Oy, meanwhile, was standing ten or twelve yards farther along and looking back at him over one low shoulder.
'Okay,' Jake said. 'I'm coming.'
Other paths joined the one they were on, and Jake realized this was a continuation of the East Road. He could see only a few scattered bootprints and smaller, deeper footprints. These were in places guarded by high rocks—wayside coves the prevailing winds didn't often reach. He guessed the bootprints were Slightman's, the deep footprints Andy's. There were no others. But there
Up ahead, the path breasted the top of a hill. On either side were fantastically misshapen organ-pipe cactuses with great thick barrel arms that seemed to point every which way. Oy was standing there, looking down at something, and once more seeming to grin. As Jake approached him, he could smell the cactus-plants. The odor was bitter and tangy. It reminded him of his father's martinis.
He sat astride his pony beside Oy, looking down. At the bottom of the hill on the right was a shattered concrete driveway. A sliding gate had been frozen half-open ages ago, probably long before the Wolves started raiding the borderland Callas for children. Beyond it was a building with a curved metal roof. Small windows lined the side Jake could see, and his heart lifted at the sight of the steady white glow that came through them. Not 'seners, and not lightbulbs, either (what Roland called 'sparklights'). Only fluorescents threw that kind of white light. In his New York life, fluorescent lights made him think mostly of unhappy, boring things: giant stores where everything was always on sale and you could never find what you wanted, sleepy afternoons at school when the teacher droned on and on about the trade routes of ancient China or the mineral deposits of Peru and rain poured endlessly down outside and it seemed the Closing Bell would never ring, doctors' offices where you always wound up sitting on a tissue-covered exam table in your underpants, cold and embarrassed and somehow positive that you would be getting a shot.
Tonight, though, those lights cheered him up.
'Good boy!' he told the bumbler.
Instead of responding as he usually did, by repeating his name, Oy looked past Jake and commenced a low growl. At the same moment the pony shifted and gave a nervous whinny. Jake reined him, realizing that bitter (but not entirely unpleasant) smell of gin and juniper had gotten stronger. He looked around and saw two spiny barrels of the cactus-tangle on his right swiveling slowly and blindly toward him. There was a faint grinding sound, and dribbles of white sap were running down the cactus's central barrel. The needles on the arms swinging toward Jake looked long and wicked in the moonlight. The thing had smelled him, and it was hungry.
'Come on,' he told Oy, and booted the pony's sides lightly. The pony needed no further urging. It hurried downhill, not quite trotting, toward the building with the fluorescent lights. Oy gave the moving cactus a final mistrustful look, then followed them.
Jake reached the driveway and stopped. About fifty yards farther down the road (it was now very definitely a road, or had been once upon a time), train-tracks crossed and then ran on toward the Devar-Tete Whye, where a low bridge took them across. The
'The trains that bring the roont ones back from Thunderclap come on those tracks,' he murmured to Oy. And did he feel the tug of the Beam? Jake was sure he did. He had an idea that when they left Calla Bryn Sturgis—
He stood where he was a moment longer, feet out of the stirrups, then headed the pony up the crumbling driveway toward the building. To Jake it looked like a Quonset hut on a military base. Oy, with his short legs, was having hard going on the broken-up surface. That busted-up paving would be dangerous for his horse, too. Once the frozen gate was behind them, he dismounted and looked for a place to tether his mount. There were bushes close by, but something told him they were
'Stay! Oy! Ake!'
Jake found more bushes behind a pile of boulders like a strew of huge and eroded toy blocks. Here he felt satisified enough to tether the pony. Once it was done, he stroked the long, velvety muzzle. 'Not long,' he said. 'Can you be good?'
The pony blew through his nose and appeared to nod. Which meant exactly nothing, Jake knew. And it was probably a needless precaution, anyway. Still, better safe than sorry. He went back to the driveway and bent to scoop the bumbler up. As soon as he straightened, a row of brilliant lights flashed on, pinning him like a bug on a microscope stage. Holding Oy in the curve of one arm, Jake raised the other to shield his eyes. Oy whined and blinked.
There was no warning shout, no stern request for identification, only the faint snuffle of the breeze. The lights were turned on by motion-sensors, Jake guessed. What came next? Machine-gun fire directed by dipolar computers? A scurry of small but deadly robots like those Roland, Eddie, and Susannah had dispatched in the clearing where the Beam they were following had begun? Maybe a big net dropping from overhead, like in this jungle movie he'd seen once on TV?
Jake looked up. There was no net. No machine-guns, either. He started walking forward again, picking his way around the deepest of the potholes and jumping over a washout. Beyond this latter, the driveway was tilted and cracked but mostly whole. 'You can get down now,' he told Oy. 'Boy, you're heavy. Watch out or I'll have to stick you in Weight Watchers.'
He looked straight ahead, squinting and shielding his eyes from the fierce glare. The lights were in a row running just beneath the Quonset's curved roof. They threw his shadow out behind him, long and black. He saw rock-cat corpses, two on his left and two more on his right. Three of them were little more than skeletons. The fourth was in a high state of decomposition, but Jake could see a hole that looked too big for a bullet. He thought it had been made by a bah-bolt. The idea was comforting. No weapons of super-science at work here. Still, he was crazy not to be hightailing it back toward the river and the Calla beyond it. Wasn't he? 'Crazy,' he said.
'Razy,' Oy said, once more padding along at Jake's heel.
A minute later they reached the door of the hut. Above it, on a rusting steel plate, was this:
On the door itself, now hanging crooked by only two screws, was another sign. A joke? Some sort of nickname? Jake thought it might be a little of both. The letters were choked with rust and eroded by God knew how many years of blowing sand and grit, but he could still read them:
