Anderson lit another cigarette with a hand that trembled slightly, making the matchflame quiver momentarily. It was the sort of thing you would have seen only if you were looking for it.

“I was out of egg cartons by then, and the thing was going to have too many batteries for just one or two anyway. So I got one of Uncle Frank's cigar boxes -there must be a dozen old wooden ones up in the attic, probably even Mabel Noyes down at Junque-a-Torium would pay a few bucks for them, and you know what a skinflint she is-and I stuffed them with toilet paper and tried to make nests in the paper for the batteries to stand up in. You know… nests?”

Anderson made quick poking gestures with her right index finger and then looked, bright-eyed, at Gard, to see if he got it. Gardener nodded. That feeling of unreality was stealing back, that feeling of his mind getting ready to seep through to the top of his skull and float up to the ceiling. A drink would fix that, he thought, and the pulse in his head sharpened.

“But the batteries kept failing over anyway.” She snuffed her cigarette and immediately lit another one. “They were wild, just wild. I was wild, too. Then I got an idea.”

They?

“I went down to Chip McCausland's. Down on the Dugout Road?”

Gardener shook his head. He had never been down the Dugout Road.

“Well, he lives out there with this woman-she's his common-law wife, I guess -and about ten kids. Man, you talk about sluts… the dirt on her neck, Gard… you couldn't wash it off unless you used a jackhammer on it first. I guess he was married before, and… doesn't matter… it's just… I haven't had anyone to talk to… I mean, they don't talk, not the way a couple of people do, and I keep mixing up the stuff that's not important with the stuff that is-”

Anderson's words had started to come out quicker and quicker, until now they were almost tripping over each other. She's speed-rapping, Gardener thought with some alarm, and pretty soon she's going to start either yelling or crying. He didn't know which he dreaded more and thought again of Ishmael, Ishmael rambling through the streets of Bedford, Massachusetts, stinking more of madness than whale-oil, finally grabbing some unlucky passerby and screaming: Listen! I'm the only fucking one left to tell you and so you better listen, damn you! You better listen if you don't want to be using this harpoon for a fucking suppository! I got a tale to tell, it's about this white fucking whale and YOU'RE GOING TO LISTEN!

He reached across the table and touched her hand. “You tell it any old way you want to. I'm here and I'm going to listen. We've got time; like you said, it's your day off. So slow down. If I fall asleep you'll know you got too far from the point. Okay?”

Anderson smiled and relaxed visibly. Gardener wanted to ask again what was going on in the woods. More than that, who they were. But it would be best to wait. All bad things come to him who waits, he thought, and after a pause to collect herself, Bobbi went on.

“Chip McCausland's got three or four henhouses, that's all I started to say. For a couple of bucks I was able to get all the egg cartons I wanted… even a few of the big egg-crate sheets. Those sheets each have ten dozen cradles.”

Anderson laughed cheerfully and added something that brought gooseflesh out on Gardener's skin.

“Haven't used one of those yet, but when I do I guess we'll have enough zap for the whole town of Haven to let go of the CMP tit. With enough left over for Albion and most of Troy, as well.

“So I got the power going here-Jesus, I'm rambling-and I already had the gadget hooked up to the typewriter-and I really did sleep-napped, anyway-and that's about where we came in, isn't it?”

Gardener nodded, still trying to cope with the idea that there might be fact as well as hallucination in Bobbi's casual statement that she could build a,gadget” which could power three small towns from a source consisting of one hundred and twenty D-cell batteries.

“What the gadget on the typewriter does is…” Anderson frowned. Her head cocked a little, almost as if she were listening to a voice Gardener could not hear. “It might be easier to show you. Go on over there and roll in a sheet of paper, would you?”

“Okay.” He headed for the door into the living room, then looked back at Anderson. “Aren't you coming?”

Bobbi smiled. “I'll stay here,” she said, and then Gardener got it. He got it, and even understood on some mental level where only pure logic was allowed that it might be so-hadn't the immortal Holmes himself said that when you eliminated the impossible, you had to believe whatever was left, no matter how improbable? And there was a new novel sitting in there on the table by what Bobbi sometimes called her word-accordion.

Yeah, except typewriters don't write books by themselves, Gard old buddy. You know what the immortal Holmes probably would say? That the fact that there is a novel sitting next to Bobbi's typewriter, and the added fact that this is a novel you never saw before does not mean it is a new novel. Holmes would say Bobbi wrote that book at some time in the past. Then, while you were gone and Bobbi was losing her marbles, she brought it out and sat it beside the typewriter. She may even believe what she's telling you, but that doesn't make it so.

Gardener walked into the cluttered corner of the living room that served as Bobbi's writing quarters. It was handy enough to the bookshelf so she could simply rock back on the legs of her chair and grab almost anything she wanted. It's too good to be a trunk novel.

He knew what the immortal Holmes would say about that, too: he would agree that The Buffalo Soldiers being a trunk novel was improbable; he would argue, however, that writing a novel in three days-and not at the typewriter but while taking cat-naps between repeated frenzies of activity-was imfucking-possible.

Except that novel hadn't come out of any trunk. Gardener knew it, because he knew Bobbi. Bobbi would have been just as incapable of sticking a novel that good in her trunk as Gard was of remaining rational in a discussion on the subject of nuclear power.

Fuck you, Sherlock, and the hansom cab you and Dr W. rode in on. Christ I want a drink.

The urge-the need-to drink had come back in full, frightening force.

“You there, Gard?” Anderson called.

This time he consciously saw the roll of computer paper. It hung down loosely. He looked behind the typewriter and did indeed see another of Bobbi's “gadgets.” This one was smaller-half an egg carton with the last two egg-cradles standing empty. D-cells stood in the other four, each neatly capped with one of those little funnels (looking at them more closely, Gard decided they were scraps of tin can carefully cut to shape with tin-snips), each with a wire coming out of the funnel over the + post… one red, one blue, one yellow, one green. These went to another circuit board. This one, which looked as if it might have come from a radio, was held vertical by two short, flat pieces of wood that had been glued to the desk with the board sandwiched in between. Those pieces of wood, each looking a little like the chalk gutter at the foot of a blackboard, were so absurdly familiar to Gardener that for a moment he was unable to identify them. Then it came. They were the tile-holders you put your letters on when you were playing Scrabble.

One single wire, almost as thick as an AC cord, ran from the circuit board into the typewriter.

“Put in some paper!” Anderson called. She laughed. “That was the part I almost forgot, isn't that stupid? They were no help there and I almost went crazy before I saw the answer. I was sitting on the jakes one day, wishing I'd gotten one of those damned word-crunchers after all, and when I reached for the toilet paper… eureka! Boy, did I feel dumb! Just roll it in, Gard!”