They shook their heads. Jake was not even sure of whom Susannah was speaking.
"But he did. In the Keystone World, and in a when beyond any of ours. I bet it was in the when of '99. So dies the son of the last gunslinger, O Discordia. What I think now is that I was kind of hearing the obituary page from The Time Traveler's Weekly. It was all different times mixed together. John John Kennedy, then Stephen King. I'd never heard of him, but David Brinkley said he wrote 'salem's Lot. That's the book Father Callahan was in, right?"
Roland and Eddie nodded.
"Father Callahan told us his story."
"Yeah," Jake said. "But what-"
She overrode him. Her eyes were hazy, distant. Eyes just a look away from understanding. "And then comes Brautigan to the Ka-Tet of Nineteen, and tells his tale. And look! Look at the tape counter!"
They leaned over. In the windows were 1999
"I think King might have written Ted's story, too," she said.
"Anybody want to take a guess what year that story showed up, or wz'Z/show up, in the Keystone World?"
"1999," Jake said, low. "But not the part we heard. The part we didn't hear. Ted's Connecticut Adventure."
"And you met him," Susannah said, looking at her dinh and her husband. 'You met Stephen King."
They nodded again.
"He made the Pere, he made Brautigan, he made us," she said, as if to herself, then shook her head. "No." All things serve the Beam. "He... he facilitated us."
"Yeah." Eddie was nodding. "Yeah, okay. That feels just about right."
"In my dream I was in a cell," she said. "I was wearing the clothes I had on when I got arrested. And David Brinkley said Stephen King was dead, woe, Discordia-something like that.
Brinkley said he was... "She paused, frowning. She would have demanded that Roland hypnotize the complete recollection out of her if it had been necessary, but it turned out not to be. "Brinkley said King was killed by a minivan while walking near his home in Lovell, Maine."
Eddie jerked. Roland sat forward, his eyes burning. "Do you say so?"
Susannah nodded firmly.
"He bought the house on Turtleback Lane!" the gunslinger roared. He reached out and took hold of Eddie's shirt. Eddie seemed not to even notice. "Of course he did! Ka speaks and the wind blows! He moved a little further along the Path of the Beam and bought the house where it's thin! Where we saw the walk-ins! Where we talked to John Cullum and then came back through! Do you doubt it? Do you doubt it so much as a single goddam bit?"
Eddie shook his head. Of course he didn't doubt it. It had a ring, like the one you got when you were at the carnival and hit the pedal just right with the mallet, hit it with all your force, and the lead slug flew straight to the top of the post and rang the bell up there. You got a Kewpie doll when you rang the bell, and was that because Stephen King thought it was a Kewpie doll? Because King came from the world where Gan started time rolling with His holy finger? Because if King says Kewpie, we all say Kewpie, and we all say thankya? If he'd somehow gotten the idea that the prize for ringing the Test Your Strength bell at the carnival was a Cloopie doll, would they say Cloopie? Eddie thought the answer was yes. He thought the answer was yes just as surely as Co-Op City was in Brooklyn.
"David Brinkley said King was fifty-two. You boys met him, so do the math. Could he have been fifty-two in the year of '99?"
"You bet your purity," Eddie said. He tossed Roland a dark, dismayed glance. "And since nineteen's the part we keep running into-Ted Stevens Brautigan, go on, count the letters!-
I bet it has to do with more than just the year. Nineteen-"
"It's a date," Jake said flatly. "Sure it is. Keystone Date in Keystone Year in Keystone World. The nineteenth of something, in the year of 1999. Most likely a summer month, because he was outwalking."
"It's summer over there right now," Susannah said. "It's June.
The 6-month. Turn 6 on its head and you get 9."
"Yeah, and spell dog backward, you get god," Eddie said, but he sounded uneasy.
"I think she's right," Jake said. "I think it's June 19th. That's when King gets turned into roadkill and even the chance that he might go back to work on the Dark Tower story-our story-is kaput. Gan's Beam is lost in the overload. Shardik's Beam is left, but it's already eroded." He looked at Roland, his face pale, his lips almost blue. "It'll snap like a toothpick."
"Maybe it's happened already," Susannah said.
"No," Roland said.
"How can you be sure?" she asked.
He gave her a wintry, humorless smile. "Because," he said, "we'd no longer be here."
NINETEEN
"How can we stop it from happening?" Eddie asked. "That guy Trampas told Ted it was ka."
"Maybe he got it wrong," Jake said, but his voice was thin.
Trailing. "It was only a rumor, so maybe he got it wrong. And hey, maybe King's got until July. Or August. Or what about September? It could be September, doesn't that seem likely?