Song of Susannah (The Dark Tower 6)

"The children?" Susannah asked. "The twins?" She paused. "The Wolves?"

"Nay, all of that was two dozen centuries later. Or more. But hear me now: there was one couple in Fedic who had ababy. You've no idea, Susannah of New York, how rare and wonderful that was in those days when most folk were as sterile as the elementals themselves, and those who weren't more often than not produced either slow mutants or monsters so terrible they were killed by their parents if they took more than a single breath. Most of them didn't. Butthis baby!"

She clasped her hands. Her eyes shone.

"It was round and pink and unblemished by so much as a portwine stain - perfect - and I knew after a single look what I'd been made for. I wasn't fucking for the sex of it, or because in coitus I was almost mortal, or because it brought death to most of my partners, but to have a baby like theirs. Like their Michael. "

She lowered her head slightly and said, "I would have taken him, you know. Would have gone to the man, fucked him until he was crazy, then whispered in his ear that he should kill his molly. And when she'd gone to the clearing at the end of the path, I would have fucked him dead and the baby - that beautiful little pink baby - would have been mine. D'you see?"

"Yes," Susannah said. She felt faintly sick. In front of them, in the middle of the street, the ghostly woman made yet another turn and started back again. Farther down, the huckster-robot honked out his seemingly eternal spiel:Girls, girls, girls! Some are humie and some are cybie, but who cares, you can't tell the difference!

"I discovered I couldn't go near them," Mia said. "It was as though a magic circle had been drawn around them. It was the baby, I suppose.

"Then came the plague. The Red Death. Some folks said something had been opened in the castle, some jar of demonstuff that should have been left shut forever. Others said the plague came out of the crack - what they called the Devil's Arse. Either way, it was the end of life in Fedic, life on the edge of Discordia. Many left on foot or in waggons. Baby Michael and his parents stayed, hoping for a train. Each day I waited for them to sicken - for the red spots to show on the baby's dear cheeks and fat little arms - but they never did; none of the three sickened. Perhaps theywere in a magic circle. I think they must have been. And a train came. It was Patricia. The mono. Do ya ken - "

"Yes," Susannah said. She knew all she wanted to about Blaine's companion mono. Once upon a time her route must have taken her over here as well as to Lud.

"Aye. They got on. I watched from the station platform, weeping my unseen tears and wailing my unseen cries. They got on with their sweet we

e one. . . only by then he was three or four years old, walking and talking. And they went. I tried to follow them, and Susannah, I could not. I was a prisoner here. Knowing my purpose was what made me so. "

Susannah wondered about that, but decided not to comment.

"Years and decades and centuries went by. In Fedic there were by then only the robots and the unburied bodies left over from the Red Death, turning to skeletons, then to dust.

"Then men came again, but I didn't dare go near them because they werehis men. " She paused. "Itsmen. "

"The Crimson King's. "

"Aye, they with the endlessly bleeding holes on their foreheads. They went there. " She pointed to the Fedic Dogan - the Arc 16 Experimental Station. "And soon their accursed machines were running again, just as if they still believed that machines could hold up the world. Not, ye ken, that holding it up is what they want to do! No, no, not they! They brought in beds - "

"Beds!" Susannah said, startled. Beyond them, the ghostly woman in the street rose once more on the balls of her feet and made yet one more graceful pirouette.

"Aye, for the children, although this was still long years before the Wolves began to bring em here, and long before you were part of your dinh's story. Yet that time did draw nigh, and Walter came to me. "

"Can you make that woman in the street disappear?" Susannah asked abruptly (and rather crossly). "I know she's a version of you, I get the idea, but she makes me. . . I don't know. . . nervous. Can you make her go away?"

"Aye, if you like. " Mia pursed her lips and blew. The disturbingly beautiful woman - the spirit without a name - disappeared like smoke.

For several moments Mia was quiet, once more gathering the threads of her story. Then she said, "Walter. . . saw me. Not like other men. Even the ones I fucked to death only saw what they wanted to see. Or whatI wanted them to see. " She smiled in unpleasant reminiscence. "I made some of them die thinking they were fucking their own mothers! You should have seen their faces!" Then the smile faded. "But Waltersaw me. "

"What did he look like?"

"Hard to tell, Susannah. He wore a hood, and inside it he grinned - such a grinning man he was - and he palavered with me. There. " She pointed toward the Fedic Good-Time Saloon with a finger that trembled slightly.

"No mark on his forehead, though?"

"Nay, I'm sure not, for he's not one of what Pere Callahan calls the low men. Their job is the Breakers. The Breakers and no more. "

Susannah began to feel the anger then, although she tried not to show it. Mia had access to all her memories, which meant all the inmost workings and secrets of their ka-tet. It was like discovering you'd had a burglar in the house who had tried on your underwear as well as stealing your money and going through your most personal papers.

It was awful.

"Walter is, I suppose, what you'd call the Crimson King's Prime Minister. He often travels in disguise, and is known in other worlds under other names, but always he is a grinning, laughing man - "

"I met him briefly," Susannah said, "under the name of Flagg. I hope to meet him again. "

"If you truly knew him, you'd wish for no such thing. "

"The Breakers you spoke of - where are they?"

"Why. . . Thunderclap, do'ee not know? The shadow-lands. Why do you ask?"

"No reason but curiosity," Susannah said, and seemed to hear Eddie:Ask any question she'll answer. Burn up the day. Give us a chance to catch up. She hoped Mia couldn't read her thoughts when they were separated like this. If she could, they were all likely up shit creek without a paddle. "Let's go back to Walter. Can we speak of him a bit?"

Mia signaled a weary acceptance that Susannah didn't quite believe. How long had it been since Mia had had an ear for any tale she might care to tell? The answer, Susannah guessed, was probably never. And the questions Susannah was asking, the doubts she was articulating. . . surely some of them must have passed through Mia's own head. They'd be banished quickly as the blasphemies they were, but still, come on, this was not a stupid woman. Unless obsessionmade you stupid. Susannah supposed a case could be made for that idea.

"Susannah? Bumbler got your tongue?"

"No, I was just thinking what a relief it must have been when he came to you. "

Mia considered that, then smiled. Smiling changed her, made her look girlish and artless and shy. Susannah had to remind herself that wasn't a look she could trust. "Yes! It was! Of course it was!"

"After discovering your purpose and being trapped here by it. . . after seeing the Wolves getting ready to store the kids and then operate on them. . . after all that, Walter comes. The devil, in fact, but at least he can see you. At least he can hear your sad tale. And he makes you an offer. "

"He said the Crimson King would give me a child," Mia said, and put her hands gently against the great globe of her belly. "My Mordred, whose time has come round at last. "

Twelve

Mia pointed again at the Arc 16 Experimental Station. What she had called the Dogan of Dogans. The last remnant of her smile lingered on her lips, but there was no happiness or real amusement in it now. Her eyes were shiny with fear and - perhaps - awe.

"That's where they changed me, made me mortal. Once there were many such places - there must have been - but I'd set my watch and warrant that's the only one left in all of In-World, Mid-World, or End-World. It's a place both wonderful and terrible. And it was there I was taken. "

"I don't understand what you mean. " Susannah was thinking of her Dogan. Which was, of course, based onJake's Dogan. It was certainly a strange place, with its flashing lights and multiple TV screens, but not frightening.

"Beneath it are passages which go under the castle," Mia said. "At the end of one is a door that opens on the Calla side of Thunderclap, just under the last edge of the darkness. That's the one the Wolves use when they go on their raids. "

Susannah nodded. That explained a lot. "Do they take the kiddies back the same way?"

"Nay, lady, do it please you; like many doors, the one that takes the Wolves from Fedic to the Calla side of Thunderclap goes in only one direction. When you're on the other side, it's no longer there. "