Stephen King – The Dark Tower

life on the outside, to be the butt of the joke every time, to always be Carrie at the fuckin prom?”

“Who?” Eddie asked, confused, but Dinky was on a roll and paid no attention.

“There are guys down there who can’t walk or talk. One chick with no arms. Several with

hydrocephalus, which means they have heads out to fuckinNew Jersey .” He held his hands

two feet beyond his head on either side, a gesture they all took for exaggeration. Later they would discover it was not. “Poor old Stanley here, he’s one of the ones who can’t talk.”

Roland glanced at Stanley, with his pallid, stubbly face and his masses of curly dark hair.

And the gunslinger almost smiled.“I think he can talk,” he said, and then: “Do’ee bear your

father’s name, Stanley? I believe thee does.”

Stanley lowered his head, and color mounted in his cheeks, yet he was smiling. At the

same time he began to cry again.Just what in the hell’s going on here? Eddie wondered.

Ted clearly wondered, too. “Sai Deschain, I wonder if I could ask—”

“No, no, cry pardon,” Roland said. “Your time is short just now, so you said and we all feel

it. Do the Breakers know how they’re being fed?What they’re being fed, to increase their

powers?”

Ted abruptly sat on a rock and looked down at the shining steel cobweb of rails. “It has to

do with the kiddies they bring through the Station, doesn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“They don’t know andI don’t know,” Ted said in that same heavy voice. “Not really.

We’re fed dozens of pills a day. They come morning, noon, and night. Some are vitamins.

Some are no doubt intended to keep us docile. I’ve had some luck purging those from my

system, and Dinky’s, and Stanley’s. Only…for such a purging to work, gunslinger, you

mustwant it to work. Do you understand?”

Roland nodded.

“I’ve thought for a long time that they must also be giving us some kind of…I don’t

know…brain-booster…but with so many pills, it’s impossible to tell which one it might be.

Which one it is that makes us cannibals, or vampires, or both.” He paused, looking down at

the improbable sunray. He extended his hands on both sides. Dinky took one, Stanley the

other.

“Watch this,” Dinky said. “This is good.”

Ted closed his eyes. So did the other two. For a moment there was nothing to see but three

men looking out over the dark desert toward the Cecil B. DeMille sunbeam…and theywere

looking, Roland knew. Even with their eyes shut.

The sunbeam winked out. For a space of perhaps a dozen seconds the Devar-Toi was as

dark as the desert, and Thunderclap Station, and the slopes of Steek-Tete. Then that absurd

golden glow came back on. Dinky uttered a harsh (but not dissatisfied) sigh and stepped

back, disengaging from Ted. A moment later, Ted let go of Stanley and turned to Roland.

“You did that?” the gunslinger asked.

“The three of us together,” Ted said. “Mostly it’s Stanley. He’s an extremely powerful

sender. One of the few things that terrify Prentiss and the low men and the taheen is when

they lose their artificial sunlight. It happens more and more often, you know, and not

always because we’re meddling with the machinery. The machinery is just…” He

shrugged. “It’s running down.”

“Everything is,” Eddie said.

Ted turned to him, unsmiling. “But not fast enough, Mr. Dean. This fiddling with the

remaining two Beams must stop, and very soon, or it will make no difference. Dinky,

Stanley, and I will help you if we can, even if it means killing the rest of them.”

“Sure,” Dinky said with a hollow smile. “If the Rev. Jim Jones could do it, why not us?”

Ted gave him a disapproving glance, then looked back at Roland’s ka-tet. “Perhaps it

won’t come to that. But if it does…” He stood up suddenly and seized Roland’s arm.“Are

we cannibals?” he asked in a harsh, almost strident voice. “Have we been eating the

children the Greencloaks bring from the Borderlands?”

Roland was silent.

Ted turned to Eddie. “I want to know.”

Eddie made no reply.

“Madam-sai?” Ted asked, looking at the woman who sat astride Eddie’s hip. “We’re

prepared to help you. Will you not help me by telling me what I ask?”

“Would knowing change anything?” Susannah asked.

Ted looked at her for a moment longer, then turned to Jake. “You really could be my

young friend’s twin,” he said. “Do you know that, son?”

“No, but it doesn’t surprise me,” Jake said. “It’s the way things work over here, somehow.

Everything…um…fits.”

“Will you tell me what I want to know? Bobby would.”

So you can eat yourself alive?Jake thought.Eat yourself instead of them?

He shook his head. “I’m not Bobby,” he said. “No matter how much I might look like

him.”

Ted sighed and nodded. “You stick together, and why would that surprise me? You’re

ka-tet, after all.”

“We gotta go,” Dink told Ted. “We’ve already been here too long. It isn’t just a question

of getting back for room-check; me n Stanley’ve got to trig their fucking telemetery so

when Prentiss and The Wease check it they’ll say ‘Teddy B was there all the time. So was

Dinky Earnshaw and Stanley Ruiz, no problem withthose boys.’ ”

“Yes,” Ted agreed. “I suppose you’re right. Five more minutes?”

Dinky nodded reluctantly. The sound of a siren, made faint by distance, came on the wind,

and the young man’s teeth showed in a smile of genuine amusement. “They getso upset

when the sun goes in,” he said. “When they have to face up to what’s really around them,

which is some fucked-up version of nuclear winter.”

Ted put his hands in his pockets for a moment, looking down at his feet, then up at Roland.

“It’s time that this…this grotesque comedy came to an end. We three will be back

tomorrow, if all goes well. Meanwhile, there’s a bigger cave about forty yards down the

slope, and on the side away from Thunderclap Station and Algul Siento. There’s food and

sleeping bags and a stove that runs on propane gas. There’s a map, very crude, of the Algul.

I’ve also left you a tape recorder and a number of tapes. They probably don’t explain

everything you’d like to know, but they’ll fill in many of the blank spots. For now, just

realize that Blue Heaven isn’t as nice as it looks. The ivy towers are watchtowers. There are three runs of fence around the whole place. If you’re trying to get out from the inside, the

first run you strike gives you a sting—”

“Like barbwire,” Dink said.

“The second one packs enough of a wallop to knock you out,” Ted went on. “And the

third—”

“I think we get the picture,” Susannah said.

“What about the Children of Roderick?” Roland asked. “They have something to do with

the Devar, for we met one on our way here who said so.”

Susannah looked at Eddie with her eyebrows raised. Eddie gave her atell-you-later look in

return. It was a simple and perfect bit of wordless communication, the sort people who love

each other take for granted.

“Thosewanks,” Dinky said, but not without sympathy. “They’re…what do they call em in

the old movies? Trusties, I guess. They’ve got a little village about two miles beyond the

station in that direction.” He pointed. “They do groundskeeping work at the Algul, and

there might be three or four skilled enough to do roofwork…replacing shingles and such.

Whatever contaminants there are in the air here, those poor shmucks are especially

vulnerable to em. Only on them it comes out looking like radiation sickness instead of just

pimples and eczema.”

“Tell me about it,” Eddie said, remembering poor old Chevin of Chayven: his sore-eaten

face and urine-soaked robe.

“They’re wanderingfolken, ” Ted put in. “Bedouins. I think they follow the railroad tracks,

for the most part. There are catacombs under the station and Algul Siento. The Rods know

their way around them. There’s tons of food down there, and twice a week they’ll bring it

into the Devar on sledges. Mostly now that’s what we eat. It’s still good, but…” He

shrugged.

“Things are falling down fast,” Dinky said in a tone of uncharacteristic gloom. “But like

the man said, the wine’s great.”

“If I asked you to bring one of the Children of Roderick with you tomorrow,” Roland said,

“could you do that?”

Ted and Dinky exchanged a startled glance. Then both of them looked at Stanley. Stanley

nodded, shrugged, and spread his hands before him, palms down:Why, gunslinger?

Roland stood for a moment lost in thought. Then he turned to Ted. “Bring one with half a

brain left in his head,” Roland instructed. “Tell him ‘Dan sur, dan tur, dan Roland, dan

Gilead.’ Tell it back.”

Without hesitation, Ted repeated it.

Roland nodded. “If he still hesitates, tell him Chevin of Chayven says he must come. They speak a little plain, do they not?”