Wolves of the Calla

Eddie gave him a sunny smile. 'Does the seminon blow in the summertime, old buddy?'

More clicks and clacks. Andy's head, which had been tilted one way, now tilted the other. 'I do not follow you, Eddie of NewYork.'

'Sorry. I'm just being a silly old human bean, aren't I? No, I don't want to retry. At least not right now. Let me tell you what we'd like you to help us with, and you can tell us if your programming will allow you to do it. Does that sound fair?'

'Fair as fresh air, Eddie.'

'Okay.' Eddie reached up and took hold of Andy's thin metal arm. The surface was smooth and somehow unpleasant to the touch. Greasy. Oily. Eddie held on nonetheless, and lowered his voice to a confidential level. 'I'm only telling you this because you're clearly good at keeping secrets.'

'Oh, yes, sai Eddie! No one keeps a secret like Andy!' The robot was back on solid ground and back to his old self, smug and complacent.

'Well…' Eddie went up on tiptoe. 'Bend down here.'

Servomotors hummed inside Andy's casing-inside what would have been his heartbox, had he not been a high-tech tinman. He bent down. Eddie, meanwhile, stretched up even further, feeling absurdly like a small boy telling a secret.

'The Pere's got some guns from our level of the Tower,' he murmured. 'Good ones.'

Andy's head swiveled around. His eyes glared out with a brilliance that could only have been astonishment. Eddie kept a poker face, but inside he was grinning.

'Say true, Eddie?'

'Say thankya.'

'Pere says they're powerful,' Tian said. 'If they work, we can use em to blow the living bugger out of the Wolves. But we have to get em out north of town… and they're heavy. Can you help us load em in a bucka on Wolfs Eve, Andy?'

Silence. Clicks and clacks.

'Programming won't let him, I bet,' Eddie said sadly. 'Well, if we get enough strong backs-'

'I can help you,' Andy said. 'Where are these guns, sais?'

'Better not say just now,' Eddie replied. 'You meet us at the Pere's rectory early on Wolf's Eve, all right?'

'What hour would you have me?'

'How does six sound?'

'Six o' the clock. And how many guns will there be? Tell me that much, at least, so I may calculate the required energy levels.'

My friend, it takes a bullshitter to recognize bullshit, Eddie thought merrily, but kept a straight face. 'There be a dozen. Maybe fifteen. They weigh a couple of hundred pounds each. Do you know pounds, Andy?'

'Aye, say thankya. A pound is roughly four hundred and fifty grams. Sixteen ounces. 'A pint's a pound, the world around.' Those are big guns, sai Eddie, say true! Will they shoot?'

'We're pretty sure they will,' Eddie said. 'Aren't we, Tian?'

Tian nodded. 'And you'll help us?'

'Aye, happy to. Six o' the clock, at the rectory.'

'Thank you, Andy,' Eddie said. He started away, then looked back. 'You absolutely won't talk about this, will you?'

'No, sai, not if you tell me not to.'

'That's just what I'm telling you. The last thing we want is for the Wolves to find out we've got some big guns to use against em.'

'Of course not,' Andy said. 'What good news this is. Have a wonderful day, sais.'

'And you, Andy,' Eddie replied. 'And you.'

ELEVEN

Walking back toward Tian's place-it was only two miles distant from where they'd come upon Andy-Tian said, 'Does he believe it?'

'I don't know,' Eddie said, 'but it surprised the shit out of him-did you feel that?'

'Yes,' Tian said. 'Yes, I did.'

'He'll be there to see for himself, I guarantee that much.'

Tian nodded, smiling. 'Your dinh is clever.'

'That he is,' Eddie agreed. 'That he is.'

TWELVE

Once more Jake lay awake, looking up at the ceiling of Benny's room. Once more Oy lay on Benny's bed, curved into a comma with his nose beneath his squiggle of tail. Tomorrow night Jake would be back at Father Callahan's, back with his ka-tet, and he couldn't wait. Tomorrow would be Wolfs Eve, but this was only the eve of Wolf's Eve, and Roland had felt it would be best for Jake to stay this one last night at the Rocking B. 'We don't want to raise suspicions this late in the game,' he'd said. Jake understood, but boy, this was sick. The prospect of standing against the Wolves was bad enough. The thought of how Benny might look at him two days from now was even worse.

Maybe we'll all get killed, Jake thought. Then I won't have to worry about it.

In his distress, this idea actually had a certain attraction.

'Jake? You asleep?'

For a moment Jake considered faking it, but something inside sneered at such cowardice. 'No,' he said. 'But I ought to try, Benny. I doubt if I'll get much tomorrow night.'

'I guess not,' Benny whispered back respectfully, and then: 'You scared?'

' 'Course I am,' Jake said. 'What do you think I am, crazy?'

Benny got up on one elbow. 'How many do you think you'll kill?'

Jake thought about it. It made him sick to think about it, way down in the pit of his stomach, but he thought about it anyway. 'Dunno. If there's seventy, I guess I'll have to try to get ten.'

He found himself thinking (with a mild sense of wonder) of Ms. Avery's English class. The hanging yellow globes with ghostly dead flies lying in their bellies. Lucas Hanson, who always tried to trip him when he was going up the aisle. Sentences diagrammed on the blackboard: beware the misplaced modifier. Petra Jesserling, who always wore A-line jumpers and had a crush on him (or so Mike Yanko claimed). The drone of Ms. Avery's voice. Outs at noon-what would be plain old lunch in a plain old public school. Sitting at his desk afterward and trying to stay awake. Was that boy, that neat Piper School boy, actually going out to the north of a farming town called Calla Bryn Sturgis to battle child-stealing monsters? Could that boy be lying dead thirty-six hours from now with his guts in a steaming pile behind him, blown out of his back and into the dirt by something called a sneetch? Surely that wasn't possible, was it? The housekeeper, Mrs. Shaw, had cut the crusts off his sandwiches and sometimes called him 'Bama. His father had taught him how to calculate a fifteen percent tip. Such boys surely did not go out to die with guns in their hands. Did they?

'I bet you get twenty!' Benny said. 'Boy, I wish I could be with you! We'd fight side by side! Pow! Pow! Pow! Then we'd reload!'

Jake sat up and looked at Benny with real curiosity. 'Would you?' he asked. 'If you could?'

Benny thought about it. His face changed, was suddenly older and wiser. He shook his head. 'Nah. I'd be scared. Aren't you really scared? Say true?'

'Scared to death,' Jake said simply.

'Of dying?'

'Yeah, but I'm even more scared of fucking up.'

'You won't.'

Easy for you to say, Jake thought.

'If I have to go with the little kids, at least I'm glad my father's going, too,' Benny said. 'He's taking his bah. You ever seen him shoot?'

'No.'

'Well, he's good with it. If any of the Wolves get past you guys, he'll take care of them. He'll find that gill-place on their chests, and pow!'

What if Benny knew the gill-place was a lie? Jake wondered. False information this boy's father would hopefully pass on? What if he knew-

Eddie spoke up in his head, Eddie with his wise-ass Brooklyn accent in full flower. Yeah, and if fish had bicycles, every fuckin river'd be the Tour de France.

'Benny, I really have to try to get some sleep.'

Benny lay back down. Jake did the same, and resumed looking up at the ceiling. All at once he hated it that Oy was on Benny's bed, that Oy had taken so naturally to the other boy. All at once he hated everything about everything. The hours until morning, when he could pack, mount his borrowed pony, and ride back to town, seemed to stretch out into infinity.

'Jake?'

'What, Benny, what?'