The Tommyknockers, Page 74

  David Brown? Kyle thought unbelieving at Hazel. Is that what you

  pick up yes he's trying to save the kid, to

  to bring him back

  back from Altair-4

  Then, for a moment overriding the net, came Dick Allison's voice, excited and full of sour triumph:

  Hot DAMN! I KNEW that kid would come in handy!

  19

  For a moment Gardener felt nothing at all. He began to relax, on the edge of a doze again. Then pain hit him in a single awful crunch, a destructive battering ram that would tear his head apart.

  "No!" he screamed. His hands went to his temples; beat against them. "No, God no, it hurts too much, Jesus, no!"

  Ride with it, son, try to ride with it!

  "I can't I can't OH CHRIST MAKE IT STOP!"

  This made his shattered ankle feel like a mosquito bite. He was dimly aware that his nose was bleeding and that his mouth was filled with blood.

  RIDE WITH IT, SON!

  The pain backed off a little. It was replaced with another feeling. This new sensation was horrible, horrible and terrifying.

  Once, while in college, he had participated in something called the Great McDonald's Eat-Out. Five frats had fielded "champion eaters." Gard had been Delta Tau Delta's "champ." He had been on his sixth Big Mac--not even close to the contest winner's eventual total--and had become suddenly aware that he was very close to total physical overload. He had never felt anything like it in his life. In a gross way it was almost interesting. His midsection felt thundery with food. He did not feel like vomiting; nausea did not exactly describe what it had been like. He saw his stomach as a huge, still dirigible lying bloated in still air at his center. He thought he could sense red lights going on in some mental Mission Control Center as various systems tried to deal with this insane load of meat, bread, and sauce. He didn't vomit. He walked it off. Very slowly, he walked it off. For hours he had felt like those drawings of Tweedledum and Tweedledee, his stomach stretched and smooth and terribly close to bursting.

  Now it was his mind that felt like that, and Jim Gardener understood as coldly and rationally as a trapeze performer who works with no net that he was on the knife-edge of death. But there was another sensation, one which was unrelatable to anything, and for the first time he understood what the Tommyknockers were all about--what moved them; what propelled them onward.

  In spite of the pain, which had only retreated, not left, and in spite of that dreadful smooth feeling of being as stuffed as a python which has swallowed a kid, part of him was enjoying this. It was like a drug--an incredibly powerful drug. His brain felt like the engine in the biggest fucking Chrysler ever built, idling on fat gas, waiting for him to drop the car into gear and peel out.

  Peel out to where?

  Anywhere.

  The stars, if he wanted.

  Son I'm losing you

  That was the old man, sounding more exhausted than ever, and Gardener pulled himself back to the job at hand--the next piece of furniture he had to hop to. Oh, this feeling was drunkenly wonderful, but it was stolen. He forced himself to think again of those leaf-brown shapes locked in all those hammocks. Galley slaves. The old man was powering him; he was drinking the old man like a vampire drinking blood. How long until he was a vampire himself? Like them?

  He thought at Hillman: I am with you, old horse.

  Ev Hillman close his one good eye in silent relief. Gard turned to the monitor screen, absently holding the plug in his ear like a newsman on a live remote listening. to a question from the anchor back in the studio.

  In the closed space of Bobbi's shed, the light began to cycle up again.

  20

  listen

  They all listened; they were all on a party-line which covered all of Haven, radiating out from a center about two miles from that still-faint smudge of smoke. They were all on the net and they all listened. They accepted no absolute common; Tommyknockers was a name they accepted as casually as any, but they were really interstellar gypsies with no king. Yet in this moment of crisis during the period of regeneration--a period when they were so vulnerable--they were willing to accept the voices of those Gardener called the Shed People. They were, after all, the clearest distillation of them all. the time has come to close the borders

  There was a universal sigh of agreement--a mental sound Ruth McCausland would have recognized: a sound like autumn leaves blown before a November wind.

  For the time being, at least, the Shed People had lost all contact with Gardener. They were only content that he was occupied elsewhere. If he meant to go to their ship, the fire would soon be in his way.

  The unified voice quickly explained the rota that was to be followed--some of these plans had been made, vaguely, weeks ago--these plans had become more concrete as the Shed People "became."

  Gadgets had been made--haphazardly, it had seemed. But birds flying south as winter approaches may seem haphazard; their migration may even seem so to. themselves --just something which felt like as good a way as any to spend the winter months. Want to go to North Carolina, dear? Of course, my love; what a wonderful idea.

  So they had built, and sometimes they had killed each other with their new toys, and sometimes they had finished gadgets, looked at them doubtfully, and packed them away somewhere out of sight, since they were no obvious help in their daily round. But some they had toted out to Haven's borders, usually' in the trunks of cars or in the backs of trucks, under tarps. One of these gadgets had been the Coke machine which had murdered John Leandro; it had been customized by the late Dave Rutledge, who had once serviced such machines for a living. One had been the Bensohn brush-trimmer which had cut up a storm on Lester Moran. There were duded-up televisions which shot fire; there were smoke-detectors (Gardener had seen some but not all of these on his first visit to the shed) which flew through the air like Frisbees, emitting killing waves of ultrasonic sound; at several locations there were force-barriers. Almost all of these gadgets could be mentally activated with the help of simple electronic devices which were casually dubbed "Callers," not much different from the device Freeman Moss had used to float the drainage machinery into the woods.

  No one thought more about why these gadgets should be placed in a rough perimeter around the town than a bird thinks about flying south or a caterpillar thinks about weaving a cocoon. But of course, this time always came--the time when the borders had to be sealed. This time had come early ... but, it seemed, not too early.

  The Shed People also suggested that a number of Tommyknockers go back to the village. Hazel McCready was designated to go with them--she would be the representative of the more advanced Tommyknockers. The stuff protecting the borders would run pretty much without supervision until the batteries were dead. In the village there were more discretionary gadgets which could be sent into the woods to form a protective net around the ship, in case the drunk made a break for it.

  And there was one other very important gadget which needed guarding on the off-chance that anyone--anyone at all--should break through. This gadget sat in Hazel McCready's backyard like a onering circus under a large five-man tent. It was the safety net. It would do many of the things the transformer in the shed could do, but this thing, which had once been a furnace, was vitally different from the transformer in the shed in two respects. The galvanized aluminum pipes which had once led to the ventilators in the various rooms of the McCready house now all pointed skyward. Hooked up to this New and Improved furnace, on two plywood ramps protected from the elements by more of the silvery netting which lined the trench in which the ship lay, were twenty-four truck batteries. When this gadget was turned on, it would make air.

  Tommyknocker air.

  Once this small atmosphere-manufacturing factory was in operation, they would no longer be at the mercy of winds and weather--even in the event of a hurricane, the air-exchanger, which had been surrounded by force-shields, would protect most of them if they gathered in the village.

  The sug
gestion that the borders should be closed came as Gardener was putting one of the transformer earphones into his own ear. Five minutes later, Hazel and about forty others had dropped out of the net and were headed back to town--some to the town hall to oversee the borders and protect the ship with other gadgets; some to make sure the atmosphere factory was protected, in case of accident ... or in case the reaction from the outside world was quicker, more informed, and better organized than they expected. All these things had happened before, at other times, on other worlds, and affairs were usually concluded in a satisfactory fashion ... but the "becoming" did not always have a happy ending.

  During the ten minutes between the command to close the borders and the departure of Hazel's party, the size and shape of the smoke rising into the sky did not change appreciably. The wind was not rising much ... at least, not yet. This was good because the attention of the outside world would be slower in turning toward them. It was bad because Gardener would not be cut off from the ship so soon.

  Still--Newt/Dick/ Adley/Kyle thought Gardener's goose was just about cooked. They held the remaining Tommyknockers in place for five minutes, waiting for mental notice that the gadgets along the borders were waking up, getting ready to do their jobs.

  This came as an awakening hum.

  Newt looked at Dick. Dick nodded. The two of them dropped out of the net, and turned their attention back to the shed. Gardener, who had once been impossible for even Bobbi to pick up, was still a tough nut to crack. But they should have been able to read the transformer with no trouble at all; its steady, heavy pulses of energy should have been as easy for them to "hear" as RF interference on a TV or radio from the small motor in an electric mixer.

  But the transformer was barely a whisper--no more than the dim sound of the ocean in a conch shell.

  Newt looked at Dick again, frightened. jesus he's gone motherfucker's

  Dick smiled. He did not believe that Gardener, who could still barely thought-read or -send at all, could have accomplished his purpose so quickly ... if it had ever been possible for him to accomplish at all. The man's presence here and Bobbi's perverse affection for him had been a nuisance ... one which Dick now believed at an end.

  He winked one of his strange eyes at Newt. This odd mixture of human and alien was both hideous and hilarious at the same time.

  Not gone, Newt. The asshole's DEAD.

  Newt looked at Dick thoughtfully for a moment, then began to smile.

  They moved in, all of them together, drawing in toward Bobbi's house like a tightening noose.

  21

  Carrying a heavy head.

  The phrase chimed constantly in the back of Gard's mind as he turned toward the monitor screen--it seemed to have been there for a long time. Once, and for a Jim Gardener that no longer existed, his poems had formed around such lines, like pearls around chips of grit.

  Carrying a heavy head now, boss.

  Was it from some chain-gang movie, like Cool Hand Luke? A song? Yeah. Some song. Something which seemed oddly mixed in his mind, something from the West Coast sixties, a waif-faced psychedelic flower-child wearing a Hell's Angels jacket and carrying a bike chain wrapped around one thin white violinist's hand ...

  Your mind, Gard, something happening to your mind--

  Yeah, you're fucking-A, big daddy, I'm carrying a heavy head, that's what, I was born to be wild, I been caught in the crosstown traffic, and if they say I never loved you, you know they are a liar. Carrying a heavy head. I can feel every vein, artery, and capillary in it swelling up, getting plump, standing out the way the veins on our hands used to when we were kids and wrapped a dozen rubber bands around our wrists and left them there to see what would happen. Carrying a heavy head. If I looked into a mirror right now, I know what I'd see--green light spilling out of my pupils like the pencil-beams of flashlights. Heavy head--and if you joggle it, it will burst. Yes. So be careful, Gard. Be careful, son

  Yeah old man yeah.

  David

  Yeah.

  That feeling of dipping and swaying out over the drop. He remembered the news film of Karl Wallenda, that grand old man of the aerialists, falling from the wire in Puerto Rico--gripping for the line, finding it, holding for a minute--then, gone.

  Gardener dismissed it from his mind. He tried to dismiss everything from his mind and prepared to be a hero. Or die trying.

  22

  PROGRAM?

  Gard pushed the earphone deep into his ear and frowned at the screen. Drove the heavy ram of his thoughts toward it. Felt pain flare; felt the balloon of his brain swell a little more. The pain faded; the feeling of increased swelling remained. He stared at the screen.

  ALTAIR-4

  Okay ... what next? He listened for the old man to tell him, but there was nothing. Either his mental link to the transformer had excluded the old man or the old man didn't know. Did it really matter which? Nope.

  He looked at the screen.

  CROSS-FILE WTTH--

  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 onweworked, and wait
ed for the light,lAnd 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.