FIVE
Night in Thunderclap is the very definition of darkness: no moon, no stars. Yet if we were to stand outside the cave where Roland and his tet have just shared khef and will now listen to the tapes Ted Brautigan has left them, we'd see two red coals floating in that wind-driven darkness. If we were to climb the path up the side of Steek-Tete toward those floating coals (a dangerous proposition in the dark), we'd eventually come upon a seven-legged spider now crouched over the queerly deflated body of a mutie coyote. This can-toi-tete was a literally misbegotten thing in life, with the stub of a fifth leg jutting from its chest and ajellylike mass of flesh hanging down between its rear legs like a deformed udder, but its flesh nourishes Mordred, and its blood-taken in a series of long, steaming gulps-is as sweet as a dessert wine. There are, in truth, all sorts of things to eat over here. Mordred has no friends to lift him from place to place via the seven-league boots of teleportation, but he found his journey from Thunderclap Station to Steek-Tete far from arduous.
He has overheard enough to be sure of what his father is planning: a surprise attack on the facility below. They're badly outnumbered, but Roland's band of shooters is fiercely devoted to him, and surprise is ever a powerful weapon.
And gunslingers are what Jake would call fou, crazy when their blood is up, and afraid of nothing. Such insanity is an even more powerful weapon.
Mordred was born with a fair amount of inbred knowledge, it seems. He knows, for instance, that his Red Father, possessed of such information as Mordred now has, would have sent word of the gunslinger's presence at once to the Devar-Toi's Master or Security Chief. And then, sometime later tonight, the ka-tet out of Mid-World would have found themselves ambushed.
Balled in their sleep, mayhap, thus allowing the Breakers to continue the King's work. Mordred wasn't born with a knowledge of that work, but he's capable of logic and his ears are sharp. He now understands what the gunslingers are about: they have come here to break the Breakers.
He could stop it, true, but Mordred feels no interest in his Red Father's plans or ambitions. What he most truly enjoys, he's discovering, is the bitter loneliness of outside. Of watching with the cold interest of a child watching life and death and war and peace through the glass wall of the antfarm on his bureau.
Would he let yon ki'-dam actually kill his White Father? Oh, probably not. Mordred is reserving that pleasure for himself, and he has his reasons; already he has his reasons. But as for the others-the young man, the shor'-leg woman, the kid-yes, if ki'-dam Prentiss gets the upper hand, by all means let him kill any or all three of them. As for Mordred Deschain, he will let the game play out straight. He will watch. He will listen.
He will hear the screams and smell the burning and watch the blood soak into the ground. And then, if he judges that Roland won't win his throw, he, Mordred, will step in. On behalf of the Crimson King, if it seems like a good idea, but really on his own behalf, and for his own reason, which is really quite simple:
Mordred's a-hungry.
And if Roland and his ka-tet should win their throw? Win and press on to the Tower? Mordred doesn't really think it will happen, for he is in his own strange way a member of their katet, he shares their khef and feels what they do. He feels the impending break of their fellowship.
Ka-shume! Mordred thinks, smiling. There's a single eye left in the desert-dog's face. One of the hairy black spider-legs caresses it and then plucks it out. Mordred eats it like a grape, then turns back to where the white light of the gas-lanterns spills around the corners of the blanket Roland has hung across the cave's mouth.
Could he go down closer? Close enough to listen?
Mordred thinks he could, especially with the rising wind to mask the sound of his movements. An exciting idea.
He scutters down the rocky slope toward the errant sparks of light, toward the murmur of the voice from the tape recorder and the thoughts of those listening: his brothers, his sistermother, the pet billy, and, of course, overseeing them all, Big White Ka-Daddy.
Mordred creeps as close as he dares and then crouches in the cold and windy dark, miserable and enjoying his misery, dreaming his outside dreams. Inside, beyond the blanket, is light. Let them have it, if they like; for now let there be light.
Eventually he, Mordred, will put it out. And in the darkness, he will have his pleasure.
<h3>Chapter VIII:NOTES FROM THE GINGERBREAD HOUSE</h3>
ONE
Eddie looked at the others. Jake and Roland were sitting on the sleeping-bags which had been left for them. Oy lay curled up at Jake's feet. Susannah was parked comfortably on the seat of her Cruisin Trike. Eddie nodded, satisfied, and pushed the tape recorder's PLAY button. The reels spun … there was silence … they spun … and silence … then, after clearing his throat, Ted Brautigan began to speak. They listened for over four hours, Eddie replacing each empty reel with the next full one, not bothering to rewind.
No one suggested they stop, certainly not Roland, who listened with silent fascination even when his hip began to throb again. Roland thought he understood more, now; certainly he knew they had a real chance to stop what was happening in the compound below them. The knowledge frightened him because their chances of success were slim. The feeling of kashume made that clear. And one did not really understand the stakes until one glimpsed the goddess in her white robe, the bitch-goddess whose sleeve fell back to reveal her comely white arm as she beckoned: Come to me, run to me. Yes, it's possible, you may gain your goal, you may win, so run to me, give me your whole heart. And if I break it? Ifone of you falls short, falls into the pit ofcoffah (the place your neiv friends call hell)? Too bad for you.
Yes, if one of them fell into coffah and burned within sight of the fountains, that would be too bad, indeed. And the bitch in the white robe? Why, she'd only put her hands on her hips, and throw back her head, and laugh as the world ended. So much depended on the man whose weary, rational voice now filled the cave. The Dark Tower itself depended on him, for Brautigan was a man of staggering powers.
The surprising thing was that the same could be said of Sheemie.
TWO
"Test, one two … test, one two … test, test, test. This is Ted Stevens Brautigan and this is a test … "
A brief pause. The reels turned, one full, the other now beginning to fill.
"Okay, good. Great, in fact. I wasn't sure this thing would work, especially here, but it seems fine. I prepared for this by trying to imagine you four-five, counting the boy's little friend-listening to me, because I've always found visualization an excellent technique when preparing some sort of presentation.
Unfortunately, in this case it doesn't work. Sheemie can send me very good mental pictures-brilliant ones, in fact-but Roland is the only one of you he's actually seen, and him not since the fall of Gilead, when both of them were very young. No disrespect, fellows, but I suspect the Roland now coming toward Thunderclap looks hardly anything like the young man my friend Sheemie so worshipped.
"Where are you now, Roland? In Maine, looking for the writer? The one who also created me, after a fashion? In New York, looking for Eddie's wife? Are any of you even still alive? I know the chances of you reaching Thunderclap aren't good; ka is drawing you to the Devar-Toi, but a very powerful anti-ka, set in motion by the one you call the Crimson King, is working against you and your tet in a thousand ways. All the same …
"Was it Emily Dickinson who called hope the thing with feathers? I can't remember. There are a great many things I can't remember any longer, but it seems I still remember how to fight. Maybe that's a good thing. I hope it's a good thing.
"Has it crossed your mind to wonder where I'm recording this, lady and gentlemen?"
It hadn't. They simply sat, mesmerized by the slightly dusty sound of Brautigan's voice, passing a bottle of Perrier and a tin filled with graham crackers back and forth.
"I'll tell yon," Brautigan went on, "partly because the three of you from America will surely find it amusing, but mostly because you may find it useful in formulating a plan to destroy what's going on in Algul Siento.
"As I speak, I'm sitting on a chair made of slab chocolate.
The seat is a big blue marshmallow, and I doubt if the air mattresses we're planning to leave you could be any more comfortable.
You'd think such a seat would be sticky, but it's not. The walls of this room-and the kitchen I can see if I look through the gumdrop arch to my left-are made of green, yellow, and red candy. Lick the green one and you taste lime. Lick the red one and you taste raspberry. Although taste (in any sense of that slippery word) had very little to do with Sheemie's choices, or so I believe; I think he simply has a child's love of bright primary colors."
Roland was nodding and smiling a little.
"Although I must tell you," the voice from the tape recorder said dryly, "I'd be happy to have at least one room with a slightly more reserved decor. Something in blue, perhaps. Earth-tones would be even better.
"Speaking of earth tones, the stairs are also chocolate. The banister's a candy-cane. One cannot, however, say 'the stairs going up to the second floor,' because there is no second floor. Through the window you can see cars that look suspiciously like bonbons going by, and the street itself looks like licorice. But if you open the door and take more than a single step toward Twizzler Avenue, you find yourself back where you started. In what we may as well call 'the real world,' for want of a better term.