He broke off, looking in the direction of the Cherokee. There was a line of men—and one woman—standing in the trees, some armed. Ev recognized all of them... and none of them.
19
Bobbi started down the slope toward the two men. The others followed.
“Hello, Ev,” Bobbi said pleasantly enough.
Dugan raised the .45, wishing bitterly for the familiar feel of his service .357. “Stop,” he said. He didn’t like the way the gold cup muffled the word, robbed it of authority. He pulled the air mask down. “All of you. Those of you with rifles, put them down. You’re all under arrest.”
“You’re outgunned, Butch,” Newt Berringer said pleasantly.
“Damned tooting!” Beach growled. Dick Allison frowned at him.
“You better put y’mask on again, Butch,” Adley McKeen said with a lazy, mocking smile. “I think you’re losing it.”
Butch had begun to feel woozy as soon as he pulled the mask off. Hearing the steady whisper of their thoughts made it worse. He pulled it up, wondering how much air could be left in the flat-pack.
“Put it down,” Bobbi said. “And you put down the flare-gun, Ev. No one wants to hurt you two.”
“Where’s David?” Ev asked roughly. “I want him, you bitch.”
“He’s on Altair-4 with Robby the Robot and Dr. Mobius,” Kyle Archinbourg said with a titter. “He’s picnicking amid the Krell memory-banks.”
“Shut up,” Bobbi said. She suddenly felt confused, ashamed of herself, unsure. Bitch? Was that what the old man had called her? A bitch? She found herself wanting to tell him that he was confused—she wasn’t a bitch. That was her sister Anne.
A sudden, confused image came to her—the old man’s distress, Gard’s distress, even her own, all mingled. She was distracted. While she was, Ev Hillman raised the flare-pistol and fired. If Dugan had done it, they would have read his intention before he could have acted, but the old man was different.
There was a hollow fuddd! and a whoosh. Beach Jernigan exploded into white flame and staggered backward, the .22 flying out of his hands. His eyes filmed, simmered, then burst as they filled with burning phosphorus. His cheeks began to run. He opened his mouth and began to claw at his chest as the superheated air he drew in expanded and ruptured his lungs. This all happened in a space of seconds.
The line of men wavered and lost coherency as they stumbled backward, their faces blank with terror. They were hearing Beach Jernigan die inside their heads.
“Come on!” Ev shrieked at Dugan, and ran for the Cherokee. Jud Tarkington moved sluggishly to stop him. Ev swept the hot barrel of the flaregun across his face, branding his cheek and breaking his nose. Jud went flailing backward, stumbled over his own feet, went sprawling.
Beach was burning on the muddy, churned ground. He clawed weakly at his throat with one twisted, tallowy hand, shuddered, and then stilled.
Dugan got moving, running after the old man, who was clawing at the driver’s-side door of the Cherokee.
Bobbi heard Beach’s thoughts fade away, wink out, and turned to see that the old man and the cop were on the verge of getting away.
Jesus Christ you guys stop them!
That broke their paralysis, but Bobbi moved first. She got to Ev and slammed the butt of the shotgun she was carrying into the nape of the old man’s neck. Ev’s face whacked the top of the Jeep’s door. Blood sprayed from his nose and he dropped to his knees, dazed. Bobbi raised the shotgun butt to hit him again, when Dugan, standing on the other side of the Cherokee, fired the old man’s .45 through the passenger window.
Bobbi felt a large hot hammer suddenly slam her lower right shoulder. Her right arm was driven powerfully upward, and she lost her grip on the shotgun. The hammer numbed her flesh for a moment and then the heat was back, an expanding furnace glow that was baking her from the inside out.
She was thrown backward, her left hand going for the place the hammer had hit her, expecting to find blood, finding none—at least, not yet—only a hole in her shirt and in the flesh beneath. The hole had hard edges that felt hot and throbby. Blood was running down her back, a lot of it, but shock had numbed her and she felt little pain yet. Her left hand had found the small entrance wound; the exit wound was as big as a kid’s fist.
She saw Dick Allison, his face white and slack with panic
this isn’t going right Christ not right at all get him before he gets us oh you fucking snoop fucking snoop FUCKING SNOOP!
“Don’t shoot him!” Bobbi screamed. Pain exploded through her. Blood flew from her mouth in a scrawny spray. The bullet had torn her right lung open.
Allison hesitated. Before Dugan could raise the gun again, Newt and Joe Summerfield had stepped in. Dugan turned toward them, and Newt clubbed the barrel of his rifle down on the hand holding the .45 as he did. Dugan’s second shot went into the dirt.
“Hold it, Trooper, hold it or you’re dead!” John Enders, the grammar-school principal, screamed. “Four guns on you right now!”
Dugan looked around. He saw four men with rifles. And Allison, still walleyed and only one small step from unglued, looked ready to shoot the moment a squirrel farted.
They’ll kill you anyway. Might as well go out like John Wayne. Shit, they’re all crazy.
“No,” Bobbi said. She was leaning against the Jeep’s hood now. Blood trickled steadily from her mouth. The back of her shirt was soaking. “We’re not crazy. We’re not going to kill you. Check me.”
Dugan probed clumsily toward Bobbi Anderson’s mind and saw that she meant it ... but there was a catch somewhere, something he might have caught on to if he hadn’t been so new at this eerie mind-reading trick. It was like the fine print in some slick car salesman’s contract. He would think about it later. These guys were amateurs, and there might still be a chance to get away clean. If ...
Suddenly Adley McKeen ripped the gold mask off his face. Butch felt a wave of dizziness almost at once.
“I like you better this way,” Adley said. “You won’t think s’much about excapin with your goddam canned air turned off.”
Butch fought the dizziness and looked back at Bobbi Anderson. I think she’s going to die. think what you want
He straightened and took a step backward as that unexpected thought filled his head. He looked at her more closely.
“What about the old man?” he asked flatly.
“Not—” Bobbi coughed, spraying more blood. Bubbles formed on her nostrils. Kyle and Newt started toward her. Bobbi waved them back. “Not your business. You and me are going to get in the front of the Jeep. You drive. There’ll be three men with guns in the back, if you think of trying anything funny.”
“I want to know what’s going to happen to the old man,” Butch repeated.
Bobbi raised her gun with a great effort. She brushed her sweaty hair away from her eyes with her left hand. Her right dangled uselessly by her side. It was as if she wanted Dugan to see her very clearly, to measure her. Butch did. The coldness he saw in her eyes was real.
“I don’t want to kill you,” she said softly. “You know that. But if you say one more word, I’ll have these men execute you right here. We’ll bury you next to Beach and take our chances.”
Ev Hillman was struggling to his feet. He looked dazed, not sure where he was. He armed blood off his forehead like sweat.
Another wave of dizziness washed through Butch, and a thought of infinite comfort came to him: This is a dream. All just a dream.
Bobbi smiled without humor. “Think that if you want,” she said. “Just get in the Jeep.”
Butch got in and slid across behind the wheel. Bobbi started around to the passenger side. She began coughing again, spraying blood, and her knees buckled. Two of the others had to help her.
Never mind the “think.” I know she’s going to die.
Bobbi turned her head and looked at him. That clear mental voice
(think what you want)
filled his head again.
A
rchinbourg, Summerfield, and McKeen crammed into the back seat of the Cherokee.
“Drive,” Bobbi whispered. “Slow.”
Butch began to back up. He would see Everett Hillman once more but would not remember—later, most of Butch’s mind would have been rubbed away like chalk from a blackboard. The old man stood there in the sunlight, that stupendous saucer-shape behind him. He was surrounded by big men, and five feet to his left, there was something on the ground that looked like a charred log.
You didn’t do too bad, old man. In your day you must have been quite a high rider... and you sure as hell weren’t crazy.
Hillman looked up and shrugged, as if to say: Well, we tried.
More dizziness. Butch’s sight wavered.
“I’m not sure I can drive,” he said, his voice seeming to boom into his ears from a great distance. “That thing ... it makes me sick.”
“Is there any air left in his little kit, Adley?” Bobbi whispered. Her face was ashy pale. The blood on her lips seemed very red by comparison.
“Face mask’s hissin a little.”
“Put it on him.”
A moment after it was jammed firmly over Butch’s mouth and nose again, he began to improve.
“Enjoy it while you can,” Bobbi whispered, and then passed out.
20
“Ashes to ashes... dust to dust. Thus we commit the body of our friend Ruth McCausland to the ground, and her soul to a loving God.”
The mourners had moved on to the pretty little graveyard on the hill west of the village. They stood loosely gathered around an open grave. Ruth’s casket was suspended over it on runners. There were far fewer mourners here than there had been in the church; many of the out-of-towners, either headachy and nauseated or glowing feverishly with strange new ideas, had taken the chance afforded by the intermission between acts to slip away.
The flowers at the head of the grave ruffled gently in a fresh summer breeze. As the Rev. Goohringer raised his head, he saw a bright yellow rose go twirling down the grassy hill. Beyond and below Homeland’s weatherbeaten white fence, he could see the town-hall clock-tower. It wavered slightly in the bright air, like something seen through a heat-haze. Still, Goohringer thought, it was a damned good illusion. These strangers in town had seen the best magic-lantern slide in history and didn’t even know it.
His eyes met Frank Spruce’s for just an instant—he read relief clearly in Frank’s eyes, and he supposed Frank could see it just as clearly in his own. Many of the outsiders would go back to wherever they came from and tell their friends that Ruth’s death had rocked the little community to its foundations; they had hardly seemed to be there at all. What none of them knew, Goohringer reflected, was that they had been following the events near the ship with most of their attention. For a while things out there had gone very badly. Now they were under control again, but Bobbi Anderson might die if they couldn’t get her back to the shed in time, and that was bad.
Still, things were under control. The “becoming” would continue. That was the only important consideration.
Goohringer held his Bible open in one hand. Its pages fluttered a little in the wind. Now he raised the other hand in the air. The mourners standing around Ruth’s grave lowered their heads.
“May the Lord bless you and keep you; may the Lord lift up His face and make it shine upon you and give you peace. Amen.”
The mourners raised their heads. Goohringer smiled. “There’ll be refreshments in the library, for those of you who’d care to stop by for a while and remember Ruth,” he said.
Act II was over.
21
Kyle reached gently into Bobbi’s pants pocket and probed until he found her keyring. He worked it out, picked through the keys, and found the one that opened the padlock on the shed door. He inserted the key in the lock but didn’t turn it.
Adley and Joe Summerfield were covering Dugan, who was still behind the wheel of the Jeep. Butch was finding it harder and harder to pull air from the mask. The needle on the supply dial had been in the red for five minutes now. Kyle rejoined them.
“Go check the drunk,” Kyle said to Joe Summerfield. “Looks like he’s still passed out, but I don’t trust the fucker. ”
Joe crossed the side yard, climbed the porch, and examined Gardener carefully, wincing at his sour breath. This time there really was no sham; Gardener had gotten a fresh bottle of Scotch and had drunk himself into oblivion.
As the two other men stood waiting for Joe to come back, Kyle said: “Bobbi is most likely going to die. If she does, I’m going to get rid of that lush first thing.”
Joe came back. “He’s out.”
Kyle nodded and turned the key in the shed’s padlock as Joe joined Adley in keeping the cop covered. Kyle pulled the lock free and opened the door partway. Brilliant green light poured out—it was so bright it seemed to dim the sunlight. There was an odd liquid churning sound. It was almost (but not quite) the sound of machinery.
Kyle took an involuntary step backward, his face tightening momentarily into an expression of fright, revulsion, and awe. The smell alone—thick and fetid and organic—was damn near enough to knock a man over. Kyle understood—they all did—that the two-hearted nature of the Tommyknockers was now growing together. The dance of deception was nearly done.
Liquid churning sounds, that smell... and then another sound. Something like the feeble, bubbly yap of a drowning dog.
Kyle had been in the shed twice before, but remembered little about it. He knew, of course, that it was an important place, a fine place, and that it had speeded his own “becoming.” But the human part of him was still almost superstitiously afraid of it.
He came back to Adley and Joe.
“We can’t wait for the others. We’ve got to get Bobbi in there right now if there’s going to be any chance of saving her at all.”
The cop, he saw, had taken off the mask. It lay, used up, on the seat beside him. That was good. As Adley had said out in the woods, he would think less about escaping without his canned air.
“Keep your gun on the cop,” Kyle said. “Joe, help me with Bobbi.”
“Help you take her into the shed?”
“No, help me take her to the Rumford Zoo so she can see the fucking lion!” Kyle shouted. “Of course, the shed!”
“I don’t... I don’t think I want to go in there. Not just now.” Joe looked from that green light back to Kyle, a shamed, slightly sickened smile on his lips.
“I’ll help you,” Adley said softly. “Bobbi’s a good old sport. Be a shame if she croaked before we got to the end of it.”
“All right,” Kyle said. “Cover the cop,” he said to Joe. “And if you screw up, I swear to God I’ll kill you.”
“I won’t, Kyle,” Joe said. That shamed grin still hung on his mouth, but there was no mistaking the relief in his eyes. “I sure won’t. I’ll watch him good.”
“See that you do,” Bobbi said feebly. It startled them all.
Kyle looked at her, then back to Joe. Joe flinched away from the naked contempt in Kyle’s eyes... but he didn’t look toward the shed, toward that light, those churning, squelching sounds.
“Come on, Adley,” Kyle said at last. “Let’s get Bobbi in there. Soonest started, soonest done.”
Adley McKeen, fiftyish, balding, and stocky, flagged for only a moment. “Is it ...” he licked his lips. “Kyle, is it bad? In there?”
“I don’t really remember,” Kyle said. “All I know is I felt wonderful when I came out. Like I knew more. Could do more.”
“Oh,” Adley said in an almost nonexistent voice.
“You’ll be one of us, Adley,” Bobbi said in that same feeble voice.
Adley’s face, although still frightened, firmed up again.
“All right,” he said.
“Let’s try not to hurt her,” Kyle said.
They got Bobbi into the shed. Joe Summerfield turned his attention briefly away from Dugan to watch them disappear into that glow—an
d it seemed to him that they really did disappear rather than just step inside; it was like watching objects disappear into a dazzling corona.
His lapse was brief, but it was all the old Butch Dugan would have needed. Even now he saw the opportunity; he was simply unable to use it. No strength in his legs. Churning nausea in his stomach. His head thudded and pounded.
I don’t want to go in there.
Nothing he could do about it if they decided to drag him in, though. He was as weak as a kitten.
He drifted.
After a while he heard voices and raised his head. It took an effort, because it seemed as if someone had poured cement into one of his ears until his head was full of it. The rest of the posse was pushing out of the tangle that was Bobbi Anderson’s garden. They were shoving the old man roughly along. Hillman’s feet tangled and he fell down. One of them—Tarkington—kicked him to his feet, and Butch got the run of Tarkington’s thoughts clearly: he was outraged at what he thought of as the murder of Beach Jernigan.
Hillman stumbled on toward the Cherokee. The shed door opened then. Kyle Archinbourg and Adley McKeen came out. McKeen no longer looked frightened—his eyes were glowing and a big toothless grin stretched his lips. But that wasn’t all. Something else...
Then Butch realized.
In the few minutes the two men had been inside there, a large portion of Adley McKeen’s hair appeared to have disappeared.
“I’ll go in anytime, Kyle,” he was saying. “No problem.” There was more, but now everything wanted to drift away again. Butch let it.
The world dimmed out until there was nothing left but those churning sounds and the afterimage of green light on his eyelids.
22
Act III.
They sat in the town library—the name would be changed to the Ruth McCausland Memorial Library, all agreed. They drank coffee, iced tea, Coca-Cola, ginger ale. They drank nothing that was alcoholic. Not at Ruth’s wake. They ate tiny triangular tuna-fish sandwiches, they ate similar ones containing a paste of cream cheese and olives, they ate sandwiches containing a paste of cream cheese and pimiento. They ate cold cuts and a Jell-O salad with shreds of carrot suspended in it like fossils in amber.
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