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, f**king 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.