ask the question Jake himself had proposed, and the answer would no doubt expose him as the superstitious scatterbrain he had become. Yet still, why not ask? Even if it were the equivalent of flipping a coin, why not?
Jake had come, possibly at the end of a short but undeniably interesting life, to a place where there were magic doors, mechanical butlers, telepathy (of which he was capable, at least to some small degree, himself), vampires, and were-spiders. So why not let Sheemie choose? They had to go one way or the other, after all, and he'd been through too goddam much to worry about such a paltry thing as looking like an idiot in front of his companions. Besides, he thought, if I'm not among friends here, I never will be.
"Sheemie," he said. Looking into those bloody eyes was sort of horrible, but he made himself do it. "We're on a quest.
That means we have ajob to do. We-"
"You have to save the Tower," said Sheemie. "And my old friend is to go in, and mount to the top, and see what's to see.
There may be renewal, there may be death, or there may be both. He was Will Dearborn once, aye, so he was. Will Dearborn to me."
Jake glanced at Roland, who was still hunkered down, looking out of the cave. But Jake thought his face had gone pale and strange.
One of Roland's fingers made his twirling go-ahead gesture.
"Yes, we're supposed to save the Dark Tower," Jake agreed.
\nd thought he understood some of Roland's lust to see it and snter it, even if it killed him. What lay at the center of the umbrae?
What man (or boy) could but wonder, once the question was thought of, and want to see?
Even if looking drove him mad?
"But in order to do that, we have to do two jobs. One nvolves going back to our world and saving a man. A writer vho's telling our story. The other job is the one we've been talking about. Freeing the Breakers." Honesty made him add:
"Or stopping them, at least. Do you understand?"
But this time Sheemie didn't reply. He was looking where Roland was looking, out into the murk. His face was that of someone who's been hypnotized. Looking at it made Jake uneasy, but he pushed on. He had come to his question, after all, and where else was there to go but on?
"The question is, which job do we do first? It'd seem that saving the writer might be easier because there's no opposition... that we know of, anyway... but there's a chance that... well..." Jake didn't want to say But there's a chance that teleporting us might kill you, and so came to a lame and unsatisfying halt.
For a moment he didn't think Sheemie would make any reply, leaving him with the job of deciding whether or not to try again, but then the former tavern-boy spoke. He looked at none of them as he did so, but only out of the cave and into the dim of Thunderclap.
"I had a dream last night, so I did," said Sheemie of Mejis, whose life had once been saved by three young gunslingers from Gilead. "I dreamed I was back at the Travellers' Rest, only Coral wasn't there, nor Stanley, nor Pettie, nor Sheb-him that used to play the pianer. There was nobbut me, and I was moppin the floor and singin 'Careless Love.' Then the batwings screeked, so they did, they had this funny sound they made..."
Jake saw that Roland was nodding, a trace of a smile on his lips.
"I looked up," Sheemie resumed, "and in come this boy."
His eyes shifted briefly to Jake, then back to the mouth of the cave. "He looked like you, young sai, so he did, close enough to be twim. But his face were covert wi' blood and one of his eye'n were put out, spoiling his pretty, and he walked all a-limp.
Looked like death, he did, and frighten't me terrible, and made me sad to see him, too. I just kept moppin, thinkin that if I did that he might not never mind me, or even see me at all, and go away."
Jake realized he knew this tale. Had he seen it? Had he actually been that bloody boy?
"But he looked right at you... "Roland murmured, still a-hunker, still looking out into the gloom.
"Aye, Will Dearborn that was, right at me, so he did, and said
"Why must you hurt me, when I love you so?