FOURTEEN
There was a rocker in Rosa’s little living room. The gunslinger sat in it naked, holding a clay saucer in one hand. He was smoking and looking out at the sunrise. He wasn’t sure he would ever again see it rise from this place.
Rosa came out of the bedroom, also naked, and stood in the doorway looking at him. “How’re y’bones, tell me, I beg?”
Roland nodded. “That oil of yours is a wonder.”
“ ’Twon’t last.”
“No,” Roland said. “But there’s another world—my friends’ world—and maybe they have something there that will. I’ve got a feeling we’ll be going there soon.”
“More fighting to do?”
“I think so, yes.”
“You won’t be back this way in any case, will you?”
Roland looked at her. “No.”
“Are you tired, Roland?”
“To death,” said he.
“Come back to bed a little while, then, will ya not?”
He crushed out his smoke and stood. He smiled. It was a younger man’s smile. “Say thankya.”
“Thee’s a good man, Roland of Gilead.”
He considered this, then slowly shook his head. “All my life I’ve had the fastest hands, but at being good I was always a little too slow.”
She held out a hand to him. “Come ye, Roland. Come commala.” And he went to her.
FIFTEEN
Early that afternoon, Roland, Eddie, Jake, and Pere Callahan rode out the East Road—which was actually a north road at this point along the winding Devar-Tete Whye—with shovels concealed in the bedrolls at the backs of their saddles. Susannah had been excused from this duty on account of her pregnancy. She had joined the Sisters of Oriza at the Pavilion, where a larger tent was being erected and preparations for a huge evening meal were already going forward. When they left, Calla Bryn Sturgis had already begun to fill up, as if for a Fair-Day. But there was no whooping and hollering, no impudent rattle of firecrackers, no rides being set up on the Green. They had seen neither Andy nor Ben Slightman, and that was good.
“Tian?” Roland asked Eddie, breaking the rather heavy silence among them.
“He’ll meet me at the rectory. Five o’clock.”
“Good,” Roland said. “If we’re not done out here by four, you’re excused to ride back on your own.”
“I’ll go with you, if you like,” Callahan said. The Chinese believed that if you saved a man’s life, you were responsible for him ever after. Callahan had never given the idea much thought, but after pulling Eddie back from the ledge above the Doorway Cave, it seemed to him there might be truth in the notion.
“Better you stay with us,” Roland said. “Eddie can take care of this. I’ve got another job for you out here. Besides digging, I mean.”
“Oh? And what might that be?” Callahan asked.
Roland pointed at the dust-devils twisting and whirling ahead of them on the road. “Pray away this damned wind. And the sooner the better. Before tomorrow morning, certainly.”
“Are you worried about the ditch?” Jake asked.
“The ditch’ll be fine,” Roland said. “It’s the Sisters’ Orizas I’m worried about. Throwing the plate is delicate work under the best of circumstances. If it’s blowing up a gale out here when the Wolves come, the possibilities for things to go wrong—” He tossed his hand at the dusty horizon, giving it a distinctive (and fatalistic) Calla twist. “Delah.”
Callahan, however, was smiling. “I’ll be glad to offer a prayer,” he said, “but look east before you grow too concerned. Do ya, I beg.”
They turned that way in their saddles. Corn—the crop now over, the picked plants standing in sloping, skeletal rows—ran down to the rice-fields. Beyond the rice was the river. Beyond the river was the end of the borderlands. There, dust-devils forty feet high spun and jerked and sometimes collided. They made the ones dancing on their side of the river look like naughty children by comparison.
“The seminon often reaches the Whye and then turns back,” Callahan said. “According to the old folks, Lord Seminon begs Lady Oriza to make him welcome when he reaches the water and she often bars his passage out of jealousy. You see—”
“Seminon married her sissa,” Jake said. “Lady Riza wanted him for herself—a marriage of wind and rice—and she’s still p.o.’d about it.”
“How did you know that?” Callahan asked, both amused and astonished.
“Benny told me,” Jake said, and said no more. Thinking of their long discussions (sometimes in the hayloft, sometimes lazing on the bank of the river) and their eager exchanges of legend made him feel sad and hurt.
Callahan was nodding. “That’s the story, all right. I imagine it’s actually a weather phenomenon—cold air over there, warm air rising off the water, something like that—but whatever it is, this one shows every sign of going back where it came from.”
The wind dashed grit in his face, as if to prove him wrong, and Callahan laughed. “This’ll be over by first light tomorrow, I almost guarantee you. But—”
“Almost’s not good enough, Pere.”
“What I was going to say, Roland, is that since I know almost’s not good enough, I’ll gladly send up a prayer.”
“Tell ya thanks.” The gunslinger turned to Eddie, and pointed the first two fingers of his left hand at his own face. “The eyes, right?”
“The eyes,” Eddie agreed. “And the password. If it’s not nineteen, it’ll be ninety-nine.”
“You don’t know that for sure.”
“I know,” Eddie said.
“Still . . . be careful.”
“I will.”
A few minutes later they reached the place where, on their right, a rocky track wandered off into the arroyo country, toward the Gloria and Redbirds One and Two. The folken assumed that the buckas would be left here, and they were correct. They also assumed that the children and their minders would then walk up the track to one mine or the other. In this they were wrong.
Soon three of them were digging on the west side of the road, a fourth always standing watch. No one came—the folken from this far out were already in town—and the work went quickly enough. At four o’clock, Eddie left the others to finish up and rode back to town to meet Tian Jaffords with one of Roland’s revolvers holstered on his hip.
SIXTEEN
Tian had brought his bah. When Eddie told him to leave it on the Pere’s porch, the farmer gave him an unhappy, uncertain stare.
“He won’t be surprised to see me packing iron, but he might have questions if he saw you with that thing,” Eddie said. This was it, the true beginning of their stand, and now that it had come, Eddie felt calm. His heart was beating slowly and steadily. His vision seemed to have clarified; he could see each shadow cast by each individual blade of grass on the rectory lawn. “He’s strong, from what I’ve heard. And very quick when he needs to be. Let it be my play.”
“Then why am I here?”
Because even a smart robot won’t expect trouble if I’ve got a clodhopper like you with me was the actual answer, but giving it wouldn’t be very diplomatic.
“Insurance,” Eddie said. “Come on.”
They walked down to the privy. Eddie had used it many times during the last few weeks, and always with pleasure—there were stacks of soft grasses for the clean-up phase, and you didn’t have to concern yourself with poison flurry—but he’d not examined the outside closely until now. It was a wood structure, tall and solid, but he had no doubt Andy could demolish it in short order if he really wanted to. If they gave him a chance to.
Rosa came to the back door of her cottage and looked out at them, holding a hand over her eyes to shield them from the sun. “How do ya, Eddie?”
“Fine so far, Rosie, but you better go back inside. There’s gonna be a scuffle.”
“Say true? I’ve got a stack of plates—”
“I don’t think Rizas’d help much in this case,” Eddie said. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt if you stood by, though.”
She nodded and went back inside without another word. The men sat down, flanking the open door of the privy with its new bolt-lock. Tian tried to roll a smoke. The first one fell apart in his shaking fingers and he had to try again. “I’m not good at this sort of thing,” he said, and Eddie understood he wasn’t talking about the fine art of cigarette-making.
“It’s all right.”
Tian peered at him hopefully. “Do ya say so?”
“I do, so let it be so.”
Promptly at six o’clock (The bastard’s probably got a clock set right down to millionths of a second inside him, Eddie thought), Andy came around the rectory-house, his shadow trailing out long and spidery on the grass in front of him. He saw them. His blue eyes flashed. He raised a hand in greeting. The setting sun reflected off his arm, making it look as though it had been dipped in blood. Eddie raised his own hand in return and stood up, smiling. He wondered if all the thinking-machines that still worked in this rundown world had turned against their masters, and if so, why.
“Just be cool and let me do the talking,” he said out of the corner of his mouth.
“Yes, all right.”
“Eddie!” Andy cried. “Tian Jaffords! How good to see you both! And weapons to use against the Wolves! My! Where are they?”
“Stacked in the shithouse,” Eddie said. “We can get a wagon down here once they’re out, but they’re heavy . . . and there isn’t much room to move around in there . . . ”
He stood aside. Andy came on. His eyes were flashing, but not in laughter now. They were so brilliant Eddie had to squint—it was like looking at flashbulbs.
“I’m sure I can get them out,” Andy said. “How good it is to help! How often I’ve regretted how little my programming allows me to . . . ”
He was standing in the privy door now, bent slightly at the thighs to get his metallic barrel of a head below the level of the jamb. Eddie drew Roland’s gun. As always, the sandalwood grip felt smooth and eager against his palm.
“Cry your pardon, Eddie of New York, but I see no guns.”
“No,” Eddie agreed. “Me either. Actually all I see is a fucking traitor who teaches songs to the kids and then sends them to be—”
Andy turned with terrible liquid speed. To Eddie’s ears the hum of the servos in his neck seemed very loud. They were standing less than three feet apart, point-blank range. “May it do ya fine, you stainless-steel bastard,” Eddie said, and fired twice. The reports were deafening in the evening stillness. Andy’s eyes exploded and went dark. Tian cried out.
“NO!” Andy screamed in an amplified voice. It was so loud that it made the gunshots seem no more than popping corks by comparison. “NO, MY EYES, I CAN’T SEE, OH NO, VISION ZERO, MY EYES, MY EYES—”
The scrawny stainless-steel arms flew up to the shattered sockets, where blue sparks were now jumping erratically. Andy’s legs straightened, and his barrel of a head ripped through the top of the privy’s doorway, throwing chunks of board left and right.
“NO, NO, NO, I CAN’T SEE, VISION ZERO, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME, AMBUSH, ATTACK, I’M BLIND, CODE 7, CODE 7, CODE 7!”
“Help me push him, Tian!” Eddie shouted, dropping the gun back into its holster. But Tian was frozen, gawking at the robot (whose head had now vanished inside the broken doorway), and Eddie had no time to wait. He lunged forward and planted his outstretched palms on the plate giving Andy’s name, function, and serial number. The robot was amazingly heavy (Eddie’s first thought was that it was like pushing a parking garage), but it was also blind, surprised, and off-balance. It stumbled backward, and suddenly the amplified words cut off. What replaced them was an unearthly shrieking siren. Eddie thought it would split his head. He grabbed the door and swung it shut. There was a huge, ragged gap at the top, but the door still closed flush. Eddie ran the new bolt, which was as thick as his wrist.
From within the privy, the siren shrieked and warbled.
Rosa came running with a plate in both hands. Her eyes were huge. “What is it? In the name of God and the Man Jesus, what is it?”
Before Eddie could answer, a tremendous blow shook the privy on its foundations. It actually moved to the right, disclosing the edge of the hole beneath it.
“It’s Andy,” he said. “I think he just pulled up a horoscope he doesn’t much care f—”
“YOU BASTARDS!” This voice was totally unlike Andy’s usual three forms of address: smarmy, self-satisfied, or falsely subservient. “YOU BASTARDS! COZENING BASTARDS! I’LL KILL YOU! I’M BLIND, OH, I’M BLIND, CODE 7! CODE 7!” The words ceased and the siren recommenced. Rosa dropped her plates and clapped her hands over her ears.
Another blow slammed against the side of the privy, and this time two of the stout boards bowed outward. The next one broke them. Andy’s arm flashed through, gleaming red in the light, the four jointed fingers at the end opening and closing spasmodically. In the distance, Eddie could hear the crazy barking of dogs.
“He’s going to get out, Eddie!” Tian shouted, grabbing Eddie’s shoulder. “He’s going to get out!”
Eddie shook the hand off and stepped to the door. There was another crashing blow. More broken boards popped off the side of the privy. The lawn was scattered with them now. But he couldn’t shout against the wail of the siren, it was just too loud. He waited, and before Andy hammered the side of the privy again, it cut off.
“BASTARDS!” Andy screamed. “I’LL KILL YOU! DIRECTIVE 20, CODE 7! I’M BLIND, ZERO VISION, YOU COWARDLY—”
“Andy, Messenger Robot!” Eddie shouted. He had jotted the serial number on one of Callahan’s precious scraps of paper, with Callahan’s stub of pencil, and now he read it off. “DNF-44821-V-63! Password!”
The frenzied blows and amplified shouting ceased as soon as Eddie finished giving the serial number, yet even the silence wasn’t silent; his ears still rang with the hellish shriek of the siren. There was a clank of metal and the click of relays. Then: “This is DNF-44821-V-63. Please give password.” A pause, and then, tonelessly: “You ambushing bastard Eddie Dean of New York. You have ten seconds. Nine . . . ”
“Nineteen,” Eddie said through the door.
“Incorrect password.” And, tin man or not, there was no mistaking the furious pleasure in Andy’s voice. “Eight . . . seven . . . ”
“Ninety-nine.”
“Incorrect password.” Now what Eddie heard was triumph. He had time to regret his insane cockiness out on the road. Time to see the look of terror which passed between Rosa and Tian. Time to realize the dogs were still barking.
“Five . . . four . . . ”
Not nineteen; not ninety-nine. What else was there? What in the name of Christ turned the bastard off?
“. . . three . . . ”
What flashed into his mind, as bright as Andy’s eyes had been before Roland’s big revolver turned them dark, was the verse scrawled on the fence around the vacant lot, spray-painted in dusty rose-pink letters: Oh SUSANNAH-MIO, divided girl of mine, Done parked her RIG in the DIXIE PIG, in the year of—
“. . . two . . . ”
Not one or the other; both. Which was why the damned robot hadn’t cut him off after a single incorrect try. He hadn’t been incorrect, not exactly.
“Nineteen-ninety-nine!” Eddie screamed through the door.
From behind it, utter silence. Eddie waited for the siren to start up again, waited for Andy to resume bashing his way out of the privy. He’d tell Tian and Rosa to run, try to cover them—
The voice that spoke from inside the battered building was colorless and flat: the voice of a machine. Both the fake smarminess and the genuine fury were gone. Andy as generations of Calla-folken had known him was gone, and for good.
“Thank you,” the voice said. “I am Andy, a messenger robot, many other functions. Serial number DNF-44821-V-63. How may I help?”
“By shutting yourself down.”
Silence from the privy.
“Do you understand what I’m asking?”
A small, horrified voice said, “Please don’t make me. You bad man. Oh, you bad man.”
“Shut yourself down now.”
A longer silence. Rosa stood with her hand pressed against her throat. Several men appeared around the side of the Pere’s house, armed with various homely weapons. Rosa waved them back.
“DNF-44821-V-63, comply!”
“Yes, Eddie of New York. I will shut myself down.” A horrible self-pitying sadness had crept into Andy’s new small voice. It made Eddie’s skin crawl. “Andy is blind and will shut down. Are you aware that with my main power cells ninety-eight per cent depleted, I may never be able to power up again?”
Eddie remembered the vast roont twins out at the Jaffords smallhold—Tia and Zalman—and then thought of all the others like them this unlucky town had known over the years. He dwelled particularly on the Tavery twins, so bright and quick and eager to please. And so beautiful. “Never won’t be long enough,” he said, “but I guess it’ll have to do. Palaver’s done, Andy. Shut down.”
Another silence from within the half-busted privy. Tian and Rosa crept up to either side of Eddie and the three of them stood together in front of the locked door. Rosa gripped Eddie’s forearm. He shook her off immediately. He wanted his hand free in case he had to draw. Although where he would shoot now that Andy’s eyes were gone, he didn’t know.
When Andy spoke again, it was in a toneless amplified voice that made Tian and Rosa gasp and step back. Eddie stayed where he was. He had heard a voice like this and words like this once before, in the clearing of the great bear. Andy’s rap wasn’t quite the same, but close enough for government work.
“DNF-44821-V-63 IS SHUTTING DOWN! ALL SUBNUCLEAR CELLS AND MEMORY CIRCUITS ARE IN SHUTDOWN PHASE! SHUTDOWN IS 13 PER CENT COMPLETE! I AM ANDY, MESSENGER ROBOT, MANY OTHER FUNCTIONS! PLEASE REPORT MY LOCATION TO LAMERK INDUSTRIES OR NORTH CENTRAL POSITRONICS, LTD! CALL 1-900-54! REWARD IS OFFERED! REPEAT, REWARD IS OFFERED!” There was a click as the message recycled. “DNF-44821-V-63 IS SHUTTING DOWN! ALL SUBNUCLEAR CELLS AND MEMORY CIRCUITS ARE IN SHUTDOWN PHASE! SHUTDOWN IS 19 PER CENT COMPLETE! I AM ANDY—”
“You were Andy,” Eddie said softly. He turned to Tian and Rosa, and had to smile at their scared-children’s faces. “It’s all right,” he said. “It’s over. He’ll go on blaring like that for awhile, and then he’ll be done. You can turn him into a . . . I don’t know . . . a planter, or something.”
“I think we’ll tear up the floor and bury him right there,” Rosa said, nodding at the privy.
Eddie’s smile widened and became a grin. He liked the idea of burying Andy in shit. He liked that idea very well.