he pulled her tight against him. He could feel her shivering, although the night was warm.
The gunslinger rolled over. Starlight fell into his open eyes.
'Jake, where are you?' he called to the night. 'Come back!'
'Oh Jesus—he's off again. What should we do, Suze?'
'I don't know. I just knew I couldn't listen to it anymore by myself. He sounds so far away. So far away from everything.'
'Go, then,' the gunslinger murmured, rolling back onto his side and drawing his knees up once more, 'there are other worlds than these.' He was silent for a moment. Then his chest hitched and he loosed the boy's name in a long, bloodcurdling cry. In the woods behind them, some large bird flew away in a dry whirr of wings toward some less exciting part of the world.
'Do you have any ideas?' Susannah asked. Her eyes were wide and wet with tears. 'Maybe we should wake him up?'
'I don't know.' Eddie saw the gunslinger's revolver, the one he wore on his left hip. It had been placed, in its holster, on a neatly folded square of hide within easy reach of the place where Roland lay. 'I don't think I dare,' he added at last.
'It's driving him crazy.'
Eddie nodded.
'What do we do about it? Eddie, what do we do?'
Eddie didn't know. An antibiotic had stopped the infection caused by the bite of the lobster-thing; now Roland was burning with infection again, but Eddie didn't think there was an antibiotic in the world that would cure what was wrong with him this time.
'I don't know. Lie down with me, Suze.'
Eddie threw a hide over both of them, and after a while her trembling quieted.
'If he goes insane, he may hurt us,' she said.
'Don't I know it.' This unpleasant idea had occurred to him in terms of the bear—its red, hate-filled eyes (and had there not been bewilderment as well, lurking deep in those red depths?) and its deadly slashing claws. Eddie's eyes moved to the revolver, lying so close to the gunslinger's good left hand, and he remembered again how fast Roland had been when he'd seen the mechanical bat swooping down toward them. So fast his hand had seemed to disappear. If the gunslinger went mad, and if he and Susannah became the focus of that madness, they would have no chance. No chance at all.
He pressed his face into the warm hollow of Susannah's neck and closed his eyes.
Not long after, Roland ceased his babbling. Eddie raised his head and looked over. The gunslinger appeared to be sleeping naturally again. Eddie looked at Susannah and saw that she had also gone to sleep. He lay down beside her, gently kissed the swell of her breast, and closed his own eyes.
Not you, buddy; you're gonna be awake a long, long time.
But they had been on the move for two days and Eddie was bone-tired. He drifted off … drifted down.
Back to the dream, he thought as he went. I want to go back to Second Avenue . . . back to Tom and Gerry's. That's what I want.
The dream did not return that night, however.
30
THEY ATE A QUICK breakfast as the sun came up, repacked and redistributed the gear, and then returned to the wedge-shaped clearing. It didn't look quite so spooky in the clear light of morning, but all three of them were still at pains to keep well away from the metal box with its warning slashes of black and yellow. If Roland had any recollection of the bad dreams which had haunted him in the night, he gave no sign. He had gone about the morning chores as he always did, in thoughtful, stolid silence.
'How do you plan to keep to a straight-line course from here?' Susannah asked the gunslinger.
'If the legends are right, that should be no problem. Do you remember when you asked about magnetism?'
She nodded.
He rummaged deep into his purse and at last emerged with a small square of old, supple leather. Threaded through it was a long silver needle.
'A compass!' Eddie said. 'You really are an Eagle Scout!'
Roland shook his head. 'Not a compass. I know what they are, of course, but these days I keep my directions by the sun and stars, and even now they serve me quite well.'
'Even now?' Susannah asked, a trifle uneasily.
He nodded. 'The directions of the world are also in drift.'
'Christ,' Eddie said. He tried to imagine a world where true north was slipping slyly off to the east or west and gave up almost at once. It made him feel a little ill; the way looking down from the top of a high building had always made him feel a little ill.
'This is just a needle, but it is steel and it should serve our purpose as well as a compass. The Beam is our course now, and the needle will show it.' He rummaged in his purse again and came out with a poorly made pottery cup. A crack ran down one side. Roland had mended this artifact, which he had found at the old campsite, with pine-gum. Now he went to the stream, dipped the cup into it, and brought it back to where Susannah sat in her wheelchair. He put the cup down carefully on the wheelchair's arm, and when the surface of the water inside was calm, he dropped the needle in. It sank to the bottom and rested there.
'Wow!' Eddie said. 'Great! I'd fall at your feet in wonder, Roland, but I don't want to spoil the crease in my pants.'
'I'm not finished. Hold the cup steady, Susannah.'
She did, and Roland pushed her slowly across the clearing. When she was about twelve feet in front of the door, he turned the chair carefully so she was facing away from it.
'Eddie!' she cried. 'Look at this!'
He bent over the pottery cup, marginally aware that water was already oozing through Roland's makeshift seal. The needle was rising slowly to the surface. It reached it and bobbed there as serenely as a cork would have done. Its direction lay in a straight line from the portal behind them and into the old, tangled forest ahead. 'Holy shit—a floating needle. Now I really have seen everything.'
'Hold the cup, Susannah.'
She held it steady as Roland pushed the wheelchair further into the clearing, at right angles to the box. The needle lost its steady point, bobbed randomly for a moment, then sank to the bottom of the cup again. When Roland pulled the chair backward to its former spot, it rose once more and pointed the way.
'If we had iron filings and a sheet of paper,' the gunslinger said, 'we could scatter the filings on the paper's surface and watch them draw together into a line which would point that same course.'
'Will that happen even when we leave the Portal?' Eddie asked.
Roland nodded. 'Nor is that all. We can actually see the Beam.'
Susannah looked over her shoulder. Her elbow bumped the cup a little as she did. The needle swung aimlessly as the water inside sloshed . . . and then settled firmly back in its original direction.
'Not that way,' Roland said. 'Look down, both of you—Eddie at your feet, Susannah into your lap.'
They did as he asked.
'When I tell you to look up, look straight ahead, in the direction the needle points. Don't look at any one thing; let your eye see whatever it will. Now—look up!'
They did. For a moment Eddie saw nothing but the woods. He tried to make his eyes relax . . . and suddenly it was there, the way the shape of the slingshot had been there, inside the knob of wood, and he knew why Roland had told them not to look at any one thing. The effect of the Beam was everywhere along its course, but it was subtle. The needles of the pines and spruces pointed that way. The greenberry bushes grew slightly
