Stephen King – The Dark Tower

one thing theydo measure is teleportation potential. We’ve had Breakers who’ve tried to

shield the talent and it doesn’t work. If there was a teleport in the woodpile, Pimli o’ New

Jersey, these needles would be jittering all the way up to fifty or even eighty.”

“So.” Half-smiling, half-serious, Pimli began to count off on his fingers. “No teleports, no

Bleeding Lion stalking from the north, no gunslinger-man. Oh, and the Greencloaks

succumbed to a computer virus. If all that’s the case, what’s gotten under your skin? What

feels hinky-di-di to ya?”

“The approaching end, I suppose.” Finli sighed heavily. “I’m going to double the guard in

the watchtowers tonight, any ro’, and humes along the fence, as well.”

“Because it feels hinky-di-di.” Pimli, smiling a little.

“Hinky-di-di, yar.” Finli did not smile; his cunning little teeth remained hidden inside his

shiny brown muzzle.

Pimli clapped him on the shoulder. “Come on, let’s go up to The Study. Perhaps seeing all

those Breakers at work will soothe you.”

“P’rhaps it will,” Finli said, but he still didn’t smile.

Pimli said gently, “It’s all right, Fin.”

“I suppose,” said the taheen, looking doubtfully around at the equipment, and then at

Beeman and Trelawney, the two low men, who were respectfully waiting at the door for the

two big bugs to finish their palaver. “I suppose ’tis.” Only his heart didn’t believe it. The only thing he was sure his heart believed was that there were no teleports left in Algul

Siento.

Telemetry didn’t lie.

Seven

Beeman and Trelawney saw them all the way down the oak-paneled basement corridor to

the staff elevator, which was also oak-paneled. There was a fire-extinguisher on the wall of

the car and another sign reminding Devar-folkenthat they had to work together to create a

fire-free environment.

This too had been turned upside down.

Pimli’s eyes met Finli’s. The Master believed he saw amusement in his Security Chief’s look, but of course what he saw might have been no more than his own sense of humor,

reflected back at him like a face in a mirror. Finli untacked the sign without a word and

turned it rightside up. Neither of them commented on the elevator machinery, which was

loud and ill-sounding. Nor on the way the car shuddered in the shaft. If it froze, escape

through the upper hatch would be no problem, not even for a slightly overweight

(well…quiteoverweight) fellow like Prentiss. Damli House was hardly a skyscraper, and

there was plenty of help near at hand.

They reached the third floor, where the sign on the closed elevator door was rightside up.

It saidSTAFF ONLY andPLEASE USE KEY andGO DOWN IMMEDIATELY IF YOU

HAVE REACHED THIS LEVEL IN ERROR. YOU WILL NOT BE PENALIZED IF

YOU REPORT IMMEDIATELY.

As Finli produced his key-card, he said with a casualness that might have been feigned

(Goddamn his unreadable black eyes): “Have you heard from sai Sayre?”

“No,” Pimli said (rather crossly), “nor do I really expect to. We’re isolated here for a

reason, deliberately forgotten in the desert just like the scientists of the Manhattan Project back in the 1940s. The last time I saw him, he told me it might be…well, the last time I saw

him.”

“Relax,” Finli said. “I was just asking.” He swiped the key-card down its slot and the

elevator door slid open with a rather hellishscreee sound.

Eight

The Study was a long, high room in the center of Damli, also oak-paneled and rising three

full stories to a glass roof that allowed the Algul’s hard-won sunlight to pour in. On the

balcony opposite the door through which Prentiss and the Tego entered was an odd trio

consisting of a ravenhead taheen named Jakli, a can-toi technician named Conroy, and two

hume guards whose names Pimli could not immediately recall. Taheen, can-toi, and humes

got on together during work hours by virtue of careful—and sometimes brittle—courtesy,

but one did not expect to see them socializing off-duty. And indeed the balcony was strictly

off-limits when it came to “socializing.” The Breakers below were neither animals in a zoo

nor exotic fish in an aquarium; Pimli (Finli o’ Tego, as well) had made this point to the staff over and over. The Master of Algul Siento had only had to lobo one staff member in all his

years here, a perfectly idiotic hume guard named David Burke, who had actually been

throwing something—had it been peanut-shells?—down on the Breakers below. When

Burke had realized the Master was serious about lobotomizing him, he begged for a second

chance, promising he’d never do anything so foolish and demeaning again. Pimli had

turned a deaf ear. He’d seen a chance to make an example which would stand for years,

perhaps for decades, and had taken it. You could see the nowtruly idiotic Mr. Burke around

to this day, walking on the Mall or out by Left’rds Bound’ry, mouth slack and eyes vaguely

puzzled—Ialmostknow who I am, I almostremember what I did to end up like this, those

eyes said. He was a living example of what simply wasn’t done when one was in the

presence of working Breakers. But there was no rule expressly prohibiting staff from coming up here and they all did from time to time.

Because it was refreshing.

For one thing, being near working Breakers made talk unnecessary. What they called

“good mind” kicked in as you walked down the third-floor hall on either side, from either

elevator, and when you opened the doors giving on the balcony good mind bloomed in

your head, opening all sorts of perceptual doorways. Aldous Huxley, Pimli had thought on

more than one occasion, would have gone absolutely bonkers up here. Sometimes one

found one’s heels leaving the floor in a kind of half-assed float. The stuff in your pockets

tended to rise and hang in the air. Formerly baffling situations seemed to resolve

themselves the moment you turned your thoughts to them. If you’d forgotten something,

your five o’clock appointment or your brother-in-law’s middle name, for instance, this was

the place where you could remember. And even if you realized that what you’d forgotten

was important, you were never distressed.Folken left the balcony with smiles on their faces

even if they’d come up in the foulest of moods (a foul mood was an excellent reason to visit

the balcony in the first place). It was as if some sort of happy-gas, invisible to the eye and unmeasurable by even the most sophisticated telemetry, always rose from the Breakers

below.

The two of them hiled the trio across the way, then approached the wide fumed-oak railing

and looked down. The room below might have been the capacious library of some richly

endowed gentlemen’s club in London. Softly glowing lamps, many with genuine Tiffany

shades, stood on little tables or shone on the walls (oak-paneled, of course). The rugs were

the most exquisite Turkish. There was a Matisse on one wall, a Rembrandt on

another…and on a third was theMona Lisa . The real one, as opposed to the fake hanging in

the Louvre on Keystone Earth. A man stood before it with his arms clasped behind him.

From up here he looked as though he were studying the painting—trying to decipher the

famously enigmatic smile, maybe—but Pimli knew better. The men and women holding

magazines looked as though they were reading, too, but if you were right down there you’d

see that they were gazing blankly over the tops of theirMcCall’s and theirHarper’s or a

little off to one side. An eleven- or twelve-year-old girl in a gorgeous striped summer dress that might have cost sixteen hundred dollars in a Rodeo Drive kiddie boutique was sitting

before a dollhouse on the hearth, but Pimli knew she wasn’t paying any attention to the

exquisitely made replica of Damli at all.

Thirty-three of them down there. Thirty-three in all. At eight o’clock, an hour after the

artificial sun snapped off, thirty-three fresh Breakers would troop in. And there was one

fellow—one and one only—who came and went just as he pleased. A fellow who’d gone

under the wire and paid no penalty for it at all…except for being brought back, that was,

and for this man, that was penalty enough.

As if the thought had summoned him, the door at the end of the room opened, and Ted

Brautigan slipped quietly in. He was still wearing his tweed riding cap. Daneeka Rostov

looked up from the dollhouse and gave him a smile. Brautigan dropped her a wink in return.

Pimli gave Finli a little nudge.

Finli: (I see him)

But it was more than seeing. Theyfelt him. The moment Brautigan came into the room,

those on the balcony—and, much more important, those on the floor—felt the power-level

rise. They still weren’t completely sure what they’d gotten in Brautigan, and the testing

equipment didn’t help in that regard (the old dog had blown out several pieces of it himself, and on purpose, the Master was quite sure). If there were others like him, the low men had