ONE
At around two in the afternoon of that day, the ten of them sat down to what Roland called a rancher's dinner. "During the morning chores, you look forward with love," he told his friends later. "During the evening ones, you look back with nostalgia."
Eddie thought he was joking, but with Roland you could never be completely sure. What humor he had was dry to the point of desiccation.
It wasn't the best meal Eddie had ever had, the banquet put on by the old people in River Crossing still held pride of place in that regard, but after weeks in the woods, subsisting on gun-slinger burritos (and shitting hard little parcels of rabbit turds maybe twice a week), it was fine fare indeed. Andy served out whopping steaks done medium rare and smothered in mushroom gravy. There were beans on the side, wrapped things like tacos, and roasted corn. Eddie tried an ear of this and found it tough but tasty. There was coleslaw which, Tian Jaffords was at pains to tell them, had been made by his own wife's hands. There was also a wonderful pudding called strawberry cosy. And of course there was coffee. Eddie guessed that, among the four of them, they must have put away at least a gallon. Even Oy had a little. Jake put down a saucer of the dark, strong brew. Oy sniffed, said "Coff!" and then lapped it up quickly and efficiently.
There was no serious talk during the meal ("Food and palaver don't mix" was but one of Roland's many little nuggets of wisdom), and yet Eddie learned a great deal from Jaffords and his wife, mostly about how life was lived out here in what Tian and Zalia called "the borderlands." Eddie hoped Susannah (sitting by Overholser) and Jake (with the youngster Eddie was already coming to think of as Benny the Kid) were learning half as much. He would have expected Roland to sit with Callahan, but Callahan sat with no one. He took his food off a little distance from all of them, blessed himself, and ate alone. Not very much, either. Mad at Overholser for taking over the show, or just a loner by nature? Hard to tell on such short notice, but if someone had put a gun to his head, Eddie would have voted for the latter.
What struck Eddie with the most force was how goddam civilized this part of the world was. It made Lud, with its warring Grays and Pubes, look like the Cannibal Isles in a boy's sea-story. These people had roads, law enforcement, and a system of government that made Eddie think of New England town meetings. There was a Town Gathering Hall and a feather which seemed to be some sort of authority symbol. If you wanted to call a meeting, you had to send the feather around. If enough people touched it when it came to their place, there was a meeting. If they didn't, there wasn't. Two people were sent to carry the feather, and their count was trusted without question. Eddie doubted if it would work in New York, but for a place like this it seemed a fine way to run things.
There were at least seventy other Callas, stretching in a mild arc north and south of Calla Bryn Sturgis. Calla Bryn Lockwood to the south and Calla Amity to the north were also farms and ranches. They also had to endure the periodic depredations of the Wolves. Farther south were Calla Bryn Bouse and Calla Staffel, containing vast tracts of ranchland, and Jaffords said they suffered the Wolves as well... at least he thought so. Farther north, Calla Sen Pinder and Calla Sen Chre, which were farms and sheep.
"Farms of a good size," Tian said, "but they're smaller as ye go north, kennit, until ye're in the lands where the snows fall - so I'm told; I've never seen it myself - and wonderful cheese is made."
"Those of the north wear wooden shoes, or so 'tis said." Zalia told Eddie, looking a little wistful. She herself wore scuffed clodhoppers called shor'boots.
The people of the Callas traveled little, but the roads were there if they wanted to travel, and trade was brisk. In addition to them, there was the Whye, sometimes called Big River. This ran south of Calla Bryn Sturgis all the way to the South Seas, or so 'twas said. There were mining Callas and manufacturing Callas (where things were made by steam-press and even, aye, by electricity) and even one Calla devoted to nothing but pleasure: gambling and wild, amusing rides, and...
But here Tian, who had been talking, felt Zalia's eyes on him and went back to the pot for more beans. And a conciliatory dish of his wife's slaw.
"So," Eddie said, and drew a curve in the dirt. "These are the borderlands. The Callas. An arc that goes north and south for... how far, Zalia?"
" 'Tis men's business, so it is," she said. Then, seeing her own man was still at the embering fire, inspecting the pots, she leaned forward a bit toward Eddie. "Do you speak in miles or wheels?"
"A little of both, but I'm better with miles."
She nodded. "Mayhap two thousand miles so" - she pointed north - "and twice that, so ." To the south. She remained that way, pointing in opposite directions, then dropped her arms, clasped her hands in her lap, and resumed her former demure pose.
"And these towns... these Callas... stretch the whole way?"
"So we're told, if it please ya, and the traders do come and go. Northwest of here, the Big River splits in two. We call the east branch Devar-Tete Whye - the Little Whye, you might say. Of course we see more river-travel from the north, for the river flows north to south, do ya see."
"I do. And to the east?"
She looked down. "Thunderclap," she said in a voice Eddie could barely hear. "None go there."
"Why?"
"It's dark there," said she, still not looking up from her lap. Then she raised an arm. This time she pointed in the direction from which Roland and his friends had come. Back toward Mid-World. "There," she said, "the world is ending. Or so we're told. And there..." She pointed east and now raised her face to Eddie's. "There, in Thunderclap, it's already ended. In the middle are we, who only want to go our way in peace."
"And do you think it will happen?"
"No." And Eddie saw she was crying.
TWO
Shortly after this, Eddie excused himself and stepped into a copse of trees for a personal moment. When he rose from his squat, reaching for some leaves with which to clean himself, a voice spoke from directly behind him.
"Not those, sai, do it please ya. Those be poison flurry. Wipe with those and how you'll itch."
Eddie jumped and wheeled around, grabbing the waistband of his jeans with one hand and reaching for Roland's gun-belt, hanging from the branch of a nearby tree, with the other. Then he saw who had spoken - or what - and relaxed a little.
"Andy, it's not really kosher to creep up behind people when they're taking a dump." Then he pointed to a thatch of low green bushes. "What about those? How much trouble will I get into if I wipe with those?"
There were pauses and clicks.
"What?" Eddie asked. "Did I do something wrong?"
"No," Andy said. "I'm simply processing information, sai. Kosher : unknown word. Creeping up . I didn't, I walked, if it do ye fine. Taking a dump , likely slang for the excretion of - "
"Yeah," Eddie said, "that's what it is. But listen - if you didn't creep up on me, Andy, how come I didn't hear you? I mean, there's underbrush . Most people make noise when they go through underbrush."
"I am not a person, sai," Andy said. Eddie thought he sounded smug.
"Guy, then. How can a big guy like you be so quiet?"
"Programming," Andy said. "Those leaves will be fine, do ya."
Eddie rolled his eyes, then grabbed a bunch. "Oh yeah. Programming. Sure. Should have known. Thankee-sai, long days, kiss my ass and go to heaven."
"Heaven," said Andy. "A place one goes after death; a kind of paradise. According to the Old Fella, those who go to heaven sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, forever and ever."
"Yeah? Who's gonna sit at his left hand? All the Tupperware salesmen?"
"Sai, I don't know. Tupperware is an unknown word to me. Would you like your horoscope?"
"Why not?" Eddie said. He started back toward the camp, guided by the sounds of laughing boys and a barking billy-bumbler. Andy towered beside him, shining even beneath the cloudy sky and seeming to not make a sound. It was eerie.
"What's your birth date, sai?"
Eddie thought he might be ready for this one. "I'm Goat Moon," he said, then remembered a little more. "Goat with beard."
"Winter's snow is full of woe, winter's child is strong and wild," said Andy. Yes, that was smugness in its voice, all right.
"Strong and wild, that's me," Eddie said. "Haven't had a real bath in over a month, you better believe I'm strong and wild. What else do you need, Andy old guy? Want to look at my palm, or anything?"
"That will not be necessary, sai Eddie." The robot sounded unmistakably happy and Eddie thought, That's me, spreading joy wherever I go. Even robots love me. It's my ka.
"This is Full Earth, say we all thankya. The moon is red, what is called the Huntress Moon in Mid-World that was. You will travel, Eddie! You will travel far! You and your friends! This very night you return to Calla New York. You will meet a dark lady. You - "
"I want to hear more about this trip to New York," Eddie said, stopping. Just ahead was the camp. He was close enough so he could see people moving around. "No joking around, Andy."
"You will go todash, sai Eddie! You and your friends. You must be careful. When you hear the kammen - the chimes, ken ya well - you must all concentrate on each other. To keep from getting lost."
"How do you know this stuff?" Eddie asked.
"Programming," Andy said. "Horoscope is done, sai. No charge." And then, what struck Eddie as the final capping lunacy: "Sai Callahan - the Old Fella, ye ken - says I have no license to tell fortunes, so must never charge."
"Sai Callahan says true," Eddie said, and then, when Andy started forward again: "But stay a minute, Andy. Do ya, I beg." It was absolutely weird how quickly that started to sound okay. Andy stopped willingly enough and turned toward Eddie, his blue eyes glowing. Eddie had roughly a thousand questions about todash, but he was currently even more curious about something else.
"You know about these Wolves."
"Oh, yes. I told sai Tian. He was wroth." Again Eddie detected something like smugness in Andy's voice... but surely that was just the way it struck him, right? A robot - even one that had survived from the old days - couldn't enjoy the discomforts of humans? Could it?
Didn't take you long to forget the mono, did it, sugar ? Susannah's voice asked in his head. Hers was followed by Jake's. Blaine's a pain . And then, just his own: If you treat this guy like nothing more than a fortune-telling - machine in a carnival arcade, Eddie old boy, you deserve whatever you get .
"Tell me about the Wolves," Eddie said.
"What would you know, sai Eddie?"
"Where they come from, for a start. The place where they feel like they can put their feet up and fart right out loud. Who they work for. Why they take the kids. And why the ones they take come back ruined." Then another question struck him. Perhaps the most obvious. "Also, how do you know when they're coming?"
Clicks from inside Andy. A lot of them this time, maybe a full minute's worth. When Andy spoke again, its voice was different. It made Eddie think about Officer Bosconi, back in the neighborhood. Brooklyn Avenue, that was Bosco Bob's beat. If you just met him, walking along the street and twirling his nightstick, Bosco talked to you like you were a human being and so was he - howya doin, Eddie, how's your mother these days, how's your goodfornothin bro, are you gonna sign up for PAL Middlers, okay, seeya at the gym, stay off the smokes, have a good day. But if he thought maybe you'd done something, Bosco Bob turned into a guy you didn't want to know. That Officer Bosconi didn't smile, and the eyes behind his glasses were like puddle ice in February (which just happened to be the Time o' the Goat, over here on this side of the Great Whatever). Bosco Bob had never hit Eddie, but there were a couple of times - once just after some kids lit Woo Kim's Market on fire - when he felt sure that bluesuit mothafuck would have hit him, if Eddie had been stupid enough to smart off. It wasn't schizophrenia - at least not of the pure Detta/Odetta kind - but it was close. There were two versions of Officer Bosconi. One of them was a nice guy. The other one was a cop.
When Andy spoke again, it no longer sounded like your well-meaning but rather stupid uncle, the one who believed the alligator-boy and Elvis-is-alive-in-Buenos-Aires stories Inside View printed were absolutely true. This Andy sounded emotionless and somehow dead.
Like a real robot, in other words.
"What's your password, sai Eddie?"
"Huh?"
"Password. You have ten seconds. Nine... eight... seven..."
Eddie thought of spy movies he'd seen. "You mean I say something like 'The roses are blooming in Cairo' and you say 'Only in Mrs. Wilson's garden' and then I say - "
"Incorrect password, sai Eddie... two... one... zero." From within Andy came a low thudding sound which Eddie found singularly unpleasant. It sounded like the blade of a sharp cleaver passing through meat and into the wood of the chopping block beneath. He found himself thinking for the first time about the Old People, who had surely built Andy (or maybe the people before the Old People, call them the Really Old People - who knew for sure?). Not people Eddie himself would want to meet, if the last remainders in Lud had been any example.
"You may retry once," said the cold voice. It bore a resemblance to the one that had asked Eddie if Eddie would like his horoscope told, but that was the best you could call it - a resemblance. "Would you retry, Eddie of New York?"
Eddie thought fast. "No," he said, "that's all right. The info's restricted, huh?"
Several clicks. Then: "Restricted : confined, kept within certain set limits, as information in a given document or q-disc; limited to those authorized to use that information; those authorized announce themselves by giving the password." Another pause to think and then Andy said, "Yes, Eddie. That info's restricted."
"Why?" Eddie asked.
He expected no answer, but Andy gave him one. "Directive Nineteen."
Eddie clapped him on his steel side. "My friend, that don't surprise me at all. Directive Nineteen it is."
"Would you care to hear an expanded horoscope, Eddie-sai?"
"Think I'll pass."
"What about a tune called 'The Jimmy Juice I Drank Last Night?' It has many amusing verses." The reedy note of a pitch-pipe came from somewhere in Andy's diaphragm.
Eddie, who found the idea of many amusing verses somehow alarming, increased his pace toward the others. "Why don't we just put that on hold?" he said. "Right now I think I need another cup of coffee."
"Give you joy of it, sai," Andy said. To Eddie he sounded rather forlorn. Like Bosco Bob when you told him you thought you'd be too busy for PAL League that summer.
THREE
Roland sat on a stone outcrop, drinking his own cup of coffee. He listened to Eddie without speaking himself, and with only one small change of expression: a minute lift of the eyebrows at the words Directive Nineteen.
Across the clearing from them, Slightman the Younger had produced a kind of bubble-pipe that made extraordinarily tough bubbles. Oy chased them, popped several with his teeth, then began to get the hang of what Slightman seemed to want, which was for him to herd them into a fragile little pile of light. The bubble-pile made Eddie think of the Wizard's Rainbow, those dangerous glass balls. And did Callahan really have one? The worst of the bunch?
Beyond the boys, at the edge of the clearing, Andy stood with his silver arms folded over the stainless-steel curve of his chest. Waiting to clean up the meal he had hauled to them and then cooked, Eddie supposed. The perfect servant. He cooks, he cleans, he tells you about the dark lady you'll meet. Just don't expect him to violate Directive Nineteen. Not without the password, anyway.
"Come over to me, folks, would you?" Roland asked, raising his voice slightly. "Time we had a bit of palaver. Won't be long, which is good, at least for us, for we've already had our own, before sai Callahan came to us, and after awhile talk sickens, so it does."
They came over and sat near him like obedient children, those from the Calla and those who were from far away and would go beyond here perhaps even farther.
"First I'd hear what you know of these Wolves. Eddie tells me Andy may not say how he comes by what he knows."
"You say true," Slightman the Elder rumbled. "Either those who made him or those who came later have mostly gagged him on that subject, although he always warns us of their coming. On most other subjects, his mouth runs everlastingly."
Roland looked toward the Calla's big farmer. "Will you set us on, sai Overholser?"
Tian Jaffords looked disappointed not to be called on. His woman looked disappointed for him. Slightman the Elder nodded as if Roland's choice of speaker was only to be expected. Overholser himself did not puff up as Eddie might have guessed. Instead he looked down at his own crossed legs and scuffed shor'boots for thirty seconds or so, rubbing at the side of his face, thinking. The clearing was so quiet Eddie could hear the minute rasp of the farmer's palm on two or three days' worth of bristles. At last he sighed, nodded, and looked up at Roland.
"Say thankee. Ye're not what I expected, I must say. Nor your tet." Overholser turned to Tian. "Ye were right to haul us out here, Tian Jaffords. This is a meeting we needed to have, and I say thankee."
"It wasn't me got you out here," Jaffords said. "Was the Old Fella."
Overholser nodded to Callahan. Callahan nodded back, then sketched the shape of a cross in the air with his scarred hand - as if to say, Eddie thought, that it wasn't him, either, but God. Maybe so, but when it came to pulling coals out of a hot fire, he'd put two dollars on Roland of Gilead for every one he put on God and the Man Jesus, those heavenly gunslingers.
Roland waited, his face calm and perfectly polite.
Finally Overholser began to talk. He spoke for nearly fifteen minutes, slowly but always to the point. There was the business of the twins, to begin with. Residents of the Calla realized that children birthed in twos were the exception rather than the rule in other parts of the world and at other times in the past, but in their area of the Grand Crescent it was the singletons, like the Jaffordses' Aaron, who were the rarities. The great rarities.
And, beginning perhaps a hundred and twenty years ago (or mayhap a hundred and fifty; with time the way it was, such things were impossible to pin down with any certainty), the Wolves had begun their raids. They did not come exactly once every generation; that would have been each twenty years or so, and it was longer than that. Still, it was close to that.
Eddie thought of asking Overholser and Slightman how the Old People could have shut Andy's mouth concerning the Wolves if the Wolves had been raiding out of Thunderclap for less than two centuries, then didn't bother. Asking what couldn't be answered was a waste of time, Roland would have said. Still, it was interesting, wasn't it? Interesting to wonder when someone (or some thing) had last programmed Andy the Messenger (Many Other Functions).
And why.
The children, Overholser said, one of each set between the ages of perhaps three and fourteen, were taken east, into the land of Thunderclap. (Slightman the Elder put his arm around his boy's shoulders during this part of the tale, Eddie noticed.) There they remained for a relatively short period of time - mayhap four weeks, mayhap eight. Then most of them would be returned. The assumption made about those few who did not return was that they had died in the Land of Darkness, that whatever evil rite was performed on them killed a few instead of just ruining them.
The ones who came back were at best biddable idiots. A five-year-old would return with all his hard-won talk gone, reduced to nothing but babble and reaching for the things he wanted. Diapers which had been left forgotten two or three years before would go back on and might stay on until such a roont child was ten or even twelve.
"Yer-bugger, Tia still pisses herself one day out of every six, and can be counted on to shit herself once a moon, as well," Jaffords said.
"Hear him," Overholser agreed gloomily. "My own brother, Welland, was much the same until he died. And of course they have to be watched more or less constant, for if they get something they like, they'll eat it until they bust. Who's watching yours, Tian?"
"My cuz," Zalia said before Tian could speak. "Heddon n Hedda can help a little now, as well; they've come to a likely enough age - " She stopped and seemed to realize what she was saying. Her mouth twisted and she fell silent. Eddie guessed he understood. Heddon and Hedda could help now, yes. Next year, one of them would still be able to help. The other one, though...
A child taken at the age of ten might come back with a few rudiments of language left, but would never get much beyond that. The ones who were taken oldest were somehow the worst, for they seemed to come back with some vague understanding of what had been done to them. What had been stolen from them. These had a tendency to cry a great deal, or to simply creep off by themselves and peer into the east, like lost things. As if they might see their poor brains out there, circling like birds in the dark sky. Half a dozen such had even committed suicide over the years. (At this, Callahan once more crossed himself.)
The roont ones remained childlike in stature as well as in speech and behavior until about the age of sixteen. Then, quite suddenly, most of them sprouted to the size of young giants.
"Ye can have no idea what it's like if ye haven't seen it and been through it," Tian said. He was looking into the ashes of the fire. 'Ye can have no idea of the pain it causes them. When a babby cuts his teeth, ye ken how they cry?"
"Yes," Susannah said.
Tian nodded. "It's as if their whole bodies are teething, kennit."
"Hear him," Overholser said. "For sixteen or eighteen months, all my brother did was sleep and eat and cry and grow. I can remember him crying even in his sleep. I'd get out of my bed and go across to him and there'd be a whispering sound from inside his chest and legs and head. 'Twere the sound of his bones growing in the night, hear me."
Eddie contemplated the horror of it. You heard stories about giants - fee-fi-fo-fum, and all that - but until now he'd never considered what it might be like to become a giant. As if their whole bodies are teething , Eddie thought, and shivered.
"A year and a half, no longer than that and it were done, but I wonder how long it must seem to them, who're brought back with no more sense of time than birds or bugs."
"Endless," Susannah said. Her face was very pale and she sounded ill. "It must seem endless."
"The whispering in the nights as their bones grow," Overholser said. "The headaches as their skulls grow."
"Zalman screamed one time for nine days without stopping," Zalia said. Her voice was expressionless, but Eddie could see the horror in her eyes; he could see it very well. "His cheekbones pushed up. You could see it happening. His forehead curved out and out, and if you held an ear close to it you could hear the skull creaking as it spread. It sounded like a tree-branch under a weight of ice.
"Nine days he screamed. Nine. Morning, noon, and in the dead of night. Screaming and screaming. Eyes gushing water. We prayed to all the gods there were that he'd go hoarse - that he'd be stricken dumb, even - but none such happened, say thankee. If we'd had a gun, I believe we would have slew him as he lay on his pallet just to end his pain. As it was, my good old da' was ready to slit 'een's thr'ut when it stopped. His bones went on yet awhile - his skellington, do ya - but his head was the worst of it and it finally stopped, tell gods thankya, and Man Jesus too."
She nodded toward Callahan. He nodded back and raised his hand toward her, outstretched in the air for a moment. Zalia turned back to Roland and his friends.
"Now I have five of my own," she said. "Aaron's safe, and say thankee, but Heddon and Hedda's ten, a prime age. Lyman and Lia's only five, but five's old enough. Five's..."
She covered her face with her hands and said no more.
FOUR
Once the growth-spurt was finished, Overholser said, some of them could be put to work. Others - the majority - weren't able to manage even such rudimentary tasks as pulling stumps or digging postholes. You saw these sitting on the steps of look's General Store or sometimes walking across the countryside in gangling groups, young men and women of enormous height, weight, and stupidity, sometimes grinning at each other and babbling, sometimes only goggling up at the sky.
They didn't mate, there was that to be grateful for. While not all of them grew to prodigious size and their mental skills and physical abilities might vary somewhat, there seemed to be one universal: they came back sexually dead. "Beggin your pardon for the crudity," Overholser said, "but I don't b'lieve my brother Welland had so much as a piss-hardon after they brought him back. Zalia? Have you ever seen your brother with a... you know..."
Zalia shook her head.
"How old were you when they came, sai Overholser?" Roland asked.
"First time, ye mean. Welland and I were nine." Overholser now spoke rapidly. It gave what he said the air of a rehearsed speech, but Eddie didn't think that was it. Overholser was a force in Calla Bryn Sturgis; he was, God save us and stone the crows, the big farmer. It was hard for him to go back in his mind to a time when he'd been a child, small and powerless and terrified. "Our Ma and Pa tried to hide us away in the cellar. So I've been told, anyway. I remember none of it, m'self, to be sure. Taught myself not to, I's'pose. Yar, quite likely. Some remember better'n others, Roland, but all the tales come to the same: one is took, one is left behind. The one took comes back roont, maybe able to work a little but dead in the b'low the waist. Then... when they get in their thirties..."
When they reached their thirties, the roont twins grew abruptly, shockingly old. Their hair turned white and often fell completely out. Their eyes dimmed. Muscles that had been prodigious (as Tia Jaffords's and Zalman Hoonik's were now) went slack and wasted away. Sometimes they died peacefully, in their sleep. More often, their endings weren't peaceful at all. The sores came, sometimes out on the skin but more often in the stomach or the head. In the brain. All died long before their natural span would have been up, had it not been for the Wolves, and many died as they had grown from the size of normal children to that of giants: screaming in pain. Eddie wondered how many of these idiots, dying of what sounded to him like terminal cancer, were simply smothered or perhaps fed some strong sedative that would take them far beyond pain, far beyond sleep. It wasn't the sort of question you asked, but he guessed the answer would have been many. Roland sometimes used the word delah , always spoken with a light toss of the hand toward the horizon.
Many.
The visitors from the Calla, their tongues and memories untied by distress, might have gone on for some time, piling one sorry anecdote on another, but Roland didn't allow them to. "Now speak of the Wolves, I beg. How many come to you?"
"Forty," Tian Jaffords said.
"Spread across the whole Calla?" Slightman the Elder asked. "Nay, more than forty." And to Tian, slightly apologetic: "You were no more'n nine y'self last time they came, Tian. I were in my young twenties. Forty in town, maybe, but more came to the outlying farms and ranches. I'd say sixty in all, Roland-sai, maybe eighty."
Roland looked at Overholser, eyebrows raised.
"It's been twenty-three years, ye mind," Overholser said, "but I'd call sixty about right."