Stephen King – The Dark Tower

have spotted Mordred even if they had: a spider now as big as a medium-sized dog,

crouched in the deep shadow under the main station’s eave, held in place by a little

hammock of webbing.

“You’re going to check the telemetry again because of the second alarm?”

“Partly,” Finli said. “Mostly because things feel hinky to me.” This was a word he’d

picked up from one of the many other-side crime novels he read—they fascinated

him—and he used it at every opportunity.

“Hinky how?”

Finli only shook his head. He couldn’t say. “But telemetry doesn’t lie. Or so I was taught.”

“You question it?”

Aware he was on thin ice again—that they both were—Finli hesitated, and then decided

what the hell. “These are the end-times, boss. I question damn near everything.”

“Does that include your duty, Finli o’ Tego?”

Finli shook his head with no hesitation. No, it didn’t include his duty. It was the same with the rest of them, including the former Paul Prentiss of Rahway. Pimli remembered some

old soldier—maybe “Dugout” Doug MacArthur—saying, “When my eyes close in death,

gentlemen, my final thought will be of the corps. And the corps. And the corps.” Pimli’s

own final thought would probably be of Algul Siento. Because what else was there now? In

the words of another great American—Martha Reeves of Martha and the Vandellas—they

had nowhere to run, baby, nowhere to hide. Things were out of control, running downhill with no brakes, and there was nothing left to do but enjoy the ride.

“Would you mind a little company as you go your rounds?” Pimli asked.

“Why not?” The Weasel replied. He smiled, revealing a mouthful of needle-sharp teeth.

And sang, in his odd and wavering voice: “ ‘Dream with me…I’m on my way to the moon

of my fa-aathers…’ ”

“Give me one minute,” Pimli said, and got up.

“Prayers?” Finli asked.

Pimli stopped in the doorway. “Yes,” he said. “Since you ask. Any comments, Finli o’

Tego?”

“Just one, perhaps.” The smiling thing with the human body and the sleek brown weasel’s

head continued to smile. “If prayer’s so exalted, why do you kneel in the same room where

you sit to shit?”

“Because the Bible suggests that when one is in company, one should do it in one’s closet.

Further comments?”

“Nay, nay.” Finli waved a negligent hand. “Do thy best and thy worst, as the Manni say.”

Three

In the bathroom, Paul o’ Rahway closed the lid on the toilet, knelt on the tiles, and folded

his hands.

If prayer’s so exalted, why do you kneel in the same room where you sit to shit?

Maybe I should have said because it keeps me humble,he thought.Because it keeps me

right-sized. It’s dirt from which we arose and it’s dirt to which we return, and if there’s a room where it’s hard to forget that, it’s this one.

“God,” he said, “grant me strength when I am weak, answers when I am confused, courage

when I am afraid. Help me to hurt no one who doesn’t deserve it, and even then not unless

they leave me no other choice. Lord…”

And while he’s on his knees before the closed toilet seat, this man who will shortly be

asking his God to forgive him for working to end creation (and with absolutely no sense of

irony), we might as well look at him a bit more closely. We won’t take long, for Pimli

Prentiss isn’t central to our tale of Roland and his ka-tet. Still, he’s a fascinating man, full of folds and contradictions and dead ends. He’s an alcoholic who believes deeply in a

personal God, a man of compassion who is now on the very verge of toppling the Tower

and sending the trillions of worlds that spin on its axis flying into the darkness in a trillion different directions. He would quickly put Dinky Earnshaw and Stanley Ruiz to death if he

knew what they’d been up to…and he spends most of every Mother’s Day in tears, for he

loved his own Ma dearly and misses her bitterly. When it comes to the Apocalypse, here’s

the perfect guy for the job, one who knows how to get kneebound and can speak to the Lord

God of Hosts like an old friend.

And here’s an irony: Paul Prentiss could be right out of the ads that proclaim “I got my job

throughThe New York Times !” In 1970, laid off from the prison then known as Attica (he

and Nelson Rockefeller missed the mega-riot, at least), he spied an ad in theTimes with this

headline:

WANTED: EXPERIENCED CORRECTIONS OFFICER

FOR HIGHLY RESPONSIBLE POSITION

IN PRIVATE INSTITUTION

High Pay! Top Benefits! Must Be Willing to Travel!

The high pay had turned out to be what his beloved Ma would have called “a pure-D,

high-corn lie,” because there was no pay at all, not in the sense an America-side corrections officer would have understood, but the benefits…yes, the bennies were exceptional. To

begin with he’d wallowed in sex as he now wallowed in food and booze, but that wasn’t the

point. The point, in sai Prentiss’s view, was this: what did you want out of life? If it was to do no more than watch the zeros increase in your bank account, than clearly Algul Siento

was no place for you…which would be a terrible thing, because once you had signed on,

there was no turning back; it was all the corps. And the corps. And every now and then,

when an example needed to be made, a corpse or two.

Which was a hundred per cent okey-fine with Master Prentiss, who had gone through the

solemn taheen name-changing ceremony some twelve years before and had never regretted

it. Paul Prentiss had become Pimli Prentiss. It was at that point he had turned his heart as

well as his mind away from what he now only called “America-side.” And not because

he’d had the best baked Alaska and the best champagne of his life here. Not because he’d

had sim sex with hundreds of beautiful women, either. It was because this was his job, and

he intended to finish it. Because he’d come to believe that their work at the Devar-Toi was

God’s as well as the Crimson King’s. And behind the idea of God was something even

more powerful: the image of a billion universes tucked into an egg which he, the former

Paul Prentiss of Rahway, once a forty-thousand-dollar-a-year man with a stomach ulcer

and a bad medical benefits program okayed by a corrupt union, now held in the palm of his

hand. He understood that he was also in that egg, and that he would cease to exist as flesh

when he broke it, but surely if there was heaven and a God in it, then both superseded the

power of the Tower. It was to that heaven he would go, and before that throne he would

kneel to ask forgiveness for his sins. And he would be welcomed in with a heartyWell done,

thou good and faithful servant . His Ma would be there, and she would hug him, and they

would enter the fellowship of Jesus together. That day would come, Pimli was quite sure,

and probably before Reap Moon rolled around again.

Not that he considered himself a religious nut. Not at all. These thoughts of God and heaven he kept strictly to himself. As far as the rest of the world was concerned, he was just a joe doing a job, one he intended to do well to the very end. Certainly he saw himself as no villain, but no truly dangerous man ever has. Think of Ulysses S. Grant, that Civil War

general who’d said he intended to fight it out on this line if it took all summer.

In the Algul Siento, summer was almost over.

Four

The Master’s home was a tidy Cape Cod at one end of the Mall. It was called Shapleigh

House (Pimli had no idea why), and so of course the Breakers called it Shit House. At the

other end of the Mall was a much larger dwelling—a gracefully rambling Queen Anne

called (for equally obscure reasons) Damli House. It would have looked at home on

Fraternity Row at Clemson or Ole Miss. The Breakers called this one Heartbreak House, or

sometimes Heartbreak Hotel. Fine. It was where the taheen and a sizable contingent of

can-toi lived and worked. As for the Breakers, let them have their little jokes, and by all

means let them believe that the staff didn’t know.

Pimli Prentiss and Finli o’ Tego strolled up the Mall in companionable silence…except,

that was, when they passed off-duty Breakers, either alone or in company. Pimli greeted

each of them with unfailing courtesy. The greetings they returned varied from the

completely cheerful to sullen grunts. Yet each made some sort of response, and Pimli

counted this a victory. He cared about them. Whether they liked it or not—many