Jake opened his mouth to ask how they could be sure they had been looking into Keystone World, the one where Stephen King had less than a day to live, and then shut it again. The answer was in the time, stupid, as the answer always was: the numbers comprising 9:19 also added up to nineteen.
Thirteen
“And how long ago was it that you saw this?” Roland asked.
Dinky calculated. “Had to’ve been five hours, at least. Based on when the change-of-shifts horn blew and the sun went out for the night.”
Which should make it two-thirty in the morning right now on the other side, Jake calculated, counting the hours on his fingers. Thinking was hard now, even simple addition slowed by constant thoughts of Eddie, but he found he could do it if he really tried. Only you can’t depend on its only being five hours, because time goes faster on America-side. That may change now that the Breakers have quit beating up on the Beam—it may equalize—but probably not yet. Right now it’s probably still running fast.
And it might slip.
One minute Stephen King could be sitting in front of his typewriter in his office on the morning of June 19th, fine as paint, and the next… boom! Lying in a nearby funeral parlor that evening, eight or twelve hours gone by in a flash, his grieving family sitting in their own circle of lamplight and trying to decide what kind of service King would’ve wanted, always assuming that information wasn’t in his will; maybe even trying to decide where he’d be buried. And the Dark Tower? Stephen King’s version of the Dark Tower? Or Gan’s version, or the Prim’s version? Lost forever, all of them. And that sound you hear? Why, that must be the Crimson King, laughing and laughing and laughing from somewhere deep in the Discordia. And maybe Mordred the Spider-Boy, laughing along with him.
For the first time since Eddie’s death, something besides grief came to the forefront of Jake’s mind. It was a faint ticking sound, like the one the Sneetches had made when Roland and Eddie programmed them. Just before giving them to Haylis to plant, this had been. It was the sound of time, and time was not their friend.
“He’s right,” Jake said. “We have to go while we can still do something.”
Ted: “Will Susannah—”
“No,” Roland said. “Susannah will stay here, and you’ll help her bury Eddie. Do you agree?”
“Yes,” Ted said. “Of course, if that’s how you’d have it.”
“If we’re not back in…” Roland calculated, one eye squinted shut, the other looking off into the darkness. “If we’re not back by this time on the night after next, assume that we’ve come back to End-World at Fedic.” Yes, assume Fedic, Jake thought. Of course. Because what good would it do to make the other, even more logical assumption, that we’re either dead or lost between the worlds, todash forever?
“Do’ee ken Fedic?” Roland was asking.
“South of here, isn’t it?” asked Worthington. He had wandered over with Dani, the pre-teen girl. “Or what was south? Trampas and a few of the other can-toi used to talk of it as though it were haunted.”
“It’s haunted, all right,” Roland said grimly. “Can you put Susannah on a train to Fedic in the event that we’re not able to come back here? I know that at least some trains must still run, because of—”
“The Greencloaks?” Dinky said, nodding. “Or the Wolves, as you think of them. All the D-line trains still run. They’re automated.”
“Are they monos? Do they talk?” Jake asked. He was thinking of Blaine.
Dinky and Ted exchanged a doubtful look, then Dinky returned his attention to Jake and shrugged. “How would we know? I probably know more about D-cups than D-lines, and I think that’s true of everyone here. The Breakers, at least. I suppose some of the guards might know something more. Or that guy.” He jerked a thumb at Tassa, who was still sitting on the stoop of Warden’s House, head in hands.
“In any case, we’ll tell Susannah to be careful,” Roland murmured to Jake. Jake nodded. He supposed that was the best they could do, but he had another question. He made a mental note to ask either Ted or Dinky, if he got a chance to do so without being overheard by Roland. He didn’t like the idea of leaving Susannah behind—every instinct of his heart cried out against it—but he knew she would refuse to leave Eddie unburied, and Roland knew it, too. They could make her come, but only by binding and gagging her, and that would only make things worse than they were already.
“It might be,” Ted said, “that a few Breakers would be interested in taking the train-trip south with Susannah.”
Dani nodded. “We’re not exactly loved around here for helping you out,” she said. “Ted and Dinky are getting it the worst, but somebody spit at me half an hour ago, while I was in my room, getting this.” She held up a battered-looking and clearly much-loved Pooh Bear. “I don’t think they’ll do anything while you guys are around, but after you go…” She shrugged.
“Man, I don’t get that,” Jake said. “They’re free.”
“Free to do what?” Dinky asked. “Think about it. Most of them were misfits on America-side. Fifth wheels. Over here we were VIPs, and we got the best of everything. Now all that’s gone. When you think about it that way, is it so hard to understand?”
“Yes,” Jake said bluntly. He supposed he didn’t want to understand.
“They lost something else, too,” Ted told them quietly. “There’s a novel by Ray Bradbury called Fahrenheit 451. ‘It was a pleasure to burn’ is that novel’s first line. Well, it was a pleasure to Break, as well.”
Dinky was nodding. So were Worthington and Dani Rostov.
Even Sheemie was nodding his head.
Fourteen
Eddie lay in that same circle of light, but now his face was clean and the top sheet of the proctor’s bed had been folded neatly down to his midsection. Susannah had dressed him in a clean white shirt she’d found somewhere (in the proctor’s closet was Jake’s guess), and she must have found a razor, too, because his cheeks were smooth. Jake tried to imagine her sitting here and shaving the face of her dead husband—singing “Commala-come-come, the rice has just begun” as she did it—and at first he couldn’t. Then, all at once, the image came to him, and it was so powerful that he had to struggle once again to keep from bursting into sobs.
She listened quietly as Roland spoke to her, sitting on the side of the bed, hands folded in her lap, eyes downcast. To the gunslinger she looked like a shy virgin receiving a marriage proposal.
When he had finished, she said nothing.
“Do you understand what I’ve told you, Susannah?”
“Yes,” she said, still without looking up. “I’m to bury my man. Ted and Dinky will help me, if only to keep their friends—” she gave this word a bitterly sarcastic little twist that actually encouraged Roland a bit; she was in there after all, it seemed “—from taking him away from me and lynching his body from a sour apple tree.”
“And then?”
“Either you’ll find a way to come back here and we’ll return to Fedic together, or Ted and Dinky will put me on the train and I’ll go there alone.”
Jake didn’t just hate the cold disconnection in her voice; it terrified him, as well. “You know why we have to go back to the other side, don’t you?” he asked anxiously. “I mean, you know, don’t you?”
“To save the writer while there’s still time.” She had picked up one of Eddie’s hands, and Jake noted with fascination that his nails were perfectly clean. What had she used to get the dirt out from beneath them, he wondered—had the proctor had one of those little nail-care gadgets, like the one his father always kept on a keychain in his pocket? “Sheemie says we’ve saved the Beam of Bear and Turtle. We think we’ve saved the rose. But there’s at least one more job to do. The writer. The lazybones writer.” Now she did look up, and her eyes flashed. Jake suddenly thought it might be good that Susannah wouldn’t be with them when—if—they met sai Stephen King.