corridor to his daughter’s office, he had picked a cane out of a faux elephant-foot stand, and now he thumped it on the expensive carpet for emphasis. Marian bore this patiently.
“SayGawd -bomb!”
“My father’s recent friendship with the Reverend Harrigan, who holds court down below,
has not been the high point in my life,” Marian said with a sigh, “but never mind. Did you
read the plaque, Roland?”
He nodded. Nancy Deepneau had used a different word—sign or sigul—but he understood
it came to the same. “The letters changed into Great Letters. I could read it very well.”
“And what did it say?”
“GIVEN BY THE TET CORPORATION, IN HONOR OF EDWARD CANTOR DEAN
AND JOHN “JAKE” CHAMBERS.”He paused. “Then it said ‘Cam-a-cam-mal, Pria-toi,
Gan delah,’ which you might say asWHITE OVER RED, THUS GAN WILLS EVER .”
“And to us it saysGOOD OVER EVIL, THIS IS THE WILL OF GOD ,” Marian said.
“God be praised!” Moses Carver said, and thumped his cane. “May thePrim rise!”
There was a perfunctory knock at the door and then the woman from the outer desk came
in, carrying a silver tray. Roland was fascinated to see a small black knob suspended in
front of her lips, and a narrow black armature that disappeared into her hair. Some sort of
far-speaking device, surely. Nancy Deepneau and Marian Carver helped her set out
steaming cups of tea and coffee, bowls of sugar and honey, a crock of cream. There was
also a plate of sandwiches. Roland’s stomach rumbled. He thought of his friends in the
ground—no more popkins for them—and also of Irene Tassenbaum, sitting in the little
park across the street, patiently waiting for him. Either thought alone should have been
enough to kill his appetite, but his stomach once more made its impudent noise. Some parts
of a man were conscienceless, a fact he supposed he had known since childhood. He helped
himself to a popkin, dumped a heaping spoonful of sugar into his tea, then added honey for good measure. He would make this as brief as possible and return to Irene as soon as he
could, but in the meantime…
“May it do you fine, sir,” Moses Carver said, and blew across his coffee cup. “Over the
teeth, over the gums, look out guts, here it comes! Hee!”
“Dad and I have a house on Montauk Point,” said Marian, pouring cream into her own
coffee, “and we were out there this past weekend. At around five-fifteen on Saturday
afternoon, I got a call from one of the security people here. The Hammarskjöld Plaza
Association employs them, but the Tet Corporation pays them a bonus so we may
know…certain things of interest, let’s say…as soon as they occur. We’ve been watching
that plaque in the lobby with extraordinary interest as the nineteenth of June approached,
Roland. Would it surprise you to know that, until roughly quarter of five on that day, it
readGIVEN BY THE TET CORPORATION, IN HONOR OF THE BEAM FAMILY,
AND IN MEMORY OF GILEAD ?”
Roland considered this, sipped his tea (it was hot and strong and good), then shook his
head. “No.”
She leaned forward, eyes gleaming. “And why do you say so?”
“Because until Saturday afternoon between four and five o’clock, nothing was sure. Even
with the Breakers stopped, nothing was sure until Stephen King was safe.” He glanced
around at them. “Do you know about the Breakers?”
Marian nodded. “Not the details, but we know the Beam they were working to destroy is
safe from them now, and that it wasn’t so badly damaged it can’t regenerate.” She hesitated,
then said: “And we know of your loss. Both of your losses. We’re ever so sorry, Roland.”
“Those boys are safe in the arms of Jesus,” Marian’s father said. “And even if they ain’t,
they’re together in the clearing.”
Roland, who wanted to believe this, nodded and said thankya. Then he turned back to
Marian. “The thing with the writer was very close. He was hurt, and badly. Jake died
saving him. He put his body between King and the van-mobile that would have taken his
life.”
“King is going to live,” Nancy said. “And he’s going to write again. We have that on very
good authority.”
“Whose?”
Marian leaned forward. “In a minute,” she said. “The point is, Roland, we believe it, we’re
sure of it, and King’s safety over the next few years means that your work in the matter of
the Beams is done: Ves’-Ka Gan.”
Roland nodded. The song would continue.
“There’s plenty of work for us ahead,” Marian went on, “thirty years’ worth at least, we
calculate, but—”
“But it’sour work, not yours,” Nancy said.
“You have this on the same ‘good authority’?” Roland asked, sipping his tea. Hot as it was,
he’d gotten half of the large cup inside of him already.
“Yes. Your quest to defeat the forces of the Crimson King has been successful. The
Crimson King himself—”
“That wa’n’tnever this man’s quest and you know it!” the centenarian sitting next to the
handsome black woman said, and he once more thumped his cane for emphasis. “His
quest—”
“Dad, that’s enough.” Her voice was hard enough to make the old man blink.
“Nay, let him speak,” Roland said, and they all looked at him, surprised by (and a little
afraid of) that dry whipcrack. “Let him speak, for he says true. If we’re going to have it out, let us have it all out. For me, the Beams have always been no more than means to an end.
Had they broken, the Tower would have fallen. Had the Tower fallen, I should never have
gained it, and climbed to the top of it.”
“You’re saying you cared more for the Dark Tower than for the continued existence of the
universe,” Nancy Deepneau said. She spoke in a just-let-me-make
-sure-I’ve-got-this-right voice and looked at Roland with a mixture of wonder and
contempt. “For the continued existence ofall the universes.”
“The Dark Toweris existence,” Roland said, “and I have sacrificed many friends to reach it
over the years, including a boy who called me father. I have sacrificed my own soul in the
bargain, lady-sai, so turn thy impudent glass another way. May you do it soon and do it
well, I beg.”
His tone was polite but dreadfully cold. All the color was dashed from Nancy Deepneau’s
face, and the teacup in her hands trembled so badly that Roland reached out and plucked it
from her hand, lest it spill and burn her.
“Take me not amiss,” he said. “Understand me, for we’ll never speak more. What was
done was done in both worlds, well and ill, for ka and against it. Yet there’s more beyond
all worlds than you know, and more behind them than you could ever guess. My time is
short, so let’s move on.”
“Well said, sir!” Moses Carver growled, and thumped his cane again.
“If I offended, I’m truly sorry,” Nancy said.
To this Roland made no reply, for he knew she was not sorry a bit—she was only afraid of
him. There was a moment of uncomfortable silence that Marian Carver finally broke. “We
don’t have any Breakers of our own, Roland, but at the ranch in Taos we employ a dozen
telepaths and precogs. What they make together is sometimes uncertain but always greater
than the sum of its parts. Do you know the term ‘good-mind’?”
The gunslinger nodded.
“They make a version of that,” she said, “although I’m sure it’s not so great or powerful as
that the Breakers in Thunderclap were able to produce.”
“B’cause they had hundreds,” the old man grumped.“And they were better fed.”
“Also because the servants of the King were more than willing to kidnap any who were
particularly powerful,” Nancy said, “they always had what we’d call ‘the pick of the litter.’
Still, ours have served us well enough.”
“Whose idea was it to put such folk to work for you?” Roland asked.
“Strange as it might seem to you, partner,” Moses said, “it was Cal Tower. He never
contributed much—never did much but c’lect his books and drag his heels, greedy
highfalutin whitebread sumbitch that he was—”
His daughter gave him a warning look. Roland found he had to struggle to keep a straight
face. Moses Carver might be a hundred years old, but he had pegged Calvin Tower in a
single phrase.
“Anyway, he read about putting tellypaths to work in a bunch of science fiction books. Do
you know about science fiction?”
Roland shook his head.
“Well, ne’mine. Most of it’s bullshit, but every now and then a good idear crops up. Listen
to me and I’ll tell you a good ’un. You’ll understand if you know what Tower and your
friend Mist’ Dean talked about twenty-two years ago, when Mist’ Dean come n saved
Tower from them two honky thugs.”
“Dad,” Marian said warningly. “You quit with the nigger talk, now. You’re old but not