Coathangers jingled and jangled. Jake had to watch his step to keep from treading on Oy. He'd always been slightly prone to claustrophobia, and now he began to feel the pudgy fingers of the Panic-Man caressing his neck: first one side and then the other. The 'Rizas clanked softly together in their bag. Seven people and one billy-bumbler crowding into an abandoned office closet? It was nuts. He could still hear the snarl of the approaching engines. The one in charge called The Weasel.
"Join hands," Ted murmured. "And concentrate."
"Steek-Tete," Susannah repeated, but to Jake she sounded dubious this time.
"Little Nee-" Eddie began, and then stopped. The blank wall at the end of the closet was gone. Where it had been was a small clearing with boulders on one side and a steep, scrubcrusted hillside on another. Jake was willing to bet that was Steek-Tete, and if it was a way out of this enclosed space, he was delighted to see it.
Stanley gave a little moan of pain or effort or both. The man's eyes were closed and tears were trickling out from beneath the lids.
"Now," Ted said. "Lead us through, Stanley." To the others he added: "And help him if you can! Help him, for your fathers' sakes!"
Jake tried to hold an image of the outcrop Ted had pointed to through the office window and walked forward, holding Roland's hand ahead of him and Susannah's behind him. He felt a breath of cold air on his sweaty skin and then stepped through onto the slope of Steek-Tete in Thunderclap, thinking just briefly of Mr. C. S. Lewis, and the wonderful wardrobe that took you to Narnia.
FIVE
They did not come out in Narnia.
It was cold on the slope of the butte, and Jake was soon shivering.
When he looked over his shoulder he saw no sign of the portal they'd come through. The air was dim and smelled of something pungent and not particularly pleasant, like kerosene.
There was a small cave folded into the flank of the slope (it was really not much more than another closet), and from it Ted brought a stack of blankets and a canteen that turned out to hold a sharp, alkali-tasting water. Jake and Roland wrapped themselves in single blankets. Eddie took two and bundled himself and Susannah together. Jake, trying not to let his teeth start chattering (once they did, there'd be no stopping them), envied the two of them their extra warmth.
Dink had also wrapped himself in a blanket, but neither Ted nor Stanley seemed to feel the cold.
"Look down there," Ted invited Roland and the others. He was pointing at the spiderweb of tracks. Jake could see the rambling glass roof of the switching-yard and a green-roofed structure next to it that had to be half a mile long. Tracks led away in every direction. Thunderclap Station, he marveled. Where the Wolves put the kidnapped kids on the train and send them along the Path of the Beam to Fedic. And where they bring them back after they 've been roont.
Even after all he'd been through, it was hard for Jake to believe that they had been down there, six or eight miles away, less than two minutes ago. He suspected they'd all played a part in keeping the portal open, but it was the one called Stanley who'd created it in the first place. Now he looked pale and tired, nearly used up. Once he staggered on his feet and Dink (a very unfortunate nickname, in Jake's humble opinion) grabbed his arm and steadied him. Stanley seemed not to notice. He was looking at Roland with awe.
Not just awe, Jake thought, and not exactly fear, either. Something else. What?
Approaching the station were two motorized buckas with big balloon tires-ATVs. Jake assumed it was The Weasel (whoever he was) and his taheen buddies.
"As you may have gleaned," Ted told them, "there's an alarm in the Devar-Toi Supervisor's office. The warden's office, if you like. It goes off when anyone or anything uses the door between the Fedic staging area and yon station-"
"I believe the term you used for him," Roland said dryly, "wasn't supervisor or warden but ki'-dam."
Dink laughed. "That's a good pickup on your part, dude."
"What does ki'-dam mean?" Jake asked, although he had a fair notion. There was a phrase folks used in the Calla: headbox, heartbox, ki'box. Which meant, in descending order, one's thought processes, one's emotions, and one's lower functions.
Animal functions, some might say; ki'box could be translated as shitbox if you were of a vulgar turn of mind.
Ted shrugged. "Ki'-dam means shit-for-brains. It's Dinky's nickname for sai Prentiss, the Devar Master. But you already knew that, didn't you?"
"I guess," Jake said. "Kinda."
Ted looked at him long, and when Jake identified that expression, it helped him define how Stanley was looking at Roland: not with fear but with fascination. Jake had a pretty good idea Ted was still thinking about how much he looked like someone named Bobby, and he was pretty sure Ted knew he had the touch. What was the source of Stanley's fascination? Or maybe he was making too much of it. Maybe it was just that Stanley had never expected to see a gunslinger in the flesh.
Abruptly, Ted turned from Jake and back to Roland. "Now look this way," he said.