“And in time I may,” Roland said, “but this morning time is short.”

Back to that again,Eddie thought. Yesterday it hardly existed, and now it’s short . But it’s all about time, somehow, isn’t it? Roland’s old days, our old days, and these new days. These dangerous new days.

“Why?” Susannah asked.

“Our friends,” Roland said, and nodded to the south. “I have a feeling they’ll be making themselves known to us soon.”

“ Arethey our friends?” Jake asked.

“That really is to the side,” Roland said, and again wondered if that were really true. “For now, let’s turn the mind of our khef to this Bookstore of the Mind, or whatever it’s called. You saw the harriers from the Leaning Tower greensticking the owner, didn’t you? This man Tower, or Toren.”

“Pressuring him, you mean?” Eddie asked. “Twisting his arm?”

“Yes.”

“Sure they were,” Jake said.

“Were,” Oy put in. “Sure were.”

“Bet you anything that Tower and Toren are really the same name,” Susannah said. “That toren ’s Dutch for ‘tower.’ ” She saw Roland getting ready to speak, and held up her hand. “It’s the way folks often do things in our bit of the universe, Roland—change the foreign name to one that’s more…well…American.”

“Yeah,” Eddie said. “So Stempowicz becomes Stamper…Yakov becomes Jacob…or…”

“Or Beryl Evans becomes Claudia y Inez Bachman,” Jake said. He laughed but didn’t sound very amused.

Eddie picked a half-burned stick out of the fire and began to doodle with it in the dirt. One by one the Great Letters formed: C…L…A…U. “Big Nose even said Tower was Dutch. ‘A squarehead’s always a squarehead, right, boss?’ ” He looked at Jake for confirmation. Jake nodded, then took the stick and continued on with it: D…I…A.

“Him being Dutch makes a lot of sense, you know,” Susannah said. “At one time, the Dutch owned most of Manhattan.”

“You want another Dickens touch?” Jake asked. He wrote y in the dirt after CLAUDIA, then looked up at Susannah. “How about the haunted house where I came through into this world?”

“The Mansion,” Eddie said.

“The Mansion in Dutch Hill, ” Jake said.

“Dutch Hill. Yeah, that’s right. Goddam.”

“Let’s go to the core,” Roland said. “I think it’s the agreement paper you saw. And you felt you had to see it, didn’t you?”

Eddie nodded.

“Did your need feel like a part of following the Beam?”

“Roland, I think it was the Beam.”

“The way to the Tower, in other words.”