And transmitted?
Jake felt pain in his hands and realized they were tightly clenched, the nails biting into his palms. He opened them with an effort. He kept expecting the voice from the speaker-grille - the voice so much like Blaine's - to challenge him, ask him what he was doing here. But it was mostly silent in this room of not-quite-ruin; no sounds but the low hum of the equipment and the occasionally raspy whoosh of the air-exchangers. He looked over his shoulder at the door and saw it had closed behind him on a pneumatic hinge. He wasn't worried about that; from this side it would probably open easily. If it didn't, good old ninety-nine would get him out again. He remembered introducing himself to the folken that first night in the Pavilion, a night that already seemed a long time ago. I am Jake Chambers, son of Elmer, the Line of Eld , he had told them. The ka-tet of the Ninety and Nine . Why had he said that? He didn't know. All he knew was that things kept showing up again. In school, Ms. Avery had read them a poem called "The Second Coming," by William Buder Yeats. There had been something in it about a hawk turning and turning in a widening gyre, which was - according to Ms. Avery - a kind of circle. But here things were in a spiral, not a circle. For the Ka-Tet of Nineteen (or of the Ninety and Nine, Jake had an idea they were really the same), things were tightening up even as the world around them grew old, grew loose, shut down, shed pieces of itself. It was like being in the cyclone which had carried Dorothy off to the Land of Oz, where witches were real and bumhugs ruled. To Jake's heart it made perfect sense that they should be seeing the same things over and over, and more and more often, because -
Movement on one of the screens caught his eye. He looked at it and saw Benny's Da' and Andy the Messenger Robot coming over the hilltop guarded by the cactus sentries. As he watched, the spiny barrel arms swung inward to block the road - and, perhaps, impale the prey. Andy, however, had no reason to fear cactus spines. He swung an arm and broke one of the barrels off halfway down its length. It fell into the dust, spurting white goo. Maybe it wasn't sap at all, Jake thought. Maybe it was blood. In any case, the cactus on the other side swiveled away in a hurry. Andy and Ben Slightman stopped for a moment, perhaps to discuss this. The screen's resolution wasn't clear enough to show if the human's mouth was moving or not.
Jake was seized by an awful, throat-closing panic. His body suddenly seemed too heavy, as if it were being tugged by the gravity of a giant planet like Jupiter or Saturn. He couldn't breathe; his chest lay perfecdy flat. This is what Goldilocks would have felt like , he thought in a faint and distant way, if she had awakened in the little bed that was just right to hear the Three Bears coming back in downstairs . He hadn't eaten the porridge, he hadn't broken Baby Bear's chair, but he now knew too many secrets. They boiled down to one secret. One monstrous secret.
Now they were coming down the road. Coming to the Dogan.
Oy was looking up at him anxiously, his long neck stretched to the max, but Jake could barely see him. Black flowers were blooming in front of his eyes. Soon he would faint. They would find him stretched out here on the floor. Oy might try to protect him, but if Andy didn't take care of the bumbler, Ben Slightman would. There were four dead rock-cats out there and Benny's Da' had dispatched at least one of them with his trusty bah. One small barking billy-bumbler would be no problem for him. Would you be so cowardly, then ? Roland asked inside his head. But why would they kill such a coward as you ? Why would they not just send you west with the broken ones who have forgotten the faces of their fathers ?
That brought him back. Most of the way, at least. He took a huge breath, yanking in air until the bottoms of his lungs hurt. He let it out in an explosive whoosh. Then he slapped himself across the face, good and hard.
"Ake! " Oy cried in a reproving - almost shocked - voice.
"S'okay," Jake said. He looked at the monitors showing the galley and the bunkroom and decided on the latter. There was nothing to hide behind or under in the galley. There might be a closet, but what if there wasn't? He'd be screwed.
"Oy, to me," he said, and crossed the humming room beneath the bright white lights.