new substance from the brute caldera; here was the world’s most remarkable thing: logic
which was also ecstasy.
Sometimes he missed or struck aslant, as the sculptor may carve badly or in vain, but this
was a perfect shot. The brick struck the girl in the bright gingham dress squarely on the
head. He saw blood—it was brighter than the brick but would eventually dry to the same
maroon color—splash up. He heard the start of the mother’s scream. Then he was moving.
Jack crossed the room and threw the chair which had been under the knob into a far corner
(he’d kicked the other—the one he’d sat in while waiting—aside as he crossed the room).
He yanked up the sweatshirt and pulled a bandanna from his back pocket. He used it to turn
the knob.
No fingerprints allowed.
Only Don’t Bees left fingerprints.
He stuffed the bandanna into his back pocket again even as the door was swinging open.
As he walked down the hall, he assumed a faintly drunken gait. He didn’t look around.
Looking around was also only for Don’t Bees.
DoBees knew that trying to see if someone was noticing you was a sure way to accomplish
just that. Looking around was the sort of thing a witness might remember after an accident.
Then some smartass cop might decide it was a suspi- cious accident, and there would be an investigation. All because of one nervous glance around. Jack didn’t believe anyone could
connect him with the crime even if someone decided the “accident” was suspicious and
there was an inves- tigation, but. . .
Take only acceptable risks. Minimize those which remain.
In other words, always prop a chair under the doorknob.
So he walked down the powdery corridor where patches of lathing showed through the
plastered walls, he walked with his head down, mumbling to himself like the vags you saw
on the street. He could still hear the woman—the mother of the little girl, he
supposed—screaming, but that sound was com- ing from the front of the building; it was
faint and unimpor- tant. All of the things which happened after— the cries, the confusion, the wails of the wounded (if the wounded were still capable of wailing), were not things which
mattered to Jack. What mattered was the thing which pushed change into the ordinary
course of things and sculpted new lines in the flow of lives . . . and, perhaps, the destinies
not only of those struck, but of a widening circle around them, like ripples from a stone
tossed into a still pond.
Who was to say that he had not sculpted the cosmos today, or might not at some future
time?
God, no wonder he creamed his jeans!
He met no one as he went down the two flights of stairs but he kept up the act, swaying a
little as he went but never reeling. A swayer would not be remembered. An ostentatious
reeler might be. He muttered but didn’t actually say anything a person might understand.
Not acting at all would be better than hamming it up.
He let himself out the broken rear door into an alley filled with refuse and broken bottles
which twinkled galaxies of sun-stars.
He had planned his escape in advance as he planned everything in advance (take only
acceptable risks, minimize those which remain, be a Do Bee in all things); such planning
was why he had been marked by his colleagues as a man who would go far (and he did
intend to go far, but one of the places he did not intend to go was to jail, or the electric
chair).
A few people were running along the street into which the alley debouched, but they were
on their way to see what the screaming was about, and none of them looked at Jack Mort,
who had removed the out-of-season knit cap but not the sun- glasses (which, on such a
bright morning, did not seem out of place).
He turned into another alley.
Came out on another street.
Now he sauntered down an alley not so filthy as the first two—almost, in fact, a lane. This
fed into another street, and a block up there was a bus stop. Less than a minute after he got
there a bus arrived, which was also part of the schedule. Jack entered when the doors
accordioned open and dropped his fifteen cents into the slot of the coin receptacle. The
driver did not so much as glance at him. That was good, but even if he had, he would have
seen nothing but a nondescript man in jeans, a man who might be out of work—the
sweatshirt he was wearing looked like something out of a Salvation Army grab-bag.
Be ready, be prepared, be a Do-Bee.
Jack Mort’s secret for success both at work and at play.
Nine blocks away there was a parking lot. Jack got off the bus, entered the lot, unlocked
his car (an unremarkable mid-fifties Chevrolet which was still in fine shape), and drove
back to New York City.
He was free and clear.
7
The gunslinger saw all of this in a mere moment. Before his shocked mind could shut out
the other images by simply shutting down, he saw more. Not all, but enough. Enough.
8
He saw Mort cutting a piece from page four of The New York Daily Mirror with an Exacto
knife, being fussily sure to stay exactly upon the lines of the column. NEGRO GIRL
COM- ATOSE FOLLOWING TRAGIC ACCIDENT, the headline read. He saw Mort
apply glue to the back of the clipping with the brush attached to the cover of his paste-pot.
Saw Mort position it at the center of a blank page of a scrapbook, which, from the bumpy,
swelled look of the foregoing pages, contained many other clippings. He saw the opening
lines of the piece: “Five-year-old Odetta Holmes, who came to Elizabethtown, N.J., to
celebrate a joyous occasion, is now the victim of a cruel freak accident. Following the
wedding of an aunt two days ago, the girl and her family were walking toward the railway
station when a brick tumbled …”
But that wasn’t the only time he’d had dealings with her, was it? No. Gods, no.
In the years between that morning and the night when Odetta had lost her legs, Jack Mort
had dropped a great many things and pushed a great many people.
Then there had been Odetta again.
The first time he had pushed something on her.
The second time he had pushed her in front of something.
What sort of man is this that I am supposed to use? What sort of man—
But then he thought of Jake, thought of the push which had sent Jake into this world, and
he thought he heard the laughter of the man in black, and that finished him.
Roland fainted.
9
When he came to, he was looking at neat rows of figures marching down a sheet of green
paper. The paper had been ruled both ways, so that each single figure looked like a prisoner
in a cell.
He thought: Something else.
Notjust Walter’s laughter. Something—a plan?
No, Gods, no—nothing as complex or hopeful as that.
But an idea, at least. A tickle.
How long have I been out?he thought with sudden alarm. It was maybe nine o’ the clock
when I came through the door, maybe a little earlier. How long—?
He came forward.
Jack Mort—who was now only a human doll controlled by the gunslinger—looked up a
little and saw the hands of the expensive quartz clock on his desk stood at quarter past one.
Gods, as late as that? As late as that? But Eddie. . .he was so tired, he can never have
stayed awake for so I—
The gunslinger turned Jack’s head. The door was still there, but what he saw through it was far worse, than he would have imagined.
Standing to one side of the door were two shadows, one that of the wheelchair, the other
that of a human being. . . but the human being was incomplete, supporting itself on its arms
because its lower legs had been snatched away with the same quick brutality as Roland’s
fingers and toe.
The shadow moved.
Roland whipped Jack Mort’s head away at once, moving with the whiplash speed of a
striking snake.
She mustn’t look in. Not until I am ready. Until then, she sees nothing but the back of this
man’s head.
Detta Walker would not see Jack Mort in any case, because the person who looked through
the open door saw only what the host saw. She could only see Mort’s face if he looked into
a mirror (although that might lead to its own awful consequen- ces of paradox and
repetition), but even then it would mean nothing to either Lady; for that matter, the Lady’s
face would not mean anything to Jack Mort. Although they had twice been on terms of