The real one, as opposed to the fake hanging in the Louvre on Keystone Earth. A man stood before it with his arms clasped behind him. From up here he looked as though he were studying the painting-trying to decipher the famously enigmatic smile, maybe-but Pimli knew better. The men and women holding magazines looked as though they were reading, too, but if you were right down there you'd see that they were gazing blankly over the tops of their McCalVs and their Harper's or a littie off to one side. An eleven- or twelve-year-old girl in a gorgeous striped summer dress that might have cost sixteen hundred dollars in a Rodeo Drive kiddie boutique was sitting before a dollhouse on the hearth, but Pimli knew she wasn't paying any attention to the exquisitely made replica of Damli at all.
Thirty-three of them down there. Thirty-three in all. At eight o'clock, an hour after the artificial sun snapped off, thirty-three fresh Breakers would troop in. And there was one fellow-one and one only-who came and went just as he pleased. A fellow who'd gone under the wire and paid no penalty for it at all... except for being brought back, that was, and for this man, that was penalty enough.
As if the thought had summoned him, the door at the end of the room opened, and Ted Brautigan slipped quietly in. He was still wearing his tweed riding cap. Daneeka Rostov looked up from the dollhouse and gave him a smile. Brautigan dropped her a wink in return. Pimli gave Finli a little nudge.
Finli: (I see him)
But it was more than seeing. They felt him. The moment Brautigan came into the room, those on the balcony-and, much more important, those on the floor-felt the powerlevel rise. They still weren't completely sure what they'd gotten in Brautigan, and the testing equipment didn't help in that regard (the old dog had blown out several pieces of it himself, and on purpose, the Master was quite sure). If there were others like him, the low men had found none on their talent hunts (now suspended; they had all the talent they needed to finish the job). One thing that did seem clear was Brautigan's talent as a facilitator, a psychic who was not just powerful by himself but was able to up the abilities of others just by being near them. Finli's thoughts, ordinarily unreadable even to Breakers, now burned in Pimli's mind like neon.
Finli: (He is extraordinary)
Pimli: (And, so far as we know, unique Have you seen the thing)
Image: Eyes growing and shrinking, growing and shrinking.
Finli: (Yes Do you know what causes it)
Pimli: (Not at all Nor care dear Finli nor care That old)
Image: An elderly mongrel with burdocks in his matted fur, limping along on three legs.
(has almost finished his work almost time to)
Image: A gun, one of the hume guards' Berettas, against the side of the old mongrel's head.
Three stories below them, the subject of their conversation picked up a newspaper (the newspapers were all old, now, old like Brautigan himself, years out of date), sat in a leatherupholstered club chair so voluminous it seemed almost to swallow him, and appeared to read.
Pimli felt the psychic force rising past them and dirough them, to the skylight and through that, too, rising to the Beam that ran directly above Algul, working against it, chipping and eroding and rubbing relentlessly against the grain. Eating holes in the magic. Working patiently to put out the eyes of the Bear.
To crack the shell of the Turtle. To break the Beam which ran from Shardik to Maturin. To topple the Dark Tower which stood between.
Pimli turned to his companion and wasn't surprised to realize he could now see the cunning litde teeth in the Tego's weasel head. Smiling at last! Nor was he surprised to realize he could read die black eyes. Taheen, under ordinary circumstances, could send and receive some very simple mental communications, but not be progged. Here, though, all that changed. Here-
-Here Finli O'Tego was at peace. His concerns
(hinky-di-di)
were gone. At least for the time being.
Pimli sent Finli a series of bright images: a champagne bottle breaking over the stern of a boat; hundreds of flat black graduation caps rising in die air; a flag being planted on Mount Everest; a laughing couple escaping a church with their heads bent against a pelting storm of rice; a planet-Earth-suddenly glowing with fierce brilliance.
Images that all said the same thing.
"Yes," Finli said, and Pimli wondered how he could ever have thought those eyes hard to read. "Yes, indeed. Success at the end of the day."
Neither of them looked down at that moment. Had they done, they would have seen Ted Brautigan-an old dog, yes, and tired, but perhaps not quite as tired as some thought-looking up at them.
With a ghost of his own smile.
NINE
There was never rain out here, at least not during Pimli's years, but sometimes, in the Stygian blackness of its nights, there were great volleys of dry thunder. Most of the Devar-Toi's staff had trained themselves to sleep through these fusillades, but Pimli often woke up, heart hammering in his throat, the Our Father running through his mostly unconscious mind like a circle of spinning red ribbon.