Not just awe, Jake thought, and not exactly fear, either. Something else. What?
Approaching the station were two motorized buckas with big balloon tires-ATVs. Jake assumed it was The Weasel (whoever he was) and his taheen buddies.
"As you may have gleaned," Ted told them, "there's an alarm in the Devar-Toi Supervisor's office. The warden's office, if you like. It goes off when anyone or anything uses the door between the Fedic staging area and yon station-"
"I believe the term you used for him," Roland said dryly, "wasn't supervisor or warden but ki'-dam."
Dink laughed. "That's a good pickup on your part, dude."
"What does ki'-dam mean?" Jake asked, although he had a fair notion. There was a phrase folks used in the Calla: headbox, heartbox, ki'box. Which meant, in descending order, one's thought processes, one's emotions, and one's lower functions.
Animal functions, some might say; ki'box could be translated as shitbox if you were of a vulgar turn of mind.
Ted shrugged. "Ki'-dam means shit-for-brains. It's Dinky's nickname for sai Prentiss, the Devar Master. But you already knew that, didn't you?"
"I guess," Jake said. "Kinda."
Ted looked at him long, and when Jake identified that expression, it helped him define how Stanley was looking at Roland: not with fear but with fascination. Jake had a pretty good idea Ted was still thinking about how much he looked like someone named Bobby, and he was pretty sure Ted knew he had the touch. What was the source of Stanley's fascination? Or maybe he was making too much of it. Maybe it was just that Stanley had never expected to see a gunslinger in the flesh.
Abruptly, Ted turned from Jake and back to Roland. "Now look this way," he said.
"Whoa!" Eddie cried. "What the hell?"
Susannah was amused as well as amazed. What Ted was pointing out reminded her of Cecil B. DeMille's Bible epic The Ten Commandments, especially the parts where the Red Sea opened by Moses had looked suspiciously like Jell-O and the voice of God coming from the burning bush sounded quite a bit like Charles Laughton. Still, it xoas amazing. In a cheesy Hollywood-special-effects way, that was.
What they saw was a single fat and gorgeous bolt of sunlight slanting down from a hole in the sagging clouds. It cut through the strangely dark air like a searchlight beam and lit a compound that might have been six miles from Thunderclap Station.
And "about six miles" was really all you could say, because there was no more north or south in this world, at least not that you could count on. Now there was only the Path of the Beam.
"Dinky, there's a pair of binoculars in-"
"The lower cave, right?"
"No, I brought them up the last time we were here," Ted replied with carefully maintained patience. "They're sitting on that pile of crates just inside. Get them, please."
Eddie barely noticed this byplay. He was too charmed (and amused) by that single broad ray of sun, shining down on a green and cheerful plot of land, as unlikely in this dark and sterile desert as... well, he supposed, as unlikely as Central Park must seem to tourists from the Midwest making their first trip to New York.
He could see buildings that looked like college dormitories-nice ones-and others that looked like comfy old manor houses with wide stretches of green lawn before them. At the far side of the sunbeam's area was what looked like a street lined with shops. The perfect little Main Street America, except for one thing: in all directions it ended in dark and rocky desert. He saw four stone towers, their sides agreeably green with ivy. No, make that six. The other two were mostly concealed in stands of graceful old elms. Elms in the desert!
Dink returned with a pair of binoculars and offered them to Roland, who shook his head.
"Don't hold it against him," Eddie said. "His eyes... well, let's just say they're something else. I wouldn't mind a peek, though."
"Me, either," Susannah said.
Eddie handed her the binoculars. "Ladies first."
"No, really, I-"
"Stop it," Ted almost snarled. "Our time here is brief, our risk enormous. Don't waste the one or increase the other, if you please."
Susannah was stung but held back a retort. Instead she took the binoculars, raised them to her eyes, and adjusted them. What she saw merely heightened her sense of looking at a small but perfect college campus, one that merged beautifully with the neighboring village. No town-versus-gown tensions there,
I bet, she thought. / bet Elmville and Breaker U go together like peanut butter and jelly, Abbott and Costello, hand and glove. Whenever there was a Ray Bradbury short in the Saturday Evening Post, she always turned to it first, she loved Bradbury, and what she was looking at through the binoculars made her think of Greentown,
Bradbury's idealized Illinois village. A place where adults sat out on their porches in rocking chairs, drinking lemonade, and the kids played tag with flashlights in the lightning-bugstitched dusk of summer evenings. And the nearby college campus? No drinking there, at least not to excess. No joysticks or goofballs or rock and roll, either. It would be a place where the girls kissed the boys goodnight with chaste ardor and were glad to sign back in so that the Dormitory Mom wouldn't think ill of them. A place where the sun shone all day, where Perry Como and the Andrews Sisters sang on the radio, and nobody suspected they were actually living in the ruins of a world that had moved on.
No, she thought coldly. Some of them know. That's why these three showed up to meet us.
"That's the Devar-Toi," Roland said flatly. Not a question.
"Yeah," Dinky said. "The good old Devar-Toi." He stood beside Roland and pointed at a large white building near the dormitories. "See that white one? That's Heartbreak House, where the can-toi live. Ted calls em the low men. They're taheen-human hybrids. And they don't call it the Devar-Toi, they call it Algul Siento, which means-"
"Blue Heaven," Roland said, and Jake realized why: all of the buildings except for the rock towers had blue tiled roofs.
Not Narnia but Blue Heaven. Where a bunch of folks were busy bringing about the end of the world.
All the worlds.
SIX
"It looks like the pleasantest place in existence, at least since In-World fell," Ted said. "Doesn't it?"
"Pretty nice, all right," Eddie agreed. He had at least a thousand questions, and guessed Suze and Jake probably had another thousand between them, but this wasn't the time to ask them. In any case, he kept looking at that wonderful litde hundred-acre oasis down there. The one sunny green spot in all of Thunderclap. The one nice place. And why not? Nothing but the best for Our Breaker Buddies.
And, in spite of himself, one question did slip out.
"Ted, why does the Crimson King want to bring the Tower down? Do you know?"
Ted gave him a brief glance. Eddie thought it cool, maybe downright cold, until the man smiled. When he did, his whole face lit up. Also, his eyes had quit doing that creepy in-and-out thing, which was a big improvement.
"He's mad," Ted told him. "Nuttier than a fruitcake. Riding the fabled rubber bicycle. Didn't I tell you that?" And then, before Eddie could reply: 'Yes, it's quite nice. Whether you call it Devar-Toi, the Big Prison, or Algul Siento, it looks a treat. It is a treat."
"Very classy accommos," Dinky agreed. Even Stanley was looking down at the sunlit community with an expression of faint longing.
"The food is the best," Ted went on, "and the double feature at the Gem Theater changes twice a week. If you don't want to go to the movies, you can bring the movies home on DVDs."
"What are those?" Eddie asked, then shook his head. "Never mind. Go on."
Ted shrugged, as if to say What else do you need?
"Absolutely astral sex, for one thing," Dinky said. "It's sim, but it's still incredible-I made it with Marilyn Monroe,
Madonna, and Nicole Kidman all in one week." He said this with a certain uneasy pride. "I could have had them all at the same time if I'd wanted to. The only way you can tell they're not real is to breathe directly on them, from close up. When you do, the part you blow on... kinda disappears. It's unsettling."
"Booze? Dope?" Eddie asked.
"Booze in limited quantities," Ted replied. "If you're into oenology, for instance, you'll experience fresh wonders at every meal."
"What's oenology?" Jake asked.
"The science of wine-snobbery, sugarbun," Susannah said.
"If you come to Blue Heaven addicted to something," Dinky said, "they get you off it. Kindly. The one or two guys who proved especially tough nuts in that area..." His eyes met Ted's briefly. Ted shrugged and nodded. "Those dudes disappeared."
"In truth, the low men don't need any more Breakers," Ted said. "They've got enough to finish the job right now."
"How many?" Roland asked.
"About three hundred," Dinky said.
"Three hundred and seven, to be exact," Ted said. "We're quartered in five dorms, although that word conjures the wrong image. We have our own suites, and as much-or as little-contact with our fellow Breakers as we wish."
"And you know what you're doing?" Susannah asked.
"Yes. Although most don't spend a lot of time thinking about it."
"I don't understand why they don't mutiny."