The gray fellow in the hospital bed looks from the TV where Jonesy I is sitting astride the Arctic Cat to the chair where Jonesy II sits in his blood-sodden johnny.
What are you hiding? Mr Gray asks.
Nothing.
Why do you keep seeing a brick wall? What is 19, besides a prime number? Who said “Fuck the Tigers'? What does that mean? What is the brick wall? When is the brick wall? What does it mean, why do you keep seeing it?
He can feel Mr Gray prying at him, but for the time being that one kernel is safe. He can be carried, but not changed. Not entirely opened, either, it seems. Not yet, at least.
Jonesy puts his finger to his lips and gives the gray fellow’s own words back to him: Be quiet, watch the movie.
It studies him with the black bulbs of its eyes (they are insectile, Jonesy thinks, the eyes of a praying mantis), and Jonesy can feel it prying for a moment or two longer. Then the sensation fades. There is no hurry; sooner or later it will dissolve the shell over that last kernel of pure uninvaded Jonesy, and then it will know everything it wants to know.
In the meantime, they watch the movie. And when Bowser crawls into Jonesy’s lap-Bowser with his sharp teeth and his ethery antifreeze smell-Jonesy barely notices.
Jonesy I, Shed Jonesy (only that one’s now actually Mr Gray), reaches out. There are many minds to reach out to, they are hopping all over each other like late-night radio transmissions, and he finds one with the information he needs easily enough. It’s like opening a file on your personal computer and finding a wonderfully detailed 3-D movie instead of words.
Mr Gray’s source is Emil “Dawg” Brodsky, from Menlo Park, New Jersey. Brodsky is an Army Tech Sergeant, a motor-pool munchkin. Only here, as part of Kurtz’s Tactical Response Team, Tech Sergeant Brodsky has no rank. No one else does, either. He calls his superiors boss and those who rank below him (there are not many of those at this particular barbecue) hey you. If he doesn’t know which is which, pal or buddy will do.
There are jets overlying the area, but not many (they’ll be able to get all the pix they need from low earth orbit if the clouds ever clear), and they are not Brodsky’s job, anyway. The jets fly out of the Air National Guard base in Bangor, and he is here in Jefferson Tract. Brodsky’s job is the choppers and the trucks in the rapidly growing motor-pool (since noon, all the roads in this part of the state have been closed and the only traffic is olive-green trucks with their insignia masked), He’s also in charge of setting up at least four generators to provide the electricity needed to serve the compound growing around Gosselin’s Market. These needs include motion sensors, Pole lights, perimeter lights, and the makeshift operating theatre which is being hastily equipped in a Windstar motor home.
Kurtz has made it clear that the lights are a big deal-he wants this place as bright as day all night long. The greatest number of pole lights is going up around the barn and what used to be a horse corral and paddock behind the barn. In the field where old Reggie Gosselin’s forty milkers once grazed away their days, two tents have been erected. The larger has a sign on its green roof: COMMISSARY. The other tent is white and unmarked. There are no kerosene heaters in it, as there are in the larger tent, and no need of them. This is the temporary morgue, Jonesy understands. There are only three bodies in there now (one is a banker who tried to run away, foolish man), but soon there may be lots more. Unless there’s an accident that makes collecting bodies difficult or impossible. For Kurtz, the boss, such an accident would solve all sorts of problems.
And all that is by the way. Jonesy I’s Job is Emil Brodsky of Menlo Park.
Brodsky is striding rapidly across the snowy, muddy, churned-up ground between the helicopter landing zone and the paddock where the Ripley-positives are to be kept (there are already a good number of them in there, walking around with the bewildered expressions of freshly interned prisoners the world over, calling out to the guards, asking for cigarettes and information and making vain threats). Emil Brodsky is squat and crewcut, with a bulldog face that looks made for cheap cigars (in fact, Jonesy knows, Brodsky is a devout Catholic who has never smoked). He’s as busy as a one-armed paperhanger just now. He’s got earphones on and a receptionist’s mike hung in front of his lips. He is in radio contact with the fuel-supply convoy coming up I-95-those guys are critical, because the helicopters out on mission are going to come back low-but he’s also talking to Cambry, who is walking next to him, about the control-and-surveillance center Kurtz wants set up by nine P.m… midnight at the latest. This mission is going to be over in forty-eight hours at the outside, that’s the scuttlebutt, but who the fuck knows for sure? According to the scuttlebutt, their prime target, Blue Boy, has already been taken out, but Brodsky doesn’t know how anyone can be sure of that, since the big assault choppers haven’t come back yet. And anyhow, their “ob here is simple: turn the whole works up to eleven and then yank the knobs off.
And ye gods, all at once there are three Jonesys: the one watching TV in the fungus-crawling hospital room, the one in the snowmobile shed… and Jonesy III, who suddenly appears in Emil Brodsky’s crewcut Catholic head. Brodsky stops walking and simply looks up into the white sky.
Cambry walks on three or four steps by himself before realizing that Dawg has stopped cold, is just standing there in the middle of the muddy cow pasture. In the midst of all this frantic bustle-running men, hovering helicopters, revving engines-he’s standing there like a robot with a dead battery.
“Boss?” Cambry asks. “Everything all right?” Brodsky makes no reply… at least not to Cambry, he doesn’t. To Jonesy I- Shed Jonesy- he says: Open the engine cowling and show me the plugs.
Jonesy has some trouble finding the catch that opens the cowling, but Brodsky directs him. Then Jonesy leans over the small engine, not looking for himself but turning his eyes into a pair of high-res cameras and sending the picture back to Brodsky.
“Boss?” Cambry asks with increasing concern. “Boss, what is it? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing wrong,” Brodsky says, slowly and distinctly. He puts the headphones down around his neck; the chatter in them is a distraction. “Just let me think a minute.”
And to Jonesy: Someone yanked the plugs. Look around… yeah, there they are. End of the table.
On the end of the worktable is a mayonnaise jar half filled with gasoline. The jartop has been vented-two punches with the tip of a screwdriver-to keep the fumes from building up. Sunk in it like exhibits preserved in formaldehyde are two Champion sparkplugs.
Aloud, Brodsky says “Dry them off good,” and when Cambry asks, “Dry what off good?” Brodsky tells him absently to put a sock in it.
Jonesy fishes the plugs out, dries them off, then seats and connects them as Brodsky directs. Try it now, Brodsky says, this time without moving his lips, and the snowmobile starts up with a roar. Check the gas, too.
Jonesy does, and says thank you.
“No problem, boss,” Brodsky says, and starts walking briskly again. Cambry has to trot a little to catch up. He sees the faintly bewildered look on Dawg’s face when Dawg discovers his headphones are now around his neck.
“What the hell was that all about?” Cambry asks.
“Nothing,” Brodsky says, but it was something, all right; it sure as shit was something. Talking. A conversation. A… consultation? Yeah, that. He just can’t remember exactly what the subject was. What he can remember is the briefing they got this morning, before daylight, when the team went hot. One of the directives, straight from Kurtz, had been to report anything unusual. Was this unusual? What, exactly, had it been?