But then its bulge of a head recoiled, and before its three-fingered hand shielded its eyes (it had no lids, not even any lashes), Jonesy saw an expression on its gray sketch of a face that had to be bewilderment. Maybe even pain. It had been out there, in the snowy dark, disposing of the driver’s body. It had come in here unprepared for the discount-mart glare. He saw something else, too: The invader had borrowed its expression of surprise from the host. For a moment, Mr Gray was a horrible caricature of Jonesy himself.
Its surprise gave Jonesy just enough time. Pushing the dolly ahead of him almost without realizing it and feeling like the imprisoned princess in some fucked-up fairy-tale, he ran into the office. He sensed rather than saw Mr Gray reaching out for him with his three-fingered hands (the gray skin was raw-looking, like very old uncooked meat), and slammed the office door just ahead of their clutch. He bumped the dolly with his bad hip as he spun around-he accepted that he was inside his own head, but all of this was nevertheless completely real-and just managed to run the bolt before Mr Gray could turn the knob and force his way in. Jonesy engaged the thumb-lock in the center of the doorknob for good measure. Had the thumb-lock been there before, or had he added it? He couldn’t remember.
Jonesy stepped back, sweating, and this time ran his butt into the handle of the dolly. In front of him, the doorknob turned back and forth, back and forth. Mr Gray was out there, in charge of the rest of his mind-and his body, as well-but he couldn’t get in here. Couldn’t force the door, didn’t have the heft to break it down, didn’t have the wit to pick the lock.
Why? How could that be?
“Duddits,” he whispered. “No bounce, no play.”
The doorknob rattled. “Let me in!” Mr Gray snarled, and to Jonesy he didn’t sound like an emissary from another galaxy but like anyone who has been denied what he wants and is pissed off about it. Was that because he was interpreting Mr Gray’s behavior in terms which he, Jonesy, understood? Humanizing the alien? Translating him?
“Let…me…IN!’Jonesy responded without thinking: “Not by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin.” And thought: To which you say, “Then I’ll huff… and I’ll PUFF…and I’ll BLO W your house in!”
But Mr Gray only rattled the knob harder than ever. He was not used to being balked in this manner (or in any manner, Jonesy guessed) and was very pissed. Janas’s momentary resistance had startled him, but this was resistance on a whole other level.
“Where are you?” Mr Gray called angrily. “How can you be in there? Come out!” Jonesy didn’t reply, only stood among the tumbled boxes, listening. He was almost positive Mr Gray couldn’t get in, but it would be just as well not to provoke him.And after a little more knob-rattling, he sensed Mr Gray leaving him. Jonesy went to the window, stepping over the tumbled boxes marked DUDDITS and DERRY to get there, and stared out into the snowy night.
7
Mr Gray climbed Jonesy’s body back behind the wheel of the truck, slammed the door, and pushed the accelerator. The truck bolted forward, then lost purchase. All four wheels spun, and the truck skidded into the guardrails with a jarring bang.
“Fuck!” Mr Gray cried, accessing Jonesy’s profanity almost without being aware of it. “Jesus-Christ-bananas! Kiss my bender! Doodlyfuck! Bite my bag!”
Then he stopped and accessed Jonesy’s driving skills again. Jonesy had some information on driving in weather like this, but nowhere near as much as Janas had possessed. Janas was gone, however, his files erased. What Jonesy knew would have to do. The important thing was to get beyond what Janas had thought of as the “q-zone”. Beyond the q-zone he would be safe. Janas had been clear about that.
Jonesy’s foot pressed down on the gas pedal again, much more gently this time. The truck started to move. Jonesy’s hands steered the Chevrolet back into the fading path left by the plow. Under the dash, the radio crackled to life. “Tubby One, this is Tubby Four. I got a rig off the road and turned over on the median. Do you copy?”
Mr Gray consulted the files. What Jonesy knew about military communication was skimpy, mostly gleaned from books and something called the movies, but it might do. He took the mike, felt for the button Jonesy seemed to think would be on the side, found it, pushed it. “I copy,” he said. Would Tubby Four be able to tell that Tubby One was no longer Andy Janas? Based on Jonesy’s files, Mr Gray doubted it.
“A bunch of us are going to get him up, see if we can get him back on the road. He’s got the goddam food, you copy?” Mr Gray pushed the button. “Got the goddam food, copy.”
A longer pause, long enough for him to wonder if he’d said something wrong, stepped in some kind of a trap, and then the radio said: “We’ll have to wait for the next bunch of plows, I guess. You might as well keep rolling, over?” Tubby Four sounded disgusted. Jonesy’s files suggested that might be because Janas, with his superior driving skills, had gotten too far ahead to help. All this was good. He would’ve kept moving in any case, but it was good to have Tubby Four’s official sanction, if that’s what it was.
He checked Jonesy’s files (which he now saw as Jonesy saw them-boxes in a vast room) and said, “Copy. Tubby One, over and out.” And, as an afterthought: “Have a nice night.”
The white stuff was horrible. Treacherous. Nonetheless, Mr Gray risked driving a little faster. As long as he was in the area controlled by Creepy Kurtz’s armed force, he might be vulnerable. Once out of the net, however, he would be able to complete his business very quickly.
What he needed had to do with a place called Derry, and when Mr Gray went into the big storeroom again, he discovered an amazing thing: his unwilling host had either known that or sensed it, because it was the Derry files Jonesy had been moving when Mr Gray had returned and almost caught him.
Mr Gray searched the boxes that were left with sudden anxiety, and then relaxed.
What he needed was still here.
Lying on its side near the box which contained the most important information was another box, very small and very dusty. Written on the side in black pencil was the word DUDDITS. If there were other Duddits-boxes, they had been removed. Only this one had been overlooked.
More out of curiosity than anything else (his curiosity also borrowed from Jonesy’s store of emotions), Mr Gray opened it. Inside was a bright yellow container made of plastic. Outlandish figures capered upon it, figures Jonesy’s files identified as both cartoons and the Scooby-Doos. On one end was a sticker reading I BELONG TO DUDDITS CAVELL, 19 MAPLE LANE, DERRY, MAINE. IF THE BOY I BELONG TO IS LOST, CALL
This was followed by numbers too faint and illegible to read, probably a communication-code Jonesy no longer remembered. Mr Gray tossed the yellow plastic container, probably meant for carrying food, aside. It could mean nothing… although if that was really the case, why had Jonesy risked his existence getting the other DUDDITS-boxes (as well as some of those marked DERRY) to safety?
DUDDITS=CHILDHOOD FRIEND. Mr Gray knew this from his initial encounter with Jonesy in “the hospital”… and if he had known what an annoyance Jonesy would turn out to be, he would have erased his host’s consciousness right then. Neither the term CHILDHOOD nor the term FRIEND had any emotional resonance for Mr Gray, but he understood what they meant. What he didn’t understand was how Jonesy’s childhood friend could have anything to do with what was happening tonight.
One possibility occurred to him: his host had gone mad. Being turned out of his own body had driven him insane, and he’d simply taken the boxes closest to the door of his perplexing stronghold, assigning them in his madness an importance they did not actually have.
“Jonesy,” Mr Gray said, speaking the name with Jonesy’s vocal cords. These creatures were mechanical geniuses (of course they would have to be, to survive in such a cold world), but their thought-processes were odd and crippled: rusty mentation sunk in corrosive pools of emotion. Their telepathic abilities were minus; the transient telepathy they were now experiencing thanks to the byrus and the kim (“flashlights”, they called them) bewildered and frightened them. It was difficult for Mr Gray to believe they hadn’t murdered their entire species yet. Creatures incapable of real thought were maniacs-this was surely beyond argument.
Meanwhile, no answer from the creature in that strange, impregnable room.
“Jonesy.”
Nothing. But Jonesy was listening. Mr Gray was sure of it.