was like watching a runaway factory machine over which someone had thrown a huge, moth-eaten rug.
It looks like a hat! A little steel hat!
She saw it . . . but it didn’t look like a hat to her. It looked like a radar-dish—a much smaller version of the kind she had seen in MovieTone newsreel stories about how the DEW-line was keeping everyone safe from a Russian sneak attack. It was bigger than the pebbles she had shot off the boulder earlier, but the distance was greater. Sun and shadow ran across it in deceiving dapples.
I do not aim with my hand; she who aims with her hand has forgotten the face of her father.
I can’t do it!
I do not shoot with my hand; she who shoots with her hand has forgotten the face of her father.
I’ll miss! I know I’ll miss!
I do not kill with my gun; she who kills with her gun—
“Shoot it!” Roland roared. “Susannah, shoot it!”
With the trigger as yet unpulled, she saw the bullet go home, guided from muzzle to target by nothing more or less than her heart’s fierce desire that it should fly true. All fear fell away. What was left was a feeling of deep coldness and she had time to think: This is what he feels. My God—how does he stand it?
“I kill with my heart, motherfucker,” she said, and the gunslinger’s revolver roared in her hand.
8
THE SILVERY THING SPUN on a steel rod planted in the bear’s skull. Susannah’s bullet struck it dead center and the radar-dish blew into a hundred glittering fragments. The pole itself was suddenly engulfed in a burst of crackling blue fire which reached out in a net and seemed to grasp the sides of the bear’s face for a moment.
It rose on its rear legs with a whistling howl of agony, its front paws boxing aimlessly at the air. It turned in a wide, staggering circle and began to flap its arms, as if it had decided to fly away. It tried to roar again but what came out instead was a weird warbling sound like an air-raid siren.
“It is very well.” Roland sounded exhausted. “A good shot, fair and true.”
“Should I shoot it again?” she asked uncertainly. The bear was still blundering around in its mad circle but now its body had begun to tilt sidewards and inwards. It struck a small tree, rebounded, almost fell over, and then began to circle again.
“No need,” Roland said. She felt his hands grip her waist and lift her. A moment later she was sitting on the ground with her thighs folded beneath her. Eddie was slowly and shakily descending the pine, but she didn’t see him. She could not take her eyes from the bear.
She had seen the whales at the Seaquarium near Mystic, Connecticut, and believed they had been bigger than this—much bigger, probably—but this was certainly the largest land creature she had ever seen. And it was clearly dying. Its roars had become liquid bubbling sounds, and although its eyes were open, it seemed blind. It flailed aimlessly about the camp, knocking over a rack of curing hides, stamping flat the little shelter she shared with Eddie, caroming off trees. She could see the steel post rising from its head. Tendrils of smoke were rising around it, as if her shot had ignited its brains.
Eddie reached the lowest branch of the tree which had saved his life and sat shakily astride it. “Holy Mary Mother of God,” he said. “I’m looking right at it and I still don’t beli—”
The bear wheeled back toward him. Eddie leaped nimbly from the tree and streaked toward Susannah and Roland. The bear took no notice, it marched drunkenly to the pine which had been Eddie’s refuge, tried to grasp it, failed, and sank to its knees. Now they could hear other sounds coming from inside it, sounds that made Eddie think of some huge truck engine stripping its gears.
A spasm convulsed it, bowed its back. Its front claws rose and gored madly at its own face. Worm-infested blood flew and splattered. Then it fell over, making the ground tremble with its fall, and lay still. After all its strange centuries, the bear the Old People had called Mir—the world beneath the world—was dead.
9
EDDIE PICKED SUSANNAH UP, held her with his sticky hands locked together at the small of her back, and kissed her deeply. He reeked of sweat and pine-tar. She touched his cheeks, his neck; she ran