Stephen King

by The Tommyknockers (v5)

  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.”

  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 walkietalkie, 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—atleast 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 office 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 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 predinner 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 noseplugs. 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 than Gardener, but she wasn’t getting anything either. Gard gestured for her 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 called a tunnel. Gard 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 semicircular 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—whatwould 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.