those locations using our star-charts. Think of it, Gard! Every place has been a strange place to us ... even to us, and we are great sky-travelers.'
She leaned forward and sipped a little more beer. The toy pistol which was no longer a toy did not waver from Gardener's chest.
'So that's teleportation. Some big deal, huh? A few rocks, a lot of holes, one cosmic attic. Maybe someday someone will open a wavelength into the heart of a sun and flash-fry a whole planet.'
Bobbi laughed, as if this would be a particularly fine jest. The gun didn't waver from Gard's chest, however.
Growing serious again, Bobbi said: 'But that's not all, Gard. When you turn on a radio, you think of tuning a station. But a band - megaherz, kiloherz, shortwave, whatever - isn't just stations. It's also all the blank space between stations. In fact, that's what some bands are mostly made up of. Do you follow?'
'Yes.'
'This is my roundabout way of trying to convince you to take the pills. I won't send you to the place you call Altair-4, Gard - there I know you'd die slowly and unpleasantly.'
'The way David Brown is dying?'
'I had nothing to do with that,' she said quickly. 'It was his brother's doing entirely.'
'It's like Nuremberg, isn't it, Bobbi? Nothing was really anyone's fault
'You idiot,.' Bobbi said. 'Don't you realize that sometimes that's the truth? Are you so gutless you can't accept the idea of random occurrence?'
'I can accept it. But I also believe in the ability of the individual to reverse irrational behavior,' he said.
'Really? You never could.'
Shot your wife, he heard the booger-picking deputy say. Good fucking deal, uh?
Maybe sometimes people start the old Atonement Boogie a little late, he thought, looking down at his hands.
Bobbi's eyes flicked sharply at his face. She had caught some of that. He tried to reinforce the shield - a tangled chain of disconnected thoughts like white noise.
'What are you thinking about, Gard?'
'Nothing I want you to know,' he said, and smiled thinly. 'Think of it as ... well, let's say a padlock on a shed door.'
Her lips drew back from her teeth for a moment ... then relaxed into that strange gentle smile again. 'It doesn't matter,' she said. 'I might not understand anyway. As I say, we've never been very good understanders. We're not a race of super-Einsteins. Thomas Edison in Space would be closer, I think. Never mind. I won't send you to a place where you'll die a slow, miserable death. I still love you in my way, Gard, and if I have to send you somewhere, I'll send you to ... nowhere.'
She shrugged.
'It's probably like taking ether . . . but it might be painful. Agony, even. Either way, the devil you know is always better than the devil you don't.'
Gardener suddenly burst into tears.
'Bobbi, you could have saved me yea grief if you'd reminded me of that sooner.'
'Take the pills, Gard. Deal with the devil you know. The way you are now, two hundred milligrams of Valium will take you off very quickly. Don't make me mail you like a letter addressed to nowhere.'
'Tell me some more about the Tommyknockers,' Gardener said, wiping at his face with his hands.
Bobbi smiled. 'The pills, Gard. If you start taking the pills, I'll tell you anything you want to know. If you don't - ' She raised the photon pistol.
Gardener unscrewed the top of the Valium bottle, shook out half a dozen of the blue pills with the heart-shape in the middle (Valentines from the Valley of Torpor, he thought), tossed them into his mouth, cracked the beer, and swallowed them. There went sixty milligrams down the old chute. He could have hidden one under his tongue, maybe, but six? Come on, folks, be real. Not much time now. I vomited my belly empty, I've lost a lot of blood, I haven't been taking this shit and so have no tolerance to it, I'm some thirty pounds lighter than I was when I picked up the first mandatory prescription. If I don't get rid of this shit quick, they'll hit me like a highballing semi.
'Tell me about the Tommyknockers,' he invited again. One hand dropped into his lap below the table and touched the butt
(shield-shield-shield-shield)
of the gun. How long before the stuff started to work? Twenty minutes? He couldn't remember. And nobody had ever told him about OD'ing on Valium.
Bobbi moved the gun a bit toward the pills. 'Take some more, Gard. As