certainly would have been killed. Instead he was on his knees, at the foot of it, praying for the safety of his friends. He didn’t even look up when the window blew in but simply
redoubled his supplications. He could hear Dinky’s thoughts
(GO SOUTH)
pounding in his head, then heard other thought-streams join it,
(WITH YOUR HANDS UP)
making a river. And thenTed’s voice was there, not just joining the others but amping
them up, turning what had been a river
(YOU WON’T BE HURT)
into an ocean. Without realizing it, Sheemie changed his prayer.Our Father andP’teck my
pals becamego south with your hands up, you won’t be hurt . He didn’t even stop this when
the propane tanks behind the Damli House cafeteria blew up with a shattering roar.
Fourteen
Gangli Tristum (that’sDoctor Gangli to you, say thankya) was in many ways the most
feared man in Damli House. He was a can-toi who had—perversely—taken a taheen name
instead of a human one, and he ran the infirmary on the third floor of the west wing with an
iron fist. And on roller skates.
Things on the ward were fairly relaxed when Gangli was in his office doing paperwork, or
off on his rounds (which usually meant visiting Breakers with the sniffles in their dorms),
but when he came out, the whole place—nurses and orderlies as well as patients—fell
respectfully (and nervously) silent. A newcomer might laugh the first time he saw the squat,
dark-complected, heavily jowled man-thing gliding slowly down the center aisle between the beds, arms folded over the stethoscope which lay on his chest, the tails of his white coat wafting out behind him (one Breaker had once commented, “He looks like John Irving
after a bad facelift”). Such a one who wascaught laughing would never laugh again,
however. Dr. Gangli had a sharp tongue, indeed, and no one made fun of his roller skates
with impunity.
Now, instead of gliding on them, he went flying up and down the aisles, the steel wheels
(for his skating gear far predated rollerblades) rumbling on the hardwood. “All the papers!”
he shouted. “Do you hear me?…If I lose one file in this fucking mess,one gods-damned file,
I’ll have someone’s eyes with my afternoon tea!”
The patients were already gone, of course; he’d had them out of their beds and down the
stairs at the first bray of the smoke detector, at the first whiff of smoke. A number of
orderlies—gutless wonders, and he knew who each of them was, oh yes, and a complete
report would be made when the time came—had fled with the sickfolk, but five had stayed,
including his personal assistant, Jack London. Gangli was proud of them, although one
could not have told it from his hectoring voice as he skated up and down, up and down, in
the thickening smoke.
“Get the papers, d’ye hear? You better, by all the gods that ever walked or crawled!You
better! ”
A red glare shot in through the window. Some sort of weapon, for it blew in the glass wall
that separated his office from the ward and set his favorite easy-chair a-smolder.
Gangli ducked and skated under the laser beam, never slowing.
“Gan-a-damn!” cried one of the orderlies. He was a hume, extraordinarily ugly, his eyes
bulging from his pale face. “What in the hell was th—”
“Never mind!” Gangli bawled. “Never mind what it was, you pissface clown! Get the
papers!Get my motherfucking papers! ”
From somewhere in front—the Mall?—came the hideous approaching clang-and-yowl of
some rescue vehicle. “STAND CLEAR!” Gangli heard. “THIS IS FIRE-RESPONSE
TEAM BRAVO!”
Gangli had never heard of such a thing as Fire-Response Team Bravo, but there was so
much they didn’t know about this place. Why, he could barely use a third of the equipment
in his own surgical suite! Never mind, the thing that mattered right now—
Before he could finish his thought, the gas-pods behind the kitchen blew up. There was a
tremendous roar—seemingly from directly beneath them—and Gangli Tristum was
thrown into the air, the metal wheels on his roller skates spinning. The others were thrown
as well, and suddenly the smoky air was full of flying papers. Looking at them, knowing
that the papers would burn and he would be lucky not to burn with them, a clear thought came to Dr. Gangli: the end had come early.
Fifteen
Roland heard the telepathic command
(GO SOUTH WITH YOUR HANDS UP, YOU WON’T BE HURT)
begin to beat in his mind. It was time. He nodded at Jake and the Orizas flew. Their eerie
whistling wasn’t loud in the general cacophony, yet one of the guards must have heard
something coming, because he was beginning to pivot when the plate’s sharpened edge
took his head off and tumbled it backward into the compound, the eyelashes fluttering in
bewildered surprise. The headless body took two steps and then collapsed with its arms
over the rail, blood pouring from the neck in a gaudy stream. The other guard was already
down.
Eddie rolled effortlessly beneath theSOO LINE boxcar and bounced to his feet on the
compound side. Two more automated fire engines had come bolting out of the station
hitherto hidden by the hardware store façade. They were wheelless, seeming to run on
cushions of compressed air. Somewhere toward the north end of the campus (for so Eddie’s
mind persisted in identifying the Devar-Toi), something exploded. Good. Lovely.
Roland and Jake took fresh plates from the dwindling supply and used them to cut through
the three runs of fence. The high-voltage one parted with a bitter, sizzling crack and a brief blink of blue fire. Then they were in. Moving quickly and without speaking, they ran past
the now-unguarded towers with Oy trailing closely at Jake’s heels. Here was an alley
running between Henry Graham’s Drug Store & Soda Fountain and the Pleasantville Book
Store.
At the head of the alley, they looked out and saw that Main Street was currently empty,
although a tangy electric smell (a subway-station smell, Eddie thought) from the last two
fire engines still hung in the air, making the overall stench even worse. In the distance,
fire-sirens whooped and smoke detectors brayed. Here in Pleasantville, Eddie couldn’t
help but think of the Main Street in Disneyland: no litter in the gutters, no rude graffiti on the walls, not even any dust on the plate-glass windows. This was where homesick
Breakers came when they needed a little whiff of America, he supposed, but didn’t any of
them want anything better, anything morerealistic, than this plastic-fantastic still life?
Maybe it looked more inviting with folks on the sidewalks and in the stores, but that was
hard to believe. Hard forhim to believe, at least. Maybe it was only a city boy’s
chauvinism.
Across from them were Pleasantville Shoes, Gay Paree Fashions, Hair Today, and the
Gem Theater (COME IN IT’S KOOL INSIDEsaid the banner hanging from the bottom of
the marquee). Roland raised a hand, motioning Eddie and Jake across to that side of the
street. It was there, if all went as he hoped (it almost never did), that they would set their
ambush. They crossed in a crouch, Oy still scurrying at Jake’s heel. So far everything seemed to be working like a charm, and that made the gunslinger nervous, indeed.
Sixteen
Any battle-seasoned general will tell you that, even in a small-scale engagement (as this
one was), there always comes a point where coherence breaks down, and narrative flow,
and any real sense of how things are going. These matters are re-created by historians later
on. The need to re-create the myth of coherence may be one of the reasons why history
exists in the first place.
Never mind. We have reached that point, the one where the Battle of Algul Siento took on
a life of its own, and all I can do now is point here and there and hope you can bring your
own order out of the general chaos.
Seventeen
Trampas, the eczema-plagued low man who inadvertently let Ted in on so much, rushed to
the stream of Breakers who were fleeing from Damli House and grabbed one, a scrawny
ex-carpenter with a receding hairline named Birdie McCann.
“Birdie, what is it?” Trampas shouted. He was currently wearing his thinking-cap, which
meant he could not share in the telepathic pulse all around him. “What’s happening, do you
kn—”
“Shooting!” Birdie yelled, pulling free. “Shooting!They’re out there!” He pointed vaguely
behind him.
“Who? How m—”
“Watch out you idiots it’s not slowing down!”yelled Gaskie o’ Tego, from somewhere
behind Trampas and McCann.
Trampas looked up and was horrified to see the lead fire engine come roaring and swaying
along the center of the Mall, red lights flashing, two stainless-steel robot firemen now
clinging to the back. Pimli, Finli, and Jakli leaped aside. So did Tassa the houseboy. But
Tammy Kelly lay facedown on the grass in a spreading soup of blood. She had been