Roland's arm. "Are we cannibals?" he asked in a harsh, almost strident voice. "Have we been eating the children the Greencloaks bring from the Borderlands?"
Roland was silent.
Ted turned to Eddie. "I want to know."
Eddie made no reply.
"Madam-sai?" Ted asked, looking at the woman who sat astride Eddie's hip. "We're prepared to help you. Will you not help me by telling me what I ask?"
"Would knowing change anything?" Susannah asked.
Ted looked at her for a moment longer, then turned to Take. "You really could be my young friend's twin," he said. "Do you know that, son?"
"No, but it doesn't surprise me," Jake said. "It's the way things work over here, somehow. Everything... um... fits."
"Will you tell me what I want to know? Bobby would."
So you can eat yourself alive? Jake thought. Eat yourself instead of them?
He shook his head. "I'm not Bobby," he said. "No matter how much I might look like him."
Ted sighed and nodded. 'You stick together, and why would that surprise me? You're ka-tet, after all."
"We gotta go," Dink told Ted. "We've already been here too long. It isn't just a question of getting back for room-check; me n Stanley've got to trig their fucking telemetery so when Prentiss and The Wease check it they'll say 'Teddy B was there all the time. So was Dinky Earnshaw and Stanley Ruiz, no problem with those hoys.'"
"Yes," Ted agreed. "I suppose you're right. Five more minutes?"
Dinky nodded reluctantly. The sound of a siren, made faint by distance, came on the wind, and the young man's teeth showed in a smile of genuine amusement. "They get so upset when the sun goes in," he said. "When they have to face up to what's really around them, which is some fucked-up version of nuclear winter."
Ted put his hands in his pockets for a moment, looking down at his feet, then up at Roland. "It's time that this... this grotesque comedy came to an end. We three will be back tomorrow, if all goes well. Meanwhile, there's a bigger cave about forty yards down the slope, and on the side away from Thunderclap Station and Algul Siento. There's food and sleeping bags and a stove that runs on propane gas. There's a map, very crude, of the Algul. I've also left you a tape recorder and a number of tapes. They probably don't explain everything you'd like to know, but they'll fill in many of the blank spots. For now, just realize that Blue Heaven isn't as nice as it looks. The ivy towers are watchtowers. There are three runs offence around the whole place. If you're trying to get out from the inside, the first run you strike gives you a sting-"
"Like barbwire," Dink said.
"The second one packs enough of a wallop to knock you out," Ted went on. "And the third-"
"I think we get the picture," Susannah said.
"What about the Children of Roderick?" Roland asked.
"They have something to do with the Devar, for we met one on our way here who said so."
Susannah looked at Eddie with her eyebrows raised. Eddie gave her a tell-you-laterlook in return. It was a simple and perfect bit of wordless communication, the sort people who love each other take for granted.
"Those wanks," Dinky said, but not without sympathy.
"They're... what do they call em in the old movies? Trusties, I guess. They've got a little village about two miles beyond the station in that direction." He pointed. "They do groundskeeping work at the Algul, and there might be three or four skilled enough to do roofwork... replacing shingles and such. Whatever contaminants there are in the air here, those poor shmucks are especially vulnerable to em. Only on them it comes out looking like radiation sickness instead of just pimples and eczema."
"Tell me about it," Eddie said, remembering poor old Chevin of Chayven: his sore-eaten face and urine-soaked robe.
"They're wandering folhen," Ted put in. "Bedouins. I think they follow the railroad tracks, for the most part. There are catacombs under the station and Algul Siento. The Rods know their way around them. There's tons of food down there, and twice a week they'll bring it into the Devar on sledges. Mostly now that's what we eat. It's still good, but..." He shrugged.
"Things are falling down fast," Dinky said in a tone of uncharacteristic gloom. "But like the man said, the wine's great."
"If I asked you to bring one of the Children of Roderick with you tomorrow," Roland said, "could you do that?"
Ted and Dinky exchanged a