There was no answer. Eddie let the seconds spin out. Each one seemed long enough to read a whole novel in. He was reaching for the button again when the faint pink glow reappeared.
“I’m Little Blaine,” the child’s voice whispered. “The one he doesn’t see. The one he forgot. The one he thinks he left behind in the rooms of ruin and the halls of the dead.”
Eddie pushed the button again with a hand that had picked up an uncontrollable shake. He could hear that shake in his voice, as well. “Who? Who is the one who doesn’t see? Is it the Bear?”
No-not the bear; not he. Shardik lay dead in the forest, many miles behind them; the world had moved on even since then. Eddie suddenly remembered what it had been like to lay his ear against that strange unfound door in the clearing where die bear had lived its violent half-life, that door with its somehow terrible stripes of yellow and black. It was all of a piece, he realized now; all part of some awful, decaying whole, a tattered web with the Dark Tower at its center like an incomprehensible stone spider. All of Mid-World had become one vast haunted mansion in these strange latter days; all of Mid-World had become The Drawers; all of Mid-World had become a waste land, haunting and haunted.
He saw Susannah’s lips form the words of the real answer before the voice from the intercom could speak them, and those words were as obvious as the solution to a riddle once the answer is spoken.
“Big Blaine,” the unseen voice whispered. “Big Blaine is the ghost in the machine-the ghost in all the machines.”
Susannah’s hand had gone to her throat and was clutching it, as if she intended to strangle herself. Her eyes were full of terror, but they were not glassy, not stunned; they were sharp with understanding. Perhaps she knew a voice like this one from her own when-the when where the integrated whole that was Susannah had been shunted aside by the warring personalities of Detta and Odetta. The childish voice had surprised her as well as him, but her agonized eyes said she was no stranger to the concept being expressed.
Susannah knew all about the madness of duality.
“Eddie we have to go,” she said. Her terror turned the words into an unpunctuated auditory smear. He could hear air whistling in her windpipe like a cold wind around a chimney. “Eddie we have to get away Eddie we have to get away Eddie-”
“Too late,” the tiny, mourning voice said. “He’s awake. Big Blaine is awake. He knows you are here. And he’s coming.”
Suddenly lights-bright orange arc-sodiums-began to flash on in pairs above them, bathing the pillared vastness of the Cradle in a harsh glare that banished all shadows. Hundreds of pigeons darted and swooped in frightened, aimless flight, startled from their complex of interlocked nests high above.
“Wait!” Eddie shouted. “Please, wait!”
In his agitation he forgot to push the button, but it made no difference; Little Blaine responded anyway. “No! I can’t let him catch me! I can’t let him kill me, too!”
The light on the intercom box went dark again, but only for a moment. This time both COMMAND and ENTER lit up, and their color was not pink but the lurid dark red of a blacksmith’s forge.
“WHO ARE YOU?” a voice roared, and it came not just from the box but from every speaker in the city which still operated. The rotting bodies hanging from the poles shivered with the vibrations of that mighty voice; it seemed that even the dead would run from Blaine, if they could..
Susannah shrank back in her chair, the heels of her hands pressed to her ears, her face long with dismay, her mouth distorted in a silent scream. Eddie felt himself shrinking toward all the fantastic, hallucinatory terrors of eleven. Had it been this voice he had feared when he and Henry stood outside The Mansion? That he had perhaps even anticipated? He didn’t know… but he did know how Jack in that old story must have felt when he realized that he had tried the beanstalk once too often, and awakened the giant.
“HOW DARE YOU DISTURB MY SLEEP? TELL ME NOW, OR DIE WHERE YOU STAND.”
He might have frozen right there, leaving Blaine-Big Blaine-to do to them whatever it was he had done to Ardis (or something even worse); perhaps should have frozen, locked in that down-the-rabbit-hole, fairy-tale terror. It was the memory of the small voice which had spoken first that enabled him to move. It had been the voice of a terrified child, but it had tried to help them, terrified or not.
So now you have to help yourself, he thought. You woke it up; deal with it, for Christ’s sake!
Eddie reached out and pushed the button again. “My name is Eddie Dean. The woman with me is my wife, Susannah. We’re…”
He looked at Susannah, who nodded and made frantic motions for him to go on.
“We’re on a quest. We seek the Dark Tower which lies in the Path of the Beam. We’re in the company of two others, Roland of Gilead and… and Jake of New York. We’re from New York too. If you’re-” He paused for a moment, biting back the words Big Blaine. If he used them, he might make the intelligence behind the voice aware that they had heard another voice; a ghost inside the ghost, so to speak.
Susannah gestured again for him to go on, using both hands.
“If you’re Blaine the Mono… well… we want you to take us.”
He released the button. There was no response for what seemed like a very long time, only the agitated flutter of the disturbed pigeons from overhead. When Blaine spoke again, his voice came only from the speaker-box mounted on the gate and sounded almost human.
“DO NOT TRY MY PATIENCE. ALL THE DOORS TO THAT WHERE ARE CLOSED. GILEAD IS NO MORE, AND THOSE KNOWN AS GUNSLINGERS ARE ALL DEAD. NOW ANSWER MY QUESTION: WHO ARE YOU? THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE.”
There was a sizzling sound. A ray of brilliant blue-white light lanced down from the ceiling and seared a hole the size of a golf-ball in the marble floor less than five feet to the left of Susannah’s wheelchair. Smoke that smelled like the aftermath of a lightning-bolt rose lazily from it. Susannah and Eddie stared at each other in mute terror for a moment, and then Eddie lunged for the communicator-box and thumbed the button.
“You’re wrong! We did come from New York! We came through the doors, on the beach, only a few weeks ago!”
“It’s true!” Susannah called. “I swear it is!”
Silence. Beyond the long barrier, Blaine’s pink back humped smoothly. The window at the front seemed to regard them like a vapid glass eye. The wiper could have been a lid half-closed in a sly wink.
“PROVE IT,” Blaine said at last.
“Christ, how do I do that?” Eddie asked Susannah.
“I don’t know.”
Eddie pushed the button again. “The Statue of Liberty! Does that ring a bell?”
“GO ON,” Blaine said. Now the voice sounded almost thoughtful.
“The Empire State Building! The Stock Exchange! The World Trade Center! Coney Island Red-Hots! Radio City Music Hall! The East Vil-”
Blaine cut him off… and now, incredibly, the voice which came from the speaker was the drawling voice of John Wayne.
“OKAY, PILGRIM. I BELIEVE YOU.”
Eddie and Susannah shared another glance, this one of confusion and relief. But when Blaine spoke again, the voice was again cold and emotionless.
“ASK ME A QUESTION, EDDIE DEAN OF NEW YORK. AND IT BETTER BE A GOOD ONE.” There was a pause, and then Blaine added: “BECAUSE IF IT’s NOT, YOU AND YOUR WOMAN ARE GOING TO DIE, NO MATTER WHERE YOU CAME FROM.”
Susannah looked from the box on the gate to Eddie. “What’s it talking about?” she hissed.
Eddie shook his head. “I don’t have the slightest idea."