22
   AFTER THEY HAD RUN for God knew how long (all Jake knew for sure was that the drums had stopped again), Gasher once more yanked him to a stop. This time Jake managed to keep his feet. He had gotten his second wind. Gasher, who would never see eleven again, had not.
   "Hoo! My old pump's doing nip-ups, sweetie."
   "Too bad," Jake said unfeelingly, then stumbled backward as Gasher's gnarled hand connected with the side of his face.
   "Yar, you'd cry a bitter tear if I dropped dead right here, woontcher? Too likely! But no such luck, my fine young squint—old Gasher's seen em come and seen em go, and I wasn't born to drop dead at the feet of any little sweetcheeks berry like you."
   Jake listened to these incoherencies impassively. He meant to see Gasher dead before the day was over. Gasher might take Jake with him, but Jake no longer cared about that. He dabbed blood from his freshly split lip and looked at it thoughtfully, wondering at how quickly the desire to do murder could invade and conquer the human heart.
   Gasher observed Jake looking at his bloody fingers and grinned. "Sap's runnin, ennet? Nor will it be the last your old pal Gasher beats out of your young tree, unless you look sharp; unless you look wery sharp indeed." He pointed down at the cobbled surface of the narrow alley they were currently negotiating. There was a rusty manhole cover there, and Jake realized he had seen the words stamped into the steel not long ago: LaMERK FOUNDRY, they said.
   "There's a grip on the side," Gasher said. "Yer see? Get your hands into that and pull away. Step lively, now, and maybe ye'll still have all your teeth when ye meet up with Tick-Tock."
   Jake grasped the steel cover and pulled. He pulled hard, but not quite as hard as he could have done. The maze of streets and alleys through which Gasher had run him was bad, but at least he could see. He couldn't imagine what it might be like in the underworld below the city, where the blackness would preclude even dreams of escape, and he didn't intend to find out unless he absolutely had to.
   Gasher quickly made it clear to him that he did.
   "It's too heavy for—" Jake began, and then the pirate seized him by the throat and yanked him upward until they were face to face. The long run through the alleys had brought a thin, sweaty flush to his cheeks and turned the sores eating into his flesh an ugly yellow-purple color. Those which were open exuded thick infected matter and threads of blood in steady pulses. Jake caught just a whiff of Gasher's thick stench before his wind was cut off by the hand which had encircled his throat.
   "Listen, you stupid cull, and listen well, for this is your last warning. You yank that fucking streethead off right now or I'll reach into your mouth and rip the living tongue right out of it. And feel free to bite all you want while I do it, for what I have runs in the blood and you'll see the first blossoms on yer own face before the week's out—if yer lives that long. Now, do you see?"
   Jake nodded frantically. Gasher's face was disappearing into deepen­ing folds of gray, and his voice seemed to be coming from a great distance.
   "All right." Gasher shoved him backward. Jake fell in a heap beside the manhole cover, gagging and retching. He finally managed to draw in a deep, whooping breath that burned like liquid fire. He spat out a blood-flecked wad of stuff and almost threw up at the sight of it.
   "Now yank back that cover, my heart's delight, and let's have no more natter about it.
   Jake crawled over to it, slid his hands into the grip, and this time pulled with all his might. For one terrible moment he thought he was still not going to be able to budge it. Then he imagined Gasher's fingers reaching into his mouth and seizing his tongue, and found a little extra. There was a dull, spreading agony in his lower back as something gave there, but the circular lid slipped slowly aside, grinding on the cobbles and exposing a grinning crescent of darkness.
   "Good, cully, good!" Gasher cried cheerfully. "What a little mule y'are! Keep pulling—don't give up now!"
   When the crescent had become a half-moon and the pain in Jake's lower back was a white-hot fire, Gasher booted him in the ass, knocking him asprawl.
   "Wery good!" Gasher said, peering in. "Now, cully, go smartly down the ladder on the side. Mind you don't lose your grip and tumble all the way to the bottom, for those rungs are fearsome slick and greezy. There's twenty or so, as I remember. And when you get to the bottom, stand stock-still and wait for me. You might feel like runnin from yer old pal, but do you think that would be a good idea?"
   "No," Jake said. "I suppose not."
   "Wery intelligent, old son!" Gasher's lips spread in his hideous smile, once more revealing his few surviving teeth. "It's dark down there, and there are a thousand tunnels going every which-a-way. Yer old pal Gasher knows em like the back of his hand, so he does, but you'd be lost in no time. Then there's the rats—wery big and wery hungry they are. So you just wait."
   "I will."
   Gasher regarded him narrowly. "You speak just like a little triggie, you do, but you're no Pube—I'll set my watch and warrant to that. Where are you from, squint?"
   Jake said nothing.
   "Bumbler got your tongue, do he? Well, that's all right; Tick-Tock'll get it all out of you, so he will. He's got a way about him, Ticky does; just naturally wants to make people conwerse. Once he gets em goin, they sometimes talks so fast and screams so loud someone has to hit em over the head to slow em down. Bumblers ain't allowed to hold no one's tongue around the Tick-Tock Man, not even fine young triggers like you. Now get the fuck down that ladder. Hup!"
   He lashed out with his foot. This time Jake managed to tuck in and dodge the blow. He looked into the half-open manhole, saw the ladder, and started down. He was still chest-high to the alley when a tremendous stonelike crash hammered the air. It came from a mile or more away, but Jake knew what it was without having to be told. A cry of pure misery burst from his lips.
   A grim smile tugged at the corners of Gasher's mouth. "Your hard-case friend trailed ye a little better than ye thought he would, didn't he?
   Not better than I thought, though, cully, for I got a look at his eyes— wery pert and cunning they were. I thought he'd come arter his juicy little night-nudge a right smart, if he was to come at all, and so he did. He spied the tripwires, but the fountain's got him, so that's all right. Get on, sweetcheeks."
   He aimed a kick at Jake's protruding head. Jake ducked it, but one foot slipped on the ladder bolted to the side of the sewer shaft and he only saved himself from falling by clutching Gasher's scab-raddled ankle. He looked up, pleading, and saw no softening on that dying, infected face.
   "Please," he said, and heard the word trying to break into a sob. He kept seeing Roland lying crushed beneath the huge fountain. What had Gasher said? If anyone wanted him, they would have to pick him up with a blotter.
   "Beg if you want, dear heart. Just don't expect no good to come of it, for mercy stops on this side of the bridge, so it does. Now go down, or I'll kick your bleedin brains right outcher bleedin ears."
   So Jake went down, and by the time he reached the standing water at the bottom, the urge to cry had passed. He waited, shoulders slumped and head down, for Gasher to descend and lead him to his fate.

23
   ROLAND HAD COME CLOSE to tripping the crossed wires which held back the avalanche of junk, but the dangling fountain was absurd—a trap which might have been set by a stupid child. Cort had taught them to constantly check all visual quadrants as they moved in enemy territory, and that included above as well as behind and below.
   "Stop," he told Oy, raising his voice to be heard over the drums.
   "Op!" Oy agreed, then looked ahead and immediately added, "Ake!"
   "Yes." The gunslinger took another look up at the suspended marble fountain, then examined the street, looking for the trigger. There were two, he saw. Perhaps their camouflage as cobblestones had once been effective, but that time was long past. Roland bent down, hands on his knees, and spoke into Oy's upturned face. "Going to pick you up for a minute now. Don't fuss, Oy."
   "Oy!"
   Roland put his arms around the bumbler. At first Oy stiffened and attempted to pull away, and then Roland felt the small animal give in. He wasn't happy about being this close to someone who wasn't Jake, but he clearly intended to put up with it. Roland found himself wondering again just how intelligent Oy was.
   He carried him up the narrow passage and beneath The Hanging Fountain of Lud, stepping carefully over the mock cobbles. Once they were safely past, he bent to let Oy go. As he did, the drums stopped.
   "Ake!" Oy said impatiently. "Ake-Ake!"
   "Yes—but there's a little piece of business to attend to first."
   He led Oy fifteen yards farther down the alley, then bent and picked up a chunk of concrete. He tossed it thoughtfully from hand to hand, and as he did, he heard the sound of a pistol-shot from the east. The amplified thump of the drums had buried the sound of Eddie and Susan­nah's battle with the ragged band of Pubes, but he heard this gunshot clearly and smiled—it almost surely meant that the Deans had reached the cradle, and that was the first good news of this day, which already seemed at least a week long.
   Roland turned and threw the piece of concrete. His aim was as true as it had been when he had thrown at the ancient traffic signal in River Crossing; the missile struck one of the discolored triggers dead center, and one of the rusty cables snapped with a harsh twang. The marble fountain dropped, rolling over as the other cable snubbed it for a moment longer—long enough so that a man with fast reflexes could have cleared the drop-zone anyway, Roland reckoned. Then it too let go, and the fountain fell like a pink, misshapen stone.
   Roland dropped behind a pile of rusty steel beams and Oy jumped nimbly into his lap as the fountain hit the street with a vast, shattery thump. Chunks of pink marble, some as big as carts, flew through the air. Several small chips stung Roland's face. He brushed others out of Oy's fur. He looked over the makeshift barricade. The fountain had cracked in two like a vast plate. We won't be coming back this way, Roland thought. The passageway, narrow to begin with, was now com­pletely blocked.
   He wondered if Jake had heard the fall of the fountain, and what he had made of it if he had. He didn't waste such speculation on Gasher; Gasher would think he had been crushed to paste, which was exactly what Roland wanted him to think. Would Jake think the same thing? The boy should know better than to believe a gunslinger could be killed by such a simple device, but if Gasher had terrorized him enough, Jake might not be thinking that clearly. Well, it was too late to worry about it now, and if he had it to do over again, he would do exactly the same thing. Dying or not, Gasher had displayed both courage and animal cun­ning. If he was off his guard now, the trick was worth it.
   Roland got to his feet. "Oy—find Jake."
   "Ake!" Oy stretched his head forward on his long neck, sniffed around in a semicircle, picked up Jake's scent, and was off again with Roland running after. Ten minutes later he came to a stop at a manhole cover in the street, sniffed all the way around it, then looked up at Roland and barked shrilly.
   The gunslinger dropped to one knee and observed both the confu­sion of tracks and a wide path of scratches on the cobbles. He thought this particular manhole cover had been moved quite often. His eyes narrowed as he saw the wad of bloody phlegm in a crease between two nearby cobbles.
   "The bastard keeps hitting him," he murmured.
   He pulled the manhole cover back, looked down, then untied the rawhide lacings which held his shirt closed. He picked the bumbler up and tucked him into his shirt. Oy bared his teeth, and for a moment Roland felt his claws splayed against the flesh of his chest and belly like small sharp knives. Then they withdrew and Oy only peered out of Roland's shirt with his bright eyes, panting like a steam engine. The gunslinger could feel the rapid beat of Oy's heart against his own. He pulled the rawhide lace from the eyelets in his shirt and found another, longer, lace in his purse.
   "I'm going to leash you. I don't like it and you're going to like it even less, but it's going to be very dark down there."
   He tied the two lengths of rawhide together and formed one end into a wide loop which he slipped over Oy's head. He expected Oy to bare his teeth again, perhaps even to nip him, but Oy didn't. He only looked up at Roland with his gold-ringed eyes and barked "Ake!" again in his impatient voice.
   Roland put the loose end of his makeshift leash in his mouth, then sat down on the edge of the sewer shaft … if that was what it was. He felt for the top rung of the ladder and found it. He descended slowly and carefully, more aware than ever that he was missing half a hand and that the steel rungs were slimy with oil and some thicker stuff that was probably moss. Oy was a heavy, warm weight between his shirt and belly, panting steadily and harshly. The gold rings in his eyes gleamed like medallions in the dim light.
   At last, the gunslinger's groping foot splashed into the water at the bottom of the shaft. He glanced up briefly at the coin of white light far above him. This is where it starts getting hard, he thought. The tunnel was warm and dank and smelled like an ancient charnel house. Some­where nearby, water was dripping hollowly and monotonously. Farther off, Roland could hear the rumble of machinery. He lifted a very grateful Oy out of his shirt and set him down in the shallow water running sluggishly along the sewer tunnel.
   "Now it's all up to you," he murmured in the bumbler's ear. "To Jake, Oy. To Jake!"
   "Ake!" the bumbler barked, and splashed rapidly off into the darkness, swinging his head from side to side at the end of his long neck like a pendulum. Roland followed with the end of the rawhide leash wrapped around his diminished right hand.

24
   THE CRADLE—IT WAS easily big enough to have acquired proper-noun status in their minds—stood in the center of a square five times larger than the one where they had come upon the blasted statue, and when she got a really good look at it, Susannah realized how old and gray and fundamentally grungy the rest of Lud really was. The Cradle was so clean it almost hurt her eyes. No vines overgrew its sides; no graffiti daubed its blinding white walls and steps and columns. The yellow plains dust which had coated everything else was absent here. As they drew closer, Susannah saw why: streams of water coursed endlessly down the sides of the Cradle, issuing from nozzles hidden in the shadows of the copper-sheathed eaves. Interval sprays created by other hidden nozzles washed the steps, turning them into off-and-on waterfalls.
   "Wow," Eddie said. "It makes Grand Central look like a Greyhound station in Buttfuck, Nebraska ."
   "What a poet you are, dear," Susannah said dryly.
   The steps surrounded the entire building and rose to a great open lobby. There were no obscuring mats of vegetation here, but Eddie and Susannah found they still couldn't get a good look inside; the shadows thrown by the overhanging roof were too deep. The Totems of the Beam marched all the way around the building, two by two, but the corners were reserved for creatures Susannah fervently hoped never to meet outside of the occasional nightmare—hideous stone dragons with scaly bodies, clutching, claw-tipped hands, and nasty peering eyes.
   Eddie touched her shoulder and pointed higher. Susannah looked... and felt her breath come to a stop in her throat. Standing astride the peak of the roof, far above The Totems of the Beam and the dragonish gargoyles, as if given dominion over them, was a golden warrior at least sixty feet high. A battered cowboy hat was shoved back to reveal his lined and careworn brow; a bandanna hung askew on his upper chest, as if it had just been pulled down after serving long, hard duty as a dust-muffle. In one upraised fist he held a revolver; in the other, what appeared to be an olive branch.
   Roland of Gilead stood atop the Cradle of Lud, dressed in gold.
   No, she thought, at last remembering to breathe again. It's not him... but in another way, it is. That man was a gunslinger, and the resemblance between him, who's probably been dead a thousand years or more, and Roland is all the truth of ka-tet you'll ever need to know.
   Thunder slammed out of the south. Lightning harried racing clouds across the sky. She wished she had more time to study both the golden statue which stood atop the Cradle and the animals which surrounded it; each of these latter appeared to have words carved upon them, and she had an idea that what was written there might be knowledge worth having. Under these circumstances, however, there was no time to spare.
   A wide red strip had been painted across the pavement at the point where The Street of the Turtle emptied into The Plaza of the Cradle. Maud and the fellow Eddie called Jeeves the Butler stopped a prudent distance from the red mark.
   "This far and no farther," Maud told them flatly. "You may take us to our deaths, but each man and woman owes one to the gods anyway, and I'll die on this side of the dead-line no matter what. I'll not dare Blaine for outlanders."
   "Nor will I," Jeeves said. He had taken off his dusty bowler and was holding it against his naked chest. On his face was an expression of fearful reverence.
   "Fine," Susannah said. "Now scat on out of here, both of you."
   "Ye'll backshoot us the second we turn from ye," Jeeves said in a trembling voice. "I'll take my watch and warrant on it, so I will."
   Maud shook her head. The blood on her face had dried to a gro­tesque maroon stippling. "There never were a backshooting gunslinger— that much I will say."
   "We only have their word for it that that's what they are."
   Maud pointed to the big revolver with the worn sandalwood grip which Susannah held in her hand. Jeeves looked... and after a moment he stretched out his hand to the woman. When Maud took it, Susannah's image of them as dangerous killers collapsed. They looked more like Hansel and Gretel than Bonnie and Clyde; tired, frightened, confused, and lost so long in the woods that they had grown old there. Her hate and fear of them departed. What replaced it was pity and a deep, aching sadness.
   "Fare you well, both of you," she said softly. "Walk as you will, and with no fear of harm from me or my man here."
   Maud nodded. "I believe you mean us no harm, and I forgive you for shooting Winston. But listen to me, and listen well: stay out of the Cradle. Whatever reasons you think you have for going in, they're not good enough. To enter Blaine 's Cradle is death."
   "We don't have any choice," Eddie said, and thunder banged over­head again, as if in agreement. "Now let me tell you something. I don't know what's underneath Lud and what isn't, but I do know those drums you're so whacked out about are part of a recording—a song—that was made in the world my wife and I came from." He looked at their uncom­prehending faces and raised his arms in frustration. "Jesus Pumpkin-Pie Christ, don't you get it? You're killing each other over a piece of music that was never even released as a single!"
   Susannah put her hand on his shoulder and murmured his name. He ignored her for the moment, his eyes flicking from Jeeves to Maud and then back to Jeeves again.
   "You want to see monsters? Take a good look at each other, then. And when you get back to whatever funhouse it is you call home, take a good look at your friends and relatives."
   "You don't understand," Maud said. Her eyes were dark and somber. "But you will. Ay—you will."
   "Go on, now," Susannah said quietly. "Talk between us is no good; the words only drop dead. Just go your way and try to remember the faces of your fathers, for I think you lost sight of those faces long ago."
   The two of them walked back in the direction from which they had come without another word. They did look back over their shoulders from time to time, however, and they were still holding hands: Hansel and Gretel lost in the deep dark forest.
   "Lemme outta here," Eddie said heavily. He made the Ruger safe, stuck it back in the waistband of his pants, and then rubbed his red eyes with the heels of his hands. "Just lemme out, that's all I ask."
   "I know what you mean, handsome." She was clearly scared, but her head had that defiant tilt he had come to recognize and love. He put his hands on her shoulders, bent down, and kissed her. He did not let either their surroundings or the oncoming storm keep him from doing a thorough job. When he pulled back at last, she was studying him with wide, dancing eyes. "Wow! What was that about?"
   "About how I'm in love with you," he said, "and I guess that's about all. Is it enough?"
   Her eyes softened. For a moment she thought about telling him the secret she might or might not be keeping, but of course the time and place were wrong—she could no more tell him she might be pregnant now than she could pause to read the words written on the sculpted Portal Totems.
   "It's enough, Eddie," she said.
   "You're the best thing that ever happened to me." His hazel eyes were totally focused on her. "It's hard for me to say stuff like that— living with Henry made it hard, I guess—but it's true. I think I started loving you because you were everything Roland took me away from—in New York, I mean—hut it's a lot more than that now, because I don't want to go hack anymore. Do you?"
   She looked at the Cradle. She was terrified of what they might find in there, but all the same... she looked back at him. "No, I don't want to go back. I want to spend the rest of my life going forward. As long as you're with me, that is. It's funny, you know, you saying you started loving me because of all the things he took you away from."
   "Funny how?"
   "I started loving you because you set me free of Detta Walker." She paused, thought, then shook her head slightly. "No—it goes further than that. I started loving you because you set me free of both those bitches. One was a foul-mouthed, cock-teasing thief, and the other was a self-righteous, pompous prig. Comes down to six of one and half a dozen of the other, as far as I'm concerned. I like Susannah Dean better than either one... and you were the one who set me free."
   This time it was she who did the reaching, pressing her palm to his stubbly cheeks, drawing him down, kissing him gently. When he put a light hand on her breast, she sighed and covered it with her own.
   "I think we better get going," she said, "or we're apt to be laying right here in the street... and getting wet, from the look."
   Eddie stared around at the silent towers, the broken windows, the vine-encrusted walls a final time. Then he nodded. "Yeah. I don't think there's any future in this town, anyway."
   He pushed her forward, and they both stiffened as the wheels of the chair passed over what Maud had called the dead-line, fearful that they would trip some ancient protective device and die together. But nothing happened. Eddie pushed her into the plaza, and as they approached the steps leading up to the Cradle, a cold, wind-driven rain began to fall.
   Although neither of them knew it, the first of the great autumn storms of Mid-World had arrived.

25
   ONCE THEY WERE IN the smelly darkness of the sewers, Gasher slowed the killing pace he'd maintained aboveground. Jake didn't think it was because of the darkness; Gasher seemed to know every twist and turn of the route he was following, just as advertised. Jake believed it was because his captor was satisfied that Roland had been squashed to jelly by the deadfall trap.
   Jake himself had begun to wonder.
   If Roland had spotted the tripwires—a far more subtle trap than the one which followed—was it really likely that he had missed seeing the fountain? Jake supposed it was possible, but it didn't make much sense. Jake thought it more likely that Roland had tripped the fountain on purpose, to lull Gasher and perhaps slow him down. He didn't believe Roland could follow them through this maze under the streets—the total darkness would defeat even the gunslinger's tracking abilities—but it cheered his heart to think that Roland might not have died in an attempt to keep his promise.
   They turned right, left, then left again. As Jake's other senses sharp­ened in an attempt to compensate for his lack of sight, he had a vague perception of other tunnels around him. The muffled sounds of ancient, laboring machinery would grow loud for a moment, then fade as the stone foundations of the city drew close around them again. Drafts blew intermittently against his skin, sometimes warm, sometimes chilly. Their splashing footfalls echoed briefly as they passed the intersecting tunnels from which these stenchy breaths blew, and once Jake nearly brained himself on some metal object jutting down from the ceiling. He slapped at it with one hand and felt something that might have been a large valve-wheel. After that he waved his hands as he trotted along in an attempt to read the air ahead of him.
   Gasher guided him with taps to the shoulders, as a waggoner might have guided his oxen. They moved at a good clip, trotting but not run­ning. Gasher got enough of his breath back to first hum and then begin singing in a low, surprisingly tuneful tenor voice.
   "Bibble-ti-tibble-ti-ting-ting-ting,
   I'll get a job and buy yer a ring,
   When I get my –mitts
   On yerjiggly tits,
   Ribble-ti-tibble-ti-ting-ting-ting!

   O ribble-ti-tibble,
   I just wanter fiddle,
   Fiddle around with your ting-ting-ting!"
   There were five or six more verses along this line before Gasher quit. "Now you sing somethin, squint."
   "I don't know anything," Jake puffed. He hoped he sounded more out of breath than he actually was. He didn't know if it would do him any good or not, but down here in the dark any edge seemed worth trying for.
   Gasher brought his elbow down in the center of Jake's back, almost hard enough to send him sprawling into the ankle-high water running sluggishly through the tunnel they were traversing. "Yon better know sominat, ‘less you want me to rip your ever-lovin spine right outcher back." He paused, then added: "There's haunts down here, boy. They live inside the fuckin machines, so they do. Singin keeps em off... don't you know that? Now sing!"
   Jake thought hard, not wanting to earn another love-tap from Gasher, and came up with a song he'd learned in summer day camp at the age of seven or eight. He opened his mouth and began to bawl it into the darkness, listening to the echoes bounce back amid the sounds of running water, falling water, and ancient thudding machinery.
   "My girl's a corker, she's a New Yorker,
   I buy her everything to keep her in style,
   She got a pair of hips
   Just like two battleships,
   Oh boy, that's how my money goes.

   My girl's a dilly, she comes from Philly,
   I buy her everything to keep her in style,
   She's got a pair of eyes
   Just like two pizza pies,
   Oh boy, that's how—"
   Gasher reached out, seized Jake's ears as if they were jug-handles, and yanked him to a stop. "There's a hole right ahead of yer," he said. "With a voice like yours, squint, it'd be doin the world a mercy to letcher fall in, so it would, but Tick-Tock wouldn't approve at all, so I reckon ye're safe for a little longer." Gasher's hands left Jake's ears, which burned like fire, and fastened on the back of his shirt. "Now lean forward until you feel the ladder on the t'other side. And mind you don't slip and drag us both down!"
   Jake leaned cautiously forward, hands outstretched, terrified of fall­ing into a pit he couldn't see. As he groped for the ladder, he became aware of warm air—clean and almost fragrant—whooshing past his face, and a faint blush of rose-colored light from beneath him. His fingers touched a steel rung and closed over it. The bite-wounds on his left hand broke open again, and he felt warm blood running across his palm.
   "Got it?" Gasher asked.
   "Yes."
   "Then climb down! What are you waitin for, gods damn it!" Gasher let go of his shirt, and Jake could imagine him drawing his foot back, meaning to hurry him along with a kick in the ass. Jake stepped across the faintly glimmering gap and began to descend the ladder, using his hurt hand as little as possible. This time the rungs were clear of moss and oil, and hardly rusted at all. The shaft was very long and as Jake went down, hurrying to keep Gasher from stepping on his hands with his thick-soled boots, he found himself remembering a movie he'd once seen on TV—Journey to the Center of the Earth.
   The throb of machinery grew louder and the rosy glow grew stronger. The machines still didn't sound right, but his ears told him these were in better shape than the ones above. And when he finally reached the bottom, he found the floor was dry. The new horizontal shaft was square, about six feet high, and sleeved with riveted stainless steel. It stretched away for as far as Jake could see in both directions, straight as a string. He knew instinctively, without even thinking about it, that this tunnel (which had to be at least seventy feet under Lud) also followed the path of the Beam. And somewhere up ahead—Jake was sure of this, although he couldn't have said why—the train they had come looking for lay directly above it.
   Narrow ventilation grilles ran along the sides of the walls just below the shaft's ceiling; it was from these that the clean, dry air was flowing. Moss dangled from some of them in blue-gray beards, but most were still clear. Below every other grille was a yellow arrow with a symbol that looked a bit like a lower-case t. The arrows pointed in the direction Jake and Gasher were heading.
   The rose-colored light was coming from glass tubes which ran along the ceiling of the shaft in parallel rows. Some—about one in every three—were dark, and others sputtered fitfully, but at least half of them were still working. Neon tubing, Jake thought, amazed. How about that?
   Gasher dropped down beside him. He saw Jake's expression of sur­prise and grinned. "Nice, ennet? Cool in the summer, warm in the win­ter, and so much food that five hunnert men couldn't eat it in five hunnert years. And do yer know the best part, squint? The very best part of the whole coozy fakement?"
   Jake shook his head.
   "Farkin Pubies don't have the leastest idear the place even exists. They think there's monsters down here. Catch a Pubie goin within twenty feet of a sewer-cap, less'n he has to!"
   He threw his head back and laughed heartily. Jake didn't join in, even though a cold voice in the back of his mind told him it might be politic to do so. He didn't join in because he knew exactly how the Pubes felt. There were monsters under the city—trolls and boggerts and ores. Hadn't he been captured by just such a one?
   Gasher shoved him to the left. "Gam—almost there now. Hup!"
   They jogged on, their footfalls chasing them in a pack of echoes. After ten or fifteen minutes of this, Jake saw a watertight hatchway about two hundred yards ahead. As they drew closer, he could see a big valve-wheel sticking out of it. A communicator box was mounted on the wall to the right.
   "I'm blown out," Gasher gasped as they reached the door at the end of the tunnel. "Doin's like this are too much for an inwalid like yer old pal, so they are!" He thumbed the button on the intercom and bawled: "I got im, Tick-Tock—got him as dandy as you please! Didn't even muss 'is hair! Didn't I tell yer I would? Trust the Gasherman, I said, for he'll leadjer straight and true! Now open up and let us in!"
   He let go of the button and looked impatiently at the door. The valve-wheel didn't turn. Instead a flat, drawling voice came out of the intercom speaker: "What's the password?"
   Gasher frowned horribly, scratched his chin with his long, dirty nails, then lifted his eyepatch and swabbed out another clot of yellow-green goo. "Tick-Tock and his passwords!" he said to Jake. He sounded worried as well as irritated. "He's a trig cove, but that's takin it a deal too far if you ask me, so it is."
   He pushed the button and yelled, "Come on, Tick-Tock! If you don't reckergnize the sound of my voice, you need a heary-aid!"
   "Oh, I recognize it," the drawling voice returned. To Jake it sounded like Jerry Reed, who played Burt Reynolds's sidekick in Smokey and the Bandit. "But I don't know who's with you, do I? Or have you forgotten that the camera out there went tits-up last year? You give the password, Gasher, or you can rot out there!"
   Gasher stuck a finger up his nose, extracted a chunk of snot the color of mint jelly, and squashed it into the grille of the speaker. Jake watched this childish display of ill temper in silent fascination, feeling unwelcome, hysterical laughter bubbling around inside him. Had they come all this way, through the boobytrapped mazes and lightless tunnels, to be balked here at this watertight door simply because Gasher couldn't remember the Tick-Tock Man's password?
   Gasher looked at him balefully, then slid his hand across his skull, peeling off his sweat-soaked yellow scarf. The skull beneath was bald, except for a few straggling tufts of black hair like porcupine quills, and deeply dented above the left temple. Gasher peered into the scarf and plucked forth a scrap of paper. "Gods bless Hoots," he muttered. "Hoots takes care of me a right proper, he does."
   He peered at the scrap, turning it this way and that, and then held it out to Jake. He kept his voice pitched low, as if the Tick-Tock Man could hear him even though the TALK button on the intercom wasn't depressed.
   "You're a proper little gennelman, ain't you? And the very first thing they teach a gennelman to do after he's been lamed not to eat the paste and piss in the comers is read. So read me the word on this paper, cully, for it's gone right out of my head—so it has."
   Jake took the paper, looked at it, then looked up at Gasher again. "What if I won't?" he asked coolly.
   Gasher was momentarily taken aback at this response... and then he began to grin with dangerous good humor. "Why, I'll grab yer by the throat and use yer head for a doorknocker," he said. "I doubt if it'll conwince old Ticky to let me in—for he's still nervous of your hardcase friend, so he is—but it'll do my heart a world of good to see your brains drippin off that wheel."
   Jake considered this, the dark laughter still bubbling away inside him. The Tick-Tock Man was a trig enough cove, all right—he had known that it would be difficult to persuade Gasher, who was dying anyway, to speak the password even if Roland had taken him prisoner. What Tick-Tock hadn't taken into account was Gasher's defective memory.
   Don't laugh. If you do, he really will beat your brains out.
   In spite of his brave words, Gasher was watching Jake with real anxiety, and Jake realized a potentially powerful fact: Gasher might not be afraid of dying... but he was afraid of being humiliated.
   "All right, Gasher," he said calmly. "The word on this piece of paper is bountiful."
   "Gimme that." Gasher snatched the paper back, returned it to his scarf, and quickly wrapped the yellow cloth around his head again. He thumbed the intercom button. "Tick-Tock? Yer still there?"
   "Where else would I be? The West End of the World?" The drawl­ing voice now sounded mildly amused.
   Gasher stuck his whitish tongue out at the speaker, but his voice was ingratiating, almost servile. "The password's bountyful, and a fine word it is, too! Now let me in, gods cuss it!"
   "Of course," the Tick-Tock Man said. A machine started up some­where nearby, making Jake jump. The valve-wheel in the center of the door spun. When it stopped, Gasher seized it, yanked it outward, grabbed Jake's arm, and propelled him over the raised lip of the door and into the strangest room he had ever seen in his life.

26
   ROLAND DESCENDED INTO DUSKY pink light. Oy's bright eyes peered out from the open V of his shirt; his neck stretched to the limit of its considerable length as he sniffed at the warm air that blew through the ventilator grilles. Roland had had to depend completely on the bumbler's nose in the dark passages above, and he had been terribly afraid the animal would lose Jake's scent in the running water... but when he had heard the sound of singing—first Gasher, then Jake—echoing back through the pipes, he had relaxed a little. Oy had not led them wrong.
   Oy had heard it, too. Up until then he had been moving slowly and cautiously, even backtracking every now and again to be sure of himself, but when he heard Jake's voice he began to run, straining the rawhide leash. Roland was afraid he might call after Jake in his harsh voice—Ake! Ake!—but he hadn't done so. And, just as they reached the shaft which led to the lower levels of this Dycian Maze, Roland had heard the sound of some new machine—a pump of some sort, perhaps—followed by the metallic, echoing crash of a door being slammed shut.
   He reached the foot of the square tunnel and glanced briefly at the double line of lighted tubes which led off in either direction. They were lit with swamp-fire, he saw, like the sign outside the place which had belonged to Balazar in the city of New York . He looked more closely at the narrow chrome ventilation strips running along the top of each wall, and the arrows below them, then slipped the rawhide loop off Oy's neck. Oy shook his head impatiently, clearly glad to be rid of it.
   "We're close," he murmured into the bumbler's cocked ear, "and so we have to be quiet. Do you understand, Oy? Very quiet."
   "I-yet," Oy replied in a hoarse whisper that would have been funny under other circumstances.
   Roland put him down and Oy was immediately off down the tunnel, neck out, muzzle to the steel floor. Roland could hear him muttering Ake-Ake! Ake-Ake! under his breath. Roland unholstered his gun and followed him.

27
   EDDIE AND SUSANNAH LOOKED up at the vastness of Blaine 's Cradle as the skies opened and the rain began to fall in torrents.
   "It's a hell of a building, but they forgot the handicap ramps!" Eddie yelled, raising his voice to be heard over the rain and thunder.
   "Never mind that," Susannah said impatiently, slipping out of the wheelchair. "Let's get up there and out of the rain."
   Eddie looked dubiously up the incline of steps. The risers were shallow... but there were a lot of them. "You sure, Suze?"
   "Race you, white boy," she said, and began to wriggle upward with uncanny ease, using hands, muscular forearms, and the stumps of her legs.
   And she almost did beat him; Eddie had the ironmongery to contend with, and it slowed him down. Both of them were panting when they reached the top, and tendrils of steam were rising from their wet clothes. Eddie grabbed her under the arms, swung her up, and then just held her with his hands locked together in the small of her back instead of dropping her back into the chair, as he had meant to do. He felt randy and half-crazy without the slightest idea why.
   Oh, give me a break, he thought. You've gotten this far alive; that's what's got your glands pumped up and ready to party.
   Susannah licked her full lower lip and wound her strong fingers into his hair. She pulled. It hurt... and at the same time it felt wonderful. "Told you I'd beat you, white boy," she said in a low, husky voice.
   "Get outta here—I had you … by half a step." He tried to sound less out of breath than he was and found it was impossible.
   "Maybe... but it blew you out, didn't it?" One hand left his hair, slid downward, and squeezed gently. A smile gleamed in her eyes. "Somethin ain't blown out, though."
   Thunder rumbled across the sky. They flinched, then laughed together.
   "Come on," he said. "This is nuts. The time's all wrong."
   She didn't contradict him, but she squeezed him again before returning her hand to his shoulder. Eddie felt a pang of regret as he swung her back into her chair and ran her across vast flagstones and under cover of the roof. He thought he saw the same regret in Susannah's eyes.
   When they were out of the downpour, Eddie paused and they looked back. The Plaza of the Cradle, The Street of the Turtle, and all the city beyond was rapidly disappearing into a shifting gray curtain. Eddie wasn't a bit sorry. Lud hadn't earned itself a place in his mental scrapbook of fond memories.
   "Look," Susannah murmured. She was pointing at a nearby down­spout. It ended in a large, scaly fish-head that looked like a close relation to the dragon-gargoyles which decorated the corners of the Cradle. Water ran from its mouth in a silver torrent.
   "This isn't just a passing shower, is it?" Eddie asked.
   "Nope. It's gonna rain until it gets tired of it, and then it's gonna rain some more, just for spite. Maybe a week; maybe a month. Not that it's gonna matter to us, if Blaine decides he doesn't like our looks and fries us. Fire a shot to let Roland know we got here, sugar, and then we'll have us a look around. See what we can see."
   Eddie pointed the Ruger into the gray sky, pulled the trigger, and fired the shot, which Roland heard a mile or more away, as he followed Jake and Gasher through the booby-trapped maze. Eddie stood where he was a moment longer, trying to persuade himself that things might still turn out all right, that his heart was wrong in its stubborn insistence that they had seen the last of the gunslinger and the boy Jake. Then he made the automatic safe again, returned it to the waistband of his pants, and went back to Susannah. He turned her chair away from the steps and rolled her along an aisle of columns which led deeper into the build­ing. She popped the cylinder of Roland's gun and reloaded it as they went.
   Under the roof the rain had a secret, ghostly sound and even the harsh thundercracks were muted. The columns which supported the structure were at least ten feet in diameter, and their tops were lost in the gloom. From up there in the shadows, Eddie heard the cooing con­versation of pigeons.
   Now a sign hanging on thick chrome-silver chains swam out of the shadows:
   NORTH CENTRAL POSITRONICS WELCOMES YOU
   TO THE CRADLE OF LUD
   <— SOUTHEAST TRAVEL ( BLAINE )
   NORTHWEST TRAVEL (PATRICIA) —>
   "Now we know the name of the one that fell in the river," Eddie said. "Patricia. They got their colors wrong, though. It's supposed to be pink for girls and blue for boys, not the other way around."
   "Maybe they're both blue."
   "They're not. Blaine 's pink."
   "How would you know that?"
   Eddie looked confused. "I don't know how... but I do."
   They followed the arrow pointing toward Blaine 's berth, entering what had to be a grand concourse. Eddie didn't have Susannah's ability to see the past in clear, visionary flashes, but his imagination nonetheless filled this vast, pillared space with a thousand hurrying people; he heard clicking heels and murmuring voices, saw embraces of homecoming and farewell. And over everything, the speakers chanting news of a dozen different destinations.
   Patricia is now boarding for Northwest Baronies...
   Will Passenger Killington, passenger Killington, please report to the information booth on the lower level?
   Blaine is now arriving at Berth #2, and will be debarking shortly...
   Now there was only the pigeons.
   Eddie shivered.
   "Look at the faces," Susannah murmured. "I don't know if they give you the willies, but they sure do me." She was pointing to the right.
   High up on the wall, a series of sculpted heads seemed to push out of tin– marble, peering down at them from the shadows—stern men with the harsh faces of executioners who are happy in their work. Some of the faces had fallen from their places and lay in granite shards and splinters seventy or eighty feet below their peers. Those remaining were spider-webbed with cracks and splattered with pigeon dung.
   "They must have been the Supreme Court, or something," Eddie said, uneasily scanning all those thin lips and cracked, empty eyes. "Only judges can look so smart and so completely pissed off at the same time— you're talking to a guy who knows. There isn't one of them who looks like he'd give a crippled crab a crutch."
   " 'A heap of broken images, where the sun beats and the dead tree gives no shelter,' " Susannah murmured, and at these words Eddie felt gooseflesh waltz across the skin of his arms and chest and legs.
   "What's that, Suze?"
   "A poem by a man who must have seen Lud in his dreams," she said. "Come on, Eddie. Forget them."
   "Easier said than done." But he began to push her again.
   Ahead, a vast grilled barrier like a castle barbican swam out of the gloom... and beyond it, they caught their first glimpse of Blaine the Mono. It was pink, just as Eddie had said it would be, a delicate shade which matched the veins running through the marble pillars. Blaine flowed above the wide loading platform in a smooth, streamlined bullet shape which looked more like flesh than metal. Its surface was broken only once—by a triangular window equipped with a huge wiper. Eddie knew there would be another triangular window with another big wiper on the other side of the mono's nose, so that if you looked at Blaine head-on, it would seem to have a face, just like Charlie the Choo-Choo. The wipers would look like slyly drooping eyelids.
   White light from the southeastern slot in the Cradle fell across Blaine in a long, distorted rectangle. To Eddie, the body of the train looked like the breaching back of some fabulous pink whale—one that was utterly silent.
   "Wow." His voice had fallen to a whisper. "We found it."
   "Yes. Blaine the Mono."
   "Is it dead, do you think? It looks dead."
   "It's not. Sleeping, maybe, but a long way from dead."
   "You sure?"
   "Were you sure it would be pink?" It wasn't a question he had to answer, and he didn't. The face she turned up to him was strained and badly frightened. "It's sleeping, and you know what? I'm scared to wake it up."
   "Well, we'll wait for the others, then."
   She shook her head. "I think we better try to lx– ready for when they get here... because I've got an idea that they're going to come on the run. Push me over to that box mounted on the bars. It looks like an intercom. See it?"
   He did, and pushed her slowly toward it. It was mounted on one side of a closed gate in the center of the barrier which ran the length of the Cradle. The vertical bars of the barrier were made of what looked like stainless steel; those of the gate appeared to be ornamental iron, and their lower ends disappeared into steel-ringed holes in the floor. There was no way either of them was going to wriggle through those bars, either, Eddie saw. The gap between each set was no more than four inches. It would have been a tight squeeze even for Oy.
   Pigeons ruffled and cooed overhead. The left wheel of Susannah's chair squawked monotonously. My kingdom for an oilcan, Eddie thought, and realized he was a lot more than just scared. The last time he had felt this level of terror had been on the day when he and Henry had stood on the sidewalk of Rhinehold Street in Dutch Hill, looking at the slumped ruin of The Mansion. They hadn't gone in on that day in 1977; they had turned their backs on the haunted house and walked away, and he remembered vowing to himself that he would never, never, ever go back to that place. It was a promise he'd kept, but here he was, in another haunted house, and there was the haunter, right over there— Blaine the Mono, a long low pink shape with one window peering at him like the eye of a dangerous animal who is shamming sleep.
   He stirs no more from his berth in the Cradle.... He has even stopped speaking in his many voices and laughing.... Ardis was the last to go nigh Blaine... and when Ardis couldn't answer what was asked, Blaine slew him with blue fire.
   If it speaks to me, I'll probably go crazy, Eddie thought.
   The wind gusted outside, and a fine spray of rain flew in through the tall egress slot cut in the side of the building. He saw it strike Blaine 's window and bead up there.
   Eddie shuddered suddenly and looked sharply around. "We're being watched—I can feel it."
   "I wouldn't be at all surprised. Push me closer to the gate, Eddie. I want to get a better look at that box."
   "Okay, but don't touch it. If it's electrified—"
   "If Blaine wants to cook us, he will," Susannah said, looking through the bars at Blaine 's back. "You know it, and I do, too."
   And because Eddie knew that was only the truth, he said nothing.
   The box looked like a combination intercom and burglar alarm. There was a speaker set into the top half, with what looked like a TALK/LISTEN button next to it. Below this were numbers arranged in a shape which made a diamond:
   1
   2 3
   4 5 6
   7 8 9 10
   11 12 13 14 15
   16 17 18 19 20 21
   22 23 24 25 26 27 28
   29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36
   37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45
   46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55
   56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64
   65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72
   73 74 75 76 77 78 79
   80 81 82 83 84 85
   86 87 88 89 90
   91 92 93 94
   95 96 97
   98 99
   100
   Under the diamond were two other buttons with words of the High Speech printed on them: COMMAND and ENTER.
   Susannah looked bewildered and doubtful. "What is this thing, do you think? It looks like a gadget in a science fiction movie."
   Of course it did, Eddie realized. Susannah had probably seen a home security system or two in her time—she had, after all, lived among the Manhattan rich, even if she had not been very enthusiastically accepted by them—but there was a world of difference between the electronics gear available in her when, 1963, and his own, which was 1987. We've never talked much about the differences, either, he thought. I wonder what she'd think if I told her Ronald Reagan was President of the United States when Roland snatched me? Probably that I was crazy.
   "It's a security system," he said. Then, although his nerves and instincts screamed out against it, he forced himself to reach out with his right hand and thumb the TALK/LISTEN switch.
   There was no crackle of electricity; no deadly blue fire went racing up his arm. No sign that the thing was even still connected.
   Maybe Blaine is dead. Maybe he's dead, after all.
   But he didn't really believe that.
   "Hello?" he said, and in his mind's eye saw tin– unfortunate Ardis, screaming as he– was microwaved by the blue fire dancing all over his face and body, melting his eyes and setting his hair ablaze. "Hello... Blaine ? Anybody ?"
   He let go of the button and waited, stiff with tension. Susannah's hand crept into his, cold and small. There was still no answer, and Eddie—now more reluctant than ever—pushed the button again.
   " Blaine ?"
   He let go of the button. Waited. And when there was still no answer, a dangerous giddiness overcame him, as it often did in moments of stress and fear. When that giddiness took him, counting the cost no longer seemed to matter. Nothing mattered. It had been like that when he had outfaced Balazar's sallow-faced contact man in Nassau, and it was like that now. And if Roland had seen him in the moment this lunatic impa­tience overtook him, he would have seen more than just a resemblance between Eddie and Cuthbert; he would have sworn Eddie was Cuthbert.
   He jammed the button in with his thumb and began to bellow into the speaker, adopting a plummy (and completely bogus) British accent. "Hullo, Blaine ! Cheerio, old fellow! This is Robin Leach, host of Life­styles of the Rich and Brainless, here to tell you that you have won six billion dollars and a new Ford Escort in the Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes!"
   Pigeons took flight above them in soft, startled explosions of wings. Susannah gasped. Her face wore the dismayed expression of a devout woman who has just heard her husband blaspheme in a cathedral. "Eddie, stop it! Stop it!"
   Eddie couldn't stop it. His mouth was smiling, but his eyes glittered with a mixture of fear, hysteria, and frustrated anger. "You and your monorail girlfriend, Patricia, will spend a lux-yoo-rious month in scenic Jimtown, where you'll drink only the finest wine and eat only the finest virgins! You—"
   ". . . shhhh..."
   Eddie broke off, looking at Susannah. He was at once sure that it had been she who had shushed him—not only because she had already tried but because she was the only other person here—and yet at the same time he knew it hadn't been Susannah. That had been another voice: the voice of a very young and very frightened child.
   "Suze? Did you—"
   Susannah was shaking her head and raising her hand at the same time. She pointed at the intercom box, and Eddie saw the button marked COMMAND was glowing a very faint shell-pink. It was the same color as the mono sleeping in its berth on the other side of the barrier.
   "Shhh… don't wake him up," the child's voice mourned. It drifted from the speaker, soft as an evening breeze.
   "What..." Eddie began. Then he shook his head, reached toward the TALK/LISTEN switch and pressed it gently. When he spoke again, it was not in the blaring Robin Leach bellow but in the almost-whisper of a conspirator. "What are you? Who are you?"
   He released the button. He and Susannah regarded each other with the big eyes of children who now know they are sharing the house with a dangerous—perhaps psychotic—adult. How have they come by the knowledge? Why, because another child has told them, a child who has lived with the psychotic adult for a long time, hiding in corners and stealing out only when it knows the adult is asleep; a frightened child who happens to be almost invisible.
   There was no answer. Eddie let the seconds spin out. Each one seemed long enough to read a whole novel in. He was reaching for the button again when the faint pink glow reappeared.
   "I'm Little Blaine," the child's voice whispered. "The one he doesn't see. The one he forgot. The one he thinks he left behind in the rooms of ruin and the halls of the dead."
   Eddie pushed the button again with a hand that had picked up an uncontrollable shake. He could hear that shake in his voice, as well. "Who? Who is the one who doesn't see? Is it the Bear?"
   No—not the bear; not he. Shardik lay dead in the forest, many miles behind them; the world had moved on even since then. Eddie suddenly remembered what it had been like to lay his ear against that strange unfound door in the clearing where die bear had lived its violent half-life, that door with its somehow terrible stripes of yellow and black. It was all of a piece, he realized now; all part of some awful, decaying whole, a tattered web with the Dark Tower at its center like an incompre­hensible stone spider. All of Mid-World had become one vast haunted mansion in these strange latter days; all of Mid-World had become The Drawers; all of Mid-World had become a waste land, haunting and haunted.
   He saw Susannah's lips form the words of the real answer before the voice from the intercom could speak them, and those words were as obvious as the solution to a riddle once the answer is spoken.
   "Big Blaine," the unseen voice whispered. "Big Blaine is the ghost in the machine—the ghost in all the machines."
   Susannah's hand had gone to her throat and was clutching it, as if she intended to strangle herself. Her eyes were full of terror, but they were not glassy, not stunned; they were sharp with understanding. Per­haps she knew a voice like this one from her own when—the when where the integrated whole that was Susannah had been shunted aside by the warring personalities of Detta and Odetta. The childish voice had sur­prised her as well as him, but her agonized eyes said she was no stranger to the concept being expressed.
   Susannah knew all about the madness of duality.
   "Eddie we have to go," she said. Her terror turned the words into an unpunctuated auditory smear. He could hear air whistling in her wind­pipe like a cold wind around a chimney. "Eddie we have to get away Eddie we have to get away Eddie—"
   "Too late," the tiny, mourning voice said. "He's awake. Big Blaine is awake. He knows you are here. And he's coming."
   Suddenly lights—bright orange arc-sodiums—began to flash on in pairs above them, bathing the pillared vastness of the Cradle in a harsh glare that banished all shadows. Hundreds of pigeons darted and swooped in frightened, aimless flight, startled from their complex of interlocked nests high above.
   "Wait!" Eddie shouted. "Please, wait!"
   In his agitation he forgot to push the button, but it made no differ­ence; Little Blaine responded anyway. "No! I can't let him catch me! I can't let him kill me, too!"
   The light on the intercom box went dark again, but only for a moment. This time both COMMAND and ENTER lit up, and their color was not pink but the lurid dark red of a blacksmith's forge.
   "WHO ARE YOU?" a voice roared, and it came not just from the box but from every speaker in the city which still operated. The rotting bodies hanging from the poles shivered with the vibrations of that mighty voice; it seemed that even the dead would run from Blaine, if they could. .
   Susannah shrank back in her chair, the heels of her hands pressed to her ears, her face long with dismay, her mouth distorted in a silent scream. Eddie felt himself shrinking toward all the fantastic, hallucinatory terrors of eleven. Had it been this voice he had feared when he and Henry stood outside The Mansion? That he had perhaps even antici­pated? He didn't know... but he did know how Jack in that old story must have felt when he realized that he had tried the beanstalk once too often, and awakened the giant.
   "HOW DARE YOU DISTURB MY SLEEP? TELL ME NOW, OR DIE WHERE YOU STAND."
   He might have frozen right there, leaving Blaine —Big Blaine—to do to them whatever it was he had done to Ardis (or something even worse); perhaps should have frozen, locked in that down-the-rabbit-hole, fairy-tale terror. It was the memory of the small voice which had spoken first that enabled him to move. It had been the voice of a terrified child, but it had tried to help them, terrified or not.
   So now you have to help yourself, he thought. You woke it up; deal with it, for Christ's sake!
   Eddie reached out and pushed the button again. "My name is Eddie Dean. The woman with me is my wife, Susannah. We're..."
   He looked at Susannah, who nodded and made frantic motions for him to go on.
   "We're on a quest. We seek the Dark Tower which lies in the Path of the Beam. We're in the company of two others, Roland of Gilead and... and Jake of New York. We're from New York too. If you're—" He paused for a moment, biting back the words Big Blaine. If he used them, he might make the intelligence behind the voice aware that they had heard another voice; a ghost inside the ghost, so to speak.
   Susannah gestured again for him to go on, using both hands.
   "If you're Blaine the Mono... well … we want you to take us."
   He released the button. There was no response for what seemed like a very long time, only the agitated flutter of the disturbed pigeons from overhead. When Blaine spoke again, his voice came only from the speaker-box mounted on the gate and sounded almost human.
   "DO NOT TRY MY PATIENCE. ALL THE DOORS TO THAT WHERE ARE CLOSED. GILEAD IS NO MORE, AND THOSE KNOWN AS GUNSLINGERS ARE ALL DEAD. NOW ANSWER MY QUESTION: WHO ARE YOU? THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE."
   There was a sizzling sound. A ray of brilliant blue-white light lanced down from the ceiling and seared a hole the size of a golf-ball in the marble floor less than five feet to the left of Susannah's wheelchair. Smoke that smelled like the aftermath of a lightning-bolt rose lazily from it. Susannah and Eddie stared at each other in mute terror for a moment, and then Eddie lunged for the communicator-box and thumbed the button.
   "You're wrong! We did come from New York! We came through the doors, on the beach, only a few weeks ago!"
   "It's true!" Susannah called. "I swear it is!"
   Silence. Beyond the long barrier, Blaine's pink back humped smoothly. The window at the front seemed to regard them like a vapid glass eye. The wiper could have been a lid half-closed in a sly wink.
   "PROVE IT," Blaine said at last.
   "Christ, how do I do that?" Eddie asked Susannah.
   "I don't know."
   Eddie pushed the button again. "The Statue of Liberty ! Does that ring a bell?"
   "GO ON," Blaine said. Now the voice sounded almost thoughtful.
   "The Empire State Building ! The Stock Exchange! The World Trade Center ! Coney Island Red-Hots! Radio City Music Hall ! The East Vil —"
   Blaine cut him off... and now, incredibly, the voice which came from the speaker was the drawling voice of John Wayne.
   "OKAY, PILGRIM. I BELIEVE YOU."
   Eddie and Susannah shared another glance, this one of confusion and relief. But when Blaine spoke again, the voice was again cold and emotionless.
   "ASK ME A QUESTION, EDDIE DEAN OF NEW YORK . AND IT BETTER BE A GOOD ONE." There was a pause, and then Blaine added: "BECAUSE IF IT'S NOT, YOU AND YOUR WOMAN ARE GOING TO DIE, NO MATTER WHERE YOU CAME FROM."
   Susannah looked from the box on the gate to Eddie. "What's it talking about?" she hissed.
   Eddie shook his head. "I don't have the slightest idea."

28
   To JAKE, THE ROOM Gasher dragged him into looked like a Minuteman missile silo which had been decorated by the inmates of a lunatic asylum: part museum, part living room, part hippie crash pad. Above him, empty space vaulted up to a rounded ceiling and below him it dropped seventy-five or a hundred feet to a similarly rounded base. Running all around the single curved wall in vertical lines were tubes of neon in alternating strokes of color: red, blue, green, yellow, orange, peach, pink. These long tubes came together in roaring rainbow knots at the bottom and top of the silo … if that was what it had been.
   The room was about three-quarters of the way up the vast capsule-shaped space and floored with rusty iron grillework. Rugs that looked Turkish (he later learned that such rugs were actually from a barony called Kashmin) lay on the grilled floor here and there. Their corners were held down with brass-bound trunks or standing lamps or the squat legs of over-stuffed chairs. If not, they would have flapped like strips of paper tied to an electric fan, because a steady warm draft rushed up from below. Another draft, this one issuing from a circular band of venti­lators like the ones in the tunnel they had followed here, swirled about four or five feet above Jake's head. On the far side of the room was a door identical to the one through which he and Gasher had entered, and Jake assumed it was a continuation of the subterranean corridor following the Path of the Beam.
   There were half a do/en people in the room, four men and two women. Jake guessed that he was looking at the Gray high command— if, that was, there were enough Grays left to warrant a high command. None of them were young, but all were still in the prime of their lives. They looked at Jake as curiously as he looked at them.
   Sitting in the center of the room, with one massive leg thrown casu­ally over the arm of a chair big enough to be a throne, was a man who looked like a cross between a Viking warrior and a giant from a child's fairy-tale. His heavily muscled upper body was naked except for a silver band around one bicep, a knife-scabbard looped over one shoulder, and a strange charm about his neck. His lower body was clad in soft, tight-fitting leather breeches which were tucked into high boots. He wore a yellow scarf tied around one of these. His hair, a dirty gray-blonde, cas­caded almost to the middle of his broad back; his eyes were as green and curious as the eyes of a tomcat who is old enough to be wise but not old enough to have lost that refined sense of cruelty which passes for fun in feline circles. Hung by its strap from the back of the chair was what looked like a very old machine-gun.
   Jake looked more closely at the ornament on the Viking's chest and saw that it was a coffin-shaped glass box hung on a silver chain. Inside it, a tiny gold clock-face marked the time at five minutes past three. Below the face, a tiny gold pendulum went back and forth, and despite the soft whoosh of circulating air from above and below, he could hear the tick-tock sound it made. The hands of the clock were moving faster than they should have done, and Jake was not very surprised to see that they were moving backward.
   He thought of the crocodile in Peter Pan, the one that was always chasing after Captain Hook, and a little smile touched his lips. Gasher saw it, and raised his hand. Jake cringed away, putting his own hands to his face.
   The Tick-Tock Man shook his finger at Gasher in an amusing school-marmish gesture. "Now, now … no need of that, Gasher," he said.
   Gasher lowered his hand at once. His face had changed completely. Before, it had alternated between stupid rage and a species of cunning, almost existential humor. Now he only looked servile and adoring. Like the others in the room (and Jake himself), the Gasherman could not look away from Tick-Tock for long; his eyes were drawn inexorably back. And Jake could understand why. The Tick-Tock Man was the only person here who seemed wholly vital, wholly healthy, and wholly alive.
   "If you say there's no need, there ain't," Gasher said, but he favored Jake with a dark look before shifting his eyes back to the blonde giant on the throne. "Still, he's wery pert, Ticky. Wery pert, Ticky. Wery pert indeed, so he is, and if you want my opinion, he'll take a deal of training!"
   "When I want your opinion, I'll ask for it, the Tick-Tock Man said. "Now close the door, Cash—was yon lx>re in a barn?"
   A dark-haired woman laughed shrilly, a sound like the caw of a crow. Tick-Tock flicked his eyes toward her; she quieted at once and cast her eyes down to the grilled floor.
   The door through which Gasher had dragged him was actually two doors. The arrangement reminded Jake of the way spaceship airlocks looked in the more intelligent science fiction movies. Gasher shut them both and turned to Tick-Tock, giving him a thumbs-up gesture. The Tick-Tock Man nodded and reached languidly up to press a button set into a piece of furniture that looked like a speaker's podium. A pump began to cycle wheezily within the wall, and the neon tubes dimmed perceptibly. There was a faint hiss of air and the valve-wheel of the inside door spun shut. Jake supposed the one in the outer door was doing the same. This was some sort of bomb-shelter, all right; no doubt of that. When the pump died, the long neon tubes resumed their former muted brilliance.
   "There," Tick-Tock said pleasantly. His eyes began to look Jake up and down. Jake had a clear and very uncomfortable sense of being expertly catalogued and filed. "All safe and sound, we are. Snug as bugs in a rug. Right, Hoots?"
   "Yar!" a tall, skinny man in a black suit replied promptly. His face was covered with some sort of rash which he scratched obsessively.
   "I brung him," Gasher said. "I told yer you could trust me to do it, and didn't I?"
   "You did," Tick-Tock said. "Bang on. I had some doubts about your ability to remember the password at the end, there, but—"
   The dark-haired woman uttered another shrill caw. The Tick-Tock Man half-turned in her direction, that lazy smile dimpling the corners of his mouth, and before Jake was able to grasp what was happening—what had already happened—she was staggering backward, her eyes bulging in surprise and pain, her hands groping at some strange tumor in the middle of her chest which hadn't been there a second before.
   Jake realized die Tick-Tock Man had made some sort of move as he was turning, a move so quick it had been no more than a flicker. The slim white hilt which had protruded from the scabbard looped over the Tick-Tock Man's shoulder was gone. The knife was now on the other side of the room, sticking out of the dark-haired woman's chest. Tick-Tock had drawn and thrown with an uncanny speed Jake wasn't sure even Roland could match. It had been like some malign magic trick.
   The others watched silently as the woman staggered toward Tick-Tock, gagging harshly, her hands wrapped loosely around the hilt of the knife. Her hip bumped one of the standing lamps and the one called Hoots darted forward to catch it before it could fall. Tick-Tock himself never moved; he only went on sitting with his leg tossed over the arm of his throne, watching the woman with his lazy smile.
   Her foot caught beneath one of the rugs and she tumbled forward. Once more the Tick-Tock Man moved with that spooky speed, pulling back the foot which had been dangling over the arm of the chair and then driving it forward again like a piston. It buried itself in the pit of the dark-haired woman's stomach and she went flying backward. Blood spewed from her mouth and splattered the furniture. She struck the wall, slid down it, and ended up sitting with her chin on her breastbone. To Jake she looked like a movie Mexican taking a siesta against an adobe wall. It was hard for him to believe she had gone from living to dead with such terrible speed. Neon tubes turned her hair into a haze that was half red and half blue. Her glazing eyes stared at the Tick-Tock Man with terminal amazement.
   "I told her about that laugh," Tick-Tock said. His eyes shifted to the other woman, a heavyset redhead who looked like a long-haul trucker. "Didn't I, Tilly?"
   "Ay," Tilly said at once. Her eyes were lustrous with fear and excite­ment, and she licked her lips obsessively. "So you did, many and many a time. I'll set my watch and warrant on it."
   "So you might, if you could reach up your fat ass far enough to find them," Tick-Tock said. "Bring me my knife, Brandon, and mind you wipe that slut's stink off it before you put it in my hand."
   A short, bandy-legged man hopped to do as he had been bidden. The knife wouldn't come free at first; it seemed caught on the unfortu­nate dark-haired woman's breastbone. Brandon threw a terrified glance over his shoulder at the Tick-Tock Man and then tugged harder.
   Tick-Tock, however, appeared to have forgotten all about both Bran­don and the woman who had literally laughed herself to death. His bril­liant green eyes had fixed on something which interested him much more than the dead woman.
   "Come here, cully," he said. "I want a better look at you."
   Gasher gave him a shove. Jake stumbled forward. He would have fallen if Tick-Tock's strong hands hadn't caught him by the shoulders. Then, when he was sure Jake had his balance again, Tick-Tock grasped the boy's left wrist and raised it. It was Jake's Seiko which had drawn his interest.
   "If this here's what I think it is, it's an omen for sure and true," Tick-Tock said. "Talk to me, boy—what's this sigul you wear?"
   Jake, who hadn't the slightest idea what a sigul was, could only hope for the best. "It's a watch. But it doesn't work, Mr. Tick-Tock."
   Hoots chuckled at that, then clapped both hands over his mouth when the Tick-Tock Man turned to look at him. After a moment, Tick-Toc looked back at Jake, and a sunny smile replaced the frown. Looking at that smile almost made you forget that it was a dead woman and not a movie Mexican taking a siesta over there against the wall. Looking at it almost made you forget that these people were crazy, and the Tick-Tock Man was likely the craziest inmate in the whole asylum.
   "Watch," Tick-Tock said, nodding. "Ay, a likely enough name for such; after all, what does a person want with a timepiece but to watch it once in a while? Ay, Brandon? Ay, Tilly? Ay, Gasher?"
   They responded with eager affirmatives. The Tick-Tock Man favored them with his winning smile, then turned back to Jake again. Now Jake noticed that the smile, winning or not, stopped well short of the Tick-Tock Man's green eyes. They were as they had been throughout: cool, cruel, and curious.
   He reached a finger toward the Seiko, which now proclaimed the time to be ninety-one minutes past seven—A.M. and P.M.—and pulled it back just before touching the glass above the liquid crystal display. "Tell me, dear boy—is this 'watch' of yours boobyrigged?"
   "Huh? Oh! No. No, it's not boobyrigged." Jake touched his own finger to the face of the watch.
   "That means nothing, if it's set to the frequency of your own body," the Tick-Tock Man said. He spoke in the sharp, scornful tone Jake's father used when he didn't want people to figure out that he didn't have the slightest idea what he was talking about. Tick-Tock glanced briefly at Brandon, and Jake saw him weigh the pros and cons of making the bowlegged man his designated toucher. Then he dismissed the notion and looked back into Jake's eyes. "If this thing gives me a shock, my little friend, you're going to be choking to death on your own sweetmeats in thirty seconds."
   Jake swallowed hard but said nothing. The Tick-Tock Man reached out his finger again, and this time allowed it to settle on the face of the Seiko. The moment that it did, all the numbers went to zeros and then began to count upward again.
   Tick-Tock's eyes had narrowed in a grimace of potential pain as he touched the face of the watch. Now their corners crinkled in the first genuine smile Jake had seen from him. He thought it was partly pleasure at his own courage but mostly simple wonder and interest.
   "May I have it?" he asked Jake silkily. "As a gesture of your goodwill, shall we say? I am something of a clock fancier, my dear young cully— so I am."
   "Be my guest." Jake stripped the watch off his arm at once and dropped in onto the Tick-Tock Man's large waiting palm.
   "Talks just like a little silk-arse gennelman, don't he?" Gasher said happily. "In the old days someone would have paid a wery high price for the return o' such as him, Ticky, ay, so they would. Why, my father—"
   "Your father died so blowed-out-rotten with the mandrus that not even the dogs would eat him," the Tick-Tock Man interrupted. "Now shut up, you idiot."
   At first Gasher looked furious... and then only abashed. He sank into a nearby chair and closed his mouth.
   Tick-Tock, meanwhile, was examining the Seiko's expansion band with an expression of awe. He pulled it wide, let it snap back, pulled it wide again, let it snap back again. He dropped a lock of his hair into the open links, then laughed when they closed on it. At last he slipped the watch over his hand and pushed it halfway up his forearm. Jake thought this souvenir of New York looked very strange there, but said nothing.
   "Wonderful!" Tick-Tock exclaimed. "Where did you get it, cully?"
   "It was a birthday present from my father and mother," Jake said. Gasher leaned forward at this, perhaps wanting to mention the idea of ransom again. If so, the intent look on the Tick-Tock Man's face changed his mind and he sat back without saying anything.
   "Was it?" Tick-Tock marvelled, raising his eyebrows. He had discov­ered the small button which lit the face of the watch and kept pushing it, watching the light go off and on. Then he looked back at Jake, and his eyes were narrowed to bright green slits again. "Tell me something, cully—does this run on a dipolar or unipolar circuit?"
   "Neither one," Jake said, not knowing that his failure to say he did not know what either of these terms meant was buying him a great deal of future trouble. "It runs on a nickel-cadmium battery. At least I'm pretty sure it does. I've never had to replace it, and I lost the instruction folder a long time ago."
   The Tick-Tock Man looked at him for a long time without speaking, and Jake realized with dismay that the blonde man was trying to decide if Jake had been making fun of him. If he decided Jake had been making fun, Jake had an idea that the abuse he had suffered on the way here would seem like tickling compared to what the Tick-Tock Man might do. He suddenly wanted to divert Tick-Tock's train of thought—wanted that more than anything in the world. He said the first thing he thought might turn the trick.
   "He was your grandfather, wasn't he?"
   The Tick-Tock Man raised his brows interrogatively. His hands returned to Jake's shoulders, and although his grip was not tight, Jake could feel the phenomenal strength there. If Tick-Tock chose to tighten his grip and pull sharply forward, he would snap Jake's collarbones like pencils. If he shoved, he would probably break his back.
   "Who was my grandfather, cully?"
   Jake's eyes once more took in the Tick-Tock Man's massive, nobly shaped head and broad shoulders. He remembered what Susannah had said: Look at the size of him, Roland—they must have had to grease him to get him into the cockpit!
   "The man in the airplane. David Quick."
   The Tick-Tock Man's eyes widened in surprise and amazement. Then he threw back his head and roared out a gust of laughter that echoed off the domed ceiling high above. The others smiled nervously. None, however, dared to laugh right out loud... not after what had happened to the woman with the dark hair.
   "Whoever you are and wherever you come from, boy, you're the triggest cove old Tick-Tock's run into for many a year. Quick was my great-grandfather, not my grandfather, but you're close enough—wouldn't you say so, Gasher, my dear?"
   "Ay," Gasher said. "He's trig, right enough, I could've toldjer that. But wery pert, all the same."
   "Yes," the Tick-Tock Man said thoughtfully. His hands tightened on the boy's shoulders and drew Jake closer to that smiling, handsome, lunatic face. "I can see he's pert. It's in his eyes. But we'll take care of that, won't we, Gasher?"
   It's not Gasher he's talking to, Jake thought. It's me. He thinks he's hypnotizing me... and maybe he is.
   "Ay," Gasher breathed.
   Jake felt he was drowning in those wide green eyes. Although the Tick-Tock Man's grip was still not really tight, he couldn't get enough breath into his lungs. He summoned all of his own force in an effort to break the blonde man's hold over him, and again spoke the first words which came to mind:
   "So fell Lord Perth, and the countryside did shake with that thunder."
   It acted upon Tick-Tock like a hard open-handed blow to the face. He recoiled, green eyes narrowing, his grip on Jake's shoulders tightening painfully. "What do you say? Where did you hear that?"
   "A little bird told me," Jake replied with calculated insolence, and the next instant he was flying across the room.
   If he had struck the curved wall headfirst, he would have been knocked cold or killed. As it happened, he struck on one hip, rebounded, and landed in a heap on the iron grillework. He shook his head groggily, looked around, and found himself face to face with the woman who was not taking a siesta. He uttered a shocked cry and crawled away on his hands and knees. Hoots kicked him in the chest, flipping him onto his back. Jake lay there gasping, looking up at the knot of rainbow colors where the neon tubes came together. A moment later, Tick-Tock's face filled his field of vision. The man's lips were pressed together in a hard, straight line, his cheeks flared with color, and there was fear in his eyes. The coffin-shaped glass ornament he wore around his neck dangled directly in front of Jake's eyes, swinging gently back and forth on its silver chain, as if imitating the pendulum of the tiny grandfather clock inside.
   "Gasher's right," he said. He gathered a handful of Jake's shirt into one fist and pulled him up. "You're pert. But you don't want to be pert with me, cully. You don't ever want to be pert with me. Have you heard of people with short fuses? Well, I have no fuse at all, and there's a thousand could testify to it if I hadn't stilled their tongues for good. If you ever speak to me of Lord Perth again... ever, ever, ever... I'll tear off the top of your skull and eat your brains. I'll have none of that bad-luck story in the Cradle of the Grays. Do you understand me?"
   He shook Jake back and forth like a rag, and the boy burst into tears.
   "Do you?"
   "Y-Y-Yes!"
   "Good." He set Jake upon his feet, where he swayed woozily back and forth, wiping at his streaming eyes and leaving smudges of dirt on his cheeks so dark they looked like mascara. "Now, my little cull, we're going to have a question and answer session here. I'll ask the questions and you'll give the answers. Do you understand?"
   Jake didn't reply. He was looking at a panel of the ventilator grille which circled the chamber.
   The Tick-Tock Man grabbed his nose between two of his fingers and squeezed it viciously. "Do you understand me?"
   "Yes!" Jake cried. His eyes, now watering with pain as well as terror, returned to Tick-Tock's face. He wanted to look back at the ventilator grille, wanted desperately to verify that what he had seen there was not simply a trick of his frightened, overloaded mind, but he didn't dare. He was afraid someone else—Tick-Tock himself, most likely—would follow his gaze and see what he had seen.
   "Good." Tick-Tock pulled Jake back over to the chair by his nose, sat down, and cocked his leg over the arm again. "Let's have a nice little chin, then. We'll begin with your name, shall we? Just what might that be, cully?"
   "Jake Chambers." With his nose pinched shut, his voice sounded nasal and foggy.
   "And are you a Not-See, Jake Chambers?"
   For a moment Jake wondered if this was a peculiar way of asking him if he was blind... but of course they could all see he wasn't. "I don't understand what—"
   Tick-Tock shook him back and forth by the nose. "Not-See! Not-See! You just want to stop playing with me, boy!"
   "I don't understand—" Jake began, and then he looked at the old machine-gun hanging from the chair and thought once more of the crashed Focke-Wulf. The pieces fell together in his mind. "No—I'm not a Nazi. I'm an American. All that ended long before I was born!"
   The Tick-Tock Man released his hold on Jake's nose, which immedi­ately began to gush blood. "You could have told me that in the first place and saved yourself all sorts of pain, Jake Chambers... but at least now you understand how we do things around here, don't you?"
   Jake nodded.
   "Ay. Well enough! We'll start with the simple questions."
   Jake's eyes drifted back to the ventilator grille. What he had seen before was still there; it hadn't been just his imagination. Two gold-ringed eyes floated in the dark behind the chrome louvers.
   Oy.
   Tick-Tock slapped his face, knocking him back into Gasher, who immediately pushed him forward again. "It's school-time, dear heart," Gasher whispered. "Mind yer lessons, now! Mind em wery sharp!"
   "Look at me when I'm talking to you," Tick-Tock said. "I'll have some respect, Jake Chambers, or I'll have your balls."
   "All right."
   Tick-Tock's green eyes gleamed dangerously. "All right what?"
   Jake groped for the right answer, pushing away the tangle of ques­tions and the sudden hope which had dawned in his mind. And what came was what would have served at his own Cradle of the Pubes... otherwise known as The Piper School. "All right, sir?"
   Tick-Tock smiled. "That's a start, boy," he said, and leaned forward, forearms on his thighs. "Now... what's an American?"
   Jake began to talk, trying with all his might not to look toward the ventilator grille as he did so.

29
   ROLAND BOLSTERED HIS GUN, laid both hands on the valve-wheel, and tried to turn it. It wouldn't budge. That didn't much surprise him, but it presented serious problems.
   Oy stood by his left boot, looking up anxiously, waiting for Roland to open the door so they could continue the journey to Jake. The gunslinger only wished it was that easy. It wouldn't do to simply stand out here and wait for someone to leave; it might be hours or even days before one of the Grays decided to use this particular exit again. Gasher and his friends might take it into their heads to flay Jake alive while the gunslinger was waiting for it to happen.
   He leaned his head against the steel but heard nothing. That didn't surprise him, either. He had seen doors like this a long time ago—you couldn't shoot out the locks, and you certainly couldn't hear through them. There might be one; there might be two, facing each other, with some dead airspace in between. Somewhere, though, there would be a button which would spin the wheel in the middle of the door and release the locks. If Jake could reach that button, all might still be well.
   Roland understood that he was not a full member of this ka-tet; he guessed that even Oy was more fully aware than he of the secret life which existed at its heart (he very much doubted that the bumbler had tracked Jake with his nose alone through those tunnels where water ran in polluted streamlets). Nevertheless, he had been able to help Jake when die boy had been trying to cross from his world to this one. He had been able to see... and when Jake had been trying to regain the key he had dropped, he had been able to send a message.
   He had to be very careful about sending messages this time. At best, the Grays would realize something was up. At worst, Jake might misinterpret what Roland tried to tell him and do something foolish.
   But if he could see...
   Roland closed his eyes and bent all his concentration toward Jake. He thought of the boy's eyes and sent his ka out to find them.
   At first there was nothing, but at last an image began to form. It was a face framed by long, gray-blonde hair. Green eyes gleamed in deep sockets like firedims in a cave. Roland quickly understood that this was the Tick-Tock Man, and that he was a descendent of the man who had died in the air-carriage—interesting, but of no practical value in this situation. He tried to look beyond the Tick-Tock Man, to see the rest of the room in which Jake was being held, and the people in it.
   "Ake," Oy whispered, as if reminding Roland that this was neither the time nor the place to take a nap.
   "Shhh," the gunslinger said, not opening his eyes.
   But it was no good. He caught only blurs, probably because Jake's concentration was focused so tightly on the Tick-Tock Man; everyone and everything else was little more than a series of gray-shrouded shapes on the edges of Jake's perception.
   Roland opened his eyes again and pounded his left fist lightly into the open palm of his right hand. He had an idea that he could push harder and see more... but that might make the boy aware of his presence. That would be dangerous. Casher might smell a rat, and if he didn't the Tick-Tock Man would.
   He looked up at the narrow ventilator grilles, then down at Oy. He had wondered several times just how smart he was; now it looked as though he was going to find out.
   Roland reached up with his good left hand, slipped his fingers between the horizontal slats of the ventilator grille closest to the hatchway through which Jake had been taken, and pulled. The grille popped out in a shower of rust and dried moss. The hole behind it was far too small for a man... but not for a billy-bumbler. He put the grille down, picked Oy up, and spoke softly into his ear.
   "Go... see... come back. Do you understand? Don't let them see you. Just go and see and come back."
   Oy gazed up into his face, saying nothing, not even Jake's name. Roland had no idea if he had understood or not, but wasting time in ponderation would not help matters. He placed Oy in the ventilator shaft. The bumbler sniffed at the crumbles of dried moss, sneezed delicately, then only crouched there with the draft rippling through his long, silky fur, looking doubtfully at Roland with his strange eyes.
   "Go and see and come back," Roland repeated in a whisper, and Oy disappeared into the shadows, walking silently, claws retracted, on the pads of his paws.
   Roland drew his gun again and did the hardest thing. He waited.
   Oy returned less than three minutes later. Roland lifted him out of the shaft and put him on the floor. Oy looked up at him with his long neck extended. "How many, Oy?" Roland asked. "How many did you see?"
   For a long moment he thought the bumbler wouldn't do anything except go on staring in his anxious way. Then he lifted his right paw tentatively in the air, extended the claws, and looked at it, as if trying to remember something very difficult. At last he began to tap on the steel floor.
   One... two... three... four. A pause. Then two more, quick and delicate, the extended claws clicking lightly on the steel: five, six. Oy paused a second time, head down, looking like a child lost in the throes of some titanic mental struggle. Then he tapped his claws one final time on the steel, looking up at Roland as he did it. "Ake!"
   Six. Grays... and Jake.
   Roland picked Oy up and stroked him. "Good!" he murmured into Oy's ear. In truth, he was almost overwhelmed with surprise and grati­tude. He had hoped for something, but this careful response was amaz­ing. And he had few doubts about the accuracy of the count. "Good boy!"
   "Oy! Ake!"
   Yes, Jake. Jake was the problem. Jake, to whom he had made a promise he intended to keep.
   The gunslinger thought deeply in his strange fashion—that combina­tion of dry pragmatism and wild intuition which had probably come from his strange grandmother, Deidre the Mad, and had kept him alive all these years after his old companions had passed. Now he was depending on it to keep Jake alive, too.
   He picked Oy up again, knowing Jake might live—might—but the bumbler was almost certainly going to die. He whispered several simple words into Oy's cocked ear, repeating them over and over. At last he ceased speaking and returned him to the ventilator shaft. "Good boy," he whispered. "Go on, now. Get it done. My heart goes with you."
   "Oy! Art! Ake!" the bumbler whispered, and then scurried off into the darkness again.
   Roland waited for all hell to break loose.

   30
   ASK ME A QUESTION, Eddie Dean of New York . And it better be a good one... if it's not, you and your woman are going to die, no matter where you came from.
   And, dear God, how did you respond to something like that?
   The dark red light had gone out; now the pink one reappeared. "Hurry," the faint voice of Little Blaine urged them. "He's worse than ever before... hurry or he'll kill you!"
   Eddie was vaguely aware that flocks of disturbed pigeons were still swooping aimlessly through the Cradle, and that some of them had smashed headfirst into the pillars and dropped dead on the floor.
   "What does it want?" Susannah hissed at the speaker and the voice of Little Blaine somewhere behind it. "For God's sake, what does it want?"
   No reply. And Eddie could feel any period of grace they might have started with slipping away. He thumbed the TALK/LISTEN and spoke with frantic vivacity as the sweat trickled down his cheeks and neck.
   Ask me a question.
   "So— Blaine ! What have you been up to these last few years? I guess you haven't been doing the old southeast run, huh? Any reason why not? Haven't been feeling up to snuff?"
   No sound but the rustle and flap of the pigeons. In his mind he saw Ardis trying to scream as his cheeks melted and his tongue caught fire.
   He felt the hair on the nape of his neck stirring and clumping together. Fear? Or gathering electricity?
   Hurry... he's worse than ever before.
   "Who built you, anyway?" Eddie asked frantically, thinking: If I only knew what the fucking thing wanted! "Want to talk about that? Was it the Grays? Nah... probably the Great Old Ones, right? Or..."
   He trailed off. Now he could feel Blaine 's silence as a physical weight on his skin, like fleshy, groping hands.
   "What do you want?" he shouted. "Just what in hell do you want to hear?"
   No answer—but the buttons on the box were glowing an angry dark red again, and Eddie knew their time was almost up. He could hear a low buzzing sound nearby—a sound like an electrical generator—and he didn't believe that sound was just his imagination, no matter how much he wanted to think so.
   "Blaine!" Susannah shouted suddenly. "Blaine, do you hear me?"
   No answer... and Eddie felt the air was filling up with electricity as a bowl under a tap fills up with water. He could feel it crackling bitterly in his nose with every breath he took; could feel his fillings buzzing like angry insects.
   "Blaine, I've got a question, and it is a pretty good one! Listen!" She closed her eyes for a moment, fingers rubbing frantically at her temples, and then opened her eyes again. " 'There is a thing that... uh... that nothing is, and yet it has a name; 'tis sometimes tall and... and sometimes short...' " She broke off and stared at Eddie with wide, agonized eyes. "Help me! I can't remember how the rest of it goes!"
   Eddie only stared at her as if she had gone mad. What in the name of God was she talking about? Then it came to him, and it made a weirdly perfect sense, and the rest of the riddle clicked into his mind as neatly as the last two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. He swung toward the speaker again.
   " 'It joins our talks, it joins our sport, and plays at every game.' What is it? That's our question, Blaine —what is it?"
   The red light illuminating the COMMAND and ENTER buttons below the diamond of numbers blinked out. There was an endless moment of silence before Blaine spoke again... but Eddie was aware that the feeling of electricity crawling all over his skin was diminishing.
   "A SHADOW, OF COURSE," the voice of Blaine responded. "AN EASY ONE... BUT NOT BAD. NOT BAD AT ALL."
   The voice coming out of the speaker was animated by a thoughtful quality... and something else, as well. Pleasure? Longing? Eddie couldn't quite decide, but he did know there was something in that voice that reminded him of Little Blaine. He knew something else, as well: Susannah had saved their bacon, at least for the time being. He bent down and kissed her cold, sweaty brow.
   "DO YOU KNOW ANY MORE RIDDLES?" Blaine asked.
   "Yes, lots," Susannah said at once. "Our companion, Jake, has a whole book of them."
   "FROM THE NEW YORK PLACE OF WHERE?" Blaine asked, and now the tone of his voice was perfectly clear, at least to Eddie. Blaine might be a machine, but Eddie had been a heroin junkie for six years, and he knew stone greed when he heard it.
   "From New York, right," he said. "But Jake has been taken prisoner. A man named Gasher took him."
   No answer... and then the buttons glowed that faint, rosy pink again. "Good so far," the voice of Little Blaine whispered. "But you must be careful... he's tricky..."
   The red lights reappeared at once.
   "DID ONE OF YOU SPEAK?" Blaine's voice was cold and—Eddie could have sworn it was so—suspicious.
   He looked at Susannah. Susannah looked back with the wide, fright­ened eyes of a little girl who has heard something unnameable moving slyly beneath the bed.
   "I cleared my throat, Blaine," Eddie said. He swallowed and armed sweat from his forehead. "I'm... shit, tell the truth and shame the devil. I'm scared to death."
   "THAT IS VERY WISE OF YOU. THESE RIDDLES OF WHICH YOU SPEAK—ARE THEY STUPID? I WON'T HAVE MY PATIENCE TRIED WITH STUPID RIDDLES."
   "Most are smart," Susannah said, but she looked anxiously at Eddie as she said it.
   "YOU LIE. YOU DON'T KNOW THE QUALITY OF THESE RIDDLES AT ALL."
   "How can you say—"
   "VOICE ANALYSIS. FRICTIVE PATTERNS AND DIPH­THONG STRESS-EMPHASIS PROVIDE A RELIABLE QUOTIENT OF TRUTH/UNTRUTH. PREDICTIVE RELIABILITY IS 97 PER CENT, PLUS OR MINUS .5 PER CENT." The voice fell silent for a moment, and when it spoke again, it did so in a menacing drawl that Eddie found very familiar. It was the voice of Humphrey Bogart. "I SHUGGEST YOU SHTICK TO WHAT YOU KNOW, SHWEET-HEART. THE LAST GUY THAT TRIED SHADING THE TRUTH WITH ME WOUND UP AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SEND IN A PAIR OF SHEMENT COWBOY BOOTS."
   "Christ," Eddie said. "We walked four hundred miles or so to meet the computer version of Rich Little. How can you imitate guys like John Wayne and Humphrey Bogart, Blaine? Guys from our world?"
   Nothing.
   "Okay, you don't want to answer that one. How about this one—if a riddle was what you wanted, why didn't you just say so?"
   Again there was no answer, but Eddie discovered that he didn't really need one. Blaine liked riddles, so he had asked them one. Susannah had solved it. Eddie guessed that if she had failed to do so, the two of them would now look like a couple of giant-economy-size charcoal bri­quets lying on the floor of the Cradle of Lud.
   "Blaine?" Susannah asked uneasily. There was no answer. "Blaine, are you still there?"
   "YES. TELL ME ANOTHER ONE."
   "When is a door not a door?" Eddie asked.
   "WHEN IT'S AJAR. YOU'LL HAVE TO DO BETTER THAN THAT IF YOU REALLY EXPECT ME TO TAKE YOU SOME­WHERE. CAN YOU DO BETTER THAN THAT?"
   "If Roland gets here, I'm sure we can," Susannah said. "Regardless of how good the riddles in Jake's book may be, Roland knows hundreds— he actually studied them as a child." Having said this, she realized she could not conceive of Roland as a child. "Will you take us, Blaine?"
   "I MIGHT," Blaine said, and Eddie was quite sure he heard a dim thread of cruelty running through that voice. "BUT YOU'LL HAVE TO PRIME THE PUMP TO GET ME GOING, AND MY PUMP PRIMES BACKWARD."
   "Meaning what?" Eddie asked, looking through the bars at the smooth pink line of Blaine's back. But Blaine did not reply to this or any of the other questions they asked. The bright orange lights stayed on, but both Big Blaine and Little Blaine seemed to have gone into hiberna­tion. Eddie, however, knew better. Blaine was awake. Blaine was watch­ing them. Blaine was listening to their frictive patterns and diphthong stress-emphasis.
   He looked at Susannah.
   " 'You'll have to prime the pump, but my pump primes backward,' " he said bleakly. "It's a riddle, isn't it?"
   "Yes, of course." She looked at the triangular window, so like a half-lidded, mocking eye, and then pulled him close so she could whisper in his ear. "It's totally insane, Eddie—schizophrenic, paranoid, probably delusional as well."
   "Tell me about it," he breathed back. "What we've got here is a lunatic genius ghost-in-the-computer monorail that likes riddles and goes faster than the speed of sound. Welcome to the fantasy version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest ."
   "Do you have any idea what the answer is?"
   Eddie shook his head. "You?"
   "A little tickle, way back in my mind. False light, probably. I keep thinking about what Roland said: a good riddle is always sensible and always solvable. It's like a magician's trick."
   "Misdirection."
   She nodded. "Go fire another shot, Eddie—let em know we're still here."
   "Yeah. Now if we could only be sure that they're still there."
   "Do you think they are, Eddie?"
   Eddie had started away, and he spoke without stopping or looking back. "I don't know—that's a riddle not even Blaine could answer."

30
   ASK ME A QUESTION, Eddie Dean of New York . And it better be a good one... if it's not, you and your woman are going to die, no matter where you came from.
   And, dear God, how did you respond to something like that?
   The dark red light had gone out; now the pink one reappeared. "Hurry," the faint voice of Little Blaine urged them. "He's worse than ever before... hurry or he'll kill you!"
   Eddie was vaguely aware that flocks of disturbed pigeons were still swooping aimlessly through the Cradle, and that some of them had smashed headfirst into the pillars and dropped dead on the floor.
   "What does it want?" Susannah hissed at the speaker and the voice of Little Blaine somewhere behind it. "For God's sake, what does it want?"
   No reply. And Eddie could feel any period of grace they might have started with slipping away. He thumbed the TALK/LISTEN and spoke with frantic vivacity as the sweat trickled down his cheeks and neck.
   Ask me a question.
   "So— Blaine ! What have you been up to these last few years? I guess you haven't been doing the old southeast run, huh? Any reason why not? Haven't been feeling up to snuff?"
   No sound but the rustle and flap of the pigeons. In his mind he saw Ardis trying to scream as his cheeks melted and his tongue caught fire.
   He felt the hair on the nape of his neck stirring and clumping together. Fear? Or gathering electricity?
   Hurry... he's worse than ever before.
   "Who built you, anyway?" Eddie asked frantically, thinking: If I only knew what the fucking thing wanted! "Want to talk about that? Was it the Grays? Nah... probably the Great Old Ones, right? Or..."
   He trailed off. Now he could feel Blaine 's silence as a physical weight on his skin, like fleshy, groping hands.
   "What do you want?" he shouted. "Just what in hell do you want to hear?"
   No answer—but the buttons on the box were glowing an angry dark red again, and Eddie knew their time was almost up. He could hear a low buzzing sound nearby—a sound like an electrical generator—and he didn't believe that sound was just his imagination, no matter how much he wanted to think so.
   "Blaine!" Susannah shouted suddenly. "Blaine, do you hear me?"
   No answer... and Eddie felt the air was filling up with electricity as a bowl under a tap fills up with water. He could feel it crackling bitterly in his nose with every breath he took; could feel his fillings buzzing like angry insects.
   "Blaine, I've got a question, and it is a pretty good one! Listen!" She closed her eyes for a moment, fingers rubbing frantically at her temples, and then opened her eyes again. " 'There is a thing that... uh... that nothing is, and yet it has a name; 'tis sometimes tall and... and sometimes short...' " She broke off and stared at Eddie with wide, agonized eyes. "Help me! I can't remember how the rest of it goes!"
   Eddie only stared at her as if she had gone mad. What in the name of God was she talking about? Then it came to him, and it made a weirdly perfect sense, and the rest of the riddle clicked into his mind as neatly as the last two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. He swung toward the speaker again.
   " 'It joins our talks, it joins our sport, and plays at every game.' What is it? That's our question, Blaine —what is it?"
   The red light illuminating the COMMAND and ENTER buttons below the diamond of numbers blinked out. There was an endless moment of silence before Blaine spoke again... but Eddie was aware that the feeling of electricity crawling all over his skin was diminishing.
   "A SHADOW, OF COURSE," the voice of Blaine responded. "AN EASY ONE... BUT NOT BAD. NOT BAD AT ALL."
   The voice coming out of the speaker was animated by a thoughtful quality... and something else, as well. Pleasure? Longing? Eddie couldn't quite decide, but he did know there was something in that voice that reminded him of Little Blaine. He knew something else, as well: Susannah had saved their bacon, at least for the time being. He bent down and kissed her cold, sweaty brow.
   "DO YOU KNOW ANY MORE RIDDLES?" Blaine asked.
   "Yes, lots," Susannah said at once. "Our companion, Jake, has a whole book of them."
   "FROM THE NEW YORK PLACE OF WHERE?" Blaine asked, and now the tone of his voice was perfectly clear, at least to Eddie. Blaine might be a machine, but Eddie had been a heroin junkie for six years, and he knew stone greed when he heard it.
   "From New York, right," he said. "But Jake has been taken prisoner. A man named Gasher took him."
   No answer... and then the buttons glowed that faint, rosy pink again. "Good so far," the voice of Little Blaine whispered. "But you must be careful... he's tricky..."
   The red lights reappeared at once.
   "DID ONE OF YOU SPEAK?" Blaine's voice was cold and—Eddie could have sworn it was so—suspicious.
   He looked at Susannah. Susannah looked back with the wide, fright­ened eyes of a little girl who has heard something unnameable moving slyly beneath the bed.
   "I cleared my throat, Blaine," Eddie said. He swallowed and armed sweat from his forehead. "I'm... shit, tell the truth and shame the devil. I'm scared to death."
   "THAT IS VERY WISE OF YOU. THESE RIDDLES OF WHICH YOU SPEAK—ARE THEY STUPID? I WON'T HAVE MY PATIENCE TRIED WITH STUPID RIDDLES."
   "Most are smart," Susannah said, but she looked anxiously at Eddie as she said it.
   "YOU LIE. YOU DON'T KNOW THE QUALITY OF THESE RIDDLES AT ALL."
   "How can you say—"
   "VOICE ANALYSIS. FRICTIVE PATTERNS AND DIPH­THONG STRESS-EMPHASIS PROVIDE A RELIABLE QUOTIENT OF TRUTH/UNTRUTH. PREDICTIVE RELIABILITY IS 97 PER CENT, PLUS OR MINUS .5 PER CENT." The voice fell silent for a moment, and when it spoke again, it did so in a menacing drawl that Eddie found very familiar. It was the voice of Humphrey Bogart. "I SHUGGEST YOU SHTICK TO WHAT YOU KNOW, SHWEET-HEART. THE LAST GUY THAT TRIED SHADING THE TRUTH WITH ME WOUND UP AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SEND IN A PAIR OF SHEMENT COWBOY BOOTS."
   "Christ," Eddie said. "We walked four hundred miles or so to meet the computer version of Rich Little. How can you imitate guys like John Wayne and Humphrey Bogart, Blaine? Guys from our world?"
   Nothing.
   "Okay, you don't want to answer that one. How about this one—if a riddle was what you wanted, why didn't you just say so?"
   Again there was no answer, but Eddie discovered that he didn't really need one. Blaine liked riddles, so he had asked them one. Susannah had solved it. Eddie guessed that if she had failed to do so, the two of them would now look like a couple of giant-economy-size charcoal bri­quets lying on the floor of the Cradle of Lud.
   "Blaine?" Susannah asked uneasily. There was no answer. "Blaine, are you still there?"
   "YES. TELL ME ANOTHER ONE."
   "When is a door not a door?" Eddie asked.
   "WHEN IT'S AJAR. YOU'LL HAVE TO DO BETTER THAN THAT IF YOU REALLY EXPECT ME TO TAKE YOU SOME­WHERE. CAN YOU DO BETTER THAN THAT?"
   "If Roland gets here, I'm sure we can," Susannah said. "Regardless of how good the riddles in Jake's book may be, Roland knows hundreds— he actually studied them as a child." Having said this, she realized she could not conceive of Roland as a child. "Will you take us, Blaine?"
   "I MIGHT," Blaine said, and Eddie was quite sure he heard a dim thread of cruelty running through that voice. "BUT YOU'LL HAVE TO PRIME THE PUMP TO GET ME GOING, AND MY PUMP PRIMES BACKWARD."
   "Meaning what?" Eddie asked, looking through the bars at the smooth pink line of Blaine's back. But Blaine did not reply to this or any of the other questions they asked. The bright orange lights stayed on, but both Big Blaine and Little Blaine seemed to have gone into hiberna­tion. Eddie, however, knew better. Blaine was awake. Blaine was watch­ing them. Blaine was listening to their frictive patterns and diphthong stress-emphasis.
   He looked at Susannah.
   " 'You'll have to prime the pump, but my pump primes backward,' " he said bleakly. "It's a riddle, isn't it?"
   "Yes, of course." She looked at the triangular window, so like a half-lidded, mocking eye, and then pulled him close so she could whisper in his ear. "It's totally insane, Eddie—schizophrenic, paranoid, probably delusional as well."
   "Tell me about it," he breathed back. "What we've got here is a lunatic genius ghost-in-the-computer monorail that likes riddles and goes faster than the speed of sound. Welcome to the fantasy version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest ."
   "Do you have any idea what the answer is?"
   Eddie shook his head. "You?"
   "A little tickle, way back in my mind. False light, probably. I keep thinking about what Roland said: a good riddle is always sensible and always solvable. It's like a magician's trick."
   "Misdirection."
   She nodded. "Go fire another shot, Eddie—let em know we're still here."
   "Yeah. Now if we could only be sure that they're still there."
   "Do you think they are, Eddie?"
   Eddie had started away, and he spoke without stopping or looking back. "I don't know—that's a riddle not even Blaine could answer."

31
   "COULD I HAVE SOMETHING to drink?" Jake asked. His voice came out sounding furry and nasal. Both his mouth and the tissues in his abused nose were swelling up. He looked like someone who has gotten the worst of it in a nasty street-fight.
   "Oh, yes," Tick-Tock replied judiciously. "You could. I'd say you certainly could. We have lots to drink, don't we, Copperhead?"
   "Ay," said a tall, bespectacled man in a white silk shirt and a pair of black silk trousers. He looked like a college professor in a turn-of-the-century Punch cartoon. "No shortage of po-ter-bulls here."
   The Tick-Tock Man, once more seated at ease in his throne-like chair, looked humorously at Jake. "We have wine, beer, ale, and, of course, good old water. Sometimes that's all a body wants, isn't it? Cool, clear, sparkling water. How does that sound, cully?"
   Jake's throat, which was also swollen and as dry as sandpaper, prick­led painfully. "Sounds good," he whispered.
   "It's woke my thirsty up, I know that," Tick-Tock said. His lips spread in a smile. His green eyes sparkled. "Bring me a dipper of water, Tilly—I'll be damned if I know what's happened to my manners."
   Tilly stepped through the hatchway on the far side of the room—it was opposite the one through which Jake and Gasher had entered. Jake watched her go and licked his swollen lips.
   "Now," Tick-Tock said, returning his gaze to Jake, "you say the American city you came from—this New York —is much like Lud."
   "Well... not exactly …"
   "But you do recognize some of the machinery, Tick-Tock pressed. "Valves and pumps and such. Not to mention the firedim tubes."
   "Yes. We call it neon, but it's the same."
   Tick-Tock reached out toward him. Jake cringed, but Tick-Tock only patted him on the shoulder. "Yes, yes; close enough." His eyes gleamed. "And you've heard of computers?"
   "Sure, but—"
   Tilly returned with the dipper and timidly approached the Tick-Tock Man's throne. He took it and held it out to Jake. When Jake reached for it, Tick-Tock pulled it back and drank himself. As Jake watched the water trickle from Tick-Tock's mouth and roll down his naked chest, he began to shake. He couldn't help it.
   The Tick-Tock Man looked over the dipper at him, as if just remem­bering that Jake was still there. Behind him, Gasher, Copperhead, Bran-don, and Hoots were grinning like schoolyard kids who have just heard an amusing dirty joke.
   "Why, I got thinking about how thirsty I was and forgot all about you!" Tick-Tock cried. "That's mean as hell, gods damn my eyes! But, of course, it looked so good... and it is good... cold... clear …"
   He held the dipper out to Jake. When Jake reached for it, Tick-Tock pulled it back.
   "First, cully, tell me what you know about dipolar computers and transitive circuits," he said coldly.
   "What …" Jake looked toward the ventilator grille, but the golden eyes were still gone. He was beginning to think he had imagined them after all. He shifted his gaze back to the Tick-Tock Man, understanding one thing clearly: he wasn't going to get any water. He had been stupid to even dream he might. "What are dipolar computers?"
   The Tick-Tock Man's face contorted with rage; he threw the remain­der of the water into Jake's bruised, puffy face. "Don't you play it light with me!" he shrieked. He stripped off the Seiko watch and shook it in front of Jake. "When I asked you if this ran on a dipolar circuit, you said it didn't! So don't tell me you don't know what I'm talking about when you already made it clear that you do!"
   "But... but …" Jake couldn't go on. His head was whirling with fear and confusion. He was aware, in some far-off fashion, that he was licking as much water as he could off his lips.
   "There's a thousand of those ever-fucking dipolar computers right under the ever-fucking city, maybe a HUNDRED thousand, and the only one that still works don't do a thing except play Watch Me and run those drums! I want those computers! I want them working for ME!"
   The Tick-Tock Man bolted forward on his throne, seized Jake, shook him back and forth, and then threw him to the floor. Jake struck one of the lamps, knocking it over, and the bulb blew with a hollow coughing sound. Tilly gave a little shriek and stepped backward, her eyes wide and frightened. Copperhead and Brandon looked at each other uneasily.
   Tick-Tock leaned forward, elbows on his thighs, and screamed into Jake's face: "I want them AND I MEAN TO HAVE THEM!"
   Silence fell in the room, broken only by the soft whoosh of warm air pouring from the ventilators. Then the twisted rage on the Tick-Tock Man's face disappeared so suddenly it might never have existed at all. It was replaced by another charming smile. He leaned further forward and helped Jake to his feet.
   "Sorry. I get thinking about the potential of this place and sometimes I get carried away. Please accept my apology, cully." He picked up the overturned dipper and threw it at Tilly. "Fill this up, you useless bitch! What's the matter with you?"
   He turned his attention back to Jake, still smiling his TV game-show host smile.
   "All right; you've had your little joke and I've had mine. Now tell me everything you know about dipolar computers and transitive circuits. Then you can have a drink."
   Jake opened his mouth to say something—he had no idea what— and then, incredibly, Roland's voice was in his mind, filling it.
   Distract them, Jake—and if there's a button that opens the door, get close to it.
   The Tick-Tock Man was watching him closely. "Something just came into your mind, didn't it, cully? I always know. So don't keep it a secret; tell your old friend Ticky."
   Jake caught movement in the corner of his eye. Although he did not dare glance up at the ventilator panel—not with all the Tick-Tock Man's notice bent upon him—he knew that Oy was back, peering down through the louvers.
   Distract them... and suddenly Jake knew just how to do that.
   "I did think of something," he said, "but it wasn't about computers. It was about my old pal Gasher. And his old pal, Hoots."
   "Here! Here!" Gasher cried. "What are you talking about, boy?"
   "Why don't you tell Tick-Tock who really gave you the password, Gasher? Then I can tell Tick-Tock where you keep it."
   The Tick-Tock Man's puzzled gaze shifted from Jake to Gasher. "What's he talking about?"
   "Nothin!" Gasher said, but he could not forbear a quick glance at Hoots. "He's just runnin his gob, tryin to get off the hot-seat by puttin me on it, Ticky. I told you he was pert! Didn't I say—"
   Take a look in his scarf, why don't you?" Jake asked. "He's got a scrap of paper with the word written on it. I had to read it to him because he couldn't even do that."
   There was no sudden rage on Tick-Tock's part this time; his face darkened gradually instead, like a summer sky before a terrible thunderstorm.
   "Let me see your scarf, Gasher," he said in a soft, thick voice. "Let your old pal sneak a peek."
   "He's lyin, I tell you!" Gasher cried, putting his hands on his scarf and taking two steps backward toward the wall. Directly above him, Oy's gold-ringed eyes gleamed. "All you got to do is look in his face to see lyin's what a pert little cull like him does best!"
   The Tick-Tock Man shifted his gaze to Hoots, who looked sick with fear. "What about it?" Tick-Tock asked in his soft, terrible voice. "What about it, Hooterman? I know you and Gasher was butt-buddies of old, and I know you've the brains of a hung goose, but surely not even you could be stupid enough to write down a password to the inner chamber... could you? Could you?"
   "I … I oney thought..." Hoots began.
   "Shut up!" Gasher shouted. He shot Jake a look of pure, sick hate. "I'll kill you for this, dearie—see if I don't."
   "Take off your scarf, Gasher," the Tick-Tock Man said. "I want a look inside it."
   Jake sidled a step closer to the podium with the burtons on it.
   "No!" Gasher's hands returned to the scarf and pressed against it as if it might fly away of its own accord. "Be damned if I will!"
   " Brandon, grab him," Tick-Tock said.
   Brandon lunged for Gasher. Gasher's move wasn't as quick as Tick-Tock's had been, but it was quick enough; he bent, yanked a knife from the top of his boot, and buried it in Brandon 's arm.
   "Oh, you barstard!" Brandon shouted in surprise and pain as blood began to pour out of his arm.
   "Lookit what you did!" Tilly screamed.
   "Do I have to do everything around here myself?" Tick-Tock shouted, more exasperated than angry, it seemed, and rose to his feet. Gasher retreated from him, weaving the bloody knife back and forth in front of his face in mystic patterns. He kept his other hand planted firmly on top of his head.
   "Draw back," he panted. "I loves you like a brother, Ticky, but if you don't draw back, I'll hide this blade in your guts—so I will."
   “You? Not likely," the Tick-Tock Man said with a laugh. He removed his own knife from its scabbard and held it delicately by the bone hilt. All eyes were on the two of them. Jake took two quick steps to the podium with its little cluster of buttons and reached for the one he thought the Tick-Took man had pushed.
   Gasher was backing along the curved wall, the tubes of light painting his mandrus-riddled face in a succession of sick colors: bile-green, fever-red, jaundice-yellow. Now it was the Tick-Tock Man standing below the ventilator grille where Oy was watching.
   "Put it down, Gasher," Tick-Tock said in a reasonable tone of voice. "You brought the boy as I asked; if anyone else gets pricked over this, it'll be Hoots, not you. Just show me—"
   Jake saw Oy crouching to spring and understood two things: what the humbler meant to do and who had put him up to it.
   "Oy, no!" he screamed.
   All of them turned to look at him. At that moment Oy leaped, hitting the flimsy ventilator grille and knocking it free. The Tick-Tock Man wheeled toward die sound, and Oy fell onto his upturned face, biting and slashing.