"Joe!" she said. Her voice was little more than a whisper. She felt faint, and it seemed she could hear singing voices, far and wee. "Oh, Joe! This picture...!"
"Aye, mum," he said, clearly pleased by her reaction. "It's a good 'un, ain't it? Which is why I pinned it up. I've got others, but this is the best. Right at sunset, so the shadow seems to lie forever back along the Path of the Beam. Which in a way it does, as I'm sure ye both must know."
Roland's breathing in her right ear was rapid and ragged, as if he'd just run a race, but Susannah barely noticed. For it was not just the subject of the picture that had filled her with awe.
"This is a Polaroid!"
"Well... yar," he said, sounding puzzled at the level of her excitement. "I suppose Stuttering Bill could have brung me a Kodak if I'd ast for one, but how would I ever have gotten the fillum developed? And by the time I thought of a video camera-for the gadget under the TV'd play such things-I was too old to go back, and yonder nag 'uz too old to carry me. Yet I would if I could, for it's lovely there, a place of warm-hearted ghosts. I heard the singing voices of friends long gone; my Ma and Pa, too. I allus-"
A paralysis had seized Roland. She felt it in the stillness of his muscles. Then it broke and he turned from the picture so fast that it made Susannah dizzy. "You've been there?" he asked.
"You've been to the Dark Tower?"
"Indeed I have," said the old man. "For who else do ye think took that pitcher? Ansel Fuckin Adams?"
"When did you take it?"
"That's from my last trip," he said. "Two year ago, in the summer-although that's lower land, ye must know, and if the snow ever comes to it, I've never seen it."
"How long from here?"
Joe closed his bad eye and calculated. It didn't take him long, but to Roland and Susannah it seemed long, very long indeed. Outside, the wind gusted. The old horse whinnied as if in protest at the sound. Beyond the frost-rimmed window, the falling snow was beginning to twist and dance.
"Well," he said, "ye're on the downslope now, and Stuttering Bill keeps Tower Road plowed for as far as ye'd go; what else does the old whatchamacallit have to do with his time? O' course yell want to wait here until this new nor'east jeezer blows itself out-"
"How long once we're on the move?" Roland asked.
"Rarin t'go, ain'tcha? Aye, hot n rarin, and why not, for if you've come from In-World ye must have been many long years gettin this far. Hate to think how many, so I do. I'm gonna say it'd take you six days to get out of the White Lands, maybe seven-"
"Do you call these lands Empathica?" Susannah asked.
He blinked, then gave her a puzzled look. "Why no, ma'am-I've never heard this part of creation called anything but the White Lands."
The puzzled look was bogus. She was almost sure of it. Old Joe Collins, cheery as Father Christmas in a children's play, had just lied to her. She wasn't sure why, and before she could pursue it, Roland asked sharply: "Would you let that go for now?
Would you, for your father's sake?"
"Yes, Roland," she said meekly. "Of course."
Roland turned back to Joe, still holding Susannah on his hip.
"Might take you as long as nine days, I guess," Joe said, scratching his chin, "for that road can be plenty slippery, especially after Bill packs down the snow, but you can't get him to stop. He's got his orders to follow. His programmin, he calls it."
The old man saw Roland getting ready to speak and raised his hand. "Nay, nay, I'm not drawrin it out to irritate cher, sir or sai or whichever you prefer-it's just that I'm not much used to cump'ny.
"Once you get down b'low the snowline it must be another ten or twelve days a-walkin, but ain't no need in the world to walk unless you fancy it. There's another one of those Positronics huts down there with any number a' wheelie vehicles parked inside. Like golf-carts, they are. The bat'tries are all dead, natcherly-flat as yer hat-but there's a gennie there, too,
Honda just like mine, and it was a-workin the last time I was down there, for Bill keeps things in trim as much as he can. If you could charge up one of those wheelies, why that'd cut your time down to four days at most. So here's what I think: if you had to hoof it the whole way, it might take you as long as nineteen days. If you can go the last leg in one O'Them hummers-that's what I call em, hummers, for that's the sound they make when they're runnin-I should say ten days. Maybe eleven."
The room fell silent. The wind gusted, throwing snow against the side of the cottage, and Susannah once more marked how it sounded almost like a human cry. A trick of the angles and eaves, no doubt.