The Waste Lands

18

UNTIL THEY MET THE old people in River Crossing, Susannah had seen Roland strictly in terms of television shows she rarely watched: Cheyenne, The Rifleman, and, of course, the archetype of them all, Gunsmoke. That was one she had sometimes listened to on tin�C radio with her father before it came on TV (she thought of how foreign the idea of radio drama would be to Eddie and Jake and smiled - Roland's was not the only world which had moved on). She could still remember what the narrator said at the beginning of every one of those radio playlets: "It makes a man watchful... and a little lonely."

Until River Crossing, that had summed Roland up perfectly for her. He was not broad-shouldered, as Marshal Dillon had been, nor anywhere near as tall, and his face seemed to her more that of a tired poet than a wild-west lawman, but she had still seen him as an existential version of that make-believe Kansas peace officer, whose only mission in life (other than an occasional drink in The Longbranch with his friends Doc and Kitty) had been to Clean Up Dodge.

Now she understood that Roland had once been much more than a cop riding a Daliesque range at the end of the world. He had been a diplomat; a mediator; perhaps even a teacher. Most of all, he had been a soldier of what these people called "the white," by which she guessed they meant the civilizing forces that kept people from killing each other enough of the time to allow some sort of progress. In his time he had been more wandering knight-errant than bounty hunter. And in many ways, this still was his time; the people of River Crossing had certainly thought so. Why else would they have knelt in the dust to receive his blessing?

In light of this new perception, Susannah could see how cleverly the gunslinger had managed them since that awful morning in the speaking ring, Each time they had begun a line of conversation which would lead to the comparing of notes - and what could be more natural, given the cataclysmic and inexplicable "drawing" each of them had experienced? -  Roland had been there, stepping in quickly and turning the conversation into other channels so smoothly that none of them (even she, who had spent almost four years up to her neck in the civil-rights movement) had noticed what he was doing.

Susannah thought she understood why - he had done it in order to give Jake time to heal. But understanding his motives didn't change her own feelings - astonishment, amusement, chagrin - about how neatly he had handled them. She remembered something Andrew, her chauffeur, had said shortly before Roland had drawn her into this world. Something about President Kennedy being the last gunslinger of the western world. She had scoffed then, but now she thought she understood. There was a lot more JFK than Matt Dillon in Roland. She suspected that Roland possessed little of Kennedy's imagination, but when it came to romance... dedication... charisma...

And guile, she thought. Don't forget guile.

She surprised herself by suddenly bursting into laughter.

Roland had seated himself cross-legged. Now he turned toward her, raising his eyebrows. "Something funny?"

"Very. Tell me something - how many languages can you speak?"

The gunslinger thought it over. "Five," he said at last. "I used to speak the Sellian dialects fairly well, but I believe I've forgotten every-thing but the curses."

Susannah laughed again. It was a cheerful, delighted sound. "You a fox, Roland," she said. "Indeed you are."

Jake looked interested. "Say a swear in Strelleran," he said.

"Sellian," Roland corrected. He thought a minute, then said some-thing very fast and greasy - to Eddie it sounded a little as if he was gargling with some very thick liquid. Week-old coffee, say. Roland grinned as he said it.

Jake grinned back. "What does it mean?"

Roland put an arm around the boy's shoulders for a moment. "That we have a lot of things to talk about."

19

"WE ARE KA-TET," ROLAND began, "which means a group of people bound together by fate. The philosophers of my land said a ka-tet could only be broken by death or treachery. My great teacher, Cort, said that since death and treachery are also spokes on the wheel of ka, such a binding can never be broken. As the years pass and I see more, I come more and more to Cort's way of looking at it.

"Each member of a ka-tet is like a piece in a puzzle. Taken by itself, each piece is a mystery, but when they are put together, they make a picture ... or part of a picture. It may take a great many ka-tets to finish one picture. You mustn't be surprised if you discover your lives have been touching in ways you haven't seen until now. For one thing, each of you three is capable of knowing each other's thoughts - "

"What?" Eddie cried.

"It's true. You share your thoughts so naturally that you haven't even been aware it's happening, but it has been. It's easier for me to see, no doubt, because I am not a full member of this ka-tet - possibly because I am not from your world - and so cannot take part completely in the thought-sharing ability. But I can send. Susannah ... do you remember when we were in the circle?"

"Yes. You told me to let the demon go when you told me. But you didn't say that out loud."

"Eddie ... do you remember when we were in the bear's clearing, and the mechanical bat came at you?"

"Yes. You told me to get down."

"He never opened his mouth, Eddie," Susannah said.

"Yes, you did! You yelled! I heard you, man!"

"I yelled, all right, but I did it with my mind." The gunslinger turned to Jake. "Do you remember? In the house?"

"When the board I was pulling on wouldn't come up, you told me to pull on the other one. But if you can't read my mind, Roland, how did you know what land of trouble I was in?"

"I saw. I heard nothing, but I saw - just a little, as if through a dirty window." His eyes surveyed them. "This closeness and sharing of minds is called khef, a word that means many other things in the original tongue of the Old World  - water, birth, and life-force are only three of them. Be aware of it. For now, that's all I want."

"Can you be aware of something you don't believe in?" Eddie asked.

Roland smiled. "Just keep an open mind."

"That I can do."

"Roland?" It was Jake. "Do you think Oy might be part of our ka-tet?"

Susannah smiled. Roland didn't. "I'm not prepared to even guess right now, but I'll tell you this, Jake - I've been thinking about your furry friend a good deal. Ka does not rule all, and coincidences still happen... but the sudden appearance of a billy-bumbler that still remembers people doesn't seem completely coincidental to me."

He glanced around at them.

"I'll begin. Eddie will speak next, taking up from the place where I leave off. Then Susannah. Jake, you'll speak last. All right?"

They nodded.

"Fine," Roland said. "We are ka-tet - one from many. Let the pala-ver begin."

20

THE TALK WENT ON until sundown, stopping only long enough for them to eat a cold meal, and by the time it was over, Eddie felt as if he had gone twelve hard rounds with Sugar Ray Leonard. He no longer doubted that they had been "sharing khef," as Roland put it; he and Jake actually seemed to have been living each other's life in their dreams, as if they were two halves of the same whole.

Roland began with what had happened under the mountains, where Jake's first life in this world had ended. He told of his own palaver with the man in black, and Walter's veiled words about a Beast and someone he called the Ageless Stranger. He told of the strange, daunting dream which had come to him, a dream in which the whole universe had been swallowed in a beam of fantastic white light. And how, at the end of that dream, there had been a single blade of purple grass.

Eddie glanced sideways at Jake and was stunned by the knowledge -  the recognition - in the boy's eyes.

21

ROLAND HAD BABBLED PARTS of this story to Eddie in his time of delir-ium, but it was entirely new to Susannah, and she listened with wide eyes. As Roland repeated the things Walter had told him, she caught glints of her own world, like reflections in a smashed mirror: automobiles, cancer, rockets to the moon, artificial insemination. She had no idea who the Beast might be, but she recognized the name of the Ageless Stranger as a variation upon the name of Merlin, the magician who had supposedly orchestrated the career of King Arthur. Curiouser and curiouser.

Roland told of how he had awakened to find Walter long years dead - time had somehow slipped forward, perhaps a hundred years, per-haps five hundred. Jake listened in fascinated silence as the gunslinger told of reaching the edge of the Western Sea, of how he had lost two of the fingers on his right hand, and how he had drawn Eddie and Susannah before encountering Jack Mort, the dark third.

The gunslinger motioned to Eddie, who took up the tale with the coming of the great bear.

"Shardik?" Jake interjected. "But that's the name of a book! A book in our world! It was written by the man who wrote that famous book about the rabbits - "

"Richard Adams!" Eddie shouted. "And the book about the bunnies was Watership Down! I knew I knew that name! But how can that be, Roland? How is it that the people in your world know about things in ours?"

"There are doors, aren't there?" Roland responded. "Haven't we seen four of them already? Do you think they never existed before, or never will again?"

"But - "

"All of us have seen the leavings of your world in mine, and when I was in your city of New York, I saw the marks of my world in yours. I saw gunslingers. Most were lax and slow, but they were gunslingers all the same, clearly members of their own ancient ka-tet."

"Roland, they were just cops. You ran rings around them."

"Not the last one. When Jack Mort and I were in the underground railway station, that one almost took me down. Except for blind luck -  Mort's flint-and-steel - he would have done. That one ... I saw his eyes. He knew the face of his father. I believe he knew it very well. And then ... do you remember the name of Balazar's nightclub?"

"Sure," Eddie said uneasily. "The Leaning Tower . But it could have been coincidence; you yourself said ka doesn't rule everything."

Roland nodded. "You really are like Cuthbert - I remember some-thing he said when we were boys. We were planning a midnight lark in the cemetery, but Alain wouldn't go. He said he was afraid of offending the shades of his fathers and mothers. Cuthbert laughed at him. He said he wouldn't believe in ghosts until he caught one in his teeth."

"Good for him!" Eddie exclaimed. "Bravo!"

Roland smiled. "I thought you'd like that. At any rate, let's leave this ghost for now. Go on with your story."

Eddie told of the vision which had come to him when Roland threw the jawbone into the fire - the vision of the key and the rose. He told of his dream, and how he had walked through the door of Tom and Gerry's Artistic Deli and into the field of roses which was dominated by the tall, soot-colored Tower. He told of the blackness which had issued from its windows, forming a shape in the sky overhead, speaking directly to Jake now, because Jake was listening with hungry concentration and growing wonder. He tried to convey some sense of the exaltation and terror which had permeated the dream, and saw from their eyes - Jake's most of all -  that he was either doing a better job of that than he could have hoped for ... or that they'd had dreams of their own.

He told of following Shardik's backtrail to the Portal of the Bear, and how, when he put his head against it, he'd found himself remember-ing the day he had talked his brother into taking him to Dutch Hill, so he could see The Mansion. He told about die cup and the needle, and how the pointing needle had become unnecessary once they realized they could see the Beam at work in everything it touched, even the birds in the sky.

Susannah took up the tale at this point. As she spoke, telling of how Eddie had begun to carve his own version of the key, Jake lay back, laced his hands together behind his head, and watched the clouds run slowly toward the city on their straight southeasterly course. The orderly shape they made showed the presence of the Beam as clearly as smoke leaving a chimney shows die direction of the wind.

She finished with the story of how they had finally hauled Jake into this world, closing the split track of his and Roland's memories as sud-denly and as completely as Eddie had closed the door in the speaking ring. The only fact she left out was really not a fact at all - at least, not yet. She'd had no morning sickness, after all, and a single missed period meant nothing by itself. As Roland himself might have said, that was a tale best left for another day.

Yet as she finished, she found herself wishing she could forget what Aunt Talitha had said when Jake told her this was his home now: Gods pity you, then, for the sun is going down on this world. It's going down forever.

"And now it's your turn, Jake," Roland said.

Jake sat up and looked toward Lud, where the windows of the west-em towers reflected back the late afternoon light in golden sheets. "It's all crazy," he murmured, "but it almost makes sense. Like a dream when you wake up."

"Maybe we can help you make sense of it," Susannah said.

"Maybe you can. At least you can help me think about the train. I'm tired of trying to make sense of Blaine by myself." He sighed. "You know what Roland went through, living two lives at the same time, so I can skip that part. I'm not sure I could ever explain how it felt, anyway, and I don't want to. It was gross. I guess I better start with my Final Essay, because that's when I finally stopped thinking that the whole thing might just go away." He looked around at them somberly. "That was when I gave up."