you were wrong," Roland told her. He spoke ih obvious reluctance, but as a man will when he has ajob to do, or a debt to repay. And he did owe this woman a debt, he reckoned, for had he not pretty much seized her by the scruff of the neck and hauled her into this world, where she'd learned the art of murder and fallen in love and been left bereaved? Had he not kidnapped her into this present sorrow? If he could make that right, he had an obligation to do so. His desire to keep her with him-and at the risk of her own life-was pure selfishness, and unworthy of his training.
More important than that, it was unworthy of how much he had come to love and respect her. It broke what remained of his heart to think of bidding her goodbye, the last of his strange and wonderful ka-tet, but if it was what she wanted, what she needed, then he must do it. And he thought he could do it, for he had seen something about the young man's drawing that Susannah had missed. Not something that was there; something that wasn't
"Look thee," he said gently, showing her the picture. "Do you see how hard he's tried to please thee, Susannah?"
"Yes!" she said. "Yes, of course I do, but-"
"It took him ten minutes to do this, I should judge, and most of his drawings, good as they are, are the work of three or four at most, wouldn't you say?"
"I don't understand you!" She nearly screamed this.
Patrick drew Oy to him and wrapped an arm around the bumbler, all the while looking at Susannah and Roland with wide, unhappy eyes.
"He worked so hard to give you what you want that there's only the Door. It stands by itself, all alone on the paper. It has no... no..."
He searched for the right word. Vannay's ghost whispered it dryly into his ear.
"It has no context!"
For a moment Susannah continued to look puzzled, and then the light of understanding began to break in her eyes.
Roland didn't wait; he simply dropped his good left hand on Patrick's shoulder and told him to put the door behind Susannah's little electric golf-cart, which she had taken to calling Ho Fat III.
Patrick was happy to oblige. For one thing, putting Ho Fat III in front of the door gave him a reason to use his eraser. He worked much more quickly this time-almost carelessly, an observer might have said-but the gunslinger was sitting right next to him and didn't think Patrick missed a single stroke in his depiction of the little cart. He finished by drawing its single front wheel and putting a reflected gleam of firelight in the hubcap. Then he put his pencil down, and as he did, there was a disturbance in the air. Roland felt it push against his face. The flames of the fire, which had been burning straight up in the windless dark, streamed briefly sideways. Then the feeling was gone. The flames once more burned straight up. And standing not ten feet from that fire, behind the electric cart, was a door Roland had last encountered in Calla Bryn Sturgis, in the Cave of the Voices.
SEVENTEEN
Susannah waited until dawn, at first passing the time by gathering up her gunna, then putting it aside again-what would her few possessions (not to mention the little hide bag in which they were stored) avail her in New York City? People would laugh. They would probably laugh anyway... or scream and run at the very sight of her. The Susannah Dean who suddenly appeared in Central Park would look to most folks not like a college graduate or an heiress to a large fortune; not even like Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, say sorry. No, to civilized city people she'd probably look like some kind of freak-show escapee.
And once she went through this door, would there be any going back? Never. Never in life.
So she put her gunna aside and simply waited. As dawn began to show its first faint white light on the horizon, she called Patrick over and asked him if he wanted to go along with her.
Back to the world you came from or one very much like it, she told him, although she knew he didn't remember that world at aU-either he'd been taken from it too young, or the trauma of being snatched away had erased his memory.
Patrick looked at her, then at Roland,