Jane Doming sat down in the jump-seat closest to the aisle. She held the Thermos in her
hands and made no move to fasten the web-harness. She wanted to keep the Thermos in
complete control, and that meant both hands.
Susy thinks I’ve flipped out.
Jane hoped she had.
If Captain McDonald lands hard, I’m going to have blis- ters all over my hands.
She would risk it.
The plane was dropping. The man in 3A, the man with the two-tone eyes and the pale face,
suddenly leaned down and pulled his travelling bag from under the seat.
This is it,Jane thought. This is where he brings out the grenade or the automatic weapon or
whatever the hell he’s got.
And the moment she saw it, the very moment, she was going to flip the red top off the
Thermos in her slightly trembling hands, and there was going to be one very surprised
Friend of Allah rolling around on the aisle floor of Delta Flight 901 while his skin boiled on
his face.
3A unzipped the bag.
Jane got ready.
3
The gunslinger thought this man, prisoner or not, was probably better at the fine art of
survival than any of the other men he had seen in the air-carriage. The others were fat
things, for the most part, and even those who looked reasonably fit also looked open,
unguarded, their faces those of spoiled and cosseted children, the faces of men who would
fight— eventually—but who would whine almost endlessly before they did; you could let
their guts out onto their shoes and their last expressions would not be rage or agony but
stupid surprise.
The prisoner was better. . . but not good enough. Not at all.
The army woman. She saw something. I don’t know what, but she saw something wrong.
She’s awake to him in a way she’s not to the others.
The prisoner sat down. Looked at a limp-covered book he thought of as a “Magda-Seen,”
although who Magda might have been or what she might have seen mattered not a whit to
Roland. The gunslinger did not want to look at a book, amazing as such things were; he
wanted to look at the woman in the army uniform. The urge to come forward and take
control was very great. But he held against it. . . at least for the time being.
The prisoner had gone somewhere and gotten a drug. Not the drug he himself took, nor
one that would help cure the gunslinger’s sick body, but one that people paid a lot of money
for because it was against the law. He would give this drug to his brother, who would in
turn give it to a man named Balazar. The deal would be complete when Balazar traded
them the kind of drug they took for this one—if, that was, the prisoner was able to correctly perform a ritual unknown to the gun- slinger (and a world as strange as this must of
necessity have many strange rituals); it was called Clearing the Customs.
But the woman sees him.
Could she keep him from Clearing the Customs? Roland thought the answer was probably
yes. And then? Gaol. And if the prisoner were gaoled, there would be no place to get the
sort of medicine his infected, dying body needed.
He must Clear the Customs,Roland thought. He must. And he must go with his brother to this man Balazar. It’s not in the plan, the brother won’t like it, but he must.
Because a man who dealt in drugs would either know a man or be a man who also cured the
sick. A man who could listen to what was wrong and then . . . maybe . . .
Hemust Clear the Customs, the gunslinger thought.
The answer was so large and simple, so close to him, that he very nearly did not see it at all.
It was the drug the prisoner meant to smuggle in that would make Clearing the Customs so
difficult, of course; there might be some sort of Oracle whomight be consulted in the cases
of people who seemed suspi- cious. Otherwise, Roland gleaned, the Clearing ceremony
would be simplicity itself, as crossing a friendly border was in his own world. One made
the sign of fealty to that kingdom’s monarch—a simple token gesture—and was allowed to
pass.
He was able to take things from the prisoner’s world to his own. The tooter-fish popkin
proved that. He would take the bags of drugs as he had taken the popkin. The prisoner
would Clear the Customs. And then Roland would bring the bags of drugs back.
Can you?
Ah, here was a question disturbing enough to distract him from the view of the water
below . . . they had gone over what looked like a huge ocean and were now turning back
toward the coastline. As they did, the water grew steadily closer. The air-carriage was
coming down (Eddie’s glance was brief, cursory; the gunslinger’s as rapt as the child seeing
his first snowfall). He could take things from this world, that he knew. But bring them back again? That was a thing of which he as yet had no knowing. He would have to find out.
The gunslinger reached into the prisoner’s pocket and closed the prisoner’s fingers over a
coin.
Roland went back through the door.
4
The birds flew away when he sat up. They hadn’t dared come as close this time. He ached; he was woozy, feverish . . . yet it was amazing how much even a little bit of nourishment
had revived him.
He looked at the coin he had brought back with him this time. It looked like silver, but the
reddish tint at the edge suggested it was really made of some baser metal. On one side was
a profile of a man whose face suggested nobility, courage, stubbornness. His hair, both
curled at the base of the skull and pigged at the nape of the neck, suggested a bit of vanity
as well. He turned the coin over and saw something so startling it caused him to cry out in
a rusty, croaking voice.
On the back was an eagle, the device which had decorated his own banner, in those dim
days when there had still been kingdoms and banners to symbolize them.
Time’s short. Go back. Hurry.
But he tarried a moment longer, thinking. It was harder to think inside this head—the
prisoner’s was far from clear, but it was, temporarily at least, a cleaner vessel than his own.
To try the coin both ways was only half the experiment, wasn’t it?
He took one of the shells from his cartridge belt and folded it over the coin in his hand.
Roland stepped back through the door.
5
The prisoner’s coin was still there, firmly curled within the pocketed hand. He didn’t have
to come forward to check on the shell; he knew it hadn’t made the trip.
He came forward anyway, briefly, because there was one thing he had to know. Had to see.
So he turned, as if to adjust the little paper thing on the back of his seat (by all the gods that ever were, there was paper everywhere in this world), and looked through the doorway. He
saw his body, collapsed as before, now with a fresh trickle of blood flowing from a cut on
his cheek—a stone must have done it when he left himself and crossed over.
The cartridge he had been holding along with the coin lay at the base of the door, on the
sand.
Still, enough was answered. The prisoner could Clear the Customs. Their guards o’ the
watch might search him from head to toe, from asshole to appetite, and back again.
They’d find nothing.
The gunslinger settled back, content, unaware, at least for the time being, that he still had
not grasped the extent of his problem.
6
The 727 came in low and smooth over the salt marshes of Long Island, leaving sooty trails
of spent fuel behind. The landing gear came down with a rumble and a thump.
7
3A, the man with the two-tone eyes, straightened up and Jane saw—actually saw—a
snub-nosed Uzi in his hands before she realized it was nothing but his duty declaration card
and a little zipper bag of the sort which men sometimes use to hold their passports.
The plane settled like silk.
Letting out a deep, shaking shudder, she tightened the red top on the Thermos.
“Call me an asshole,” she said in a low voice to Susy, buckling the cross-over belts now that it was too late. She had told Susy what she suspected on the final approach, so Susy
would be ready. “You have every right.”
“No,” Susy said. “You did the right thing.”
“I over-reacted. And dinner’s on me.”
“Like hell it is. And don’t look at him. Look at me. Smile, Janey.”