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EDDIE WENT BACK FOR Susannah&039;s wheelchair No one had to ask hiet hi was over, every muscle in his body see tremor He did not want either of theht ht know it for what it really was: excitement overload He had liked it Even when you added in the bat which had almost scalped him, he had liked it

That&039;s bullshit, buddy And you know it

The trouble was, he didn&039;t know it He had co Susannah had found out for herself after shooting the bear: he could talk about how he didn&039;t want to be a gunslinger, how he didn&039;t want to be tra around this crazy world where the three of them seemed to be the only hu else was to be standing on the corner of Broadway and Forty-second Street, popping his fingers,to Creedence Clearwater Revival blast out of his Walko by, those ultio-to-hell s in short skirts He could talk about those things until he was blue in the face, but his heart knew other things It knew that he had enjoyed blowing the electronic aun was his own private hand-held thunderstorh it had hurt his foot and even though he had been scared shitless In so scared part - actually seemed to add to the enjoyh, but his heart knew so back to New York appeared in front of hih it Not, at least, until he had seen the Dark Tower for hi to believe that Roland&039;s illness was a communicable disease

As he wrestled Susannah&039;s chair through the tangle of junk-alders, cursing the branches that whipped at his face and tried to poke his eyes out, Eddie found his, and the admission cooled his blood a little / want to see if it looks the way it did inlike thatthat would be really fantastic

And another voice spoke up inside I&039;ll bet his other friends - the ones with the naht fro Arthur&039;s court - I&039;ll bet they felt the same way, Eddie And they&039;re all dead Every one of thenized that voice, like it or not It belonged to Henry, and that made it a hard voice not to hear

28

ROLAND, WITH SUSANNAH BALANCED on his right hip, was standing in front of the metal box that looked like a subway entrance closed for the night Eddie left the wheelchair at the edge of the clearing and walked over As he did, the steady hu noise and the vibration under his feet beca the noise, he realized, was either inside the box or under it It seemed that he heard it not with his ears but sout

"So this is one of the twelve portals Where does it go, Roland? Disney World?"

Roland shook his head "I don&039;t knohere it goes Maybe nowhereor everywhere There&039;s a lot about my world I don&039;t know - surely you both have realized that And there are things I used to knohich have changed"

"Because the world has lanced at hiure of speech The world really is s are wearing out falling apart" He kicked diebox to illustrate his point

Eddie thought of the rough diagram of the portals which Roland had drawn in the dirt "Is this the edge of the world?" he asked, almost timidly "I mean, it doesn&039;t look hed a little "If there&039;s a drop-off, I don&039;t see it"

Roland shook his head "It&039;s not that kind of edge It&039;s the place where one of the Beaht"

"Beams?" Susannah asked "What Beams?"

"The Great Old Ones didn&039;t make the world, but they did re-make it Some tale-tellers say the Beams saved it; others say they are the seeds of the world&039;s destruction The Great Old Ones created the Beams They are lines of some sort lines which bind and hold"

"Are you talking about netism?" Susannah asked cautiously

His whole face lit up, transfor new and a, and for a moment Eddie kne Roland would look if he actually did reach his Tower

"Yes! Not just ravity and the proper alignment of space, size, and diether"

"Welcome to physics in the nuthouse," Eddie said in a low voice

Susannah ignored this "And the Dark Tower ? Is it soenerator? A central power-source for these Beams?"

"I don&039;t know"

"But you do know that this is point A," Eddie said "If alked long enough in a straight line, we&039;d coe of the world But before we did, we&039;d come to point B The center-point The Dark Tower "

The gunslinger nodded

"How long a trip is it? Do you know?"

"No But I know it&039;s very far, and that the distance groith every day that passes"

Eddie had bent to exahtened up and stared at Roland "That can&039;t be" He sounded like ato explain to a s in his closet, that there can&039;t be because there isn&039;t any such thing as the boogeyrow, Roland"

"Don&039;t they? When I was a boy, Eddie, there were maps I redoms of the Western Earth It showed my land, which was called by the name GileadIt showed the Downland Baronies, which were overrun by riot and civil war in the year after I won uns, and the hills, and the desert, and thedistance from Gilead to the Western Sea - a thousand miles or more - but it had taken me over twenty years to cross that distance"

"That&039;s impossible," Susannah said quickly, fearfully "Even if you walked the whole distance it couldn&039;t take twenty years"