The Tommyknockers (81 page)

“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, Gard, 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 singing
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.

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 smoky 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 hell 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.

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 do? Grab Bobbi's ax and make like Jack Nicholson in
The Shining?
He could see it. Smash, crash, bash:
Heeeeeere's GARDENER!
Except that might be a bit hard to cover up before the pilgrims came back from the Viewing of the Sacred Hatch.

He stood in Bobbi's workshop, feeling time slip 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
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.

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 klieg 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 eave, 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.

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 okay—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.

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—

Slishh-slishh-slishhh.

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.