day for a killing, and if anyone needed killing it was James Eric Gardener, and so they came, well over five hundred of them in all, good country people who had learned some new tricks. They came. And they brought their new weapons with them.
8
By the time Gardener got halfway to the shed, he began to feel better - perhaps he was getting a second wind. More likely, he supposed, was the possibility that he really had gotten rid of almost all the Valium and was now starting to get on top of the rest.
Or maybe the old man was somehow feeding him strength.
Whatever it was, it was enough to get him on his feet again and start hopping toward the shed. He clutched at the door for a moment, heart galloping wildly in his chest. He happened to glance down, and saw a hole in the door. It was round. The edges stuck out in a jagged bracelet of white splinters. It had a chewed look, that hole.
The vacuum cleaner that ran the buttons. This is how it got out. It had a New and Improved cutting attachment. Christ, these people really are crazy.
He worked his way around the building and a cold certainty came to him: the key would be gone.
Oh Christ, Gard, give it a rest! Why would it
But it was. It was gone. The nail where it had hung was empty.
Gardener leaned against the side of the shed, exhausted and trembling, his body sheened with sweat. He looked down and the sun gleamed off something on the ground - the key. The nail slanted down a bit. He had put the key back in a hurry and had probably pulled the nail down a bit in the soft wood himself. It had simply slid off.
He bent painfully, picked it up, and began to shamble around to the front again. He was exquisitely aware of how fast time was passing. They would arrive soon; how could he possibly get his business done in the shed and then get out to the ship before they did? Since it was impossible, it was probably best to ignore it.
By the time he got back to the shed door, he could hear the faint sound of motors. He stabbed the key at the lock and missed the keyway. The sun was bright, his shadow little more than a puddle hanging from his heels. Again. This time the key socked home. He turned it, shoved the door open, and lurched into the shed.
Green light enfolded him.
It was strong - stronger than it had been the last time he was here. That big piece of cobbled-together equipment
(the transformer)
was glowing brightly. It was cycling, as it had been before, but the cycles were faster now. Thin green fire ran across the silvery road maps of circuit boards.
He looked around. The old man, floating in his green bath, was looking back at Gardener with his one good eye. That gaze was tortured ... but sane.
Use the transformer to save David
'Old man, they are coming for me,' Gardener croaked. 'I'm out of time.'
Corner, far corner.
He looked and saw something that looked a bit like a television antenna, a bit like a large coat-hanger mobile, and a bit like those back-yard devices on which women hang clothes, turning them to do so.
'That?'
Take it out into the dooryard.
Gardener didn't question. There was no time. The thing stood on a small square platform. Gardener supposed its circuits and batteries were in that.
Close-up, he saw that the things which looked like the bent arms of a TV antenna were really narrow steel tubes. He seized the central pole. The thing wasn't heavy, but it was awkward. He was going to have to put some weight on his shattered ankle, like it or not.
He looked back at the tank in which Ev Hillman floated.
You sure about this, old-timer?
But it was the woman who answered. Her eyes opened. Looking into them was like looking into the witches' caldron in Macbeth. For a moment Gard forgot all his pain and weariness and sickness. He was held in thrall by that poisoned gaze. In that instant he understood all the truth and all the power of the fearsome woman Bobbi had called Sissy, and the reason Bobbi had fled from her, as from a fiend. She was a fiend. She was a witch. And even now, in her fearful agony, her hate held.
Take it, you stupid man! I'll run it!
Gardener put his hurt foot