"Yes," she said. "I would. I'll just sit on the bench in the sunshine and wait for you. It's... refreshing. Does that sound crazy?"
"No," he said. "If someone whose looks you don't trust should speak to you, Irene-I think it unlikely, because this is a safe place, but it's certainly possible-concentrate just as hard as you can, and call for me."
Her eyes widened. "Are you talking ESP?"
He didn't know what ESP stood for, but he understood what she meant, and nodded.
"You'd hear that? Hear me?"
He couldn't say for sure that he would. The building might be equipped with damping devices, like the thinking-caps the can-toi wore, that would make it impossible.
"I might. And as I say, trouble's unlikely. This is a safe place."
She looked at the turde, its shell gleaming with spray from the fountain. "It is, isn't it?" She started to smile, then stopped.
"You'll come back, won't you? You wouldn't dump me without at least..." She shrugged one shoulder. The gesture made her look very young. "Without at least saying goodbye?"
"Never in life. And my business in yonder tower shouldn't take long." In fact it was hardly business at all... unless, that was, whoever was currently running the Tet Corporation had some with him. "We have another place to go, and it's there Oy and I would take our leave of you."
"Okay," she said, and sat on the bench with the bumbler at her feet. The end of it was damp and she was wearing a new pair of slacks (bought in the same quick shopping-run that had netted Roland's new shirt and jeans), but this didn't bother her.
They would dry quickly on such a warm, sunny day, and she found she wanted to be near the turtle sculpture. To study its tiny, timeless black eyes while she listened to those sweet voices.
She thought that would be very restful. It was not a word she usually thought of in connection with New York, but this was a very un-New York place, with its feel of quiet and peace. She thought she might bring David here, diat if they could sit on this bench he might hear the story of her missing three days without thinking her insane. Or too insane.
Roland started away, moving easily-moving like a man who could walk for days and weeks without ever varying his pace. I wouldn't like to have him on my trail, she thought, and shivered a little at the idea. He reached the iron gate through which he would pass to the sidewalk, then turned to her once more. He spoke in a soft singsong.
"See the TURTLE of enormous girth!
On his shell he holds the earth.
His thought is slow but always kind;
He holds us all within his mind.
On his back all vows are made;
He sees the truth but mayn't aid.
He loves the land and loves the sea,
And even loves a child like me."
Then he left her, moving swiftly and cleanly, not looking back. She sat on the bench and watched him wait with the others clustered on the corner for the WALK light, dien cross with them, the leather bag slung over his shoulder bouncing lightly against his hip. She watched him mount the steps of 2 Hammarskjold Plaza and disappear inside. Then she leaned back, closed her eyes, and listened to the voices sing. At some point she realized that at least two of the words they were singing were the ones that made her name.
FIVE
It seemed to Roland that great multitudes of folken were streaming into the building, but this was the perception of a man who had spent the latter years of his quest in mostly deserted places.
If he'd come at quarter to nine, while people were still arriving, instead of at quarter to eleven, he would have been stunned by the flood of bodies. Now most of those who worked here were settled in their offices and cubicles, generating paper and bytes of information.
The lobby windows were of clear glass and at least two stories high, perhaps three. Consequently the lobby was full of light, and as he stepped inside, the grief that had possessed him ever since kneeling by Eddie in the street of Pleasantville slipped away. In here the singing voices were louder, not a chorus but a great choir. And, he saw, he wasn't the only one who heard them. On the street, people had been hurrying with their heads down and looks of distracted concentration on their faces, as if they were deliberately not seeing the delicate and perishable beauty of the day which had been given them; in here they were helpless not to feel at least some of that to which the gunslinger was so exquisitely attuned, and which he drank like water in the desert.
As if in a dream, he drifted across the rose-marble tile, hearing the echoing clack of his bootheels, hearing the faint and shifting conversation of the Orizas in their pouch. He thought, People who loork here wish they lived here. They may not know it, exactly, but they do. People who work here find excuses to work late.