Stephen King – The Dark Tower

sloping belly supported by long legs with slab thighs. He was balding and had the turnip

nose of a veteran drinker. He looked perhaps fifty. Hefelt like about fifty (younger, when

he hadn’t spent the previous night tossing them back with Finli and several of the can-toi).

He had been fifty when he came here, a good many years ago; at least twenty-five, and that

might be a big underestimation. Time was goofy on this side, just like direction, and you

were apt to lose both quickly. Somefolken lost their minds, as well. And if they ever lost

the sun machine for good—

The top of the pimple bulged…trembled…burst. Ah!

A glut of bloody pus leaped from the site of the infection, splattered onto the mirror, and

began to drool down its slightly concave surface. Pimli Prentiss wiped it off with the tip of a finger, turned to flick it into the jakes, then offered it to Finli instead.

The taheen shook his head, then made the sort of exasperated noise any veteran dieter

would have recognized, and guided the Master’s finger into his mouth. He sucked the pus

off and then released the finger with an audible pop.

“Shouldn’t do it, can’t resist,” Finli said. “Didn’t you tell me thatfolken on the other side decided eating rare beef was bad for them?”

“Yar,” Pimli said, wiping the pimple (which was still oozing) with a Kleenex. He had been

here a long time, and there would never be any going back, for all sorts of reasons, but until recently he had been up on current events; until the previous—could you call it a

year?—he’d gottenThe New York Times on a fairly regular basis. He bore a great affection

for theTimes, loved doing the daily crossword puzzle. It was a little touch of home.

“But they go on eating it, just the same.”

“Yar, I suppose many do.” He opened the medicine cabinet and brought out a bottle of

hydrogen peroxide from Rexall.

“It’s your fault for putting it in front of me,” Finli said. “Not that such stuff is bad for us, ordinarily; it’s a natural sweet, like honey or berries. The problem’s Thunderclap.” And, as

if his boss hadn’t gotten the point, Finli added: “Too much of what comes out of it don’t

run the true thread, no matter how sweet it might taste. Poison, do ya.”

Prentiss dampened a cotton ball with the hydrogen peroxide and swabbed out the wound in his cheek. He knew exactly what Finli was talking about, how could he not? Before coming

here and assuming the Master’s mantle, he hadn’t seen a blemish on his skin in well over

thirty years. Now he had pimples on his cheeks and brow, acne in the hollows of his

temples, nasty nests of blackheads around his nose, and a cyst on his neck that would soon

have to be removed by Gangli, the compound doctor. (Prentiss thought Gangli was a

terrible name for a physician; it reminded him both ofganglion andgangrene .) The taheen

and the can-toi were less susceptible to dermatological problems, but their flesh often

broke open spontaneously, they suffered from nosebleeds, and even minor wounds—the

scrape of a rock or a thorn—could lead to infection and death if not promptly seen to.

Antibiotics had worked a treat on such infections to begin with; not so well anymore. Same

with such pharmaceutical marvels as Accutane. It was the environment, of course; death

baking out of the very rocks and earth that surrounded them. If you wanted to see things at

their worst you only had to look at the Rods, who were no better than slow mutants these

days. Of course,they wandered far to the…was it still the southeast? They wandered far in

the direction where a faint red glow could be seen at night, in any case, and everyone said

things were much worse in that direction. Pimli didn’t know for sure if that was true, but he suspected it was. They didn’t call the lands beyond Fedic the Discordia because they were

vacation spots.

“Want more?” he asked Finli. “I’ve got a couple on my forehead that’re ripe.”

“Nay, I want to make my report, double-check the videotapes and telemetry, go on over to

The Study for a quick peek, and then sign out. After that I want a hot bath and about three

hours with a good book. I’m readingThe Collector .”

“And you like it,” Prentiss said, fascinated.

“Very much, say thankya. It reminds me of our situation here. Except I like to think our

goals are a little nobler and our motivations a little higher than sexual attraction.”

“Noble? So you call it?”

Finli shrugged and made no reply. Close discussion of what was going on here in Blue

Heaven was generally avoided by unspoken consent.

Prentiss led Finli into his own library-study, which overlooked the part of Blue Heaven

they called the Mall. Finli ducked beneath the light fixture with the unconscious grace of

long practice. Prentiss had once told him (after a few shots of graf) that he would have

made a hell of a center in the NBA. “The first all-taheen team,” he’d said. “They’d call you

The Freaks, but so what?”

“These basketball players, they get the best of everything?” Finli had inquired. He had a

sleek weasel’s head and large black eyes. No more expressive than dolls’ eyes, in Pimli’s

view. He wore a lot of gold chains—they had become fashionable among Blue Heaven

personnel, and a brisk trading market in such things had grown up over the last few years.

Also, he’d had his tail docked. Probably a mistake, he’d told Prentiss one night when they’d both been drunk. Painful beyond belief and bound to send him to the Hell of

Darkness when his life was over, unless…

Unless there was nothing. This was an idea Pimli denied with all his mind and heart, but

he’d be a liar if he didn’t admit (if only to himself) that the idea sometimes haunted him in the watches of the night. For such thoughts there were sleeping pills. And God, of course.

His faith that all things served the will of God, even the Tower itself.

In any case, Pimli had confirmed that yes, basketball players—Americanbasketball

players, at least—got the best of everything, including more pussy than a fackin toilet seat.

This remark had caused Finli to laugh until reddish tears had seeped from the corners of his

strangely inexpressive eyes.

“And the best thing,” Pimli had continued, “is this: you’d be able to play near forever, by

NBA standards. For instance, do ya hear, the most highly regarded player in my old

country (although I never saw him play; he came after my time) was a fellow named

Michael Jordan, and—”

“If he were taheen, what would he be?” Finli had interrupted. This was a game they often

played, especially when a few drinks over the line.

“A weasel, actually, and a damned handsome one,” Pimli had said, and in a tone of

surprise that had struck Finli as comical. Once more he’d roared until tears came out of his

eyes.

“But,” Pimli had continued, “his career was over in hardly more than fifteen years, and

that includes a retirement and a comeback or two. How many years could you play a game

where you’d have to do no more than run back and forth the length of a campa court for an

hour or so, Fin?”

Finli of Tego, who was then over three hundred years old, had shrugged and flicked his

hand at the horizon. Delah. Years beyond counting.

And how long had Blue Heaven—Devar-Toi to the newer inmates, Algul Siento to the

taheen and the Rods—how long had this prison been here? Also delah. But if Finli was

correct (and Pimli’s heart said that Finli almost certainly was), then delah was almost over.

And what could he, once Paul Prentiss of Rahway, New Jersey, and now Pimli Prentiss of

the Algul Siento, do about it?

His job, that was what.

His fackin job.

Two

“So,” Pimli said, sitting down in one of the two wing chairs by the window, “you found a maintenance drone. Where?”

“Close to where Track 97 leaves the switching-yard,” said Finli. “That track’s still

hot—has what you call ‘a third rail’—and so that explains that. Then, after we’d left, you

call and say there’s been asecond alarm.”

“Yes. And you found—?”

“Nothing,” Finli said. “That time, nothing. Probably a malfunction, maybe even caused by

the first alarm.” He shrugged, a gesture that conveyed what they both knew: it was all

going to hell. And the closer to the end they moved, the faster it went.

“You and your fellows had a good look, though?”

“Of course. No intruders.”

But both of them were thinking in terms of intruders who were human, taheen, can-toi, or

mechanical. No one in Finli’s search-party had thought to look up, and likely would not