Song of Susannah (The Dark Tower #6)(21)
The dial on her left was labeled EMOTIONAL TEMP. The markings on it ran from 32 to 212 (32 in blue; 212 in bright red). It was currently set at 160. The dial in the middle was marked LABOR FORCE. The numbers around its face went from 0 to 10, and it was currently turned to 9. The label under the toggle-switch simply read CHAP, and there were only two settings: AWAKE and ASLEEP. It was currently set to AWAKE.
Susannah looked up and saw one of the screens was now showing a babyin utero. It was a boy. Abeautiful boy. His tiny penis floated like a strand of kelp below the lazy curl of his umbilical cord. His eyes were open, and although the rest of the image was black and white, those eyes were a piercing blue. The chap's gaze seemed to go right through her.
They're Roland's eyes,she thought, feeling stupid with wonder.How can that be?
It couldn't, of course. All this was nothing but the work of her own imagination, a visualization technique. But if so, why would she imagine Roland's blue eyes? Why not Eddie's hazel ones? Why not her husband's hazel eyes?
No time for that now. Do what you have to do.
She reached out to EMOTIONAL TEMP with her lower lip caught between her teeth (on the monitor showing the park bench, Mia also began biting her lower lip). She hesitated, then dialed it back to 72, exactly as if it was a thermostat. And wasn't it?
Calm immediately filled her. She relaxed in her chair and let her lip escape the grip of her teeth. On the park monitor, the black woman did the same. All right, so far, so good.
She hesitated for a moment with her hand not quite touching the LABOR FORCE dial, then moved on to CHAP instead. She flipped the toggle from AWAKE to ASLEEP. The baby's eyes closed immediately. Susannah found this something of a relief. Those blue eyes were disconcerting.
All right, back to LABOR FORCE. Susannah thought this was the important one, what Eddie would call the Big Casino. She took hold of the old-fashioned dial, applied a little experimental force, and was not exactly surprised to find the clunky thing dully resistant in its socket. It didn't want to turn.
But you will,Susannah thought.Because we need you to. We needyou to.
She grasped it tightly and began turning it slowly counter-clockwise. A pain went through her head and she grimaced. Another momentarily constricted her throat, as if she'd gotten a fishbone stuck in there, but then both pains cleared. To her right an entire bank of lights flashed on, most of them amber, a few bright red.
"WARNING," said a voice that sounded eerily like that of Blaine the Mono. "THIS OPERATION MAY EXCEED SAFETY PARAMETERS."
No shit, Sherlock,Susannah thought. The LABOR FORCE dial was now down to 6. When she turned it past 5, another bank of amber and red lights flashed on, and three of the monitors showing Calla scenes shorted out with sizzling pops. Another pain gripped her head like invisible pressing fingers. From somewhere beneath her came the start-up whine of motors or turbines. Big ones, from the sound. She could feel them thrumming against her feet, which were bare, of course - Mia had gotten the shoes.Oh well, she thought,I didn't have any feet at all before this, so maybe I'm ahead of the game.
"WARNING," said the mechanical voice. "WHAT YOU'RE DOING IS DANGEROUS, SUSANNAH OF NEW YORK. HEAR ME I BEG. IT'S NOT NICE TO FOOL MOTHER NATURE."
One of Roland's proverbs occurred to her: You do whatyou need to, and I'll do whatI need to, and we'll see who gets the goose. She wasn't sure what it meant, but it seemed to fit this situation, so she repeated it aloud as she slowly but steadily turned the LABOR FORCE dial past 4, to 3...
She meant to turn the dial all the way back to 1, but the pain which ripped through her head when the absurd thing passed 2 was so huge - sosickening - that she dropped her hand.
For a moment the pain continued - intensified, even - and she thought it would kill her. Mia would topple off the bench where she was sitting, and both of them would be dead before their shared body hit the concrete in front of the turtle sculpture. Tomorrow or the next day, her remains would take a quick trip to Potter's Field. And what would go on the death certificate? Stroke? Heart attack? Or maybe that old standby of the medical man in a hurry, natural causes?
But the pain subsided and she was still alive when it did. She sat in front of the console with the two ridiculous dials and the toggle-switch, taking deep breaths and wiping the sweat from her cheeks with both hands. Boy-howdy, when it came to visualization technique, she had to be the champ of the world.
This is more than visualization - you know that, right?
She supposed she did. Something had changed her - had changed all of them. Jake had gotten the touch, which was a kind of telepathy. Eddie had grown (was still growing) into some sort of ability to create powerful, talismanic objects - one of them had already served to open a door between two worlds. And she?
I...see. That's all. Except if I see it hard enough, it starts to be real. The way Detta Walker got to be real.
All over this version of the Dogan, amber lights were glowing. Even as she looked, some turned red. Beneath her feet - special guest feet, she thought them - the floor trembled and thrummed. Enough of this and cracks would start to appear in its elderly surface. Cracks that would widen and deepen. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the House of Usher.
Susannah got up from the chair and looked around. She should go back. Was there anything else that needed doing before she did?
One thing occurred to her.
Three
Susannah closed her eyes and imagined a radio mike. When she opened them the mike was there, standing on the console to the right of the two dials and the toggle-switch. She had imagined a Zenith trademark, right down to the lightning-bolt Z, on the microphone's base, but NORTH CENTRAL POSITRONICS had been stamped there, instead. So something was messing in with her visualization technique. She found that extremely scary.