The Waste Lands Read online

  "Oh, Walter was there. They were both there, and they both pushed Jake."

  "Somebody bring the Thorazine and the straitjacket," Eddie called. "Roland just went over the high side."

  Roland paid no attention to this; he was coming to understand that Eddie's jokes and clowning were his way of dealing with stress. Cuthbert had not been much different . . . as Susannah was, in her way, not so different from Alain. "What exasperates me about all of this," he said, "is that I should have known. I was in Jack Mort, after all, and I had access to his thoughts, just as I had access to yours, Eddie, and yours, Susannah. I saw Jake while was in Mort. I saw him through Mort's eyes, and I knew Mort planned to push him. Not only that; I stopped him from doing it. All I had to do was enter his body. Not that he knew that was what it was; he was concentrating so hard on what he planned to do that he actually thought I was a fly landing on his neck."

  Eddie began to understand. "If Jake wasn't pushed into the street, he never died. And if he never died, he never came into this world. And if he never came into this world, you never met him at the way station. Right?"

  "Right. The thought even crossed my mind that if Jack Mort meant to kill the boy, I would have to stand aside and let him do it. To avoid creating the very paradox that is tearing me apart. But I couldn't do that. I . . I . . ."

  "You couldn't kill this kid twice, could you?" Eddie asked softly. "Every time I just about make up my mind that you're as mechanical as that bear, you surprise me with something that actually seems human. Goddam"

  "Quit it, Eddie," Susannah said.

  Eddie took a look at the gunslinger's slightly lowered face and grimaced. "Sorry, Roland. My mother used to say that my mouth had a bad habit of running away with my mind."

  "It's all right. I had a friend who was the same way"

  "Cuthbert?"

  Roland nodded. He looked at his diminished right hand for a long moment, then clenched it into a painful fist, sighed, and looked up at them again. Somewhere, deeper in the forest, a lark sang sweetly.

  "Here is what I believe. If I had not entered Jack Mort when I did, he still wouldn't have pushed Jake that day. Not then. Why not? Ka-tet. Simply that. For the first time since the last of the friends with whom I set forth on this quest died, I have found myself once again at the center of ka-tet."

  "Quartet?" Eddie asked doubtfully.

  The gunslinger shook his head. "Ka--the word you think of as 'destiny,' Eddie, although the actual meaning is much more complex and hard to define, as is almost always the case with words of the High Speech. And tet, which means a group of people with the same interests and goals. We three are a tet, for instance. Ka-tet is the place where many lives are joined by fate."

  "Like in The Bridge of San Luis Rey," Susannah murmured.

  "What's that?" Roland asked.

  "A story about some people who die together when the bridge they're crossing collapses. It's famous in our world."

  Roland nodded his understanding. "In this case, ka-tet bound Jake, Walter, Jack Mort, and me. There was no trap, as I first suspected when I realized who Jack Mort meant to be his next victim, because ka-tet cannot be changed or bent to the will of any one person. But ka-tet can be seen, known, and understood. Walter saw, and Walter knew." The gunslinger struck his thigh with his fist and exclaimed bitterly, "How he must have been laughing inside when I finally caught up to him!"

  "Let's go back to what would have happened if you hadn't messed up Jack Mort's plans on the day he was following Jake," Eddie said. "You're saying that if you hadn't stopped Mort, someone or something else would have. Is that right?"

  "Yes--because it wasn't the right day for Jake to die. It was close to the right day, but not the right day. I felt that, too. Perhaps, just before he did it, Mort would have seen someone watching him. Or a perfect stranger would have intervened. Or--"

  "Or a cop," Susannah said. "He might have seen a cop in the wrong place and at the wrong time."

  "Yes. The exact reason--the agent of ka-tet-- doesn't matter. I know from firsthand experience that Mort was as wily as an old fox. If he sensed any slightest thing wrong, he would have called it off and waited for another day.

  "I know something else, as well. He hunted in disguise. On the day he dropped the brick on Detta Holmes's head, he was wearing a knitted cap and an old sweater several sizes too big for him. He wanted to look like a wine-bibber, because he pushed the brick from a building where a large number of sots kept their dens. You see?"

  They nodded.

  "On the day, years later, when he pushed you in front of the train, Susannah, he was dressed as a construction worker. He was wearing a big yellow helmet he thought of as a 'hardhat' and a fake moustache. On the day when he actually would have pushed Jake into traffic, causing his death, he would have been dressed as a priest."

  "Jesus," Susannah nearly whispered. "The man who pushed him in New York was Jack Mort, and the man he saw at the way station was this fella you were chasing--Walter."

  "Yes."

  "And the little boy thought they were the same man because they were both wearing the same kind of black robe?"

  Roland nodded. "There was even a physical resemblance between Walter and Jack Mort. Not as if they were brothers, I don't mean that, but both were tall men with dark hair and very pale complexions. And given the fact that Jake was dying when he got his only good look at Mort and was in a strange place and scared almost witless when he got his only good look at Walter, I think his mistake was both understandable and forgivable. If there's a horse's ass in this picture, it's me, for not realizing the truth sooner."

  "Would Mort have known he was being used?" Eddie asked. Thinking back to his own experiences and wild thoughts when Roland had invaded his mind, he didn't see how Mort could not know . . . but Roland was shaking his head.

  "Walter would have been extremely subtle. Mort would have thought the priest disguise his own idea . . . or so I believe. He would not have recognized the voice of an intruder--of Walter--whispering deep within his mind, telling him what to do." "Jack Mort," Eddie marvelled. "It was Jack Mort all the time."

  "Yes . . . with assistance from Walter. And so I ended up saving Jake's life after all. When I made Mort jump from the subway platform in front of the train, I changed everything."

  Susannah asked, "If this Walter was able to enter our world--through his own private door, maybe--whenever he wanted, couldn't he have used someone else to push your little boy? If. he could suggest to Mort that he dress up like a priest, then he could make somebody else do it . . . What, Eddie? Why are you shaking your head?"

  "Because I don't think Walter would want that to happen. What Walter wanted is what is happening . . . for Roland to be losing his mind, bit by bit. Isn't that right?"

  The gunslinger nodded.

  "Walter couldn't have done it that way even if he had wanted to," Eddie added, "because he was dead long before Roland found the doors on the beach. When Roland went through that last one and into Jack Mort's head, ole Walt's messin-around days were done."

  Susannah thought about this, then nodded her head. "I see . . . I think. This time-travel business is some confusing shit, isn't it?"

  Roland began to pick up his goods and strap them back into place. "Time we were moving on."

  Eddie stood up and shrugged into his pack. "You can take comfort from one thing, at least," he told Roland. "You--or this ka-tet business--were able to save the kid after all."

  Roland had been knotting the harness-strings at his chest. Now he looked up, and the blazing clarity of his eyes made Eddie flinch backward. "Have I?" he asked harshly. "Have I really? I'm going insane an inch at a time, trying to live with two versions of the same reality. I had hoped at first that one or the other would begin to fade away, but that's not happening. In fact, the exact opposite is happening: those two realities are growing louder and louder in my head, clamoring at each other like opposing factions which must soon go to war. So tell me this, Eddie: How do you
suppose Jake feels? How do you suppose it feels to know you are dead in one world and alive in another?"

  The lark sang again, but none of them noticed. Eddie stared into the faded blue eyes blazing out of Roland's pale face and could not think of a thing to say.

  24

  THEY CAMPED ABOUT FIFTEEN miles due east of the dead bear that night, slept the sleep of the completely exhausted (even Roland slept the night through, although his dreams were nightmare carnival-rides), and were up the next morning at sunrise. Eddie kindled a small fire without speaking, and glanced at Susannah as a pistol-shot rang out in the woods nearby.

  "Breakfast," she said.

  Roland returned three minutes later with a hide slung over one shoulder. On it lay the freshly gutted corpse of a rabbit. Susannah cooked it. They ate and moved on.

  Eddie kept trying to imagine what it would be like to have a memory of your own death. On that one he kept coming up short.

  25

  SHORTLY AFTER NOON THEY entered an area where most of the trees had been pulled over and the bushes mashed flat--it looked as though a cyclone had touched down here many years before, creating a wide and dismal alley of destruction.

  "We're close to the place we want to find," Roland said. "He pulled down everything to clear the sightlines. Our friend the bear wanted no surprises. He was big, but not complacent."

  "Has it left us any surprises?" Eddie asked.

  "He may have done so." Roland smiled a little and touched Eddie on the shoulder. "But there's this--they'll be old surprises."

  Their progress through this zone of destruction was slow. Most of the fallen trees were very old--many had almost rejoined the soil from which they had sprung--but they still made enough of a tangle to create a formidable obstacle course. It would have been difficult enough if all three of them had been able-bodied; with Susannah strapped to the gunslinger's back in her harness, it became an exercise in aggravation and endurance.

  The flattened trees and jumbles of underbrush served to obscure the bear's backtrail, and that also worked to slow their speed. Until midday they had followed claw-marks as clear as trail-blazes on the trees. Here, however, near its starting point, the bear's rage had not been full-blown, and these handy signs of its passage disappeared. Roland moved slowly, looking for droppings in the bushes and tufts of hair on the tree-trunks over which the bear had climbed. It took all afternoon to cross three miles of this decayed jumble.

  Eddie had just decided they were going to lose the light and would have to camp in these creepy surroundings when they came to a thin skirt of alders. Beyond it, he could hear a stream babbling noisily over a bed of stones. Behind them, the setting sun was radiating spokes of sullen red light across the jumbled ground they had just crossed, turning the fallen trees into crisscrossing black shapes like Chinese ideograms.

  Roland called a halt and eased Susannah down. He stretched his back, twisting it this way and that with his hands on his hips.

  "That it for the night?" Eddie asked.

  Roland shook his head. "Give Eddie your gun, Susannah."

  She did as he said, looking at him questioningly.

  "Come on, Eddie. The place we want is on the other side of those trees. We'll have a look. We might do a little work, as well."

  "What makes you think--"

  "Open your ears."

  Eddie listened and realized he heard machinery. He further realized that he had been hearing it for some time now. "I don't want to leave Susannah."

  "We're not going far and she has a good loud voice. Besides, if there's danger, it's ahead--we'll be between it and her."

  Eddie looked down at Susannah.

  "Go on--just make sure you're back soon." She looked back the way they had come with thoughtful eyes. "I don't know if there's ha'ants here or not, but it feels like there are."

  "We'll be back before dark," Roland promised. He started toward the screen of alders, and after a moment, Eddie followed him.

  26

  FIFTEEN YARDS INTO THE trees, Eddie realized that they were following a path, one the bear had probably made for itself over the years. The alders bent above them in a tunnel. The sounds were louder now, and he began to sort them out. One was a low, deep, humming noise. He could feel it in his feet--a faint vibration, as if some large piece of machinery was running in the earth. Above it, closer and more urgent, were crisscrossing sounds like bright scratches--squeals, squeaks, chitterings.

  Roland placed his mouth against Eddie's ear and said, "I think there's little danger if we're quiet."

  They moved on another five yards and then Roland stopped again. He drew his gun and used the barrel to brush aside a branch which hung heavy with sunset-tinted leaves. Eddie looked through this small opening and into the clearing where the bear had lived for so long--the base of operations from which he had set forth on his many expeditions of pillage and terror.

  There was no undergrowth here; the ground had been beaten bald long since. A stream emerged from the base of a rock wall about fifty feet high and ran through the arrowhead-shaped clearing. On their side of the stream, backed up against the wall, was a metal box about nine feet high. Its roof was curved, and it reminded Eddie of a subway entrance. The front was painted in diagonal yellow and black stripes. The earth which floored the clearing was not black, like the topsoil in the forest, but a strange powdery gray. It was littered with bones, and after a moment Eddie realized that what he had taken for gray soil was more bones, bones so old they were crumbling back to dust.

  Things were moving in the dirt--the things making the squealing, chittering noises. Four . . . no, five of them. Small metal devices, the largest about the size of a Collie pup. They were robots, Eddie realized, or something like robots. They were similar to each other and to the bear they had undoubtedly served in one way only--atop each of them, a tiny radar-dish turned rapidly.

  More thinking caps, Eddie thought. My God, what kind of world is this, anyway?

  The largest of these devices looked a little like the Tonka tractor Eddie had gotten for his sixth or seventh birthday; its treads churned up tiny gray clouds of bone-dust as it rolled along. Another looked like a stainless steel rat. A. third appeared to be a snake constructed of jointed steel segments--it writhed and humped its way along. They formed a rough circle on the far side of the stream, going around and around on a deep course they had carved in the ground. Looking at them made Eddie think of cartoons he had seen in the stacks of old Saturday Evening Post magazines his mother had for some reason saved and stored in the front hall of their apartment. In the cartoons, worried, cigarette-smoking men paced ruts in the carpet while they awaited for their wives to give birth.

  As his eyes grew used to the simple geography of the clearing, Eddie saw that there were a great many more than five of these assorted freaks. There were at least a dozen others that he could see and probably more hidden behind the bony remains of the bear's old kills. The difference was that the others weren't moving. The members of the bear's mechanical retinue had died, one by one, over the long years until just this little group of five were left . . . and they did not sound very healthy, with their squeaks and squalls and rusty chitterings. The snake in particular had a hesitant, crippled look as it followed the mechanical rat around and around the circle. Every now and then the device which followed the snake--a steel block that walked on stubby mechanical legs--would catch up with it and give the snake a nudge, as if telling it to hurry the fuck up.

  Eddie wondered what their job had been. Surely not protection; the bear had been built to protect itself, and Eddie guessed that if old Shardik had come upon the three of them while still in its prime, it would have chewed them up and spat them out in short order. Perhaps these little robots had been its maintenance crew, or scouts, or messengers. He guessed that they could be dangerous, but only in their own defense . . . or their master's. They did not seem warlike.

  There was, in fact, something pitiful about them. Most of the crew was now def
unct, their master was gone, and Eddie believed they knew it somehow. It was not menace they projected but a strange, inhuman sadness. Old and almost worn out, they paced and rolled and wriggled their anxious way around the worry-track they had dug in this godforsaken clearing, and it almost seemed to Eddie that he could read the confused run of their thoughts; Oh dear, oh dear, what now? What is our purpose, now that He is gone? And who will take care of us, now that He is gone? Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear . . .

  Eddie felt a tug on the back of his leg and came very close to screaming in fear and surprise. He wheeled, cocking Roland's gun, and saw Susannah looking up at him with wide eyes. Eddie let out a long breath and dropped the hammer carefully back to its resting position. He knelt, put his hands on Susannah's shoulders, kissed her cheek, then whispered in her ear: "I came really close to putting a bullet in your silly head--what are you doing here?"

  "Wanted to see," she whispered back, looking not even slightly abashed. Her eyes shifted to Roland as he also hunkered beside her. "Besides, it was spooky back there by myself."

  She had sustained a number of small scratches crawling after them through the brush, but Roland had to admit to himself that she could be as quiet as a ghost when she wanted to be; he hadn't heard a thing. He took a rag (the last remnant of his old shirt) from his back pocket and wiped the little trickles of blood from her arms. He examined his work for a moment and then dabbed at a small nick on her forehead as well. "Have your look, then," he said. His voice was hardly more than the movement of his lips. "I guess you earned it."

  He used one hand to open a sightline at her level in the hock and greenberry bushes, then waited while she stared raptly into the clearing. At last she pulled back and Roland allowed the bushes to close again.

  "I feel sorry for them," she whispered. "Isn't that crazy?"

  "Not at all," Roland whispered back. "They are creatures of great sadness, I think, in their own strange way. Eddie is going to put them out of their misery."

  Eddie began to shake his head at once.

  "Yes, you are . . . unless you want to hunker here in what you call 'the toolies' all night. Go for the hats. The little twirling things."