tom and Gerry's Artistic Deli and inserted the key in the lock. It turned easily. He opened the door and stepped through into a huge open field. He looked back over his shoulder and saw the traffic on Second Avenue hurrying by, and then the door slammed shut and fell over. There was nothing behind it. Nothing at all. He turned back to survey his new surroundings, and what he saw filled him with terror at first. The field was a deep scarlet, as if some titanic battle had been fought here and the ground had been drenched with so much blood that it could not all be absorbed.

Then he realized that it was not blood he was looking at, but roses.

That feeling of mingled joy and triumph surged through him again, swelling his heart until he felt it might burst within him. He raised his clenched fists high over his head in a gesture of victory... and then froze that way.

The field stretched on for miles, climbing a gentle slope of land, and standing at the horizon was the Dark Tower . It was a pillar of dumb stone rising so high into the sky that he could barely discern its tip. Its base, surrounded by red, shouting roses, was formidable, titanic with weight and size, yet the Tower became oddly graceful as it rose and tapered. The stone of which it had been made was not black, as he had imagined it would be, but soot-colored. Narrow, slitted windows marched about it in a rising spiral; below the windows ran an almost endless flight of stone stairs, circling up and up. The Tower was a dark gray exclamation point planted in the earth and rising above the field of blood-red roses. The sky arched above it was blue, but filled with puffy white clouds like sailing ships. They flowed above and around the top of the Dark Tower in an endless stream.

How gorgeous it is! Eddie marvelled. How gorgeous and strange! But his feeling of joy and triumph had departed; he was left with a sense of deep malaise and impending doom. He looked about him and realized with sudden horror that he was standing in the shadow of the Tower. No, not just standing in it; buried alive in it.

He cried out but his cry was lost in the golden blast of some tremen-dous horn. It came from the top of the Tower, and seemed to fill the world. As that note of warning held and drew out over the field where he stood, blackness welled from the windows which girdled the Tower. It overspilled them and spread across the sky in flaggy streams which came together and formed a growing blotch of darkness. It did not look like a cloud; it looked like a tumor hanging over the earth. The sky was blotted out. And, he saw, it was not a cloud or a tumor but a shape, some tenebrous, cyclopean shape racing toward the place where he stood. It would do no good to run from that beast coalescing in the sky above the field of roses; it would catch him, clutch him, and bear him away. Into the Dark Tower it would bear him, and the world of light would see him no more.

Rents formed in the darkness and terrible inhuman eyes, each easily the size of the bear Shardik which lay dead in the forest, peered down at him. They were red - red as roses, red as blood.

Jack Andolini's dead voice hammered in his ears: A thousand worlds, Eddie - ten thousand! - and that train rolls through every one. If you can get it started. And if you do get it started, your troubles are only begin-ning, because this device is a real bastard to shut down.

Jack's voice had become mechanical, chanting. A real bastard to shut down, Eddie boy, you better believe it, this bastard is -

" - SHUTTING DOWN! SHUTDOWN WILL BE COMPLETE IN ONE HOUR AND SIX MINUTES!"

In his dream, Eddie threw his hands up to shield his eyes ...

20

... AND WOKE, SITTING BOLT upright beside the dead campfire. He was looking at the world from between his own spread fingers. And still that voice rolled on and on, the voice of some heartless SWAT Squad com-mander bellowing through a bullhorn.

"THERE IS NO DANGER! REPEAT, THERE IS NO DANGER! FIVE SUBNUCLEAR CELLS ARE DORMANT, TWO SUBNUCLEAR CELLS ARE NOW IN SHUTDOWN PHASE, ONE SUBNUCLEAR CELL IS OPERATING AT TWO PER CENT CAPACITY. THESE CELLS ARE OF NO VALUE! REPEAT, THESE CELLS ARE OF NO VALUE! REPORT LOCATION TO NORTH CENTRAL POSITRONICS, LIMITED! CALL 1-900-44! THE CODE WORD FOR THIS DEVICE IS 'SHARDIK.' REWARD IS OFFERED! REPEAT, REWARD ZS OFFERED!"

The voice fell silent. Eddie saw Roland standing at the edge of the clearing, holding Susannah in the crook of one arm. They were staring toward the sound of the voice, and as the recorded announcement began again, Eddie was finally able to shake off the chill remnants of his nightmare. He got up and joined Roland and Susannah, wondering how many centuries it had been since that announcement, pro-grammed to broadcast only in the event of a total system breakdown, had been recorded.

"THIS DEVICE IS SHUTTING DOWN! SHUTDOWN WILL BE COMPLETE IN ONE HOUR AND FIVE MINUTES! THERE IS NO DANGER! REPEAT - "

Eddie touched Susannah's arm and she looked around. "How long has this been going on?"

"About fifteen minutes. You were dead to the w - " She broke off. "Eddie, you look terrible! Are you sick?"

"No. I just had a bad dream."

Roland was studying him in a way that made Eddie feel uncomfort-able. "Sometimes there's truth in dreams, Eddie. What was yours?"

He thought for a moment, then shook his head. "I don't remember."

"You know, I doubt that."

Eddie shrugged and favored Roland with a thin smile. "Doubt away, then - be my guest. And how are you this morning, Roland?"

"The same," Roland said. His faded blue eyes still conned Eddie's face.

"Stop it," Susannah said. Her voice was brisk, but Eddie caught an undertone of nervousness. "Both of you. I got better things to do than watch you two dance around and kick each other's shins like a couple of little kids playin Two for Flinching. Specially this morning, with that dead bear trying to yell down the whole world."

The gunslinger nodded, but kept his eyes on Eddie. "All right... but are you sure there's nothing you want to tell me, Eddie?"

He thought about it then - really thought about telling. What he had seen in the fire, what he had seen in his dream. He decided against it. Perhaps it was only the memory of the rose in the fire, and the roses

which had blanketed that dream-field in such fabulous profusion. Me knew he could not tell these things as his eyes had seen them and his heart had felt them; he could only cheapen them. And, at least for the time being, he wanted to ponder these things alone.

But remember, he told himself again... except the voice in his mind didn't sound much like his own. It seemed deeper, older - the voice of a stranger. Remember the rose... and the shape of the key.

"I will," he murmured.

"You will what?" Roland asked.

"Tell," Eddie said. "If anything comes up that seems, you know, really important, I'll tell you. Both of you. Right now there isn't. So if we're going somewhere, Shane, old buddy, let's saddle up."

"Shane? Who is this Shane?"

"I'll tell you that some other time, too. Meantime, let's go."

They packed the gear they had brought with them from the old campsite and headed back, Susannah riding in her wheelchair again. Eddie had an idea she wouldn't be riding in it for long.

21

ONCE, BEFORE EDDIE HAD become too interested in the subject of heroin to be interested in much else, he and a couple of friends had driven over to New Jersey to see a couple of speed-metal groups -  Anthrax and Megadeth - in concert at the Meadowlands. He believed that Anthrax had been slightly louder than the repeating announcement coming from the fallen bear, but he wasn't a hundred per cent sure. Roland stopped them while they were still half a mile from the clearing in the woods and tore six small scaps of cloth from his old shirt. They stuffed them in their ears and then went on. Even the cloth didn't do much to deaden the steady blast of sound.

"THIS DEVICE IS SHUTTING DOWN!" the bear blared as they stepped into the clearing again. It lay as it had lain, at the foot of the tree Eddie had climbed, a fallen Colossus with its legs apart and its knees in the air, like a furry female giant who had died trying to give birth. "SHUTDOWN WILL BE COMPLETE IN FORTY-SEVEN MINUTES! THERE IS NO DANGER - "

Yes, there is, Eddie thought, picking up the scattered hides which had not been shredded in either the bear's attack or its flailing death-throes. Plenty of danger. To my fucking ears. He picked up Roland's gunbelt and silently handed it over. The chunk of wood he had been working on lay nearby; he grabbed it and tucked it into the pocket in the hack of Susannah's wheelchair as the gunslinger slowly buckled the wide leather belt around his waist and cinched the rawhide tiedown.

" - IN SHUTDOWN PHASE, ONE SUBNUCLEAR CELL OPERATING AT ONE PER CENT CAPACITY. THESE CELLS - "

Susannah followed Eddie, holding in her lap a carry-all bag she had sewn herself. As Eddie handed her the hides, she stuffed them into the bag. When all of them were stored away, Roland tapped Eddie on the arm and handed him a shoulderpack. What it contained mostly was deer-meat, heavily salted from a natural lick Roland had found about three miles up the little creek. The gunslinger had already donned a similar pack. His purse - restocked and once again bulging with all sorts of odds and ends - hung from his other shoulder.

A strange, home-made harness with a seat of stitched deerskin dan-gled from a nearby branch. Roland plucked it off, studied it for a moment, and then draped it over his back and knotted the straps below his chest. Susannah made a sour face at diis, and Roland saw it. He did not try to speak - this close to the bear, he couldn't have made himself heard even by shouting at the top of his voice - but he shrugged sympatheti-cally and spread his hands: You know well need it.

She shrugged back. / know... but that doesn't mean I like it.

The gunslinger pointed across the clearing. A pair of leaning, splin-tered spruce trees marked the place where Shardik, who had once been known as Mir in these parts, had entered the clearing.

Eddie leaned toward Susannah, made a circle with his thumb and forefinger, then raised his eyebrows interrogatively. Okay?

She nodded, then pressed the heels of her palms against her ears. Okay - but let's get out of here before I go deaf.

The three of them moved across the clearing, Eddie pushing Susan-nah, who held the bag of hides in her lap. The pocket in the back of her wheelchair was stuffed with other items; die piece of wood with the slingshot still mostly hidden inside it was only one of them.

From behind them the bear continued to roar out its final communi-cation to the world, telling them shutdown would be complete in forty minutes. Eddie couldn't wait. The broken spruces leaned in toward each other, forming a rude gate, and Eddie thought: This is where the quest for Roland's Dark Tower really begins, at least for us.

He thought of his dream again - the spiraling windows issuing their unfurling flags of darkness, flags which spread over the field of roses like a stain - and as they passed beneath the leaning trees, a deep shudder gripped him.