The Dark Tower

Eddie looked at the others. Jake and Roland were sitting on the sleeping-bags which had been left for them. Oy lay curled up at Jake’s feet. Susannah was parked comfortably on the seat of her Cruisin Trike. Eddie nodded, satisfied, and pushed the tape recorder’s PLAY button. The reels spun . . . there was silence . . . they spun . . . and silence . . . then, after clearing his throat, Ted Brautigan began to speak. They listened for over four hours, Eddie replacing each empty reel with the next full one, not bothering to rewind.

No one suggested they stop, certainly not Roland, who listened with silent fascination even when his hip began to throb again. Roland thought he understood more, now; certainly he knew they had a real chance to stop what was happening in the compound below them. The knowledge frightened him because their chances of success were slim. The feeling of ka-shume made that clear. And one did not really understand the stakes until one glimpsed the goddess in her white robe, the bitch-goddess whose sleeve fell back to reveal her comely white arm as she beckoned: Come to me, run to me. Yes, it’s possible, you may gain your goal, you may win, so run to me, give me your whole heart. And if I break it? If one of you falls short, falls into the pit of coffah (the place your new friends call hell)? Too bad for you.

Yes, if one of them fell into coffah and burned within sight of the fountains, that would be too bad, indeed. And the bitch in the white robe? Why, she’d only put her hands on her hips, and throw back her head, and laugh as the world ended. So much depended on the man whose weary, rational voice now filled the cave. The Dark Tower itself depended on him, for Brautigan was a man of staggering powers.

The surprising thing was that the same could be said of Sheemie.

TWO

“Test, one two . . . test, one two . . . test, test, test. This is Ted Stevens Brautigan and this is a test . . .”

A brief pause. The reels turned, one full, the other now beginning to fill.

“Okay, good. Great, in fact. I wasn’t sure this thing would work, especially here, but it seems fine. I prepared for this by trying to imagine you four—five, counting the boy’s little friend—listening to me, because I’ve always found visualization an excellent technique when preparing some sort of presentation. Unfortunately, in this case it doesn’t work. Sheemie can send me very good mental pictures—brilliant ones, in fact—but Roland is the only one of you he’s actually seen, and him not since the fall of Gilead, when both of them were very young. No disrespect, fellows, but I suspect the Roland now coming toward Thunderclap looks hardly anything like the young man my friend Sheemie so worshipped.

“Where are you now, Roland? In Maine, looking for the writer? The one who also created me, after a fashion? In New York, looking for Eddie’s wife? Are any of you even still alive? I know the chances of you reaching Thunderclap aren’t good; ka is drawing you to the Devar-Toi, but a very powerful anti-ka, set in motion by the one you call the Crimson King, is working against you and your tet in a thousand ways. All the same . . .

“Was it Emily Dickinson who called hope the thing with feathers? I can’t remember. There are a great many things I can’t remember any longer, but it seems I still remember how to fight. Maybe that’s a good thing. I hope it’s a good thing.

“Has it crossed your mind to wonder where I’m recording this, lady and gentlemen?”

It hadn’t. They simply sat, mesmerized by the slightly dusty sound of Brautigan’s voice, passing a bottle of Perrier and a tin filled with graham crackers back and forth.

“I’ll tell you,” Brautigan went on, “partly because the three of you from America will surely find it amusing, but mostly because you may find it useful in formulating a plan to destroy what’s going on in Algul Siento.

“As I speak, I’m sitting on a chair made of slab chocolate. The seat is a big blue marshmallow, and I doubt if the air mattresses we’re planning to leave you could be any more comfortable. You’d think such a seat would be sticky, but it’s not. The walls of this room—and the kitchen I can see if I look through the gumdrop arch to my left—are made of green, yellow, and red candy. Lick the green one and you taste lime. Lick the red one and you taste raspberry. Although taste (in any sense of that slippery word) had very little to do with Sheemie’s choices, or so I believe; I think he simply has a child’s love of bright primary colors.”

Roland was nodding and smiling a little.

“Although I must tell you,” the voice from the tape recorder said dryly, “I’d be happy to have at least one room with a slightly more reserved décor. Something in blue, perhaps. Earth-tones would be even better.