The Tommyknockers (80 page)

He had joined her before he realized that she hadn't spoken the conclusion of her thoughts aloud; Gardener had heard her in his head.

Something,
all right, Gardener thought.

Pulling aside the rock Gardener's drill had chunked up just before it exploded, Bobbi had revealed, finally, a line in the ship's surface—one single line in all of that huge featureless expanse. Looking at it, Gardener understood Bobbi's excitement. He stretched out his hand to touch it.

“Better not,” she said sharply. “Remember what happened before.”

“Leave me alone,” Gardener said. He pushed Bobbi's hand aside and touched that groove. There was music in his head, but it was muffled, and quickly faded. He thought he could feel his teeth vibrating rapidly in their sockets and suspected he would lose more of them tonight. Didn't matter. He wanted to touch it; he
would
touch it. This was the way in; this was the closest they had been to the Tommyknockers and their secrets, their first real sign that this ridiculous thing wasn't just solid through and through (the thought
had
occurred to him; what a cosmic joke
that
would have been). Touching it was like touching starlight made solid.

“It's the hatch,” Bobbi said. “I
knew
it was here!”

Gardener grinned at her. “We did it, Bobbi.”

“Yeah, we did it. Thank God you came back, Gard!”

Bobbi hugged him . . . and when Gardener felt the jellylike movement of her breasts and torso, he felt sick revulsion rise in him. Starlight? Maybe the stars were touching
him,
right now.

It was a thought he was quick to conceal, and he thought that he
did
conceal it, that Bobbi got none of it.

That's one for me,
he thought. “How big do you think it is?”

“I'm not sure. I think we might be able to clear it today. It's best if we do. Time's gotten short, Gard.”

“How do you mean?”

“The air over Haven has changed. This did it.” Bobbi rapped her knuckles on the hull of the ship. There was a dim, bell-like note.

“I know.”

“It makes people sick to come in. You saw the way Anne was.”

“Yes.”

“She was protected to some degree by her dental work. I know it sounds crazy, but it's true. Still, she left in a hell of a hurry.”

Oh? Did she?

“If that was all—the air poisoning people who came into town—that would be bad enough.
But we can't leave anymore, Gard.”

“Can't?”

“No. I think
you
could. You might feel sickish for a
few days, but you could leave. It would kill me, and very quickly. And something else: we've had a long siege of hot, still weather. If the weather changes—if the wind blows hard enough—it's going to blow our biosphere right out over the Atlantic Ocean. We'll be like a bunch of tropical fish just after someone pulled the plug on the tank and killed the rebreather. We'll die.”

Gard shook his head. “The weather changed the day you went to that woman's funeral, Bobbi. I remember. It was clear and breezy. That was what was so weird about you catching a sunstroke after all that hot and muggy.”

“Things have changed. The ‘becoming' has speeded up.”

Would they all die?
Gardener wondered,
ALL of them? Or just you and your special pals, Bobbi? The ones that have to wear makeup now?

“I hear doubt in your head, Gard,” Bobbi said. She sounded half-exasperated, half-amused.

“What I doubt is that any of this can be happening at all,” Gardener said. “Fuck it. Come on. Dig, babe.”

They took turns with a pick. One of them would use it for fifteen minutes or so, and then both would clear away the rubble. By three that afternoon Gard saw a circular groove that looked about six feet in diameter. Like a manhole cover. And here, at last, was a symbol. He looked at it wonderingly, and at last he had to touch it. The blast of music in his head was louder this time, as if in weary protest, or in weary warning—a warning to get away from this thing before its protection lapsed entirely. But he needed to touch it, confirm it.

Running his fingers over this almost Chinese symbol, he thought:
A creature who lived under the glow of a different sun conceived this mark. What does it mean?
NO TRESPASSING? WE CAME IN PEACE?
Or is it maybe a plague symbol, an alien version of
ABANDON HOPE, ALL YE WHO ENTER IN HERE?

It was pressed into the metal of the ship like a bas-relief. Merely touching it brought on a species of superstitious dread he had never felt before; he would have
laughed if, six weeks ago, someone had told him he might feel this way—like a caveman watching an eclipse of the sun or a medieval peasant watching the arrival of what would eventually become known as Halley's Comet.

A creature who lived under the glow of a different sun conceived this mark. I, James Eric Gardener, born in Portland, Maine, United States of America, Western Hemisphere of the World, am touching a symbol made and struck by God only knows what sort of being across a black distance of light-years. My God, my God, I am touching a different mind!

He had, of course, been touching different minds for some time now, but this was not the same . . . not the same at all.

Are we really going in?
He was aware that his nose was bleeding again, but not even that could make him take his hand away from that symbol; he trailed the pads of his fingers restlessly back and forth across its smooth, unknowable surface.

More accurately, are you going to try to go in there? Are you, even though you know it may—probably will—kill you? You get a jolt every time you touch the thing; what's going to happen if you're foolish enough to go inside? It will probably set up a harmonic vibration in that damned steel plate of yours that will blow your head apart like a stick of dynamite in a rotten turnip.

Awfully concerned about your welfare for a man who was on the verge of suicide not very long ago, aren't you, goodbuddy?
he thought, and had to grin in spite of himself. He drew his fingers away from the shape of the symbol, flicking them absently to get rid of the tingle, like a man trying to shake off a good-sized booger.
Go on and go for it. What the fuck, if you're gonna step out anyway, having your brains vibrated to death inside of a flying saucer is a more exotic way to go than most.

Gard laughed aloud. It was a strange sound at the bottom of that deep slit in the ground.

“What's funny?” Bobbi asked quietly. “What's funny, Gard?”

Laughing harder, Gardener said: “Everything. This is . . . something else. I guess it's laugh or go crazy. You dig it?”

Bobbi looked at him, obviously not digging it, and Gardener thought:
Of course she doesn't. Bobbi got stuck
with the other option. She can't laugh because she went crazy.

Gardener roared until tears rolled down his cheeks, and some of these tears were bloody, but he did not notice this. Bobbi did, but Bobbi didn't bother to tell him.

It took them another two hours to completely clear the hatchway. When they were done, Bobbi stuck out a dirty, makeup-streaked hand in Gardener's direction.

“What?” Gardener asked, shaking it.

“That's it,” Bobbi said. “We're finished with the dig. We're done, Gard.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Tomorrow we go inside, Gard.”

Gard looked at her without saying anything. His mouth felt dry.

“Yes,” Bobbi said, and nodded, as if Gard had questioned this. “Tomorrow we go in. Sometimes it seems like I started this about a million years ago. Sometimes like it was just yesterday. I stumbled over it, and I saw it, and I ran my fingers along it and blew off the dirt. That was the start. One finger dragged through the dirt. This is the end.”

“That was a different Bobbi at the beginning,” Gardener said.

“Yes,” Bobbi said meditatively. She looked up, and there was a sunken gleam of humor in her eyes. “A different Gard, too.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess you know, it'll probably kill me to go in there . . . but I'm going to give it a shot.”

“It won't kill you,” Bobbi said.

“No?”

“No. Now, let's get out of here. I've got a lot to do. I'll be out in the shed tonight.”

Gardener looked at Bobbi sharply, but Bobbi was looking upward as the motorized sling trundled down on its cables.

“I've been building things out there,” Bobbi said. Her voice was dreamy. “Me and a few others. Getting ready for tomorrow.”

“They'll be joining you tonight,” Gardener said. It was not a question.

“Yes. But first I need to bring them out here, to look at the hatch. They . . . they've been waiting for this day too, Gard.”

“I'll bet they have,” Gardener said.

The sling arrived. Bobbi turned to look at Gardener narrowly. “What's that supposed to mean, Gard?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all.”

Their eyes met. Gardener could feel her clearly now, working at his mind, trying to dig into it, and he had again that sense of his secret knowledge and secret doubts turning and turning like a dangerous jewel.

He thought deliberately:

(get out of my head Bobbi you're not welcome here)

Bobbi recoiled as if slapped—but there was also faint shame on her face, as if Gard had caught her peeking where she had no business peeking. There was still some humanness left in her, then. That was comforting.

“Bring them out, by all means,” Gard said. “But when it comes to opening it up, Bobbi, it's just you and me. We dug the fucker up, and we go in the fucker first. You agree?”

“Yes,” Bobbi said. “We go in first. The two of us. No brass bands, no parades.”

“And no Dallas Police.”

Bobbi smiled faintly. “Not them either.” She held out the sling. “You want to ride up first?”

“No, you go. It sounds like you got a schedule and a half still ahead of you.”

“I do.” Bobbi swung astride the sling, pressed a button, and started up. “Thanks again, Gard.”

“Welcome,” Gardener said, craning his neck to follow Bobbi's upward progress.

“And you'll feel better about all of this—”

(when you “become” when you finish your own “becoming”)

Bobbi rose up and up and out of sight.

It was August 14th. A quick calculation told Gardener that he had been with Bobbi for forty-one days—almost exactly a biblical period of confusion or unknown time, as in “he wandered in the desert for forty days and forty nights.” It seemed longer. It seemed like his entire life.

He and Bobbi did no more than pick at the frozen pizza Gardener heated up for their supper.

“I think I'd like a beer,” Bobbi said, going to the fridge. “How about you? Want one, Gard?”

“I'll pass, thanks.”

Bobbi raised her eyebrows but said nothing. She got the beer, walked out on the porch, and Gardener heard the seat of her old rocker creak comfortably as she sat down. After a while he drew a cold glass of water from the tap, went out, and sat beside Bobbi. They sat there for what seemed a long time, not speaking, just looking out into the hazy stillness of early evening.

“Been a long time, Bobbi, you and me,” he said.

“Yes. A long time. And a strange ending.”

“Is that what it is?” Gardener asked, turning in his chair to look at Bobbi. “The end?”

Bobbi shrugged easily. Her eye slid away from Gardener's. “Well, you know. End of a phase. How's that? Any better?”

“If it's
le mot juste,
then it's not just better, not even the
best—just the only
mot
that matters. Isn't that what I taught you?”

Bobbi laughed. “Yeah, it was. First damned class. Mad dogs, Englishmen . . . and English
teachers
.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

Bobbi sipped her beer and looked out at the Old Derry Road again. Impatient for them to arrive, Gardener supposed. If the two of them had really said everything there was left to say after all these years, he almost wished he had never heeded the impulse to come back at all, no matter what the reasons or eventual outcome. Such a weak ending to a relationship which had, in its time, encompassed love, sex, friendship, a period of tense
détente,
concern, and even fear, seemed to make mock of the whole thing—the pain, the hurt, the effort.

“I always loved you, Gard,” Bobbi said softly and thoughtfully, not looking at him. “And no matter how this turns out, remember that I still do.” Now she did look at Gardener, her face a strange parody of a face under the thick makeup—surely this was some hopeless eccentric who happened to resemble Bobbi a little. “And I hope you'll remember that I never asked to stumble over the goddam thing. Free will was not a factor here, as some wise-ass or other has surely said.”

“But you chose to dig it up,” Gardener said. His voice was as soft as Bobbi's but he felt a new terror steal into his heart. Was that crack about free will a roundabout apology for his own impending murder?

Stop it, Gard. Stop jumping at shadows.

Is the car buried out at the end of Nista Road a shadow?
his mind returned at once.

Bobbi laughed softly. “Man, the idea that whether or not to dig something like that up could ever
be
a function of free will . . . you might be able to stick that to a kid in a high-school debate, but we out on de po'ch, Gard. You don't really think a person
chooses
something like that, do you? Do you think people can choose to put away
any
knowledge once they've seen the edge of it?”