The gunslinger looked a trifle sour. "Nothing in your city seemed very fine to me, but the people who lived there did not seem to be survivors of such a plague as this, no. "
"There was something called Legionnaires' disease," Eddie said. "And AIDS, of course - "
"That's the sex one, right?" Susannah asked. "Transmitted by fruits and drug addicts?"
"Yes, but calling gays fruits isn't the done thing in my when," Eddie said. He tried a smile, but it felt stiff and unnatural on his face and he put it away again.
"So this . . . this never happened," Jake said, tentatively touching the face of Christ on the back page of the paper.
"But it did," Roland said. "It happened in June-sowing of the year one thousand nine hundred and eighty-six. And here we are, in the aftermath of that plague. If Eddie's right about the length of time that has gone by, the plague of this 'superflu' was this past June-sowing. We're in Topeka, Kansas, in the Reap of eighty-six. That's the when of it. As to the where, all we know is that it's not Eddie's. It might be yours, Susannah, or yours, Jake, because you left your world before this arrived. " He tapped the date on the paper, then looked at Jake. "You said something to me once. I doubt if you remember, but I do; it's one of the most important things anyone has ever said to me: 'Go, then, there are other worlds than these. ' "
"More riddles," Eddie said, scowling.
"Is it not a fact that Jake Chambers died once and now stands before us, alive and well? Or do you doubt my story of his death under the mountains? That you have doubted my honesty from time to time is something I know. And I suppose you have your reasons. "
Eddie thought it over, then shook his head. "You lie when it suits your purpose, but I think that when you told us about Jake, you were too fucked up to manage anything but the truth. "
Roland was startled to find himself hurt by what Eddie had said - You lie when it suits your purpose - but he went on. After all, it was essentially true.
"We went back to time's pool," the gunslinger said, "and pulled him out before he could drown. "
"You pulled him out," Eddie corrected.
"You helped, though," Roland said, "if only by keeping me alive, you helped, but let that go for now. It's beside the point. What's more to it is that there are many possible worlds, and an infinity of doors leading into them. This is one of those worlds; the thinny we can hear is one of those doors . . . only one much bigger than the ones we found on the beach. "
"How big?" Eddie asked. "As big as a warehouse loading door, or as big as the warehouse?"
Roland shook his head and raised his hands palms to the sky - who knows?
"This thinny," Susannah said. "We're not just near it, are we? We came through it. That's how we got here, to this version of Topeka. "
"We may have," Roland admitted. "Did any of you feel something strange? A sensation of vertigo, or transient nausea?"
They shook their heads. Oy, who had been watching Jake closely, also shook his head this time.
"No," Roland said, as if he had expected this. "But we were concentrating on the riddling - "
"Concentrating on not getting killed," Eddie grunted.
"Yes. So perhaps we passed through without being aware. In any case, thinnies aren't natural - they are sores on the skin of existence, able to exist because things are going wrong. Things in all worlds. "
"Because things are wrong at the Dark Tower," Eddie said.
Roland nodded. "And even if this place - this when, this where - is not the ka of your world now, it might become that ka. This plague - or others even worse - could spread. Just as the thinnies will continue to spread, growing in size and number. I've seen perhaps half a dozen in my years of searching for the Tower, and heard maybe two dozen more. The first . . . the first one 1 ever saw was when I was still very young. Near a town called Hambry. " He rubbed his hand up his cheek again, and was not surprised to find sweat amid the bristles. Love me, Roland. If you love me, then love me.
"Whatever happened to us, it bumped us out of your world, Roland," Jake said. "We've fallen off the Beam. Look. " He pointed at the sky. The clouds were moving slowly above them, but no longer in the direction Blame's smashed snout was pointing. Southeast was still southeast, but the signs of the Beam which they had grown so used to following were gone.
"Does it matter?" Eddie asked. "I mean . . . the Beam may be gone, but the Tower exists in all worlds, doesn't it?"
"Yes," Roland said, "but it may not be accessible from all worlds. "
The year before beginning his wonderful and fulfilling career as a heroin addict, Eddie had done a brief and not-very-successful turn as a bicycle messenger. Now he remembered certain office-building elevators he'd been in while making deliveries, buildings with banks or investment firms in them, mostly. There were some floors where you couldn't stop the car and get off unless you had a special card to swipe through the slot below the numbers. When the elevator came to those locked-off floors, the number in the window was replaced by an X.
"I think," Roland said, "we need to find the Beam again. "
"I'm convinced," Eddie said. "Come on, let's get going. " He took a couple of steps, then turned back to Roland with one eyebrow raised. "Where?"
"The way we were going," Roland said, as if that should have been obvious, and walked past Eddie in his dusty, broken boots, headed for the park across the way.