Stephen King - The Tommyknockers

The Shed People also suggested that a number of Tommyknockers go back to the village. Hazel McCready was designated to go with them-she would be the representative of the more advanced Tommyknockers. The stuff protecting the borders would run pretty much without supervision until the batteries were dead. In the village there were more discretionary gadgets which could be sent into the woods to form a protective net around the ship, in case the drunk made a break for it.

And there was one other. very important gadget which needed guarding on the off-chance that anyone-anyone at all-should break through. This gadget sat in Hazel McCready's back yard like a one-ring circus under a large five-man tent. It was the safety net. It would do many of the things the transformer in the shed could do, but this thing, which had once been a furnace, was vitally different from the transformer in the shed in two respects. The galvanized aluminum pipes which had once led to the ventilators in the various rooms of the McCready house now all pointed skyward. Hooked up to this New and Improved Furnace, on two plywood ramps protected from the elements by more of the silvery netting which lined the trench in which the ship lay, were twenty-four truck batteries. When this gadget was turned on, it would make air.

Tommyknocker air.

Once this small atmosphere-manufacturing factory was in operation, they would no longer be at the mercy of winds and weather-even in the event of a hurricane, the air-exchanger, which had been surrounded by force-shields, would protect most of them if they gathered in the village.

The suggestion that the borders should be closed came as Gardener was putting one of the transformer earphones into his own ear. Five minutes later, Hazel and about forty others had dropped out of the net and were headed back to town-some to the town hall to oversee the borders and protect the ship with other gadgets; some to make sure the atmosphere-factory was protected, in case of accident… or in case the reaction from the outside world was quicker, more informed, and better organized than they expected. All these things had happened before, and affairs were usually concluded in a satisfactory fashion… but the “becoming” did not always have a happy ending.

During the ten minutes between the command to close the borders and the departure of Hazel's party, the size and shape of the smoke rising into the sky did not change appreciably. The wind was not rising much… at least, not yet. This was good because the attention of the outside world would be slower in turning toward them. It was bad because Gardener would not be cut off from the ship so soon.

Still-Newt/Dick/Adley/Kyle thought Gardener's goose was just about cooked. They held the remaining Tommyknockers in place for five minutes, waiting for mental notice that the gadgets along the borders were waking up, getting ready to do their jobs.

This came as an awakening hum.

Newt looked at Dick. Dick nodded. The two of them dropped out of the net, and turned their attention back to the shed. Gardener, who had once been impossible for even Bobbi to pick up, was still a tough nut to crack. But they should have been able to read the transformer with no trouble at all; its steady, heavy pulses of energy should have been as easy for them to “hear” as RF interference on a TV or radio from the small motor in an electric mixer.

But the transformer was barely a whisper-no more than the dim sound of the ocean in a conch shell.

Newt looked at Dick again, frightened.

jesus he's gone motherfucker's

Dick smiled. He did not believe that Gardener, who could still barely thought-read or -send at all, could have accomplished his purpose so quickly… if it had ever been possible for him to accomplish at all. The man's presence here and Bobbi's perverse affection for him had been a nuisance… one which Dick now believed at an end.

Tommyknockers, Knocking at the Door

He winked one of his strange eyes at Newt. Ibis odd mixture of human and alien was both hideous and hilarious at the same time.

Not gone, Newt. The assholes DEAD.

Newt looked at Dick thoughtfully for a moment, then began to smile.

They moved in, all of them together, drawing in toward Bobbi's house like a tightening noose.

Carrying a heavy head.

The phrase chimed constantly in the back of Gard's mind as he turned toward the monitor screen-it seemed to have been there for a long time. Once, and for a Jim Gardener who no longer existed, his poems had formed around such lines, like pearls around chips of grit.

Carrying a heavy head now, boss.

Was it from some chain-gang movie, like Cool Hand Luke? A song? Yeah. Some song. Something which seemed oddly mixed in his mind, something from the West Coast sixties, a waif-faced psychedelic flower-child wearing a Hell's Angels jacket and carrying a bike-chain wrapped around one thin white violinist's hand…

Your mind, Gard, something happening to your mind

Yeah, you're fucking-A, big daddy, I'm carrying a heavy head, that's what, I was born to be wild, I been caught in the crosstown traffic, and if they say I never loved you, you know they are a liar. Carrying a heavy head. I can feel every vein, artery, and capillary in it swelling up, getting plump, standing out the way the veins on our hands used to when we were kids and wrapped a dozen rubber bands around our wrists and left them there to see what would happen. Carrying a heavy head. If I looked into a mirror right now, I know what I'd see-green light spilling out of my pupils like the pencil-beams of flashlights. Heavy head-and if you joggle it, it will burst. Yes. So be careful, Gard. Be careful, son

Yeah old man yeah.

David

Yeah.

That feeling of dipping and swaying out over the drop. He remembered the news film of Karl Wallenda, that grand old man of the aerialists, failing from the wire in Puerto Rico-gripping for the line, finding it, holding for a minute-then, gone.

Gardener dismissed it from his mind. He tried to dismiss everything from his mind and prepared to be a hero. Or die trying.

PROGRAM?

Gard pushed the earphone deep into his ear and frowned at the screen. Drove the heavy ram of his thoughts toward it. Felt pain flare; felt the balloon of his brain swell a little more. The pain faded; the feeling of increased swelling remained. He stared at the screen.

ALTAIR-4

Okay… what next? He listened for the old man to tell him, but there was nothing. Either his mental link to the transformer had excluded the old man or the old man didn't know. Did it really matter which? Nope.

He looked at the screen.

CROSS-FILE WITH

The screen suddenly filled up with 9s, from top to bottom and side to side. Gardener stared at this with consternation, thinking: Oh Jesus Christ, I broke it!

The 9s disappeared. For just a moment

OH JESUS CHRIST I BROKE IT

glimmered on the screen like a ghost. Then the screen showed:

CROSS-FILE READY

He relaxed a little. The machine was okay. But his brain really was stretched to capacity, and he knew it. If this machine. which was being powered by the old man and whatever was left of Peter, could bring the boy back, he might actually be able to walk away… or hop. considering his ankle. But if it was going to try and draw from him as well, his brain would pop like a party noisemaker.

But this really wasn't the time to think of that, was it?

Licking his lips with his numb tongue, he looked at the screen.

CROSS-FILE WITH DAVID BROWN

9s across the screen.

9s for eternity.

CROSS-FILE SUCCESSFUL

Okay. Good. What next? Gardener shrugged. He knew what he was trying to do; why dance?

BRING DAVID BROWN BACK FROM ALTAIR-4