No answer.

Bobbi was gone-there was not even a feel of her left in the air. They looked at each other cautiously, testing each other's impression of that

thought, confirming that it had been Bobbi. Each knew that if he or she had been alone, with no confirmation available, he or she would have dismissed it as an incredibly powerful hallucination.

How are we going to keep it from Marie? Dick Allison asked, almost angrily. We can't hide nothing from anybody else!

Yes, Newt returned. We can. Not good enough yet, maybe, but we can dim out our thoughts a little. Make them hard to see. Because

(because we've been)

(been out there)

(been in the shed)

(Bobbi's shed)

(we wore the headphones in Bobbi's shed)

(and ate ate to “become')

(take ye eat do this in remembrance of me)

A sigh ran gently through them.

We'll have to go back, Adley McKeen said. Won't we?

“Yes,” Kyle said. “We will.” It was the only time anyone spoke aloud during the entire meeting, and it marked its end.

Wednesday, August 3rd:

Andy Bozeman, who had been Haven's only realtor up until three weeks ago, when he simply closed his office, had discovered that mind-reading was something a fellow got used to very quickly. He didn't realize how quickly, or how much he had come to depend on it, until it was his turn to go on out to Bobbi's place to help and to keep an eye on the drunk.

Part of his problem-he knew it was going to be a problem after talking to Enders and the Tremain lad-was being this close to the ship. It was like standing next to the biggest power generator in the world; constant eddies and flows of its weird force ran over his skin like skirling sand-devils in the desert. Sometimes large ideas would float dreamily into his mind, making it impossible to concentrate on what he was doing. Sometimes the exact opposite would occur: thought would break up completely, like a microwave transmission interrupted by a burst of ultraviolet rays. But most of it was just the physical fact of the ship, looming there like something out of a dream. It was exhilarating, awe-inspiring, frightening, wonderful. Bozeman thought he now understood how the Israelites must have felt carrying the Ark of the Covenant through the desert. In one of his sermons, the Rev. Goohringer said that some fellow had ventured to stick his head in there, just to see what all the shouting was about, and he had dropped dead on the spot.

Because it had been God in there.

There might be a kind of God in that ship, too, Andy thought. And even if that God had fled, It had left some residue… some of Itself… and thinking about all that made it hard to keep your mind on the business at hand.

Then there was Gardener's unsettling blankness. You kept running into it like a closed door that should have been open. You'd yell at him to hand you something, and he would go right on with what he was doing.

Just… no response. Or you'd go to tune in on him-just sort of fall into the run of his thoughts, like picking up a telephone on a party-line to see who was talking, and there would be no one there. No one at all. Nothing but a dead line.

There was a buzz from the intercom nailed to the inside wall of the lean-to. Its wire ran across the muddy, churned ground and into the trench from which the ship jutted.

Bozeman flipped the toggle over to Talk. “I'm here.”

“The charge is set,” Gardener said. “Haul me up.” He sounded very, very tired. He had thrown himself a pretty fair country drunk last night, Bozeman thought, judging by the sound of the puking he had heard from the back porch around midnight. And when he glanced into Gardener's room this morning, he had seen blood on his pillow.

“Right away.” The episode with Enders had taught them all that when Gardener asked to be brought up, you didn't waste time.

He went to the windlass and began to crank. It was a pain in the ass, having to do this by hand, but there was a temporary shortage of batteries again. Give them another week and everything out here would be running like clockwork… except Bozeman doubted if he would be here to see it. Being near the ship was exhausting. Being near Gardener was exhausting in a different way-it was like being near a loaded gun that had a hair trigger. The way he had sucker-punched poor John Enders, now-the only reason John hadn't known it was coming was because Gardener was such an infuriating blank. Every now and then a bubble of thought partial or complete-would rise to the surface of his mind, as readable as a newspaper headline, but that was all. Maybe Enders had it coming-Bozeman knew that he wouldn't be too nuts about being stuck at the bottom of a trench with one of those explosive radios. But that wasn't the point. The point was that Johnny hadn't been able to see it coming. Gardener could do anything, at any time, and no one could stop him, because no one could see it coming.

Andy Bozeman almost wished Bobbi would die so they could get rid of him. It would be tougher with just Havenites working on the project, true, it would slow them down, but it would almost be worth it.

The way he could come out of left field at you was so fucking unsettling.

This morning, for instance. Coffee break. Bozeman sitting on a stump, eating some of those little peanut-butter-and-cracker sandwiches and drinking iced coffee from his Thermos. He had always preferred hot coffee to cold even in warm weather, but since he'd lost his teeth, really hot drinks seemed to bother him.

Gardener had been sitting cross-legged like one of those Yoga masters on a dirty swatch of tarpaulin, eating an apple and drinking a beer. Bozeman didn't see how anyone could eat an apple and drink a beer at the same time, especially in the morning, but Gardener was doing it. From here, Bozeman could see the scar an inch or so above Gardener's left eyebrow. The steel plate would be under that scar. it

Gardener had turned his head and caught Bozeman looking at him. Bozeman flushed, wondering if Gardener was going to start to yell and rant. If maybe he was going to come over here and try to sucker-punch him the way he had Johnny Enders. If he tries that, Bozeman thought, curling his hands into fists, he's going to find that I'm no sucker.

Instead, Gardener had begun to speak in a clear, carrying voice-there was a small, cynical smile on his mouth as he did it. After a moment, Bozeman realized he wasn't just speaking, he was reciting. The man was sitting out here in the woods cross-legged on a dirty tarp, hungover out of his mind, the glittering body of the ship in the earth casting moving ripples of reflection on his cheek, and reciting like a schoolboy-the man was unfucking-stable, Bozeman would tell the world. He sincerely wanted Gardener dead.

Tom gave up the brush with reluctance in his face, but alacrity in his heart,"” Gardener said, eyes half-closed, face turned up toward the warm morning sun. That little smile never left his lips. -Andwhile the late steamer Big Missouri worked and sweated in the sun, the retired artist sat on a barrel in the shade close by, dangled his legs, munched his apple, and planned the slaughter of more innocents.

“What-” Andy began, but Gardener, his smile now spreading into a genuine-if nonetheless cynical-grin, overrode him.

There was no lack of material; boys happened along every little while; they came to jeer, but they remained to whitewash. By the time Ben was fagged out, Tom had traded the next chance to Billy Fisher for a kite, in good repair; and when he played out, Johnny Miller bought in for a dead rat, and a string to swing it with… “”

Gardener drank the rest of his beer, belched, and stretched.

“You never brought me a dead rat and a string to swing it with, but I got an intercom, Bozie, and I guess that's a start, huh?”