"Iasked this magic man's name and Trampas said, 'Iknow it not,
Ted, but I do know there's no magic in him anymore, for he's ceased whatever it was that ka meant him to do. If we leave him be, the Ka of Nineteen, which is that of his world, and the Ka of Ninety-nine, which is that of our world, will combine to-"
But there is no more. That is where the tape runs out.
EIGHTEEN
The take-up reel turned and the shiny brown tape-end flapped, making that low fwip-fwip-fwip sound until Eddie leaned forward and pressed STOP. He muttered "Fuck!" under his breath.
"Just when it was getting interesting," Jake said. "And those numbers again. Nineteen... and ninety-nine." He paused, then said them together. "Nineteen-ninety-nine." Then a third time. "1999. The Keystone Year in the Keystone World. Where Mia went to have her baby. Where Black Thirteen is now."
"Keystone World, Keystone Year," Susannah said. She took the last tape off the spindle, held it up to one of the lamps for a moment, then put it back in its box. "Where time always goes in one direction. Like it's s'posed to."
"Gan created time," Roland said. "This is what the old legends say. Gan rose from the void-some tales say from the sea, but both surely mean the Prim-and made the world. Then he tipped it with his finger and set it rolling and that was time."
Something was gathering in the cave. Some revelation.
They all felt it, a thing as close to bursting as Mia's belly had been at the end. Nineteen. Ninety-nine. They had been haunted by these numbers. They had turned up everywhere. They saw them in the sky, saw them written on board fences, heard them in their dreams.
Oy looked up, ears cocked, eyes bright.
Susannah said, "When Mia left the room we were in at the Plaza-Park to go to the Dixie Pig-room 1919, it was-I fell into a kind of trance. I had dreams... jailhouse-dreams... newscasters announcing that this one, that one, and t'other one had died-"
"You told us," Eddie said.
She shook her head violently. "Not all of it, I didn't. Because some of it didn't seem to make any sense. Hearing Dave Garroway say that President Kennedy's little boy was dead, for instance-little John-John, the one who saluted his Daddy's coffin when the catafalque went by. I didn't tell you because that part was nuts. Jake, Eddie, had litde John-John Kennedy died in your whens? Either of your whens?"
They shook their heads. Jake was not even sure of whom Susannah was speaking.
"But he did. In the Keystone World, and in a when beyond any of ours. I bet it was in the when of '99. So dies the son of the last gunslinger, O Discordia. What I think now is that I was kind of hearing the obituary page from The Time Traveler's Weekly. It was all different times mixed together. John John Kennedy, then Stephen King. I'd never heard of him, but David Brinkley said he wrote 'salem's Lot. That's the book Father Callahan was in, right?"
Roland and Eddie nodded.
"Father Callahan told us his story."
"Yeah," Jake said. "But what-"
She overrode him. Her eyes were hazy, distant. Eyes just a look away from understanding. "And then comes Brautigan to the Ka-Tet of Nineteen, and tells his tale. And look! Look at the tape counter!"
They leaned over. In the windows were 1999
"I think King might have written Ted's story, too," she said.
"Anybody want to take a guess what year that story showed up, or wz'Z/show up, in the Keystone World?"
"1999," Jake said, low. "But not the part we heard. The part we didn't hear. Ted's Connecticut Adventure."
"And you met him," Susannah said, looking at her dinh and her husband. 'You met Stephen King."
They nodded again.
"He made the Pere, he made Brautigan, he made us," she said, as if to herself, then shook her head. "No." All things serve the Beam. "He... he facilitated us."
"Yeah." Eddie was nodding. "Yeah, okay. That feels just about right."
"In my dream I was in a cell," she said. "I was wearing the clothes I had on when I got arrested. And David Brinkley said Stephen King was dead, woe, Discordia-something like that.
Brinkley said he was... "She paused, frowning. She would have demanded that Roland hypnotize the complete recollection out of her if it had been necessary, but it turned out not to be. "Brinkley said King was killed by a minivan while walking near his home in Lovell, Maine."
Eddie jerked. Roland sat forward, his eyes burning. "Do you say so?"
Susannah nodded firmly.
"He bought the house on Turtleback Lane!" the gunslinger roared. He reached out and took hold of Eddie's shirt. Eddie seemed not to even notice. "Of course he did! Ka speaks and the wind blows! He moved a little further along the Path of the Beam and bought the house where it's thin! Where we saw the walk-ins! Where we talked to John Cullum and then came back through! Do you doubt it? Do you doubt it so much as a single goddam bit?"
Eddie shook his head. Of course he didn't doubt it. It had a ring, like the one you got when you were at the carnival and hit the pedal just right with the mallet, hit it with all your force, and the lead slug flew straight to the top of the post and rang the bell up there. You got a Kewpie doll when you rang the bell, and was that because Stephen King thought it was a Kewpie doll? Because King came from the world where Gan started time rolling with His holy finger? Because if King says Kewpie, we all say Kewpie, and we all say thankya? If he'd somehow gotten the idea that the prize for ringing the Test Your Strength bell at the carnival was a Cloopie doll, would they say Cloopie? Eddie thought the answer was yes. He thought the answer was yes just as surely as Co-Op City was in Brooklyn.
"David Brinkley said King was fifty-two. You boys met him, so do the math. Could he have been fifty-two in the year of '99?"
"You bet your purity," Eddie said. He tossed Roland a dark, dismayed glance. "And since nineteen's the part we keep running into-Ted Stevens Brautigan, go on, count the letters!-
I bet it has to do with more than just the year. Nineteen-"
"It's a date," Jake said flatly. "Sure it is. Keystone Date in Keystone Year in Keystone World. The nineteenth of something, in the year of 1999. Most likely a summer month, because he was outwalking."
"It's summer over there right now," Susannah said. "It's June.
The 6-month. Turn 6 on its head and you get 9."
"Yeah, and spell dog backward, you get god," Eddie said, but he sounded uneasy.
"I think she's right," Jake said. "I think it's June 19th. That's when King gets turned into roadkill and even the chance that he might go back to work on the Dark Tower story-our story-is kaput. Gan's Beam is lost in the overload. Shardik's Beam is left, but it's already eroded." He looked at Roland, his face pale, his lips almost blue. "It'll snap like a toothpick."
"Maybe it's happened already," Susannah said.
"No," Roland said.
"How can you be sure?" she asked.
He gave her a wintry, humorless smile. "Because," he said, "we'd no longer be here."
NINETEEN
"How can we stop it from happening?" Eddie asked. "That guy Trampas told Ted it was ka."
"Maybe he got it wrong," Jake said, but his voice was thin.
Trailing. "It was only a rumor, so maybe he got it wrong. And hey, maybe King's got until July. Or August. Or what about September? It could be September, doesn't that seem likely?
September's the 9-month, after all..."
They looked at Roland, who was now sitting with his leg stretched out before him. "Here's where it hurts," he said, as if speaking to himself. He touched his right hip... then his ribs... last the side of his head. "I've been having headaches.
Worse and worse. Saw no reason to tell you." He drew his diminished right hand down his right side. "This is where he'll be hit. Hip smashed. Ribs busted. Head crushed. Thrown dead into the ditch. Ka... and the end of ka." His eyes cleared and he turned urgently to Susannah. "What date was it when you were in New York? Refresh me."
"June first of 1999."
Roland nodded and looked to Jake. "And you? The same, yes?"
"Yes."
"Then to Fedic... a rest... and on to Thunderclap." He paused, thinking, then spoke four words with measured emphasis. "There is still time."
"But time moves faster over there-"
"And if it takes one of those hitches-"
Their words overlapped. Then they fell quiet again, looking at him again.
"We can change ka," Roland said. "It's been done before.
There's always a price to pay-ka-shume, mayhap-but it can be done."
"How do we get there?" Eddie asked.
"There's only one way," Roland said. "Sheemie must send us.
Silence in the cave, except for a distant roll of the thunder that gave this dark land its name.
"We have two jobs," Eddie said. "The writer and the Breakers.
Which comes first?"
"The writer," Jake said. "While there's still time to save him."
But Roland was shaking his head.
"Why not?" Eddie cried. "Ah, man, why notfYou know how slippery time is over there! And it's one-way! If we miss the window, we'll never get another chance!"