The Tommyknockers, Page 48

  Clud ... clud ... clud. Why can't it just clink? Why does it have to keep making that other sound, like dirt being shoveled on top of a coffin?

  Clud ... clud ... clud.

  Christ, I should have jumped when I had the chance. Just stepped off that fucking breakwater at Arcadia Beach. July 4th, wasn't it? Shit, I could have been a Yankee Doodle Deader.

  Well, go on, then. When you go back to the house tonight, gobble all the Valium in the medicine cabinet. Kill yourself if you haven't got the guts to either see this thing through or put a stop to it. The good people of Haven will probably throw a party over your body. You think they want you here? If there wasn't some of the Old, Unimproved Bobbi still around, I think you'd be gone already. If she wasn't standing between you and them ...

  Clud ... clud ... clud.

  Was Bobbi still standing between him and the rest of Haven? Yeah. But if she died, how long would it be before he himself was scrubbed from the equation?

  Not long, buddy. Not long at all. Like maybe fifteen minutes.

  Clud ... clud . . . cl--

  Wincing, teeth set against the dull dead sound, Gard leapt up and caught the brass nozzle of the hose before it could rap against the side of the ship again. He pulled it down, knelt over the hole, and craned his head up at Enders' small face.

  "Start the pump!" he yelled.

  "... what? . . ."

  Jesus wept, Gardener thought.

  "Start the motherfucking pump!" he shrieked, and this time he felt, actually felt his head fall apart. He closed his eyes.

  "... oh ... kay . . ."

  When he looked up, Enders was gone.

  Gardener plunged the end of the hose into the glory-hole he had cut out from rock that morning. The water began to bubble slowly, almost contemplatively. It was frigid at first, but his hands quickly became numb. Although the trench he was in was only forty feet deep, they had removed a whole hillside in the process of cutting a base level, so that the place where Gardener now crouched had probably been, until late June, ninety feet under the earth. Measuring the freeboard surface of the ship would have given an exact figure, but Gardener didn't give a shit. The simple fact was that they seemed to have nearly reached the aquifer: spongy rock filled with water. Apparently the bottom half or two-thirds of the ship was floating in a large underground lake.

  His hands were now so numb they had forgotten what they were.

  "Come on, asshole," he muttered.

  As if in answer, the hose began to vibrate and wriggle. He couldn't hear the pump's motor from here, but he didn't have to. As the water level in the glory-hole dropped, Gardener was able to see his reddened, dripping hands again. He watched as the water level continued to drop.

  If we hit the aquifer, it's going to slow us down.

  Yeah. We might lose a whole day while they figure out some sort of super-pump. There might be a delay, but nothing's going to stop them, Gard. Don't you know that?

  The hose began to emit the sound of a giant soda straw in a giant Coke glass. The glory-hole was empty.

  "Turn it off!" he shouted. Enders just went on looking down at him. Gardener sighed and yanked hard on the hose. Enders looked startled, then made a thumb-and-forefinger circle at Gardener. He disappeared. A few seconds later the hose stopped vibrating. Then it began to rise as Enders wound it up.

  Gardener made sure that the end of it was perfectly still and wouldn't pendulum before he let it go.

  He now took the radio out of his shirt and turned it on. There was a built-in ten-minute delay. He put the radio on the bottom of the glory-hole, then covered it with loose chunks of rock. A lot of the explosion's force would be channeled upward anyway, but this was powerful stuff, whatever it was--enough would be left to tear perhaps three vertical feet of bedrock into chunks which they could quickly load into a sling and power-winch up. And the ship would not be hurt. Apparently nothing could do that.

  Gardener slid his foot into the sling and shouted: "Pull me up!"

  Nothing happened.

  "PULL ME UP, JOHNNY"! he screamed. Once again there was that feeling that his head was splitting along some rotted midseam.

  Still nothing.

  His wrist-deep plunge into the icy water had dropped Gardener's body temperature perhaps two whole degrees. Nonetheless, a damp and slickly unpleasant sweat suddenly sprang out on his forehead. He looked at his wristwatch. Two minutes had passed since he had turned on the Snoopy radio. From his watch, his eyes moved to the loose pile of chunked granite in the glory-hole. Plenty of time to yank the rocks out and turn off the radio.

  Except turning off the radio wouldn't stop whatever was going on inside the radio. He knew that somehow.

  He looked up for Enders and Enders wasn't there.

  This is how they're getting rid of you, Gard.

  A drop of sweat ran into his eyes. He brushed it away with the back of his hand.

  "ENDERS! HEY, JOHNNY!"

  Shinny up the rope, Gard.

  Forty feet? Dream on. Maybe in college. Maybe not even then.

  He looked at his watch. Three minutes.

  Yeah, this is how. Poof. All gone. A sacrifice to the Great Ship. A little something to propitiate the Tommyknockers.

  ". . . start it going yet?"

  He looked up so quickly his neck popped, his growing fear turning immediately to rage.

  "I started it almost five minutes ago you fucking shit-for-brains! Get me out of here before it goes off and blows me sky-high!"

  Enders' mouth dropped into an O that was almost comical. He disappeared again and Gardener was left looking at his watch through what was becoming a blur of sweat.

  Then the loop around his foot jerked and a moment later he began to rise. Gardener closed his eyes and clung to the rope. Apparently he wasn't quite as ready to sniff the pipe as he thought he was. Maybe that wasn't such a bad thing to know, either.

  He reached the top of the cut, stepped out, loosened the loop around his foot, and walked over to where Enders stood.

  "Sorry," Enders said, smiling fussily. "I thought we'd agreed that you'd give me a shout before--"

  Gardener hit him. The thing was done and Enders was on the ground, his glasses hanging from one ear and his mouth bloody, before Gardener was even wholly aware of what he meant to do. And although he was not telepathic, he thought he could feel every head in Haven suddenly turn toward this place, alert and listening.

  "You left me down there with that thing going, asshole," he said. "If you--or anyone else in this town--ever does it again, you better just leave me down there. Do you hear me?"

  Rage dawned in Enders' eyes. He fixed his glasses back in place as well as he could and got to his feet. There was dirt on his bald head. "I don't think you know who you're talking to."

  "I know more than you think," Gardener said. "Listen, Johnny. And the rest of you, if you're hearing this, and I think you are, you listen too. I want an intercom down there. I want some ordinary fucking consideration. I've played square with you; I'm the only one in this town that didn't have to have his brains scrambled to do it, either. I want some fucking consideration. Do you hear me?"

  Enders looked at him, but Gardener thought he was listening too. Listening to other voices. Gardener waited for their decision. He was too angry to really care much.

  "All right," Enders said softly, pressing the back of his hand against his bloody mouth. "You may have a point. We'll put in an intercom, and we'll see that you have a bit more . . . what did you call it?" A contemptuous flick of smile touched his lips. It was a smile with which Gardener was extremely familiar. It was the way the Arbergs and McCardles of the world smiled. It was the way the guys who ran the nukes smiled when they talked about atomic-power facilities.

  "The word was 'consideration.' You want to remember it. But smart guys can learn, yeah, Johnny? There's a dictionary back at the house. You need it, asshole?" He took a step toward Enders and had the distinct satisfaction of seeing the man fall back two steps, the contem
ptuous little smile disappearing. It was replaced with a look of nervy apprehension. "Consideration, Johnny. You remember. All of you remember. If not for me, then for Bobbi."

  They were standing by the equipment lean-to now, Enders' eyes small and nervous, Gardener's large and bloodshot and still angry.

  And if Bobbi dies, your idea of consideration may extend all the way to a quick and painless death. That's about the size of it, am I right? Would you say that just about describes the topography of this situation, you bald-headed little fuck?

  "I--we--appreciate your plain speaking," Enders said. His lips, with no teeth to back them up, pooched in and out nervously.

  "I bet you do."

  "Perhaps a little plain speaking of our own is in order." He took off his glasses, began to wipe them on the sweaty front of his shirt (an action which Gardener thought would only leave them more smeared than before), and Gardener saw a dirty, furious gleam in his eyes. "You don't want to ... to strike out like that, Jim. I advise you--we all advise you--never do it again. There are . . . uh ... changes . . . yes, changes . . . going on in Haven--"

  "No shit."

  "And some of these changes have made people . . . uh ... short-tempered. So striking out like that could be ... well, a bad mistake."

  "Do sudden noises bother you?" Gardener inquired.

  Enders looked wary. "I don't understand your p--"

  "Because if the timer in that radio is jake, you're about to hear one."

  He stepped behind the lean-to, not quite running, but by no means lingering. Enders threw a startled glance toward the ship and then ran after him. He tripped over a shovel and went sprawling in the dirt, grabbing at his shin and grimacing. A moment later a loud, crumping roar shook the earth. There was a series of those.dull yet penetrating cludding sounds as chunks of rock flew against the ship's hull. Others sprayed into the air, then fell onto the edge of the cut or rattled back into it. Gardener saw one rebound from the ship's hull and bounce an amazing distance.

  "You small-minded, practical-joking son of a bitch!" Enders shouted. He was still lying on the ground, still clutching his shin.

  "Small-minded, hell," Gardener said. "You left me down there."

  Enders glared at him.

  Gardener stood where he was for a moment, then walked over to him and held out his hand. "Come on, Johnny. Time to let bygones be bygones. If Stalin and Roosevelt could cooperate long enough to fight Hitler, I guess we ought to be able to cooperate long enough to unglue this sucker from the ground. What do you say?"

  Enders would say nothing, but after a moment he took Gardener's hand and got up. He brushed sullenly at his clothes, occasionally favoring Gardener with an almost catlike expression of dislike.

  "Want to go see if we brought in our well yet?" Gardener asked. He felt better than he had in days--months, actually, maybe even years. Blowing up at Enders had done him a world of good.

  "What do you mean?"

  "Never mind," Gardener said, and went over to the cut alone. He peered down, looking for water, listening for gurgles and splashes. He saw nothing, heard nothing. It seemed they had lucked out again.

  It suddenly occurred to him that he was standing here with his hands planted on his upper thighs, bent over a forty-foot drop with a man somewhere behind him to whom he had just administered a punch in the mouth. If Enders wanted, he could run up behind me and tumble me into this hole with one hard push, he thought, and heard Enders saying: Striking out like that could be a very bad mistake.

  But he didn't look around, and that sense of well-being, absurdly out of place or not, held. He was in a fix, and strapping a rearview mirror onto his head so he could see who was coming up behind him wasn't going to get him out of it.

  When he turned around at last, Enders was still by the lean-to, looking at him with that sulky kicked-cat expression. Gardener suspected he had been on the party-line again with his fellow mutations.

  "What do you say?" Gardener called over to him. There was an edged pleasantness in his voice. "There's a lot of broken rock down there. Do we go back to work, or do we air a few more grievances?"

  Enders went into the shed, grabbed the levitation-pack they used to move the bigger rocks, and started toward Gardener with it. He held it out. Gardener shouldered the pack. He started back toward the sling, then looked back at Enders.

  "Don't forget to hoist me up when I yell."

  "I won't." Enders' eyes--or perhaps it was only the lenses of his spectacles--were murky. Gardener discovered he didn't really care which. He put his foot into the rope sling and tightened it as Enders went back to the winch.

  "Remember, Johnny. Consideration. That's the word for today."

  John Enders lowered him without saying anything.

  4

  Sunday, July 31st:

  Henry Buck, known to his friends as Hank, committed the last act of outright irrational craziness to take place in Haven at a quarter past eleven on that Sunday morning. People in Haven are short-tempered, Enders had told Gard. Ruth McCausland had seen evidences of this short temper during the search for David Brown; hot words, scuffles, a thrown punch or two. Ironically, it had always been Ruth herself--Ruth and the clear moral imperative she had always represented in these people's lives--who had prevented the search from turning into a free-for-all.

  Short-tempered? "Crazy" was probably a better word. In the shock of the "becoming," the town had been like a gas-filled room, waiting only for someone to light a match . . . or to do something even more accidental but just as deadly, as an explosion in a gas-filled room may be set off by an innocent delivery-boy pushing a doorbell and creating a spark.

  That spark never came. Part of it was Ruth's doing. Part of it was Bobbi's doing. Then, after the visits to the shed, a group of half a dozen men and one woman began to work like the hippie LSD-trip-guides of the sixties, helping Haven through to the end of the first difficult stage of "becoming."

  It was well for the people of Haven that the big bang never did come, well for the people of Maine, New England, perhaps for the whole continent or the whole planet. I would not be the one to tell you there are no planets anywhere in the universe that are not large dead cinders floating in space because a war over who was or was not hogging too many dryers in the local Laundromat escalated into Doomsville. No one ever really knows where things will end--or if they will. And there had been a time in late June when the entire world might well have awakened to discover a terrible, worldripping conflict was going on in an obscure Maine town--an exchange which had begun over something as deeply important as whose turn it had been to pick up the coffee-break check at the Haven Lunch.

  Of course we may blow up our world someday with no outside help at all, for reasons which look every bit as trivial from a standpoint of light-years; from where we rotate far out on one spoke of the Milky Way in the Lesser Magellanic Cloud, whether or not the Russians invade the Iranian oilfields or whether NATO decides to install American-made Cruise missiles in West Germany may seem every bit as important as whose turn it is to pick up the tab for five coffees and a like number of Danish. Maybe it all comes down to the same thing, when viewed from a galactic perspective.

  However that may be, the tense period in Haven really ended with the month of July--by this time, almost everyone in town had lost his teeth, and a number of other, stranger mutations had begun. Those seven people who had visited Bobbi's shed, communing with what waited in the green glow, had begun to experience these mutations some ten days earlier, but had kept them secret.

  Considering the nature of the changes, that was probably wise.

  Because Hank Buck's revenge on Albert "Pits" Barfield was really the last act of outrageous craziness in Haven, and in that light it probably deserves a brief mention.

  Hank and Pits Barfield were part of the Thursday-night poker circle to which Joe Paulson had also belonged. By July 31st the poker games had ended, and not because that bitch 'Becka Paulson had gone crazy and roasted her husband. They
had stopped because you can't bluff at poker when all the players are telepaths.

  Still, Hank held a grudge against Pits Barfield, and the more he thought about it, the more it grew in his mind. All these years, Pits had been bottom-dealing. Several of them suspected it--Hank could remember a night in the back room of Kyle Archinbourg's place, seven years ago it must have been, playing pool with Moss Harlingen, and Moss had said: "He's bottom-dealing just as sure as you're born, Hank. Six-ball in the side." Whack! The six-ball shot into the side pocket as if on a string. "Thing is, bastid's good at it. If he was just a little slower, I could catch him at it."

  "If that's what you think, y'ought to get out'n the game."

  "Shit! Everyone else in that game is as honest as the day is long. And the truth is, I can outplay most of 'em. Nine-ball. Corner." Whap! "Suckardly little prick is fast, and he never overuses it--just does a little if he really starts to go in the hole. You notice how he comes out every Thursday night? 'Bout even?"

  Hank had. All the same, he had thought the whole thing was just a little buggyboo in Moss's head--Moss was a good poker player, and he resented anyone whose money he couldn't take. But others had voiced a similar suspicion over the intervening years, and more than a few of them--some of them damned nice fellows, too, fellows Hank had really enjoyed pulling a few beers and dealing a few hands with--had dropped out of the game. They did this quietly, with no fuss or bother, and the possibility that Pits Barfield might be responsible was never hinted at. It was that they had finally gotten into the Monday-night bowling league up to Bangor and their wives didn't want them out late two nights a week. It was that their work schedules had changed and they couldn't take that late night anymore. It was that winter was coming (even if it was only May) and they had to do a little work on their snowmobiles.

  So they dropped out, leaving the little core of three or four that had been there all along, and somehow that made it worse, knowing those outsiders had either picked it up or smelled it as clearly as you could smell the jungle-juice aroma which arose from Barfield's unwashed body most of the time. They got it. Him and Kyle and Joe had been snookered. All these years they had been snookered.

  After the "becoming" got rolling really well, Hank discovered the truth once and for all. Not only had Pits been doing a little basement dealing, he had also, from time to time, indulged in a little discreet card-marking. He had picked these skills up in the long, monotonous hours of duty at a Berlin reppledepple in the months after the end of World War II. Some of those hot, muggy July nights Hank would lie awake in bed, head aching, and imagine Pits sitting in a nice warm farmhouse, shirt and shoes off, stinking to high heaven and grinning a great big shit-eating grin as he practiced cheating and dreamed of the suckers he would fleece when he got back home.