Ted and Dinky exchanged a brief, doubtful look, then shook their heads simultaneously.
"Once, maybe," Ted said. "Not now. Now she's married. All she wants to do is cuddle with her fella."
"And Break," Dinky added.
"But don't they understand..." She found she couldn't finish.
She was haunted not so much by the remnants of her own dream as by Sheemie's. Now you scar me with nails, the dream-boy had told Sheemie. The dream-boy who had once been fair.
"They don't want to understand," Ted told her kindly. He caught a glimpse of Eddie's dark face and shook his head.
"But I won't let you hate them for it. You-we-may have to kill some of them, but I won't let you hate them. They did not put understanding away from them out of greed or fear, but from despair."
"And because to Break is divine," Dinky said. He was also looking at Eddie. "The way the half an hour after you shoot up can be divine. If you know what I'm talking about."
Eddie sighed, stuck his hands in his pockets, said nothing.
Sheemie surprised them all by picking up one of the Coyote machine-pistols and swinging it in an arc. Had it been loaded, the great quest for the Dark Tower would have ended right there. "I'll fight, too!" he cried. "Pow, pow, pow! Bam-bam-bam-ba-
Eddie and Susannah ducked; Jake threw himself instinctively in front of Oy; Ted and Dinky raised their hands in front of their faces, as if that could possibly have saved them from a burst of a hundred high-caliber, steeljacketed slugs. Roland plucked the machine-pistol calmly from Sheemie's hands.
"Your time to help will come," he said, "but after this first battle's fought and won. Do you see Jake's bumbler, Sheemie?"
"Aye, he's with the Rod."
"He talks. See if you can get him to talk to you."
Sheemie obediently went to where Chucky/Haylis was still stroking Oy's head, dropped to one knee, and commenced trying to get Oy to say his name. The bumbler did almost at once, and with remarkable clarity. Sheemie laughed, and Haylis joined in. They sounded like a couple of kids from the Calla.
The roont kind, perhaps.
Roland, meanwhile, turned to Dinky and Ted, his lips little more than a white line in his stern face.
SEVEN
"He's to be kept out of it, once the shooting starts." The gunslinger mimed turning a key in a lock. "If we lose, what happens to him later on won't matter. If we win, we'll need him at least one more time. Probably twice."
"To go where?" Dinky asked.
"Keystone World America," Eddie said. "A small town in western Maine called Lovell. As early in June of 1999 as one-way time allows."
"Sending me to Connecticut appears to have inaugurated Sheemie's seizures," Ted said in a low voice. "You know that sending you back America-side is apt to make him worse, don't you? Or kill him?" He spoke in a matter-of-fact tone. Just askin, gents.
"We know," Roland said, "and when the time comes, I'll make the risk clear and ask him if-"
"Oh man, you can stick that one where the sun don't shine,"
Dinky said, and Eddie was reminded so strongly of himself-the way he'd been during his first few hours on the shore of the Western Sea, confused, pissed off, and jonesing for heroin-that he felt a moment of deja vu. "If you told him you wanted him to set himself on fire, the only thing he'd want to know would be if you had a match. He thinks you're Christ on a cracker."
Susannah waited, with a mixture of dread and almost prurient interest, for Roland's response. There was none. Roland only stared at Dinky, his thumbs hooked into his gunbelt.
"Surely you realize that a dead man can't bring you back from America-side," Ted said in a more reasonable tone.
"We'll jump that fence when and if we come to it," Roland said. "In the meantime, we've got several other fences to get over."
"I'm glad we're taking on the Devar-Toi first, whatever the risk," Susannah said. "What's going on down there is an abomination."
"Yes, ma'am," Dinky drawled, and pushed up an imaginary hat. "Ah reckon that's the word."
The tension in die cave eased. Behind them, Sheemie was telling Oy to roll over, and Oy was doing so willingly enough.
The Rod had a big, sloppy smile on his face. Susannah wondered when Haylis of Chayven had last had occasion to use his smile, which was childishly charming.
She thought of asking Ted if there was any way of telling what day it was in America right now, then decided not to bother. If Stephen King was dead, diey'd know; Roland had said so, and she had no doubt he was right. For now the writer was fine, happily frittering away his time and valuable imagination on some meaningless project while the world he'd been born to imagine continued to gather dust in his head. If Roland was pissed at him, it was really no wonder. She was a little pissed at him herself.