Holding out his hand, the man said, “I represent the Hardy Homeostatic Vermin Trap Corporation of Berkeley, California. I’m here to acquaint you with an amazing proposition that could well mean tripling your profits within six months.” His eyes flashed.
Gill repressed the impulse to laugh aloud. “I see,” he said, nodding. “Very interesting, Mr.—” He glanced questioningly at the phoce.
“M-mr. Stuart McConchie,” the phoce stammered. “I knew him before the war; I haven’t seen him in all that time and now he’s migrated up here, the same as I did.”
“My employer, Mr. Hardy,” Stuart McConchie said, “has empowered me to describe to you in detail the design of a fully-automated cigarette-making machine. We at Hardy Homeostatic are well aware of the fact that your cigarettes are rolled entirely in the old-fashioned way. By hand.” He pointed toward the employees at the long bench. “Such a method is a century out of date, Mr. Gill. You’ve achieved superb quality in your special deluxe Gold Label cigarettes—”
“Which I intend to maintain,” Gill said quietly.
Stuart McConchie said, “Our automated electronic equipment will in no way sacrifice quality for quantity. In fact—”
“Wait,” Gill said. “I don’t want to discuss this now.” He glanced toward the phoce, who was parked close by, listening. The phoce flushed and at once spun his ‘mobile away.
“I’m going,” Hoppy said sullenly. “This doesn’t interest me anyhow; goodbye.” He wheeled through the open door, out onto the street. The two of them watched him until he disappeared.
“Our handy,” Gill said. “Fixes—heals, rather—everything that breaks. Hoppy Harrington, the human handless handy.”
Strolling a few steps away, surveying the factory and the men at their work, McConchie said, “Nice place you have here, Gill. I want to state right now how much I admire your product; it’s first in its field.”
I haven’t heard talk like that, Gill realized, in seven years. It was difficult to believe that it still existed in the world; so much had changed, and yet here, in this man McConchie, it remained intact. Gill felt a glow of pleasure. It reminded him of happier times, this salesman’s line of patter. He felt amiably inclined toward the man.
“Thank you,” he said, and he meant it. Perhaps the world, at last, was really beginning to regain some of its old forms, its civilities and customs and preoccupations, all that had gone into it to make it what it was.
“How about a cup of coffee?” Gill said. “I’ll take a break for ten minutes and you can tell me about this fully automated machine of yours.”
“Real coffee?” McConchie said, and the pleasant, optimistic mask slid for an instant from his face; he gaped at Gill with naked hunger.
“Sorry,” Gill said. “A substitute. But not bad; I think you’ll like it. Better than what’s sold in the city at those so-called ‘coffee’ stands.” He went to get the pot of water.
“Coming here,” McConchie said, “is a long-time dream fulfilled. It took me a week to make the trip and I’ve been mulling about it ever since I smoked my first special deluxe Gold Label. It’s—” He groped for the words to express his thought. “An island of civilization in these barbaric times.” He roamed about the factory, hands in his pockets. “Life seems more peaceful here. In the city if you leave your horse—well, a while ago I left my horse to go across the Bay and when I got back someone had eaten it, and it’s things like that that make you disgusted with the city and want to move on.”
“I know,” Gill said, nodding. “It’s brutal in the city because there’re still so many homeless and destitute people.”
“I really loved that horse,” Stuart McConchie said, looking sad.
“Well,” Gill said, “in the country you’re faced constantly with the death of animals. When the bombs fell, thousands of animals up here were horribly injured; sheep and cattle… but that can’t compare of course to the loss of human life down where you come from. You must have seen a good deal of human suffering since E-Day.”
McConchie nodded. “That and the sporting. The freaks both as regards animals and people. Like my old buddy Hoppy Harrington, but of course he’s from before; at Modern TV Sales & Service where we worked we used to say Hoppy was from that drug, that thalidomide.”
“What sort of vermin trap does your company make?” Gill asked.
“It’s not a passive type. Being homeostatic, that is, self-notifying, it follows for instance a rat or a cat or dog down into the network of burrows such as now underlie Berkeley and Oakland… it pursues one vermin after another, killing one and going on to the next—until it runs out of power or by chance a brilliant vermin manages to destroy it. There are a few such brilliant rats that know how to lame a Hardy Homeostatic Vermin Trap. But not many.”
“Impressive,” Gill murmured.
“Now, our proposed cigarette-rolling machine—”
“My friend,” Gill said, “I like you but—here’s the problem. I don’t have any money to buy your machine and I don’t have anything to trade you. And I don’t intend to let anyone enter my business as a partner. So what does that leave?” He smiled. “I must continue as I am.”
“Wait,” McConchie said instantly. “There has to be a solution. Maybe we could lease you a Hardy cigarette-rolling machine in exchange for x-number of cigarettes, your special deluxe Gold Label variety, of course, delivered each week for x-number of weeks.” His face glowed with animation. “The Hardy Company for instance could become sole licensed distributors of your cigarette; we could represent you everywhere, develop a systematic program of outlets up and down California. What do you say to that?”
“I must admit it does sound interesting. I admit that distribution has not been my cup of tea… I’ve thought on and off for several years about the need of getting an organization going, especially with my factory being located in a rural spot. I’ve even thought about moving back into the city, but the theft and vandalism is too great there. Anyhow I don’t want to move into the city; this is my home, here.”
He did not say anything about Bonny Keller. That was his actual reason for remaining in West Marin; his affair with her had ended years ago but he was more in love with her now than ever—he had watched her go from man to man, becoming dissatisfied with each of them, and Gill believed in his own heart that someday he would get her back. And Bonny was the mother of his daughter; he was well aware that Edie Keller was his child.
“Since you’re just up from the city,” he said aloud, “I will ask you this… is there any interesting national or international news, of late, that we might not have heard? We do get the satellite, but I’m frankly tired of disc jockey talk and music. And those endless readings.”
They both laughed. “I know what you mean,” McConchie said, sipping his coffee and nodding. “Well, I understand that an attempt is being made to produce an automobile again, somewhere around the ruins of Detroit. It’s mostly made of plywood but it does run on kerosene.”
“I don’t know where they’re going to get the kerosene,” Gill said. “Before they build a car they better get a few refineries operating again. And repair a few major roads.”
“Oh, something else. The Government plans to reopen Route Forty across the Rockies sometime this year. For the first time since the war.”
“That’s great news,” Gill said, pleased. “I didn’t know that.”
“And the telephone company—”
“Wait,” Gill said, rising. “How about a little brandy in your coffee? How long has it been since you’ve had a coffee royal?”
“Years,” Stuart McConchie said.
“This is Gill’s Five Star. My own. From the Sonoma Valley.” He poured from the squat bottle into McConchie’s cup.
“Here’s something else that might interest you.” McConchie reached into his coat pocket and brought out something flat and folded. He opened it, spread it out, and Gill saw an envelope.
Mail service. A letter from New York.
/> “That’s right,” McConchie said. “Delivered to my boss, Mr. Hardy. All the way from the East Coast; it only took four weeks. The Government in Cheyenne, the military people; they’re responsible. It’s done partly by blimp, partly by truck, partly by horse. The last stage is by foot.”
“Good Lord,” Gill said. And he poured some Gill’s Five Star into his coffee, too.
Bill Keller heard the small animal, the snail or slug near him, and at once he got into it. But he had been tricked; it was sightless. He was out but he could not see or hear this time, he could only move.
“Let me back,” he called to his sister in panic. “Look what you did, you put me into something wrong.”You did it on purpose, he said to himself as he moved. He moved on and on, searching for her.
If I could reach out, he thought. Reach—upward. But he had nothing to reach with, no limbs of any sort. What am I now that I’m out again? he asked himself as he tried to reach up. What do they call those things up there that shine? Those lights in the sky… can I see them without having eyes? No, he thought; I can’t.
He moved on; raising himself now and then as high as possible and then sinking back, once more to crawl, to do the one thing possible for him in his born, outside life.
In the sky, Walt Dangerfield moved, in his satellite, although he sat resting with his head in his hands. The pain inside him had grown, changed, absorbed him until, as so many times before, he could imagine nothing else.
How long can I keep going? he asked himself. How long will I live?
There was no one to answer.
Edie Keller, with a delicious shiver of exultation, watched the angleworm crawling slowly across the ground and knew with certitude that her brother was in it.
For inside her, down in her stomach, the mentality of the worm now resided; she heard its monotonous voice. “Boom, boom, boom,” it went, in echo of its own nondescript biological processes.
“Get out of me, worm,” she giggled. What did the worm think about its new existence? Was it as dumbfounded as Bill probably was? I have to keep my eye on him, she realized, meaning the creature wriggling across the ground. For he might get lost. “Bill,” she said, bending over him, “you look funny. You’re all red and long; did you know that?” And then she thought, What I should have done was put him in the body of another human being. Why didn’t I do that? Then it would be like it ought to be; I would have a real brother, outside of me, who I could play with.
But on the other hand she would have a strange, new person inside her. And that did not sound like much fun.
Who would do? she asked herself. One of the kids at school? An adult? Mr. Barnes, my teacher, maybe. Or—
Hoppy Harrington. Who is afraid of Bill anyhow.
“Bill,” she said, kneeling down and picking up the angleworm; she held it in the palm of her hand. “Wait until you hear my plan.” She held the worm against her side, where the hard lump within lay. “Get back inside now. You don’t want to be a worm anyhow; it’s no fun.”
Her brother’s voice once more came to her. “You—I hate you, I’ll never forgive you. You put me in a blind thing with no legs or nothing! All I could do was drag myself around!”
“I know,” she said, rocking back and forth, cupping the now-useless worm in her hand still. “Listen, did you hear me? You want to do that, Bill, what I said? Shall I get near Hoppy Harrington? You’d have eyes and ears; you’d be a real outside person.”
“It scares me.”
“But I want to,” Edie said, rocking back and forth. “We’re going to, Bill; we’re going to give you eyes and ears—now.”
There was no answer from Bill; he had turned his thoughts away from her and her world, into the regions which only he could reach. Talking to those old crummy, sticky dead, Edie said to herself. Those empty poo-poo dead that never had any fun or nothing.
It won’t do you any good, Bill, she thought. Because I’ve decided.
Hurrying down the path in her robe and slippers, through the night darkness, Edie Keller groped her way toward Hoppy Harrington’s house.
“If you’re going to do it you have to hurry,” Bill cried, from deep within her. “He knows about us—they’re telling me, the dead are. They say we’re in danger. If we can get close enough to him I can do an imitation of someone dead that’ll scare him, because he’s afraid of dead people. That’s because to him the dead are like fathers, lots of fathers, and—”
“Be quiet,” Edie said. “Let me think.” In the darkness she had gotten mixed up. She could not find the path through the oak forest, now, and she halted, breathing deeply, trying to orient herself by the dull gleam of the partial moon overhead.
It’s to the left, she thought. Down a hill. I must not fall; he’d hear the noise, he can hear a long way, almost everything. Step by step she descended, holding her breath.
“I’ve got a good imitation ready,” Bill was mumbling; he would not be quiet. “When I get near him I switch with someone dead, and you won’t like that because it’s—sort of squishy, but it’s just for a few minutes and then they can talk to him direct, from inside you. Is that—”
“Shut up,” Edie said desperately. They were now above Hoppy’s house; she saw the lights below. “Please, Bill, please.”
“But I have to explain to you,” Bill went on. “When I—”
He stopped. Inside her there was nothing. She was empty.
“Bill,” she said.
He had gone.
Before her eyes, in the dull moonlight, something she had never seen before bobbed. It rose, jiggled, its long pale hair streaming behind it like a tail; it rose until it hung directly before her face. It had tiny, dead eyes and a gaping mouth, it was nothing but a little hard round head, like a baseball. From its mouth came a squeak, and then it fluttered upward once more, released. She watched it as it gained more and more height, rising above the trees in a swimming motion, ascending in the unfamiliar atmosphere which he had never known before.
“Bill,” she said, “Hoppy took you out of me. Hoppy put you outside.” And you are leaving, she realized; Hoppy is making you go. “Come back,” she said, but it didn’t matter because he could not live outside of her. She knew that. Doctor Stockstill had said that. He could not be born, and Hoppy had heard him and made him born, knowing that he would die.
You won’t get to do your imitation, she realized. I told you to be quiet and you wouldn’t. Straining, she saw—or thought she saw—the hard little object with the streamers of hair, high now above her… and then it disappeared, silently. She was alone.
Why go on now? It was over. She turned, walked back up the hillside, her head lowered, eyes shut, feeling her way. Back to her house, her bed. Inside she felt raw; she felt the tearing loose. If you only could have been quiet, she thought. He would not have heard you. I told you so.
Floating in the atmosphere, Bill Keller saw a little, heard a little, felt the trees and the animals alive and moving among them. He felt the pressure at work on him, lifting him up, but he remembered his imitation and he said it. His voice came out tiny in the cold air; then his ears picked it up and he exclaimed.
“We have been taught a terrible lesson for our folly,” he squeaked, and his voice echoed in his ears, delighting him.
The pressure on him let go; he bobbed up, swimming happily, and then he dove. Down and down he went and just before he touched the ground he went sideways until, guided by the living presence within, he hung suspended above Hoppy Harrington’s house.
“This is God’s way!” he shouted in his thin, tiny voice. “We can see by this awful example that it is time to call a halt to high-altitude nuclear testing. I want all of you to write letters to President Kennedy!” He did not know who President Kennedy was. A living person, perhaps. He looked around for him but he did not see him; he saw oak forests of animals, he saw a bird with noiseless wings that drifted, huge-beaked, eyes staring. Bill squeaked in fright as the noiseless, brown-feathered bird glided his way.
/> The bird made a dreadful sound, of greed and the desire to rend.
“All of you,” Bill cried, fleeing through the dark, chill air. “You must write letters in protest!”
The glittering eyes of the bird followed behind him as he and it glided above the trees, in the dim moonlight.
The owl reached him. And crunched him, in a single instant. Once more he was within. He could no longer see or hear; it had been for a short time and now it was over. The owl, hooting, flew on. Bill Keller said to the owl, “Can you hear me?”
Maybe it could; maybe not. It was only an owl; it did not have any sense, as Edie had. Can I live inside you? he asked it, hidden away in here where no one knows… you have your flights that you make, your passes. With him, in the owl, were the bodies of mice and a thing that stirred and scratched, big enough to keep on wanting to live.
Lower, he told the owl. He saw, by means of the owl, the oaks; he saw clearly, as if everything were full of light. Millions of individual objects lay immobile and then he spied one that crept—it was alive and the owl turned that way. The creeping thing, suspecting nothing, hearing no sound, wandered on, out into the open.
An instant later it had been swallowed. The owl flew on. Good, he thought. And, is there more? This goes on all night, again and again, and then there is bathing when it rains, and the long, deep sleeps. Are they the best part? They are.
He said, “Fergesson don’t allow his employees to drink; it’s against his religion, isn’t it?” And then he said, “Hoppy, what’s the light from? Is it God? You know, like in the Bible. I mean, is it true?” The owl hooted.
A thousand dead things within him yammered for attention. He listened, repeated, picked among them. “You dirty little freak,” he said. “Now you listen. Stay down here; we’re below street-level, the bomb won’t get us. People upstairs, they’re going to die. Down here you clear. Space. For them.” Frightened, the owl flapped; it rose higher, trying to evade him. But he continued, sorting and picking and listening on.