The Dark Tower-Part 1#-2#(31)

Across the room, a door marked MAIN ACCESS slid open.

Nigel tramped stolidly in, twitching his capsule of a head almost constantly now, counting off not in two or three languages but in perhaps as many as a dozen.

"Sir, I really cannot continue to-"

Mordred made a baby's cheerful goo-goo-ga-ga sounds and held out his hands toward the bag. The thought which he sent was both clear and cold: Shut up. Give me what I need.

Nigel put the bag in his lap. From within it came a cheeping sound almost like human speech, and for the first time Mordred realized that the twitches were all coming from a single creature.

Not a rat, then! Something bigger! Bigger and bloodier!

He opened the bag and peered in. A pair of gold-ringed eyes the hoo-hoo bird, he didn't know its name, and then he saw die thing had fur, not feathers. It was a throcken, known in many parts of Mid-World as a billy-bumbler, this one barely old enough to be off its mother's teat.

There now, there, he thought at it, his mouth filling with drool. We're in the same boat, my little cully-we're motherless children in a hard, cruel world. Be still and I'll give you comfort.

Dealing with a creature as young and simple-headed as this wasn't much different from dealing with the machines. Mordred looked into its thoughts and located the node that controlled its simple bit of will. He reached for it with a hand made of thought-made of his will-and seized it. For a moment he could hear the creature's timid, hopeful thought

(don't hurt me please don't hurt me; please let me live; I want to live have fun play a little; don't hurt me please don't hurt me please let me live)

and he responded:

All is well, don't fear, cully, all is well.

The bumbler in the bag (Nigel had found it in the motorpool, separated from its mother, brothers, and sisters by the closing of an automatic door) relaxed-not believing, exactly, but hoping to believe.

SIX

In Nigel's study, the lights had been turned down to quarterbrilliance.

When Oy began to whine, Jake woke at once. The others slept on, at least for the time being.

What's wrong, Oy?

The bumbler didn't reply, only went on whining deep in his throat. His gold-ringed eyes peered into the gloomy far corner of the study, as if seeing something terrible there. Jake could remember peering into the corner of his bedroom the same way after waking from some nightmare in the small hours of die morning, a dream of Frankenstein or Dracula or

(Tyrannasorbet Wrecks)

some other boogeyman, God knew what. Now, thinking that perhaps bumblers also had nightmares, he tried even harder to touch Oy's mind. There was nothing at first, then a deep, blurred image

(eyes eyes looking out of the darkness)

of something that might have been a billy-bumbler in a sack.

"Shhhh," he whispered into Oy's ear, putting his arms around him. "Don't wake 'em, they need their sleep."

"Leep," Oy said, very low.

"You just had a bad dream," Jake whispered. "Sometimes I have them, too. They're not real. Nobody's got you in a bag. Go back to sleep."

"Leep." Oy put his snout on his right forepaw. "Oy-be ki-yit."

That's right, Jake thought at him, Oy be quiet.

The gold-ringed eyes, still looking troubled, remained open a bit longer. Then Oy winked at Jake with one and closed both.

A moment later, the bumbler was asleep again. Somewhere close by, one of his kind had died …  but dying was the way of the world; it was a hard world and always had been.

Oy dreamed of being with Jake beneath the great orange orb of the Peddler's Moon. Jake, also sleeping, picked it up by touch and they dreamed of Old Cheap Rover Man's Moon together.

Oy, who died? asked Jake beneath the Peddler's one-eyed, knowing wink.

Oy, said his friend. Delah. Many.

Beneath the Old Cheap Man's empty orange stare Oy said no more; had, in fact, found a dream within his dream, and here also Jake went with him. This dream was better. In it, the two of them were playing together in bright sunshine. To them came another bumbler: a sad fellow, by his look. He tried to talk to them, but neither Jake nor Oy could tell what he said, because he was speaking in English.

SEVEN

Mordred wasn't strong enough to lift the bumbler from the bag, and Nigel either would not or could not help him. The robot only stood inside the door of the Control Center, twisting his head to one side or the other, counting and clanking more loudly than ever. A hot, cooked smell had begun to rise from his innards.

Mordred succeeded in turning the bag over and the bumbler, probably half a yearling, fell into his lap. Its eyes were halfopen, but the yellow-and-black orbs were dull and unmoving.

Mordred threw his head back, grimacing in concentration.

That red flash ran down his body, and his hair tried to stand on end. Before it could do more than begin to rise, however, it and the infant's body to which it had been attached were gone. The spider came. It hooked four of its seven legs about the bumbler's body and drew it effortlessly up to the craving mouth. In twenty seconds it had sucked the bumbler dry. It plunged its mouth into the creature's soft underbelly, tore it open, lifted the body higher, and ate the guts which came tumbling out: delicious, strength-giving packages of dripping meat. It ate deeper, making muffled mewling sounds of satisfaction, snapping the billybum bier's spine and sucking the brief dribble of marrow. Most of the energy was in the blood-aye, always in the blood, as the Grandfathers well knew-but there was strength in meat, as well. As a human baby (Roland had used the old Gilead endearment, bah-bo), he could have taken no nourishment from either the juice or the meat. Would likely have choked to death on it.

But as a spider-

He finished and cast the corpse aside onto the floor, just as he had the used-up, desiccated corpses of the rats. Nigel, that dedicated busding butler, had disposed of those. He would not dispose of this one. Nigel stood silent no matter how many times Mordred bawled Nigel, I need you! Around the robot, the smell of charred plastic had grown strong enough to activate the overhead fans. DNK 45932 stood with his eyeless face turned to the left. It gave him an oddly inquisitive look, as if he'd died while on the verge of asking an important question: What is the meaning of life, perhaps, or Who put the overalls in Mrs. Murphy's chowder"? In any case, his brief career as a rat- and bumblercatcher was over.

For the time being, Mordred was full of energy-the meal had been fresh and wonderful-but that wouldn't last long. If he stayed in his spider-shape, he'd use up this new reservoir of strength even faster. If he went back to being a baby, however, he wouldn't even be able to get down from the chair in which he was sitting, or once more put on the diaper-which had, of course, slid off his body when he changed. But he had to change back, for in his spider-shape he couldn't tfiink clearly at all. As for deductive reasoning? The idea was a bitter joke.

The white node on the spider's back closed its human eyes, and the black body beneath flushed a congested red. The legs retracted toward the body and disappeared. The node which was the baby's head grew and gained detail as the body beneath paled and took on human shape; the child's blue eyes-bombardier eyes, gunslinger eyes-flashed. He was still full of strength from the bumbler's blood and meat, he could feel it as the transformation rushed toward its conclusion, but a distressing amount of it (something like the foam on top of a glass of beer) had already dissipated. And not just from switching back and forth, either. The fact was that he was growing at a headlong pace. That sort of growth required relentless nourishment, and there was damned little nourishment to be had in the Arc 16 Experimental Station. Or in Fedic beyond, for that matter. There were canned goods and meals in foil packets and powdered power drinks, yar, plenty of those, but none of what was here would feed him as he needed to be fed. He needed fresh meat and even more than meat he needed blood. And the blood of animals would sustain the avalanche of his growth for only so long. Very soon he was going to need human blood, or the pace of his growth would first slow, then stop. The pain of starvation would come, but that pain, twisting relentlessly in his vitals like an auger, would be nothing to the mental and spiritual pain of watching them on the various video screens: still alive, reunited in their fellowship, with the comfort of a cause.

The pain of seeing him. Roland of Gilead.

How, he wondered, did he know the things he knew? From his mother? Some of them, yes, for he'd felt a million of Mia's thoughts and memories (a good many of them swiped from Susannah) rush into him as he fed on her. But to know it was that way with the Grandfathers, as well, how did he know that?

That, for instance, a German vampire who swilled the life's blood of a Frenchman might speak French for a week or ten days, speak it like a native, and then the ability, like his victim's memories, would begin to fade …

How could he know a thing like that?

Did it matter?

Now he watched them sleep. The boy Jake had awakened, but only briefly. Earlier Mordred had watched them eat, four fools and a bumbler-full of blood, full of energy-dining in a circle together. Always they would sit in a circle, they would make that circle even when they stopped to rest five minutes on the trail, doing it without even being aware of it, their circle that kept die rest of the world out. Mordred had no circle. Although he was new, he already understood that outsidewas his ka, just as it was the ka of winter's wind to swing through only half die compass: from north to east and then back again to bleak north once more. He accepted this, yet he still looked at them with the outsider's resentment, knowing he would hurt them and that the satisfaction would be bitter. He was of two worlds, the foretold joining of Prim and Am, of gadosh and godosh, of Gan and Gilead. He was in a way like Jesus Christ, but in a way he was purer than the sheepgod-man, for the sheepgod-man had but one true father, who was in the highly hypothetical heaven, and a stepfather who was on Earth. Poor old Joseph, who wore horns put on him by God Himself.