Page 11 (1/2)

24

THEY CAMPED ABOUT FIFTEEN ht, slept the sleep of the coh, although his dreaht at sunrise Eddie kindled a slanced at Susannah as a pistol-shot rang out in the woods nearby

"Breakfast," she said

Roland returned threeover one shoulder On it lay the freshly gutted corpse of a rabbit Susannah cooked it They ate and ine what it would be like to have aup short

25

SHORTLY AFTER NOON THEY entered an area where most of the trees had been pulled over and the bushes h a cyclone had touched down herea wide and dismal alley of destruction

"We&039;re close to the place ant to find," Roland said "He pulled down everything to clear the sightlines Our friend the bear wanted no surprises He was big, but not complacent"

"Has it left us any surprises?" Eddie asked

"He may have done so" Roland smiled a little and touched Eddie on the shoulder "But there&039;s this - they&039;ll be old surprises"

Their progress through this zone of destruction was slow Most of the fallen trees were very old -- but they still le to create a forh if all three of theer&039;s back in her harness, it becaravation and endurance

The flattened trees and jumbles of underbrush served to obscure the bear&039;s backtrail, and that also worked to slow their speed Until mid-day they had followed claw-marks as clear as trail-blazes on the trees Here, however, near its starting point, the bear&039;s rage had not been full-blown, and these handy signs of its passage disappeared Roland s in the bushes and tufts of hair on the tree-trunks over which the bear had climbed It took all afternoon to cross three miles of this decayed ju to lose the light and would have to cas when they came to a thin skirt of alders Beyond it, he could hear a strea noisily over a bed of stones Behind theht across the ju the fallen trees into crisscrossing black shapes like Chinese ideograms

Roland called a halt and eased Susannah down He stretched his back, twisting it this way and that with his hands on his hips

"That it for the night?" Eddie asked

Roland shook his head "Give Eddie your gun, Susannah"

She did as he said, looking at hily

"Come on, Eddie The place ant is on the other side of those trees We&039;ll have a look We ht do a little work, as well"

"What makes you think - "

"Open your ears"

Eddie listened and realized he heardit for some time now "I don&039;t want to leave Susannah"

"We&039;re not going far and she has a good loud voice Besides, if there&039;s danger, it&039;s ahead - we&039;ll be between it and her"

Eddie looked down at Susannah

"Go on - just make sure you&039;re back soon" She looked back the way they had cohtful eyes "I don&039;t know if there&039;s ha ants here or not, but it feels like there are"

"We&039;ll be back before dark," Roland promised He started toward the screen of alders, and after a moment, Eddie followed him

26

FIFTEEN YARDS INTO THE trees, Eddie realized that they were following a path, one the bear had probably made for itself over the years The alders bent above thean to sort the noise He could feel it in his feet - a faint vibration, as if so in the earth Above it, closer and ht scratches - squeals, squeaks, chitterings

Roland placed his ainst Eddie&039;s ear and said, "I think there&039;s little danger if we&039;re quiet"

They ain He drew his gun and used the barrel to brush aside a branch which hung heavy with sunset-tinted leaves Eddie looked through this s where the bear had lived for so long - the base of operations froe and terror

There was no undergrowth here; the ground had been beaten bald long since A streah and ran through the arrowhead-shaped clearing On their side of the streaainst the wall, was a h Its roof was curved, and it reminded Eddie of a subway entrance The front was painted in diagonal yellow and black stripes The earth which floored the clearing was not black, like the topsoil in the forest, but a strange powdery gray It was littered with bones, and after a ray soil wasback to dust

Things were , chittering noises Four no, five of theest about the size of a Collie pup They were robots, Eddie realized, or so like robots They were similar to each other and to the bear they had undoubtedly served in one way only - atop each of them, a tiny radar-dish turned rapidly

More thinking caps, Eddie thought My God, what kind of world is this, anyway?

The largest of these devices looked a little like the Tonka tractor Eddie had gotten for his sixth or seventh birthday; its treads churned up tiny gray clouds of bone-dust as it rolled along Another looked like a stainless steel rat A third appeared to be a snake constructed of jointed steel seg They for around and around on a deep course they had carved in the ground Looking at them made Eddie think of cartoons he had seen in the stacks of old Saturday Evening Post azines his mother had for some reason saved and stored in the front hall of their apart men paced ruts in the carpet while they waited for their wives to give birth

As his eyes grew used to the sireat many more than five of these assorted freaks There were at least a dozen others that he could see and probably more hidden behind the bony remains of the bear&039;s old kills The difference was that the others weren&039;tThe members of the bear&039;syears until just this little group of five were leftand they did not sound very healthy, with their squeaks and squalls and rusty chitterings The snake in particular had a hesitant, crippled look as it followed the mechanical rat around and around the circle Every now and then the device which followed the snake - a steel block that walked on stubby ive the snake a nudge, as if telling it to hurry the fuck up

Eddie wondered what their job had been Surely not protection; the bear had been built to protect itself, and Eddie guessed that if old Shardik had come upon the three of them while still in its prime, it would have chewed them up and spat them out in short order Perhaps these little robots had been its uessed that they could be dangerous, but only in their own defenseor their master&039;s They did not see pitiful about theone, and Eddie believed they knew it soe, inhuman sadness Old and alled their anxious way around the worry-track they had dug in this godforsaken clearing, and it almost seemed to Eddie that he could read the confused run of their thoughts; Oh dear, oh dear, what now? What is our purpose, now that He is gone? And ill take care of us, now that He is gone? Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear

Eddie felt a tug on the back of his leg and ca in fear and surprise He wheeled, cocking Roland&039;s gun, and saw Susannah looking up at hi breath and dropped the ha position He knelt, put his hands on Susannah&039;s shoulders, kissed her cheek, then whispered in her ear: "I ca a bullet in your silly head - what are you doing here?"

"Wanted to see," she whispered back, looking not even slightly abashed Her eyes shifted to Roland as he also hunkered beside her "Besides, it was spooky back there by myself"

She had sustained a nuh the brush, but Roland had to adhost when she wanted to be; he hadn&039;t heard a thing He took a rag (the last remnant of his old shirt) from his back pocket and wiped the little trickles of blood from her arms He examined his work for a moment and then dabbed at a small nick on her forehead as well "Have your look, then," he said His voice was hardly uess you earned it"

He used one hand to open a sightline at her level in the hock and greenberry bushes, then waited while she stared raptly into the clearing At last she pulled back and Roland allowed the bushes to close again

"I feel sorry for them," she whispered "Isn&039;t that crazy?"

"Not at all," Roland whispered back "They are creatures of great sadness, I think, in their own strange way Eddie is going to put thean to shake his head at once

"Yes, you are unless you want to hunker here in what you call &039;the toolies&039; all night Go for the hats The little twirling things"

"What if I miss?" Eddie whispered at hied