took me down. Except for blind luck— Mort's flint-and-steel—he would have done. That one … I saw his eyes. He knew the face of his father. I believe he knew it very well. And then … do you remember the name of Balazar's nightclub?'
'Sure,' Eddie said uneasily. 'The Leaning Tower. But it could have been coincidence; you yourself said ka doesn't rule everything.'
Roland nodded. 'You really are like Cuthbert—I remember something he said when we were boys. We were planning a midnight lark in the cemetery, but Alain wouldn't go. He said he was afraid of offending the shades of his fathers and mothers. Cuthbert laughed at him. He said he wouldn't believe in ghosts until he caught one in his teeth.'
'Good for him!' Eddie exclaimed. 'Bravo!'
Roland smiled. 'I thought you'd like that. At any rate, let's leave this ghost for now. Go on with your story.'
Eddie told of the vision which had come to him when Roland threw the jawbone into the fire—the vision of the key and the rose. He told of his dream, and how he had walked through the door of Tom and Gerry's Artistic Deli and into the field of roses which was dominated by the tall, soot-colored Tower. He told of the blackness which had issued from its windows, forming a shape in the sky overhead, speaking directly to Jake now, because Jake was listening with hungry concentration and growing wonder. He tried to convey some sense of the exaltation and terror which had permeated the dream, and saw from their eyes—Jake's most of all— that he was either doing a better job of that than he could have hoped for … or that they'd had dreams of their own.
He told of following Shardik's backtrail to the Portal of the Bear, and how, when he put his head against it, he'd found himself remembering the day he had talked his brother into taking him to Dutch Hill, so he could see The Mansion. He told about die cup and the needle, and how the pointing needle had become unnecessary once they realized they could see the Beam at work in everything it touched, even the birds in the sky.
Susannah took up the tale at this point. As she spoke, telling of how Eddie had begun to carve his own version of the key, Jake lay back, laced his hands together behind his head, and watched the clouds run slowly toward the city on their straight southeasterly course. The orderly shape they made showed the presence of the Beam as clearly as smoke leaving a chimney shows die direction of the wind.
She finished with the story of how they had finally hauled Jake into this world, closing the split track of his and Roland's memories as suddenly and as completely as Eddie had closed the door in the speaking ring. The only fact she left out was really not a fact at all—at least, not yet. She'd had no morning sickness, after all, and a single missed period meant nothing by itself. As Roland himself might have said, that was a tale best left for another day.
Yet as she finished, she found herself wishing she could forget what Aunt Talitha had said when Jake told her this was his home now: Gods pity you, then, for the sun is going down on this world. It's going down forever.
'And now it's your turn, Jake,' Roland said.
Jake sat up and looked toward Lud, where the windows of the west-em towers reflected back the late afternoon light in golden sheets. 'It's all crazy,' he murmured, 'but it almost makes sense. Like a dream when you wake up.'
'Maybe we can help you make sense of it,' Susannah said.
'Maybe you can. At least you can help me think about the train. I'm tired of trying to make sense of Blaine by myself.' He sighed. 'You know what Roland went through, living two lives at the same time, so I can skip that part. I'm not sure I could ever explain how it felt, anyway, and I don't want to. It was gross. I guess I better start with my Final Essay, because that's when I finally stopped thinking that the whole thing might just go away.' He looked around at them somberly. 'That was when I gave up.'
22
JAKE TALKED THE SUN down.
He told them everything he could remember, beginning with My Understanding of Truth and ending with the monstrous doorkeeper which had literally come out of the woodwork to attack him. The other three listened without a single interruption.
When he was finished, Roland turned to Eddie, his eyes bright with a mixture of emotions Eddie initially took for wonder. Then he realized he was looking at powerful excitement . . . and deep fear. His mouth went dry. Because if Roland was afraid—
'Do you still doubt that our worlds overlap each other, Eddie?'
He shook his head. 'Of course not. I walked down the same street, and I did it in his clothes! But . . . Jake, can I see that book? Charlie the Choo-Choo?'
Jake reached for his pack, but Roland stayed his hand. 'Not yet,' he said. 'Go back to the vacant lot, Jake. Tell that part once more. Try to remember everything.'
'Maybe you should hypnotize me,' Jake said hesitantly. 'Like you did before, at the way station.'
Roland shook his head. 'There's no need. What happened to you in that lot was the most important thing ever to happen in your life, Jake. In all our lives. You can remember everything.'
So Jake went through it again. It was clear to all of them that his experience in the vacant lot where Tom and Gerry's once had stood was the secret heart of the ka-tet they shared. In Eddie's dream, the Artistic Deli had still been standing; in Jake's reality it had been torn down, but in both cases it was a place of enormous, talismanic power. Nor did Roland doubt that the vacant lot with its broken bricks and shattered glass was another version of what Susannah knew as the Drawers and the place he had seen at the end of his vision in the place of bones.
As he told this part of his story for the second time, speaking very slowly now, Jake found that what the gunslinger had said was true: he could remember everything. His recall improved until he almost seemed to be reliving the experience. He told them of the sign which said that a building called Turtle Bay Condominiums was slated to stand on the spot where Tom and Gerry's had once stood. He even remembered the little poem which had been spray-painted on the fence, and recited it for them:
'See the TURTLE of enormous girth!
On his shell he holds the earth.
If you want to run and play,
Come along the BEAM today.'
Susannah murmured, 'His thought is slow but always kind; He holds us all within his mind . . . isn't that how it went, Roland?'
'What?' Jake asked. 'How what went?'
'A poem I learned as a child,' Roland said. 'It's another connection, one that really tells us something, although I'm not sure it's anything we need to know . . . still, one never knows when a little understanding may come in handy.'
'Twelve portals connected by six Beams,' Eddie said. 'We started at the Bear. We're only going as far as the middle—to the Tower—but if we went all the way to the other end, we'd come to the Portal of the Turtle, wouldn't we?'
Roland nodded. 'I'm sure we would.'
'Portal of the Turtle,' Jake said thoughtfully, rolling the words in his mouth, seeming to taste them. Then he finished by telling them again about the gorgeous voice of the choir, his realization that there were faces and stories and histories everywhere, and his growing belief that he had stumbled on something very like the core of all existence. Last of all, he told them again about finding the key and seeing the rose. In the totality of his recall, Jake began to weep, although he seemed unaware of it.
'When it opened,' he said, 'I saw the middle was the brightest yellow you ever saw in your life. At first I thought it was pollen and it only looked bright because everything in that lot looked bright. Even looking at the old candy-wrappers and beer-bottles was like looking at the greatest paintings you ever saw. Only then I realized it
