The Dark Tower (12 page)

“Madam? Are you all right?”

“Yes. Why do you ask, Nigel?”

“I believe you shivered.”

“Never mind. Just get me to the door to New York, the one that still works.”

Once they left the infirmary, Nigel bore her rapidly down first one corridor and then another. They came to escalators that looked as if they had been frozen in place for centuries. Halfway down one of them, a steel ball on legs flashed its amber eyes at Nigel and cried,
“Howp! Howp!
” Nigel responded
“Howp, howp!
” in return and then said to Susannah (in the confidential tone certain gossipy
people adopt when discussing Those Who Are Unfortunate), “He’s a Mech Foreman and has been stuck there for over eight hundred years—fried boards, I imagine. Poor soul! But he still tries to do his best.”

Twice Nigel asked her if she believed his eyes could be replaced. The first time Susannah told him she didn’t know. The second time—feeling a little sorry for him (definitely him now, not it)—she asked what
he
thought.

“I think my days of service are nearly over,” he said, and then added something that made her arms tingle with gooseflesh: “O Discordia!”

The Diem Brothers are dead,
she thought, remembering—had it been a dream? a vision? a glimpse of
her
Tower?—something from her time with Mia. Or had it been her time in Oxford, Mississippi? Or both?
Papa Doc Duvalier is dead. Christa McAuliffe is dead. Stephen King is dead, popular writer killed while taking afternoon walk, O Discordia, O lost!

But who was Stephen King? Who was Christa McAuliffe, for that matter?

Once they passed a low man who had been present at the birth of Mia’s monster. He lay curled on a dusty corridor floor like a human shrimp with his gun in one hand and a hole in his head. Susannah thought he’d committed suicide. In a way, she supposed that made sense. Because things had gone wrong, hadn’t they? And unless Mia’s baby found its way to where it belonged on its own, Big Red Daddy was going to be mad. Might be mad even if Mordred somehow found his way home.

His
other
father. For this was a world of twins and mirror images, and Susannah now understood more about what she’d seen than she really wanted
to. Mordred too was a twin, a Jekyll-and-Hyde creature with two selves, and he—or it—had the faces of two fathers to remember.

They came upon a number of other corpses; all looked like suicides to Susannah. She asked Nigel if he could tell—by their smells, or something—but he claimed he could not.

“How many are still here, do you think?” she asked. Her blood had had time to cool a little, and now she felt nervous.

“Not many, madam. I believe that most have moved on. Very likely to the Derva.”

“What’s the Derva?”

Nigel said he was dreadfully sorry, but that information was restricted and could be accessed only with the proper password. Susannah tried
chassit,
but it was no good. Neither was
nineteen
or, her final try,
ninety-nine
. She supposed she’d have to be content with just knowing most of them were gone.

Nigel turned left, into a new corridor with doors on both sides. She got him to stop long enough to try one of them, but there was nothing of particular note inside. It was an office, and long-abandoned, judging by the thick fall of dust. She was interested to see a poster of madly jitterbugging teenagers on one wall. Beneath it, in large blue letters, was this:

SAY, YOU COOL CATS AND BOPPIN’ KITTIES!
I ROCKED AT THE HOP WITH ALAN FREED!
CLEUELAND, OHIO, OCTOBER 1954

Susannah was pretty sure that the performer on stage was Richard Penniman. Club-crawling folkies
such as herself affected disdain for anyone who rocked harder than Phil Ochs, but Suze had always had a soft spot in her heart for Little Richard; good golly, Miss Molly, you sure like to ball. She guessed it was a Detta thing.

Did these people once upon a time use their doors to vacation in various wheres and whens of their choice? Did they use the power of the Beams to turn certain levels of the Tower into tourist attractions?

She asked Nigel, who told her he was sure he did not know. Nigel still sounded sad about the loss of his eyes.

Finally they came into an echoing rotunda with doors marching all around its mighty circumference. The marble tiles on the floor were laid in a black-and-white checkerboard pattern Susannah remembered from certain troubled dreams in which Mia had fed her chap. Above, high and high, constellations of electric stars winked in a blue firmament that was now showing plenty of cracks. This place reminded her of the Cradle of Lud, and even more strongly of Grand Central Station. Somewhere in the walls, air-conditioners or -exchangers ran rustily. The smell in the air was weirdly familiar, and after a short struggle, Susannah identified it: Comet Cleanser. They sponsored
The Price Is Right,
which she sometimes watched on TV if she happened to be home in the morning.
“I’m Don Pardo, now please welcome your host, Mr. Bill Cullen!
” Susannah felt a moment of vertigo and closed her eyes.

Bill Cullen is dead. Don Pardo is dead. Martin Luther King is dead, shot down in Memphis. Rule Discordia!

O Christ, those
voices,
would they never stop?

She opened her eyes and saw doors marked
SHANGHAI/FEDIC
and
BOMBAY/FEDIC
and one marked
DALLAS (NOVEMBER 1963)/FEDIC
. Others were written in runes that meant nothing to her. At last Nigel stopped in front of one she recognized.

NORTH CENTRAL POSITRONICS, LTD.

New York/Fedic
Maximum Security

All of this Susannah recognized from the other side, but below
VERBAL ENTRY CODE REQUIRED
was this message, flashing ominous red:

#9 FINAL DEFAULT

“What would you like to do next, madam?” Nigel asked.

“Set me down, sugarpie.”

She had time to wonder what her response would be if Nigel declined to do so, but he didn’t even hesitate. She walk-hopped-scuttled to the door in her old way and put her hands on it. Beneath them she felt a texture that was neither wood nor metal. She thought she could hear a very faint hum. She considered trying
chassit
—her version of Ali Baba’s
Open, sesame
—and didn’t bother. There wasn’t even a doorknob. One-way meant one-way, she reckoned; no kidding around.

(
JAKE!
)

She sent it with all her might.

No answer. Not even that faint

(
wimeweh
)

nonsense word. She waited a moment longer, then turned around and sat with her back propped against the door. She dropped the extra ammo clips between her spread knees and then held the Walther PPK up in her right hand. A good weapon to have with your back to a locked door, she reckoned; she liked the weight of it. Once upon a time, she and others had been trained in a protest technique called passive resistance. Lie down on the lunchroom floor, cover your soft middle and softer privates. Do not respond to those who strike you and revile you and curse your parents. Sing in your chains like the sea. What would her old friends make of what she had become?

Susannah said: “You know what? I don’t give shit one. Passive resistance is also dead.”

“Madam?”

“Nothing, Nigel.”

“Madam, may I ask—”

“What I’m doing?”

“Exactly, madam.”

“Waiting on a friend, Chumley. Just waiting on a friend.”

She thought that DNK 45932 would remind her that his name was Nigel, but he didn’t. Instead, he asked how long she would wait for her friend. Susannah told him until hell froze over. This elicited a long silence. Finally Nigel asked: “May I go, then, madam?”

“How will you see?”

“I have switched to infrared. It is less satisfying than three-X macrovision, but it will suffice to get me to the repair bays.”

“Is there anyone in the repair bays who can fix you?” Susannah asked with mild curiosity. She
pushed the button that dropped the clip out of the Walther’s butt, then rammed it back in, taking a certain elemental pleasure in the oily, metallic
SNACK!
sound it made.

“I’m sure I can’t say, madam,” Nigel replied, “although the probability of such a thing is very low, certainly less than one per cent. If no one comes, then I, like you, will wait.”

She nodded, suddenly tired and very sure that this was where the grand quest ended—here, leaning against this door. But you didn’t give up, did you? Giving up was for cowards, not gunslingers.

“May ya do fine, Nigel—thanks for the piggyback. Long days and pleasant nights. Hope you get your eyes back. Sorry I shot em out, but I was in a bit of a tight and didn’t know whose side you were on.”

“And good wishes to you, madam.”

Susannah nodded. Nigel clumped off and then she was alone, leaning against the door to New York. Waiting for Jake. Listening for Jake.

All she heard was the rusty, dying wheeze of the machinery in the walls.

The threat that the low men and the vampires might kill Oy was the only thing that kept Jake from dying with the Pere. There was no agonizing over the decision; Jake yelled

(OY, TO ME!)

with all the mental force he could muster, and Oy ran swiftly at his heel. Jake passed low men who stood mesmerized by the turtle and straight-armed a door marked
EMPLOYEES ONLY
. From the dim orange-red glow of the restaurant he and Oy entered a zone of brilliant white light and charred, pungent cookery. Steam billowed against his face, hot and wet,

(
the jungle
)

perhaps setting the stage for what followed,

(
the mighty jungle
)

perhaps not. His vision cleared as his pupils shrank and he saw he was in the Dixie Pig’s kitchen. Not for the first time, either. Once, not too long before the coming of the Wolves to Calla Bryn Sturgis, Jake had followed Susannah (only then she’d have
been Mia) into a dream where she’d been searching some vast and deserted kitchen for food.
This
kitchen, only now the place was bustling with life. A huge pig sizzled on an iron spit over an open fire, the flames leaping up through a food-caked iron grate at every drop of grease. To either side were gigantic copper-hooded stoves upon which pots nearly as tall as Jake himself fumed. Stirring one of these was a gray-skinned creature so hideous that Jake’s eyes hardly knew how to look at it. Tusks rose from either side of its gray, heavy-lipped mouth. Dewlapped cheeks hung in great warty swags of flesh. The fact that the creature was wearing foodstained cook’s whites and a puffy popcorn chef’s toque somehow finished the nightmare, sealed it beneath a coat of varnish. Beyond this apparition, nearly lost in the steam, two other creatures dressed in whites were washing dishes side by side at a double sink. Both wore neckerchiefs. One was human, a boy of perhaps seventeen. The other appeared to be some sort of monster housecat on legs.

“Vai, vai, los mostros pubes, tre cannits en founs!
” the tusked chef screeched at the washerboys. It hadn’t noticed Jake. One of them—the cat—did. It laid back its ears and hissed. Without thinking, Jake threw the Oriza he’d been holding in his right hand. It sang across the steamy air and sliced through the cat-thing’s neck as smoothly as a knife through a cake of lard. The head toppled into the sink with a sudsy splash, the green eyes still blazing.

“San fai, can dit los!
” cried the chef. He seemed either unaware of what had happened or was unable to grasp it. He turned to Jake. The eyes beneath his sloping, crenellated forehead were a bleary blue-gray, the eyes of a sentient being. Seen
head-on, Jake realized what it was: some kind of freakish, intelligent warthog. Which meant it was cooking its own kind. That seemed perfectly fitting in the Dixie Pig.

“Can foh pube ain-tet can fah! She-so pan! Vai!
” This was addressed to Jake. And then, just to make the lunacy complete: “And eef you won’d scrub,
don’d even stard!
”

The other washboy, the human one, was screaming some sort of warning, but the chef paid no attention. The chef seemed to believe that Jake, having killed one of his helpers, was now duty- and honor-bound to take the dead cat’s place.

Jake flung the other plate and it sheared through the warthog’s neck, putting an end to its blabber. Perhaps a gallon of blood flew onto the stovetop to the thing’s right, sizzling and sending up a horrible charred smell. The warthog’s head slewed to the left on its neck and then tilted backward, but didn’t come off. The being—it was easily seven feet tall—took two stagger-steps to its left and embraced the sizzling pig turning on its spit. The head tore loose a little further, now lying on Chef Warthog’s right shoulder, one eye glaring up at the steam-wreathed fluorescent lights. The heat sealed the cook’s hands to the roast and they began to melt. Then the thing fell forward into the open flames and its tunic caught fire.