out and in the c-c-clear, so it is!" And Susannah could hear the emotion in Stuttering Bill's voice. It was genuine gladness, and she felt more than okay about lowering her plate.
TWELVE
They palavered in the yard. Bill would have been quite willing to go into the hut, for he had but rudimentary olfactory equipment.
The humes were better equipped and knew that the hut stank and had not even warmth to recommend it, for the furnace and the fire were both out. In any case, the palaver didn't take long. William the Maintenance Robot (Many Other Functions) had counted the being that sometimes called itself Joe Collins as his master, for there was no longer anyone else to lay claim to the job. Besides, Collins/Dandelo had the necessary code-words.
"I w-was nuh-not able to g-give him the c-code wuh-wuhhurds when he a-asked," said Stuttering Bill, "but my p-programming did not pruh-prohibit bringing him cer-hertain m-manuals that had the ih-information he needed."
"Bureaucracy is so wonderful," Susannah said.
Bill said he had stayed away from "JJ-Joe" as often (and as long) as he could, although he had to come when Tower Road needed plowing-that was also in his programming-and once a month to bring provisions (canned goods, mostly) from what he called "the Federal." He also liked to see Patrick, who had once given Bill a wonderful picture of himself that he looked at often (and of which he had made many copies). Yet every time he came, he confided, he was sure he would find Patrick gone-killed and thrown casually into the woods somewhere back toward what Bill called "the Buh-Buh-Bads," like an old piece of trash. But now here he was, alive and free, and Bill was delighted.
"For I do have r-r-rudimentary em-m-motions," he said, sounding to Susannah like someone owning up to a bad habit.
"Do you need the code-words from us, in order to accept our orders?" Roland asked.
"Yes, sai," Stuttering Bill said.
"Shit," Susannah muttered. They had had similar problems with Andy, back in Calla Bryn Sturgis.
"H-H-However," said Stuttering Bill, "if you were to c-ccouch your orders as suh-huh-hugestions, I'm sure I'd be huhhuh-
huh-huh-" He raised his arm and smacked his head again. The Wheep! sound came once more, not from his mouth but from the region of his chest, Susannah thought. "-happy to oblige," he finished.
"My first suggestion is that you fix that fucking stutter,"
Roland said, and then turned around, amazed. Patrick had collapsed to the snow, holding his belly and voicing great, blurry cries of laughter. Oy danced around him, barking, but Oy was harmless; this time there was no one to steal Patrick's joy. It belonged only to him. And to those lucky enough to hear it.
THIRTEEN
In the woods beyond the plowed intersection, back toward what Bill would have called "the Bads," a shivering adolescent boy wrapped in stinking, half-scraped hides watched the quartet standing in front of Dandelo's hut. Die, he thought at them.
Die, why don'tyou all do me a favor and just die? But they didn't die, and the cheerful sound of their laughter cut him like knives.
Later, after they had all piled into the cab of Bill's plow and driven away, Mordred crept down to the hut. There he would stay for at least two days, eating his fill from the cans in Dandelo's pantry-and eating something else as well, something he would live to regret. He spent those days regaining his strength, for the big storm had come close to killing him. He believed it was his hate that had kept him alive, that and no more.
Or perhaps it was the Tower.
For he felt it, too-that pulse, that singing. But what Roland and Susannah and Patrick heard in a major key, Mordred heard in a minor. And where they heard many voices, he heard only one. It was the voice of his Red Father, telling him to come. Telling him to kill the mute boy, and the blackbird bitch, and especially the gunslinger out of Gilead, the uncaring White Daddy who had left him behind. (Of course his Red Daddy had also left him behind, but this never crossed Mordred's mind.)
And when the killing was done, the whispering voice promised, they would destroy the Dark Tower and rule todash together for eternity.
So Mordred ate, for Mordred was a-hungry. And Mordred slept, for Mordred was a-weary. And when Mordred dressed himself in Dandelo's warm clothes and set out along the freshly plowed Tower Road, pulling a rich sack of gunna on a sled behind him-canned goods,