one by one."
He had actually spoken this aloud, but Roland wasn't surprised Eddie didn't remember doing so; he'd been hypnotized or close to it.
"We were on the outside, then," Eddie said. "Now we're on the inside." He pointed at the door into Thunderclap, then with one finger traced the course of the fat cables. "The machinery sending power through these doesn't sound very healthy. If we're going to use this thing, I think we ought to right away. It could shut down for good anytime, and then what?"
"Have to call Triple-A Travel," Susannah said dreamily.
"I don't think so. We'd be basted... what do you call it,
Roland?"
"Basted in a hot oast. 'These are the rooms of ruin.' You said that, too. Do you recall?"
"I said it? Right out loud?"
"Aye." Roland led them to the door. He reached out, touched the knob, then pulled his hand back.
"Hot?" Jake asked.
Roland shook his head.
"Electrified?" Susannah asked.
The gunslinger shook his head again.
"Then go on and go for it," Eddie said. "Let's boogie."
They crowded close behind Roland. Eddie was once more holding Susannah on his hip and Jake had picked Oy up. The bumbler was panting through his usual cheery grin and inside their gold rings his eyes were as bright as polished onyx.
"What do we do-" if it's lockedwas how Jake meant to finish, but before he could, Roland turned the knob with his right hand (he had his remaining gun in the left) and pulled the door open. Behind the wall, the machinery cycled up a notch, the sound of it growing almost desperate. Jake thought he could smell something hot: burning insulation, maybe. He was just telling himself to stop imagining things when a number of overhead fans started up. They were as loud as taxiing fighter airplanes in a World War II movie, and they all jumped. Susannah actually put a hand on her head, as if to shield it from falling objects.
"Come on," Roland snapped. "Quick." He stepped through without a backward look. During the brief moment when he was halfway through, he seemed to be broken into two pieces.
Beyond the gunslinger, Jake could see a vast and gloomy room, much bigger than the Staging Area. And silvery crisscrossing lines that looked like dashes of pure light.
"Go on, Jake," Susannah said. 'You next."
Jake took a deep breath and stepped through. There was no riptide, such as they'd experienced in the Cave of Voices, and no jangling chimes. No sense of going todash, not even for a moment. Instead there was a horrid feeling of being turned inside-out, and he was attacked by the most violent nausea he had ever known. He stepped downward, and his knee buckled.
A moment later he was on both knees. Oy spilled out of his arms. Jake barely noticed. He began to retch. Roland was on all fours next to him, doing the same. From somewhere came steady low chugging sounds, the persistent ding-ding-ding-ding of a bell, and an echoing amplified voice.
Jake turned his head, meaning to tell Roland that now he understood why they sent robot raiders through their damned door, and then he vomited again. The remains of his last meal ran steaming across cracked concrete.
All at once Susannah was crying "No! No!" in a distraught voice. Then "Put me down! Eddie, put me down before I-"
Her voice was interrupted by harsh yarking sounds. Eddie managed to deposit her on the cracked concrete before turning his head andjoining the Upchuck Chorus.
Oy fell on his side, hacked hoarsely, then got back on his feet. He looked dazed and disoriented... or maybe Jake was only attributing to the bumbler the way he felt himself.
The nausea was beginning to fade a little when he heard clacking, echoing footfalls. Three men were hurrying toward them, all dressed in jeans, blue chambray shirts, and odd, homemade-looking footwear. One of them, an elderly gent with a mop of untidy white hair, was ahead of the other two. All three had their hands in the air.
"Gunslingers!" cried the man with the white hair. "Are you gunslingers? If you are, don't shoot! We're on your side!"
Roland, who looked in no condition to shoot anyone (Not that I'd want to test that, Jake thought), tried to get up, almost made it, then went back to one knee and made another strangled retching sound. The man with the white hair seized one of his wrists and hauled him up without ceremony.
"The sickness is bad," the old man said, "no one knows it any better than