among them, as were Frank Spruce and Rudy Barfield, brother of the late and mostly unlamented Pits), because eventually they would run out of breathable air, in spite of the prevailing winds. So it was necessary to first go west, and then turn either south or north in an effort to buttonhook around the fire-front ... a desperation play where the penalty for failure was not losing the ball but being roasted to cinders in Big Injun Woods. A few - not all, but a few - actually did make it.
Most, however, died in the clearing where Bobbi Anderson and Jim Gardener had worked so long and hard - died within feet of that empty socket where something had been buried and then pulled.
They had been used roughly by a power which was much greater than the early, tentative state of their 'becoming' could cope with. The ship had reached out to the net of their minds, seized it, and used it to obey the Controller's weak but unmistakable command, which had been expressed as WARP SPEED to the ship's organic-cybernetic circuits. The words WARP SPEED were not in the ship's vocabulary, but the concept was clear.
The living lay on the ground, most unconscious, some deeply dazed. A few sat up, holding their heads and moaning, oblivious of the sparks drifting down around them. Some, mindful of the danger coming from the east, tried to get up and fell back.
One of those who did not fall back was Chip McCausland, who lived on Dugout Road with his common-law wife and about ten kids; two months and a million years ago, Bobbi Anderson had gone to Chip for more egg cartons to hold her expanding collection of batteries. Chip shambled halfway across the clearing like an old drunk and fell into the empty trench. He tumbled, shrieking, all the way to the bottom, where he died of a broken neck and a shattered skull.
Others who understood the danger of the fire and who could possibly have gotten away elected not to do so. The 'becoming' was at an end. It had ended with the departure of the ship. The purpose of their lives had been canceled. So they only sat and waited for the fire to take care of what remained of them .
2
By nightfall, there were less than two hundred people left alive in Haven. Most of the township's heavily wooded western half had burned or was burning flat. The wind grew stronger yet. The air began to change, and the remaining Tommyknockers, gasping and whey-faced, gathered in Hazel McCready's yard. Phil Golden and Bryant Brown got the big air-exchanger going. The survivors gathered around it as homesteaders might once have gathered around a stove on a bitter night. Their tortured breathing gradually ceased.
Bryant looked over at Phil.
Weather for tomorrow?
Clear skies, diminishing winds.
Marie was standing nearby, and Bryant saw her relax.
Good that's good.
And so it was ... for the time being. But the winds were not going to remain calm for the rest of their lives. And with the ship gone, there was only this gadget and the twenty-four truck batteries between them and eventual strangulation.
How long? Bryant asked, and no one answered. There was only the flat shine of their frightened, inhuman eyes in the fireshot night.
3
The following morning there were twenty less. During the night John Leandro's story had broken worldwide, with all the force of a hammerfall. State and Defense Departments denied everything, but dozens of people had taken photographs as the ship rose. These photographs were persuasive ... and no one could stop the flood of leaks from such 'informed sources' as frightened residents of the surrounding towns and the first arriving National Guardsmen.
The Haven border-barriers held, at least for the time being. The fire-front had advanced into Newport, where the flames were finally being brought under control.
Several Tommyknockers blew their brains out in the night.
Poley Andrews swallowed Dran-O.
Phil Golden awoke to discover that Queenie, his wife of twenty years, had jumped into Hazel McCready's dry well.
That day there were only four suicides, but the nights ... the nights were worse.
By the time the Army finally broke into Haven, like inept burglars into a strong safe, later that week, there were less than eighty Tommyknockers left.
Justin Hurd shot a fat Army sergeant with a kid's Daisy air rifle that squirted green fire. The fat sergeant exploded. A scared E-4 in the APC just then roaring past Cooder's market turned the .50 caliber he was sitting behind