The Dark Tower (11 page)

“What the dev—” he began, and then she pulled the trigger with her middle finger, at the same time yanking back on the shoulder-rig with all her force. The straps binding the holster to Scowther’s body held, but the thinner one holding the automatic in place snapped, and as Scowther fell sideways, trying to look down at the smoking black hole in his white lab-coat, Susannah took full
possession of his gun. She shot Straw and the vampire beside him, the one with the electric sword. For a moment the vampire was there, still staring at the spider-god that had looked so much like a baby to begin with, and then its aura whiffed out. The thing’s flesh went with it. For a moment there was nothing where it had been but an empty shirt tucked into an empty pair of bluejeans. Then the clothes collapsed.

“Kill her!
” Sayre screamed, reaching for his own gun.
“Kill that bitch!
”

Susannah rolled away from the spider crouched on the body of its rapidly deflating mother, raking at the helmet she was wearing even as she tumbled off the side of the bed. There was a moment of excruciating pain when she thought it wasn’t going to come away and then she hit the floor, free of it. It hung over the side of the bed, fringed with her hair. The spider-thing, momentarily pulled off its roost when its mother’s body jerked, chittered angrily.

Susannah rolled beneath the bed as a series of gunshots went off above her. She heard a loud
SPROINK
as one of the slugs hit a spring. She saw the rathead nurse’s feet and hairy lower legs and put a bullet into one of her knees. The nurse gave a scream, turned, and began to limp away, squalling.

Sayre leaned forward, pointing the gun at the makeshift double bed just beyond Mia’s deflating body. There were already three smoking, smoldering holes in the groundsheet. Before he could add a fourth, one of the spider’s legs caressed his cheek, tearing open the mask he wore and revealing the hairy cheek beneath. Sayre recoiled, crying out. The spider turned to him and made a mewling
noise. The white thing high on its back—a node with a human face—glared, as if to warn Sayre away from its meal. Then it turned back to the woman, who was really not recognizable as a woman any longer; she looked like the ruins of some incredibly ancient mummy which had now turned to rags and powder.

“I say, this
is
a bit confusing,” the robot with the incubator remarked. “Shall I retire? Perhaps I might return when matters have clarified somewhat.”

Susannah reversed direction, rolling out from beneath the bed. She saw that two of the low men had taken to their heels. Jey, the hawkman, didn’t seem to be able to make up his mind. Stay or go? Susannah made it up for him, putting a single shot into the sleek brown head. Blood and feathers flew.

Susannah got up as well as she could, gripping the side of the bed for balance, holding Scowther’s gun out in front of her. She had gotten four. The rathead nurse and one other had run. Sayre had dropped his gun and was trying to hide behind the robot with the incubator.

Susannah shot the two remaining vampires and the low man with the bulldog face. That one—Haber—hadn’t forgotten Susannah; he’d been holding his ground and waiting for a clear shot. She got hers first and watched him fall backward with deep satisfaction. Haber, she thought, had been the most dangerous.

“Madam, I wonder if you could tell me—” began the robot, and Susannah put two quick shots into its steel face, darkening the blue electric eyes. This trick she had learned from Eddie. A gigantic siren immediately went off. Susannah felt that if she listened to it long, she would be deafened.

“I HAVE BEEN BLINDED BY GUNFIRE!
” the robot bellowed, still in its absurd would-you-like-another-cup-of-tea-madam accent.
“VISION ZERO, I NEED HELP, CODE 7, I SAY, HELP!
”

Sayre stepped away from it, hands held high. Susannah couldn’t hear him over the siren and the robot’s blatting, but she could read the words as they came off the bastard’s lips:
I surrender, will you accept my parole?

She smiled at this amusing idea, unaware that she smiled. It was without humor and without mercy and meant only one thing: she wished she could get him to lick her stumps, as he had forced Mia to lick his boots. But there wasn’t time enough. He saw his doom in her grin and turned to run and Susannah shot him twice in the back of the head—once for Mia, once for Pere Callahan. Sayre’s skull shattered in a fury of blood and brains. He grabbed the wall, scrabbled at a shelf loaded with equipment and supplies, and then went down dead.

Susannah now took aim at the spider-god. The tiny white human head on its black and bristly back turned to look at her. The blue eyes, so uncannily like Roland’s, blazed.

No, you cannot! You
must
not! For I am the King’s only son!

I can’t?
she sent back, leveling the automatic.
Oh, sugar, you are just . . . so. . . WRONG!

But before she could pull the trigger, there was a gunshot from behind her. A slug burned across the side of her neck. Susannah reacted instantly, turning and throwing herself sideways into the aisle. One of the low men who’d run had had a change of heart and come back. Susannah put two bullets into his chest and made him mortally sorry.

She turned, eager for more—yes, this was what she wanted, what she had been made for, and she’d always revere Roland for showing her—but the others were either dead or fled. The spider raced down the side of its birthbed on its many legs, leaving the papier-mâché corpse of its mother behind. It turned its white infant’s head briefly toward her.

You’d do well to let me pass, Blackie, or
—

She fired at it, but stumbled over the hawkman’s outstretched hand as she did. The bullet that would have killed the abomination went a little awry, clipping off one of its eight hairy legs instead. A yellowish-red fluid, more like pus than blood, poured from the place where the leg had joined the body. The thing screamed at her in pain and surprise. The audible portion of that scream was hard to hear over the endless cycling blat of the robot’s siren, but she heard it in her head loud and clear.

I’ll pay you back for that! My father and I,
we’ll
pay you back! Make you cry for death, so we will!

You ain’t gonna have a chance, sugar,
Susannah sent back, trying to project all the confidence she possibly could, not wanting the thing to know what she believed: that Scowther’s automatic might have been shot dry. She aimed with a deliberation that was unnecessary, and the spider scuttled rapidly away from her, darting first behind the endlessly sirening robot and then through a dark doorway.

All right. Not great, not the best solution by any means, but she was still alive, and that much was grand.

And the fact that all of sai Sayre’s crew were dead or run off? That wasn’t bad, either.

Susannah tossed Scowther’s gun aside and selected another, this one a Walther PPK. She took it from the docker’s clutch Straw had been wearing, then rummaged in his pockets, where she found half a dozen extra clips. She briefly considered adding the vampire’s electric sword to her armory and decided to leave it where it was. Better the tools you knew than those you didn’t.

She tried to get in touch with Jake, couldn’t hear herself think, and turned to the robot.
“Hey, big boy! Shut off that damn sireen, what do you say?
”

She had no idea if it would work, but it did. The silence was immediate and wonderful, with the sensuous texture of moiré silk. Silence might be useful. If there was a counterattack, she’d hear them coming. And the dirty truth? She
hoped
for a counterattack,
wanted
them to come, and never mind whether that made sense or not. She had a gun and her blood was up. That was all that mattered.

(
Jake! Jake, do you hear me, kiddo? If you hear, answer your big sis!
)

Nothing. Not even that rattle of distant gunfire. He was out of t—

Then, a single word—
was
it a word?

(
wimeweh
)

More important, was it
Jake
?

She didn’t know for sure, but she thought yes. And the word seemed familiar to her, somehow.

Susannah gathered her concentration, meaning to call louder this time, and then a queer idea came to her, one too strong to be called intuition. Jake was trying to be quiet. He was . . . hiding? Maybe getting ready to spring an ambush? The idea sounded crazy, but maybe
his
blood was up,
too. She didn’t know, but thought he’d either sent her that one odd word

(
wimeweh
)

on purpose, or it had slipped out. Either way, it might be better to let him roll his own oats for awhile.

“I say, I have been blinded by gunfire!” the robot insisted. Its voice was still loud, but had dropped to a range at least approaching normal. “I can’t see a bloody thing and I have this incubator—”

“Drop it,” Susannah said.

“But—”

“Drop
it, Chumley.”

“I beg pawdon, madam, but my name is Nigel the Butler and I really can’t—”

Susannah had been hauling herself closer during this little exchange—you didn’t forget the old means of locomotion just because you’d been granted a brief vacation with legs, she was discovering—and read both the name and the serial number stamped on the robot’s chrome-steel midsection.

“Nigel DNK 45932, drop that fucking glass box, say thankya!”

The robot (
DOMESTIC
was stamped just below its serial number) dropped the incubator and then whimpered when it shattered at its steel feet.

Susannah worked her way over to Nigel, and found she had to conquer a moment’s fear before reaching up and taking one three-fingered steel hand. She needed to remind herself that this wasn’t Andy from Calla Bryn Sturgis, nor could Nigel
know
about Andy. The butler-robot might or might not be sophisticated enough to crave revenge—
certainly Andy had been—but you couldn’t crave what you didn’t know about.

She hoped.

“Nigel, pick me up.”

There was a whine of servomotors as the robot bent.

“No, hon, you have to come forward a little bit. There’s broken glass where you are.”

“Pawdon, madam, but I’m blind. I believe it was you who shot my eyes out.”

Oh. That.

“Well,” she said, hoping her tone of irritation would disguise the fear beneath, “I can’t very well get you new ones if you don’t pick me up, can I? Now get a wiggle on, may it do ya. Time’s wasting.”

Nigel stepped forward, crushing broken glass beneath its feet, and came to the sound of her voice. Susannah controlled the urge to cringe back, but once the Domestic Robot had set its grip on her, its touch was quite gentle. It lifted her into its arms.

“Now take me to the door.”

“Madam, beg pawdon but there are
many
doors in Sixteen. More still beneath the castle.”

Susannah couldn’t help being curious. “How many?”

A brief pause. “I should say five hundred and ninety-five are currently operational.” She immediately noticed that five-ninety-five added up to nineteen. Added up to
chassit
.

“Do you mind giving me a carry to the one I came through before the shooting started?” Susannah pointed toward the far end of the room.

“No, madam, I don’t mind at all, but I’m sorry to tell you that it will do you no good,” Nigel said in his plummy voice. “That door,
NEW YORK #7/FEDIC
,
is one-way.” A pause. Relays clicking in the steel dome of its head. “Also, it burned out after its last use. It has, as you might say, gone to the clearing at the end of the path.”

“Oh, that’s just
wonderful
!” Susannah cried, but realized she wasn’t exactly surprised by Nigel’s news. She remembered the ragged humming sound she’d heard it making just before Sayre had pushed her rudely through it, remembered thinking, even in her distress, that it was a dying thing. And yes, it had died. “Just
wonderful
!”

“I sense you are distressed, madam.”

“You’re goddamned right I’m distressed! Bad enough the damned thing only opened one-way! Now it’s shut down completely!”

“Except for the default,” Nigel agreed.

“Default? What do you mean, default?”

“That would be
NEW YORK #9/FEDIC
,” Nigel told her. “At one time there were over thirty one-way New York–to–Fedic ports, but I believe #9 is the only one that remains. All commands pertaining to
NEW YORK #7/FEDIC
will now have defaulted to #9.”

Chassit
, she thought . . . almost prayed.
He’s talking about
chassit,
I think. Oh God, I hope he is.

“Do you mean passwords and such, Nigel?”

“Why, yes, madam.”

“Take me to Door #9.”

“As you wish.”

Nigel began to move rapidly up the aisle between the hundreds of empty beds, their taut white sheets gleaming under the brilliant overhead lamps. Susannah’s imagination momentarily populated this room with screaming, frightened children, freshly arrived from Calla Bryn Sturgis, maybe from the neighboring Callas, as well. She
saw not just a single rathead nurse but battalions of them, eager to clamp the helmets over the heads of the kidnapped children and start the process that . . . that did what? Ruined them in some way. Sucked the intelligence out of their heads and knocked their growth-hormones out of whack and ruined them forever. Susannah supposed that at first they would be cheered up to hear such a pleasant voice in their heads, a voice welcoming them to the wonderful world of North Central Positronics and the Sombra Group. Their crying would stop, their eyes fill with hope. Perhaps, they would think the nurses in their white uniforms were good in spite of their hairy, scary faces and yellow fangs. As good as the voice of the nice lady.

Then the hum would begin, quickly building in volume as it moved toward the middle of their heads, and this room would again fill with their frightened screams—