by Stephen King
“Yes,” Roland said.
“In 1977, no one would have believed he could live so long.”
“Did the fayen-folken kill him, too?”
“No, the cancer came back, that’s all. He died in his bed. I was there. The last thing he said was, ’Tell Roland we did our best.’ And so I do tell you.”
“Thankee-sai.” He heard the roughness in his voice and hoped she would mistake it for curtness. Many had done their best for him, was it not true? A great many, beginning with Susan Delgado, all those years ago.
“Are you all right?” she asked in a low, sympathetic voice.
“Yes,” he said. “Fine. And Moses Carver? When did he pass?”
She raised her eyebrows, then laughed.
“What-?”
“Look for yourself!”
She pointed toward the glass doors. Now approaching them from the inside, passing the desk-minding woman who had apparently been talking to herself, was a wizened man with fluffy fly-away hair and white eyebrows to match. His skin was dark, but the woman upon whose arm he leaned was even darker. He was tall-perhaps six-and-three, if the bend had been taken out of his spine-but the woman was even taller, at least six-and-six.
Her face was not beautiful but almost savagely handsome. The face of a warrior.
The face of a gunslinger.
NINE
Had Moses Carver’s spine been straight, he and Roland would have been eye-to-eye. As it was, Carver needed to look up slightly, which he did by cocking his head, birdlike. He seemed incapable of actually bending his neck; arthritis had locked it in place. His eyes were brown, the whites so muddy it was difficult to tell where the irises ended, and they were full of merry laughter behind their gold-rimmed spectacles. He still had the tiny white moustache.
“Roland of Gilead!” said he. “How I’ve longed to meet you, sir! I b’lieve it’s what’s kept me alive so long after John and Aaron passed. Let loose of me a minute, Marian, let loose!
There’s something I have to do!”
Marian Carver let go of him and looked at Roland. He didn’t hear her voice in his head and didn’t need to; what she wanted to tell him was clear in her eyes: Catch him if he falls, sai.
But the man Susannah had called Daddy Mose didn’t fall.
He put his loosely clenched, arthritic fist to his forehead, then bent his right knee, taking all of his weight on his trembling right leg. “Hile you last gunslinger, Roland Deschain out of Gilead, son of Steven and true descendent of Arthur Eld. I, the last of what was called among ourselves the Ka-Tet of the Rose, salute you.”
Roland put his own fisted hand to his forehead and did more than make a leg; he went to his knee. “Hile Daddy Mose, godfather of Susannah, dinh of the Ka-Tet of the Rose, I salute you with my heart.”
“Thankee,” said the old man, and then laughed like a boy.
“We’re well met in the House of the Rose! What was once meant to be the Grave of the Rose! Ha! Tell me we’re not! Can you?”
“Nay, for it would be a lie.”
“Speak it!” the old man cried, then uttered that cheery goto-
hell laugh once again. “But I’m f gettin my manners in my awe, gunslinger. This handsome stretch of woman standing beside me, it’d be natural for you to call her my granddaughter,
“cause I was sem’ty in the year she was born, which was nineteenand-
sixty-nine. But the truth is"-But’na troof is was what reached Roland’s ear-"that sometimes the best things in life are started late, and having children"-Chirrun-"is one of m, in my opinion. Which is a long-winded way of saying this is my daughter, Marian Odetta Carver, President of the Tet Corporation since I stepped down in ’97, at the age of ninety-eight.
And do you think it would frost some country-club balls, Roland, to know that this business, now worth just about ten billion dollars, is run by a Negro?” His accent, growing deeper as his excitement and joy grew, turned the last into Dis bid’ness, now wuthjus ’bout tin binnion dolla, is run bah NEE-grow?
“Stop, Dad,” the tall woman beside him said. Her voice was kind but brooked no denial. ’You’ll have that heart monitor you wear sounding the alarm if you don’t, and this man’s time is short.”
“She run me like a ray’road!” the old man cried indignantly.
At the same time he turned his head slightly and dropped Roland a wink of inexpressible slyness and good humor with the eye his daughter could not see.
As if she wasn’t onto your tricks, old man, Roland thought, amused even in his sorrow. As if she hasn’t been on to them for many and many a year-say delah.
Marian Carver said, “We’d palaver with you for just a litde while, Roland, but first there’s something I need to see.”
“Ain’t a bit o’ need for that!” the old man said, his voice cracking with indignation. “Not a bit o’ need, and you know it!
Did I raise ajackass?”
“He’s very likely right,” Marian said, “but always safe-”
“-never sorry,” the gunslinger said. “It’s a good rule, aye.
What is it you’d see? What will tell you that I am who I say I am, and you believe I am?”
“Your gun,” she said.
Roland took the Old Home Days shirt out of the leather bag, then pulled out the holster. He unwrapped the shell-belt and pulled out his revolver with the sandalwood grips. He heard Marian Carver draw in a sharp, awed breath and chose to ignore it. He noticed that the two guards in their well-cut suits had drawn close, their eyes wide.
“You see it!” Moses Carver shouted. “Aye, every one of you here! Say God Might as well tell your gran-babbies you saw Excalibur, the Sword of Arthur, for’t comes to the same!”
Roland held his father’s revolver out to Marian. He knew she would need to take it in order to confirm who he was, that she must do this before leading him into the Tet Corporation’s soft belly (where the wrong someone could do terrible damage), but for a moment she was unable to fulfill her responsibility.
Then she steeled herself and took the gun, her eyes widening at the weight of it. Careful to keep all of her fingers away from the trigger, she brought the barrel up to her eyes and then traced a bit of the scrollwork near the muzzle:
“Will you tell me what this means, Mr. Deschain?” she asked him.
“Yes,” he said, “if you will call me Roland.”
“If you ask, I’ll try.”
“This is Arthur’s mark,” he said, tracing it himself. “The only mark on the door of his tomb, do ya. ’Tis his dinh mark, and means WHITE.”
The old man held out his trembling hands, silent but imperative.
“Is it loaded?” she asked Roland, and then, before he could answer: “Of course it is.”
“Give it to him,” Roland said.
Marian looked doubtful, the two guards even more so, but Daddy Mose still held his hands out for the widowmaker, and Roland nodded. The woman reluctandy held the gun out to her father. The old man took it, held it in both hands, and then did something that both warmed and chilled the gunslinger’s heart: he kissed the barrel with his old, folded lips.
“What does thee taste?” Roland asked, honestly curious.
“The years, gunslinger,” Moses Carver said. “So I do.” And with that he held the gun out to the woman again, butt first.
She handed it back to Roland as if glad to be rid of its grave and killing weight, and he wrapped it once more in its belt of shells.
“Come in,” she said. “And although our time is short, we’ll make it as joyful as your grief will allow.”
“Amen to that!” the old man said, and clapped Roland on the shoulder. “She’s still alive, my Odetta-she you call Susannah.
There’s that. Thought you’d be glad to know it, sir.”
Roland was glad, and nodded his thanks.
“Come now, Roland,” Marian Carver said. “Come and be welcome in our place, for it’s your place as well, and we know the chances are good that you’ll
never visit it again.”
TEN
Marian Carver’s office was on the northwest corner of the ninety-ninth floor. Here the walls were all glass unbroken by a single strut or muntin, and the view took the gunslinger’s breath away. Standing in that corner and looking out was like hanging in midair over a skyline more fabulous than any mind could imagine. Yet it was one he had seen before, for he recognized yonder suspension bridge as well as some of the tall buildings on this side of it. He should have recognized the bridge, for they’d almost died on it in another world. Jake had been kidnapped off it by Gasher, and taken to the Tick-Tock Man. This was the City of Lud as it must have been in its prime.
“Do you call it New York?” he asked. ’You do, yes?”
“Yes,” Nancy Deepneau said.
“And yonder bridge, that swoops?”
“The George Washington,” Marian Carver said. “Or just the GWB, if you’re a native.”
So yonder lay not only the bridge which had taken them into Lud but the one beside which Pere Callahan had walked when he left New York to start his wandering days. That Roland remembered from his story, and very well.
“Would you care for some refreshment?” Nancy asked.
He began to say no, took stock of how his head was swimming, and changed his mind. Something, yes, but only if it would sharpen wits that needed to be sharp. “Tea, if you have it,” he said. “Hot, strong tea, with sugar or honey. Can you?”
“We can,” Marian said, and pushed a button on her desk.
She spoke to someone Roland couldn’t see, and all at once the woman in the outer office-the one who had appeared to be talking to herself-made more sense to him.
When the ordering of hot drinks and sandwiches (what Roland supposed he would always think of as popkins) was done, Marian leaned forward and captured Roland’s eye.
“We’re well-met in New York, Roland, so I hope, but our time here isn’t… isn’t vital. And I suspect you know why.”
The gunslinger considered this, then nodded. A trifle cautiously, but over the years he had built a degree of caution into his nature. There were others-Alain Johns had been one, Jamie DeCurry another-for whom a sense of caution had been inbred, but that had never been the case with Roland, whose tendency had been to shoot first and ask questions later.
“Nancy told you to read the plaque in the Garden of the Beam,” Marian said. “Did-”
“Garden of the Beam, say Gawd!” Moses Carver interjected.
On the walk down the corridor to his daughter’s office, he had picked a cane out of a faux elephant-foot stand, and now he thumped it on the expensive carpet for emphasis. Marian bore this patiently. “Say Gawd-bomb!”
“My father’s recent friendship with the Reverend Harrigan, who holds court down below, has not been the high point in my life,” Marian said with a sigh, “but never mind. Did you read the plaque, Roland?”
He nodded. Nancy Deepneau had used a different word-sign or sigul-but he understood it came to the same. “The letters changed into Great Letters. I could read it very well.”
“And what did it say?”
“GIVEN BY THE TET CORPORATION, IN HONOR OF EDWARD CANTOR DEAN AND JOHN “JAKE” CHAMBERS.” He paused. “Then it said ‘Cam-a-cam-mal, Pria-toi, Gan delah,’ which you might say as WHITE OVER RED, THUS GAN WILLS EVER.”
“And to us it says GOOD OVER EVIL, THIS IS THE WILL OF GOD,” Marian said.
“God be praised!” Moses Carver said, and thumped his cane. “May the Prim rise!”
There was a perfunctory knock at the door and then the woman from the outer desk came in, carrying a silver tray.
Roland was fascinated to see a small black knob suspended in front of her lips, and a narrow black armature that disappeared into her hair. Some sort of far-speaking device, surely. Nancy Deepneau and Marian Carver helped her set out steaming cups of tea and coffee, bowls of sugar and honey, a crock of cream. There was also a plate of sandwiches. Roland’s stomach rumbled. He thought of his friends in the ground-no more popkins for them-and also of Irene Tassenbaum, sitting in the little park across the street, patiently waiting for him. Either thought alone should have been enough to kill his appetite, but his stomach once more made its impudent noise. Some parts of a man were conscienceless, a fact he supposed he had known since childhood. He helped himself to a popkin, dumped a heaping spoonful of sugar into his tea, then added honey for good measure. He would make this as brief as possible and return to Irene as soon as he could, but in the meantime…
“May it do you fine, sir,” Moses Carver said, and blew across his coffee cup. “Over the teeth, over the gums, look out guts, here it comes! Hee!”
“Dad and I have a house on Montauk Point,” said Marian, pouring cream into her own coffee, “and we were out there this past weekend. At around five-fifteen on Saturday afternoon, I got a call from one of the security people here. The Hammarskjold Plaza Association employs them, but the Tet Corporation pays them a bonus so we may know… certain things of interest, let’s say… as soon as they occur. We’ve been watching that plaque in the lobby with extraordinary interest as the nineteenth of June approached, Roland. Would it surprise you to know that, until roughly quarter of five on that day, it read GIVEN BY THE TET CORPORATION, IN HONOR OF THE BEAM FAMILY, AND IN MEMORY OF GILEAD?”
Roland considered this, sipped his tea (it was hot and strong and good), then shook his head. “No.”
She leaned forward, eyes gleaming. “And why do you say so?”
“Because until Saturday afternoon between four and five o’clock, nothing was sure. Even with the Breakers stopped, nothing was sure until Stephen King was safe.” He glanced around at them. “Do you know about the Breakers?”
Marian nodded. “Not the details, but we know the Beam they were working to destroy is safe from them now, and that it wasn’t so badly damaged it can’t regenerate.” She hesitated, then said: “And we know of your loss. Both of your losses.
We’re ever so sorry, Roland.”
“Those boys are safe in the arms of Jesus,” Marian’s father said. “And even if they ain’t, they’re together in the clearing.”
Roland, who wanted to believe this, nodded and said thankya. Then he turned back to Marian. “The thing with the writer was very close. He was hurt, and badly. Jake died saving him. He put his body between King and the van-mobile that would have taken his life.”
“King is going to live,” Nancy said. “And he’s going to write again. We have that on very good authority.”
“Whose?”
Marian leaned forward. “In a minute,” she said. “The point is, Roland, we believe it, we’re sure of it, and King’s safety over the next few years means that your work in the matter of the Beams is done: Ves’-Ka Gan.”
Roland nodded. The song would continue.
“There’s plenty of work for us ahead,” Marian went on,
“thirty years’ worth at least, we calculate, but-”
“But it’s ourwork, not yours,” Nancy said.
“You have this on the same ’good authority’?” Roland asked, sipping his tea. Hot as it was, he’d gotten half of the large cup inside of him already.
“Yes. Your quest to defeat the forces of the Crimson King has been successful. The Crimson King himself-”
“That wa’n’t never this man’s quest and you know it!” the centenarian sitting next to die handsome black woman said, and he once more thumped his cane for emphasis. “His quest-”
“Dad, that’s enough.” Her voice was hard enough to make the old man blink.
“Nay, let him speak,” Roland said, and they all looked at him, surprised by (and a little afraid of) that dry whipcrack. “Let him speak, for he says true. If we’re going to have it out, let us have it all out. For me, the Beams have always been no more than means to an end. Had they broken, the Tower would have fallen. Had die Tower fallen, I should never have gained it, and climbed to the top of it.”
“You’re saying you cared
more for the Dark Tower than for the continued existence of the universe,” Nancy Deepneau said. She spoke in a just-let-me-make-sure-I’ve-got-this-right voice and looked at Roland with a mixture of wonder and contempt.
“For the continued existence of all the universes.”
“The Dark Tower is existence,” Roland said, “and I have sacrificed many friends to reach it over the years, including a boy who called me father. I have sacrificed my own soul in the bargain, lady-sai, so turn thy impudent glass another way. May you do it soon and do it well, I beg.”
His tone was polite but dreadfully cold. All the color was dashed from Nancy Deepneau’s face, and the teacup in her hands trembled so badly that Roland reached out and plucked it from her hand, lest it spill and burn her.
“Take me not amiss,” he said. “Understand me, for we’ll never speak more. What was done was done in both worlds, well and ill, for ka and against it. Yet there’s more beyond all worlds than you know, and more behind them than you could ever guess. My time is short, so let’s move on.”
“Well said, sir!” Moses Carver growled, and thumped his cane again.
“If I offended, I’m truly sorry,” Nancy said.
To this Roland made no reply, for he knew she was not sorry a bit-she was only afraid of him. There was a moment of uncomfortable silence that Marian Carver finally broke.
“We don’t have any Breakers of our own, Roland, but at the ranch in Taos we employ a dozen telepaths and precogs.
What they make together is sometimes uncertain but always greater than the sum of its parts. Do you know the term “good-mind’?”
The gunslinger nodded.
“They make a version of that,” she said, “although I’m sure it’s not so great or powerful as that the Breakers in Thunderclap were able to produce.”
“B’cause they had hundreds,” the old man grumped. “And they were better fed.”
“Also because the servants of the King were more than willing to kidnap any who were particularly powerful,” Nancy said, “they always had what we’d call ’the pick of the litter.’ Still, ours have served vis well enough.”
