The unmistakable greed in Blaine’s voice-its naked desire to hear and solve their best riddles before it killed them-made Susannah feel tired and old.
“I might not have time even so to pose you all my very best ones,” Roland said in a casual, considering tone of voice. “That would be a shame, wouldn’t it?”
A pause ensued-brief, but more of a hesitation than the computer had accorded any of Roland’s riddles-and then Blaine chuckled. Susannah hated the sound of its mad laughter, but there was a cynical weariness in this chuckle that chilled her even more deeply. Perhaps because it was almost sane.
“GOOD, GUNSLINGER. A VALIANT EFFORT. BUT YOU ARE NOT SCHEHERAZADE, NOR DO WE HAVE A THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS IN WHICH TO HOLD PALAVER.”
“I don’t understand you. I know not this Scheherazade.”
“NO MATTER. SUSANNAH CAN FILL YOU IN, IF YOU REALLY WANT TO KNOW. PERHAPS EVEN EDDIE. THE POINT, ROLAND, IS THAT I’ll NOT BE DRAWN ON BY THE PROMISE OF MORE RIDDLES. WE VIE FOR THE GOOSE. COME TOPEKA, IT SHALL BE AWARDED, ONE WAY OR ANOTHER. DO YOU UNDERSTAND THAT?”
Once more the diminished hand went up Roland’s cheek; once more Susannah heard the minute rasp of his fingers against the wiry stubble of his beard.
“We play for keeps. No one cries off.”
“CORRECT. NO ONE CRIES OFF.”
“All right, Blaine, we play for keeps and no one cries off. Here’s the next.”
“AS ALWAYS, I AWAIT IT WITH PLEASURE.”
Roland looked down at Jake. “Be ready with yours, Jake; I’m almost at the end of mine.”
Jake nodded.
Beneath them, the mono’s slo-trans engines continued to cycle up-mat beat-beat-beat which Susannah did not so much hear as feel in the hinges of her jaw, the hollows of her temples, the pulse-points of her wrists.
It’s not going to happen unless there’s a stumper in Jake’s book, she thought. Roland can’t pose Blame, and I think he knows it. I think he knew it an hour ago.
“Blame, I occur once in a minute, twice in every moment, but not once in a hundred thousand years. What am I?”
And so the contest would continue, Susannah realized, Roland asking and Blaine answering with his increasingly terrible lack of hesitation, like an all-seeing, all-knowing god. Susannah sat with her cold hands clasped in her lap and watched the glowing dot draw nigh Topeka, the place where all rail service ended, the place where the path of their ka-tet would end in the clearing. She thought about the Hounds of the Falls, how they had jutted from the thundering white billows below the dark and starshot sky; she thought of their eyes.
Their electric-blue eyes.
Chapter III
THE FAIR-DAY GOOSE
1
Eddie Dean-who did not know Roland sometimes thought of him as ka mai, ka’s fool-heard all of it and heard none of it; saw all of it and saw none of it. The only thing to really make an impression on him once the riddling began in earnest was the fire flashing from the stone eyes of the Hounds; as he raised his hand to shield his eyes from that chain-lightning glare, he thought of the Portal of the Beam in the Clearing of the Bear, how he had pressed his ear against it and heard the distant, dreamy rumble of machinery.
Watching the eyes of the Hounds light up, listening as Blaine drew that current into his batteries, powering up for his final plunge across Mid-World, Eddie had thought: Not all is silent in the halls of the dead and the rooms of ruin. Even now some of the stuff the Old Ones left behind still works. And that’s really the horror of it, wouldn’t ’t you say? Yes. The exact horror of it.
Eddie had been with his friends for a short time after that, mentally as well as physically, but then he had fallen back into his thoughts again. Eddie’s zonin. Henry would have said. Let ’im be.
It was the image of Jake striking flint and steel that kept recurring; he would allow his mind to dwell on it for a second or two, like a bee alighting on some sweet flower, and then he would take off again. Because that memory wasn’t what he wanted; it was just the way in to what he wanted, another door like the ones on the beach of the Western Sea, or the one he had scraped in the dirt of the speaking ring before they had drawn Jake… only this door was in his mind. What he wanted was behind it; what he was doing was kind of… well… diddling the lock.
Zoning, in Henry-speak.
His brother had spent most of his time putting Eddie down-because Henry had been afraid of him and jealous of him, Eddie had finally come to realize-but he remembered one day when Henry had stunned him by saying something that was nice. Better than nice, actually; mind-boggling.
A bunch of them had been sitting in the alley behind Dahlie’s, some of them eating Popsicles and Hoodsie Rockets, some of them smoking Kents from a pack Jimmie Polino-Jimmie Polio, they had all called him, because he had that fucked-up thing wrong with him, that clubfoot-had hawked out of his mother’s dresser drawer. Henry, predictably enough, had been one of the ones smoking.
There were certain ways of referring to things in the gang Henry was a part of (and which Eddie, as his little brother, was also a part of); the argot of their miserable little ka-tet. In Henry’s gang, you never beat anyone else up; you sent em home with a fuckin rupture. You never made out with a girl; you fucked that skag til she cried. You never got stoned; you went on a fuckin bombin-run. And you never brawled with another gang; you got in a fuckin pisser.
The discussion that day had been about who you’d want with you if you got in a fuckin pisser. Jimmie Polio (he got to talk first because he had supplied the cigarettes, which Henry’s homeboys called the fuckin cancer-sticks) opted for Skipper Brannigan, because, he said, Skipper wasn’t afraid of anyone. One time, Jimmie said, Skipper got pissed off at this teacher-at the Friday night PAL dance, this was-and beat the living shit out of him. Sent THE FUCKIN CHAPERONE home with a fuckin rupture, if you could dig it. That was his homie Skipper Brannigan.
Everyone listened to this solemnly, nodding their heads as they ate their Rockets, sucked their Popsicles, or smoked their Kents. Everyone knew that Skipper Brannigan was a fuckin pussy and Jimmie was full of shit, but no one said so. Christ, no. If they didn’t pretend to believe Jimmie Polio’s outrageous lies, no one would pretend to believe theirs.
Tommy Fredericks opted for John Parelli. Georgie Pratt went for Csaba Drabnik, also known around the nabe as The Mad Fuckin Hungarian. Frank Duganelli nominated Larry McCain, even though Larry was in Juvenile Detention; Larry fuckin ruled, Frank said.
By then it was around to Henry Dean. He gave the question the weighty consideration it deserved, then put his arm around his surprised brother’s shoulders. Eddie, he said. My little bro. He’s the man.
They all stared at him, stunned-and none more stunned than Eddie. His jaw had been almost down to his belt-buckle. And then Jimmie Polio said. Come on. Henry, stop fuckin around. This a serious question. Who ’d you want watching your hack if the shit was gonna come down?
I am being serious. Henry had replied.
Why Eddie? Georgie Pratt had asked, echoing the question which had been in Eddie’s own mind. He couldn’t 't fight his way out of a paper bag. A wet one. So why the fuck?
Henry thought some more-not, Eddie was convinced, because he didn’t know why, but because he had to think about how to articulate it. Then he said: Because when Eddie’s in that fuckin zone, he could talk the devil into setting himself on fire.
The image of Jake returned, one memory stepping on another. Jake scraping steel on flint, flashing sparks at the kindling of their campfire, sparks that fell short and died before they lit.
He could talk the devil into setting himself on fire.
Move your flint in closer, Roland said, and now there was a third memory, one of Roland at the door they’d come to at the end of the beach, Roland burning with fever, close to death, shaking like a maraca, coughing, his blue bombardier’s eyes fixed on Eddie, Roland saying, Come a little closer, Eddie-come a little closer for your father’s sake!
Because he wanted to grab me, Eddie thought. Faintly, almost as if it were coming through one of those magic doors from some other world, he heard Blaine telling them that the endgame had commenced; if they had been saving their best riddles, now was the time to trot them out. They had an hour.
An hour! Only an hour!
His mind tried to fix on that and Eddie nudged it away. Something was happening inside him (at least he prayed it was), some desperate game of association, and he couldn’t let his mind get fucked up with deadlines and consequences and all that crap; if he did, he’d lose whatever chance he had. It was, in a way, like seeing something in a piece of wood, something you could carve out-a bow, a slingshot, perhaps a key to open some unimaginable door. You couldn’t look too long, though, at least to start with. You’d lose it if you did. It was almost as if you had to carve while your own back was turned.
He could feel Blaine’s engines powering up beneath him. In his mind’s eye he saw the flint flash against the steel, and in his mind’s ear he heard Roland telling Jake to move the flint in closer. And don’t hit it with the steel, Jake; scrape it.
Why am I here? If this isn’t what I want, why does my mind keep coming hack to this place?
Because it’s as close as I can get and still stay out of the hurt-zone. Only a medium-sized hurt, actually, but it made me think of Henry. Being put down by Henry.
Henry said you could talk the devil into setting himself on fire.
Yes. I always loved him for that. That was great.
And now Eddie saw Roland move Jake’s hands, one holding flint and the other steel, closer to the kindling. Jake was nervous. Eddie could see it; Roland had seen it, too. And in order to ease his nerves, take his mind off the responsibility of lighting the fire, Roland had-
He asked the kid a riddle.
Eddie Dean blew breath into the keyhole of his memory. And this time the tumblers turned.
2
The green dot was closing in on Topeka, and for the first time Jake felt vibration… as if the track beneath them had decayed to a point where Blaine’s compensators could no longer completely handle the problem. With the sense of vibration there at last came a feeling of speed. The walls and ceiling of the Barony Coach were still opaqued, but Jake found he didn’t need to see the countryside blurring past to imagine it. Blaine was rolling full out now, leading his last sonic boom across the waste lands to the place where Mid-World ended, and Jake also found it easy to imagine the transteel piers at the end of the monorail. They would be painted in diagonal stripes of yellow and black. He didn’t know how he knew that, but he did.
