To this Roland did not reply, but the robot huckster, perhaps startled out of its long sleep by the sound of their voices, did.
“Girls, girls, girls.1” it cried from inside the batwing doors of the Gaiety Bar and Grill. “Some are humie and some are cybie, but who cares, you can’t tell, who cares, they give, you tell, girls tell, you tell… “There was a pause and then the robot huckster shouted one final word-“SATISFACTION!”-and fell silent.
“By the gods, but this is a sad place,” he said. “We’ll stay the night and then see it no more.”
“At least die sun’s out, and that’s a relief after Thunderclap, but isn’t it cold!”
He nodded, then asked about the others.
“They’ve gone on,” she said, “but there was a minute there when I didn’t think any of us were going anywhere except to the bottom of yonder crevasse.”
She pointed to the end of the Fedic high street furthest from the castle wall.
“There are TV screens that still work in some of the traincars, and as we came up on town we got a fine view of the bridge that’s gone. We could see the ends sticking out over the hole, but the gap in the middle had to be a hundred yards across.
Maybe more. We could see the train trestle, too. That was still intact. The train was slowing down by then, but not enough so any of us could have jumped off. By then there was no time. And the jump would likely have killed anyone who tried. We were going, oh I’m gonna say fifty miles an hour. And as soon as we were on the trestle, the fucking thing started to creak and groan. Or to queel and grale, if you’ve ever read your James Thurber, which I suppose you have not. The train was playing music. Like Blaine did, do you remember?”
“Yes.”
“But we could hear the trestle getting ready to let go even over that. Then everything started shaking from side to side. A voice-very calm and soothing-said, ’We are experiencing minor difficulties, please take your seats.’ Dinky was holding that little Russian girl, Dani. Ted took my hands and said, ’I want to tell you, madam, that it has been a pleasure to know you.”
There was a lurch so hard it damn near threw me out of my s e a t would have, if Ted hadn’t been holding onto me-and I thought ’That’s it, we’re gone, please God let me be dead before whatever’s down there gets its teeth into me,’ and for a second or two we were going backward. Backward, Roland! I could see the whole car-we were in the first one behind the joco-tilting up. There was the sound of tearing metal. Then the good old Spirit of Topeka put on a burst of speed. Say what you want to about the old people, I know they got a lot of things wrong, but they built machines that had some balls.
“The next thing I knew, we were coasting into the station.
And here comes that same soothing voice, this time telling us to look around our seats and make sure we’ve got all our personals-our gunna, you ken. Like we were on a damn TWA flight landing at Idlewild! It wasn’t until we were out on the platform that we saw the last nine cars of the train were gone. Thank God they were all empty.” She cast a baleful (but frightened) eye toward the far end of the street. “Hope whatever’s down there chokes on em.”
Then she brightened.
“There’s one good thing-at speeds of up to three hundred miles an hour, which is what that ain’t-we-happy voice said the Spirit of Topeka was doing, we must have left Master Spider-
Boy in the dust.”
“I wouldn’t count on it,” Roland said.
She rolled her eyes wearily. “Don’t tell me that.”
“I do tell you. But we’ll deal with Mordred when the time comes, and I don’t think that will be today.”
“Good.”
“Have you been beneath the Dogan again? I take it you have.”
Susannah’s eyes grew round. “Isn’t it something) Makes Grand Central look like a train station someplace out in Sticksville, U.S A. How long did it take you to find your way up?”
“If it had just been me, I’d still be wandering around down there,” Roland admitted. “Oy found the way out. I assumed he was following your scent.”
Susannah considered this. “Maybe he was. Jake’s, more likely. Did you cross a wide passage with a sign on the wall reading SHOW ORANGE PASS ONLY, BLUE PASS NOT ACCEPTED?”
Roland nodded, but the fading sign painted on the wall had meant litde to him. He had identified the passage which the Wolves took at the beginning of their raids by the sight of two motionless gray horses far down the passage, and another of those snarling masks. He had also seen a moccasin he remembered quite well, one that had been made from a chunk of rubber.
One of Ted’s or Dinky’s, he decided; Sheemie Ruiz had no doubt been buried in his.
“So,” he said. ’You got off the train-how many were you?”
“Five, with Sheemie gone,” she said. “Me, Ted, Dinky,
Dani Rostov, and Fred Worthington-do you remember Fred?”
Roland nodded. The man in the bankerly suit.
“I gave them the guided tour of the Dogan,” she said. “As much as I could, anyway. The beds where they stole the brains out of the kids and the one where Mia finally gave birth to her monster; the one-way door between Fedic and the Dixie Pig in New York that still works; Nigel’s apartment.
“Ted and his friends were pretty amazed by the rotunda where all the doors are, especially the one going to Dallas in 1963, where President Kennedy was killed. We found another door two levels down-this is where most of the passages are-that goes to Ford’s Theater, where President Lincoln was assassinated in 1865. There’s even a poster for the play he was watching when Booth shot him. Our American Cousin, it was called. What kind of people would want to go and watch things like that?”
Roland thought a lot of people might, actually, but knew better than to say so.
“It’s all very old,” she said. “And very hot. And very fucking scary, if you want to know the truth. Most of the machinery has quit, and there are puddles of water and oil and God knows what everywhere. Some of the puddles gave off a glow, and Dinky said he thought it might be radiation. I don’t like to think what I got growin on my bones or when my hair’ll start fallin out. There were doors where we could hear those awful chimes… the ones that set your teeth on edge.”
“Todash chimes.”
“Yep. And things behind some of em. Slithery things. Was it you or was it Mia who told me there are monsters in the todash darkness?”
“I might have,” he said. Gods knew there were.
“There are things in that crack beyond town, too. Was Mia told me that. ’Monsters that cozen, diddle, increase, and plot to escape,’ she said. And then Ted, Dinky, Dani, and Fredjoined hands. They made what Ted called ’the little good-mind.’ I could feel it even though I wasn’t in their circle, and I was glad to feel it, because that’s one spooky old place down there.” She clutched her blankets more tightly. “I don’t look forward to going again.”
“But you believe we have to.”
“There’s a passage that goes deep under the castle and comes out on the other side, in the Discordia. Ted and his friends located it by picking up old thoughts, what Ted called ghost-thoughts. Fred had a piece of chalk in his pocket and he marked it for me, but it’ll still be hard to find again. What it’s like down there is the labyrinth in an old Greek story where this bull-monster was supposed to run. I guess we can find it again…”
Roland bent and stroked Oy’s rough fur. “We’ll find it.
This fella will backtrail your scent. Won’t you, Oy?”
Oy looked up at him with his gold-ringed eyes but said nothing.
“Anyway,” she went on, “Ted and the others touched the minds of the things that live in that crack outside of town.
They didn’t mean to, but they did. Those things are neither for the Crimson King nor against him, they’re only for themselves, but they think. And they’re telepathic. They knew we were there, and once the contact was made, they were glad to palaver.
Ted and his friends said that they’ve been tunneling their way toward the catacombs under the Experimental Station for a long long time, and now they’re close to breaking through.
Once they do, they’ll be free to roam wherever they want.”
Roland considered this silendy for a few moments, rocking back and forth on the eroded heels of his boots. He hoped he and Susannah would be long gone before that breakthrough happened… but perhaps it would happen before Mordred got here, and the halfling would have to face them, if he wanted to follow. Baby Mordred against the ancient monsters from under the earth-that was a happy thought.
At last he nodded for Susannah to go on.
“We heard todash chimes coming from some of the passages, too. Not just from behind the doors but from passages with no doors to block em off! Do you see what that means?”
Roland did. If they picked the wrong one-or if Ted and his friends were wrong about the passageway they had marked-he, Susannah, and Oy would likely disappear forever instead of coming out on the far side of Castle Discordia.
“They wouldn’t leave me down there-they took me back as far as the infirmary before going on themselves-and I was damned glad. I wasn’t looking forward to finding my way alone, although I guess I probably could’ve.”
Roland put an arm around her and gave her a hug. “And their plan was to use the door that the Wolves used?”
“Uh-huh, the one at the end of the ORANGE PASS corridor.
They’ll come out where the Wolves did, find their way to the River Whye, and then across it to Calla Bryn Sturgis. The Callage few will take them in, won’t they?”
“Yes.”
“And once they hear the whole story, they won’t… won’t lynch them or anything?”
“I’m sure not. Henchick will know they’re telling the truth and stand up for them, even if no one else will.”
“They’re hoping to use the Doorway Cave to get back America-side.” She sighed. “I hope it works for them, but I have my doubts.”
Roland did, as well. But the four of diem were powerful, and Ted had struck him as a man of extraordinary determination and resource. The Manni-folk were also powerful, in their way, and great travelers between the worlds. He thought that, sooner or later, Ted and his friends probably would get back to America.
He considered telling Susannah that it would happen if ka willed it, then thovight better of it. Ka was not her favorite word just now, and he could
