The Tommyknockers

“Stop fucking with me, Bobbi!” Her voice rose unevenly.

“Oh, listen!” Bobbi said. “I never thought I'd hear anything like that from you, A

She didn't want to see. Suddenly A

The shower had washed off the makeup. Bobbi's entire head and neck were transparent and jellylike. Her breasts had swelled bulbously outward and seemed to be merging into one single nippleless outcropping of flesh. A

Behind Bobbi's forehead she could see the quivering sac of mind.

Bobbi gri

“Welcome to Haven, A

She felt herself stepping backward in a spongy dream. She was trying to scream but there was no air.

At Bobbi's crotch, a grotesque thatch of tentacles like sea-grass wavered from her vagina… the place where her vagina had been, anyway. A

Naked, Bobbi began walking toward her. A

“No,” she whispered, trying to crawl away. “No… Bobbi… no.

“Good to have you here,” Bobbi said, still smiling. “I hadn't counted on you… not at all… but I think we can find a job for you. Positions, as they say, are still open.”

“Bobbi…” She managed this one final terrified whisper, and then she felt the tentacles, moving lightly on her body. She jerked, tried to move away… and they slithered around her wrists. Bobbi's hips thrust out in a movement that was like an obscene parody of copulation.

Chapter 2

Gardener Takes a Walk

Gardener took A

He sat on the ground by the lean-to, looking at the ship. After a while the moon rose and lit its surface an even more ghostly silver. It was strange and yet very beautiful.

What's going on around here?

I don't want to know.

What it is ain't precisely clear…

I don't want to know.

Hey stop, what's that sound, everybody look what's going down…

He tipped the bottle up and drank deep. He put it aside, rolled over, and rested his throbbing head on his arms. He fell asleep that way, in the woods near the graceful circular jut of the ship.

He slept there all night.

In the morning there were two teeth on the ground.

It's what I get for sleeping so close to it, he thought dully, but there was at least one compensation-he had no headache at all, although he had put away nearly a fifth of Scotch. He had noticed before that, all its other attributes aside, the ship-or the change in the atmosphere the ship had generated-seemed, at very close range, to provide hangover protection.

He didn't want to leave his teeth just lying there. Heeding an obscure urge, he kicked dirt over them. As he did it he thought again: Playing Hamlet is a luxury you can no longer afford, Gard. If you don't commit to one course or the other very soon-in the next day or so, I think-you're not going to be able to do anything but march along with the rest of them.

He looked at the ship, thought of the deep ravine which extended down its smooth, unmarked side, and thought again: We'll be down to the hatchway soon, if there is a hatchway… what then?

Rather than trying to answer, he struck off for home.

The Cutlass was gone.

“Where were you last night?” Bobbi asked Gardener.

“I slept in the woods.”

“Did you get really drunk?” Bobbi asked with surprising gentleness. Her face was dark with makeup again. And Bobbi had been wearing shirts which seemed oddly loose and baggy the last few days; this morning he thought he could see why. Her chest was thickening. Her breasts had begun to look like a single unit instead of two separate things. It made Gardener think of guys who pumped iron.

“Not very. One or two nips and I passed out. No hangover this morning. And no bug bites.” He raised his arms, darkly ta

“Have you changed your mind, Gard?”

“You keep asking me that, have you noticed?”

Bobbi didn't reply.

“Did you hear the news on the radio yesterday?” He knew she hadn't. Bobbi didn't see, hear, or think about anything now but the ship. Her headshake was no surprise. “Troops massing in Libya. More fighting in Lebanon. American troop movements. The Russians getting louder and louder about SDI. We're all still sitting on the powderkeg. That hasn't changed a bit since 1945 or so. Then you discover a deus ex machina in your back yard, and now you keep wanting to know if I've changed my mind about using it.”

“Have you?”

“No,” Gardener said, not sure if he was lying or not-but he was very glad Bobbi couldn't read him.

Oh, can't she? I think she can. Not much, but more than she could a month ago… more and more each day. Because you're “becoming” now, too. Changed your mind? That's a laugh; you can't fucking make up your mind!

Bobbi dismissed it, or appeared to do so. She turned toward the pile of hand-tools stacked on the corner of the porch. She had missed making up a spot just below her right ear, Gardener saw-it was the same spot many men miss when they are shaving. He realized with a sickish lack of surprise that he could see into Bobbi -her skin had changed, had become some kind of semi-transparent jelly. Bobbi had grown thicker, shorter over the last two days-and the change was accelerating.

God, he thought, horrified and bitterly amused, is that what happens when you turn into a Tommyknocker? You start looking like someone who got caught in a great big messy atomic meltdown?

Bobbi, who had been bending over the tools and gathering them up in her arms, turned quickly to look at Gardener, her face wary.

“What?”

I said let's get moving, you lazy juggins, Gardener sent clearly, and that wary, puzzled expression became a reluctant smile.

“Okay. Help me with these, then.”

No, of course victims of high-gamma radiation didn't turn transparent, like Claude Raines in The Invisible Man. They didn't start to lose inches as their bodies twisted and thickened. But, yes, they were apt to lose teeth, their hair was apt to fall out-in other words, there was a kind of physical “becoming” in both cases.

He thought again: Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.

Bobbi was looking narrowly at him again.