so out of control it's ridiculous. It really is more like watching something happen-or listening to a song-than writing a damned made-up story.
He decides to make himself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch and forget the whole damned thing for another day. Tonight he will go to see the new Clint Eastwood movie,
Bloodxoork, and be glad he can go anywhere, do anything.
Tomorrow he'll be back at his desk, and something from the film may slip out into the book-certainly Roland himself was partly Clint Eastwood to start with, Sergio Leone's Man with No Name.
And... speaking of books...
Lying on the coffee-table is one that came via FedEx from his office in Bangor just this morning: The Complete Poetical Works of Robert Browning. It contains, of course, "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came," the narrative poem that lies at the root of King's long (and trying) story. An idea suddenly occurs to him, and it brings an expression to his face that stops just short of outright laughter. As if reading his feelings (and possibly he can; King has always suspected dogs are fairly recent emigres from that great I-know-just-how-you-feel country of Empathica), Marlowe's own fiendish grin appears to widen.
"One place for the poem, old boy," King says, and tosses the book back onto the coffee-table. It's a big 'un, and lands with a thud. "One place and one place only." Then he settles deeper in the chair and closes his eyes. Just gonna sit here like this for a minute or two, he thinks, knowing he's fooling himself, knowing he'll almost certainly doze off. As he does.
Part Four:THE WHITE LANDS OF EMPATHICA Chapter I:THE THING UNDER THE CASTLE
ONE
They did indeed find a good-sized kitchen and an adjoining pantry at ground-level in the Arc 16 Experimental Station, and not far from the infirmary. They found something else, as well: the office of sai Richard P. Sayre, once the Crimson King's Head of Operations, now in the clearing at the end of the path courtesy of Susannah Dean's fast right hand. Lying atop Sayre's desk were amazingly complete files on all four of them.
These they destroyed, using the shredder. There were photographs of Eddie and Jake in the folders that were simply too painful to look at. Memories were better.
On Sayre's wall were two framed oil-paintings. One showed a strong and handsome boy. He was shirtless, barefooted, tousle-haired, smiling, dressed only in jeans and wearing a docker's clutch. He looked about Jake's age. This picture had a notquite-pleasant sensuality about it. Susannah thought that the painter, sai Sayre, or both might have been part of the Lavender Hill Mob, as she had sometimes heard homosexuals called in the Village. The boy's hair was black. His eyes were blue. His lips were red. There was a livid scar on his side and a birthmark on his left heel as crimson as his lips. A snow-white horse lay dead before him. There was blood on its snarling teeth. The boy's marked left foot rested on the horse's flank, and his lips were curved in a smile of triumph.
"That's Llamrei, Arthur Eld's horse," Roland said. "Its image was carried into battle on the pennons of Gilead, and was the sigul of all In-World."
"So according to this picture, the Crimson King wins?" she asked. "Or if not him then Mordred, his son?"
Roland raised his eyebrows. "Thanks to John Farson, the Crimson King's men won the In-World lands long ago," he said.
But then he smiled. It was a sunny expression so unlike his usual look that seeing it always made Susannah feel dizzy. "But I think wwon the only battle that matters. What's shown in this picture is no more than someone's wishful fairy-tale." Then, with a savagery that startled her, he smashed the glass over the frame with his fist and yanked the painting free, ripping it most of the way down the middle as he did so. Before he could tear it to pieces, as he certainly meant to do, she stopped him and pointed to the bottom. Written there in small but nonetheless extravagant calligraphy was the artist's name: ^afoich ^Dwrnu/Ze.
The other painting showed the Dark Tower, a sooty-gray black cylinder tapering upward. It stood at the far end of Can'-Ka No Rey, the field of roses. In their dreams the Tower had seemed taller than the tallest skyscraper in New York (to Susannah this meant the Empire State Building). In the painting it looked to be no more than six hundred