The Dark Tower

At last Roland said: “I thank you, Bill — we all say thank you, I’m sure — but I think we’ll pass on your kind offer. Were you to ask me why, I couldn’t say. Only that part of me thinks that tomorrowday’s too soon. That part of me thinks we should go the rest of the way on foot, just as we’ve already traveled so far.” He took a deep breath, let it out. “I’m not ready to be there yet. Not quite ready.”

You too, Susannah marveled. You too.

“I need a little more time to prepare my mind and my heart. Mayhap even my soul.” He reached into his back pocket and brought out the photocopy of the Robert Browning poem that had been left for them in Dandelo’s medicine chest. “There’s something writ in here about remembering the old times before coming to the last battle…or the last stand. It’s well-said. And perhaps, really, all I need is what this poet speaks of — a draught of earlier, happier sights. I don’t know. But unless Susannah objects, I believe we’ll go on foot.”

“Susannah doesn’t object,” she said quietly. “Susannah thinks it’s just what the doctor ordered. Susannah only objects to being dragged along behind like a busted tailpipe.”

Roland gave her a grateful (if distracted) smile — he seemed to have gone away from her somehow during these last few days — and then turned back to Bill. “I wonder if you have a cart I could pull? For we’ll have to take at least some gunna…and there’s Patrick. He’ll have to ride part of the time.”

Patrick looked indignant. He cocked an arm in front of him, made a fist, and flexed his muscle. The result — a tiny goose-egg rising on the biceps of his drawing-arm — seemed to shame him, for he dropped it quickly.

Susannah smiled and reached out to pat his knee. “Don’t look like that, sugar. It’s not your fault that you spent God knows how long caged up like Hansel and Gretel in the witch’s house.”

“I’m sure I have such a thing,” Bill said, “and a battery-powered version for Susannah. What I don’t have, I can make. It would take an hour or two at most.”

Roland was calculating. “If we leave here with five hours of daylight ahead of us, we might be able to make twelve wheels by sunset. What Susannah would call nine or ten miles. Another five days at that rather leisurely speed would bring us to the Tower I’ve spent my life searching for. I’d come to it around sunset if possible, for that’s when I’ve always seen it in my dreams. Susannah?”

And the voice inside — that deep voice — whispered: Four nights. Four nights to dream. That should be enough. Maybe more than enough. Of course, ka would have to intervene. If they had indeed outrun its influence, that wouldn’t—couldn’t—happen. But Susannah now thought ka reached everywhere, even to the Dark Tower. Was, perhaps, embodied by the Dark Tower.

“That’s fine,” she told him in a faint voice.

“Patrick?” Roland asked. “What do you say?”

Patrick shrugged and flipped a hand in their direction, hardly looking up from his pad. Whatever they wanted, that gesture said. Susannah guessed that Patrick understood little about the Dark Tower, and cared less. And why would he care? He was free of the monster, and his belly was full. Those things were enough for him. He had lost his tongue, but he could sketch to his heart’s content. She was sure that to Patrick, that seemed like more than an even trade. And yet…and yet…

He’s not meant to go, either. Not him, not Oy, not me. But what is to become of us, then?

She didn’t know, but she was queerly unworried about it. Ka would tell. Ka, and her dreams.

Four

An hour later the three humes, the bumbler, and Bill the robot stood clustered around a cut-down wagon that looked like a slightly larger version of Ho Fat’s Luxury Taxi. The wheels were tall but thin, and spun like a dream. Even when it was full, Susannah thought, it would be like pulling a feather. At least while Roland was fresh. Pulling it uphill would undoubtedly rob him of his energy after awhile, but as they ate the food they were carrying, Ho Fat II would grow lighter still…and she thought there wouldn’t be many hills, anyway. They had come to the open lands, the prairie-lands; all the snow- and tree-covered ridges were behind them. Bill had provided her with an electric runabout that was more scooter than golf-cart. Her days of being dragged along behind (“like a busted tailpipe”) were done.

“If you’ll give me another half an hour, I can smooth this off,” Bill said, running a three-fingered steel hand along the edge where he had cut off the front half of the small wagon that was now Ho Fat II.

“We say thankya, but it won’t be necessary,” Roland said. “We’ll lay a couple of hides over it, just so.”