frazzle-nerved as she was her self, but definitely on edge. An unexpected knock at the door would give them all massive heart attacks — or maybe they'd pick up guns and blast the door to smithereens, and her with it.
Instead she rose up in plain sight and rapped on the window.
Mr. Talbot jerked his head in surprise and pointed, but even as he was pointing, the other man and the woman flew to their feet with the suddenness of marionettes snapped upright on strings. Moose barked once, twice. The three people — and the dog — stared in surprise at Chrissie. From the expression on their faces, she might have been not a bedraggled eleven-year-old girl but a chainsaw-wielding maniac wearing a leather hood to conceal a deformed face.
She supposed that right now, in alien-infested Moonlight Cove, even a pathetic, rain-soaked, exhausted little girl could be an object of terror to those who didn't know that she was still human. In hope of allaying their fear, she spoke through the windowpane:
'Help me. Please, help me.'
18
The machine screamed. Its skull shattered under the impact of the two slugs, and it was blown out of its seat, toppling to the floor of the bedroom and pulling the chair with it. The elongated fingers tore loose of the computer on the desk. The segmented wormlike probe snapped in two, halfway between the computer and the forehead from which it had sprung. The thing lay on the floor, twitching, spasming.
Loman had to think of it as a machine. He could not think of it as his son. That was too terrifying.
The face was misshapen, wrenched into an asymmetrical real mask by the impact of the bullets as they'd torn through the cranium.
The silvery eyes had gone black. Now it appeared as if puddles of oil, not mercury, were pooled in the sockets in the thing's' skull.
Between plates of shattered bone, Loman saw not merely the gray matter he had expected but what appeared to be coiled wire, glinting shards that looked almost ceramic, odd geometrical shapes. The blood that seeped from the wounds was accompanied by wisps of blue smoke.
Still, the machine screamed.
The electronic shrieks no longer came from the boy-thing but from the computer on the desk. Those sounds were so bizarre that they were as out of place in the machine half of the organism as they had been in the boy half.
Loman realized these were not entirely electronic walls. They also had a tonal quality and character that were unnervingly 'human.'
The waves of data ceased flowing across the screen. One word was repeated hundreds of times, filling line after line on the display:
NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO …
He suddenly knew that Denny was only half dead. The part of the boy's mind that had inhabited his body was extinguished, but another fragment of his consciousness still lived somehow within the computer, kept alive in silicon instead of brain tissue.
On the screen:
WHERE'S THE REST OF ME WHERE'S THE REST, OF ME WHERE'S THE REST OF ME NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO….
Loman felt as if his blood was icy sludge pumped by a heart as jellied as the meat in the freezer downstairs. He had never known a chill that penetrated as deep as this one.
He stepped away from the crumpled body, which at last stopped twitching, and turned his revolver on the computer. He emptied the gun into the machine, first blowing out the screen. Because the blinds and drapes were closed, the room was nearly dark. He blasted the circuitry to pieces. Thousands of sparks flared in the blackness, spraying out of the data-processing unit. But with a final sputter and crackle, the machine died, and the gloom closed in again.
The air stank of scorched insulation. And worse.
Loman left the room and walked to the head of the stairs. He stood there a moment, leaning against the railing. Then he descended to the front hall.
He reloaded his revolver, holstered it.
He went out into the rain.
He got in his car and started the engine.
'Shaddack,' he said aloud.
19
Tessa immediately took charge of the girl. She led her upstairs, leaving Harry and Sam and Moose in the kitchen, and got her out of her wet clothes.
'Your teeth are chattering, honey.'
'I'm lucky to have any teeth to chatter.'
'Your skin's positively blue.'
'I'm lucky to have skin,' the girl said.
'I noticed you're limping too.'
'Yeah. I twisted an ankle.'
'Sure it's just sprained?'
'Yeah. Nothing serious. Besides—'
'I know,' Tessa said, 'You're lucky to
'Right. For all I know, aliens find ankles particularly tasty, the same way some people like pig's feet. Yuch.'
She sat on the edge of the bed in the guest room, a wool blanket pulled around her nakedness, and waited while Tessa got a sheet from the linen supplies and several safety pins from a sewing box that she noticed in the same closet.
Tessa said, 'Harry's clothes are much too big for you, so we'll wrap you in a sheet temporarily. While your clothes are in the dryer, you can come downstairs and tell Harry and Sam and me all about it.'
'It's been quite an adventure,' the girl said.
'Yes, you look as if you've been through a lot.'
'It'd make a great book.'
'You like books?'
'Oh, yes, I love books.'
Blushing but evidently determined to be sophisticated Chrissie threw back the blanket and stood and allowed Tessa to drape the sheet around her. Tessa pinned it in place, fashioning a toga of sorts.
As Tessa worked, Chrissie said, 'I think I'll write a book about all of this one day. I'll call it
