The Tommyknockers, Page 53

  That was about all Mr. Freeman Moss had to say to him that day.

  They sank a nest of hoses into the trench and rigged more hoses--outflow hoses, this time--to direct the water they pumped out downhill, on a slope that ran a bit southeast of Bobbi's place. These "dumper hoses," as Moss called them, were big wide-bore rolls of canvas that Gard supposed had been scavenged from the VFD.

  "Ayuh, got a few there, got a few other places," Moss said, and would offer no more on that subject.

  Before starting the pumps, he had Gardener pound a number of U-shaped clamps over the dumper hoses. "Else they'll go whippin around, sprayin water everywhere. If you've ever seen a fireman's hose outta control, you know someone c'n get hurt. And we ain't got enough men to stand around holdin a bunch of pissin hoses all day."

  "Not that there'd be any volunteers standing in line. Right?"

  Freeman Moss had looked at him silently, saying nothing for a moment. Then he grunted: "Pound those clamps in good. We'll still have to stop pretty often to pound 'em back in. They'll loosen up."

  "Can't you control the outflow so you don't have to bother with all this clamping shit?" Gardener asked.

  Moss rolled his eyes impatiently at his ignorance. "Sure," he said, "but there's one fuck of a lot of water down in that hole, and I'd like to get it out before doomsday, if it's all the same to you."

  Gardener held out his hands, half-laughing. "Hey, I was just asking," he said. "Peace."

  The man had only grunted in his inimitable Freeman Moss style.

  By nine-thirty, water was pouring downhill and away from the ship at a great rate. It was cold and clear and as sweet as water can be--which is sweet indeed, as anyone with a good well could attest. By noon they had created a brand-new stream. It was six feet wide, shallow, but brawling right along, carrying pine needles, loamy black topsoil, and small shrubs away. There was not much for the men to do but to sit around and make sure none of the plump, straining dumper hoses came free and started to fly around spraying water like bombed-out fire hydrants. Moss shut the pumps down regularly, in sequence, so that they could pound in loose clamps or switch them to a new place if the ground was getting loose where they had been.

  By three o'clock, the stream was rolling larger bushes downstream, and just before five o'clock, Gardener heard the rending rumble of a biggish tree going over. He got up and craned his neck, but it had happened too far down the new stream's course to see.

  "Sounded like a pine," Moss said.

  It was Gardener's turn to look at Moss and say nothing.

  "Might have been a spruce," Moss said, and although the man's face remained perfectly straight, Gardener believed Moss might just have made a joke. A very small one, but a joke, just the same.

  "Is this water reaching the road, do you think?"

  "Oh, ayuh, I sh'd suspect."

  "It'll wash it out, won't it?"

  "Nope. Town crew's already puttin in a new culve't. Large bore. S'pose they'll have to detour traffic couple of days while they tear up the tarvy, but they ain't's much traffic out here as there used to be, anyway."

  "I noticed," Gardener said.

  "Damn good thing, if you ask me. Summer people're always a pain in the ass. Looka here, Gardener--I'm gonna cut the outflow on these pumps way down, but they'll still pump fifteen, maybe seventeen gallons a minute overnight. With four pumps workin, that's thirty-eight hundred gallons an hour, all night long. Not bad for runnin on automatic. Come on, let's go. Yon ship's lovely, but it makes my blood pressure jumpy. I'll drink one of your beers before I head home to the missus, if you'll let it be so."

  Moss had shown up again yesterday, Saturday, in his old Pontiac, and had promptly run the pumps up to capacity--thirty-five gallons per minute each, eighty-four hundred gallons an hour.

  This morning, no Freeman Moss. He had finally played out like the others, leaving Gardener to consider the same old options.

  First option: Business as usual.

  Second option: Run like hell. He had already come to the conclusion that if Bobbi died, he would suffer a fatal accident soon afterward. It might take as long as half an hour for him to have it. If he decided to run, would they know in advance? Gardener didn't think so. He and the rest of Haven still played poker the old-fashioned way: with all the cards dealt facedown. Oh, and by the way, gang--how far would he have to run to get out of the reach of them and their Buck Rogers gadgetry?

  Actually, Gard didn't think it would be that far. Derry, Bangor, even Augusta . . . all those might be too close. Portland? Maybe. Probably. Because of what he thought of as the Cigarette Analogy.

  When a kid started to smoke, he was lucky if he could get through half a butt without puking his guts out or almost fainting. After six months' experience, he might be able to get through five or ten butts a day. Give a kid three years and you had yourself a two-and-a-half-pack-a-day candidate for lung cancer.

  Then turn it over. Tell a kid who has just finished his first butt and who is wandering around green-faced and gagging that he has to quit smoking, and he'll probably fall down and kiss your ass. Catch him when he's doing five or ten smokes a day and you've got a kid who probably doesn't care much one way or another . . . although a kid habituated even at that level may find himself eating too many sweets and wishing for a smoke when he's bored or nervous.

  Ah, Gardener thought, but take your smoking vet. Tell him he's got to quit the coffin-nails and he clutches his chest like a man who's having a heart attack . . . only he's just protecting the smokes in the breast pocket of his shirt. Smoking, Gardener knew from his own mostly successful efforts to either quit the habit or at least damp it down to a less lethal vice, is a physical addiction. In the first week off cigarettes, smokers suffer from jitters, headaches, muscle spasms. Doctors may prescribe B12 to quiet the worst of these symptoms. They know, however, that there are no pills to combat the ex-smoker's feelings of loss and depression during the six months which begin the instant the smoker crushes out his last butt and starts his or her lonely voyage out of addiction.

  And Haven, Gardener thought now, running the pumps up to full power, is like a smoke-filled room. They were sick here at first . . . they were like a bunch of kids learning to smoke cornshucks out behind the barn. But now they like the air in the room, and why not? They're the ultimate chainsmokers. It's in the air they breathe, and God knows what kinds of physiological changes are going on in their brains and bodies. Lung sections show formation of oat cells in the lung tissue of people who have been smoking for only eighteen months. There's a high incidence of brain tumors in towns where there are high-pollution milling operations or, God save us, nuclear reactors. So what is this doing to them?

  He didn't know--he had seen no surface, observable changes except for the loss of teeth and the increased shortness of temper. But he didn't think they'd chase him very far if he split. They might begin by lighting out after him with the fervor of a posse in a Republic western, but he somehow thought they would lose interest very quickly ... as soon as the withdrawal symptoms set in.

  He got all four pumps running at top speed, swelling the creek into a wide stream almost at once. Then he began the day's work of checking the U-clamps which held the hoses still.

  If he got away, his choices were two: keep his mouth shut or blow the whistle. He knew that, for a variety of reasons, he would probably keep quiet. Which meant simply dealing himself out--writing off the last month of back-breaking labor, writing off any chance to change the suicidal course of world politics at a stroke, most of all writing off his good friend and erstwhile lover Bobbi Anderson, who had been in absentia for the best part of two weeks now.

  Third option: Get rid of it. Blow it up. Destroy it. Make it no more than another vague rumor, like the supposed aliens in Hangar 18.

  In spite of his dull fury at the insanity of nuclear power and the energy-swilling technocratic pigs who had created it and underwritten it and refused to see its dangers even in the wake of Chernobyl, in spite
of his depression at the AP Wirephoto of the scientists advancing the Black Clock to two minutes before midnight, he fully recognized the possibility that destroying the ship might be the best thing he could possibly do. The oxidation of whatever had been impregnated in the surface of its hull (deliberately, he had no doubt) had created a cornucopia of mind-blowing gadgets out here; God alone knew what wonderful things might be waiting inside. But there was the other stuff, wasn't there? The neurosurgeon in the crashed plane, that old man and the big state cop, maybe the lady constable, Mrs. McCausland, maybe the two other state cops who had disappeared, maybe even the Brown kid . . . how much of this could be laid at the door of this thing he was staring at, which was jutting out of the ground like the breeching snout of the greatest white whale ever dreamed of? Some? All? None of the above?

  Gardener was sure of one thing--it wasn't the last.

  That the ship in the earth was a font of creation was undeniable . . . but it was also the wrecked craft of an unknowable species from somewhere far out in the blackness--creatures whose minds might be as different from those of human beings as human minds were from the minds of spiders. It was a marvelous, improbable artifact shining in the hazy sunlight of this Sunday morning ... but it was also a haunted house where demons might still walk between the walls and in the hollow places. There were times when he would look at it and feel his throat fill up with strangeness, as at the sight of flat eyes staring up at him from the earth.

  But get rid of it how? Blow it up how? Even supposing he wanted to, how would he do it? The packet charges they had used to chop up the bedrock holding the ship fast were more powerful than dynamite, but they didn't even scratch the hull of the thing. Was he supposed to trot off to Limestone Air Force Base, steal an A-bomb, moving with the silky, unbelievable smoothness of Dirk Pitt in a Clive Cussler novel? And wouldn't it be funny, wouldn't it really be the last laugh, if he actually did manage to get a nuke and set it off, only to discover that all he'd really managed to do was to set the ship, still uncannily unharmed and unscratched, free at a stroke?

  Those were his options, the third of which was not an option at all ... and apparently his hands had known more than his brain, for while he went on turning them over in his mind for the umptieth time, he had gone calmly about the morning's work--driving the pumps up to full blast and making sure that the dumper hoses were solidly planted. Now he was back at the trench checking the sucker hoses, and the level of the water. He was happy to find he needed a powerful flashlight to see the water--it was falling rapidly. He guessed that blasting and excavation could begin again by Wednesday, Thursday at the latest ... and once they got going again, the work would go fast. The rock of an aquifer was spongy and large-pored. They wouldn't need to waste time digging glory-holes for explosives, because there would be enough natural spots for not just exploding radios but satchel charges. The next phase would be like moving from a dense, gluey batter to a freshly risen dough.

  Gard stood bent over the cut in the earth for some time, shining the big light into the black depths. Then he clicked it off, meaning to inspect the clamps again. Here it was, only eight-thirty in the morning, and already he wanted a drink.

  He turned around.

  Bobbi was standing there.

  Gardener's mouth dropped open. He closed it with a snap after a moment and started toward her, fully expecting this hallucination to grow transparent, then be gone. But Bobbi stayed solid, and Gard saw that she had lost a great deal of hair--her brow, a pale and shining white, extended back nearly to the middle of her skull, leaving the world's biggest widow's peak in the center. Nor were these newly exposed sections of skull the only pale things about her; she looked like someone who had been through a terrible debilitating illness. Her right arm was in a sling. And--

  --and she's wearing makeup. Pan-Cake makeup. I'm pretty sure that's what it is--she's laid it on heavy the way a lady does when she wants to cover up a bruise. But it's her ... Bobbi ... no dream ...

  His eyes suddenly filled with tears. Bobbi doubled, then trebled. It wasn't until then--that moment--that he realized just how scared he had been. And how lonely.

  "Bobbi?" he asked hoarsely. "Is it really you?"

  Bobbi smiled, that old sweet smile he loved so well, the one that had saved him from his own idiot self so often. It was Bobbi. It was Bobbi and he loved her.

  He went to her, put his arms around her, laid his tired face against her neck. He had done this before, too.

  "Hello, Gard," she said, and began to cry.

  He was crying too. He kissed her. Kissed her. Kissed her.

  His hands were suddenly all over her; her free one was on him.

  No, he said, still kissing her. No, you can't--

  Shh. I have to. It's my last chance, Gard. Our last chance.

  Kissed. They kissed. Oh they kissed and now her shirt was unbuttoned and this was not the body of a sex goddess, it was white and sickish, the muscles flabby, the breasts saggy, but he loved it and he kissed her and kissed her and their tears were all over each other's faces.

  Gard my dear, my dear, always my

  shhhh

  Oh please I love you

  Bobbi I love

  love

  kiss me

  kiss

  yes

  Pine needles under them. Sweetness. Her tears. His tears. They kissed, kissed, kissed. And as he entered her, Gard realized two things at once: how much he had missed her, and that not a single bird was singing. The woods were dead.

  Kissed.

  12

  Gard used his shirt, not very clean anyway, to wipe swatches of brown makeup from his naked body. It hadn't just been on her face. Had she come out here expecting to make love to him? Something it might be just as well not to think about. Now, anyway.

  Although they both should have been Thanksgiving dinner for the noseeums and moose-flies, spouting sweat as they had been doing, he hadn't a single bite. He didn't think Bobbi had any, either. It's not only an IQ booster, he thought, looking at the ship, it's got every insect repellent on the market beat hollow.

  He tossed his shirt aside and touched Bobbi's face, running a finger down her cheek, picking up a little more of the makeup. Most of it, however, had either been sweated off ... or washed away by her tears.

  "I hurt you," he said.

  You loved me, she answered.

  "What?"

  You hear me, Gard. I know you do.

  "Are you angry?" he asked, aware that the barriers were going up again, aware that he was acting again, aware that it was over, all the things they'd had were finally over. These were sorry things to be aware of. "Is that why you won't talk to me?" He paused. "I wouldn't blame you. You've put up with a lot of shit from me over the years, woman."

  "I was talking to you," she said, and, sorry as he was to be lying to her after loving her, he was glad to sense her doubt. "With my mind."

  "I didn't hear."

  "You did before. You heard ... and you answered. We talked, Gard."

  "We were closer to ... that." He flagged an arm at the ship.

  She smiled wanly up at him and put her cheek against his shoulder. With most of the makeup scrubbed away, her flesh had an unsettling translucence.

  "Did I? Hurt you?"

  "No. Yes. A little." She smiled. It was that old Bobbi Anderson go-to-hell grin, but a final tear ran slowly down her cheek nonetheless. "It was worth it. We saved the best for last, Gard."

  He kissed her gently, but now her lips were different. The lips of the New and Improved Roberta Anderson.

  "First, last, or in the middle, I didn't have any business making love to you, and you don't have any business out here."

  "I look tired, I know," Bobbi said, "and I'm wearing a lot of goop, as you already found out. You were right--I let myself get overtired and I had something like a complete physical breakdown."

  Bullshit, Gardener thought, but he covered this thought with white noise so Bobbi couldn't read it--he did this with b
arely a conscious thought. Such hiding was becoming second nature to him now.

  "The treatment was ... radical. It's resulted in some superficial skin problems and some hair loss. But it'll all grow back."

  "Oh," Gardener said, thinking: You still can't lie for shit, Bobbi. "Well, I'm glad you're all right. But you maybe ought to take a couple of days off, put your feet up--"

  "No," Bobbi said quietly. "This is the time for the final push, Gard. We're almost there. We started this, you and me--"

  "No," Gardener said. "You started it, Bobbi. You literally stumbled over it. Back when Peter was alive. Remember?"

  Gard saw pain in Bobbi's eyes at the mention of Peter. Then it was gone. She shrugged Gard's qualification off.

  "You were here soon enough. You saved my life. I wouldn't be here without you. So let's do it together, Gard. I bet it's no more than another twenty-five feet down to that hatchway."

  Gardener had a strong hunch she was right, but he suddenly didn't feel like admitting it. There was a spike turning and turning in his heart, and the pain was worse than any hangover headache he'd ever had.

  "If you think so, I'll take your word for it."

  "What do you say, Gard? One more mile. You and me."

  He sat thoughtfully, looking at Bobbi, noticing again how still, how almost malignant the woods seemed with no birdsong in them.

  This is how it would be--this is how it will be--if one of their asshole power plants ever does melt down. The people will have smarts enough to get out--if they're warned in time, that is, and if the power plant in question and the NRC have balls enough to tell them--but you can't tell an owl or woodpecker to clear the area. You can't tell a scarlet tanager not to look at the fireball. So their eyes will melt and they'll just go flapping around, blind as bats, running into trees and the sides of buildings until they starve to death or break their necks. Is this a spaceship, Bobbi? Or is it a great big containment housing that's already leaking? It has, hasn't it? That's why these woods are so quiet, and that's why the Polyester-Clad Neurologist Bird fell out of the sky on Friday, isn't it?

  "What do you say, Gard? One more mile?"

  So where's the good solution? Where's peace with honor? Do you run? Do you turn it over to the American Dallas Police so they can use it on the Soviet Dallas Police? What? What? Any new ideas, Gard?