Wolves of the Calla - Stephen King [66]
When Andy spoke again, it no longer sounded like your well-meaning but rather stupid uncle, the one who believed the alligator-boy and Elvis-is-alive-in-Buenos-Aires stories Inside View printed were absolutely true. This Andy sounded emotionless and somehow dead.
Like a real robot, in other words.
“What’s your password, sai Eddie?”
“Huh?”
“Password. You have ten seconds. Nine…eight…seven…”
Eddie thought of spy movies he’d seen. “You mean I say something like ‘The roses are blooming in Cairo’ and you say ‘Only in Mrs. Wilson’s garden’ and then I say—”
“Incorrect password, sai Eddie…two…one…zero.” From within Andy came a low thudding sound which Eddie found singularly unpleasant. It sounded like the blade of a sharp cleaver passing through meat and into the wood of the chopping block beneath. He found himself thinking for the first time about the Old People, who had surely built Andy (or maybe the people before the Old People, call them the Really Old People—who knew for sure?). Not people Eddie himself would want to meet, if the last remainders in Lud had been any example.
“You may retry once,” said the cold voice. It bore a resemblance to the one that had asked Eddie if Eddie would like his horoscope told, but that was the best you could call it—a resemblance. “Would you retry, Eddie of New York?”
Eddie thought fast. “No,” he said, “that’s all right. The info’s restricted, huh?”
Several clicks. Then: “Restricted: confined, kept within certain set limits, as information in a given document or q-disc; limited to those authorized to use that information; those authorized announce themselves by giving the password.” Another pause to think and then Andy said, “Yes, Eddie. That info’s restricted.”
“Why?” Eddie asked.
He expected no answer, but Andy gave him one. “Directive Nineteen.”
Eddie clapped him on his steel side. “My friend, that don’t surprise me at all. Directive Nineteen it is.”
“Would you care to hear an expanded horoscope, Eddie-sai?”
“Think I’ll pass.”
“What about a tune called ‘The Jimmy Juice I Drank Last Night?’ It has many amusing verses.” The reedy note of a pitch-pipe came from somewhere in Andy’s diaphragm.
Eddie, who found the idea of many amusing verses somehow alarming, increased his pace toward the others. “Why don’t we just put that on hold?” he said. “Right now I think I need another cup of coffee.”
“Give you joy of it, sai,” Andy said. To Eddie he sounded rather forlorn. Like Bosco Bob when you told him you thought you’d be too busy for PAL League that summer.
Three
Roland sat on a stone outcrop, drinking his own cup of coffee. He listened to Eddie without speaking himself, and with only one small change of expression: a minute lift of the eyebrows at the words Directive Nineteen.
Across the clearing from them, Slightman the Younger had produced a kind of bubble-pipe that made extraordinarily tough bubbles. Oy chased them, popped several with his teeth, then began to get the hang of what Slightman seemed to want, which was for him to herd them into a fragile little pile of light. The bubble-pile made Eddie think of the Wizard’s Rainbow, those dangerous glass balls. And did Callahan really have one? The worst of the bunch?
Beyond the boys, at the edge of the clearing, Andy stood with his silver arms folded over the stainless-steel curve of his chest. Waiting to clean up the meal he had hauled to them and then cooked, Eddie supposed. The perfect servant. He cooks, he cleans, he tells you about the dark lady you’ll meet. Just don’t expect him to violate Directive Nineteen. Not without the password, anyway.
“Come over to me, folks, would you?” Roland asked, raising his voice slightly. “Time we had a bit of palaver. Won’t be long, which is good, at least for us, for we’ve already had our own, before sai Callahan came to us, and after