Hammarskjold Plaza was a shrine.
SIX
There was a tap on his shoulder and Roland whirled about so suddenly that he drew glances of alarm. He was alarmed himself.
Not for years-perhaps since his early teenage years-had anyone been quiet enough to come within shoulder-tapping distance of him without being overheard. And on this marble floor, he surely should have-
The young (and extremely beautiful) woman who had approached him was clearly surprised by the suddenness of his reaction, but the hands he shot out to seize her shoulders only closed on thin air and then themselves, making a soft clapping sound that echoed back from the ceiling above, a ceiling at least as high as that in the Cradle of Lud. The woman's green eyes were wide and wary, and he would have sworn there was no harm in them, but still, first to be surprised, then to miss like that-
He glanced down at the woman's feet and got at least part of the answer. She was wearing a kind of shoe he'd never seen before, something with deep foam soles and what might have been canvas uppers. Shoes that would move as softly as moccasins on a hard surface. As for the woman herself-
A queer double certainty came to him as he looked at her: first, that he had "seen the boat she came in," as familial resemblance was sometimes expressed in Calla Bryn Sturgis; second, that a society of gunslingers was a-breeding in this world, this special Keystone World, and he had just been accosted by one of them.
And what better place for such an encounter than within sight of the rose?
"I see your father in your face, but can't quite name him,"
Roland said in a low voice. "Tell me who he was, do it please you."
The woman smiled, and Roland almost had the name he was looking for. Then it slipped away, as such things often did: memory could be bashful. "You never met him... although I can understand why you might think you had. I'll tell you later, if you like, but right now I'm to take you upstairs, Mr. Deschain.
There's a person who wants..." For a moment she looked self-conscious, as if she thought someone had instructed her to use a certain word so she'd be laughed at. Then dimples formed at the corners of her mouth and her green eyes slanted enchantingly up at the corners; it was as if she were thinking If it's a joke on me, let them have it. "... a person who wants to play with you," she finished.
"All right," he said.
She touched his shoulder lightly, to hold him where he was yet a moment longer. "I'm asked to make sure that you read the sign in the Garden of the Beam," she said. "Will you do it?"
Roland's response was dry, but still a bit apologetic. "I will if I may," he said, "but I've ever had trouble with your written language, although it seems to come out of my mouth well enough when I'm on this side."
"I think you'll be able to read this," she said. "Give it a try."
And she touched his shoulder again, gently turning him back to the square of earth in the lobby floor-not earth that had been brought in wheelbarrows by some crew of gifted gardeners, he knew, but the actual earth of this place, ground which might have been tilled but had not been otherwise changed.
At first he had no more success with the small brass sign in the garden than he'd had with most signs in the shop windows, or the words on the covers of the "magda-seens." He was about to say so, to ask the woman with the faindy familiar face to read it to him, when the letters changed, becoming the Great Letters of Gilead. He was then able to read what was writ diere, and easily.
When he had finished, it changed back again.
"A pretty trick," he said. "Did it respond to my thoughts?"
She smiled-her lips were coated with some pink candylike stuff-and nodded. 'Yes. If you were Jewish, you might have seen it in Hebrew. If you were Russian, it would have been in Cyrillic."
"Say true?"
"True."
The lobby had regained its normal rhythm... except, Roland understood, die rhythm of this place would never be like that in other business buildings. Those living in Thunderclap would suffer all their lives from little ailments like boils and eczema and headaches and ear-styke; at the end of it, they would die (probably at an early age) of some big and painful trum, likely the cancers that ate fast and burned die nerves like brushfires as they made their meals. Here was just the opposite: health and harmony, goodwill and generosity. These folken did not hear the rose singing, exactly, but they didn't need to.
They were the lucky ones, and on some level every one of them knew i t... which was luckiest of all. He watched them come in and cross to the lift-boxes that were called ele-vaydors, moving briskly, swinging their pokes and packages, their gear and their gunna, and not one course was a perfecdy straight line from the doors. A few came to what she'd called the Garden of the Beam, but even those who didn't bent their steps briefly in that direction, as if attracted by a powerful magnet. And if anyone tried to harm the rose? There was a security guard sitting at a little desk by the elevators, Roland saw, but he was fat and old.
And it didn't matter. If anyone made a threatening move, everyone in this lobby would hear a scream of alarm in his or her head, as piercing and imperative as that kind of whistle only dogs can hear. And they would converge upon the would-be assassin of the rose. They would do so swiftly, and with absolutely no regard for their own safety. The rose had been able to protect itself when it had been growing in the trash and the weeds of the vacant lot (or at least draw those who would protect it), and that hadn't changed.
"Mr. Deschain? Are you ready to go upstairs now?"
"Aye," he said. "Lead me as you would."
SEVEN
The familiarity of the woman's face clicked into place for him just as they reached the ele-vaydor. Perhaps it was seeing her in profile that did it, something about the shape of the cheekbone.
He remembered Eddie telling him about his conversation with Calvin Tower after Jack Andolini and George Biondi had left the Manhattan Restaurant of die Mind. Tower had been speaking of his oldest friend's family. They like to boast that they have the most unique legal letterhead in New York, perhaps in the United States.
It simply reads "DEEPNEAU."
"Are you sai Aaron Deepneau's daughter?" he asked her.
"Surely not, you're too young. His granddaughter?"
Her smile faded. "Aaron never had children, Mr. Deschain.
I'm the granddaughter of his older brother, but my own parents and grandfather died young. Airy was the one who mosdy raised me."
"Did you call him so? Airy?" Roland was charmed.
"As a child I did, and it just kind of stuck." She held out a hand, her smile returning. "Nancy Deepneau. And I am so pleased to meet you. A litde frightened, but pleased."
Roland shook her hand, but the gesture was perfunctory, hardly more than a touch. Then, with considerably more feeling
(for this was the ritual he had grown up with, the one he understood), he placed his fist against his forehead and made a leg. "Long days and pleasant nights, Nancy Deepneau."
Her smile widened into a cheerful grin. "And may you have twice the number, Roland of Gilead! May you have twice the number."
The ele-vaydor came, they got on, and it was to the ninetyninth floor that they went.
EIGHT
The doors opened on a large round foyer. The floor was carpeted in a dusky pink shade that exacdy matched the hue of the rose. Across from the ele-vaydor was a glass door with THE TET CORPORATION lettered on it. Beyond, Roland saw another, smaller lobby where a woman sat at a desk, apparendy talking to herself. To the right of the outer lobby door were two men wearing business suits. They were chatting to each other, hands in pockets, seemingly relaxed, but Roland saw they were anything but. And they were armed. The coats of their suits were welltailored, but a man who knows how to look for a gun usually sees one, if a gun is there. These two fellows would stand in this foyer for an hour, maybe two (it was difficult for even good men to remain totally alert for much longer), falling into their little justchatting routine each time the ele-vaydor came, ready to move instandy if they smelled something wrong. Roland approved.
He didn't spend much time looking at the guards, however.
Once he had identified them for what they were, he let his gaze go where it had wanted to be from the moment the ele-vaydor doors opened. There was a large black-and-white picture on the wall to his left. This was a photograph (he had originally thought the word was fottergraf) about five feet long and three wide, mounted without a frame, curved so cunningly to the shape of the wall diat it looked like a hole into some unnaturally still reality. Three men in jeans and open-necked shirts sat on the top rail of a fence, their boots hooked under the lowest rail.
How many times, Roland wondered, had he seen cowboys or pastorillas sitting just that way while they watched branding, roping, gelding, or the breaking of wild horses? How many times had he sat so himself, sometimes with one or more of his old tet-Cuthbert, Alain, Jamie DeCurry-sitting to either side of him, as John Cullum and Aaron Deepneau sat flanking the black man with the gold-rimmed spectacles and the tiny white moustache? The remembering made him ache, and this was no mere ache of the mind; his stomach clenched and his heart sped up. The three in the picture had been caught laughing at something, and the result was a kind of timeless perfection, one of those rare moments when men are glad to be what they are and where they are.