Стивен Кинг - The Drawing of the Three

The fat man found that the idea of Jack Mort tucked safely away in a sanitarium somewhere was very comforting.

The gunslinger wouldn't have been surprised.

Somewhere between the echoing room which his Mort­cypedia identified as a lobby, to wit, a place of entry and exit from the offices which filled this sky-tower, and the bright sunshine of street (his Mortcypedia identified this street as both 6th Avenue and Avenue of the Americas), the screaming of Roland's host stopped. Mort had not died of fright; the gunslinger felt with a deep instinct which was the same as knowing that if Mort died, their kas would be expelled forever, into that void of possibility which lay beyond all physical worlds. Not dead—fainted. Fainted at the overload of terror and strangeness, as Roland himself had done upon entering the man's mind and discovering its secrets and the crossing of destinies too great to be coincidence.

He was glad Mort had fainted. As long as the man's unconsciousness hadn't affected Roland's access to the man's knowledge and memories—and it hadn't—he was glad to have him out of the way.

The yellow cars were public conveyences called Tack-Sees or Cabs or Hax. The tribes which drove them, the Mortcypedia told him, were two: Spix and Mockies. To make one stop, you held your hand up like a pupil in a classroom.

Roland did this, and after several Tack-Sees which were obviously empty save for their drivers had gone by him, he saw that these had signs which read Off-Duty. Since these were Great Letters, the gunslinger didn't need Mort's help. He waited, then put his hand up again. This time the Tack-See pulled over. The gunslinger got into the back seat. He smelled old smoke, old sweat, old perfume. It smelled like a coach in his own world.

"Where to, my friend?" the driver asked—Roland had no idea if he was of the Spix or Mockies tribe, and had no inten­tion of asking. It might be impolite in this world.

"I'm not sure," Roland said.

"This ain't no encounter group, my friend. Time is money."

Tell him to put his flag down, the Mortcypedia told him.

"Put your flag down," Roland said.

"That ain't rolling nothing but time," the driver replied.

Tell him you'll tip him five bux, the Mortcypedia advised.

"I'll tip you five bucks," Roland said.

"Let's see it," the cabbie replied. "Money talks, bullshit walks."

Ask him if he wants the money or if he wants to go fuck himself, the Mortcypedia advised instantly.

"Do you want the money, or do you want to go fuck yourself?" Roland asked in a cold, dead voice.

The cabbie's eyes glanced apprehensively into the rear-view mirror for just a moment, and he said no more.

Roland consulted Jack Mort's accumulated store of knowledge more fully this time. The cabbie glanced up again, quickly, during the fifteen seconds his fare spent simply sit­ting there with his head slightly lowered and his left hand spread across his brow, as if he had an Excedrin Headache. The cabbie had decided to tell the guy to get out or he'd yell for a cop when the fare looked up and said mildly, "I'd like you to take me to Seventh Avenue and Forty-Ninth street . For this trip I will pay you ten dollars over the fare on your taxi meter, no matter what your tribe."

A weirdo, the driver (a WASP from Vermont trying to break into showbiz) thought, but maybe a rich weirdo. He dropped the cab into gear. "We're there, buddy," he said, and pulling into traffic he added mentally, And the sooner the better.

Improvise. That was the word.

The gunslinger saw the blue-and-white parked down the block when he got out, and read Police as Posse without checking Mort's store of knowledge. Two gunslingers inside, drinking something—coffee, maybe—from white paper glasses. Gunslingers, yes—but they looked fat and lax.

He reached into Jack Mort's wallet (except it was much too small to be a real wallet; a real wallet was almost as big as a purse and could carry all of a man's things, if he wasn't travelling too heavy) and gave the driver a bill with the number 20 on it. The cabbie drove away fast. It was easily the biggest tip he'd make that day, but the guy was so freaky he felt he had earned every cent of it.

The gunslinger looked at the sign over the shop.

CLEMENTS GUNS AND SPORTING GOODS, it said. AMMO, FISHING TACKLE, OFFICIAL FACSIMILES.

He didn't understand all of the words, but one look in the window was all it took for him to see Mort had brought him to the right place. There were wristbands on display, badges of rank … and guns. Rifles, mostly, but pistols as well. They were chained, but that didn't matter.

He would know what he needed when— if— he saw it.

Roland consulted Jack Mort's mind—a mind exactly sly enough to suit his purposes—for more than a minute.

One of the cops in the blue-and-white elbowed the other. "Now that," he said, "is a serious comparison shopper."

His partner laughed. "Oh God," he said in an effeminate voice as the man in the business suit and gold-rimmed glasses finished his study of the merchandise on display and went inside. "I think he jutht dethided on the lavender hand­cuffths."

The first cop choked on a mouthful of lukewarm coffee and sprayed it back into the styrofoam cup in a gust of laughter.

A clerk came over almost at once and asked if he could be of help.

"I wonder," the man in the conservative blue suit replied, "if you have a paper …" He paused, appeared to think deeply, and then looked up. "A chart, I mean, which shows pictures of revolver ammunition."

"You mean a caliber chart?" the clerk asked.

The customer paused, then said, "Yes. My brother has a revolver. I have fired it, but it's been a good many years. I think I will know the bullets if I see them."

"Well, you may think so," the clerk replied, "but it can be hard to tell. Was it a .22? A .38? Or maybe—"

"If you have a chart, I'll know," Roland said.

"Just a sec." The clerk looked at the man in the blue suit doubtfully for a moment, then shrugged. Fuck, the customer was always right, even when he was wrong … if he had the dough to pay, that was. Money talked, bullshit walked. "I got a Shooter's Bible. Maybe that's what you ought to look at."

"Yes." He smiled. Shooter's Bible. It was a noble name for a book.

The man rummaged under the counter and brought out a well-thumbed volume as thick as any book the gunslinger had ever seen in his life—and yet this man seemed to handle it as if it were no more valuable than a handful of stones.

He opened it on the counter and turned it around. "Take a look. Although if it's been years, you're shootin' in the dark." He looked surprised, then smiled. "Pardon my pun."

Roland didn't hear. He was bent over the book, studying pictures which seemed almost as real as the things they repres­ented, marvellous pictures the Mortcypedia identified as Fottergraffs.

He turned the pages slowly. No … no … no …

He had almost lost hope when he saw it. He looked up at the clerk with such blazing excitement that the clerk felt a little afraid.

"There!" he said. "There! Right there!"

The photograph he was tapping was one of a Winchester .45 pistol shell. It was not exactly the same as his own shells, because it hadn't been hand-thrown or hand-loaded, but he could see without even consulting the figures (which would have meant almost nothing to him anyway) that it would chamber and fire from his guns.