The Dark Tower

In through the door of the next shed, scraping a balloon tire of the SCT on the jamb, but not quite hard enough to tip it over. Praise God, for she never would have had enough strength to right it on her own. In here, one of the “lazers” was set on a snap-down tripod. She pushed the toggle-switch marked ON and was wondering if she needed to do something else with the INTERVAL switch when the weapon’s muzzle emitted a blinding stream of reddish-purple light that arrowed into the compound above the triple run of fence and made a hole in the top story of Damli House. To Susannah it looked as big as a hole made by a point-blank artillery shell.

This is good, she thought. I gotta get the other ones going.

But she wondered if there would be time. Already other Breakers were picking up on Dinky’s suggestion, rebroadcasting it and boosting it in the process:

(GO SOUTH! HANDS UP! WON’T BE HURT!)

She flicked the Coyote’s fire-switch to FULL AUTO and raked it across the upper level of the nearest dorm to emphasize the point. Bullets whined and ricocheted. Glass broke. Breakers screamed and began to stampede around the side of Damli House with their hands up. Susannah saw Ted come around the same side. He was hard to miss, because he was going against the current. He and Dinky embraced briefly, then raised their hands and joined the southward flow of Breakers, who would soon lose their status as VIPs and become just one more bunch of refugees struggling to survive in a dark and poisoned land.

She’d gotten eight, but it wasn’t enough. The hunger was upon her, that dry hunger. Her eyes saw everything. They pulsed and ached in her head, and they saw everything. She hoped that other taheen, low men, or hume guards would come around the side of Damli House.

She wanted more.

Thirteen

Sheemie Ruiz lived in Corbett Hall, which happened to be the dormitory Susannah, all unknowing, had raked with at least a hundred bullets. Had he been on his bed, he almost certainly would have been killed. Instead he was on his knees, at the foot of it, praying for the safety of his friends. He didn’t even look up when the window blew in but simply redoubled his supplications. He could hear Dinky’s thoughts

(GO SOUTH)

pounding in his head, then heard other thought-streams join it,

(WITH YOUR HANDS UP)

making a river. And then Ted’s voice was there, not just joining the others but amping them up, turning what had been a river

(YOU WON’T BE HURT)

into an ocean. Without realizing it, Sheemie changed his prayer. Our Father and P’teck my pals became go south with your hands up, you won’t be hurt. He didn’t even stop this when the propane tanks behind the Damli House cafeteria blew up with a shattering roar.

Fourteen

Gangli Tristum (that’s Doctor Gangli to you, say thankya) was in many ways the most feared man in Damli House. He was a can-toi who had — perversely — taken a taheen name instead of a human one, and he ran the infirmary on the third floor of the west wing with an iron fist. And on roller skates.

Things on the ward were fairly relaxed when Gangli was in his office doing paperwork, or off on his rounds (which usually meant visiting Breakers with the sniffles in their dorms), but when he came out, the whole place — nurses and orderlies as well as patients — fell respectfully (and nervously) silent. A newcomer might laugh the first time he saw the squat, dark-complected, heavily jowled man-thing gliding slowly down the center aisle between the beds, arms folded over the stethoscope which lay on his chest, the tails of his white coat wafting out behind him (one Breaker had once commented, “He looks like John Irving after a bad facelift”). Such a one who was caught laughing would never laugh again, however. Dr. Gangli had a sharp tongue, indeed, and no one made fun of his roller skates with impunity.

Now, instead of gliding on them, he went flying up and down the aisles, the steel wheels (for his skating gear far predated rollerblades) rumbling on the hardwood. “All the papers!” he shouted. “Do you hear me?…If I lose one file in this fucking mess, one gods-damned file, I’ll have someone’s eyes with my afternoon tea!”

The patients were already gone, of course; he’d had them out of their beds and down the stairs at the first bray of the smoke detector, at the first whiff of smoke. A number of orderlies — gutless wonders, and he knew who each of them was, oh yes, and a complete report would be made when the time came — had fled with the sickfolk, but five had stayed, including his personal assistant, Jack London. Gangli was proud of them, although one could not have told it from his hectoring voice as he skated up and down, up and down, in the thickening smoke.