The Tommyknockers

1

'I hope you enjoyed the flight,' the stewardess by the hatch told the fortyish woman who left Delta's flight 230 with a trickle of other passengers who had stuck it out all the way to Bangor, 230's terminating point.

Bobbi Anderson's sister Anne, who was only forty but who thought fifty as well as looking it (Bobbi would say – during those infrequent times she was in her cups – that sister Anne had thought like a woman of fifty since she was thirteen or so), halted and fixed the stew with a gaze that might have stopped a clock.

'Well, I'll tell you, babe,' she said. 'I'm hot. My pits stink because the plane was late leaving La Garbage and even later leaving Logan. The air was bumpy and I hate to fly. The trainee they sent back to Livestock Class spilled someone's screwdriver all over me and I've got orange juice drying to a fine crack-glaze all over my arm. My panties are sticking in the crack of my ass and this little town looks like a pimple on the cock of New England. Other questions?'

'No,' the stew managed. Her eyes had gone glassy, and she felt as if she had suddenly gone about three quick rounds with Boom-Boom Mancini on a day when Mancini was pissed at the world. This was an effect Anne Anderson often had on people.

'Good for you, dear.' Anne marched past the attendant and up the jetway, swinging a large, screamingly purple totebag in one hand. The attendant never even had time to wish her a pleasant stay in the Bangor area. She decided it would have been a wasted effort anyway. The lady looked as if she had never had a pleasant stay anywhere. She walked straight, but she looked like a woman who did it in spite of pain somewhere -like the little mermaid, who went on walking even though every step was like knives in her feet.

Only, the flight attendant thought, if that babe has got a True Love stashed anywhere, I hope to God he knows about the mating habits of the trapdoor spider.

2

The Avis clerk told Anne she had no cars to rent; that if Anne hadn't made a reservation in advance, she was out of luck, so sorry. It was summer in Maine, and rental cars were at a premium.

This was a mistake on the part of the clerk. A bad one.

Anne smiled grimly, mentally spat on her hands, and went to work. Situations like this were meat and drink to sister Anne, who had nursed her father until he had died a miserable death on the first of August, eight days ago. She had refused to have him removed to an I.C. facility, preferring instead to wash him, medicate his bedsores, change his continence pants, and give him his pills in the middle of the night, by herself. Of course she had driven him to the final stroke, worrying at him constantly about selling the house on Leighton Street (he didn't want to; she was determined that he would; the final monster stroke, which occurred after three smaller ones at two-year intervals, came three days after the house was put up for sale), but she would no more admit that she knew this than she would admit the fact that, although she had attended St Bart's in Utica ever since earliest childhood and was one of the leading lay-women in that fine church, she believed the concept of God was a crock of shit. By the time she was eighteen she had bent her mother to her will, and now she had destroyed her father and watched dirt shoveled over his coffin. No slip of an Avis clerk could stand against Sissy. It took her about ten minutes to break the clerk down, but she brushed aside the offer of the compact car which Avis held in reserve for the occasional – very occasional – celebrity passing through Bangor and pressed on, scenting the young clerk's increasing fear of her as clearly as a hungry carnivore scents blood. Twenty minutes after the offer of the compact, Anne drove serenely away from Bangor International behind the wheel of a Cutlass Supreme reserved for a businessman scheduled to deplane at 6:15 P.m. By that time the clerk would be off-duty – and besides, she had been so unnerved by Anne's steady flailing that she wouldn't have cared if the Cutlass had been earmarked for the President of the United States. She went tremblingly into the inner office, shut the door, locked it, put a chair under the knob, and smoked a joint one of the mechanics had laid on her. Then she burst into tears.

Anne Anderson had a similar effect on many people.

3

By the time the clerk had been eaten, it was going on three o'clock. Anne could have driven straight to Haven – the map she'd picked tip at the Avis counter put the mileage at less than fifty – but she wanted to be absolutely fresh for her confrontation with Roberta.

There was a cop at the X-shaped intersection of Hammond and Union Streets – a streetlight was out, which she thought typical of this little running sore of a town -and she stopped halfway across to ask him for directions to the best hotel or motel in town. The cop intended to remonstrate with her for holding up traffic in order to ask for directions, and then the look in her eyes – the warm look of a fire in the brain which has been well-banked and might flare at any time – decided it might be less trouble to give her the directions and get rid of her. This lady looked like a dog the cop had known when he was a kid, a dog who had thought it fine fun to tear the seats from the pants of kids passing on the way to school. That kind of hassle on a day when both the temperature and his ulcer were too hot, he didn't need. He directed her to Cityscape Hotel out on Route 7 and was glad to see the ass end of her, going away.

4

Cityscape Hotel was full.

That was no trouble for sister Anne.

She got herself a double, then bullied the harried manager into giving her another because the air-conditioner in the first rattled and because the color on the TV was so bad, she said, that all the actors looked like they had just eaten shit and would soon die.

She unpacked, masturbated to a grim and cheerless climax with a vibrator nearly the size of one of the mutant carrots in Bobbi's garden (the only climaxes she had were of the grim and cheerless type; she'd never been with a man in bed and never intended to), showered, napped, then went to dinner. She scanned the menu with a darkening frown, then bared her teeth in a spitless grin at the waiter who came to take her order.

'Bring me a bunch of vegetables. Raw, leafy vegetables.'

'Madame wants a sal – '

'Madame wants a bunch of raw, leafy vegetables. I don't give a shit what you call them. Just wash them first to get the bugpiss off. And bring me a sombrero right now.'

'Yes, madame,' the waiter said, licking his lips. People were looking at them. A few smiled … but those who got a look at Anne Anderson's eyes soon stopped. The waiter started away and she called him back, her voice loud and even and undeniable.

'A sombrero,' she said, 'has Kahlua and cream in it. Cream. If you bring me a sombrero with milk in it, chum, you're going to be shampooing with the motherfucker.'

The waiter's Adam's apple went up and down like a monkey on a stick. He tried to summon the sort of aristocratic, pitying smile which is a good waiter's chief weapon against vulgar customers. To do him full credit, he got a pretty good start on that smile – then Anne's lips curved up in a grin that froze it dead. There was no good nature in that grin. There was something like murder in it.

'I mean it, chum,' sister Anne said softly. The waiter believed her.

5

She was back in her room at seven-thirty. She undressed, put on a robe, and sat looking out the fourth-story window. In spite of its name, Cityscape Hotel was actually far out on Bangor's outskirts. The view Anne looked out on was, except for the lights in the small parking lot, one of almost unalloyed darkness. That was exactly the sort of view she liked.

There were amphetamine capsules in her purse. Anne took one of them out, opened it, poured the white powder onto the mirror of her compact, made a line with one sensibly short nail, and snorted half of it. Her heart immediately began to jackrabbit in her narrow chest. A flush of color bloomed in her pallid face. She left the rest for the morning. She had begun to use yellowjackets this way shortly after her father's first stroke. Now she found she could not sleep without a snort of this stuff, which was the diametric opposite of a sedative. When she had been a little girl – a very little girl – her mother had once cried at Anne in utter exasperation, 'You're so contrary cheese'd physic ya!'

Anne supposed it had been true then, and that it was true now … not that her mother would ever dare say it now, of course.

Anne glanced at the phone and then away. Just looking at it made her think of Bobbi, of the way she had refused to come to Father's funeral – not in words but in a cowardly way that was typical of her, by simply refusing to respond to Anne's increasingly urgent efforts to communicate with her * She had called twice during the twenty-four hours following the old bastard's stroke, when it became obvious he was going to snuff it. The phone had not been answered either time.

She called again after her father died – this time at 1:04 on the morning of August 2nd. Some drunk had answered the telephone.

'I'd like Roberta Anderson, please,' Anne said. She stood stiffly at the pay phone in the lobby of Utica Soldiers' Hospital. Her mother sat in a nearby plastic chair, surrounded by endless brothers and endless sisters with their endless Irish potato faces, weeping and weeping and weeping. 'Right now.'

'Bobbi?' the drunk voice at the other end said. 'You want the old boss or the New and Improved Boss?'

'Spare me the bullshit, Gardener. Her father has

'Can't talk to Bobbi now,' the drunk – it was Gardener, all right, she recognized the voice now – broke in. Anne closed her eyes. There was only one piece of phone-related bad manners she hated worse than being broken in upon. 'She's out in the shed with the Dallas Police. They're all getting even Newer and more Improved.'

'You tell her her sister Anne -

Click!

Dry rage turned the sides of her throat to heated flannel. She held the telephone handset away from her and looked at it the way a woman might look at a snake that has bitten her. Her fingernails were white-going-on-purple.

The piece of phone-related bad manners she hated most was being hung up on.

6

She had dialed back at once, but this time, after a long pause, the telephone began to make a weird sirening noise in her ear. She hung up and went over to her weeping mother and her harp relatives.

'Did you get her, Sissy?' her mother asked Anne.

'Yes.'

'What did she say?' Her eyes begged Anne for good news. 'Did she say she'd come home for the funeral?'

'I couldn't get a commitment one way or another,' Anne said, and suddenly all of her fury at Roberta, Roberta who had had the temerity to try and escape, suddenly burst out of her heart – but not in shrillness. Anne would never be still or shrill. That sharklike grin surfaced on her face. The murmuring relatives grew silent and looked at Anne uneasily. Two of the old ladies gripped their rosaries. 'She did say that she was glad the old bastard was dead. Then she laughed. Then she hung up.'

There was a moment of stunned silence. Then Paula Anderson clapped her hands to her ears and began to shriek.

7

Anne had had no doubt – at least at first – that Bobbi would be at the funeral. Anne meant for her to be there, and so she would be. Anne always got what she wanted; that made the world nice for her, and that was the way things should be. When Roberta did come, she would be confronted with the lie Anne had told – probably not by their mother, who would be too pathetically glad to see her to mention it (or probably even to remember it), but surely by one of the harp uncles. Bobbi would deny it, so the harp uncle would probably let it go – unless the harp uncle happened to be very drunk which was always a good possibility with Mama's brothers – but they would all remember Anne's statement, not Bobbi's denial.

That was good. Fine, in fact. But not enough. It was time – overtime – that Roberta came home. Not just for the funeral; for good.

She would see to it. Leave it to Sissy.

8

Sleep did not come easy to Anne that night in the Cityscape. Part of it was being in a strange bed; part of it was the dim gabble of TVs from other rooms and the sense of being surrounded by other people, just another bee trying to sleep in just another chamber of this hive where the chambers were square instead of hexagonal; part of it was knowing that tomorrow would be an extremely busy day; most of it, however, was her continuing dull fury at being balked. It was the thing which she hated above all others – it reduced such annoyances as being hung up on to minor piffles. Bobbi had balked her. So far she had balked her utterly and completely, necessitating this stupid trip during what the weather forecasters were calling the worst heatwave to hit New England since 1974.

An hour after her lie about Bobbi to her mother and the harp aunts and uncles, she had tried the phone again, this time from the undertaker's (her mother had long since tottered home, where Anne supposed she would be sitting up with her cunt of a sister Betty, the two of them drinking that shitty claret they liked, wailing over the dead man while they got slopped). She got nothing but that sirening sound again. She called the operator and reported trouble on the line.

'I want you to check it, locate the trouble, and see that it's corrected,' Anne said. 'There's been a death in the family, and I need to reach my sister as soon as possible.'

'Yes, ma'am. If you'll give me the number you're calling from

'I'm calling from the undertaker's,' Anne said. 'I'm going to pick out a coffin for my father and then go to bed. I'll call in the morning. Just make sure my call goes through then, honey.'

She hung up and turned to the undertaker.

'Pine box,' she said. 'Cheapest one you've got.'

'But, Ms Anderson, I'm sure you'll want to think about

'I don't want to think about anything,' Anne barked. She could feel the warning pulses which signaled the onset of one of her frequent migraine headaches. 'Just sell me the cheapest pine box you've got so I can get the fuck out of here. It smells dead.'

'But . . .' The undertaker was entirely flabbergasted now. 'But won't you want to see . . .'

'I'll see it when he's wearing it,' Anne said, drawing her checkbook out of her purse. 'How much?'

9

The next morning Bobbi's telephone was working, but there was no answer. There continued to be no answer all day. Anne grew steadily more angry. Around four P.m., with the wake in the next room going full-blast, she had called Maine directory assistance and told the operator she wanted the number of the Haven Police Department.

'Well . . . there's no police department, exactly, but I have a listing for the Haven constable. Will that

'Yeah. Give it to me.'

The directory-assistance operator did. Anne called. The phone rang … rang … rang. The tone of the ring was exactly the same as the tone she got when she dialed the house where her spineless sister had been hiding out for the last thirteen years or so. A person could almost believe they were ringing into the same receiver.

She actually toyed with the idea for a moment before brushing it aside. But giving such a paranoid thought even a moment's house-room was unlike her, and it made her angrier. The rings sounded alike because the same little dipshit backwoods phone company sold and serviced all the phone equipment in town, that was all.

'Did you get her?' Paula asked timidly, coming to the door.

'No. She doesn't answer, the town constable doesn't answer, I think the whole fucking town went to Bermuda. Jesus!' She blew a lock of hair off her sweaty forehead.

'Perhaps if you called one of her friends

'What friends? The loony she's shacked up with?'

'Sissy! You don't know – '

'I know who answered the phone the one time I did get through,' she returned grimly. 'After living in this family, it's easier for me to tell when a man's drunk by his voice.'

Her mother said nothing; she had been reduced to wet-eyed trembling silence, one hand hovering at the collar of her black dress, and that was just how Anne liked her.

'No, he's there, and they both know I'm trying to get through and why, and they're going to be sorry they fucked with me.'

'Sissy, I do so wish you wouldn't use that lang – '

'Shut up!' Anne screamed at her, and of course her mother did.

Anne picked up the telephone again. This time when she dialed directory assistance, she asked for the number of the Haven mayor. They didn't have one of those either. There was something called a town manager, whatever the fuck that was.

Muffled little clicks like rats' claws on glass, its the operator looked things up on her computer screen. Her mother had fled. From the other room came the theatrically overblown sobs and wails of Irish grief. Like a V-2 rocket, Anne thought, an Irish wake was powered by liquid fuel, and in both cases the liquid was the same. Anne closed her eyes. Her head thumped. She ground her teeth together -it produced a bitter, metallic taste. She closed her eyes and imagined how good, how wonderful it would be to perform a little surgery on Bobbi's face with her fingernails.

'Are you still there, honey,' she asked without opening her eyes, 'or did you suddenly run off to the W.C.?'

'Yes, I have a -'

'Give it to me.'

The operator was gone. A robot recited a number in odd, herky-jerky cadences. Anne dialed it. She fully expected no answer, but the phone was picked up promptly. 'Selectmen's. Newt Berringer here.'

'Well, it's good to know someone's there. My name's Anne Anderson. I'm calling from Utica, New York. I tried to call your constable, but apparently he's gone fishing.'

Berringer's voice was even. 'He's a she, Miss Anderson. She died unexpectedly last month. The office hasn't been filled. Probably won't be until next town meeting.'

This stopped Anne for only an instant. She focused instead on something which interested her more.

'Miss Anderson? How did you know I was Miss, Berringer?'

There was no pause. Berringer said, 'Ain't you Bobbi's sister? If you are, and if you were married, you wouldn't be Anderson, would you?'

You know Bobbi then, do you?'

Everyone in Haven knows Bobbi, Miss Anderson. She's our resident celebrity. We're real proud of her.'

It went through the meat of Anne's brain like a sliver of glass. Our resident celebrity. Oh dear bleeding Christ.

'Good job, Sherlock. I've been trying to reach her on whatever passes for phones up there in Moosepaw County to tell her her father died yesterday and he's going to be buried tomorrow.'

She had expected some conventional sentiment from this faceless official – after all, he knew Bobbi – but there was none. 'Been some trouble with the phones out her way,' was all Berringer said.

Anne was again put momentarily off-pace (very momentarily; Anne was never put off-pace for very long). The conversation was not going as she had expected. The man's responses were a little strange, too reserved even for a Yankee. She tried to picture him and couldn't. There was something very odd in his voice.

'Could you have her call me? Her mother is crying her eyes out in the other room, she's near collapse, and if Roberta doesn't get here in time for the funeral, I think she will collapse.'

‘Well I can't make her call you, Miss Anderson, can l?' Berringer returned with infuriating, drawly slowness. 'She's a grown woman. But I'll surely pass the message along.'

'Maybe I'd better give you the number,' Anne said through clenched teeth. 'I mean, we're still here at the same old stand, but she calls so seldom these days she might have forgotten it. It's – '

'No need,' Berringer interrupted. 'If she don't remember, or have it written down, there's always directory assistance, ain't there? I guess that's how you must have gotten this'un.'

Anne hated the telephone because it allowed only a fraction of the full, relentless force of her personality to come through. She thought she had never hated it so much as she did at this moment. 'Listen!' she cried. 'I don't think you understand – '

'Think I do,' Berringer said. This was the second interruption, and the conversation was not yet three minutes old. 'I'll go out 'fore I have m'dinner and pass it on. Thanks for calling, Miss Anderson.'

'Listen – '

Before she could finish, he did the thing she hated the most.

Anne hung up, thinking she could cheerfully stand by and watch as the jag-off to whom she'd just been speaking was eaten alive by wild dogs.

She had been grinding her teeth together madly.

10

Bobbi didn't return her call that afternoon. Nor that early evening, as the V-2 of the wake entered the boozosphere. Nor that late evening as it went into orbit. Nor in the two hours past midnight as the last of the wakers stumbled blearily out to their cars, with which they would menace other drivers on their way home.

Anne lay sleepless and ramrod straight in her bed most of the night, wired up on speed like a suitcase bomb, alternately grinding her teeth and digging her nails into her palms, planning revenge.

You'll come back, Bobbi, oh yes you will. And when you do …

When she still hadn't called the next day, Anne put the funeral off in spite of her mother's weak wailings that it wasn't fitting. Finally Anne whirled on her and snarled, 'I'll say what's fitting and what isn't. What's fitting is that that little whore should be here and she hasn't even bothered to call. Now leave me alone!'

Her mother slunk away.

That night she tried first Bobbi's number, then the selectmen's office. At the first number the sirening sound continued. At the second, she got a recorded message. She waited patiently until the beep and then said, 'It's Bobbi's sis again, Mr Berringer, cordially hoping that you'll be afflicted with syphilis that won't be diagnosed until your nose falls off and your balls turn black.'

She called directory assistance back and asked for three Haven numbers – the number of Newt Berringer, a Smith ('Any Smith, dear, in Haven they're all related'), and a Brown (the number she received in response to this last request was, by virtue of alphabetical order, Bryant's). She got the same siren howl at each number.

'Shit!' Anne yelled, and threw the phone at the wall.

Upstairs in bed, her mother cringed and hoped Bobbi would not come home … at least not until Anne was in a better mood.

11

She had put the funeral and interment off yet another day.

The relatives began to rumble, but Anne was more than equal to them, thank you. The funeral director took one look at her and decided the old mick could rot in his pine box before he got involved. Anne, who spent the whole day on the phone, would have congratulated him on making a wise decision. Her fury was rapidly passing all previous bounds. Now all the phones into Haven seemed out of service.

She could not delay the funeral another day longer and she knew it. Bobbi had won this battle; all right, so be it. But not the war. Oh no. If she thought that, the bitch had several more thinks coming – and all of them would be painful.

Anne bought her plane tickets angrily but confidently – one from upstate New York to Bangor … and two returns.

12

She would have flown to Bangor the following day – that was when the ticket was for – but her idiotic mother fell down the back stairs and broke her hip. Sean O'Casey had once said that when you lived with the Irish you marched in a fool's parade, and oh how right he had been. Her mother's screams brought Anne in from the back yard, where she had been lying on a chaiselongue, soaking up some sun, and going over her strategy for keeping Bobbi in Utica once she had gotten her here. Her mother was sprawled at the bottom of the narrow staircase, bent at a hideous angle, and Anne's first thought was that for a row of pins she would gladly have left the stupid old bitch there until the anesthetic effects of the claret began to wear off. The new widow smelled like a winery.

In that angry, dismayed moment Anne knew that all of her plans would have to be changed, and she thought that their mother might actually have done it on purpose – gotten drunk to nerve herself up and then not just fallen but jumped downstairs. Why? To keep her from Bobbi, of course.

But you won't, she had thought, going to the phone. You won't; if I want a thing to be, if I mean a thing to be, that thing will be; I am going to Haven and I am going to cut a wide swath there. I'm going to bring Bobbi back, and they're going to remember me for a long time. Especially the hayseed dork who hung up on me.

She picked up the phone and punched the Medix number – it had been pasted to the phone ever since her father's first stroke – with quick, angry stabs of her forefinger. She was grinding her teeth.

13

Thus it was the ninth of August before she could finally get away. In the caesura, there was no call from Bobbi, and Anne didn't try to get her again, or the hick town manager, or Bobbi's drunken fuck in Troy. He had apparently moved in so he could poke her full-time. Okay. Let them both fall into a lull. That would be very fine.

Now she was here, in Bangor's Cityscape Hotel, sleeping badly … and grinding her teeth.

She had always ground her teeth. Sometimes it was so loud it awoke her mother in the night … on a few occasions even her father, who slept like a brick. Her mother mentioned it to the family doctor when Anne was three. That fellow, a venerable upstate New York G.P. whom Doc Warwick would have felt right at home with, looked surprised. He considered a moment, then said: 'I think you must be imagining that, Mrs Anderson.'

'If I am, it must be catching,' Paula had said. 'My husband's heard it, too.'

They looked toward Anne, who was building a shaky tower of blocks, one on top of the other. She worked with grim, unsmiling concentration. As she added a sixth block, the tower fell down … and as she started to rebuild it, they both heard the grim, skeletal sound of Anne grinding her baby teeth together.

'She also does that in her sleep?' the doctor asked.

Paula Anderson nodded.

'Well, it'll probably go away,' the doctor said. 'It's harmless.' But of course it didn't go away and it wasn't harmless; it was bruxism, a malady which, along with heart attacks, strokes, and ulcers, often afflicts driven, self-assertive people. The first of Anne's baby teeth to fall out was noticeably eroded. Her parents commented on it … then forgot it. By then Anne's personality had begun to assert itself in more gaudy and startling ways. By six and a half she was already ruling the Anderson family in some strange way you could never quite put your finger on. And they had all gotten used to the thin, slightly gruesome whisper of Anne's teeth grinding together in the night.

The family dentist had noticed the problem wasn't going away but getting worse by the time Anne was nine, but it wasn't treated until she was fifteen, when it began to cause her actual pain. By then she had worn her teeth down to the live nerves. The dentist fitted her with a rubber mouth-splint taken from a mould of her teeth, then an acrylic one. She wore these appliances, which are called 'night-guards,' to bed every night. At eighteen she was fitted with all-metal crowns on most of her top and bottom teeth. The Andersons couldn't afford it, but Anne insisted. They had allowed the problem to slide, and she was not going to allow her skinflint father to turn around when she was twenty-one and say, 'You're a grownup now, Anne; it's your problem. If you want crowns, you pay the bill.'

She had wanted gold, but that really was beyond their means.

For several years thereafter, Anne's infrequent smiles had a glittery, mechanized look that was extremely startling. People often actually recoiled from that grin. She took a grim enjoyment from these reactions, and when she had seen the villain Jaws in one of the later James Bond movies, she had laughed until she thought her sides would split – this unaccustomed burst of amusement had left her feeling dizzy and ill. But she had understood exactly why, when that huge man first bared his stainless-steel teeth in a sharklike grin, people had recoiled from her, and she almost wished she hadn't finally had porcelain fused over the metal. Yet, she thought, it was perhaps better not to show oneself so clearly – it could be as unwise to wear your personality on your sleeve as it was to wear your heart there. Maybe you didn't have to look as though you could chew your way through a door made of oak planks to get what you wanted as long as you knew you could.

Bruxism aside, Anne also had had a lot of cavities both as a child and an adult in spite of Utica's fluoridated water and her own strictly observed regimen of oral hygiene (she often flossed her teeth until her gums bled). This was also due in large part to her personality rather than her physiology. Drive and the urge to dominate afflicts both the softest parts of the human body – stomach and vitals – and the hardest, the teeth. Anne had a chronic case of dry-mouth. Her tongue was nearly white. Her teeth were dry little islands. Without a steady flow of saliva to wash away crumbs of food, cavities began quickly. By this night when she lay sleeping uneasily in Bangor, Anne had better than twelve ounces of silver-amalgam fillings in her mouth – on infrequent occasions she had set off airport metal-detectors.

In the last two years she had begun to lose teeth in spite of her fanatic efforts to save them: two on the top right, three on the bottom left. In both cases she had opted for the most expensive dental bridgework available – she had to travel to New York City to have the work done. The dental surgeon removed the rotting husks, flayed her gums to the dull white of the jawbone, and implanted tiny titanium screws. The gums were sewn back together and healed nicely – some people reject metal implants in the bone, but Anne Anderson had no trouble at all accepting them – leaving two little titanium posts sticking out of the flesh. The bridgework was placed over the metal anchors after the flesh around them had healed.

She didn't have as much metal in her head as Gard did (Gard's plate always set off airport metal-detectors), but she had a lot.

So she slept without knowing that she was a member of an extremely exclusive club: those people who could enter Haven as it was now with a bare chance of surviving.

14

She left for Haven in her rental car at eight the following morning. She made one wrong turn, but still arrived at the Troy-Haven town line by nine-thirty.

She had awakened feeling as nervous and randy-dandy as a thoroughbred dancing her way into the starting gate. But somewhere, in the last fifteen or twenty miles before she reached the Haven town line – the land around her nearly empty, dreamingly ripe in the breathless summer heat-hush – that fine feeling of anticipation and wire-thin nervy readiness had bled away. Her head began to ache. At first it was just a minor throb, but it quickly escalated into the familiar pounding of one of her near-migraines.

She drove past the town line into Haven.

By the time she got to Haven Village, she was hanging on to herself by force of will and not much more. The headache came and went in sickish waves. Once she thought she had heard a burst of hideously distorted music coming out of her mouth, but that must have been imagination, something brought on by the headache. She was faintly aware of people on the streets in the little village, but not of the way they all turned to look at her … her, then each other.

She could hear machinery throbbing in the woods somewhere – the sound was distant and dreamlike.

The Cutlass began to weave back and forth on the deserted road. Images doubled, trebled, came reluctantly back together, then began doubling and trebling again.

Blood trickled from the corners of her mouth unnoticed.

She held hard to one thought: It's on this road, Route 9, and her name will be on the mailbox. It's on this road, Route 9, and her name will be on the mailbox. It's on this road

The road was mercifully deserted. Haven slept in the morning sun. Ninety per cent of out-of-town traffic had been rerouted now, and this was a good thing for Anne, whose car pitched and yawed wildly, left-hand wheels now spuming dust from one shoulder, right-hand wheels spuming dust from the other a few moments later. She knocked down a turn sign without being aware of it.

Young Ashley Ruvall saw her coming and pulled his bike a prudent distance off the road and stood astride it in Justin Hurd's north pasture until she was gone.

(a lady there's a lady and I can't hear her except her pain)

A hundred voices answered him, soothing him.

(we know Ashley it's all right … shhh … shhh)

Ashley grinned, exposing his pink, baby-smooth gums.

15

Her stomach revolted.

Somehow she was able to pull over and shut off the engine before her breakfast bolted up and out a moment after she managed to claw the driver's door open. For a moment she just hung there with her forearms propped on the open window of the half-open door, bent awkwardly outward, consciousness no more than a single spark which she maintained by her determination that it should not go out. At last she was able to straighten up and pull the door closed.

She thought in a dim and confused way that it must have been breakfast -headaches she was used to, but she almost never threw up. Breakfast in the restaurant of that fleabag that was supposed to be Bangor's best hotel. The bastards had poisoned her.

I may be dying … oh God yes, it really feels as if I might be dying. But if I'm not, I am going to sue them from here to the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court. If I live, I'll make them wish their mothers never met their fathers.

Perhaps it was the bracing quality of this thought which made Anne feel strong enough to get the car moving again. She crept along at thirty-five, looking for a mailbox with ANDERSON written on it. A terrible idea came to her. Suppose Bobbi had painted out her name on the mailbox? It wasn't so crazy when you really thought about it. She might well suspect Sissy would turn up, and the spineless little twat had always been afraid of her. She was in no shape to stop at every farm along the way, inquiring after Bobbi (not that she'd get much help from Bobbi's hayseed neighbors if the donkey she'd spoken to on the phone was any indication), and

But there it was: R. ANDERSON. And behind it, a place she had seen only in photographs. Uncle Frank's place. The old Garrick farm. There was a blue truck parked in the driveway. The place was right, yes, but the light was wrong. She realized this clearly for the first time as she approached the driveway. Instead of feeling the triumph she had expected at this moment – the triumph of a predator that has finally succeeded in running its prey to earth – she felt confusion, uncertainty, and, although she did not even really realize it for what it was because it was so unfamiliar, the first faint trickle of fear.

The light.

The light was wrong.

This realization brought others in quick succession. Her stiff neck. The circles of sweat darkening her dress under her arms. And

Her hand flew to her crotch. There was a faint dampness there, drying now, and she isolated a dim ammoniac smell in the car. It had been there for some time, but her conscious mind had just now tumbled to it.

I Pissed myself. I pissed myself and I've been in this fucking car almost long enough for it to dry

(and the light, Anne)

The light was wrong. It was sunset light.

Oh no – it's nine-thirty in the

But it was sunset light. There was no denying it. She had felt better after vomiting, yes … and she suddenly understood why. The knowledge had been there all along, really, just waiting to be noticed, like the patches of sweat under the arms of her dress, or that faint smell of drying urine. She had felt better because the period between closing the door and actually starting the car again hadn't been seconds or minutes but hours – she had spent all that brutally hot summer day in the oven of the car. She had lain in a deathlike stupor, and if she had been using the Cutlass's air-conditioning with all the windows rolled up when she stopped the car, she would have cooked like a Thanksgiving turkey. But her sinuses were nearly as bad as her teeth, and the canned air manufactured by automobile air-conditioners irritated them. This physical problem, she realized suddenly, staring at the old farm with wide, bloodshot eyes, had probably saved her life. She had been running with all four windows open. Otherwise

This led to another thought. She had spent the day in a deathlike stupor, parked by the side of the road, and no one had stopped to check on her. That no one had come along a main road like Route 9 in all those hours since nine-thirty was something she just couldn't accept. Not even out in the sticks. And when they did see you in trouble in Sticksville, they didn't just put the pedal to the metal and keep on going, like New Yorkers stepping over a wino.

What kind of town is this, anyway?

That unaccustomed trickle again, like hot acid in her stomach.

This time she recognized the feeling as fear, seized it, wrung its neck … and killed it. Its brother might show up later on, and if so, she would kill it too, and all the sibs that might follow.

She drove into the yard.

16

Anne had met Jim Gardener twice before, but she never forgot a face. Even so, she barely recognized the Great Poet, although she believed she could have smelled him at forty yards, if she had been downwind on even a moderately breezy day. He was sitting on the porch in a strappy T-shirt and a pair of blue jeans, an open bottle of Scotch in one hand. He had a threeor four-day beard-stubble, much of it gray. His eyes were bloodshot. Although Anne didn't know this – and wouldn't have cared – Gardener had been in this state, more or less, for the last two days. All his noble resolves had gone by the board since finding the dog hairs on Bobbi's dress.

He watched the car pull into the dooryard (missing the mailbox by bare inches) with a drunk's bleary lack of surprise. He watched the woman get out, stagger, and hold on to the open door for a minute.

Oh wow, Gardener thought. It's a bird, it's a plane, it's Superbitch. Faster than a speeding hate-letter, able to leap cringing family members at a single bound.

Anne shoved the car door closed. She stood there for a moment, throwing a long shadow, and Gardener felt an eerie sense of familiarity. She looked like Ron Cummings when Ron had a skinful and was trying to decide if he could walk across the room.

Anne made her way across the dooryard, trailing a steadying hand along the side of Bobbi's truck. When she had passed the truck, she reached at once for the porch railing. She looked up, and in the slanting light of seven o'clock, Gardener thought the woman looked both aged and ageless. She also looked evil, he thought -jaundiced and yellowish-black with a 'heavy freight of evil that was simultaneously wearing her out and eating her up.

He raised the Scotch, drank, gagged at the rank burn. Then he tipped the neck of it at her. 'Hello, Sissy. Welcome to Haven. Having said that much, I now urge you to leave as fast as you can.'

17

She got up the first two steps okay, then stumbled and went to one knee. Gardener held out a hand. She ignored it.

'Where's Bobbi?'

'You don't look so good,' Gard said. 'Haven has that effect on people these days.'

'I'm fine,' she said, at last gaining the porch. She stood over him, panting. 'Where is she?'

Gardener inclined his head toward the house. The steady hiss of water came from one of the open windows. 'Shower. We've been working in the woods all day and it was esh – extremely hot. Bobbi believes in showering to remove dirt.' Gardener raised the bottle again. 'I believe in simply disinfecting. Shorter and pleasanter.'

'You smell like a dead pig,' Anne remarked, and started past him toward the house.

'While my own nose is undoubtedly not as keen as your own, dear heart, you have a delicate but noticeable odor of your own,' Gard said. 'What do the French call that particular perfume? Eau de Piss?'

She turned on him, startled into a snarl. People – people in Utica, at least – didn't speak to her that way. Never. But of course, they knew her. The Great Poet had undoubtedly judged her on the basis of his jizz receptacle: Haven's resident celebrity. And he was drunk.

'Well,' Gardener said, amused but also a trifle uneasy under her smoking gaze, 'it was you who brought up the subject of aroma.'

'So I did,' she said slowly.

'Maybe we ought to start again,' he said with drunken courtesy.

'Start what again? You're the Great Poet. You're the drunk who shot his wife. I have nothing to say to you. I came for Bobbi.'

Good shot, the thing about the wife. She saw his face freeze, saw his hand tighten on the neck of the bottle. He stood there as if he had at least temporarily forgotten where he was. She offered him a sweet smile. That smartass crack about Eau de Piss had gotten through, but sick or not, she thought she was still ahead on points.

Inside, the shower shut off. And – perhaps it was only a hunch – Gardener had a clear sense of Bobbi listening.

'You always did like to operate without anesthetic. I guess I never got anything but exploratory surgery before this, huh?'

'Maybe.'

'Why now? After all these years, why did you have to pick now?'

'None of your business.'

'Bobbi's my business.'

They faced each other. She drilled him with her gaze. She waited for his eyes to drop. They didn't. It suddenly occurred to her that if she started into the house without saying more, he might attempt to restrain her. It wouldn't do him any good, but it might be simpler to answer his question. What difference did it make?

'I've come to take her home.'

Silence again.

There are no crickets.

'Let me give you a piece of advice, Sister Anne.'

'Spare me. No candy from strangers, no advice from drunks.'

'Do exactly what I told you when you got out of the car. Leave. Now. Just go. This is not a good place to be right now.'

There was something in his eyes, something desperately honest, that brought on a recurrence of her earlier chill and that unaccustomed confusion. She had been left all day in her car at the side of the road as she lay in a swoon. What sort of people did that?

Then every bit of her Anne-ness rose up and crushed these little doubts. If she wanted a thing to be, if she meant a thing to be, that thing would be; so it had been, was, and ever would be, alleluia, Amen.

'Okay, Chumly,' she said. 'You gave me yours, I'll give you mine. I'm going inside that shack, and about two minutes later a very large chunk of shit is going to hit the fan. I suggest you go for a walk if you don't want to get splattered. Sit on a rock somewhere and watch the sun go down and jerk off or think up rhymes or do whatever it is Great Poets do when they watch the sunset. But you want to keep out of what goes on in the house, no matter what. It's between Bobbi and me. If you get in my way, I'll rip you up.'

'In Haven, You're more likely to be the rippee than the ripper.'

'Well, that's something I'll have to see for myself, even though I'm not from Missouri,' Anne said, and started for the door.

'Anne … Sissy … Bobbi's not the same. She .

'Take a walk, little man,' Anne said, and went inside.

18

The windows were open but for some reason the shades were drawn. Every now and then a puff of faint breeze would stir, sucking the shades into the openings a little way. When it happened, they looked like the sails of a becalmed ship doing their best and failing. Anne sniffed and wrinkled her nose. Bluh. The place smelled like a monkey-house. From the Great Poet she would have expected it, but her sister had been raised better. This place was a pigsty.

'Hello, Sissy.'

She turned. For a moment Bobbi was just a shadow, and Anne felt her heart go into her throat because there was something odd about that shape, something all wrong

Then she saw the white blur of her sister's robe, heard the patter of water, and understood that Bobbi had just come from the shower. She was all but naked. Good. But her pleasure was not as great as it should have been. Her unease remained, her feeling that there was something wrong about the shape in the doorway.

This is not a good place to be right now.

'Daddy's dead,' she said, straining her eyes to see better. For all her straining, Bobbi remained only a dim figure in the door which communicated between living room and – she assumed – bathroom.

'I know. Newt Berringer called and told me.'

Something about her voice. Something even more different in the vague suggestiveness of her shape. Then it came to her. The realization brought a nasty shock and stronger fear. She didn't sound afraid. For the first time in her life, Bobbi didn't sound afraid of her.

'We buried him without you. Your mother died a little when you didn't come home, Bobbi.'

She waited for Bobbi to defend herself. There was only silence.

For Christ's sake, come out where I can see you, you little coward!

Anne … Bobbi's not the same …

'She fell downstairs four days ago and broke her hip.'

'Did she?' Bobbi asked indifferently.

'You're coming home with me, Bobbi.' She meant to convey force and was appalled by the weak shrillness of her voice.

'It was your teeth that let you get in,' Bobbi said. 'Of course! I should have thought of that!'

'Bobbi, get out here where I can see you!'

'Do you want me to?' Her voice had taken on a strange, teasing lilt. 'I wonder if you do.'

'Stop fucking with me, Bobbi!' Her voice rose unevenly.

'Oh, listen!' Bobbi said. 'I never thought I'd hear anything like that from you, Anne. After all the years you fucked with me … with all of us. But okay. If you insist. If you insist, that's fine. Just fine.'

She didn't want to see. Suddenly Anne didn't want anything but to run, and keep running until she was far from this shadowy place and this town where they left you fainting all day at the side of the road. But it was too late. She saw the blurred movement of her younger sister's hand, and the lights went on at the same moment the robe dropped with a soft rustle.

The shower had washed off the makeup. Bobbi's entire head and neck were transparent and jellylike. Her breasts had swelled bulbously outward and seemed to be merging into one single nippleless outcropping of flesh. Anne could see dim organs in Bobbi's stomach that looked nothing at all like human organs – there was fluid circulating in there but it looked green.

Behind Bobbi's forehead she could see the quivering sac of mind.

Bobbi grinned toothlessly.

'Welcome to Haven, Anne,' she said.

She felt herself stepping backward in a spongy dream. She was trying to scream but there was no air.

At Bobbi's crotch, a grotesque thatch of tentacles like sea-grass wavered from her vagina … the place where her vagina had been, anyway. Anne had no idea if it was still there or not, and didn't care. The sunken valley which had replaced her crotch was enough. That . . . and the way the tentacles seemed to be pointing toward her … reaching for her.

Naked, Bobbi began walking toward her. Anne tried to back away and stumbled over a footstool.

'No,' she whispered, trying to crawl away. 'No … Bobbi … no .

'Good to have you here,' Bobbi said, still smiling. 'I hadn't counted on you … not at all … but I think we can find a job for you. Positions, as they say, are still open.'

'Bobbi . . .' She managed this one final terrified whisper, and then she felt the tentacles, moving lightly on her body. She jerked, tried to move away … and they slithered around her wrists. Bobbi's hips thrust out in a movement that was like an obscene parody of copulation.

1

Gardener took Anne's advice and went for a walk. He went, in fact, all the way out to the ship in the woods. This was the first time he had been out here by himself, he realized, and it would soon be full dark. He felt vaguely afraid, as a child might passing near a haunted house. Are there ghosts in there? The ghosts of Tommyknockers Past? Or are the real Tommyknockers themselves still in there, maybe in suspended animation, beings like freeze-dried coffee, waiting to be thawed out? And just what were they, anyhow?

He sat on the ground by the lean-to, looking at the ship. After a while the moon rose and lit its surface an even more ghostly silver. It was strange and yet very beautiful.

What's going on around here?

I don't want to know.

What it is ain't precisely clear . . .

I don't want to know.

Hey stop, what's that sound, everybody look what's going down …

He tipped the bottle up and drank deep. He put it aside, rolled over, and rested his throbbing head on his arms. He fell asleep that way, in the woods near the graceful circular jut of the ship.

He slept there all night.

In the morning there were two teeth on the ground.

It's what I get for sleeping so close to it, he thought dully, but there was at least one compensation – he had no headache at all, although he had put away nearly a fifth of Scotch. He had noticed before that, all its other attributes aside, the ship – or the change in the atmosphere the ship had generated – seemed, at very close range, to provide hangover protection.

He didn't want to leave his teeth just lying there. Heeding an obscure urge, he kicked dirt over them. As he did it he thought again: Playing Hamlet is a luxury you can no longer afford, Gard. If you don't commit to one course or the other very soon – in the next day or so, I think – you're not going to be able to do anything but march along with the rest of them.

He looked at the ship, thought of the deep ravine which extended down its smooth, unmarked side, and thought again: We'll be down to the hatchway soon, if there is a hatchway … what then?

Rather than trying to answer, he struck off for home.

2

The Cutlass was gone.

'Where were you last night?' Bobbi asked Gardener.

'I slept in the woods.'

'Did you get really drunk?' Bobbi asked with surprising gentleness. Her face was dark with makeup again. And Bobbi had been wearing shirts which seemed oddly loose and baggy the last few days; this morning he thought he could see why. Her chest was thickening. Her breasts had begun to look like a single unit instead of two separate things. It made Gardener think of guys who pumped iron.

'Not very. One or two nips and I passed out. No hangover this morning. And no bug bites.' He raised his arms, darkly tanned on top, white and strangely vulnerable beneath. 'Any other summer, you'd wake up the next morning so bug-bit you couldn't open your eyes. But now they're gone. Along with the birds. And the beasts. In fact, Roberta, it seems to repel everything but fools like us.'

'Have you changed your mind, Gard?'

'You keep asking me that, have you noticed?'

Bobbi didn't reply.

'Did you hear the news on the radio yesterday?' He knew she hadn't. Bobbi didn't see, hear, or think about anything now but the ship. Her headshake was no surprise. 'Troops massing in Libya. More fighting in Lebanon. American troop movements. The Russians getting louder and louder about SDI. We're all still sitting on the powderkeg. That hasn't changed a bit since 1945 or so. Then you discover a deus ex machina in your back yard, and now you keep wanting to know if I've changed my mind about using it.'

'Have you?'

'No,' Gardener said, not sure if he was lying or not – but he was very glad Bobbi couldn't read him.

Oh, can't she? I think she can. Not much, but more than she could a month ago … more and more each day. Because you're 'becoming' now, too. Changed your mind? That's a laugh; you can't fucking make up your mind!

Bobbi dismissed it, or appeared to do so. She turned toward the pile of hand-tools stacked on the corner of the porch. She had missed making up a spot just below her right ear, Gardener saw – it was the same spot many men miss when they are shaving. He realized with a sickish lack of surprise that he could see into Bobbi -her skin had changed, had become some kind of semi-transparent jelly. Bobbi had grown thicker, shorter over the last two days – and the change was accelerating.

God, he thought, horrified and bitterly amused, is that what happens when you turn into a Tommyknocker? You start looking like someone who got caught in a great big messy atomic meltdown?

Bobbi, who had been bending over the tools and gathering them up in her arms, turned quickly to look at Gardener, her face wary.

'What?'

I said let's get moving, you lazy juggins, Gardener sent clearly, and that wary, puzzled expression became a reluctant smile.

'Okay. Help me with these, then.'

No, of course victims of high-gamma radiation didn't turn transparent, like Claude Raines in The Invisible Man. They didn't start to lose inches as their bodies twisted and thickened. But, yes, they were apt to lose teeth, their hair was apt to fall out – in other words, there was a kind of physical 'becoming' in both cases.

He thought again: Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.

Bobbi was looking narrowly at him again.

I'm running out of maneuvering room, all right. And fast.

'What did you say, Gard?'

'I said “let's go, boss.”'

After a long moment, Bobbi nodded. 'Yeah,' she said, 'daylight's wasting.'

3

They rode out to the dig on the Tomcat. It did not fly the way the little boy's bike had flown in E.T.; Bobbi's tractor would never soar cinematically in front of the moon, hundreds of feet above the rooftops. But it did cruise silently and handily eighteen inches above the ground, large wheels spinning slowly like dying propellers. It smoothed the ride out a whole hell of a lot. Gard was driving, Bobbi standing behind him on the yoke.

'Your sister left?' Gard said. There was no need to yell. The Tomcat's engine was a faint, distant purr.

'That's right,' Bobbi said. 'She left.'

You still can't lie worth shit, Bobbi. And I think – I really do – that I heard her scream. Just before I hit the patch going into the woods, I think I heard her scream. How much would it take to make a high-stepping, pure-d, ball-cutting bitch like Sissy let out a howl? How bad would it have to be?

The answer to that one was easy. Very bad.

'She was never the type to exit gracefully,' Bobbi said. 'Or to let anyone be graceful, if she could help it. She came to bring me home, you know … watch that stump, Gard, it's a high one.'

Gardener shoved the gear lever all the way up. The Tomcat rose another three inches, skimming over the top of the high stump. Once past, he relaxed his hand and the Tomcat sank back to its previous altitude, eighteen inches above the ground.

'Yes, she just came up with her bit and her hackamore,' Bobbi said, sounding faintly amazed. 'There was a time when she might have taken me, too. As things are now, she never had a chance.'

Gardener felt cold. There were a lot of ways a person could interpret a remark like that, weren't there?

'I'm still surprised that it took you only one evening to convince her,' Gardener said. 'I thought Patricia McCardle was bad, but your sister made ole Patty look like Annette Funicello.'

'I just wiped off some of this makeup. When she saw what was underneath, she screamed and left so fast you would have thought there were rockets in her heels. It was actually pretty funny.'

It was plausible. It was so plausible that the temptation to believe it was almost insuperable. Unless you ignored the simple fact that the lady under discussion couldn't have gone anywhere in a hurry without help. The lady could barely walk without help.

No, Gardener thought. She never left. The only question is whether you killed her or if she's out in the goddam shed with Peter.

'How long do the physical changes go on, Bobbi?' Gardener asked.

'Not much longer,' Bobbi said, and Gardener thought again that Bobbi had never been able to lie worth shit. 'Here we are. Park it over by the lean-to.'

4

The following evening they knocked off early – the heat was still holding, and neither of them felt capable of going on until the last light died. They returned to the house, pushed food around on their plates, even ate some of it. With the dishes washed, Gardener said he thought he would go for a walk.

'Oh?' Bobbi was looking at him with that wary expression which had become one of her main stocks in trade. 'I would have thought you'd gotten enough exercise today for anyone.'

'Sun's down now,' Gard said easily. 'It's cooler. No bugs. And . He looked clear-eyed at Bobbi. 'If I go out on the porch, I'm going to take a bottle. If I take a bottle, I'm going to get drunk. If I go for a long walk and come back tired, maybe I can fall into bed sober for one night.'

All of this was true enough … but * there was another truth nested inside it, like one Chinese box inside another. Gardener looked at Bobbi and waited to see if she would go hunting for that inner box.

She didn't.

'All right,' she said, 'but you know I don't care how much you drink, Gard. I'm your friend, not your wife.'

No, you don't care how much I drink – you've made it very easy for me to drink all I want. Because it neutralizes me.

He walked along Route 9 past Justin Hurd's place, and when he struck the Nista Road, he turned left and moved along at a good pace, his arms swinging easily. The last month's labor had toughened him more than he would have believed – not so long ago even a two-mile walk such as this would have left him rubber-legged and winded.

Still, it was eerie. No whippoorwills greeted the encroaching twilight; no dog barked at him. Most of the houses were dark. No TVs flickered inside the few lighted windows he passed.

Who needs Barney Miller reruns when you can 'become' instead? Gardener thought.

By the time he reached the sign reading ROAD ENDS 200 YARDS, it was almost full dark, but the moon was rising and the night was very bright. At the end of the road he reached a heavy chain strung between two posts. A rusty, bullet-holed NO TRESPASSING sign hung from it. Gard stepped over the chain, kept walking, and was soon standing in an abandoned gravel pit. The moonlight on its weedy sides was white as bone. The silence made Gardener's scalp prickle.

What had brought him here? His own 'becoming' he supposed – something he had picked out of Bobbi's mind without even knowing he'd done it. It must have been that, because whatever had brought him out here had been a lot stronger than just a hunch.

To the left there was a thick triangular scar against the whiteness of the undisturbed gravel. This stuff had been moved around. Gardener walked over, shoes crunching. He dug into the fresher gravel, found nothing, moved, dug another hole, found nothing, moved, dug a third, found nothing

Oh, hey, wait a minute.

His fingers skimmed across something much too smooth to be a stone. He leaned over, heart thudding, but could see nothing. He wished he had brought a flashlight, but that probably would have made Bobbi even more suspicious. He dug wider, letting the dirt run and rattle down the inclined slope.

He saw he had uncovered a car headlight.

Gardener looked at it, filled with an eerie, skeletal amusement. THIS is what it's like to find something in the earth, he thought. To find some strange artifact. Only I didn't have to stumble over it, did I? I knew where to look.

He dug faster, climbing the slope and throwing dirt back between his legs like a mutt digging for a bone, ignoring his pounding head, ignoring his hands, which first scraped, then chafed, then began to bleed.

He was able to clear a level place on the Cutlass's hood just above the right-side headlights where he could stand, and then the work went faster. Bobbi and her buddies had done a casual burial job at best. Gardener pulled loose gravel down by the armload, then kicked it off the car. Pebbles shrieked and squealed on the metalwork. His mouth was dry. He was working his way up to the windshield, and he honestly didn't know which would be better – to see something, or nothing.

His fingers brushed slick smoothness again. Without allowing himself to stop and think – the silent creepiness of the place might have gotten to him then; he might have just turned and run – he dug a clear place on the windshield and peered in, cupping his hands to the glass to cut the glare from the moon.

Nothing.

Anne Anderson's rented Cutlass was empty.

They could have put her in the trunk. The fact is, you still don't know anything for sure.

He thought he did, however. Logic told him that Anne's body wasn't in the trunk. Why would they bother? Anyone who found a brand-new car buried out here in a deserted gravel pit was going to find it suspicious enough to investigate the trunk … or to call the police, who would do it.

No one in Haven would give a rip one way or another. They have concerns more pressing than cars buried in gravel pits right now. And if someone from town did happen to find it, calling the police is the last thing they'd do. That would mean outsiders, and we don't want any outsiders in Haven this summer, do we? Perish the thought!

So she wasn't in the trunk. Simple logic. QED.

Maybe the people who did this didn't have your sterling powers of logic, Gard.

That was a crock of shit, too. If he could see a thing from three angles, the Haven Quiz-Kids could see it from twenty-three. They didn't miss a trick.

Gardener backed to the edge of the hood on his knees and jumped down. Now he was aware of his scraped, burning hands. He would have to take a couple of aspirin when he got back and try to conceal the damage from Bobbi in the morning – work-gloves were going to be the order of the day. All day.

Anne wasn't in the car. Where was Anne? In the shed, of course; in the shed. Gardener suddenly understood why he had come out here – not just to confirm a thought he had plucked from Bobbi's head (if that was what he had done; his subconscious mind might simply have fixed on this as the handiest place to get rid of a big car quick), but because he had needed to make sure it was the shed. Needed to. Because he had a decision to make, and he knew now that not even seeing Bobbi change into something which was not human was enough to force him into that decision – so much of him still wanted to dig the ship out, dig it out and put it to use – so much, so very much.

Before he could make the decision, he had to see what was in Bobbi's shed.

5

Halfway back he stopped in the cold, slippery moonlight, struck by a question -why had they bothered to hide the car? Because the rental people would report it missing and more police would turn up in Haven? No. The Hertz or Avis people might not even know it was missing for days, and it would be longer still before the cops traced Anne's family connection here. At least a week, more like two. And Gardener thought by then Haven would be done worrying about outside interference, one way or another, for good.

So who had the car been hidden from?

From you, Gard. They hid it from you. They still don't want you to know what they're capable of when it comes to protecting themselves. They hid it and Bobbi told you Anne went away.

He went back with this dangerous secret turning in his mind like a jewel.

1

It happened two days later, as Haven lay sprawled and sunstruck under the August heat. Dog-days had come, except of course there were no dogs left in Haven -unless maybe there was one in Bobbi Anderson's shed.

Gard and Bobbi were at the bottom of a cut which was now a hundred and seventy feet deep – the hull of the ship formed one side of this excavation, and the other side, behind the silvery mesh crisscrossing it, showed a cutaway view of thin soil, clay, schist, granite, and spongy aquifer. A geologist would have loved it. They were wearing jeans and sweatshirts. It was stiflingly hot on the surface, but down here it was chilly – Gardener felt like a bug crawling on the side of a water cooler. On his head he wore a hard-hat with a flashlight attached to it by silver utility tape. Bobbi had cautioned him to use the light as sparingly as possible -batteries were in limited supply. Both of his ears were stuffed with cotton. He was using a pneumatic drill to shag up big chunks of rock. Bobbi was at the other end of the cut, doing the same thing.

Gardener had asked her that morning why they had to drill. 'I liked the radio explosives better, Bobbi old kid,' he said. 'Less pain and strain on the American brain, know what I mean?'

Bobbi didn't smile. Bobbi seemed to be losing her sense of humor along with her hair.

'We're too close now,' Bobbi said. 'Using an explosive might damage something we don't want to damage.'

'The hatch?'

'The hatch.'

Gardener's shoulders were aching, and the plate in his head was aching as well -that was probably mental, steel couldn't ache, but it always seemed to when he was down here – and he hoped Bobbi would signal soon that it was time for them to knock off for lunch.

He let the drill chatter and bite its way toward the ship again, not bothering too much about grazing that dull silver surface. You had to be careful not to let the tip of the drill walk onto it too hard, he had discovered; it was apt to rebound and tear off your foot if you weren't careful. The ship itself was as invulnerable to the rough kiss of the drill as it had been to the explosives he and his parade of helpers had used. There was at least no danger of damaging the goods.

The drill touched the ship's surface – and suddenly its steady machine-gun thunder turned to a high-pitched squeal. He thought he saw smoke squirt from the pulsing blur of the drill's tip. There was a snap. Something flew past his head. All this happened in less than a second. He shut the drill off and saw the drill-bit was almost entirely gone. All that remained was a jagged stub.

Gardener turned around and saw the part that had gone winging past his face embedded in the rock of the cut. It had sheared a strand of the meshwork neatly in two. Delayed shock hit, making his knees want to come unlocked and spill him to the ground.

Missed me by a whore's hair. No more, no less. Mother!

He tried to pull it out of the rock, and thought at first it wasn't going to come. Then he began to wiggle it back and forth. Like pulling a tooth out of a gum, he thought, and a hysterical titter escaped him.

The chunk of drill-bit came free. It was the size of a .45 slug, maybe a little bigger.

Suddenly he was on the verge of passing out. He put an arm on the mesh-covered wall of the cut and rested his head on it. He closed his eyes and waited for the world to either go away or come back. He was dimly aware that Bobbi's drill had also cut out.

The world began to come back … and Bobbi was shaking him.

'Gard? Gard, what's wrong?'

There was real concern in her voice. Hearing it made Gardener feel absurdly like weeping. Of course, he was very tired.

'I almost got shot in the head by a forty-five-caliber drill-bit,' Gardener said. 'On second thought, make that a .357 Magnum.'

'What are you talking about?'

Gardener handed her the fragment he had worked out of the wall. Bobbi looked at it and whistled. 'Jesus!'

'I think He and I just missed connections. That's the second time I've almost gotten killed down in this shithole. The first time was when your friend Enders almost forgot to send down the sling after I'd set one of those radio explosives.'

'He's no friend of mine,' Bobbi said absently. 'I think he's a dork … Gard, what did you hit? What made it happen?'

'What do you mean? A rock! What else is there down here to hit?'

'Were you near the ship?' All of a sudden Bobbi looked excited. No; more than that. Nearly feverish.

'Yes, but I've grazed the ship with the drill before. It just bounces b

But Bobbi wasn't listening anymore. She was at the ship, down on her knees, digging into the rubble with her fingers.

It looked like it was steaming, Gardener thought. It

It's here, Gard! Finally here!

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.

2

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 that 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 halfexasperated, half-amused.

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

3

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.

4

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 finger 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.

1

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 detente, concern, and even fear seemed to make a 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 wiII 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?'

'I had been picketing nuclear power plants on that assumption, yes,' Gardener said slowly.

Bobbi waved it away. 'Societies may choose not to implement ideas – actually I doubt even that, but for the sake of argument we'll say it's so – but ordinary people? No, I'm sorry. When ordinary people see something sticking out of the ground, they got to dig on it. They got to dig on it because it might be treasure.'

'And you didn't have the slightest inkling that there would be . Fallout was the word that came to mind. He didn't think it was a word Bobbi would like. '. . . consequences?'

Bobbi smiled openly. 'Not a hint in the world.'

'But Peter didn't like it.'

'No. Peter didn't like it. But it didn't kill him, Gard.'

I'm quite sure it didn't.

'Peter died of natural causes. He was old. That thing in the woods is a ship from another world. Not Pandora's box, not a divine apple tree. I heard no voice from heaven saying Of this ship shalt thou not eat lest ye die.'

Gard smiled a little. 'But it is a ship of knowledge, isn't it?'

'Yes. I suppose.'

Bobbi was looking toward the road again, obviously not wanting to pursue the topic further.

'When do you expect them?' Gardener asked.

Instead of answering, Bobbi nodded at the road. Kyle Archinbourg's Caddy was coming, followed by Adley McKeen's old Ford.

'Guess I'll go inside and catch some winks,' Gardener said, getting up.

'If you want to go out to the ship with us, you're welcome to.'

'With you, maybe. With them?' He cocked a thumb toward the approaching cars. 'They think I'm crazy. Also, they hate my guts because they can't read my mind.'

'If I say you go, you go.'

'Well, I think I'll pass,' Gardener said, getting up and stretching. 'I don't like them, either. They make me nervous.'

'I'm sorry.'

'Don't be. Just … tomorrow. The two of us, Bobbi. Right?'

'Right.'

'Give them my best. And remind them I helped, steel plate in my head or not.'

'I will. Of course I will.' But Bobbi's eyes slid away again, and Gardener didn't like that. He didn't like it at all.

2

He thought they might go in the shed first, but they didn't. They stood around outside for a while talking – Bobbi, Frank, Newt, Dick Allison, Hazel, the others – and then moved off toward the woods in a tight group. The light was shading down toward purple now, and most of them were carrying flashlights.

Watching, Gard felt that his last real moment with Bobbi had come and gone. There was nothing now but to go into the shed and see what was in there. Make up his mind once and for all.

Saw an eyeball peepin' through a smokey cloud behind the green door …

He got up and went through the house to the kitchen in time to see them heading into Bobbi's rampant garden. He counted noses quickly, making sure that they were all there, then headed for the cellar. Bobbi kept a spare keyring down there.

He opened the cellar door and paused one final time.

Do you really want to do this?

No; no, he did not. But he meant to do it. And he discovered that, more than fear, he felt a great sense of loneliness. There was literally no one else he could turn to for help. He had been in the desert with Bobbi Anderson forty days and forty nights, and now he was in the desert on his own. God help him.

To bell with it, he thought. Like the old World War I platoon sergeant was supposed to have said, Come on, you guys, you want to live forever?

Gardener went downstairs to get Bobbi's keyring.

3

It was there, hanging on its nail with every key neatly labeled. The only catch was the shed key was gone. It had been here; he was quite sure of that. When had he last seen it here? Gard tried to remember and couldn't. Bobbi taking precautions? Maybe.

He stood in the New and Improved Workshop, sweat on his forehead and sweat on his balls. No key. That was great. So what was he supposed to d… Grab Bobbi's ax and make like Jack Nicholson in The Shining? He could see it. Smash, crash, bash: Heeeeere's GARDENER! Except that might be a bit hard to cover up before the pilgrims got back from The Viewing of the Sac-red Hatch.

Gardener stood in Bobbi's workshop, feeling time slipping away, feeling Old and Unimproved. How long would they be out there, anyway? No way of telling, was there? No way at all.

Okay, where do people put keys? Always assuming she really was just taking precautions and not just hiding it from you?

A thought struck him so hard he actually slapped his forehead. Bobbi hadn't taken the key. Nor had anyone been trying to hide it. The key had disappeared when Bobbi had supposedly been in Derry Home Hospital recovering from sunstroke. He was almost positive of that, and what memory would not or could not supply, logic did.

Bobbi hadn't been in Derry Home; she had been in the shed. Had one of the others taken the spare key, to tend her when Bobbi needed tending? Did they all have copies? Why bother? No one in Haven was into stealing these days; they were into 'becoming.' The only reason the shed was kept locked was to keep him, Gardener, out. So they could just

Gardener remembered watching them arrive on one of the occasions after the 'something' had happened to Bobbi … the 'something' that had been a lot more serious than heat prostration.

He closed his eyes and saw the Caddy. KYLE-1. They get out and …

… and Archinbourg splits off from the rest for a moment or two. You're up on one elbow, looking out the window at them, and if you think of it at all, you think he must have stepped around there to tap a kidney. But he didn't. He went around to get the key. Sure, that's what he did. Went around to get the key.

It wasn't much, but it was enough to get him moving. He ran back up the cellar stairs, headed for the door, then doubled back. In the bathroom there was an ancient pair of Foster Grant sunglasses on top of the medicine cabinet – they had come to rest up there with the finality that trivial objects manage to obtain only in a single man or woman's quarters (like the makeup which had belonged to Newt Berringer's wife). Gardener took the sunglasses down, blew a thick coating of dust from the lenses, wiped them carefully, then folded the bows and put them in his breast pocket.

He went out to the shed.

4

He stood by the padlocked plank door for a moment, looking out along the path which led to the dig. Dusk had advanced far enough now so that the woods beyond the garden were a massy blue-gray with no detail to them. He saw no bobbing line of returning flashlights.

But they could turn up. At any time at all, they could turn up and catch you with your arm all the way down in the jam-jar.

I think they'll spend a pretty good while out there mooning over it. They've got the kleig lights.

But you don't know for sure.

No. Not for sure.

Gardener shifted his gaze back to the plank door. Between the planks he could see that green light, and he could hear a dim, unpleasant noise, like an old-fashioned washing machine with a gutful of clothes and thick suds.

No – not just one washing machine; more like a whole line of them, not quite in sync.

That light was pulsing in time to the low slurping sound.

I don't want to go in there.

There was a smell. Even that, Gardener thought, was slightly sudsy, bland with a faint hint of rancidity. Old soap. Cakey soap.

But it's no bunch of washing machines. That sound's alive. It's not telepathic typewriters inside there, not New and Improved water heaters, it's something alive, and I don't want to go in there.

But he was going to. After all, hadn't he come back from the dead just to look inside Bobbi's shed and catch the Tommyknockers at their strange little benches? He supposed he had.

Gard went around to the far side of the shed. There, hanging on a rusty nail under the eaves, was the key. He reached up with a hand that trembled and took it down. He tried to swallow. At first he couldn't. His throat felt as if it had been coated with dry, heated flannel.

A drink. Just one drink. I'll go into the house long enough to get just one, a short peg. Then I'll be ready.

Fine. Sounded great. Except he wasn't going to do it, and he knew he wasn't. The drinking part was done. So was the delaying part. Holding the key tightly in his damp hand, Gardener went around to the door. He thought: Don't want to go in. Don't even know if I can. Because I'm so afraid

Stop it. Let that part be over, too. Your Tommyknocker Phase.

He looked around again, almost hoping to see the line of flashlights coming out of the woods, or to hear their voices.

But you wouldn't, because they talk in their heads.

No flashlights. No movements. No crickets. No birdsong. The only sound was the sound of washing machines, the sound of amplified, leaky heartbeats:

Slisshh-slisshhh-slissshhh …

Gardener looked at the pulsing green light fingering its way through the cracks between the boards. He reached into his pocket, took out the old sunglasses, and put them on.

It had been a long time since he had prayed, but he prayed now. It was short, but a prayer for all that.

'God, please,' Jim Gardener said into the dim summer dusk, and slid the key into the padlock.

5

He expected a blast of head-radio, but none came. Until it didn't, he hadn't realized that his stomach was tight and sucked in, like a man expecting an electric shock.

He licked his lips and turned the key.

A small noise, barely audible over the low slooching noises from the shed: -click!

The hasp sprang up a little from the body of the lock. He reached for it with an arm that felt like lead. He pulled it free, clicked the hasp down, and put it into his left front pocket with the key still sticking out. He felt like a man in a dream. It was not a good one to be having.

The air in there had to be good – well, perhaps not okay; perhaps none of the air in Haven was exactly okay anymore. But it was about the same as the air outside, Gard thought, because the shed was a sieve of cracks. If there was such a thing as a pure Tommyknocker biosphere, this couldn't be it. At least, he didn't think so.

All the same, he would take as few risks as possible. He took a deep breath, held it, and told himself to count his steps: Three. You go in no more than three steps. Just in case. One good look around and then out. In one big hurry.

You hope.

Yes, I hope.

He took a final look along the path, saw nothing, turned back to the shed, and opened the door.

The green glow, brilliant even through the dark glasses, washed over him like corrupt sunlight.

6

At first he could see nothing at all. The light was too bright. He knew it had been brighter than this on other occasions, but he had never been so close to it before. Close? God, he was in it. Someone standing just outside the open door looking for him now would hardly be able to see him.

He slitted his eyes against that brilliant greenness and shuffled forward a step … then another step … then a third. His hands were held out in front of him like those of a groping blind man. Which he was; shit, he even had the dark glasses to prove it.

The noise was louder. Slissh-slissshh-slisshhh … off to the left. He turned in that direction but didn't go any further. He was afraid to go any further, afraid of what he might touch.

Now his eyes began to adjust. He saw dark shapes in the green. A bench but no Tommyknockers at it; it had simply been shoved back against the wall, out of the way. And …

My God, it is a washing machine! It really is!

It was, all right, one of the old-fashioned kind with wringer-roller at the top, but it wasn't making that weird noise. It had also been pushed back against the wall. It was in the process of being modified somehow; someone was working on it in the best Tommyknocker tradition, but it wasn't running now.

Next to it was an Electrolux vacuum cleaner … one of the old long ones that ran on wheels, low to the ground, like a mechanical dachshund. A chainsaw mounted on wheels. Stacks of smoke-detectors from Radio Shack, most still in their boxes. A number of kerosene drums, also on wheels, with hoses attached to them, and things like arms …

Arms, of course they are, they're robots, fucking robots in the making, and none of them looks exactly like the white dove of peace, does it, Gard? And

Slisshh-slisshh-slisshhh.

Further left. The source of the glow was here.

Gard heard a funny, hurt noise escape him. The breath he had been holding ran weakly out like air from a pricked balloon. The strength ran out of his legs in exactly the same way. He reached out blindly, his hand found the bench, and he did not sit but simply plopped down on it. He was unable to take his eyes from the left-rear corner of the shed, where Ev Hillman, Anne Anderson, and Bobbi's good old beagle Peter had somehow been hung up on posts in two old galvanized steel shower cabinets with their doors removed. They hung there like slabs of beef on meathooks. But they were alive, Gard saw … somehow, some way, still alive.

A thick black cord which looked like a high-voltage line or a very big coaxial cable ran out of the center of Anne Anderson's forehead. A similar cable ran out of the old man's right eye. And the entire top of the dog's skull had been peeled away; dozens of smaller cords ran out of Peter's exposed and pulsing brain.

Peter's eyes, free of cataracts, turned toward Gard. He whined.

Jesus … oh my Jesus … oh my Jesus Christ.

He tried to get up from the bench. He couldn't.

Portions of the old man's skull and Anne's skull had also been removed, he saw. The doors had been torn off the shower stalls but they were still full of some clear liquid – it was being contained in the same way that tiny sun was contained in Bobbi's water heater, he supposed. If he tried to get into one of those stalls, he would feel a tough springiness. Plenty of give … but no access.

Want to get in? I only want to get out!

Then his mind returned to its former scripture:

Jesus … dear Jesus … oh my Jesus look at them …

I don't want to look at them.

No. But he couldn't tear his eyes away.

The liquid was clear but emerald green. It was moving – making that low, thick sudsy sound. For all its clarity, Gardener thought that liquid must be very gluey indeed, perhaps the consistency of dish detergent.

How can they breathe in there? How can they be alive? Maybe they're not; maybe it's only the movement of the liquid that makes you think they are. Maybe it's just an illusion, please Jesus let it be an illusion.

Peter … you heard him whine

Nope. Part of the illusion. That's all. He's hanging on a hook in a shower stall filled with the interstellar equivalent of Joy dish detergent, he couldn't whine in that, it would come out all soap-bubbles, and you're just freaking out. That's what it is, just a little visit from King Freakout.

Except he wasn't just freaking, and he knew it. Just as he knew he hadn't heard Peter whine with his ears.

That hurt, helpless whining sound had come from the same place the radio music came from: the center of his brain.

Anne Anderson opened her eyes.

Get me out of here! she screamed. Get me out of here, I'll leave her ah only I can't feel anything except when they make it hurt make it hurt make it hurrrrtt …

Gardener tried again to get up. He was very faintly aware that he was making a sound. Just some old sound. The sound he was making was probably a lot like the sound a woodchuck run over in the road might make, he thought.

The greenish, moving liquid gave Sissy's face a gassy, ghastly corpse-hue. The blue of her eyes had bleached out. Her tongue floated like some fleshy undersea plant. Her fingers, wrinkled and pruney, drifted.

I can't feel anything except when they make it hurrrrrttttt! Anne wailed, and he couldn't shut her voice out, couldn't stick his fingers in his ears to make it go away, because that voice was coming from inside his head.

Slisshhh-slisshhh-slisshhh.

Copper tubing running into the tops of the shower stalls, making them look like a hilarious combination of Buck Rogers suspended animation chambers and L'il Abner moonshine stills.

Peter's fur had fallen out in patches. His hindquarters appeared to be collapsing in on themselves. His legs moved through the liquid in long lazy sweeps, as if in his dreams he was running away.

When they make it hurrrrrt!

The old man opened his one eye.

The boy.

This thought was utterly clear; unquestionable. Gardener found himself responding to it.

What boy?

The answer was immediate, startling for a moment, then unquestionable.

David. David Brown.

That one eye stared at him, a ceaseless sapphire with emerald tints.

Save the boy.

The boy. David. David Brown. Was he a part of this somehow, the boy they had hunted for so many exhausting hot days? Of course he was. Maybe not directly, but a part of it.

Where is he? Gardener thought at the old man who floated in his pale green solution.

Slisshhh-slisshhh-slisshhh.

Altair-4, the old man returned finally. David's on Altair-4. Save him … and then kill us. This is … it's bad. Real bad. Can't die. I've tried. We all have. Even

(bitchbitch)

her. This is being in hell. Use the transformer to save David. Then pull the plugs. Cut the wires. Burn the place. Do you hear?

For the third time Gardener tried to get up and fell bonelessly back onto the bench. He became aware that thick electrical cords were scattered all over the floor, and that brought back a ghostly memory of the band that had picked him up on the turnpike when he was coming back from New Hampshire. He puzzled at this, and then got the connection. The floor looked like a concert stage just before a rock group started to play. That, or a big-city TV studio. The cables snaked into a huge crate filled with circuit boards and a stack of VCRs. They were wired together. He looked for a DC current converter, saw none, and then thought: Of course not, idiot. Batteries are DC.

The cassette recorders had been plugged into a mix of home computers – Ataris, Apple II's and III's, TRS-80s, Commodores. Blinking on and off on the one lit screen was the word

PROGRAM?

Behind the modified computers were more circuit boards – hundreds of them. The whole thing was uttering a low sleepy hum – a sound he associated with

(use the transformer)

big electrical equipment.

Light spilled out of the crate and the computers placed haphazardly next to it in a green flood – but the light was not quite steady. It was cycling. The pulse of the light and its relation to the sudsing sounds coming from the shower cabinets was very clear.

That's the center, he thought with an invalid's weak excitement. That's the annex to the ship. They come in the shed to use that. It's a transformer, and they draw their power from there.

Use the transformer to save David.

Might as well ask me to fly Air Force One. Ask me something easy, Pop. If I could bring him back from wherever he was by reciting Mark Twain – Poe, even -I'd take a shot. But that thing? It looks like an explosion in an electronics warehouse.

But – the boy.

How old? Four? Five?

And where in God's name had they put him? The sky was, literally, the limit.

Save the boy … use the transformer.

There was, of course, not even any time to look closely at the damned mess. The others would be coming back. Still, he stared at the one lighted video terminal with hypnotic intensity.

PROGRAM ?

What if I typed Altair-4 on the keyboard? he wondered, and saw there was no keyboard; at the same second the letters on the screen changed.

ALTAIR-4

it now read.

No! his mind screamed, full of intruder's guilt. No, Jesus, no!

The letters rippled.

NO JESUS NO

Sweating, Gardener thought: Cancel! Cancel!

CANCEL CANCEL

These letters blinked on and off … on and off. Gardener stared at them, horrified. Then:

PROGRAM ?

He made an effort to shield his thoughts and tried again to get to his feet. This time he made it. Other wires came out of the transformer. These were thinner. There were … he counted. Yes. Eight of them. Ending in earplugs.

Earplugs. Freeman Moss. The animal trainer leading mechanical elephants. Here were more earplugs. In a crazy way it reminded him of a high-school language lab.

Are they learning another language in here?

Yes. No. They're learning to 'become.' The machine is teaching them. But where are the batteries? I don't see any. There should be ten or twelve big old Delcos hooked up to that thing. Just a maintenance charge running through it. There should be

Stunned, he raised his eyes to the shower stalls again.

He looked at the coaxial cable coming out of the woman's forehead, the old man's eye. He watched Peter's legs moving in those big dreamy strides and wondered just how Bobbi had gotten the dog hairs on her dress – had she been giving Peter the equivalent of an interstellar oil-change? Had she been perhaps overcome by a simple human emotion? Love? Remorse? Guilt? Had she perhaps hugged her dog before filling that cabinet up with liquid again?

There are the batteries. Organic Delcos and Ever Readies, you might say. They're sucking them dry. Sucking them like vampires.

A new emotion crept through his fear and bewilderment and revulsion. It was fury, and Gardener welcomed it.

They make it hurrrt … make it hurrrt … make it hurrrrrr

Her voice cut off abruptly. The dull hum of the transformer changed pitch; cycled down even lower. The light coming out of the crate faded a little. He thought she had fallen unconscious, thereby lowering the machine's total output by x number of … what? Volts? Dynes? Ohms? Who the fuck knew?

End it, son. Save my grandson and then end it.

For a moment the old man's voice filled his head, perfectly clear and perfectly lucid. Then it was gone. The old man's eye slipped closed.

The green light from the machine grew paler yet.

They woke up when I came in, he thought feverishly. The anger still pounded and drilled at his mind. He spat out a tooth almost without realizing he had done so. Even Peter woke up a little. Now they've gone back to whatever state they were in … before. Sleeping? No. Not sleeping. Something else. Organic cold storage.

Do batteries dream of electric sheep? he thought, and uttered a cracked cackle.

He moved backward, away from the transformer,

(what exactly is it transforming how why)

away from the shower stalls, the cables. His eyes turned toward the array of gadgets ranged against the far wall. The wringer washer had something mounted on top of it, something that looked like the boomerang TV antennas you sometimes saw on the back of big limos. Behind the washer and to its left was an old-fashioned treadle sewing machine with a glass funnel mounted on its sidewheel. Kerosene drums with hoses and steel arms … a butcher-knife, he saw had been welded to the end of one of those arms.

Christ, what is all this? What is it for?

A voice whispered: Maybe it's protection, Gard. In case the Dallas Police show up early. It's the Tommyknocker Yard-Sale Army – old washing machines with cellular antennas, Electrolux vacuums, chainsaws on wheels. Name it and claim it, baby.

He felt his sanity tottering. His eyes were drawn relentlessly back to Peter, Peter with most of his skull peeled away, Peter with a bunch of wires plugged into what remained of his head. His brain looked like a pallid veal roast with a bunch of temperature probes stuck into it.

Peter with his legs racing dreamily through that liquid, as if running away.

Bobbi, he thought in despair and fury, how could you do it to Peter? Christ! The people were bad, awful – but Peter was somehow worse. It was a curse piled on top of an obscenity. Peter, his legs loping and loping, as if running away in his dreams.

Batteries. Living batteries.

He backed into something. There was a dull metallic thump. He turned around and saw another shower cabinet, little blossoms of rust on its sides, its front door gone. Holes had been punched in the back. Wires had been threaded through these; they now hung limply down, large-bore steel plugs at their tips.

For you, Gard! his brain yammered. This plug's for you, like the beer commercials say! They'll open up the back of your skull, maybe short out your motor-control centers first so you can't move, and then they'll drill – drill for the place where they get their power. This plug's for you, for all you do … all ready and waiting! Wow! Neato-keeno!

He snatched for his thoughts, which were tightening into a hysterical spiral, and brought them under control. Not for him; at least, not originally. This had already been used. There was that faint smell, bland and sudsy. Streaks of dried gunk on the inner walls – the last traces of that thick green liquid. It looks like the Wizard of Oz's semen, he thought.

Do you mean Bobbi's got her sister floating in a big sperm bank?

That weird cackle escaped him again. He pressed the heel of his hand against his mouth, pressed hard, to stifle it.

He looked down and saw a pair of tan shoes tossed beside the shower cabinet. He picked one up, saw splashes of dried blood on it.

Bobbi's. Her one pair of good shoes. Her 'going-out' shoes. She was wearing them when she left for the funeral that day.

The other shoe was also bloody.

Gard looked behind the shower cabinet and saw the rest of the clothing Bobbi had been wearing that day.

The blood, all that blood.

He didn't want to touch the blouse, but the shape under it was too clear. He pinched as small a piece of it as he could between his fingers and peeled it up from Bobbi's good charcoal-coloured skirt.

Underneath the shirt was a gun. It was the biggest, oldest-looking gun Gardener had ever seen except for pictures in a book. After a moment he picked the gun up and rolled the cylinder. There were still four rounds in it.

Two gone. Gardener was willing to bet that one of those rounds had gone into Bobbi.

He pushed the cylinder back into place and stuck it in his belt. At once a voice spoke up in his mind. Shot your wife … good fucking deal.

Never mind. The gun might come in handy.

When they see it's gone, it's you they'll come looking for, Gard. I thought you already came to that conclusion.

No; that was one thing he didn't think he had to worry about. They would have noticed the changed words on the computer screen, but these clothes hadn't been touched since Bobbi took them off (or since they took them off her, which was probably more likely).

They must be too exalted when they get in here to bother much about housekeeping, he thought. Damn good thing there's no flies.

He touched the gun again. This time the voice in his head was silent. It had decided, perhaps, that there were no wives here to worry about.

If you have to shoot Bobbi, will you be able to?

That was a question he couldn't answer.

Slisshhh-slisshhh-slisshhh.

How long had Bobbi and her company been gone? He didn't know; hadn't the slightest idea. Time had no meaning in here; the old man was right. This was hell. And did Peter still respond to his strange mistress's caress when she came in here?

His stomach was on the edge of revolt.

He had to get out – get out right now. He felt like a creature in a fairy tale, Bluebeard's wife in the secret room, Jack grubbing in the giant's pile of gold. He felt ripe for discovery. But he held the stiff, bloody garment in front of him as if frozen. Not as if; he was frozen.

Where's Bobbi?

She had a sunstroke.

Hell of a strange sunstroke that had soaked her blouse with blood. Gardener had retained a morbid, sickish interest in guns and the damage they could do to the human body. If she had been shot with the big old gun now in his own belt, he guessed Bobbi had no right to be alive – even if she had been taken quickly to a hospital which specialized in the emergency treatment of gunshot wounds, she probably would have died.

They brought me in here when I was blown apart, but the Tommyknockers fixed me up right smart.

Not for him. The old shower stall was not for him. Gardener had a feeling that he would be put out of the way with more finality. The shower stall had been for Bobbi.

They had brought her in here, and … what?

Why, hooked her up to their batteries, of course. Not Anne, she had not been here then. But to Peter … and Hillman.

He dropped the blouse … then forced himself to pick it up again and put it back on top of the skirt. He didn't know how much of the real world they noticed when they got in here (not much, he guessed) but he didn't want to take any extra chances.

He looked at the holes in the back of the cabinet, the dangling cords with the steel plugs at their tips.

The green light had begun to pulse brighter and more rapidly again. He turned around. Anne's eyes were open again. Her short hair floated around her head. He could still see that unending hate in her eyes, now mixed with horror and growing strangeness.

Now there were bubbles.

They floated up from her mouth in a brief, thick stream.

Thought/sound exploded in his head.

She was screaming.

Gardener fled.

7

Real terror is the most physically debilitating of all emotions. It saps the endocrines, dumps muscle-tightening organic drugs into the bloodstream, races the heart, exhausts the mind. Jim Gardener staggered away from Bobbi Anderson's shed on rubber legs, his eyes bugging, his mouth hanging stupidly open (the tongue lolled in one corner like a dead thing), his bowels hot and full, his stomach cramped.

It was hard to think beyond the crude, powerful images which stuttered on and off in his mind like bar-room neon: those bodies hung up on hooks, impaled like bugs impaled on pins by cruel, bored children; Peter's relentlessly moving legs; the bloody blouse with the bullet-hole in it; the plugs; the old-fashioned washing machine topped with the boomerang antenna. Strongest of all was the image of that short, thick stream of bubbles emerging from Anne Anderson's mouth as she screamed inside his head.

He got into the house, rushed into the bathroom and knelt in front of the toilet bowl only to discover he couldn't puke. He wanted to puke. He thought of maggoty hot-dogs, moldy pizza, pink lemonade with hairballs floating in it; finally he rammed two fingers down his throat. He was able to trip a simple gag reaction by this last, but no more. He couldn't sick it up. Simple as that.

If I can't, I'll go crazy.

Fine, go crazy if you have to. But first do what you have to do. Keep it together that long. And just by the way, Gard, do you have any more questions about what you should do?

Not anymore he didn't. Peter's relentlessly moving legs had convinced him. That stream of bubbles had convinced him. He wondered how he could have hesitated so long in the face of a power that was so obviously corrupting, so obviously dark.

Because you were mad, he answered himself. Gard nodded. That was it. No more explanation was needed. He had been mad – and not just for the last month or so. It was late to wake up, oh yes, very late, but late was better than never.

The sound. Slisshhh-slisshhh-slisshhh.

The smell. Bland yet meaty. A smell his mind insisted on associating with raw veal slowly spoiling in milk.

His stomach lurched. A burning, acidic burp scorched his throat. Gardener moaned.

The idea – that glimmer – returned to him, and he clutched at it. It might be possible either to abort all of this . or to at least put it on hold for a long, long time. It just might.

You got to let the world go to hell in its own way, Gard, two minutes to midnight or not.

He thought of Ted the Power Man again, thought of mad military organizations trading ever more sophisticated weapons with each other, and that angry, inarticulate, obsessed part of his mind tried to shout down sanity one final time.

Shut up, Gardener told it.

He went into the guest bedroom and pulled off his shirt. He looked out the window and now he could see sparks of light coming out of the woods. Dark had come. They were returning. They would go into the shed and maybe have a little seance. A meeting of minds around the shower cabinets. Fellowship in the homey green glow of raped minds.

Enjoy it, Gardener thought. He put the .45 under the foot of the mattress, then unbuckled his belt. It may be the last time, so

He looked down at his shirt. Sticking out of the pocket was a bow of metal. It was the padlock, of course. The padlock which belonged on the shed door.

8

For a moment which probably seemed much longer than it actually was, Gardener was unable to move at all. That feeling of unreal fairy-tale terror stole back into his tired heart. He was reduced to a horrified spectator watching those lights move steadily along the path. Soon they would reach the overgrown garden. They would cut through. They would cross the dooryard. They would reach the shed. They would see the missing padlock. Then they would come into the house and either kill Jim Gardener or send his discorporated atoms to Altair-4, wherever that was.

His first coherent thought was simple panic yelling at the top of its voice: Run! Get out of here!

His second thought was the shaky resurfacing of reason. Guard your thoughts. If you ever guarded them before, guard them now.

He stood with his shirt off, his unbuckled and unzipped jeans sagging around his hips, staring at the padlock in his shirt pocket.

Get out there right now and put it back. Right NOW!

No … no time … Christ, there's no time. They're at the garden.

There might be. There might be just enough if you quit playing pocket-pool and get moving!

He broke the paralysis with a final harsh effort of will, bent, snatched up the lock with the key still sticking out of the bottom, and ran, zipping his pants as he went. He slipped out the back door, paused for just a moment as the last two flashlights slipped into the garden and disappeared, then ran for the shed.

Faintly, vaguely, he could hear their voices in his mind – full of awe, wonder, jubilation.

He closed them out.

Green light fanning out from the shed door, which stood ajar.

Christ, Gard, how could you have been so stupid? his cornered mind raved, but he knew how. It was easy to forget such mundane things as relocking doors when you had seen a couple of people hung up on posts with coaxial cables coming out of their heads.

He could hear them in the garden now – could hear the rustle of the useless giant cornstalks.

As he reached toward the hasp, lock in hand, he remembered closing it before dropping it into his pocket. His hand jerked at the thought and he dropped the goddam thing. It thumped to the ground. He looked for it, and at first couldn't see it at all.

No … there it was, there just beyond the narrow fan of pulsing green light. There was the lock, yes, but the key wasn't in it anymore. The key had fallen out when the lock thumped to the ground.

God my God my God, his mind sobbed. His body was now covered with oozing sweat. His hair hung in his eyes. He thought he must smell like a rancid monkey.

He could hear cornstalks and leaves rustling louder. Someone laughed quietly -the sound was shockingly near. They would be out of the garden in seconds – he could feel those seconds bustling by, like. self-important businessmen with pot bellies and attache cases. He went down on his knees, snatched up the lock, and began to sweep his hand back and forth in the dirt, trying to find the key.

Oh you bastard where are you? Oh you bastard where are you? Oh you bastard! Where are you?

Aware that even now, in this panic, he had thrown a screen around his thoughts. Was it working? He didn't know. And if he couldn't find the key, it didn't matter, did it?

Oh you bastard where are you?

He saw a dull glint of silver beyond where he was sweeping his hand – the key had gone much further than he would have believed. His seeing it was only dumb luck … like Bobbi stumbling over that little rim of protruding metal in the earth two months before, he supposed.

Gardener snatched it and bolted to his feet. He would be hidden from them by the angle of the house for just a moment longer, but that was all he had left. One more screw-up – even a little one – would finish him, and there might not be enough time left even if he performed each of the mundane little operations involved in padlocking a door perfectly.

The fate of the world may now depend on whether a man can lock a shed door on the first try, he thought dazedly. Modem life is so challenging.

For a moment he didn't think he was even going to be able to slot the key in the lock. It chattered all the way around the slit without going in, a prisoner of his shaking hand. Then, when he thought it really was all over, it slid home. He turned it. The lock opened. He closed the door, slipped the arm of the padlock through the hasp, and then clicked it shut. He pulled the key out and folded it into his sweating hand. He slid around the corner of the shed like oil. At the exact moment he did, the men and women who had gone out to the ship emerged into the dooryard, moving in single file.

Gardener reached up to hang the key on the nail where he had found it. For one nightmare moment he thought he was going to drop it again and have to hunt for it in the high weeds growing on this side of the shed. When it slipped onto the nail he let out his breath in a shuddering sigh.

Part of him wanted not to move, to just freeze here. Then he decided he'd better not take the risk. After all, he didn't know that Bobbi had her key.

He continued slipping along the side of the shed. His left ankle struck the haft of an old harrow that had been left to rust in the weeds, and he had to clamp his teeth over a cry of pain. He stepped over it and slipped around another corner. Now he was behind the shed.

That sudsing sound was maddeningly loud back here.

I'm right behind those goddam showers, he thought. They're floating inches from me … literally inches.

A rustle of weeds. A minute scrape of metal. Gardener felt simultaneously like laughing and screeching. They hadn't had Bobbi's key. Someone had just come around to the side of the shed and taken the key Gardener had hung up again only seconds before – probably Bobbi herself.

Still warm from my hand, Bobbi, did you notice?

He stood in back of the shed, pressed against the rough wood, arms slightly spread, palms tight on the boards.

Did you notice? And do you hear me? Do any of you hear me? Is someone -Allison or Archinbourg or Berringer – going to suddenly pop his head around here and yell out 'Peek-a-boo, Gard, we seeee you?' Is the shield still working?

He stood there and waited for them to take him.

They didn't. On an ordinary summer night he probably would not have been able to hear the metallic rattle as the door was unlocked – it would have been masked by the loud ree-ree-ree of the crickets. But now there were no crickets. He beard the unlocking; heard the creak of the hinges as the door was opened; heard the hinges creak again as the door was pushed shut. They were inside.

Almost at once the pulses of light failing through the cracks began to speed up and become brighter, and his mind was split by an agonized scream:

Hurts! It hurrrrr

He moved away from the shed and went back to the house.

9

He lay awake a long time, waiting for them to come out again, waiting to see if he had been discovered.

All right, I can try to put a stop to the 'becoming,' he thought. But it won't work unless I actually can go inside the ship. Can I do that?

He didn't know. Bobbi seemed to have no worries, but Bobbi and the others were different now. Oh, he himself was also 'becoming'; the lost teeth proved that, the ability to hear thoughts did, too. He had changed the words on the computer screen just by thinking them. But there was no use kidding himself: he was far behind the competition. If Bobbi survived the entry into the ship and her old buddy Gard dropped dead, would any of them, even Bobbi herself, spare a tear? He didn't think so.

Maybe that's what they all want. Bobbi included. For you to go into the ship and just fall over with your brains exploding in one big harmonic radio transmission. It would save Bobbi the moral pain of taking care of you herself, for one thing. Murder without tears.

That they intended to get rid of him, he no longer doubted. But he thought maybe that Bobbi – the old Bobbi – would let him live long enough to see the interior of the strange thing they had worked so long to dig up. That at least felt right. And in the end, it didn't matter. If murder was what Bobbi was planning, there was no real defense, was there? He had to go into the ship. Unless he did that, his idea, crazy as it undoubtedly was, had no chance to work at all.

Have to try, Gard.

He had intended to try as soon as they were inside, and that would probably be tomorrow morning. Now he thought that maybe he ought to press his luck a little further. If he went according to the rag and a bone he supposed he had to call his 'original plan,' there would be no way he could do anything about that little boy. The kid would have to come first.

Gard, he's probably dead anyway.

Maybe. But the old man didn't think so; the old man thought there was still a little boy left to save.

One kid doesn't matter – not in the face of all this. You know it, too – Haven is like a great big nuclear reactor that's ready to go red-line. The containment is melting. To coin a phrase.

It was logical, but it was a croupier's logic. Ultimately, killer logic. Ted the Power Man Logic. If he wanted to play the game that way, why even bother?

The kid matters or nothing matters.

And maybe this way he could even save Bobbi. He didn't think so; he thought Bobbi had gone too far for salvation. But he could try.

Long odds, Gard ole Gard.

Sure. The clock's at a minute to midnight … we're down to counting seconds.

Thinking that, he slipped into the blankness of sleep. This was followed by nightmares where he floated in a clear green bath, tethered by thick coaxial cables. He was trying to scream but he couldn't, because the cables were coming out of his mouth.

1

Entombed in the overdecorated confines of the Bounty Tavern, drinking buck-a-bottle Heinekens and laughed at by David Bright, who had sunk to vulgar depths of humor – who had even ended up comparing John Leandro to Superman's pal Jimmy Olson, Leandro had wavered. No use telling himself otherwise. He had, indeed, wavered. But men of vision have always had to endure barbs of ridicule, and not a few have been burned or crucified or had their height artificially extended by five or six inches on the Inquisitorial rack of pain for their visions. Having David Bright ask him over beers in the Bounty if his Secret Wristwatch was in good working order was hardly the worst thing that could have befallen him.

But oh shit it hurt.

John Leandro determined that David Bright, and anyone else to whom Bright had related Crazy Johnny's ideas that Something Big Was Going on in Haven, would end up laughing on the other side of his or her face. Because something big was going on there. He felt it in every bone in his body. There were days, when the wind was blowing from the southeast, that he almost imagined he could smell it.

His vacation had begun the previous Friday. He had hoped to go down to Haven that very day. But he lived with his widowed mother, and she had been counting so on him running her up to Nova Scotia to see her sister, she said, but if John had commitments, why, she understood; after all, she was old and probably not much fun anymore; just someone to cook his meals and wash his underwear, and that was fine, you go on, Johnny, go on and hunt up your scoop, I'll just call Megan on the telephone, maybe in a week or two your cousin Alfie will bring her down here to see me, Alfie's so good to his mother, et cetera, et cetera, ibid., ibid., ad infinitum, ad infinitum.

On Friday, Leandro took his mother to Nova Scotia. Of course they stayed over, and by the time they got back to Bangor, Saturday was shot. Sunday was a bad day to begin anything, what with his Sunday-school class of first-and-second graders at nine, full worship services at ten, and Young Men for Christ in the Methodist rectory at five P.m. At the YMC meeting, a special speaker gave them a slide-show on Armageddon. As he explained to them how unrepenting sinners would be inflicted with boils and running sores and ailments of the bowels and the intestines, Georgina Leandro and the other members of the Ladies' Aid passed out paper cups of Za-Rex and oatmeal cookies. And during the evening there was always a songfest for Christ in the church basement.

Sundays always left him feeling exalted. And exhausted.

2

So it was Monday, the 15th of August before Leandro finally tossed his yellow legal pads, his Sony tape recorder, his Nikon and a gadget-bag filled with film and various lenses, into the front seat of his used Dodge and prepared to set out for Haven … and what he hoped would be journalistic glory. He would not have been appalled if he had known he was approaching ground-zero of what was shortly to become the biggest story since the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

The day was calm and blue and mellow – very warm but not so savagely hot and humid as the last few days had been. It was a day everyone on earth would mark forever in his memory. Johnny Leandro had wanted a story, but he had never heard the old proverb that goes, 'God says take what you want … and pay for it.'

He only knew that he had stumbled onto the edge of something, and when he tried to wiggle it, it remained firm … which meant it was maybe bigger than one might at first think. There was no way he was going to walk away from this; he intended to excavate. All the David Brights in the world with their smart cracks about Jimmy Olson wristwatches and Fu Manchu could not stop him.

He put the Dodge in drive and began to roll away from the curb.

'Don't forget your lunch, Johnny!' his mother called. She came puffing down the walk with a brown-paper sack in one hand. Large grease spots were already forming on the brown paper; since grade school, Leandro's favorite sandwich had been bologna, slices of Bermuda onion, and Wesson Oil.

'Thanks, Mom,' he said, leaning over to take the bag and put it down on the floor. 'You didn't have to do that, though. I could have picked up a hamburger – '

'If I've told you once I've told you a thousand times,' she said, 'you have no business going into those roadside luncheonettes, Johnny. You never know if the kitchen's dirty or clean.

'Microbes,' she said ominously, leaning forward.

'Ma, I got to g – '

'You can't see microbes at all,' Mrs Leandro went on. She was not to be turned from her subject until she had had her say on it.

'Yes, Mom,' Leandro said, resigned.

'Some of those places are just havens for microbes,' she said. 'The cooks may not be clean, you know. They may not wash their hands after leaving the lavatory. They may have dirt or even excrement under their nails. This isn't anything I want to discuss, you understand, but sometimes a mother has to instruct her son. Food in places like that can make a person very, very sick.'

'Mom – '

She uttered a long-suffering laugh and dabbed momentarily at the corner of one eye with her apron. 'Oh, I know, your mother is silly, just a silly old woman with a lot of funny old ideas, and she probably ought to just learn to shut up.'

Leandro recognized this for the manipulative trick it was, but it still always made him feel squirmy, guilty, about eight years old.

'No, Mom,' he said. 'I don't think that at all.'

'I mean, you are the big newsman, I just sit home and make your bed and wash your clothes and air out your bedroom if you get the farts from drinking too much beer.'

Leandro bent his head, said nothing, and waited to be released.

'But do this for me. Stay out of roadside luncheonettes, Johnny, because you can get sick. From microbes.'

'I promise, Mom.'

Satisfied that she had extracted a promise from him, she was now willing to let him go.

'You'll be home for supper?'

'Yes,' Leandro said, not knowing any better.

'At six?' she persisted.

'Yes! Yes!'

'I know, I know, I'm just a silly old …'

'Bye, Mom!' he said hastily, and pulled away from the curb.

He looked in the rearview mirror and saw her standing at the end of the walk, waving. He waved back, then dropped his hand, hoping she would go back into the house … and knowing better. When he made a right turn two blocks down and his mother was finally gone, Leandro felt a faint but unmistakable lightening of his heart. Rightly or wrongly, he always felt this way when his mom finally dropped out of sight.

3

In Haven, Bobbi Anderson was showing Jim Gardener some modified breathing apparatus. Ev Hillman would have recognized it; the respirators looked very similar to the one he had picked up for the cop, Butch Dugan. But that one had been to protect Dugan from the Haven air; the respirators Bobbi was demonstrating drew on reserves of just that – Haven air was what they were used to, and Haven air was what the two of them would breathe if they got inside the Tommyknockers' ship. It was nine-thirty.

At that same time, in Derry, John Leandro had pulled over to the side of the road not far from the place where the gutted deer and the cruiser requisitioned to officers Rhodes and Gabbons had been found. He thumbed open the glove compartment to check on the Smith&Wesson .38 he had picked up in Bangor the week before. He took it out for a moment, not putting his forefinger anywhere near the trigger even though he knew it was unloaded. He liked the compact way the gun fitted his palm, its weight, the feeling of simple power it somehow conveyed. But it also made him feel a trifle skittery, as if he might have torn off a chunk of something that was far too big for the likes of him to chew.

A chunk of what?

He wasn't quite sure. Some sort of strange meat.

Microbes, his mother's voice spoke up in his mind. Food in places like that can make a person very, very sick.

He checked to make sure the carton of bullets was still in the glove compartment, then put the gun back. He guessed that transporting a handgun in the glove compartment of a motor vehicle was probably against the law (he thought again of his mother, this time without even realizing he was doing so). He could imagine a cop pulling him over for something routine, asking to see his registration, and getting a glimpse of the .38 when Leandro opened the glove compartment. That was the way the murderers always got caught on Alfred Hitchcock Presents, which he and his mother watched every Saturday night on the cable station that showed it. It would also be a scoop of a different sort: BANGOR 'DAILY NEWS' REPORTER ARRESTED ON ILLEGAL WEAPONS CHARGE.

Well then, take your registration out of the glove compartment and put it in your wallet, if you're so worried.

But he wouldn't do that. The idea made perfect sense, but it also seemed like buying trouble … and that voice of reason sounded altogether too much like the voice of Mother, warning him about microbes or instructing him (as she had when he was a boy) on the horrors which might result if he forgot to put paper all over the ring of a public toilet before sitting on it.

Leandro drove on instead, aware that his heart was beating a little too fast, and that he felt just a little sweatier than the heat of the day could explain.

Something big … some days I can almost smell it.

Yes. Something was out there, all right. The death of the McCausland woman (a furnace explosion in July? oh really?); the disappearance of the investigating troopers; the suicide of the cop who had supposedly been in love with her. And before any of those things, there had been the disappearance of the little boy. David Bright had said David Brown's grandfather had been spouting a lot of crazy nonsense about telepathy and magic tricks that really worked.

I only wish you'd come to me instead of Bright, Mr Hillman, Leandro thought for perhaps the fiftieth time.

Except now Hillman had disappeared. Hadn't been back to his rooming house in over two weeks. Hadn't been back to Derry Home Hospital to visit his grandson, although the nurses had had to boot him out nights before. The official state-police line was that Ev Hillman hadn't disappeared, but that was catch-22 because a legal adult couldn't disappear in the eyes of the law until another legal adult actually so reported that person, filling out the proper forms in consequence. So all was jake in the eyes of the law. All was far from jake in the eyes of John Leandro. Hillman's landlady in Derry had told him that the old man had stiffed her for sixty bucks – as far as Leandro had been able to find out, it was the first unpaid bill the old guy had left in his life.

Something big … strange meat.

Nor was that all of the weirdness emanating out of Haven these days. A fire, also in July, had killed a couple on the Nista Road. This month a doctor piloting a small plane had crashed and burned. That had happened in Newport, true, but the FAA controller at BIA had confirmed that the unfortunate doc had overflown Haven, and at an illegally low altitude. Phone service in Haven had begun to get oddly glitchy. Sometimes people could get through, sometimes they couldn't. He had sent to the Augusta Bureau of Taxation for a list of Haven voters (paying the required fee of six dollars to get the nine computer sheets), and had managed to trace relatives of nearly sixty of these Havenites – relatives living in Bangor, Derry, and surrounding areas – in his spare time.

He couldn't find one – not one – who had seen his or her Haven relations since July 10th or so … over a month before. Not one.

Of course, a lot of those he interviewed didn't find this strange at all. Some of them weren't on good terms with their Haven relations and couldn't care less if they didn't hear from or see them in the next six months … or six years. Others seemed first surprised, then thoughtful when Leandro pointed out the length of the lapse they were talking about. Of course, summer was an active season for most people. Time passed with a light easiness that winter knew nothing about. And, of course, they had spoken to Aunt Mary or Brother Bill a time or two on the phone -sometimes you couldn't get through, but mostly you could.

There were other suspicious similarities in the testimony of the people

Leandro interviewed, similarities that had made his nose flare with the smell of something decidedly off:

Ricky Berringer was a house-painter in Bangor. His older brother, Newt, was a carpenter-contractor who also happened to be a Haven selectman. 'We invited Newt up for dinner near the end of July,' Ricky said, 'but he said he had the flu.'

Don Blue was a Derry realtor. His Aunt Sylvia, who lived in Haven, had been in the habit of coming up to take dinner with Don and his wife every Sunday or so. The last three Sundays she had begged off – once with the flu (flu seems to be going around in Haven, Leandro thought, nowhere else, you understand – just in Haven), and the other times because it was so hot she just didn't feel like traveling. After further questioning Blue realized it had been more like five Sundays since his aunt had favored them – and maybe as many as six.

Bill Spruce kept a herd of dairy cows in Cleaves Mills. His brother Frank kept a herd in Haven. They usually got together every week or two, merging two extremely large families for a few hours – the clan Spruce would eat tons of barbecue, drink gallons of beer and Pepsi-Cola, and Frank and Bill would sit either at the picnic table in Frank's back yard or on the front porch of Bill's house and compare notes about what they simply called the Business. Bill admitted it had been a month or more since he'd seen Frank – there had been some problem first with his feed supplier, Frank had told him, then with the milk inspectors. Bill, meanwhile, had had a few problems of his own. Half a dozen of his holsteins had died during this last hot-spell. And, he added as an afterthought, his wife had had a heart attack. He and his brother just hadn't had time to visit much this summer … but the man had still expressed unfeigned surprise when Leandro dragged out his wallet calendar and the two of them figured out just how long it had been: the two brothers hadn't gotten together since June 30th. Spruce whistled and tilted his cap back on his head. 'Gorry, that is a long time,' he had said. 'Guess I'll have to take a ride down Haven and see Frank, now that my Evelyn's on the mend.'

Leandro said nothing, but some of the other testimony he had gathered over the last couple of weeks made him think that Bill Spruce might find a trip like that hazardous to his health.

'Felt like I was dine,' Alvin Rutledge told Leandro. Rutledge was a long-haul trucker, currently unemployed, who lived in Bangor. His grandfather was Dave Rutledge, a lifelong Haven resident.

'What exactly do you mean?' Leandro asked.

Alvin Rutledge looked at the young reporter shrewdly. 'Another beer'd go down good just about now,' he said. They were sitting in Nan's Tavern in Bangor. 'Talkin's amazin' dusty work, chummy.'

'Isn't it,' Leandro said, and told the waitress to draw two.

Rutledge took a deep swallow when it came, wiped foam from his upper lip with the heel of his hand, and said: 'Heart beatin' too fast. Headache. Felt like I was gonna puke my guts out. I did puke, as a matter of fact. Just 'fore I turned around. Rolled down the window and just let her fly into the slipstream, I did.'

'Wow,' Leandro said, since some remark seemed called for. The image of Rutledge 'letting her fly into the slipstream' flapped briefly in his mind. He dismissed it. At least, he tried.

'And looka here.'

He rolled back his upper lip, revealing the remains of his teeth.

'Ooo see a ho in funt?' Rutledge asked. Leandro saw a good many holes in front, but thought it might not be politic to say so. He simply agreed. Rutledge nodded and let his lip fall back into place. It was something of a relief.

'Teeth never have been much good,' Rutledge said indifferently. 'When I get workin' again and can afford me a good set of dentures, I'm gonna have all of 'em jerked. Fuck em. Point is, I had my two front teeth there on top before I headed up to Haven week before last to check on Gramp. Hell, they wasn't even loose.'

'They fell out when you started to get close to Haven?'

'Didn't fall out,' Rutledge finished his beer. 'I puked 'em out.'

'Oh,' Leandro had replied faintly.

'You know, another brew'd go down good. Talkin's

'Thirsty work, I know,' Leandro said, signaling the waitress. He was over his limit, but he found he could use another one himself.

4

Alvin Rutledge wasn't the only person who had tried to visit a friend or relative in Haven during July, nor the only one to become ill and turn back. Using the voting lists and area phone books as a starting point, Leandro turned up three people who told stories similar to Rutledge's. He uncovered a fourth incident through pure coincidence – or almost pure. His mother knew he was 'following up' some aspect of his 'big story,' and happened to mention that her friend Eileen Pulsifer had a friend who lived down in Haven.

Eileen was fifteen years older than Leandro's mother, which put her close to seventy. Over tea and cloyingly sweet gingersnaps, she told Leandro a story similar to those he had already heard.

Mrs Pulsifer's friend was Mary Jacklin (whose grandson was Tommy Jacklin). They had visited back and forth for more than forty years, and often played in local bridge tournaments. This summer she hadn't seen Mary at all. Not even once. She'd spoken to her on the phone, and she seemed fine; her excuses always sounded believable … but all the same, something about them – a bad headache, too much baking to do, the family had decided on the spur of the moment to go down to Kennebunk and visit the Trolley Museum – wasn't quite right.

'They were fine by the one-by-one, but they seemed odd to me in the whole bunch, if you see what I mean.' She offered the cookies. 'More 'snaps?'

'No thank you,' Leandro said.

'Oh, go ahead! I know you boys! Your mother taught you to be polite, but no boy ever born could turn down a gingersnap! Now you just go on and take what you hanker for!'

Smiling dutifully, Leandro took another gingersnap.

Settling back and folding her hands on her tight round belly, Mrs Pulsifer went on: 'I begun to think something might be wrong … I still think that maybe something's wrong, truth to tell. First thing to cross my mind was that maybe Mary didn't want to be my friend anymore … that maybe I did or said something to offend her. But no, says I to myself, if I'd done something ' I guess she'd tell me. After forty years of friendship I guess she would. Besides, she didn't really sound cool to me, you know

'But she did sound different.'

Eileen Pulsifer nodded decisively. 'Ayuh. And that got me thinking that maybe she was sick, that maybe, God save us, her doctor had found a cancer or something inside her, and she didn't want any of her old friends to know. So I called up Vera and I said, "We're going to go down to Haven, Vera, and see Mary. We ain't going to tell her we're coming, and that way she can't call us off. You get ready, Vera," I says, "because I'm coming by your house at ten o'clock, and if you ain't ready, I'm going to go without you.-

'Vera is – '

'Vera Anderson, in Derry. Just about my best friend in the whole world, John, except for Mary and your mother. And your mother was down in Monmouth, Visiting her sister that week.'

Leandro remembered it well: a week of such peace and quiet was a week to be treasured.

'So the two of you headed down.'

'Ayuh.'

'And you got sick.'

'Sick! I thought I was dying. My heart!' She clapped a hand dramatically over one breast. 'It was beating so fast! My head started to ache, and I got a nosebleed, and Vera got scared. She says, “Turn around, Eileen, right now, you got to get to the hospital right away!”

'Well, I turned around somehow – I don't hardly remember how, the world was spinning so – and by then my mouth was bleeding, and two of my teeth fell out. Right out of my head! Did you ever hear the beat of it?'

'No,' he lied, thinking of Alvin Rutledge. 'Where did it happen?'

'Why, I told you – we were going to see Mary Jacklin – '

'Yes, but were you actually in Haven when you got sick? And which way did you come in?'

'Oh, I see! No, we weren't. We were on the Old Derry Road. In Troy.'

'Close to Haven, then.'

'Oh, 'bout a mile from the town line. I'd been feeling sick for a little time -whoopsy, you know – but I didn't want to say so to Vera. I kept hoping that I would feel better.'

Vera Anderson hadn't gotten sick, and this troubled Leandro. It didn't fit. Vera hadn't gotten a bloody nose, nor lost any teeth.

'No, she didn't get sick at all,' Mrs Pulsifer said. 'Except with terror. I guess she was sick with that. For me … and for herself too, I imagine.'

'How do you mean?'

'Well, that road's awful empty. She thought I was going to pass out. I almost did. It might have been fifteen, twenty minutes before someone came along.'

'She couldn't have driven you?'

'God bless you, John, Vera's had muscular dystrophy for years. She wears great big metal braces on her legs – cruel-looking things, they are, like something you'd expect to see on a torture chamber. It just about makes me cry sometimes to see her.'

5

At a quarter to ten on the morning of August 15th, Leandro crossed into the town of Troy. His stomach was tight with anticipation and – let's face it, folks – a tingle of fear. His skin felt cold.

I may get sick. I may get sick, and if I do, I'm going to leave about ninety feet of rubber reversing out of the area. Got that?

I got it, boss, he answered himself. I got it, I got it.

You may lose some teeth, too, he cautioned himself, but the loss of -a few teeth seemed a small price to pay for a story which might win him a Pulitzer Prize … and, just as important, one which would surely turn David Bright green with envy.

He passed through Troy Village, where everything seemed fine … if a little slower than usual. The first jag in the normal run of things came about a mile further south, and from a direction he wouldn't have expected. He had been listening to WZON out of Bangor. Now the normally strong AM signal began to waver and flutter. Leandro could hear one … no, two . . * no ' three … other stations mixed in with its signal. He frowned. That sometimes happened at night, when radiant cooling thinned the atmosphere and allowed radio signals to travel further, but he had never heard of it happening on an AM band in the morning, not even during those periods of optimum radio-transmission conditions which ham operators call 'the skip.'

He ran the tuner on the Dodge's radio, and was amazed as a flood of conflicting transmissions poured out of the speakers – rock-and-roll, countryand-western, and classical music stepped all over each other. Somewhere in the background he could hear Paul Harvey extolling Amway. He turned the dial further and caught a momentarily clear transmission so surprising he pulled over. He sat staring at the radio with big eyes.

It was speaking in Japanese.

He sat and waited for the inevitable clarification -'This lesson in Beginners' Japanese has been brought to you by your local Kyanize Paint dealer,' something like that. The announcer finished. Then came the Beach Boys 'Be True to Your School.' In Japanese.

Leandro continued to tune down the kHz band with a hand that shook. It was much the same all the way. As it did at night, the tangle of voices and music got worse as he tuned toward the higher frequencies. At last the tangle grew so severe it began to frighten him – it was the auditory equivalent of a squirming mass of snakes. He turned the radio off and sat behind the wheel, eyes wide, body thrumming slightly, like a man on lowgrade speed.

What is this?

Foolish to speculate when the answer lay no more than six miles up ahead … always assuming he could uncover it, of course.

Oh, I think you'll uncover it. You may not like it when you do, but yeah, I think you'll uncover it with no trouble at all.

Leandro looked around. The hay in the field on his right was long and shaggy. Too long and shaggy for August. There hadn't been any first cutting in early July. Somehow he didn't think there was going to be any August cutting, either. He looked left and saw a tumbledown barn surrounded by rusty auto parts. The corpse of a '57 Studebaker was decaying in the barn's maw. The windows seemed to stare at Leandro. There were no people to stare, at least not that he could see.

A very quiet, very polite little voice spoke up inside him, the voice of a well-mannered child at a tea party that has become decidedly scary:

I would like to go home, please.

Yes. Home to Mother. Home in time to watch the afternoon soaps with her. She would be glad to see him back with his scoop, maybe even more glad to see him back without it. They'd sit and eat cookies and drink coffee. They would talk. She would talk, rather, and he would listen. That was how it always was, and it really wasn't that bad. She could be an irritating thing sometimes, but she was …

Safe.

Safe, yeah. That was it. Safe. And whatever was going on south of Troy on this dozy summer afternoon, it wasn't at all safe.

I would like to go home, please.

Right. There had probably been times when Woodward and Bernstein felt that way when Nixon's boys were really putting the squeeze on. Bernard Fall had probably felt that way when he got off the plane in Saigon for the last time. When you saw the TV news correspondents in trouble-spots like Lebanon and Tehran, they only looked cool, calm, and collected. Viewers never had a chance to inspect their shorts.

The story is out there, and I'm going to get it, and when I collect my Pulitzer Prize, I can say I owe it all to David Bright … and my secret Superman wristwatch.

He put the Dodge in gear again and drove on toward Haven.

6

He hadn't gone a mile before he began to feel a bit ill. He thought this must be a physical symptom of his fear and ignored it. Then, when he began to feel worse, he asked himself (as one is apt to do when he realizes that the nausea sitting in his stomach like a small dark cloud is not going away) what he had eaten. There was no blame to be laid in that direction. He hadn't been afraid when he got up that morning, but he had been feeling a lot of anticipation and high-spirited tension; as a result he had refused the usual bacon and scrambled eggs and settled for tea and dry toast. That was all.

I would like to go home! The voice was now more shrill.

Leandro pushed on, teeth clamped grimly together. The scoop was in Haven. If he couldn't get into Haven, there would be no scoop. You couldn't hit 'em if you couldn't see 'em. QED.

Less than a mile from the town line – the day was eerily, utterly dead – a series of beeping, booping, and buzzing noises began to come from the back seat, startling him so badly that he cried out and pulled over to the side of the road again.

He looked in back and at first was unable to credit what he was seeing. It had to be, he thought, a hallucination brought on by his increasing nausea.

When he and his mother had been in Halifax this past weekend, he had taken his nephew Tony out for a Dairy Queen. Tony (whom Leandro privately thought was an ill-mannered little snot) had sat in the back playing with a plastic toy that looked a bit like the handset of a Princess phone. This toy was called Merlin, and it ran on a computer chip. It played four or five simple games which called for simple feats of memory or the ability to identify a simple mathematical series. Leandro remembered it had also played tic-tac-toe.

Anyway, Tony must have forgotten it, and now it was going crazy in the back seat, its red lights flashing on and off in random patterns (but were they? or just a little too fast for him to catch?), making its simple series of sounds again and again and again. It was running by itself.

No … no. I hit a pothole, or something. That's all. Jogged its switch. Got it going.

But he could see the small black switch on the side. It was pushed to Off. But Merlin went on booping and beeping and buzzing. It reminded him of a Vegas slot-machine paying off a big jackpot.

The thing's plastic case began to smoke. The plastic itself was sinking … drooling … running like tallow. The lights flashed faster … faster. Suddenly they all went on at once, bright red, and the gadget emitted a strangled buzzing sound. The case cracked open. There was a brittle shower of plastic shards. The seat-cover started to smolder underneath it.

Ignoring his stomach, Leandro got up on his knees and knocked it onto the floor. There was a charred spot on the seat where Merlin had lain.

What is this?

The answer, irrelevant, nearly a scream:

I WOULD LIKE TO GO HOME NOW PLEASE!

'The ability to isolate a simple mathematical series.' Did I think that? The John Leandro that flunked general math in high school? Do you mean it?

Never mind that, just bug OUT!

No.

He put the Dodge in gear and drove on again. He had gone less than twenty yards when he thought suddenly, with crazy exhilaration:

The ability to isolate a simple mathematical series indicates the existence of a general case, doesn't it? You could express it this way, come to think of it:

ax[2] + bxy = cy[2] + dx + ey + f = 0.

Yup. It'll work as long as a, b, c, d, and f are constants. I think. Yeah. You bet. But you couldn't let a, b, or c be 0 – that'd fuck it for sure! Let f take care of itself! Ha!

Leandro felt like puking, but he still uttered a shrill, triumphant laugh. All at once he felt as if his brain had lifted off, right through the top of his skull. Although he didn't know it (having pretty much dozed through that part of Nerd Math), he had reinvented the general quadratic equation in two variables, which can indeed be used to isolate components in a simple mathematical series. It blew his mind.

A moment later, blood burst from his nose in an amazing flood.

That was the end of John Leandro's first effort to get into Haven. He threw the gearshift into reverse and backed unsteadily up the road, weaving from side to side, right arm hooked over the front seat, blood pouring onto the shoulder of his shirt as he stared out through the back window with watering eyes.

He backed up for almost a mile, then turned around in a driveway. He looked down at himself. His shirt was drenched with blood. But he felt better. A little better, he amended. Still, he didn't linger; he drove back to Troy Village and parked in front of the general store.

He walked in, expecting the usual gathering of old men to stare at his bloody shirt with silent Yankee surprise. But only the shopkeeper was there, and he didn't look surprised at all – not at the blood, not at Leandro's question about any shirts he might have in stock.

'Look like your nose might've bled a tetch,' the storekeeper said mildly, and showed Leandro a selection of T-shirts. An inordinately large selection for such a small store as this, Leandro thought – he was slowly getting hold of himself, although his head still ached and his stomach still felt sour and unsteady. The flow of blood from his nose had scared him very badly.

'You could say that,' Leandro said. He allowed the old man to thumb through the shirts for him, because there was tacky blood still drying on his own hands. They were sized S, M, L, and XL. WHERE TH' HELL IS TROY, MAINE? some said. On others there was a lobster and the slogan I GOT THE BEST PIECE OF TAIL I EVER HAD IN TROY, MAINE. On others there was a large blackfly which looked like a monster from outer space. THE MAINE STATE BIRD, these proclaimed.

'You sure do have lots of shirts,' Leandro said, pointing to a WHERE TH' HELL in an M size. He thought the lobster shirt was amusing, but thought his mother would be less than wild about the innuendo.

'Ayuh,' the storekeeper said. 'Have to have a lot. Sell a lot.'

'Tourists?' Leandro's mind was already racing ahead, trying to figure out what came next. He had thought he was onto something big; now he believed it was one hell of a lot bigger than even he had believed.

'Some,' the storekeeper said, 'but there ain't been many down this way this summer. Mostly I sell 'em to folks like you.'

'Like me?'

'Ayuh. Folks with bloody noses.'

Leandro gaped at the storekeeper.

'Their noses bleed, they wreck their shirts,' the storekeeper said. 'Same way you wrecked yours. They want a new one, and if they're just locals – like I 'spect you are – they ain't got no luggitch and no changes. So they stop first place they come to and buy a new one. I don't blame 'em. Drivin' around in a shirt all over blood like yours'd make me puke. Why, I've had ladies in here this summer – nice-looking ladies, too, dressed to the nines – who smelled like guts in a hogshead.'

The storekeeper cackled, showing a mouth that was perfectly toothless.

Leandro said slowly: 'Let me get this straight. Other people come back from Haven with bloody noses? It's not just me?'

'Just you? Hell, no! Shittagoddam! The day they buried Ruth McCausland, I sold fifteen shirts! That one day! I was thinkin' about retirin' on the proceeds and movin' to Florida.'

The storekeeper cackled again.

'They was all out-of-towners.' He said this as if it explained everything – and perhaps in his mind, it did. 'Couple of 'em was still spoutin' when they come in here. Noses like fountains! Ears too, sometimes. Shittagoddarn!'

'And nobody knows about this?'

The old man looked at Leandro from wise eyes.

'You do, sonny,' he said.

1

'You ready, Gard?'

Gardener was sitting on the front porch, looking out at Route 9. The voice came from behind him, and it was easy – too easy – for him not to flash on a hundred sleazy prison movies, where the warden arrives to escort the condemned man along the Last Mile. Such scenes always beginning, of course, with the warden growling, Are you ready, Rocky?

Ready for this? You got to be kidding.

He got up, turned around, saw the equipment in Bobbi's arms, then the little smile on Bobbi's face. There was something knowing in that smile that he didn't like.

'See something funny?' he asked.

'Heard it. Heard you, Gard. You were thinking about old prison movies,' Bobbi said. 'And then you thought, “Ready for this? You got to be kidding.” I caught all of that one, and that's very rare … unless you're deliberately sending. That's why I was smiling.'

'You were peeking.'

'Yes. And it's getting easier to do,' Bobbi said, still smiling.

From behind his decaying mental shield, Gardener thought: I have a gun now, Bobbi. It's under my bed. I got it in The First Reformed Church of the Tommyknockers. It was dangerous … but it would be more dangerous not to know just how deep Bobbi's ability to 'peek' now went.

Bobbi's smile faltered a little. 'What was that one?' she asked.

'You tell me,' he said, and when her smile began to change to a look of narrow suspicion he added easily, 'Come on, Bobbi, I was just pulling your string a little. I was only wondering what you got there.'

Bobbi brought the equipment over. There were two rubber snorkel mouthpieces attached to tanks and homemade regulators.

'We wear these,' she said. 'When we go inside.'

Inside.

Just the word lit a hot spark in his belly and triggered all sorts of conflicting emotions – awe, terror, anticipation, curiosity, tension. Part of him felt like a superstitious native preparing to walk on taboo ground; the rest felt like a kid on Christmas morning.

'The air inside is different, then,' Gardener said.

'Not so different.' Bobbi had put her makeup on indifferently this morning, perhaps having decided there was no longer any need to hide the accelerating physical changes from Gardener. Gard realized he could see Bobbi's tongue moving inside her head as she spoke … only it didn't look precisely like a tongue anymore. And the pupils of Bobbi's eyes looked bigger, but somehow uneven and wavering, as if they were peering up at him from under water. Water with a slight greenish tinge. He felt his stomach turn over.

'Not so different,' she said. 'Just … rotten.'

'Rotten?'

'The ship's been sealed for over twenty-five thousand centuries,' Bobbi said patiently. 'Totally sealed. We'd be killed by the outrush of bad air as soon as we opened the hatch. So we wear these.'

'What's in them?'

'Nothing but good old Haven air. The tanks are small – forty, maybe fifty minutes of air. You clip it to your belt like this, see?'

'Yes.'

Bobbi offered him one of the rigs. Gard attached the tank to his belt. He had to raise his T-shirt to do it, and he was very glad he'd decided to leave the .45 under the bed for now.

'Start using the canned air just before I open it up,' Bobbi said. 'Almost forgot. Here. Just in case you forget.' She handed Gardener a pair of noseplugs. Gard stuffed them into a jeans pocket.

'Well!' Bobbi said briskly. 'Are you ready, then?'

'We're really going in there?'

'We really are,' Bobbi said almost tenderly.

Gardener laughed shakily. His hands and feet were cold. 'I'm pretty fucking excited,' he said.

Bobbi smiled. 'I am, too.'

'Also, I'm scared.'

In that same tender voice, Bobbi said, 'No need to be, Gard. Everything will be all right.'

Something in that tone made Gardener feel more scared than ever.

2

They took the Tomcat and cruised silently through the dead woods, the only sound the minute hum of batteries. Neither of them talked.

Bobbi parked the Tomcat by the lean-to and they stood for a moment looking at the silver dish rising out of the trench. The morning sun shone on it in a pure, widening wedge of light.

Inside, Gardener thought again.

'Are you ready?' Bobbie asked again. Come on, Rocky – just one big jolt, you'll never feel a thing.

'Yeah, fine,' Gardener said. His voice was a trifle hoarse.

Bobbi was looking at him inscrutably with her changing eyes – those floating, widening pupils. Gardener seemed to feel mental fingers fluttering over his thoughts, trying to pull them open.

'Going in there could kill you, you know,' Bobbi said at last. 'Not the air – we've got that licked.' She smiled. 'It's funny, you know. Five minutes on one of those mouthpieces would knock someone from the outside unconscious, and half an hour of it would kill him. But it'll keep us alive. Does that tickle you, Gard?'

'Yes,' Gard said, looking at the ship and wondering the things he always wondered: Where did you come from? And how long did you have to cruise the night to get here? 'It tickles me.'

'I think you'll be okay, but you know – ' Bobbi shrugged. 'Your head … that steel plate interacts somehow with the

'I know the risk.'

'As long as you do.'

Bobbi turned and walked toward the trench. Gardener stood where he was for a moment, watching her go.

I know the risk from the plate. What I'm less clear on is the risk from you, Bobbi. Is it Haven air I'm going to get when I have to use that mask, or something like Raid?

But it didn't matter, did it? He had thrown the dice. And nothing was going to keep him from seeing inside that ship, if he could – not David Brown, not the whole world.

Bobbi reached the trench. She turned and looked back, her made-up face a dull mask in the morning light angling through the old pines and spruces which surrounded this place. 'Coming?'

'Yeah,' Gardener said, and walked over to the ship.

3

Getting down proved to be unexpectedly tricky. Ironically, getting up was the easy part. The button at the bottom was right there, in fact no more than the 0 on a remote telephone handset. At the top, the button was a conventional electrical switch set on one of the posts which supported the lean-to. This was fifty feet from the edge of the trench. For the first time Gardener realized how all those car recalls could happen; until now, neither of them had bothered with the fact that their arms were somewhat less than fifty feet long.

They had been using the sling to go up and down for a long time now, long enough to take it for granted. Standing at the edge of the trench, they realized that they had never both gone down together. What both also realized but neither said was that they could have gone down one at a time; with someone to run the buttons at the bottom, all would have been well. Neither said it because it was understood between them that this time, and only this time, they must go down together, perfectly together, both with one foot in the single stirrup, arms around each other's waists, like lovers in a descending swing. It was stupid; just stupid, just stupid enough to be the only way.

They looked at each other without saying a word – but two thoughts flew, and crossed in the air.

(here we are a couple of college graduates)

(Bobbi where'd I leave my left-handed monkeywrench)

Bobbi's strange new mouth quivered. She turned around and snorted. Gardener felt a moment of the old warmth touch his heart then. It was the last time he really ever saw the old and unimproved Bobbi Anderson.

'Well, can you rig a portable unit to run the sling?'

'I can, but it's not worth taking the time. I've got another idea.' Her eyes touched Gardener's face for a moment, thoughtful and calculating. It was a look Gardener could not quite interpret. Then Bobbi walked away to the lean-to.

Gardener followed her partway and saw Bobbi swing open a large green metal box that had been mounted on a pole. She pawed through the tools and general junk inside, then came back with a transistor radio. It was smaller than the ones his helpers had turned into New and Improved satchel charges while Bobbi was recuperating. Gard had never seen this particular radio before. It was very small.

One of them brought it out last night, he thought.

Bobbi pulled up its stubby antenna, inserted a jack in its plastic case and the plug in her ear. Gard was instantly reminded of Freeman Moss, moving the pumping equipment like an elephant trainer moving the big guys around the center ring.

'This won't take long.' Bobbi pointed the antenna back toward the farm. Gardener seemed to hear a heavy, powerful hum – not on the air but inside the air, somehow. For just a moment his mind muttered with music and there was a headachy pain in the middle of his forehead, as if he had drunk too much cold water too fast.

'Now what?'

'We wait,' Bobbi said, and repeated: 'It won't take long.'

Her speculative gaze passed over Gardener's face again, and this time Gardener thought he understood that look. It's something she wants me to see. And this chance came up to show me.

He sat down near the trench and discovered a very old pack of cigarettes in his breast pocket. Two were left. One was broken, the other bent but whole. He lit it and smoked reflectively, not really sorry about this delay. It gave him a chance to go over his plans again. Of course, if he dropped dead as soon as he went through that round hatch, it would put something of a crimp in those plans.

'Ah, here we go!' Bobbi said, getting up.

Gard also got up. He looked around, but at first saw nothing.

'Over there, Gard. The path.' Bobbi spoke with the pride of a kid showing off her first soapbox racer. Gardener finally saw it, and began to laugh. He didn't really want to laugh, but he couldn't help it. He kept thinking he was getting used to the brave new world of Haven's jury-rigged superscience, and then some odd new combination would tumble him right back down the rabbit-hole. Like now.

Bobbi was smiling, but faintly, vaguely, as if Gardener's laughter meant nothing one way or the other.

'It does look a little strange, but it will do the trick. Take my word for

It was the Electrolux he had seen in the shed. It was not running on the ground but just above it, its little white wheels turning. Its shadow ran placidly off to one side, like a dachshund on a leash. From the back, where the vacuum-hose attachments would have gone in a sane world, two filament-thin wires protruded in a V shape. Its antenna, Gardener thought.

Now it landed, if you could call a touchdown from three inches a landing, and trundled over the beaten earth of the excavation area to the lean-to, leaving narrow tracks behind it. It stopped below the switchbox which controlled the sling.

'Watch this,' Bobbi said in that same pleased showing-off-my-soapbox-racer voice.

There was a click. A hum. Now a thin black rope began to rise out of the vacuum cleaner's side, like a rope rising out of a wicker basket in the Indian rope trick. Only it wasn't a rope, Gardener saw; it was a length of coaxial cable.

It rose in the air … up … up … up. It touched the side of the switchbox and slid around to the front. Gardener felt a crawl of revulsion. It was like watching something like a bat – a blind thing which had some sort of radar. A blind thing that could … could seek.

The end of the cable found the buttons – the black one which started the sling going down or up, the red one which stopped it. The end of the cable touched the black one – and suddenly went rigid. The black button popped neatly in. The motor behind the lean-to started up, and the sling started to slip into the trench.

The tension went out of the cable. It slipped down to the red stop button, stiffened, pushed it. When the motor had died – leaning over, Gardener could see the sling dangling against the side of the cut about twelve feet down – the cable rose and pushed the black button again. The motor started once more. The sling came back up. When it reached the top of the trench, the motor died automatically.

Bobbi turned to him. She was smiling, but her eyes were watchful. 'There,' she said. 'Works fine.'

'It's incredible,' Gardener said. His eyes had moved steadily back and forth between Bobbi and the Electrolux as the cable ran the buttons. Bobbi had not been gesturing with the radio, as Freeman Moss had with his walkie-talkie, but Gardener had seen the little frown of concentration, and the way her eyes had dropped just an instant before the coaxial cable slipped down from the black button to the red one.

It looks like a mechanical dachshund, something out of one of those terminally cute Kelly Freas SF paintings. That's what it looks like, but it's not a robot, not really. It has no brain. Bobbi's its brain … and she wants me to know it.

And there had been a lot of those customized appliances in the shed, lined up against the wall. The one his mind kept trying to fix on was the washing machine with the boomerang antenna mounted on it.

The shed. That raised a hell of an interesting question. Gard opened his mouth to ask it … then closed it again, trying at the same time to thicken the shield over his thoughts as much as he could. He felt like a man who has nearly strolled over the lip of a chasm a thousand feet deep while looking at the pretty sunset.

No one back home – at least that I know of – and the shed's padlocked on the outside. So just how did Fido the Vacuum Cleaner get out?

He had really been only an instant from asking that question when he realized Bobbi hadn't mentioned where the Electrolux had come from. Gard could suddenly smell his own sweat, sour and evil.

He looked at Bobbi and saw Bobbi looking at him with that small, irritated smile that meant she knew Gardener was thinking … but not what.

'Where did that thing come from, anyway?' Gardener asked.

'Oh … it was around.' Bobbi waved her hand vaguely. 'The important thing is that it works. So much for the unexpected delay. Want to get going?'

'Fine. I just hope that thing's batteries don't go flat while we're down there.'

'I'm its battery,' she said. 'As long as I'm all right, you'll get up again, Gard. Okay?'

Your insurance policy. Yes, I think I get it.

'Okay,' he said.

They went to the trench. Bobbi rode the sling down first while the cable rising from the side of the Electrolux ran the buttons. The sling came back up and Gardener stepped into it, holding the rope as it began to go down again.

He took a final look at the battered old Electrolux and thought again: How the hell did it get out?

Then he was sliding into the dimness of the trench and the dank mineral smell of wet rocks, the smooth surface of the ship rising up and up on his left, like the side of a skyscraper without windows.

4

Gard stepped off the sling. He and Bobbi stood shoulder to shoulder in front of the circular groove of the hatch, which had the shape of a large porthole. Gardener found it almost impossible to take his eyes from the symbol etched upon it. He found himself remembering something from earliest childhood.

There had been an outbreak of diphtheria in the Portland suburb where he'd been raised. Two kids had died, and the public-health officials had imposed a quarantine. He remembered walking to the library, his hand safely caught up in his mother's, and passing houses where signs had been stapled to the front doors, the same word in heavy black letters heading each. He had asked his mother what the word was, and she told him. He asked her what it meant, and she said it meant there was sickness in the house. It was a good word, she said, because it warned people not to go in. If they did, she said, they might catch the disease and spread it.

'Are you ready?' Bobbi asked, breaking in on his thoughts.

'What does that mean?' He pointed at the symbol on the hatch.

'Burma-Shave.' Bobbi was unsmiling. 'Are you?'

'No … but I guess I'm as close as I'll ever get.'

He looked at the tank clipped to his belt and wondered again if he was going to draw some poison that would explode his lungs at the first breath. He didn't think so. This was supposed to be his reward. One visit inside the Holy Temple before he was erased, once and for all, from the equation.

'All right,' Bobbi said. 'I'm going to open it – '

'You're going to think it open,' Gardener said, looking at the plug in Bobbi's ear.

'Yes,' Bobbi replied dismissively, as if to say What else? 'It's going to iris open. There'll be an explosive outrush of bad air … and when I say bad, I mean really bad. How are your hands?'

'What do you mean?'

'Cuts?'

'Nothing that isn't scabbed over.' He held his hands out like a little boy submitting to his mother's pre-dinner inspection.

'Okay.' Bobbi took a pair of cotton work-gloves from her back pocket and drew them on. To Gard's inquiring look she said, 'Hangnails on two fingers. It might not be enough – but it might. When you see the hatch start to iris open, Gard, close your eyes. Breathe from the tank. If you whiff on what comes out of the ship, it's going to kill you as quick as a Dran-O cocktail.'

'I,' Gardener said, 'am convinced.' He slipped the snorkel mouthpiece into his mouth and used the nose-plugs. Bobbi did the same. Gardener could hear/ feel his pulse in his temples, moving very fast, like someone tapping rapidly on a muffled drum with one finger.

This is it … this is finally it.

'Ready?' Bobbi asked one last time. Muffled by the mouthpiece, it came out sounding like Elmer Fudd: Weady?

Gardener nodded.

'Remember?' Wememboo?

Gardener nodded again.

for Christ's sake, Bobbi, let's go!

Bobbi nodded.

Okay. Be ready

Before he could ask her for what, that symbol suddenly broke apart in curves, and Gardener realized with a deep, almost sickening excitement that the hatch was opening. There was a high thin screaming sound, as if something rusted shut for a long time was now moving again … but with great reluctance.

He saw Bobbi turn the valve on the tank clipped to her belt. He did the same, then closed his eyes. A moment later, a soft wind pushed against his face, shoving his shaggy hair back from his brow. Gardener thought: Death. That's death. Death rushing past me, filling this trench like chlorine gas. Every microbe on my skin is dying right now.

His heart was pounding much too fast, and he had actually begun to wonder if the outrush of gas (like the rush of gas out of a coffin, his skittish mind chattered) wasn't killing him somehow after all when he realized he had been holding his breath.

He pulled a breath in through the mouthpiece. He waited to see if it would kill him. It didn't. It had a dry, stale taste, but it was perfectly breathable.

Forty, maybe fifty minutes of air.

Slow down, Gard. Take it slow. Make it last. No panting.

He slowed down.

Tried, at least.

Then that high, screaming noise quit. The outrush of air grew softer against his face, then stopped entirely. Then Gardener spent an eternity in the dark, facing the open hatch with his eyes shut. The only sounds were the muffled drum of his heart and the sigh of air through the tank's demand regulator. His mouth already tasted of rubber, and his teeth were locked much too hard on the rubber pins inside the snorkel mouthpiece. He forced himself to get cool and ease up.

At last, eternity ended. Bobbi's clear thought filled his mind:

Okay … should be okay … you can open those baby blues, Gard.

Like a kid at a surprise party, Jim Gardener did just that.

5

He was looking along a corridor.

It was perfectly round except for a flat ledge of walkway halfway up one side. The position looked all wrong. For a wild moment he visualized the Tommyknockers as grisly intelligent flies crawling along that walkway with sticky feet. Then logic reasserted itself. The walkway was canted, everything was canted, because the ship was at an angle.

Soft light glowed out of the round, featureless walls.

No dead batteries here, Gardener thought. These are really long-life jobbies. He looked into the corridor beyond the hatch with a deep and profound sense of wonder. It is alive. Even after all these years. Still alive.

‘I’m going in, Gard. Are you coming?

Gonna try, Bobbi.

She stepped in, ducking her head so as not to bump it on the upper curve of the hatch. Gardener hesitated a moment, biting down on the rubber pins inside the mask again, and followed.

6

There was a moment of transcendent agony – he felt rather than heard radio transmissions. fill his head. Not just one; it was as if every radio broadcast in the world momentarily shrieked inside his brain.

Then it was gone – simply gone. He thought of the way that radio transmissions faded when you went into a tunnel. He had entered the ship, and all outside transmissions had been damped down to nothing. Nor was it only outside transmissions, he discovered a moment later. Bobbi was looking at him, obviously sending a thought – Are you all right? was Gardener's best guess, but a guess was all it was. But he could no longer hear Bobbi in his head at all.

Curious, he sent back: I am fine, go on!

Bobbi's questioning expression didn't change – she was much better at this business than Gardener, but she wasn't getting anything, either. Gard gestured tor tier to go on. After a moment, she nodded and did.

7

They walked twenty paces up the corridor. Bobbi moved with no hesitation, nor did she hesitate when they came to a round interior hatch set into the surface of the flat walkway on their left. This hatch, about three feet in diameter, was open. Without looking back at Gardener, Bobbi climbed into it.

Gardener paused, looking back along the softly lit corridor. The hatchway to the outside was back there, a round porthole giving onto the darkness of the trench. Then he followed.

There was a ladder bolted to the new corridor, which was almost small enough in diameter to be a tunnel. Gardener and Bobbi did not need the ladder; the ship's position had rendered the corridor almost horizontal. They went on their hands and knees with the ladder sometimes scraping their backs.

The ladder made Gardener uneasy. The rungs were spaced almost four feet apart, that was one thing. A man – even a very long-legged one – would have had difficulty using it. The other thing about the rungs was more unsettling: a pronounced semi-circular dip, almost a notch, in the center of each.

So the Tommyknockers had really bad fallen arches, he thought, listening to the rasp of his own respiration. Big deal, Gard.

But the picture that came to him was not of flat feet or fallen arches; the picture which stole into his mind, softly and yet with a simple undeniable power, was of some not-quite-seen creature climbing that ladder, a creature with a single thick claw on each foot, a claw which fit neatly into each of those dips as it climbed …

Suddenly the round, dimly lit walls seemed to be pressing in on him, and he had to grapple with a terrible bout of claustrophobia. The Tommyknockers were here, all right, and still alive. At any moment he might feel a thick, inhuman hand close about his ankle …

Sweat ran into his eye, stinging.

He whipped his head around, looking back over one shoulder.

Nothing. Nothing, Gard. Get yourself under control!

But they were here. Perhaps dead – but somehow alive just the same. In Bobbi, for one thing. But …

But you have to see, Gard. Now GO!

He started crawling again. He was leaving faint sweaty handprints on the metal, he saw. Human handprints inside this thing which had come from God knew where.

Bobbi reached the mouth of the passage, turned on her stomach, and dropped out of sight. Gard followed, stopping at the mouth of the passageway to look out. Here was a large open space, hexagonal in shape, like a large chamber in a beehive. It was also canted at a crazy funhouse angle as a result of the crash. The walls glowed with soft colorless light. A thick cable came out of a gasket on the floor; this split into half a dozen thinner cords, and each ended in a set of things which looked like headphones with bulging centers.

Bobbi wasn't looking at these. She was looking into the corner. Gardener followed her gaze and felt his stomach gain weight. His head swam dizzily. his heart faltered.

They had been gathered around their telepathic steering wheel or whatever the hell it was, when the ship hit. They had perhaps been trying to pull out of their dive to the very last, but it hadn't worked. And here they were, two or three of them, at least, slung into a far corner. It was hard to tell what they looked like – they were too tangled together. The ship had hit, and they had been thrown to that end of this room. There they still lay.

Interstellar car crash, Gardener thought sickly. Is that all there is, Alfie?

Bobbi did not go toward those brown husks piled in the lowest angle of this strange, bare room. She only stared, her hands clenching and unclenching. Gardener tried to understand what she was thinking and feeling and could not. He turned and carefully lowered himself over the edge of the passageway. He joined her, walking carefully on the canted floor. Bobbi looked at him with her strange new eyes – What do I look like to her through those new eyes? Gard wondered – and then back toward the tangled remains in the corner. Her hands continued to open and snap closed.

Gardener started toward them. Bobbi clutched at his arm. Gardener shook her grip off without even thinking. He had to look at them. He felt like a child drawn toward an open grave, full of fear but compelled to go on anyway. He had to see.

Gardener, who had grown up in southern Maine, crossed what he believed to be -for all its starkness – the control room of an interstellar spacecraft. The floor under his feet looked as smooth as glass, but his sneakers held their grip easily He heard no sound but his own harsh breathing, smelled only dusty Haven air. He walked down the slanted floor to the bodies and looked at them.

These are the Tommyknockers, he thought. Bobbi and the others aren't going to look exactly like them when they're done 'becoming,' maybe because of the environment or maybe because the original physiological makeup of the – what would you call it? target group? – results in a slightly different look each time this happens. But there's a kissin'-cousin resemblance, all right. Maybe these aren't the originals … but they're close enough. Ugly fuckers.

He felt awe … horror … and a revulsion that ran blood-deep.

Late last night and the night before, a wavering voice sang in his mind. Tommyknockers, Tommyknockers, knocking at the door.

At first he thought there were five, but there were only four – one was in two pieces. None of them looked as if he – she – it – had died easily, or with any serenity. Their faces were ugly and long-snouted. Their eyes were filmed over to the whiteness of cataracts. Their lips were drawn back in uniform snarls.

Their skins were scaly but transparent – he could see frozen muscles laid in crisscross patterns around jaws, temples and necks.

They had no teeth.

8

Bobbi joined him. Gard saw awe on her face – but no revulsion.

These are her gods now, and one is rarely if ever revolted by one's own gods, Gardener thought. These are her gods now, and why not? They made her what she is today.

He pointed to each one of them in turn, deliberately, like an instructor. They were naked, and their wounds were clear. Interstellar car crash, yes. But he didn't believe there had been any mechanical failure. Those weird, scaly bodies were slashed; scored with ragged cuts. One six-fingered hand was still wrapped around the haft of something that looked like a knife with a circular blade.

Look at them, Bobbi, he thought, even though he knew Bobbi couldn't read him in here even if he opened up all the way. He pointed here, to a grinning mouth buried in another creature's throat; there, to a wide wound gaping in a thick, inhuman chest; there, to a knife still clutched in one hand.

Look at them, Bobbi. You don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to see they were fighting. Having a good old knock-down-drag-out here in the old control room. None of this 'Come-let-us-reason-together' shit for your gods. They were whipping some heavy numbers on each other. Maybe it started as an argument about whether or not to land here, or maybe it was about whether or not they should have hooked a left at Alpha Centauri. Anyway, the results are the same. Remember how we always assumed a technologically advanced race of beings would be, if one ever made contact with us? We thought they'd be smart like Mr Wizard and wise like Robert Young on Father Knows Best. Well, here's the truth, Bobbi. The ship crashed because they were having a fight. And where are the blasters? The phasers? The transporter room? I see one knife. The rest they must have done with mirrors … or their bare hands … or those big claws.

Bobbi looked away, frowning strenuously – a pupil who didn't want to learn the lesson, a pupil who was in fact determined not to learn it. She started to move off. Gardener caught her by the arm and pulled her back. Pointed at the feet.

If Bruce Lee had had afoot like that, he would have killed a thousand people a week, Bobbi.

The Tommyknockers' legs were grotesquely long – they made Gardener think of those guys who don stilts and Uncle Sam suits and march in Fourth of July parades. The muscles below the semi-transparent skins were long, ropy, gray. The feet were narrow, and not precisely toed. Instead, each foot sloped into that one thick, chitinous claw, like a bird's talon. Something like a giant vulture's.

Gardener thought of the dips in the ladder rungs. He shuddered.

Look, Bobbi. See how dark the claws are. That's blood, or whatever they had inside them. It's on the claws because they did most of the damage. This place sure as shit didn't look like the bridge of the starship Enterprise before it crashed. Just before it hit, it probably looked more like a free-for-all cockfight out behind some redneck's barn. This is progress, Bobbi? Next to these guys, Ted the Power Man looks like Gandhi.

Frowning, Bobbi pulled away. Leave me alone, her eyes said.

Bobbi, can't you see

Bobbi turned away. She wasn't into seeing.

Gardener stood by the desiccated bodies, watching her climb the deck like a woman climbing a steep smooth hill. She didn't slip at all. She turned toward a far wall where there was another round opening and boosted herself in. For a moment Gardener could see her legs and the dirty soles of her tennis shoes, and then she was gone.

Gard walked up the slope and stood for a moment near the center of the room, looking at the single thick cord coming out of the floor, at the earphones that split off from it. The similarity to the set-up in Bobbi's shed was perfectly clear. Otherwise …

He looked around. Hexagonal room. Barren. No chairs. No pictures of Niagara Fails – or Cygnus-B Falls, for that matter. No astrogation charts, no Mad Labs equipment. All the big-time science-fiction producers and special-effects men would have been disgusted by this emptiness, Gardener thought. Nothing but some earphones lying tangled on the floor, and the bodies, perfectly preserved but probably as light as autumn leaves by now. Earphones and remains like husks piled in that far corner, where gravity had tossed them. Nothing very interesting about it. Nothing very smart. That fit. Because the Havenites were doing lots of stuff, but none of it was very smart, when you got right down to where the short hairs grew.

It wasn't disappointment he felt so much as stupid correctness. Not rightness -God knew there was nothing right about this – but correctness, as if part of him had always known it would be this way when and if they got in. No Disneyland razzmatazz; only a dreary species of blankness. He found himself remembering W. H. Auden's poem about running away: sooner or later you always ended up in one room, under a naked light bulb, playing solitaire at three in the morning. Tomorrowland, it seemed, ended up being an empty place where people smart enough to capture the stars got mad and tore each other to shreds with the claws on their feet.

So much for Robert Heinlein, Gard thought, and followed Bobbi.

9

He trekked uphill, realizing he had entirely lost track of what his position was in relation to the world outside. It was easier not to think about it. He used the ladder to help himself along as he went. He came to a rectangular porthole and looked through it into something that might have been an engine room – big metal blocks, square on one end, rounded on the other, marched off in a double row. Pipes, thick and dull silver in color, protruded from the square ends of these blocks and moved off at strange, crooked angles.

Like straight-pipes coming out of a kid's jalopy, Gard thought. He became aware of liquid warmth on the skin above his mouth. It divided in two and ran down his chin. His nose was bleeding again … slowly, but as if it meant to keep it up for a while.

Is the light brighter in here now?

He stopped and looked around.

Yes. And could he hear a faint humming, or was that imagination?

He cocked his head. No; not imagination. Machinery. Something had started up.

It didn't just start, and you know it. We started it up. We're kicking it over.

He bit down hard on the mouthpiece. He wanted out of here. Wanted to get Bobbi out. The ship was alive; in a weird way he supposed it was the Ultimate Tommyknocker. It was a howl. It was also the most horrible thing of all. Sentient creature … What? Woke it up, of course. Gard wanted it asleep. All of a sudden he felt too much like Jack nosing around the castle while the giant slept. They had to get out. He began to crawl faster. Then a new thought struck him, stopping him dead.

What if it won't let you out?

He pushed the idea away and kept going.

10

The corridor branched into a Y, left arm continuing to angle up, the right turning steeply downward. He listened and heard Bobbi crawling to the left. He moved that way and came to another hatch. She was standing below it. She glanced briefly up at Gardener with eyes that were wide and frightened. Then she looked back again.

He got one leg over the lip of the hatch and paused. No way he was going in there.

The room was lozenge-shaped. It was full of hammocks suspended in metal frames – there were hundreds of them. All were canted drunkenly upward and to the left; the room looked like a snapshot of a sailing ship's bunkroom taken just as the ship rolled in the trough of a swell. All the hammocks were full, their occupants strapped in. Transparent skins, doglike snouts; milky, dead eyes.

A cable ran from each scaled, triangular head.

Not just strapped, Gardener thought. CHAINED. They were the ship's drive, weren't they, Bobbi? If this is the future, it's time to eat the gun. These are dead galley slaves.

They were snarling, but Gardener saw that some of the snarls were halfobliterated, because some of their heads seemed to have exploded – as if, when the ship crashed, there had been some gigantic backflow of energy that had literally blown their brains out.

All dead. Strapped forever in their hammocks, heads lolling, snouts frozen in eternal snarls. All dead in this tilted room.

Close by, another engine started up – chopping rustily at first, then smoothing out. A moment later fans whirred into life – he supposed the newly started engine was driving them. Air blew against his face – whether or not it was fresh was something he didn't intend to personally check on.

Maybe opening the outer hatch started this stuff up, but I don't believe it. It was us. What starts up next, Bobbi?

Suppose they started up next – the Tommyknockers themselves? Suppose their grayish-transparent six-fingered hands started to clench and unclench, as Bobbi's hands had been doing as she stared at the corpses in the barren control room? What if those taloned feet began to twitch? Or suppose those heads began to turn, and those milky eyes looked at them?

I want out. The ghosts here are very lively and I want out.

He touched Bobbi's shoulder. She jumped. Gardener glanced at his wrist, but there was no watch there – only a fading white shape on his otherwise tanned wrist. It had been a Timex, a tough old baby that had gone on a lot of toots with him and come out alive. But two days of working on the excavation had killed it. THERE'S one John Cameron Swayze never tried in those old TV ads, he thought.

Bobbi took the point. She pointed at the air-bottle clipped to her belt and raised her eyebrows at Gardener. How long has it been?

Gardener didn't know and didn't care. He wanted out before the whole damned ship woke up and did God-knew-what.

He pointed back down the passageway. Long enough. Let's bug out.

A thick, oily chuckling noise began in the wall next to Gardener. He shrank from it. Drops of blood from his slowly bleeding nose splattered the wall. His heart was beating madly.

Stop it, it's just some sort of pump

The oily noise began to smooth out … and then something went wrong. There was a screech of grinding metal and a quick, thudding series of explosions. Gardener felt the wall vibrate, and for a moment the light seemed to flicker and dim.

Could we find our way out of here in the dark if the lights went out? You make thee joke I theenk, senor.

The pump tried to start again. There was a long metallic scream that set Gardener's teeth biting at the rubber plugs in his mouthpiece. It died away at last. There was a long loud rattle, like a straw in an empty glass. Then nothing.

Not everything lasted all that time with no damage, Gardener thought, and found this idea actually relieving.

Bobbi was pointing: Go, Gard.

Before he did, he saw Bobbi pause and look back once at the ranks of the hammocked dead. That frightened look was back on her face.

Then Gard was crawling back the way he came, trying to keep an even, steady pace as the claustrophobia wrapped itself around him.

11

In the control room, one of the walls had turned into a gigantic picture-window fifty feet long and twenty feet high.

Gardener stood, gape-jawed, looking at the blue Maine sky and the fringe of pines and spruces and maples around the trench. In the lower right-hand corner he could see the rooftree of their equipment lean-to. He stared at this for several seconds – long enough to see big white summer clouds drifting across the blue sky -before realizing it couldn't be a window. They were somewhere toward the middle of the ship, and deep in the ground as well. A window in that wall should show only more ship. Even if they had been near the hull, which they weren't, it would have given on a vista of mesh-covered rock wall, with maybe a squib of blue sky at the very top.

It's a TV picture of some kind. Something like a TV picture, anyway.

But there were no lines. The illusion was perfect.

Forgetting, in this powerful new fascination, his claustrophobic need to get out, Gardener walked slowly toward the wall. The angle gave him a perverse sensation of flying – the effect was like slipping behind the controls of an airline trainer and pulling the mock controls into a steep climb. The sky was so bright he had to squint. He kept looking for the wall, the way you might expect to see a movie screen through the picture as you got closer to it, but the wall just didn't seem to be there. The pines were a true, clear green, and only the fact that he couldn't feel any breeze or smell the woods worked against the persuasive illusion of looking through an open window.

He walked closer, still looking for the wall.

It's a camera, got to be – mounted on the outer rim of the ship, maybe even the part Bobbi stumbled over. The angle confirms that. But, Jesus! It's so fucking real! If the people at Kodak or Polaroid saw this, they'd go out of their gou

His arm was grabbed – grabbed hard – and terror leaped up in him. He turned, expecting to see one of them, a grinning thing with a dog's head, holding a cable with a plug tip in one hand: Just bend down, Mr Gardener; this won't hurt a bit.

It was Bobbi. She pointed to the wall. Held out her hands and arms and jittered them rapidly in some kind of charade. Then pointed at the window-wall again. After a moment, Gardener got it. In a grisly way it was almost funny. Bobbi had been miming electrocution, telling him that touching the window-wall would probably be a lot like touching the third rail of a subway.

Gardener nodded, then pointed toward the wider companionway through which they had entered. Bobbi nodded back and led the way.

As Gardener boosted himself up, he thought he heard a leaf-dry rattle and turned back, feeling a child's dreamy terror tug at his mind. He felt that it must be them, those corpses in the corner; them, rising slowly to their taloned feet like zombies.

But they still lay in their tangled drift of strange arms and legs. The wide, clear view of the sky and the trees on the wall (or through the wall) was dimming, losing reality and definition.

Gardener turned away and crawled after Bobbi as fast as he could.

1

You're crazy, you know, John Leandro told himself as he pulled into exactly the same parking slot Everett Hillman had used not three weeks ago. Leandro did not of course know this. That was probably just as well.

You're crazy, he told himself again. You bled like a stuck pig, there's two teeth less in your head, and you're planning to go back there. You're crazy!

Right, he thought, getting out of the old car. I'm twenty-four, unmarried, getting bulgy around the middle, and if I'm crazy it's because I found this, I did, me, I tripped over it. It's big, and it's mine. My story. No, use the other word. It's old-fashioned, but who gives a fuck – it's the right word. My scoop. I'm not going to let it kill me, but I am going to ride it until it bucks me off.

Leandro stood in the parking lot at a quarter past one on what was rapidly becoming the longest day of his life (it would also be the last, despite all his mental avowals to the contrary) and thought: Good for you. Gonna ride it till it bucks you off. Probably Robert Capa, Ernie Pyle, thought the same thing from time to time.

Sensible. Sarcastic, but sensible. That deeper part of his mind seemed to be beyond such sense, however. My story, it returned stubbornly. My scoop.

John Leandro, now clad in a T-shirt reading WHERE TH' HELL IS TROY, MAINE? (David Bright would probably have laughed himself into a hemorrhage over that one), crossed the small parking lot of Maine Med Supplies ('Specializing in Respiration Supplies and Respiration Therapy since 1946') and went inside.

2

'Thirty bucks is a stiff deposit for an air mask, don't you think?' Leandro asked the clerk, thumbing through his cash. He guessed he had the thirty, but it was going to leave him with about a buck and a half. 'Wouldn't think they'd be a big black-market item.'

'We never used to require one at all,' the clerk said, 'and we still don't if we know the individual or the organization, you know. But I lost one a couple, three weeks ago. Old man came in and told me he wanted some air. I figured he meant for diving, you know – he was old, but he looked tough enough for it – so I started telling him about Downeast ScubaDive in Bangor. But he said no, he was interested in ground portability. So I rented it to him. I never got it back. Brand-new Bell flat-pack. Two-hundred-dollar piece of equipment.'

Leandro looked at the clerk, almost sick with excitement. He felt like a man following arrows deeper and deeper into a frightening but fabulous and totally unexplored cavern.

You rented this mask? Personally?'

Well, it was a flat-pack, actually, but yes. My dad and I run the place. He was delivering oxy bottles down to Augusta. I caught hell from him. I don't know if he'll like me renting another Bell, even, but with the deposit I guess it's okay.'

'Can you describe the man?'

'Mister, do you feel okay? You look a little white around the

'I'm fine. Can you describe the man who rented the flat-pack?'

'Old. Had a tan. He was mostly bald. He was skinny … stringy, I guess you'd say. Like I say, he looked tough.' The clerk thought. 'He was driving a Valiant.'

'Could you check the day he rented the flat-pack?'

'You a cop?'

Reporter. Bangor Daily News.' Leandro showed the clerk his press card. Now the clerk also began to look excited.

'He do Somethin' else? Besides rip off our flat-pack, I mean?'

'Could you look up the name and date for me?'

'Sure.'

The clerk flipped back through his rental book. He found the entry and turned the book so Leandro could read it. The date was July 26th. The name was scrawled but still legible. Everett Hillman.

'You never reported the loss of the equipment to the police,' Leandro said. It was not a question. If a complaint of theft had been lodged against the old geezer to complement his landlady's understandable unhappiness at being stiffed for two weeks' rent, the cops might have taken more interest in how or why Hillman had disappeared … or where he had disappeared to.

'No, Dad said not to bother. Our insurance doesn't cover the theft of rented equipment, see, and … well, that's why.'

The clerk shrugged and smiled, but the shrug was slightly embarrassed, the smile slightly uneasy, and taken together they told Leandro a lot. He might be a terminal twerp, as David Bright feared, but he was not a stupid one. If they had reported the theft or disappearance of the flat-pack, the insurance company wouldn't cover the loss. But this fellow's father knew some other way they could stick it to the insurance company. But for now all that was very much a secondary consideration.

'Well, thank you for all your help,' Leandro said, turning the book back around. 'Now if we could finish up here – '

'Sure, of course.' The clerk was obviously happy to leave the subject of insurance behind. 'And you won't put any of this in the paper until you check with my father, will you?'

'Absolutely not,' Leandro said with a warm sincerity that P. T. Barnum himself would have admired. 'Now, if I could just sign the agreement – '

'Right. I'll have to see some ID first, though. I didn't ask the old guy, and I also heard from Dad about that, I can tell you.'

'I just showed you my press card.'

'I know, but maybe I ought to see some real identification.'

Sighing, Leandro pushed his driver's license across the counter.

3

'Slow down, Johnny,' David Bright said. But Leandro was standing at an outdoor phone kiosk near the edge of a drive-in-restaurant parking lot. He heard the beginnings of excitement in Bright's voice. He believes me. Son of a bitch, I think he finally believes me!

As he had driven away from Maine Med Supplies and back toward Haven, Leandro's excitement and tension had grown until he thought he might explode if he didn't talk to someone else. And he had to; he recognized that as a responsibility that superseded his desire to get his scoop alone. He had to because he was going back, and something could easily happen to him, and if it did, he wanted to be sure somebody knew what he was onto. And Bright, as insufferable as he could be, was at least utterly honest; he wouldn't double-cross him.

Slow down, yeah, I got to.

He switched the phone to his other ear. The afternoon sun was hot on his neck, but it didn't feel bad at all. He started with the ride to Haven: the incredible jam-up of stations on the radio; the violent nausea; the bloody nose; the lost teeth. He told him about his conversation with the old man in the general store, how empty the place had been, how the whole area could have been wearing a big sign that said GONE FISHIN. He didn't mention his mathematical insights, because he could barely remember having them. Something had happened, but it was now all vague and diffuse in his mind.

Instead, he told Bright that he had gotten the idea that the air in Haven had been poisoned, somehow – that there had been a chemical spill or something, or maybe the escape of some natural but deadly gas from inside the earth.

'A gas that improves radio transmissions, Johnny?'

Yes, he knew it was unlikely, he knew all the pieces didn't fit yet, but he had been there and he was sure it was the air that had made him sick. So he had decided to get some portable oxygen and go back.

He related his coincidental discovery that Everett Hillman, whom Bright himself had dismissed as a nutty old man, had been there before him, on exactly the same errand.

'So what do you think?' Leandro said finally.

There was a momentary lag, and then Bright said what Leandro believed to be the sweetest words he had ever heard in his life. 'I think you were right all the time, Johnny. Something very weird is happening out there, and I advise you very strongly to stay away.'

Leandro closed his eyes for a moment and leaned his head against the side of the telephone. He was smiling. It was a large and blissful smile. Right. Right all the time. Ah, they were good words; fine words; words of balm and beatitude. Right all the time.

'John? Johnny? Are you still there?'

Eyes still closed, still smiling, Leandro said: 'I'm here.' Just relishing it, David, old man, because I think I have been waiting my entire life for someone to tell me I was right all the time. About something. About anything.

'Stay away. Call the state cops.'

'Would you?'

'Fuck, no!'

Leandro laughed. 'Well, there you go. I'll be okay. I've got oxygen

'According to the guy at the medical-supply place, Hillman did too. He's just as gone.'

'I'm going,' Leandro repeated. 'Whatever's going on in Haven, I'm going to be the first one to see it … and get pictures of it.'

'I don't like it.'

'What time is it?' Leandro's own watch had stopped. Which was funny; he was almost sure he'd wound it when he got up that morning.

'Almost two.'

'Okay. I'll call in by four. Again at six. Et cetera, until I'm home and dry. If you or somebody there doesn't hear from me every two hours, call the cops.'

'Johnny, you sound like a kid playing with matches telling his father if he catches on fire, Dad has permission to put him out.'

'You're not my father,' Leandro said sharply.

Bright sighed. 'Look, Johnny. If it makes any difference, I'm sorry I called you fucking Jimmy Olson. You were right, isn't that enough? Stay out of Haven.'

'Two hours. I want two hours, David. I deserve two hours, goddammit.' Leandro hung up the phone.

He started back to his car … then turned and marched defiantly back to the walk-up window and ordered two cheeseburgers with everything on them. It was the first time in his life he had ever ordered food from one of those places his mother called roadside luncheonettes – only when she said the words she made such places sound like the blackest pits of horror, as in It Came from the Roadside Luncheonette, or Earth vs. The Microbe Monsters.

When they came, the cheeseburgers were hot and wrapped in grease-spotted sheets of waxed paper with the marvelous words DERRY BURGER RANCH printed all over them. He had gobbled the first even before he got back to his Dodge.

'Wonderful,' he said, the word muffled to something that sounded like wunnel. 'Wonderful, wonderful.'

Microbes do your worst! he thought with almost drunken defiance as he pulled out onto Route 9. He was, of course, unaware that things were changing rapidly in Haven now, and had been ever since noon; the situation in Haven was, in nuclear parlance, critical. Haven had in fact become a separate country, and its borders were now policed.

Not knowing this, Leandro drove on, tearing into his second cheeseburger and regretting only that he hadn't ordered a vanilla shake to go with them.

4

By the time he passed the Troy general store, his euphoria had dissipated, and his former low nervousness had returned – the sky overhead was a clear blue in which a few wispy-white clouds floated, but his nerves felt as if there were a thunderstorm on the way. He glanced at the flat-pack on the seat beside him, the gold cup covered with a round of cellophane which read SANI-SEALED FOR YOUR PROTECTION. In other words, Leandro thought, microbes keep out.

No cars on the road. No tractors in the fields. No boys walking barefoot along the side of the road with fishing rods. Troy dreamed silent (and, Leandro guessed, toothless) under the August sun.

He kept the radio tuned to WZON, and as he passed the Baptist church, he began to lose the signal in a rising mutter of other voices. Not long after that, his cheeseburgers began to first walk around uneasily in his stomach, and then to jump up and down. He could imagine them squirting grease as they did so. He was very close to the place where he had pulled over on his first effort to get into Haven. He pulled over now without delay – he didn't want the symptoms to get any worse. Those cheeseburgers had been too damned good to lose.

5

With the oxygen mask in place, the queasiness went away at once. That sense of low, gnawing nervousness did not. He caught a glimpse of himself, gold cup bobbing on his mouth and nose, in the rearview mirror and felt a moment of fright -was that him? That man's eyes looked too serious, too intent … they looked like the eyes of a jet fighter pilot. Leandro didn't want people like David Bright to think he was a twerp, but he wasn't sure he wanted to look that serous.

Too late now. You're in it.

The radio babbled in a hundred voices, maybe a thousand. Leandro turned it off. And there, up ahead, was the Haven town line. Leandro, who knew nothing at all about invisible nylon stockings, drove up to the town-line marker … and then past it, into Haven, with no trouble at all.

Although the battery situation in Haven was approaching the critical point again, force-fields could have been set up along most of the roads leading into town. But in the frightened confusion over the developing events of the morning, Dick Allison and Newt had made one decision that came to directly affect John Leandro. They wanted Haven closed, but they didn't want anyone to strike an inexplicable barrier in the middle of what appeared to be thin air, turn around, and carry the tale back to the wrong people …

… which was everyone else on earth just now.

I don't believe anyone could get that close, Newt said. He and Dick were in Dick's pickup truck, part of a procession of cars and trucks racing out to Bobbi Anderson's place.

I used to think so too, Dick replied. But that was before Hillman … and Bobbi's sister. No, someone could get in … but if they do, they'll never get out again.

All right, fine. You're Queen for a Day. Now can't you drive this fucker any faster?

The texture of both men's thoughts – of the thoughts all around them – was dismayed and furious. At that moment the possible incursion of outsiders into Haven seemed the least of their worries.

'I knew we should have gotten rid of that goddam drunk!' Dick cried out loud, and slammed his fist down on the dashboard. He was wearing no makeup today. His skin, as well as becoming increasingly transparent, had begun to roughen. The center of his face – and Newt's face, and the faces of all of those who had spent time in Bobbi's shed – had begun to swell. To grow decidedly snoutlike.

6

John Leandro of course knew nothing of this – he knew only that the air around him was poisonous – more poisonous than even he would have believed. He had slipped the gold cup down long enough to take a single shallow breath, and the world had immediately begun to fade into dimness. He put the cup back quickly, heart racing, hands cold.

Some two hundred yards past the town-line marker, his Dodge simply died. Most Haven cars and trucks had been customized in such a way as to make them immune to the steadily increasing electromagnetic field thrown off by the ship in the earth over the last two months or so (much of this work was done at Elt Barker's Shell), but Leandro's car had undergone no such treatment.

He sat behind the wheel a moment, staring stupidly down at the red idiot lights. He threw the transmission into Park and turned the key. The motor didn't crank. Hell, the solenoid didn't even click.

Battery cable came off, maybe.

It wasn't a battery cable. If it had been, the OIL and AMP lights wouldn't be glowing. But that was minor. Mostly he knew it wasn't his battery cable just because he knew it.

There were trees along both sides of the road here. The sun through their moving leaves made dappled patterns on the asphalt and white dirt of the soft shoulders. Leandro suddenly felt that eyes were looking out at him from behind trees. This was silly, of course, but the idea was nonetheless very powerful.

Okay, now you have got to get out, and see if you can walk out of the poison belt before your air runs out. The odds get longer every second you sit here giving yourself the creeps.

He tried the ignition key once more. Still nothing.

He got his camera, hooked the strap over his shoulder, and got out. He stood looking uneasily at the woods on the right side of the road. He thought he heard something behind him – a shuffling sound – and whirled quickly, lips pulled up in a dry grin of fear.

Nothing … nothing he could see.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep …

Get moving. You're just standing here using up your air.

He opened the door again, leaned in, and got the gun out of the glove compartment. He loaded it, then tried to put it in his right front pocket. It was too big. He was afraid it would fall out and go off if he left it there. He pulled up his new T-shirt, stuck it in his belt, then pulled the shirt down over it.

He looked at the woods again, then bitterly at the car. He could take pictures, he supposed, but what would they show? Nothing but a deserted country road. You could see those all over the state, even at the height of the summer tourist season. The pictures wouldn't convey the lack of woods sounds; the pictures would not show that the air had been poisoned.

There goes your scoop, Johnny. Oh, you'll write plenty of stories about it, and I've got a feeling you'll be telling a lot of network-news filming crews which is your good side, but your picture on the cover of Newsweek? The Pulitzer Prize? Forget it.

Part of him – a more adult part – insisted that was dumb, that half a loaf was better than none, that most of the reporters in the world would kill to get just a slice from this loaf, whatever it turned out to be.

But John Leandro was a man younger than his twenty-four years. When David Bright, believed he had seen a generous helping of twerp in Leandro, he hadn't been wrong. There were reasons, of course, but the reasons didn't change the fact. He felt like a rookie who gets a fat pitch during his first at-bat in the majors and hits an opposite-field triple. Not bad … but in his heart a voice cries out: Hey, God, if you was gonna give me a fat one, why didn't You let me get it all?

Haven Village was less than a mile away. He could walk it in fifteen minutes … but then he would never get out of the poison belt before the air in the flat-pack ran out, and he knew it.

If only I'd rented two of these goddam things.

Even if you'd thought of it, you didn't have cash enough to pay the frigging security deposit on two. The question is, Johnny, do you want to die for your scoop or not?

He didn't. If his picture was going to be on the cover of Newsweek, he didn't want there to be a black border around it.

He began to trudge back toward the Troy town line. He got five dozen steps before realizing he could hear engines – a lot of them, very faint.

Something going on over on the other side of town.

Might as well be something happening on the dark side of the moon. Forget it.

With another uneasy glance at the woods, he started walking again. Got another dozen steps and realized he could hear another sound: a low, approaching hum from behind him.

He turned. His jaw dropped. In Haven, most of July had been Municipal Gadget Month. As the 'becoming' progressed, most Havenites had lost interest in such things … but the gadgets were still there, strange white elephants such as the ones Gardener had seen in Bobbi's shed. Many had been pressed into service as border guards. Hazel McCready sat in her town-hall office before a bank of earphones, monitoring each briefly in turn. She was furious at being left behind to do this duty while the future of everything hung in the balance out at Bobbi's farm. But now … someone had entered town after all.

Glad of the diversion, Hazel moved to take care of the intruder.

7

It was the Coke machine which had been in front of Cooder's market. Leandro stood frozen with amazement, watching it approach: a jolly red-and-white rectangle six and a half feet high and four wide. It was slicing rapidly through the air toward him, its bottom about eighteen inches over the road.

I've fallen into an ad, Leandro thought. Some kind of weird ad. In a second or two the door of that thing will open and 0. J. Simpson is going to come flying out.

It was a funny idea. Leandro started to laugh. Even as he was laughing, it occurred to him that here was the picture … oh God, here was the picture, here was a Coca-Cola vending machine floating up a rural stretch of two-lane blacktop!

He grabbed for the Nikon. The Coke machine, humming to itself, banked around Leandro's stalled car and came on. It looked like a madman's hallucination, but the front of the machine proclaimed that, however much one might want to believe the contrary, this was THE REAL THING.

Still giggling, Leandro realized it wasn't stopping – it was, in fact, speeding up. And what was a soda machine, really? A refrigerator with ads on it. And refrigerators were heavy. The Coke machine, a red-and-white guided missile, slid through the air at Leandro. The wind made a tiny hollow hooting noise in the coin return.

Leandro forgot the picture. He leapt to the left. The Coke machine struck his right shin and broke it. For a moment his leg was nothing but a bolt of pure white pain. He screamed into the gold cup as he landed on his stomach at the side of the road, tearing his shirt open. The Nikon flew to the end of its strap and hit the gravelly soft shoulder with a crunch.

Oh you son of a bitch that camera cost four hundred dollars!

He got to his knees and turned around, shirt torn open, chest bleeding, leg screaming.

The Coke machine banked back. It hung in the air for a moment, its front turning back and forth in small arcs that reminded Leandro of the sweeps of a radar dish. The sun flashed off its glass door. Leandro could see bottles of Coke and Fanta inside.

Suddenly it pointed at him – and accelerated toward him.

Found me, Christ

He got up and tried to hop toward his car on his left foot. The soda machine bore down on him, coin return hooting dismally.

Shrieking, Leandro threw himself forward and rolled. The Coke machine missed him by perhaps four inches. He landed in the road. Pain bellowed up his broken leg. Leandro screamed.

The machine turned, paused, found him, and started back again.

Leandro groped for the pistol in his belt and brought it out. He fired four times, balanced on his knees. Each bullet went home. The third shattered the machine's glass door.

The last thing Leandro saw before the machine – which weighed just a bit over six hundred pounds – hit him was various soft drinks foaming and dripping from the broken necks of the bottles his bullets had shattered.

Broken bottle-necks coming at him at forty miles an hour.

Mama! Leandro's mind shrieked, and he threw his arms up in front of his face in a crisscross.

He didn't have to worry about jagged bottle-necks after all, or the microbes which might have been in the cheeseburgers from the Burger Ranch, for that matter. One of life's great truths is this: when one is about to be struck by a speeding six-hundred-pound Coke machine, one need worry about nothing else.

There was a thudding, crunching sound. The front of Leandro's skull shattered like a Ming vase hurled onto the floor. A split second later his spine snapped. For a moment the machine carried him along, plastered to it like a very large bug plastered to the windshield of a fast-moving car. His splayed legs dragged on the road, the white line unreeling between them. The heels of his loafers eroded to smoking rubber nodules. One fell off.

Then he slid down the front of the vending machine and flopped onto the road.

The Coke machine started back toward Haven Village. Its coin-holder had been jarred when the machine hit Leandro, and as it moved rapidly through the air, humming, a steady stream of quarters, nickels, and dimes spewed out of the coin return and went rolling about on the road.

1

Gardener knew that Bobbi would make her move soon – the old Bobbi had fulfilled what the New and Improved Bobbi saw as its last obligation to good old Jim Gardener, who had come to save his friend and who had stayed on to whitewash one hell of a strange fence.

He thought, in fact, that it would be the sling – that Bobbi would want to go up first, and, once up, would simply not send it back down. There he'd be, down by the hatch, and there he'd die, next to that strange symbol. Bobbi wouldn't even have to deal with the messy reality of murder; there would be no need to think about good old Gard dying slowly and miserably of starvation, either. Good old Gard would die of multiple hemorrhages very quickly.

But Bobbi insisted that Gard go up first, and the sardonic cut of her eyes told Gardener that Bobbi knew exactly what he had been thinking … and she hadn't had to read his mind to do it, either.

The sling rose in the air and Gardener clung tightly to the cable, fighting a need to vomit – that need, he thought, was quickly going to become impossible to deny, but Bobbi had sent him a thought which came through loud and clear as soon as they wriggled out through the hatch again: Don't take the mask off until you get topside. Were Bobbi's thoughts clearer, or was it his imagination? No. Not imagination. They had both gotten another boost inside the ship. His nose was still bleeding and his shirt was sopping with it; the air mask was filling up. It was by far the worst nosebleed he'd had since Bobbi first brought him out here.

Why not? he had sent back, trying to be very careful and send only that top thought – nothing below it.

Most of the machines we heard were air-exchangers. Breathing what's in the trench now would do you in just as quick as breathing what was in the ship when we first opened it. The two won't equalize for the rest of the day, maybe longer.

Not the sort of thinking one would usually suspect in a woman who wanted to kill you – but that look was still in Bobbi's eyes, and the feel of it colored all of Bobbi's thoughts.

Hanging on to the cable for dear life, biting at the rubber pegs, Gardener fought to hold onto his stomach.

The sling reached the top. He wandered away on legs that felt as if they were made of rubber bands and paper clips, barely seeing the Electrolux and the length of cable manipulating the buttons; Count ten, he thought. Count ten, get as far from the trench as you can, then take off the mask and take what comes, I think I'd rather die than feel like this, anyway.

He got as far as five and could hold back no longer. Crazy images danced before his eyes: dumping the drink down Patricia McCardle's dress, seeing Bobbi reeling off her porch to greet him when he finally arrived; the big man with the gold cup over his mouth and nose turning to look at him from the passenger window of a four-wheel-drive as Gardener lay drunk on the porch.

If I'd dug in a few different places out at that gravel pit, why, I just might have found that one, too! he thought, and that was when his stomach finally rebelled.

He tore the mouthpiece off and threw up, groping for a pine tree at the edge of the clearing and clinging to it for support.

He did it again, and realized he had never experienced this sort of vomiting in his entire life. He had read about it, however. He was ejecting stuff – most of it bloody -in wads that flew like bullets. And bullets were almost what they were. He was having a seizure of projectile vomiting. This was not considered a sign of good health in medical circles.

Gray veils drifted over his sight. His knees buckled.

Oh fuck I'm dying, he thought, but the idea seemed to have no emotional gradient. It was dreary news, no more, no less. He felt his hand slipping down the rough bark of the pine. He felt tarry sap. Faintly he was aware that the air smelled foul and yellow and sulfuric – it was the way a paper mill smells after a week of still, overcast weather. He didn't care. Whether there were Elysian fields or just a big black nothing, there would not be that stink. So maybe he would come out a winner anyway. Best to just let go. To just …

No! No, you will not just let go! You came back to save Bobbi and Bobbi was maybe already beyond saving, but that kid's around and he might not be. Please, Gard, at least try!

'Don't let it be for nothing,' he said in a cracked, wavering voice. 'Jesus Christ, please don't let it be for nothing.'

The wavering gray mists cleared a little. The vomiting subsided. He raised a hand to his face and flung away a sheet of blood with it.

A hand touched the back of his neck as he did, and Gardener's flesh pebbled with goosebumps. A hand … Bobbi's hand . . . but not a human hand, not anymore.

Gard, are you all right?

'All right,' he answered aloud, and managed to get to his feet.

The world wavered, then came back into focus. The first thing he saw in it was Bobbi. The look on Bobbi's face was one of cold, cheerless calculation. He saw no love there, not even a counterfeit of concern. Bobbi had become beyond such things.

'Let's go,' Gardener said hoarsely. 'You drive. I'm feeling . . .'He stumbled and had to grab at Bobbi's bunched, strange shoulder to keep from falling. a little under the weather.'

2

By the time they got back to the farm, Gardener was better. The bleeding from his nose had subsided into a trickle. He had swallowed a fair amount of blood while wearing the mouthpiece, and a lot of the blood he had seen in his vomit must have been that. He hoped.

He had lost a total of nine teeth.

'I want to change my shirt,' he told Bobbi.

Bobbi nodded without much interest. 'Come on out in the kitchen after you do,' she said. 'We have to talk.'

'Yes. I suppose we do.'

In the guestroom, Gardener took off the T-shirt he had been wearing and put on a clean one. He let it hang down over his belt. He went to the foot of the bed, lifted the mattress, and got the .45. He tucked it into his pants. The T-shirt was too big; he had lost a lot of weight. The outline of the gun butt hardly showed at all if he sucked in his gut. He paused for a moment longer, wondering if he was ready for this. He supposed there was no way to tell such a thing in advance. A dull headache gnawed his temples, and the world seemed to move in and out of focus in slow, woozy cycles. His mouth hurt and his nose felt stuffed with drying blood.

This was it; as much a showdown as any Bobbi had ever written in her westerns. High noon in central Maine. Make yore play, pard.

A ghost of a smile touched his lips. All of those two-for-a-penny sophomore philosophers said life was a strange proposition, but really, this was outrageous.

He went out to the kitchen.

Bobbi was sitting at the kitchen table watching him. Strange, half-glimpsed green fluid circulated below the surface of her transparent face. Her eyes – larger, the pupils oddly misshapen – looked at Gardener somberly.

On the table was a boom-box radio. Dick Allison had brought it out to Bobbi's three days ago, at her request. It was the one Hank Buck had used to send Pits Barfield to that great repple-depple in the sky. It had taken Bobbi less than twenty, minutes to connect its circuitry to the toy photon pistol she was pointing at Gardener.

On the table were two beers and a bottle of pills. Gardener recognized the bottle. Bobbi must have gone into the bathroom and gotten it while he was changing his shirt. It was his Valium.

'Sit down, Gard,' Bobbi said.

3

Gardener had raised his mental shield as soon as he was out of the ship. The question now was how much of it still remained.

He walked slowly across the room and sat at the table. He felt the .45 digging into his stomach and groin; he also felt it digging into his mind, lying heavy against whatever was left of that shield.

'Are those for me?' he asked, pointing at the pills.

'I thought we'd have a beer or two together,' Bobbi said evenly, 'the way friends do? And you could take a few of those at a time while we talk. I thought it would be the kindest way.'

'Kind,' Gardener mused. He felt the first faint tug of anger. Won't get fooled again, the song said, but the habit must be awfully hard to break. He himself had been fooled plenty. But then, he thought, maybe you're an exception to the rule, Gard ole Gard.

'I get the pills and Peter got that weird seaquarium in the shed. Bobbi, your definition of kindness has undergone one fuck of a radical change since the days when you'd cry if Peter brought home a dead bird. Remember those days? We lived here together, we stood your sister off when she came, and never had to stick her in a shower stall to do it. We just kicked her ass the hell out.' He looked at her somberly. 'Remember, Bobbi? That was when we were lovers as well as friends. I thought you might have forgotten. I would have died for you, kiddo. And I would have died without you. Remember? Remember us?'

Bobbi looked down at her hands. Did he see tears in those strange eyes? Probably all he saw was wishful thinking.

'When were you in the shed?'

'Last night.'

'What did you touch?'

'I used to touch you,' Gardener mused. 'And you me. And neither of us minded. Remember?'

'What did you touch?' she screamed shrilly at him, and when she looked back up he didn't see Bobbi but only a furious monster.

'Nothing,' Gardener said. 'I touched nothing.' The contempt on his face must have been more convincing than any protest would have been, because Bobbi settled back. She sipped delicately at her beer.

'Doesn't matter. You couldn't have done anything out there anyway.'

'How could you do it to Peter? That's how it keeps coming at me. The old man I didn't know, and Anne barged in. But I knew Peter. He would have died for you, too. How could you do it? God's name!'

'He kept me alive when you weren't here,' Bobbi said. There was just the faintest uneasy, defensive note in her voice. 'When I was working around the clock. He was the only reason there was anything left for you to save when you got here.'

'You fucking vampire!'

She looked at him, then away.

'Jesus Christ, you did something like that and I went along with it. Do you know how that hurts? I went along! I saw what was happening to you … to a lesser degree I saw what was happening to the others, but I still went along with it. Because I was crazy. But of course you knew that, didn't you? You used me the same way you used Peter, but I wasn't even as smart as an old beagle dog, I guess, because you didn't even have to put me in the shed and stick one of those filthy stinking rotten cables in my head to do it. You just kept me oiled. You handed me a shovel and said, “Here you go, Gard, let's dig this baby up and stop the Dallas Police.” Except you're the Dallas Police. And I went along with it.'

'Drink your beer,' Bobbi said. Her face was cold again.

'And if I don't?'

'Then I'm going to turn on this radio,' Bobbi said, 'and open a hole in reality, and send you … somewhere.'

'To Altair-4?' Gardener asked. He kept his voice casual and tightened his mental grip

(shield-shield-shield-shield)

on that barrier in his mind. A slight frown creased Bobbi's forehead again, and Gardener felt those mental fingers probing again, digging, trying to find out what he knew, how much … and how.

'You've been snooping a lot, haven't you?' Bobbi asked.

'Not until I realized how much you were lying to me.' And suddenly knew. He had gotten it in the shed without even knowing it.

'Most of the lies you told to yourself, Gard.'

'Oh? What about the kid that died? Or the one that's blind?'

'How do you kn -'

'The shed. That's where you go to get smart, isn't it?'

She said nothing.

'You sent them to get batteries. You killed one and blinded the other to get batteries. Jesus, Bobbi, how stupid could you get?'

'We're more intelligent than you could ever hope to -'

'Who's talking about intelligence?' he cried furiously. 'I'm talking about smarts! Common-fucking-sense! The CMP power lines run right behind your house! Why didn't you tap them?'

'Sure.' Bobbi smiled with her weird mouth. 'A really intelligent – pardon me, smart -idea. And the first, time some tech at the Augusta substation saw the power drain on his dials – '

'You're running almost everything on C, D, and double-A batteries,' Gard said. 'That's a trickle. A guy using house current to run a big band-saw would bang those needles harder.'

She looked momentarily confused. Seemed to listen – not to anyone else, but to her own interior voice. 'Batteries run on direct current, Gard. AC power lines wouldn't do us any g – '

He struck his temples with his fists and screamed: 'Haven't you ever seen a goddam DC converter? You can get them at Radio Shack for three bucks! Are you seriously trying to tell me you couldn't have made a simple DC converter when you can make your tractor fly and your typewriter run on telepathy? Are you – '

'Nobody thought of it!' she screamed suddenly.

There was a moment of silence. She looked stunned, as if at the sound of her own voice.

'Nobody thought of it,' he said. 'Right. So you sent those two kids, all ready to do or die for good old Haven, and now one them is dead and the other one's blind. It's shit, Bobbi. I don't care who or what has taken you over – part of you has to be inside someplace. Part of you has to realize that you people haven't been doing anything creative at all. Quite the opposite. You've been taking dumb-pills and congratulating each other on how wonderful it all is. I was the crazy one. I kept telling myself it would be okay even after I knew better. But it's the same old shit it always was. You can disintegrate people, you can teleport them to someplace for safekeeping, or burial, or whatever, but you're as dumb as a baby with a loaded Pistol.'

'I think you better shut up now, Gard.'

'You didn't think of it,' he said softly. Jesus, Bobbi! How can you even look at yourself in the mirror? Any of you?'

'I said I think -'

'Idiot savant, you said once. It's worse. It's like watching a bunch of kids getting ready to blow up the world with Soapbox Derby plans. You guys aren't even evil. Dumb, but not evil.'

'Gard -'

'You're just a bunch of dumbbells with screwdrivers.' He laughed.

'Shut up!' she shrieked.

'Jesus,' Card said. 'Did I really think Sissy was dead? Did I?'

She was trembling.

He nodded toward the photon gun. 'So if I don't drink the beer and take the pills, you pack me off to Altair-4, right? I get to babysit David Brown until we both drop dead of asphyxiation or starvation or cosmic-ray poisoning.'

She was viciously cold now, and it hurt – more than he ever would have believed -but at least she wasn't trying to read him. In her anger, she had forgotten.

The way they had forgotten how simple it was to plug a battery-driven tape recorder into a wall socket with a DC converter between the instrument and the power source.

'There really isn't an Altair-4, just as there aren't really any Tommyknockers. There aren't any nouns for some things – they just are. Somebody pastes one name on those things in one place, somebody pastes on another someplace else. lt's never a very good name, but it doesn't matter. You came back from New Hampshire talking about Tommyknockers, so here that's what we are. We've been called other things in other places. Altair-4 has, too. It's just a place where things get stored. Usually not live things. Attics can be cold, dark places.'

'Is that where you're from? Your people?'

Bobbi – or whatever this was that looked a bit like her – laughed almost gently. 'We're not a “People,” Gard. Not a “race.” Not a “species” Klaatu is not going to appear and say “Take us to your leader.” No, we're not from Altair-4.'

She looked at him, still smiling faintly. She had recovered most of her equanimity and seemed to have forgotten the pills for the time being.

'If you know about Altair-4, I wonder if you've found the existence of the ship a little strange. '

Gardener only looked at her.

'I don't suppose you've had time enough to wonder why a race with access to teleportation technology' – Bobbi wiggled the plastic gun slightly -'would even bother zipping around in a physical ship.'

Gardener raised his eyebrows. No, he hadn't considered that, but now that Bobbi brought it up, he remembered a college acquaintance once wondering aloud why Kirk, Spock, and company bothered with the Starship Enterprise when it would have been so much simpler to just beam around the universe.

'More dumb-pills,' he said.

'Not at all. It's like radio. There are wavelengths. But beyond that, we don't understand it very well. Which is true of us about most things, Gard. We re builders, not understanders.

'Anyway, we've isolated something like ninety thousand clear – wave lengths – that is, pro-linear settings which do two things: avoid the binomial paradox that prevents the reintegration of living tissue and unfixed matter, and actually seem to go somewhere. But in almost all cases, it isn't anywhere anyone would want to go.'

'Like winning an all-expenses-paid trip to Utica, huh?'

'Much worse. There's a place which seems to be very much like the surface of Jupiter. If you open a door on that place, the difference in pressure is so extreme it starts a tornado in the doorway which quickly assumes an extremely high electrical charge which blows the door open wider and wider like tearing a wound open. The gravity is so much higher that it starts sucking out the earth of the incursive world the way a corkscrew pulls a cork. If left on that particular “station” for long, it would cause a gravonic fault in the planet's orbit, assuming the mass was similar to earth's. Or, depending on the planet's composition, it might just rip it to pieces.'

'Did anything like that come close to happening here?' Gard's lips were numb. Such a possibility made Chernobyl seem as important as a fart in a phone-booth. And you went along with it, Gard! his mind screamed at him. You helped dig it up!

'No, although some people had to be dissuaded from doing too much tinkering along transmitter/transmatter lines.' She smiled. 'It happened somewhere else we visited, though.'

'What happened?'

'They got the door shut before Shatterday, but a lot of people cooked when the orbit changed.' She sounded bored with the subject.

'All of them?' Gardener whispered.

'Nope. There are still nine or ten thousand of them alive at one of the poles,' Bobbi said. 'I think.'

'Jesus. Oh my Jesus, Bobbi.'

'There are other channels which open on rock. Just rock. The inside of some place. Most open in deep space. We've never been able to chart a single one of those locations using our star-charts. Think of it, Gard! Every place has been a strange place to us … even to us, and we are great sky-travelers.'

She leaned forward and sipped a little more beer. The toy pistol which was no longer a toy did not waver from Gardener's chest.

'So that's teleportation. Some big deal, huh? A few rocks, a lot of holes, one cosmic attic. Maybe someday someone will open a wavelength into the heart of a sun and flash-fry a whole planet.'

Bobbi laughed, as if this would be a particularly fine jest. The gun didn't waver from Gard's chest, however.

Growing serious again, Bobbi said: 'But that's not all, Gard. When you turn on a radio, you think of tuning a station. But a band – megaherz, kiloherz, shortwave, whatever – isn't just stations. It's also all the blank space between stations. In fact, that's what some bands are mostly made up of. Do you follow?'

'Yes.'

'This is my roundabout way of trying to convince you to take the pills. I won't send you to the place you call Altair-4, Gard – there I know you'd die slowly and unpleasantly.'

'The way David Brown is dying?'

'I had nothing to do with that,' she said quickly. 'It was his brother's doing entirely.'

'It's like Nuremberg, isn't it, Bobbi? Nothing was really anyone's fault

'You idiot,.' Bobbi said. 'Don't you realize that sometimes that's the truth? Are you so gutless you can't accept the idea of random occurrence?'

'I can accept it. But I also believe in the ability of the individual to reverse irrational behavior,' he said.

'Really? You never could.'

Shot your wife, he heard the booger-picking deputy say. Good fucking deal, uh?

Maybe sometimes people start the old Atonement Boogie a little late, he thought, looking down at his hands.

Bobbi's eyes flicked sharply at his face. She had caught some of that. He tried to reinforce the shield – a tangled chain of disconnected thoughts like white noise.

'What are you thinking about, Gard?'

'Nothing I want you to know,' he said, and smiled thinly. 'Think of it as … well, let's say a padlock on a shed door.'

Her lips drew back from her teeth for a moment … then relaxed into that strange gentle smile again. 'It doesn't matter,' she said. 'I might not understand anyway. As I say, we've never been very good understanders. We're not a race of super-Einsteins. Thomas Edison in Space would be closer, I think. Never mind. I won't send you to a place where you'll die a slow, miserable death. I still love you in my way, Gard, and if I have to send you somewhere, I'll send you to … nowhere.'

She shrugged.

'It's probably like taking ether . . . but it might be painful. Agony, even. Either way, the devil you know is always better than the devil you don't.'

Gardener suddenly burst into tears.

'Bobbi, you could have saved me yea grief if you'd reminded me of that sooner.'

'Take the pills, Gard. Deal with the devil you know. The way you are now, two hundred milligrams of Valium will take you off very quickly. Don't make me mail you like a letter addressed to nowhere.'

'Tell me some more about the Tommyknockers,' Gardener said, wiping at his face with his hands.

Bobbi smiled. 'The pills, Gard. If you start taking the pills, I'll tell you anything you want to know. If you don't – ' She raised the photon pistol.

Gardener unscrewed the top of the Valium bottle, shook out half a dozen of the blue pills with the heart-shape in the middle (Valentines from the Valley of Torpor, he thought), tossed them into his mouth, cracked the beer, and swallowed them. There went sixty milligrams down the old chute. He could have hidden one under his tongue, maybe, but six? Come on, folks, be real. Not much time now. I vomited my belly empty, I've lost a lot of blood, I haven't been taking this shit and so have no tolerance to it, I'm some thirty pounds lighter than I was when I picked up the first mandatory prescription. If I don't get rid of this shit quick, they'll hit me like a highballing semi.

'Tell me about the Tommyknockers,' he invited again. One hand dropped into his lap below the table and touched the butt

(shield-shield-shield-shield)

of the gun. How long before the stuff started to work? Twenty minutes? He couldn't remember. And nobody had ever told him about OD'ing on Valium.

Bobbi moved the gun a bit toward the pills. 'Take some more, Gard. As Jacqueline Susann may have once said, six is not enough.'

He shook out four more but left them on the oilcloth.

'You were scared shitless out there, weren't you?' Gardener asked. 'I saw the way you looked, Bobbi. You looked like you thought they were all going to get up and walk. Day of the Dead.'

Bobbi's New and Improved eyes flickered … but her voice remained soft. 'But we are walking and talking, Gard. We are back.'

Gard picked up the four Valiums, bounced them in his palm. 'I want you to tell me just one thing, and then I'll take these.' Yes. Just that one thing would in some fashion answer all the other questions – the ones he was never going to get a chance to ask. Maybe that was why he hadn't tried Bobbi with the gun yet. Because this was what he really needed to know. This one thing.

'I want to know what you are,' Gardener said. 'Tell me what you are.'

4

'I'll answer your question, or at least try to,' Bobbi said, 'if you'll take those pills you're bouncing in your hand right now. Otherwise, you're going bye-bye, Gard. There's something in your mind. I can't quite read it – it's like seeing a shape through gauze. But it makes me extremely nervous.'

Gardener put the pills in his mouth and swallowed them.

'More.'

Gardener shook out another four and took them. All the way up to 140 milligrams now. Shooting the moon. Bobbi seemed to relax.

'I said Thomas Edison was closer than Albert Einstein, and that's as good a way to put it as any,' Bobbi said. 'There are things here in Haven that would have made Albert boggle, I suppose, but Einstein knew what E=mc2 meant. He understood relativity. He knew things. We … we make things. Fix things. We don't theorize. We build. We're handymen.'

'You improve things,' Gardener said. He swallowed. When Valium took hold of him, his throat began to feel dry. He remembered that much. When it started to happen, he would have to act. He thought maybe he had already taken a lethal dose, and there were at least a dozen pills left in the bottle.

Bobbi had brightened a little.

'Improve! That's right! That's what we do. The way they – we – improved Haven. You saw the potential as soon as you got back. No more having to suck the corporate tit! Eventually, it's possible to convert totally to … uh … organic-storage-battery sources. They're renewable and long-lasting.

'You're talking about people.'

'Not just people, although higher species do seem to produce longer-lasting power than the lower ones – it may be a function of spirituality rather than intelligence. The Latin word for it, esse, is probably the best. But even Peter has lasted a remarkably long time, produced a great deal of power, and he's only a dog.'

'Maybe because of his spirit,' Gardener said. 'Maybe because he loved you.' He took the pistol out of his belt. He held it

(shield-shield-shield-shield)

against his inner left thigh.

'That's beside the point,' Bobbi said, waving the subject of Peter's love or spirituality away. 'You have decided for some reason that the morality of what we're doing is unacceptable – but then, the spectrum of what you think of as morally acceptable behavior is very narrow. It doesn't matter; you'll be going to sleep soon.

'We have no history, written or oral. When you say the ship crashed here because those in charge were, in effect, fighting over the steering wheel, I feel there's an element of truth in that … but I also feel that perhaps it was meant, fated to happen. Telepaths are at least to some degree precognitives, Gard, and precognitives are more apt to let themselves be guided by the currents, both large and small, that run through the universe. “God” is the name some people give those currents, but God's only a word, like Tommyknockers or Altair-4.

'What I mean is, we would almost certainly be long extinct if we hadn't trusted those currents, because we've always been short-tempered, ready to fight. But “fight” is too general a word. We … we . . .'Bobbi's eyes suddenly glowed a deep, frightful green. Her lips spread in a toothless grin. Gardener's right hand clutched the gun with a sweaty palm.

'We squabble!' Bobbi said. 'Le mot juste, Gard!'

'Good for you,' Gardener said, and swallowed. He heard a click. That dryness hadn't just sneaked up – all at once it was just there.

'Yes, we squabble, we've always squabbled. Like kids, you could say.' Bobbi smiled. 'We're very childlike. That's our good side.'

'Is it now?' A monstrous image suddenly filled Gardener's head: grammarschool kids heading off to school armed with books and Uzis and Smurfs lunch-boxes and M-16s and apples for the teachers they liked and fragmentation grenades for those they didn't. And, oh Christ, every one of the girls looked like Patricia McCardle and every one of the boys looked like Ted the Power Man. Ted the Power Man with greeny-glowing eyes that explained the whole sorry fucking mess, from Crusades and crossbow to Reagan's missile-tipped satellites.

We squabble. Every now and then we even tussle a bit. We're grownups – I guess -but we still have bad tempers, like kids do, and we also still like to have fun, like kids do, so we satisfied both wants by building all these nifty nuclear slingshots, and every now and then we leave a few around for people to pick UP, and do you know what? They always do. People like Ted, who are perfectly willing to kill so no woman in Braintree with the wherewithal to buy one shall want for electricity to run her hair-dryer. People like you, Gard, who see only minimal drawbacks to the idea of killing for peace.

It would be such a dull world without guns and squabbles, wouldn't it?

Gardener realized he was getting sleepy.

'Childlike,' she repeated. 'We fight … but we can also be very generous. As we have here.'

'Yes, you've been very generous to Haven,' Gardener said, and his jaws abruptly cracked open in a huge, tendon-stretching yawn.

Bobbi smiled.

'Anyway, we might have crashed because it was “crash-time,” according to those currents I mentioned. The ship wasn't hurt, of course. And when I started to uncover it, we … came back.'

'Are there more of you out there?'

Bobbi shrugged. 'I don't know.' And don't care, the shrug said. We're here, There are improvements to be made. That is enough.

'That's really all you are?' He wanted to make sure; make sure there was no more to it. He was terribly afraid he was taking too long, much too long … but he had to know. 'That's all?'

'What do you mean, all? Is it so little, what we are?'

'Frankly, yes,' Gard said. 'You see, I've been looking for the devil outside my life all my life because the one inside was so fucking hard to catch. It's hard to spend such a long time thinking you're … Homer . . .' He yawned again, hugely. His eyelids had bricks on them. and discover you were … Captain Ahab all the time.'

And finally, for the last time, with a kind of desperation he asked her:

'Is that all you are? Just people who fix things up?'

'I guess so,' she said. 'I'm sorry it's such a let-down for y

Gardener lifted the pistol under the table, and at the same moment felt the drug finally betray him: the shield slipped.

Bobbi's eyes glowed – no, this time they glared. Her voice, a mental scream, blasted through Gardener's head like a meat-cleaver

(GUN HE'S GOT A GUN HES GOT A)

chopping through the rising fog.

She tried to move. At the same time she tried to bring the photon pistol to bear on him. Gardener aimed the .45 at Bobbi under the table and pulled the trigger. There was only a dry click. The old slug had misfired.

1

John Leandro died. The scoop did not.

David Bright had promised to give Leandro until four, and that was a promise he had intended to keep – because it was honorable, of course, but also because he was not sure this was anything he wanted to stick his hand into. It might turn out to be a threshing machine instead of a news story. Nonetheless, he never doubted Johnny Leandro had been telling the truth, or his perception of it, crazed as his story sounded. Johnny was a twerp, Johnny sometimes didn't just jump to conclusions but broad-jumped them completely, but he wasn't a liar (even if he had been, Bright didn't believe he was smart enough to fabricate something this woolly).

Around two-thirty that afternoon, Bright suddenly began to think of another Johnny – poor, damned Johnny Smith, who had sometimes touched objects and gotten 'feelings' about them. That had been crazy, too, but Bright had believed Johnny Smith, had believed in what Smith said he could do. It was impossible to look into the man's haunted eyes and not believe. Bright was not touching anything which belonged to John Leandro, but he could see his desk across the room, the hood pulled neatly over his word-processor terminal, and he began to get a feeling … a very dismal one. He felt that Johnny Leandro might be dead.

He called himself an old woman, but the feeling didn't go away. He thought of Leandro's voice, desperate and cracking with excitement. This is my story, and I'm not going to give it up just like that. Thought of Johnny Smith's dark eyes, his trick of constantly rubbing at the left side of his forehead. Bright's eyes were drawn again and again to Leandro's hooded word-cruncher.

He held out until three o'clock. By then the feeling had become sickening assurance. Leandro was dead. There was just no maybe in it. He might not ever have another genuine premonition in his life, but he was having one now. Not crazy, not wounded, not one of the missing. Dead.

Bright picked up the phone, and although the number he dialed had a Cleaves Mills exchange, both Bobbi and Gard would have known it was really long-distance: fifty-five days after Bobbi Anderson's stumble in the woods, someone was finally calling the Dallas Police.

2

The man Bright talked to at the Cleaves Mills state-police barracks was Andy Torgeson. Bright had known him since college, and he could talk to him without feeling that he had the words NEWS SNOOP tattooed on his forehead in bright red letters. Torgeson listened patiently, saying little, as Bright told him everything, beginning with Leandro's assignment to the story of the missing cops.

'His nose bled, his teeth fell out, he got vomiting, and he was convinced that all of this was coming out of the air?'

'Yes,' Bright said.

'Also, this whatever-it-is in the air improved the shit out of his radio reception.'

'Right.'

'And you think he might be in a lot of trouble.'

'Right again.'

'I think he might be in a lot of trouble, too, Dave – it sounds like he's gone section-eight.'

'I know how it sounds. I just don't think that's the way it is.'

'David,' Torgeson said in a tone of great patience, 'it might be possible – at least in a movie – to take over a little town and poison it somehow. But there's a highway that runs through that little town. There's people in that little town. And phones. Do you think someone could poison a whole town, or shut it off from the outside world, with no one the wiser?'

'Old Derry Road isn't really a highway,' Bright pointed out. 'Not since they finished the stretch of I-95 between Bangor and Newport thirty years ago. Since then, the Old Derry Road has been more like this big deserted landing strip with a yellow line running down the middle of it.'

'You're not trying to tell me nobody's tried to use it lately, are you?'

'No. I'm not trying to tell you much of anything . . . but Johnny did say he'd found some people who hadn't seen their relatives in Haven for a couple of months. And some people who tried to go in to check on them got sick and had to leave in a hurry. Most of them chalked it up to food poisoning or something. He also mentioned a store in Troy where this old crock is doing a booming business in T-shirts because people have been coming out of Haven with bloody noses … and that it's been going on for weeks.'

'Pipe dreams,' Torgeson said. Looking across the barracks ready-room, he saw the dispatcher sit up abruptly and switch the telephone he was holding to his left hand, so he could write. Something had happened somewhere, and from the goosed look on the dispatcher's face, it wasn't a fender-bender or purse-snatching. Of course, people being what they were, something always did happen. And, as little as he liked to admit it, something might be happening in Haven, as well. The whole thing sounded as mad as the tea party in Alice, but David had never impressed him as a member of the fruit-and-nuts brigade. At least not a card-carrying one, he amended.

'Maybe they are,' Bright was saying, 'but their essential pipe-dreaminess can be proved or disproved by a quick trip out to Haven by one of your guys.' He paused. 'I'm asking as a friend. I'm not one of Johnny's biggest fans, but I'm worried about him.'

Torgeson was still looking into the dispatcher's office, where Smokey Dawson was now ratchet-jawing away a mile a minute. Smokey looked up, saw Torgeson looking, and held up one hand, all the fingers splayed. Wait, the gesture said. Something big.

'I'll see that someone takes a ride out there before the end of the day,' Torgeson said. 'I'll go myself if I can, but – '

'If I was to come over to Derry, could you pick me up?'

'I'll have to call you,' Torgeson said. 'Something's happening here. Dawson looks like he's having a heart attack.'

'I'll be here,' Bright said. 'I'm seriously worried, Andy.'

'I know,' Torgeson said – there had not even been a flicker of interest from Bright when Torgeson mentioned something big was apparently up, and that wasn't like him at all. 'I'll call you.'

Dawson came out of the dispatcher's office. It was high summer, and, except for Torgeson, who was catching, the entire complement of troopers on duty was out on the roads. The two of them had the barracks to themselves.

'Jesus, Andy,' Dawson said. 'I dunno what to make of this.'

'Of what?' He felt the old tight excitement building in the center of his chest -Torgeson had his own intuitions from time to time, and they were accurate within the narrow band of his chosen profession. Something big, all right. Dawson looked as if someone had hit him with a brick. That old, tight excitement – most of him hated it, but part of him was a junkie for it. And now that part of him made a sudden, exhilarating connection – it was irrational but it was also irrefutable. This had something to do with what Bright had just called about. Somebody get the Dormouse and the Mad Hatter, plop the Dormouse into the pot, he thought. I think the tea party's getting under way.

'There's a forest fire in Haven,' Dawson said. 'Must be a forest fire. The report says it's probably in Big Injun Woods.'

'Probably? What's this probably shit?'

'The report came from a fire-watch station in China Lakes,' Dawson said. 'They logged smoke over an hour ago. Around two o'clock. They called Derry Fire Alert and Ranger Station Three in Newport. Engines were sent from Newport, Unity, China, Woolwich -'

'Troy? Albion? What about them? Christ, they border the town!'

'Troy and Albion didn't report.'

'Haven itself?'

'The phones are dead.'

'Come on, Smokey, don't break my balls. Which phones?'

'All of them.' He looked at Torgeson and swallowed. 'Of course, I haven't verified that for myself. But that isn't the nuttiest part. I mean, it's pretty crazy, but – '

'Go on and spill it.'

Dawson did. By the time he finished, Torgeson's mouth was dry.

Ranger Station Three was in charge of fire control in Penobscot County, at least as long as a fire in the woods didn't develop a really broad front. The first task was surveillance; the second was spotting; the third was locating. It sounded easy. It wasn't. In this case, the situation was even worse than usual, because the fire had been reported from twenty miles away. Station Three called for conventional fire engines because it was still technically possible that they might be of some use: they hadn't been able to reach anyone from Haven who could tell them one way or the other. As far as the fire wardens at Three knew, the fire could be in Frank Spruce's east pasture or a mile into the woods. They also sent out three two-man crews of their own in four-wheel-drive vehicles, armed with topographical maps, and a spotterplane. Dawson had called them Big Injun Woods, but Chief Wahwayvokah was long gone, and today the new, non-racist name on the topographical maps seemed more apt: Burning Woods.

The Unity fire engines arrived first . . . unfortunately for them. Three or four miles from the Haven town line, with the growing pall of smoke still at least eight miles distant, the men on the pumper began to feel ill. Not just one or two; the whole seven-man crew. The driver pressed on . . . until he suddenly lost consciousness behind the wheel. The pumper ran off Unity's Old Schoolhouse Road and crashed into the woods, still a mile and a half shy of Haven. Three men were killed in the crash; two bled to death. The two survivors had literally crawled out of the area on hands and knees, puking as they went.

'They said it was like being gassed,' Dawson said.

'That was them on the phone?'

Christ, no. The two still alive are on their way to Derry Home in an amb'lance. That was Station Three. They're trying to get things together, but right now it looks like there's a hell of a lot more going on in Haven than a forest fire. But that's spreading out of control, the Weather Service says there's going to be an easterly wind by nightfall, and it don't seem like no one can get in there to put it out!'

'What else do they know?'

Jack Shit!' Smokey Dawson exclaimed, as if personally offended. 'People who get close to Haven get sick. Closer you get, the sicker you are. That's all anyone knows, besides something's burning.'

Not a single fire unit had gotten into Haven. Those from China and Woolwich had gotten closest. Torgeson went to the anemometer on the wall and thought he saw why. They'd been coming from upwind. If the air in and around Haven was poisoned, the wind was blowing it the other way.

Dear God, what if it's something radioactive?

If it was, it was like no kind of radiation Torgeson had ever heard of – the Woolwich units had reported one-hundred-per-cent engine-failure as they approached the Haven town line. China had sent a pumper and a tanker. The pumper quit on them, but the tanker kept running and the driver had somehow managed to reverse it out of the danger zone with vomiting men stuffed into the cab, clinging to the bumpers, and spreadeagled on top of the tank. Most had nosebleeds; a few earbleeds; one had a ruptured eye.

All of them had lost teeth.

What kind of fucking radiation is THAT?

Dawson glanced into the dispatcher's booth and saw that all of his incoming lines were lighted.

'Andy, the situation's still developing. I gotta

'I know,' Torgeson said, 'you've got to go talk to crazy people. I've got to call the attorney general's office in Augusta and talk to other crazy people. Jim Tierney's the best A.G. we've had in Maine since I put on this uniform, and do you know where he is this gay day, Smokey?'

'No.‘

'On vacation,' Torgeson said with a laugh that was slightly wild. 'First one since he took the job. The only man in the administration that might be able to understand this nuttiness is camping with his family in Utah. Fucking Utah! Nice, huh?'

'Nice.'

'What the fuck's going on?'

'I don't know.'

'Any other casualties?'

'A forest ranger from Newport died,' Dawson said reluctantly.

'Who?'

'Henry Amberson.'

'What? Henry? Christ!'

Torgeson felt as if he had been hit hard in the pit of the stomach. He had known Henry Amberson for twenty years – the two of them hadn't been best friends, nothing like it, but they had played some cribbage together when times were slow, done a little fly-fishing. Their families had taken dinner together.

Henry, Jesus, Henry Amberson. And Tierney was in fucking Utah. 'Was he in one of the Jeeps they sent out?'

'Yeah. He had a pacemaker, you know, and

'What? What?' Torgeson took a step toward Smokey as if to shake him. 'What?'

'The guy driving the Jeep apparently radioed in to Three that it exploded in Amberson's chest.'

'Oh my Jesus Christ!'

'It's not sure yet,' Dawson said quickly. 'Nothing is. The situation is still developing.'

'How could a pacemaker explode?' Torgeson asked softly.

'I don't know.'

'It's a joke,' Torgeson said flatly. 'Either some weird joke or something like that radio show that time. War of the Worlds.'

Timidly, Smokey said: 'I don't think it's a joke . . . or a hoax.'

'Neither do I,' Torgeson said. He headed for his office and the telephone.

'Fucking Utah,' he said softly, and then left Smokey Dawson to try and keep up with the increasingly unbelievable information that was coming in from the area of which Bobbi Anderson's farm was the center.

3

Torgeson would have called the A.G.'s office if Jim Tierney hadn't been in fucking Utah. Since he was, he put it off long enough to make a quick call to David Bright at the Bangor Daily News.

'David? It's Andy. Listen, I – '

'We've got reports there's a fire in Haven, Andy. Maybe a big one. Have you got that?'

'Yeah, we do. David, I can't take you over there. The information you gave me checks out, though. Fire crews and recon people can't get into town. They get sick. We've lost a forest ranger. A guy I knew. I heard . . .' He shook his head. 'Forget what I heard. It's too goddam crazy to be true.'

Bright's voice was excited. 'What was it?'

'Forget it.'

'But you say firemen and rescue crews are getting sick?'

'Recon people. We don't know yet if anyone needs rescuing or not. Then there's the shit about the fire trucks and jeeps. Vehicles seem to stop running when they get close to or into Haven

'What?'

'You heard me.'

'You mean it's like the pulse?'

'Pulse? What pulse?' He had a crazy idea that Bright was talking about Henry's pacemaker, that he had known all along.

'It's a phenomenon that's supposed to follow big nuclear bangs. Cars stop dead.'

'Christ. What about radios?'

'Them too.'

'But your friend said -'

'All over the band, yes. Hundreds. Can I at least quote you on the sick firemen and rescue people? The vehicles stopping?'

Yeah. As Mr Source. Mr Informed Source.'

When did you first hear – '

'I don't have time to do the Playboy interview, David. Your Leandro went to Maine Med Supplies for air?'

'Yes.'

'He thought it was the air,' Torgeson said, more to himself than to Bright. 'That's what he thought.'

'Andy … you know what else stops cars dead, according to the reports we get from time to time?'

'What?'

'UFOs. Don't laugh; it's true. People who sight flying saucers at close range when they're in their cars or planes almost always say their motors just drop dead until the thing goes away.' He paused. 'Remember the doctor who crashed his plane in Newport a week or two ago?'

War of the Worlds, Torgeson thought again. What a pile of crap.

But Henry Amberson's pacemaker had … what? Exploded? Could that possibly be true?

He would make it his business to find out; that you could take to the bank.

'I'll be talking to you, Davey,' Torgeson said, and hung up. It was 3:15. In Haven, the fire which had begun at the old Frank Garrick farm had been burning for over an hour, and was now spreading toward the ship in a widening crescent.

4

Torgeson called Augusta at 3:17 P.M. At that time, two sedans with a total of six investigators in them were already northbound on 1-95; Fire Station Three had called the A.G.'s office at 2:26 P.M. and the Derry state police barracks at 2:49. The Derry report included the first jagged elements – the crash of the Unity pumper, the death of a forest ranger who appeared to have been shotgunned by his own pacemaker. At 1:30 P.M. mountain time, a Utah state police cruiser stopped at the campground where Jim Tierney and his family were staying. The trooper informed him there was an emergency in his home state. What sort of emergency? That, the trooper had been told, was information obtainable strictly on a need-to-know basis. Tierney could have called Derry, but Torgeson in Cleaves Mills was a guy he knew and trusted. Right now he wanted more than anything else to talk to someone he trusted. He felt a slow sinking dread in his gut, a feeling that it had to be Maine Yankee, had to be something with the state's only nuclear plant, had to be, only something that big could have caused this kind of extraordinary response almost a whole country away. The trooper patched him through. Torgeson was both delighted and relieved to hear Tierney's voice.

At 1:37 P.M. mountain time, Tierney climbed into the shotgun seat of the cruiser and said, 'How fast does this go?'

'Sir! This vehicle will go one hundred and thirty miles an hour and I am a Mormon sir and I am not afraid to drive it at that speed sir because I am confident that I will avoid hell! Sir!'

'Prove it,' Tierney said.

At 2:03 P.M. mountain time, Tierney was in a Lear jet with no markings but the U.S. flag on its tail. It had been waiting for him at a small private airfield near Cottonwoods … the town of which Zane Grey wrote in Riders of the Purple Sage, the book which had been Roberta Anderson's favorite as a girl, the one which had perhaps set her course forever as a writer of westerns.

The pilot was in mufti.

'Are you Defense Department?' Tierney asked.

The pilot looked at him with expressionless dark glasses. 'Shop.' It was the only word he spoke before, during, or after the flight.

That was how the Dallas Police entered the game.

5

Haven had been nothing but a wide place in the road, dreaming its life away comfortably off the major Maine tourist tracks. Now it had been noticed. Now people headed there in droves. Since they knew nothing of the anomalies that were being reported in ever-increasing numbers, it was only the growing pall of smoke on the horizon which drew them at first, like moths to candle flames. It would be almost seven o'clock that evening before the state police, with the help of the local National Guard unit, would be able to block off all the roads to the area – the minor ones as well as the major. By morning, the fire would become the greatest forest fire in Maine history. The brisk easterly wind came up right on schedule, and once it did there was no way the fire's running start could be overcome. The realization did not sink in all at once, but it did sink in: the fire might have burned unchecked even if the day had been dead calm. You couldn't do much about a fire you couldn't get to, and efforts to get near this one had unpleasant results.

The spotter-plane had crashed.

A busload of National Guardsmen from Bangor ran off the road, struck a tree, and exploded when the driver's brain simply burst like a tomato loaded with a cherry-bomb. All seventy weekend warriors died, but maybe only half of them in the crash; the rest died in a fruitless effort to crawl out of the poison belt.

Unfortunately, the wind was blowing the wrong way . . . as Torgeson could have told them.

The forest fire which had begun in Burning Woods had crisped half of Newport before fire-fighters could properly go to work . . . but by then they were strung too thin to do much good, because the fire line was nearly six miles long.

By seven that evening, hundreds of people – some self-appointed firefighters, most your common garden variety Homo rubberneckus – had poured into the area. Most promptly poured right back out again, faces white, eyes bulging, noses and ears jetting blood. Some came clutching their lost teeth in their hands like pitted pearls. And not a few of them died … not to mention the hundred or so hapless residents of eastern Newport who got a sudden dose of Haven when the wind turned brisk. Most of those died in their houses. Those who came to gawk and stayed to asphyxiate on the rotten air were found in or beside various roads, curled in fetal positions, hands clutched over their stomachs. Most, one G.I. later told the Washington Post (under the strict condition that he not be identified), looked like bloody human commas.

Such was not the fate of Lester Moran, a textbook salesman who lived in a Boston suburb and spent most of his days on the highways of northern New England.

Lester was returning from his annual late-summer selling trip to the schools in the SADs (school administrative districts) of Aroostook County when he saw smoke – a lot of it – on the horizon. This was at about 4:15 P. m.

Lester diverted immediately. He was in no hurry to get back, being a bachelor and having no plans for the next two weeks or so, but he would have diverted even if the national sales conference had been slated to begin the next day with him as the principal speaker and his speech still unwritten. He couldn't have helped himself. Lester Moran was a fire-freak. He had been one since earliest childhood. In spite of having spent the last five days on the road, in spite of a fanny that felt like a board and kidneys that felt like bricks after the constant jolting his sprung car had taken on the shitty roads of townships so small they mostly had map coordinates for names, Lester never thought twice. His weariness fell away; his eyes glowed with that preternatural light which fire-chiefs from Manhattan to Moscow know and dread: the unholy excitement of the natural-born fire-freak.

They are the sort of people fire-chiefs will, however, put to use … if driven to the wall. Five minutes ago, Lester Moran, who had applied to the Boston Fire Department at the age of twenty-one and had been turned down because of the steel plate in his skull, had felt like a whipped dog. Now he felt like a man highballing on amphetamines. Now he was a man who would happily don an Indian pump which weighed almost half as much as he did himself and lug it on his back all night, breathing smoke the way some men breathe the perfume on the nape of a beautiful woman's neck, fighting the flames until the skin of his cheeks was cracked and blistered and his eyebrows were burned clean off.

He exited the turnpike at Newport and burned up the road which led toward Haven.

The plate in his head was the result of a hideous accident which had occurred when Moran was twelve, and a junior-high patrol-boy. A car had struck him and thrown him thirty feet, where his flight had been interrupted by the obdurate brick wall of a furniture warehouse. He had been given last rites; his weeping parents had been told by the surgeon who operated on him that their son would likely die within six hours, or remain in a coma for several days or weeks before succumbing. Instead, the boy had been awake and asking for ice cream before the end of the day.

'I think it's a miracle,' the boy's sobbing mother cried. 'A miracle from God!'

'Me too,' said the surgeon who had operated on Lester Moran, and who had looked at the boy's brain through a gaping hole in the poor kid's shattered skull.

Now, closing in on all that delightful smoke, Lester began to feel a little sick to his stomach, but he chalked that up to excitement and then forgot all about it. The plate in his skull was, after all, nearly twice the size of the one in Jim Gardener's. The absence of police, fire, or Forestry Department vehicles in the thickening murk he found both extraordinary and oddly exhilarating. Then he rounded a sharp curve and saw a bronze-colored Plymouth lying upside-down in the left-hand ditch, its red dashboard flasher still pulsing. Written on the side was DERRY F.D.

Lester parked his old Ford wagon, got out, and trotted over to the wreck. There was blood on the steering wheel and the seat and driver's-side floormat. There were droplets of blood on the windshield.

All in all, quite a lot of blood. Lester stared at it, horrified, and then looked toward Haven. Dull red colored the base of the smoke now, and he realized he could actually hear the dull crackle of burning wood. It was like standing near the world's biggest open-hearth furnace . . . or as if the world's biggest open-hearth furnace had sprouted legs and was slowly approaching him.

Next to that sound, next to the sight of that dull yet titanic red glow, the overturned Derry fire-chief's car and the blood inside began to seem a good deal less important. Lester went back to his own car, fought a brief battle with his conscience, and won by promising himself he would stop at the first pay phone he came to and call the state police in Cleaves Mills … no, Derry. Like most good salesmen, Lester Moran carried a detailed map of his territory in his head, and after consulting it, he decided Derry was closer.

He had to resist the yammering urge to goose the wagon up to its top speed … which was about sixty these days. He expected at every turn of the road to come upon sawhorses blocking the road, a confusion of crazily parked vehicles, the sound of CB radios squealing out messages at top gain, shouting men in hard-hats, helmets, and rubber coats.

It didn't happen. Instead of sawhorses and a boiling nest of activity he came upon the overturned Unity pumper, cab broken off its body, the tank itself still spraying the last of its load. Lester, who was now breathing smoke as well as air that would have killed almost anyone else on earth, stood on the soft shoulder, mesmerized by the limp white arm he saw dangling from the window of the pumper's amputated cab. Rivulets of drying blood ran erratic courses down the arm's white and vulnerable underside.

Something wrong here. Something a lot more wrong than just a woods fire. You got to get out, Les.

But instead he turned toward the fire again and was lost.

The smoky taste in the air was stronger. The sound of burning was now not a crackle but rolling thunder. The truth of it suddenly fell on him like a bucket of cement: No one was fighting this fire. No one at all. For some reason he couldn't understand, they either hadn't been able to get into the area or hadn't been allowed in. As a result, the fire was burning out of control, and with the freshening wind to help, it was growing like a radioactive monster in a horror movie.

The idea made him ill with terror … and excitement … and sick, dark joy. It was bad to feel a thing like that last, but it was there and it was impossible to deny. Nor was he the only one who had felt it. That dark joy had seemed to be a part of every fire-fighter he had ever bought a drink for (which was almost every fire-fighter he'd ever met since he flunked his own 13FD physical).

He fumbled and stumbled back to his car, started it with some difficulty (assuming that in his excitement he had probably almost flooded the damned dinosaur), boosted the air-conditioner all the way up, and headed toward Haven again. He was aware this was idiocy of the purest ray serene – he was, after all, not Superman but a forty-five-year-old textbook salesman who was going bald and who was still a bachelor because he was too shy to ask women for dates. He was not just behaving in an idiotic fashion, either. Harsh as that judgment was, it was still a rationalization. The truth was, he was behaving like a lunatic. And yet he could no more stop himself than a junkie can stop himself when he sees his fix cooking in the spoon.

He couldn't fight it …

… but he could still go see it.

And it would really be something to see, wouldn't it? Lester thought. Sweat was already rolling down his face, as if in anticipation of the heat ahead. Something to see, oh yeah. A forest fire that was for some reason being allowed to rage utterly out of control as they had millions of years ago, when men were little more than a small tribe of hairless monkeys cowering in the twin cradles of the Nile and the Euphrates and the great fires themselves were touched off by spontaneous combustion, strokes of lightning, or meteor-falls instead of drunk hunters who didn't give a shit what they did with their cigarette butts. It would be a bright orange furnace, a firewall ninety feet high in the woods; across the clearings and gardens and hayfields it would race like a Kansas prairie fire in the 1840s, gobbling houses so swiftly they would implode from the sudden change in air-pressure, as houses and factories had done during the World War II firebombings. He would be able to see the road he was on, this very road, disappearing into that furnace, like a highway into hell.

The tar itself, he thought, would first begin to run in sticky little rivulets … and then to burn.

He stepped down harder on the gas, and thought: How could you not go on? When you had a chance – a once-in-a-lifetime chance – to see something like that, how could you not?

6

'I just don't know how I'm going to explain to my dad, is all,' the Maine Med Supplies clerk said. He wished he had never argued four years ago for expanding their business to include rentals in the first place. His father had thrown that in his face after the old guy rented the flat-pack and never returned it, and now all hell was breaking loose in Haven – the radio said it was a forest fire and then went on to hint that even weirder things might be happening there – and he was betting he'd never see the flat-pack he had rented that morning to the reporter with the thick glasses, either. Now here were two more fellows, state troopers no less, demanding not just one flat-pack each, but six of them.

'You can tell your dad we requisitioned them,' Torgeson said. 'I mean, you do provide respiration gear for firemen, don't you?'

'Yes, but – '

'And there's a forest fire in Haven, isn't there?'

'Yes, but – '

'Then get them out here. I don't have time to bullshit.'

'My father is gonna kill me!' he wailed. 'That's all we got!'

Torgeson had met Claudell Weems pulling into the parking lot of the barracks just as Torgeson himself was pulling out. Claudell Weems, Maine's only black state trooper, was tall – not as tall as the late Monster Dugan, but a very respectable six-four. Claudell Weems had one gold tooth in the front of his mouth, and when Claudell Weems moved very close to people – suspects, for instance, or a reluctant clerk – and smiled, revealing that sparkling gold incisor, they became very nervous. Torgeson once asked Claudell Weems why this was, and Claudell Weems said he b'leeved it was dat ole black magic. And then laughed until the glass in the barracks windows seemed to tremble in its frames.

Weems now leaned very close to the clerk and employed dat ole black magic dat he wove so well.

When they left Maine Med with the flat-packs, the clerk was not really sure what had happened … except that the black fella had the biggest gold tooth he had ever seen in his life.

7

The toothless old man who had sold Leandro the T-shirt stood on his porch and watched expressionlessly as Torgeson's cruiser blasted by. When it was gone he went inside and made a phone call to a number most people wouldn't have been able to reach; they would have heard the sirening sound which had infuriated Anne Anderson instead. But there was a gadget on the back of the storekeeper's phone, and soon he was talking to an increasingly harried Hazel McCready.

8

'So!' Claudell Weems said cheerfully after craning his neck to look at the speedometer, 'I see we are driving at just over ninety miles an hour! And since the consensus is that you're probably the shittiest motor-vehicle operator in the entire Maine state police-'

'What fucking consensus?' Torgeson asked.

'My fucking consensus,' Claudell Weems said. 'Anyway, that leads to a deduction. The deduction is that I will die very soon. I don't know if you believe in that bullshit about granting a doomed man's last request, but if you do, maybe you'd tell me what this is all about. If you can before we receive our engine-block implants, that is.'

Andy opened his mouth, then closed it again. 'No,' he said. 'I can't. It's too nuts. Just this much. You may start to feel sick. If you do, put some of that canned air to you right away.'

'Oh, Christ,' Weems said. 'The air's been poisoned in Haven?'

'I don't know. I think so.'

'Oh Christ,' Weems said again. 'Who spilled what beans?'

Andy only shook his head.

'That's why no one's fighting the fire.' The smoke boiled up from the horizon in a widening swath – mostly white so far, thank God.

'I don't know. I think so. Run one of the bands on the radio.'

Weems blinked as if he thought Torgeson might be crazy. 'Which band?'

'Any band.'

So Weems began to run the police band, at first getting nothing but the confused, beginning-to-be-frightened babble of cops and firemen who wanted to fight a fire and somehow couldn't get to where it was at. Then, further down, they heard a request for backup units at the scene of a liquor-store robbery. The address given was 117 Mystic Avenue, Medford.

Weems looked at Andy. 'Jeepers-creepers, Andy, I didn't know there was any Mystic Avenue in Medford – in fact, I didn't think there was any avenues at all in Medford. Couple of pulproads, maybe.'

'I think,' Andy said, and his voice seemed to be coming to his own ears from very far away, 'that particular squeal is coming from Medford, Massachusetts.'

9

Two hundred yards over the Haven town line, Lester Moran's motor died. It did not cough; it did not hitch; it did not backfire. It just died, quietly and without fanfare. He got out without bothering to switch off the key.

The steady crackle of the fire filled the whole world, it seemed. The air temperature had gone up at least twenty degrees. The wind was carrying the heavy smoke toward him but up, so the air was breathable. It still had a hot, acrid taste.

Here on the left and right were wide fields – Clarendon land on the right, Ruvall land on the left. It rose in a long, undulating slope toward the woods. In those woods, Lester could see steadily brightening winks of red and orange light; smoke poured up from them in a torrent which was steadily darkening. He could hear the thumping explosions of hollow trees imploding as the fire sucked the oxygen out of them like marrow from old bones. The wind was not straight into his face, but close enough; the fire was going to break out of the woods and into the field in minutes . . . seconds, maybe. Its rush down to where he stood, face red and running with sweat, might be lethally quick. He wanted to be back in his car before that happened – it would start, of course it would, old gal had never failed him yet – and piling up distance between himself and that red, oncoming beast.

Go, then! Go, for Chrissake! You've seen it, now GO!

Thing was, he really hadn't seen it. He'd felt its heat, seen it wink its eyes and fume smoke from its dragon's nostrils … but he really hadn't seen the fire.

But then he did.

It came out of Luther Ruvall's west field in a pounce. The main fire-front bore on into Big Injun Woods, but this side now broke free of the forest. The trees massed at the far end of the field were no match for the red animal. They seemed for a moment to grow blacker as the light behind them was turned up – yellow to orange, orange to glare-red. Then they simply swept into flame. It happened in an instant. For a moment Lester could see their tops, and then they were gone, too. It was like the act of some fabulous prestidigitator, the sort of magician Hilly Brown had once wanted to be with all his heart and soul.

The fire-line was before him, eight feet high and eating trees as Lester Moran stood mesmerized, mouth gaping, before it. Flames began to run down the slope of the field. Now the smoke began to rafter around him, thicker, choking. He began to cough.

Get out! For Christ's sake, get out!

Yes. Now he would; now he could. He had seen it and it was every bit as spectacular as he had expected it would be. But it was a beast. And what a right-thinking man did when confronted with a beast was run. Run just as fast and far as he could. All living things did it. All living things

Lester backed halfway to his car and then stopped.

All living things.

Yes. All living things ran before a forest fire. The old patterns were suspended. The coyote ran beside the rabbit. But there were no rabbits and no coyotes coming down that field; there were no birds in the gunmetal-colored sky.

No one here but him.

No birds or animals running from the fire meant there were none in the woods.

The overturned F.D. car, the blood everywhere.

The pumper wrecked in the woods. The bloody arm.

What's going on here? his mind screamed.

He didn't know … but he knew he was putting on those fabled boogie shoes. He pulled the door open – and then looked back one final time.

What he saw rising out of that great pillar of smoke jerked a scream from him. He drew in smoke, coughed on it, screamed again.

Something – some huge something – was rising out of the smoke like the greatest whale in creation slowly breaching.

Smoke-hazed sunlight gleamed mellowly on its side – and still it came up, came up, came up, and there was no sound except for the awkward thunder-crunch strides of the fire.

Up … and up … and up …

His neck craned to follow its slow, impossible progress, and so he never saw the small, queer thing which came out of the smoke and trundled smartly down the road toward him. It was a red wagon. It had belonged to little Billy Fannin at the beginning of the summer. In the center of the wagon was a platform. On the platform was a Bensohn brush-trimmer – little more than a power blade at the end of a long pole. The blade was controlled by a pistol-grip control. A sales tag reading CUT UP A STORM WITH YOUR BENSOHN! still fluttered from the top of the pole. It was on a moving gimbal, and looked a bit like the jutting prow of an absurd ship.

Lester was cringing against his car and staring up into the sky when the gadget's EEG-sensor – which had begun life as a digital meat probe – triggered the brush-trimmer's electronic starter (a modification the Bensohn designers had never considered). The blade shrieked into life, the small gas motor howling like a hurt cat.

Lester turned and saw something like a fishing pole with teeth coming at him. He cried out and ducked toward the rear of his car.

What's going on here? his mind screamed. What's going on, what's going on, what's going on, what's

The brush-trimmer swung on its gimbal, seeking Lester, following his brain-waves, which it sensed as neat little pulses, not much different than radar blips. The brush-trimmer was not very bright (its brain came from a programmable toy called The Terrible Tracker Tank), but it was bright enough to stay homed in on the low electrical output of Lester Moran's own brain. His battery, one might say.

'Get out!' Lester screamed as Billy Fannin's wagon trundled toward him. 'Get away! Get awaaaay!'

Instead, the wagon seemed to leap at him. Lester Moran, his heart hammering wildly in his chest, zigged. The brush-trimmer zigged with him. Lester Moran tried to zag – and then a huge, slowly moving shadow fell over him, and he looked up in spite of himself … he just couldn't help it. His feet tangled in each other and the brush-cutter pounced. Its whirling blade chewed into Lester's head. It was still working on him when the fire engulfed both it and its victim.

10

Torgeson and Weems saw the body in the road at the same time. They were both breathing canned air now; nausea had come on them quickly with frightening power, but with the masks in place, it disappeared completely. Leandro had been right. The air. Something in the air.

Claudell Weems had ceased asking questions after they'd picked up the police-band squeal from Massachusetts. After that he only sat with his hands in his lap, his eyes moving steadily and cautiously. Further down-tuning had brought them news of police doings in such interesting places as Friday, North Dakota, Arnette, Texas.

Torgeson stopped and the two men got out. Weems paused, then took the riot gun clipped under the dash. Torgeson nodded. Things were starting to come clear. Not sane, but clear. Gabbons and Rhodes had disappeared on their way back from this town. And Monster had been here the day before he committed suicide. What was that Phil Collins song, the one with the spooky drums? I can feel it in the air tonight …

It was in the air, all right.

Gently, Torgeson turned over the man he believed to be the one who had finally blown the whistle on this craziness.

He had cleaned up a lot of ugly messes on the highway, but he still drew in a harsh gasp and shied his face away.

'Christ, what hit him?' Weems asked. The mask muffled his words, but the tone of dismay came through loud and clear.

Torgeson didn't know. He had seen a man once who'd been hit by a snowplow. That guy had looked a little like this. That was the closest.

The guy was blood from the top of what had been his head all the way down to his waist. His belt buckle had been driven deep into his body.

'Christ, man, I'm sorry,' he murmured, and laid the body down gently. He could go for the wallet, but he wanted nothing more to do with that smashed body. He headed for the car. Weems fell in beside him, riot gun held on a slant against his chest. In the distance, to the west, the smoke was growing thicker by the moment, but here there was only a faint, woodsy tang.

'This is crazy shit,' Weems said through his mask.

'Yes.'

'I have a very bad feeling about being here.'

'Yes.'

'I believe we should vacate this area on the dou

There was a crackling sound from behind them, and for a moment Torgeson thought it must be the fire – it was far away, relatively speaking, but it could be over here, too. Perfectly reasonable! When you were at the Mad Hatter's tea party, anything was. Turning, he realized that the sound was not burning branches but breaking ones.

'Holy shit!' Claudell Weems cried.

Torgeson's jaw dropped.

The Coke machine, stupid but reliable, moved in again. This time it came out of the brush at the side of the road. The glass display front was broken. The sides of the big rectangular box were scratched. And on the metal part of the machine's front, Torgeson saw a horridly suggestive shape driven in so deep it looked almost sculpted.

It looked like half a head.

The Coke machine moved out over the road and just hung there for a moment like a coffin painted in incongruously gay colors. They were gay, at least, until you noticed the blood which had dripped and run and was beginning to dry in maroon splotches.

Torgeson could hear a faint humming, and a clicking sound – Like relays, he thought. Maybe it's been damaged. Maybe, but still

The Coke machine suddenly arrowed straight at them.

'MothaFUCKAH!' Weems shouted – there was dismay and terror in his voice, but a kind of crazed laughter as well.

'Shoot it, shoot it!' Torgeson cried, and leaped to the right.

Weems took a step back and promptly fell over Leandro's body. This was extremely stupid. It was also extremely lucky. The Coke machine missed him by inches. As it banked for another run, Weems sat up and pumped three quick shotgun blasts into it. Metal exploded inward in metal daisy-shapes with black centers. The machine began to buzz. It stopped, jittering back and forth in the air like a man with Huntington's chorea.

Torgeson drew his service pistol and fired four rounds. The Coke machine started for him, but now it seemed lethargic, unable to get up any speed. It jerked to a stop, jerked forward, stopped, jerked forward again. It rocked drunkenly from side to side. The buzzing grew louder. Runnels of soda fell from the access door in sticky rivulets.

As it came at him, Torgeson pivoted easily away.

'Drop, Andy!' Weems yelled.

Torgeson dropped. Claudell Weems shot the Coke machine three more times, firing as fast as he could work the pump action. On the third shot, something inside it exploded. Black smoke and a brief belch of fire licked out one side of the machine.

Green fire, Torgeson saw. Green.

The Coke machine thumped to the road about twenty feet from Leandro's body. It tottered, then fell forward with a hollow bang. Broken glass jingled. There were three seconds of silence; then a long metallic croaking sound. It stopped. The Coca-Cola machine lay dead across the yellow line in the middle of Route 9. Its red-and-white hide was full of bullet-holes. Smoke poured from it.

'I have just drawn my weapon and killed a Coke machine, sir,' Claudell Weems said hollowly inside his mask.

Andy Torgeson turned toward him. 'And you never even ordered it to a halt, or fired a warning shot. Probably draw a suspension, you dumb shit.'

They stared at each other over the masks, and started to laugh. Claudell Weems laughed so hard he was nearly doubled over.

Green, Torgeson thought, and although he was still laughing, nothing felt very funny inside, where he lived. The fire that came out of that fucker was green.

'Never fired a warning shot,' Weems cackled breathlessly. 'No, I never did. Never did at all.'

'Violated its fucking civil rights,' Torgeson said.

Have to be an investigation!' Weems laughed. 'Yo, baby! I mean mean . . .' He tottered on his feet, and there was a lot of Claudell Weems to totter. Torgeson suddenly realized he was dizzy himself. They were breathing pure oxygen … hyperventilating.

'Stop laughing!' he shouted, and his voice seemed to come from a long distance away. 'Claudell, stop laughing!'

He somehow crossed the distance to where Weems was swaying woozily on his feet. The distance seemed very wide. When he was almost there, he stumbled. Weems somehow caught him and for a moment they stood swaying drunkenly, arms about each other, like Rocky Balboa and Apollo Creed at the end of the first fight.

'You pullin' me down, asshole,' Weems muttered.

'Fuck you, you started it.' The world came into focus, wavered, steadied. Slow breaths, Torgeson told himself. Big slow breaths, easy respiration. Be still, my beating heart. That last made him giggle again, but he got hold of it.

The two of them wavered back toward the cruiser, arms about each other's waists.

'The body,' Weems said.

'Leave it for now. He's dead. We're not. Yet.'

'Look,' Weems said as they passed Leandro's remains. 'The bubs! They're out!'

The blue flashers, called bubbles or bubs by the troopers, on top of the cruiser were dead and dark. That wasn't supposed to be – leaving the flashers on at the scene of the accident was ingrained behavior.

'Did you – ' Torgeson began, and then stopped.

Something in the landscape had changed. The day had darkened, as it does when a large cloud floats over the sun or when an eclipse begins. They looked at each other, then turned. Torgeson saw it first, a great silvery shape emerging from the boil of smoke. Its huge leading edge gleamed.

'Holy Christ!' Weems almost squealed. His large brown hand found Torgeson's arm and bore down upon it.

Torgeson barely felt it, although there would be bruises in the shape of Weems's hand the next day.

Up it came … and up … and up. Smoke-hazed sunlight glinted on its silvery-metallic surface. It rose on an angle of roughly forty degrees. It seemed to be wavering slightly, although that could have been an illusion or heat-haze.

Of course the whole thing was an illusion – had to be. No way it could be real, Torgeson thought; it was oxygen rapture.

But how can we both be having the same hallucination?

'Oh my dear God,' Weems groaned, 'it's a flyin' saucer, Andy, it's a fuckin' flyin' saucer!'

But to Torgeson it did not look like a saucer. It looked like the underside of an Army mess-plate – the biggest damn plate in creation. Up it came and up it came; you thought it must end, that a hazy margin of sky must appear between it and the rafters of smoke, but still it came, dwarfing the trees, dwarfing all the landscape. It made the smoke of the forest fire look like a couple of cigarette butts smoldering in an ashtray. It filled more and more of the sky, blotting out the horizon, rising, oh, something was rising out of Big Injun woods, and it was deathly silent – there was no sound, no sound at all.

They stared at it, and then Weems clutched Torgeson and Torgeson clutched Weems, they hugged each other like children and Torgeson thought: Oh, if it falls on us

And still it came up from the smoke and fire, and up, as if it would never end.

By nightfall, Haven had been cut off from the outside world by the National Guard. The Guardsmen surrounded it, those downwind wearing oxygen equipment.

Torgeson and Weems made it out – but not in their cruiser. That was as dead as John Wilkes Booth. They hoofed it. By the time they had used up the oxygen in the last flat-pack, swapping it back and forth, they were well into Troy and found themselves able to deal with the outside air – the wind left them lucky, Claudell Weems said later. They walked out of what would soon be referred to as 'the zone of pollution' in top-secret government reports, and theirs was the first official word of what was going on in Haven, but by then there had been hundreds of unofficial reports on the lethal quality of the air in the area and thousands of reports of a gigantic UFO seen rising from the smoke in Big Injun Woods.

Weems made it out with a bloody nose. Torgeson lost half a dozen teeth. Both counted themselves lucky.

The initial perimeter, staffed with National Guardsmen from Bangor and Augusta, was thin. By 9:00 P.M. it had been augmented by Guardsmen from Limestone and Presque Isle and Brunswick and Portland. By dawn, a thousand more battle-equipped Guardsmen had been flown in from Eastern Corridor cities.

Between the hours of 7:00 P.M. and 1:00 AM--– NORAD stood at DEFCON-2. The President was circling the Midwest at sixty thousand feet in Looking Glass and chewing Tums five and six at a time.

The FBI was on the scene at 6:00 P.M. the CIA at 7:15 P.M. By 8:00, they were yelling about jurisdiction. At 9:15 P.M. a frightened, infuriated CIA agent named Spacklin shot an FBI agent named Richardson. The incident was hushed up, but both Gardener and Bobbi Anderson would have understood perfectly – the Dallas Police were on the scene and in complete control of the situation.

1

There was a moment of paralyzed silence in Bobbi's kitchen following the misfire of Ev Hillman's old .45, a silence that was as much mental as it was physical. Gard's wide blue eyes stared into Bobbi's green ones.

'You tried – ' Bobbi began, and her mind

(! tried to !)

produced an echo in Gardener's head. That moment seemed very long. And when it broke, it broke like glass.

Bobbi had dropped the photon pistol to her side in her surprise. Now she brought it up again. There was to be no second chance. In her agitation, her mind was completely open to Gardener, and he felt her shock at the chance she had given him. She intended that there should be no second chance.

There was nothing he could do with his right hand; it was under the table. Before she could aim the muzzle of the photon pistol at him, he put his left hand on the edge of the kitchen table and, without thinking, shoved as hard as he could. The table legs squealed harshly on the floor as the table moved. It struck Bobbi's lumped and misshapen chest. At the same instant, a beam of brilliant green light shot from the barrel of the toy gun hooked into Hank Buck's big radio/tape-player. Instead of hitting Gard's own chest, it jerked upward and passed over his shoulder -more than a foot above it, actually, but he could still feel the skin there tingle unpleasantly under the shirt, as if the surface molecules were dancing like drops of water on a hot skillet.

Gard twisted to the right and dropped down to get away from that beam of what looked like light. His ribs struck the table, struck it hard, and the table rammed Bobbi again, this time even harder. Bobbi's chair rocked backward on its rear legs, teetered, and then both it and she toppled over with a crash. The beam of green light swung upward, and Gardener was momentarily reminded of those guys who stand on airport tarmacs at night, using powerful flashlights to guide planes into their berths.

He heard a low crunching, crackling sound like splintering plywood coming from overhead, looked up, and saw the photon pistol had drawn a long slit in the kitchen ceiling. Gardener staggered to his feet. Incredibly, his jaws cracked and wavered in another large yawn. His head clanged and echoed with the grassfire alarm of Bobbi's thoughts

(gun he's got a gun tried to shoot me bastard bastard tried to shoot me gun gun he's got)

and he tried to shield himself before he went mad. He couldn't. Bobbi was screaming inside his head and as she lay on the floor, pinned for the moment between the table and the overturned chair, she was trying to bring the gun to bear on him for another shot.

Gardener lifted his foot and shoved the table again, grimacing. It overturned, beers, pills, and boom-box radio all sliding off. Most of the stuff fell on Bobbi. Beer splashed in her face and ran, fizzing and foaming, over her New and Improved transparent skin. The radio hit her neck, then the floor, landing in a shallow puddle of beer.

Flash, you fucker! Gardener screamed at it. Explode! Self-destruct! Explode, goddammit, ex

The radio did more than that. It seemed to bulge, and then with a sound like rotten cloth ripping along a seam, it shattered outward in all directions, belching small streaks of green fire like bottled lightning. Bobbi screamed. What he heard with his ears was bad; the sound inside his head was infinitely worse.

Gardener screamed with her, not hearing himself. He saw that Bobbi's shirt was burning.

He started for her, not thinking about what he was up to. He dropped the .45 as he did so, without even thinking. This time it did go off, sending a slug into Jim Gardener's ankle, shattering it. Pain blew through his mind like a hot wind. He screamed again. He took a shambling step forward, his head ringing with her horrid mental cries. They would send him mad in a moment. This thought was actually a relief. When he finally went mad, none of this shit would matter anymore.

Then, for one second, Gard saw his Bobbi for the last time.

He thought perhaps Bobbi was trying to smile.

Then the screaming began again. She screamed and tried to beat out the flames that were turning her torso to tallow, and that screaming was too much, far too much, too loud, far too loud; it was unbearable. For them both, he thought. He bent, found the triple-damned pistol on the floor, and picked it up. He needed to use both of his thumbs to get it cocked. The pain in his ankle was bad – he knew that – but for the moment it was lost to him, buried under Bobbi's shrieking agony. He pointed Hillman's pistol at her head.

Work you goddam thing, oh please, please work

But if it worked and he missed? There mightn't be another cartridge in the mag.

His motherfucking hands wouldn't stop shaking.

He fell to his knees like a man struck with a sudden violent need to pray. He crawled toward Bobbi, who lay shrieking and writhing and burning on the floor. He could smell her; could see black shards of plastic from the radio's case bubbling their way into her flesh. He almost overbalanced and fell on top of her. Then he pressed the .45 against the side of her neck and pulled the trigger.

Another click.

Bobbi, screaming and screaming. Screaming inside his head.

He tried to pull the slide back again. Almost got it. Then it slipped. Snick.

Please God, oh please let me be her friend this one last time!

This time he got the slide all the way back. He tried the trigger again. This time the gun went off.

The scream suddenly became a loud buzz in Gardener's head. He knew he was listening to the mental sound of mortal disconnect. He turned his head upward. A bright stripe of sunlight from the unzipped roof fell across his face, bisecting it. Gardener shrieked.

Suddenly the buzzing stopped and there was silence.

Bobbi Anderson – or whatever she had become – was as dead as the pile of autumn-leaf corpses in the control room of the ship, as dead as the galley slaves which had been the ship's drive.

She was dead and Gardener would have gladly died then, too … but it still wasn't over.

Not yet.

2

Kyle Archinbourg was having a Pepsi at Cooder's when the screams began in his head. The bottle dropped from his hand and shattered on the floor as his hands jerked up to his temples. Dave Rutledge, dozing outside Cooder's in a chair which he had caned himself, was tilted back against the building and dreaming weird dreams in alien colors. His eyes snapped open and he sat bolt upright as if someone had touched him with a live wire, scrawny tendons standing out on his throat. His chair slid from under him, and when his head hit the wooden wall of the market, his neck shattered like glass. He was dead before he hit the asphalt. Hazel McCready was making herself a cup of tea. When the screams began, her hands jerked. The one holding the teapot spilled boiling water across the back of the one holding the cup, scalding it badly. She hurled the teapot across the room, screaming in pain and fear. Ashley Ruvall, riding his bike past the town hall, fell over into the street and lay there stunned. Dick Allison and Newt Berringer were playing cribbage at Newt's house, a pretty goddam stupid thing to be doing since each knew what the other held in his hand, but Newt didn't have a Parcheesi board, and besides, they were only passing time, waiting for the telephone to ring, waiting for Bobbi to tell them the drunk was dead and the next phase of the work could begin. Newt was dealing, and he sprayed cards all over the table and floor. Dick bolted to his feet, eyes wild, hair standing on end, and lurched for the door. He ran into the wall three feet to the right of it instead and went sprawling. Doc Warwick was in his study, going over his old diaries. The scream hit him like a wall of cinderblocks being trundled along a set of tracks at brisk speed. His body dumped adrenalin into his heart in lethal quantities, and it blew like a tire. Ad McKeen was in his pickup truck, headed over to Newt's. He ran off the road and into Pooch Bailey's abandoned Hot Dog House. His face hit the steering wheel. He was momentarily stunned, but no more. He had been going slow. He looked around, dazed and terrified. Wendy Fannin was coming up from the cellar with two jars of peach preserves. Since her 'becoming' had started, she ate little else. In the last four weeks she had eaten over ninety jars of peach preserves all by herself. She wailed and threw these two into the air like a spastic juggler. They came down, struck the stairs, shattered. Peaches and sticky juice ran and dripped. Bobbi, she thought numbly, Bobbi Anderson's burning up! Nancy Voss was standing blankly at the back window and thinking about Joe. She missed Joe, missed him a lot. She supposed that the 'becoming' would eventually wipe that longing out -every day it seemed more and more distant – but although it hurt to miss Joe, she didn't want that hurt to stop. It made no sense, but there it was. Then the shrieks began in her head and she jerked forward so suddenly that she broke three of the windowpanes with her forehead.

3

Bobbi's screams blanketed Haven like an air-raid siren. Everything and everyone came to a complete stop … and then the changed people of Haven drifted into the streets of the village. Their looks were all one look: dismay, pain, and horror at first … then anger.

They knew who had caused those shrieks of agony.

While they went on, no other mental voice could be heard, and the only thing anyone could do was listen to them.

Then came the buzzing death-rattle, and a silence so complete it could only be death.

A few moments later there was the low pulse of Dick Allison's mind. It was emotionally shaken but clear enough in its command.

Her farm. Everyone. Stop him before he can do anything else.

Hazel's voice picked the thought up, strengthening it – the effect was like a second voice joining a first to make a duet.

Bobbi's farm. Go there. Everybody.

The beat of Kyle's mental voice made it a trio. The radius of the voice began to spread as it gained strength.

Everyone. Stop him

Adley's voice. Newt Berringer's voice.

– before he can do anything else.

Those Gardener thought of as the Shed People had welded their voices into one voice of command, clear and beyond denial … not that anyone in Haven even thought of denying it.

Stop him before he can do anything to the ship. Stop him before he can do anything to the ship.

Rosalie Skehan left her kitchen sink without bothering to turn off the water running over the cod she had been freshening for supper. She joined her husband, who had been in the back yard chopping wood and who had barely missed amputating several of his toes when Bobbi's screams began. Without a word they went to their car, got in, and started for Bobbi's farm, four miles away. Turning out of their driveway, they nearly struck Elt Barker, who had taken off from his gas station on his old Harley. Freeman Moss was wheeling his pulp-truck. He felt a vague regret – he had sort of liked Gardener. He had what Freeman's pop had called 'sand' – but that wouldn't stop him from tearing the bastard's gizzard out. Andy Bozeman was driving his Oldsmobile Delta 88, his wife sitting beside him with her hands folded neatly on her purse. In it was a molecule-exciter which could raise the spot heat of anything two inches in diameter roughly one thousand degrees in fifteen seconds. She was hoping to boil Gardener like a lobster. Just let me get within five feet she kept thinking. Just five feet, that's all I ask. Beyond that distance, the gadget became unreliable. She knew she could have improved its effectiveness up to half a mile, and now wished she had done so, but if Andy didn't have at least six fresh shirts in the closet, he was like a bear. Bozeman himself wore a frozen sneer of rage, lips skinned back from his few remaining teeth in a dry, spitless grin. I'll whitewash your fence when I get hold of you, fuckface, he thought and pushed the Olds up to ninety, passing a line of slower-moving cars, all headed for Bobbi's place. They all picked up the Command Voice, which was now a hammering litany: STOP HIM BEFORE HE CAN DO ANYTHING TO THE SHIP, STOP HIM BEFORE HE CAN DO ANYTHING TO THE SHIP, STOP HIM, STOP HIM, STOP HIM!

4

Gard stood over Bobbi's corpse, half-mad with pain and grief and shock … and abruptly his jaws snapped open in another wide, tendon-stretching yawn. He reeled to the sink, trying to hop but doing a bad job of it because of the load of dope he'd taken on. Each time he came down on the bad ankle, it felt as if there was a metal claw inside him, relentlessly digging. The dryness in his throat was much worse now. His limbs felt heavy. His thoughts were losing their former acuteness; they seemed to be … spreading, like broken egg yolks. As he reached the sink he yawned again and deliberately took a step on the shattered ankle. The pain slashed through the fog like a sharply honed meat cleaver.

He barely cracked the tap marked H and got a glass of warm – almost hot – water. Fumbled in the overhead cabinet, knocking a box of cereal and a bottle of maple syrup onto the floor. His hand closed around the carton of salt with the picture of the little girl in the front. When it rains it pours, he thought soupily. That is very true. He fumbled at the pour-spout for what seemed like at least a year and then spilled enough salt into the glass to turn the water cloudy. Stirred it with a finger. Chugged it. The taste was like drowning.

He retched, bringing up the salt water dyed blue. He saw undissolved chunks of blue pills in the vomitus, as well. Some looked more or less intact. How many did she get me to take?

Then he threw up again … again … again. It was an encore performance of the projectile vomiting in the woods – some overworked circuit in his brain persistently triggering the gag reflex, a deadly hiccuping that could kill.

At last it slowed, then stopped.

Pills in the sink. Bluish water in the sink.

Blood in the sink. A lot.

He staggered backward, came down on the bad ankle, screamed, fell on the floor. He found himself looking into one of Bobbi's glazed eyes across the lumpy terrain of the linoleum, and closed his own. Immediately his mind began to drift away … but in that blackness there were voices. No – many voices blended into one. He recognized it. It was the voice of the Shed People.

They were coming for him, as he supposed he had always known they would … in time.

Stop him … stop him … stop him!

Get moving or they won't have to stop you. They'll shoot you or disintegrate you or whatever they want to do to you while you're snoozing on the floor.

He got to his knees, then managed to get to his feet with the help of the counter. He thought there was a box of No-Doz pills in the bathroom cabinet, but doubted if his stomach would hold them down after the latest insult he had dealt it. Under other circumstances it might have been worth the experiment, but Gardiner was afraid that if the projectile vomiting started again, it might not stop.

Just keep moving. If it gets really bad, take a few steps on that ankle. That'll sharpen you up in a hurry.

Would it? He didn't know. All he knew was he had to move fast right now and wasn't sure he would be able to move for long at all.

He hop-staggered to the kitchen door and looked back one final time. Bobbi, who had rescued Gardener from his demons time after time, was little more than a hulk now. Her shirt was still smoking. In the end he hadn't been able to save her from hers. Just put her out of their reach.

Shot your best friend. Good fucking deal, uh?

He put the back of his hand against his mouth. His stomach grunted. He shut his eyes and forced the vomiting down before it could start.

He turned, opened them again, and started across the living room. The idea was to look for something solid, hop to it, and then hold onto it. His mind kept wanting to be that silver Puffer balloon it became just before he was carried away by the big black twister. He fought it as well as he could and marked things and hopped to them. If there was a God, and if He was

good, perhaps they all would bear his weight and he would make it across this seemingly endless room like Moses and his troops had the desert.

He knew that the Shed People would arrive soon. He knew that if he was still here when they did, his goose wasn't just cooked; it was nuked. They were afraid he might do something to the ship. Well, yes. Now that you mentioned it, that was part of what he had in mind, and he knew he would be safest there.

He also knew he couldn't go there. Not yet.

He had business in the shed first.

He made it out onto the porch where he and Bobbi had sat up late on so many summer evenings, Peter asleep on the boards between them. Just sitting here, drinking beers, the Red Sox playing their nightly nine at Fenway, or Comiskey Park, or some damn place, but playing mostly inside Bobbi's radio; tiny baseball men dodging between tubes and circuits. Sitting here with cans of beer in a bucket of cold well water. Talking about life, death, God, politics, love, literature. Maybe even once or twice about the possibility of life on other planets. Gardener seemed to remember such a conversation or two, but perhaps that was only his tired mind goofing with him. They had been happy here. It seemed a very long time ago.

It was Peter his tired mind fixed on. Peter was really the first goal, the first piece of furniture he had to hop to. This wasn't exactly true – the attempted rescue of David Brown had to come prior to ending Peter's torment, but David Brown did not offer him the emotional pulse-point he required; he had never seen David Brown in his life. Peter was different.

'Good old Peter,' he remarked to the still hot afternoon (was it yet afternoon? By God it was). He reached the porch steps and then disaster struck. His balance suddenly deserted him. His weight came down on the bad ankle. This time he could almost see the splintered ends of the bones digging into each other. Gardener uttered a high, mewling shriek – not the scream of a woman but of a very young girl in desperate trouble. He grabbed for the porch railing as he collapsed sideways.

During her frantic early July, Bobbi had fixed the railing between the kitchen and the cellar, but had never bothered with the one between the porch and the dooryard. It had been rickety for years, and when Gard put his weight on it, both of the rotted uprights snapped. Ancient wood-dust puffed out into the summer sunlight … along with the heads of a few startled termites. Gard pitched sideways off the porch, yelling miserably, and fell into the dooryard with a solid meat thump. He tried to get up, then wondered why he was trying. The world was swaying in front of his eyes. He saw first two mailboxes, then three. He decided to forget the whole thing and go to sleep. He closed his eyes.

5

In this long, strange and painful dream he was having, Ev Hillman felt/saw Gardener fall, and heard Gardener's thought

(forget the whole thing go to sleep)

clearly. Then the dream began to break up and that seemed good; it was hard to dream. It made him hurt all over, made him ache. And it hurt to combat the green light. If sunlight was too bright

(he remembered it a little sunlight)

you could close your eyes but the green light was inside, always inside – a third eye that saw and a green light that burned. There were other minds here.

One belonged to THE WOMAN ' the other to THE LESS-MIND which had once been Peter. Now THE LESS-MIND Could only howl. It howled sometimes for BOBBI to come and let it free from the green light but mostly it only howled as it burned in the torment of the draining. THE WOMAN also screamed for release, but sometimes her thoughts cycled into appalling images of hate that Ev could barely stand. So: yes. Better

(better)

to go to sleep

(easier)

and let it all go but there was David.

David was dying. Already his thoughts – which Ev had received clearly at first – were falling into a deepening spiral that would end first in unconsciousness and then, swiftly, in death.

So Ev fought the dark.

Fought it and began to call:

Get up! Get up! You out there in sunlight! I remember sunlight! David Brown deserves his time of sunlight. So get up! Get up! Get UP! GET

6

UP GET UP GET UP!

The thought was a steady beat in Gardener's head. No; not a beat. It was something like a car, only the wheels were glass, they were cutting into his brain as the car motored slowly across it.

deserves his time of sunlight David Brown GET up David GET David up David Brown! GET UP! DAVID BROWN! GET up! GET UP, DAMMIT!

'All right!' Gardener muttered through a mouth that was full of blood. 'All right, I hear you, leave me alone!'

He managed to get to his knees. He tried to get to his feet. The world grayed out. No good. At least the rasping, cutting voice in his head had let

up a little … he sensed its owner was somehow looking out of his eyes, using them like dirty windows,

(dreaming through them)

seeing some of what he saw.

He tried to get to his feet again and was again unable.

'My asshole quotient is still very high,' Gardener croaked. He spat out two teeth and began to crawl through the dirt of the dooryard toward the shed.

7

Haven came after Jim Gardener.

They came in cars. They came in pickup trucks. They came on tractors. They came on motorcycles. Mrs Eileen Crenshaw, the Avon lady who had been so bored at Hilly Brown's SECOND GALA MAGIC SHOW, came driving her son Galen's dune-buggy. The Reverend Goohringer rode behind her, the remaining strands of his graying hair blowing back from his sunburned pate. Vern Jernigan came in a hearse he had been trying to convert into a camper before the 'becoming' got into high gear. They filled the roads. Ashley Ruvall wove between those on foot like a slalom racer, pedaling his bike like a madman. He had returned home long enough to get something he called a Zap Gun. This spring it had only been an outgrown toy, gathering dust in the attic. Now, equipped with a 9-volt battery and the circuit board from his little brother's Speak 'n' Spell, it was a weapon the Pentagon would have found interesting. It blew holes in things. Big holes. This was strapped onto the carrier of his bike, where he had once carried newspapers for delivery. They came in a ripping hurry and there were some accidents. Two people were killed when Early Hutchinson's VW collided with the Fannins' station wagon, but such minor things stopped no one. Their mental chant filled the hollow spaces in the air with a steady, rhythmic cry: Before he can do anything to the ship! Before he can do anything to the ship! It was a fine summer's day, a fine day for a killing, and if anyone needed killing it was James Eric Gardener, and so they came, well over five hundred of them in all, good country people who had learned some new tricks. They came. And they brought their new weapons with them.

8

By the time Gardener got halfway to the shed, he began to feel better – perhaps he was getting a second wind. More likely, he supposed, was the possibility that he really had gotten rid of almost all the Valium and was now starting to get on top of the rest.

Or maybe the old man was somehow feeding him strength.

Whatever it was, it was enough to get him on his feet again and start hopping toward the shed. He clutched at the door for a moment, heart galloping wildly in his chest. He happened to glance down, and saw a hole in the door. It was round. The edges stuck out in a jagged bracelet of white splinters. It had a chewed look, that hole.

The vacuum cleaner that ran the buttons. This is how it got out. It had a New and Improved cutting attachment. Christ, these people really are crazy.

He worked his way around the building and a cold certainty came to him: the key would be gone.

Oh Christ, Gard, give it a rest! Why would it

But it was. It was gone. The nail where it had hung was empty.

Gardener leaned against the side of the shed, exhausted and trembling, his body sheened with sweat. He looked down and the sun gleamed off something on the ground – the key. The nail slanted down a bit. He had put the key back in a hurry and had probably pulled the nail down a bit in the soft wood himself. It had simply slid off.

He bent painfully, picked it up, and began to shamble around to the front again. He was exquisitely aware of how fast time was passing. They would arrive soon; how could he possibly get his business done in the shed and then get out to the ship before they did? Since it was impossible, it was probably best to ignore it.

By the time he got back to the shed door, he could hear the faint sound of motors. He stabbed the key at the lock and missed the keyway. The sun was bright, his shadow little more than a puddle hanging from his heels. Again. This time the key socked home. He turned it, shoved the door open, and lurched into the shed.

Green light enfolded him.

It was strong – stronger than it had been the last time he was here. That big piece of cobbled-together equipment

(the transformer)

was glowing brightly. It was cycling, as it had been before, but the cycles were faster now. Thin green fire ran across the silvery road maps of circuit boards.

He looked around. The old man, floating in his green bath, was looking back at Gardener with his one good eye. That gaze was tortured … but sane.

Use the transformer to save David

'Old man, they are coming for me,' Gardener croaked. 'I'm out of time.'

Corner, far corner.

He looked and saw something that looked a bit like a television antenna, a bit like a large coat-hanger mobile, and a bit like those back-yard devices on which women hang clothes, turning them to do so.

'That?'

Take it out into the dooryard.

Gardener didn't question. There was no time. The thing stood on a small square platform. Gardener supposed its circuits and batteries were in that.

Close-up, he saw that the things which looked like the bent arms of a TV antenna were really narrow steel tubes. He seized the central pole. The thing wasn't heavy, but it was awkward. He was going to have to put some weight on his shattered ankle, like it or not.

He looked back at the tank in which Ev Hillman floated.

You sure about this, old-timer?

But it was the woman who answered. Her eyes opened. Looking into them was like looking into the witches' caldron in Macbeth. For a moment Gard forgot all his pain and weariness and sickness. He was held in thrall by that poisoned gaze. In that instant he understood all the truth and all the power of the fearsome woman Bobbi had called Sissy, and the reason Bobbi had fled from her, as from a fiend. She was a fiend. She was a witch. And even now, in her fearful agony, her hate held.

Take it, you stupid man! I'll run it!

Gardener put his hurt foot down and screamed as a savage hand reached all the way up from his ankle to seize the soft double sac of his testicles.

The old man:

wait wait

It rose on its own. Not far; only an inch or two. The green swamplight brightened even more.

You'll have to guide it, son.

This he was able to manage. It wavered across the green shed like the skeleton of a crazy beach umbrella, nodding and dipping, casting weird elongated shadows on the walls and floor. Gardener hopped clumsily after it, not wanting, not daring, to look back into that insane woman's eyes. Over and over his mind played a single thought: Bobbi Anderson's sister was a witch … a witch … a witch . . .

He guided the bobbing umbrella out into the sunlight.

9

Freeman Moss arrived first. He swung the pulp-truck in which Gard had once hitched a ride into Bobbi's dooryard and was out almost before the laboring, farting engine had died. And by Christ, chummy, if the cocksucker wasn't right there, front and center, holding onto something that looked like a woman's clothes whirligig. Man looked like a winded runner. He was holding one of his feet – the left – up, like a dog with a thorn in its paw. That sneaker was bright red, dripping blood.

Looks like Bobbi put at least one good one into you, you snake.

Her murdering pal apparently heard the thought. He looked up and smiled wearily. He was still holding onto the whirligig with the platform stand on the bottom. He was supporting himself on it.

Freeman walked toward him, leaving the driver's door of the old truck hanging open. There was something childlike and winning in the man's grin, and in a moment Freeman understood what it was: with his missing teeth, it was the Halloween punkin grin of a little, boy.

Jesus, I sorta liked you – why'd you have to be such a fuckup?

'What you doing out here, Freeman?' Gardener asked. 'You should have stuck home. Watched the Red Sox. The fence is all whitewashed.'

You sonofawhore!

Moss was wearing a down-filled vest but no shirt beneath; the vest was simply the first thing to come to hand as he rushed out of the house. Now he brushed it aside, revealing not a gimmick or a gadget but a Colt Woodsman, He pulled it out. Gardener stood looking at him, holding the whirligig's post, foot up.

Close your eyes. I'll make it quick. I can do that, at least.

10

(GET DOWN ASSHOLE GET DOWN OR YOU'LL LOSE YOUR HEAD WHEN HE LOSES HIS I DON'T GIVE A TIN SHIT WHO GOES SO GET DOWN IF YOU WANT TO LIVE)

In the tank, Anne Anderson's eyes blazed with stricken hate and fury; her teeth were gone but her bare gums ground together ground together ground together and a trail of small bubbles floated up.

The light pulsed faster and faster, like a carousel speeding up. It became strobelike. The hum rose to a low electric moan, and there was a rich smell of ozone in the shed's air.

On the one lit VDT screen the word

PROGRAM?

was replaced with

DESTROY

It began to flash rapidly, over and over again.

(GET DOWN ASSHOLE OR STAY UP I DON'T CARE WHICH)

11

Gardener ducked. His bad foot hit the ground. Pain leaped up his leg again. He dropped into the dust on his hands and knees.

Over his head, the whirligig began to spin, slowly at first. Moss stared at it, the gun sagging slightly for a moment in his hand. Realization crossed his face during the last instant he still had one. Then the slender pipes spilled green fire into the dooryard. For a moment the beach-umbrella illusion was perfect and complete. It looked exactly like a big green one that has been partially lowered so that its circular hem touches the ground. But this umbrella was made of fire, and Gard crouched below it, eyes squinted, one hand in front of his face, grimacing as if from strong heat … but there was no heat, at least not here, underneath Sissy's poison toadstool.

Freeman Moss was at the edge of the parasol. His pants blazed up, then the down vest. For a moment the flames were green; then they flared yellow.

He screamed and staggered backward, dropping the gun. Over Gardener's head, the whirligig spun faster. The skeletal metal arms, which had drooped comically downward, were pulled more and more erect by centrifugal force. The parasol's fire-hem bellied outward, and Moss's shoulders and face were enveloped in sheeting flame as he backed away. In Gard's head, that hideous mental wailing began again. He tried to block it out, but there was no way – simply no way. He caught a wavery glimpse of a face running like warm chocolate, then covered his face like a kid at a scary movie.

The flames spun around Bobbi's dooryard in a widening gyre, making a black spiral of dooryard dirt fused into a gritty sort of glass. Moss's pulp-truck and Bobbi's blue pickup were both in the thing's final circumference; the shed was barely beyond it, although its shape danced like a demon in the heat-haze. It was very hot at the edge of the circle, if not where Gard crouched; no doubt of that.

The paint on the hood of Moss's truck and on the sides of the pickup first bubbled, then blackened, then burst into flame, burning down to clean white steel. The litter of bark, sawdust, and woodchips in the back of Moss's truck blazed up like dry kindling in a woodstove. The two big trash-barrels in Bobbi's pickup, made of heavy pressed gypsum, also caught fire and burned like sconces. The dark circle at the edge of the fire-parasol's range became a brand in the shape of a saucer. The army blanket covering the torn seat in the cab of Moss's truck sprang alight, then the seat-covers beneath, then the tindery stuffing; now the entire cab was flickery furnace orange, with the skeletons of springs peering up through the glare.

Freeman Moss staggered backward, twisting and turning, looking like a movie stuntman who has forgotten his flame-suit. He collapsed.

12

Even overmastering Moss's dying screams, Anne Anderson's mental cry:

Eat shit and die! Eat shit and d

Then, suddenly, something let go in whatever remained of her – there was a final brilliant flare of green light, a sustained pulse that lasted nearly two seconds. The heavy hum of the transformer rose a notch, and every board in the shed picked it up and rattled in sympathetic vibration.

Then the hum dropped back to its former sleepy drone; Anne's head slumped forward in the liquid, her hair trailing like that of a drowned woman. On the computer screen,

DESTROY

winked out like a blown candle and became

PROGRAM?

again.

13

The fiery parasol wavered, then disappeared. The whirligig, which had been spinning at a mad rate, began to slow, squeaking rhythmically, like an unlatched gate in a mild breeze. The pipes sank back to their former angle. It squeaked once more, then stopped.

The gas tank of Bobbi's truck suddenly exploded. More yellow flames shouted at the sky. Gard felt a piece of metal whiz by him.

He raised his head and stared stupidly at the blazing truck, thinking: Bobbi and I used to go to the Starlite Drive-In over in Derry in that truck sometimes. I think we even got laid there once during some stupid Ryan O'Neal picture. What happened? Lord, what happened?

In his mind, the old man's voice, almost exhausted, but somehow imperative:

Quick! I can power the transformer when the rest come, but you got to be quick! The boy! David! Quick, man!

Not much time, Gardener thought wearily. Jesus, there never is.

He started back toward the open door of the shed, sweating, cheeks waxy-pale. He paused at that dark burned ring in the dirt, and then hopped clumsily over it. He somehow didn't want to touch it. He tottered on the edge of balance and then managed to hop on. As he made his way back inside the shed, the twin gas tanks of Moss's truck went up with a furious roar. The cab tore free of the body. The truck flipped over on its side like a tiddlywink. Burning chunks of seat-cover and seat-stuffing began to float out of the open passenger window and floated upward like blazing feathers. Most fell back into the dooryard and went out. A few, however, wafted their way over to the porch, and three or four actually floated through the open door on the first faint puff of the easterly wind which would soon come up. One of these burning cotton puffs alighted on a paperback novel which Gardener had left on the table just inside the door a week ago. The cover caught on fire.

In the living room, another burning fragment of seat-stuffing lit up a rag rug which Mrs Anderson had made in her bedroom and sent surreptitiously to Bobbi one day when Anne was gone.

When Jim Gardener came out of the shed again, the entire house was on fire.

14

The light in the shed was at its lowest level ever – a dim and watery green the color of stagnant pond-water.

Gardener looked cautiously toward Anne, afraid of those blazing eyes. But there was nothing to be afraid of. She only floated, head bent forward as if in deep thought, her hair trailing upward.

She's dead, son. If you're going to get the boy, it has to be now. I don't know how long I can provide the power. And I can't be divided, with half of myself looking out for them and half running the transformer.

He stared out at Gardener, and Gard felt deep pity … and admiration for the old bastard's brute courage. Could he have done half as much, gone half as far, if their positions had been reversed? He doubted it.

You're in a lot of pain, aren't you?

I ain't exactly feeling in the pink, son, if that's what you mean. But I'll get through it … if you get going, that is.

Get going. Yes. He had dilly-dallied too long, far too long.

His mouth popped open in another wrenching yawn, and then he stepped toward the equipment in and around that orange crate – what the old man called the transformer.

PROGRAM?

the keyless computer screen beckoned.

Hillman could have told Gardener what to do, but Gardener didn't need to be told. He knew. He also remembered the nosebleed and the blast of sound he'd taken as a result of his single experiment with Moss's levitation gadget. This made that thing look like a box of Lincoln Logs. Still, he had gone quite a ways down the path to 'becoming' himself since then, like it or not. He would just have to hope it was enou

Oh shit, son, hold the phone, we got company

Then a louder voice overrode Hillman's, a voice Gard vaguely recognized but could not put a name to.

(BACK OFF BACK OFF HOLD ON ALL OF YOU)

Just 1 think just one or maybe two

That was the old man's exhausted mental voice again. Gardener felt his concentration go out to the whirligig in the dooryard. In the shed, the light began to grow bright once more, and the killing pulses began.

15

Dick Allison and Newt Berringer were still two miles from Bobbi's place when Freeman Moss's mental shrieks began. Moments before, they had swerved past Elt Barker. Now Dick looked up into the rearview mirror and saw Elt's Harley swerve across the road and go leaping through the air. For a moment Elt looked like Evel Knievel, white hair or no. Then he separated from the bike and landed in the scrub.

Newt hit the brakes with both feet and his truck screamed to a stop in the middle of the road. He looked at Dick with large eyes that were both frightened and furious.

Son of a bitch has got a gadget!

Yeah. Fire. Some kind of

Abruptly Dick raised his mental voice to a shout. Newt picked it up, amplified it. From Kyle Archinbourg's Cadillac, Kyle and Hazel McCready joined in.

(BACK OFF BACK OFF HOLD ON ALL OF YOU)

They stopped, holding their positions. They were not great takers of orders as a rule, these Tommyknockers, but Moss's hideous screams, fading now, were great persuaders. All stopped, that was, except for a blue Oldsmobile Delta 88 with a bumper-sticker on the back reading REALTORS SELL IT BY THE ACRE.

When the command came to back off and hold position, Andy Bozeman was already in sight of the Anderson place. His hate had grown exponentially – Gardener lying bleeding and dead was all he could think of. He came slewing into Bobbi's driveway in a wild power turn. The Olds's rear end broke free when Bozeman stamped the brake; the big car nearly tipped over.

I'll whitewash your fence, you fucking asshole – I'll give you a dead rat and a string to swing it on, oh you bastard.

His wife pulled the molecule-exciter out of her purse. It looked like a Buck Rogers blaster which had been created by a fairly bright lunatic. Its frame had once been part of a garden tool marketed under the trade name of Weed Eater. She leaned out the car window and pulled the trigger utterly at random. The east end of Bobbi's farmhouse exploded into a caldron of fire. Ida Bozeman grinned a cheerful, reptilian grin.

As the Bozemans began to get out of the Olds, the whirligig started to spin. A moment later the green parasol of flame began to form. Ida Bozeman tried to aim what she called her 'molecule disco' at it, but too late. If her first shot had hit the whirligig instead of the house, everything might have been different … but it didn't.

The two of them went up like firetrees. A moment later the Olds exploded with three payments still due on it.

16

Now, with the screams of Freeman Moss just beginning to fade from their minds, the screams of Andy and Ida Bozeman took their place. Newt and Dick waited them out, grimacing.

At last they faded.

Ahead, Dick Allison could see other vehicles parked on both sides of Route 9, and in the middle. Frank Spruce was leaning out of the cab of his big tanker truck, looking toward Newt and Dick urgently. He/they sensed the others – all the others -on this road, on other roads; some were standing in the fields they had been cutting across. All of them waiting for something – some decision.

Dick turned toward Newt.

Fire.

Yes. Fire.

Can we put it out?

There was a short mental silence as Newt thought about it; Dick could sense him wanting to simply push it aside and go on to where Gardener was. What Dick wanted wasn't complicated: he wanted to rip out Jim Gardener's gizzard. But that wasn't the answer and they both knew it – all the Shed People, even Adley, knew it. The stakes were higher now. And Dick was confident Jim Gardener was going to lose his gizzard anyway, in one fashion or another.

Crossing the Tommyknockers was a bad idea. It made them mad. This was a truth many races on other worlds had found out long before today's festivities in Haven.

He and Newt both looked out toward the tree-bordered field where Elt Barker had crashed. The grasses and the plumes of the trees were blowing – not hard, but clearly blowing in a wind which blew from east to west. Not even enough breeze to qualify as a cap o'wind. but Dick thought it showed signs of brisking.

Yes we can put out the fire, Newt replied at last.

Stop the fire and the drunk too? Can we be sure of that?

Another long, thinking pause, and then Newt came to the answer that Dick had already suspected.

I don't know if we can do both. I know one or the other but I don't know if we can do both.

Then we'll let the fire burn for now we'll let it burn yes all right

The ship will be all right the ship will not be hurt and the wind the way the wind's blowing

They looked at each other, grinning, as their thoughts came together in a moment of utter, chiming harmony – one voice, one mind.

The fire will be between him and the ship. He won't be able to get to the ship!

On the roads and in the fields, the people listening in on this party-line all relaxed slightly. He won't be able to get to the ship.

Is he still in the shed?

Yes.

Newt turned his puzzled, troubled face to Dick.

What the fuck's he doing in there? Does he have something making something? Something to hurt the ship?

There was a pause; and then Dick's voice, not just to Newt Berringer but to all the Shed People, clear and imperative:

NET YOUR MINDS. NET YOUR MINDS WITH OURS. ALL WHO CAN NET YOUR MINDS WITH OURS AND LISTEN. LISTEN FOR GARDENER. LISTEN.

They listened. In the hot summer silence of the early afternoon, they listened. Two or three ridges over, the first smudges of smoke rose into the sky.

17

Gardener felt them listening. There was a horrid crawling sensation over the surfaces of his brain. It was ridiculous, but it was happening. He thought: Now I know how a streetlight must feel with a lot of moths fluttering around it.

The old man moved in his tank, trying to catch Gardener's eye. He missed his eye but caught his mind. Gardener looked up.

Never mind, son – they want to know what you're up to, but forget them. Won't hurt if they find out. Might even help. Slow 'em down. Relieve their minds. They don't care about David, only about their goddam ship. Go on, son! Go on!

Gardener was standing by the transformer and holding one of the earplugs in his hand. He didn't want to put it in. He felt like a man who's gotten a hefty shock from one particular switch-plate who is compelled to touch that same switch-plate again.

Do I really have to wear this fucker? I changed the screen just by thinking before.

Yes and that's all you can do. You got to wear it, son. I'm sorry.

Incredibly, Gardener's eyelids were growing heavy again. He had to force them up.

I'm afraid it will kill me, he thought at the old man, and then waited, hoping the old man would contradict him. But there was nothing – only the pained eye looking at him, and the dim slisshh-slisshhh-slisshhh of the equipment.

Yeah, it may kill me, and he knows it, too.

Outside, dimly, he could hear the crackle of fire.

The fluttering feeling along the surfaces of his mind stopped. The moths had flown away.

Reluctantly Gardener put the plug in his ear.

18

Kyle and Hazel relaxed. They looked at each other. There was an identical – and very human – expression in their eyes. The expression of people discovering something just too good to be true.

David Brown? Kyle thought unbelievingly 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 closed 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 back yard like a one-ring 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 suggestion 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, 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.

Tommyknockers, Knocking at the Door

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

Not gone, Newt. The assholes 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 who 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, failing 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 WITH -

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 and 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 it would 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 of 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 on we worked, and waited for the light, / And 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.

On one of these shelves was a Transco Sonic Space Blaster. Another kid's toy. On the side was a switch. He supposed the child who had received this for his birthday used it to make the gun ululate at different frequencies.

What did it do now?

Who gives a fuck? Gardener thought wearily. All this shit has become one big dumb bore.

Bore or not, he put the gun in his belt and hopped back across the shed. At the door, he looked back at the old man.

Thanks, guy.

Faint, fainter, faintest – a dry rustle of leaves:

out of this son

Yes. You and Peter both. You bet.

He hopped outside and looked around. No one else had come yet. That was good – but his luck couldn't hold much longer. They were there; his mind touched theirs, like a couple waltzing with the care of strangers. He sensed them linked in a

(net)

single consciousness. They were not hearing him … feeling him … whatever they did. Either using the transformer or just being in the shed had cut his mind off from theirs. But they'd soon know that, like Elvis, fat, flailing, but game and blindly bopping just the same, he had made a comeback.

The sunshine was dazzling. The air was hot, full of a burning stink. Bobbi's farmhouse was blazing like a heap of dry kindling in a fireplace. As he watched, half the roof fell in. Sparks, nearly colorless in the bright declining day, rushed up to the sky in a flume. Dick, Newt, and the others had not observed much smoke because the fire was burning hot and colorless. Most of the smoke they'd seen had come from the burning vehicles in the dooryard.

Gard stood for a moment on his good leg in the shed doorway and then hopped for the whirligig. He made it about halfway and then sprawled full-length in the dust. As he came down, he thought of the Sonic Space Blaster in his belt. A kid's toy. No safety on a kid's toy. If the trigger was depressed, the essential Gardener might suddenly be drastically reduced. The Tommyknocker Weight-Loss Plan. He took the toy gun out of his belt, handling it as if it were a live mine. He crawled the rest of the way to the whirligig on his hands and knees, then pulled himself up.

Forty feet away, the other half of Bobbi's roof collapsed. Hot sparks whirled toward the garden and the woods beyond. Gard turned toward the shed and thought again, as hard as he could: Thank you, my friend.

He thought there was an answer – some weary, faint answer.

Gardener pointed the toy at the shed and pulled its trigger. A green ray no thicker than a pencil-lead shot out of its muzzle. There was a sound like bacon frying in a skillet. For a moment the green beam splashed from the side of the shed like water from a hose, and then the boards burst into flame. More hot work, Gardener thought wearily. Smokey the Bear wouldn't dig me at all.

He began to hop toward the back of the house, the Sonic Space Blaster in his hand. Sweat and bloody tears ran down his face. Winston Churchill would have loved me, he thought, and began to laugh. He saw the Tomcat … and then his jaws spread in another big yawn. It occurred to him that possibly Bobbi had saved his life without even knowing it. In fact, it was more than possible; it was likely. The Valium could have protected him from the full force of the unimaginable power-load that transformer carried. It might well have been the Valium which

Something inside the burning house – one of Bobbi's gadgets – exploded with an artillery-shell bang. Gard ducked his head instinctively. Half of the house seemed to suddenly lift off. The far side of it, fortunately for Gardener. He looked up into the sky, and a second yawn turned into a large stupid gape.

There goes Bobbi's Underwood.

It flew up and up, a typewriter in the sky, whirling and turning.

Gard hopped on. He reached the Tomcat. The key was in the ignition. That was good. He'd had enough troubles with keys to last him the rest of his life – what little might remain.

He pulled himself up onto the seat. Behind him, vehicles approached and turned into the dooryard. He didn't turn around to look. The Tomcat was parked too close to the house. If he didn't get moving right now, he was going to bake like an apple.

He turned on the key. The Tomcat's motor made no sound, but that didn't bother him. It was vibrating faintly. Something else exploded inside the house. Sparks drifted down and prickled his skin. More vehicles turning into the yard. The minds of the arriving Tommyknockers were turned toward the shed, and they thought

baked apple he's

baked inside the shed

dead in the shed right yes

Good. Let them think that. The New and Improved Tomcat wouldn't clue them in. It was as noisy as a Ninja. And he had to go; the garden was already on fire, the giant sunflowers and huge cornstalks with their giant inedible ears of corn blazing. But the path down through the middle of the garden was still passable.

Hey! Hey! HEY, HE'S BEHIND THE HOUSE! HE'S ALIVE! HE'S STILL

Gardener looked to his right, dismayed, and saw Nancy Voss roaring across the stony field which lay between Bobbi's place and the stone wall at the edge of the Hurd property. The Voss woman was on a Yamaha trail-bike. Her hair was tied in braids which flew out behind her. Her face was a harridan's glare … although she still looked like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm next to Sissy, Gard thought.

HEY! BACK HERE! BACK HERE!

Oh, you bitch, Gardener thought, and raised the Sonic Space Blaster.

23

Twenty or thirty of them had entered the yard. Adley and Kyle were among them; so were Frank Spruce, the Goldens, Rosalie Skehan, and Pop Cooder. Newt and Dick were back by the road, keeping all in order.

All of them turned toward

HERE! BACK HERE! ALIVE! THE SON OF A BITCH IS STILL

Nancy Voss's screams. They all saw her charging across the field on the bike, looking like a jockey riding a hard-charging horse as the Yamaha's tough suspension system bounced her up and down. They all saw the green pencil-beam shoot out from behind the burning house and envelop her.

None of them saw the whirligig as it started to turn again.

24

One whole side of the shed was in flames. Part of the roof fell in. Sparks swirled in a fat spiral. One landed in a pile of greasy rags and they bloomed with fire-roses.

Deliverance, Ev Hillman thought. Last thing of all. Last thing

The transformer began to pulse a brilliant green for the last time, for a moment or two rivaling the fire.

25

Dick Allison heard the creak of the whirligig. His mind was filled with a furious, feral cry of rage as he realized Gardener was still alive. All of it happened fast; very fast. Nancy Voss was a flaming rag-doll in the field to the right of Bobbi's house. Her Yamaha ran on for twenty yards, struck a rock, and turned a backover flip.

Dick saw the burned hulks of Bobbi's truck, Moss's truck, the Bozemans' Olds -and then he saw the whirligig.

GET AWAY FROM THAT THING! GET AWAY! GET

But there was no chance. Dick had fallen out of the net and he couldn't get past the two thoughts it beat out like a primitive rock-and-roll backbeat:

Still alive. Behind the house. Still alive. Behind the house.

More people were arriving. They were moving across the dooryard in a tidal flow, ignoring the blazing house, the blazing shed, the guttering, blackened vehicles.

NO! FUCKING DAMN FOOLS! NO! GET DOWN! GET AWAY!

Mesmerized, Newt was staring at the inferno of the house, ignoring the whirligig, spinning faster and faster, and in that moment Dick could cheerfully have killed him. But he still needed him, and so he contented himself with pushing Newt rudely to the ground and falling on top of him.

A moment later, the green parasol spread its delicate web over the yard again.

26

Gard heard the screams – a multitude of them this time – and shut them out as best he could. They didn't matter. Nothing mattered except getting to the last stop on the line.

No sense trying to fly the Tomcat. He threw it into first gear and drove into Bobbi's monstrous useless burning garden.

There came a moment when he began to believe he wasn't going to make it; the fire had caught hold faster in the weeds and overgrown crops than he had believed possible. The heat was baking, tremendous. Soon his lungs would boil.

He heard dull thudding noises, like fat knots of pine exploding in a fireplace, looked, saw pumpkins and gourds exploding like pine knots in a fireplace. The Tomcat's wheel was blistering his hands.

Heat on his head. Gardener reached up. His hair was on fire.

27

The entire inside of the shed was ablaze now. In the middle of it the transformer waxed and waned, waxed and waned, a pulsating cat's eye in the middle of an inferno.

Peter lay on his side, his legs stilled at last. Ev Hillman was looking at the transformer with exhausted concentration. The fluid encasing him was becoming very, very hot. That was all right; there was no pain, not in the physical sense. The insulation on the main cable connecting him to the transformer was now beginning to melt and fuse. But the connection still held. For the moment, in the burning shed, it held, and Ev Hillman thought:

The last thing. Give him a chance to get away. The last thing

LAST THING

the computer screen flashed.

LAST THING LAST THING LAST THING

Then filled up with 9s.

28

The destruction in Bobbi Anderson's dooryard was incredible.

Dick and Newt watched it, fascinated, almost unbelieving. As in the woods that day with the old man and the cop, Dick found himself wondering how things could possibly go so wrong. The two of them – them and all the others who hadn't arrived yet – were well outside the parasol's deadly perimeter, but still Dick didn't get up. He wasn't sure he could.

People were burning in the yard like dry scarecrows. Some ran, flapping and cawing and screeching with their voices and their minds. A few – a fortunate few -managed to back away in time. Frank Spruce walked slowly past where Dick and Newt lay, half of his face burned away so his jaw showed on that side in a half-grin. There were flash-explosions as the weapons some of them carried fused and self-destructed.

Dick's eyes met Newt's.

Send them around! Flank him! Got to

Yes I see but oh Christ there must be ten or twenty of us burning

STOP FUCKING WHINING!

Newt recoiled, lips bared in a toothless snarl. Dick ignored him. The mind-net had fallen apart. Now he could make himself heard.

Go around! Go around! Get him! Get the drunk! Go around!

They began to move, slowly at first, their faces dazed, and then with quickening purpose.

29

The computer screen imploded. There was a coughing explosion, like a giant clearing a throat thick with phlegm, and thick green fluid poured from the shower cabinet in which Ev Hillman had been kept prisoner. It met the fire and produced a deadly green steam. Ev, mercifully dead at last, washed out like a fish from a burst aquarium. A moment later, Peter followed. Anne Anderson came last, her dead hands still hooked into claws.

30

The fire-parasol died. Now there was no sound but the screams of the dying and Dick's insistent voice. The summer day was an inferno. Bobbi's dooryard was a dirt pond filled with islands of fire. But the Tommyknockers always brought fire in the end, and they got used to it quickly.

Newt joined his voice with Dick's. Kyle was dead, Adley badly burned. Nevertheless, Ad joined his own mortally wounded voice with theirs:

Get him before he can get to the ship! He's still alive! Get him before he can get to the ship! Before he can get to the ship!

The Tommyknockers had taken a mauling. That fifteen of them had been flash-fried in Bobbi's yard was not very important. But Bobbi was dead; Kyle was dead; Adley soon would be; the transformer had been destroyed just when the border-closing had rendered their need for it critical. And Gardener was still alive. Incredibly, Gardener was still alive.

Perhaps worst of all, the wind was freshening.

31

Get him, and get him quick.

On the net; the Tommyknockers were on the net.

They came across the fields; came toward the spreading fire.

QUICK!

Dick Allison turned toward town and the net turned with him like a radar dish. He sensed Hazel's dumb amazement at the turn of events.

He

(the net)

brushed that aside.

Whatever you got out that way, Hazel: send it at him.

Dick turned toward Newt.

You didn't have to push me so effing hard, Newt said sulkily, and wiped a drip of blood from his chin.

'Fuck you,' Dick said deliberately. 'Let's get that sonofawhore.'

32

The whirligig, dead now, had started a fire that was spreading out from Bobbi's house in a shape which resembled a lady's fan – a fire-fan. Bobbi's house, now only black bones shimmering in a red pillar of fire, was at its point of origination. The wings were spreading through the obscenely overgrown garden, and as the mutated plants burned, the fire glowed green.

Passing between the flames was Jim Gardener, crowned with burning hair. His shirt was smoldering; one of the sleeves squirted smoke and then burst into flames. He slapped them out. He wanted to scream but he seemed too tired, too woozy.

I have been badly used, Gardener thought, and it is no one's fault but my own.

He reached the far edge of the garden. The Tomcat lurched and waddled down a mild slope and into the woods. The low, scrubby bushes on the sides of the trail were on fire, and low runners of flame were already spreading into Big Injun Woods. Gard cared little for them. The feeling that he was going to be microwaved was passing. He whacked repeatedly at his head. His hair smelled dreadful – like food fried by a child.

Green fire sizzled over his right shoulder as the Tomcat entered the woods.

Gard flinched to the left and ducked. He looked back and there was Hank Buck, with his own Zap Gun. Hank had ridden a motorcycle out to the farm, had dumped it in the same field where Nancy Voss had come to ruin, had picked himself up and started to run.

Gardener turned around, held the Sonic Space Blaster out straight in his right hand, and gripped his right wrist with his left hand. He pulled the trigger. The pencil-beam stabbed out, and more by good luck than any sort of shooting skill, he struck Hank high up on the left side of the chest. There was the sound of frying bacon. Green death splashed up onto Hank's face and he fell over.

Gardener turned forward again and saw the Tomcat moving toward a large burning spruce at a complacent five miles an hour. He hauled on the wheel with both blistered hands, barely avoiding a head-on collision. One of the Tomcat's pillow tires scraped the trunk of the tree, and for a moment Gardener found himself shoving away blazing, fragrant spruce boughs like a man fighting his way through burning curtains. The little tractor tilted sickeningly, tottered … then thumped back down again. Gardener pushed the throttle-lever as far as it would go and hung on as the Tomcat made its way up the path into the woods.

33

They came. The Tommyknockers came. They came along the widening wings of that fiery lady's fan, and Dick Allison began to feel a kind of furious desperation, because they weren't going to catch him. Gardener had been able to use the path; that had made all the difference. Three minutes later – maybe even one – and Gardener really would have been cooked. Four of the Tommyknockers (Mrs Eileen Crenshaw and the Reverend Goohringer among them) tried to follow him that way and were burned alive. Two of the gigantic, flaming corn plants toppled onto the Crenshaw woman, who shrieked and let go of the dune-buggy's steering bar. The dune-buggy promptly drove itself into the depths of the flaming garden. Its tires exploded like bombs. Bare seconds later, fire choked the whole path.

Dick's frustration went deeper than the bone. The 'becoming' had been thwarted and choked off before – not often, but it had happened – but always as the result of some natural intervention … as a whole generation of mosquito larvae breeding in a quiet, stagnant pond may be killed by a stroke of lightning from a summer storm. But this was no thunderstorm, no natural happening; this was one man, a man they had all regarded with the kind of wary contempt reserved for a stupid dog which may bite; this was one man who had spent most of his time with Bobbi in a drunken stupor, one man who had somehow tricked Bobbi and killed her and who refused to die no matter what they did.

We will not be stopped by one man, Dick thought frenziedly. We Will NOT! But was there any real way to stop just that from happening? The fire-front was now spreading too fast for them to catch him. Gardener had managed to shoot down the center of an alley of fire, but he would be the only one. Hank Buck had had a shot … but somehow the fucking son of a bitch had managed to shoot Hank dead.

Dick was in a perfect ecstasy of fury (Newt sensed it and kept his distance – Dick was twenty pounds heavier and ten years younger), but at the center of his rage was terror, like a cold curdle of rancid cream in the middle of a poisoned chocolate.

The Tommyknockers, Bobbi had told Gardener, were great sky travelers. This was true. But never, anywhere, had they met anyone quite like this one man, who kept going, even with his shattered ankle, his great loss of blood, and his ingestion of a drug that should have rendered him unconscious fifteen minutes ago, in spite of the great lot he had vomited up.

Impossible – but happening.

Somehow the fire that was supposed to keep Gardener from the ship had become Gardener's shield.

Now there were only the automated monitors – the gadgets.

'They'll get him,' Dick whispered. He and Newt were standing on a knoll to the right of the house like a pair of generals, watching people stream into the woods … but doing so on a pair of infuriatingly oblique angles. Dick's hands opened; snapped closed; opened; closed. Green blood beat in his neck. 'They'll get him, they'll stop him, he's not going to get to the ship, he's not, he's not.'

Newt Berringer kept prudently silent.

34

The smoke-detector, very like a flying saucer itself, whickered silently through the woods with the red sensor light on its underside pulsing erratically. Hazel McCready was controlling this baby herself. She had caught Dick Allison's wave of anger, despair, and fear, and had determined to take care of Gardener herself – by remote control, as it were. First she had put Pauline Goudge, whom she felt most trustworthy, to work on one other matter, and then Hazel had gone down to her office, closed the door, and locked it.

From the bottom drawer of her filing cabinet she brought out a ghetto-blaster a little smaller than the late Hank Buck's disposal unit. She put it on her desk, turned it on, took an earphone from the Out basket of her desk-minder, and put the plug in her ear.

Now she sat with her eyes closed, but she could see trees rush past on either side of the smoke-detector as it whizzed through the woods about six feet above the ground. Gardener would have been forcibly reminded of the sequence in The Return of the Jedi, when the good guys chase the bad guys through a seemingly endless forest at brain-numbing speeds on what appear to be air motorcycles.

Hazel, however, had no time for metaphors – nor ever would, if they got out of this; Tommyknockers weren't much into metaphors, either.

Part of her – the smoke-detector part on the machine side of the cyborg interface she'd made – wanted to fulfill its original function and buzz, because the woods were full of smoke. It was similar to the feeling one has when a sneeze impends like a rainshower.

The smoke-detector banked easily from side to side, slaloming around trees, popping up over knolls and then zooming back down them like the world's smallest crop-duster.

Hazel sat bent forward at her desk, earplug pushed firmly into her ear, concentrating fiercely. She was pushing the little smoke-detector through the woods faster than was safe, but it had been at the Haven-Newport border, fully five miles from the ship. She had to get to Gardener, and time was short.

The smoke-detector flipped onto its side and missed a small pine tree by inches. A close call, that. But … there he was, and there was the ship, throwing back its echoes of light, tattooing its dancing sun-dapples on the trees.

The smoke-detector hovered motionless above the thick mat of fallen needles on the floor of the forest for a moment … and then it arrowed directly at Gardener. Hazel prepared to turn on the ultra-sound attachment that would turn Gardener's bones to smashed fragments in his body.

35

Hey, Gard! On your left!

The voice was unbelievable. It was also unmistakable. It was Bobbi Anderson's voice. The old, unimproved Bobbi. Gardener had no time to think about that. He looked left and saw something slashing out of the woods at him. It was tan. There was a red light flashing on its underside. That was all he had time to see.

He brought the Sonic Space Blaster up, wondering how he could ever in the world hope to hit that thing, and at the same moment a wild thin shriek, like every mosquito in the world whining in perfect harmony, filled his ears … his head … his body. Yes, it was inside him; everything inside him was beginning to vibrate.

Then it felt as if hands seized his wrist – first seized it, then turned it. He fired. Green fire shot across the daylight. The smoke-detector exploded. Several jagged chunks of plastic flew near Gardener's head, barely missing him.

36

Hazel screamed and bolted upright in her old swivel chair. A tremendous backflow of energy surged through the earplug. She clawed at it – and missed. The plug was in her left ear. From her right one came a sudden squirt of greenish, soupy liquid. It looked like radioactive oatmeal. For a moment her brains continued to hose out of her head through her ear, and then the pressure became too great. The right side of her skull pushed open like a strange flower and her brains hit her Currier&Ives wall calendar with a liquid smack.

Hazel fell forward limply onto her desk, her hands outstretched, her glazing eyes staring unbelievingly at nothing.

The ghetto-blaster radio buzzed for a while and then stopped.

37

Bobbi? Gardener thought, looking around wildly.

Fuck you, old hoss, an amused voice returned. That's all the help you get – after all, I'm dead, remember?

I remember, Bobbi.

One piece of advice: watch out for rabid vacuum cleaners.

Then she was gone, if she had ever been there. From behind him came the rending, grinding crash of a tree falling over. The woods between here and the farm had begun to sound like a big open-hearth fireplace. Now he could hear voices from behind him, both mental and shouted aloud. Tommyknocker voices.

But Bobbi was gone.

You imagined it, Gard. The part of you that wants Bobbi – that NEEDS Bobbi – is trying to reinvent her, that's all.

Yeah, and what about the hand? The hand over my hand? Did I make that up? I couldn't have hit that thing all by myself. Annie Oakley couldn't have hit that thing without help.

But the voices – those in the air and those inside his head – were getting closer. So was the fire. Gardener drew in a throatful of smoke, put the Tomcat in gear again, and got going. There was no time for debate right now.

Gard headed for the ship. Five minutes later he came out in the clearing.

38

'Hazel?' Newt cried in a kind of religious terror. 'Hazel? Hazel?'

Yes, Hazel! Dick Allison shouted back at him furiously, and could restrain himself no longer. He threw himself upon Newt. Stupid bastard!

Whoreboy! Newt spat back, and the two of them rolled about on the ground, green eyes glaring, grabbing for each other's throats. This was not at all logical under the circumstances, but any resemblance between the Tommyknockers and the likes of Mr Spock was purely coincidental.

Dick's hands found the wattled folds of Newt's throat and began to squeeze. His fingers punched through the flesh and green blood bubbled up over Dick's fingers. He began to raise Newt up and slam him back down. Newt's struggles lessened … lessened … lessened. Dick choked him until he was quite dead.

With that done, Dick discovered that he felt a little better.

39

Gard dismounted the Tomcat, staggered, lost his balance, fell down. At that same instant, a buzzing, snarling projectile blasted through the air where he had been a moment before. Gardener stared stupidly at the Electrolux vacuum cleaner which had nearly torn his head off.

It bulleted across the clearing like a torpedo, banked, and came back at him. There was something on one end that distorted the air into a silvery ripple -something like a propeller.

Gardener thought of that round, chewed hole in the bottom of the shed door and all the spittle in his mouth dried up.

Watch out for

It dive-bombed him, the cutter attachment whining and buzzing like the motor of a kid's gas-powered fighter plane. The little wheels, which were supposed to make the weary housewife's work easier as she trundled her faithful vacuum cleaner along behind her from room to room, spun lazily in the air. The hole where one was supposed to clip various attachment hoses gaped like an open mouth.

Gardener made as if to dive to the right, then held position a moment longer – if he jumped too soon, the vacuum cleaner would jog with him and chew through his guts as easily as it had chewed through the shed door when Bobbi called it.

He waited, feinted left this time, then threw himself to the right at the last moment. He thudded painfully into the dirt. The bones in his shattered ankle ground together. Gardener screamed miserably.

The Electrolux crashed. The propeller ate dirt. Then it bounced, like a plane rising into the air again after touching down too hard on a runway. It whistled off toward the great canted dish of the ship and then banked around for another run at Gardener. Now the cable it had used to run the buttons was emerging from the hose attachment hole. The cable whistled in the air – a dry, snakelike sound that Gardener could just hear under the rumble-roar of the fire. The cable whickered, and for a moment Gardener was reminded of a wild west rodeo his mother had taken him to once (in that rootin', tootin' trail-drive town of Portland, Maine). There had been a cowboy in a tall white hat who had done rope tricks. In one of the tricks, he had floated a big lasso at ankle height, dancing in and out of its circle while playing 'My Gal Sal' on a harmonica. The cable whirling out from the attachment hole looked like that rope.

Fucker'll cut your head off just as slick as shit through a goose, if you let it, Gard ole Gard.

The Electrolux whistled at him, shadow tracking beneath.

On his knees, Gardener held out the Sonic Blaster and fired. The vacuum cleaner sheared off as he aimed, but Gardener winged it just the same. A chunk of chrome above a rear wheel blew off. The cable drew a wavering line through the dirt.

get him

yes get him before

before he can hurt the ship

Closer. The voices were closer. He had to end this.

The vacuum cleaner skirted a tree and circled back. It tilted upward, climbed, then dropped in a kamikaze power dive, its chopping blade turning faster and faster.

Gardener steadied himself by thinking of Ted the Power Man.

You oughtta take a look at this shit, Teddy-boy, he thought crazily. You'd go ape for it! Better living through electricity!

He pulled the trigger on the toy gun, saw the green pencil-beam splash off the vacuum cleaner's snout, and then shoved himself forward, digging with both feet, and never mind the shattered ankle. The Electrolux struck the ground beside the Tomcat and buried itself three feet deep in the dirt. Black smoke jetted from the protruding end in a tight, compact little cloud. It made a thick farting noise and died.

Gardener got to his feet, holding onto the Tomcat for support, the Sonic Space Blaster dangling from his right hand. The plastic barrel, he saw, was partially melted. It wasn't going to be any good much longer. The same was undoubtedly true of himself.

The vacuum cleaner was dead – dead and sticking out of the ground like a dud bomb. But there were plenty of other gadgets on their way, some flying, some trundling enthusiastically through the woods on makeshift wheels. He couldn't wait around.

What was it the old man had been thinking at the end? The last thing … and then … Deliverance

'Good word,' Gardener said hoarsely. 'Dee-liverance. Great word.'

Also, he realized, the name of a novel. A novel by a poet. James Dickey. A novel about city men who had to get slugged, mugged, and buggered before discovering they were good ole boys after all. But there was a line in that book … one of the men looking at one of the others and telling him calmly, 'Machines are gonna fail, Lewis.'

Gardener certainly hoped so.

He hopped over to the lean-to, then pushed the button which started the sling's descent. He was going to have to go down the cable hand over hand. It was stupid, but that was Tommyknocker technology for you. The motor began to whine. The cable began to descend. Gardener hopped over to the cut and stared down. If he could actually work his way down there, he would be safe.

Safe among the Tommyknocker dead.

The motor stopped. He could faintly see the useless sling at the bottom. The voices were closer, the fire was closer, and he sensed a rogue's gallery of gadgets closing in. Didn't matter. He had shot the chutes, climbed the ladders, and somehow got to the finish line before the others.

Congratulations, Mr Gardener! You've won a flying saucer! Do you want to quit or go for the all-expenses-paid vacation in deep space?

'Fuck,' Gardener croaked, tossing the half-melted toy gun aside. 'Let's do it.'

That also had reverberations.

He seized the cable and swung out over the cut. As he did, it came to him. Sure. Gary Gilmore. It was what Gary Gilmore said just before stepping in front of the firing squad in Utah.

40

He was halfway down when he realized the last of his physical strength had run out. If he didn't do something quick, he would fall.

He began to descend more quickly, cursing their thoughtless decision to put the motor controls so far from the trench. Hot, stinging sweat ran into his eyes. His muscles jumped and fluttered. His stomach was beginning to do long, lazy flips again. His hands slipped … held … slipped again. Then, suddenly, the cable was running through his hands like hot butter. He squeezed it, screaming in pain as the friction built. A steel thread which had popped up from one of the cable's steel pigtails punched through his palm.

'God!' Gardener screamed. 'Oh dear God!'

He thudded neatly into the descending sling on his bad foot. Pain roared up his leg, through his stomach, through his neck. It seemed to rip off the top of his head. His knee buckled and struck the side of the ship. The kneecap popped like a bottlecap.

Gardener felt himself graying out and fought it. He saw the hatch. It was still open. The air-exchangers were still droning.

His left leg was a frozen wall of pain. He looked down at it and saw it had become magically shorter than his right leg. And it looked … well, it looked croggled, like an old stogie that has been carried around too long in someone's pocket.

'Christ, I'm failing apart,' he whispered, and then, amazing himself, he laughed. It did have this to recommend it: it was a hell of a lot more interesting than just stepping off a breakwater with a hangover would have been.

There was a high, sweet buzzing sound from overhead. Something else had arrived. Gardener didn't wait to see what it was. Instead, he pushed himself into the hatch and began to crawl up the round corridor. The light from the walls glowed softly on the planes of his haggard face, and that light – white, not green – was kind. Someone seeing Gardener in that light might almost have believed he was not dying. Almost.

41

Late last night and the night before,

(over the hills and through the woods)

Tommyknockers, Tommyknockers, knocking at the door.

(to grandmother's house we go)

They look so quiet, but they ain't quite dead,

(the horse knows the way to carry the sleigh)

You get that Tommyknocker flu inside your head!

(over the frozen fields of snow)

Doggerel chiming in his head, Gardener crawled up the corridor, pausing once to turn his head and vomit. The air in here was still pretty fucking rank. He thought a miner's canary would already be lying at the bottom of its cage, alive but only by an inch or so.

But the machinery, Gard … do you hear it? Do you hear how much louder it's gotten just since you came in?

Yes. Louder, more confident. Nor was it just the air-exchangers. Deeper in the ship, other machinery was humming into life. The lights were brightening. The ship was feeding off whatever was left of him. Let it.

He reached the first interior hatchway. He looked back. Frowned at the hatch giving on the trench. They would be arriving in the clearing very soon now; perhaps already had. They might try to follow him in. Judging by the awed reactions of his 'helpers' (even hard-headed Freeman Moss hadn't been completely immune), he didn't think they would … but it wouldn't do to forget how desperate they were. He wanted to be sure the loonies were out of his life once and for all. God knew he hadn't much left; he didn't need those assholes fucking up what little there was.

Fresh pain blossomed in his head, making his eyes water, tugging at his brain like a fishhook. Bad, but nothing compared to the pain in his ankle and leg. He was not surprised to see the main hatchway had irised. Could he open it again, if he wanted to? He somehow doubted it. He was locked in now … locked in with the dead Tommyknockers.

Dead? Are you sure they're dead?

No; to the contrary. He was sure they were not. They had been lively enough to start it all up again. Lively enough to turn Haven into one weird munitions factory. Dead?

'Un-fucking-likely,' Gardener croaked, and pulled himself through another hatchway and into the corridor beyond. Machinery pounded and hummed in the guts of the ship; when he touched the glowing, curved wall, he could feel the vibration.

Dead? Oh, no. You're crawling around inside the oldest haunted house in the universe, Gard ole Gard.

He thought he heard a noise and turned around quickly, heart speeding up, saliva glands squirting bitter juice into his mouth. Nothing there, of course. Except there was. I had a perfectly good reason to raise this fuss; I met the Tommyknockers, and they were us.

'Help me, God,' Gardener said. He flicked his stinking hair out of his eyes. Over him was the spidery-thin ladder with its wide-spaced rungs … each with that deep, disquieting dip in the middle. That ladder would rotate to the vertical when … if … the ship ever heeled over to its proper horizontal flight position.

There's a smell in here now. Air-exchangers or not, a smell, it's the smell of death, I think. Long death. And insanity.

'Please help me, God, just a little help, okay? Just a few breaks for the kid is all I'm asking for, 'kay?'

Still conversing to God, Gardener pressed onward. Shortly he reached the control room and lowered himself into it.

42

The Tommyknockers stood at the edge of the clearing, looking at Dick. More arrived each minute. They arrived – then just stopped, like simple computer devices whose few programmed operations had all been performed.

They stood looking from the canted plane of the ship … to Dick … back to the ship … to Dick again. They were like a crowd of sleepwalkers at a tennis match. Dick could sense the others, who had gone back to the village to run the border defenses, also simply waiting … looking through the eyes of those who were actually here.

Behind them, growing closer, gaining strength, came the fire. Already the clearing had begun to fill with tendrils of smoke. A few people coughed … but no one moved.

Dick looked back at them, puzzled – what, exactly, did they want from him? Then he understood. He was the last of the Shed People. The rest of them were gone, and directly or indirectly, the death of each had been Gardener's fault. It was really inexplicable, and more than a little frightening. Dick became more and more convinced that nothing quite like this had happened in all of the Tommyknockers' long, long experience.

They're looking at me because I'm the last. I'm supposed to tell them what to do next.

But there was nothing they could do. There had been a race, and Gardener should have lost, but somehow he hadn't, and now there was nothing to do but wait. Watch and wait and hope that the ship would kill him somehow before he could do anything. Before

The Tommyknockers

A large hand suddenly reached into Dick Allison's head and squeezed the meat of his brain. His hands flew up to his temples, the fingers splayed into stiff, galvanic spider-shapes. He tried to scream but was unable. Below him, in the clearing, he was vaguely aware that people were falling to their knees in ranks, like pilgrims witnessing a miracle or a divine visitation.

The ship had begun to vibrate – the sound filled the air with a thick, subaural hum.

Dick was aware of this … and then, as his eyes blew out of his head like half-congealed chunks of moldy jelly, he knew no more. Then, or ever.

43

Little help, God, we got a deal?

He sat in the middle of the canted hexagonal room, his twisted, broken leg stuck out in front of him (croggled, that word wouldn't go away, his leg had been croggled), near where the thick mastercable came out of the gasket in the floor.

Little help for the kid. I know I'm not much, shot my wife, good fucking deal, shot my best friend, another good fucking deal, a New and Improved Good Fucking Deal, you might say, but please, God, I need an assist right now.

That was no exaggeration, either. He needed more than just a little. The thick cable split off into eight thinner ones, each ending not in an earplug but in a set of headphones. If he had been playing Russian roulette back in Bobbi's shed, this was like sticking his head into a cannon and asking someone to pull the lanyard.

But it had to be done.

He picked up one set of phones, noticing again how the centers bulged inward, and then looked toward the tangle of brown, sere bodies in the far corner of the room.

Tommyknockers? Hey-nonny-nonny nonsense name or not, it was still too good for them. Cavemen from space, that was all they had been. Long claws operating machinery they made but didn't even try to understand. Toes like the spurs on fighting cocks. This thing was a malignant tumor that needed quick removal.

Please God, let my little idea be right.

Could he tap all of them? That was really the $64,000 question, wasn't it? If the 'becoming' was a closed system – something on the skin of the ship simply biodegrading into the atmosphere – the answer was probably no. But Gardener had come to think – or perhaps only to hope – that it was more, that it was an open system where the ship fed the humans. causing them to 'become,' and the humans fed the ship so it could … what? Come again, of course. Could one use the word resurrection? Sorry, no. Too noble. If he was right, this was a kind of freak-show parthenogenesis whose proper place was under tawdry carnival lights and in cheap tabloids, not in undying myths or religious creeds. An open system … a slave system … quite literally a go-fuck-yourself system.

Please, God. Little help right now.

Gardener donned the headphones.

It happened instantaneously. No sensation of pain this time, only a great white radiance. The lights in the control room flashed up to full bright. One of the walls turned into a window again, showing the smoky sky and the fringe of trees. And then another of the room's eight walls went transparent … another … another. In a space of seconds Gard seemed to be sitting in an open space with the sky above him and the trench with its silvery netting on either side. The ship seemed to have disappeared. He had a 360-degree view.

Motors kicked in one by one and cycled up to full running pitch.

A bell was ringing somewhere. Huge thudding relays kicked over one by one, making the metal deck shiver under him.

The feeling of power was incredible; he felt as though the Mississippi was running through his head at flood level. He sensed it was killing him, but that was okay.

I've tapped them all, Gardener thought faintly. Oh God, thank you God I've tapped them all! It worked!

The ship began to tremble. To vibrate. The vibration became spasms of racking shudders. The time had come.

Baring the last few of his teeth, Gardener prepared to reach down and grasp his own bootstraps.

44

He had tapped all of them, but it was Dick Allison, because of his greater evolution, and Hazel's forty or so border-watchers back in town who bore the brunt of the ship's powering-up process – these latter were all tied together neatly in one unified web, and the ship simply reached out for it.

They slumped over, blood trickling from their eyes and noses, and died as the ship sucked their brains up.

The ship drew from the Tommyknockers in the woods as well, and several of the older ones died; most, however, felt only an excruciating pain in their heads as they either knelt or lay, half-fainting, around the perimeter of the clearing. A few understood that the fire was very close now. As the wind freshened, that burning lady's fan spread … and spread. Smoke ran across the clearing in thick grayish-white clouds. The fire crackled and thundered.

45

Now, Gardener thought.

He felt something in his mind slip, catch, slip … and catch firmly. It was like a gearshift lever. Now there was pain, but it was bearable.

THEY'RE feeling most of the pain, he thought faintly.

The sides of the trench appeared to move. At first just a little. Then a little more. There was a grinding, squealing sound.

Gardener bore down, his brow locked in a tremendous frown, his eyes squeezed into slits.

The silvery mesh began to slip past, slowly but steadily. Not that it was moving at all, of course; it was the ship that was moving; that grinding noise was the sound of it pulling itself free of the bedrock which had held it so long.

Going up, he thought incoherently. Ladies' lingerie, hosiery, notions, and be sure to visit our pet department

It was gaining speed, the trench walls passing more quickly to either side. The sky widened out ahead – it was a dull gunmetal color. Sparks twisted by like formations of tiny burning birds.

He brimmed with exaltation.

Gardener thought of looking out of a subway window as the train left the station, slowly at first, then beginning to speed up – how the tile walls seemed to unroll backwards like the strip of paper in a player piano, how you could read the ads as they passed from left to right – Annie, A Chorus Line, These Times Demand The Times, Touch the Velvet. Then into the darkness where there was only movement and a vague sensation of black walls rushing past.

I'm going, yes, going now, going

A Klaxon went off three times, nearly deafening him, making him shriek; fresh blood spattered into his lap. The ship shuddered and rumbled and squealed and dragged itself out of the earth's crypt; it rose into thickening bands of smoke and hazy sunlight, its polished flank coming out of the trench, out and out and up and up, a moving metal wall. One standing right next to this insane sight might have been tempted to believe that the earth was creating a stainless-steel mountain or injecting a titanium wall into the air.

As the arc of the edge grew broader and broader, it reached the edges of the trench Bobbi and Gardener had dug steadily wider – ripping at the earth with their smart-stupid tools like half-wits trying to perform a Cesarean section.

Up and out and out and up. Rocks squealed. The earth moaned. Dust and the smoke of friction fumed from the trench. Up close the illusion of an emerging mountain or wall held, but even from such a short distance away as the edge of the clearing, the thing's circular shape was revealed ~ the titanic shape of the saucer, now emerging from the earth like a great engine. It was silent, but the clearing was filled with the coarse thunder of breaking rock. Up and out it came, cutting the trench wider and wider, its shadow gradually covering the whole clearing and burning woods.

Its leading edge – the one Bobbi had stumbled over – sheared off the top of the tallest spruce in the forest and sent it tumbling and crashing to the ground. And still the ship birthed itself from the womb which had held it so long; continued until it covered the whole sky and was reborn.

Then it stopped cutting the trench wider; a moment later there was actually a gap between the edges of the trench and the edge of the emerging ship. Its center had at last been reached and passed.

The ship rumbled out of the smoky trench, emerging into the smoky sunshine, and at last the squealing, rumbling sounds ceased, and there was daylight between the ground and the ship.

It was out.

It rose on a slanted, canted angle, and then came to the horizontal, crushing trees with its unknown, unknowable weight, bursting their trunks open. Sap sprayed the air with thin amber veils.

It moved with slow, ponderous elegance through the burning day, cutting a swath along the top of the trees like a clipper trimming a hedge. Then it hovered, as if waiting for something.

46

Now the floor below Gardener was also transparent; he seemed to be sitting in thin air, looking down at the billowing reefs of smoke coming from the edge of the woods and filling the air.

The ship was fully alive now – but he was fading fast.

His hands crept up to the earphones.

Scotty, he thought, gimme warp-speed. We're blowing this disco.

He bore down hard inside his mind, and this time the pain was thick and fibrous and sickening.

Meltdown, he thought dimly, this is what meltdown feels like.

There was a sensation of tremendous speed. A hand knocked him sprawling to the deck, although there was no sensation of multi-g force; the Tommyknockers had apparently found a way to beat that.

The ship didn't tilt; it simply rose straight up into the air.

Instead of blotting out the whole sky, it blotted out only three-quarters, then half. It grew indistinct in the smoke, its hard-edged metal-alloy reality growing fuzzy, and thus dreamy.

Then it was gone in the smoke, leaving only the dazed, drained Tommyknockers to try and find their feet before the fire could overtake them. It left the Tommyknockers, and the clearing, the lean-to . . . and the trench, like a black socket from which some poisonous fang had been drawn.

47

Gard lay on the floor of the control room, staring upward. As he watched, the smoky, chromed look of the sky disappeared. It became blue again – the brightest, clearest blue he had ever seen.

Gorgeous, he tried to say, but no word came out – not even a croak. He swallowed blood and coughed, his eyes never leaving that brilliant sky.

Its blue deepened to indigo … then to purple.

Please don't let it stop now, please

Purple to black.

And now in that blackness he saw the first hard chips of stars.

The Klaxon blared again. He felt fresh pain as the ship drew from him, and there was a sensation of increasing speed as it slipped into a higher gear.

Where are we going? Gardener thought incoherently, and then the blackness overtook him as the ship fled up and out, escaping the envelope of the earth's atmosphere as easily as it had escaped the ground which had held it for so long. Where are we – ?

Up and up, out and out – the ship rose and Jim Gardener, born in Portland, Maine, went with it.

He drifted down through black levels of unconsciousness, and shortly before the final vomiting began – a vomiting of which he was never even aware – he had a dream. A dream so real that he smiled as he lay in the middle of blackness, surrounded by space and with the earth below him like a giant blue-gray croaker marble.

He had gotten through it – somehow gotten through it. Patricia McCardle had tried to break him, but she had never quite been able to do it. Now he was back in Haven, and there was Bobbi coming down the porch steps and across the dooryard to meet him, and Peter was barking and wagging his tail, and Gard grabbed Bobbi and hugged her, because it was good to be with your friends, good to be where you belonged … good to have some safe haven to come to.

Lying on the transparent floor of the control room, already better than seventy thousand miles out in space, Jim Gardener lay in a widening pool of his own blood … and smiled.

EPILOGUE

Curl up, baby! Curl up tight! Curl up, baby! Keep it all outta sight! Undercover Keep it all outta sight, Under cover of the night.

–The Rolling Stones, 'Undercover'

0 every night and every day A little piece of you is falling away … Toe your line and play their game Let the anaesthetic cover it all Till one day they call your name: You're only waiting for the hammer to fall.

–Queen, 'Hammer to Fall'

1

Most of them died in the fire.

Not all; a hundred or more never reached the clearing at all before the ship pulled itself out of the ground and disappeared into the sky. Some, like Elt Barker, who had gone flying off his motorcycle, did not reach it because they had been wounded or killed on the way … fortunes of war. Others, like Ashley Ruvall and old Miss Timms, who was the town librarian on Tuesdays and Thursdays, were simply too late or too slow.

Nor were all of those who did reach the clearing killed. The ship had gone into the sky and the awful, draining power which had seized them dwindled away to nothing before the fire reached the clearing (although by then sparks were drifting down and many of the smaller trees at the eastern edge were blazing). Some of them managed to stumble and limp further into the woods ahead of that spreading, fiery fan. Of course, going straight west was no good to these few (Rosalie Skehan was among them, as were Frank Spruce and Rudy Barfield, brother of the late and mostly unlamented Pits), because eventually they would run out of breathable air, in spite of the prevailing winds. So it was necessary to first go west, and then turn either south or north in an effort to buttonhook around the fire-front … a desperation play where the penalty for failure was not losing the ball but being roasted to cinders in Big Injun Woods. A few – not all, but a few – actually did make it.

Most, however, died in the clearing where Bobbi Anderson and Jim Gardener had worked so long and hard – died within feet of that empty socket where something had been buried and then pulled.

They had been used roughly by a power which was much greater than the early, tentative state of their 'becoming' could cope with. The ship had reached out to the net of their minds, seized it, and used it to obey the Controller's weak but unmistakable command, which had been expressed as WARP SPEED to the ship's organic-cybernetic circuits. The words WARP SPEED were not in the ship's vocabulary, but the concept was clear.

The living lay on the ground, most unconscious, some deeply dazed. A few sat up, holding their heads and moaning, oblivious of the sparks drifting down around them. Some, mindful of the danger coming from the east, tried to get up and fell back.

One of those who did not fall back was Chip McCausland, who lived on Dugout Road with his common-law wife and about ten kids; two months and a million years ago, Bobbi Anderson had gone to Chip for more egg cartons to hold her expanding collection of batteries. Chip shambled halfway across the clearing like an old drunk and fell into the empty trench. He tumbled, shrieking, all the way to the bottom, where he died of a broken neck and a shattered skull.

Others who understood the danger of the fire and who could possibly have gotten away elected not to do so. The 'becoming' was at an end. It had ended with the departure of the ship. The purpose of their lives had been canceled. So they only sat and waited for the fire to take care of what remained of them .

2

By nightfall, there were less than two hundred people left alive in Haven. Most of the township's heavily wooded western half had burned or was burning flat. The wind grew stronger yet. The air began to change, and the remaining Tommyknockers, gasping and whey-faced, gathered in Hazel McCready's yard. Phil Golden and Bryant Brown got the big air-exchanger going. The survivors gathered around it as homesteaders might once have gathered around a stove on a bitter night. Their tortured breathing gradually ceased.

Bryant looked over at Phil.

Weather for tomorrow?

Clear skies, diminishing winds.

Marie was standing nearby, and Bryant saw her relax.

Good that's good.

And so it was … for the time being. But the winds were not going to remain calm for the rest of their lives. And with the ship gone, there was only this gadget and the twenty-four truck batteries between them and eventual strangulation.

How long? Bryant asked, and no one answered. There was only the flat shine of their frightened, inhuman eyes in the fireshot night.

3

The following morning there were twenty less. During the night John Leandro's story had broken worldwide, with all the force of a hammerfall. State and Defense Departments denied everything, but dozens of people had taken photographs as the ship rose. These photographs were persuasive … and no one could stop the flood of leaks from such 'informed sources' as frightened residents of the surrounding towns and the first arriving National Guardsmen.

The Haven border-barriers held, at least for the time being. The fire-front had advanced into Newport, where the flames were finally being brought under control.

Several Tommyknockers blew their brains out in the night.

Poley Andrews swallowed Dran-O.

Phil Golden awoke to discover that Queenie, his wife of twenty years, had jumped into Hazel McCready's dry well.

That day there were only four suicides, but the nights … the nights were worse.

By the time the Army finally broke into Haven, like inept burglars into a strong safe, later that week, there were less than eighty Tommyknockers left.

Justin Hurd shot a fat Army sergeant with a kid's Daisy air rifle that squirted green fire. The fat sergeant exploded. A scared E-4 in the APC just then roaring past Cooder's market turned the .50 caliber he was sitting behind on Justin Hurd, who was standing in front of the hardware store, wearing only a yellowing pair of Hanes underpants and his orange work-shoes.

'Fixed them woodchucks!' Justin was screaming. 'Fixed them all, you're fucking-A, you're – '

Then he was hit by some twenty .50 caliber slugs. Justin nearly exploded, too.

The E-4 puked into his gas mask and nearly choked on the stuff before someone could get a fresh one over his face.

'Someone get that popgun!' a major shouted through an electric bullhorn. His mask muffled his words but did not destroy them. 'Get it, but be careful! Pick it up by the barrel! I repeat, be extremely careful! Don't point it at anyone!'

Pointing it at someone, Gard would have said, always comes later.

4

More than a dozen were shot down on the first day of the invasion by scared, trigger-happy soldiers, kids, most of them, who pursued the Tommyknockers from house to house. After a while, some of the invaders' fear began to rub off. By afternoon they were actually having fun – they were like men driving rabbits through wheat. Two dozen more were killed before the Army doctors and Pentagon brain-trusters realized that the air outside of Haven was lethal to these freak-show mutations who had once been American taxpayers. The fact that the invaders could not breathe the air inside Haven would have seemed to have made the converse self-evident, but in all the excitement, no one was really thinking very well (Gard wouldn't have found this very surprising).

Now there were only forty or so. Most were insane; those who weren't wouldn't talk. A makeshift stockade was built in the area which passed for a town square in Haven Village – just below and to the right of the towerless town hall. They were kept there for another week, and during that period another fourteen died.

The changed air was analyzed; the machine which manufactured it was carefully studied; the failing batteries were replaced. As Bobbi had suggested, it didn't take the brain-trusters long to understand the mechanics of the device. and the underlying principles were already being studied at MIT, Cal Tech, Bell Labs, and the Shop in Virginia by scientists who were nearly vomiting with excitement.

The remaining twenty-six Tommyknockers, looking like the weary, pox raddled remnants of the final Apache tribe in existence, were flown in the controlled-environment cargo-bay of a C-140 Starlifter to a government installation in Virginia. This installation, which had once been burned to the ground by a child, was the Shop. There they were studied … and there they died, one by one.

The last survivor was Alice Kimball, the schoolteacher who was a lesbian (a fact 'Becka Paulson had learned from Jesus one hot day in July). She died on October 31st … Halloween.

5

At about the same time Queenie Golden was standing on the edge of Hazel's dry well and preparing to jump in, a nurse stepped into Hilly Brown's room to check on the boy, who had shown some faint signs of returning consciousness over the last couple of days.

She looked at the bed, and frowned. She couldn't be seeing what she was seeing -it was an illusion of some kind, a double shadow thrown onto the wall by the light from the corridor

She flipped the wall switch and took a step closer. Her mouth dropped open. It hadn't been an illusion. There were two shadows on the wall because there were two boys in the bed. They slept with their arms wrapped around each other.

'What – ?'

She took another step, her hand going unconsciously to the crucifix she wore around her neck.

One of them, of course, was Hilly Brown, his face thin and wasted, his arms seemingly no thicker than sticks, his skin nearly as white as his hospital johnny.

She didn't know the other boy, who was very young. He was wearing blue shorts and a T-shirt which read THEY CALL ME DR LOVE. His feet were black with dirt … and something about that dirt seemed unnatural to her.

'What – ?' she whispered again, and the younger boy stirred and wrapped his arms more tightly around Hilly's neck. His cheek rested against Hilly's shoulder, and she saw with something like terror that the boys looked very much alike.

She decided she had to tell Dr Greenleaf about this. Right now. She turned to leave, heart beating fast, one hand still clutching at her crucifix … and saw something that was quite impossible.

'What – ?' she whispered for the third and last time. Her eyes were very wide.

More of that strange black dirt. On the floor. Tracks on the floor. Leading to the bed. The little boy had crossed to the bed and gotten in. The two boys' facial resemblance suggested that this was Hilly's missing – and long since presumed dead – brother.

The tracks didn't come from the hall. They started in the middle of the floor.

As if the little boy had come from nowhere.

The nurse bolted from the room, screaming for Dr Greenleaf.

6

Hilly Brown opened his eyes.

'David?'

'Shut up, Hilly, I'm sleepun.'

Hilly smiled, not sure where he was, not sure when he was, sure only that many things had been wrong – just what those things had been no longer mattered, because everything was okay now. David was here, warm and solid against him.

'Me too,' Hilly said. 'We got to trade G.I Joes tomorrow.'

'Why?'

'I dunno. But we got to. I promised.'

'When?'

'I dunno.'

'As long as I get Crystal Ball,' David said, settling himself more firmly into the crook of Hilly's arm.

'Well okay.'

Silence there was a dim commotion at the nurses' station down the hall, but here there was silence, and the sweet warmth of boys.

'Hilly?'

'What?' Hilly muttered.

'It was cold where I was.'

'Was it?'

'Yes.'

'Better now?'

'Better. I love you, Hilly.'

'I love you too, David. I'm sorry.'

'For what?'

'I dunno.'

'Oh.'

David's hand groped for the blanket, found it, and pulled it up. Ninety-three million miles from the sun and a hundred parsecs from the axis-pole of the galaxy, Hilly and David Brown slept in each other's arms.

August 19th, 1982

May 19th, 1987