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EDDIE AND SUSANNAH LOOKED up at the vastness of Blaine &039;s Cradle as the skies opened and the rain began to fall in torrents

"It&039;s a hell of a building, but they forgot the handicap ra his voice to be heard over the rain and thunder

"Neverout of the wheelchair "Let&039;s get up there and out of the rain"

Eddie looked dubiously up the incline of steps The risers were shallow but there were a lot of them "You sure, Suze?"

"Race you, white boy," she said, and began to wriggle upith uncanny ease, using hands, s

And she alery to contend with, and it slowed hi when they reached the top, and tendrils of stearabbed her under the ar her up, and then just held her with his hands locked together in the s her back into the chair, as he had htest idea why

Oh, give otten this far alive; that&039;s what&039;s got your glands pumped up and ready to party

Susannah licked her full lower lip and wound her strong fingers into his hair She pulled It hurt and at the same time it felt wonderful "Told you I&039;d beat you, white boy," she said in a low, husky voice

"Get outta here - I had youby half a step" He tried to sound less out of breath than he was and found it was impossible

"Maybe but it blew you out, didn&039;t it?" One hand left his hair, slid doard, and squeezed gently A sleah"

Thunder ruether

"Co"

She didn&039;t contradict hi her hand to his shoulder Eddie felt a pang of regret as he swung her back into her chair and ran her across vast flagstones and under cover of the roof He thought he saw the saret in Susannah&039;s eyes

When they were out of the downpour, Eddie paused and they looked back The Plaza of the Cradle, The Street of the Turtle, and all the city beyond was rapidly disappearing into a shifting gray curtain Eddie wasn&039;t a bit sorry Lud hadn&039;t earned itself a place in his mental scrapbook of fond memories

"Look," Susannahat a nearby down-spout It ended in a large, scaly fish-head that looked like a close relation to the dragon-gargoyles which decorated the corners of the Cradle Water ran from its mouth in a silver torrent

"This isn&039;t just a passing shower, is it?" Eddie asked

"Nope It&039;s gonna rain until it gets tired of it, and then it&039;s gonna rain some more, just for spite Maybe a week; onna matter to us, if Blaine decides he doesn&039;t like our looks and fries us Fire a shot to let Roland knoe got here, sugar, and then we&039;ll have us a look around See e can see"

Eddie pointed the Ruger into the gray sky, pulled the trigger, and fired the shot, which Roland heard a h the booby-trappedto persuade hiht, that his heart rong in its stubborn insistence that they had seen the last of the gunslinger and the boy Jake Then he ain, returned it to the waistband of his pants, and went back to Susannah He turned her chair away fro an aisle of colu She popped the cylinder of Roland&039;s gun and reloaded it as they went

Under the roof the rain had a secret, ghostly sound and even the harsh thundercracks were muted The columns which supported the structure were at least ten feet in dialoo con-versation of pigeons

Now a sign hanging on thick chrome-silver chains swam out of the shadows:

NORTH CENTRAL POSITRONICS WELCOMES YOU

TO THE CRADLE OF LUD

< - SOUTHEAST TRAVEL ( BLAINE )

NORTHWEST TRAVEL (PATRICIA) - >

"Noe know the name of the one that fell in the river," Eddie said "Patricia They got their colors wrong, though It&039;s supposed to be pink for girls and blue for boys, not the other way around"

"Maybe they&039;re both blue"

"They&039;re not Blaine &039;s pink"

"Hoould you know that?"

Eddie looked confused "I don&039;t kno but I do"

They followed the arrow pointing toward Blaine &039;s berth, entering what had to be a grand concourse Eddie didn&039;t have Susannah&039;s ability to see the past in clear, visionary flashes, but his iination nonetheless filled this vast, pillared space with a thousand hurrying people; he heard clicking heels andand farewell And over everything, the speakers chanting news of a dozen different destinations

Patricia is now boarding for Northwest Baronies

Will Passenger Killington, passenger Killington, please report to the information booth on the lower level?

Blaine is now arriving at Berth 2, and will be debarking shortly

Now there was only the pigeons

Eddie shivered

"Look at the faces," Susannah ive you the willies, but they sure do h up on the wall, a series of sculpted heads see down at them from the shadows - stern men with the harsh faces of executioners who are happy in their work Soranite shards and splinters seventy or eighty feet below their peers Those reeon dung

"They ," Eddie said, uneasily scanning all those thin lips and cracked, ees can look so smart and so completely pissed off at the sauy who knows There isn&039;t one of theive a crippled crab a crutch"

" &039;A heap of broken iives no shelter,&039; " Susannah ooseflesh waltz across the skin of his ars

"What&039;s that, Suze?"

"A poem by a man who must have seen Lud in his dreaet thean to push her again

Ahead, a vast grilled barrier like a castle barbican swalimpse of Blaine the Mono It was pink, just as Eddie had said it would be, a delicate shade which h theplatform in a smooth, streamlined bullet shape which looked more like flesh than ularequipped with a huge wiper Eddie knew there would be another triangular ith another big wiper on the other side of the mono&039;s nose, so that if you looked at Blaine head-on, it would seem to have a face, just like Charlie the Choo-Choo The wipers would look like slyly drooping eyelids