Deepneau’s eyes measured him.

“I know what I’m doing,” Eddie said. Then added: “Unfortunately.”

EIGHT

Aaron found a couple of children’s Band-Aids in the cabin’s medicine chest (Snow White on one, Bambi on another) and put them over the hole in Eddie’s arm after pouring another shot of disinfectant into the wound’s entry and exit points. Then, while drawing a glass of water to go with the painkillers, he asked Eddie where he came from. “Because,” he said, “although you wear that gun with authority, you sound a lot more like Cal and me than you do him.”

Eddie grinned. “There’s a perfectly good reason for that. I grew up in Brooklyn. Co-Op City.” And thought: Suppose I were to tell you that I’m there right now, as a matter of fact? Eddie Dean, the world’s horniest fifteen-year-old, running wild in the streets? For that Eddie Dean, the most important thing in the world is getting laid. Such things as the fall of the Dark Tower and some ultimate baddie named the Crimson King won’t bother me for another—

Then he saw the way Aaron Deepneau was looking at him and came out of his own head in a hurry. “What? Have I got a booger hanging out of my nose, or something?”

“Co-Op City’s not in Brooklyn,” Deepneau said. He spoke as one does to a small child. “Co-Op City’s in the Bronx. Always has been.”

“That’s—” Eddie began, meaning to add ridiculous, but before he could get it out, the world seemed to waver on its axis. Again he was overwhelmed by that sense of fragility, that sense of the entire universe (or an entire continuum of universes) made of crystal instead of steel. There was no way to speak rationally of what he was feeling, because there was nothing rational about what was happening.

“There are more worlds than these,” he said. “That was what Jake told Roland just before he died. ‘Go, then—there are other worlds than these.’ And he must have been right, because he came back.”

“Mr. Dean?” Deepneau looked concerned. “I don’t understand what you’re talking about, but you’ve come over very pale. I think you should sit down.”

Eddie allowed himself to be led back into the cabin’s combination kitchen and sitting room. Did he himself understand what he was talking about? Or how Aaron Deepneau—presumably a lifelong New Yorker—could assert with such casual assurance that Co-Op City was in the Bronx when Eddie knew it to be in Brooklyn?

Not entirely, but he understood enough to scare the hell out of him. Other worlds. Perhaps an infinite number of worlds, all of them spinning on the axle that was the Tower. All of them were similar, but there were differences. Different politicians on the currency. Different makes of automobiles—Takuro Spirits instead of Datsuns, for instance—and different major league baseball teams. In these worlds, one of which had been decimated by a plague called the superflu, you could time-hop back and forth, past and future. Because …