The Drawing of the Three

ROLAND TAKES HIS MEDICINE

1

Now Jack Mort knew the gunslinger was here. If he had been another person—an Eddie Dean or an Odetta Walker, for instance—Roland would have held palaver with the man, if only to ease his natural panic and confusion at suddenly finding one's self shoved rudely into the passenger seat of the body one's brain had driven one's whole life.

But because Mort was a monster—worse, than Detta Walker ever had been or could be—he made no effort to explain or speak at all. He could hear the man's clamorings—Who are you? What's happening to me?—but disregarded them. The gunslinger concentrated on his short list of necessities, using the man's mind with no compunction at all. The clamorings became screams of terror. The gunslinger went right on disregarding them.

The only way he could remain in the worm-pit which was this man's mind was to regard him as no more than a combination atlas and encyclopedia. Mort had all the information Roland needed. The plan he made was rough, but rough was often better than smooth. When it came to planning, there were no creatures in the universe more different than Roland and Jack Mort.

When you planned rough, you allowed room for improvisation. And improvisation at short notice had always been one of Roland's strong points.

2

A fat man with lenses over his eyes, like the bald man who had poked his head into Mort's office five minutes earlier (it seemed that in Eddie's world many people wore these, which his Mortcypedia identified as 'glasses'), got into the elevator with him. He looked at the briefcase in the hand of the man who he believed to be Jack Mort and then at Mort himself.

'Going to see Dorfman, Jack?'

The gunslinger said nothing.

'If you think you can talk him out of sub-leasing, I can tell you it's a waste of time,' the fat man said, then blinked as his colleague took a quick step backward. The doors of the little box closed and suddenly they were falling.

He clawed at Mort's mind, ignoring the screams, and found this was all right. The fall was controlled.

'If I spoke out of turn, I'm sorry,' the fat man said. The gunslinger thought: This one is afraid, too. 'You've handled the jerk better than anyone else in the firm, that's what I think.'

The gunslinger said nothing. He waited only to be out of this falling coffin.

'I say so, too,' the fat man continued eagerly. 'Why, just yesterday I was at lunch with—'

Jack Mort's head turned, and behind Jack Mort's gold-rimmed glasses, eyes that seemed a somehow different shade of blue than Jack's eyes had ever been before stared at the fat man. 'Shut up,' the gunslinger said tonelessly.

Color fell from the fat man's face and he took two quick steps backward. His flabby buttocks smacked the fake wood panels at the back of the little moving coffin, which suddenly stopped. The doors opened and the gunslinger, wearing Jack Mort's body like a tight-fitting set of clothes, stepped out with no look back. The fat man held his finger on the DOOR OPEN button of the elevator and waited inside until Mort was out of sight. Always did have a screw loose, the fat man thought, but this could be serious. This could be a breakdown.

The fat man found that the idea of Jack Mort tucked safely away in a sanitarium somewhere was very comforting.

The gunslinger wouldn't have been surprised.

3

Somewhere between the echoing room which his Mortcypedia identified as a lobby, to wit, a place of entry and exit from the offices which filled this sky-tower, and the bright sunshine of street (his Mortcypedia identified this street as both 6th Avenue and Avenue of the Americas), the screaming of Roland's host stopped. Mort had not died of fright; the gunslinger felt with a deep instinct which was the same as knowing that if Mort died, their kas would be expelled forever, into that void of possibility which lay beyond all physical worlds. Not dead—fainted. Fainted at the overload of terror and strangeness, as Roland himself had done upon entering the man's mind and discovering its secrets and the crossing of destinies too great to be coincidence.

He was glad Mort had fainted. As long as the man's unconsciousness hadn't affected Roland's access to the man's knowledge and memories—and it hadn't—he was glad to have him out of the way.

The yellow cars were public conveyences called Tack-Sees or Cabs or Hax. The tribes which drove them, the Mortcypedia told him, were two: Spix and Mockies. To make one stop, you held your hand up like a pupil in a classroom.

Roland did this, and after several Tack-Sees which were obviously empty save for their drivers had gone by him, he saw that these had signs which read Off-Duty. Since these were Great Letters, the gunslinger didn't need Mort's help. He waited, then put his hand up again. This time the Tack-See pulled over. The gunslinger got into the back seat. He smelled old smoke, old sweat, old perfume. It smelled like a coach in his own world.

'Where to, my friend?' the driver asked—Roland had no idea if he was of the Spix or Mockies tribe, and had no intention of asking. It might be impolite in this world.

'I'm not sure,' Roland said.

'This ain't no encounter group, my friend. Time is money.'

Tell him to put his flag down, the Mortcypedia told him.

'Put your flag down,' Roland said.

'That ain't rolling nothing but time,' the driver replied.

Tell him you'll tip him five bux, the Mortcypedia advised.

'I'll tip you five bucks,' Roland said.

'Let's see it,' the cabbie replied. 'Money talks, bullshit walks.'

Ask him if he wants the money or if he wants to go fuck himself, the Mortcypedia advised instantly.

'Do you want the money, or do you want to go fuck yourself?' Roland asked in a cold, dead voice.

The cabbie's eyes glanced apprehensively into the rear-view mirror for just a moment, and he said no more.

Roland consulted Jack Mort's accumulated store of knowledge more fully this time. The cabbie glanced up again, quickly, during the fifteen seconds his fare spent simply sitting there with his head slightly lowered and his left hand spread across his brow, as if he had an Excedrin Headache. The cabbie had decided to tell the guy to get