22

AFTER THEY HAD RUN for God knew how long (all Jake knew for sure was that the drums had stopped again), Gasher once more yanked him to a stop. This time Jake managed to keep his feet. He had gotten his second wind. Gasher, who would never see eleven again, had not.

"Hoo! My old pump's doing nip-ups, sweetie."

"Too bad," Jake said unfeelingly, then stumbled backward as Gasher's gnarled hand connected with the side of his face.

"Yar, you'd cry a bitter tear if I dropped dead right here, woontcher? Too likely! But no such luck, my fine young squint - old Gasher's seen em come and seen em go, and I wasn't born to drop dead at the feet of any little sweetcheeks berry like you."

Jake listened to these incoherencies impassively. He meant to see Gasher dead before the day was over. Gasher might take Jake with him, but Jake no longer cared about that. He dabbed blood from his freshly split lip and looked at it thoughtfully, wondering at how quickly the desire to do murder could invade and conquer the human heart.

Gasher observed Jake looking at his bloody fingers and grinned. "Sap's runnin, ennet? Nor will it be the last your old pal Gasher beats out of your young tree, unless you look sharp; unless you look wery sharp indeed." He pointed down at the cobbled surface of the narrow alley they were currently negotiating. There was a rusty manhole cover there, and Jake realized he had seen the words stamped into the steel not long ago: LaMERK FOUNDRY, they said.

"There's a grip on the side," Gasher said. "Yer see? Get your hands into that and pull away. Step lively, now, and maybe ye'll still have all your teeth when ye meet up with Tick-Tock."

Jake grasped the steel cover and pulled. He pulled hard, but not quite as hard as he could have done. The maze of streets and alleys through which Gasher had run him was bad, but at least he could see. He couldn't imagine what it might be like in the underworld below the city, where the blackness would preclude even dreams of escape, and he didn't intend to find out unless he absolutely had to.

Gasher quickly made it clear to him that he did.

"It's too heavy for - " Jake began, and then the pirate seized him by the throat and yanked him upward until they were face to face. The long run through the alleys had brought a thin, sweaty flush to his cheeks and turned the sores eating into his flesh an ugly yellow-purple color. Those which were open exuded thick infected matter and threads of blood in steady pulses. Jake caught just a whiff of Gasher's thick stench before his wind was cut off by the hand which had encircled his throat.

"Listen, you stupid cull, and listen well, for this is your last warning. You yank that fucking streethead off right now or I'll reach into your mouth and rip the living tongue right out of it. And feel free to bite all you want while I do it, for what I have runs in the blood and you'll see the first blossoms on yer own face before the week's out - if yer lives that long. Now, do you see?"

Jake nodded frantically. Gasher's face was disappearing into deepen-ing folds of gray, and his voice seemed to be coming from a great distance.

"All right." Gasher shoved him backward. Jake fell in a heap beside the manhole cover, gagging and retching. He finally managed to draw in a deep, whooping breath that burned like liquid fire. He spat out a blood-flecked wad of stuff and almost threw up at the sight of it.

"Now yank back that cover, my heart's delight, and let's have no more natter about it.

Jake crawled over to it, slid his hands into the grip, and this time pulled with all his might. For one terrible moment he thought he was still not going to be able to budge it. Then he imagined Gasher's fingers reaching into his mouth and seizing his tongue, and found a little extra. There was a dull, spreading agony in his lower back as something gave there, but the circular lid slipped slowly aside, grinding on the cobbles and exposing a grinning crescent of darkness.

"Good, cully, good!" Gasher cried cheerfully. "What a little mule y'are! Keep pulling - don't give up now!"

When the crescent had become a half-moon and the pain in Jake's lower back was a white-hot fire, Gasher booted him in the ass, knocking him asprawl.

"Wery good!" Gasher said, peering in. "Now, cully, go smartly down the ladder on the side. Mind you don't lose your grip and tumble all the way to the bottom, for those rungs are fearsome slick and greezy. There's twenty or so, as I remember. And when you get to the bottom, stand stock-still and wait for me. You might feel like runnin from yer old pal, but do you think that would be a good idea?"

"No," Jake said. "I suppose not."

"Wery intelligent, old son!" Gasher's lips spread in his hideous smile, once more revealing his few surviving teeth. "It's dark down there, and there are a thousand tunnels going every which-a-way. Yer old pal Gasher knows em like the back of his hand, so he does, but you'd be lost in no time. Then there's the rats - wery big and wery hungry they are. So you just wait."

"I will."

Gasher regarded him narrowly. "You speak just like a little triggie, you do, but you're no Pube - I'll set my watch and warrant to that. Where are you from, squint?"

Jake said nothing.

"Bumbler got your tongue, do he? Well, that's all right; Tick-Tock'll get it all out of you, so he will. He's got a way about him, Ticky does; just naturally wants to make people conwerse. Once he gets em goin, they sometimes talks so fast and screams so loud someone has to hit em over the head to slow em down. Bumblers ain't allowed to hold no one's tongue around the Tick-Tock Man, not even fine young triggers like you. Now get the fuck down that ladder. Hup!"

He lashed out with his foot. This time Jake managed to tuck in and dodge the blow. He looked into the half-open manhole, saw the ladder, and started down. He was still chest-high to the alley when a tremendous stonelike crash hammered the air. It came from a mile or more away, but Jake knew what it was without having to be told. A cry of pure misery burst from his lips.

A grim smile tugged at the corners of Gasher's mouth. "Your hard-case friend trailed ye a little better than ye thought he would, didn't he?

Not better than I thought, though, cully, for I got a look at his eyes -  wery pert and cunning they were. I thought he'd come arter his juicy little night-nudge a right smart, if he was to come at all, and so he did. He spied the tripwires, but the fountain's got him, so that's all right. Get on, sweetcheeks."

He aimed a kick at Jake's protruding head. Jake ducked it, but one foot slipped on the ladder bolted to the side of the sewer shaft and he only saved himself from falling by clutching Gasher's scab-raddled ankle. He looked up, pleading, and saw no softening on that dying, infected face.

"Please," he said, and heard the word trying to break into a sob. He kept seeing Roland lying crushed beneath the huge fountain. What had Gasher said? If anyone wanted him, they would have to pick him up with a blotter.

"Beg if you want, dear heart. Just don't expect no good to come of it, for mercy stops on this side of the bridge, so it does. Now go down, or I'll kick your bleedin brains right outcher bleedin ears."

So Jake went down, and by the time he reached the standing water at the bottom, the urge to cry had passed. He waited, shoulders slumped and head down, for Gasher to descend and lead him to his fate.

23

ROLAND HAD COME CLOSE to tripping the crossed wires which held back the avalanche of junk, but the dangling fountain was absurd - a trap which might have been set by a stupid child. Cort had taught them to constantly check all visual quadrants as they moved in enemy territory, and that included above as well as behind and below.

"Stop," he told Oy, raising his voice to be heard over the drums.

"Op!" Oy agreed, then looked ahead and immediately added, "Ake!"

"Yes." The gunslinger took another look up at the suspended marble fountain, then examined the street, looking for the trigger. There were two, he saw. Perhaps their camouflage as cobblestones had once been effective, but that time was long past. Roland bent down, hands on his knees, and spoke into Oy's upturned face. "Going to pick you up for a minute now. Don't fuss, Oy."

"Oy!"

Roland put his arms around the bumbler. At first Oy stiffened and attempted to pull away, and then Roland felt the small animal give in. He wasn't happy about being this close to someone who wasn't Jake, but he clearly intended to put up with it. Roland found himself wondering again just how intelligent Oy was.

He carried him up the narrow passage and beneath The Hanging Fountain of Lud, stepping carefully over the mock cobbles. Once they were safely past, he bent to let Oy go. As he did, the drums stopped.

"Ake!" Oy said impatiently. "Ake-Ake!"

"Yes - but there's a little piece of business to attend to first."

He led Oy fifteen yards farther down the alley, then bent and picked up a chunk of concrete. He tossed it thoughtfully from hand to hand, and as he did, he heard the sound of a pistol-shot from the east. The amplified thump of the drums had buried the sound of Eddie and Susan-nah's battle with the ragged band of Pubes, but he heard this gunshot clearly and smiled - it almost surely meant that the Deans had reached the cradle, and that was the first good news of this day, which already seemed at least a week long.

Roland turned and threw the piece of concrete. His aim was as true as it had been when he had thrown at the ancient traffic signal in River Crossing; the missile struck one of the discolored triggers dead center, and one of the rusty cables snapped with a harsh twang. The marble fountain dropped, rolling over as the other cable snubbed it for a moment longer - long enough so that a man with fast reflexes could have cleared the drop-zone anyway, Roland reckoned. Then it too let go, and the fountain fell like a pink, misshapen stone.

Roland dropped behind a pile of rusty steel beams and Oy jumped nimbly into his lap as the fountain hit the street with a vast, shattery thump. Chunks of pink marble, some as big as carts, flew through the air. Several small chips stung Roland's face. He brushed others out of Oy's fur. He looked over the makeshift barricade. The fountain had cracked in two like a vast plate. We won't be coming back this way, Roland thought. The passageway, narrow to begin with, was now com-pletely blocked.

He wondered if Jake had heard the fall of the fountain, and what he had made of it if he had. He didn't waste such speculation on Gasher; Gasher would think he had been crushed to paste, which was exactly what Roland wanted him to think. Would Jake think the same thing? The boy should know better than to believe a gunslinger could be killed by such a simple device, but if Gasher had terrorized him enough, Jake might not be thinking that clearly. Well, it was too late to worry about it now, and if he had it to do over again, he would do exactly the same thing. Dying or not, Gasher had displayed both courage and animal cun-ning. If he was off his guard now, the trick was worth it.

Roland got to his feet. "Oy - find Jake."

"Ake!" Oy stretched his head forward on his long neck, sniffed around in a semicircle, picked up Jake's scent, and was off again with Roland running after. Ten minutes later he came to a stop at a manhole cover in the street, sniffed all the way around it, then looked up at Roland and barked shrilly.

The gunslinger dropped to one knee and observed both the confu-sion of tracks and a wide path of scratches on the cobbles. He thought this particular manhole cover had been moved quite often. His eyes narrowed as he saw the wad of bloody phlegm in a crease between two nearby cobbles.

"The bastard keeps hitting him," he murmured.

He pulled the manhole cover back, looked down, then untied the rawhide lacings which held his shirt closed. He picked the bumbler up and tucked him into his shirt. Oy bared his teeth, and for a moment Roland felt his claws splayed against the flesh of his chest and belly like small sharp knives. Then they withdrew and Oy only peered out of Roland's shirt with his bright eyes, panting like a steam engine. The gunslinger could feel the rapid beat of Oy's heart against his own. He pulled the rawhide lace from the eyelets in his shirt and found another, longer, lace in his purse.

"I'm going to leash you. I don't like it and you're going to like it even less, but it's going to be very dark down there."

He tied the two lengths of rawhide together and formed one end into a wide loop which he slipped over Oy's head. He expected Oy to bare his teeth again, perhaps even to nip him, but Oy didn't. He only looked up at Roland with his gold-ringed eyes and barked "Ake!" again in his impatient voice.

Roland put the loose end of his makeshift leash in his mouth, then sat down on the edge of the sewer shaft ... if that was what it was. He felt for the top rung of the ladder and found it. He descended slowly and carefully, more aware than ever that he was missing half a hand and that the steel rungs were slimy with oil and some thicker stuff that was probably moss. Oy was a heavy, warm weight between his shirt and belly, panting steadily and harshly. The gold rings in his eyes gleamed like medallions in the dim light.

At last, the gunslinger's groping foot splashed into the water at the bottom of the shaft. He glanced up briefly at the coin of white light far above him. This is where it starts getting hard, he thought. The tunnel was warm and dank and smelled like an ancient charnel house. Some-where nearby, water was dripping hollowly and monotonously. Farther off, Roland could hear the rumble of machinery. He lifted a very grateful Oy out of his shirt and set him down in the shallow water running sluggishly along the sewer tunnel.

"Now it's all up to you," he murmured in the bumbler's ear. "To Jake, Oy. To Jake!"

"Ake!" the bumbler barked, and splashed rapidly off into the darkness, swinging his head from side to side at the end of his long neck like a pendulum. Roland followed with the end of the rawhide leash wrapped around his diminished right hand.

24

THE CRADLE - IT WAS easily big enough to have acquired proper-noun status in their minds - stood in the center of a square five times larger than the one where they had come upon the blasted statue, and when she got a really good look at it, Susannah realized how old and gray and fundamentally grungy the rest of Lud really was. The Cradle was so clean it almost hurt her eyes. No vines overgrew its sides; no graffiti daubed its blinding white walls and steps and columns. The yellow plains dust which had coated everything else was absent here. As they drew closer, Susannah saw why: streams of water coursed endlessly down the sides of the Cradle, issuing from nozzles hidden in the shadows of the copper-sheathed eaves. Interval sprays created by other hidden nozzles washed the steps, turning them into off-and-on waterfalls.

"Wow," Eddie said. "It makes Grand Central look like a Greyhound station in Buttfuck, Nebraska ."

"What a poet you are, dear," Susannah said dryly.

The steps surrounded the entire building and rose to a great open lobby. There were no obscuring mats of vegetation here, but Eddie and Susannah found they still couldn't get a good look inside; the shadows thrown by the overhanging roof were too deep. The Totems of the Beam marched all the way around the building, two by two, but the corners were reserved for creatures Susannah fervently hoped never to meet outside of the occasional nightmare - hideous stone dragons with scaly bodies, clutching, claw-tipped hands, and nasty peering eyes.

Eddie touched her shoulder and pointed higher. Susannah looked... and felt her breath come to a stop in her throat. Standing astride the peak of the roof, far above The Totems of the Beam and the dragonish gargoyles, as if given dominion over them, was a golden warrior at least sixty feet high. A battered cowboy hat was shoved back to reveal his lined and careworn brow; a bandanna hung askew on his upper chest, as if it had just been pulled down after serving long, hard duty as a dust-muffle. In one upraised fist he held a revolver; in the other, what appeared to be an olive branch.

Roland of Gilead stood atop the Cradle of Lud, dressed in gold.

No, she thought, at last remembering to breathe again. It's not him... but in another way, it is. That man was a gunslinger, and the resemblance between him, who's probably been dead a thousand years or more, and Roland is all the truth of ka-tet you'll ever need to know.

Thunder slammed out of the south. Lightning harried racing clouds across the sky. She wished she had more time to study both the golden statue which stood atop the Cradle and the animals which surrounded it; each of these latter appeared to have words carved upon them, and she had an idea that what was written there might be knowledge worth having. Under these circumstances, however, there was no time to spare.

A wide red strip had been painted across the pavement at the point where The Street of the Turtle emptied into The Plaza of the Cradle. Maud and the fellow Eddie called Jeeves the Butler stopped a prudent distance from the red mark.

"This far and no farther," Maud told them flatly. "You may take us to our deaths, but each man and woman owes one to the gods anyway, and I'll die on this side of the dead-line no matter what. I'll not dare Blaine for outlanders."

"Nor will I," Jeeves said. He had taken off his dusty bowler and was holding it against his naked chest. On his face was an expression of fearful reverence.

"Fine," Susannah said. "Now scat on out of here, both of you."

"Ye'll backshoot us the second we turn from ye," Jeeves said in a trembling voice. "I'll take my watch and warrant on it, so I will."

Maud shook her head. The blood on her face had dried to a gro-tesque maroon stippling. "There never were a backshooting gunslinger -  that much I will say."

"We only have their word for it that that's what they are."

Maud pointed to the big revolver with the worn sandalwood grip which Susannah held in her hand. Jeeves looked... and after a moment he stretched out his hand to the woman. When Maud took it, Susannah's image of them as dangerous killers collapsed. They looked more like Hansel and Gretel than Bonnie and Clyde; tired, frightened, confused, and lost so long in the woods that they had grown old there. Her hate and fear of them departed. What replaced it was pity and a deep, aching sadness.

"Fare you well, both of you," she said softly. "Walk as you will, and with no fear of harm from me or my man here."

Maud nodded. "I believe you mean us no harm, and I forgive you for shooting Winston. But listen to me, and listen well: stay out of the Cradle. Whatever reasons you think you have for going in, they're not good enough. To enter Blaine 's Cradle is death."

"We don't have any choice," Eddie said, and thunder banged over-head again, as if in agreement. "Now let me tell you something. I don't know what's underneath Lud and what isn't, but I do know those drums you're so whacked out about are part of a recording - a song - that was made in the world my wife and I came from." He looked at their uncom-prehending faces and raised his arms in frustration. "Jesus Pumpkin-Pie Christ, don't you get it? You're killing each other over a piece of music that was never even released as a single!"

Susannah put her hand on his shoulder and murmured his name. He ignored her for the moment, his eyes flicking from Jeeves to Maud and then back to Jeeves again.

"You want to see monsters? Take a good look at each other, then. And when you get back to whatever funhouse it is you call home, take a good look at your friends and relatives."

"You don't understand," Maud said. Her eyes were dark and somber. "But you will. Ay - you will."

"Go on, now," Susannah said quietly. "Talk between us is no good; the words only drop dead. Just go your way and try to remember the faces of your fathers, for I think you lost sight of those faces long ago."

The two of them walked back in the direction from which they had come without another word. They did look back over their shoulders from time to time, however, and they were still holding hands: Hansel and Gretel lost in the deep dark forest.

"Lemme outta here," Eddie said heavily. He made the Ruger safe, stuck it back in the waistband of his pants, and then rubbed his red eyes with the heels of his hands. "Just lemme out, that's all I ask."

"I know what you mean, handsome." She was clearly scared, but her head had that defiant tilt he had come to recognize and love. He put his hands on her shoulders, bent down, and kissed her. He did not let either their surroundings or the oncoming storm keep him from doing a thorough job. When he pulled back at last, she was studying him with wide, dancing eyes. "Wow! What was that about?"

"About how I'm in love with you," he said, "and I guess that's about all. Is it enough?"

Her eyes softened. For a moment she thought about telling him the secret she might or might not be keeping, but of course the time and place were wrong - she could no more tell him she might be pregnant now than she could pause to read the words written on the sculpted Portal Totems.

"It's enough, Eddie," she said.

"You're the best thing that ever happened to me." His hazel eyes were totally focused on her. "It's hard for me to say stuff like that -  living with Henry made it hard, I guess - but it's true. I think I started loving you because you were everything Roland took me away from - in New York, I mean - hut it's a lot more than that now, because I don't want to go hack anymore. Do you?"

She looked at the Cradle. She was terrified of what they might find in there, but all the same... she looked back at him. "No, I don't want to go back. I want to spend the rest of my life going forward. As long as you're with me, that is. It's funny, you know, you saying you started loving me because of all the things he took you away from."

"Funny how?"

"I started loving you because you set me free of Detta Walker." She paused, thought, then shook her head slightly. "No - it goes further than that. I started loving you because you set me free of both those bitches. One was a foul-mouthed, cock-teasing thief, and the other was a self-righteous, pompous prig. Comes down to six of one and half a dozen of the other, as far as I'm concerned. I like Susannah Dean better than either one... and you were the one who set me free."

This time it was she who did the reaching, pressing her palm to his stubbly cheeks, drawing him down, kissing him gently. When he put a light hand on her breast, she sighed and covered it with her own.

"I think we better get going," she said, "or we're apt to be laying right here in the street... and getting wet, from the look."

Eddie stared around at the silent towers, the broken windows, the vine-encrusted walls a final time. Then he nodded. "Yeah. I don't think there's any future in this town, anyway."

He pushed her forward, and they both stiffened as the wheels of the chair passed over what Maud had called the dead-line, fearful that they would trip some ancient protective device and die together. But nothing happened. Eddie pushed her into the plaza, and as they approached the steps leading up to the Cradle, a cold, wind-driven rain began to fall.

Although neither of them knew it, the first of the great autumn storms of Mid-World had arrived.