The Dark Tower - Stephen King [83]
He could wait; felt no deep need beyond the eagerness of the child that wants everything and wants it now. Certainly he didn’t suffer the bright intensity of Walter’s hate. His own feelings were more complex, tinctured by sadness and loneliness and—yes, he’d do better to admit it—love. Mordred felt he wanted to enjoy this melancholy for awhile. There would be food aplenty on the other side of this door, he was sure of it, so he’d eat. And grow. And watch. He would watch his father, and his sister-mother, and his ka-brothers, Eddie and Jake. He’d watch them camp at night, and light their fires, and form their circle around it. He’d watch from his place that was outside. Perhaps they would feel him and look uneasily into the dark, wondering what was out there.
He approached the door, reared up before it, and pawed at it questioningly. Too bad, really, there wasn’t a peephole. And it probably would be safe to go through now. What had Walter said? That Roland’s ka-tet meant to release the Breakers, whatever they might be (it had been in Walter’s mind, but Mordred hadn’t bothered looking for it).
There’s plenty to occupy em right where they come out—they might find the reception a trifle hot!
Had Roland and his children perhaps been killed on the other side? Ambushed? Mordred believed he would have known had that happened. Would have felt it in his mind like a Beamquake.
In any case he would wait awhile before creeping through the door with the cloud-and-lightning sigul on it. And when he was through? Why, he’d find them. And overhear their palaver. And watch them, both awake and asleep. Most of all, he would watch the one Walter had called his White Father. His only real father now, if Walter had been right about the Crimson King’s having gone insane.
And for the present?
Now, for a little while, I may sleep.
The spider ran up the wall of this room, which was full of great hanging objects, and spun a web. But it was the baby—naked, and now looking fully a year old—that slept in it, head down and high above any predators that might come hunting.
Chapter IV:
The Door into Thunderclap
One
When the four wanderers woke from their sleep (Roland first, and after six hours exactly), there were more popkins stacked on a cloth-covered tray, and and also more drinks. Of the domestic robot, however, there was no sign.
“All right, enough,” Roland said, after calling Nigel for the third time. “He told us he was on his last legs; seems that while we slept, he fell off em.”
“He was doing something he didn’t want to do,” Jake said. His face looked pale and puffy. From sleeping too heavily was Roland’s first thought, and then wondered how he could be such a fool. The boy had been crying for Pere Callahan.
“Doing what?” Eddie asked, slipping his pack over one shoulder and then hoisting Susannah onto his hip. “For who? And why?”
“I don’t know,” Jake said. “He didn’t want me to know, and I didn’t feel right about prying. I know he was just a robot, but with that nice English voice and all, he seemed like more.”
“That’s a scruple you may need to get over,” Roland said, as gently as he could.
“How heavy am I, sugar?” Susannah asked Eddie cheerfully. “Or maybe what I should ask is ‘How bad you missin that good old wheelchair?’ Not to mention the shoulder-rig.”
“Suze, you hated that piggyback rig from the word go and we both know it.”
“Wasn’t askin about that, and you know it.”
It always fascinated Roland when Detta crept unheard into Susannah’s voice, or—even more spooky—her face. The woman herself seemed unaware of these incursions, as her husband did now.
“I’d carry you to the end of the world,” Eddie said sentimentally, and kissed the tip of her nose. “Unless you put on another ten pounds or so, that is. Then I might have to leave you and look for a lighter lady.”
She poked