“Those pipes are speakers. Even a pipsqueak can sound big through a twelve-speaker Dolby sound-system; don’t you remember the movie? It has to sound big because it’s a bumhug, Jake—just a bumhug.”

“WHAT ARE YOU TELLING HIM, EDDIE OF NEW YORK? ONE OF YOUR STUPID, NASTY-MINDED LITTLE JOKES? ONE OF YOUR UNFAIR RIDDLES?”

“Yeah,” Eddie said. “The one that goes, ‘How many dipolar computers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?’ Who are you, buddy? I know goddam well you’re not Blaine the Mono, so who are you?”

“I... AM... OZ!” the voice thundered. The glass columns flashed; so did the pipes behind the throne. “OZ THE GREAT! OZ THE POWERFUL! WHO ARE YOU?”

Susannah rolled forward until her wheelchair was at the base of the dull green steps leading up to a throne that would have dwarfed even Lord Perth.

“I’m Susannah Dean, the small and crippled,” she said, “and I was raised to be polite, but not to suffer bullshit. We’re here because we’re s’pozed to be here—why else did we get left the shoes?”

“WHAT DO YOU WANT OF ME, SUSANNAH? WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE, LITTLE COWGIRL?”

“You know,” she said. “We want what everyone wants, so far as I know—to go back home again, ’cause there’s no place like home. We—”

“You can’t go home,” Jake said. He spoke in a rapid, frightened murmur. “You can’t go home again, Thomas Wolfe said that, and that is the truth.”

“It’s a lie, sug,” Susannah said. “A flat-out lie. You can go home again. All you have to do is find the right rainbow and walk under it. We’ve found it; the rest is just, you know, footwork.”

“WOULD YOU GO BACK TO NEW YORK, SUSANNAH DEAN? EDDIE DEAN? JAKE CHAMBERS? IS THAT WHAT YOU ASK OF OZ, THE MIGHTY AND POWERFUL?”

“New York isn’t home for us anymore,” Susannah said. She looked very small yet very fearless as she sat in her new wheelchair at the foot of the enormous, pulsing throne. “No more than Gilead is home for Roland. Take us back to the Path of the Beam. That’s where we want to go, because that’s our way home. Only way home we got.”

“GO AWAY!” cried the voice from the pipes. “GO AWAY AND COME BACK TOMORROW! WE’LL DISCUSS THE BEAM THEN! FIDDLE-DE-DEE, SAID SCARLETT, WE’LL TALK ABOUT THE BEAM TOMORROW, FOR TOMORROW IS ANOTHER DAY!”

“No,” Eddie said. “We’ll talk about it now.”

“DO NOT AROUSE THE WRATH OF THE GREAT AND POWERFUL OZ!” the voice cried, and the pipes flashed furiously with each word. Susannah was sure this was supposed to be scary, but she found it almost amusing, instead. It was like watching a salesman demonstrate a child’s toy. Hey, kids! When you talk, the pipes flash bright colors! Try it and see!

“Sugar, you best listen, now,” Susannah said. “What you don’t want to do is arouse the wrath of folks with guns. Especially when you be livin in a glass house.”