in front of Oy; Ted and Dinky raised their hands in front of their faces, as if that could possibly have saved them from a burst of a hundred high-caliber, steeljacketed slugs. Roland plucked the machine-pistol calmly from Sheemie's hands.
"Your time to help will come," he said, "but after this first battle's fought and won. Do you see Jake's bumbler, Sheemie?"
"Aye, he's with the Rod."
"He talks. See if you can get him to talk to you."
Sheemie obediently went to where Chucky/Haylis was still stroking Oy's head, dropped to one knee, and commenced trying to get Oy to say his name. The bumbler did almost at once, and with remarkable clarity. Sheemie laughed, and Haylis joined in. They sounded like a couple of kids from the Calla.
The roont kind, perhaps.
Roland, meanwhile, turned to Dinky and Ted, his lips little more than a white line in his stern face.
SEVEN
"He's to be kept out of it, once the shooting starts." The gunslinger mimed turning a key in a lock. "If we lose, what happens to him later on won't matter. If we win, we'll need him at least one more time. Probably twice."
"To go where?" Dinky asked.
"Keystone World America," Eddie said. "A small town in western Maine called Lovell. As early in June of 1999 as one-way time allows."
"Sending me to Connecticut appears to have inaugurated Sheemie's seizures," Ted said in a low voice. "You know that sending you back America-side is apt to make him worse, don't you? Or kill him?" He spoke in a matter-of-fact tone. Just askin, gents.
"We know," Roland said, "and when the time comes, I'll make the risk clear and ask him if-"
"Oh man, you can stick that one where the sun don't shine,"
Dinky said, and Eddie was reminded so strongly of himself-the way he'd been during his first few hours on the shore of the Western Sea, confused, pissed off, and jonesing for heroin-that he felt a moment of deja vu. "If you told him you wanted him to set himself on fire, the only thing he'd want to know would be if you had a match. He thinks you're Christ on a cracker."
Susannah waited, with a mixture of dread and almost prurient interest, for Roland's response. There was none. Roland only stared at Dinky, his thumbs hooked into his gunbelt.
"Surely you realize that a dead man can't bring you back from America-side," Ted said in a more reasonable tone.
"We'll jump that fence when and if we come to it," Roland said. "In the meantime, we've got several other fences to get over."
"I'm glad we're taking on the Devar-Toi first, whatever the risk," Susannah said. "What's going on down there is an abomination."
"Yes, ma'am," Dinky drawled, and pushed up an imaginary hat. "Ah reckon that's the word."
The tension in die cave eased. Behind them, Sheemie was telling Oy to roll over, and Oy was doing so willingly enough.
The Rod had a big, sloppy smile on his face. Susannah wondered when Haylis of Chayven had last had occasion to use his smile, which was childishly charming.
She thought of asking Ted if there was any way of telling what day it was in America right now, then decided not to bother. If Stephen King was dead, diey'd know; Roland had said so, and she had no doubt he was right. For now the writer was fine, happily frittering away his time and valuable imagination on some meaningless project while the world he'd been born to imagine continued to gather dust in his head. If Roland was pissed at him, it was really no wonder. She was a little pissed at him herself.
"What's your plan, Roland?" Ted asked.
"It relies on two assumptions: that we can surprise them and then stampede them. I don't think they expect to be interrupted in these last days; from Pimli Prentiss down to the lowliest hume guard outside the fence, they have no reason to believe they'll be bothered in their work, certainly not attacked. If my assumptions are correct, we'll succeed. If we fail, at least we won't live long enough to see the Beams break and the Tower fall."
Roland found the crude map of die Algul and put it on the floor of the cave. They all gathered around it.
"These railroad sidetracks," he said, indicating the hashmarks labeled 10. "Some of the dead engines and traincars on them stand widiin twenty yards of the south fence, it looks like through the binoculars. Is that right?"
"Yeah," Dinky said, and pointed to the center of