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 alone, 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-slishhh-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 Li’l 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 hurrrrrrt!
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.
Slishhh-slishhh-slishhh.
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.
He looked at the coaxial cable coming out of the woman’s forehead, the old man’s eye. He watched Peter’s . legs moving in those big dreamy strides and wondered just how Bobbi had gotten the dog hairs on her dress—had she been giving Peter the equivalent of an interstellar oil change? Had she been perhaps overcome by a simple human emotion? Love? Remorse? Guilt? Had she perhaps hugged
her dog before filling that cabinet up with liquid again?
There are the batteries. Organic Delcos and Evereadys, you might say. They’re sucking them dry. Sucking them like vampires.
A new emotion crept through his fear and bewilderment and revulsion. It was fury, and Gardener welcomed it.
They make it hurrrt ... make it hurrrt ... make it hurrrrrr—
Her voice cut off abruptly. The dull hum of the transformer changed pitch; cycled down even lower. The light coming out of the crate faded a little. He thought she had fallen unconscious, thereby lowering the machine’s total output by x number of ... what? Volts? Dynes? Ohms? Who the fuck knew?
End it, son. Save my grandson and then end it.
For a moment the old man’s voice filled his head, perfectly clear and perfectly lucid. Then it was gone. The old man’s eye slipped closed.
The green light from the machine grew paler yet. They woke up when I came in, he thought feverishly. The anger still pounded and drilled at his mind. He spat out a tooth almost without realizing he had done so. Even Peter woke up a little. Now they’ve gone back to whatever state they were in ... before. Sleeping? No. Not sleeping. Something else. Organic cold storage.
Do batteries dream of electric sheep? he thought, and uttered a cracked cackle.
He moved backward, away from the transformer,
(what exactly is it transforming how why)
away from the shower stalls, the cables. His eyes turned toward the array of gadgets ranged against the far wall. The wringer washer had something mounted on top of it, something that looked like the boomerang TV antennas you sometimes saw on the backs of big limos. Behind the washer and to its left was an old-fashioned treadle sewing machine with a glass funnel mounted on its sidewheel. Kerosene drums with hoses and steel arms ... a butcher knife, he saw, had been welded to the end of one of those arms.
Christ, what is all this? What is it for?
A voice whispered: Maybe it’s protection, Gard. In case the Dallas Police show up early. It’s the Tommyknocker Yard-Sale Army—old washing machines with cellular antennas. Electrolux vacuums, chainsaws on wheels. Name it and claim it, baby.
He felt his sanity tottering. His eyes were drawn relentlessly back to Peter, Peter with most of his skull peeled away, Peter with a bunch of wires plugged into what remained of his head. His brain looked like a pallid veal roast with a bunch of temperature probes stuck into it.
Peter with his legs racing dreamily through that liquid, as if running away.
Bobbi, he thought in despair and fury, how could you do it to Peter? Christ! The people were bad, awful—but Peter was somehow worse. It was a curse piled on top of an obscenity. Peter, his legs loping and loping, as if running away in his dreams.
Batteries. Living batteries.
He backed into something. There was a dull metallic thump. He turned around and saw another shower cabinet, little blossoms of rust on its sides, its front door gone. Holes had been punched in the back. Wires had been threaded through these; they now hung limply down, large-bore steel plugs at their tips.
For you, Gard! his brain yammered. This plug’s for you, like the beer commercials say! They’ll open up the back of your skull, maybe short out your motor-control centers first so you can’t move, and then they’ll drill—drill for the place where they get their power. This plug’s for you, for all you do ... all ready and waiting! Wow! Neato-keeno!
He snatched for his thoughts, which were tightening into a hysterical spiral, and brought them under control. Not for him; at least, not originally. This had already been used. There was that faint smell, bland and sudsy. Streaks of dried gunk on the inner walls—the last traces of that thick green liquid. It looks like the Wizard of Oz’s semen, he thought.
Do you mean Bobbi’s got her sister floating in a big sperm bank?
That weird cackle escaped him again. He pressed the heel of his hand against his mouth, pressed hard, to stifle it.
He looked down and saw a pair of tan shoes tossed beside the shower cabinet. He picked one up, saw splashes of dried blood on it.
Bobbi’s. Her one pair of good shoes. Her “going-out” shoes. She was wearing them when she left for the funeral that day.
The other shoe was also bloody.
Gard looked behind the shower cabinet and saw the rest of the clothing Bobbi had been wearing that day.
The blood, all that blood.
He didn’t want to touch the blouse, but the shape under it was too clear. He pinched as small a piece of it as he could between his fingers and peeled it up from Bobbi’s good charcoal-colored skirt.
Underneath the shirt was a gun. It was the biggest, oldest-looking gun Gardener had ever seen except for pictures in a book. After a moment he picked the gun up and rolled the cylinder. There were still four rounds in it. Two gone. Gardener was willing to bet that one of those rounds had gone into Bobbi.
He pushed the cylinder back into place and stuck it in his belt. At once a voice spoke up in his mind. Shot your wife ... good fucking deal.
Never mind. The gun might come in handy.
When they see it’s gone, it’s you they’ll come looking for, Gard. I thought you already came to that conclusion.
No; that was one thing he didn’t think he had to worry about. They would have noticed the changed words on the computer screen, but these clothes hadn’t been touched since Bobbi took them off (or since they took them off her, which was probably more likely).
They must be too exalted when they get in here to bother much about housekeeping, he thought. Damn good thing there’s no flies.
He touched the gun again. This time the voice in his head was silent. It had decided, perhaps, that there were no wives here to worry about.
If you have to shoot Bobbi, will you be able to?
That was a question he couldn’t answer.
Slishhh-slishhh-slishhh.
How long had Bobbi and her company been gone? He didn’t know; hadn’t the slightest idea. Time had no meaning in here; the old man was right. This was hell. And did Peter still respond to his strange master’s caress when she came in here?
His stomach was on the edge of revolt
He had to get out—get out right now. He felt like a creature in a fairy-tale, Bluebeard’s wife in the secret room, Jack grubbing in the giant’s pile of gold. He felt ripe for discovery. But he held the stiff, bloody garment in front of him as if frozen. Not as if; he was frozen.
Where’s Bobbi?
She had a sunstroke.
Hell of a strange sunstroke that had soaked her blouse with blood. Gardener had retained a morbid, sickish interest in guns and the damage they could do to the human body. If she had been shot with the big old gun now in his own belt, he guessed Bobbi had no right to be alive—even if she had been taken quickly to a hospital which specialized in the emergency treatment of gunshot wounds, she probably would have died.
They brought me in here when I was blown apart, but the Tommyknockers fixed me up right smart.
Not for him. The old shower stall was not for him. Gardener had a feeling that he would be put out of the way with more finality. The shower stall had been for Bobbi.
They had brought her in here, and ... what?
Why, hooked her up to their batteries, of course. Not Anne, she had not been here then. But to Peter ... and Hillman.
He dropped the blouse ... then forced himself to pick it up again and put it back on top of the skirt. He didn’t know how much of the real world they noticed when they got in here (not much, he guessed) but he didn’t want to take any extra chances.
He looked at the holes in the back of the cabinet, the dangling cords with the steel plugs at their tips.
The green light had begun to pulse brighter and more rapidly again. He turned around. Anne’s eyes were open again. Her short hair floated around her head. He could still see that unending hate in her eyes, now mixed with horror and growing strangeness.
Now there were bubbles.
They floated up from her mouth in a brief, thick stream.
Thought/sound exploded in his head.
She was screaming.
Gardener fled.
7
Real terror is the most physically debilitating of all emotions. It saps the endocrines, dumps muscle-tightening organic drugs into the bloodstream, races the heart, exhausts the mind. Jim Gardener staggered away from Bobbi Anderson’s shed on rubber legs, his eyes bugging, his mouth hanging stupidly open (the tongue lolled in one corner like a dead thing), his bowels hot and full, his stomach cramped.
It was hard to think beyond the crude, powerful images which stuttered on and off in his mind like barroom neon: those bodies hung up on hooks, like bugs impaled on pins by cruel, bored children; Peter’s relentlessly moving legs; the bloody blouse with the bullet-hole in it; the plugs; the old-fashioned washing machine topped with the boomerang antenna. Strongest of all was the image of that short, thick stream of bubbles emerging from Anne Anderson’s mouth as she screamed inside his head.
He got into the house, rushed into the bathroom, and knelt in front of the toilet bowl, only to discover he couldn’t puke. He wanted to puke. He thought of maggoty hot-dogs, moldy pizza, pink lemonade with hairballs floating in it; finally he rammed two fingers down his throat. He was able to trip a simple gag reaction by this last, but no more. He couldn’t sick it up. Simple as that.
If I can’t, I’ll go crazy.
Fine, go crazy if you have to. But first do what you have to do. Keep it together that long. And just by the way, Gard, do you have any more questions about what you should do?
Not anymore he didn’t. Peter’s relentlessly moving legs had convinced him. That stream of bubbles had convinced him. He wondered how he could have hesitated so long in the face of a power that was so obviously corrupting, so obviously dark.
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