to take a powder when you've got nothing to wear but your Algul Siento slippers, let's put it that way."
"I still can't believe it,"Jake said. "All those people working to break the Beams, I mean. No offense, but-"
Dinky turned on him with his fists clenched and a tight, furious smile on his face. Oy immediately stepped in front of Jake, growling low and showing his teeth. Dinky either didn't notice or paid no attention. 'Yeah? Well guess what, kiddo? I take offense. I take offense like a motherfucker. What do you know about what it's like to spend your whole life on the outside, to be the butt of the joke every time, to always be Carrie at the fuckin prom?"
"Who?" Eddie asked, confused, but Dinky was on a roll and paid no attention.
"There are guys down there who can't walk or talk. One chick with no arms. Several with hydrocephalus, which means they have heads out to fuckin New Jersey." He held his hands two feet beyond his head on either side, a gesture they all took for exaggeration. Later they would discover it was not. "Poor old Stanley here, he's one of the ones who can't talk."
Roland glanced at Stanley, with his pallid, stubbly face and his masses of curly dark hair. And the gunslinger almost smiled.
"I think he can talk," he said, and then: "Do'ee bear your father's name, Stanley? I believe thee does."
Stanley lowered his head, and color mounted in his cheeks, yet he was smiling. At the same time he began to cry again. Just what in the hell's going on here? Eddie wondered.
Ted clearly wondered, too. "Sai Deschain, I wonder if I could ask-"
"No, no, cry pardon," Roland said. "Your time is short just now, so you said and we all feel it. Do the Breakers know how they're being fed? What they're being fed, to increase their powers?"
Ted abruptly sat on a rock and looked down at the shining steel cobweb of rails. "It has to do with the kiddies they bring through the Station, doesn't it?"
"Yes."
"They don't know and I don't know," Ted said in that same heavy voice. "Not really. We're fed dozens of pills a day. They come morning, noon, and night. Some are vitamins. Some are no doubt intended to keep us docile. I've had some luck purging those from my system, and Dinky's, and Stanley's.
Only... for such a purging to work, gunslinger, you must want it to work. Do you understand?"
Roland nodded.
"I've thought for a long time that they must also be giving us some kind of... I don't know... brain-booster... but with so many pills, it's impossible to tell which one it might be. Which one it is that makes us cannibals, or vampires, or both." He paused, looking down at the improbable sunray. He extended his hands on both sides. Dinky took one, Stanley the other.
"Watch this," Dinky said. "This is good."
Ted closed his eyes. So did the other two. For a moment there was nothing to see but three men looking out over the dark desert toward the Cecil B. DeMille sunbeam... and they were looking, Roland knew. Even with their eyes shut.
The sunbeam winked out. For a space of perhaps a dozen seconds the Devar-Toi was as dark as the desert, and Thunderclap Station, and the slopes of Steek-Tete. Then that absurd golden glow came back on. Dinky uttered a harsh (but not dissatisfied) sigh and stepped back, disengaging from Ted. A moment later, Ted let go of Stanley and turned to Roland.
"You did that?" the gunslinger asked.
"The three of us together," Ted said. "Mostly it's Stanley. He's an extremely powerful sender. One of the few things that terrify Prentiss and the low men and the taheen is when they lose their artificial sunlight. It happens more and more often, you know, and not always because we're meddling with the machinery. The machinery is just..." He shrugged. "It's running down."
"Everything is," Eddie said.
Ted turned to him, unsmiling. "But not fast enough, Mr. Dean. This fiddling with the remaining two Beams must stop, and very soon, or it will make no difference. Dinky, Stanley, and I will help you if we can, even if it means killing the rest of them."
"Sure," Dinky said with a hollow smile. "If the Rev. Jim Jones could do it, why not us?"
Ted gave him a disapproving glance, then looked back at Roland's ka-tet. "Perhaps it won't come to that. But if it does... "He stood up suddenly and seized