with drinking something too cold too fast.
He lay still, feeling his heart pumping like a runaway engine, feeling fresh energy surge
into his body so fast he felt as if he might actually explode. Without thinking of what he
was doing, he tore another piece from his shirt—soon it would be no more than a rag
hanging around his neck—and laid it across one leg. When the drink was gone he would
pour the ice into the rag and make a pack for his wounded hand. But his mind was
elsewhere.
Sweet!it cried out again and again, trying to get the sense of it, or to convince itself
there was sense in it, much as Eddie had tried to convince himself of the other as an actual being and not some mental convulsion that was only another part of himself trying to trick
him. Sweet! Sweet! Sweet!
The dark drink was laced with sugar, even more than Marten—who had been a great
glutton behind his grave ascet- ic’s exterior—had put in his coffee in mornings and at
‘Downers.
Sugar . . . white . . . powder . . .
The gunslinger’s eyes wandered to the bags, barely visible under the grass he had tossed
over them, and wondered briefly if the stuff in this drink and the stuff in the bags might be
one and the same. He knew that Eddie had understood him per- fectly over here, where they
were two separate physical crea- tures; he suspected that if he had crossed bodily to Eddie’s
world (and he understood instinctively it could be done . . . although if the door should shut while he was there, he would be there forever, as Eddie would be here forever if their
posi- tions were reversed), he would have understood the language just as perfectly. He
knew from being in Eddie’s mind that the languages of the two worlds were similar to begin
with. Similar, but not the same. Here a sandwich was a popkin. There to rustle was finding
something to eat. So… was it not possible that the drug Eddie called cocaine was, in the gunslinger’s world, called sugar?
Reconsideration made it seem unlikely. Eddie had bought this drink openly, knowing that
he was being watched by people who served the Priests of Customs. Further, Roland
sensed he had paid comparatively little for it. Less, even, than for the popkins of meat. No,
sugar was not cocaine, but Roland could not understand why anyone would want cocaine
or any other illegal drug, for that matter, in a world where such a powerful one as sugar was
so plentiful and cheap.
He looked at the meat popkins again, felt the first stir- rings of hunger . . . and realized with amazement and con- fused thankfulness that he felt better.
The drink? Was that it? The sugar in the drink?
That might be part of it—but a small part. Sugar could revive one’s strength for awhile
when it was flagging; this was something he had known since he was a child. But sugar
could not dull pain or damp the fever-fire in your body when some infection had turned it
into a furnace. All the same, that was exactly what had happened to him . . . was still
happening.
The convulsive shuddering had stopped. The sweat was drying on his brow. The fishhooks
which had lined his throat seemed to be disappearing. Incredible as it was, it was also an
inarguable fact, not just imagination or wishful thinking (in point of fact, the gunslinger
had not been capable of such frivolity as the latter in unknown and unknowable decades).
His missing fingers and toes still throbbed and roared, but he believed even these pains to
be muted.
Roland put his head back, closed his eyes and thanked God.
God and Eddie Dean.
Don’t make the mistake of putting your heart near his hand, Roland,a voice from the
deeper ranges of his mind spoke—this was not the nervous, tittery-bitchy voice of the man
in black or the rough one of Cort; to the gunslinger it sounded like his father. You know that what he’s done for you he has done out of his own personal need, just as you know that
those men—Inquisitors though they may be—are partly or completely right about him. He
is a weak vessel, and the reason they took him was neither false nor base. There is steel in
him, I dispute it not. But there is weakness as well. He is like Hax, the cook. Hax poisoned
reluctantly . . . but reluctance has never stilled the screams of the dying as their intestines rupture. And there is yet another reason to beware . . .
But Roland needed no voice to tell him what that other reason was. He had seen that in
Jake’s eyes when the boy finally began to understand his purpose.
Don’t make the mistake of putting your heart near his hand.
Good advice. You did yourself ill to feel well of those to whom ill must eventually be done.
Remember your duty, Roland.
“I’ve never forgotten it,” he husked as the stars shone pitilessly down and the waves grated on the shore and the lobster monstrosities cried their idiot questions. “I’m damned for my
duty. And why should the damned turn aside?”
He began to eat the meat popkins which Eddie called “dogs.”
Roland didn’t much care for the idea of eating dog, and these things tasted like
gutter-leavings compared to the tooter-fish, but after that marvellous drink, did he have any
right to complain? He thought not. Besides, it was late in the game to worry overmuch
about such niceties.
He ate everything and then returned to the place where now Eddie was, in some magical
vehicle that rushed along a metal road filled with other such vehicles . . . dozens, maybe
hundreds, and not a horse pulling a single one.
7
Eddie stood ready as the pizza truck pulled up; Roland stood even more ready inside of
him.
Just another version of Diana’s Dream,Roland thought. What was in the box? The golden
bowl or the biter-snake? And just as she turns the key and puts her hands upon the lid she
hears her mother calling “Wake up, Diana! It’s time to milk!”
Okay,Eddie thought. Which is it gonna be? The lady or the tiger?
A man with a pale, pimply face and big buck teeth looked out of the pizza truck’s
passenger window. It was a face Eddie knew.
“Hi, Col,” Eddie said without much enthusiasm. Beyond Col Vincent, sitting behind the
wheel, was Old Double-Ugly, which was what Henry called Jack Andolini.
But Henry never called him that to his face,Eddie thought. No, of course not. Calling Jack
something like that to his face would be a wonderful way to get yourself killed. He was a
huge man with a bulging caveman’s forehead and a prothagonous jaw to match. He was
related to Enrico Balazar by marriage … a niece, a cousin, some fucking thing. His gigantic
hands clung to the wheel of the delivery truck like the hands of a monkey clinging to a branch. Coarse sprouts of hair grew from his ears. Eddie could only see one of those ears
now because Jack Andolini remained in profile, never looking around.
Old Double-Ugly. But not even Henry (who, Eddie had to admit, was not always the most
perceptive guy in the world) had ever made the mistake of calling him Old Double-Stupid.
Colin Vincent was no more than a glorified gofer. Jack, how- ever, had enough smarts
behind that Neanderthal brow to be Balazar’s number one lieutenant. Eddie didn’t like the
fact that Balazar had sent a man of such importance. He didn’t like it at all.
“Hi, Eddie,” Col said. “Heard you had some trouble.”
“Nothing I couldn’t handle,” Eddie said. He realized he was scratching first one arm then the other, one of the typical junkie moves he had tried so hard to keep away from while
they had him in custody. He made himself stop. But Col was smiling, and Eddie felt an
urge to slam a fist all the way through that smile and out the other side. He might have done
it, too. . . except for Jack. Jack was still staring straight ahead, a man who seemed to be
thinking his own rudimentary thoughts as he observed the world in the simple primary
colors and elementary motions which were all a man of such intellect (or so you’d think,
looking at him) could perceive. Yet Eddie thought Jack saw more in a single day than Col
Vincent would in his whole life.
“Well, good,” Col said. “That’s good.”
Silence. Col looked at Eddie, smiling, waiting for Eddie to start the Junkie Shuffle again,
scratching, shifting from foot to foot like a kid who needs to go to the bathroom, waiting
mostly for Eddie to ask what was up, and by the way, did they just happen to have any stuff