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 t
o 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--they 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 lightni
ng 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.