Stephen King – The Dark Tower

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 hehad 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 neededblood . 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 watchingthem on the various video screens: still alive, reunited in their fellowship, with the comfort of a cause.

The pain of seeinghim . 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 thatoutside 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 ofPrim andAm, ofgadosh andgodosh,

ofGan andGilead . He was in a way like Jesus Christ, but in a way he waspurer 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 tworeal fathers. One of whom now slept on the

screen before him.

You’re old, Father,he thought. It gave him vicious pleasure to think so; it also made him feel small and mean, no more than…well, no more than a spider, looking down from its

web. Mordred was twins, and would remain twins until Roland of the Eld was dead and the

last ka-tet broken. And the longing voice that told him to goto Roland, and call him father?

To call Eddie and Jake his brothers, Susannah his sister? That was the gullible voice of his

mother. They’d kill him before he could get a single word out of his mouth (assuming he

had reached a stage where he could do more than gurgle baby-talk). They’d cut off his balls

and feed them to the brat’s bumbler. They’d bury his castrated corpse, and shit on the

ground where he lay, and then move on.

You’re finally old, Father, and now you walk with a limp, and at end of day I see you rub

your hip with a hand that’s picked up the tiniest bit of a shake.

Look, if you would. Here sits a baby with blood streaking his fair skin. Here sits a baby

weeping his silent, eerie tears. Here sits a baby that knows both too much and too little, and although we must keep our fingers away from his mouth (he snaps, this one; snaps like a

baby crocodile), we are allowed to pity him a little. If ka is a train—and it is, a vast, hurtling mono, maybe sane, maybe not—then this nasty little lycanthrope is its most vulnerable

hostage, not tied to the tracks like little Nell but strapped to the thing’s very headlight.

He may tell himself he has two fathers, and there may be some truth to it, but there is no

father here and no mother, either. He ate his mother alive, say true, ate her big-big, she was his first meal, and what choice did he have about that? He is the last miracle ever to be

spawned by the still-standing Dark Tower, the scarred wedding of the rational and the

irrational, the natural and the supernatural, and yet he is alone, and he is a-hungry. Destiny might have intended him to rule a chain of universes (or destroy them all), but so far he has succeeded in establishing dominion over nothing but one old domestic robot who has now

gone to the clearing at the end of the path.

He looks at the sleeping gunslinger with love and hate, loathing and longing. But suppose

he went to them and wasnot killed? What if they were to welcome him in? Ridiculous idea,

yes, but allow it for the sake of argument. Even then he would be expected to set Roland

above him, accept Roland as dinh, and that he will never do, never do, no, never do.

Chapter III:

The Shining Wire

One

“You were watching them,” said a soft, laughing voice. Then it lilted a bit of cradle

nonsense Roland would have remembered well from his own early childhood: “ ‘Penny,

posy, Jack’s a-nosy! Do ya say so? Yes I do-so! He’s my sneaky, peeky, darling bah-bo!’

Did you like what you saw before you fell asleep? Did you watch them move on with the

rest of the failing world?”

Perhaps ten hours had passed since Nigel the domestic robot had performed his last duty.

Mordred, who in fact had fallen deeply asleep, turned his head toward the voice of the

stranger with no residual fuzzy-headedness or surprise. He saw a man in bluejeans and a

hooded parka standing on the gray tiles of the Control Center. His gunna—nothing more

than a beat-up duffelbag—lay at his feet. His cheeks were flushed, his face handsome, his

eyes burning hot. In his hand was an automatic pistol, and as he looked into the dark eye of

its muzzle, Mordred Deschain for the second time realized that even gods could die once

their divinity had been diluted with human blood. But he wasn’t afraid. Not of this one.

Hedid look back into the monitors that showed Nigel’s apartment, and confirmed that the

newcomer was right: it was empty.

The smiling stranger, who seemed to have sprung from the very floor, raised the hand not

holding the gun to the hood of his parka and turned a bit of it outward. Mordred saw a flash

of metal. Some kind of woven wire coated the inside of the hood.

“I call it my ‘thinking-cap,’ ” said the stranger. “I can’t hear your thoughts, which is a

drawback, but you can’t get into my head, which is a—”

(which is a definite advantage, wouldn’t you say)

“—which is a definite advantage, wouldn’t you say?”

There were two patches on the jacket. One readU.S. ARMY and showed a bird—the