Текст книги "The Dark Tower"

Автор книги: Stephen Edwin King

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Текущая страница: 33 (всего у книги 52 страниц)

“Which brings us to our final gifts,” Marian said. “Our true gifts. First…” She handed him the box.

It opened on a hinge. Roland placed his left hand splayed over the top, meaning to swing it back, then paused and studied his interlocutors. They were looking at him with hope and suspenseful interest, an expression that made him uneasy. A mad (but surprisingly persuasive) idea came to him: that these were in truth agents of the Crimson King, and when he opened the box, the last thing he’d see would be a primed sneetch, counting down the last few clicks to red zero. And the last sound he’d hear before the world blew up around him would be their mad laughter and a cry of Hile the Red King! It wasn’t impossible, either, but a point came where one had to trust, because the alternative was madness.

If ka will say so, let it be so, he thought, and opened the box.

Twelve

Within, resting on dark blue velvet (which they might or might not have known was the color of the Royal Court of Gilead), was a watch within a coiled chain. Engraved upon its gold cover were three objects: a key, a rose, and—between and slightly above them—a tower with tiny windows marching around its circumference in an ascending spiral.

Roland was amazed to find his eyes once more filling with tears. When he looked at the others again—two young women and one old man, the brains and guts of the Tet Corporation—he at first saw six instead of three. He blinked the phantom doubles away.

“Open the cover and look inside,” Moses Carver said. “And there’s no need to hide your tears in this company, you son of Steven, for we’re not the machines the others would replace us with, if they had their way.”

Roland saw that the old man spoke true, for tears were slipping down the weathered darkness of his cheeks. Nancy Deepneau was also weeping freely. And although Marian Carver no doubt prided herself on being made of sterner stuff, her eyes held a suspicious gleam.

He depressed the stem protruding from the top of the case, and the lid sprang up. Inside, finely scrolled hands told the hour and the minute, and with perfect accuracy, he had no doubt. Below, in its own small circle, a smaller hand raced away the seconds. Carved on the inside of the lid was this:

To the Hand of ROLAND DESCHAIN

From Those of

MOSES ISAAC CARVER

MARIAN ODETTA CARVER

NANCY REBECCA DEEPNEAU

With Our Gratitude

White Over Red, Thus GOD Wills Ever

“Thankee-sai,” Roland said in a hoarse and trembling voice. “I thank you, and so would my friends, were they here to speak.”

“In our hearts they do speak, Roland,” Marian said. “And in your face we see them very well.”

Moses Carver was smiling. “In our world, Roland, giving a man a gold watch has a special significance.”

“What would that be?” Roland asked. He held the watch—easily the finest timepiece he’d ever had in his life—up to his ear and listened to the precise and delicate ticking of its machinery.

“That his work is done and it’s time for him to go fishing or play with his grandchildren,” Nancy Deepneau said. “But we gave it to you for a different reason. May it count the hours to your goal and tell you when you near it.”

“How can it do that?”

“We have one exceptional good-mind fellow in New Mexico,” Marian said. “His name is Fred Towne. He sees a great deal and is rarely if ever mistaken. This watch is a Patek Philippe, Roland. It cost nineteen thousand dollars, and the makers guarantee a full refund of the price if it’s ever fast or slow. It needs no winding, for it runs on a battery—not made by North Central Positronics or any subsidiary thereof, I can assure you—that will last a hundred years. According to Fred, when you near the Dark Tower, the watch may nevertheless stop.”

“Or begin to run backward,” Nancy said. “Watch for it.”

Moses Carver said, “I believe you will, won’t you?”

“Aye,” Roland agreed. He put the watch carefully in one pocket (after another long look at the carvings on the golden cover) and the box in another. “I will watch this watch very well.”

“You must watch for something else, too,” Marian said. “Mordred.”

Roland waited.

“We have reason to believe that he’s murdered the one you called Walter.” She paused. “And I see that does not surprise you. May I ask why?”

“Walter’s finally left my dreams, just as the ache has left my hip and my head,” Roland said. “The last time he visited them was in Calla Bryn Sturgis, the night of the Beamquake.” He would not tell them how terrible those dreams had been, dreams in which he wandered, lost and alone, down a dank castle corridor with cobwebs brushing his face; the scuttering sound of something approaching from the darkness behind him (or perhaps above him), and, just before waking up, the gleam of red eyes and a whispered, inhuman voice: “Father.”

They were looking at him grimly. At last Marian said: “Beware him, Roland. Fred Towne, the fellow I mentioned, says ‘Mordred be a-hungry.’ He says that’s a literal hunger. Fred’s a brave man, but he’s afraid of your… your enemy.”

My son, why don’t you say it? Roland thought, but believed he knew. She withheld out of care for his feelings.

Moses Carver stood and set his cane beside his daughter’s desk. “I have one more thing for you,” he said, “on’y it was yours all along—yours to carry and lay down when you get to where you’re bound.”

Roland was honestly perplexed, and more perplexed still when the old man began to slowly unbutton his shirt down the front. Marian made as if to help him and he motioned her away brusquely. Beneath his dress-shirt was an old man’s strap-style undershirt, what the gunslinger thought of as a slinkum. Beneath it was a shape that Roland recognized at once, and his heart seemed to stop in his chest. For a moment he was cast back to the cabin on the lake—Beckhardt’s cabin, Eddie by his side—and heard his own words: Put Auntie’s cross around your neck, and when you meet with sai Carver, show it to him. It may go a long way toward convincing him you’re on the straight. But first…

The cross was now on a chain of fine gold links. Moses Carver pulled it free of his slinkum by this, looked at it for a moment, looked up at Roland with a little smile on his lips, then down at the cross again. He blew upon it. Faint and faint, raising the hair on the gunslinger’s arms, came Susannah’s voice:

“We buried Pimsey under the apple tree…”

Then it was gone. For a moment there was nothing, and Carver, frowning now, drew in breath to blow again. There was no need. Before he could, John Cullum’s Yankee drawl arose, not from the cross itself, but seemingly from the air just above it.

“We done our best, partner”—paaa’t-nuh—“and I hope ‘twas good enough. Now, I always knew this was on loan to me, and here it is, back where it belongs. You know where it finishes up, I…” Here the words, which had been fading ever since here it is, became inaudible even to Roland’s keen ears. Yet he had heard enough. He took Aunt Talitha’s cross, which he had promised to lay at the foot of the Dark Tower, and donned it once more. It had come back to him, and why would it not have done? Was ka not a wheel?

“I thank you, sai Carver,” he said. “For myself, for my ka-tet that was, and on behalf of the woman who gave it to me.”

“Don’t thank me,” Moses Carver said. “Thank Johnny Cullum. He give it to me on his deathbed. That man had some hard bark on him.”

“I—” Roland began, and for a moment could say no more. His heart was too full. “I thank you all,” he said at last. He bowed his head to them with the palm of his right fist against his brow and his eyes closed.

When he opened them again, Moses Carver was holding out his thin old arms. “Now it’s time for us to go our way and you to go yours,” he said. “Put your arms around me, Roland, and kiss my cheek in farewell if you would, and think of my girl as you do, for I’d say goodbye to her if I may.”

Roland did as he was bid, and in another world, as she dozed aboard a train bound for Fedic, Susannah put a hand to her cheek, for it seemed to her that Daddy Mose had come to her, and put an arm around her, and bid her goodbye, good luck, good journey.

Thirteen

When Roland stepped out of the ele-vaydor in the lobby, he wasn’t surprised to see a woman in a gray-green pullover and slacks the color of moss standing in front of the garden with a few other quietly respectful folken. An animal which was not quite a dog sat by her left shoe. Roland crossed to her and touched her elbow. Irene Tassenbaum turned to him, her eyes wide with wonder.

“Do you hear it?” she asked. “It’s like the singing we heard in Lovell, only a hundred times sweeter.”

“I hear it,” he said. Then he bent and picked up Oy. He looked into the bumbler’s bright gold-ringed eyes as the voices sang. “Friend of Jake,” he said, “what message did he give?”

Oy tried, but the best he could manage was something that sounded like Dandy-o, a word Roland vaguely remembered from an old drinking song, where it rimed with Adelina says she’s randy-o.

Roland put his forehead down against Oy’s forehead and closed his eyes. He smelled the bumbler’s warm breath. And more: a scent deep in his fur that was the hay into which Jake and Benny Slightman had taken turns jumping not so long before. In his mind, mingled with the sweet singing of those voices, he heard the voice of Jake Chambers for the last time:

Tell him Eddie says, “Watch for Dandelo.” Don’t forget!

And Oy had not.

Fourteen

Outside, as they descended the steps of 2 Hammarskjöld Plaza, a deferential voice said, “Sir? Madam?”

It was a man in a black suit and a soft black cap. He stood by the longest, blackest car Roland had ever seen. Looking at it made the gunslinger uneasy.

“Who’s sent us a funeral bucka?” he asked.

Irene Tassenbaum smiled. The rose had refreshed her—excited and exhilarated her, as well—but she was still tired. And concerned to get in touch with David, who would likely be out of his mind with worry by this time.

“It’s not a hearse,” she said. “It’s a limousine. A car for special people… or people who think they’re special.” Then, to the driver: “While we’re riding, can you have someone in your office check some airline info for me?”

“Of course, madam. May I ask your carrier of choice and your destination?”

“My destination’s Portland, Maine. My carrier of choice is Rubberband Airlines, if they’re going there this afternoon.”

The limousine’s windows were smoked glass, the interior dim and ringed with colored lights. Oy jumped up on one of the seats and watched with interest as the city rolled past. Roland was mildly amazed to see that there was a completely stocked liquor-bar on one side of the long passenger compartment. He thought of having a beer and decided that even such a mild drink would be enough to dim his own lights. Irene had no such worries. She poured herself what looked like whiskey from a small bottle and then held the glass toward him.

“May your road wind ever upward and the wind be ever at your back, me foine bucko,” she said.

Roland nodded. “A good toast. Thankee-sai.”

“These have been the most amazing three days of my life. I want to thankee-sai you. For choosing me.” Also for laying me, she thought but did not add. She and Dave still enjoyed the occasional snuggle, but not like that of the previous night. It had never been like that. And if Roland hadn’t been distracted? Very likely she would have blown her silly self up, like a Black Cat firecracker.

Roland nodded and watched the streets of the city—a version of Lud, but still young and vital—go by. “What about your car?” he asked.

“If we want it before we come back to New York, we’ll have someone drive it up to Maine. Probably David’s Beemer will do us. It’s one of the advantages of being wealthy—why are you looking at me that way?”

“You have a cartomobile called a Beamer?”

“It’s slang,” she said. “It’s actually BMW. Stands for Bavarian Motor Works.”

“Ah.” Roland tried to look as if he understood.

“Roland, may I ask you a question?”

He twirled his hand for her to go ahead.

“When we saved the writer, did we also save the world? We did, somehow, didn’t we?”

“Yes,” he said.

“How does it happen that a writer who’s not even very good—and I can say that, I’ve read four or five of his books—gets to be in charge of the world’s destiny? Or of the entire universe’s?”

“If he’s not very good, why didn’t you stop at one?”

Mrs. Tassenbaum smiled. “Touché. He is readable, I’ll give him that—tells a good story, but has a tin ear for language. I answered your question, now answer mine. God knows there are writers who feel that the whole world hangs on what they say. Norman Mailer comes to mind, also Shirley Hazzard and John Updike. But apparently in this case the world really does. How did it happen?”

Roland shrugged. “He hears the right voices and sings the right songs. Which is to say, ka.”

It was Irene Tassenbaum’s turn to look as though she understood.

Fifteen

The limousine drew up in front of a building with a green awning out front. Another man in another well-cut suit was standing by the door. The steps leading up from the sidewalk were blocked with yellow tape. There were words printed on it which Roland couldn’t read.

“It says CRIME SCENE, DO NOT ENTER,” Mrs. Tassenbaum told him. “But it looks like it’s been there awhile. I think they usually take the tape down once they’re finished with their cameras and little brushes and things. You must have powerful friends.”

Roland was sure the tape had indeed been there awhile; three weeks, give or take. That was when Jake and Pere Callahan had entered the Dixie Pig, positive they were going to their deaths but pushing ahead anyway. He saw there was a little puddle of liquor left in Irene’s glass and swallowed it, grimacing at the hot taste of the alcohol but relishing the burn on the way down.

“Better?” she asked.

“Aye, thanks.” He reset the bag with the Orizas in it more firmly on his shoulder and got out with Oy at his heel. Irene paused to talk to the driver, who seemed to have been successful in making her travel arrangements. Roland ducked beneath the tape and then just stood where he was for a moment, listening to the honk and pound of the city on this bright June day, relishing its adolescent vitality. He would never see another city, of that much he was almost positive. And perhaps that was just as well. He had an idea that after New York, all others would be a step down.

The guard—obviously someone who worked for the Tet Corporation and not this city’s constabulary—joined him on the walk. “If you want to go in there, sir, there’s something you should show me.”

Roland once more took his gunbelt from the pouch, once more unwrapped it from the holster, once more drew his father’s gun. This time he did not offer to hand it over, nor did that gentleman ask to take it. He only examined the scrollwork, particularly that at the end of the barrel. Then he nodded respectfully and stepped back. “I’ll unlock the door. Once you go inside, you’re on your own. You understand that, don’t you?”

Roland, who had been on his own for most of his life, nodded.

Irene took his elbow before he could move forward, turned him, and put her arms around his neck. She had also bought herself a pair of low-heeled shoes, and only needed to tilt her head back slightly in order to look into his eyes.

“You take care of yourself, cowboy.” She kissed him briefly on the mouth—the kiss of a friend—and then knelt to stroke Oy. “And take care of the little cowboy, too.”

“I’ll do my best,” Roland said. “Will you remember your promise about Jake’s grave?”

“A rose,” she said. “I’ll remember.”

“Thankee.” He looked at her a moment longer, consulted the workings of his own inner instincts—hunch-think—and came to a decision. From the bag containing the Orizas, he took the envelope containing the bulky book… the one Susannah would never read to him on the trail, after all. He put it in Irene’s hands.

She looked at it, frowning. “What’s in here? Feels like a book.”

“Yar. One by Stephen King. Insomnia, it’s called. Has thee read that one?”

She smiled a bit. “No, thee hasn’t. Has thee?”

“No. And won’t. It feels tricksy to me.”

“I don’t understand you.”

“It feels… thin.” He was thinking of Eyebolt Canyon, in Mejis.

She hefted it. “Feels pretty goddamned thick to me. A Stephen King book for sure. He sells by the inch, America buys by the pound.”

Roland only shook his head.

Irene said, “Never mind. I’m being smart because Ree doesn’t do goodbyes well, never has. You want me to keep this, right?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Maybe when Big Steve gets out of the hospital, I’ll get him to sign it. The way I look at it, he owes me an autograph.”

“Or a kiss,” Roland said, and took another for himself. With the book out of his hands, he felt somehow lighter. Freer. Safer. He drew her fully into his arms and hugged her. Irene Tassenbaum returned his strength with her own.

Then Roland let her go, touched his forehead lightly with his fist, and turned to the door of the Dixie Pig. He opened it and slipped inside with no look back. That, he had found, was ever the easiest way.

Sixteen

The chrome post which had been outside on the night Jake and Pere Callahan had come here had been put in the lobby for safekeeping. Roland stumbled against it, but his reflexes were as quick as ever and he grabbed it before it could fall over. He read the sign on top slowly, sounding the words out and getting the sense of only one: CLOSED. The orange electric flambeaux which had lit the dining room were off but the battery-powered emergency lights were on, filling the area beyond the lobby and the bar with a flat glare. To the left was an arch and another dining room beyond it. There were no emergency lights there; that part of the Dixie Pig was as dark as a cave. The light from the main dining room seemed to creep in about four feet—just far enough to illuminate the end of a long table—and then fall dead. The tapestry of which Jake had spoken was gone. It might be in the evidence room of the nearest police station, or it might already have joined some collector’s trove of oddities. Roland could smell the faint aroma of charred meat, vague and unpleasant.

In the main dining room, two or three tables were overturned. Roland saw stains on the red rug, several dark ones that were almost certainly blood and a yellowish curd that was… something else.

H’row it aside! Nasty bauble of the ‘heep-God, h’row it aside if you dare!

And the Pere’s voice, echoing dimly in Roland’s ears, unafraid: I needn’t stake my faith on the challenge of such a thing as you, sai.

The Pere. Another of those he had left behind.

Roland thought briefly of the scrimshaw turtle that had been hidden in the lining of the bag they had found in the vacant lot, but didn’t waste time looking for it. If it had been here, he thought he would have heard its voice, calling to him in the silence. No, whoever had appropriated the tapestry of the vampire-knights at dinner had very likely taken the sköldpadda as well, not knowing what it was, only knowing it was something strange and wonderful and otherworldly. Too bad. It might have come in handy.

The gunslinger moved on, weaving his way among the tables with Oy trotting at his heel.

Seventeen

He paused in the kitchen long enough to wonder what the constabulary of New York had made of it. He was willing to bet they had never seen another like it, not in this city of clean machinery and bright electric lights. This was a kitchen in which Hax, the cook he remembered best from his youth (and beneath whose dead feet he and his best friend had once scattered bread for the birds), would have felt at home. The cookfires had been out for weeks, but the smell of the meat that had been roasted here—some of the variety known as long pork—was strong and nasty. There were more signs of trouble here, as well (a scum-caked pot lying on the green tiles of the floor, blood which had been burned black on one of the stovetops), and Roland could imagine Jake fighting his way through the kitchen. But not in panic; no, not he. Instead he had paused to demand directions of the cook’s boy.

What’s your name, cully?

Jochabim, that be I, son of Hossa.

Jake had told them this part of his story, but it was not memory that spoke to Roland now. It was the voices of the dead. He had heard such voices before, and knew them for what they were.

Eighteen

Oy took the lead as he had done the last time he had been here. He could still smell Ake’s scent, faint and sorrowful. Ake had gone on ahead now, but not so very far; he was good, Ake was good, Ake would wait, and when the time came—when the job Ake had given him was done—Oy would catch up and go with him as before. His nose was strong, and he would find fresher scent than this when the time came to search for it. Ake had saved him from death, which did not matter. Ake had saved him from loneliness and shame after Oy had been cast out by the tet of his kind, and that did.

In the meantime, there was this job to finish. He led the man Olan into the pantry. The secret door to the stairs had been closed, but the man Olan felt patiently along the shelves of cans and boxes until he found the way to open it. All was as it had been, the long, descending stair dimly lit by overhead bulbs, the scent damp and overlaid with mold. He could smell the rats which scuttered in the walls; rats and other things, too, some of them bugs of the sort he had killed the last time he and Ake had come here. That had been good killing, and he would gladly have more, if more were offered. Oy wished the bugs would show themselves again and challenge him, but of course they didn’t. They were afraid, and they were right to be afraid, for ever had his kind stood enemy to theirs.

He started down the stairs with the man Olan following behind.

Nineteen

They passed the deserted kiosk with its age-yellowed signs (NEW YORK SOUVENIRS, LAST CHANCE, and VISIT SEPTEMBER 11, 2001), and fifteen minutes later—Roland checked his new watch to be sure of the time—they came to a place where there was a good deal of broken glass on the dusty corridor floor. Roland picked Oy up so he wouldn’t cut the pads of his feet. On both walls he saw the shattered remains of what had been glass-covered hatches of some kind. When he looked in, he saw complicated machinery. They had almost caught Jake here, snared him in some kind of mind-trap, but once again Jake had been clever enough and brave enough to get through. He survived everything but a man too stupid and too careless to do the simple job of driving his bucka on an empty road, Roland thought bitterly. And the man who brought him there—that man, too. Then Oy barked at him and Roland realized that in his anger at Bryan Smith (and at himself), he was squeezing the poor little fellow too tightly.

“Cry pardon, Oy,” he said, and put him down.

Oy trotted on without making any reply, and not long after Roland came to the scattered bodies of the boogers who had harried his boy from the Dixie Pig. Here also, printed in the dust that coated the floor of this ancient corridor, were the tracks he and Eddie had made when they arrived. Again he heard a ghost-voice, this time that of the man who had been the harriers’ leader.

I know your name by your face, and your face by your mouth. ‘Tis the same as the mouth of your mother, who did suck John Farson with such glee.

Roland turned the body over with the toe of his boot (a hume named Flaherty, whose da’ had put a fear of dragons in his head, had the gunslinger known or cared… which he did not) and looked down into the dead face, which was already growing a crop of mold. Next to him was the stoat-head taheen whose final proclamation had been Be damned to you, then, chary-ka. And beyond the heaped bodies of these two and their mates was the door that would take him out of the Keystone World for good.

Assuming that it still worked.

Oy trotted to it and sat down before it, looking back at Roland. The bumbler was panting, but his old, amiably fiendish grin was gone. Roland reached the door and placed his hands against the close-grained ghostwood. Deep within he felt a low and troubled vibration. This door was still working but might not be for much longer.

He closed his eyes and thought of his mother bending over him as he lay in his little bed (how soon before he had been promoted from the cradle he didn’t know, but surely not long), her face a patchwork of colors from the nursery windows, Gabrielle Deschain who would later die at those hands which she caressed so lightly and lovingly with her own; daughter of Candor the Tall, wife of Steven, mother of Roland, singing him to sleep and dreams of those lands only children know.

Baby-bunting, baby-dear,

Baby, bring your berries here.

Chussit, chissit, chassit!

Bring enough to fill your basket!

So far I’ve traveled, he thought with his hands splayed on the ghostwood door. So far I’ve traveled and so many I’ve hurt along the way, hurt or killed, and what I may have saved was saved by accident and can never save my soul, do I have one. Yet there’s this much: I’ve come to the head of the last trail, and I need not travel it alone, if only Susannah will go with me. Mayhap there’s still enough to fill my basket.

“Chassit,” Roland said, and opened his eyes as the door opened. He saw Oy leap nimbly through. He heard the shrill scream of the void between the worlds, and then stepped through himself, sweeping the door shut behind him and still without a backward look.