The Collective

gun and fired once, but the bullet went into one of the wagon-

wheels, smashing a wooden spoke and turning the wheel on its hub

with a high screeching sound. Behind him, he heard the green folk

in the street uttering hoarse, yapping cries as they charged forward.

The thing which had been hiding beneath the overturned wagon

was a monster with two heads growing out of his neck, one with

the vestigial, slack face of a corpse. The other, although just as

green, was more lively. Broad lips spread in a cheerful grin as he

raised his club to strike again.

Roland drew with his left hand - the one that wasn't numbed and

distant. He had time to put one bullet through the bushwhacker's

grin, flinging him backwards in a spray of blood and teeth, the

bludgeon flying out of his relaxing fingers. Then the others were

on him, clubbing and drubbing.

The gunslinger was able to slip the first couple of blows, and there

was one moment when he thought he might be able to spin around

to the rear of the overturned wagon, spin and turn and go to work

with his guns. Surely he would be able to do that. Surely his quest

for the Dark Tower wasn't supposed to end on the sun-blasted

street of a little far-western town called Eluria, at the hands of half

a dozen green-skinned slow mutants. Surely ka could not be so

cruel.

But Bowler Hat caught him with a vicious sidehand blow, and

Roland crashed into the wagon's slowly spinning rear wheel

instead of skirting around it. As he went to his hands and knees,

still scrambling and trying to turn, trying to evade the blows which

rained down on him, he saw there were now many more than half a

dozen. Coming up the street towards the town square were at least

thirty green men and women. This wasn't a clan but a damned tribe

of them. And in broad, hot daylight! Slow mutants were, in his

experience, creatures that loved the dark, almost like toadstools

with brains, and he had never seen any such as these before. They -

The one in the red vest was female. Her bare breasts swinging

beneath the dirty red vest were the last things he saw clearly as

they gathered around and above him, bashing away with their

clubs. The one with the nails studded in it came down on his lower

right calf, sinking its stupid rusty fangs in deep. He tried again to

raise one of the big guns (his vision was fading, now, but that

wouldn't help them if he got to shooting; he had always been the

most hellishly talented of them; Jamie DeCurry had once

proclaimed that Roland could shoot blindfolded, because he had

eyes in his fingers), and it was kicked out of his hand and into the

dust. Although he could still feel the smooth sandalwood grip of

the other, he thought it was nevertheless already gone.

He could smell them - the rich, rotted smell of decaying meat. Or

was that only his hands, as he raised them in a feeble and useless

effort to protect his head? His hands, which had been in the

polluted water where flecks and strips of the dead boy's skin

floated?

The clubs slamming down on him, slamming down all over him, as

if the green folk wanted not just to beat him to death but to

tenderize him as they did so. And as he went down into the

darkness of what he most certainly believed would be his death, he

heard the bugs singing, the dog he had spared barking, and the

bells hung on the church door ringing. These sounds merged

together into strangely sweet music. Then that was gone, too; the

darkness ate it all.

II. Rising. Hanging Suspended. White Beauty.

Two Others. The Medallion.

The gunslinger's return to the world wasn't like coming back to

consciousness after a blow, which he'd done several times before,

and it wasn't like waking from sleep, either. It was like rising.

I'm dead, he thought at some point during this process ... when the

power to think had been at least partially restored to him. Dead

and rising into whatever afterlife there is. That's what it must be.

The singing I hear is the singing of dead souls.

Total blackness gave way to the dark grey of rainclouds, then to

the lighter grey of fog. This brightened to the uniform clarity of a

heavy mist moments before the sun breaks through. And through it

all was that sense of rising, as if he had been caught in some mild

but powerful updraught.

As the sense of rising began to diminish and the brightness behind

his eyelids grew, Roland at last began to believe he was still alive.

It was the singing that convinced him. Not dead souls, not the

heavenly host of angels sometimes described by the Jesus-man

preachers, but only those bugs. A little like crickets, but sweeter-

voiced. The ones he had heard in Eluria.

On this thought, he opened his eyes.

His belief that he was still alive was severely tried, for Roland

found himself hanging suspended in a world of white beauty - his

first bewildered thought was that he was in the sky, floating within

a fair-weather cloud. All around him was the reedy singing of the

bugs. Now he could hear the tinkling of bells, too.

He tried to turn his head and swayed in some sort of harness. He

could hear it creaking. The soft singing of the bugs, like crickets in

the grass at the end of day back home in Gilead, hesitated and

broke rhythm. When it did, what felt like a tree of pain grew up

Roland's back. He had no idea what its burning branches might be,

but the trunk was surely his spine. A far deadlier pain sank into one

of his lower legs ~ in his confusion, the gunslinger could not tell

which one. That's where the club with the nails in it got me, he

thought. And more pain in his head. His skull felt like a badly

cracked egg. He cried out, and could hardly believe that the harsh

crow's caw he heard came from his own throat. He thought he

could also hear, very faintly, the barking of the cross-dog, but

surely that was his imagination.

Am I dying? Have I awakened once more at the very end?

A hand stroked his brow. He could feel it but not see it - fingers

trailing across his skin ' pausing here and there to massage a knot

or a line. Delicious, like a drink of cool water on a hot day. He

began to close his eyes, and then a horrible idea came to him:

suppose that hand were green, its owner wearing a tattered red vest

over her hanging dugs?

What if it is? What could you do?

'Hush, man,' a young woman's voice said ... or perhaps it was the

voice of a girl. Certainly the first person Roland thought of was

Susan, the girl from Mejis, she who had spoken to him as thee.

'Where ... where . . .'

'Hush, stir not. 'Tis far too soon.'

The pain in his back was subsiding now, but the image of the pain

as a tree remained, for his very skin seemed to be moving like

leaves in a light breeze. How could that be?

He let the question go - let all questions go - and concentrated on

the small, cool hand stroking his brow.

'Hush, pretty man, God's love be upon ye. Yet it's sore hurt ye are.

Be still. Heal.'

The dog had hushed its barking (if it had ever been there in the first

place), and Roland became aware of that low, creaking sound

again. It reminded him of horse-tethers, or something - hangropes -

he didn't like to think of. Now he believed he could feel pressure

beneath his thighs, his buttocks, and perhaps . . . yes ... his

shoulders.

I'm not in a bed at all. I think I'm above a bed. Can that be?

He supposed he could be in a sling. He seemed to remember once,

as a boy, that some fellow had been suspended that way in the

horse-doctor's room behind the Great Hall. A stablehand who had

been burned too badly by kerosene to be laid in a bed. The man

had died, but not soon enough; for two nights, his shrieks had filled

the sweet summer air of the Gathering Fields.

Am I burned, then, nothing but a cinder with legs, hanging in a

sling?

The fingers touched the centre of his brow, rubbing away the

frown forming there. And it was as if the voice which went with

the hand had read his thoughts, picking them up with the tips of her

clever, soothing fingers.

'Ye'll be fine if God wills, sai,' the voice which went with the hand

said. 'But time belongs to God, not to you.'

No, he would have said, if he had been able. Time belongs to the

Tower.

Then he slipped down again, descending as smoothly as he had

risen, going away from the hand and the dreamlike sounds of the

singing insects and chiming bells. There was an interval that might

have been sleep, or perhaps unconsciousness, but he never went all

the way back down.

At one point he thought he heard the girl's voice, although he

couldn't be sure, because this time it was raised in fury, or fear, or

both. 'No!' she cried. 'Ye can't have it off him and ye know it! Go

your course and stop talking of it, do!'

When he rose back to consciousness the second time, he was no

stronger in body, but a little more himself in mind. What he saw

when he opened his eyes wasn't the inside of a cloud, but at first

that same phrase - white beauty - recurred to him. It was in some

ways the most beautiful place Roland had ever been in his life ...

partially because he still had a life, of course, but mostly because it

was so fey and peaceful.

It was a huge room, high and long. When Roland at last turned his

head - cautiously, so cautiously - to take its measure as well as he

could, he thought it must run at least two hundred yards from end

to end. It was built narrow, but its height gave the place a feeling

of tremendous airiness.

There were no walls or ceilings such as those he was familiar with,

although it was a little like being in a vast tent. Above him, the sun

struck and diffused its light across billowy panels of thin white

silk, turning them into the bright swags which he had first mistaken

for clouds. Beneath this silk canopy, the room was as grey as

twilight. The walls, also silk, rippled like sails in a faint breeze.

Hanging from each wall-panel was a curved rope bearing small

bells. These lay against the fabric and rang in low and charming

unison, like wind-chimes, when the walls rippled.

An aisle ran down the centre of the long room; on either side of it

were scores of beds, each made up with clean white sheets and

headed with crisp white pillows. There were perhaps forty on the

far side of the aisle, all empty, and another forty on Roland's side.

There were two other occupied beds here, one next to Roland on

his left. This fellow

It's the boy. The one who was in the trough.

The idea ran goosebumps up Roland's arms and gave him a nasty,

superstitious start. He peered more closely at the sleeping boy.

Can't be. You're just dazed, that's all; it can't be.

Yet closer scrutiny refused to dispel the idea. It certainly seemed to

be the boy from the trough, probably ill (why else would he be in a

place like this?) but far from dead; Roland could see the slow rise

and fall of his chest, and the occasional twitch of the fingers which

dangled over the side of the bed.

You didn't get a good enough look at him to be sure of anything,

and after a few days in that trough, his own mother couldn't have

said for sure who it was.

But Roland, who'd had a mother, knew better than that. He also

knew that he'd seen the gold medallion around the boy's neck. just

before the attack of the green folk, he had taken it from this lad's

corpse and put it in his pocket. Now someone - the proprietors of

this place, most likely, they who had sorcerously restored the lad

named James to his interrupted life - had taken it back from Roland

and put it around the boy's neck again.

Had the girl with the wonderfully cool hand done that? Did she in

consequence think Roland a ghoul who would steal from the dead?

He didn't like to think so. In fact, the notion made him more

uncomfortable than the idea that the young cowboy's bloated body

had been somehow returned to its normal size and then reanimated.

Further down the aisle on this side, perhaps a dozen empty beds

away from the boy and Roland Deschain, the gunslinger saw a

third inmate of this queer infirmary. This fellow looked at least

four times the age of the lad, twice the age of the gunslinger. He

had a long beard, more grey than black, that hung to his upper

chest in two straggly forks. The face above it was sun-darkened,

heavily lined, and pouched beneath the eyes. Running from his left

cheek and across the bridge of his nose was a thick dark mark

which Roland took to be a scar. The bearded man was either asleep

or unconscious - Roland could hear him snoring - and was

suspended three feet above his bed, held up by a complex series of

white belts that glimmered in the dim air. These crisscrossed each

other, making a series of figure eights all the way around the man's

body. He looked like a bug in some exotic spider's web. He wore a

gauzy white bed-dress. One of the belts ran beneath his buttocks,

elevating his crotch in a way that seemed to offer the bulge of his

privates to the grey and dreaming air. Further down his body,

Roland could see the dark shadow-shapes of his legs. They

appeared to be twisted like ancient dead trees. Roland didn't like to

think in how many places they must have been broken to look like

that. And yet they appeared to be moving. How could they be, if

the bearded man was unconscious? It was a trick of the light,

perhaps, or of the shadows ... perhaps the gauzy singlet the man

was wearing was stirring in a light breeze, or ...

Roland looked away, up at the billowy silk panels high above,

trying to control the accelerating beat of his heart. What he saw

hadn't been caused by the wind, or a shadow, or anything else. The

man's legs were somehow moving without moving ... as Roland

had seemed to feel his own back moving without moving. He

didn't know what could cause such a phenomenon, and didn't want

to know, at least not yet.

'I'm not ready,' he whispered. His lips felt very dry. He closed his

eyes again, wanting to sleep, wanting not to think about what the

bearded man's twisted legs might indicate about his own condition.

But

But you'd better get ready.

That was the voice that always seemed to come when he tried to

slack off, to scamp a job, or take the easy way around an obstacle.

It was the voice of Cort, his old teacher. The man whose stick they

had all feared, as boys. They hadn't feared his stick as much as his

mouth, however. His jeers when they were weak, his contempt

when they complained or tried whining about their lot.

Are you a gunslinger, Roland? If you are, you better get ready.

Roland opened his eyes again and turned his head to the left again.

As he did, he felt something shift against his chest.

Moving very slowly, he raised his right hand out of the sling that

held it. The pain in his back stirred and muttered. He stopped

moving until he decided the pain was going to get no worse (if he

was careful, at least), then lifted the hand the rest of the way to his

chest. It encountered finely-woven cloth. Cotton. He lowered his

chin to his breastbone and saw he was wearing a bed-dress like the

one draped on the body of the bearded man.

Roland reached beneath the neck of the gown and felt a fine chain.

A little further down, his fingers encountered a rectangular metal

shape. He thought he knew what it was, but had to be sure. He

pulled it out, still moving with great care, trying not to engage any

of the muscles in his back. A gold medallion. He dared the pain,

lifting it until he could read what was engraved upon it:

James

Loved of family, Loved of GOD

He tucked it into the top of the bed-dress again and looked back at

the sleeping boy in the next bed - in it, not suspended over it. The

sheet was only pulled up to the boy's ribcage, and the medallion

lay on the pristine white breast of his bed-dress. The same

medallion Roland now wore. Except ...

Roland thought he understood, and understanding was a relief.

He looked back at the bearded man, and saw an exceedingly

strange thing: the thick black line of scar across the bearded man's

cheek and nose was gone. Where it had been was the pinkish-red

mark of a healing wound ... a cut, or perhaps a slash.

I imagined it.

No, gunslinger, Cort's voice returned. Such as you was not made to

imagine. As you well know.

The little bit of movement had tired him out again ... or perhaps it

was the thinking which had really tired him out. The singing bugs

and chiming bells combined and made something too much like a

lullaby to resist. This time when Roland closed his eyes, he slept.

III. Five Sisters. Jenna. The Doctors of Eluria.

The Medallion. A Promise of Silence.

When Roland awoke again, he was at first sure that he was still

sleeping. Dreaming. Having a nightmare.

Once, at the time he had met and fallen in love with Susan

Delgado, he had known a witch named Rhea - the first real witch

of Mid-World he had ever met. It was she who had caused Susan's

death, although Roland had played his own part. Now, opening his

eyes and seeing Rhea not just once but five times over, he thought:

This is what comes of remembering those old times. By conjuring

Susan, I've conjured Rhea of the Coos, as well. Rhea and her

sisters.

The five were dressed in billowing habits as white as the walls and

the panels of the ceiling. Their antique crones' faces were framed

in wimples just as white, their skin as grey and runnelled as

droughted earth by comparison. Hanging like phylacteries from the

bands of silk imprisoning their hair (if they indeed had hair) were

lines of tiny bells which chimed as they moved or spoke. Upon the

snowy breasts of their habits was embroidered a blood-red rose ...

the sigil of the Dark Tower. Seeing this, Roland thought: I am not

dreaming. These harridans are real.

'He wakes!' one of them cried in a gruesomely coquettish voice.

'Oooo!'

'Ooooh!'

'Ah!'

They fluttered like birds. The one in the centre stepped forward,

and as she did, their faces seemed to shimmer like the silk walls of

the ward. They weren't old after all, he saw - middle-aged, perhaps,

but not old.

Yes. They are old. They changed.

The one who now took charge was taller than the others, and with

a broad, slightly bulging brow. She bent towards Roland, and the

bells which fringed her forehead tinkled. The sound made him feel

sick, somehow, and weaker than he had felt a moment before. Her

hazel eyes were intent. Greedy, mayhap. She touched his cheek for

a moment, and a numbness seemed to spread there. Then she

glanced down, and a look which could have been disquiet cramped

her face. She took her hand back.

'Ye wake, pretty man. So ye do. 'Tis well.'

'Who are you? Where am l?'

'We are the Little Sisters of Eluria,' she said. 'I am Sister Mary.

Here is Sister Louise, and Sister Michela, and Sister Coquina -'

'And Sister Tamra,' said the last. 'A lovely lass of one-and-twenty.'

She giggled. Her face shimmered, and for a moment she was again

as old as the world. Hooked of nose, grey of skin. Roland thought

once more of Rhea.

They moved closer, encircling the complication of harness in

which he lay suspended, and when Roland shrank away, the pain

roared up his back and injured leg again. He groaned. The straps

holding him creaked.

'Ooooo!'

'It hurts!'

'Hurts him!'

'Hurts so fierce!'

They pressed even closer, as if his pain fascinated them. And now

he could smell them, a dry and earthy smell. The one named Sister

Michela reached out

'Go away! Leave him! Have I not told ye before?'

They jumped back from this voice, startled. Sister Mary looked

particularly annoyed. But she stepped back, with one final glare

(Roland would have sworn it) at the medallion lying on his chest.

He had tucked it back under the bed-dress at his last waking, but it

was out again now.

A sixth sister appeared, pushing rudely in between Mary and

Tamra. This one perhaps was only one-and-twenty, with flushed

cheeks, smooth skin, and dark eyes. Her white habit billowed like a

dream. The red rose over her breast stood out like a curse.

'Go! Leave him!'

'Oooo, my dear!' cried Sister Louise in a voice both laughing and

angry. 'Here's Jenna, the baby, and has she fallen in love with

him?'

'She has!' laughed Tamra. 'Baby's heart is his for the purchase,'

'Oh, so it is!' agreed Sister Coquina.

Mary turned to the newcomer, lips pursed into a tight line. 'Ye

have no business here, saucy girl.'

'I do if I say I do,' Sister Jenna replied. She seemed more in charge

of herself now. A curl of black hair had escaped her wimple and

lay across her forehead in a comma. 'Now go. He's not up to your

jokes and laughter.'

'Order us not,' Sister Mary said, 'for we never joke. So you know,

Sister Jenna.'

The girl's face softened a little, and Roland saw she was afraid. It

made him afraid for her. For himself, as well. 'Go,' she repeated.

`'Tis not the time. Are there not others to tend?'

Sister Mary seemed to consider. The others watched her. At last

she nodded, and smiled down at Roland. Again her face seemed to

shimmer, like something seen through a heat-haze. What he saw

(or thought he saw) beneath was horrible and watchful. 'Bide well,

pretty man,' she said to Roland. 'Bide with us a bit, and we'll heal

ye.'

What choice have I? Roland thought.

The others laughed, birdlike titters which rose into the dimness like

ribbons. Sister Michela actually blew him a kiss.

'Come, ladies!' Sister Mary cried. 'We'll leave Jenna with him a bit

in memory of her mother, who we loved well!' And with that, she

led the others away, five white birds flying off down the centre

aisle, their skirts nodding this way and that.

'Thank you,' Roland said, looking up at the owner of the cool

hand.. . for he knew it was she who had soothed him.

She took up his fingers as if to prove this, and caressed them. 'They

mean ye no harm,' she said ... yet Roland saw she believed not a

word of it, nor did he. He was in trouble here, very bad trouble.

'What is this place?'

'Our place,' she said simply. 'The home of the Little Sisters of

Eluria. Our convent, if 'ee like.'

'This is no convent,' Roland said, looking past her at the empty

beds. It's an infirmary. Isn't it?'

'A hospital,' she said, still stroking his fingers. 'We serve the

doctors ... and they serve us.' He was fascinated by the black curl

lying on the cream of her brow - would have stroked it, if he had

dared reach up. Just to tell its texture. He found it beautiful because

it was the only dark thing in all this white. The white had lost its

charm for him. 'We are hospitallers ... or were, before the world

moved on.'

'Are you for the Jesus-man?'

She looked surprised for a moment, almost shocked, and then

laughed merrily. 'No, not us!'

'If you are hospitallers ... nurses ... where are the doctors?'

She looked at him, biting at her lip, as if trying to decide

something. Roland found her doubt utterly charming, and he

realized that, sick or not, he was looking at a woman as a woman

for the first time since Susan Delgado had died, and that had been

long ago. The whole world had changed since then, and not for the

better.

'Would you really know?'

'Yes, of course,' he said, a little surprised. A little disquieted, too.

He kept waiting for her face to shimmer and change, as the faces of

the others had done. It didn't. There was none of that unpleasant

dead-earth smell about her, either.

Wait, he cautioned himself. Believe nothing here, least of all your

senses. Not yet.

'I suppose you must,' she said with a sigh. It tinkled the bells at her

forehead, which were darker in colour than those the others wore -

not black like her hair but charry, somehow, as if they had been

hung in the smoke of a campfire. Their sound, however, was

brightest silver. 'Promise me you'll not scream and wake the pube

in yonder bed.'

'Pube?'

'The boy. Do ye promise?'

'Aye,' he said, falling into the half-forgotten patois of the Outer Arc

without even being aware of it. Susan's dialect. 'It's been long since

I screamed, pretty.'

She coloured more definitely at that, roses more natural and lively

than the one on her breast mounting in her cheeks.

'Don't call pretty what ye can't properly see,' she said.

'Then push back the wimple you wear.'

Her face he could see perfectly well, but he badly wanted to see

her hair - hungered for it, almost. A full flood of black in all this

dreaming white. Of course it might be cropped, those of her order

might wear it that way, but he somehow didn't think so.

'No, 'tis not allowed.'

'By who?'

'Big Sister.'

'She who calls herself Mary?'

'Aye, her.' She started away, then paused and looked back over her

shoulder. In another girl her age, one as pretty as this, that look

back would have been flirtatious. This girl's was only grave.

'Remember your promise.'

'Aye, no screams.'

She went to the bearded man, skirt swinging. In the dimness, she

cast only a blur of shadow on the empty beds she passed. When

she reached the man (this one was unconscious, Roland thought,

not just sleeping), she looked back at Roland once more. He

nodded.

Sister Jenna stepped close to the suspended man on the far side of

his bed, so that Roland saw her through the twists and loops of

woven white silk. She placed her hands lightly on the left side of

his chest, bent over him ... and shook her head from side to side,

like one expressing a brisk negative. The bells she wore on her

forehead rang sharply, and Roland once more felt that weird

stirring up his back, accompanied by a low ripple of pain. It was as

if he had shuddered without actually shuddering, or shuddered in a

dream.

What happened next almost did jerk a scream from him; he had to

bite his lips against it. Once more the unconscious man's legs

seemed to move without moving ... because it was what was on

them that moved. The man's hairy shins, ankles, and feet were

exposed below the hem of his bed-dress. Now a black wave of

bugs moved down them. They were singing fiercely, like an army

column that sings as it marches.

Roland remembered the black scar across the man's cheek and

nose - the scar which had disappeared. More such as these, of

course. And they were on him, as well. That was how he could

shiver without shivering. They were all over his back. Battening on

him.

No, keeping back a scream wasn't as easy as he had expected it to

be.

The bugs ran down to the tips of the suspended man's toes, then

leaped off them in waves, like creatures leaping off an

embankment and into a swimming hole. They organized

themselves quickly and easily on the bright white sheet below, and

began to march down to the floor in a battalion about a foot wide.

Roland couldn't get a good look at them, the distance was too far

and the light too dim, but he thought they were perhaps twice the

size of ants, and a little smaller than the fat honeybees which had

swarmed the flowerbeds back home.

They sang as they went.

The bearded man didn't sing. As the swarms of bugs which had

coated his twisted legs began to diminish, he shuddered and

groaned. The young woman put her hand on his brow and soothed

him, making Roland a little jealous even in his revulsion at what he

was seeing.

And was what he was seeing really so awful? In Gilead, leeches

had been used for certain ailments - swellings of the brain, the

armpits, and the groin, primarily. When it came to the brain, the

leeches, ugly as they were, were certainly preferable to the next

step, which was trepanning.

Yet there was something loathsome about them, perhaps only

because he couldn't see them well, and something awful about

trying to imagine them all over his back as he hung here, helpless.

Not singing, though. Why? Because they were feeding? Sleeping?

Both at once?

The bearded man's groans subsided. The bugs marched away

across the floor, towards one of the mildly rippling silken walls.

Roland lost sight of them in the shadows.

Jenna came back to him, her eyes anxious. 'Ye did well. Yet I see

how ye feel; it's on your face.'

'The doctors,' he said.

'Yes. Their power is very great, but. . .'She dropped her voice. 'I

believe that drover is beyond their help. His legs are a little better,

and the wounds on his face are all but healed, but he has injuries

where the doctors cannot reach.' She traced a hand across her

midsection, suggesting the location of these injuries, if not their

nature.

'And me?' Roland asked.

'Ye were ta'en by the green folk,' she said. 'Ye must have angered

them powerfully, for them not to kill ye outright. They roped ye

and dragged ye, instead. Tamra, Michela, and Louise were out

gathering herbs. They saw the green folk at play with ye, and bade

them stop, but -,

'Do the muties always obey you, Sister Jenna

She smiled, perhaps pleased he remembered her name. 'Not

always, but mostly. This time they did, or ye'd have now found the

clearing in the trees.'

'I suppose so.'

'The skin was stripped almost clean off your back - red ye were

from nape to waist. Ye'll always bear the scars, but the doctors

have gone far towards healing ye. And their singing is passing fair,

is it not?'

'Yes,' Roland said, but the thought of those black things all over his

back, roosting in his raw flesh, still revolted him. 'I owe you

thanks, and give it freely. Anything I can do for you -

'Tell me your name, then. Do that.'

'I'm Roland of Gilead. A gunslinger. I had revolvers, Sister Jenna.

Have you seen them?'

'I've seen no shooters,' she said, but cast her eyes aside. The roses

bloomed in her cheeks again. She might be a good nurse, and fair,

but Roland thought her a poor liar. He was glad. Good liars were

common. Honesty, on the other hand, came dear.

Let the untruth pass for now, he told himself. She speaks it out of

fear, I think.

'Jenna!' The cry came from the deeper shadows at the far end of the

infirmary - today it seemed longer than ever to the gunslinger - and

Sister Jenna jumped guiltily. 'Come away! Ye've passed words

enough to entertain twenty men! Let him sleep!'

'Aye!' she called, then turned back to Roland. 'Don't let on that I

showed you the doctors.'

'Mum is the word, Jenna.'

She paused, biting her lip again, then suddenly swept back her

wimple. It fell against the nape of her neck in a soft chiming of

bells. Freed from its confinement, her hair swept against her

cheeks like shadows.

'Am I pretty? Am I? Tell me the truth, Roland of Gilead - no

flattery. For flattery's kind only a candle's length.'

'Pretty as a summer night.'

What she saw in his face seemed to please her more than his

words, because she smiled radiantly. She pulled the wimple up

again, tucking her hair back in with quick little finger-pokes. 'Am I

decent?'

'Decent as fair,' he said, then cautiously lifted an arm and pointed

at her brow. 'One curl's out ... just there.'

'Aye, always that one to devil me.' With a comical little grimace,

she tucked it back. Roland thought how much he would like to kiss

her rosy cheeks ... and perhaps her rosy mouth, for good measure.

'All's well,' he said.

'Jenna!' The cry was more impatient than ever. 'Meditations!'

`I'm coming just now!' she called, and gathered her voluminous

skirts to go. Yet she turned back once more, her face now very

grave and very serious. 'One more thing,' she said in a voice only a

step above a whisper. She snatched a quick look around. 'The gold

medallion ye wear - ye wear it because it's yours. Do'ee understand

... James?'

'Yes.' He turned his head a bit to look at the sleeping boy. 'This is

my brother.'

`If they ask, yes. To say different would be to get Jenna in serious

trouble.'

How serious he did not ask, and she was gone in any case, seeming

to flow along the aisle between all the empty beds, her skirt caught

up in one hand. The roses had fled from her face, leaving her

cheeks and brow ashy. He remembered the greedy look on the

faces of the others, how they had gathered around him in a

tightening knot ... and the way their faces had shimmered.

Six women, five old and one young.

Doctors that sang and then crawled away across the floor when

dismissed by jingling bells.

And an improbable hospital ward of perhaps a hundred beds, a

ward with a silk roof and silk walls ...

... and all the beds empty save three.

Roland didn't understand why Jenna had taken the dead boy's

medallion from his pants pocket and put it around his neck, but he

had an idea that if they found out she had done so, the Little Sisters

of Eluria might kill her.

Roland closed his eyes, and the soft singing of the doctor-insects

once again floated him off into sleep.

IV. A Bowl of Soup. The Boy

in the Next Bed. The Night-Nurses.

Roland dreamed that a very large bug (a doctor-bug, mayhap) was

flying around his head and banging repeatedly into his nose -

collisions which were annoying rather than painful. He swiped at

the bug repeatedly, and although his hands were eerily fast under

ordinary circumstances, he kept missing it. And each time he

missed, the bug giggled.

I'm slow because I've been sick, he thought.

No, ambushed. Dragged across the ground by slow mutants, saved

by the Little Sisters of Eluria.

Roland had a sudden, vivid image of a man's shadow growing

from the shadow of an overturned freight-wagon; heard a rough,

gleeful voice cry, 'Booh!'

He jerked awake hard enough to set his body rocking in its

complication of slings, and the woman who had been standing

beside his head, giggling as she tapped his nose lightly with a

wooden spoon, stepped back so quickly that the bowl in her other

hand slipped from her fingers.

Roland's hands shot out, and they were as quick as ever - his

frustrated failure to catch the bug had been only part of his dream.

He caught the bowl before more than a few drops could spill. The

woman - Sister Coquina - looked at him with round eyes.

There was pain all up and down his back from the sudden

movement but it was nowhere near as sharp as it had been before,

and there was no sensation of movement on his skin. Perhaps the

'doctors' were only sleeping, but he had an idea they were gone.

He held out his hand for the spoon Coquina had been teasing him

with (he found he wasn't surprised at all that one of these would

tease a sick and sleeping man in such a way; it only would have

surprised him if it had been Jenna), and she handed it to him, her

eyes still big.

'How speedy ye are!' she said. `'Twas like a magic trick, and you

still rising from sleep!'

'Remember it, sai,' he said, and tried the soup. There were tiny bits

of chicken floating in it. He probably would have considered it

bland under other circumstances, but under these, it seemed

ambrosial. He began to eat greedily.

'What do 'ee mean by that?' she asked. The light was very dim

now, the wall-panels across the way a pinkish-orange that

suggested sunset. In this light, Coquina looked quite young and

pretty ... but it was a glamour, Roland was sure; a sorcerous kind

of make-up.

'I mean nothing in particular.' Roland dismissed the spoon as too

slow, preferring to tilt the bowl itself to his lips. In this way he

disposed of the soup in four large gulps. 'You have been kind to

me'

'Aye, so we have!' she said, rather indignantly.

'- and I hope your kindness has no hidden motive. If it does, Sister,

remember that I'm quick. And, as for myself, I have not always

been kind.'

She made no reply, only took the bowl when Roland handed it

back. She did this delicately, perhaps not wanting to touch his

fingers. Her eyes dropped to where the medallion lay, once more

hidden beneath the breast of his bed-dress. He said no more, not

wanting to weaken the implied threat by reminding her that the

man who made it was unarmed, next to naked, and hung in the air

because his back couldn't yet bear the weight of his body.

'Where's Sister Jenna?' he asked.

'Oooo!' Sister Coquina said, raising her eyebrows. 'We like her, do

we? She makes our heart go . . .' She put her hand against the rose

on her breast and fluttered it rapidly.

'Not at all, not at all,' Roland said, 'but she was kind. I doubt she

would have teased me with a spoon, as some would.'

Sister Coquina's smile faded. She looked both angry and worried.

'Say nothing of that to Mary, if she comes by later. Ye might get

me in trouble.'

'Should I care?'

'I might get back at one who caused me trouble by causing little

Jenna trouble,' Sister Coquina said. 'She's in Big Sister's black

books, just now, anyway. Sister Mary doesn't care for the way

Jenna spoke to her about ye ... nor does she like it that Jenna came

back to us wearing the Dark Bells.'

This was no sooner out of her mouth before Sister Coquina put her

hand over that frequently imprudent organ, as if realizing she had

said too much.

Roland, intrigued by what she'd said but not liking to show it just

now, only replied: 'I'll keep my mouth shut about you, if you keep

your mouth shut to Sister Mary about Jenna.'

Coquina looked relieved. 'Aye, that's a bargain.' She leaned

forward confidingly. 'She's in Thoughtful House. That's the little

cave in the hillside where we have to go and meditate when Big

Sister decides we've been bad. She'll have to stay and consider her

impudence until Mary lets her out.' She paused, then said abruptly:

'Who's this beside ye? Do ye know?'

Roland turned his head and saw that the young man was awake,

and had been listening. His eyes were as dark as Jenna's.

'Know him?' Roland asked, with what he hoped was the right touch

of scorn. 'Should I not know my own brother?'

'Is he, now, and him so young and you so old?' Another of the

sisters materialized out of the darkness: Sister Tamra, who had

called herself one-and-twenty. In the moment before she reached

Roland's bed, her face was that of a hag who will never see eighty

again ... or ninety. Then it shimmered and was once more the

plump, healthy countenance of a thirty-year-old matron. Except for

the eyes. They remained yellowish in the corneas, gummy in the

corners, and watchful.

'He's the youngest, I the eldest,' Roland said. 'Betwixt us are seven

others, and twenty years of our parents' lives.'

'How sweet! And if he's yer brother, then ye'll know his name,

won't ye? Know it very well.'

Before the gunslinger could flounder, the young man said: 'They

think you've forgotten such a simple hook as John Norman. What

culleens they be, eh, Jimmy?'

Coquina and Tamra looked at the pale boy in the bed next to

Roland's, clearly angry ... and clearly trumped. For the time being,

at least.

'You've fed him your muck,' the boy (whose medallion

undoubtedly proclaimed him John, Loved of Family, Loved of

God) said `Why don't you go, and let us have a natter?'

'Well!' Sister Coquina huffed. 'I like the gratitude around here, so I

do!'

'I'm grateful for what's given me,' Norman responded, looking at

her steadily, 'but not for what folk would take away.'

Tamra snorted through her nose, turned violently enough for her

swirling dress to push a draught of air into Roland's face, and then

took her leave. Coquina stayed a moment.

'Be discreet, and mayhap someone ye like better than ye like me

will get out of hack in the morning, instead of a week from

tonight.'

Without waiting for a reply, she turned and followed Sister Tamra.

Roland and John Norman waited until they were both gone, and

then Norman turned to Roland and spoke in a low voice. 'My

brother. Dead?'

Roland nodded. 'The medallion I took in case I should meet with

any of his people. It rightly belongs to you. I'm sorry for your loss.'

'Thankee-sai. ' John Norman's lower lip trembled, then firmed. 'I

knew the green men did for him, although these old biddies

wouldn't tell me for sure. They did for plenty, and cotched the rest.'

'Perhaps the Sisters didn't know for sure.'

'They knew. Don't you doubt it. They don't say much, but they

know plenty. The only one any different is Jenna. That's who the

old battle-axe meant when she said "your friend". Aye?'

Roland nodded. 'And she said something about the Dark Bells. I'd

know more of that, if would were could.'

'She's something special, Jenna is. More like a princess - someone

whose place is made by bloodline and can't be refused - than like

the other Sisters. I lie here and look like I'm asleep - it's safer, I

think - but I've heard 'em talking. Jenna's just come back among

'em recently, and those Dark Bells mean something special ... but

Mary's still the one who swings the weight. I think the Dark Bells

are only ceremonial, like the rings the old Barons used to hand

down from father to son. Was it she who put Jimmy's medal

around your neck?'

'Yes.'

'Don't take it off, whatever you do.' His face was strained, grim. 'I

don't know if it's the gold or the God, but they don't like to get too

close. I think that's the only reason I'm still here.' Now his voice

dropped all the way to a whisper. 'They ain't human.'

'Well, perhaps a bit fey and magical, but-`

'No!' With what was clearly an effort, the boy got up on one elbow.

He looked at Roland earnestly. 'You're thinking about hubber-

women, or witches. These ain't hubbers, nor witches, either. They

ain't human!'

'Then what are they?'

'Don't know.'

'How came you here, John?'

Speaking in a low voice, John Norman told Roland what he knew

of what had happened to him. He, his brother, and four other

young men who were quick and owned good horses had been hired

as scouts, riding drogue-and-forward, protecting a long-haul

caravan of seven freightwagons taking goods - seeds, food, tools,

mail, and four ordered brides - to an unincorporated township

called Tejuas some two hundred miles further west of Eluria. The

scouts rode fore and aft of the goods-train in turn and turn about

fashion; one brother rode with each party because, Norman

explained, when they were together they fought like ... well ...

'Like brothers,' Roland suggested.

John Norman managed a brief, pained smile. 'Aye,' he said.

The trio of which John was a part had been riding drogue, about

two miles behind the freight-wagons, when the green mutants had

sprung an ambush in Eluria.

'How many wagons did you see when you got there?' he asked

Roland. 'Only one. Overturned.'

'How many bodies?'

'Only your brother's.'

John Norman nodded grimly. 'They wouldn't take him because of

the medallion, I think.'

'The muties?'

'The Sisters. The muties care nothing for gold or God. These

bitches, though . . .' He looked into the dark, which was now

almost complete. Roland felt lethargy creeping over him again, but

it wasn't until later that he realized the soup had been drugged.

'The other wagons?' Roland asked. 'The ones not overturned?'

'The muties would have taken them, and the goods, as well,'

Norman said. 'They don't care for gold or God; the Sisters don't

care for goods. Like as not they have their own foodstuffs,

something I'd as soon not think of. Nasty stuff ... like those bugs.'

He and the other drogue riders galloped into Eluria, but the fight

was over by the time they got there. Men had been lying about,

some dead but many more still alive. At least two of the ordered

brides had still been alive, as well. Survivors able to walk were

being herded together by the,,' green folk - John Norman

remembered the one in the bowler hat very well, and the woman in

the ragged red vest.

Norman and the other two had tried to fight. He had seen one of hi

pards gutshot by an arrow, and then he saw no more - someone had

cracked him over the head from behind, and the lights had gone

out.

Roland wondered if the ambusher had cried 'Booh!' before he had

struck, but didn't ask.

'When I woke up again, I was here,' Norman said. 'I saw that some

of the others - most of them - had those cursed bugs on them.'

'Others?' Roland looked at the empty beds. In the growing

darkness, they glimmered like white islands. 'How many were

brought here?'

'At least twenty. They healed ... the bugs healed 'em ... and then,

one by one, they disappeared. You'd go to sleep, and when you

woke up there'd, be one more empty bed. One by one they went,

until only me and that, one down yonder was left.'

He looked at Roland solemnly.

'And now you.'

'Norman,' Roland's head was swimming. `I-`

'I reckon I know what's wrong with you,' Norman said. He seemed

to speak from far away . . . perhaps from all the way around the

curve of I the earth. 'It's the soup. But a man has to eat. A woman,

too. If she's a natural woman, anyway. These ones ain't natural.

Even Sister Jenna's not natural. Nice don't mean natural.' Further

and further away. 'And she'll be like them in the end. Mark me

well.'

'Can't move.' Saying even that required a huge effort. It was like

moving boulders.

'No.' Norman suddenly laughed. It was a shocking sound, and

echoed in the growing blackness which filled Roland's head. 'It

ain't just sleepmedicine they put in their soup; it's can't-move-

medicine, too. There's nothing much wrong with me, brother ... so

why do you think I'm still here?'

Norman was now speaking not from around the curve of the earth

but perhaps from the moon. He said: 'I don't think either of us is

ever going to see the sun shining on a flat piece of ground again.'

You're wrong about that, Roland tried to reply, and more in that

vein, as well, but nothing came out. He sailed around to the black

side of the moon, losing all his words in the void he found there.

Yet he never quite lost awareness of himself. Perhaps the dose of

'medicine' in Sister Coquina's soup had been badly calculated, or

perhaps it was just that they had never had a gunslinger to work

their mischief on, and did not know they had one now.

Except, of course, for Sister Jenna - she knew.

At some point in the night, whispering, giggling voices and lightly

chiming bells brought him back from the darkness where he had

been biding, not quite asleep or unconscious. Around him, so

constant he now barely heard it, were the singing 'doctors'.

Roland opened his eyes. He saw pale and chancy light dancing in

the black air. The giggles and whispers were closer. Roland tried to

turn his head and at first couldn't. He rested, gathered his will into

a hard blue ball, and tried again. This time his head did turn. Only

a little, but a little was enough.

It was five of the Little Sisters - Mary, Louise, Tamra, Coquina,

Michela. They came up the long aisle of the black infirmary,

laughing together like children out on a prank, carrying long tapers

in silver holders, the bells lining the forehead-bands of their

wimples chiming little silver runs of sound. They gathered about

the bed of the bearded man. From within their circle, candleglow

rose in a shimmery column that died before it got halfway to the

silken ceiling.

Sister Mary spoke briefly. Roland recognized her voice, but not the

words - it was neither low speech nor the High, but some other

language entirely. One phrase stood out - can de lach, mi him en

tow - and he had no idea what it might mean.

He realized that now he could hear only the tinkle of bells - the

doctor-bugs had stilled.

'Ras me! On! On!' Sister Mary cried in a harsh, powerful voice.

The candles went out. The light which had shone through the

wings of their wimples as they gathered around the bearded man's

bed vanished, and all was darkness once more.

Roland waited for what might happen next, his skin cold. He tried

to flex his hands and feet, and could not. He had been able to move

his head perhaps fifteen degrees; otherwise he was as paralysed as

a fly neatly wrapped up and hung in a spider's web.

The low jingling of bells in the black ... and then sucking sounds.

As soon as he heard them, Roland knew he'd been waiting for

them. Some part of him had known what the Little Sisters of Eluria

were, all along.

If Roland could have raised his hands, he would have put them to

his ears to block those sounds out. As it was, he could only lie still,

listening and waiting for them to stop.

For a long time - for ever, it seemed - they did not. The women

slurped and grunted like pigs snuffling half-liquefied feed out of a

trough. There was even one resounding belch, followed by more

whispered giggles (these, ended when Sister Mary uttered a single

curt word - 'Hais!'). And once there was a low, moaning cry - from

the bearded man, Roland was quite sure. If so, it was his last on

this side of the clearing.

In time, the sound of their feeding began to taper off. As it did, the

bugs began to sing again - first hesitantly, then with more

confidence. The whispering and giggling recommenced. The

candles were re-lit. Roland was by now lying with his head turned

in the other direction. He didn't want them to know what he'd seen,

but that wasn't all; he had no urge to see more on any account. He

had seen and heard enough.

But the giggles and whispers now came his way. Roland closed his

eyes concentrating on the medallion which lay against his chest. I

don't know if it's the gold or the God, but they don't like to get too

close, John Norman had said. It was good to have such a thing to

remember as the Little Sister drew nigh, gossiping and whispering

in their strange other tongue, but the medallion seemed a thin

protection in the dark.

Faintly, at a great distance, Roland heard the cross-dog barking.

As the Sisters circled him, the gunslinger realized he could smell

them. It was a low, unpleasant odour, like spoiled meat. And what

else would they smell of, such as these?

'Such a pretty man it is.' Sister Mary. She spoke in a low,

meditative tone.

'But such an ugly sigil it wears.' Sister Tamra.

'We'll have it off him!' Sister Louise.

'And then we shall have kisses!' Sister Coquina.

'Kisses for all!' exclaimed Sister Michela, with such fervent

enthusiasm that they all laughed.

Roland discovered that not all of him was paralysed, after all. Part

of him had, in fact, arisen from its sleep at the sound of their voices

and now stood tall. A hand reached beneath the bed-dress he wore,

touched that stiffened member, encircled it, caressed it. He lay in

silent horror, feigning sleep, as wet warmth almost immediately

spilled from him. The hand remained where it was for a moment,

the thumb rubbing up and down the wilting shaft. Then it let him

go and rose a little higher. Found the wetness pooled on his lower

belly. Giggles, soft as wind. Chiming bells. Roland opened his

eyes the tiniest crack and looked up at the ancient faces laughing

down at him in the light of their candles - glittering eyes, yellow

cheeks, hanging teeth that jutted over lower lips. Sister Michela

and sister Louise appeared to have grown goatees, but of course

that wasn't the darkness of hair but of the bearded man's blood.

Mary is hand was cupped. She passed it from Sister to Sister; each

licked from her palm in the candlelight.

Roland closed his eyes all the way and waited for them to be gone.

Eventually they were.

I'll never sleep again, he thought, and was five minutes later lost to

himself and the world.

V. Sister Mary. A Message. A Visit from Ralph.

Norman's Fate. Sister Mary Again.

When Roland awoke, it was full daylight, the silk roof overhead a

bright white and billowing in a mild breeze. The doctor-bugs were

singing contentedly. Beside him on his left, Norman was heavily

asleep with his head turned so far to one side that his stubbly cheek

rested on his shoulder.

Roland and John Norman were the only ones here. Further down

on their side of the infirmary, the bed where the bearded man had

been was empty, it's top sheet pulled up and neatly tucked in, the

pillow neatly nestled in a crisp white case. The complication of

slings in which his body had rested was gone.

Roland remembered the candles - the way their glow had

combined and streamed up in a column, illuminating the Sisters as

they gathered around the bearded man. Giggling. Their damned

bells jingling.

Now, as if summoned by his thoughts, came Sister Mary, gliding

along rapidly with Sister Louise in her wake. Louise bore a tray,

and looked nervous. Mary was frowning, obviously not in good

temper.

To be grumpy after you've fed so well? Roland thought. Fie, Sister.

She reached the gunslinger's bed and looked down at him. 'I have

little to thank ye for, sai,' she said with no preamble.

'Have I asked for your thanks?' he responded in a voice that

sounded as dusty and little-used as the pages of an old book.

She took no notice. 'Ye've made one who was only impudent and

restless with her place outright rebellious. Well, her mother was

the same way, and died of it not long after returning Jenna to her

proper Place. Raise your hand, thankless man.'

'I can't. I can't move at all.'

'Oh, cully! Haven't you heard it said "fool not your mother 'less

she's out of face"? I know pretty well what ye can and can't do.

Now raise your hand.'

Roland raised his right hand, trying to suggest more effort than it,

actually took. He thought that this morning he might be strong

enough to slip free of the slings ... but what then? Any real walking

would beyond him for hours yet, even without another dose of

'medicine' . . and behind Sister Mary, Sister Louise was taking the

cover from a fresh bowl of soup. As Roland looked at it, his

stomach rumbled.

Big Sister heard and smiled a bit. 'Even lying in bed builds an

appetite in a strong man, if it's done long enough. Wouldn't you

say so, Jason brother of John?'

'My name is James. As you well know, Sister.'

'Do I?' She laughed angrily. 'Oh, la! And if I whipped your little

sweetheart hard enough and long enough - until the blood jumped

her back like drops of sweat, let us say - should I not whip a

different name out of her? Or didn't ye trust her with it, during

your little talk?'

'Touch her and I'll kill you.'

She laughed again. Her face shimmered; her firm mouth turned

into something that looked like a dying jellyfish. 'Speak not of

killing to us cully, lest we speak of it to you.'

'Sister, if you and Jenna don't see eye to eye, why not release her

from her vows and let her go her course?'

'Such as us can never be released from our vows, nor be let go. Her

mother tried and then came back, her dying and the girl sick. Why,

it was we nursed Jenna back to health after her mother was nothing

but dirt in the breeze that blows out towards End-World, and how

little she thanks us! Besides, she bears the Dark Bells, the sigil of

our sisterhood. Of our ka-tet. Now eat - yer belly says ye're

hungry!'

Sister Louise offered the bowl, but her eyes kept drifting to the

shape the medallion made under the breast of his bed-dress. Don't

like it, do you? Roland thought, and then remembered Louise by

candlelight, the freighter's blood on her chin, her ancient eyes

eager as she leaned forward to lick his spend from Sister Mary's

hand.

He turned his head aside. 'I want nothing.'

'But ye're hungry!' Louise protested. 'If'ee don't eat, James, how

will'ee get'ee strength back?'

'Send Jenna. I'll eat what she brings.'

Sister Mary's frown was black. 'Ye'll see her no more. She's been

released from Thoughtful House only on her solemn promise to

double her time of meditation ... and to stay out of the infirmary.

Now eat, James, or whoever ye are. Take what's in the soup, or

we'll cut ye with knives and rub it in with flannel poultices. Either

way, makes no difference to us. Does it? Louise?'

'Nar,' Louise said. She still held out the bowl. Steam rose from it,

and the good smell of chicken.

'But it might make a difference to you.' Sister Mary grinned

humourlessly, baring her unnaturally large teeth. 'Flowing blood's

risky around here. The doctors don't like it. It stirs them up.'

It wasn't just the bugs that were stirred up at the sight of blood, and

Roland knew it. He also knew he had no choice in the matter of the

soup. He took the bowl from Louise and ate slowly. He would

have given much to wipe but the look of satisfaction he saw on

Sister Mary's face.

'Good,' she said after he had handed the bowl back and she had

peered inside to make sure it was completely empty. His hand

thumped back into the sling which had been rigged for it, already

too heavy to hold up. He could feel the world drawing away again.

Sister Mary leaned forward, the billowing top of her habit touching

the skin of his left shoulder. He could smell her, an aroma both

ripe and dry, and would have gagged if he'd had the strength.

'Have that foul gold thing off ye when yer strength comes back a

little - put it in the pissoir under the bed. Where it belongs. For to

be even this close to where it lies hurts my head and makes my

throat close.'

Speaking with enormous effort, Roland said: 'If you want it, take

it. How can I stop you, you bitch?'

Once more her frown turned her face into something like a

thunderhead. He thought she would have slapped him, if she had

dared touch him so close to where the medallion lay. Her ability to

touch seemed to end above his waist, however.

'I think you had better consider the matter a little more fully,' she

said. 'I can still have Jenna whipped, if I like. She bears the Dark

Bells, but I am the Big Sister. Consider that very well.'

She left. Sister Louise followed, casting one look - a strange

combination Of fright and lust - back over her shoulder.

Roland thought, I must get out of here - I must.

Instead, he drifted back to that dark place which wasn't quite sleep.

Or perhaps he did sleep, at least for a while; perhaps he dreamed.

Fingers once more caressed his fingers, and lips first kissed his ear

and then whispered into it: 'Look beneath your pillow, Roland ...

but let no one know I was here.'

At some point after this, Roland opened his eyes again, half-

expecting to see Sister Jenna's pretty young face hovering above

him, and that comma of dark hair once more poking out from

beneath her wimple. There was no one. The swags of silk overhead

were at their brightest, and although it was impossible to tell the

hours in here with any real accuracy, Roland guessed it to be

around noon. Perhaps three hours since his second bowl of the

Sisters' soup.

Beside him, John Norman still slept, his breath whistling out in

faint, nasal snores.

Roland tried to raise his hand and slide it under his pillow. The

hand wouldn't move. He could wiggle the tips of his fingers, but

that was all. He waited, calming his mind as well as he could,

gathering his patience.' Patience wasn't easy to come by. He kept

thinking about what Norman had said - that there had been twenty

survivors of the ambush ... at least to start with. One by one they

went, until only me and that one down yonder was left. And now

you.

The girl wasn't here. His mind spoke in the soft, regretful tone of

Alain, one of his old friends, dead these many years now. She

wouldn't dare, not with the others watching. That was only a

dream you had.

But Roland thought perhaps it had been more than a dream.

Some length of time later - the slowly shifting brightness overhead

made him believe it had been about an hour - Roland tried his hand

again. This time he was able to get it beneath his pillow. This was

puffy and soft, tucked snugly into the wide sling which supported

the gunslinger's neck. At first he found nothing, but as his fingers

worked their slow way deeper, they touched what felt like a stiffish

bundle of thin rods.

He paused, gathering a little more strength (every movement was

like swimming in glue), and then burrowed deeper. It felt like a

dead bouquet. Wrapped around it was what felt like a ribbon.

Roland looked around to make sure the ward was still empty and

Norman still asleep, then drew out what was under the pillow. It

was six brittle stems of fading green with brownish reed-heads at

the tops. They gave off a strange, yeasty aroma that made Roland

think of early-morning begging expeditions to the Great House

kitchens as a child - forays he had usually made with Cuthbert. The

reeds were tied with a wide white silk ribbon, and smelled like

burned toast. Beneath the ribbon was a fold of cloth. Like

everything else in this cursed place, it seemed, the cloth was of

silk.

Roland was breathing hard and could feel drops of sweat on his

brow. Still alone, though - good. He took the scrap of cloth and

unfolded it. Printed painstakingly in blurred charcoal letters, was

this message:

NIBBLE HEDS. Once each hour. Too

much, CRAMPS or DETH.

TOMORROW NITE. Can't be sooner.

BE CAREFUL!

No explanation, but Roland supposed none was needed. Nor did he

have any option; if he remained here, he would die. All they had to

do was have the medallion off him, and he felt sure Sister Mary

was smart enough to figure a way to do that.

He nibbled at one of the dry reed-heads. The taste was nothing like

the toast they had begged from the kitchen as boys; it was bitter in

his throat and hot in his stomach. Less than a minute after his

nibble, his heart-rate had doubled. His muscles awakened, but not

in a pleasant way, as after good sleep; they felt first trembly and

then hard, as if they were gathered into knots. This feeling passed

rapidly, and his heartbeat was back to normal before Norman

stirred awake an hour or so later, but he understood why Jenna's

note had warned him not to take more than a nibble at a time - this

was very powerful stuff.

He slipped the bouquet of reeds back under the pillow, being

careful to brush away the few crumbles of vegetable matter which

had dropped to the sheet. Then he used the ball of his thumb to

blur the painstaking charcoaled words on the bit of silk. When he

was finished, there was nothing on the square but meaningless

smudges. The square he also tucked back under his pillow.

When Norman awoke, he and the gunslinger spoke briefly of the

young scout's home - Delain, it was, sometimes known jestingly as

Dragon's Lair, or Liar's Heaven. All tall tales were said to orginate

in Delain. The boy asked Roland to take his medallion and that of

his brother home to their parents, if Roland was able, and explain

as well as he could what had happened to James and John, sons of

Jesse.

'You'll do all that yourself,' Roland said.

'No.' Norman tried to raise his hand, perhaps to scratch his nose,

and was unable to do even that. The hand rose perhaps six inches,

then fell back to the counterpane with a small thump. 'I think not.

It's a pity for us to have run up against each other this way, you

know - I like you.'

'And I you, John Norman. Would that we were better met.'

'Aye. When not in the company of such fascinating ladies.'

He dropped off to sleep again soon after. Roland never spoke with

him again ... although he certainly heard from him. Yes. Roland

was lying above his bed, shamming sleep, as John Norman

screamed his last.

Sister Michela came with his evening soup just as Roland was

getting past the shivery muscles and galloping heartbeat that

resulted from his second nibble of brown reed. Michela looked at

his flushed face with some concern, but had to accept his

assurances that he did not feel feverish; she couldn't bring herself

to touch him and judge the heat of his skin for herself - the

medallion held her away.

With the soup was a popkin. The bread was leathery and the meat

inside it tough, but Roland demolished it greedily, just the same.

Michela watched with a complacent smile, hands folded in front of

her, nodding from time to time. When he had finished the soup,

she took the bowl back from him carefully, making sure their

fingers did not touch.

'Ye're healing,' she said. 'Soon you'll be on yer way, and we'll have

just yer memory to keep, Jim.'

'Is that true?' he asked quietly.

She only looked at him, touched her tongue against her upper lip,

giggled, and departed. Roland closed his eyes and lay back against

hi pillow, feeling lethargy steal over him again. Her speculative

eyes ... he peeping tongue. He had seen women look at roast

chickens and joints of mutton that same way, calculating when

they might be done.

His body badly wanted to sleep, but Roland held on to wakefulness

for what he judged was an hour, then worked one of the reeds out

from under the pillow. With a fresh infusion of their 'can't-move-

medicine' in his system, this took an enormous effort, and he

wasn't sure he could have done it at all, had he not separated this

one reed from the ribbon holding the others. Tomorrow night,

Jenna's note had said. If that meant escape, the idea seemed

preposterous. The way he felt now, he might be lying in this bed

until the end of the age.

He nibbled. Energy washed into his system, clenching his muscles

and racing his heart, but the burst of vitality was gone almost as

soon as it came, buried beneath the Sisters' stronger drug. He could

only hope ... and sleep.

When he woke it was full dark, and he found he could move his

arms and legs in their network of slings almost naturally. He

slipped one of the reeds out from beneath his pillow and nibbled

cautiously. She had left half a dozen, and the first two were now

almost entirely consumed.

The gunslinger put the stem back under the pillow, then began to

shiver like a wet dog in a downpour. I took too much, he thought.

I'll be lucky not to convulse -

His heart, racing like a runaway engine. And then, to make matters

worse, he saw candlelight at the far end of the aisle. A moment

later he heard the rustle of their gowns and the whisk of their

slippers.

Gods, why now? They'll see me shaking, they'll know

Calling on every bit of his willpower and control, Roland dosed his

eyes and concentrated on stilling his jerking limbs. If only he had

been in bed instead of in these cursed slings, which seemed to

tremble as if with their own ague at every movement!

The Little Sisters drew closer. The light of their candles bloomed

red within his closed eyelids. Tonight they were not giggling, nor

whispering amongst themselves. It was not until they were almost

on top of him that Roland became aware of the stranger in their

midst - a creature that breathed through its nose in great, slobbery

gasps of mixed air and snot.

The gunslinger lay with his eyes closed, the gross twitches and

jumps of his arms and legs under control, but with his muscles still

knotted arid crampy, thrumming beneath the skin. Anyone who

looked at him closely would see at once that something was wrong

with him. His heart was larruping away like a horse under the

whip, surely they must see

But it wasn't him they were looking at - not yet, at least.

'Have it off him,' Mary said. She spoke in a bastardized version of

the low speech Roland could barely understand. 'Then t'other 'un.

Go on, Ralph.'

'U'se has whik-sky?' the slobberer asked, his dialect even heavier

than Mary's. Use has 'backky?'

'Yes, yes, plenty whisky and plenty smoke, but not until you have

these wretched things off!' Impatient. Perhaps afraid, as well.

Roland cautiously rolled his head to the left and cracked his

eyelids open.

Five of the six Little Sisters of Eluria were clustered around the far

side of the sleeping John Norman's bed, their candles raised to cast

their light upon him. It also cast light upon their own faces, faces

which would have given the strongest man nightmares. Now, in the

ditch of the night, their glamours were set aside, and they were but

ancient corpses in voluminous habits.

Sister Mary had one of Roland's guns in her hand. Looking at her

holding it, Roland felt a bright flash of hate for her, and promised

himself she would pay for her temerity.

The thing standing at the foot of the bed, strange as it was, looked

almost normal in comparison to the Sisters. It was one of the green

folk.

Roland recognized Ralph at once. He would be a long time

forgetting that bowler hat.

Now Ralph walked slowly around to the side of Norman's bed

closest to Roland, momentarily blocking the gunslinger's view of

the Sisters. The mutie went all the way to Norman's head,

however, clearing the hags to Roland's slitted view once more.

Norman's medallion lay exposed - the boy had perhaps waken

enough to take it out of his bed-dress, hoping it would protect him

better so. Ralph picked it up in his melted-tallow hand. The Sister

watched eagerly in the glow of their candles as the green man

stretched to the end of its chain. . . and then put it down again.

Their faces droop in disappointment.

'Don't care for such as that,' Ralph said in his clotted voice. 'Want

whik-sky! Want 'backky!'

'You shall have it,' Sister Mary said. 'Enough for you and all you

verminous clan. But first, you must have that horrid thing off him!

both of them! Do you understand? And you shan't tease us.'

'Or what?' Ralph asked. He laughed. It was a choked and gargly

sound the laughter of a man dying from some evil sickness of the

throat an lungs, but Roland still liked it better than the giggles of

the Sisters 'Or what, Sisser Mary, you'll drink my bluid? My

bluid'd drop'ee dead where'ee stand, and glowing in the dark!'

Mary raised the gunslinger's revolver and pointed it at Ralph. 'Take

that wretched thing, or you die where you stand.'

'And die after I've done what you want, likely.'

Sister Mary said nothing to that. The others peered at him with

their black eyes.

Ralph lowered his head, appearing to think. Roland suspected hi

friend Bowler Hat could think, too. Sister Mary and her cohorts

might, not believe that, but Ralph had to be trig to have survived as

long as he had. But of course when he came here, he hadn't

considered Roland's guns.

'Smasher was wrong to give them shooters to you,' he said at last.

'Give em and not tell me. Did u'se give him whik-sky? Give him

'backky?'

'That's none o' yours,' Sister Mary replied. 'You have that

goldpiece off the boy's neck right now, or I'll put one of yonder

man's bullets in what's left of yer brain.'

'All right,' Ralph said. 'Just as you wish, sai.'

Once more he reached down and took the gold medallion in his

melted fist. That he did slow; what happened after, happened fast.

He snatched it away, breaking the chain and flinging the gold

heedlessly into the dark. With his other hand he reached down,

sank his long and ragged nails into John Norman's neck, and tore it

open.

Blood flew from the hapless boy's throat in a jetting, heart-driven

gush more black than red in the candlelight, and he made a single

bubbly cry. The women screamed - but not in horror. They

screamed as women do in a frenzy of excitement. The green man

was forgotten; Roland was forgotten; all was forgotten save the

life's blood pouring out of John Norman's throat.

They dropped their candles. Mary dropped Roland's revolver in the

same hapless, careless fashion. The last the gunslinger saw as

Ralph darted away into the shadows (whisky and tobacco another

time, wily Ralph must have thought; tonight he had best

concentrate on saving his own life) was the sisters bending forward

to catch as much of the flow as they could before it dried up.

Roland lay in the dark, muscles shivering, heart pounding,

listening to the harpies as they fed on the boy lying in the bed next

to his own. It seemed to go on for ever, but at last they had done

with him. The Sisters re-lit their candles and left, murmuring.

When the drug in the soup once more got the better of the drug in

the reeds, Roland was grateful ... yet for the first time since coming

here, his sleep was haunted.

In his dream he stood looking down at the bloated body in the

town trough, thinking of a line in the book marked REGISTRY OF

MISDEEDS & REDRESS. Green folk sent hence, it had read, and

perhaps the green folk had been sent hence, but then a worse tribe

had come. The Little Sisters of Eluria, they called themselves. And

a year hence, they might be the Little Sisters of Tejuas, or of

Kambero, or some other far-western village. They came with their

bells and their bugs ... from where? Who knew? Did it matter?

A shadow fell beside his on the scummy water of the trough.

Roland tried to turn and face it. He couldn't; he was frozen in

place. Then a green hand grasped his shoulder and whirled him

about. It was Ralph. His bowler hat was cocked back on his head;

John Norman's medallion, now red with blood, hung around his

neck.

'Booh!' cried Ralph, his lips stretching in a toothless grin. He raised

a big revolver with worn sandalwood grips. He thumbed the

hammer back

- and Roland jerked awake, shivering all over, dressed in skin both

wet and icy cold. He looked at the bed on his left. It was empty, the

sheet pulled up and tucked about neatly, the pillow resting above it

in its snowy sleeve. Of John Norman there was no sign. It might

have been empty for years, that bed.

Roland was alone now. Gods help him, he was the last patient of

the Little Sisters of Eluria, those sweet and patient hospitallers.

The last human being still alive in this terrible place, the last with

warm blood flowing in his veins.

Roland, lying suspended, gripped the gold medallion in his fist and

looked across the aisle at the long row of empty beds. After a little

while, he brought one of the reeds out from beneath his pillow and

nibbled at it.

When Mary came fifteen minutes later, the gunslinger took the

bowl she brought with a show of weakness he didn't really feel.

Porridge instead of soup this time ... but he had no doubt the basic

ingredient was still the same.

'How well ye look this morning, sai,' Big Sister said. She looked

well herself - there were no shimmers to give away the ancient

wampir hiding inside her. She had supped well, and her meal had

firmed her up. Roland, stomach rolled over at the thought. 'Ye'll be

on yer pins in no time, I warrant.'

'That's shit,' Roland said, speaking in an ill-natured growl. 'Put me

on my pins and you'd be picking me up off the floor directly after.

I've start to wonder if you're not putting something in the food.'

She laughed merrily at that. 'La, you lads! Always eager to blame

weakness on a scheming woman! How scared of us ye are - aye,

way down in yer little boys' hearts, how scared ye are!'

'Where's my brother? I dreamed there was a commotion about him

in the night, and now I see his bed's empty.'

Her smile narrowed. Her eyes glittered. 'He came over fevery and

pitched a fit. We've taken him to Thoughtful House, which has

been home to contagion more than once in its time.'

To the grave is where you've taken him, Roland thought. Mayhap

that is a Thoughtful House, but little would you know it, sai, one

way or another.

'I know ye're no brother to that boy,' Mary said, watching him eat.

Already Roland could feel the stuff hidden in the porridge draining

his strength once more. 'Sigil or no sigil, I know ye're no brother to

him. Why do you lie? 'Tis a sin against God.'

'What gives you such an idea, sai?' Roland asked, curious to see if

she would mention the guns.

'Big Sister knows what she knows. Why not 'fess up, Jimmy?

Confession's good for the soul, they say.'

'Send me Jenna to pass the time, and perhaps I'd tell you much,'

Roland said.

The narrow bone of smile on Sister Mary's face disappeared like

chalkwriting in a rainstorm. 'Why would ye talk to such as her?'

'She's passing fair,' Roland said. 'Unlike some.'

Her lips pulled back from her overlarge teeth. 'Ye'll see her no

more, cully. Ye've stirred her up, so you have, and I won't have

that.'

She turned to go. Still trying to appear weak and hoping he would

not overdo it (acting was never his forte), Roland held out the

empty porridge bowl. 'Do you not want to take this?'

'Put it on your head and wear it as a nightcap, for all of me. Or

stick it ill your ass. You'll talk before I'm done with ye, cully - talk

till I bid you shut up and then beg to talk some more!'

On this note she swept regally away, hands lifting the front of her

skirt off the floor. Roland had heard that such as she couldn't go

about in daylight, and that part of the old tales was surely a lie. Yet

another part was almost true, it seemed: a fuzzy, amorphous shape

kept pace with her, running along the row of empty beds to her

right, but she cast no real shadow at all.

VI. Jenna. Sister Coquina. Tamra, Michela, Louise.

The Cross-Dog. What Happened in the Sage.

That was one of the longest days of Roland's life. He dozed, but

never deeply; the reeds were doing their work, and he had begun to

believe that he might, with Jenna's help, actually get out of here.

And there was the matter of his guns, as well - perhaps she might

be able to help there, too.

He passed the slow hours thinking of old times - of Gilead and his

friends, of the riddling he had almost won at one Wide Earth Fair.

In the end another had taken the goose, but he'd had his chance,

aye. He thought of his mother and father; he thought of Abel

Vannay, who had limped his way through a life of gentle

goodness, and Eldred Jonas, who had limped his way through a life

of evil ... until Roland had blown him loose of his saddle, one fine

desert day.

He thought, as always, of Susan.

If you love me, then love me, she'd said ... and so he had.

So he had.

In this way the time passed. At rough hourly intervals, he took one

of the reeds from beneath his pillow and nibbled it. Now his

muscles didn't tremble so badly as the stuff passed into his system,

nor his heart pound so fiercely. The medicine in the reeds no

longer had to battle the Sisters' medicine so fiercely, Roland

thought; the reeds were winning.

The diffused brightness of the sun moved across the white silk

ceiling of the ward, and at last the dimness which always seemed

to hover at bed-level began to rise. The long room's western wall

bloomed with the rose-melting-to-orange shades of sunset.

It was Sister Tamra who brought him his dinner that night - soup

and another popkin. She also laid a desert lily beside his hand. She

smiled she did it. Her cheeks were bright with colour. All of them

were bright with colour today, like leeches which had gorged until

they were almost to bursting.

'From your admirer, Jimmy,' she said. 'She's so sweet on ye! The I

means "Do not forget my promise". What has she promised ye,

Jimmy brother of Johnny?'

'That she'd see me again, and we'd talk.'

Tamra laughed so hard that the bells lining her forehead jingled.

She clasped her hands together in a perfect ecstasy of glee. 'Sweet

as honey

Oh, yes!' She bent her smiling gaze on Roland. 'It's sad such a

promise can never be kept. Ye'll never see her again, pretty man.'

She took the bowl. 'Big Sister has decided.' She stood up, still

smiling. 'Why not take that ugly gold sigil off?'

'I think not.'

'Yer brother took his off - look!' She pointed, and Roland spied the

gold medallion lying far down the aisle, where it had landed when

Ralph threw it.

Sister Tamra looked at him, still smiling.

'He decided it was part of what was making him sick, and cast it

away Ye'd do the same, were ye wise.'

Roland repeated: 'I think not.'

'So,' she said dismissively, and left him alone with the empty beds

glimmering in the thickening shadows.

Roland hung on, in spite of growing sleepiness, until the hot

colours bleeding across the infirmary's western wall had cooled to

ashes. Then he nibbled one of the reeds and felt strength - real

strength, not a jittery, heart-thudding substitute -bloom in his body.

He looked towards where the castaway medallion gleamed in the

last light and made a silent promise to John Norman: he would take

it with the other one to Norman's kin, if ka chanced that he should

encounter them in his travels.

Feeling completely easy in his mind for the first time that day, the

gunslinger dozed. When he awoke it was full dark. The doctor-

bugs were singing with extraordinary shrillness. He had taken one

of the reeds out from under the pillow and had begun to nibble on

it when a cold voice said, 'So - Big Sister was right. Ye've been

keeping secrets.'

Roland's heart seemed to stop dead in his chest. He looked around

and saw Sister Coquina getting to her feet. She had crept in while

he was dozing and hidden under the bed on his right side to watch

him. 'Where did ye get that?' she asked. 'Was it 'He got it from me.'

Coquina whirled about. Jenna was walking down the aisle towards

them. Her habit was gone. She still wore her wimple with its

foreheadfringe of bells, but its hem rested on the shoulders of a

simple checkered shirt. Below this she wore jeans and scuffed

desert boots. She had something in her hands. It was too dark for

Roland to be sure, but he thought

YOU,' Sister Coquina whispered with infinite hate. 'When I tell

Big Sister -

`you'll tell no one anything,' Roland said.

If he had planned his escape from the slings which entangled him,

he no doubt would have made a bad business of it, but, as always,

the gunslinger did best when he thought least. His arms were free

in a moment; so was his left leg. His right caught at the ankle,

however, twisting, hanging him up with his shoulders on the bed

and his leg in the air.

Coquina turned on him, hissing like a cat. Her lips pulled back

from teeth that were needle-sharp. She rushed at him, her fingers

splayed. The nails at the ends of them looked sharp and ragged.

Roland clasped the medallion and shoved it out towards her. She

recoiled from it, still hissing, and whirled back to Sister Jenna in a

flare of white skirt. 'I'll do for ye, ye interfering trull!' she cried in a

low, harsh voice.

Roland struggled to free his leg and couldn't. It was firmly caught,

the shitting sling actually wrapped around the ankle somehow, like

a noose.

Jenna raised her hands, and he saw he had been right: it was his

revolvers she had brought, holstered and hanging from the two old

gunbelts he had worn out of Gilead after the last burning.

'Shoot her, Jenna! Shoot her!'

Instead, still holding the holstered guns up, Jenna shook her head

as she had on the day when Roland had persuaded her to push back

her wimple so he could see her hair. The bells rang with a

sharpness that seemed to go into the gunslinger's head like a spike.

The Dark Bells. The sigil of their ka-tet. What

The sound of the doctor-bugs rose to a shrill, reedy scream that

was eerily like the sound of the bells Jenna wore. Nothing sweet

about them now. Sister Coquina's hands faltered on their way to

Jenna's throat; Jenna herself had not so much as flinched or blinked

her eyes.

'No,' Coquina whispered. 'You can't!'

'I have,' Jenna said, and Roland saw the bugs. Descending from the

legs of the bearded man, he'd observed a battalion. What he saw

coming from the shadows now was an army to end all armies; had

they been men instead of insects, there might have been more than

all the men who had ever carried arms in the long and bloody

history of World.

Yet the sight of them advancing down the boards of the aisle was

what Roland would always remember, nor what would haunt his

dream for a year or more; it was the way they coated the beds.

These were turning black two by two on both sides of the aisle,

like pairs of dim rectangular lights going out.

Coquina shrieked and began to shake her own head, to ring her

bells. The sound they made was thin and pointless compared to the

sharp ringing of the Dark Bells.

Still the bugs marched on, darkening the floor, blacking out the be

Jenna darted past the shrieking Sister Coquina, dropped Roland's

beside him, then yanked the twisted sling straight with one hard p

Roland slid his leg free.

'Come,' she said. 'I've started them, but staying them could be a

different thing.'

Now Sister Coquina's shrieks were not of horror but of pain. The

bugs had found her.

'Don't look,' Jenna said, helping Roland to his feet. He thought that

never in his life had he been so glad to be upon them. 'Come. We

mu be quick - she'll rouse the others. I've put your boots and

clothes aside the path that leads away from here - I carried as much

as I could. How ye? Are ye strong?'

'Thanks to you.' How long he would stay strong Roland didn't

know... and right now it wasn't a question that mattered. He saw

Jenna snatch up two of the reeds - in his struggle to escape the

slings, they had scattered all over the head of the bed - and then

they were hurrying up the aisle, away from the bugs and from

Sister Coquina, whose cries were now failing.

Roland buckled on his guns and tied them down without breaking

stride.

They passed only three beds on each side before reaching the flap

of the tent . . . and it was a tent, he saw, not a vast pavilion. The

silk walls and ceiling were fraying canvas, thin enough to let in the

light of a threequarters Kissing Moon. And the beds weren't beds

at all, but only a double row of shabby cots.

He turned and saw a black, writhing hump on the floor where

Sister Coquina had been. At the sight of her, Roland was struck by

an unpleasant thought.

'I forgot John Norman's medallion!' A keen sense of regret - almost

of mourning - went through him like wind.

Jenna reached into the pocket of her jeans and brought it out. It

glimmered in the moonlight.

'I picked it up off the floor.'

He didn't know which made him gladder - the sight of the

medallion or the sight of it in her hand. It meant she wasn't like the

others.

Then, as if to dispel that notion before it got too firm a hold on

him, she said: 'Take it, Roland - I can hold it no more.' And, as he

took it, he saw unmistakable marks of charring on her fingers.

He took her hand and kissed each burn.

'Thankee-sai,' she said, and he saw she was crying. 'Thankee, dear.

To be kissed so is lovely, worth every pain. Now . . .'

Roland saw her eyes shift, and followed them. Here were bobbing

lights descending a rocky path. Beyond them he saw the building

where the Little Sisters had been living - not a convent but a ruined

hacienda that looked a thousand years old. There were three

candles; as they drew closer, Roland saw that there were only three

sisters. Mary wasn't among them.

He drew his guns.

'Oooo, it's a gunslinger-man he is!' Louise.

'A scary man!' Michela.

'And he's found his ladylove as well as his shooters!' Tamra.

'His slut-whore!' Louise.

Laughing angrily. Not afraid ... at least, not of his weapons.

'Put them away,' Jenna told him, and when she looked, saw that he

already had.

The others, meanwhile, had drawn closer.

'Ooo, see, she cries!' Tamra.

'Doffed her habit, she has!' Michela. 'Perhaps it's her broken vows

she cries for.'

'Why such tears, pretty?' Louise.

'Because he kissed my fingers where they were burned,' Jenna said.

'I've never been kissed before. It made me cry.'

'Ooooo!'

'Luv-ly!'

'Next he'll stick his thing in her! Even luv-lier!'

Jenna bore their japes with no sign of anger. When they were done,

she said: 'I'm going with him. Stand aside.'

They gaped at her, counterfeit laughter disappearing in shock.

'No!' Louise whispered. 'Are ye mad? Ye know what'll happen!'

'No, and neither do you,' Jenna said. 'Besides, I care not.' She half-

turned and held her hand out to the mouth of the ancient hospital

tent. It was a faded olive-drab in the moonlight, with an old red

cross drawn on its roof.

Roland wondered how many towns the Sisters had been to With

this tent which was so small and plain on the outside, so huge and

gloriously on the inside. How many towns and over how many

years.

Now, cramming the mouth of it in a black, shiny tongue, were

doctor-bugs. They had stopped their singing. Their silence was

somehow terrible.

'Stand aside or I'll have them on ye,' Jenna said.

'Ye never would!' Sister Michela cried in a low, horrified voice.

'Aye. I've already set them on Sister Coquina. She's a part of the

medicine, now.'

Their gasp was like cold wind passing through dead trees. Nor was

all that dismay directed towards their own precious hides. What

Jenna h done was clearly far outside their reckoning.

'Then you're damned,' Sister Tamra said.

'Such ones to speak of damnation! Stand aside.'

They did. Roland walked past them and they shrank away from

him. but they shrank from her more.

'Damned?' he asked after they had skirted the haci and reached the

path beyond it. The Kissing Moon glimmered above a tumbled

scree of rocks In its light Roland could see a small black opening

low on the scarp. guessed it was the cave the Sisters called

Thoughtful House. 'What did they mean, damned?'

'Never mind. All we have to worry about now is Sister Mary. I like

not that we haven't seen her.'

She tried to walk faster, but he grasped her arm and turned her

about. He could still hear the singing of the bugs, but faintly; they

were leaving the place of the Sisters behind. Eluria, too, if the

compass in his head was still working; he thought the town was in

the other direction. The husk of the town, he amended.

'Tell me what they meant.'

'Perhaps nothing. Ask me not, Roland - what good is it? 'Tis done,

the bridge burned. I can't go back. Nor would if I could.' She

looked down, biting her lip, and when she looked up again, Roland

saw fresh tears falling on her cheeks. 'I have supped with them.

There were times when I couldn't help it, no more than you could

help drinking their wretched soup, no matter if you knew what was

in it.'

Roland remembered John Norman saying A man has to eat... a

woman, too. He nodded.

'I'd go no further down that road. If there's to be damnation, let it

be of my choosing, not theirs. My mother meant well by bringing

me back to them, but she was wrong.' She looked at him shyly and

fearfully ... but met his eyes. 'I'd go beside ye on yer road, Roland

of Gilead. For as long as I may, or as long as ye'd have me.'

`you're welcome to your share of my way,' he said. 'And I am `

Blessed by your company, he would have finished, but before he

could, a voice spoke from the tangle of moonshadow ahead of

them, where the path at last climbed out of the rocky, sterile valley

in which the Little Sisters had practised their glamours.

`It's a sad duty to stop such a pretty elopement, but stop it I must.'

Sister Mary came from the shadows. Her fine white habit with its

bright red rose had reverted to what it really was: the shroud of a

corpse. Caught, hooded in its grimy folds, was a wrinkled, sagging

face from which two black eyes stared. They looked like rotted

dates. Below them, exposed by the thing's smile, four great incisors

gleamed.

Upon the stretched skin of Sister Mary's forehead, bells tinkled ...

but not the Dark Bells, Roland thought. There was that.

'Stand clear,' Jenna said. 'Or I'll bring the can tam on ye.'

'No,' Sister Mary said, stepping closer, 'ye won't. They'll not stray

so far from the others. Shake your head and ring those damned

bells until the clappers fall out, and still they'll never come.'

Jenna did as bid, shaking her head furiously from side to side. The

Dark Bells rang piercingly, but without that extra, almost psychic

tone-quality that had gone through Roland's head like a spike. And

the doctor-bugs

what Jenna had called the can tam - did not come.

Smiling ever more broadly (Roland had an idea Mary herself

hadn't been completely sure they wouldn't come until the

experiment was made), the corpse-woman closed in on them,

seeming to float above the ground. Her eyes flicked towards him.

'And put that away,' she said.

Roland looked down and saw that one of his guns was in his hand.

He had no memory of drawing it.

'Unless it's been blessed or dipped in some sect's holy wet - blood,

water, semen - it can't harm such as I, gunslinger. For I am more

shade than substance ... yet still the equal to such as yerself, for all

that.'

She thought he would try shooting her, anyway; he saw it in her

eyes. Those shooters are all ye have, her eyes said. Without 'em,

you might as well be back in the tent we dreamed around ye,

caught up in our slings and awaiting our pleasure.

Instead of shooting, he dropped the revolver back into its holster

and launched himself at her with his hands out. Sister Mary uttered

a scream that was mostly surprise, but it was not a long one;

Roland's fingers clamped down on her throat and choked the sound

off before it was fairly started.

The touch of her flesh was obscene - it seemed not just alive but

various beneath his hands, as if it was trying to crawl away from

him. He could feel it running like liquid, flowing, and the sensation

was horrible beyond description. Yet he clamped down harder,

determined to choke the I out of her.

Then there came a blue flash (not in the air, he would think later;

that flash happened inside his head, a single stroke of lightning as

she touch off some brief but powerful brainstorm), and his hands

flew away from h neck. For one moment his dazzled eyes saw

great wet gouges in her flesh - gouges in the shapes of his hands.

Then he was flung backwards hitting the scree on his back and

sliding, striking his head on a jutting rock hard enough to provoke

a second, lesser, flash of light.

'Nay, my pretty man,' she said, grimacing at him, laughing with

those terrible dull eyes of hers. 'Ye don't choke such as I, and I'll

take ye slow yer impertinence - cut ye shallow in a hundred places

to refresh my thirst First, though, I'll have this vowless girl ... and

I'll have those damned bells off her, in the bargain.'

'Come and see if you can!' Jenna cried in a trembling voice, and

shook her head from side to side. The Dark Bells rang mockingly,

provokingly

Mary's grimace of a smile fell away. 'Oh, I can,' she breathed. Her

mouth yawned. In the moonlight, her fangs gleamed in her gums

like bone needles poked through a red pillow. 'I can and I -'

There was a growl from above them. It rose, then splintered into a

volley of snarling barks. Mary turned to her left, and in the

moment before the snarling thing left the rock on which it was

standing, Roland could clearly read the startled bewilderment on

Big Sister's face.

It launched itself at her, only a dark shape against the stars, legs

outstretched so it looked like some sort of weird bat, but even

before it crashed into the woman, striking her in the chest above

her half-raise arms and fastening its own teeth on her throat,

Roland knew exactly what it was.

As the shape bore her over on to her back, Sister Mary uttered a

gibbering shriek that went through Roland's head like the Dark

Bells themselves. He scrambled to his feet, gasping. The shadowy

thing tore at her, forepaws on either side of her head, rear paws

planted on the grave-shroud above her, chest, where the rose had

been.

Roland grabbed Jenna, who was looking down at the fallen Sister

with a kind of frozen fascination.

'Come on!' he shouted. 'Before it decides it wants a bite of you,

too!'

The dog took no notice of them as Roland pulled Jenna past. It had

torn

Sister Mary's head mostly off. Her flesh seemed to be changing,

somehow - decomposing, very likely - but whatever was

happening, Roland did not want to see it. He didn't want Jenna to

see it, either.

They half-walked, half-ran to the top of the ridge, and when they

got there paused for breath in the moonlight, heads down, hands

linked, both of them gasping harshly.

The growling and snarling below them had faded, but was still

faintly audible when Sister Jenna raised her head and asked him,

'What was it? you know - I saw it in your face. And how could it

attack her? We all have power over animals, but she has - had - the

most.'

'Not over that one.' Roland found himself recalling the unfortunate

boy in the next bed. Norman hadn't known why the medallions

kept the Sisters at arm's length - whether it was the gold or the

God. Now Roland knew the answer. 'It was a dog. Just a town-dog.

I saw it in the square, before the green folk knocked me out and

took me to the Sisters. I suppose the other animals that could run

away did run away, but not that one. it had nothing to fear from the

Little Sisters of Eluria, and somehow it knew it didn't. It bears the

sign of the Jesus-man on its chest. Black fur on white. just an

accident of its birth, I imagine. In any case, it's done for her now. I

knew it was lurking around. I heard it barking two or three times.'

'Why?' Jenna whispered. 'Why would it come? Why would it stay?

And why would it take on her as it did?'

Roland of Gilead responded as he ever had and ever would when

such useless, mystifying questions were raised: 'Ka. Come on.

Let's get as far as we can from this place before we hide up for the

day.'

As far as they could turned out to be eight miles at most ... and

probably, Roland thought as the two of them sank down in a patch

of sweet-smelling sage beneath an overhang of rock, a good deal

less. Five, perhaps. It was him slowing them down; or rather, it

was the residue of the poison in the soup. When it was clear to him

that he could not go farther without help, he asked her for one of

the reeds. She refused, saying that the stuff in it might combine

with the unaccustomed exercise to burst his heart.

'Besides,' she said as they lay back against the embankment of the

little nook they had found, 'they'll not follow. Those that are left -

Michela, Louise, Tamra - will be packing up to move on. They

know to leave when the time comes; that's why the Sisters have

survived as long as they have. As We have. We're strong in some

ways, but weak in many more. Sister

Mary forgot that. It was her arrogance that did for her as much as

the cross-dog, I think.'

She had cached not just his boots and clothes beyond the top of the

ridge, but the smaller of his two purses, as well. When she tried

apologize for not bringing his bedroll and the larger purse (she'd

tried she said, but they were simply too heavy), Roland hushed her

with a finger to her lips. He thought it a miracle to have as much as

he did. And besides (this he did not say, but perhaps she knew it,

anyway), the guns were the only things which really mattered. The

guns of his father, and his father before him, all the way back to

the days of Arthur Eld when dreams about dragons had still walked

the earth.

'Will you be all right?' he asked her as they settled down. The

moon had set, but dawn was still at least three hours away. They

were surrounded the sweet smell of the sage. A purple smell, he

thought it then ... and ever after. Already he could feel it forming a

kind of magic carpet under him, which would soon float him away

to sleep. He thought he had never been so tired.

'Roland, I know not.' But even then, he thought she had known.

Her mother had brought her back once; no mother would bring her

back again. And she had eaten with the others, had taken the

communion of the Sisters. Ka was a wheel; it was also a net from

which none ever escaped.

But then he was too tired to think much of such things ... and what

good would thinking have done, in any case? As she had said, the

bridge was burned. Even if they were to return to the valley,

Roland guess they would find nothing but the cave the Sisters had

called Thoughtful House. The surviving Sisters would have packed

their tent of bad dreams and moved on, just a sound of bells and

singing insects moving down the late night breeze.

He looked at her raised a hand (it felt heavy), and touched the curl

which once more lay across her forehead.

Jenna laughed, embarrassed. 'That one always escapes. It's

wayward Like its mistress.'

She raised her hand to poke it back in, but Roland took her fingers

before she could. 'It's beautiful,' he said. 'Black as night and as

beautiful as forever.'

He sat up - it took an effort; weariness dragged at his body like soft

hands. He kissed the curl. She closed her eyes and sighed. He felt

her trembling beneath his lips. The skin of her brow was very cool;

the dark curve of the wayward curl like silk.

'Push back your wimple, as you did before,' he said.

She did it without speaking. For a moment he only looked at her.

Jenna looked back gravely, her eyes never leaving his. He ran his

hands through her hair, feeling its smooth weight (like rain, he

thought, rain with weight), then took her shoulders and kissed each

of her cheeks. He drew back for a moment.

'Would ye kiss me as a man does a woman, Roland? On my

mouth?'

Aye.

And, as he had thought of doing as he lay caught in the silken

infirmary tent, he kissed her lips. She kissed back with the clumsy

sweetness of one who has never kissed before, except perhaps in

dreams. Roland thought to make love to her then - it had been long

and long, and she was beautiful but he fell asleep instead, still

kissing her.

He dreamed of the cross-dog, barking its way across a great open

landscape. He followed, wanting to see the source of its agitation,

and soon he did. At the far edge of that plain stood the Dark

Tower, its smoky stone outlined by the dull orange ball of a setting

sun, its fearful windows rising in a spiral. The dog stopped at the

sight of it and began to howl.

Bells - peculiarly shrill and as terrible as doom - began to ring.

Dark bells, he knew, but their tone was as bright as silver. At their

sound, the dark windows of the Tower glowed with a deadly red

light - the red of poisoned roses. A scream of unbearable pain rose

in the night.

The dream blew away in an instant, but the scream remained, now

unravelling to a moan. That part was real - as real as the Tower,

brooding in its place at the very end of End-World. Roland came

back to the brightness of dawn and the soft purple smell of desert

sage. He had drawn both his guns, and was on his feet before he

had fully realized he was awake.

Jenna was gone. Her boots lay empty beside his purse. A little

distance from them, her jeans lay as flat as discarded snakeskins.

Above them was her shirt. It was, Roland observed with wonder,

still tucked into the pants. Beyond them was her empty wimple,

with its fringe of bells lying on the powdery ground. He thought

for a moment that they were ringing, mistaking the sound he heard

at first.

Not bells but bugs. The doctor-bugs. They sang in the sage,

sounding a bit like crickets, but far sweeter.

'Jenna?'

No answer ... unless the bugs answered. For their singing suddenly

stopped.

'Jenna?'

Nothing. Only the wind and the smell of the sage.

Without thinking about what he was doing (like play-acting,

reasoned thought was not his strong suit), he bent, picked up the

wimple, and shook it. The Dark Bells rang.

For a moment there was nothing. Then a thousand small dark

creatures came scurrying out of the sage, gathering on the broken

earth. Roland thought of the battalion marching down the side of

the freighter's and took a step back. Then he held his position. As,

he saw, the bugs holding theirs.

He believed he understood. Some of this understanding came from

his memory of how Sister Mary's flesh had felt under his hands...

how it had felt various, not one thing but many. Part of it was what

she had Said: I have supped with them. Such as them might never

die but they might change.

The insects trembled, a dark cloud of them blotting out the white

powdery earth.

Roland shook the bells again.

A shiver ran through them in a subtle wave, and then they began

form a shape. They hesitated as if unsure of how to go on,

regrouped, began again. What they eventually made on the

whiteness of the sand there between the blowing fluffs of lilac-

coloured sage was one of Great Letters: the letter C.

Except it wasn't really a letter, the gunslinger saw; it was a curl.

They began to sing, and to Roland it sounded as if they were

singing his name.

The bells fell from his unnerved hand, and when they struck

ground and chimed there, the mass of bugs broke apart, running

every direction. He thought of calling them back - ringing the bell

again might do that - but to what purpose? To what end?

Ask me not, Roland. 'Tis done, the bridge burned.

Yet she had come to him one last time, imposing her will over

thousand various parts that should have lost the ability to think

when the whole lost its cohesion . . . and yet she had thought,

somehow enough to make that shape. How much effort might that

have taken?

They fanned wider and wider, some disappearing into the sage,

some trundling up the sides of rock overhang, pouring into the

cracks where they would, mayhap, wait out the heat of the day.

They were gone. She was gone.

Roland sat down on the ground and put his hands over his face. He

thought he might weep, but in time the urge passed; when he raised

his head again, his eyes were as dry as the desert he would

eventually come to, still following the trail of Walter, the man in

black.

If there's to be damnation, she had said, let it be of my choosing,

not theirs.

He knew a little about damnation himself ... and he had an idea that

the lessons, far from being done, were just beginning.

She had brought him the purse with his tobacco in it. He rolled a

cigarette and smoked it hunkered over his knees. He smoked it

down to a glowing roach, looking at her empty clothes the while,

remembering the steady gaze of her dark eyes. Remembering the

scorch-marks on her fingers from the chain of the medallion. Yet

she had picked it up, because she had known he would want it; had

dared that pain, and Roland now wore both around his neck.

When the sun was fully up, the gunslinger moved on west. He

would find another horse eventually, or a mule, but for now he was

content to walk. All that day he was haunted by a ringing, singing

sound in his ears, like bells. Several times he stopped and looked

around, sure he would see a dark following shape flowing over the

ground, chasing after as the shadows of our best and worst

memories chase after, but no shape was ever there. He was alone in

the low hill country west of Eluria.

Quite alone.

The Night

of The Tiger

STEPHEN KING

From

Fantasy & Science Fiction, 1978

I first saw Mr. Legere when the circus swung through Steubenville,

but I'd only been with the show for two weeks; he might have been

making his irregular visits indefinitely. No one much wanted to

talk about Mr. Legere, not even that last night when it seemed that

the world was coming to an end -- the night that Mr. Indrasil

disappeared.

But if I'm going to tell it to you from the beginning, I should start

by saying that I'm Eddie Johnston, and I was born and raised in

Sauk City. Went to school there, had my first girl there, and

worked in Mr. Lillie's five-and-dime there for a while after I

graduated from high school. That was a few years back... more

than I like to count, sometimes. Not that Sauk City's such a bad

place; hot, lazy summer nights sitting on the front porch is all right

for some folks, but it just seemed to itch me, like sitting in the

same chair too long. So I quit the five-and-dime and joined Farnum

& Williams' All-American 3-Ring Circus and Side Show. I did it

in a moment of giddiness when the calliope music kind of fogged

my judgment, I guess.

So I became a roustabout, helping put up tents and take them

down, spreading sawdust, cleaning cages, and sometimes selling

cotton candy when the regular salesman had to go away and bark

for Chips Baily, who had malaria and sometimes had to go

someplace far away, and holler. Mostly things that kids do for free

passes -- things I used to do when I was a kid. But times change.

They don't seem to come around like they used to.

We swung through Illinois and Indiana that hot summer, and the

crowds were good and everyone was happy. Everyone except Mr.

Indrasil. Mr. Indrasil was never happy. He was the lion tamer, and

he looked like old pictures I've seen of Rudolph Valentine. He was

tall, with handsome, arrogant features and a shock of wild black

hair. And strange, mad eyes -- the maddest eyes I've ever seen. He

was silent most of the time; two syllables from Mr. Indrasil was a

sermon. All the circus people kept a mental as well as a physical

distance, because his rages were legend. There was a whispered

story about coffee spilled on his hands after a particularly difficult

performance and a murder that was almost done to a young

roustabout before Mr. Indrasil could be hauled off him. I don't

know about that. I do know that I grew to fear him worse than I

had cold-eyed Mr. Edmont, my high school principal, Mr. Lillie, or

even my father, who was capable of cold dressing-downs that

would leave the recipient quivering with shame and dismay.

When I cleaned the big cats' cages, they were always spotless. The

memory of the few times I had the vituperative wrath of Mr.

Indrasil called down on me still have the power to turn my knees

watery in retrospect.

Mostly it was his eyes - large and dark and totally blank. The eyes,

and the feeling that a man capable of controlling seven watchful

cats in a small cage must be part savage himself.

And the only two things he was afraid of were Mr. Legere and the

circus's one tiger, a huge beast called Green Terror.

As I said, I first saw Mr. Legere in Steubenville, and he was staring

into Green Terror's cage as if the tiger knew all the secrets of life

and death.

He was lean, dark, quiet. His deep, recessed eyes held an

expression of pain and brooding violence in their green-flecked

depths, and his hands were always crossed behind his back as he

stared moodily in at the tiger.

Green Terror was a beast to be stared at. He was a huge, beautiful

specimen with a flawless striped coat, emerald eyes, and heavy

fangs like ivory spikes. His roars usually filled the circus grounds -

fierce, angry, and utterly savage. He seemed to scream defiance

and frustration at the whole world.

Chips Baily, who had been with Farnum &Williams since Lord

knew when, told me that Mr. Indrasil used to use Green Terror in

his act, until one night when the tiger leaped suddenly from its

perch and almost ripped his head from his shoulders before he

could get out of' the cage. I noticed that Mr. Indrasil always wore,

his hair long down the back of his neck.

I can still remember the tableau that day in Steubenville. It was

hot, sweatingly hot, and we had a shirtsleeve crowd. That was why

Mr. Legere and Mr. Indrasil stood out. Mr. Legere, standing

silently by the tiger cage, was fully dressed in a suit and vest, his

face unmarked by perspiration. And Mr. Indrasil, clad in one of his

beautiful silk shirts and white whipcord breeches, was staring at

them both, his face dead-white, his eyes bulging in lunatic anger,

hate, and fear. He was carrying a currycomb and brush, and his

hands were trembling as they clenched on them spasmodically.

Suddenly he saw me, and his anger found vent. "You!" He

shouted. "Johnston!"

"Yes sir?" I felt a crawling in the pit of my stomach. I knew I was

about to have the wrath of Indrasil vented on me, and the thought

turned me weak with fear. I like to think I'm as brave as the next,

and if it had been anyone else, I think I would have been fully

determined to stand up for myself. But it wasn't anyone else. It was

Mr. Indrasil, and his eyes were mad.

"These cages, Johnston. Are they supposed to be clean?" He

pointed a finger, and I followed it. I saw four errant wisps of straw

and an incriminating puddle of hose water in the far corner of one.

"Y-yes, sir," I said, and what was intended to be firmness became

palsied bravado.

Silence, like the electric pause before a downpour. People were

beginning to look, and I was dimly aware that Mr. Legere was

staring at us with his bottomless eyes.

"Yes, sir?" Mr. Indrasil thundered suddenly. "Yes, sir? Yes, sir?

Don't insult my intelligence, boy! Don't you think I can see?

Smell? Did you use the disinfectant?''

"I used disinfectant yes----"

"Don't answer me back!" He screeched, and then the sudden drop

in his voice made my skin crawl. "Don't you dare answer me

back." Everyone was staring now. I wanted to retch, to die. "Now

you get the hell into that tool shed, and you get that disinfectant

and swab out those cages," he whispered, measuring every word.

One hand suddenly shot out, grasping my shoulder. "And don't you

ever, ever, speak back to me again."

I don't know where the words came from, but they were suddenly

there, spilling off my lips. "I didn't speak back to you, Mr. Indrasil,

and I don't like you saying I did. I-- resent it. Now let me go."

His face went suddenly red, then white, then almost saffron with

rage. His eyes were blazing doorways to hell.

Right then I thought I was going to die.

He made an inarticulate gagging sound, and the grip on my

shoulder became excruciating. His right hand went up...up...up,

and then descended with unbelievable speed.

If that hand had connected with my face, it would have knocked

me senseless at best. At worst, it would have broken my neck.

It did not connect.

Another hand materialized magically out of space, right in front of

me. The two straining limbs came together with a flat Smacking

sound. It was Mr. Legere.

"Leave the boy alone," he said emotionlessly.

Mr. Indrasil stared at him for a long second, and I think there was

nothing so unpleasant in the whole business as watching the fear of

Mr. Legere and the mad lust to hurt (or to kill!) mix in those

terrible eyes.

Then he turned and stalked away.

I turned to look at Mr. Legere. "Thank you," I said.

"Don't thank me." And it wasn't a "don't thank me," but a "don't

thank me.'' Not a gesture of modesty but a literal command. In a

sudden flash of intuition empathy if you will I understood

exactly what he meant by that comment. I was a pawn in what

must have been a long combat between the two of them. I had been

captured by Mr. Legere rather than Mr. Indrasil. He had stopped

the lion tamer not because he felt for me, but because it gained him

an advantage, however slight, in their private war.

"What's your name?" I asked, not at all offended by what I had

inferred. He had, after all, been honest with me.

"Legere," he said briefly. He turned to go.

"Are you with a circus?" I asked, not wanting to let him go so

easily. "You seemed to know --- him."

A faint smile touched his thin lips, and warmth kindled in his eyes

for a moment; "No. You might call me a-policeman." And before I

could reply, he had disappeared into the surging throng passing by.

The next day we picked up stakes and moved on.

I saw Mr. Legere again in Danville and, two weeks later, in

Chicago. In the time between I tried to avoid Mr. Indrasil as much

as possible and kept the cat cages spotlessly clean. On the day

before we pulled out for St. Louis, I asked Chips Baily and Sally

O'Hara, the red-headed wire walker, if Mr. Legere and Mr. Indrasil

knew each other. I was pretty sure they did, because Mr. Legere

was hardly following the circus to eat our fabulous lime ice.

Sally and Chips looked at each other over their coffee cups. "No

one knows much about what's between those, two," she said. "But

it's been going on for a long time maybe twenty years. Ever since

Mr. Indrasil came over from Ringling Brothers, and maybe before

that."

Chips nodded. "This Legere guy picks up the circus almost every

year when we swing through the Midwest and stays with us until

we catch the train for Florida in Little Rock. Makes old Leopard

Man touchy as one of his cats."

"He told me he was a police-man," I said. "What do you suppose

he looks for around here? You don't suppose Mr. Indrasil--?"

Chips and Sally looked at each other strangely, and both just about

broke their backs getting up. "Got to see those weights and counter

weights get stored right," Sally said, and Chips muttered something

not too convincing about checking on the rear axle of his U-Haul.

And that's about the way any conversation concerning Mt. Indrasil

or Mr. Legere usually broke up--- hurriedly, with many hard-

forced excuses.

We said farewell to Illinois and comfort at the same time. A killing

hot spell came on, seemingly at the very instant we crossed the

border, and it stayed with us for the next month and a half, as we

moved slowly across Missouri and into Kansas. Everyone grew

short of temper, including the animals. And that, of course,

included the cats, which were Mr. Indrasil's responsibility. He rode

the roustabouts unmercifully, and myself in particular. I grinned

and tried to bear it, even though I had my own case of prickly heat.

You just don't argue with a crazy man, and I'd pretty well decided

that was what Mr. Indrasil was.

No one was getting any sleep, and that is the curse of all circus

performers. Loss of sleep slows up reflexes, and slow reflexes

make for danger. In Independence Sally O'Hara fell seventy-five

feet into the nylon netting and fractured her shoulder. Andrea

Solienni, our bareback rider, fell off one of her horses during

rehearsal and was knocked unconscious by a flying hoof. Chips

Baily suffered silently with the fever that was always with him, his

face a waxen mask, with cold perspiration clustered at each temple.

And in many ways, Mr. Indrasil had the roughest row to hoe of all.

The cats were nervous and short-tempered, and every time he

stepped into the Demon Cat Cage, as it was billed, he took his life

in his hands. He was feeding the lions ordinate amounts of raw

meat right before he went on, something that lion tamers rarely do,

contrary to popular belief. His face grew drawn and haggard, and

his eyes were wild.

Mr. Legere was almost always there, by Green Terror's cage,

watching him. And that, of course, added to Mr. Indrasil's load.

The circus began eyeing the silk-shirted figure nervously as he

passed, and I knew they were all thinking the same thing I was:

He's going to crack wide open, and when he does ---

When he did, God alone knew what would happen.

The hot spell went on, and temperatures were climbing well into

the nineties every day. It seemed as if the rain gods were mocking

us. Every town we left would receive the showers of blessing.

Every town we entered was hot, parched, sizzling.

And one night, on the road between Kansas City and Green Bluff, I

saw something that upset me more than anything else.

It was hot -- abominably hot. It was no good even trying to sleep. I

rolled about on my cot like a man in a fever-delirium, chasing the

sandman but never quite catching him. Finally I got up, pulled on

my pants, and went outside.

We had pulled off into a small field and drawn into a circle. Myself

and two other roustabouts had unloaded the cats so they could

catch whatever breeze there might be. The cages were there now,

painted dull silver by the swollen Kansas moon, and a tall figure in

white whipcord breeches was standing by the biggest of them. Mr.

Indrasil.

He was baiting Green Terror with a long, pointed pike. The big cat

was padding silently around the cage, trying to avoid the sharp tip.

And the frightening thing was, when the staff did punch into the

tiger's flesh, it did not roar in pain and anger as it should have. It

maintained an ominous silence, more terrifying to the person who

knows cats than the loudest of roars.

It had gotten to Mr. Indrasil, too. "Quiet bastard, aren't you?" He

grunted. Powerful arms flexed, and the iron shaft slid forward.

Green Terror flinched, and his eyes rolled horribly. But he did not

make a sound. "Yowl!" Mr. Indrasil hissed. "Go ahead and yowl,

you monster Yowl!" And he drove his spear deep into the tiger's

flank.

Then I saw something odd. It seemed that a shadow moved in the

darkness under one of the far wagons, and the moonlight seemed to

glint on staring eyes -- green eyes.

A cool wind passed silently through the clearing, lifting dust and

rumpling my hair.

Mr. Indrasil looked up, and there was a queer listening expression

on his face. Suddenly he dropped the bar, turned, and strode back

to his trailer.

I stared again at the far wagon, but the shadow was gone. Green

Tiger stood motionlessly at the bars of his cage, staring at Mr.

Indrasil's trailer. And the thought came to me that it hated Mr.

Indrasil not because he was cruel or vicious, for the tiger respects

these qualities in its own animalistic way, but rather because he

was a deviate from even the tiger's savage norm. He was a rogue.

That's the only way I can put it. Mr. Indrasil was not only a human

tiger, but a rogue tiger as well.

The thought jelled inside me, disquieting and a little scary. I went

back inside, but still I could not sleep.

The heat went on.

Every day we fried, every night we tossed and turned, sweating

and sleepless. Everyone was painted red with sunburn, and there

were fistfights over trifling affairs. Everyone was reaching the

point of explosion.

Mr. Legere remained with us, a silent watcher, emotionless on the

surface, but, I sensed, with deep-running currents of - what? Hate?

Fear? Vengeance? I could not place it. But he was potentially

dangerous, I was sure of that. Perhaps more so than Mr. Indrasil

was, if anyone ever lit his particular fuse.

He was at the circus at every performance, always dressed in his

nattily creased brown suit, despite the killing temperatures. He

stood silently by Green Terror's cage, seeming to commune deeply

with the tiger, who was always quiet when he was around.

From Kansas to Oklahoma, with no letup in the temperature. A day

without a heat prostration case was a rare day indeed. Crowds were

beginning to drop off; who wanted to sit under a stifling canvas

tent when there was an air-conditioned movie just around the

block?

We were all as jumpy as cats, to coin a particularly applicable

phrase. And as we set down stakes in Wildwood Green, Oklahoma,

I think we all knew a climax of some sort was close at hand. And

most of us knew it would involve Mr. Indrasil. A bizarre

occurrence had taken place just prior to our first Wildwood

performance. Mr. Indrasil had been in the Demon Cat Cage,

putting the ill-tempered lions through their paces. One of them

missed its balance on its pedestal, tottered and almost regained it.

Then, at that precise moment, Green Terror let out a terrible, ear-

splitting roar.

The lion fell, landed heavily, and suddenly launched itself with

rifle-bullet accuracy at Mr. Indrasil. With a frightened curse, he

heaved his chair at the cat's feet, tangling up the driving legs. He

darted out just as the lion smashed against the bars.

As he shakily collected himself preparatory to re-entering the cage,

Green Terror let out another roar -- but this one monstrously like a

huge, disdainful chuckle.

Mr. Indrasil stared at the beast, white-faced, then turned and

walked away. He did not come out of his trailer all afternoon.

That afternoon wore on interminably. But as the temperature

climbed, we all began looking hopefully toward the west, where

huge banks of thunderclouds were forming.

"Rain, maybe," I told Chips, stopping by his barking platform in

front of the sideshow.

But he didn't respond to my hopeful grin. "Don't like it," he said.

"No wind. Too hot. Hail or tornadoes." His face grew grim. "It

ain't no picnic, ridin' out a tornado with a pack of crazy-wild

animals all over the place, Eddie. I've thanked God mor'n once

when we've gone through the tornado belt that we don't have no

elephants.

"Yeah" he added gloomily, "you better hope them clouds stay right

on the horizon."

But they didn't. They moved slowly toward us, cyclopean pillars in

the sky, purple at the bases and awesome blue-black through the

cumulonimbus. All air movement ceased, and the heat lay on us

like a woolen winding-shroud. Every now and again, thunder

would clear its throat further west.

About four, Mr. Farnum himself, ringmaster and half-owner of the

circus, appeared and told us there would be no evening

performance; just batten down and find a convenient hole to crawl

into in case of trouble. There had been corkscrew funnels spotted

in several places between Wildwood and Oklahoma City, some

within forty miles of us.

There was only a small crowd when the announcement came,

apathetically wandering through the sideshow exhibits or ogling

the animals. But Mr. Legere had not been present all day; the only

person at Green Terror's cage was a sweaty high-school boy with

clutch of books. When Mr. Farnum announced the U.S. Weather

Bureau tornado warning that had been issued, he hurried quickly

away.

I and the other two roustabouts spent the rest of the-afternoon

working our tails off, securing tents, loading animals back into

their wagons, and making generally sure that everything was nailed

down.

Finally only the cat cages were left, and there was a special

arrangement for those. Each cage had a special mesh "breezeway"

accordioned up against it, which, when extended completely,

connected with the Demon Cat Cage. When the smaller cages had

to be moved, the felines could be herded into the big cage while

they were loaded up. The big cage itself rolled on gigantic casters

and could be muscled around to a position where each cat could be

let back into its original cage. It sounds complicated, and it was,

but it was just the only way.

We did the lions first, then Ebony Velvet, the docile black panther

that had set the circus back almost one season's receipts. It was a

tricky business coaxing them up and then back through the

breezeways, but all of us preferred it to calling Mr. Indrasil to

help.

By the time we were ready for Green Terror, twilight had come ---

a queer, yellow twilight that hung humidly around us. The sky

above had taken on a flat, shiny aspect that I had never seen and

which I didn't like in the least.

"Better hurry," Mr. Farnum said, as we laboriously trundled the

Demon Cat Cage back to where we could hook it to the back of

Green Terror's show cage. "Barometer's falling off fast." He shook

his head worriedly. "Looks bad, boys. Bad.'' He hurried on, still

shaking his head.

We got Green Terror's breezeway hooked up and opened the back

of his cage. "In you go," I said encouragingly.

Green Terror looked at me menacingly and didn't move.

Thunder rumbled again, louder, closer, sharper. The sky had gone

jaundice, the ugliest color I have ever seen. Wind-devils began to

pick jerkily at our clothes and whirl away the flattened candy

wrappers and cotton-candy cones that littered the area.

"Come on, come on," I urged and poked him easily with the blunt-

tipped rods we were given to herd them with.

Green Terror roared ear-splittingly, and one paw lashed out with

blinding speed. The hardwood pole was jerked from my hands and

splintered as if it had been a greenwood twig. The tiger was on his

feet now, and there was murder in his eyes.

"Look," I said shakily. "One of you will have to go get Mr.

Indrasil, that's all. We can't wait around."

As if to punctuate my words, thunder cracked louder, the clapping

of mammoth hands.

Kelly Nixon and Mike McGregor flipped for it; I was excluded

because of my previous run-in with Mr. Indrasil. Kelly drew the

task, threw us a wordless glance that said he would prefer facing

the storm and then started off.

He was gone almost ten minutes. The wind was picking up

velocity now, and twilight was darkening into a weird six o'clock

night. I was scared, and am not afraid to admit it. That rushing,

featureless sky, the deserted circus grounds, the sharp, tugging

wind-vortices all that makes a memory that will stay with me

always, undimmed.

And Green Terror would not budge into his breezeway.

Kelly Nixon came rushing back, his eyes wide. "I pounded on his

door for 'most five minutes!" He gasped. "Couldn't raise him!"

We looked at each other, at a loss. Green Terror was a big

investment for the circus. He couldn't just be left in the open. I

turned bewilderedly, looking for Chips, Mr. Farnum, or anybody

who could tell me what to do. But everyone was gone. The tiger

was our responsibility. I considered trying to load the cage bodily

into the trailer, but I wasn't going to get my fingers in that cage.

"Well, we've just got to go and get him," I said. "The three of us.

Come on." And we ran toward Mr. Indrasil's trailer through the

gloom of coming night.

We pounded on his door until he must have thought all the demons

of hell were after him. Thankfully, it finally jerked open. Mr.

Indrasil swayed and stared down at us, his mad eyes rimmed and

oversheened with drink. He smelled like a distillery.

"Damn you, leave me alone," he snarled.

"Mr. Indrasil --" I had to shout over the rising whine of the wind. It

was like no storm I had ever heard of or read about, out there. It

was like the end of the world .

"You," he gritted softly. He reached down and gathered my shirt

up in a knot. "I'm going to teach you a lesson you'll never forget."

He glared at Kelly and Mike, cowering back in the moving storm

shadows. "Get out!"

They ran. I didn't blame them; I've told you -- Mr. Indrasil was

crazy. And not just ordinary crazy -- he was like a crazy animal,

like one of his own cats gone bad.

"All right," he muttered, staring down at me, his eyes like

hurricane lamps. "No juju to protect you now. No grisgris." His

lips twitched in a wild, horrible smile. "He isn't here now, is he?

We're two of a kind, him and me. Maybe the only two left. My

nemesis -- and I'm his." He was rambling, and I didn't try to stop

him. At least his mind was off me.

"Turned that cat against me, back in '58. Always had the power

more'n me. Fool could make a million -- the two of us could make

a million if he wasn't so damned high and mighty...what's that?"

It was Green Terror, and he had begun to roar ear-splittingly.

"Haven't you got that damned tiger in?" He screamed, almost

falsetto. He shook me like a rag doll.

"He won't go!" I found myself yelling back. "You've got to --"

But he flung me away. I stumbled over the fold-up steps in front of

his trailer and crashed into a bone-shaking heap at the bottom.

With something between a sob and a curse, Mr. Indrasil strode past

me, face mottled with anger and fear.

I got up, drawn after him as if hypnotized. Some intuitive part of

me realized I was about to see the last act played out.

Once clear of the shelter of Mr. Indrasil's trailer, the power of the

wind was appalling. It screamed like a runaway freight train. I was

an ant, a speck, an unprotected molecule before that thundering,

cosmic force.

And Mr. Legere was standing by Green Terror's cage.

It was like a tableau from Dante. The near-empty cage-clearing

inside the circle of trailers; the two men, facing each other silently,

their clothes and hair rippled by the shrieking gale; the boiling sky

above; the twisting wheatfields in the background, like damned

souls bending to the whip of Lucifer.

"It's time, Jason," Mr. Legere said, his words flayed across the

clearing by the wind.

Mr. Indrasil's wildly whipping hair lifted around the livid scar

across the back of his neck. His fists clenched, but he said nothing.

I could almost feel him gathering his will, his life force, his id. It

gathered around him like an unholy nimbus.

And, then, I saw with sudden horror that Mr. Legere was

unhooking Green Terror's breezeway -- and the back of the cage

was open!

I cried out, but the wind ripped my words away.

The great tiger leaped out and almost flowed past Mr. Legere. Mr.

Indrasil swayed, but did not run. He bent his head and stared down

at the tiger.

And Green Terror stopped.

He swung his huge head back to Mr. Legere, almost turned, and

then slowly turned back to Mr. Indrasil again. There was a

terrifyingly palpable sensation of directed force in the air, a mesh

of conflicting wills centered around the tiger. And the wills were

evenly matched.

I think, in the end, it was Green Terror's own will -- his hate of Mr.

Indrasil -- that tipped the scales.

The cat began to advance, his eyes hellish, flaring beacons. And.

something strange began to happen to Mr. Indrasil. He seemed to

be folding in on himself, shriveling, accordioning. The silk-shirt

lost shape, the dark, whipping hair became a hideous toadstool

around his collar.

Mr. Legere called something across to him, and, simultaneously,

Green Terror leaped.

I never saw the outcome. The next moment I was slammed flat on

my back, and the breath seemed to be sucked from my body. I

caught one crazily tilted glimpse of a huge, towering cyclone

funnel, and then the darkness descended.

When I awoke, I was in my cot just aft of the grainery bins in the

all-purpose storage trailer we carried. My body felt as if it had

been beaten with padded Indian clubs.

Chips Baily appeared, his face lined and pale. He saw my eyes

were open and grinned relievedly. "Didn't know as you were ever

gonna wake up. How you feel?"

"Dislocated," I said. "What happened? How'd I get here?"

"We found you piled up against Mr. Indrasil's trailer. The tornado

almost carried you away for a souvenir, m'boy."

At the mention of Mr. Indrasil, all the ghastly memories came

flooding back. "Where is Mr. Indrasil? And Mr. Legere?"

His eyes went murky, and he started to make some kind of an

evasive answer.

"Straight talk," I said, struggling up on one elbow. "I have to know,

Chips. I have to."

Something in my face must have decided him. "Okay. But this isn't

exactly what we told the cops -- in fact we hardly told the cops any

of it. No sense havin' people think we're crazy. Anyhow, Indrasil's

gone. I didn't even know that Legere guy was around."

"And Green Tiger?"

Chips' eyes were unreadable again. "He and the other tiger fought

to death."

"Other tiger? There's no other ---"

"Yeah, but they found two of 'em, lying in each other's blood. Hell

of a mess. Ripped each other's throats out."

"What -- where --"

"Who knows? We just told the cops we had two tigers. Simpler

that way." And before I could say another word, he was gone.

And that's the end of my story -- except for two little items. The

words Mr. Legere shouted just before the tornado hit: "When a

man and an animal live in the same shell, Indrasil, the instincts

determine the mold!"

The other thing is what keeps me awake nights. Chips told me

later, offering it only for what it might be worth. What he told me

was that the strange tiger had a long scar on the back of its neck.

THE

REPLOIDS

Stephen King

Appeared in

Night Visions #5, 1988

No one knew exactly how long it had been going on. Not long.

Two days, two weeks; it couldn't have been much longer than that,

Cheyney reasoned. Not that it mattered. It was just that people got

to watch a little more of the show with the added thrill of knowing

the show was real. When the United States - the whole world -

found out about the Reploids, it was pretty spectacular. just as

well, maybe. These days, unless it's spectacular, a thing can go on

damned near forever. It is neither believed nor disbelieved. It is

simply part of the weird Godhead mantra that made up the

accelerating flow of events and experience as the century neared its

end. It's harder to get peoples' attention. It takes machine-guns in a

crowded airport or a live grenade rolled up the aisle of a bus load

of nuns stopped at a roadblock in some Central American country

overgrown with guns and greenery. The Reploids became national

- and international - news on the morning of November 30, 1989,

after what happened during the first two chaotic minutes of the

Tonight Show taping in Beautiful Downtown Burbank, California,

the night before.

The floor manager watched intently as the red sweep secondhand

moved upward toward the twelve. The studio audience

clockwatched as intently as the floor manager. When the red sweep

second-hand crossed the twelve, it would be five o'clock and

taping of the umpty-umptieth Tonight Show would commence.

As the red second-hand passed the eight, the audience stirred and

muttered with its own peculiar sort of stage fright. After all, they

represented America, didn't they? Yes!

"Let's have it quiet, people, please," the floor manager said

pleasantly, and the audience quieted like obedient children. Doc

Severinsen's drummer ran off a fast little riff on his snare and then

held his sticks easily between thumbs and fingers, wrists loose,

watching the floor manager instead of the clock, as the show -

people always did. For crew and performers, the floor manager

was the clock. When the second-hand passed the ten, the floor

manager counted down aloud to four, and then held up three

fingers, two fingers, one finger ... and then a clenched fist from

which one finger pointed dramatically at the audience. An

APPLAUSE sign lit up, but the studio audience was primed to

whoop it up; it would have made no difference if it had been

written in Sanskrit.

So things started off just as they were supposed to start off: dead

on time. This was not so surprising; there were crewmembers on

the Tonight Show who, had they been LAPD officers, could have

retired with full benefits. The Doc Severinsen band, one of the best

showbands in the world, launched into the familiar theme: Ta-da-

da-Da-da ... and the large, rolling voice of Ed

McMahon cried enthusiastically: "From Los Angeles,

entertainment capital of the world, it's The Tonight Show, live,

with Johnny Carson! Tonight, Johnny's guests are actress Cybill

Shepherd of Moonlighting!" Excited applause from the audience.

"Magician Doug Henning!" Even louder applause from the

audience. "Pee Wee Herman!" A fresh wave of applause, this time

including hoots of joy from Pee Wee's rooting section. "From

Germany, the Flying Schnauzers, the world's only canine

acrobats!" Increased applause, with a mixture of laughter from the

audience. "Not to mention Doc Severinsen, the world's only Flying

Bandleader, and his canine band!"

The band members not playing horns obediently barked. The

audience laughed harder, applauded harder.

In the control room of Studio C, no one was laughing.

A man in a loud sport-coat with a shock of curly black hair was

standing in the wings, idly snapping his fingers and looking across

the stage at Ed, but that was all.

The director signaled for Number Two Cam's medium shot on Ed

for the umpty-umptieth time, and there was Ed on the ON

SCREEN monitors. He barely heard someone mutter, "Where the

hell is he?" before Ed's rolling tones announced, also for the

umpty-umptieth time: "And now heeeere's JOHNNY!"

Wild applause from the audience.

"Camera Three," the director snapped.

"But there's only that-"

"Camera Three, goddammit!"

Camera Three came up on the ON SCREEN monitor, showing

every TV director's private nightmare, a dismally empty stage ...

and then someone, some stranger, was striding confidently into

that empty space, just as if he had every right in the world to be

there, filling it with unquestionable presence, charm, and authority.

But, whoever he was, he was most definitely not Johnny Carson.

Nor was it any of the other familiar faces TV and studio audiences

had grown used to during Johnny's absences. This man was taller

than Johnny, and instead of the familiar silver hair, there was a

luxuriant cap of almost Pan-like black curls. The stranger's hair

was so black that in places it seemed to glow almost blue, like

Superman's hair in the comic-books. The sport-coat he wore was

not quite loud enough to put him in the Pleesda-Meetcha-Is-This-

The-Missus? car salesman category, but Carson would not have

touched it with a twelve-foot pole.

The audience applause continued, but it first seemed to grow

slightly bewildered, and then clearly began to thin.

"What the fuck's going on?" someone in the control room asked.

The director simply watched, mesmerized.

Instead of the familiar swing of the invisible golf-club, punctuated

by a drum-riff and high-spirited hoots of approval from the studio

audience, this dark-haired, broad-shouldered, loud-jacketed,

unknown gentleman began to move his hands up and down, eyes

flicking rhythmically from his moving palms to a spot just above

his head - he was miming a juggler with a lot of fragile items in the

air, and doing it with the easy grace of the long-time showman. It

was only something in his face, something as subtle as a shadow,

that told you the objects were eggs or something, and would break

if dropped. It was, in fact, very like the way Johnny's eyes

followed the invisible ball down the invisible fairway, registering

one that had been righteously stroked ... unless, of course, he chose

to vary the act, which he could and did do from time to time, and

without even breathing hard.

He made a business of dropping the last egg, or whatever the

fragile object was, and his eyes followed it to the floor with

exaggerated dismay. Then, for a moment, he froze. Then he

glanced toward Cam Three Left ... toward Doc and the orchestra,

in other words.

After repeated viewings of the videotape, Dave Cheyney came to

what seemed to him to be an irrefutable conclusion, although many

of his colleagues - including his partner - questioned it.

"He was waiting for a sting," Cheyney said. "Look, you can see it

on his face. It's as old as burlesque."

His partner, Pete Jacoby, said, "I thought burlesque was where the

girl with the heroin habit took off her clothes while the guy with

the heroin habit played the trumpet."

Cheyney gestured at him impatiently. "Think of the lady that used

to play the piano in the silent movies, then. Or the one that used to

do schmaltz on the organ during the radio soaps."

Jacoby looked at him, wide-eyed. 'Mid they have those things

when you were a kid, daddy?" he asked in a falsetto voice.

"Will you for once be serious?" Cheyney asked him. "Because this

is a serious thing we got here, I think."

"What we got here is very simple. We got a nut."

"No," Cheyney said, and hit rewind on the VCR again with one

hand while he lit a fresh cigarette with the other. "What we got is a

seasoned performer who's mad as hell because the guy on the snare

dropped his cue." He paused thoughtfully and added: "Christ,

Johnny does it all the time. And if the guy who was supposed to

lay in the sting dropped his cue, I think he'd look the same way.

By then it didn't matter. The stranger who wasn't Johnny Carson

had time to recover, to look at a flabbergasted Ed McMahon and

say, "The moon must be full tonight, Ed - do you think - " And that

was when the NBC security guards came out and grabbed him.

"Hey! What the fuck do you think you're - "

But by then they had dragged him away.

In the control room of Studio C, there was total silence. The

audience monitors picked up the same silence. Camera Four was

swung toward the audience, and showed a picture of one hundred

and fifty stunned, silent faces. Camera Two, the one medium-close

on Ed McMahon, showed a man who looked almost cosmically

befuddled.

The director took a package of Winstons from his breast pocket,

took one out, put it in his mouth, took it out again and reversed it

so the filter was facing away from him, and abruptly bit the

cigarette in two. He threw the filtered half in one direction and spat

the unfiltered half in another.

"Get up a show from the library with Rickles," he said. "No Joan

Rivers. And if I see Totie Fields, someone's going to get fired."

Then he strode away, head down. He shoved a chair with such

violence on his way out of the control room that it struck the wall,

rebounded, nearly fractured the skull of a white-faced intern from

USC, and fell on its side.

One of the PA's told the intern in a low voice, "Don't worry; that's

just Fred's way of committing honorable seppuku."

The man who was not Johnny Carson was taken, bellowing loudly

not about his lawyer but his team of lawyers, to the Burbank Police

Station. In Burbank, as in Beverly Hills and Hollywood Heights,

there is a wing of the police station which is known simply as

"special security functions." This may cover many aspects of the

sometimes crazed world of Tinsel-Town law enforcement. The

cops don't like it, the cops don't respect it ... but they ride with it.

You don't shit where you eat. Rule One.

"Special security functions" might be the place to which a coke-

snorting movie-star whose last picture grossed seventy million

dollars might be conveyed; the place to which the battered wife of

an extremely powerful film producer might be taken; it was the

place to which the man with the dark crop of curls was taken.

The man who showed up in Johnny Carson's place on the stage of

Studio C on the afternoon of November 29th identified himself as

Ed Paladin, speaking the name with the air of one who expects

everyone who hears it to fall on his or her knees and, perhaps,

genuflect. His California driver's license, Blue Cross - Blue Shield

card, Amex and Diners' Club cards, also identified him as Edward

Paladin.

His trip from Studio C ended, at least temporarily, in a room in the

Burbank PD's "special security" area. The room was panelled with

tough plastic that almost did look like mahogany and furnished

with a low, round couch and tasteful chairs. There was a cigarette

box on the glass-topped coffee table filled with Dunhills, and the

magazines included Fortune and Variety and Vogue and Billboard

and GQ. The wall-to-wall carpet wasn't really ankle-deep but

looked it, and there was a CableView guide on top of the large-

screen TV. There was a bar (now locked), and a very nice neo-

Jackson Pollock painting on one of the walls. The walls, however,

were of drilled cork, and the mirror above the bar was a little bit

too large and a little bit too shiny to be anything but a piece of one-

way glass.

The man who called himself Ed Paladin stuck his hands in his just-

too-loud sport-coat pockets, looked around disgustedly, and said:

"An interrogation room by any other name is still an interrogation

room."

Detective 1st Grade Richard Cheyney looked at him calmly for a

moment. When he spoke, it was in the soft and polite voice that

had earned him the only halfkidding nickname "Detective to the

Stars." Part of the reason he spoke this way was because he

genuinely liked and respected show people. Part of the reason was

because he didn't trust them. Half the time they were lying they

didn't know it.

"Could you tell us, please, Mr Paladin, how you got on the set of

The Tonight Show, and where Johnny Carson is?"

"Who's Johnny Carson?"

Pete Jacoby - who wanted to be Henny Youngman when he grew

up, Cheyney often thought - gave Cheyney a momentary dry look

every bit as good as a Jack Benny deadpan. Then he looked back at

Edward Paladin and said, "Johnny Carson's the guy who used to be

Mr Ed. You know, the talking horse? I mean, a lot of people know

about Mr Ed, the famous talking horse, but an awful lot of people

don't know that he went to Geneva to have a species-change

operation and when he came back he was-"

Cheyney often allowed Jacoby his routines (there was really no

other word for them, and Cheyney remembered one occasion when

Jacoby had gotten a man charged with beating his wife and infant

son to death laughing so hard that tears of mirth rather than

remorse were rolling down his cheeks as he signed the confession

that was going to put the bastard in jail for the rest of his life), but

he wasn't going to tonight. He didn't have to see the flame under

his ass; he could feel it, and it was being turned up. Pete was

maybe a little slow on the uptake about some things, and maybe

that was why he wasn't going to make Detective 1st for another

two or three years ... if he ever did.

Some ten years ago a really awful thing had happened in a little

nothing town called Chowchilla. Two people (they had walked on

two legs, anyway, if you could believe the newsfilm) had hijacked

a busload of kids, buried them alive, and then had demanded a

huge sum of money. Otherwise, they said, those kiddies could just

stay where they were and swap baseball trading cards until their air

ran out. That one had ended happily, but it could have been a

nightmare. And God knew Johnny Carson was no busload of

schoolkids, but the case had the same kind of fruitcake appeal: here

was that rare event about which both the Los Angeles Times-

Mirror and The National Enquirer would hobnob on their front

pages. What Pete didn't understand was that something extremely

rare had happened to them: in the world of day-to-day police work,

a world where almost everything came in shades of gray, they had

suddenly been placed in a situation of stark and simple contrasts:

produce within twenty-four hours, thirty-six at the outside, or

watch the Feds come in ... and kiss your ass goodbye.

Things happened so rapidly that even later he wasn't completely

sure, but he believed both of them had been going on the unspoken

presumption, even then, that Carson had been kidnapped and this

guy was part of it.

"We're going to do it by the numbers, Mr Paladin," Cheyney said,

and although he was speaking to the man glaring up at him from

one of the chairs (he had refused the sofa at once), his eyes flicked

briefly to Pete. They had been partners for nearly twelve years, and

a glance was all it took.

No more Comedy Store routines, Pete.

Message received.

"First comes the Miranda Warning," Cheyney said pleasantly. "I

am required to inform you that you are in the custody of the

Burbank City Police. Although not required to do so immediately,

I'll add that a preliminary charge of trespassing-"

"Trespassing!" An angry flush burst over Paladin's face.

"-on property both owned and leased by the National Broadcasting

Company has been lodged against you. I am Detective 1st Grade

Richard Cheyney. This man with me is my partner, Detective 2nd

Grade Peter Jacoby. We'd like to interview you."

"Fucking interrogate me is what you mean."

"I only have one question, as far as interrogation goes," Cheyney

said. "Otherwise, I only want to interview you at this time. In other

words, I have one question relevant to the charge which has been

lodged; the rest deal with other matters."

"Well, what's the fucking question?"

"That wouldn't be going by the numbers," Jacoby said.

Cheyney said:. "I am required to tell you that you have the right-"

"To have my lawyer here, you bet," Paladin said. "And I just

decided that before I answer a single fucking question, and that

includes where I went to lunch today and what I had, he's going to

be in here. Albert K. Dellums."

He spoke this name as if it should rock both detectives back on

their heels, but Cheyney had never heard of it and could tell by

Pete's expression that he hadn't either.

Whatever sort of crazy this Ed Paladin might turn out to be, he was

no dullard. He saw the quick glances which passed between the

two detectives and read them easily. You know him? Cheyney's

eyes asked Jacoby's, and Jacoby's replied, Never heard of him in

my life.

For the first time an expression of perplexity - it was not fear, not

yet - crossed Mr Edward Paladin's face.

"Al Dellums," he said, raising his voice like some Americans

overseas who seem to believe they can make the waiter understand

if they only speak loudly enough and slowly enough. "Al Dellums

of Dellums, Carthage, Stoneham, and Tayloe. I guess I shouldn't

be all that surprised that you haven't heard of him. He's only one of

the most important, well-known lawyers in the country." Paladin

shot the left cuff of his just-slightly-too-loud sport-coat and

glanced at his watch. "If you reach him at home, gentlemen, he'll

be pissed. If you have to call his club - and I think this is his club-

night - he's going to be pissed like a bear."

Cheyney was not impressed by bluster. If you could sell it at a

quarter a pound, he never would have had to turn his hand at

another day's work. But even a quick peck had been enough to

show him that the watch Paladin was wearing was not just a Rolex

but a Rolex Midnight Star. It might be an imitation, of course, but

his gut told him it was genuine. Part of it was his clear impression

that Paladin wasn't trying to make an impression - he'd wanted to

see what time it was, no more or less than that. And if the watch

was the McCoy ... well, there were cabin-cruisers you could buy

for less. What was a man who could afford a Rolex Midnight Star

doing mixed up in something weird like this?

Now he was the one who must have been showing perplexity clear

enough for Paladin to read it, because the man smiled - a

humorless skinning-back of the lips from the capped teeth. "The

air-conditioning in here's pretty nice," he said, crossing his legs

and flicking the crease absently. "You guys want to enjoy it while

you can. It's pretty muggy walking a beat out in Watts, even this

time of year."

In a harsh and abrupt tone utterly unlike his bright pitter-patter

Comedy Store voice, Jacoby said: "Shut your mouth, jag-off."

Paladin jerked around and stared at him, eyes wide. And again

Cheyney would have sworn it had been years since anyone had

spoken to this man in that way. Years since anyone would have

dared.

"What did you say?"

"I said shut your mouth when Detective Cheyney is talking to you.

Give me your lawyer's number. I'll see that he is called. In the

meantime, I think you need to take a few seconds to pull your head

out of your ass and look around and see exactly where you are and

exactly how serious the trouble is that you are in. I think you need

to reflect on the fact that, while only one charge has been lodged

against you, you could be facing enough to put you in the slam

well into the next century ... and you could be facing them before

the sun comes up tomorrow morning."

Jacoby smiled. It wasn't his howaya-folks-anyone-here-from-

Duluth Comedy Store smile, either. Like Paladin's, it was a brief

pull of the lips, no more.

"You're right - the air-conditioning in here isn't halfbad. Also, the

TV works and for a wonder the people on it don't look like they're

seasick. The coffee's good - perked, not instant. Now, if you want

to make another two or three wisecracks, you can wait for your

legal talent in a holding cell on the fifth floor. On Five, the only

entertainment consists of kids crying for their mommies and winos

puking on their sneakers. I don't know who you think you are and I

don't care, because as far as I'm concerned, you're nobody. I never

saw you before in my life, never heard of you before in my life,

and if you push me enough I'll widen the crack in your ass for

you."

"That's enough," Cheyney said quietly.

"I'll retool it so you could drive a Ryder van up there, Mister

Paladin - you understand me? Can you grok that?"

Now Paladin's eyes were all but hanging from their sockets on

stalks. His mouth was open. Then, without speaking, he removed

his wallet from his coat pocket (some kind of lizard-skin, Cheyney

thought, two months' salary ... maybe three). He found his lawyer's

card (the home number was jotted on the back, Cheyney notedit

was most definitely not part of the printed matter on the front) and

handed it to Jacoby. His fingers now showed the first observable

tremor.

"Pete?"

Jacoby looked at him and Cheyney saw it was no act; Paladin had

actually succeeded in pissing his easy-going partner off. No mean

feat.

"Make the call yourself."

"Okay." Jacoby left.

Cheyney looked at Paladin and was suddenly amazed to find

himself feeling sorry for the man. Before he had looked perplexed;

now he looked both stunned and frightened, like a man who wakes

from a nightmare only to discover the nightmare is still going on.

"Watch closely," Cheyney said after the door had closed, "and I'll

show you one of the mysteries of the West. West LA, that is."

He moved the neo-Pollock and revealed not a safe but a toggle

switch. He flicked it, then let the painting slide back into place.

"That's one-way glass," Cheyney said, cocking a thumb at the too-

large mirror over the bar.

"I am not terribly surprised to hear that," Paladin said, and

Cheyney reflected that, while the man might have some of the

shitty egocentric habits of the Veddy Rich and Well-Known in LA,

he was also a near-superb actor: only a man as experienced as he

was himself could have told how really close Paladin was to the

ragged edge of tears.

But not of guilt, that was what was so puzzling, so goddamn-

maddening.

Of perplexity.

He felt that absurd sense of sorrow again, absurd because it

presupposed the man's innocence: he did not want to be Edward

Paladin's nightmare, did not want to be the heavy in a Kafka novel

where suddenly nobody knows where they are, or why they are

there.

"I can't do anything about the glass," Cheyney said. He came back

and sat down across the coffee table from Paladin, "but I've just

killed the sound. So it's you talking to me and vice-versa." He took

a pack of Kents from his breast pocket, stuck one in the corner of

his mouth, then offered the pack to Paladin. "Smoke?"

Paladin picked up the pack, looked it over, and smiled. "Even my

old brand. I haven't smoked one since night Yul Brynner died, Mr

Cheyney. I don't think ant to start again now."

Cheyney put the pack back into his pocket. "Can we talk?" he

asked.

Paladin rolled his eyes. "Oh my God, it's Joan Raiford."

"Who?"

"Joan Raiford. You know, "I took Elizabeth Taylor to Marine

World and when she saw Shamu the Whale she asked me if it

came with vegetables?" I repeat, Detective Cheyney: grow up. I

have no reason in the world to believe that switch is anything but a

dummy. My God, how innocent do you think I am?"

Joan Raiford? Is that what he really said?, Joan Raiford?

"What's the matter?" Paladin asked pleasantly. He crossed his legs

the other way. "Did you perhaps think you saw a clear path? Me

breaking down, maybe saying I'd tell everything, everything, just

don't let 'em fry me, copper?"

With all the force of personality he could muster, Cheyney said: "I

believe things are very wrong here, Mr Paladin. You've got them

wrong and I've got them wrong. When your lawyer gets here,

maybe we can sort them out and maybe we can't. Most likely we

can't. So listen to me, and for God's sake use your brain. I gave you

the Miranda Warning. You said you wanted your lawyer present. If

there was a tape turning, I've buggered my own case. Your lawyer

would have to say just one word - enticement - and you'd walk

free, whatever has happened to Carson. And I could go to work as

a security guard in one of those flea-bitten little towns down by the

border."

"You say that," Paladin said, "but I'm no lawyer.

But ... Convince me, his eyes said. Yeah, let's talk about this, lees

see if we can't get together, because you're right, something is

weird. So ... convince me.

"Is your mother alive?" Cheyney asked abruptly.

"What - yes, but what does that have to-"

"You talk to me or I'm going to personally take two CHP

motorcycle cops and the three of us are going to rape your mother

tomorrow!" Cheyney screamed. "I'm personally going to take her

up the ass! Then we're going to cut off her tits and leave them on

the front lawn! So you better talk!"

Paladin's face was as white as milk: a white so white it is nearly

blue.

"Now are you convinced?" Cheyney asked softly. 'I'm not crazy.

I'm not going to rape your mother. But with a statement like that

on a reel of tape, you could say you were the guy on the grassy

knoll in Dallas and the Burbank police wouldn't produce the tape. I

want to talk to you, man. What's going on here?"

Paladin shook his head dully and said, "I don't know."

In the room behind the one-way glass, Jacoby joined Lieutenant

McEachern, Ed McMahon (still looking stunned), and a cluster of

technical people at a bank of high-tech equipment. The LAPD

chief of police and the mayor were rumored to be racing each other

to Burbank.

"He's talking?" Jacoby asked.

"I think he's going to," McEachern said. His eyes had moved

toward Jacoby once, quickly, when he came in. Now they were

centered only on the window. The men seated on the other side,

Cheyney smoking, relaxed, Paladin tense but trying to control it,

looked slightly lowish through the one-way glass. The sound of

their voices was clear and undistorted through the overhead

speakers - a top-of-the-line Bose in each corner.

Without taking his eyes off the men, McEachern said: "You get his

lawyer?"

Jacoby said: "The home number on the card belongs to a cleaning

woman named Howlanda Moore."

McEachern flicked him another fast glance.

"Black, from the sound, delta Mississippi at a guess. Kids yelling

and fighting in the background. She didn't quite say I'se gwine

whup you if you don't quit!, but it was close. She's had the number

three years. I re-dialed twice.

"Jesus," McEachern, said. "Try the office number?"

"Yeah," Jacoby replied. "Got a recording. You think ConTel's a

good buy, Loot?"

McEachern flicked his gray eyes in Jacoby's direction again.

"The number on the front of the card is that of a fairly large stock

brokerage," Jacoby said quietly. "I looked under lawyers in the

Yellow Pages. Found no Albert K. Dellums. Closest is an Albert

Dillon, no middle initial. No law firm like the one on the card."

"Jesus please us," McEachern said, and then the door banged open

and a little man with the face of a monkey barged in. The mayor

had apparently won the race to Burbank.

"What's going on here?" he said to McEachern.

"'I don't know," McEachern said.

"All right," Paladin said wearily. "Let's talk about it. I feel,

Detective Cheyney, like a man who had just spent two hours or so

on some disorienting amusement park ride. Or like someone

slipped some LSD into my drink. Since we're not on the record,

what was your one interrogatory? Let's start with that."

"All right," Cheyney said. "How did you get into the broadcast

complex, and how did you get into Studio C?"

"Those are two questions."

"I apologize."

Paladin smiled faintly.

"I got on the property and into the studio," he said, "the same way

I've been getting on the property and into the studio for over

twenty years. My pass. Plus the fact that I know every security

guard in the place. Shit, I've been there longer than most of them."

"May I see that pass?" Cheyney asked. His voice was quiet, but a

large pulse beat in his throat.

Paladin looked at him warily for a moment, then pulled out the

lizard-skin wallet again. After a moment of rifling, he tossed a

perfectly correct NBC Performer's Pass onto the coffee table.

Correct, that was, in every way but one.

Cheyney crushed out his smoke, picked it up, and looked at it. The

pass was laminated. In the corner was the NBC peacock,

something only long-timers had on their cards. The face in the

photo was the face of Edward Paladin. Height and weight were

correct. No space for eye-color, hair-color, or age, of course; when

you were dealing with ego. Walk softly, stranger, for here there be

tygers.

The only problem with the pass was that it was salmon pink.

NBC Performer's Passes were bright red.

Cheyney had seen something else while Paladin was looking for

his pass. "Could you put a one-dollar bill from your wallet on the

coffee table there?" he asked softly.

"Why?"