The Dark Tower (50 page)

Please, God, help me pick the right time
.

She waited, holding one of the Coyote machine-pistols with the barrel in the hollow of her shoulder. When the music started—a recorded version of what she thought might be “’At’s Amore”—Susannah
lurched on the seat of the SCT and squeezed the trigger involuntarily. Had the safety not been on, she would have poured a stream of bullets into the shed’s ceiling and no doubt queered the pitch at once. But Roland had taught her well, and the trigger didn’t move beneath her finger. Still, her heartbeat had doubled—trebled, maybe—and she could feel sweat trickling down her sides, even though the day was once again cool.

The music had started and that was good. But the music wasn’t enough. She sat on the SCT’s saddle, waiting for the horn.

“Dino Martino,” Eddie said, almost too low to hear.

“Hmmm?” Jake asked.

The three of them were behind the
SOO LINE
boxcar, having worked their way through the graveyard of old engines and traincars to that spot. Both of the boxcar’s loading doors were open, and all three of them had had a peek through them at the fence, the south watchtowers, and the village of Pleasantville, which consisted of but a single street. The six-armed robot which had earlier been on the Mall was now here, rolling up and down Main Street past the quaint (and closed) shops, bellowing what sounded like math equations at the top of its . . . lungs?

“Dino Martino,” Eddie repeated. Oy was sitting at Jake’s feet, looking up with his brilliant gold-ringed eyes; Eddie bent and gave his head a brief pat. “Dean Martin did that song originally.”

“Yeah?” Jake asked doubtfully.

“Sure. Only we used to sing it, ‘When-a da moon hits-a yo’ lip like a big piece-a shit, ’at’s amore—’”

“Hush, do ya please,” Roland murmured.

“Don’t suppose you smell any smoke yet, do you?” Eddie asked.

Jake and Roland shook their heads. Roland had his big iron with the sandalwood grips. Jake was armed with an AR-15, but the bag of Orizas was once more hung over his shoulder, and not just for good luck. If all went well, he and Roland would be using them soon.

Like most men with what’s known as “house-help,” Pimli Prentiss had no clear sense of his employees as creatures with goals, ambitions, and feelings—as humes, in other words. As long as there was someone to bring him his afternoon glass of whiskey and set his chop (rare) in front of him at six-thirty, he didn’t think of them at all. Certainly he would have been quite astounded to learn that Tammy (his housekeeper) and Tassa (his houseboy) loathed each other. They treated each other with perfect—if chilly—respect when they were around him, after all.

Only Pimli wasn’t around this morning as “’At’s Amore” (interpreted by the Billion Bland Strings) rose from Algul Siento’s hidden speakers. The Master was walking up the Mall, now in the company of Jakli, a ravenhead taheen tech, as well as his Security Chief. They were discussing the Deep Telemetry, and Pimli had no thought at all for the house he had left behind for the last time. Certainly it never crossed his mind that Tammy Kelly
(still in her nightgown) and Tassa of Sonesh (still in his silk sleep-shorts) were on the verge of battle about the pantry-stock.

“Look at this!” she cried. They were standing in the kitchen, which was deeply gloomy. It was a large room, and all but three of the electric lights were burned out. There were only a few bulbs left in Stores, and they were earmarked for The Study.

“Look at what?” Sulky.
Pouty.
And was that the remains of lip paint on his cunning little Cupid’s-bow of a mouth? She thought it was.

“Do’ee not see the empty spots on the shelves?” she asked indignantly. “Look! No more baked beans—”

“He don’t care beans for beans, as you very well know—”

“No tuna-fish, either, and will’ee tell me he don’t eat
that?
He’d eat it until it ran out his ears, and thee knows it!”

“Can you not—”

“No more soup—”

“Balls there ain’t!” he cried. “Look there, and there, and
th
—”

“Not the Campbell’s Tamater he likes best,” she overrode him, drawing closer in her excitement. Their arguments had never developed into outright fisticuffs before, but Tassa had an idea this might be the day. And if it were so, it were fine-oh! He’d love to sock this fat old run-off-at-the-mouth bitch in the eye. “Do you see any Campbell’s Tamater, Tassa o’ wherever-you-grew?”

“Can you not bring back a box of tins yourself?” he asked, taking his own step forward; now they were nearly nose-to-nose, and although the woman was large and the young man was willowy,
the Master’s houseboy showed no sign of fear. Tammy blinked, and for the first time since Tassa had shuffled into the kitchen—wanting no more than a cup of coffee, say thanks—an expression that was not irritation crossed her face. It might have been nervousness; it might even have been fear. “Are you so weak in the arms, Tammy of wherever-
you
-grew, that you can’t carry a box of soup-tins out of Stores?”

She drew herself up to her full height, stung. Her jowls (greasy and a-glow with some sort of night-cream) quivered with self-righteousness. “Fetching pantry supplies has ever been the houseboy’s job! And thee knows it very well!”

“That don’t make it a law that you can’t help out. I was mowing his lawn yest’y, as surely you know; I spied you sitting a-kitchen with a glass of cold tea, didn’t I, just as comfortable as old Ellie in your favorite chair.”

She bristled, losing any fear she might have had in her outrage. “I have as much right to rest as anyone else! I’d just warshed the floor—”

“Looked to me like Dobbie was doing it,” he said. Dobbie was the sort of domestic robot known as a “house-elf,” old but still quite efficient.

Tammy grew hotter still. “What would you know about house chores, you mincy little queer?”

Color flushed Tassa’s normally pale cheeks. He was aware that his hands had rolled themselves into fists, but only because he could feel his carefully cared-for nails biting into his palms. It occurred to him that this sort of petty bitch-and-whistle was downright ludicrous, coming as it did with the end of everything stretching black just beyond them; they were two fools sparring and catcalling
on the very lip of the abyss, but he didn’t care. Fat old sow had been sniping at him for years, and now here was the real reason. Here it was, finally naked and out in the open.

“Is that what bothers thee about me, sai?” he enquired sweetly. “That I kiss the pole instead of plug the hole, no more than that?”

Now there were torches instead of roses flaring in Tammy Kelly’s cheeks. She’d not meant to go so far, but now that she had—that
they
had, for if there was to be a fight, it was his fault as much as hers—she wouldn’t back away. Was damned if she would.

“Master’s Bible says queerin be a sin,” she told him righteously. “I’ve read it myself, so I have. Book of Leviticracks,
Chapter Three
, Verse—”

“And what do Leviticracks say about the sin of gluttony?” he enquired. “What do it say about a woman with tits as big as bolsters and an ass as big as a kitchen ta—”

“Never mind the size o’ my ass, you little
cocksucker!
”

“At least I can
get
a man,” he said sweetly, “and don’t have to lie abed with a dustclout—”

“Don’t you dare!” she cried shrilly. “Shut your foul mouth before I shut it for you!”

“—to get rid of the cobwebs in my cunny so I can—”

“I’ll knock thy teeth out if thee doesn’t—”

“—finger my tired old pokeberry pie.” Then something which would offend her even more deeply occurred to him. “My tired,
dirty
old pokeberry pie!”

She balled her own fists, which were considerably bigger than his. “At least I’ve never—”

“Go no further, sai, I beg you.”

“—never had some man’s nasty old . . . nasty . . . old . . .”

She trailed off, looking puzzled, and sniffed the air. He sniffed it himself, and realized the aroma he was getting wasn’t new. He’d been smelling it almost since the argument started, but now it was stronger.

Tammy said, “Do you smell—”

“—smoke!” he finished, and they looked at each other with alarm, their argument forgotten perhaps only five seconds before it would have come to blows. Tammy’s eyes fixed on the sampler hung beside the stove. There were similar ones all over Algul Siento, because most of the buildings which made up the compound were wood.
Old
wood.
WE ALL MUST WORK TOGETHER TO CREATE A FIRE-FREE ENVIRONMENT
, it said.

Somewhere close by—in the back hallway—one of the still-working smoke detectors went off with a loud and frightening bray. Tammy hurried into the pantry to grab the fire-extinguisher in there.

“Get the one in the library!” she shouted, and Tassa ran to do it without a word of protest. Fire was the one thing they all feared.

Gaskie o’ Tego, the Deputy Security Chief, was standing in the foyer of Feveral Hall, the dormitory directly behind Damli House, talking with James Cagney. Cagney was a redhaired can-toi who favored Western-style shirts and boots that added three inches to his actual five-foot-five. Both had
clipboards and were discussing certain necessary changes in the following week’s Damli security. Six of the guards who’d been assigned to the second shift had come down with what Gangli, the compound doctor, said was a hume disease called “momps.” Sickness was common enough in Thunderclap—it was the air, as everyone knew, and the poisoned leavings of the old people—but it was ever inconvenient. Gangli said they were lucky there had never been an actual plague, like the Black Death or the Hot Shivers.

Beyond them, on the paved court behind Damli House, an early-morning basketball game was going on, several taheen and can-toi guards (who would be officially on duty as soon as the horn blew) against a ragtag team of Breakers. Gaskie watched Joey Rastosovich take a shot from way downtown—
swish
. Trampas snared the ball and took it out of bounds, briefly lifting his cap to scratch beneath it. Gaskie didn’t care much for Trampas, who had an entirely inappropriate liking for the talented animals who were his charges. Closer by, sitting on the dorm’s steps and also watching the game, was Ted Brautigan. As always, he was sipping at a can of Nozz-A-La.

“Well fuggit,” James Cagney said, speaking in the tones of a man who wants to be finished with a boring discussion. “If you don’t mind taking a couple of humies off the fence-walk for a day or two—”

“What’s Brautigan doing up so early?” Gaskie interrupted. “He almost never rolls out until noon. That kid he pals around with is the same way. What’s his name?”

“Earnshaw?” Brautigan also palled around with that half-bright Ruiz, but Ruiz was no kid.

Gaskie nodded. “Aye, Earnshaw, that’s the one. He’s on duty this morning. I saw him earlier in The Study.”

Cag (as his friends called him) didn’t give a shit why Brautigan was up with the birdies (not that there were many birdies left, at least in Thunderclap); he only wanted to get this roster business settled so he could stroll across to Damli and get a plate of scrambled eggs. One of the Rods had found fresh chives somewhere, or so he’d heard, and—

“Do’ee smell something, Cag?” Gaskie o’ Tego asked suddenly.

The can-toi who fancied himself James Cagney started to enquire if Gaskie had farted, then rethought this humorous riposte. For in fact he did smell something. Was it smoke?

Cag thought it was.

Ted sat on the cold steps of Feveral Hall, breathing the bad-smelling air and listening to the humes and the taheen trash-talk each other from the basketball court. (Not the can-toi; they refused to indulge in such vulgarity.) His heart was beating hard but not fast. If there was a Rubicon that needed crossing, he realized, he’d crossed it some time ago. Maybe on the night the low men had hauled him back from Connecticut, more likely on the day he’d approached Dinky with the idea of reaching out to the gunslingers that Sheemie Ruiz insisted were nearby. Now he was wound up (to the max, Dinky would have said), but nervous? No. Nerves, he thought, were for people who
still hadn’t entirely made up their minds.

Behind him he heard one idiot (Gaskie) asking t’other idiot (Cagney) if he smelled something, and Ted knew for sure that Haylis had done his part; the game was afoot. Ted reached into his pocket and brought out a scrap of paper. Written on it was a line of perfect pentameter, although hardly Shakespearian:
GO SOUTH WITH YOUR HANDS UP
,
YOU WON’T BE HURT
.

He looked at this fixedly, preparing to broadcast.

Behind him, in the Feveral rec room, a smoke detector went off with a loud donkey-bray.

Here we go, here we go,
he thought, and looked north, to where he hoped the first shooter—the woman—was hiding.

Three-quarters of the way up the Mall toward Damli House, Master Prentiss stopped with Finli on one side of him and Jakli on the other. The horn still hadn’t gone off, but there was a loud braying sound from behind them. They had no more begun to turn toward it when another bray began from the other end of the compound—the dormitory end.

“What the devil—” Pimli began.

—
is that
was how he meant to finish, but before he could, Tammy Kelly came rushing out through the front door of Warden’s House, with Tassa, his houseboy, scampering along right behind her. Both of them were waving their arms over their heads.

“Fire!
” Tammy shouted. “
Fire!
”

Fire? But that’s impossible,
Pimli thought.
For if that’s the smoke detector I’m hearing in my house and
also
the smoke detector I’m hearing from one of the dorms, then surely
—

“It must be a false alarm,” he told Finli. “Those smoke detectors do that when their batteries are—”

Before he could finish this hopeful assessment, a side window of Warden’s House exploded outward. The glass was followed by an exhalation of orange flame.