The Waste Lands Page 11

  He took two strides toward the stream, picked up the steel snake, examined it briefly, and tossed it to Eddie, who caught it with his left hand. The snake broke in two pieces as he did so.

  "You see? It's exhausted. All the creatures we found here were exhausted. If we hadn't come, they would have died before long, anyway. Just as the bear would have died."

  "The bear had some sort of disease," Susannah said.

  The gunslinger nodded. "Parasites which attacked the natural parts of its body. But why did they never attack it before?"

  Susannah did not reply.

  Eddie was examining the snake. Unlike the bear, it appeared to be a totally artificial construction, a thing of metal, circuits, and yards (or maybe miles) of gossamer-thin wire. Yet he could see flecks of rust, not just on the surface of the half-snake he still held, but in its guts as well. And there was a patch of wetness where either oil had leaked out or water had seeped in. This moisture had rotted away some of the wires, and a greenish stuff that looked like moss had grown over several of the thumbnail-sized circuit boards.

  Eddie turned the snake over. A steel plate proclaimed it to be the work of North Central Positronics, Ltd. There was a serial number, but no name. Probably too unimportant to name, he thought. Just a sophisticated mechanical Roto-Rooter designed to give old Br'er Bear an enema every once in a while, keep him regular, or something equally disgusting.

  He dropped the snake and wiped his hands on his pants.

  Roland had picked up the tractor-gadget. He yanked at one of the treads. It came off easily, showering a cloud of rust down between his boots. He tossed it aside.

  "Everything in the world is either coming to rest or falling to pieces," he said flatly. "At the same time, the forces which interlock and give the world its coherence--in time and size as well as in space--are weakening. We knew that even as children, but we had no idea what the time of the end would be like. How could we? Yet now I am living in those times, and I don't believe they affect my world alone. They affect yours, Eddie and Susannah; they may affect a billion others. The Beams are breaking down. I don't know if that's a cause or only another symptom, but I know it's true. Come! Draw close! Listen!"

  As Eddie approached the metal box with its alternating diagonal slashes of yellow and black, a strong and unpleasant memory seized him--for the first time in years he found himself thinking of a crumbling Victorian wreck in Dutch Hill, about a mile away from the neighborhood he and Henry had grown up in. This wreck, which was known as The Mansion to the neighborhood kids, occupied a plot of weedy, untended lawn on Rhinehold Street. Eddie guessed that practically all the kids in the borough had heard spooky stories about The Mansion. The house stood slumped beneath its steep roofs, seeming to glare at passersby from the deep shadows thrown by its eaves. The windows were gone, of course--kids can throw rocks through windows without getting too close to a place--but it had not been-spray-painted, and it had not become a make-out spot or a shooting gallery. Oddest of all was the simple fact of its continued existence: no one had set it on fire to collect the insurance or just to see it burn. The kids said it was haunted, of course, and as Eddie stood on the sidewalk with Henry one day, looking at it (they had made the pilgrimage specifically to see this object of fabulous rumor, although Henry had told their mother they were only going for Hoodsie Rockets at Dahlberg's with some of his friends), it had seemed that it really might be haunted. Hadn't he felt some strong and unfriendly force seeping from that old Victorian's shadowy windows, windows that seemed to look at him with the fixed stare of a dangerous lunatic? Hadn't he felt some subtle wind stirring the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck? Hadn't he had the clear intuition that if he stepped inside that place, the door would slam and lock behind him and the walls would begin to close in, grinding the bones of dead mice to powder, wanting to crush his bones the same way?

  Haunting. Haunted.

  He felt that same old sense of mystery and danger now, as he approached the metal box. Gooseflesh began to ripple up his legs and down his arms; the hair on the back of his neck bushed out and became rough, overlapping hackles. He felt that same subtle wind blowing past him, although the leaves on the trees which ringed the clearing were perfectly still.

  Yet he walked toward the door anyway (for that was what it was, of course, another door, although this one was locked and always would be against the likes of him), not stopping until his ear was pressed against it.

  It was as if he had dropped a tab of really strong acid half an hour ago and it was just beginning to come on heavy. Strange colors flowed across the darkness behind his eyeballs. He seemed to hear voices murmuring up to him from long hallways like stone throats, halls which were lit with guttering electric torches. Once these flambeaux of the modern age had thrown a bright glare across everything, but now they were only sullen cores of blue light. He sensed emptiness . . . desertion . . . desolation . . . death.

  The machinery rumbled on and on, but wasn't there a rough undertone to the sound? A. kind of desperate thudding beneath the hum, like the arrhythmia of a diseased heart? A feeling that the machinery producing this sound, although far more sophisticated even than that within the bear had been, was somehow falling out of tune with itself?

  "All is silent in the halls of the dead," Eddie heard himself whisper in a falling, fainting voice. "All is forgotten in the stone halls of the dead. Behold the stairways which stand in darkness; behold the rooms of ruin. These are the halls of the dead where the spiders spin and the great circuits fall quiet, one by one."

  Roland pulled him roughly back, and Eddie looked at him with dazed eyes.

  "That's enough," Roland said.

  "Whatever they put in there isn't doing so well, is it?" Eddie heard himself ask. His trembling voice seemed to come from far away. He could still feel the power coming out of that box. It called to him.

  "No. Nothing in my world is doing so well these days."

  "If you boys are planning to camp here for the night, you'll have to do without the pleasure of my company," Susannah said. Her face was a white blur in the ashy aftermath of twilight. "I'm going over yonder. I don't like the way that thing makes me feel."

  "We'll all camp over yonder," Roland said. "Let's go."

  "What a good idea," Eddie said. As they moved away from the box, the sound of the machinery began to dim. Eddie felt its hold on him weakening, although it still called to him, invited him to explore the half-lit hallways, the standing stairways, the rooms of ruin where the spiders spun and the control panels were going dark, one by one.

  29

  IN HIS DREAM THAT night, Eddie again went walking down Second Avenue toward Tom and Gerry's Artistic Deli on the corner of Second and Forty-sixth. He passed a record store and the Rolling Stones boomed from the speakers: "I see a red door and I want to paint it black,

  No colours anymore, I want them to turn black,

  I see the girls walk by dressed in their summer clothes,

  I have to turn my head until my darkness goes . . ."

  He walked on, passing a store called Reflections of You between Forty-ninth and Forty-eighth. He saw himself in one of the mirrors hanging in the display window. He thought he looked better than he had in years--hair a little too long, but otherwise tanned and fit. The clothes, though . . . uh-uh, man. Square-bear shit all the way. Blue blazer, white shirt, dark red tie, gray dress pants . . . he had never owned a yuppie-from-hell outfit like that in his life.

  Someone was shaking him.

  Eddie tried to burrow deeper into the dream. He didn't want to wake up now. Not before he got to the deli and used his key to go through the door and into the field of roses. He wanted to see it all again--the endless blanket of red, the overarching blue sky where those great white cloud-ships sailed, and the Dark Tower. He was afraid of the darkness which lived within that eldritch column, waiting to eat anyone who got too close, but he wanted to see it again just the same. Needed to see it.

  The hand, however, wou
ld not stop shaking. The dream began to darken, and the smells of car exhaust along Second Avenue became the smell of wood-smoke--thin now, because the fire was almost out.

  It was Susannah. She looked scared. Eddie sat up and put an arm around her. They had camped on the far side of the alder grove, within earshot of the stream babbling through the bone-littered clearing. On the other side of the glowing embers which had been their campfire, Roland lay asleep. His sleep was not easy. He had cast aside his single blanket and lay with his knees drawn up almost to his chest. With his boots off, his feet looked white and narrow and defenseless. The great toe of the right foot was gone, victim of the lobster-thing which had also snatched away part of his right hand.

  He was moaning some slurred phrase over and over again. After a few repetitions, Eddie realized it was the phrase he had spoken before keeling over in the clearing where Susannah had shot the bear: Go, then--there are other worlds than these. He would fall silent for a moment, then call out the boy's name: "Jake! Where are you? Jake!"

  The desolation and despair in his voice filled Eddie with horror. His arms stole around Susannah and 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 l
ook 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 slanted, and the slant lay in the direction of the Beam. Not all the trees the bear had pushed down to clear its sightlines had fallen along that camouflaged path--which ran southeast, if Eddie had his directions right--but most had, as if the force coming out of the box had pushed them that way as they tottered. The clearest evidence was in the way the shadows lay on the ground. With the sun coming up in the east they all pointed west, of course, but as Eddie looked southeast, he saw a rough herringbone pattern that existed only along the line which the needle in the cup had pointed out.

  "I might see something," Susannah said doubtfully, "but--"

  "Look at the shadows! The shadows, Suze!"

  Eddie saw her eyes widen as it all fell into place for her. "My God! It's there! Right there! It's like when someone has a natural part in their hair!"

  Now that Eddie had seen it, he could not unsee it; a dim aisle driving through the untidy tangle which surrounded the clearing, a straight-edge course that was the way of the Beam. He was suddenly aware of how huge the force flowing around him (and probably right through him, like X-rays) must be, and had to control an urge to step away, either to the right or left. "Say, Roland, this won't make me sterile, will it?"

  Roland shrugged, smiling faintly.

  "It's like a riverbed," Susannah marvelled. "A riverbed so overgrown you can barely see it . . . but it's still there. The pattern of shadows will never change as long as we stay inside the path of the Beam, will it?"

  "No," Roland said. "They'll change direction as the sun moves across the sky, of course, but we'll always be able to see the course of the Beam. You must remember that it has been flowing along this same path for thousands--perhaps tens of thousands--of years. Look up, you two, into the sky!"