Wolves of the Calla

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'Huh!' Susannah said. 'The very same bad boys! It's almost like a Dickens novel.'

'Who is Dickens, and what is a novel?' Roland asked.

'A novel's a long story set down in a book,' she said. 'Dickens wrote about a dozen. He was maybe the best who ever lived. In his stories, folks in this big city called London kept meeting people they knew from other places or long ago. I had a teacher in college who hated the way that always happened. He said Dickens's stories were full of easy coincidences.'

'A teacher who either didn't know about ka or didn't believe in it,' Roland said.

Eddie was nodding. 'Yeah, this is ka, all right. No doubt.'

'I'm more interested in the woman who wrote Charlie the Choo-Choo than this storyteller Dickens,' Roland said. 'Jake, I wonder if you'd—'

'I'm way ahead of you,' Jake said, unbuckling the straps of his pack. Almost reverently, he slid out the battered book telling the adventures of Charlie the locomotive and his friend, Engineer Bob. They all looked at the cover. The name below the picture was still Beryl Evans.

'Man,' Eddie said. 'That is so weird. I mean, I don't want to get sidetracked, or anything…' He paused, realizing he had just made a railroading pun, then went on. Roland wasn't very interested in puns and jokes, anyway. '… but that is weird . The one Jake bought—Jake Seventy-seven—was by Claudia something Bachman.'

'Inez,' Jake said. 'Also, there was a y . A lowercase y . Any of you know what that means?'

None of them did, but Roland said there had been names like it in Mejis. 'I believe it was some sort of added honorific. And I'm not sure it is to the side. Jake, you said the sign in the window was different from before. How?'

'I can't remember. But you know what? I think if you hypnotized me again—you know, with the bullet—I could.'

'And in time I may,' Roland said, 'but this morning time is short.'

Back to that again , Eddie thought. Yesterday it hardly existed, and now it's short. But it's all about time, somehow, isn't it'?Rolands old days, our old days, and these new days. These dangerous new days .

'Why?' Susannah asked.

'Our friends,' Roland said, and nodded to the south. 'I have a feeling they'll be making themselves known to us soon.'

'Are they our friends?' Jake asked.

'That really is to the side,' Roland said, and again wondered if that were really true. 'For now, let's turn the mind of our khef to this Bookstore of the Mind, or whatever it's called. You saw the harriers from the Leaning Tower greensticking the owner, didn't you? This man Tower, or Toren.'

'Pressuring him, you mean?' Eddie asked. 'Twisting his arm?'

'Yes.'

'Sure they were,' Jake said.

'Were,' Oy put in. 'Sure were.'

'Bet you anything that Tower and Toren are really the same name,' Susannah said. 'That toren's Dutch for 'tower.' ' She saw Roland getting ready to speak, and held up her hand. 'It's the way folks often do things in our bit of the universe, Roland— change the foreign name to one that's more… well… American.'

'Yeah,' Eddie said. 'So Stempowicz becomes Stamper… Yakov becomes Jacob… or…'

'Or Beryl Evans becomes Claudia y Inez Bachman,' Jake said. He laughed but didn't sound very amused.

Eddie picked a half-burned stick out of the fire and began to doodle with it in the dirt. One by one the Great Letters formed: C… L… A… U. 'Big Nose even said Tower was Dutch. 'A squarehead's always a squarehead, right, boss?' ' He looked at Jake for confirmation. Jake nodded, then took the stick and continued on with it: D… I… A.

'Him being Dutch makes a lot of sense, you know,' Susannah said. 'At one time, the Dutch owned most of Manhattan.'

'You want another Dickens touch?' Jake asked. He wrote y in the dirt after CLAUDIA, then looked up at Susannah. 'How about the haunted house where I came through into this world?'

'The Mansion,' Eddie said.

'The Mansion in Dutch Hill,' Jake said.

'Dutch Hill. Yeah, that's right. Goddam.'

'Let's go to the core,' Roland said. 'I think it's the agreement paper you saw. And you felt you had to see it, didn't you?'

Eddie nodded.

'Did your need feel like a part of following the Beam?'

'Roland, I think it was the Beam.'

'The way to the Tower, in other words.'

'Yeah,' Eddie said. He was thinking about the way clouds flowed along the Beam, the way shadows bent along the Beam, the way every twig of every tree seemed to turn in its direction. All things serve the Beam , Roland had told them, and Eddie's need to see the paper Balazar had put in front of Calvin Tower had felt like a need, harsh and imperative.

'Tell me what it said.'

Eddie bit his lip. He didn't feel as scared about this as he had about carving the key which had ultimately allowed them to rescue Jake and pull him through to this side, but it was close. Because, like the key, this was important. If he forgot something, worlds might crash.

'Man, I can't remember it all, not word for word—'

Roland made an impatient gesture. 'If I need that, I'll hypnotize you and get it word for word.'

'Do you think it matters?' Susannah asked.

'I think it all matters,' Roland said.

'What if hypnosis doesn't work on me?' Eddie asked. 'What if I'm not, like, a good subject?'

'Leave that to me,' Roland said.

'Nineteen,' Jake said abruptly. They all turned toward him. He was looking at the letters he and Eddie had drawn in the dirt beside the dead campfire. 'Claudia y Inez Bachman. Nineteen letters.'

THREE

Roland considered for a moment, then let it pass. If the number nineteen was somehow part of this, its meaning would declare itself in time. For now there were other matters.

'The paper,' he said. 'Let's stay with that for now. Tell me everything about it you can remember.'

'Well, it was a legal agreement, with the seal at the bottom and everything.' Eddie paused, struck by a fairly basic question. Roland probably got this part of it—he'd been a kind of law enforcement officer, after all—but it wouldn't hurt to be sure. 'You know about lawyers, don't you?'

Roland spoke in his driest tone. 'You forget that I came from Gilead, Eddie. The most inner of the Inner Baronies. We had more merchants and farmers and manufactors than lawyers, I think, but the count would have been close.'

Susannah laughed. 'You make me think of a scene from Shakespeare, Roland. Two characters—might have been Falstaff and Prince Hal, I'm not sure—are talkin about what they're gonna do when they win the war and take over. And one of em says, 'First we'll kill all the lawyers.' '

'It would be a fairish way to start,' Roland said, and Eddie found his thoughtful tone rather chilling. Then the gunslinger turned to him again. 'Go on. If you can add anything, Jake, please do. And relax, both of you, for your