Eddie shook the hand off and stepped to the door. There was another crashing blow. More broken boards popped off the side of the privy. The lawn was scattered with them now. But he couldn’t shout against the wail of the siren, it was just too loud. He waited, and before Andy hammered the side of the privy again, it cut off.

“BASTARDS!”Andy screamed. “I’LL KILL YOU! DIRECTIVE 20, CODE 7! I’M BLIND, ZERO VISION, YOU COWARDLY—”

“Andy, Messenger Robot!” Eddie shouted. He had jotted the serial number on one of Callahan’s precious scraps of paper, with Callahan’s stub of pencil, and now he read it off. “DNF-44821-V-63! Password!”

The frenzied blows and amplified shouting ceased as soon as Eddie finished giving the serial number, yet even the silence wasn’t silent; his ears still rang with the hellish shriek of the siren. There was a clank of metal and the click of relays. Then: “This is DNF-44821-V-63. Please give password.” A pause, and then, tonelessly: “You ambushing bastard Eddie Dean of New York. You have ten seconds. Nine…”

“Nineteen,” Eddie said through the door.

“Incorrect password.” And, tin man or not, there was no mistaking the furious pleasure in Andy’s voice. “Eight…seven…”

“Ninety-nine.”

“Incorrect password.” Now what Eddie heard was triumph. He had time to regret his insane cockiness out on the road. Time to see the look of terror which passed between Rosa and Tian. Time to realize the dogs were still barking.

“Five…four…”

Not nineteen; not ninety-nine. What else was there? What in the name of Christ turned the bastard off?

“…three…”

What flashed into his mind, as bright as Andy’s eyes had been before Roland’s big revolver turned them dark, was the verse scrawled on the fence around the vacant lot, spray-painted in dusty rose-pink letters: Oh SUSANNAH-MIO, divided girl of mine, Done parked her RIG in the DIXIE PIG, in the year of —

“…two…”

Not one or the other; both. Which was why the damned robot hadn’t cut him off after a single incorrect try. He hadn’t been incorrect, not exactly.

“Nineteen-ninety-nine!”Eddie screamed through the door.

From behind it, utter silence. Eddie waited for the siren to start up again, waited for Andy to resume bashing his way out of the privy. He’d tell Tian and Rosa to run, try to cover them—

The voice that spoke from inside the battered building was colorless and flat: the voice of a machine. Both the fake smarminess and the genuine fury were gone. Andy as generations of Calla- folkenhad known him was gone, and for good.

“Thank you,” the voice said. “I am Andy, a messenger robot, many other functions. Serial number DNF-44821-V-63. How may I help?”

“By shutting yourself down.”

Silence from the privy.

“Do you understand what I’m asking?”

A small, horrified voice said, “Please don’t make me. You bad man. Oh, you bad man.”