Not the sort of thinking one would usually suspect in a woman who wanted to kill you-but that look was still in Bobbi's eyes, and the feel of it colored all of Bobbi's thoughts.
Hanging on to the cable for dear life, biting at the rubber pegs, Gardener fought to hold onto his stomach.
The sling reached the top. He wandered away on legs that felt as if they were made of rubber bands and paper clips, barely seeing the Electrolux and the length of cable manipulating the buttons; Count ten, he thought. Count ten, get as far from the trench as you can, then take off the mask and take what comes, I think I'd rather die than feel like this, anyway.
He got as far as five and could hold back no longer. Crazy images danced before his eyes: dumping the drink down Patricia McCardle's dress, seeing Bobbi reeling off her porch to greet him when he finally arrived; the big man with the gold cup over his mouth and nose turning to look at him from the passenger window of a four-wheel-drive as Gardener lay drunk on the porch.
If I'd dug in a few different places out at that gravel pit, why, I just might have found that one, too! he thought, and that was when his stomach finally rebelled.
He tore the mouthpiece off and threw up, groping for a pine tree at the edge of the clearing and clinging to it for support.
He did it again, and realized he had never experienced this sort of vomiting in his entire life. He had read about it, however. He was ejecting stuff-most of it bloody -in wads that flew like bullets. And bullets were almost what they were. He was having a seizure of projectile vomiting. This was not considered a sign of good health in medical circles.
Gray veils drifted over his sight. His knees buckled.
Oh fuck I'm dying, he thought, but the idea seemed to have no emotional gradient. It was dreary news, no more, no less. He felt his hand slipping down the rough bark of the pine. He felt tarry sap. Faintly he was aware that the air smelled foul and yellow and sulfuric-it was the way a paper mill smells after a week of still, overcast weather. He didn't care. Whether there were Elysian fields or just a big black nothing, there would not be that stink. So maybe he would come out a winner anyway. Best to just let go. To just…
No! No, you will not just let go! You came back to save Bobbi and Bobbi was maybe already beyond saving, but that kid's around and he might not be. Please, Gard, at least try!
“Don't let it be for nothing,” he said in a cracked, wavering voice. “Jesus Christ, please don't let it be for nothing.”
The wavering gray mists cleared a little. The vomiting subsided. He raised a hand to his face and flung away a sheet of blood with it.
A hand touched the back of his neck as he did, and Gardener's flesh pebbled with goosebumps. A hand… Bobbi's hand… but not a human hand, not anymore.
Gard, are you all right?
“All right,” he answered aloud, and managed to get to his feet.
The world wavered, then came back into focus. The first thing he saw in it was Bobbi. The look on Bobbi's face was one of cold, cheerless calculation. He saw no love there, not even a counterfeit of concern. Bobbi had become beyond such things.
“Let's go,” Gardener said hoarsely. “You drive. I'm feeling… “He stumbled and had to grab at Bobbi's bunched, strange shoulder to keep from falling. a little under the weather.”
By the time they got back to the farm, Gardener was better. The bleeding from his nose had subsided into a trickle. He had swallowed a fair amount of blood while wearing the mouthpiece, and a lot of the blood he had seen in his vomit must have been that. He hoped.
He had lost a total of nine teeth.
“I want to change my shirt,” he told Bobbi.
Bobbi nodded without much interest. “Come on out in the kitchen after you do,” she said. “We have to talk.”
“Yes. I suppose we do.”
In the guestroom, Gardener took off the T-shirt he had been wearing and put on a clean one. He let it hang down over his belt. He went to the foot of the bed, lifted the mattress, and got the. 45. He tucked it into his pants. The T-shirt was too big; he had lost a lot of weight. The outline of the gun butt hardly showed at all if he sucked in his gut. He paused for a moment longer, wondering if he was ready for this. He supposed there was no way to tell such a thing in advance. A dull headache gnawed his temples, and the world seemed to move in and out of focus in slow, woozy cycles. His mouth hurt and his nose felt stuffed with drying blood.
This was it; as much a showdown as any Bobbi had ever written in her westerns. High noon in central Maine. Make yore play, pard.
A ghost of a smile touched his lips. All of those two-for-a-penny sophomore philosophers said life was a strange proposition, but really, this was outrageous.
He went out to the kitchen.
Bobbi was sitting at the kitchen table watching him. Strange, half-glimpsed green fluid circulated below the surface of her transparent face. Her eyes-larger, the pupils oddly misshapen-looked at Gardener somberly.
On the table was a boom-box radio. Dick Allison had brought it out to Bobbi's three days ago, at her request. It was the one Hank Buck had used to send Pits Barfield to that great repple-depple in the sky. It had taken Bobbi less than twenty, minutes to connect its circuitry to the toy photon pistol she was pointing at Gardener.
On the table were two beers and a bottle of pills. Gardener recognized the bottle. Bobbi must have gone into the bathroom and gotten it while he was changing his shirt. It was his Valium.
“Sit down, Gard,” Bobbi said.
Gardener had raised his mental shield as soon as he was out of the ship. The question now was how much of it still remained.
He walked slowly across the room and sat at the table. He felt the. 45 digging into his stomach and groin; he also felt it digging into his mind, lying heavy against whatever was left of that shield.
“Are those for me?” he asked, pointing at the pills.
“I thought we'd have a beer or two together,” Bobbi said evenly, “the way friends do? And you could take a few of those at a time while we talk. I thought it would be the kindest way.”
“Kind,” Gardener mused. He felt the first faint tug of anger. Won't get fooled again, the song said, but the habit must be awfully hard to break. He himself had been fooled plenty. But then, he thought, maybe you're an exception to the rule, Gard ole Gard.
“I get the pills and Peter got that weird seaquarium in the shed. Bobbi, your definition of kindness has undergone one fuck of a radical change since the days when you'd cry if Peter brought home a dead bird. Remember those days? We lived here together, we stood your sister off when she came, and never had to stick her in a shower stall to do it. We just kicked her ass the hell out.” He looked at her somberly. “Remember, Bobbi? That was when we were lovers as well as friends. I thought you might have forgotten. I would have died for you, kiddo. And I would have died without you. Remember? Remember us?”
Bobbi looked down at her hands. Did he see tears in those strange eyes? Probably all he saw was wishful thinking.
“When were you in the shed?”
“Last night.”
“What did you touch?”
“I used to touch you,” Gardener mused. “And you me. And neither of us minded. Remember?”
“What did you touch?” she screamed shrilly at him, and when she looked back up he didn't see Bobbi but only a furious monster.
“Nothing,” Gardener said. “I touched nothing.” The contempt on his face must have been more convincing than any protest would have been, because Bobbi settled back. She sipped delicately at her beer.