Part 15 (2/2)

He pulled himself up and went to the handle. He managed to push it down, but it took all his weight hung over the handle to turn the trick. The handcar moved a foot, with silent timelessness, on the rails.

”Good!” said a faint mechanical voice. It made them both jump. ”Good, push ag...” The mechanical voice died out.

”It works a little hard,” the boy said, as if apologizing for the thing.

The gunslinger pulled himself up beside Jake and shoved the handle down. The handcar moved forward obediently, then stopped. ”Good, push again!” the mechanical voice encouraged.

He had felt a driveshaft turn beneath his feet. The operation pleased him, and so did the mechanical voice (although he intended to listen to that that no longer than necessary). Other than the pump at the way station, this was the first machine he'd seen in years that still worked well. But the thing disquieted him, too. It would take them to their destination that much the quicker. He had no doubt whatever that the man in black had meant for them to find this, too. no longer than necessary). Other than the pump at the way station, this was the first machine he'd seen in years that still worked well. But the thing disquieted him, too. It would take them to their destination that much the quicker. He had no doubt whatever that the man in black had meant for them to find this, too.

”Neat, huh?” the boy said, and his voice was full of loathing. The silence was deep. Roland could hear his organs at work inside his body, and the drip of water, and nothing else.

”You stand on one side, I stand on the other,” Jake said. ”You'll have to push by yourself until it gets rolling good. Then I can help. First you push, then I push. We'll go right along. Get it?”

”I get it,” the gunslinger said. His hands were in helpless, despairing fists.

”But you'll have to push by yourself until it gets rolling good,” the boy repeated, looking at him.

The gunslinger had a sudden vivid picture of the Great Hall a year or so after the Sowing Night Cotillion. By then it had been nothing but shattered shards in the wake of revolt, civil strife, and invasion. This image was followed by one of Allie, the scarred woman from Tull, pushed and pulled by bullets that were killing her for no reason at all... unless reflex was a reason. Next came Cuthbert Allgood's face, laughing as he went downhill to his death, still blowing that G.o.ds-d.a.m.ned horn... and then he saw Susan's face, twisted, made ugly with weeping. All my old friends, All my old friends, the gunslinger thought, and smiled hideously. the gunslinger thought, and smiled hideously.

”I'll push,” the gunslinger said.

He began to push, and when the voice began to speak (”Good, push again! Good, push again!”) he sent his hand fumbling along the post upon which the seesaw handle had been balanced. At last he found what he was surely looking for: a b.u.t.ton. He pushed it.

”Goodbye, pal!” the mechanical voice said cheerily, and was then blessedly silent for some hours.

III.

They rolled on through the dark, faster now, no longer having to feel their way. The mechanical voice spoke up once, suggesting they eat Crisp-A-La, and again to say that nothing satisfied at the end of a hard day like Larchies. Following this second piece of advice, it spoke no more.

Once the awkwardness of a buried age had been run off the handcar, it went smoothly. The boy tried to do his share, and the gunslinger allowed him small s.h.i.+fts, but mostly he pumped by himself, in large and chest-stretching risings and fallings. The underground river was their companion, sometimes closer on their right, sometimes further away. Once it took on huge and thunderous hollowness, as if pa.s.sing through some great cathedral narthex. Once the sound of it disappeared almost altogether.

The speed and the made wind against their faces seemed to take the place of sight and to drop them once again into a frame of time. The gunslinger estimated they were making anywhere from ten to fifteen miles an hour, always on a shallow, almost imperceptible uphill grade that wore him out deceptively. When they stopped he slept like the stone itself. Their food was almost gone again. Neither of them worried about it.

For the gunslinger, the tenseness of a coming climax was as imperceivable but as real (and accretive) as the fatigue of propelling the handcar. They were close to the end of the beginning... or at least he he was. He felt like a performer placed on center stage minutes before the rise of the curtain; settled in position with his first line held securely in his mind, he heard the unseen audience rattling programs and settling in their seats. He lived with a tight, tidy ball of unholy antic.i.p.ation in his belly and welcomed the exercise that let him sleep. And when he was. He felt like a performer placed on center stage minutes before the rise of the curtain; settled in position with his first line held securely in his mind, he heard the unseen audience rattling programs and settling in their seats. He lived with a tight, tidy ball of unholy antic.i.p.ation in his belly and welcomed the exercise that let him sleep. And when he did did sleep, it was like the dead. sleep, it was like the dead.

The boy spoke less and less, but at their stopping place one sleep-period not long before they were attacked by the Slow Mutants, he asked the gunslinger almost shyly about his coming of age.

”For I would hear more of that,” he said.

The gunslinger had been leaning with his back against the handle, a cigarette from his dwindling supply of tobacco clamped in his lips. He'd been on the verge of his usual unthinking sleep when the boy asked his question.

”Why would thee sill to know that?” he asked, amused.

The boy's voice was curiously stubborn, as if hiding embarra.s.sment. ”I just would.” And after a pause, he added: ”I always wondered about growing up. I bet it's mostly lies.”

”What you'd hear of wasn't my growing-up,” the gunslinger said. ”I suppose I did the first of that not long after after what thee'd hear of-” what thee'd hear of-”

”When you fought your teacher,” Jake said remotely. ”That's what I want to hear.”

Roland nodded. Yes, of course, the day he had tried the line; that was a story any boy might want to hear, all right. ”My real growing-up didn't start until after my Da' sent me away. I finished doing it at one place and another along the way.” He paused. ”I saw a not-man hung once.”

”A not-man? I don't understand.”

”You could feel him but couldn't see him.”

Jake nodded, seeming to understand. ”He was invisible.”

Roland raised his eyebrows. He had never heard the word before. ”Do you say so?”

”Yes.”

”Then let it be so. In any case, there were folk who didn't want me to do it-felt they'd be cursed if I did it, but the fellow had gotten a taste for rape. Do you know what that is?”

”Yes,” Jake said. ”And I bet an invisible guy would be good at it, too. How did you catch him?”

”That's a tale for another day.” Knowing there would be no other days. Both of them knowing there would be no others. ”Two years after that, I left a girl in a place called King's Town, although I didn't want to-”

”Sure you did,” the boy said, and the contempt in his voice was no less for the softness of his tone. ”Got to catch up with that Tower, am I right? Got to keep a-ridin', just like the cowboys on my Dad's Network.”

Roland felt his face flush with heat in the dark, but when he spoke his voice was even. ”That was the last part, I guess. Of my growing-up, I mean. I never knew any of the parts when they happened. Only later did I know that.”

He realized with some unease that he was avoiding what the boy wanted to hear.

”I suppose the coming of age was was part of it, at that,” he said, almost grudgingly. ”It was formal. Almost stylized; like a dance.” He laughed unpleasantly. part of it, at that,” he said, almost grudgingly. ”It was formal. Almost stylized; like a dance.” He laughed unpleasantly.

The boy said nothing.

”It was necessary to prove one's self in battle,” the gunslinger began.

IV.

Summer, and hot.

Full Earth had come to the land like a vampire lover that year, killing the land and the crops of the tenant farmers, turning the fields of the castle-city of Gilead white and sterile. In the west, some miles distant and near the borders that were the end of the civilized world, fighting had already begun. All reports were bad, and all of them paled to insignificance before the heat that rested over this place of the center. Cattle lolled empty-eyed in the pens of the stockyards. Pigs grunted l.u.s.tlessly, unmindful of sows and s.e.x and knives whetted for the coming fall. People whined about taxes and conscription, as they always did; but there was an apathy beneath the empty pa.s.sion-play of politics. The center had frayed like a rag rug that had been washed and walked on and shaken and hung and dried. The thread that held the last jewel at the breast of the world was unraveling. Things were not holding together. The earth drew in its breath in the summer of the coming eclipse.

The boy idled along the upper corridor of this stone place which was home, sensing these things, not understanding. He was also dangerous and empty, waiting to be filled.

It was three years since the hanging of the cook who had always been able to find snacks for hungry boys; Roland had lengthened and filled out both at shoulder and hip. Now, dressed only in faded denim pants, fourteen years old, he had come to look like the man he would become: lean and lank and quick on his feet. He was still unbedded, but two of the younger slatterns of a West-Town merchant had cast eyes on him. He had felt a response and felt it more strongly now. Even in the coolness of the pa.s.sage, he felt sweat on his body.

Ahead were his mother's apartments and he approached them incuriously, meaning only to pa.s.s them and go upward to the roof, where a thin breeze and the pleasure of his hand awaited.

He had pa.s.sed the door when a voice called him: ”You. Boy.”

It was Marten, the counselor. He was dressed with a suspicious, upsetting casualness-black whipcord trousers almost as tight as leotards, and a white s.h.i.+rt open halfway down his hairless chest. His hair was tousled.

The boy looked at him silently.

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