Stephen King – The Dark Tower

venting it all at once.

“A dangerous fellow, indeed!” Finli said when he could speak a little again. He was

wiping his streaming eyes with one furry paw-hand.

“The Snot Saboteur!” Pimli agreed. His face was bright red.

They exchanged a look and were off again, braying gales of relieved laughter until they

woke the housekeeper way up on the third floor. Tammy Kelly lay in her narrow bed,

listening to yon ka-mais bellow below, looking disapprovingly up into the gloom. Men

were much the same, in her view, no matter what sort of skin they wore.

Outside, the hume Master and the taheen Security Chief walked up the Mall, arm in arm.

The Child of Roderick, meanwhile, scurried out through the north gate, head down, heart

thumping madly in his chest. How close it had been! Aye! If Weasel-Head had asked him,

‘Haylis, didjer plant anything?’ he would have lied as best he could, but such as him

couldn’t lie successfully to such as Finli o’ Tego; never in life! He would have been found

out, sure. But hehadn’t been found out, praise Gan. The ball-thing the gunslinger had given

him was now stowed away in the back bedroom, humming softly to itself. He’d put it in the

wastebasket, as he had been told, and covered it with fresh tissue from the box on the washstand, also as he had been told. Nobody had told him he might take the cast-away

tissues, but he hadn’t been able to resist their soupy, delicious smell. And it had worked for the best, hadn’t it? Yar! For instead of asking him all manner of questions he couldn’t have

answered, they’d laughed at him and let him go. He wished he could climb the mountain

and play with the bumbler again, so he did, but the white-haired old hume named Ted had

told him to go away, far and far, once his errand was done. And if he heard shooting, Haylis

was to hide until it was over. And he would—oh yes, nair doot. Hadn’t he done what

Roland o’ Gilead had asked of him? The first of the humming balls was now in Feveral,

one of the dorms, two more were in Damli House, where the Breakers worked and the

off-duty guards slept, and the last was in Master’s House…where he’d almost been caught!

Haylis didn’t know what the humming balls did, nor wanted to know. He would go away,

possibly with his friend, Garma, if he could find her. If shooting started, they would hide in a deep hole, and he would share his tissues with her. Some had nothing on them but bits of

shaving soap, but there were wet snots and big boogies in some of the others, he could

smell their enticing aroma even now. He would save the biggest of the latter, the one with

the jellied blood in it, for Garma, and she might let him pokey-poke. Haylis walked faster,

smiling at the prospect of going pokey-poke with Garma.

Two

Sitting on the Cruisin Trike in the concealment afforded by one of the empty sheds north

of the compound, Susannah watched Haylis go. She noted that the poor, disfigured sai was

smiling about something, so things had probably gone well with him. That was good news,

indeed. Once he was out of sight, she returned her attention to her end of Algul Siento.

She could see both stone towers (although only the top half of the one on her left; the rest

was concealed by a fold of hillside). They were shackled about with some sort of ivy.

Cultivated rather than wild, Susannah guessed, given the barrenness of the surrounding

countryside. There was one fellow in the west tower, sitting in what appeared to be an easy

chair, maybe even a La-Z-Boy. Standing at the railing of the east one were a taheen with a

beaver’s head and a low man (if he was a hume, Susannah thought, he was one butt-ugly

son of a bitch), the two of them in conversation, pretty clearly waiting for the horn that

would send them off-shift and to breakfast in the commissary. Between the two

watchtowers she could see the triple line of fencing, the runs strung widely enough apart so

that more sentries could walk in the aisles between the wire without fear of getting a lethal zap of electricity. She saw no one there this morning, though. The fewfolken moving about

inside the wire were idling along, none of them in a great hurry to get anywhere. Unless the

lackadaisical scene before her was the biggest con of the century, Roland was right. They

were as vulnerable as a herd of fat shoats being fed their last meal outside the

slaughtering-pen: come-come-commala, shor’-ribs to folla.

And while the gunslingers had had no luck finding any sort of radio-controlled weaponry,

theyhad discovered that three of the more science-fictiony rifles were equipped with

switches markedINTERVAL . Eddie said he thought these rifles werelazers, although

nothing about them looked lazy to Susannah. Jake had suggested they take one of them out

of sight of the Devar-Toi and try it out, but Roland vetoed the idea immediately. Last

evening, this had been, while going over the plan for what seemed like the hundredth time.

“He’s right, kid,” Eddie had said. “The clowns down there might know we were shooting

those things even if they couldn’t see or hear anything. We don’t know what kind of vibes

their telemetry can pick up.”

Under cover of dark, Susannah had set up all three of the “lazers.” When the time came,

she’d set the interval switches. The guns might work, thus adding to the impression they

were trying to create; they might not. She’d give it a try when the time came, and that was

all she could do.

Heart thumping heavily, Susannah waited for the music. For the horn. And, if the

sneetches the Rod had set worked the way Rolandbelieved they would work, for the fires.

“The ideal would be for all of them to go hot during the five or ten minutes when they’re

changing the guard,” Roland had said. “Everyone scurrying hither and thither, waving to

their friends and exchanging little bits o’ gossip. We can’t expect that—not really—but we

can hope for it.”

Yes, they could do that much…but wish in one hand, shit in the other, see which one fills

up first. In any case, it would be her decision as to when to fire the first shot. After that, everything would happen jin-jin.

Please, God, help me pick the right time.

She waited, holding one of the Coyote machine-pistols with the barrel in the hollow of her

shoulder. When the music started—a recorded version of what she thought might be “ ’At’s

Amore”—Susannah lurched on the seat of the SCT and squeezed the trigger involuntarily.

Had the safety not been on, she would have poured a stream of bullets into the shed’s

ceiling and no doubt queered the pitch at once. But Roland had taught her well, and the

trigger didn’t move beneath her finger. Still, her heartbeat had doubled—trebled,

maybe—and she could feel sweat trickling down her sides, even though the day was once

again cool.

The music had started and that was good. But the music wasn’t enough. She sat on the

SCT’s saddle, waiting for the horn.

Three

“Dino Martino,” Eddie said, almost too low to hear.

“Hmmm?” Jake asked.

The three of them were behind theSOO LINE boxcar, having worked their way through

the graveyard of old engines and traincars to that spot. Both of the boxcar’s loading doors

were open, and all three of them had had a peek through them at the fence, the south

watchtowers, and the village of Pleasantville, which consisted of but a single street. The six-armed robot which had earlier been on the Mall was now here, rolling up and down

Main Street past the quaint (and closed) shops, bellowing what sounded like math

equations at the top of its…lungs?

“Dino Martino,” Eddie repeated. Oy was sitting at Jake’s feet, looking up with his brilliant

gold-ringed eyes; Eddie bent and gave his head a brief pat. “Dean Martin did that song

originally.”

“Yeah?” Jake asked doubtfully.

“Sure. Only we used to sing it, ‘When-a da moon hits-a yo’ lip like a big piece-a shit, ’at’s amore—’ ”

“Hush, do ya please,” Roland murmured.

“Don’t suppose you smell any smoke yet, do you?” Eddie asked.

Jake and Roland shook their heads. Roland had his big iron with the sandalwood grips.

Jake was armed with an AR-15, but the bag of Orizas was once more hung over his

shoulder, and not just for good luck. If all went well, he and Roland would be using them

soon.

Four

Like most men with what’s known as “house-help,” Pimli Prentiss had no clear sense of

his employees as creatures with goals, ambitions, and feelings—as humes, in other words.

As long as there was someone to bring him his afternoon glass of whiskey and set his chop