Susannah wondered about that, but decided not to comment.
"Years and decades and centuries went by. In Fedic there were by then only the robots and the unburied bodies left over from the Red Death, turning to skeletons, then to dust.
"Then men came again, but I didn't dare go near them because they werehis men." She paused. "Itsmen."
"The Crimson King's."
"Aye, they with the endlessly bleeding holes on their foreheads. They went there." She pointed to the Fedic Dogan - the Arc 16 Experimental Station. "And soon their accursed machines were running again, just as if they still believed that machines could hold up the world. Not, ye ken, that holding it up is what they want to do! No, no, not they! They brought in beds - "
"Beds!" Susannah said, startled. Beyond them, the ghostly woman in the street rose once more on the balls of her feet and made yet one more graceful pirouette.
"Aye, for the children, although this was still long years before the Wolves began to bring em here, and long before you were part of your dinh's story. Yet that time did draw nigh, and Walter came to me."
"Can you make that woman in the street disappear?" Susannah asked abruptly (and rather crossly). "I know she's a version of you, I get the idea, but she makes me...I don't know...nervous. Can you make her go away?"
"Aye, if you like." Mia pursed her lips and blew. The disturbingly beautiful woman - the spirit without a name - disappeared like smoke.
For several moments Mia was quiet, once more gathering the threads of her story. Then she said, "Walter...saw me. Not like other men. Even the ones I f**ked to death only saw what they wanted to see. Or whatI wanted them to see." She smiled in unpleasant reminiscence. "I made some of them die thinking they were f**king their own mothers! You should have seen their faces!" Then the smile faded. "But Waltersaw me."
"What did he look like?"
"Hard to tell, Susannah. He wore a hood, and inside it he grinned - such a grinning man he was - and he palavered with me. There." She pointed toward the Fedic Good-Time Saloon with a finger that trembled slightly.
"No mark on his forehead, though?"
"Nay, I'm sure not, for he's not one of what Pere Callahan calls the low men. Their job is the Breakers. The Breakers and no more."
Susannah began to feel the anger then, although she tried not to show it. Mia had access to all her memories, which meant all the inmost workings and secrets of their ka-tet. It was like discovering you'd had a burglar in the house who had tried on your underwear as well as stealing your money and going through your most personal papers.
It was awful.
"Walter is, I suppose, what you'd call the Crimson King's Prime Minister. He often travels in disguise, and is known in other worlds under other names, but always he is a grinning, laughing man - "
"I met him briefly," Susannah said, "under the name of Flagg. I hope to meet him again."
"If you truly knew him, you'd wish for no such thing."
"The Breakers you spoke of - where are they?"
"Why...Thunderclap, do'ee not know? The shadow-lands. Why do you ask?"
"No reason but curiosity," Susannah said, and seemed to hear Eddie:Ask any question she'll answer. Burn up the day. Give us a chance to catch up. She hoped Mia couldn't read her thoughts when they were separated like this. If she could, they were all likely up shit creek without a paddle. "Let's go back to Walter. Can we speak of him a bit?"
Mia signaled a weary acceptance that Susannah didn't quite believe. How long had it been since Mia had had an ear for any tale she might care to tell? The answer, Susannah guessed, was probably never. And the questions Susannah was asking, the doubts she was articulating...surely some of them must have passed through Mia's own head. They'd be banished quickly as the blasphemies they were, but still, come on, this was not a stupid woman. Unless obsessionmade you stupid. Susannah supposed a case could be made for that idea.
"Susannah? Bumbler got your tongue?"
"No, I was just thinking what a relief it must have been when he came to you."
Mia considered that, then smiled. Smiling changed her, made her look girlish and artless and shy. Susannah had to remind herself that wasn't a look she could trust. "Yes! It was! Of course it was!"
"After discovering your purpose and being trapped here by it...after seeing the Wolves getting ready to store the kids and then operate on them...after all that, Walter comes. The devil, in fact, but at least he can see you. At least he can hear your sad tale. And he makes you an offer."
"He said the Crimson King would give me a child," Mia said, and put her hands gently against the great globe of her belly. "My Mordred, whose time has come round at last."
Twelve