Wolves of the Calla

then, but Jake didn't think it was true now. He remembered an old joke people told when they got a blowout: Well, it's only flat on the bottom. That was them now, flat on the bottom. No longer truly ka-tet- how could they be, when they were keeping secrets? And was Mia and the child growing in Susannah's stomach the only secret? Jake thought not. There was something else, as well. Something Roland was keeping back not just from Susannah but from all of them.

We can beat the Wolves if we're together, he thought. If we're ka-tet. But not the way we are now. Not over here, not in New York, either. I just don't believe it.

Another thought came on the heels of that, one so terrible he first tried to push it away. Only he couldn't do that, he realized. Little as he wanted to, this was an idea that had to be considered.

I could take matters into my own hands. I could tell her myself.

And then what? What would he tell Roland? How would he explain?

I couldn't. There'd be no explanation I could make or that he'd listen to. The only thing I could do -

He remembered Roland's story of the day he'd stood against Cort. The battered old squireen with his stick, the untried boy with his hawk. If he, Jake, were to go against Roland's decision and tell Susannah what had so far been held back from her, it would lead directly to his own manhood test.

And I'm not ready. Maybe Roland was -barely -but I'm not him. Nobody is. He'd best me and I'd be sent east into Thunderclap alone. Oy would try to come with me, but I couldn't let him. Because it's death over there. Maybe for our whole ka-tet, surely for a kid all by himself.

And yet still, the secrets Roland was keeping, that was wrong. And so? They'd be together again, all of them, to hear the rest of Callahan's story and-maybe-to deal with the thing in Callahan's church. What should he do then?

Talk to him. Try to persuade him he's doing the wrong thing.

All right. He could do that. It would be hard, but he could do it. Should he talk to Eddie as well? Jake thought not. Adding Eddie would complicate things even more. Let Roland decide what to tell Eddie. Roland, after all, was the dinh.

The flap of the tent shivered and Jake's hand went to his side, where the Ruger would have hung if he had been wearing the docker's clutch. Not there, of course, but this time that was all right. It was only Oy, poking his snout under the flap and tossing it up so he could get his head into the tent.

Jake reached out to pat the bumbler's head. Oy seized his hand gently in his teeth and tugged. Jake went with him willingly enough; he felt as if sleep were a thousand miles away.

Outside the tent, the world was a study in severe blacks and whites. A rock-studded slope led down to the river, which was broad and shallow at this point. The moon burned in it like a lamp. Jake saw two figures down there on the rocky strand and froze. As he did, the moon went behind a cloud and the world darkened. Oy's jaws closed on his hand again and pulled him forward. Jake went with him, found a four-foot drop, and eased himself down. Oy now stood above and just behind him, panting into his ear like a little engine.

The moon came out from behind its cloud. The world brightened again. Jake saw Oy had led him to a large chunk of granite that came jutting out of the earth like the prow of a buried ship. It was a good hiding place. He peered around it and down at the river.

There was no doubt about one of them; its height and the moonlight gleaming on metal were enough to identify Andy the Messenger Robot (Many Other Functions). The other one, though… who was the other one? Jake squinted but at first couldn't tell. It was at least two hundred yards from his hiding place to the riverbank below, and although the moonlight was brilliant, it was also tricky. The man's face was raised so he could look at Andy, and the moonlight fell squarely on him, but the features seemed to swim. Only the hat the guy was wearing… he knew the hat…

You could be wrong.

Then the man turned his head slightly, the moonlight sent twin glints back from his face, and Jake knew for sure. There might be lots of cowpokes in the Calla who wore round-crowned hats like the one yonder, but Jake had only seen a single guy so far who wore spectacles.

Okay, it's Benny's Da'. What of it? Not all parents are like mine, some of them get worried about their kids, especially if they've already lost one the way Mr. Slightman lost Benny's twin sister. To hot-lung, Benny said, which probably means pneumonia. Six years ago. So we come out here camping, and Mr. Slightman sends Andy to keep an eye on us, only then he wakes up in the middle of the night and decides to check on us for himself Maybe he had his own bad dream.

Maybe so, but that didn't explain why Andy and Mr. Slightman were having their palaver way down there by the river, did it?

Well, maybe he was afraid of waking us up. Maybe he'll come up to check on the tent now -in which case I better get back inside it -or maybe he'll take Andy's word that we're all right and head back to the Rocking B.

The moon went behind another cloud, and Jake thought it best to stay where he was until it came back out. When it did, what he saw filled him with the same sort of dismay he'd felt in his dream, following Mia through that deserted castle. For a moment he clutched at the possibility that this was a dream, that he'd simply gone from one to another, but the feel of the pebbles biting into his feet and the sound of Oy panting in his ear were completely undreamlike. This was happening, all right.

Mr. Slightman wasn't coming up toward where the boys had pitched their tent, and he wasn't heading back toward the Rocking B, either (although Andy was, in long strides along the bank). No, Benny's father was wading across the river. He was heading dead east.

He could have a reason for going over there. He could have a perfectly good reason.

Really? What might that perfectly good reason be? It wasn't the Calla anymore over there, Jake knew that much. Over there was nothing but waste ground and desert, a buffer between the borderlands and the kingdom of the dead that was Thunderclap.

First something wrong with Susannah-his friend Susannah. Now, it seemed, something wrong with the father of his new friend. Jake realized he had begun to gnaw at his nails, a habit he'd picked up in his final weeks at Piper School, and made himself stop.

'This isn't fair, you know,' he said to Oy. 'This isn't fair at all.'

Oy licked his ear. Jake turned, put his arms around the bumbler, and pressed his face against his friend's lush coat. The bumbler stood patiently, allowing this. After a little while, Jake pulled himself back up to the more level ground where Oy stood. He felt a little better, a little comforted.

The moon went behind another cloud and the world darkened. Jake stood where he was. Oy whined softly. 'Just a minute,' Jake murmured.

The moon came out again. Jake looked hard at the place where Andy and Ben Slightman had palavered, marking it in his memory. There was a large round rock with a shiny surface. A dead log had washed up against it. Jake was pretty sure he could find this spot again, even if Benny's tent was gone.

Are you going to tell Roland?

'I don't know,' he muttered.

'Know,' Oy said from beside his ankle, making Jake jump a litde. Or was it no? Was that what the bumbler had actually said?

Are you crazy?

He wasn't. There was a time when he'd thought he was crazy-crazy or going there in one hell of a hurry-but he didn't think that anymore. And sometimes Oy did read his mind, he knew it.

Jake slipped back into the tent. Benny was still fast asleep. Jake looked at the other boy-older in years but younger in a lot of the ways that mattered-for several seconds, biting his lip. He didn't want to get Benny's father in trouble. Not unless he had to.

Jake lay down and pulled his blankets up to his chin. He had never in his life felt so undecided about so many things, and he wanted to cry. The day had begun to grow light before he was able to get back to sleep.

Chapter VIII: Took's Store; The Unfound Door

ONE

For the first half hour after leaving the Rocking B, Roland and Jake rode east toward the smallholds in silence, their horses ambling side by side in perfect good fellowship. Roland knew Jake had something serious on his mind; that was clear from his troubled face. Yet the gunslinger was still astounded when Jake curled his fist, placed it against the left side of his chest, and said: 'Roland, before Eddie and Susannah join up with us, may I speak to you dan-dinh?'

May I open my heart to your command. But the subtext was more complicated than that, and ancient-pre-dating Arthur Eld by centuries, or so Vannay had claimed. It meant to turn some insoluble emotional problem, usually having to do with a love affair, over to one's dinh. When one did this, he or she agreed to do exactly as the dinh suggested, immediately and without question. But surely Jake Chambers didn't have love problems-not unless he'd fallen for the gorgeous Francine Tavery, that was-and how had he known such a phrase in the first place?

Meanwhile Jake was looking at him with a wide-eyed, pale-cheeked solemnity that Roland didn't much like.

'Dan-dinh-where did you hear that, Jake?'

'Never did. Picked it up from your mind, I think.' Jake added hastily: 'I don't go snooping in there, or anything like that, but sometimes stuff just comes. Most of it isn't very important, I don't think, but sometimes there are phrases.'

'You pick them up like a crow or a rustie picks up the bright things that catch its eye from the wing.'

'I guess so, yeah.'

'What others? Tell me a few.'

Jake looked embarrassed. 'I can't remember many. Dan-dinh, that means I open my heart to you and agree to do what you say.'

It was more complicated than that, but the boy had caught the essence. Roland nodded. The sun felt good on his face as they clopped along. Margaret Eisenhart's exhibition with the plate had soothed him, he'd had a good meeting with the lady-sai's father later on, and he had slept quite well for the first time in many nights. 'Yes.'

'Let's see. There's tell-a-me, which means-I think-to gossip about someone you shouldn't gossip about. It stuck in my head, because that's what gossip sounds like: tell-a-me.' Jake cupped a hand to his ear.