“I’ll soon be delivered of mine,” Mia said. “Will ya never be delivered of yours?”
“I thought I was,” Susannah said truthfully. “She came back. Mostly, I think, to deal with you.”
“I hate her.”
“I know.” And Susannah knew more. Mia feared Detta, as well. Feared her big-big.
“If she speaks, our palaver ends.”
Susannah shrugged. “She comes when she comes and speaks when she speaks. She doesn’t ask
my permission.”
Ahead of them on this side of the street was an arch with a sign above it:
F E D I C S T A T I O N
M O N O P A T R I C I A D I S C O N T I N U E D
T H U M B P R I N T R E A D E R I N O P E R A T I V E
S H O W T I C K E T
N O R T H C E N T R A L P O S I T R O N I C S T H A N K S Y O U F O R Y O U R
P A T I E N C E
The sign didn’t interest Susannah as much as the two things that lay on the filthy station platform beyond it: a child’s doll, decayed to little more than a head and one floppy arm, and, beyond it, a grinning mask. Although the mask appeared to be made of steel, a good deal of it
seemed to have rotted like flesh. The teeth poking out of the grin were canine fangs. The eyes
were glass. Lenses, Susannah felt sure, no doubt also crafted by North Central Positronics. Surrounding the mask were a few shreds and tatters of green cloth, what had undoubtedly once been
this thing’s hood. Susannah had no trouble putting together the remains of the doll and the
remains of the Wolf; her mamma, as Detta sometimes liked to tell folks (especially horny boys in road-house parking lots), didn’t raise no fools.
“This is where they brought them,” she said. “Where the Wolves brought the twins they stole from Calla Bryn Sturgis. Where they — what? — operated on them.”
“Not just from Calla Bryn Sturgis,” Mia said indifferently, “but aye. And once the babbies were here, they were taken there. A place you’ll also recognize, I’ve no doubt.”
She pointed across Fedic’s single street and farther up. The last building before the castle wall abruptly ended the town was a long Quonset hut with sides of filthy corrugated metal and a rusty curved roof. The windows running along the side Susannah could see had been boarded up. Also
along that side was a steel hitching rail. To it were tied what looked like seventy horses, all of them gray. Some had fallen over and lay with their legs sticking straight out. One or two had
turned their heads toward the women’s voices and then seemed to freeze in that position. It was very un-horselike behavior, but of course these weren’t real horses. They were robots, or
cyborgs, or whichever one of Roland’s terms you might like to use. Many of them seemed to
have run down or worn out.
In front of this building was a sign on a rusting steel plate. It read:
NORTH CENTRAL POSITRONICS, LTD.
Fedic Headquarters
Arc 16 Experimental Station
Maximum Security
VERBAL ENTRY CODE REQUIRED
EYEPRINT REQUIRED
“It’s another Dogan, isn’t it?” Susannah asked.
“Well, yes and no,” Mia said. “It’s the Dogan of all Dogans, actually.”
“Where the Wolves brought the children.”
“Aye, and will bring them again,” Mia said. “For the King’s work will go forward after this disturbance raised by your friend the gunslinger is past. I have no doubt of it.”
Susannah looked at her with real curiosity. “How can you speak so cruel and yet be so serene?” she asked. “They bring children here and scoop out their heads like . . . like gourds.
Children, who’ve harmed nobody! What they send back are great galumphing idiots who grow to
their full size in agony and often die in much the same way. Would you be so sanguine, Mia, if
your child was borne away across one of those saddles, shrieking for you and holding out his arms?”
Mia flushed, but was able to meet Susannah’s gaze. “Each must follow the road upon which ka has set her feet, Susannah of New York. Mine is to bear my chap, and raise him, and thus end
your dinn’s quest. And his life.”
“It’s wonderful how everyone seems to think they know just what ka means for them,”
Susannah said. “Don’t you think that’s wonderful?”
“I think you’re trying to make jest of me because you fear,” Mia said levelly. “If such makes you feel better, than aye, have on.” She spread her arms and made a little sarcastic bow over her great belly.
They had stopped on the boardwalk in front of a shop advertising MILLINERY & LADIES’
WEAR and across from the Fedic Dogan. Susannah thought: Burn up the day, don’t forget that’s the other part of your job here. Kill time. Keep the oddity of a body we now seem to share in that women’s restroom just as long as you possibly can.
“I’m not making fun,” Susannah said. “I’m only asking you to put yourself in the place of all those other mothers.”
Mia shook her head angrily, her inky hair flying around her ears and brushing at her shoulders.
“I did not make their fate, lady, nor did they make mine. I’ll save my tears, thank you. Would you hear my tale or not?”
“Yes, please.”
“Then let us sit, for my legs are sorely tired.”
TEN
In the Gin-Puppie Saloon, a few rickety storefronts back in the direction from which they’d
come, they found chairs which would still bear their weight, but neither woman had any taste for the saloon itself, which smelled of dusty death. They dragged the chairs out to the boardwalk,
where Mia sat with an audible sigh of relief.
“Soon,” she said. “Soon you shall be delivered, Susannah of New York, and so shall I.”
“Maybe, but I don’t understand any of this. Least of all why you’re rushing to this guy Sayre when you must know he serves the Crimson King.”
“Hush!” Mia said. She sat with her legs apart and her huge belly rising before her, looking out across the empty street. ” ‘Twas a man of the King who gave me a chance to fulfill the only destiny ka ever left me. Not Sayre but one much greater than he. Someone to whom Sayre
answers. A man named Walter.”
Susannah started at the name of Roland’s ancient nemesis. Mia looked at her, gave her a grim
smile.
“You know the name, I see. Well, maybe that’ll save some talk. Gods know there’s been far
too much talk for my taste, already; it’s not what I was made for. I was made to bear my chap and raise him, no more than that. And no less.”
Susannah offered no reply. Killing was supposedly her trade, killing time her current chore,
but in truth she had begun to find Mia’s single-mindedness a trifle tiresome. Not to mention
frightening.
As if picking this thought up, Mia said: “I am what I am and I am content wi’ it. If others are not, what’s that to me? Spit on em!”
Spoken like Detta Walker at her feistiest, Susannah thought, but made no reply. It seemed safer to remain quiet.
After a pause, Mia went on. ‘Yet I’d be lying if I didn’t say that being here brings back . . .
certain memories. Yar!” And, unexpectedly, she laughed. Just as unexpectedly, the sound was beautiful and melodic.
“Tell your tale,” Susannah said. “This time tell me all of it. We have time before the labor starts again.”
“Do you say so?”
“I do. Tell me.”
For a few moments Mia just looked out at the street with its dusty cover of oggan and its air of sad and ancient abandonment. As Susannah waited for story-time to commence, she for the first
time became aware of the still, shadeless quality to Fedic. She could see everything very well, and there was no moon in the sky as on the castle allure, but she still hesitated to call this
daytime.
It’s no time, a voice inside her whispered — she knew not whose. This is a place between, Susannah; a place where shadows are cancelled and time holds its breath.
Then Mia told her tale. It was shorter than Susannah had expected (shorter than she wanted,
given Eddie’s abjuration to burn up the day), but it explained a great deal. More, actually, than Susannah had hoped for. She listened with growing rage, and why not? She had been more than
raped that day in the ring of stones and bones, it seemed. She had been robbed, as well — the