The Dark Tower

Susannah said: “Scowther and his Nazi doctors used the hood-things on these beds to extract something from the kids. It’s the stuff they give to the Breakers. Feed it to em or inject em with it, I guess. The kids and the brain-stuff go back to Thunderclap Station by the door. The kiddies are sent back to Calla Bryn Sturgis, maybe the other Callas as well, and at what you call the devar-toi—”

“Mawster, dinnah is served,” Eddie said bleakly.

Nigel chipped in at this point, sounding absolutely cheerful. “Would you care for a bite, sais?”

Jake consulted his stomach and found it was rumbling. It was horrible to be this hungry so soon after the Pere’s death—and after the things he had seen in the Dixie Pig—but he was, nevertheless. “Is there food, Nigel? Is there really?”

“Yes, indeed, young man,” Nigel said. “Only tinned goods, I’m afraid, but I can offer better than two dozen choices, including baked beans, tuna-fish, several kinds of soup—”

“Tooter-fish for me,” Roland said, “but bring an array, if you will.”

“Certainly, sai.”

“I don’t suppose you could rustle me up an Elvis Special,” Jake said longingly. “That’s peanut butter, banana, and bacon.”

“Jesus, kid,” Eddie said. “I don’t know if you can tell in this light, but I’m turning green.”

“I have no bacon or bananas, unfortunately,” Nigel said (pronouncing the latter ba-NAW-nas), “but I do have peanut butter and three kinds of jelly. Also apple butter.”

“Apple butter’d be good,” Jake said.

“Go on, Susannah,” Roland said as Nigel moved off on his errand. “Although I suppose I needn’t speed you along so; after we eat, we’ll need to take some rest.” He sounded far from pleased with the idea.

“I don’t think there’s any more to tell,” she said. “It sounds confusing—looks confusing, too, mostly because our little map doesn’t have any scale—but it’s essentially just a loop they make every twenty-four years or so: from Fedic to Calla Bryn Sturgis, then back to Fedic with the kids, so they can do the extraction. Then they take the kids back to the Callas and the brainfood to this prison where the Breakers are.”

“The devar-toi,” Jake said.

Susannah nodded. “The question is what we do to interrupt the cycle.”

“We go through the door to Thunderclap station,” Roland said, “and from the station to where the Breakers are kept. And there . . .” He looked at each of his ka-tet in turn, then raised his finger and made a dryly expressive shooting gesture.

“There’ll be guards,” Eddie said. “Maybe a lot of them. What if we’re outnumbered?”

“It won’t be the first time,” Roland said.

CHAPTER II: THE WATCHER

ONE

When Nigel returned, he was bearing a tray the size of a wagon-wheel. On it were stacks of sandwiches, two Thermoses filled with soup (beef and chicken), plus canned drinks. There was Coke, Sprite, Nozz-A-La, and something called Wit Green Wit. Eddie tried this last and pronounced it foul beyond description.

All of them could see that Nigel was no longer the same pip-pip, jolly-good fellow he’d been for God alone knew how many decades and centuries. His lozenge-shaped head kept jerking to one side or the other. When it went to the left he would mutter “Un, deux, trois!” To the right it was “Ein, zwei, drei!” A constant low clacking had begun in his diaphragm.

“Sugar, what’s wrong with you?” Susannah asked as the domestic robot lowered the tray to the floor amidst them.

“Self-diagnostic exam series suggests total systemic breakdown during the next two to six hours,” Nigel said, sounding glum but otherwise calm. “Pre-existing logic faults, quarantined until now, have leaked into the GMS.” He then twisted his head viciously to the right. “Ein, zwei, drei! Live free or die, here’s Greg in your eye!”

“What’s GMS?” Jake asked.

“And who’s Greg?” Eddie added.

“GMS stands for general mentation systems,” said Nigel. “There are two such systems, rational and irrational. Conscious and subconscious, as you might say. As for Greg, that would be Greg Stillson, a character in a novel I’m reading. Quite enjoyable. It’s called The Dead Zone, by Stephen King. As to why I bring him up in this context, I have no idea.”

TWO