Little safety nets, like a key. Not tomention a scrimshaw turtle.

“If he wrote those things into his story,”Eddie said, “it was long after we saw him in 1977.”

“Aye,” Roland agreed.

“And I don’t think he thought them up,”Eddie said. “Not really. He’s just… I dunno, just a…”

“A bumhug?” Susannah asked, smiling.

“No!” Jake said, sounding a little shocked.“Not that. He’s a sender. A telecaster.” He was thinking about his father andhis father’s job at the Network.

“Bingo,” Eddie said, and leveled a fingerat the boy. This idea led him to another: that if Stephen King did not remainalive long enough to write those things into his tale, the key and the turtlewould not be there when they were needed. Jake would have been eaten by theDoorkeeper in the house on Dutch Hill… always assuming he got that far, whichhe probably wouldn’t have done. And if he escaped the Dutch Hill monster, hewould’ve been eaten by the Grandfathers—Callahan’s Type Onevampires—in the Dixie Pig.

Susannah thought to tell them about thevision she’d had as Mia was beginning her final journey from the Plaza-ParkHotel to the Dixie Pig. In this vision she’d been jugged in a jail cell inOxford, Mississippi, and there had been voices coming from a TV somewhere. ChetHuntley, Walter Cronkite, Frank McGee: newscasters chanting the names of thedead. Some of those names, like President Kennedy and the Diem brothers, she’dknown. Others, like Christa McAuliffe, she had not. But one of the names hadbeen Stephen King’s, she was quite sure of it. Chet Huntley’s partner

(good night Chet good night David)

saying that Stephen King had been struckand killed by a Dodge minivan while walking near his house. King had beenfifty-two, according to Brinkley.

Had Susannah told them that, a great manythings might have happened differently, or not at all. She was opening hermouth to add it into the conversation—a falling chip on a hillsidestrikes a stone which strikes a larger stone which then strikes two others andstarts a landslide—when there was the clunk of an opening door and theclack of approaching footsteps. They all turned, Jake reaching for a ‘Riza, theothers for their guns.

“Relax, fellas,” Susannah murmured. “It’sall right. I know this guy.” And then to DNK 45932, DOMESTIC, she said:“I didn’t expect to see you again so soon. In fact, I didn’t expect to see youat all. What’s up, Nigel old buddy?”

So this time something which might havebeen spoken was not, and the deus ex machina which might have descendedto rescue a writer who had a date with a Dodge minivan on a late-spring day inthe year of ‘99 remained where it was, high above the mortals who acted theirparts below.

Three

The nice thing about robots, in Susannah’sopinion, was that most of them didn’t hold grudges. Nigel told her that no onehad been available to fix his visual equipment (although he might be able to doit himself, he said, given access to the right components, discs, and repairtutorials), so he had come back here, relying on the infrared, to pick up theremains of the shattered (and completely unneeded) incubator. He thanked herfor her interest and introduced himself to her friends.

“Nice to meet you, Nige,” Eddie said, “butyou’ll want to get started on those repairs, I kennit, so we won’t keep you.”Eddie’s voice was pleasant and he’d reholstered his gun, but he kept his handon the butt. In truth he was a little bit freaked by the resemblance Nigel boreto a certain messenger robot in the town of Calla Bryn Sturgis. That one hadheld a grudge.

“No, stay,” Roland said. “We may havechores for you, but for the time being I’d as soon you were quiet. Turned off,if it please you.” And if it doesn’t, his tone implied.

“Certainly, sai,” Nigel replied in hisplummy British accent. “You may reactivate me with the words Nigel, I needyou.”

“Very good,” Roland said.

Nigel folded his scrawny (but undoubtedlypowerful) stainless-steel arms across his chest and went still.

“Came back to pick up the broken glass,”Eddie marveled. “Maybe the Tet Corporation could sell em. Every housewife inAmerica would want two—one for the house and one for the yard.”

“The less we’re involved with science, thebetter,” Susannah said darkly. In spite of her brief nap while leaning againstthe door between Fedic and New York, she looked haggard, done almost to death.“Look where it’s gotten this world.”

Roland nodded to Jake, who told of his andPere Callahan’s adventures in the New York of 1999, beginning with the taxithat had almost hit Oy and ending with their two-man attack on the low men andthe vampires in the dining room of the Dixie Pig. He did not neglect to tell howthey had disposed of Black Thirteen by putting it in a storage locker at theWorld Trade Center, where it would be safe until early June of 2002, and howthey had found the turtle, which Susannah had dropped, like a message in abottle, in the gutter outside the Dixie Pig.

“So brave,” Susannah said, and ruffledJake’s hair. Then she bent to stroke Oy’s head. The bumbler stretched his longneck to maximize the caress, his eyes half-closed and a grin on his foxy littleface. “So damned brave. Thankee-sai, Jake.”

“Thank Ake!” Oy agreed.

“If it hadn’t been for the turtle, theywould have gotten us both.” Jake’s voice was steady, but he had gone pale. “Asit was, the Pere… he…” Jake wiped away a tear with the heel of his hand andgazed at Roland. “You used his voice to send me on. I heard you.”

“Aye, I had to,” the gunslinger agreed. “‘Twas no more than what he wanted.”

Jake said, “The vampires didn’t get him. Heused my Ruger before they could take his blood and change him into one of them.I don’t think they would’ve done that, anyway. They would have torn him apartand eaten him. They were mad.”

Roland was nodding.

“The last thing he sent—I think hesaid it out loud, although I’m not sure—it was…” Jake considered it. Hewas weeping freely now. “He said ‘May you find your Tower, Roland, and breachit, and may you climb to the top.’ Then…” Jake made a little puffing soundbetween his pursed lips. “Gone. Like a candle-flame. To whatever worlds thereare.”

He fell silent. For several moments theyall did, and the quiet had the feel of a deliberate thing. Then Eddie said,“All right, we’re back together again. What the hell do we do next?”

Four

Roland sat down with a grimace, then gaveEddie Dean a look which said—clearer than any words ever could havedone—Why do you try my patience?

“All right,” Eddie said, “it’s just ahabit. Quit giving me the look.”

“What’s a habit, Eddie?”

Eddie thought of his final bruising,addictive year with Henry less frequently these days, but he thought of it now.Only he didn’t like to say so, not because he was ashamed—Eddie reallythought he might be past that—but because he sensed the gunslinger’sgrowing impatience with Eddie’s explaining things in terms of his big brother.And maybe that was fair. Henry had been the defining, shaping force in Eddie’slife, okay. Just as Cort had been the defining, shaping force in Roland’s… butthe gunslinger didn’t talk about his old teacher all the time.

“Asking questions when I already know theanswer,” Eddie said.

“And what’s the answer this time?”

“We’re going to backtrack to Thunderclapbefore we go on to the Tower. We’re either going to kill the Breakers or setthem free. Whatever it takes to make the Beams safe. We’ll kill Walter, orFlagg, or whatever he’s calling himself. Because he’s the field marshal, isn’the?”

“He was,” Roland agreed, “but now a newplayer has come on the scene.” He looked at the robot. “Nigel, I need you.”

Nigel unfolded his arms and raised hishead. “How may I serve?”