Song of Susannah (The Dark Tower #6)(66)

"Seems pretty popular," Eddie had ventured. Not that he'd much cared, but what the hell, it was a conversation. "Microsoft, especially. The coming thing."

Henry had laughed indulgently and made jacking-off gestures. "My prick, that's the coming thing."

"But - "

"Yeah, yeah, I know, people'reflocking to that crap. Driving all the prices up. And when I observe that action, do you know what I see?"

"No, what?"

"Lemons!"

"Lemons?" Eddie had asked. He'd thought he was following Henry, but he guessed he was lost, after all. Of course the sunset had been amazing that evening, and he had been most colossally f**ked up.

"You heard me!" Henry had said, warming to the subject. "Fuckin lemons! Didn't they teach you anything in school, bro? Lemons are these little animals that live over in Switzerland, or someplace like that. And every now and then - I think it's every ten years, I'm not sure - they get suicidal and throw themselves over the cliffs."

"Oh," Eddie said, biting hard on the inside of his cheek to keep from bursting into mad cackles. "Thoselemons. I thought you meant the ones you use to make lemonade."

"Fuckin wank," Henry said, but he spoke with the indulgent good nature the great and eminent sometimes reserve for the small and uninformed. "Anyway, mypoint is that all these people who are flockin to invest in Microsoft and Macintosh and, I don't know, f**kin Nervous Norvus Speed Dial Chips, all they're gonna do is make Bill Fuckin Gates and Steve Fuckin Jobs-a-rino rich. This computer shit is gonna crash and burn by 1995, all the experts say so, and the people investin in it? Fuckin lemons, throwin themselves over the cliffs and into the f**kin ocean."

"Just f**kin lemons," Eddie agreed, and sprawled back on the still-warm roof so Henry wouldn't see how close he was to losing it entirely. He was seeing billions of Sunkist lemons trotting toward these high cliffs, all of them wearing red jogging shorts and little white sneakers, like M&Ms in a TV ad.

"Yeah, but I wish I'd gotten into that f**kin Microsoft in '82," Henry said. "Do you realize that shares that were sellin for fifteen bucks back then are now sellin for thirty-five? Oh, man!"

"Lemons," Eddie had said dreamily, watching the sunset's colors begin to fade. At that point he'd had less than a month to live in his world - the one where Co-Op City was in Brooklyn and always had been - and Henry had less than a month to live, period.

"Yeah," Henry had said, lying down beside him, "but man, I wish I coulda gotten in back in '82."

Fifteen

Now, still holding Tower's hand, he said: "I'm from the future. You know that, don't you?"

"I know thathe says you are, yes." Tower jerked his head toward Roland, then tried to pull his hand free. Eddie held on.

"Listen to me, Cal. If you listen and then act on what I tell you, you can earn what that vacant lot of yours would be worth on the real estate market five, maybe even ten times over."

"Big talk from a man who isn't even wearing socks," Tower said, and once again tried to pull his hand free. Again Eddie held it. Once he supposed he wouldn't have been able to do that, but his hands were stronger now. So was his will.

"Big talk from a man who's seen the future," he corrected. "And the future is computers, Cal. The future is Microsoft. Can you remember that?"

"Ican," Aaron said. "Microsoft."

"Never heard of it," Tower said.

"No," Eddie agreed, "I don't think it even exists yet. But it will, soon, and it's going to be huge. Computers, okay? Computers for everybody, or at least that was the plan.Will be the plan. The guy in charge is Bill Gates. Always Bill, never William."

It occurred to him briefly that since this world was different from the one in which he and Jake had grown up - the world of Claudia y Inez Bachman instead of Beryl Evans - that maybe the big computer genius herewouldn't be Gates; could be someone named Chin Ho Fuk, for all Eddie knew. But he also knew that wasn't likely. This world was very close to his: same cars, same brand names (Coke and Pepsi rather than Nozz-A-La), same people on the currency. He thought he could count on Bill Gates (not to mention Steve Jobs-a-rino) showing up when he was supposed to.

In one way, he didn't even care. Calvin Tower was in many respects a total shithead. On the other hand, Tower had stood up to Andolini and Balazar for as long as he had to. He'd held onto the vacant lot. And now Roland had the bill of sale in his pocket. They owed Tower a fair return for what he'd sold them. It had nothing to do with how much or how little they liked the guy, which was probably a good thing for old Cal.

"This Microsoft stuff," Eddie said, "you can pick it up for fifteen dollars a share in 1982. By 1987 - which is when I sort of went on permanent vacation - those shares will be worth thirty-five apiece. That's a hundred per cent gain. A little more."

"Says you," Tower said, and finally succeeded in pulling his hand free.

"If he says so," Roland said, "it's the truth."

"Say thanks," Eddie said. It occurred to him that he was suggesting that Tower take a fairly big leap based on a stone junkie's observations, but he thought that in this case he could do that.

"Come on," Roland said, and made that twirling gesture with his fingers. "If we're going to see the writer, let's go."