The Dark Tower

He finished and cast the corpse aside onto the floor, just as he had the used-up, desiccated corpses of the rats. Nigel, that dedicated bustling butler, had disposed of those. He would not dispose of this one. Nigel stood silent no matter how many times Mordred bawled Nigel, I need you! Around the robot, the smell of charred plastic had grown strong enough to activate the overhead fans. DNK 45932 stood with his eyeless face turned to the left. It gave him an oddly inquisitive look, as if he’d died while on the verge of asking an important question: What is the meaning of life, perhaps, or Who put the overalls in Mrs. Murphy’s chowder? In any case, his brief career as a rat- and bumbler-catcher was over.

For the time being, Mordred was full of energy — the meal had been fresh and wonderful — but that wouldn’t last long. If he stayed in his spider-shape, he’d use up this new reservoir of strength even faster. If he went back to being a baby, however, he wouldn’t even be able to get down from the chair in which he was sitting, or once more put on the diaper — which had, of course, slid off his body when he changed. But he had to change back, for in his spider-shape he couldn’t think clearly at all. As for deductive reasoning? The idea was a bitter joke.

The white node on the spider’s back closed its human eyes, and the black body beneath flushed a congested red. The legs retracted toward the body and disappeared. The node which was the baby’s head grew and gained detail as the body beneath paled and took on human shape; the child’s blue eyes — bombardier eyes, gunslinger eyes — flashed. He was still full of strength from the bumbler’s blood and meat, he could feel it as the transformation rushed toward its conclusion, but a distressing amount of it (something like the foam on top of a glass of beer) had already dissipated. And not just from switching back and forth, either. The fact was that he was growing at a headlong pace. That sort of growth required relentless nourishment, and there was damned little nourishment to be had in the Arc 16 Experimental Station. Or in Fedic beyond, for that matter. There were canned goods and meals in foil packets and powdered power drinks, yar, plenty of those, but none of what was here would feed him as he needed to be fed. He needed fresh meat and even more than meat he needed blood. And the blood of animals would sustain the avalanche of his growth for only so long. Very soon he was going to need human blood, or the pace of his growth would first slow, then stop. The pain of starvation would come, but that pain, twisting relentlessly in his vitals like an auger, would be nothing to the mental and spiritual pain of watching them on the various video screens: still alive, reunited in their fellowship, with the comfort of a cause.

The pain of seeing him. Roland of Gilead.

How, he wondered, did he know the things he knew? From his mother? Some of them, yes, for he’d felt a million of Mia’s thoughts and memories (a good many of them swiped from Susannah) rush into him as he fed on her. But to know it was that way with the Grandfathers, as well, how did he know that? That, for instance, a German vampire who swilled the life’s blood of a Frenchman might speak French for a week or ten days, speak it like a native, and then the ability, like his victim’s memories, would begin to fade…

How could he know a thing like that?

Did it matter?

Now he watched them sleep. The boy Jake had awakened, but only briefly. Earlier Mordred had watched them eat, four fools and a bumbler — full of blood, full of energy — dining in a circle together. Always they would sit in a circle, they would make that circle even when they stopped to rest five minutes on the trail, doing it without even being aware of it, their circle that kept the rest of the world out. Mordred had no circle. Although he was new, he already understood that outside was his ka, just as it was the ka of winter’s wind to swing through only half the compass: from north to east and then back again to bleak north once more. He accepted this, yet he still looked at them with the outsider’s resentment, knowing he would hurt them and that the satisfaction would be bitter. He was of two worlds, the foretold joining of Prim and Am, of gadosh and godosh, of Gan and Gilead. He was in a way like Jesus Christ, but in a way he was purer than the sheepgod-man, for the sheepgod-man had but one true father, who was in the highly hypothetical heaven, and a stepfather who was on Earth. Poor old Joseph, who wore horns put on him by God Himself.

Mordred Deschain, on the other hand, had two real fathers. One of whom now slept on the screen before him.