NINE
The following morning, a badly frightened Susannah Dean sat in the privy at the foot of the hill, bent over, waiting for her current cycle of contractions to pass. She’d been having them for a little over a week now, but these were by far the strongest. She put her hands on her lower belly. The flesh there was alarmingly hard.
Oh dear God, what if I’m having it right now? What if this is it?
She tried to tell herself this couldn’t be it, her water hadn’t broken and you couldn’t go into genuine labor until that happened. But what did she actually know about having babies? Very little. Even Rosalita Munoz, a midwife of great experience, wouldn’t be able to help her much, because Rosa’s career had been delivering human babies, of mothers who actually looked pregnant. Susannah looked less pregnant now than when they’d first arrived in the Calla. And if Roland was right about this baby—
It’s not a baby. It’s a chap, and it doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to Mia, whoever she is. Mia, daughter of none.
The cramps ceased. Her lower belly relaxed, losing that stony feel. She laid a finger along the cleft of her vagina. It felt the same as ever. Surely she was going to be all right for another few days. She had to be. And while she’d agreed with Roland that there should be no more secrets in their ka-tet, she felt she had to keep this one. When the fighting finally started, it would be seven against forty or fifty. Maybe as many as seventy, if the Wolves stuck together in a single pack. They would have to be at their very best, their most fiercely concentrated. That meant no distractions. It also meant that she must be there to take her place.
She yanked up her jeans, did the buttons, and went out into the bright sunshine, absently rubbing at her left temple. She saw the new lock on the privy—just as Roland had asked—and began to smile. Then she looked down at her shadow and the smile froze. When she’d gone into the privy, her Dark Lady had stretched out nine-in-the-morning long. Now she was saying that if noon wasn’t here, it would be shortly.
That’s impossible. I was only in there a few minutes. Long enough to pee.
Perhaps that was true. Perhaps it was Mia who had been in there the rest of the time.
“No,” she said. “That can’t be so.”
But Susannah thought it was. Mia wasn’t ascendant—not yet—but she was rising. Getting ready to take over, if she could.
Please, she prayed, putting one hand out against the privy wall to brace herself. Just three more days, God. Give me three more days as myself, let us do our duty to the children of this place, and then what You will. Whatever You will. But please—
“Just three more,” she murmured. “And if they do us down out there, it won’t matter noway. Three more days, God. Hear me, I beg.”
TEN
A day later, Eddie and Tian Jaffords went looking for Andy and came upon him standing by himself at the wide and dusty junction of East and River Roads, singing at the top of his . . .
“Nope,” Eddie said as he and Tian approached, “can’t say lungs, he doesn’t have lungs.”
“Cry pardon?” Tian asked.
“Nothing,” Eddie said. “Doesn’t matter.” But, by the process of association—lungs to general anatomy—a question had occurred to him. “Tian, is there a doctor in the Calla?”
Tian looked at him with surprise and some amusement. “Not us, Eddie. Gut-tossers might do well for rich folks who have the time to go and the money to pay, but when us gets sick, we go to one of the Sisters.”
“The Sisters of Oriza.”
“Yar. If the medicine’s good—it usually be—we get better. If it ain’t, we get worse. In the end the ground cures all, d’ye see?”
“Yes,” Eddie said, thinking how difficult it must be for them to fit roont children into such a view of things. Those who came back roont died eventually, but for years they just . . . lingered.
“There’s only three boxes to a man, anyro’,” Tian said as they approached the solitary singing robot. Off in the eastern distance, between Calla Bryn Sturgis and Thunderclap, Eddie could see scarves of dust rising toward the blue sky, although it was perfectly still where they were.
“Boxes?”
“Aye, say true,” Tian said, then rapidly touched his brow, his breast, and his butt. “Headbox, titbox, shitbox.” And he laughed heartily.
“You say that?” Eddie asked, smiling.
“Well . . . out here, between us, it does fine,” Tian said, “although I guess no proper lady’d hear the boxes so described at her table.” He touched his head, chest, and bottom again. “Thoughtbox, heartbox, ki’box.”
Eddie heard key. “What’s that last one mean? What kind of key unlocks your ass?”
Tian stopped. They were in plain view of Andy, but the robot ignored them completely, singing what sounded like opera in a language Eddie couldn’t understand. Every now and then Andy held his arms up or crossed them, the gestures seemingly part of the song he was singing.
“Hear me,” Tian said kindly. “A man is stacked, do ye ken. On top is his thoughts, which is the finest part of a man.”
“Or a woman,” Eddie said, smiling.
Tian nodded seriously. “Aye, or a woman, but we use man to stand for both, because woman was born of man’s breath, kennit.”
“Do you say so?” Eddie asked, thinking of some women’s-lib types he’d met before leaving New York for Mid-World. He doubted they’d care for that idea much more than for the part of the Bible that said Eve had been made from Adam’s rib.
“Let it be so,” Tian agreed, “but it was Lady Oriza who gave birth to the first man, so the old folks will tell you. They say Can-ah, can-tah, annah, Oriza: ‘All breath comes from the woman.’ ”
“So tell me about these boxes.”
“Best and highest is the head, with all the head’s ideas and dreams. Next is the heart, with all our feelings of love and sadness and joy and happiness—”
“The emotions.”
Tian looked both puzzled and respectful. “Do you say so?”
“Well, where I come from we do, so let it be so.”
“Ah.” Tian nodded as if the concept were interesting but only borderline comprehensible. This time instead of touching his bottom, he patted his crotch. “In the last box is all what we’d call low-commala: have a fuck, take a shit, maybe want to do someone a meanness for no reason.”
“And if you do have a reason?”
“Oh, but then it wouldn’t be meanness, would it?” Tian asked, looking amused. “In that case, it’d come from the heartbox or the headbox.”
“That’s bizarre,” Eddie said, but he supposed it wasn’t, not really. In his mind’s eye he could see three neatly stacked crates: head on top of heart, heart on top of all the animal functions and groundless rages people sometimes felt. He was particularly fascinated by Tian’s use of the word meanness, as if it were some kind of behavioral landmark. Did that make sense, or didn’t it? He would have to consider it carefully, and this wasn’t the time.
Andy still stood gleaming in the sun, pouring out great gusts of song. Eddie had a vague memory of some kids back in the neighborhood, yelling out I’m the Barber of Seville-a, You must try my fucking skill-a and then running away, laughing like loons as they went.
“Andy!” Eddie said, and the robot broke off at once.
“Hile, Eddie, I see you well! Long days and pleasant nights!”
“Same to you,” Eddie said. “How are you?”
“Fine, Eddie!” Andy said fervently. “I always enjoy singing before the first seminon.”
“Seminon?”
“It’s what we call the windstorms that come before true winter,” Tian said, and pointed to the clouds of dust far beyond the Whye. “Yonder comes the first one; it’ll be here either the day of Wolves or the day after, I judge.”
“The day of, sai,” said Andy. “‘Seminon comin, warm days go runnin.’ So they say.” He bent toward Eddie. Clickings came from inside his gleaming head. His blue eyes flashed on and off. “Eddie, I have cast a great horoscope, very long and complex, and it shows victory against the Wolves! A great victory, indeed! You will vanquish your enemies and then meet a beautiful lady!”
“I already have a beautiful lady,” Eddie said, trying to keep his voice pleasant. He knew perfectly well what those rapidly flashing blue lights meant; the son of a bitch was laughing at him. Well, he thought, maybe you’ll be laughing on the other side of your face a couple of days from now, Andy. I certainly hope so.
“So you do, but many a married man has had his jilly, as I told sai Tian Jaffords not so long ago.”
“Not those who love their wives,” Tian said. “I told you so then and I tell you now.”
“Andy, old buddy,” Eddie said earnestly, “we came out here in hopes that you’d do us a solid on the night before the Wolves come. Help us a little, you know.”
There were several clicking sounds deep in Andy’s chest, and this time when his eyes flashed, they almost seemed alarmed. “I would if I could, sai,” Andy said, “oh yes, there’s nothing I like more than helping my friends, but there are a great many things I can’t do, much as I might like to.”
“Because of your programming.”
“Aye.” The smug so-happy-to-see-you tone had gone out of Andy’s voice. He sounded more like a machine now. Yeah, that’s his fallback position, Eddie thought. That’s Andy being careful. You’ve seen em come and go, haven’t you, Andy? Sometimes they call you a useless bag of bolts and mostly they ignore you, but either way you end up walking over their bones and singing your songs, don’t you? But not this time, pal. No, I don’t think so.
“When were you built, Andy? I’m curious. When did you roll off the old LaMerk assembly line?”
“Long ago, sai.” The blue eyes flashing very slowly now. Not laughing anymore.
“Two thousand years?”
“Longer, I believe. Sai, I know a song about drinking that you might like, it’s very amusing—”
“Maybe another time. Listen, good buddy, if you’re thousands of years old, how is it that you’re programmed concerning the Wolves?”
From inside Andy there came a deep, reverberant clunk, as though something had broken. When he spoke again, it was in the dead, emotionless voice Eddie had first heard on the edge of Mid-Forest. The voice of Bosco Bob when ole Bosco was getting ready to cloud up and rain all over you.
“What’s your password, sai Eddie?”
“Think we’ve been down this road before, haven’t we?”
“Password. You have ten seconds. Nine . . . eight . . . seven . . . ”
“That password shit’s very convenient for you, isn’t it?”
“Incorrect password, sai Eddie.”
“Kinda like taking the Fifth.”
“Two . . . one . . . zero. You may retry once. Would you retry, Eddie?”
Eddie gave him a sunny smile. “Does the seminon blow in the summertime, old buddy?”
More clicks and clacks. Andy’s head, which had been tilted one way, now tilted the other. “I do not follow you, Eddie of New York.”
“Sorry. I’m just being a silly old human bean, aren’t I? No, I don’t want to retry. At least not right now. Let me tell you what we’d like you to help us with, and you can tell us if your programming will allow you to do it. Does that sound fair?”
“Fair as fresh air, Eddie.”
“Okay.” Eddie reached up and took hold of Andy’s thin metal arm. The surface was smooth and somehow unpleasant to the touch. Greasy. Oily. Eddie held on nonetheless, and lowered his voice to a confidential level. “I’m only telling you this because you’re clearly good at keeping secrets.”
“Oh, yes, sai Eddie! No one keeps a secret like Andy!” The robot was back on solid ground and back to his old self, smug and complacent.
“Well . . . ” Eddie went up on tiptoe. “Bend down here.”
Servomotors hummed inside Andy’s casing—inside what would have been his heartbox, had he not been a high-tech tin-man. He bent down. Eddie, meanwhile, stretched up even further, feeling absurdly like a small boy telling a secret.
“The Pere’s got some guns from our level of the Tower,” he murmured. “Good ones.”
Andy’s head swiveled around. His eyes glared out with a brilliance that could only have been astonishment. Eddie kept a poker face, but inside he was grinning.
“Say true, Eddie?”
“Say thankya.”
“Pere says they’re powerful,” Tian said. “If they work, we can use em to blow the living bugger out of the Wolves. But we have to get em out north of town . . . and they’re heavy. Can you help us load em in a bucka on Wolf’s Eve, Andy?”
Silence. Clicks and clacks.
“Programming won’t let him, I bet,” Eddie said sadly. “Well, if we get enough strong backs—”
“I can help you,” Andy said. “Where are these guns, sais?”
“Better not say just now,” Eddie replied. “You meet us at the Pere’s rectory early on Wolf’s Eve, all right?”
“What hour would you have me?”
“How does six sound?”
“Six o’ the clock. And how many guns will there be? Tell me that much, at least, so I may calculate the required energy levels.”
My friend, it takes a bullshitter to recognize bullshit, Eddie thought merrily, but kept a straight face. “There be a dozen. Maybe fifteen. They weigh a couple of hundred pounds each. Do you know pounds, Andy?”
“Aye, say thankya. A pound is roughly four hundred and fifty grams. Sixteen ounces. ‘A pint’s a pound, the world around.’ Those are big guns, sai Eddie, say true! Will they shoot?”
“We’re pretty sure they will,” Eddie said. “Aren’t we, Tian?”
Tian nodded. “And you’ll help us?”
“Aye, happy to. Six o’ the clock, at the rectory.”
“Thank you, Andy,” Eddie said. He started away, then looked back. “You absolutely won’t talk about this, will you?”
“No, sai, not if you tell me not to.”
“That’s just what I’m telling you. The last thing we want is for the Wolves to find out we’ve got some big guns to use against em.”
“Of course not,” Andy said. “What good news this is. Have a wonderful day, sais.”
“And you, Andy,” Eddie replied. “And you.”
ELEVEN
Walking back toward Tian’s place—it was only two miles distant from where they’d come upon Andy—Tian said, “Does he believe it?”
“I don’t know,” Eddie said, “but it surprised the shit out of him—did you feel that?”
“Yes,” Tian said. “Yes, I did.”
“He’ll be there to see for himself, I guarantee that much.”
Tian nodded, smiling. “Your dinh is clever.”
“That he is,” Eddie agreed. “That he is.”