Wizard and Glass

CHAPTER III

THE WIZARD

1

Roland stopped at the sentry-box, glanced in, then picked up the thing which was lying on the floor. The others caught up with him and clustered around. It had looked like a newspaper, and that was just what it was . . . although an exceedingly odd one. No Topeka Capital-Journal this, and no news of a population-levelling plague.

The Oy Daily Buzz

Vol. MDLXVDI No. 96 'Daily Buzz, Daily Buzz, Handsome Iz as Handsome Duuzz' Weather: Here today, gone tomorrow Lucky Numbers: None Prognosis: Bad

Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak blah blah blah good is bad bad is good all the stuffs the same good is bad bad is good all the stuffs the same go slow past the drawers all the stuffs the same blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Blame is a pain all the stuffs the same yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak charyou tree all the stuffs the same blah yak blah blah yak yak blah blah blah yak yak yak baked turkey cooked goose all the stuffs the same blah blah yak yak ride a train die in pain all the stuffs the same blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blame blame blame blame blame blame blah blah blah blah blah blah blah yak yak blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. (Related story p. 6)

Below this was a picture of Roland, Eddie, Susannah, and Jake crossing the mirrored courtyard, as if this had happened the day before instead of only minutes ago. Beneath it was a caption reading: Tragedy in Oz: Travellers Arrive Seeking Fame and Fortune; Find Death Instead.

'I like that,' Eddie said, adjusting Roland's revolver in the holster he wore low on his hip. 'Comfort and encouragement after days of confusion. Like a hot drink on a cold fucking night.'

'Don't be afraid of this,' Roland said. 'This is a joke.'

'I'm not afraid,' Eddie said, 'but it's a little more than a joke. I lived with Henry Dean for a lot of years, and I know when there's a plot to psych me out afoot. I know it very well.' He looked curiously at Roland. 'I hope you don't mind me saying this, but you 're the one who looks scared, Roland.'

'I'm terrified,' Roland said simply.

2

The arched entryway made Susannah think of a song which had been popular ten years or so before she had been yanked out of her world and into Roland's. Saw an eyeball peepin through a smoky cloud behind the Green Door, the lyric went. When I said 'Joe sent me, ' someone laughed out loud behind the Green Door. There were actually two doors here instead of one, and no peephole through which an eyeball could look in either. Nor did Susannah try that old speakeasy deal about how Joe had sent her. She did, however, bend forward to read the sign hanging from one of the circular glass door-pulls. bell out of order, please knock, it said.

'Don't bother,' she said to Roland, who had actually doubled up his fist to do as the sign said. 'It's from the story, that's all.'

Eddie pulled her chair back slightly, stepped in front of it, and took hold of the circular pulls. The doors opened easily, the hinges rolling in silence. He took a step forward into what looked like a shadowy green grotto, cupped his hands to his mouth, and called: 'Hey!'

The sound of his voice rolled away and came back changed… small, echoing, lost. Dying, it seemed.

'Christ,' Eddie said. 'Do we have to do this?'

'If we want to get back to the Beam, I think so.' Roland looked paler than ever, but he led them in. Jake helped Eddie lift Susannah's chair over the sill (a milky block of jade-colored glass) and inside. Oy's little shoes flashed dim red on the green glass floor. They had gone only ten paces when the doors slammed shut behind them with a no-question-about-it boom that rolled past them and went echoing away into the depths of the Green Palace.

3

There was no reception room; only a vaulted, cavernous hallway that seemed to go on forever. The walls were lit with a faint green glow. This is just like the hallway in the movie, Jake thought, the one where the Cowardly Lion got so scared when he stepped on his own tail.

And, adding a little extra touch of verisimilitude Jake could have done without, Eddie spoke up in a trembly (and better than passable) Bert Lahr imitation: 'Wait a minute, fellas, I wuz just thinkin—I really don't wanna see the Wizard this much. I better wait for you outside!'

'Stop it,' Jake said sharply.

'Oppit!' Oy agreed. He walked directly at Jake's heel, swinging his head watchfully from side to side as he went. Jake could hear no sound except for their own passage … yet he sensed something: a sound that wasn't. It was, he thought, like looking at a wind-chime that wants only the slightest puff of breeze to set it tinkling.

'Sorry,' Eddie said. 'Really.' He pointed. 'Look down there.'

About forty yards ahead of them, the green corridor did end, in a narrow green doorway of amazing height—perhaps thirty feet from the floor to its pointed tip. And from behind it, Jake could now hear a steady thrumming sound. As they drew closer and the sound grew louder, his dread grew. He had to make a conscious effort to take the last dozen steps to the door. He knew this sound; he knew it from the run he'd made with Gasher under Lud, and from the run he and his friends had made on Blaine the Mono. It was the steady beat- beat-beat of slo-trans engines.

'It's like a nightmare,' he said in a small, close-to-tears voice. 'We're right back where we started.'

'No, Jake,' the gunslinger said, touching his hair. 'Never think it. What you feel is an illusion. Stand and be true.'

The sign on this door wasn't from the movie, and only Susannah knew it was from Dante. abandon hope, all ye who enter here, it said.

Roland reached out with his two-fingered right hand and pulled the thirty-foot door open.

4

What lay beyond it was, to the eyes of Jake, Susannah, and Eddie, a weird combination of The Wizard of Oz and Blaine the Mono. A thick mg (pale blue, like the one in the Barony Coach) lay on the floor. The chamber was like the nave of a cathedral, soaring to impenetrable heights of greenish-black. The pillars which supported the glowing walls were great glass ribs of alternating green and pink light; the pink was the exact shade of Blaine's hull. Jake saw these supporting pillars had been carven with a billion different images, none of them comforting; they jostled the eye and unsettled the heart. There seemed to be a preponderance of screaming faces.

Ahead of them, dwarfing the visitors, turning them into creatures that seemed no bigger than ants, was the chamber's only furnishing: an enormous green glass throne. Jake tried to estimate its size and was unable— he had no reference-points to help him. He thought that the throne's back might be fifty feet high, but it could as easily have been seventy-five or a hundred. It was marked with the open eye symbol, this time traced in red instead of yellow. The rhythmic thrusting of the light made the eye seem alive; to be beating like a heart.

Above the throne, rising like the pipes of a mighty medieval organ, were thirteen great cylinders, each pulsing a different color. Each, that was, save for the pipe which ran directly down in back of the throne's center. That one was black as midnight and as still as death.

'Hey!' Susannah shouted from her chair. 'Anyone here?'