“Roland! Jake! Get on up here! Shuck your butts, you hear me?” When they reached the top, Eddie embraced Roland, pounding him on the back while Susannah covered Jake’s upturned, laughing face with kisses. Oy ran around in tight figure eights, barking shrilly.
“Sugar!” Susannah said. “You all right?” “Yes,” Jake said. He was still grinning, but tears stood in his eyes. “And glad to be here. You’ll never know how glad.” “I can guess, sugar. You c’n bet on that.” She turned to look at Roland. “What’d they do to him? His face look like somebody run over it with a bulldozer.” “That was mostly Gasher,” Roland said. “He won’t be bothering Jake again. Or anyone else.”
“What about you, big boy? You all right?” Roland nodded, looking about. “So this is the Cradle.” “Yes,” Eddie said. He was peering into the slot. “What’s down there?” “Machines and madness.”
“Loquacious as ever, I see.” Eddie looked at Roland, smiling. “Do you know how happy I am to see you, man? Do you have any idea?” “Yes—I think I do.” Roland smiled then, thinking of how people changed. There had been a time, and not so long ago, when Eddie had been on the edge of cutting his throat with the gunslinger’s own knife. The engines below them started up again. The escalator came to a stop. The slot in the floor began to slide closed once more. Jake went to Susannah’s overturned chair, and as he was righting it, he caught sight of the smooth pink shape beyond the iron bars. His breath stopped, and the dream he had had after leaving River Crossing returned full force: the vast pink bullet shape slicing across the empty lands of western Mis-souri toward him and Oy. Two big triangular windows glittering high up in the blank face of that oncoming monster, windows like eyes . . . and now his dream was becoming reality, just as he had known it eventually would.
It’s just an awful choo-choo train, and its name is Blaine the Pain.
Eddie walked over and slung an arm around Jake’s shoulders. “Well, there it is, champ—just as advertised. What do you think of it?” “Not too much, actually.” This was an understatement of colossal size, but Jake was too drained to do any better.
“Me, either,” Eddie said. “It talks. And it likes riddles.” Jake nodded.
Roland had Susannah planted on one hip, and together they were examining the control box with its diamond-pattern of raised number-pads. Jake and Eddie joined them. Eddie found he had to keep looking down at Jake in order to verify that it wasn’t just his imagination or wishful thinking; the boy was really here.
“What now?” he asked Roland.
Roland slipped his finger lightly over the numbered buttons which made up the diamond shape and shook his head. He didn’t know. “Because I think the mono’s engines are cycling faster,” Eddie said. “I mean, it’s hard to tell for sure with that alarm blatting, but I think it is … and it’s a robot, after all. What if it, like, leaves without us?” “Blaine!” Susannah shouted. “Blaine, are you—” “LISTEN CLOSELY, MY FRIENDS,” Blaine’s voice boomed. “THERE ARE LARGE STOCKPILES OF CHEMICAL AND BIO-LOGICAL WARFARE CANNISTERS UNDER THE CITY. I HAVE STARTED A SEQUENCE WHICH WILL CAUSE AN EXPLOSION AND RELEASE THIS GAS. THIS EXPLOSION WILL OCCUR IN TWELVE MINUTES.”
The voice fell silent for a moment, and then the voice of Little Blaine, almost buried by the steady, pulsing whoop of the alarm, came to them: “. . . / was afraid of something like this . . . you must hurry …” Eddie ignored Little Blaine, who wasn’t telling him a damned thing he didn’t already know. Of course they had to hurry, but that fact was running a distant second at the moment. Something much larger occu-pied most of his mind. “Why?” he asked. “Why in God’s name would you do that?” “I SHOULD THINK IT OBVIOUS. I CAN’T NUKE THE CITY WITHOUT DESTROYING MYSELF, AS WELL. AND HOW COULD I TAKE YOU WHERE YOU WANT TO GO IF I WERE DESTROYED?” “But there are still thousands of people in the city,” Eddie said. “You’ll kill them.”
“YES,” Blaine said calmly. “SEE YOU LATER ALLIGATOR, AFTER A WHILE CROCODILE, DON’T FORGET TO WRITE.”