The Dark Tower

“There is a Tower, lady and gentlemen, as you must know. At one time six beams crisscrossed there, both taking power from it—it’s some kind of unimaginable power-source—and lending support, the way guy-wires support a radio tower. Four of these Beams are now gone, the fourth very recently. The only two remaining are the Beam of the Bear, Way of the Turtle—Shardik’s Beam—and the Beam of the Elephant, Way of the Wolf—some call that one Gan’s Beam.

“I wonder if you can imagine my horror at discovering what I’d actually been doing in The Study. When I’d been scratching that innocent itch. Although I knew all along that it was something important, knew it.

“And there was something worse, something I hadn’t suspected, something that applied only to me. I’d known that I was different in some ways; for one thing, I seemed to be the only Breaker with an ounce of compassion in my makeup. When they’ve got the mean reds, I am, as I told you, the one they come to. Pimli Prentiss, the Master, married Tanya and Joey Rastosovich—insisted on it, wouldn’t hear a word against the idea, kept saying that it was his privilege and his responsibility, he was just like the captain on an old cruise-ship—and of course they let him do it. But afterward, they came to my rooms and Tanya said, ‘You marry us, Ted. Then we’ll really be married.’

“And sometimes I ask myself, ‘Did you think that was all it was? Before you started visiting with Trampas, and listening every time he lifted up his cap to scratch, did you truly think that having a little pity and a little love in your soul were the only things that set you apart from the others? Or were you fooling yourself about that, too?’

“I don’t know for sure, but maybe I can find myself innocent on that particular charge. I really did not understand that my talent goes far beyond progging and Breaking. I’m like a microphone for a singer or a steroid for a muscle. I . . . hype them. Say there’s a unit of force—call it darks, all right? In The Study, twenty or thirty people might be able to put out fifty darks an hour without me. With me? Maybe it jumps to five hundred darks an hour. And it jumps all at once.

“Listening to Trampas’s head, I came to see that they considered me the catch of the century, maybe of all time, the one truly indispensable Breaker. I’d already helped them to snap one Beam and I was cutting centuries off their work on Shardik’s Beam. And when Shardik’s Beam snaps, lady and gentlemen, Gan’s can only last a little while. And when Gan’s Beam also snaps, the Dark Tower will fall, creation will end, and the very Eye of Existence will turn blind.

“How I ever kept Trampas from seeing my distress I don’t know. And I’ve reason to believe that I didn’t keep as complete a poker face as I thought at the time.

“I knew I had to get out. And that was when Sheemie came to me the first time. I think he’d been reading me all along, but even now I don’t know for sure, and neither does Dinky. All I know is that one night he came to my room and thought to me, ‘I’ll make a hole for you, sai, if you want, and you can go boogie-bye-bye.’ I asked him what he meant, and he just looked at me. It’s funny how much a single look can say, isn’t it? Don’t insult my intelligence. Don’t waste my time. Don’t waste your own. I didn’t read those thoughts in his mind, not at all. I saw them on his face.”

Roland grunted agreement. His brilliant eyes were fixed on the turning reels of the tape recorder.

“I did ask him where the hole would come out. He said he didn’t know—I’d be taking luck of the draw. All the same, I didn’t think it over for long. I was afraid that if I did, I’d find reasons to stay. I said, ‘Go ahead, Sheemie—send me boogie-bye-bye.’

“He closed his eyes and concentrated, and all at once the corner of my room was gone. I could see cars going by. They were distorted, but they were actual American cars. I didn’t argue or question any more, I just went for it. I wasn’t completely sure I could go through into that other world, but I’d reached a point where I hardly even cared. I thought dying might be the best thing I could do. It would slow them down, at least.

“And just before I took the plunge, Sheemie thought to me, ‘Look for my friend Will Dearborn. His real name is Roland. His friends are dead, but I know he’s not, because I can hear him. He’s a gunslinger, and he has new friends. Bring them here and they’ll make the bad folks stop hurting the Beam, the way he made Jonas and his friends stop when they were going to kill me.’ For Sheemie, this was a sermon.