The snake in the garden,Callahan thought.This guy Stephen King, who supposedly thought me up, may only exist in one world, but what do you bet North Central Positronics exists in all of them? Sure, because that's the Crimson King's rig, just like Sombra's his rig, and he only wants what any power-mad despot in history has wanted: to be everywhere, own everything, and basically control the universe.
"Or bring it to darkness," he murmured.
"Pere!" Jake called impatiently."Pere!"
"I'm coming," he said, and hurried across to Jake with his hands full of shiny gold tokens.
Fourteen
The key came out of Locker 883 after Jake had inserted nine of the tokens, but he went on putting them in until all twenty-seven were gone. At this point the small glass port-hole under the locker-number turned red.
"Maxed out," Jake said with satisfaction. They were still talking in those low mustn't-wake-the-baby tones, and this long, cavernous room was indeed very quiet. Jake guessed it would be bedlam at eight in the morning and five in the afternoon on working days, with folks coming and going from the subway station below, some of them storing their gear in the short-term coin-op lockers. Now there was just the ghostly sound of conversation drifting down the escalator well from the few shops still open in the arcade and the rumble of another approaching train.
Callahan slid the bowling bag into the narrow opening. Slid it back as far as it would go with Jake watching anxiously. Then he closed the locker and Jake turned the key. "Bingo," Jake said, putting the key in his pocket. Then, with anxiety: "Will it sleep?"
"I think so," Callahan said. "Like it did in my church. If another Beam breaks, it might wake up and work mischief, but then, if another Beam lets go - "
"If another Beam lets go, a little mischief won't matter," Jake finished for him.
Callahan nodded. "The only thing is...well, you know where we're going. And you know what we're apt to find there."
Vampires. Low men. Other servants of the Crimson King, maybe. Possibly Walter, the hooded man in black who sometimes shifted his shape and form and called himself Randall Flagg. Possibly even the Crimson King himself.
Yes, Jake knew.
"If you have the touch," Callahan continued, "we have to assume that some of them do, too. It's possible they could pick this place - and the locker-number - out of our minds. We're going to go in there and try to get her, but we have to recognize that the chances of failure are fairly high. I've never fired a gun in my life, and you're not - forgive me, Jake, but you're not exactly a battle-hardened veteran."
"I've got one or two under my belt," Jake said. He was thinking about his time with Gasher. And about the Wolves, of course.
"This is apt to be different," Callahan said. "I'm just saying it might be a bad idea for us to be taken alive. If it comes to that. Do you understand?"
"Don't worry," Jake said in a tone of chilling comfort. "Don't worry about that, Pere. We won't be."
Fifteen
Then they were outside again, looking for another cab. Thanks to the maid's tip-money, Jake reckoned they had just about enough remaining cash to take them to the Dixie Pig. And he had an idea that once they entered the Pig, their need for ready cash - or anything else - would cease.
"Here's one," Callahan said, and waved his arm in a flagging gesture. Jake, meanwhile, looked back at the building from which they had just emerged.
"You're sure it'll be safe there?" he asked Callahan as the cab swerved toward them, honking relentlessly at a slow-poke between him and his fares.
"According to my old friend sai Magruder, that's the safest storage area in Manhattan," Callahan said. "Fifty times safer than the coin-op lockers in Penn Station and Grand Central, he said...and of course here you've got the long-term storage option. There are probably other storage places in New York, but we'll be gone before they open - one way or the other."
The cab pulled over. Callahan held the door for Jake, and Oy hopped unobtrusively in right behind him. Callahan spared one final glance at the twin towers of the World Trade Center before getting in himself.
"It's good to go until June of two thousand and two, unless someone breaks in and steals it."
"Or if the building falls down on top of it," Jake said.
Callahan laughed, although Jake hadn't quite sounded as if he were joking. "Never happen. And if it did...well, one glass ball under a hundred and ten stories of concrete and steel? Even a glass ball filled with deep magic? That'd be one way to take care of the nasty thing, I guess."
Sixteen
Jake had asked the cabbie to drop them off at Lexington and Fifty-ninth, just to be on the safe side, and after looking to Callahan for approval, he gave the sai all but their last two dollars.
On the corner of Lex and Sixtieth, Jake pointed to a number of cigarette ends mashed into the sidewalk. "This is where he was," he said. "The man playing the guitar."
He bent down, picked up one of the butts, and held it in his palm for a moment or two. Then he nodded, smiled cheerlessly, and readjusted the strap on his shoulder. The Orizas clanked faintly inside the rush bag. Jake had counted them in the back of the cab and hadn't been surprised to find there were exactly nineteen.
"No wonder she stopped," Jake said, dropping the butt and wiping his hand on his shirt. And suddenly he sang, low but perfectly on pitch: "I am a man...of constant sorrow...I've seen trouble...all my days...I'm bound to ride...that Northern railroad...Perhaps I'll take...the very next train."
Callahan, keyed up already, felt his nerves crank yet tighter. Of course he recognized the song. Only when Susannah had sung it that night on the Pavilion - the same night Roland had won the hearts of the Calla by dancing the fiercest commala many had ever seen - she'd substituted "maid" for "man."