The Waste Lands

22

THEY WERE ABLE TO use the wheelchair longer than Roland had expected. The firs of this forest were very old, and their spreading branches had created a deep carpet of needles which discouraged most undergrowth. Susannah's arms were strong - stronger than Eddie's, although Roland did not think that would be true much longer - and she wheeled herself along easily over the level, shady forest floor. When they came to one of the trees the bear had pushed over, Roland lifted her out of the chair and Eddie boosted it over the obstacle.

From behind them, only a little deadened by distance, the bear told them, at the top of its mechanical voice, that the capacity of its last operating nuclear subcell was now negligible.

"I hope you keep that damn harness lying empty over your shoulders all day!" Susannah shouted at the gunslinger.

Roland agreed, but less than fifteen minutes later the land began to slope downward and this old section of the forest began to be invaded with smaller, younger trees: birch, alder, and a few stunted maples scrab-bling grimly in the soil for purchase. The carpet of needles thinned and the wheels of Susannah's chair began to catch in the low, tough bushes which grew in the alleys between the trees. Their thin branches boinged and rattled in the stainless steel spokes. Eddie threw his weight against the handles and they were able to go on for another quarter of a mile that way. Then the slope began to grow more steep, and the ground underfoot became mushy.

"Time for a pig-back, lady," Roland said.

"Let's try the chair a little longer, what do you say? Going might get easier - "

Roland shook his head. "If you try that hill, you'll... what did you call it, Eddie? ... do a dugout?"

Eddie shook his head, grinning. "It's called doing a doughnut, Roland. A term from my misspent sidewalk-surfing days."

"Whatever you call it, it means landing on your head. Come on, Susannah. Up you come."

"I hate being a cripple," Susannah said crossly, but allowed Eddie to hoist her out of the chair and worked with him to seat herself firmly in the harness Roland wore on his back. Once she was in place, she touched the butt of Roland's pistol. "Y'all want this baby?" she asked Eddie.

He shook his head. "You're faster. And you know it, too."

She grunted and adjusted the belt, settling the gunbutt so it was easily accessible to her right hand. "I'm slowing you boys down and I know that... but if we ever make it to some good old two-lane blacktop, I'll leave the both of you kneelin in the blocks."

"I don't doubt it," Roland said... and then cocked his head. The woods had fallen silent.

"Br'er Bear has finally given up," Susannah said. "Praise God."

"I thought it still had seven minutes to go," Eddie said.

Roland adjusted the straps of the harness. "Its clock must have started running a little slow during the last five or six hundred years."

"You really think it was that old, Roland?"

Roland nodded. "At least. And now it's passed... the last of the Twelve Guardians, for all we know."

"Yeah, ask me if I give a shit," Eddie replied, and Susannah laughed.

"Are you comfortable?" Roland asked her.

"No. My butt hurts already, but go on. Just try not to drop me."

Roland nodded and started down the slope. Eddie followed, pushing the empty chair and trying not to bang it too badly on the rocks which had begun to jut out of the ground like big white knuckles. Now that the bear had finally shut up, he thought the forest seemed much too quiet - it almost made him feel like a character in one of those hokey old jungle movies about cannibals and giant apes.

23

THE BEAR'S BACKTRAIL WAS easy to find but tougher to follow. Five miles or so out of the clearing, it led them through a low, boggy area that was not quite a swamp. By the time the ground began to rise and firm up a little again, Roland's faded jeans were soaked to the knees and he was breathing in long, steady rasps. Still, he was in slightly better shape than Eddie, who had found wrestling Susannah's wheelchair through the muck and standing water hard going.

"Time to rest and eat something," Roland said.

"Oh boy, gimme eats," Eddie puffed. He helped Susannah out of the harness and set her down on the bole of a fallen tree with claw-marks slashed into its trunk in long diagonal grooves. Then he half-sat, half-collapsed next to her.

"You got my wheelchair pretty muddy, white boy," Susannah said. "It's all goan be in my repote."

He cocked an eyebrow at her. "Next carwash we come to, I'll push you through myself. I'll even Turtle-wax the goddamn thing. Okay?"

She smiled. "You got a date, handsome."

Eddie had one of Roland's waterskins cinched around his waist. He tapped it. "Okay?"

"Yes," Roland said. "Not too much now; a little more for all of us before we set out again. That way no one takes a cramp."

"Roland, Eagle Scout of Oz," Eddie said, and giggled as he unslung the waterskin.

"What is this Oz?"

"A make-believe place in a movie," Susannah said.

"Oz was a lot more than that. My brother Henry used to read me the stories once in a while. I'll tell you one some night, Roland."

"That would be fine," the gunslinger replied seriously. "I am hungry to know more of your world."

"Oz isn't our world, though. Like Susannah said, it's a make-believe place - "

Roland handed them chunks of meat which had been wrapped in broad leaves of some sort. "The quickest way to learn about a new place is to know what it dreams of. I would hear of this Oz."

"Okay, that's a date, too. Suze can tell you the one about Dorothy and Toto and the Tin Woodman, and I'll tell you all the rest." He bit into his piece of meat and rolled his eyes approvingly. It had taken the flavor of the leaves in which it had been rolled, and was delicious. Eddie wolfed his ration, stomach gurgling busily all the while. Now that he was getting his breath back, he felt good - great, in fact. His body was growing a solid sheath of muscle, and every part of it felt at peace with every other part.

Don't worry, he thought. Everything will be arguing again by tonight. I think he's gonna push on until I'm ready to drop in my tracks.

Susannah ate more delicately, chasing every second or third bite with a little sip of water, turning the meat in her hands, eating from the outside in. "Finish what you started last night," she invited Roland. "You said you thought you understood these conflicting memories of yours."

Roland nodded. "Yes. I think both memories are true. One is a little truer than the other, but that does not negate the truth of that other."

"Makes no sense to me," Eddie said. "Either this boy Jake was at the way station or he wasn't, Roland."

"It is a paradox - something that is and isn't at the same time. Until it's resolved, I will continue divided. That's bad enough, but the basic split is widening. I can feel that happening. It is ... unspeakable."

"What do you think caused it?" Susannah asked.

"I told you the boy was pushed in front of a car. Pushed. Now, who do we know who liked to push people in front of things?"

Understanding dawned in her face. "Jack Mort. Do you mean he was the one who pushed this boy into the street?"

"Yes."

"But you said the man in black did it," Eddie objected. "Your buddy Walter. You said that the boy saw him - a man who looked like a priest. Didn't the kid even hear him say he was? 'Let me through, I'm a priest,' something like that?"

"Oh, Walter was there. They were both there, and they both pushed Jake."

"Somebody bring the Thorazine and the strait-jacket," Eddie called. "Roland just went over the high side."

Roland paid no attention to this; he was coming to understand that Eddie's jokes and clowning were his way of dealing with stress. Cuthbert had not been much different ... as Susannah was, in her way, not so different from Alain. "What exasperates me about all of this," he said, "is that I should have known. I was in Jack Mort, after all, and I had access to his thoughts, just as I had access to yours, Eddie, and yours, Susannah. I saw Jake while I was in Mort. I saw him through Mort's eyes, and I knew Mort planned to push him. Not only that; I stopped him from doing it. All I had to do was enter his body. Not that he knew that was what it was; he was concentrating so hard on what he planned to do that he actually thought I was a fly landing on his neck."

Eddie began to understand. "If Jake wasn't pushed into the street, he never died. And if he never died, he never came into this world. And if he never came into this world, you never met him at the way station. Right?"

"Right. The thought even crossed my mind that if Jack Mort meant to kill the boy, I would have to stand aside and let him do it. To avoid creating the very paradox that is tearing me apart. But I couldn't do that. I ... I ..."

"You couldn't kill this kid twice, could you?" Eddie asked softly. "Every time I just about make up my mind that you're as mechanical as that bear, you surprise me with something that actually seems human. Goddam."

"Quit it, Eddie," Susannah said.

Eddie took a look at the gunslinger's slightly lowered face and gri-maced. "Sorry, Roland. My mother used to say that my mouth had a bad habit of running away with my mind."

"It's all right. I had a friend who was the same way."

"Cuthbert?"

Roland nodded. He looked at his diminished right hand for a long moment, then clenched it into a painful fist, sighed, and looked up at them again. Somewhere, deeper in the forest, a lark sang sweetly.

"Here is what I believe. If I had not entered Jack Mort when I did, he still wouldn't have pushed Jake that day. Not then. Why not? Ka-tet. Simply that. For the first time since the last of the friends with whom I set forth on this quest died, I have found myself once again at the center of ka-tet."

"Quartet?" Eddie asked doubtfully.

The gunslinger shook his head. "Ka - the word you think of as 'des-tiny,' Eddie, although the actual meaning is much more complex and hard to define, as is almost always the case with words of the High Speech. And tet, which means a group of people with the same interests and goals. We three are a tet, for instance. Ka-tet, is the place where many lives are joined by fate."

"Like in The Bridge of San Luis Rey," Susannah murmured.

"What's that?" Roland asked.

"A story about some people who die together when the bridge they're crossing collapses. It's famous in our world."

Roland nodded his understanding. "In this case, ka-tet bound Jake, Walter, Jack Mort, and me. There was no trap, as I first suspected when I realized who Jack Mort meant to be his next victim, because ka-tet cannot be changed or bent to the will of any one person. But ka-tet can be seen, known, and understood. Walter saw, and Walter knew." The gunslinger struck his thigh with his fist and exclaimed bitterly, "How he must have been laughing inside when I finally caught up to him!"

"Let's go back to what would have happened if you hadn't messed up Jack Mort's plans on the day he was following Jake," Eddie said. "You're saying that if you hadn't stopped Mort, someone or something else would have. Is that right?"

"Yes - because it wasn't the right day for Jake to die. It was close to the right day, but not the right day. I felt that, too. Perhaps, just before he did it, Mort would have seen someone watching him. Or a perfect stranger would have intervened. Or - "

"Or a cop," Susannah said. "He might have seen a cop in the wrong place and at the wrong time."

"Yes. The exact reason - the agent of ka-tet - doesn't matter. I know from firsthand experience that Mort was as wily as an old fox. If he sensed any slightest thing wrong, he would have called it off and waited for another day.

"I know something else, as well. He hunted in disguise. On the day he dropped the brick on Detta Holmes's head, he was wearing a knitted cap and an old sweater several sizes too big for him. He wanted to look like a winebibber, because he pushed the brick from a building where a large number of sots kept their dens. You see?"

They nodded.

"On the day, years later, when he pushed you in front of the train, Susannah, he was dressed as a construction worker. He was wearing a big yellow helmet he thought of as a 'hardhat' and a fake moustache. On the day when he actually would have pushed Jake into traffic, causing his death, he would have been dressed as a priest."

"Jesus," Susannah nearly whispered. "The man who pushed him in New York was Jack Mort, and the man he saw at the way station was this fella you were chasing - Walter."

"Yes."

"And the little boy thought they were the same man because they were both wearing the same kind of black robe?"

Roland nodded. "There was even a physical resemblance between Walter land Jack Mort. Not as if they were brothers, I don't mean that, but both were tall men with dark hair and very pale complexions. And given the fact that Jake was dying when he got his only good look at Mort and was in a strange place and scared almost witless when he got his only good look at Walter, I think his mistake was both understandable and forgivable. If there's a horse's ass in this picture, it's me, for not realizing the truth sooner."

"Would Mort have known he was being used?" Eddie asked. Think-ing back to his own experiences and wild thoughts when Roland had invaded his mind, he didn't see how Mort could not know... but Roland was shaking his head.

"Walter would have been extremely subtle. Mort would have thought the priest disguise his own idea ... or so I believe. He would not have recognized the voice of an intruder - of Walter - whispering deep within his mind, telling him what to do."

"Jack Mort," Eddie marvelled. "It was Jack Mort all the time."

"Yes... with assistance from Walter. And so I ended up saving Jake's life after all. When I made Mort jump from the subway platform in front of the train, I changed everything."

Susannah asked, "If this Walter was able to enter our world -  through his own private door, maybe - whenever he wanted, couldn't he have used someone else to push your little boy? If he could sug-gest to Mort that he dress up like a priest, then he could make somebody else do it ... What, Eddie? Why are you shaking your head?"

"Because I don't think Walter would want that to happen. What Walter wanted is what is happening ... for Roland to be losing his mind, bit by bit. Isn't that right?"

The gunslinger nodded.

"Walter couldn't have done it that way even if he had wanted to," Eddie added, "because he was dead long before Roland found the doors on the beach. When Roland went through that last one and into Jack Mort's head, ole Walt's messin-around days were done."

Susannah thought about this, then nodded her head. "I see ... I think. This time-travel business is some confusing shit, isn't it?"

Roland began to pick up his goods and strap them back into place. "Time we were moving on."

Eddie stood up and shrugged into his pack. "You can take comfort from one thing, at least," he told Roland. "You - or this ka-tet business -  were able to save the kid after all."

Roland had been knotting the harness-strings at his chest. Now he looked up, and the blazing clarity of his eyes made Eddie flinch backward. "Have I?" he asked harshly. "Have I really? I'm going insane an inch at a time, trying to live with two versions of the same reality. I had hoped at first that one or the other would begin to fade away, but that's not happening. In fact, the exact opposite is happening: those two realities are growing louder and louder in my head, clamoring at each other like opposing factions which must soon go to war. So tell me this, Eddie: How do you suppose Jake feels? How do you suppose it feels to know you are dead in one world and alive in another?"

The lark sang again, but none of them noticed. Eddie stared into the faded blue eyes blazing out of Roland's pale face and could not think of a thing to say.