“A visit from your brother?”

Eddie shook his head.

“The Tower, then? The field of roses and the Tower?” Roland’s face remained impassive, but Eddie could hear the subtle eagerness which always came into his voice when the subject was the Dark Tower. Eddie had once called the gunslinger a Tower junkie, and Roland hadn’t denied it.

“Not this time.”

“What, then?”

Eddie shivered. “Cold.”

“Yes. Thank your gods there’s no rain, at least. Autumn rain’s an evil to be avoided whenever one may. What was your dream?”

Still Eddie hesitated. “You’d never betray us, would you, Roland?”

“No man can say that for sure, Eddie, and I have already played the betrayer more than once. To my shame. But... I think those days are over. We are one, ka-tet. If I betray any one of you—even Jake’s furry friend, perhaps—I betray myself. Why do you ask?”

“And you’d never betray your quest.”

“Renounce the Tower? No, Eddie. Not that, not ever. Tell me your dream.”

Eddie did, omitting nothing. When he had finished, Roland looked down at his guns, frowning. They seemed to have reassembled themselves while Eddie was talking.

“So what does it mean, that I saw you driving that ’dozer at the end? That I still don’t trust you? That subconsciously—”

“Is this ology-of-the-psyche? The cabala I have heard you and Susannah speak of?”

“Yes, I guess it is.”

“It’s shit,” Roland said dismissively. “Mudpies of the mind. Dreams either mean nothing or everything—and when they mean everything, they almost always come as messages from... well, from other levels of the Tower.” He gazed at Eddie shrewdly. “And not all messages are sent by friends.”

“Something or someone is fucking with my head? Is that what you mean?”

“I think it possible. But you must watch me all the same. I bear watching, as you well know.”

“I trust you,” Eddie said, and the very awkwardness with which he spoke lent his words sincerity. Roland looked touched, almost shaken, and Eddie wondered how he ever could have thought this man an emotionless robot. Roland might be a little short on imagination, but he had feelings, all right.

“One thing about your dream concerns me very much, Eddie.”

“The bulldozer?”

“The machine, yes. The threat to the rose.”

“Jake saw the rose, Roland. It was fine.”

Roland nodded. “In his when, the when of that particular day, the rose was thriving. But that doesn’t mean it will continue to do so. If the construction the sign spoke of comes... if the bulldozer comes...”

“There are other worlds than these,” Eddie said. “Remember?”

“Some things may exist only in one. In one where, in one when.” Roland lay down and looked up at the stars. “We must protect that rose,” he said. “We must protect it at all costs.”

“You think it’s another door, don’t you? One that opens on the Dark Tower.”

The gunslinger looked at him from eyes that ran with starshine. “I think it may be the Tower,” he said. “And if it’s destroyed—”