“I hear what I hear. My ears are as sharp as they ever were, Tali-tha—sharper!” Roland’s hand dropped to his belt for a moment. When he brought it back to the table, he was holding a cartridge in his fingers. He tossed it to Susannah, who caught it. “Do you, sai?” he asked.
“Well enough,” she said, turning in his direction, “to know that you just threw something. To your woman, I think—the one with the brown skin. Something small. What was it, gunslinger? A biscuit?”
“Close enough,” he said, smiling. “You hear as well as you say. Now tell us what you meant.”
“There is another mono,” she said, “unless ’tis the same one, running a different course. Either way, a different course was run by some mono . . . until seven or eight year ago, anyways. I used to hear it leaving the city and going out into the waste lands beyond.”
“Dungheap!” one of the albino twins ejaculated. “Nothing goes to the waste lands! Nothing can live there!”
She turned her face to him. “Is a train alive, Till Tudbury?” she asked. “Does a machine fall sick with sores and puking?” Well, Eddie thought of saying, there was this bear . . . He thought it over a little more and decided it might be better to keep his silence.
“We would have heard it,” the other twin was insisting hotly. “A noise like the one Si always tells of—“
“This one didn’t make no bang,” she admitted, “but I heard that other sound, that humming noise like the one you hear sometimes after lightning has struck somewhere close. When the wind was strong, blowing out from the city, I heard it.” She thrust out her chin and added: “I did hear the bang once, too. From far, far out. The night Big Charlie Wind came and almost blew the steeple off the church. Must have been two hundred wheels from here. Maybe two hundred and fifty.”
“Bulldink!” the twin cried. “You been chewing the weed!” “I’ll chew on you, Bill Tudbury, if you don’t shut up your honkin. You’ve no business sayin bulldink to a lady, either. Why—” “Stop it, Mercy!” Si hissed, but Eddie was barely listening to this exchange of rural pleasantries. What the blind woman had said made sense to him. Of course there would be no sonic boom, not from a train which started its run in Lud; he couldn’t remember exactly what the speed of sound was, but he thought it was somewhere in the neighbor-hood of six hundred and fifty miles an hour. A train starting from a dead stop would take some time getting up to that speed, and by the time it reached it, it would be out of earshot . . . unless the listening conditions happened to be just right, as Mercy claimed they had been on the night when the Big Charlie Wind—whatever that was—had come. And there were possibilities here. Blaine the Mono was no Land Rover, but maybe . . . maybe …
“You haven’t heard the sound of this other train for seven or eight years, sai?” Roland asked. “Are you sure it wasn’t much longer?” “Couldn’t have been,” she said, “for the last time was the year old Bill Muffin took blood-sick. Poor Bill!”
“That’s almost ten year agone,” Aunt Talitha said, and her voice was queerly gentle.
“Why did you never say you heard such a thing?” Si asked. He looked at the gunslinger. “You can’t believe everything she says, lord— always longing to be in the middle of the stage is my Mercy.” “Why, you old slumgullion!” she cried, and slapped his arm. “I didn’t say because I didn’t want to o’ertop the story you’re so proud of, but now that it matters what I heard, I’m bound to tell!” “I believe you, sai,” Roland said, “but are you sure you haven’t heard the sounds of the mono since then?”
“Nay, not since then. I imagine it’s finally reached the end of its path.” “I wonder,” Roland said. “Indeed, I wonder very much.” He looked down at the table, brooding, suddenly far away from all of them, Choo-choo, Jake thought, and shivered.
HALF AN HOUR LATER they were in the town square again, Susannah in her wheelchair, Jake adjusting the straps of his pack while Oy sat at his heel, watching him attentively. Only the town elders had attended the dinner-party in the little Eden behind the Church of the Blood Everlast-ing, it seemed, because when they returned to the square, another dozen people were waiting. They glanced at Susannah and looked a bit longer at Jake (his youth apparently more interesting to them than her dark skin), but it was clearly Roland they had come to see; their wondering eyes were full of ancient awe. He’s a living remnant of a past they only know from stories, Susan-nah thought. They look at him the way religious people would look at one of the saints—Peter or Paul or Matthew—if he decided to drop by the Saturday night bean supper and tell them stories of how it was, traipsing around the Sea of Galilee with Jesus the Carpenter.
The ritual which had ended the meal was now repeated, only this time everyone left in River Crossing participated. They shuffled forward in a line, shaking hands with Eddie and Susannah, kissing Jake on the cheek or forehead, then kneeling in front of Roland for his touch and his blessing. Mercy threw her arms about him and pressed her blind face against his stomach. Roland hugged her back and thanked her for her news.
“Will ye not stay the night with us, gunslinger? Sunset comes on apace, and it’s been long since you and yours spent the night beneath a roof, I’ll warrant.” “It has been, but it’s best we go on. Thankee-sai.” “Will ye come again if ye may, gunslinger?” “Yes,” Roland said, but Eddie did not need to look into his strange friend’s face to know the chances were small. “If we can.” “Ay.” She Imaged him a final time, then passed on with her hand resting on Si’s sunburned shoulder. “Fare ye well.”