by Stephen King
Only Pimli wasn’t around this morning as “’At’s Amore”
(interpreted by the Billion Bland Strings) rose from Algul Siento’s hidden speakers. The Master was walking up the Mall, now in the company of Jakli, a ravenhead taheen tech, as well as his Security Chief. They were discussing the Deep Telemetry, and Pimli had no thought at all for the house he had left behind for the last time. Certainly it never crossed his mind that Tammy Kelly (still in her nightgown) and Tassa of Sonesh (still in his silk sleep-shorts) were on the verge of battle about the pantry-stock.
“Look at this!” she cried. They were standing in the kitchen, which was deeply gloomy. It was a large room, and all but three of the electric lights were burned out. There were only a few bulbs left in Stores, and they were earmarked for The Study.
“Look at what?” Sulky. Pouty. And was that the remains of lip paint on his cunning little Cupid’s-bow of a mouth? She thought it was.
“Do’ee not see the empty spots on the shelves?” she asked indignantly. “Look! No more baked beans-”
“He don’t care beans for beans, as you very well know-”
“No tuna-fish, either, and will’ee tell me he don’t eat that?
He’d eat it until it ran out his ears, and thee knows it!”
“Can you not-”
“No more soup-”
“Balls there ain’t!” he cried. “Look there, and there, and th-n
“Not the Campbell’s Tamater he likes best,” she overrode him, drawing closer in her excitement. Their arguments had never developed into outright fisticuffs before, but Tassa had an idea this might be the day. And if it were so, it were fine-oh!
He’d love to sock this fat old run-off-at-the-mouth bitch in the eye. “Do you see any Campbell’s Tamater, Tassa o’ wherever-yougrew?”
“Can you not bring back a box of tins yourself?” he asked, taking his own step forward; now they were nearly nose-tonose, and although the woman was large and the young man was willowy, the Master’s houseboy showed no sign of fear.
Tammy blinked, and for the first time since Tassa had shuffled into the kitchen-wanting no more than a cup of coffee, say thanks-an expression that was not irritation crossed her face.
It might have been nervousness; it might even have been fear.
“Are you so weak in die arms, Tammy of wherever-^ow-grew, that you can’t carry a box of soup-tins out of Stores?”
She drew herself up to her full height, stung. Her jowls
(greasy and a-glow with some sort of night-cream) quivered with self-righteousness. “Fetching pantry supplies has ever been the houseboy’sjob! And thee knows it very well!”
“That don’t make it a law that you can’t help out. I was mowing his lawn yest’y, as surely you know; I spied you sitting a-kitchen with a glass of cold tea, didn’t I, just as comfortable as old Ellie in your favorite chair.”
She bristled, losing any fear she might have had in her outrage. “I have as much right to rest as anyone else! I’d just warshed the floor-”
“Looked to me like Dobbie was doing it,” he said. Dobbie was the sort of domestic robot known as a “house-elf,” old but still quite efficient.
Tammy grew hotter still. “What would you know about house chores, you mincy little queer?”
Color flushed Tassa’s normally pale cheeks. He was aware that his hands had rolled themselves into fists, but only because he could feel his carefully cared-for nails biting into his palms.
It occurred to him that this sort of petty bitch-and-whistle was downright ludicrous, coming as it did with the end of everything stretching blackjust beyond them; they were two fools sparring and catcalling on the very lip of the abyss, but he didn’t care. Fat old sow had been sniping at him for years, and now here was the real reason. Here it was, finally naked and out in the open.
“Is that what bothers thee about me, sai?” he enquired sweetly. “That I kiss the pole instead of plug the hole, no more than that?”
Now there were torches instead of roses flaring in Tammy Kelly’s cheeks. She’d not meant to go so far, but now that she had-that they had, for if there was to be a fight, it was his fault as much as hers-she wouldn’t back away. Was damned if she would.
“Master’s Bible says queerin be a sin,” she told him righteously.
“I’ve read it myself, so I have. Book of Leviticracks, Chapter Three, Verse-”
“And what do Leviticracks say about the sin of gluttony?” he enquired. “What do it say about a woman with tits as big as bolsters and an ass as big as a kitchen ta-”
“Never mind the size o’ my ass, you little cocksucker!”
“At least I can get a man,” he said sweetly, “and don’t have to lie abed with a dustclout-”
“Don’t you dare!” she cried shrilly. “Shut your foul mouth before I shut it for you!”
“-to get rid of the cobwebs in my cunny so I can-”
“I’ll knock thy teeth out if thee doesn’t-”
“-finger my tired old pokeberry pie.” Then something which would offend her even more deeply occurred to him.
“My tired, dirty old pokeberry pie!”
She balled her own fists, which were considerably bigger than his. “At least I’ve never-”
“Go no further, sai, I beg you.”
“-never had some man’s nasty old… nasty… old…”
She trailed off, looking puzzled, and sniffed the air. He sniffed it himself, and realized the aroma he was getting wasn’t new. He’d been smelling it almost since the argument started, but now it was stronger.
Tammy said, “Do you smell-”
“-smoke!” he finished, and they looked at each other with alarm, their argument forgotten perhaps only five seconds before it would have come to blows. Tammy’s eyes fixed on the sampler hung beside the stove. There were similar ones all over Algul Siento, because most of the buildings which made up the compound were wood. Old wood, WE ALL MUST WORK TOGETHER TO CREATE A FIRE-FREE ENVIRONMENT, it Said.
Somewhere close by-in the back hallway-one of the still-working smoke detectors went off with a loud and frightening bray. Tammy hurried into the pantry to grab the fireextinguisher in there.
“Get the one in the library!” she shouted, and Tassa ran to do it without a word of protest. Fire was the one thing they all feared.
FIVE
Gaskie O’Tego, the Deputy Security Chief, was standing in the foyer of Feveral Hall, the dormitory directly behind Damli House, talking with James Cagney. Cagney was a redhaired cantoi who favored Western-style shirts and boots that added three inches to his actual five-foot-five. Both had clipboards and were discussing certain necessary changes in the following week’s Damli security. Six of the guards who’d been assigned to the second shift had come down with what Gangli, die compound doctor, said was a hume disease called “momps.” Sickness was common enough in Thunderclap-it was the air, as everyone knew, and die poisoned leavings of the old people-but it was ever inconvenient. Gangli said they were lucky there had never been an actual plague, like the Black Death or the Hot Shivers.
Beyond them, on the paved court behind Damli House, an early-morning basketball game was going on, several taheen and can-toi guards (who would be officially on duty as soon as the horn blew) against a ragtag team of Breakers. Gaskie watched Joey Rastosovich take a shot from way downtown-swish. Trampas snared the ball and took it out of bounds, briefly lifting his cap to scratch beneath it. Gaskie didn’t care much for Trampas, who had an entirely inappropriate liking for the talented animals who were his charges. Closer by, sitting on the dorm’s steps and also watching the game, was Ted Brautigan. As always, he was sipping at a can of Nozz-A-La.
“Well fuggit,” James Cagney said, speaking in the tones of a man who wants to be finished with a boring discussion. “If you don’t mind taking a couple of humies off the fence-walk for a day or two-”
“What’s Brautigan doing up so early?” Gaskie interrupted.
“He almost never rolls
out until noon. That kid he pals around with is the same way. What’s his name?”
“Earnshaw?” Brautigan also palled around with that halfbright Ruiz, but Ruiz was no kid.
Gaskie nodded. “Aye, Earnshaw, that’s the one. He’s on duty this morning. I saw him earlier in The Study.”
Cag (as his friends called him) didn’t give a shit why Brautigan was up with the birdies (not that there were many birdies left, at least in Thunderclap); he only wanted to get this roster business settled so he could stroll across to Damli and get a plate of scrambled eggs. One of the Rods had found fresh chives somewhere, or so he’d heard, and-
“Do’ee smell something, Cag?” Gaskie O’Tego asked suddenly.
The can-toi who fancied himself James Cagney started to enquire if Gaskie had farted, then rethought this humorous riposte. For in fact he did smell something. Was it smoke?
Cag thought it was.
SIX
Ted sat on the cold steps of Feveral Hall, breathing the badsmelling air and listening to the humes and the taheen trash-talk each other from the basketball court. (Not the can-toi; they refused to indulge in such vulgarity.) His heart was beating hard but not fast. If there was a Rubicon that needed crossing, he realized, he’d crossed it some time ago. Maybe on the night the low men had hauled him back from Connecticut, more likely on the day he’d approached Dinky with the idea of reaching out to the gunslingers that Sheemie Rviiz insisted were nearby. Now he was wound up (to the max, Dinky would have said), but nervous?
No. Nerves, he thought, were for people who still hadn’t entirely made up their minds.
Behind him he heard one idiot (Gaskie) asking t’other idiot (Cagney) if he smelled something, and Ted knew for sure that Haylis had done his part; the game was afoot. Ted reached into his pocket and brought out a scrap of paper.
Written on it was a line of perfect pentameter, although hardly Shakespearian: GO SOUTH WITH YOUR HANDS UP, YOU WON’T BE HURT.
He looked at this fixedly, preparing to broadcast.
Behind him, in the Feveral rec room, a smoke detector went off with a loud donkey-bray.
Here we go, here we go, he thought, and looked north, to where he hoped the first shooter-the woman-was hiding.
SEVEN
Three-quarters of the way up the Mall toward Damli House,
Master Prentiss stopped with Finli on one side of him and Jakli on the other. The horn still hadn’t gone off, but there was a loud braying sound from behind them. They had no more begun to turn toward it when another bray began from the other end of the compound-the dormitory end.
“What the devil-” Pimli began.
–is that was how he meant to finish, but before he could,
Tammy Kelly came rushing out through the front door of Warden’s House, with Tassa, his houseboy, scampering along right behind her. Both of them were waving their arms over their heads.
“Fire!” Tammy shouted. “Fire!”
Fire? But that’s impossible, Pimli thought. For if that’s the smoke detector Fm hearing in my house and also the smoke detector I’m hearing from one of the dorms, then surely-
“It must be a false alarm,” he told Finli. “Those smoke detectors do that when their batteries are-”
Before he could finish this hopeful assessment, a side window of Warden’s House exploded outward. The glass was followed by an exhalation of orange flame.
“Gods!” Jakli cried in his buzzing voice. “It wfire!”
Pimli stared with his mouth open. And suddenly yet another smoke-and-fire alarm went off, this one in a series of loud, hiccuping whoops. Good God, sweet Jesus, that was one of the Damli House alarms! Surely nothing could be wrong at-
Finli O’Tego grabbed his arm. “Boss,” he said, calmly enough. “We’ve got real trouble.”
Before Pimli could reply, the horn went off, signaling the change of shifts. And suddenly he realized how vulnerable they would be for the next seven minutes or so. Vulnerable to all sorts of things.
He refused to admit the word attack into his consciousness.
At least not yet.
EIGHT
Dinky Earnshaw had been sitting in the overstuffed easy chair for what seemed like forever, waiting impatiently for the party to begin. Usually being in The Study cheered him up-hell, cheered everybody up, it was the “good-mind” effect-bvit today he only felt the wires of tension inside him winding tighter and tighter, pulling his guts into a ball. He was aware of taheen and can-toi looking down from the balconies every now and again, riding the good-mind wave, but didn’t have to worry about being progged by the likes of them; from that, at least, he was safe.
Was that a smoke alarm? From Feveral, perhaps?
Maybe. But maybe not, too. No one else was looking around.
Wait, he told himself. Ted told you this would be the hard part, didn’t he? And at least Sheemie’s out of the way. Sheemie’s safe in his room, and Corbett Hall’s safe from fire. So calm down. Relax.
That was the bray of a smoke alarm. Dinky was sure of it.
Well… almost sure.
A book of crossword puzzles was open in his lap. For the last fifty minutes he’d been filling one of the grids with nonsenseletters, ignoring the definitions completely. Now, across the top, he printed this in large dark block letters: GO SOUTH WITH YOUR HANDS UP, YOU WON’T BE HU
That was when one of the upstairs fire alarms, probably the one in the west wing, went off with a loud, warbling bray. Several of the Breakers, jerked rudely from a deep daze of concentration, cried out in surprised alarm. Dinky also cried out, but in relief. Relief and something more. Joy? Yeah, very likely it was joy. Because when the fire alarm began to bray, he’d felt the powerful hum of good-mind snap. The eerie combined force of the Breakers had winked out like an overloaded electrical circuit. For the moment, at least, the assault on the Beam had stopped.
Meanwhile, he had a job to do. No more waiting. He stood up, letting the crossword magazine tumble to the Turkish rug, and threw his mind at the Breakers in the room. It wasn’t hard; he’d been practicing almost daily for this moment, with Ted’s help. And if it worked? If the Breakers picked it up, rebroadcasting it and amping what Dinky could only suggest to the level of a command? Why then it would rise. It would become the dominant chord in a new good-mind gestalt.
At least that was the hope.
(IT’s A FIRE FOLKS THERE’s A FIRE IN THE BUILDING)
As if to underscore this, there was a soft bang-and-tinkle as something imploded and the first puff of smoke seeped from the ventilator panels. Breakers looked around with wide, dazed eyes, some getting to their feet.
And Dinky sent:
(DON’T WORRY DON’T PANIC ALL IS WELL WALK UP THE)
He sent a perfect, practiced image of the north stairway, then added Breakers. Breakers walking up the north stairway.
Breakers walking through the kitchen. Crackle of fire, smell of smoke, but both coming from the guards’ sleeping area in the west wing. And would anyone question the truth of this mental broadcast? Would anyone wonder who was beaming it out, or why? Not now. Now they were only scared. Now they were wanting someone to tell them what to do, and Dinky Earnshaw was that someone.
(NORTH STAIRWAY WALK UP THE NORTH STAIRWAY WALK OUT ONTO THE BACK LAWN)
And it worked. They began to walk that way. Like sheep following a ram or horses following a stallion. Some were picking up the two basic ideas
(NO PANIC NO PANIC)
(NORTH STAIRWAY NORTH STAIRWAY)
and rebroadcasting them. And, even better, Dinky heard it from above, too. From the can-toi and the taheen who had been observing from the balconies.
No one ran and no one panicked, but the exodus up the north stairs had begun.
NINE
Susannah sat astride the SCT in the window of the shed where she’d been concealed, not worrying about being seen now.
Smoke detectors-at least three of them-were yowling. A fire alarm was whooping even more loudly; that
one was from Damli House, she was quite sure. As if in answer, a series of loud electronic goose-honks began from the Pleasantville end of the compound. This was joined by a multitude of clanging bells.
With all that happening to their south, it was no wonder that the woman north of the Devar-Toi saw only the backs of the three guards in the ivy-covered watchtowers. Three didn’t seem like many, but it was five per cent of the total. A start.
Susannah looked down the barrel of her gun at the one in her sights and prayed. God grant me true aim… true aim… Soon.
It would be soon.
TEN
Finli grabbed the Master’s arm. Pimli shook him off and started toward his house again, staring unbelievingly at the smoke that was now pouring out of all the windows on the left side.
“Boss!” Finli shouted, renewing his grip. “Boss, never mind that! It’s the Breakers we have to worry about! The Breakers!”
It didn’t get through, but the shocking warble of the Damli Hovise fire alarm did. Pimli turned back in that direction, and for a moment he met Jakli’s beady litde bird’s eyes. He saw nothing in them but panic, which had the perverse but welcome effect of steadying Pimli himself. Sirens and buzzers everywhere. One of them was a regular pulsing honk he’d never heard before. Coming from the direction of Pleasantville?
“Come on, boss!” Finli O’Tego almost pleaded. “We have to make sure the Breakers are okay-”
“Smoke!” Jakli cried, fluttering his dark (and utterly useless) wings. “Smoke from Damli House, smoke from Feveral, too!”
Pimli ignored him. He pulled the Peacemaker from the docker’s clutch, wondering briefly what premonition had caused him to put it on. He had no idea, but he was glad for the weight of the gun in his hand. Behind him, Tassa was yelling-
Tammy was, too-but Pimli ignored the pair of them. His heart was beating furiously, but he was calm again. Finli was right. The Breakers were the important thing right now. Making sure they didn’t lose a third of their trained psychics in some sort of electrical fire or half-assed act of sabotage. He nodded at his Security Chief and they began to run toward Damli House with Jakli squawking and flapping along behind them like a refugee from a Warner Bros, cartoon. Somewhere up there,