Nor did they. After walking through a metal detector (no problem with the Orizas) and past a rent-a-cop dozing on a stool, Jake determined that one of the smallest lockers—those on the far lefthand side of the long room—would accommodate the MID-WORLD LANES bag and the box inside. To rent the box for the maximum length of time would cost twenty-seven dollars. Pere Callahan fed bills into the various slots of the token-dispensing machine carefully, prepared for a malfunction: of all the wonders and horrors he’d seen during their brief time back in the city (the latter including a two-dollar taxi drop-charge), this was in some ways the hardest to accept. A vending machine that accepted paper currency? A lot of sophisticated technology had to lie behind this machine with its dull brown finish and its sign commanding patrons to INSERT BILLS FACE UP! The picture accompanying the command showed George Washington with the top of his head facing to the left, but the bills Callahan fed into the machine seemed to work no matter which way the head was facing. Just as long as the picture was on top. Callahan was almost relieved when the machine did malfunction once, refusing to accept an old and wrinkled dollar bill. The relatively crisp fives it gobbled up without a murmur, dispensing little showers of tokens into the tray beneath. Callahan gathered up twenty-seven dollars’ worth of these, started back toward where Jake was waiting, and then turned around again, curious about something. He looked on the side of the amazing (amazing to him, at least, it was) currency-eating vending machine. Toward the bottom, on a series of little plaques, was the information he’d been looking for. This was a Change-Mak-R 2000, manufactured in Cleveland, Ohio, but a lot of companies had chipped in: General Electric, DeWalt Electronics, Showrie Electric, Panasonic, and, at the bottom, smallest of all but very much there, North Central Positronics.

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.