The Tommyknockers (102 page)

He looked at the screen.

CROSS-FILE WITH—

The screen suddenly filled up with 9s, from top to bottom and side to side. Gardener stared at this with consternation, thinking:
Oh Jesus Christ, I broke it!

The 9s disappeared. For just a moment

OH JESUS CHRIST I BROKE IT

glimmered on the screen like a ghost. Then the screen showed:

CROSS-FILE READY

He relaxed a little. The machine was okay. But his brain really was stretched to capacity, and he knew it. If this machine, which was being powered by the old man and whatever was left of Peter, could bring the boy back, he might actually be able to walk away . . . or hop, considering his ankle. But if it was going to try to draw from
him
as well, his brain would pop like a party noisemaker.

But this really wasn't the time to think of that, was it?

Licking his lips with his numb tongue, he looked at the screen.

CROSS-FILE WITH DAVID BROWN

9s across the screen.

9s for eternity.

CROSS-FILE SUCCESSFUL

Okay. Good. What next? Gardener shrugged. He knew what he was trying to do; why dance?

BRING DAVID BROWN BACK FROM ALTAIR-4

9s across the screen.
Two
eternities this time. Then a message appeared which was so simple, so logical, and yet so loony that Gard would have screamed laughter if he hadn't known to do so would be to blow every working circuit he had left.

WHERE DO YOU WANT TO PUT HIM?

The urge to laugh passed. The question had to be answered. Where indeed? Home plate at Yankee Stadium? Piccadilly Circus? On the breakwater jutting out from the beach in front of the Alhambra Hotel? None of those places; of course not—but not here in Haven. Christ, no. Even if the air didn't kill him, which it probably would, his parents were turning into monsters.

So, where?

He looked up at the old man, and the old man was looking back at him urgently, and suddenly it came to him—there was really only one place
to
put him, wasn't there?

He told the machine.

He waited for it to ask for further clarification, or to say it couldn't be done, or to suggest a system of commands he would be unable to execute. Instead, there were more 9s. This time they stayed forever. The green pulsing from the transformer became almost too bright to look at.

Gard closed his eyes and in the greenish deep-sea darkness behind his lids he thought he could hear, faintly, the old man screaming.

Then the power that had filled his mind left. Bingo! It was gone. Just like that. Gardener staggered backward, the earphone popping free and hitting the floor. His nose was still bleeding and he had soaked a fresh shirt. How many pints of blood were in the human body? And what had happened? There had been no

TRANSFER SUCCESSFUL

or

TRANSFER UNSUCCESSFUL

or even

A TALL DARK TOMMYKNOCKER WILL ENTER YOUR LIFE.

What had it all been
for?
He realized miserably that he was never going to know. Two lines of Edwin Arlington Robinson came to him:
So on we worked, and waited for the light, And went without the meat, and cursed the bread
 . . .

No light, boss; no light. If you wait for it they'll burn you in your tracks, and here's a fence ain't even half whitewashed yet.

No light; just a dull blank screen. He looked toward the old man and the old man was lolling forward, head down, exhausted.

Gardener was crying a little. His tears were mixed with blood. Dull pain radiated from the plate in his head, but that stuffed, near-to-bursting feeling was gone. So was the sense of power. He missed the latter, he discovered. Part of him longed for it to come back, no matter what the consequences.

Get moving, Gard.

Yes, okay. He had done what he could for David Brown. Maybe something had happened; maybe nothing. Maybe he had killed the kid; maybe David Brown, who had probably played with Star Wars action figures and wished he could meet an E.T. like Elliot had in the movie, was now just a cloud of dissipating atoms somewhere in deep space between Altair-4 and here. It was not for him to know. But he had reached this piece of
furniture and held it long enough—too long, maybe. He knew it was time to move on.

The old man raised his head.

Old man, do you know?

If he's safe? No. But, son, you did your best. I thank you. Now please please, son please

Fading . . . the old man's mental voice was fading

please let me out of this

down a long hallway and

look on one of those shelves back there

Now Gardener had to strain to hear.

pleas  oh  
PLEA

Faint, a whisper; the old man's head lolling forward, remains of thin white hair floating in green brew.

Peter's legs moved dreamily as he chased rabbits in his dim sleep . . . or looked for Bobbi, his darling.

Gard hopped over to the back shelves. They were dark, dusty, greasy. Here were old forgotten Buss fuses and a Maxwell House can full of bolts and washers and hinges and keys with locks whose location and purpose had long since been forgotten.

On one of these shelves was a Transco Sonic Space Blaster. Another kid's toy. On the side was a switch. He supposed the child who had received this for his birthday used it to make the gun ululate at different frequencies.

What did it do now?

Who gives a fuck?
Gardener thought wearily.
All this shit has become one big dumb bore.

Bore or not, he put the gun in his belt and hopped back across the shed. At the door, he looked back at the old man.

Thanks, guy.

Faint, fainter, faintest—a dry rustle of leaves:

out  of  this  son

Yes. You and Peter both. You bet

He hopped outside and looked around. No one else had come yet. That was good—but his luck couldn't hold much longer. They were there; his mind touched theirs, like a couple waltzing with the care of strangers. He sensed them linked in a

(net)

single consciousness. They were not hearing him . . . feeling him . . .
whatever
they did. Either using the
transformer or just being in the shed had cut his mind off from theirs. But they'd soon know that, like Elvis, fat, flailing, but game and blindly bopping just the same, he had made a comeback.

The sunshine was dazzling. The air was hot, full of a burning stink. Bobbi's farmhouse was blazing like a heap of dry kindling in a fireplace. As he watched, half the roof fell in. Sparks, nearly colorless in the bright declining day, rushed up to the sky in a flume. Dick, Newt, and the others had not observed much smoke because the fire was burning hot and colorless. Most of the smoke they'd seen had come from the burning vehicles in the dooryard.

Gard stood for a moment on his good leg in the shed doorway and then hopped for the whirligig. He made it about halfway and then sprawled full-length in the dust. As he came down, he thought of the Sonic Space Blaster in his belt. A kid's toy. No safety on a kid's toy. If the trigger was depressed, the essential Gardener might suddenly be drastically reduced. The Tommyknocker Weight-Loss Plan. He took the toy gun out of his belt, handling it as if it were a live mine. He crawled the rest of the way to the whirligig on his hands and knees, then pulled himself up.

Forty feet away, the other half of Bobbi's roof collapsed. Hot sparks whirled toward the garden and the woods beyond. Gard turned toward the shed and thought again, as hard as he could:
Thank you, my friend.

He thought there was an answer—some weary, faint answer.

Gardener pointed the toy at the shed and pulled its trigger. A green ray no thicker than a pencil-lead shot out of its muzzle. There was a sound like bacon frying in a skillet. For a moment the green beam splashed from the side of the shed like water from a hose, and then the boards burst into flame.
More hot work,
Gardener thought wearily.
Smokey the Bear wouldn't dig me at all.

He began to hop toward the back of the house, the Sonic Space Blaster in his hand. Sweat and bloody tears ran down his face.
Winston Churchill would have loved me,
he thought, and began to laugh. He saw the Tomcat . . . and then his jaws spread in another big yawn. It occurred to him that possibly Bobbi had saved his life without even knowing it. In fact, it was more than possible;
it was likely. The Valium could have protected him from the full force of the unimaginable power load that transformer carried. It might well have been the Valium which—

Something inside the burning house—one of Bobbi's gadgets—exploded with an artillery-shell bang. Gard ducked his head instinctively. Half of the house seemed to suddenly lift off. The far side of it, fortunately for Gardener. He looked up into the sky, and a second yawn turned into a large stupid gape.

There goes Bobbi's Underwood.

It flew up and up, a typewriter in the sky, whirling and turning.

Gard hopped on. He reached the Tomcat. The key was in the ignition. That was good. He'd had enough troubles with keys to last him the rest of his life—what little might remain.

He pulled himself up onto the seat. Behind him, vehicles approached and turned into the dooryard. He didn't turn around to look. The Tomcat was parked too close to the house. If he didn't get moving right now, he was going to bake like an apple.

He turned on the key. The Tomcat's motor made no sound, but that didn't bother him. It was vibrating faintly. Something else exploded inside the house. Sparks drifted down and prickled his skin. More vehicles turning into the yard. The minds of the arriving Tommyknockers were turned toward the shed, and they thought

baked apple he's

baked inside the shed

dead in the shed right yes

Good. Let them think that. The New and Improved Tomcat wouldn't clue them in. It was as noisy as a Ninja. And he had to go; the garden was already on fire, the giant sunflowers and huge cornstalks with their giant inedible ears of corn blazing. But the path down through the middle of the garden was still passable.

Hey! Hey!
HEY, HE'S BEHIND THE HOUSE! HE'S ALIVE! HE'S STILL—

Gardener looked to his right, dismayed, and saw Nancy Voss roaring across the stony field which lay between Bobbi's place and the stone wall at the edge of the Hurd property. The Voss woman was on a Yamaha trail bike. Her hair was tied in braids which flew out behind her.
Her face was a harridan's glare . . . although she still looked like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm next to Sissy, Gard thought.

HEY! BACK HERE! BACK HERE!

Oh, you bitch,
Gardener thought, and raised the Sonic Space Blaster.

Twenty or thirty of them had entered the yard. Adley and Kyle were among them; so were Frank Spruce, the Goldens, Rosalie Skehan, and Pop Cooder. Newt and Dick were back by the road, keeping all in order.

All of them turned toward

HERE! BACK HERE! ALIVE! THE SON OF A BITCH IS STILL

Nancy Voss's screams. They all saw her charging across the field on the bike, looking like a jockey riding a hard-charging horse as the Yamaha's tough suspension system bounced her up and down. They all saw the green pencil-beam shoot out from behind the burning house and envelop her.

None of them saw the whirligig as it started to turn again.

One whole side of the shed was in flames. Part of the roof fell in. Sparks swirled in a fat spiral. One landed in a pile of greasy rags and they bloomed with fire-roses.

Deliverance,
Ev Hillman thought.
Last thing of all. Last thing
—

The transformer began to pulse a brilliant green for the last time, for a moment or two rivaling the fire.

Dick Allison heard the creak of the whirligig. His mind was filled with a furious, feral cry of rage as he realized Gardener was still alive. All of it happened fast; very
fast. Nancy Voss was a flaming rag-doll in the field to the right of Bobbi's house. Her Yamaha ran on for twenty yards, struck a rock, and turned a backover flip.

Dick saw the burned hulks of Bobbi's truck, Moss's truck, the Bozemans' Olds—and then he saw the whirligig.

GET AWAY FROM THAT THING! GET AWAY! GET

But there was no chance. Dick had fallen out of the net and he couldn't get past the two thoughts it beat out like a primitive rock-and-roll backbeat:

Still alive. Behind the house. Still alive. Behind the house.

More people were arriving. They were moving across the dooryard in a tidal flow, ignoring the blazing house, the blazing shed, the guttering, blackened vehicles.

NO! FUCKING DAMN FOOLS! NO! GET DOWN! GET AWAY!

Mesmerized, Newt was staring at the inferno of the house, ignoring the whirligig, spinning faster and faster, and in that moment Dick could cheerfully have killed him. But he still needed him, and so he contented himself with pushing Newt rudely to the ground and falling on top of him.

A moment later, the green parasol spread its delicate web over the yard again.

Gard heard the screams—a multitude of them this time—and shut them out as best he could. They didn't matter. Nothing mattered except getting to the last stop on the line.

No sense trying to fly the Tomcat. He threw it into first gear and drove into Bobbi's monstrous useless burning garden.

There came a moment when he began to believe he wasn't going to make it; the fire had caught hold faster in the weeds and overgrown crops than he had believed possible. The heat was baking, tremendous. Soon his lungs would boil.