The Tommyknockers, Page 22

  "Go weigh yourself," Gardener said. "If you can get the needle over ninety-five, even with your boots on, I'll eat the scale. Lose a few more pounds and you'll get sick. The state you're in, you could go into heartbeat arrhythmia and die in two days."

  "I needed to lose some weight. And I was--"

  "--too busy to eat, was that what you were going to say?"

  "Well, not exactly in those w--"

  "When I saw you last night, you looked like a survivor of the Bataan death march. You knew who I was, and that was all you knew. You're still not tracking. Five minutes after we got back in here from looking at your admittedly amazing find, you were asking me if you'd taken me to see it yet."

  Bobbi's eyes were still on the table, but he could see her expression: it was set and sullen.

  He touched her gently. "All I'm saying is that no matter how wonderful that thing in the woods is, it's done things to your body and mind that have been terrible for you."

  Bobbi drew away from him. "If you're saying I'm crazy--"

  "No, I'm not saying you're crazy, for God's sake! But you could get crazy if you don't slow down. Do you deny you've been having blackouts?"

  "You're cross-examining me, Gard."

  "And for a woman who was asking my advice fifteen minutes ago, you're being a pretty fucking hostile witness."

  They glared at each other across the table for a moment.

  Anderson gave first. "Blackouts isn't the right word. Don't try to equate what happens to you when you drink too much with what's been happening to me. They're not the same."

  "I'm not going to argue semantics with you, Bobbi.

  That's a sidetrack and you know it. The thing out there is dangerous. That's what seems important to me."

  Anderson looked up at him. Her face was unreadable. "You think it is," she said, the words making neither a question nor a declarative sentence--they came out perfectly flat and inflectionless.

  "You haven't just been getting or receiving ideas," Gardener said. "You've been driven."

  "Driven." Anderson's expression did not change.

  Gardener rubbed at his forehead. "Driven, yes. Driven the way a bad, stupid man will drive a horse until it drops dead in the traces ... then stand over it and whip the carcass because the damned nag had the nerve to die. A man like that is dangerous to horses, and whatever there is in that ship ... I think it's dangerous to Bobbi Anderson. If I hadn't shown up ..."

  "What? If you hadn't shown up, what?"

  "I think you'd still be at it right now, working day and night, not eating ... and that by this coming weekend you'd have been dead."

  "I think not," Bobbi said coolly, "but just for the sake of argument, let's say you're right. I'm on track again now."

  "You're not on track again, and you're not all right."

  That mulish look was back on her face, that look which said Gard was talking trash Bobbi would just as soon not hear.

  "Look," Gardener said, "I'm with you on at least one thing, all the way. This is the biggest, most important, utterly mind-blowing thing that's ever happened. When it comes out, the headlines in the New York Times are going to make it look like the National Enquirer. People are going to change their fucking religions over this, do you know it?"

  "Yes."

  "This isn't a powder keg; it's an A-bomb. Do you know that?"

  "Yes," Anderson said again.

  "Then get that pissed-off look off your face. If we're going to talk about it, let's fucking talk about it."

  Anderson sighed. "Yeah. Okay. Sorry."

  "I admit I was wrong about calling the Air Force."

  They spoke together, then laughed together, and that was good.

  Still smiling, Gard said: "Something has to be done."

  "I'll buy that," Anderson said.

  "But, Bobbi, Jesus! I flunked chemistry and barely got through funnybook physics. I don't know exactly, but I do know it's got to be ... well ... damped out, or something."

  "We need some experts."

  "That's right!" Gardener said, seizing on it. "Experts."

  "Gard, all the experts work for the Dallas police."

  Gardener threw his hands up in disgust.

  "Now that you're here, I'll be all right. I know it."

  "It's more likely to go the other way. Next thing, I'll start having blackouts."

  Anderson said: "I think the risk might be worth it."

  "You've decided already, haven't you?"

  "I've decided what I want to do, yeah. What I want to do is keep quiet about it and finish the dig. Digging it all the way out shouldn't even be necessary. I think that once I--once we, I hope--can free it to a depth of another forty or, fifty feet, we could come to a hatchway. If we can get inside ..." Bobbi's eyes gleamed and Gardener felt an answering excitement rise in his own chest at the thought. All the doubts in the world could not hold back that excitement.

  "If we can get inside?" Gardener repeated.

  "If we can get inside, we can get at the controls. And if we can do that, I'm going to fly that fucker right out of the ground."

  "You think you can do that?"

  "I know I can."

  "And then?"

  "Then I don't know," Bobbi said, shrugging. It was the best, most efficient lie she had told so far ... but Gardener thought it was a lie. "The next thing will happen, that's all I know."

  "But you say it's my decision to make."

  "Yes, I do. As far as the outside world goes, all I can do is continue to not tell. If you decide you will, well, what could I do to stop you? Shoot you with Uncle Frank's shotgun? I couldn't. Maybe a character in one of my books could, but I couldn't. This, unfortunately, is real life, where there are no real answers. I guess in real life I'd just stand here watching you go.

  "But whoever you called, Gard--scientists from the university up in Orono, biologists from Jennings Labs, physicists from MIT--whoever you called, it would turn out you'd actually called the Dallas Police. You'd have people coming in here with trucks full of barbed wire and men with guns." She smiled a little. "At least I wouldn't have to go to that police-state Club Med alone."

  "No?"

  "No. You're in it now too. When they flew me out there, you'd be right beside me in the next seat." The wan smile broadened, but there still wasn't much humor in it. "Welcome to the monkey-house, my friend. Aren't you glad you came?"

  "Charmed," Gardener said, and suddenly they were both laughing.

  8

  When the laughter passed, Gardener found that the atmosphere in Bobbi's kitchen had eased considerably.

  Anderson asked: "What do you think would happen to the ship if the Dallas Police got hold of it?"

  "Have you ever heard of Hangar 18?" Gard asked.

  "No."

  "According to the stories, Hangar 18's supposed to be part of an Air Force base outside of Dayton. Or Dearborn. Or somewhere. Anywhere, USA. It's where they're supposed to have the bodies of about five little men with fishy faces and gills on their necks. Saucerians. It's just one of those stories you hear, like how somebody found a rat head in his fast-food burger, or how there are alligators in the New York sewers. Only now I sort of wonder if it is a fairy tale. But I think that would be the end."

  "Can I tell you one of those modern fairy tales, Gard?"

  "Lay it on me."

  "Have you ever heard the one," she asked, "about the guy who invented a pill to take the place of gasoline?"

  9

  The sun was going down in a bright blaze of reds and yellows and purples. Gardener sat on a big stump in Bobbi Anderson's back yard, watching it go. They had talked most of the afternoon, sometimes discussing, sometimes reasoning, sometimes arguing. Bobbi had ended the palaver by declaring herself ravenous again. She made a huge pot of spaghetti and broiled thick pork chops. Gardener had followed her out into the kitchen, wanting to reopen the discussion--thoughts were rolling around in his mind like balls on a pooltable. Anderson wouldn't allow it. She offered Gardener a
drink, which Gardener, after a long, thoughtful pause, took. The whiskey went down good, and felt good, but he seemed to have no need for a second--well, no great need. Now, sitting here full of food and drink and looking at the sky, he supposed Bobbi had been right. They'd done all the constructive talking there was to do.

  It was decision time.

  Bobbi had eaten a tremendous supper. "You're gonna puke, Bobbi," Gardener said. He was serious but still couldn't help laughing.

  "Nope," Bobbi said placidly. "Never felt better." She burped. "In Portugal, that's a compliment to the cook."

  "And after a good lay--" Gard lifted one leg and broke wind. Bobbi laughed gustily.

  They did the dishes ("Haven't invented anything to do this yet, Bobbi?" "It'll come, give me time.") and then they went into the small drab living room, which hadn't changed much since the time of Bobbi's uncle, to watch the evening news. None of it was very good. The Middle East was smoldering again, with Israel flying air strikes against Syrian ground forces in Lebanon (and hitting a school by accident--Gardener winced at the pictures of burned, screaming children), the Russians driving against the mountain strongholds of the Afghan rebels, a coup in South America.

  In Washington, the NRC had issued a list of ninety nuclear facilities in thirty-seven states with safety problems ranging from "moderate to serious."

  Moderate to serious, great, Gardener thought, feeling the old impotent rage stir and twist, biting into him like acid. If we lose Topeka, that's moderate. If we lose New York, that's serious.

  He became aware that Bobby was looking at him a little sadly. "The beat goes on, right?" she said.

  "Right."

  When the news was over, Anderson told Gardener she was going to bed.

  "At seven-thirty?"

  "I'm still bushed." And she looked it.

  "Okay. I'll sack out myself pretty soon. I'm tired too. It's been a crazy couple of days, but I'm not completely sure I'd sleep, the way this stuff is whizzing around in my head."

  "You want a Valium?"

  He smiled. "I saw they were still there. I'll pass. You were the one who could have used a trank or two, last couple of weeks."

  The State of Maine's price for going along with Nora's decision not to press charges was that Gardener should go into a counseling program. The program had lasted six months; the Valium was apparently going to go on forever. Gardener hadn't actually taken any in almost three years, but every now and then--usually when he was going traveling--he filled the prescription. Otherwise, some computer might burp up his name and a psychologist picking up a few extra bucks courtesy of the State of Maine might drop by to make sure his head was staying shrunk to a suitable size.

  After she was in bed, Gardener had turned off the TV and sat awhile in Bobbi's rocker, reading The Buffalo Soldiers. In a short time, he heard her snoring away. Gardener supposed Bobbi's snores would also be part of a conspiracy to keep him awake, but he didn't really mind--Bobbi had always snored, the price of a deviated septum, and that had always annoyed Gardener, but he had discovered last night that some things were worse. The ghastly silence in which she had slept on the couch, for instance. That was much worse.

  Gardener had poked his head in for a moment, had seen Bobbi in a much more typical Bobbi Anderson sleeping posture, naked except pajama bottoms, small breasts bare, blankets kicked into disarray between her legs, one hand curled under her cheek, the other by her face, her thumb almost in her mouth. Bobbi was okay.

  So Gardener had come out here to make his decision.

  Bobbi's patch of garden was going great guns--the corn was taller than any Gardener had seen on his way north from Arcadia Beach, and her tomatoes were going to be blue-ribbon winners. Some of them would have come to the chest of a man walking down the row. In the middle of it all was a cluster of giant sunflowers, ominous as triffids, nodding in the slight breeze.

  When Bobbi asked him earlier if he'd ever heard of the so-called "gasoline pill," Gardener had smiled and nodded. More twentieth-century fairy tales, all right. She'd then asked him if he believed it. Gardener, still smiling, said no. Bobbi reminded him about-Hangar 18.

  "Are you saying you do believe there's such a pill? Or was? Something you'd just drop into your gas tank and run on all day?"

  "No," Bobbi said quietly. "Nothing I've ever read suggests the possibility of such a pill." She leaned forward, forearms on her thighs. "But I'll tell you what I do believe: if there was, it wouldn't be on the market. Some big cartel, or maybe the government itself, would buy it ... or steal it."

  "Yeah," Gard said. He had thought more than once about the crazy ironies inherent in every status quo: open the U.S. borders and put all those customs people out of work? Legalize dope and destroy the DEA? You might as well try to shoot the man in the moon with a BB gun.

  Gard burst out laughing.

  Bobbi looked at him, puzzled but also smiling a little. "So? Share."

  "I was just thinking that if there was a pill like that, the Dallas Police would shoot the guy who invented it and then put it next to the green guys in Hangar 18."

  "Not to mention his whole family," Bobbi agreed.

  Gard didn't laugh this time. This time it didn't seem quite so hilarious.

  "In that light," Anderson had said, "look at what I've done here. I'm not even a good handyman, let alone anyone's scientist, and so the force that worked through me produced a bunch of stuff that looks more like stuff from Boy's Life plans than anything else--built by a fairly incompetent boy, at that."

  "They work," Gardener replied.

  Yes, Anderson had agreed. They did. She even had a vague idea of how they worked--on a principle which could be called "collapsing-molecule fusion." It was nonatomic, totally clean. The telepathic typewriter, she said, depended on collapsing-molecule fusion for juice, but the actual principle of that one was much different, and she didn't understand it. There was a powerpack inside that had begun life as a fuzz-buster, but beyond that she was blank.

  "You get a bunch of scientists in here from the NSA or the Shop, and they'd probably have this stuff down pat in six hours," Anderson said. "They'd go around looking like somebody just kicked them in the balls, asking each other how the hell they could have missed such elementary concepts for so long. And do you know what would happen next?"

  Gardener thought about it hard, his head down, one hand gripping the can of beer Bobbi had given him, the other gripping his forehead, and suddenly he was back at that terrible party listening to Ted the Power Man defend the Iroquois plant, which even now was loading hot rods: If we gave these nuke-freaks what they wanted, they'd turn around a month or so later and start whining about not being able to use their blow-dryers, or found out their Cuisinarts weren't going to work when they wanted to mix up a bunch of macrobiotic food. He saw himself leading Ted the Power Man over to Arberg's buffet--he saw this as clearly as if it had happened ... shit, as if it was happening right then. On the table, between the chips and the bowl of raw veggies, was one of Bobbi's contraptions. The batteries were hooked up to a circuit board; that was in turn hooked up to an ordinary wall switch, the sort available in any hardware store for a buck or so. Gardener saw himself turn this switch, and suddenly everything on the table--chips, raw veggies, the lazy Susan with its five different kinds of dip, the remains of the cold cuts and the carcass of the chicken, the ashtrays, the drinks--rose six inches into the air and then simply held there, their shadows pooling decorously beneath them on the linen. Ted the Power Man looked at this for a moment, mildly annoyed. Then he swept the contraption off the table. The wires snapped. Batteries rolled hither and yon. Everything fell back to the table with a crash, glasses spilling, ashtrays overturning and scattering butts. Ted took off his sport coat and covered the remains of the gadget, the way you might cover the corpse of an animal hit and killed in the road. That done, he turned back to his small captive audience and resumed speaking. These people think they can go on having their cake and eating it too forever. These people
assume that there is always going to be a fallback position. They are wrong. There is no fallback position. It's simple: nukes or nothing. Gardener heard himself screaming in a rage that was, for a change, totally sober: What about the thing you just broke? What about that? Ted bent and picked up his sport coat as gracefully as a magician waving his cape before a bedazzled audience. The floor beneath was bare except for a few potato chips. No sign of the gadget. No sign at all. What about what thing? Ted the Power Man asked, looking straight at Gardener with an expression of sympathy into which a liberal helping of contempt had been mixed. He turned to his audience. Does anybody here see anything? ... No, they were answering in unison, like children reciting: Arberg, Patricia McCardle, all the rest; even the young bartender and Ron Cummings were reciting it. No, we don't see anything, we don't see anything at all, Ted, not a thing, you're right, Ted, it's the nukes or nothing. Ted was smiling. Next thing you know, he'll be telling us that old wheeze about the itty-bitty pill you can put in your gas tank and run your car on all day. Ted the Power Man began to laugh. All the others joined in. All of them were laughing at him.

  Gardener raised his head and turned agonized eyes on Bobbi Anderson. "You think they'd ... what? Classify all this?"

  "Don't you?" And, after a moment, in a very gentle voice, Anderson prompted: "Gard?"

  "Yes," Gardener said after a long time, and for a moment he was very close to bursting into tears. "Yeah, sure. Sure they would."

  10

  Now he sat on a stump in Bobbi's back yard without the slightest idea there was a loaded shotgun pointed at the back of his head.

  He sat thinking of his mental replay of the party. It was so horrifying and so utterly obvious that he supposed he could be forgiven the time it had taken him to see it and grasp it. The ship in the earth could not be dealt with just on the basis of Bobbi's welfare, or Haven's welfare. Regardless of what it was or what it was doing to Bobbi or anyone else in the immediate area, the ultimate disposition of the ship in the earth would have to be made on the basis of the world's welfare. Gardener had served on dozens of committees whose goals ranged from the possible to the wildly crazed. He had marched; had given more than he could afford to help pay for newspaper ads in two unsuccessful campaigns to close Maine Yankee by referendum; as a college student he had marched against the U.S. involvement in Vietnam; he belonged to Greenpeace; he supported NARAL. In half a dozen muddled ways he had tried to deal with the world's welfare, but his efforts, although growing out of individual thought, had always been expressed as part of a group. Now ...