Peel out to where?

Anywhere.

The stars, if he wanted.

Son I'm losing you

That was the old man, sounding more exhausted than ever, and Gardener pulled himself back to the job at hand-the next piece of furniture he had to hop to. Oh, this feeling was drunkenly wonderful, but it was stolen. He forced himself to think again of those leaf-brown shapes locked in all those hammocks. Galley slaves. The old man was powering him; he was drinking the old man like a vampire drinking blood. How long until he was a vampire himself? Like them?

He thought at Hillman: I am with you, old horse.

Ev Hillman closed his one good eye in silent relief. Gard turned to the monitor screen, absently holding the plug in his ear like a newsman on a live remote listening to a question from the anchor back in the studio.

In the closed space of Bobbi's shed, the light began to cycle up again.

listen

They all listened; they were all on a party-line which covered all of Haven, radiating out from a center about two miles from that still-faint smudge of smoke. They were all on the net and they all listened. They accepted no absolute common; Tommyknockers was a name they accepted as casually as any, but they were really interstellar gypsies with no king. Yet in this moment of crisis during the period of regeneration-a period when they were so vulnerable-they were willing to accept the voices of those Gardener called the Shed People. They were, after all, the clearest distillation of them all.

the time has come to close the borders

There was a universal sigh of agreement-a mental sound Ruth McCausland would have recognized: a sound like autumn leaves blown before a November wind.

For the time being, at least, the Shed People had lost all contact with Gardener. They were only content that he was occupied elsewhere. If he meant to go to their ship, the fire would soon be in his way.

The unified voice quickly explained the rota that was to be followed-some of these plans had been made, vaguely, weeks ago-these plans had become more concrete as the Shed People “became.”

Gadgets had been made-haphazardly, it had seemed. But birds flying south as winter approaches may seem haphazard; their migration may even seem so to themselves-just something which felt like as good a way as any to spend the winter months. Want to go to North Carolina, dear? Of course, my love; what a wonderful idea.

So they had built, and sometimes they had killed each other with their new toys, and sometimes they had finished gadgets, looked at them doubtfully, and packed them away somewhere out of sight, since they were no obvious help in their daily round. But some they had toted out to Haven's borders, usually in the trunks of cars or in the backs of trucks, under tarps. One of these gadgets had been the Coke machine which had murdered John Leandro; it had been customized by the late Dave Rutledge, who had once serviced such machines for a living. One had been the Bensohn brush-trimmer which had cut up a storm on Lester Moran. There were duded-up televisions which shot fire; there were smoke-detectors (Gardener had seen some but not all of these on his first visit to the shed) which flew through the air like Frisbees, emitting killing waves of ultrasonic sound; at several locations there were force-barriers. Almost all of these gadgets could be mentally activated with the help of simple electronic devices which were casually dubbed “Callers,” not much different from the device Freeman Moss had used to float the drainage machinery into the woods.

No one thought more about why these gadgets should be placed in a rough perimeter around the town than a bird thinks about flying south or a caterpillar thinks about weaving a cocoon. But of course, this time always came-the time when the borders had to be sealed. This time had come early… but, it seemed, not too early.

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.