Roland calculated. Twenty-four days left, perhaps only twenty-three, and still much left to see. And there was the thing hidden in the Old Fella’s church, that to deal with, too. And the old Manni, Henchick…

Yet in the end, he knew, the day would come and things would play out with shocking suddenness. They always did. Five minutes, ten at most, and all would be finished, for good or ill.

The trick was to be ready when those few minutes came around.

“Ten days from now,” he said. “In the evening. I’d see the four of you in competition, turn and turn about.”

“All right,” she said. “That much we can do. But Roland…I’ll not throw so much as a single plate or raise a single finger against the Wolves if my husband still says no.”

“I understand,” Roland said, knowing she would do as he said, like it or not. When the time came they all would.

There was one small window in the office wall, dirty and festooned with cobwebs but clear enough for them to be able to see Andy marching across the yard, his electric eyes flashing on and off in the deepening twilight. He was humming to himself.

“Eddie says robots are programmed to do certain tasks,” he said. “Andy does the tasks you bid him?”

“Mostly, yes,” Eisenhart said. “Not always. And he’s not always around, ye ken.”

“Hard to believe he was built to do no more than sing foolish songs and tell horoscopes,” Roland mused.

“Perhaps the Old People gave him hobbies,” Margaret Eisenhart said, “and now that his main tasks are gone—lost in time, do ya ken—he concentrates on the hobbies.”

“You think the Old People made him.”

“Who else?” Vaughn Eisenhart asked. Andy was gone now, and the back yard was empty.

“Aye, who else,” Roland said, still musing. “Who else would have the wit and the tools? But the Old People were gone two thousand years before the Wolves began raiding into the Calla. Two thousand or more. So what I’d like to know is who or what programmed Andy not to talk about them, except to tell you folks when they’re coming . And here’s another question, not as interesting as that but still curious: why does he tell you that much if he cannot—or will not—tell you anything else?”

Eisenhart and his wife were looking at each other, thunderstruck. They’d not gotten past the first part of what Roland had said. The gunslinger wasn’t surprised, but he was a little disappointed in them. Really, there was much here that was obvious. If, that was, one set one’s wits to work. In fairness to the Eisenharts, Jaffordses, and Overholsers of the Calla, he supposed, straight thinking wasn’t so easy when your babbies were at stake.

There was a knock at the door. Eisenhart called, “Come!”