16
   "ALL RIGHT," EDDIE SAID at last. "I understand the basic paradox. Your, memory is divided—"
   "Not divided. Doubled."
   "All right; it's almost the same thing, isn't it?" Eddie grasped a twig and made his own little drawing in the sand:
   He tapped the line on the left. "This is your memory of the time before you got to the way station—a single track."
   "Yes."
   He tapped the line on the right. "And after you came out on the far side of the mountains in the place of bones... the place where Walter was waiting for you. Also a single track."
   "Yes."
   Now Eddie first indicated the middle area and then drew a rough circle around it.
   "That's what you've got to do, Roland—close this double track off. Build a stockade around it in your mind and then forget it. Because it doesn't mean anything, it doesn't change anything, it's gone, it's done—"
   "But it isn't." Roland held up the bone. "If my memories of the boy Jake are false—and I know they are—how can I have this? I took it to replace the one I threw away... but the one I threw away came from the cellar of the way station, and along the track I know is true, / never went down cellar! I never spoke with the demon! I moved on alone, with fresh water and nothing else!"
   "Roland, listen to me," Eddie said earnestly. "If that jawbone you're holding was the one from the way station, that would be one thing. But isn't it possible that if you hallucinated that whole thing—the way station, the kid, the Speaking Demon—then maybe you took Walter's jawbone because—"
   "It was no hallucination," Roland said. He looked at them both with his faded blue bombardier's eyes and then did something neither expected... something Eddie would have sworn Roland did not know he meant to do himself.
   He threw the jawbone into the fire.

17
   FOR A MOMENT IT only lay there, a white relic bent in a ghostly half-grin. Then it suddenly blazed red, washing the clearing with dazzling scarlet light. Eddie and Susannah cried out and threw their hands up to shield their eyes from that burning shape.
   The bone began to change. Not to melt, but to change. The teeth which leaned out of it like gravestones began to draw together in clumps.
   The mild curve of the upper arc straightened, then snubbed down at the tip.
   Eddie's hands fell into his lap and he stared at the bone which was no longer a bone with gape-jawed wonder. It was now the color of burn­ing steel. The teeth had become three inverted V's, the middle one larger than those on the ends. And suddenly Eddie saw what it wanted to become, just as he had seen the slingshot in the wood of the stump.
   He thought it was a key.
   You must remember the shape, he thought feverishly. You must, you must.
   His eyes traced it desperately—three V's, the one in the center larger and deeper than the two on the end. Three notches . .. and the one closest the end had a squiggle, the shallow shape of a lower-case s .. .
   Then the shape in the flames changed again. The bone which had become something like a key drew inward, concentrating itself into bright, overlapping petals and folds as dark and velvety as a moonless summer midnight . For a moment Eddie saw a rose—a triumphant rose that might have bloomed in the dawn of this world's first day, a thing of depthless, timeless beauty. His eye saw, and his heart was opened. It was as if all love and life had suddenly risen from Roland's dead artifact; it was there in the fire, burning out in triumph and some wonderful, inchoate defiance, declaring that despair was a mirage and death a dream.
   The rose! he thought incoherently. First the key, then the rose! Behold! Behold the opening of the way to the Tower!
   There was a thick cough from the fire. A fan of sparks twisted outwards. Susannah screamed and rolled away, beating at the orange flecks on her dress as the flames gushed upward toward the starry sky. Eddie didn't move. He sat transfixed in his vision, held in a cradle of wonder which was both gorgeous and terrible, unmindful of the sparks which danced across his skin. Then the flames sank back.
   The bone was gone.
   The key was gone.
   The rose was gone.
   Remember, he thought. Remember the rose... and remember the shape of the key.
   Susannah was sobbing with shock and terror, but he ignored her for the moment and found the stick with which he and Roland had both drawn. And in the dirt he made this shape with a shaking hand:

18
   "WHY DID YOU DO it?" Susannah asked at last. "Why, for God's sake— and what was it?"
   Fifteen minutes had gone by. The fire had been allowed to burn low; the scattered embers had either been stamped out or had gone out on their own. Eddie sat with his arms about his wife: Susannah sat before him, with her back against his chest. Roland was off to one side, knees hugged to his chest, looking moodily into the orange-red coals. So far as Eddie could tell, neither of them had seen the bone change. They had both seen it glowing superhot, and Roland had seen it explode (or had it imploded? to Eddie that seemed closer to what he had seen), but that was all. Or so he believed; Roland, however, sometimes kept his own counsel, and when he decided to play his cards close to the vest, he played them very close indeed, Eddie knew that from bitter experience. He thought of telling them what he had seen—or thought he had seen—­and decided to play his own cards tight and close-up, at least for the time being.
   Of the jawbone itself there was no sign—not even a splinter.
   "I did it because a voice spoke in my mind and told me I must," Roland said. "It was the voice of my father; of all my fathers. When one hears such a voice, not to obey—and at once—is unthinkable. So I was taught. As to what it was, I can't say... not now, at least. I only know that the bone has spoken its final word. I have carried it all this way to hear it."
   Or to see it, Eddie thought, and again: Remember. Remember the rose. And remember the shape of the key.
   "It almost flash-fried us!" She sounded both tired and exasperated.
   Roland shook his head. "I think it was more like the sort of firework the barons used to sometimes shoot into the sky at their year-end parties. Bright and startling, but not dangerous."
   Eddie had an idea. "The doubling in your mind, Roland—is it gone? Did it leave when the bone exploded, or whatever it did?"
   He was almost convinced that it had; in the movies he'd seen, such rough shock-therapy almost always worked. But Roland shook his head.
   Susannah shifted in Eddie's arms. "You said you were beginning to understand."
   Roland nodded. "I think so, yes. If I'm right, I fear for Jake. Wher­ever he is, whenever he is, I fear for him."
   "What do you mean?" Eddie asked.
   Roland got up, went to his roll of hides, and began to spread them out. "Enough stories and excitement for one night. It's time to sleep. In the morning we'll follow the bear's backtrail and see if we can find the portal he was set to guard. I'll tell you what I know and what I believe has happened—what I believe is happening still—along the way."
   With that he wrapped himself in an old blanket and a new deerskin, rolled away from the fire, and would say no more.
   Eddie and Susannah lay down together. When they were sure the gunslinger must be asleep, they made love. Roland heard them going about it as he lay wakeful and heard their quiet after-love talk. Most of it was about him. He lay quietly, open eyes looking into the darkness long after their talk had ceased and their breathing had evened out into a single easy note.
   It was, he thought, fine to be young and in love. Even in the grave­yard which this world had become, it was fine.
   Enjoy it while you can, he thought, because there is more death ahead. We have come to a stream of blood. That it will lead us to a river of the same stuff I have no doubt. And, further along, to an ocean. In this world the graves yawn and none of the dead rest easy.
   As dawn began to come up in the east, he closed his eyes. Slept briefly. And dreamed of Jake.

19
   EDDIE ALSO DREAMED—DREAMED he was back in New York, walking along Second Avenue with a book in his hand.
   In this dream it was spring. The air was warm, the city was blooming, and homesickness sobbed within him like a muscle with a fishhook caught deep within it. Enjoy this dream, and make it go on as long as you can, he thought. Savor it... because this is as close to New York as you're going to get. You can't go home, Eddie. That part's done.
   He looked down at the book and was utterly unsurprised to find it was You Can't Go Home Again, by Thomas Wolfe. Stamped into the dark red cover were three shapes; key, rose, and door. He stopped for a moment, flipped the book open, and read the first line. The man in black fled across the desert, Wolfe had written, and the gunslinger followed.
   Eddie closed it and walked on. It was about nine in the morning, he judged, maybe nine-thirty, and traffic on Second Avenue was light. Taxis honked and wove their way from lane to lane with spring sunshine twinkling off their windshields and bright yellow paintjobs. A bum on the corner of Second and Fifty-second asked him for a handout and Eddie tossed the book with the red cover into his lap. He observed (also without surprise) that the bum was Enrico Balazar. He was sitting cross-legged in front of a magic shop. HOUSE OF CARDS, the sign in the window read, and the display inside showed a tower which had been built of Tarot cards. Standing on top was a model of King Kong. There was a tiny radar-dish growing out of the great ape's head.
   Eddie walked on, lazing his way downtown, the street-signs floating past him. He knew where he was going as soon as he saw it: a small shop on the corner of Second and Forty-sixth.
   Yeah, he thought. A feeling of great relief swept through him. This is the place. The very place. The window was full of hanging meats and cheeses. TOM AND GERRY'S ARTISTIC DELI, the sign read. PARTY PLATTERS OUR SPECIALTY!
   As he stood looking in, someone else he knew came around the corner. It was Jack Andolini, wearing a three-piece suit the color of vanilla ice cream and carrying a black cane in his left hand. Half of his face was gone, lopped off by the claws of the lobstrosities.
   Go on in, Eddie, Jack said as he passed. After all, there are other worlds than these and that fuckin train rolls through all of them.
   I can't, Eddie replied. The door is locked. He didn't know how he knew this, but he did; knew it beyond a shadow of a doubt.
   Dad-a-chum, dud-a-chee, not to worry, you've got the key, Jack said, not looking back. Eddie looked down and saw he did have a key; a primitive-looking thing with three notches like inverted Vs.
   That little s-shape at the end of the last notch is the secret, he thought. He stepped under the awning of Tom and Gerry's Artistic Deli and inserted the key in the lock. It turned easily. He opened the door and stepped through into a huge open field. He looked back over his shoulder and saw the traffic on Second Avenue hurrying by, and then the door slammed shut and fell over. There was nothing behind it. Nothing at all. He turned back to survey his new surroundings, and what he saw filled him with terror at first. The field was a deep scarlet, as if some titanic battle had been fought here and the ground had been drenched with so much blood that it could not all be absorbed.
   Then he realized that it was not blood he was looking at, but roses.
   That feeling of mingled joy and triumph surged through him again, swelling his heart until he felt it might burst within him. He raised his clenched fists high over his head in a gesture of victory... and then froze that way.
   The field stretched on for miles, climbing a gentle slope of land, and standing at the horizon was the Dark Tower . It was a pillar of dumb stone rising so high into the sky that he could barely discern its tip. Its base, surrounded by red, shouting roses, was formidable, titanic with weight and size, yet the Tower became oddly graceful as it rose and tapered. The stone of which it had been made was not black, as he had imagined it would be, but soot-colored. Narrow, slitted windows marched about it in a rising spiral; below the windows ran an almost endless flight of stone stairs, circling up and up. The Tower was a dark gray exclamation point planted in the earth and rising above the field of blood-red roses. The sky arched above it was blue, but filled with puffy white clouds like sailing ships. They flowed above and around the top of the Dark Tower in an endless stream.
   How gorgeous it is! Eddie marvelled. How gorgeous and strange! But his feeling of joy and triumph had departed; he was left with a sense of deep malaise and impending doom. He looked about him and realized with sudden horror that he was standing in the shadow of the Tower. No, not just standing in it; buried alive in it.
   He cried out but his cry was lost in the golden blast of some tremen­dous horn. It came from the top of the Tower, and seemed to fill the world. As that note of warning held and drew out over the field where he stood, blackness welled from the windows which girdled the Tower. It overspilled them and spread across the sky in flaggy streams which came together and formed a growing blotch of darkness. It did not look like a cloud; it looked like a tumor hanging over the earth. The sky was blotted out. And, he saw, it was not a cloud or a tumor but a shape, some tenebrous, cyclopean shape racing toward the place where he stood. It would do no good to run from that beast coalescing in the sky above the field of roses; it would catch him, clutch him, and bear him away. Into the Dark Tower it would bear him, and the world of light would see him no more.
   Rents formed in the darkness and terrible inhuman eyes, each easily the size of the bear Shardik which lay dead in the forest, peered down at him. They were red—red as roses, red as blood.
   Jack Andolini's dead voice hammered in his ears: A thousand worlds, Eddie—ten thousand!—and that train rolls through every one. If you can get it started. And if you do get it started, your troubles are only begin­ning, because this device is a real bastard to shut down.
   Jack's voice had become mechanical, chanting. A real bastard to shut down, Eddie boy, you better believe it, this bastard is—
   "—SHUTTING DOWN! SHUTDOWN WILL BE COMPLETE IN ONE HOUR AND SIX MINUTES!"
   In his dream, Eddie threw his hands up to shield his eyes …

20
   ... AND WOKE, SITTING BOLT upright beside the dead campfire. He was looking at the world from between his own spread fingers. And still that voice rolled on and on, the voice of some heartless SWAT Squad com­mander bellowing through a bullhorn.
   "THERE IS NO DANGER! REPEAT, THERE IS NO DANGER! FIVE SUBNUCLEAR CELLS ARE DORMANT, TWO SUBNUCLEAR CELLS ARE NOW IN SHUTDOWN PHASE, ONE SUBNUCLEAR CELL IS OPERATING AT TWO PER CENT CAPACITY. THESE CELLS ARE OF NO VALUE! REPEAT, THESE CELLS ARE OF NO VALUE! REPORT LOCATION TO NORTH CENTRAL POSITRONICS, LIMITED! CALL 1-900-44! THE CODE WORD FOR THIS DEVICE IS 'SHARDIK.' REWARD IS OFFERED! REPEAT, REWARD ZS OFFERED!"
   The voice fell silent. Eddie saw Roland standing at the edge of the clearing, holding Susannah in the crook of one arm. They were staring toward the sound of the voice, and as the recorded announcement began again, Eddie was finally able to shake off the chill remnants of his nightmare. He got up and joined Roland and Susannah, wondering how many centuries it had been since that announcement, pro­grammed to broadcast only in the event of a total system breakdown, had been recorded.
   "THIS DEVICE IS SHUTTING DOWN! SHUTDOWN WILL BE COMPLETE IN ONE HOUR AND FIVE MINUTES! THERE IS NO DANGER! REPEAT—"
   Eddie touched Susannah's arm and she looked around. "How long has this been going on?"
   "About fifteen minutes. You were dead to the w—" She broke off. "Eddie, you look terrible! Are you sick?"
   "No. I just had a bad dream."
   Roland was studying him in a way that made Eddie feel uncomfort­able. "Sometimes there's truth in dreams, Eddie. What was yours?"
   He thought for a moment, then shook his head. "I don't remember."
   "You know, I doubt that."
   Eddie shrugged and favored Roland with a thin smile. "Doubt away, then—be my guest. And how are you this morning, Roland?"
   "The same," Roland said. His faded blue eyes still conned Eddie's face.
   "Stop it," Susannah said. Her voice was brisk, but Eddie caught an undertone of nervousness. "Both of you. I got better things to do than watch you two dance around and kick each other's shins like a couple of little kids playin Two for Flinching. Specially this morning, with that dead bear trying to yell down the whole world."
   The gunslinger nodded, but kept his eyes on Eddie. "All right... but are you sure there's nothing you want to tell me, Eddie?"
   He thought about it then—really thought about telling. What he had seen in the fire, what he had seen in his dream. He decided against it. Perhaps it was only the memory of the rose in the fire, and the roses
   which had blanketed that dream-field in such fabulous profusion. Me knew he could not tell these things as his eyes had seen them and his heart had felt them; he could only cheapen them. And, at least for the time being, he wanted to ponder these things alone.
   But remember, he told himself again... except the voice in his mind didn't sound much like his own. It seemed deeper, older—the voice of a stranger. Remember the rose... and the shape of the key.
   "I will," he murmured.
   "You will what?" Roland asked.
   "Tell," Eddie said. "If anything comes up that seems, you know, really important, I'll tell you. Both of you. Right now there isn't. So if we're going somewhere, Shane, old buddy, let's saddle up."
   "Shane? Who is this Shane?"
   "I'll tell you that some other time, too. Meantime, let's go."
   They packed the gear they had brought with them from the old campsite and headed back, Susannah riding in her wheelchair again. Eddie had an idea she wouldn't be riding in it for long.

21
   ONCE, BEFORE EDDIE HAD become too interested in the subject of heroin to be interested in much else, he and a couple of friends had driven over to New Jersey to see a couple of speed-metal groups— Anthrax and Megadeth—in concert at the Meadowlands. He believed that Anthrax had been slightly louder than the repeating announcement coming from the fallen bear, but he wasn't a hundred per cent sure. Roland stopped them while they were still half a mile from the clearing in the woods and tore six small scaps of cloth from his old shirt. They stuffed them in their ears and then went on. Even the cloth didn't do much to deaden the steady blast of sound.
   "THIS DEVICE IS SHUTTING DOWN!" the bear blared as they stepped into the clearing again. It lay as it had lain, at the foot of the tree Eddie had climbed, a fallen Colossus with its legs apart and its knees in the air, like a furry female giant who had died trying to give birth. "SHUTDOWN WILL BE COMPLETE IN FORTY-SEVEN MINUTES! THERE IS NO DANGER—"
   Yes, there is, Eddie thought, picking up the scattered hides which had not been shredded in either the bear's attack or its flailing death-throes. Plenty of danger. To my fucking ears. He picked up Roland's gunbelt and silently handed it over. The chunk of wood he had been working on lay nearby; he grabbed it and tucked it into the pocket in the hack of Susannah's wheelchair as the gunslinger slowly buckled the wide leather belt around his waist and cinched the rawhide tiedown.
   "—IN SHUTDOWN PHASE, ONE SUBNUCLEAR CELL OPERATING AT ONE PER CENT CAPACITY. THESE CELLS—"
   Susannah followed Eddie, holding in her lap a carry-all bag she had sewn herself. As Eddie handed her the hides, she stuffed them into the bag. When all of them were stored away, Roland tapped Eddie on the arm and handed him a shoulderpack. What it contained mostly was deer-meat, heavily salted from a natural lick Roland had found about three miles up the little creek. The gunslinger had already donned a similar pack. His purse—restocked and once again bulging with all sorts of odds and ends—hung from his other shoulder.
   A strange, home-made harness with a seat of stitched deerskin dan­gled from a nearby branch. Roland plucked it off, studied it for a moment, and then draped it over his back and knotted the straps below his chest. Susannah made a sour face at diis, and Roland saw it. He did not try to speak—this close to the bear, he couldn't have made himself heard even by shouting at the top of his voice—but he shrugged sympatheti­cally and spread his hands: You know well need it.
   She shrugged back. / know... but that doesn't mean I like it.
   The gunslinger pointed across the clearing. A pair of leaning, splin­tered spruce trees marked the place where Shardik, who had once been known as Mir in these parts, had entered the clearing.
   Eddie leaned toward Susannah, made a circle with his thumb and forefinger, then raised his eyebrows interrogatively. Okay?
   She nodded, then pressed the heels of her palms against her ears. Okay—but let's get out of here before I go deaf.
   The three of them moved across the clearing, Eddie pushing Susan­nah, who held the bag of hides in her lap. The pocket in the back of her wheelchair was stuffed with other items; die piece of wood with the slingshot still mostly hidden inside it was only one of them.
   From behind them the bear continued to roar out its final communi­cation to the world, telling them shutdown would be complete in forty minutes. Eddie couldn't wait. The broken spruces leaned in toward each other, forming a rude gate, and Eddie thought: This is where the quest for Roland's Dark Tower really begins, at least for us.
   He thought of his dream again—the spiraling windows issuing their unfurling flags of darkness, flags which spread over the field of roses like a stain—and as they passed beneath the leaning trees, a deep shudder gripped him.

22
   THEY WERE ABLE TO use the wheelchair longer than Roland had expected. The firs of this forest were very old, and their spreading branches had created a deep carpet of needles which discouraged most undergrowth. Susannah's arms were strong—stronger than Eddie's, although Roland did not think that would be true much longer—and she wheeled herself along easily over the level, shady forest floor. When they came to one of the trees the bear had pushed over, Roland lifted her out of the chair and Eddie boosted it over the obstacle.
   From behind them, only a little deadened by distance, the bear told them, at the top of its mechanical voice, that the capacity of its last operating nuclear subcell was now negligible.
   "I hope you keep that damn harness lying empty over your shoulders all day!" Susannah shouted at the gunslinger.
   Roland agreed, but less than fifteen minutes later the land began to slope downward and this old section of the forest began to be invaded with smaller, younger trees: birch, alder, and a few stunted maples scrab­bling grimly in the soil for purchase. The carpet of needles thinned and the wheels of Susannah's chair began to catch in the low, tough bushes which grew in the alleys between the trees. Their thin branches boinged and rattled in the stainless steel spokes. Eddie threw his weight against the handles and they were able to go on for another quarter of a mile that way. Then the slope began to grow more steep, and the ground underfoot became mushy.
   "Time for a pig-back, lady," Roland said.
   "Let's try the chair a little longer, what do you say? Going might get easier—"
   Roland shook his head. "If you try that hill, you'll... what did you call it, Eddie? … do a dugout?"
   Eddie shook his head, grinning. "It's called doing a doughnut, Roland. A term from my misspent sidewalk-surfing days."
   "Whatever you call it, it means landing on your head. Come on, Susannah. Up you come."
   "I hate being a cripple," Susannah said crossly, but allowed Eddie to hoist her out of the chair and worked with him to seat herself firmly in the harness Roland wore on his back. Once she was in place, she touched the butt of Roland's pistol. "Y'all want this baby?" she asked Eddie.
   He shook his head. "You're faster. And you know it, too."
   She grunted and adjusted the belt, settling the gunbutt so it was easily accessible to her right hand. "I'm slowing you boys down and I know that... but if we ever make it to some good old two-lane blacktop, I'll leave the both of you kneelin in the blocks."
   "I don't doubt it," Roland said... and then cocked his head. The woods had fallen silent.
   "Br'er Bear has finally given up," Susannah said. "Praise God."
   "I thought it still had seven minutes to go," Eddie said.
   Roland adjusted the straps of the harness. "Its clock must have started running a little slow during the last five or six hundred years."
   "You really think it was that old, Roland?"
   Roland nodded. "At least. And now it's passed... the last of the Twelve Guardians, for all we know."
   "Yeah, ask me if I give a shit," Eddie replied, and Susannah laughed.
   "Are you comfortable?" Roland asked her.
   "No. My butt hurts already, but go on. Just try not to drop me."
   Roland nodded and started down the slope. Eddie followed, pushing the empty chair and trying not to bang it too badly on the rocks which had begun to jut out of the ground like big white knuckles. Now that the bear had finally shut up, he thought the forest seemed much too quiet—it almost made him feel like a character in one of those hokey old jungle movies about cannibals and giant apes.

23
   THE BEAR'S BACKTRAIL WAS easy to find but tougher to follow. Five miles or so out of the clearing, it led them through a low, boggy area that was not quite a swamp. By the time the ground began to rise and firm up a little again, Roland's faded jeans were soaked to the knees and he was breathing in long, steady rasps. Still, he was in slightly better shape than Eddie, who had found wrestling Susannah's wheelchair through the muck and standing water hard going.
   "Time to rest and eat something," Roland said.
   "Oh boy, gimme eats," Eddie puffed. He helped Susannah out of the harness and set her down on the bole of a fallen tree with claw-marks slashed into its trunk in long diagonal grooves. Then he half-sat, half-collapsed next to her.
   "You got my wheelchair pretty muddy, white boy," Susannah said. "It's all goan be in my repote."
   He cocked an eyebrow at her. "Next carwash we come to, I'll push you through myself. I'll even Turtle-wax the goddamn thing. Okay?"
   She smiled. "You got a date, handsome."
   Eddie had one of Roland's waterskins cinched around his waist. He tapped it. "Okay?"
   "Yes," Roland said. "Not too much now; a little more for all of us before we set out again. That way no one takes a cramp."
   "Roland, Eagle Scout of Oz," Eddie said, and giggled as he unslung the waterskin.
   "What is this Oz?"
   "A make-believe place in a movie," Susannah said.
   "Oz was a lot more than that. My brother Henry used to read me the stories once in a while. I'll tell you one some night, Roland."
   "That would be fine," the gunslinger replied seriously. "I am hungry to know more of your world."
   "Oz isn't our world, though. Like Susannah said, it's a make-believe place—"
   Roland handed them chunks of meat which had been wrapped in broad leaves of some sort. "The quickest way to learn about a new place is to know what it dreams of. I would hear of this Oz."
   "Okay, that's a date, too. Suze can tell you the one about Dorothy and Toto and the Tin Woodman, and I'll tell you all the rest." He bit into his piece of meat and rolled his eyes approvingly. It had taken the flavor of the leaves in which it had been rolled, and was delicious. Eddie wolfed his ration, stomach gurgling busily all the while. Now that he was getting his breath back, he felt good—great, in fact. His body was growing a solid sheath of muscle, and every part of it felt at peace with every other part.
   Don't worry, he thought. Everything will be arguing again by tonight. I think he's gonna push on until I'm ready to drop in my tracks.
   Susannah ate more delicately, chasing every second or third bite with a little sip of water, turning the meat in her hands, eating from the outside in. "Finish what you started last night," she invited Roland. "You said you thought you understood these conflicting memories of yours."
   Roland nodded. "Yes. I think both memories are true. One is a little truer than the other, but that does not negate the truth of that other."
   "Makes no sense to me," Eddie said. "Either this boy Jake was at the way station or he wasn't, Roland."
   "It is a paradox—something that is and isn't at the same time. Until it's resolved, I will continue divided. That's bad enough, but the basic split is widening. I can feel that happening. It is … unspeakable."
   "What do you think caused it?" Susannah asked.
   "I told you the boy was pushed in front of a car. Pushed. Now, who do we know who liked to push people in front of things?"
   Understanding dawned in her face. "Jack Mort. Do you mean he was the one who pushed this boy into the street?"
   "Yes."
   "But you said the man in black did it," Eddie objected. "Your buddy Walter. You said that the boy saw him—a man who looked like a priest. Didn't the kid even hear him say he was? 'Let me through, I'm a priest,' something like that?"
   "Oh, Walter was there. They were both there, and they both pushed Jake."
   "Somebody bring the Thorazine and the strait-jacket," Eddie called. "Roland just went over the high side."
   Roland paid no attention to this; he was coming to understand that Eddie's jokes and clowning were his way of dealing with stress. Cuthbert had not been much different … as Susannah was, in her way, not so different from Alain. "What exasperates me about all of this," he said, "is that I should have known. I was in Jack Mort, after all, and I had access to his thoughts, just as I had access to yours, Eddie, and yours, Susannah. I saw Jake while I was in Mort. I saw him through Mort's eyes, and I knew Mort planned to push him. Not only that; I stopped him from doing it. All I had to do was enter his body. Not that he knew that was what it was; he was concentrating so hard on what he planned to do that he actually thought I was a fly landing on his neck."
   Eddie began to understand. "If Jake wasn't pushed into the street, he never died. And if he never died, he never came into this world. And if he never came into this world, you never met him at the way station. Right?"
   "Right. The thought even crossed my mind that if Jack Mort meant to kill the boy, I would have to stand aside and let him do it. To avoid creating the very paradox that is tearing me apart. But I couldn't do that. I … I …"
   "You couldn't kill this kid twice, could you?" Eddie asked softly. "Every time I just about make up my mind that you're as mechanical as that bear, you surprise me with something that actually seems human. Goddam."
   "Quit it, Eddie," Susannah said.
   Eddie took a look at the gunslinger's slightly lowered face and gri­maced. "Sorry, Roland. My mother used to say that my mouth had a bad habit of running away with my mind."
   "It's all right. I had a friend who was the same way."
   "Cuthbert?"
   Roland nodded. He looked at his diminished right hand for a long moment, then clenched it into a painful fist, sighed, and looked up at them again. Somewhere, deeper in the forest, a lark sang sweetly.
   "Here is what I believe. If I had not entered Jack Mort when I did, he still wouldn't have pushed Jake that day. Not then. Why not? Ka-tet. Simply that. For the first time since the last of the friends with whom I set forth on this quest died, I have found myself once again at the center of ka-tet."
   "Quartet?" Eddie asked doubtfully.
   The gunslinger shook his head. "Ka—the word you think of as 'des­tiny,' Eddie, although the actual meaning is much more complex and hard to define, as is almost always the case with words of the High Speech. And tet, which means a group of people with the same interests and goals. We three are a tet, for instance. Ka-tet, is the place where many lives are joined by fate."
   "Like in The Bridge of San Luis Rey," Susannah murmured.
   "What's that?" Roland asked.
   "A story about some people who die together when the bridge they’re crossing collapses. It's famous in our world."
   Roland nodded his understanding. "In this case, ka-tet bound Jake, Walter, Jack Mort, and me. There was no trap, as I first suspected when I realized who Jack Mort meant to be his next victim, because ka-tet cannot be changed or bent to the will of any one person. But ka-tet can be seen, known, and understood. Walter saw, and Walter knew." The gunslinger struck his thigh with his fist and exclaimed bitterly, "How he must have been laughing inside when I finally caught up to him!"
   "Let's go back to what would have happened if you hadn't messed up Jack Mort's plans on the day he was following Jake," Eddie said. "You're saying that if you hadn't stopped Mort, someone or something else would have. Is that right?"
   "Yes—because it wasn't the right day for Jake to die. It was close to the right day, but not the right day. I felt that, too. Perhaps, just before he did it, Mort would have seen someone watching him. Or a perfect stranger would have intervened. Or—"
   "Or a cop," Susannah said. "He might have seen a cop in the wrong place and at the wrong time."
   "Yes. The exact reason—the agent of ka-tet—doesn't matter. I know from firsthand experience that Mort was as wily as an old fox. If he sensed any slightest thing wrong, he would have called it off and waited for another day.
   "I know something else, as well. He hunted in disguise. On the day he dropped the brick on Detta Holmes's head, he was wearing a knitted cap and an old sweater several sizes too big for him. He wanted to look like a winebibber, because he pushed the brick from a building where a large number of sots kept their dens. You see?"
   They nodded.
   "On the day, years later, when he pushed you in front of the train, Susannah, he was dressed as a construction worker. He was wearing a big yellow helmet he thought of as a 'hardhat' and a fake moustache. On the day when he actually would have pushed Jake into traffic, causing his death, he would have been dressed as a priest."
   "Jesus," Susannah nearly whispered. "The man who pushed him in New York was Jack Mort, and the man he saw at the way station was this fella you were chasing—Walter."
   "Yes."
   "And the little boy thought they were the same man because they were both wearing the same kind of black robe?"
   Roland nodded. "There was even a physical resemblance between Walter land Jack Mort. Not as if they were brothers, I don't mean that, but both were tall men with dark hair and very pale complexions. And given the fact that Jake was dying when he got his only good look at Mort and was in a strange place and scared almost witless when he got his only good look at Walter, I think his mistake was both understandable and forgivable. If there's a horse's ass in this picture, it's me, for not realizing the truth sooner."
   "Would Mort have known he was being used?" Eddie asked. Think­ing back to his own experiences and wild thoughts when Roland had invaded his mind, he didn't see how Mort could not know... but Roland was shaking his head.
   "Walter would have been extremely subtle. Mort would have thought the priest disguise his own idea … or so I believe. He would not have recognized the voice of an intruder—of Walter—whispering deep within his mind, telling him what to do."
   "Jack Mort," Eddie marvelled. "It was Jack Mort all the time."
   "Yes... with assistance from Walter. And so I ended up saving Jake's life after all. When I made Mort jump from the subway platform in front of the train, I changed everything."
   Susannah asked, "If this Walter was able to enter our world— through his own private door, maybe—whenever he wanted, couldn't he have used someone else to push your little boy? If he could sug­gest to Mort that he dress up like a priest, then he could make somebody else do it … What, Eddie? Why are you shaking your head?"
   "Because I don't think Walter would want that to happen. What Walter wanted is what is happening … for Roland to be losing his mind, bit by bit. Isn't that right?"
   The gunslinger nodded.
   "Walter couldn't have done it that way even if he had wanted to," Eddie added, "because he was dead long before Roland found the doors on the beach. When Roland went through that last one and into Jack Mort's head, ole Walt's messin-around days were done."
   Susannah thought about this, then nodded her head. "I see … I think. This time-travel business is some confusing shit, isn't it?"
   Roland began to pick up his goods and strap them back into place. "Time we were moving on."
   Eddie stood up and shrugged into his pack. "You can take comfort from one thing, at least," he told Roland. "You—or this ka-tet business— were able to save the kid after all."
   Roland had been knotting the harness-strings at his chest. Now he looked up, and the blazing clarity of his eyes made Eddie flinch backward. "Have I?" he asked harshly. "Have I really? I'm going insane an inch at a time, trying to live with two versions of the same reality. I had hoped at first that one or the other would begin to fade away, but that's not happening. In fact, the exact opposite is happening: those two realities are growing louder and louder in my head, clamoring at each other like opposing factions which must soon go to war. So tell me this, Eddie: How do you suppose Jake feels? How do you suppose it feels to know you are dead in one world and alive in another?"
   The lark sang again, but none of them noticed. Eddie stared into the faded blue eyes blazing out of Roland's pale face and could not think of a thing to say.

 24
   THEY CAMPED ABOUT FIFTEEN miles due east of the dead bear that night, slept the sleep of the completely exhausted (even Roland slept the night through, although his dreams were nightmare carnival-rides), and were up the next morning at sunrise. Eddie kindled a small fire without speaking, and glanced at Susannah as a pistol-shot rang out in the woods nearby.
   "Breakfast," she said.
   Roland returned three minutes later with a hide slung over one shoulder. On it lay the freshly gutted corpse of a rabbit. Susannah cooked it. They ate and moved on.
   Eddie kept trying to imagine what it would be like to have a memory of your own death. On that one he kept coming up short.

25
   SHORTLY AFTER NOON THEY entered an area where most of the trees had been pulled over and the bushes mashed flat—it looked as though a cyclone had touched down here many years before, creating a wide and dismal alley of destruction.
   "We're close to the place we want to find," Roland said. "He pulled down everything to clear the sightlines. Our friend the bear wanted no surprises. He was big, but not complacent."
   "Has it left us any surprises?" Eddie asked.
   "He may have done so." Roland smiled a little and touched Eddie on the shoulder. "But there's this—they'll be old surprises."
   Their progress through this zone of destruction was slow. Most of the fallen trees were very old—many had almost rejoined the soil from which they had sprung—but they still made enough of a tangle to create a formidable obstacle course. It would have been difficult enough if all three of them had been able-bodied; with Susannah strapped to the gunslinger's back in her harness, it became an exercise in aggravation and endurance.
   The flattened trees and jumbles of underbrush served to obscure the bear's backtrail, and that also worked to slow their speed. Until mid­day they had followed claw-marks as clear as trail-blazes on the trees. Here, however, near its starting point, the bear's rage had not been full-blown, and these handy signs of its passage disappeared. Roland moved slowly, looking for droppings in the bushes and tufts of hair on the tree-trunks over which the bear had climbed. It took all afternoon to cross three miles of this decayed jumble.
   Eddie had just decided they were going to lose the light and would have to camp in these creepy surroundings when they came to a thin skirt of alders. Beyond it, he could hear a stream babbling noisily over a bed of stones. Behind them, the setting sun was radiating spokes of sullen red light across the jumbled ground they had just crossed, turning the fallen trees into crisscrossing black shapes like Chinese ideograms.
   Roland called a halt and eased Susannah down. He stretched his back, twisting it this way and that with his hands on his hips.
   "That it for the night?" Eddie asked.
   Roland shook his head. "Give Eddie your gun, Susannah."
   She did as he said, looking at him questioningly.
   "Come on, Eddie. The place we want is on the other side of those trees. We'll have a look. We might do a little work, as well."
   "What makes you think—"
   "Open your ears."
   Eddie listened and realized he heard machinery. He further realized that he had been hearing it for some time now. "I don't want to leave Susannah."
   "We're not going far and she has a good loud voice. Besides, if there's danger, it's ahead—we'll be between it and her."
   Eddie looked down at Susannah.
   "Go on—just make sure you're back soon." She looked back the way they had come with thoughtful eyes. "I don't know if there's ha ants here or not, but it feels like there are."
   "We'll be back before dark," Roland promised. He started toward the screen of alders, and after a moment, Eddie followed him.