TEN
The bunkroom held the ghostly aroma of ancient spices: cinnamon and clove. Jake wondered—in a
distracted, back-of-the-mind way—if the tombs beneath the Pyramids had smelled this way when the first
explorers had broken into them. From the upper bunk in the corner, the reclining skeleton grinned at him, as
if in welcome. Feel like a nap, little trailhand? I'm taking a long one! It's ribcage shimmered with silky
overlays of spiderweb, and Jake wondered in that same distracted way how many generations of spider-
babies had been born in that empty cavity. On another pillow lay a jawbone, prodding a ghostly, ghastly
memory from the back of the boy's mind. Once, in a world where he had died, the gunslinger had found a
bone like that. And used it
The forefront of his mind pounded with two cold questions and one even colder resolve. The questions were
how long it would take them to get here and whether or not they would discover his pony. If Slightman had
been riding a horse of his own, Jake was sure the amiable little pony would have whinnied a greeting already.
Luckily, Slightman was on foot, as he had been last time. Jake would have come on foot himself, had he
known his goal was less than a mile east of the river. Of course, when he'd snuck away from the Rocking B,
he hadn't even been sure that he had a goal.
The resolve was to kill both the tin-man and the flesh-and-blood man if he was discovered. If he could, that
was. Andy might be tough, but those bulging blue-glass eyes looked like a weak point. If he could blind him
—
There'll be water if God wills it, said the gunslinger who now always lived in his head, for good and ill. Your
job now is to hide if you can. Where?
Not in the bunks. All of them were visible in the monitor covering this room and there was no way he could
impersonate a skeleton. Under one of the two bunk-stacks at the rear? Risky, but it would serve… unless…
Jake spied another door. He sprang forward, depressed the lever-handle, and pulled the door open. It was a
closet, and closets made fine hiding places, but this one was filled with jumbles of dusty electronic
equipment, top to bottom. Some of it fell out.
"Beans!" he whispered in a low, urgent voice. He picked up what had fallen, tossed it high and low, then shut
the closet door again. Okay, it would have to be under one of the beds—
"WELCOME TO ARC QUADRANT OUTPOST 16," boomed the recorded voice. Jake flinched, and saw
another door, this one to his left and standing partway open. Try the door or squeeze under one of the two
tiers of bunks at the rear of the room? He had time to try one bolthole or the other, but not both. "THIS IS A
MEDIUM SECURITY OUTPOST."
Jake went for the door, and it was just as well he went when he did, because Slightman didn't let the
recording finish its spiel. "Ninety-nine," came his voice from the loudspeakers, and the recording thanked
him.
It was another closet, this one empty except for two or three moldering shirts in one corner and a dust-caked
poncho slumped on a hook. The air was almost as dusty as the poncho, and Oy uttered three fast, delicate
sneezes as he padded in.
Jake dropped to one knee and put an arm around Oy's slender neck. "No more of that unless you want to get
us both killed," he said. "You be quiet, Oy."
"Kiyit Oy," the bumbler whispered back, and winked. Jake reached up and pulled the door back to within two
inches of shut, as it had been before. He hoped.
ELEVEN
He could hear them quite clearly—too clearly. Jake realized there were mikes and speakers all over this
place. The idea did nothing for his peace of mind. Because if he and Oy could hear them…
It was the cactuses they were talking about, or rather that Slightman was talking about. He called them boom-
flurry, and wanted to know what had gotten them all fashed.
"Almost certainly more rock-cats, sai," Andy said in his complacent, slightly prissy voice. Eddie said Andy
reminded him of a robot named C3PO in Star Wars, a movie to which Jake had been looking forward. He had
missed it by less than a month. "It's their mating season, you know."
"Piss on that," Slightman said. "Are you telling me boom-flurry don't know rock-cats from something they
can actually catch and eat? Someone's been out here, I tell you. And not long since."
A cold thought slipped into Jake's mind: had the floor of the Dogan been dusty? He'd been too busy gawking
at the control panels and TV monitors to notice. If he and Oy had left tracks, those two might have noticed
already. They might only be pretending to have a conversation about the cactuses while they actually crept
toward the bunkroom door.
Jake took the Ruger out of the docker's clutch and held it in his right hand with his thumb on the safety.
"A guilty conscience doth make cowards of us all," Andy said in his complacent, just-thought-you'd-like-toknow
voice. "That's my free adaptation of a—"
"Shut up, you bag of bolts and wires," Slightman snarled. "I—" Then he screamed. Jake felt Oy stiffen
against him, felt his fur begin to rise. The bumbler started to growl. Jake slipped a hand around his snout.
"Let go!" Slightman cried out. "Let go of me!"
"Of course, sai Slightman," Andy said, now sounding solicitous. "I only pressed a small nerve in your elbow,
you know. There would be no lasting damage unless I applied at least twenty foot-pounds of pressure."
"Why in the hell would you do that?" Slightman sounded injured, almost whiny. "En't I doing all you could
want, and more? En't I risking my life for my boy?"
"Not to mention a few little extras," Andy said silkily. "Your spectacles… the music machine you keep deep
down in your saddlebag… and, of course—"
"You know why I'm doing it and what'd happen to me if I was found out," Slightman said. The whine had
gone out of his voice. Now he sounded dignified and a little weary. Jake listened to that tone with growing
dismay. If he got out of this and had to squeal on Benny's Da', he wanted to squeal on a villain. "Yar, I've
taken a few little extras, you say true, I say thankya. Glasses, so I can see better to betray the people I've
known all my life. A music machine so I won't have to hear the conscience you prate about so easy and can
get to sleep at night. Then you pinch something in my arm that makes me feel like my by-Riza eyes are going
to fall right out of my by-Riza head.'"
"I allow it from the rest of them," Andy said, and now his voice had changed. Jake once more thought of
Blaine, and once more his dismay grew. What if Tian Jaffords heard this voice? What if Vaughn Eisenhart
heard it? Overholser? The rest of the folken? "They heap contumely on my head like hot coals and never do I
raise a word o' protest, let alone a hand. 'Go here, Andy. Go there, Andy. Stop yer foolish singing, Andy. Stuff
yer prattle. Don't tell us of the future, because we don't want to hear it.' So I don't, except of the Wolves,
because they'd hear what makes em sad and I'd tell em, yes I would; to me each tear's a drop of gold. 'You're
nobbut a stupid pile of lights n wires,' they say. 'Tell us the weather, sing the babby to sleep, then get't'hell out
o' here.' And I allow it. Foolish Andy am I, every child's toy and always fair game for a tongue-whipping. But
I won't take a tongue-whipping from you, sai. You hope to have a future in the Calla after the Wolves are
done with it for another few years, don't you?"
"You know I do," Slightman said, so low Jake could barely hear him. "And I deserve it."
"You and your son, both say thankya, passing your days in the Calla, both say commala! And that can
happen, but it depends on more than the death of the outworlders. It depends on my silence. If you want it, I
demand respect."
"That's absurd," Slightman said after a brief pause. From his place in the closet, Jake agreed wholeheartedly.
A robot demanding respect was absurd. But so was a giant bear patrolling an empty forest, a Morlock thug
trying to unravel the secrets of dipolar computers, or a train that lived only to hear and solve new riddles.
"And besides, hear me I beg, how can I respect you when I don't even respect myself?"
There was a mechanical click in response to this, very loud. Jake had heard Blaine make a similar sound
when he—or it— had felt the absurd closing in, threatening to fry his logic circuits. Then Andy said: "No
answer, nineteen. Connect and report, sai Slightman. Let's have done with this."
"All right."
There were thirty or forty seconds' worth of keyboard-clatter, then a high, warbling whistle that made Jake
wince and Oy whine far back in his throat. Jake had never heard a sound quite like it; he was from the New
York of 1977, and the word modem would have meant nothing to him.
The shriek cut off abruptly. There was a moment's silence. Then: "THIS IS ALGUL SIENTO. FINLI O'
TEGO HERE. PLEASE GIVE YOUR PASSWORD. YOU HAVE TEN SEC—"
"Saturday," Slightman replied, and Jake frowned. Had he ever heard that happy weekend word on this side?
He didn't think so.
"THANK YOU. ALGUL SIENTO ACKNOWLEDGES. WE ARE ONLINE." There was another brief,
shrieking whistle. Then: "REPORT, SATURDAY."
Slightman told of watching Roland and "the younger one" going up to the Cave of the Voices, where there
was now some sort of door, very likely conjured by the Manni. He said he'd used the far-seer and thus gotten
a very good look—
"Telescope," Andy said. He had reverted to his slightly prissy, complacent voice. "Such are called
telescopes."
"Would you care to make my report, Andy?" Slightman inquired with cold sarcasm.
"Cry pardon," Andy said in a long-suffering voice. "Cry pardon, cry pardon, go on, go on, as ye will."
There was a pause. Jake could imagine Slightman glaring at the robot, the glare robbed of its ferocity by the
way the foreman would have to crane his neck in order to deliver it. Finally he went on.
"They left their horses below and walked up. They carried a pink sack which they passed from hand to hand,
as if 'twere heavy. Whatever was in it had square edges; I could make that out through the telescope far-seer.
May I offer two guesses?"
"YES."
"First, they might have been putting two or three of the Pere's most valuable books in safekeeping. If that's
the case, a Wolf should be sent to destroy them after the main mission's accomplished."
"WHY?" The voice was perfectiy cold. Not a human being's voice, Jake was sure of that. The sound of it
made him feel weak and afraid.
"Why, as an example, do it please ya," Slightman said, as if this should have been obvious. "As an example
to the priest!"
"CALLAHAN WILL VERY SOON BE BEYOND EXAMPLES," the voice said. "WHAT IS YOUR OTHER
GUESS?"
When Slightman spoke again, he sounded shaken. Jake hoped the traitor son of a bitch was shaken. He was
protecting his son, sure, his only son, but why he thought that gave him the right—
"It may have been maps," Slightman said. "I've thought long and long that a man who has books is apt to
have maps. He may have given em maps of the Eastern Regions leading into Thunderclap—they haven't been
shy about saying that's where they plan to head next. If it is maps they took up there, much good may they do
em, even if they live. Next year north'll be east, and likely the year after it'll swap places with south."
In the dusty darkness of the closet Jake could suddenly see Andy watching Slightman make his report. Andy's
blue electric eyes were flashing. Slightman didn't know—no one in the Calla knew—but that rapid flashing
was the way DNF-44821-V-63 expressed humor. He was, in fact, laughing at Slightman.
Because he knows better, Jake thought. Because he knows what's really in that bag. Bet a box of cookies that
he does.
Could he be so sure of that? Was it possible to use the touch on a robot?
If it can think, the gunslinger in his head spoke up, then you can touch it.
Well… maybe.
"Whatever it was, it's a damn good indication they really do plan to take the kids into the arroyos," Slightman
was saying. "Not that they'd put em in that cave."
"No, no, not that cave," Andy said, and although his voice was as prissy-serious as ever, Jake could imagine
his blue eyes flashing even faster. Almost stuttering, in fact. "Too many voices in that cave, they'd scare the
children! Yer-bugger!"
DNF-44821-V-63, Messenger Robot. Messenger! You could accuse Slightman of treachery, but how could
anyone accuse Andy of it? What he did, what he was, had been stamped on his chest for the whole world to
see. There it had been, in front of all of them. Gods!
Benny's Da', meanwhile, was plodding stolidly on with his report to Finli O' Tego, who was in some place
called Algul Siento.
"The mine he showed us on the map the Taverys drew is the Gloria, and the Gloria en't but a mile off from
the Cave of the Voices. But the bastard's trig. Can I give another guess?"
"YES."
"The arroyo that leads to the Gloria Mine splits off to the south about a quarter-mile in. There's another old
mine at the end of the spur. The Redbird Two, it's called. Their dinh is telling folks he means to put the kids
in the Gloria, and I think he'll tell em the same at the meeting he's going to call later this week, the one where
he asks leave to stand against the Wolves. But I b'lieve that when the time comes, he'll stick em in the
