“I have no bacon or bananas,unfortunately,” Nigel said (pronouncing the latter ba-NAW-nas), “but Ido have peanut butter and three kinds of jelly. Also apple butter.”

“Apple butter’d be good,” Jake said.

“Go on, Susannah,” Roland said as Nigelmoved off on his errand. “Although I suppose I needn’t speed you along so;after we eat, we’ll need to take some rest.” He sounded far from pleased withthe idea.

“I don’t think there’s any more to tell,”she said. “It sounds confusing—looks confusing, too, mostlybecause our little map doesn’t have any scale—but it’s essentially just aloop they make every twenty-four years or so: from Fedic to Calla Bryn Sturgis,then back to Fedic with the kids, so they can do the extraction. Then they takethe kids back to the Callas and the brainfood to this prison where the Breakersare.”

“The devar-toi,” Jake said.

Susannah nodded. “The question is what wedo to interrupt the cycle.”

“We go through the door to Thunderclapstation,” Roland said, “and from the station to where the Breakers are kept.And there…” He looked at each of his ka-tet in turn, then raised his finger andmade a dryly expressive shooting gesture.

“There’ll be guards,” Eddie said. “Maybe alot of them. What if we’re outnumbered?”

“It won’t be the first time,” Roland said.

Chapter II:

The Watcher

One

When Nigel returned, he was bearing a traythe size of a wagon-wheel. On it were stacks of sandwiches, two Thermosesfilled with soup (beef and chicken), plus canned drinks. There was Coke,Sprite, Nozz-A-La, and something called Wit Green Wit. Eddie tried this lastand pronounced it foul beyond description.

All of them could see that Nigel was nolonger the same pippip, jolly-good fellow he’d been for God alone knew how manydecades and centuries. His lozenge-shaped head kept jerking to one side or theother. When it went to the left he would mutter “Un, deux, trois!” Tothe right it was “Ein, zwei, drei!” A constant low clacking had begun inhis diaphragm.

“Sugar, what’s wrong with you?” Susannahasked as the domestic robot lowered the tray to the floor amidst them.

“Self-diagnostic exam series suggests totalsystemic breakdown during the next two to six hours,” Nigel said, sounding glumbut otherwise calm. “Pre-existing logic faults, quarantined until now, haveleaked into the GMS.” He then twisted his head viciously to the right. “Ein,zwei, drei! Live free or die, here’s Greg in your eye!”

“What’s GMS?” Jake asked.

“And who’s Greg?” Eddie added.

“GMS stands for general mentation systems,”said Nigel. “There are two such systems, rational and irrational. Conscious andsubconscious, as you might say. As for Greg, that would be Greg Stillson, acharacter in a novel I’m reading. Quite enjoyable. It’s called The DeadZone, by Stephen King. As to why I bring him up in this context, I have noidea.”

Two

Nigel explained that logic faults werecommon in what he called Asimov Robots. The smarter the robot, the more thelogic faults… and the sooner they started showing up. The old people (Nigelcalled them the Makers) compensated for this by setting up a stringentquarantine system, treating mental glitches as though they were smallpox orcholera. (Jake thought this sounded like a really fine way of dealing withinsanity, although he supposed that psychiatrists wouldn’t care for the ideamuch; it would put them out of business.) Nigel believed that the trauma ofhaving his eyes shot out had weakened his mental survival-systems somehow, andnow all sorts of bad stuff was loose in his circuits, eroding his deductive andinductive reasoning capabilities, gobbling logic-systems left and right. Hetold Susannah he didn’t hold this against her in the slightest. Susannah raiseda fist to her forehead and thanked him big-big. In truth, she did notcompletely believe good old DNK 45932, although she was damned if she knew why.Maybe it was just a holdover from their time in Calla Bryn Sturgis, where arobot not much different from Nigel had turned out to be a nasty,grudge-holding cully indeed. And there was something else.

I spy with my little eye, Susannahthought.

“Hold out thy hands, Nigel.”

When the robot did, they all saw the wiryhairs caught in the joints of his steel fingers. There was also a drop of bloodon a… would you call it a knuckle? “What’s this?” she asked, holding several ofthe hairs up.

“I’m sorry, mum, I cawn’t—”

Couldn’t see. No, of course not. Nigel hadinfrared, but his actual eyesight was gone, courtesy of Susannah Dean, daughterof Dan, gunslinger in the Ka-Tet of Nineteen.

“They’re hairs. I also spy some blood.”

“Ah, yes,” Nigel said. “Rats in thekitchen, mum. I’m programmed to dispose of vermin when I detect them. There area great many these days, I’m sorry to say; the world is moving on.” And then,snapping his head violently to the left: “Un-deuxtrois! Minnie Mouse est lamouse pour moi!”

“Um… did you kill Minnie and Mickey beforeor after you made the sandwiches, Nige old buddy?” Eddie asked.

“After, sai, I assure you.”

“Well, I might pass, anyway,” Eddie said.“I had a poorboy back in Maine, and it’s sticking to my ribs like amotherfucker.”

“You should say un, deux, trois,”Susannah told him. The words were out before she knew she was going to saythem.

“Cry pardon?” Eddie was sitting with hisarm around her. Since the four of them had gotten back together, he touchedSusannah at every opportunity, as if needing to confirm the fact that she wasmore than just wishful thinking.

“Nothing.” Later, when Nigel was either outof the room or completely broken down, she’d tell him her intuition. Shethought that robots of Nigel and Andy’s type, like those in the Isaac Asimovstories she’d read as a teenager, weren’t supposed to lie. Perhaps Andy hadeither been modified or had modified himself so that wasn’t a problem. WithNigel, she thought it was a problem, indeed: can ya say problem big-big. Shehad an idea that, unlike Andy, Nigel was essentially goodhearted, but yes—he’deither lied or gilded the truth about the rats in the larder. Maybe about otherthings, as well. Ein, zwei, drei and Un, deux, trois was hismethod of letting off the pressure. For awhile, anyway.

It’s Mordred, she thought, lookingaround. She took a sandwich because she had to eat—like Jake, she wasravenous—but her appetite was gone and she knew she’d take no enjoymentfrom what she plugged grimly down her throat. He’s been at Nigel, and nowhe’s watching us somewhere. I know it—I feel it.

And, as she took her first bite of somelong-preserved, vacuum-packed mystery-meat:

A mother always knows.

Three

None of them wanted to sleep in theExtraction Room (although they would have had their pick of three hundred ormore freshly made beds) nor in the deserted town outside, so Nigel took them tohis quarters, pausing every now and then for a vicious head-clearing shake andto count off in either German or French. To this he began adding numbers insome other language none of them knew.

Their way led them through akitchen—all stainless steel and smoothly humming machines, quitedifferent from the ancient cookhouse Susannah had visited todash beneath CastleDiscordia—and although they saw the moderate clutter of the meal Nigelhad prepared them, there was no sign of rats, living or dead. None of themcommented on this.

Susannah’s sense of being observed came andwent.

Beyond the pantry was a neat littlethree-room apartment where Nigel presumably hung his hat. There was no bedroom,but beyond the living room and a butler’s pantry full of monitoring equipmentwas a neat book-lined study with an oak desk and an easy chair beneath ahalogen reading lamp. The computer on the desk had been manufactured by NorthCentral Positronics, no surprise there. Nigel brought them blankets and pillowswhich he assured them were fresh and clean.