The Dark Half

they walked, turned like radar dishes locked in on a signal. It was the study they were listening to, and the most maddening thing was that there was no sound at all from behind the trick door which led into it. She could not even hear the babies babbling and cooing to each other. She hoped they had gone to sleep, but it was not possible to silence the voice which insisted that Stark had killed them both, and Thad, too.

  Silently.

  With the razor he carried.

    She told herself that if something like that happened the sparrows would know, they would do something, and it helped, but only a little. The sparrows were a great mind-bitching unknown surrounding the house. God knew what they would do . . . or when.

  Twilight was slowly surrendering to full dark when Alan said harshly, 'They'll change places if it goes on long enough, won't they? Thad will start to get sick . . . and Stark will start to get well.'

  She was so startled she almost dropped the bitter cup of coffee she was holding.

'Yes. I think so.'

   A loon called on the lake — an isolated, aching, lonely sound. Alan thought of them upstairs, the two sets of twins, one get at rest, the other engaged in some terrible struggle in the merged twilight of their single imagination.

  Outside, the birds watched and waited as twilight drew down.

  That teeter-totter is in motion, Alan thought. Thad's end is going up, Stark's end is going down. Up there, behind that door which made two entrances when it was open, the change had begun.

  It's almost the end, Liz thought. One way or the other.

   And as if this thought had caused it to happen, she heard a wind begin to blow — a strange, whirring wind. Only, the take was as flat as a dish.

  She stood up, eyes wide, hands going to her throat. She stared out through the window-wall. Alan, she tried to say, but her voice failed her. It didn't matter.

  Upstairs there was a strange, weird whistling sound, like a note blown from a crooked flute. Stark cried out suddenly, sharply. 'Thad? What are you doing? What are you doing? ' There was a short banging sound, like the report of a cap pistol. A moment later Wendy began to cry.

  And outside in the deepening gloom, a million sparrows went on fluttering their wings, preparing to fly.

Twenty-six

The Sparrows Are Flying

1

When Liz closed the door and left the two men alone, Thad opened his notebook and looked at the blank page for a moment. Then he picked up one of the sharpened Berol pencils.

  'I am going to start with the cake,' he said to Stark.

  'Yes,' Stark said. A kind of longing eagerness filled his face. 'That's right.'

    Thad poised the pencil over the blank page. This was the moment that was always the best — just before the first stroke. This was surgery of a kind, and in the end the patient almost always died, but you did it anyway. You had to, because it was what you were made for. Only that.

Just remember, he thought. Remember what you're doing.

But a part of him — the part that really wanted to write Steel Machine — protested.

Thad bent forward and began to fill up the empty space.

STEEL MACHINE

by George Stark

Chapter I: The Wedding

  Alexis Machine was rarely whimsical, and for him to have a whimsical thought in such a situation as this was something which had never happened before. Yet it occurred to him: Of all the people an earth — what? five billion of them? — I'm the only one who is currently standing inside a moving wedding cake with a Heckler& Koch. 223 semiautomatic weapon in my hands.

  He had never been so shut up in a place. The air had gotten bad almost at once, but he could not have drawn a deep breath in any case. The Trojan Cake's frosting was real, but beneath it was nothing but a thin layer of a gypsum product called Nartex — a kind of high-class cardboard. If he filled his chest, the bride and groom standing on top of the cake's top tier would probably topple. Surely the icing would crack and . . .

    He wrote for nearly forty minutes, picking up speed as he went along, his mind gradually filling up with the sights and sounds of the wedding party which would end with such a bang.

  Finally he put the pencil down. He had written it blunt.

  'Give me a cigarette,' he said.

  Stark raised his eyebrows.

  'Yes,' Thad said.

    There was a pack of Pall Malls lying on the desk. Stark shook one out and Thad took it. The cigarette felt strange between his lips after so many years . . . too big, somehow. But it felt good. It felt right.

   Stark scratched a match and held it out to Thad, who inhaled deeply. The smoke bit his lungs in its old merciless, necessary way. He felt immediately woozy, but he didn't mind the feeling at all.

  Now I need a drink, he thought. And if this ends with me still alive and standing up, that's the first thing I'm going to have.

  'I thought you quit,' Stark said.

   That nodded. 'Me too. What can I say, George? I was wrong.' He took another deep drag and feathered smoke out through his nostrils. He turned his notebook toward Stark. 'Your turn,' he said.

   Stark leaned over the notebook and read the last paragraph Thad had written; there was really no need to read more. They both knew how this story went.

  Back in the house, Jack Rangely and Tony Westerman were in the kitchen, and Rollick should be upstairs now. All three of them were armed with Steyr-Aug semi-automatics, the only good machine-gun made in America, and even if some of the bodyguards masquerading as guests were very fast, the three of them should be able to lay down a fire-storm more than adequate to cover their retreat. Just let me out of this cake, Machine thought. That's all I ask.

Stark lit a Pall Mail himself, picked up one of his Berols, opened his own notebook . . . and then paused. He looked at Thad with naked honesty.

  'I'm scared, hoss,' he said.

  And Thad felt a great wave of sympathy for Stark — in spite of everything he knew. Scared. Yes, of course you are, he thought. Only the ones just starting out — the kids — aren't scared. The years go by and the words on the page don't get any darker . . . but the white space sure does get whiter. Scared? You'd be crazier than you are if you weren't.

  'I know,' he said. 'And you know what it comes down to — the only way to do it is to do it.'

    Stark nodded and bent over his notebook. Twice more he checked back at the last paragraph Thad had written . . . and then he began to write.

The words formed themselves with agonized slowness in Thad's mind.

Machine . . . had . . . never wondered . . .

A long pause, then, all in a burst:

. . . what it would be like to have asthma, but if anyone ever asked him after this . . .

A shorter pause.

. . . he would remember the Scoretti job.

He read over what he had written, then looked at Thad unbelievingly.

  Thad nodded. 'It makes sense, George.' He fingered the corner of his mouth, which suddenly stung, and felt a fresh sore breaking there. He looked at Stark and saw that a similar sore had disappeared from the corner of Stark's mouth.

  It's happening. It's really happening.