And ye gods, all at once there are three Jonesys: the one watching TV in the fungus-crawling hospital room, the one in the snowmobile shed… and Jonesy III, who suddenly appears in Emil Brodsky’s crewcut Catholic head. Brodsky stops walking and simply looks up into the white sky.
Cambry walks on three or four steps by himself before realizing that Dawg has stopped cold, is just standing there in the middle of the muddy cow pasture. In the midst of all this frantic bustle-running men, hovering helicopters, revving engines-he’s standing there like a robot with a dead battery.
“Boss?” Cambry asks. “Everything all right?” Brodsky makes no reply… at least not to Cambry, he doesn’t. To Jonesy I- Shed Jonesy- he says: Open the engine cowling and show me the plugs.
Jonesy has some trouble finding the catch that opens the cowling, but Brodsky directs him. Then Jonesy leans over the small engine, not looking for himself but turning his eyes into a pair of high-res cameras and sending the picture back to Brodsky.
“Boss?” Cambry asks with increasing concern. “Boss, what is it? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing wrong,” Brodsky says, slowly and distinctly. He puts the headphones down around his neck; the chatter in them is a distraction. “Just let me think a minute.”
And to Jonesy: Someone yanked the plugs. Look around… yeah, there they are. End of the table.
On the end of the worktable is a mayonnaise jar half filled with gasoline. The jartop has been vented-two punches with the tip of a screwdriver-to keep the fumes from building up. Sunk in it like exhibits preserved in formaldehyde are two Champion sparkplugs.
Aloud, Brodsky says “Dry them off good,” and when Cambry asks, “Dry what off good?” Brodsky tells him absently to put a sock in it.
Jonesy fishes the plugs out, dries them off, then seats and connects them as Brodsky directs. Try it now, Brodsky says, this time without moving his lips, and the snowmobile starts up with a roar. Check the gas, too.
Jonesy does, and says thank you.
“No problem, boss,” Brodsky says, and starts walking briskly again. Cambry has to trot a little to catch up. He sees the faintly bewildered look on Dawg’s face when Dawg discovers his headphones are now around his neck.
“What the hell was that all about?” Cambry asks.
“Nothing,” Brodsky says, but it was something, all right; it sure as shit was something. Talking. A conversation. A… consultation? Yeah, that. He just can’t remember exactly what the subject was. What he can remember is the briefing they got this morning, before daylight, when the team went hot. One of the directives, straight from Kurtz, had been to report anything unusual. Was this unusual? What, exactly, had it been?
“Had a brain-cramp, I guess,” Brodsky says. “Too many things to do and not enough time to do them in. Come on, son, keep up with me.”
Cambry keeps up. Brodsky resumes his divided conversation convoy there, Cambry here-but remembers something else, some third conversation, one that is now over. Unusual or not? Probably not, Brodsky decides. Certainly nothing he could talk about to that incompetent bastard Perlmutter-as far as Pearly’s concerned, if it isn’t on his ever-present clipboard, it doesn’t exist. Kurtz? Never. He respects the old buzzard, but fears him even more. They all do. Kurtz is smart, Kurtz is brave, but Kurtz is also the craziest ape in the jungle. Brodsky doesn’t even like to walk where Kurtz’s shadow has run across the ground.
Underhill? Could he talk to Owen Underhill?
Maybe… but maybe not. A deal like this, you could get into hack without even knowing why. He’d heard voices there for a minute or two-a voice, anyway-but he feels okay now. Still…
At Hole in the Wall, Jonesy roars out of the shed and heads up the Deep Cut Road. He senses Henry when he passes him Henry hiding behind a tree, actually biting into the moss to keep from screaming-but successfully hides what he knows from the cloud which surrounds that last kernel of his awareness. It is almost certainly the last time he will be near his old friend, who will never make it out of these woods alive.
Jonesy wishes he could have said goodbye.
7
I don’t know who made this movie, Jonesy says, but I don’t think they have to bother pressing their tuxes for the Academy Awards. In fact-
He looks around and sees only snow-covered trees. Eyes front again and nothing but the Deep Cut Road unrolling in front of him and the snowmobile vibrating between his thighs. There was never any hospital, never any Mr Gray. That was all a dream.
But it wasn’t. And there is a room. Not a hospital room, though. No bed, no TV, no IV pole. Not much of anything, actually; just a bulletin board. Two things are tacked to it: a map of northern New England with certain routes mapped-the Tracker Brothers routes and a Polaroid photo of a teenage girl with her skirt raised to reveal a golden tuft of hair. He is looking out at the Deep Cut Road from the window. It is, Jonesy feels quite sure, the window that used to be in the hospital room. But the hospital room was no good. He had to get out of that room, because
The hospital room wasn’t safe, Jonesy thinks as if this one is, as if anyplace is. And yet… this one’s safe-er, maybe. This is his final refuge, and he has decorated it with the picture he supposed they all hoped to see when they went up that driveway back in 1978. Tina Jean Sloppinger, or whatever her name had been.
Some of what I saw was real… valid recovered memories, Henry might say. I really did think I saw Duddits that day. That’s why I went into the street without looking. As for Mr Gray… that’s who I am now. Isn’t it? Except for the part of me in this dusty, empty, uninteresting room with the used rubbers on the floor and the picture of the girl on the bulletin board, I’m all Mr Gray. Isn’t that the truth?
No answer. Which is all the answer he needs, really.
But how did it happen? How did I get here? And why? What’s it for?
Still no answers, and to these questions he can supply none of his own. He’s only glad he has a place where he can still be himself, and dismayed at how easily the rest of his life has been hijacked. He wishes again, with complete and bitter sincerity, that he had shot McCarthy.
8
A huge explosion ripped through the day, and although the source had to be miles away, it was still strong enough to send snow sliding off the trees. The figure on the snowmobile didn’t even look around. It was the ship. The soldiers had blown it up. The byrum were gone.
A few minutes later, the collapsed lean-to hove into view on his right. Lying in front of it in the snow, one boot still caught beneath the tin roof, was Pete. He looked dead but wasn’t. Playing dead wasn’t an option, not in this game; he could hear Pete thinking. And as he pulled up on the snowmobile and shifted into neutral, Pete raised his head and bared his remaining teeth in a humorless grin. The left arm of his parka was blackened and melted. There seemed to be only one working finger remaining on his right hand. All of his visible skin was stippled with the byrus.
“You’re not Jonesy,” Pete said. “What have you done with Jonesy?”
“Get on, Pete,” Mr Gray said.
“I don’t want to go anywhere with you.” Pete raised his right hand-the swooning fingers, the red-gold clumps of byrus-and used it to wipe his forehead. “The fuck out of here. Get on your pony and ride.”
Mr Gray lowered the head that had once belonged to Jonesy (Jonesy watching it all from the window of his bolt-hole in the abandoned Tracker Brothers depot, unable to help or to change anything) and stared at Pete. Pete began to scream as the byrus growing all over his body tightened, the roots of the stuff digging into his muscles and nerves. The boot can lit under the collapsed tin roof jerked free and Pete, still screaming, pulled himself up into a fetal position. Fresh blood burst from his mouth and nose. When he screamed again, two more teeth popped out of his mouth.
“Get on, Pete.”
Weeping, holding his savaged right hand to his chest, Pete tried to get to his feet. The first effort was a failure; he sprawled in the snow again. Mr Gray made no comment, simply sat astride the idling Arctic Cat and watched.
Jonesy felt Pete’s pain and despair and wretched fear. The fear was by far the worst, and he decided to take a risk.
Pete.