"We're going to backtrack to Thunderclap before we go on to the Tower. We're either going to kill the Breakers or set them free. Whatever it takes to make the Beams safe. We'll kill Walter, or Flagg, or whatever he's calling himself. Because he's the field marshal, isn't he?"
"He was," Roland agreed, "but now a new player has come on the scene." He looked at the robot. "Nigel, I need you."
Nigel unfolded his arms and raised his head. "How may I serve?"
"By getting me something to write with. Is there such?"
"Pens, pencils, and chalk in the Supervisor's cubicle at the far end of the Extraction Room, sai. Or so there was, the last time I had occasion to be there."
"The Extraction Room," Roland mused, studying the serried ranks of beds. "Do you call it so?"
"Yes, sai." And then, almost timidly: "Vocal elisions and fricatives suggest that you're angry. Is that the case?"
"They brought children here by the hundreds and thousands-healthy ones, for the most part, from a world where too many are still born twisted-and sucked away their minds.
Why would I be angry?"
"Sai, I'm sure I don't know," Nigel said. He was, perhaps, repenting his decision to come back here. "But I had no part in the extraction procedures, I assure you. I am in charge of domestic services, including maintenance."
"Bring me a pencil and a piece of chalk."
"Sai, you won't destroy me, will you? It was Dr. Scowther who was in charge of the extractions over the last twelve or fourteen years, and Dr. Scowther is dead. This lady-sai shot him, and with his own gun." There was a touch of reproach in Nigel's voice, which was quite expressive within its narrow range.
Roland only repeated: "Bring me a pencil and a piece of chalk, and do itjin-jin."
Nigel went off on his errand.
"When yovi say a new player, you mean the baby," Susannah said.
"Certainly. He has two fathers, that bah-bo."
Susannah nodded. She was thinking about the tale Mia had told her during their todash visit to the abandoned town of Fedic-abandoned, that was, except for the likes of Sayre and Scowther and the marauding Wolves. Two women, one white and one black, one pregnant and one not, sitting in chairs outside the Gin-Puppy Saloon. There Mia had told Eddie Dean's wife a great deal-more than either of them had known, perhaps.
That's where they changed me, Mia had told her, "they" presumably meaning Scowther and a team of other doctors. Plus magicians? Folk like the Manni, only gone over to the other side? Maybe. Who could say? In the Extraction Room she'd been made mortal. Then, with Roland's sperm already in her, something else had happened. Mia didn't remember much about that part, only a red darkness. Susannah wondered now if the Crimson King had come to her in person, mounting her with its huge and ancient spider's body, or if its unspeakable sperm had been transported somehow to mix with Roland's. In either case, the baby grew into the loathsome hybrid Susannah had seen: not a werewolf but a -were-spider. And now it was out there, somewhere. Or perhaps it was here, watching them even as they palavered and Nigel returned with various writing implements.
Yes, she thought. It's watching us. And hating us... but not equally. Mostly it's Roland the dan-tete hates. Its first father.
She shivered.
"Mordred means to kill you, Roland," she said. "That's its job. What it was made for. To end you, and your quest, and the Tower."
"Yes," Roland said, "and to rule in his father's place. For the Crimson King is old, and I have come more and more to believe that he is imprisoned, somehow. If that's so, then he's no longer our real enemy."
"Will we go to his castle on the other side of the Discordia?"
Jake asked. It was the first time he'd spoken in half an hour.
"We will, won't we?"
"I think so, yes," Roland said. "Le Casse Roi Russe, the old legends call it. We'll go there ka-tet and slay what lives there."
"Let it be so," Eddie said. "By God, let that be so."
"Aye," Roland agreed. "But our first job is the Breakers. The Beamquake we felt in Calla Bryn Sturgis, just before we came here, suggests that their work is nearly done. Yet even if it isn't-"
"Ending what they're doing is our job," Eddie said.
Roland nodded. He looked more tired than ever. "Aye," he said. "Killing them or setting them free. Either way, we must finish their meddling with the two