XIII

Bill Keller heard the small animal, the snail or slug, near him and at once he got into it. But he been tricked; it was sightless. He was out but he could not see or hear, 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 finally out? 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 new life, his born, outside life.

In the sky, Walt Dangerfield moved, in his satellite, although he was resting with his head in his hands. The pain inside him grew, changed, absorbed him until, as before, he could imagine nothing else.

And then he thought he saw something. Beyond the window of the satellite—a flash far off, along the rim of the Earth’s darker edge. What was that? he asked himself. An explosion, like the ones he had seen and cringed from seven years ago - . . the flares ignited over the surface of the Earth. Were they beginning again?

On his feet he stood peering out, hardly breathing. Seconds passed and there were no further explosions. And the one he had seen; it had been peculiarly vague and shadowy, with a diffuseness that had made it seem somehow unreal, as if it was only imagined.

As if, he thought, it was more a recollection of a fact than the fact itself. It must be some sort of sidereal echo, he concluded. A remnant left over from E Day, still reverberating in space somehow ... but harmless, now. More so all the time.

And yet it frightened him. Like the pain inside him, it was too odd to be dismissed; it seemed to be dangerous and he could not forget it.

I feel ill, he repeated to himself, resuming his litany based on his great discomfort. Can’t they get me down? Do I have to stay up here, creeping across the sky again and again—forever?

For his own needs he put on a tape of the Bach B Minor Mass; the giant choral sound filled the satellite and made him forget. The pain inside, the dull, elderly explosion briefly outlined beyond the window—both began to leave his mind.

“Kyrie eleison,” he murmured to himself. Greek words, embedded in the Latin text; strange. Remnants of the past ... still alive, at least for him. I’ll play the B Minor Mass for the New York area, he decided. I think they’ll like it; a lot of intellectuals, there. Why should I only play what they request anyhow? I ought to be teaching them, not following. And especially, he thought, if I’m not going to be around much longer ... I better get going and do an especially bang-up job, here at the end.

All at once his vehicle shuddered. Staggering, he caught hold of the wall nearest him; a concussion, series of shock waves, passing through. Objects fell and collided and burst; he looked around amazed.

Meteor? he wondered.

It seemed to him almost as if someone were attacking him.

He shut off the B Minor Mass and stood, listening and waiting. Far off through the window he saw another dull explosion and he thought, they may get me. But why? It won’t be long anyhow before I’m finished ... why not wait? And then the thought came to him, But damn it, I’m alive now, and I better act alive; I’m not utterly dead yet.

He snapped on his transmitter and said into the mike, “Sorry for the pause, folks. But I sure felt giddy there for a while; I had to lie down and I didn’t notice the tape had ended. Anyhow—“

Laughing his laugh, he watched through the window of the satellite for more of the strange explosions. There was one, faint and farther off ... he felt a measure of relief. Maybe they wouldn’t get him after all; they seemed to be losing track of the range, as if his location were a mystery to them.

I’ll play the corniest record I can think of, he decided, as an act of defiance. “Bei Mir Bist Du Schon”; that ought to do it. Whistling in the dark, as they say, and he laughed again, thinking about it; what an act of defiance it was, by God. It would certainly come as a surprise to whoever was trying to eradicate him—if that was in fact what they wanted to do.

Maybe they’re just plain tired of my corny talk and my corny readings, Dangerfield conjectured. Well, if so—this will fix them.

“I’m back,” he said into his mike. “At least for a while. Now, what was I about to do? Does anybody remember?”

There were no more concussions. He had a feeling that, for the time being, they had ceased.

“Wait,” he said, “I’ve got a red light on; somebody’s calling me from below. Hold on.”

From his tape library he selected the proper tape, carried it to the transport and placed it on the spindle.

“I’ve got a request for ‘Bei Mir Bist Du Schön,’ “ he said, with grim relish, thinking of their dismay down below. “Can you beat that?” No, you can’t, he said to himself. And—by the Andrews Sisters. Dangerfield is striking back. Grinning, he started the tape into motion.

Edie Keller, with a delicious shiver of exultation, watched the angle worm crawling slowly across the ground and new with certitude that her brother was in it.

For inside her, down in her abdomen, the mentality of the worm now resided; she heard its monotonous voice. “Boom, boom, boom,” it went, in echo of its nondescript biological processes.

“Get out of me, worm,” she said, and 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? I bet Bill would like to be in an adult. Mr. Barnes, maybe. Or Hoppy Harrington, who was afraid of Bill anyhow. Or—she screeched with delight, Mama. It would be so easy; I could snuggle up close to her, lay against her ... and Bill could switch, and I’d have my own mama inside me—and wouldn’t that be wonderful? I could make her do anything I wanted. And she couldn’t tell me what to do.

And Edie thought, She couldn’t do any more unmentionable things with Mr. Barnes any more, or with anybody else. I’d see to that. I know Bill wouldn’t behave that way; he was as shocked as I was.

“Bill,” she said, kneeling down and carefully picking up the angleworm; she held it in the palm of her hand. “Wait until you hear my plan—you know what? We’re going to fix Mama for the bad things she does.” 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 pooh-pooh; 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 Mama to let me lie against her so you can do you-know-what? You’d have eyes and ears; you’d be a full-grown person.”

Nervously, Bill said, “I don’t know. I don’t think I want to walk around being Mama; it sort of scares me.”

“Sissy,” Edie said. “You better do it or you may never get out ever again. Well, who do you want to be if not Mama? Tell me and I’ll fix it up; I cross my heart and promise to fall down black and hard.”

“I’ll see,” Bill said. “I’ll talk to the dead people and see what they say about it. Anyhow I don’t know if it’ll work; I had trouble getting out into that little thing, that worm.”

“You’re afraid to try,” she laughed; she tossed the worm away, into the bushes at the end of the school grounds. “Sissy! My brother is a big baby sissy!”

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 pooh-pooh dead that never have, any fun or nothing.

And then a really stunning idea came to her. I’ll fix it so he gets out and into that crazy man Mr. Tree who they’re all talking about right now, she decided. Mr. Tree stood up in the Foresters’ Hall last night and said those dumb religious things about repenting, and so if Bill acts funny and doesn’t know what to do or say, nobody will pay any attention.

Yet, that posed the awful problem of her finding herself containing a crazy man. Maybe I could take poison like I’m always saying, she decided. I could swallow a lot of oleander leaves or castor beans or something and get rid of him; he’d be helpless, he couldn’t stop me.

Still, it was a problem; she did not relish the idea of having that Mr. Tree-she had seen him often enough not to like him—inside herself. He had a nice dog, and that was about all ... .

Terry, the dog. That was it. She could lie down against Terry and Bill could get out and into the dog and everything would be fine.

But dogs had a short life. And Terry was already seven years old; according to her mother and father. He had been born the same time almost as she and Bill.

Darn it, she thought. It’s hard to decide; it’s a real problem, what to do with Bill who wants so bad to get out and see and hear things. And then she thought, Who of all the people I know would I like most to have living inside my stomach? And the answer was: her father.

“You want to walk around as Daddy?” she asked Bill. But Bill did not answer; he was still turned away, conversing with the great majority beneath the ground.

I think, she decided, that Mr. Tree would be the best because he lives out in the country with sheep and doesn’t see too many people, and it would be easier on Bill that way because he wouldn’t have to know very much about talking. He’d just have Terry out there and all the sheep, and then with Mr. Tree being crazy now it’s really perfect. Bill could do a lot better with Mr. Tree’s body than Mr. Tree is doing, I bet, and all I have to worry about really is chewing the right number of poisonous oleander leaves—enough to kill him but not me. Maybe two would do. Three at the most, I guess.

Mr. Tree went crazy at the perfect time, she decided. He doesn’t know it, though. But wait’ll he finds out; won’t he be surprised. I might let him live for a while inside me, just so he’d realize what happened; I think that would be fun. I never liked him, even though Mama does, or says she does. He’s creepy. Edie shuddered.

Poor, poor Mr. Tree, she thought delightedly. You aren’t going to ruin any more meetings at the Foresters’ Hall because where you’ll be you won’t be able to preach to anybody, except maybe to me and I won’t listen.

Where can I do it? she asked herself. Today; I’ll ask Mama to take us out there after school. And if she won’t do it, I’ll hike out there by myself.

I can hardly wait, Edie said to herself, shivering with anticipation.

The bell for class rang, and, together with the other children, she started into the building. Mr. Barnes was waiting at the ‘door of the single classroom which served all the children from first grade to sixth; as she passed him, deep in thought, he said to her, “Why so absorbed; Edie? What’s on your weighty mind today?”

“Well,” she said, halting, “you were for a while. Now it’s Mr. Tree instead.”

“Oh yes,” Mr. Barnes said, nodding. “So you heard about that.”

The other children had passed on in, leaving them alone. So Edie said, “Mr. Barnes, don’t you think you ought to stop doing what you’re doing with my mama? It’s wrong; Bill says so and he knows.”

The school teacher’s face changed color, but he did not speak. Instead he walked away from her, into the room and up to his desk, still darkly flushed. Did I say it wrong? Edie wondered. Is he mad at me now? Maybe he’ll make me stay after, for punishment, and maybe he’ll tell Mama and she’ll spank me.

Feeling discouraged, she seated herself and opened the precious, ragged, fragile, coverless book to the story of Snow White; it was their reading assignment for the day.

Lying in the damp rotting leaves beneath the old live oak trees, in the shadows, Bonny Keller clasped Mr. Barnes to her and thought to herself that this was probably the last time; she was tired of it and Hal was scared, and that, she had learned from long experience, was a fatal combination.

“All right,” she murmured, “so she knows. But she knows on a small child’s level; she has no real understanding.”

“She knows it’s wrong,” Barnes answered.

Bonny sighed.

“Where is she now?” Barnes asked.

“Behind that by tree over there. Watching.”

Hal Barnes sprang to his feet as if stabbed; he whirled around, wide-eyed, then sagged as he comprehended the truth. “You and your malicious wit,” he muttered. But he did not return to her; he stayed on his feet, a short distance off, looking glum and uneasy. “Where is she really?”

“She hiked out to Jack Tree’s sheep ranch.”

“But—“ He gestured. “The man’s insane! Won’t he be—well, isn’t it dangerous?”

“She just went out to play with Terry, the verbose canine.” Bonny sat up and began picking bits of humus from her hair. “I don’t think he’s even there. The last time anybody saw Bruno, he—“

“’Bruno,’” Barnes echoed. He regarded her queerly.

“I mean Jack.” Her heart labored.

“He said the other night something about having been responsible for the high-altitude devices in 1972.” Barnes continued to scrutinize her; she waited, her pulse throbbing in her throat. Well, it was bound to come out sooner or later.

“He’s insane,” she ‘pointed out. “Right? He believes—“

“He believes,” Hal Barnes said, “that he’s Bruno Bluthgeld, isn’t that right?”

Bonny shrugged. “That, among other things.”

“And he is, isn’t he? And Stockstill knows it, you know it—that Negro knows it.”

“No,” she said, “that Negro doesn’t know it, and stop saying ‘that Negro.” His name is Stuart McConchie; I talked to Andrew about him and he says he’s a very fine, intelligent, enthusiastic and alive person.”

Barnes said, “So Doctor Bluthgeld didn’t die in the Emergency. He came here. He’s been ‘here, living among us. The man most responsible for what happened.”

“Go murder him,” Bonny said.

Barnes grunted.

“I mean it,” Bonny said. “I don’t care any more. Frankly I wish you would.” It would be a good manly act, she said to herself. It would be a distinct change.

“Why have you tried to shield a person like that?”

“I don’t know.” She did not care to discuss it. “Let’s go back to town,” she said. His company wearied her and she had begun to think once again about Stuart McConchie. “I’m out of cigarettes,” she said. “So you can drop me off at the cigarette factory.” She walked toward Barnes’ horse, which, tied to a tree, complacently cropped the long grass.

“A darky,” Barnes said, with bitterness. “Now you’re going to shack up with him. That certainly makes me feel swell.”

“Snob,” she said. “Anyhow, you’re afraid to go on; you want to quit. So the next time you see Edie you can truthfully say, ‘I am not doing anything shameful and evil with your mama, scout’s honor.’ Right?” She mounted the horse, picked up the reins and waited. “Come on, Hal.”

An explosion lit up the sky.

The horse bolted, and Bonny leaped from it, throwing herself from its side to roll, sliding, into the shrubbery of the oak forest. Bruno, she thought; can it be him really? She lay clasping her head, sobbing with pain; a branch had laid her scalp open and blood dripped through her fingers and ran down her wrist. Now Barnes bent over her; he tugged her up, turned her over. “Bruno,” she said. “Goddamn him. Somebody will have to kill him; they should have done it long ago—they should have done it in 1970 because he was insane then.” She got her handkerchief out and mopped at her scalp. “Oh dear,” she said. “I really am hurt. That was a real fall.”

“The horse is gone, too,” Barnes said.

“It’s an evil god,” she said, “who gave him that power, whatever it is. I know it’s him, Hal. We’ve seen a lot of strange things over the years, so why not this? The ability to re-create the war, to bring it back, like he said last night. Maybe he’s got us snared in time. Could that be it? We’re stuck fast; he’s—“ She broke off as a second white flash broke overhead, traveling at enormous speed; the trees around them lashed and bent and she heard, here and there, the old oaks splinter.

“I wonder where the horse went,” Barnes murmured, rising cautiously to his feet and peering around.

“Forget the horse,” she said. “We’ll have to walk back; that’s obvious. Listen, Hal. Maybe Hoppy can do something; he has funny powers, too. I think we ought to go to him and tell him. He doesn’t want to be incinerated by a lunatic. Don’t you agree? I don’t see anything else we can do at this point.”

“That’s a good idea,” Barnes said, but he was still looking for the horse; he did not seem really to be listening.

“Our punishment,” Bonny said.

“What?” he murmured.

“You know. For what Edie calls our ‘shameful, evil doings.’ I thought the other night ... maybe we should have been killed with the others; maybe it’s a good thing this is happening.”

“There’s the horse,” Barnes said, walking swiftly from her. The horse was caught; his reins had become tangled in a bay limb.

The sky, now, had become sooty black. She remembered that color; it had never entirely departed anyhow. It had merely lessened.

Our little fragile world, Bonny thought, that we labored to build up, after the Emergency . - . this puny society with out tattered school books, our “deluxe” cigarettes, our wood-burning trucks—it can’t stand much punishment; it can’t stand this that Bruno is doing or appears to be doing. One blow again directed at us and we will be gone; the brilliant animals will perish, all the new, odd species will disappear as suddenly as they arrived. Too bad, she thought with grief. It’s unfair; Terry, the verbose dog—him, too. Maybe we were too ambitious; maybe we shouldn’t have dared to try to rebuild and go on.

“I think we did pretty well, she thought, all in all. We’ve been alive; we’ve made love and drunk Gill’s Five Star, taught our kids in a peculiar-windowed school building, put out News & Views, cranked up a car radio and listened daily to W. Somerset Maugham. What more could be asked of us? Christ, she thought. It isn’t fair, this thing now. It isn’t right at all. We have our horses to protect, our crops, our lives ... .

Another explosion occurred, this time further off. To the south, she realized. Near the site of the old ones. San Francisco.

Wearily, she shut her eyes. And just when this McConchie has shown up, too, she thought. What lousy, stinking luck.

The dog, placing himself across the path, barring her way, groaned in his difficult voice, “Treezzz bizzzzeeeeee. Stopppppp.” He woofed in warning. She was not supposed to continue on to the wooden shack.

Yes, Edie thought, I know he’s busy. She had seen the explosions in the sky. “Hey, you know what?” she said to the dog.

“Whuuuuut?” the dog asked, becoming curious; he had a simple mind, as she well knew; he was easily taken in.

“I learned how to throw a stick so far nobody can find it,” she said. She bent, picked up a nearby stick. “Want me to prove it?”

Within her Bill said, “Who’re you talking to?” He was agitated, now that the time was drawing near. “Is it Mr. Tree?”

“No,” she said, “just the dog.” She waved the stick. “Bet you a paper ten dollar bill if I throw it you can’t find it.”

“Surrrrre I cannnnnn,” the dog said, and whined in eagerness; this was his favorite sort of sport. “Buuuut I cannnn’t bettttt,” he added. “I haaaaave no monnnnnneyyyy.”

From the wooden shack walked Mr. Tree, all at once; taken by surprise, both she and the dog stopped what they were doing. Mr. Tree paid no attention to them; he continued on up a small hill and then disappeared down the far side, out of sight.

“Mr. Tree!” Edie called. “Maybe he isn’t busy now,” she said to the dog. “Go ask him, okay? Tell him I want to talk to him a minute.”

Within her Bill said restlessly, “He’s not far off now, is he? I know he’s there. I’m ready; I’m going to try real hard this time. He can do almost anything, can’t he? See and walk and hear and smell—isn’t that right? It’s not like that worm.”

“He doesn’t have any teeth,” Edie said, “but he has everything else that most people have.” As the dog obediently loped off in pursuit of Mr. Tree she began walking along the path once more. “It won’t be long,” she said. “I’ll tell him—“ She had it all worked out. “I’ll say, ‘Mr. Tree, you know what? Well, I swallowed one of those duckcallers hunters use, and if you lean close you can hear it.’ How’s that?”

“I don’t know,” Bill said desperately. “What’s a ‘duckcaller’? What’s a duck, Edie? Is it alive?” He sounded more and more confused, as if the situation were to much for him.

“You sissy,” she hissed. “Be quiet.” The dog had reached Tree and now ‘the man had turned; he was starting back toward her, frowning.

“I am very busy, Edie,” Mr. Tree called. “Later—I’ll talk to you later; I can’t be interrupted now.” He raised his arms and made a bizarre motion toward her, as if he were keeping time to some music; he scowled and swayed, and she felt like laughing, he looked so foolish.

“I just want to show you something,” she called back.

“Later!” He started away, then spoke to the dog.

“Yessirr,” the dog growled, and loped back toward the girl. “Nooo,” the dog told her. “Stoppppp.”

Darn it, Edie thought. We can’t do it today; we’ll have to come back maybe tomorrow.

“Gooo awayyyy,” the dog was saying to her, and it bared its fangs; it had been given the strongest possible instructions.

Edie said, “Listen, Mr. Tree—“ And then she stopped, because there was no longer any Mr. Tree there. The dog turned, whined, and within her Bill moaned.

“Edie,” Bill cried, “he’s gone; I can feel it. Now where’ll I go to get out? What’ll I do?”

High up in the air, a tiny black speck blew and tumbled; the girl watched it drift as if it were caught in some violent spout of wind. It was Mr. Tree and his arms stuck out as he rolled over and over, dropping and rising like a kite. What’s happened to him? she wondered dismally, knowing that Bill was right; their chance, their plan, was gone forever now.

Something had hold of Mr. Tree and it was killing him. It lifted him higher and higher, and then Edie shrieked. Mr. Tree suddenly dropped. He fell like a stone straight at the ground; she shut her eyes and the dog, Terry, let out a howl of stark dismay.

“What is it?” Bill was clamoring in despair. “Who did it to him? They took him away, didn’t they?”

“Yes,” she said, and opened her eyes.

Mr. Tree lay on the ground, broken and crooked, with his legs and anns sticking up at all angles. He was dead; she knew that and so did the dog. The dog trotted over to him, halted, turned to her with a stricken, numbed look. She said nothing; she stopped, too, a distance away. It was awful, what they—whoever it was—had done to Mr. Tree. It was like the glasses man from Bolinas, she thought; it was a killing.

“Hoppy did it,” Bill moaned. “Hoppy killed Mr. Tree from a distance because he was afraid of him; Mr. Tree’s down with the dead, now, I can hear him talking. He’s saying that; he says Hoppy reached out all the way from his house where he is and grabbed Mr. Tree and picked him up and flung him everywhere!”

“Gee,” Edie said. I wonder how come Hoppy did that, she wondered. Because of the explosions Mr. Tree was making in the sky, was that it? Did they bother Hoppy? Make him sore?

She felt fright. That Hoppy, she thought; he can kill from so far off; nobody else can do that. We better be careful. Very careful. Because he could kill all of us; he could fling us all around or squeeze us.

“I guess News & Views will put this on the first page,” she said, half to herself, half to Bill.

“What’s News & Views?” Bill protested in anguish. “I don’t understand what’s going on; can’t you explain it to me? Please.”

Edie said, “We better go back to town now.” She started slowly away, leaving the dog sitting there beside the squashed remains of Mr. Tree. I guess, she thought, it’s a good thing you didn’t switch, because if you had been inside Mr. Tree you would have been killed.

And, she thought, he would be alive inside me. At least until I got the oleander leaves chewed and swallowed. And maybe he would have found a way to stop that. He had funny powers; he could make those explosions, and he might somehow have done that inside me.

“We can try somebody else,” Bill said, hopefully. “Can’t we? Do you want to try that—what do you call it again? That dog? I think I’d like to be that dog; it can run fast and catch things and see a long way, can’t it?”

“Not now,” she said, still frightened, wanting to get away. “Some other time. You’d better wait.” And she began to run back along the path, in the direction of town.

XIV

Orion Stroud, seated in the center of the Foresters’ Hall where he could clearly be heard by everyone, rapped for order and said:

“Mrs. Keller and Doctor Stockstill asked that the West Marin Official Jury and also the West Marin Governing Citizens’ Council convene to hear a piece of vital news regarding a killing that just took place today.”

Around him, Mrs. Tallman and Cas Stone and Fred Quinn and Mrs. Lully and Andrew Gill and Earl Colvig and Miss Costigan—he glanced from one to the next, satisfied that everyone was present. They all watched with fixed attention, knowing that this was really important. Nothing like this had ever happened in their community before. This was not a killing like that of the glasses man or of Mr. Austurias.

“I understand,” Stroud said, “that it was discovered that Mr. Jack Tree who’s been living among us—“

From the audience a voice said, “He was Bluthgeld.”

“Right,” Stroud said, nodding. “But he’s dead now so there’s nothing to worry about; you have to get that through your heads. And it was Hoppy that done it. Did it, I mean.” He glanced at Paul Dietz apologetically. “Have to use proper grammar,” he said, “because this is all going to be in _News & Views_--right Paul?”

“A special edition,” Paul said, nodding in agreement.

“Now you understand, we’re not here to decide if Hoppy ought to be punished for what he did. There’s no problem there because Bluthgeld was a noted war criminal and what’s more he was beginning to use his magical powers to restart some of the old war. I guess everybody in this room knows that, because you all saw the explosions. Now—“ He glanced toward Gill. “There’s a newcomer, here, a Negro named Stuart McConchie, and ordinarily I have to admit we don’t welcome darkies to West Marin, but I understand that McConchie was tracking down Bluthgeld, so he’s going to be allowed to settle in West Marin if he so desires.”

The audience rustled with approval.

“Mainly what we’re here for,” Stroud continued, “is to vote some sort of reward to Hoppy to show our appreciation. We probably would all have been killed, due to Bluthgeld’s magical powers. So we owe him a real debt of gratitude. I see he isn’t here, because he’s busy at work in his house, fixing things; after all, he’s our handy and that’s a pretty big responsibility, right there. Anyhow, has anybody got an idea of how the people here can express their appreciation for Hoppy’s timely killing of Doctor Bluthgeld?” Stroud looked around questioningly.

Rising to his feet, Andrew Gill cleared his throat and said, “I think it’s appropriate for me to say a few words. First, I want to thank Mr. Stroud and this community for welcoming my new business associate, Mr. McConchie. And then I want to offer one reward that might be appropriate regarding Hoppy’s great service to this community and to the world at large. I’d like to contribute a hundred special deluxe Gold Label cigarettes.” He paused, starting to reseat himself, and then added, “And a case of Gill’s Five Star.”

The audience applauded, whistled, stamped in approval.

“Well,” Stroud said, smiling, “that’s really something I guess Mr. Gill is aware of what Hoppy’s action spared us all. There’s a whole lot of oak trees knocked over along Bear Valley Ranch Road, from the concussion of the blasts Bluthgeld was setting off. Also, as you may know, I understand that he was beginning to turn his attention south toward San Francisco—“

“That’s correct,” Bonny Keller spoke up.

“So,” Stroud said, “Maybe those people down there will want to pitch in and contribute something to Hoppy as a token of appreciation. I guess the best we can do, and it’s good but I wish there was more, is turn over Mr. Gill’s gift of the hundred special deluxe Gold Label cigarettes and the case of brandy ... Hoppy will appreciate that, but I was actually thinking of something more in the line of a memorial, like a statue or a park or at least a plaque of some sort. And—I’d be willing to donate the land, and I know Cas Stone would, too.”

“Right,” Gas Stone declared emphatically.

“Anybody else got an idea?” Stroud asked. “You, Mrs. Tallman; I’d like to hear from you.”

Mrs. Tallman said, “It would be fitting to elect Mr. Harrington to an honorary public office, such as President of the West Marin Governing Citizens’ Council for instance, or as clerk of the School Trustees Board, That, of course, in addition to the park or memorial and the brandy and cigarettes.”

“Good idea,” Stroud said. “Well? Anybody else? Because let’s be realistic, folks; Hoppy saved our lives. That Bluthgeld had gone out of his mind, as everybody who was at the reading last night knows ... he would have put us right back where we were seven years ago, and all our hard work in rebuilding would have gone for nothing. Nothing at all.”

The audience murmured its agreement.

“When you have magic like he had,” Stroud said, a physicist like Bluthgeld with all that knowledge ... the world never was in such danger before; am I right? It’s just lucky Hoppy can move objects at a distance; it’s lucky for us that Hoppy’s been practicing that all these years now because nothing else would have reached out like that, over all that distance, and mashed that Bluthgeld like it did.”

Fred Quinn spoke up, “I talked to Edie Keller who witnessed it and she tells me that Bluthgeld got flung right up into the air before Hoppy mashed him; tossed all around.”

“I know,” Stroud said. “I interviewed Edie about it.” He looked around the room, at all the people. “If anybody wants details, I’m sure Edie would give them. Right, Mrs. Keller?”

Bonny, seated stiffly, her face pale, nodded.

“You still scared, Bonny?” Stroud asked.

“It was terrible,” Bonny said quietly.

“Sure it was,” Stroud said, “but Hoppy got him.” And then he thought to himself, That makes Hoppy pretty formidable, doesn’t it? Maybe that’s what Bonny’s thinking. Maybe that’s why she’s so quiet.

“I think the best thing to do,” Cas Stone said, “is to go right to Hoppy and say, ‘Hoppy, what do you want that sye can do for you in token of our appreciation?’ We’ll put it right to him. Maybe there’s something he wants very badly that we don’t know about.”

Yes, Stroud thought to himself. You have quite a point there, Cas. Maybe he wants many things we don’t know about, and maybe one day—not too far off—he’ll want to get them. Whether we form a delegation and go inquire after that or not.

“Bonny,” he said to Mrs. Keller, “I wish you’d speak up; you’re sitting there so quiet.”

Bonny Keller murmured, “I’m just tired.”

“Did you know Jack Tree was Bluthgeld?”

Silently, she nodded.

“Was it you, then,” Stroud asked, “who told Hoppy?”

“No,” she said. “I intended to; I was on my way. But it had already happened. He knew.”

I wonder how he knew, Stroud asked himself.

“That Hoppy,” Mrs. Lully said in a quavering voice, “he seems to be able to do almost anything ... why, he’s even more powerful than that Mr. Bluthgeld, evidently.”

“Right,” Stroud agreed.

The audience murmured nervously.

“But he’s put all his abilities to use for the welfare ot our community,” Andrew Gill said. “Remember that. Remember he’s our handy and he helps bring in Dangerfield when the signal’s weak, and he does tricks for us, and imitations when we can’t get Dangerfield at all—he does a whole lot of things, including saving our lives from another nuclear holocaust. So I say, God bless Hoppy and his abilities. I think we should thank God that we have a funny here like him.”

“Right,” Cas Stone said.

“I agree,” Stroud said, with caution. “But I think we ought to sort of put it to Hoppy that maybe from now on—“ He hesitated. “Our killings should be like with Austurias, done legally, by our Jury. I mean, Hoppy did right and he had to act quickly and all ... but the Jury is the legal body that’s supposed to decide. And Earl, here should do the actual act. In the future, I mean. That doesn’t include Bluthgeld because having all That magic he was different.” You can’t kill a man with powers like that through the ordinary methods, he realized. Like Hoppy, for instance ... suppose someone tried to kill him; it would be next to impossible.

He shivered.

“What’s the matter, Orion?” Cas Stone asked, acutely.

“Nothing,” Orion Stroud said. “Just thinking what we can do to reward Hoppy to show our appreciation; it’s a weighty problem because we owe him so much.”

The audience murmured, as the individual members discussed with one another how to reward Hoppy.

George Keller, noticing his wife’s pale, drawn features, said, “Are you okay?” He put his hand on her shoulder but she leaned away.

“Just tired,” she said. “I ran for a mile, I think, when those explosions began. Trying to reach Hoppy’s house.”

“How did you know Hoppy could do it?” he asked.

“Oh,” she said, “we all know that; we all surely know he’s the only one of us who has anything remotely resembling that kind of strength. It came into our—“ She corrected herself. “My mind right away, as soon as I saw the explosions.” She glanced at her husband.

“Who were you with?” he said.

“Barnes. We were hunting chanterelle mushrooms under the oaks along Bear Valley Ranch Road.”

George Keller said, “Personally I’m afraid of Hoppy. Look—he isn’t even here. He has a sort of contempt for us all. He’s always late getting to the Hall; do you know what I mean? Do you sense it? And it gets more true all the time, perhaps as he sharpens his abilities.”

“Perhaps,” Bonny murmured.

“What do you think will happen to us now?” George asked her. “Now that we’ve killed Bluthgeld? We’re better off, a lot safer. It’s a load off everybody’s mind. Someone should notify Dangerfield so he can broadcast it from the satellite.”

“Hoppy could do that,” Bonny said in a remote voice. “He can do anything. Almost anything.”

In the speaker’s chair, Orion Stroud rapped for order. “Who wants to be in the delegation that goes down to Hoppy’s house and confers the reward and notification of honor on him?” He looked all around the room. “Somebody start to volunteer.”

“I’ll go,” Andrew Gill spoke up.

“Me, too,” Fred Quinn said.

Bonny said, “I’ll go.”

To her, George said, “Do you feel well enough to?”

“Sure.” She nodded listlessly. “I’m fine, now. Except for the gash on my head.” Automatically she touched the bandage.

“How about you, Mrs. Tallman?” Stroud was saying.

“Yes, I’ll go,” Mrs. Tallman answered, but her voice trembled.

“Afraid?” Stroud asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“Why?”

Mrs. Tallman hesitated. “I—don’t know, Orion.”

“I’ll go, too,” Orion Stroud announced. “That’s five of us, three men and two women; that’s just about right. We’ll take the brandy and the cigaboos along and announce the rest—about the plaque, and him being President of the Council and clerk and all that.”

“Maybe,” Bonny said in a low voice, “we ought to send a delegation there that will stone him to death.”

George Keller sucked in his breath and said, “For God’s sake, Bonny.”

“I mean it,” she said.

“You’re behaving in an incredible way,” he said, furious and surprised; he did not understand her. “What’s the matter?”

“But of course it wouldn’t do any good,” she said. “He’d mash us before we got near his house. Maybe he’ll mash me now.” She smiled. “For saying that.”

“Then shut up!” He stared at her in great fear.

“All right,” she said. “I’ll be quiet. I don’t want to be flung up into the air and then dropped all the way to the ground, the way Jack was.”

“I should think not.” He was trembling.

“You’re a coward,” she said mildly. “Aren’t you? I wonder why I in all this time didn’t realize it before. Maybe that’s why I feel the way I do about you.”

“And what way’s that?”

Bonny smiled. And did not answer. It was a hard, hateful and rigidly cold smile and he did not understand it; he glanced away, wondering once again if all the rumors he had heard about his wife, over the years, could be true after all. She was so cold, so independent. George Keller felt miserable.

“Christ,” he said, “you call me a coward because I don’t want to see my wife mashed flat.”

“It’s my body and my existence,” Bonny said. “I’ll do with it what I want. I’m not afraid of Hoppy; actually I am, but I don’t intend to act afraid, if you can comprehend the difference. I’ll go down there to that tar-paper house of his and face him honestly. I’ll thank him but I think I’ll tell him that he must be more careful in the future. We insist on it.”

He couldn’t help admiring her. “Do that,” he urged. “It would be a good thing, dear. He should understand that, how we feel.”

“Thank you,” she said remotely. “Thanks a lot, George, for your encouragement.” She turned away, then, listening to Orion Stroud.

George Keller felt more miserable than ever.

First it was necessary to visit Andrew Gill’s factory to pick up the special deluxe Gold Label cigarettes and the Five Star brandy; Bonny, along with Orion Stroud and Gill, left the Foresters’ Hall and walked up the road together, all of them conscious of the gravity of their task.

“What’s this business relationship you’re going into with McConchie?” Bonny asked Andrew Gill.

Gill said, “Stuart is going to bring automation to my factory.”

Not believing him she said, “And you’re going to advertise over the satellite, I suppose. Singing commercials, as they used to be called. How will they go? Can I compose one for you?”

“Sure,” he said, “if it’ll help business.”

“Are you serious, about this automation?” It occurred to her now that perhaps he actually was.

Gill said, “I’ll know more when I’ve visited Stuart’s boss in Berkeley. Stuart and I are going to make the trip very shortly. I haven’t seen Berkeley in years. Stuart says it’s building up again—not as it was before, of course. But even that may eventually come some day.”

“I doubt that,” Bonny said. “But I don’t care anyhow; it wasn’t so good as all that. Just so it builds back some.”

Glancing about to make sure that Orion could not hear him, Gill said to her, “Bonny, why don’t you come along with Stuart and me?”

Astonished, she said, “Why?”

“It would do you good to break with George. And maybe you could manage to make the break with him final. You should, for his sake and yours.”

Nodding, she said, “But—“ It seemed to her out of the question; it went too far. Appearances would not be maintained. “Then everyone would know,” she said. “Don’t you think?”

Gill said, “Bon, they know already.”

“Oh.” Chastened, she nodded meekly. “Well, what a surprise. I’ve been living under a delusion, evidently.”

“Come to Berkeley with us,” Gill said, “and start over. In a sense that’s what I’m going to be doing; it marks the end of rolling cigarettes by band, one at a time, on a little cloth and rod machine. It means I’ll have a true factory in the old sense, the pre-war sense.”

“’The pre-war sense,’” she echoed. “Is that good?”

“Yes,” Gill said. “I’m damn sick and tired of rolling them by hand. I’ve been trying to free myself for years; Stuart has shown me the way. At least, I hope so.” He crossed his fingers.

They reached his factory, and there were the men at work in the rear, rollins away. Bonny thought, So this portion of our lives is soon to be over with forever. I must be sentimental because I cling to it. But Andrew is right. This is no way to produce goods; it’s too tedious, too slow. And too few cigarettes are made, really, when you get right down to it. With authentic machinery, Andrew can supply the entire country—assuming that the transportation, the means of delivery, is there.

Among the workmen Stuart McConchie crouched by a barrel of Gill’s fine ersatz tobacco, inspecting it. Well, Bonny thought, he either has Andrew’s special deluxe formula by now or he isn’t interested in it. “Hello,” she said to him. “Can you sell his cigarettes once they start rolling off the assembly line in quantity? Have you worked that part out?”.

“Yes,” McConchie said. “We’ve set up plans for distribution on a mass basis. My employer, Mr. Hardy—“

“Don’t give me a big sales pitch,” she interrupted. “I believe you if you say so; I was just curious.” She eyed him critically. “Andy wants me to travel to Berkeley with you. What do you say?”

“Sure,” he said vaguely.

“I could be your receptionist,” Bonny said. “At your central offices. Right in the center of the city. Correct?” She laughed, but neither Stuart McConchie nor Gill joined her. “Is this sacred?” she asked. “Am I treading on holy topics when I joke? I apologize, if I am.”

“It’s okay,” McConchie said. “We’re just concerned; there’re still a number of details to work out.”

“Maybe I will go along,” Bonny said. “Maybe it’ll solve my problems, finally.”

Now it was McConchie’s turn to scrutinize her. “What problems do you have? This seems a nice environment here, to bring up your daughter in; and your old man being principal of—“

“Please,” she said. “I don’t care to hear a summary of my blessings. Spare me.” She walked off, to join Gill who was packaging cigarettes in a metal box for presentation to the phocomelus.

The world is so innocent, she thought to herself. Even yet, even after all that’s happened to us. Gill wants to cure me of my—restlessness. Stuart McConchie can’t imagine what I could wish for that I don’t have right here. But maybe they’re right and I’m wrong. Maybe I’ve made my life unduly complicated ... maybe there’s a machine in Berkeley that will save me, too. Perhaps my problems can be automated out of existence.

Off in a corner, Orion Stroud was writing out a speech which he intended to deliver to Hoppy. Bonny smiled, thinking of the solemnity of it all. Would Hoppy be impressed? Would he perhaps be amused or even filled with bitter contempt? No, she thought; he will like it—I have an intuition. It is just the sort of display that he yearns for. Recognition of him; that will please him terribly.

Is Hoppy preparing to receive us? she wondered. Has he washed his face, shaved, put on an especially clean suit ... is he waiting expectantly for us to arrive? Is this the achievement of his life, the pinnacle?

She tried to imagine the phocomelus at this moment. Hoppy had, a few hours ago, killed a man, and she knew from what Edie said the people all believed he had killed the glasses man. The town rat catcher, she said to herself, and shivered. Who will be next? And will he get a presentation next time—for each one, from now on?

Maybe we will be returning again and again to make one presentation after another, she thought. And she thought, I will go to Berkeley; I want to get as far away from here as possible.

And, she thought, as soon as possible. Today, if I can. Right now. Hands in her coat pockets, she walked quickly back to join Stuart McConchie and Gill; they were conferring, now, and she stood as close to them as she could, listening to their words with complete raptness.

Doubtfully, Doctor Stockstill said to the phocomelus, “Are you sure he can hear me? This definitely transmits all the way to the satellite?” He touched the mike button again, experimentally.

“I can’t possibly assure you that he can hear you,” Hoppy said with a snigger. “I can only assure you that this is a five hundred watt transmitter; that’s not very much by the old standards but it’s enough to reach him. I’ve reached him with it a number of times.” He grinned his sharp, alert grin, his intelligent gray eyes alive with splinters of light. “Go ahead. Does he have a couch up there, or can that be skipped?” The phocomelus laughed, then.

Doctor Stockstill said, “The couch can be skipped.” He pressed the mike button and said, “Mr. Dangerfield, this is a—doctor, down below here in West Marin. I’m concerned with your condition. Naturally. Everyone down here is. I, urn, thought maybe I could help you.”

“Tell him the truth,” Hoppy said. “Tell him you’re an analyst.”

Cautiously, Stockstill said into the microphone, “Formerly I was an analyst, a psychiatrist. Of course, now I’m a G.P. Can you hear me?” He listened to the loudspeaker mounted in the corner but heard only static. “He’s not picking me up,” he said to Hoppy, feeling discouragement.

“It takes time to establish contact,” floppy said. “Try again.” He giggled. “So you think it’s just in his mind. Hypochondria. Are you so sure? Well, you might as well assume that because if it’s not, there is practically nothing you can do anyhow.”

Doctor Stockstill pressed the mike button and said, “Mr. Dangerfield, this is Stockstill, speaking from Marin County, California; I’m a doctor.” It seemed to him absolutely hopeless; why go on? But on the other hand—

“Tell him about Bluthgeld,” Hoppy said suddenly.

“Okay,” Stockstill said. “I will.”

“You can tell him my name,” floppy said. “Tell him I did it; listen, Doctor—this is how he’ll sound when he tells it.” The phocomelus assumed a peculiar expression and from his mouth, as before, issued the voice of Walt Dangerfield. “Well, friends, I have a bit of good, good news here ... I think you’ll all enjoy this. Seems as if—“ The phocomelus broke off, because from the speaker came a faint sound.

“ ... hello, Doctor. This is Walt Dangerfield.”

Doctor Stockstill said instantly into the microphone, “Good. Dangerfield, what I want to talk to you about is the pains you’ve been having. Now, do you have a paper bag up there in the satellite? We’re going to try a little carbon dioxide therapy, you and I. I want you to take the paper bag and blow into it. You keep blowing into it and inhaling from it, so that you’re finally inhaling pure carbon dioxide. Do you understand? It’s just a little idea, but it has a sound basis behind it. You see, too much oxygen triggers off certain diencephalic responses which set up a vicious cycle in the autonomic nervous system. One of the systems of a too-active autonomic nervous system is hyperperistalsis, and you may be suffering from that. Fundamentally, it’s an anxiety symptom.”

The phocomelus shook his head, turned and rolled away.

“I’m sorry ... ” the voice from the speaker came faintly. “I don’t understand, Doctor. You say breathe into a paper bag? What about a polyethylene container? Couldn’t asphyxiation result?” The voice, querulous and unreasonable, stumbled uncertainly on, “Is there any way I can synthesize phenobarbital out of the constituents available to me up here? I’ll give you an inventory list and possibly—“ Static interrupted Dangerfield; when he next was audible he was talking about something else. Perhaps, Doctor Stockstill thought, the man’s faculties were wandering.

“Isolation in space,” Stockstill broke in, “breeds its own disruptive phenomena, similar to what once was termed ‘cabin fever.’ Specific to this is the feedback of free-floating anxiety so that it assumes a somatic consequence.” He felt, as he talked, that he was doing it all wrong; that he had failed already. The phocomelus had retired, too disgusted to listen—he was off somewhere else entirely, puttering. “Mr. Dangerfield,” Stockstill said, “what I want to do is interrupt this feedback and the carbon dioxide trick might do just that. Then when tension symptoms have eased, we can begin a form of psychotherapy; including recall of forgotten traumatic material.”

The disc jockey said drily, “My traumatic material isn’t forgotten, Doctor; I’m experiencing it right now. It’s all around me. It’s a form of claustrophobia and I have it very, very bad.”

“Claustrophobia,” Doctor Stockstill said, “is a phobia directly traceable to the diencephalon in that it’s a disturbance of the sense of spaciality. It’s connected with the panic reaction to the presence or the imagined presence of danger; it’s a repressed desire to flee.”

Dangerfield said, “Well, where can I flee to, Doctor? Let’s be realistic. What in Christ’s name can psychoanalysis do for me? I’m a sick man; I need an operation, not the crap you’re giving me.”

“Are you sure?” Stockstill asked, feeling ineffective and foolish. “Now, this will admittedly take time, but you and I have at least established basic contact; you know I’m down here trying to help you and I know that you’re listening.” You are listening, aren’t you? he asked silently. “So I think we’ve accomplished something already.”

He waited. There was only silence.

“Hello, Dangerfield?” he said into the microphone.

Silence.

From behind him the phocomelus said, “He’s either cut himself off or the satellite’s too far, now. Do you think you’re helping him?”

“I don’t know,” Stockstill said. “But I know it’s worth trying.”

“If you had started a year ago—“

“But nobody knew.” We took Dangerfield for granted, like the sun, Stockstill realized. And now, as Hoppy says, it’s a little late.

“Better luck tomorrow afternoon,” Hoppy said, with a faint—almost sneering—smile. And yet Stockstill felt in it a deep sadness. Was Hoppy sorry for him, for his futile efforts? Or for the man in the satellite passing above them? It was difficult to tell.

“I’ll keep trying,” Stockstill said.

There was a knock at the door.

floppy said, “That will be the official delegation.” A broad, pleased smile appeared on his pinched features; his face seemed to swell, to fill with warmth. “Excuse me.” He wheeled his ‘mobile to the door, extended a manual extensor, and flung the door open.

There stood Orion Stroud, Andrew Gill, Cas Stone, Bonny Keller and Mrs. Tallman, all looking nervous and ill-at-ease. “Harrington,” Stroud said, “we. have something for you, a little gift.”

“Fine,” Hoppy said, grinning back at Stockstill. “See?” he said to the doctor. “Didn’t I tell you? It’s their appreciation.” To the delegation he said, “Come on in; I’ve been waiting.” He held the door wide and they passed on inside his house.

“What have you been doing?” Bonny asked Doctor Stockstill, seeing him standing by the transmitter and microphone.

Stockstill said, “Trying to reach Dangerfield.”

“Therapy?” she said.

“Yes.” He nodded.

“No luck, though.”

“We’ll try again tomorrow,” Stockstill said.

Orion Stroud, his presentation momentarily forgotten, said to Doctor Stockstill, “That’s right; you used to be a psychiatrist.”

Impatiently, Hoppy said, “Well, what did you bring me?” He peered past Stroud, at Gill; he made out the sight of the container of cigarettes and the case of brandy. “Are those mine?”

“Yes,” Gill said. “In appreciation.”

The container and the case were lifted from his hands; he blinked as they sailed toward the phoce and came to rest on the floor directly in front of the ‘mobile. Avidly, Hoppy plucked them open with his extensors.

“Uh,” Stroud said, disconcerted, “we have a statement to make. Is it okay to do so now, Hoppy?” He eyed the phocomelus with apprehension.

“Anything else?” Hoppy demanded, the boxes open, now. “What else did you bring me to pay me back?”

To herself as she watched the scene Bonny thought, I had no idea he was so childish. Just a little child ... we should have brought much more and it should have been wrapped gaily, with ribbons and cards, with as much color as possible. He must not be disappointed, she realized. Our lives depend on it, on his being—placated.

“Isn’t there more?” Hoppy was saying peevishly.

“Not yet,” Stroud said. “But there will be.” He shot a swift, flickering glance at the others in the delegation. “Your real presents, Hoppy, have to be prepared with care. This is just a beginning.”

“I see,” the phocomelus said. But he did not sound convinced.

“Honest,” Stroud said. “It’s the truth, floppy.”

“I don’t smoke,” Hoppy said, surveying the cigarettes; he picked up a handful and crushed them, letting the bits drop. “It causes cancer.”

“Well,” Gill began, “there’re two sides to that. Now—“

The phocomelus sniggered. “I think that’s all you’re going to give me,” he said.

“No, there will certainly be more,” Stroud said.

The room was silent, except for the static coming from the speaker.

Off in the corner an object, a transmitter tube, rose and sailed through the air, burst loudly against the wall, sprinkling them all with fragments of broken glass.

“’More,’” Hoppy mimicked, in Stroud’s deep, portentous voice. “’There will certainly be more.’”

XV

For thirty-six hours Walt Dangerfield had lain on his bunk in a state of semi-consciousness, knowing now that it was not an ulcer; it was cardiac arrest which he was experiencing, and it was probably going to kill him in a very short time. In spite of what Stockstill, the analyst, had said.

The transmitter of the satellite had continued to broadcast a tape of light concert music over and over again; the sound of soothing strings filled his ears in a travesty of unavailing comfort. He did not even have the strength to get up and make his way to the controls to shut it off.

That psychoanalyst, he thought bitterly. Talking about breathing into a paper bag. It had been like a dream ... the faint voice, so full of self-confidence. So utterly false in its premises.

Messages were arriving from all over the world as the satellite passed through its orbit again and again; his recording equipment caught them and retained them, but that was all. Dangerfield could no longer answer.

I guess I have to tell them, he said to himself. I guess the time—the time we’ve been expecting, all of us—has finally come at last.

On his hands and knees he crept until he reached the seat by the microphone, the seat in which for seven years he had broadcast to the world below. After he had sat there for a time resting he turned on one of the many tape recorders, picked up the mike, and began dictating a message which, when it had been completed, would play endlessly, replacing the concert music.

“My friends, this is Walt Dangerfield talking and wanting to thank you all for the times we have had together, speaking back and forth, us all keeping in touch. I’m afraid though that this complaint of mine makes it impossible for me to go on any longer. So with great regret I’ve got to sign off for the last time—“ He went on, painfully, picking his words with care, trying to make them, his audience below, as little unhappy as possible. But nevertheless he told them the truth; he told them that it was the end for him and that they would have to find some way to communicate without him, and then he rang off, shut down the microphone, and in a weary reflex, played the tape back.

The tape was blank. There was nothing on it, although he had talked for almost fifteen minutes.

Evidently the equipment had for some reason broken down, but he was too ill to care; he snapped the mike back on, set switches on the control panel, and this time prepared to deliver his message live to the area below. Those people there would just have to pass the word on to the others; there was no other way.

“My friends,” he began once more, “this is Walt Dangerfield. I have some bad news to give you but—“ And then he realized that he was talking into a dead mike. The loudspeaker above his head had gone silent; nothing was being transmitted. Otherwise he would have heard his own voice from the monitoring system.

As he sat there, trying to discover what was wrong, he noticed something else, something far stranger and more ominous.

Systems on all sides of him were in motion. Had been in motion for some time, by the looks of them. The highspeed recording and playback decks which he had never used—all at once the drums were spinning, for the first time in seven years. Even as he watched he saw relays click on and off; a drum halted, another one began to turn, this time at slow speed.

I don’t understand, he said to himself. What’s happening?

Evidently the systems were receiving at high speed, recording, and now one of them had started to play back, but what had set all this in motion? Not he. Dials showed him that the satellite’s transmitter was on the air, and even as he realized that, realized that messages which had been picked up and recorded were now being played over the air, he heard the speaker above his head return to life.

“Hoode hoode hoo,” a voice—his voice—chuckled. “This is your old pal, Walt Dangerfield, once more, and forgive that concert music. Won’t be any more of that.”

When did I say that? he asked himself as he sat dully listening. He felt shocked and puzzled. His voice sounded so vital, so full of good spirits; how could I sound like that now? he wondered. That’s the way I used to sound, years ago, when I had my health, and when she was still alive.

“Well,” his voice murmured on, “that bit of indisposition I’ve been suffering from ... evidently mice got into the supply cupboards, and you’ll laugh to think of Walt Dangerfield fending off mice up here in the sky, but ‘tis true. Anyhow, part of my stores deteriorated and I didn’t happen to notice ... but it sure played havoc with my insides. However—And he heard himself give his familiar chuckle. “I’m okay now. I know you’ll be glad to hear that, all you people down there who were so good as to transmit your get-well messages, and for that I give you thanks.”

Getting from from the seat before the microphone, Walt Dangerfield made his way unsteadily to his bunk; he lay down, closing his eyes, and then he thought once more of the pain in his chest and what it meant. Angina peetoris, he thought, is supposed to be more like a great fist pressing down; this is more a burning pain. If I could look at the medical data on the microfilm again ... maybe there’s some fact I failed to read. For instance, this is directly under the breastbone, not off to the left side. Does that mean anything?

Or maybe there’s nothing wrong with me, he thought to himself as he struggled to get up once more. Maybe Stockstill, that psychiatrist who wanted me to breathe carbon dioxide, was right; maybe it’s just in my mind, from the years of isolation here.

But he did not think so. It felt far too real for that.

There was one other fact about his illness that bewildered him. For all his efforts, he could not make a thing out of that fact, and so he had not even bothered to mention it to the several doctors and hospitals below. Now it was too late, because now he was too sick to operate the controls of the transmitter.

The pain seemed always to get worse when his satellite was passing over Northern California.

In the middle of the night the din of Bill Keller’s agitated murmurings woke his sister up. “What is it? Edie said sleepily, trying to make out what he wanted to tell her. She sat up in her bed, now, rubbing her eyes as the murmurings rose to a crescendo.

“Hoppy Harrington!” he was saying, deep down inside her. “He’s taken over the satellite! Hoppy’s taken over Dangerfield’s satellite!” He chattered on and on excitedly, repeating it again and again.

“How do you know?”

“Because Mr. Bluthgeld says so; he’s down below now but he can still see what’s going on above. He can’t do anything and he’s mad. He still knows all about us. He hates Hoppy because Hoppy mashed him.”

“What about Dangerfield?” she asked. “Is he dead yet?”

“He’s not down below,” her brother said, after a long pause. “So I guess not.”

“Who should I tell?” Edie said. “About what Hoppy did?”

“Tell Mama,” her brother said urgently. “Go right in now.”

Climbing from the bed, Edie scampered to the door and up the hail to their parents’ bedroom; she flung the door open, calling, “Mama, I have to tell you something—“ And then her voice failed her, because her mother was not there. Only one sleeping figure lay in the bed, her father, alone. Her mother—she knew instantly and completely—had gone and she would not be coming back.

“Where is she?” Bill clamored from within her. “I know she’s not here; I can’t feel her.”

Slowly, Edie shut the door of the bedroom. What’ll I do? she asked herself. She walked aimlessly, shivering from the night cold. “Be quiet,” she said to Bill, and his murmurings sank down a little.

“You have to find her,” Bill was saying.

“I can’t,” she said. She knew it was hopeless. “Let me think what to do instead,” she said, going back into her bedroom for her robe and slippers.

To Ella Hardy, Bonny said, “You have a very nice home here. It’s strange to be back in Berkeley after so long, though.” She felt overwhelmingly tired. “I’m going to have to turn in,” she said. It was two in the morning. Glancing at Andrew Gill and Stuart she said, “We made awfully good time getting here, didn’t we? Even a year ago it would have taken another three days.”

“Yes,” Gill said, and yawned. He looked tired, too; he had done most of the driving because it was his horsecar they had taken.

Mr. Hardy said, “Along about this time, Mrs. Keller, we generally tune in a very late pass by the satellite.”

“Oh,” she said, not actually caring but knowing it was inevitable; they would have to listen at least for a few moments to be polite. “So you get two transmissions a day, down here.”

“Yes,” Mrs. Hardy said, “and frankly we find it worth staying up for this late one, although in the last few weeks ... ” She gestured. “I suppose you know as well as we do. Dangerfield is such a sick man.”

They were all silent, for a moment.

Hardy said, “To face the brutal fact, we haven’t been able to pick him up at all the last day or so, except for a program of light opera that he has played over and over again automatically ... so—“ He glanced around at the four of them “That’s why we were pinning so many hopes on this late transmission, tonight.”

To herself, Bonny thought, There’s so much business to conduct tomorrow, but he’s right; we must stay up for this. We must know what is going on in the satellite; it’s too important to us all. She felt sad. Walt Dangerfield, she thought, are you dying up there alone? Are you already dead and we don’t know yet?

Will the light opera music go on forever? she wondered. At least until the satellite at last falls back to the Earth or drifts off into space and finally is attracted by the sun?

“I’ll turn it on,” Hardy said, inspecting his watch. He crossed the room to the radio, turned it on carefully. “It takes it a long time to warm up,” he apologized. “I think there’s a weak tube; we asked the West Berkeley Handyman’s Association to inspect it but they’re so busy, they’re too tied up, they said. I’d look at it myself, but—“ He shrugged ruefully. “Last time I tried to fix it, I broke it worse.”

Stuart said, “You’re going to frighten Mr. Gill away.”

“No,” Gill said. “I understand. Radios are in the province of the handies. It’s the same up in West Marin.”

To Bonny, Mrs. Hardy said, “Stuart says you used to live here.”

“I worked at the radiation lab for a while,” Bonny said. “And then I worked out at Livermore, also for the University. Of course—“ She hesitated. “It’s so changed. I wouldn’t know Berkeley, now. As we came through I saw nothing I recognized except perhaps San Pablo Avenue itself. All the little shops—they look new.”

“They are,” Dean Hardy said. Now static issued from the radio and he bent attentively, his ear close to it. “Generally we pick up this late transmission at about 640 kc. Excuse me.” He turned his back to them, intent on the radio.

“Turn up the fat lamp,” Gill said, “so he can see better to tune it.”

Bonny did so, marveling that even here in the city they were still dependent on the primitive fat lamp; she had supposed that their electricity had long since been restored, at least on a partial basis. In some ‘ways, she realized, they were actually behind West Marin. And in Bolinas--.

“Ah,” Mr. Hardy said, breaking into her thoughts. “I think I’ve got him. And it’s not light opera.” His face glistened, beamed.

“Oh dear,” Ella Hardy said, “I pray to heaven he’s better.” She clasped her hands together with anxiety.

From the speaker a friendly, informal, familiar voice boomed out loudly, “Hi there, all you night people down below. Who do you suppose this is, saying hello, hello and hello.” Dangerfield laughed. “Yes, folks, I’m up and around, on my two feet once more. And just twirling all these little old knobs and controls like crazy ... yes sir.” His voice was warm, and around Bonny the faces in the room relaxed, too, and smiled in company with the pleasure contained in the voice. The faces nodded, agreed.

“You hear him?” Ella Hardy said. “Why, he’s better. He is; you can tell. He’s not just saying it, you can tell the difference.”

“Hoode hoode hoo,” Dangerfield said. “Well, now, let us see; what news is there? You heard about that public enemy number one, that one-time physicist we all remember so well. Our good buddy Doctor Bluthgeld, or should I say Doctor Bloodmoney? Anyhow, I guess you all know by now that dear Doctor Bloodmoney is no longer with us. Yes, that’s right.”

“I heard a rumor about that,” Mr. Hardy said excitedly. “A peddler who hitched a balloon ride out of Marin County—“

“Shhh,” Ella Hardy said, listening.

“Yes indeed,” Dangerfield was saying. “A certain party up in Northern California took care of Doctor B. For good. And we owe a debt of sheer unadulterated gratitude to that certain little party because—well, just consider this, folks; that party’s a bit handicapped. And yet he was able to do what no one else could have done.” Now Dangerfield’s voice was hard, unbending; it was a new sound which they had not heard from him ever before. They glanced at one another uneasily. “I’m talking about Hoppy Harrington, my friends. You don’t know that name? You should, because without Hoppy not one of you would be alive.”

Hardy, rubbing his chin and frowning, shot a questioning look at Ella.

“This Hoppy Harrington,” Dangerfield continued, “mashed Doctor B. from a good four miles away, and it was easy. Very easy. You think it’s impossible for someone to reach out and touch a man four miles off? That’s miiiiighty long arms, isn’t it, folks? And mighty strong hands. Well, I’ll tell you something even more remarkable.” The voice became confidential; it dropped to an intimate near-whisper. “Hoppy has no arms and no hands at all.” And Dangerfield, then, was silent.

Bonny said quietly, “Andrew, it’s him, isn’t it?”

Twisting around in his chair to face her, Gill said, “Yes, dean. I think so.”

“Who?” Stuart McConchie said.

Now the voice from the radio resumed, more calmly this time, but also more bleakly. The voice had become chilly and stark. “There was an attempt made,” it stated, “to reward Mr. Harrington. It wasn’t much. A few cigarettes and some bad whiskey—if you can call that a ‘reward.’ And some empty phrases delivered by a cheap local politico. That was all—that was it for the man who saved us all. I guess they figured—“

Ella Hardy said, “That is not Dangerfield.”

To Gill and Bonny, Mr. Hardy said, “Who is it? Say.”

Bonny said, “It’s Hoppy.” Gill nodded.

“Is he up there?” Stuart said. “In the satellite?”

“I don’t know,” Bonny said. But what did it matter? “He’s got control of it; that’s what’s important.” And we thought by coming to Berkeley we would get away, she said to herself. That we would have left Hoppy. “I’m not surprised,” she said. “He’s been preparing a long time; everything else has been practice, for this.”

“But enough of that,” the voice from the radio declared, in a lighter tone, now. “You’ll hear more about the man who saved us all; I’ll keep you posted, from time to time ... old Walt isn’t going to forget. Meanwhile, let’s have a little music. What about a little authentic five-string banjo music, friends? Genuine authentic U.S. American oldtime folk music ... ‘Out on Penny’s Farm,’ played by Pete Seeger, the greatest of the folk music men.”

There was a pause, and then, from the speaker, came the sound of a full symphony orchestra.

Thoughtfully, Bonny said, “Hoppy doesn’t have it down quite right. There’re a few circuits left he hasn’t got control of.”

The symphony orchestra abruptly ceased. Silence obtained again, and then something spilled out at the incorrect speed; it squeaked frantically and was chopped off. In spite of herself, Bonny smiled. At last, belatedly, there came the sound of the five-string banjo.

Hard times in the country,

Out on Penny’s farm.

It was a folksy tenor voice twanging away, along with the banjo. The people in the room sat listening, obeying out of long habit; the music emanated from the radio and for seven years they had depended on this; they had learned this and it had become a part of their physical bodies, this response. And yet—Bonny felt the shame and despair around hen. No one in the room fully understood what had happened; she herself felt only a numbed confusion. They had Dangerfield back and yet they did not; they had the outer form, the appearance, but what was it really, in essence? It was some labored apparition, like a ghost; it was not alive, not viable. It went through the motions but it was empty and dead. It had a peculiar preserved quality, as if somehow the cold, the loneliness, had combined to form around the man in the satellite a new shell. A case which fitted over the living substance and snuffed it out.

The killing, the slow destruction of Dangerfield, Bonny thought, was deliberate, and it came—not from space, not from beyond—but from below, from the familiar landscape. Dangerfield had not died from the years of isolation; he had been stricken by careful instruments issuing up from the very world which he struggled to contact. If he could have cut himself off from us, she thought, he would be alive now. At the very moment he listened to us, received us, he was being killed—and did not guess.

He does not guess even now, she decided. It probably baffles him, if he is capable of perception at this point, capable of any form of awareness.

“This is terrible,” Gill was saying in a monotone.

“Terrible,” Bonny agreed, “but inevitable. He was too vulnerable up there. If Hoppy hadn’t done it someone else would have, one day.”

“What’ll we do?” Mr. Hardy said. “If you folks are so sure of this, we better—“

“Oh,” Bonny said, “we’re sure. There’s no doubt. You think we ought to form a delegation and call on Hoppy again? Ask him to stop? I wonder what he’d say.” I wonder, she thought, how near we would get to that familiar little house before we were demolished. Perhaps we are too close even now, right here in this room.

Not for the world, she thought, would I go any nearer. I think in fact I will move farther on; I will get Andrew Gill to go with me and if not him then Stuart, if not Stuart then someone. I will keep going; I will not stay in one place and maybe I will be safe from Hoppy. I don’t care about the others at this point, because I am too scared; I only care about myself.

“Andy,” she said to Gill, “listen. I want to go.”

“Out of Berkeley, you mean?”

“Yes.” She nodded. “Down the coast to Los Angeles. I know we could make it; we’d get there and we’d be okay there, I know it.”

Gill said, “I can’t go, dear. I have to return to West Marin; I have my business—I can’t give it up.”

Appalled, she said, “You’d go back to West Marin?”

“Yes. Why not? We can’t give up just because Hoppy has done this. That’s not reasonable to ask of us. Even Hoppy isn’t asking that.”

“But he will,” she said. “He’ll ask everything, in time; I know it, I can foresee it.”

“Then we’ll wait,” Gill said. “Until then. Meanwhile, let’s do our jobs.” To Hardy and Stuart McConchie he said, “I’m going to turn in, because Christ—we have plenty to discuss tomorrow.” He rose to his feet. “Things may work themselves out. We mustn’t despair.” He whacked Stuart on the back. “Right?”

Stuart said, “I hid once in the sidewalk. Do I have to do that again?” He looked around at the rest of them, seeking an answer.

“Yes,” Bonny said.

“Then I will,” he said. “But I came up out of the sidewalk; I didn’t stay there. And I’ll come up again.” He, too, rose. “Gill, you can stay with me in my place. Bonny, you can stay with the Hardys.”

“Yes,” Ella Hardy said, stirring. “We have plenty of room for you, Mrs. Keller. Until we can find a more permanent arrangement.”

“Good,” Bonny said, automatically. “That’s swell.” She rubbed her eyes. A good night’s sleep, she thought. It would help. And then what? We will just have to see.

If, she thought, we are alive tomorrow.

To her, Gill said suddenly, “Bonny, do you find this hard to believe about Hoppy? Or do you find it easy? Do you know him that well? Do you understand him?”

“I think,” she said, “it’s very ambitious of him. But it’s what we should have expected. Now he has reached out farther than any of us; as he says, he’s now got long, long arms. He’s compensated beautifully. You have to admire him”

“Yes,” Gill admitted. “I do. Very much.”

“If I only thought this would satisfy him,” she said, “I wouldn’t be so afraid.”

“The man I feel sorry for,” Gill said, “is Dangerfield. Having to lie there passively, sick as he is, and just listen.”

She nodded, but she refused to imagine it; she could not bear to.

Hurrying down the path in her robe and slippers, Edie Keller groped her way toward Hoppy Harrington’s house.

“Hurry,” Bill said, from within her. “He knows about us, they’re telling me; 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. Mr. Blaine says 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 light of the partial moon overhead.

It’s to the right, she thought. Down the 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. “It’s like this: 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 okay, because once he hears—“

“It’s okay,” she said, “just for a little while.”

“Well, then you know what they say? They say ‘We have been taught a terrible lesson for our folly. This is God’s way of making us see.’ And you know what that is? That’s the minister who used to make sermons when Hoppy was a baby and got. carried on his Dad’s back to church. He’ll remember that, even though it was years and years ago. It was the most awful moment in his life; you know why? Because that minister, he was making everybody in the church look at Hoppy and that was wrong, and Hoppy’s father never went back after that. But that’s a lot of the reason why Hoppy is like he is today, because of that minister. So he’s really terrified of that minister, and when he hears his voice again—“

“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 it had never known before.

“Bill,” she said, “he took you out of me. He 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 hair 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, hen 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, I told you so.

She plodded on back.

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, 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 antenna and house.

“This is God’s way!” he shouted in his thin, tiny voice. “We can see that it is time to call a halt to high-altitude nuclear testing. I want all of you to write letters to President Johnson!” He did not know who President Johnson 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.

XVI

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 had. It was not the same. 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 trying 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 truer

The owl hooted.

“Hoppy,” he said, from within the owl, “you said last time it was all dark. Is that right? No light at all?”

A thousand dead things within him yammered for attention. He listened, repeated, picked among them.

“You dirty little freak,” he said. “Now listen. Stay down here; we’re below street-level. You moronic jackass, stay where you are, you are, you are. I’ll go upstairs and get those. People. Down here .you clear. Space. Space for them.”

Frightened, the owl flapped; it rose higher, trying to evade him. But he continued, sorting and picking and listening on.

“Stay down here,” he repeated. Again the lights of Hoppy’s house came into view; the owl had circled, returned to it, unable to get away. He made it stay where he wanted it. He brought it closer and closer in its passes to Hoppy. “You moronic jackass,” he said. “Stay where you are.”

The owl flew lower, hooting in its desire to leave. It was caught and it knew it. The owl hated him.

“The president must listen to our pleas,” he said, “before it is too late.”

With a furious effort the owl performed its regular technique; it coughed him up and he sank in the direction of the ground, trying to - catch the currents of air. He crashed among humus and plant-growth; he rolled, giving little squeaks until finally he came to rest in a hollow.

Released, the owl soared off and disappeared.

“Let man’s compassion be witness to this,” he said as he lay in the hollow; he spoke in the minister’s voice from long ago. “it is ourselves who have done this; we see here the results of mankind’s own folly.”

Lacking the owl eyes he saw only vaguely; the illumination seemed to be gone and all that remained were several nearby shapes. They were trees.

He saw, too, the form of Hoppy’s house outlined against the dim night sky. It was not far off.

“Let me in,” Bill said, moving his mouth. He rolled about in the hollow; he thrashed until the leaves stirred. “I want to come in.”

An animal, hearing him, moved further off, warily.

“In, in, in,” Bill said. “I can’t stay out here long; I’ll die. Edie, where are you?” He did not feel her nearby; he felt only the presence of the phocomelus within the house.

As best he could, he rolled that way.

Early in the morning, Doctor Stockstill arrived at Hoppy Harrington’s tar-paper house to make his fourth attempt at treating Walt Dangerfield. The transmitter, he noticed, was on, and so were lights here and there; puzzled, he knocked on the door.

The door opened and there sat Hoppy Harrington in the center of his ‘mobile. Hoppy regarded him in an odd, cautious, defensive fashion.

“I want to make another try,” Stockstill said, knowing how useless it was but wanting to go ahead anyhow. “Is it okay?”

“Yes sir,” Hoppy said. “It’s okay.”

“Is Dangerfield still alive?”

“Yes sir. I’d know if he was dead.” Hoppy wheeled aside to admit him. “He must still be up there.”

“What’s happened?” Stockstill said. “Have you been up all night?”

“Yes,” Hoppy said. “Learning to work things.” He wheeled the ‘mobile about, frowning. “It’s hard,” he said, apparently preoccupied.

“I think that idea of carbon dioxide therapy was a mistake, now that I look back on it,” Stockstill said as he seated himself at the microphone. “This time I’m going to try some free association with him, if I can get him to.”

The phocomelus continued to wheel about; now the ‘mobile bumped into the end of a table. “I hit that by mistake,” Hoppy said. “I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to.”

Stockstill said, “You seem different.”

“I’m the same; I’m Bill Keller,” the phocomelus said. “Not Hoppy Harrington.” With his right manual extensor he pointed. “There’s Hoppy. That’s him, from now on.”

In the corner lay a shriveled dough-like object several inches long; its mouth gaped in congealed emptiness. It had a human-like quality to it, and Stockstill went over to pick it up.

“That was me,” the phocomelus said. “But I got close enough last night to switch. He fought a lot, but he was afraid, so I won. I kept doing one imitation after another. The minister one got him.”

Stockstill, holding the wizened little homunculus, said nothing.

“Do you know how to work the transmitter?” the phocomelus asked, presently. “Because I don’t. I tried, but I can’t. I got the lights to work; they turn on and off. I practiced that all night.” To demonstrate, he rolled his ‘mobile to the wall, where with his manual extensor he snapped the light switch up and down.

After a time Stockstill said, looking down at the dead, tiny form he held in his hand, “I knew it wouldn’t survive.

“It did for a while,” the phocomelus said. “For around an hour; that’s pretty good, isn’t it? Part of that time it was in an owl; I don’t know if that counts.”

“I—better get to work trying to contact Dangerfield,” Stockstill said finally. “He may die any time.”

“Yes,” the phocomelus said, nodding. “Want me to take that?” He held out an extensor and Stockstill handed him the homunculus. “That owl ate me,” the phoce said. “I didn’t like that, but it sure had good eyes; I liked that part, using its eyes.”

“Yes,” Stockstill said reflexively. “Owls have tremendously good eyesight; that must have been quite an experience.” This, that he had held in his hand—it did not seem at all possible to him. And yet, it was not so strange; the phoce had moved Bill only a matter of a few inches—that had been enough. And what was that in comparison to what he had done to Doctor Bluthgeld? Evidently after that the phoce had lost track because Bill, free from his sister’s body, had mingled with first one substance and then another. And at last he had found the phoce and mingled with him, too; had, at the end, supplanted him in his own body.

It had been an unbalanced trade. Hoppy Harrington had gotten the losing end of it, by far; the body which he had received in exchange for his own had lasted only a few minutes, at the most.

“Did you know,” Bill Keller said, speaking haltingly as if it was still difficult for him to control the phocomelus’ body, “that Hoppy got up in the satellite for a while? Everybody was excited about that; they woke me up in the night to tell me and I woke Edie. That’s how I got here,” he added, with a strained, earnest expression on his face.

“And what are you going to do now?” Stockstill asked.

The phoce said, “I have to get used to this body; it’s heavy. I feel gravity ... I’m used to just floating about. You know what? I think these extensors are swell. I can do a lot with them already.” The extensors whipped about, touched a picture on the wall, flicked in the direction of the transmitter. “I have to go find Edie,” the phoce said. “I want to tell her I’m okay; I bet she probably thinks I died.”

Turning on the microphone, Stockstill said, “Walter Dangerfield, this is Doctor Stockstill in West Marin. Can you hear me? If you can, give me an answer. I’d like to resume the therapy we were attempting the other day.” He paused, then repeated what he had said.

“You’ll have to try a lot of times,” the phoce said, watching him. “It’s going to be hard because he’s so weak; he probably can’t get up to his feet and he didn’t understand what was happening when Hoppy took over.”

Nodding, Stockstill pressed the microphone button and tried again.

“Can I go?” Bill Keller asked. “Can I look for Edie now?”

“Yes,” Stockstill said, rubbing his forehead; he drew his faculties together and said, “You’ll be careful, what you do ... you may not be able to switch again.”

“I don’t want to switch again,” Bill said. “This is fine, because for the first time there’s no one in here but me.” In explanation, he added, “I mean, I’m alone; I’m not just part of someone else. Of course, I switched before, but it was to that blind thing—Edie tricked me into it and it didn’t do at all. This is different.” The thin phoce-f ace broke into a smile.

“Just be careful” Stockstill repeated.

“Yes sir,” the phoce said dutifully. “I’ll try; I had bad luck with the owl but it wasn’t my fault because I didn’t want to get swallowed. That was the owl’s idea.”

Stockstill thought, But this was yours. There is a difference; I can see that. And it is very important. Into the microphone he repeated, “Walt, this is Doctor Stockstill down below; I’m still trying to reach you. I think we can do a lot to help you pull through this, if you’ll do as I tell you. I think we’ll try some free association, today, in an effort to get at the root causes of your tension. In any case, it won’t do any harm; I think you can appreciate that.”

From the loudspeaker came only static.

Is it hopeless? Stockstill wondered. Is it worth keeping on?

He pressed the mike button once more, saying, “Walter, the who usurped your authority in the satellite—he’s dead, now, so you don’t have to worry regarding him. When you feel strong enough I’ll give you more details. Okay? Do you agree?” He listened. Still only static.

The phoce, rolling about the room on his ‘mobile, like a great trapped beetle, said, “Can I go to school now that I’m out?”

“Yes,” Stockstill murmured.

“But I know a lot of things already,” Bill said, “from listening with Edie when she was in school; I won’t have to go back and repeat, I can go ahead, like her. Don’t you think so?”

Stockstill nodded.

“I wonder what my mother will say,” the phoce said.

Jarred, Stockstill said, “What?” And then he realized who was meant. “She’s gone,” he said. “Bonny left with Gill and McConchie.”

“I know she left,” Bill said plaintively. “But won’t she be coming back sometime?”

“Possibly not,” Stockstill said. “Bonny’s an odd woman, very restless. You can’t count on it.” It might be better if she didn’t know, he said to himself. It would be extremely difficult for her; after all, he realized, she never knew about you at all. Only Edie and I knew. And Hoppy. And, he thought, the owl. “I’m going to give up,” he said suddenly, “on trying to reach Dangerfield. Maybe some other time.”

“I guess I bother you,” Bill said.

Stockstill nodded.

“I’m sorry,” Bill said. “I was trying to practice and I didn’t know you were coming by. I didn’t mean to upset you; it happened suddenly in the night—I rolled here and got in under the door before Hoppy understood, and then it was too late because I was close.” Seeing the expression on the doctor’s face, he ceased.

“It’s—just not like anything I ever ran into before,” Stockstill said. “I knew you existed. But that was about all.”

Bill said, with pride, “You - didn’t know I was learning to switch.”

“No,” Stockstill agreed.

“Try talking to Dangerfield again,” Bill said. “Don’t give up, because I know he’s up there. I won’t tell you how I know because if I do you’ll get more upset.”

“Thank you,” Stockstill said. “For not telling me.”

Once more he pressed the mike button. The phoce opened the door and rolled outside, onto the path; the ‘mobile stopped a little way off, and the phoce looked back indecisively.

“Better go find your sister,” Stockstill said. “It’ll mean a great deal to her, I’m sure.”

When next he looked up, the phoce had gone. The ‘mobile was nowhere in sight.

“Walt Dangerfield,” Stockstill said into the mike, “I’m going to sit here trying to reach you until either you answer or I know you’re dead. I’m not saying you don’t have a genuine physical ailment, but I am saying that part of the cause lies in your psychological situation, which in many respects is admittedly bad. Don’t you agree? And after what you’ve gone through, seeing your controls taken away from you—“

From the speaker a far-off, laconic voice said, “Okay, Stockstill. I’ll make a stab at your free association. If for no other reason than to prove to you by default that I actually am desperately physically ill.”

Doctor Stockstill sighed and relaxed. “It’s about time, Have you been picking me up all this time?”

“Yes, good friend,” Dangerfield said. “I wondered how long you’d ramble on. Evidently forever. You guys are persistent, if nothing else.”

Leaning back, Stockstill shakily lit up a special deluxe Gold Label cigarette and said, “Can you lie down and make yourself comfortable?”

“I am lying down,” Dangerfield said tartly. “I’ve been lying down for five days, now.”

“And you should become thoroughly passive, if possible. Become supine.”

“Like a whale,” Dangerfield said. “Just lolling in the brine—right? Now, shall I dwell on childhood incest drives? Let’s see ... I think I’m watching my mother and she’s combing her hair at her vanity table. She’s very pretty. No, sorry, I’m wrong. It’s a movie and I’m watching Norma Shearer. It’s the late-late show on TV.” He laughed faintly.

“Did your mother resemble Norma Shearer?” Stockstill asked; he had pencil and paper out, now, and was making notes.

“More like Betty Grable,” Dangerfield said. “If you can remember her. But that probably was before your time. I’m old, you know. Almost a thousand years ... it ages you, to be up here, alone.”

“Just keep talking,” Stockstill said. “Whatever comes into your mind. Don’t force it, let it direct itself instead.”

Dangerfield said, “Instead of reading the great classics to the world maybe I can free-associate as to childhood toilet traumas, right? I wonder if that would interest mankind as much. Personally, I find it pretty fascinating.”

Stockstill, in spite of himself, laughed.

“You’re human,” Dangerfield said, sounding pleased. “I consider that good. A sign in your favor.” He laughed his old, familiar laugh. “We both have something in common; we both consider what we’re doing here as being very funny indeed.”

Nettled, Stockstill said, “I want to help you.”

“Aw, hell,” the faint, distant voice answered. “I’m the one who’s helping you, Doc. You know that, deep down in your unconscious. You need to feel you’re doing something worthwhile again, don’t you? When do you first remember ever having had that feeling? Just lie there supine, and Ill do the rest from up here.” He chuckled. “You realize, of course, that I’m recording this on tape; I’m going to play our silly conversations every night over New York—they love this intellectual stuff, up that way.”

“Please,” Stockstill said. “Let’s continue.”

“Hoode hoode hoo,” Dangerfield chortled. “By all means. Can I dwell on the girl I loved in the fifth grade? That was where my incest fantasies really got started.” He was silent for a moment and then he said in a reflective voice, “You know, I haven’t thought of Myra for years. Not in twenty years.”

“Did you take her to a dance or some such thing?”

“In the fifth grade?” Dangerfield yelled. “Are you some kind of a nut? Of course not. But I did kiss her.” His voice seemed to become more relaxed, more as it had been in former times. “I never forgot that,” he murmured.

Static, for a moment, supervened.

“ ... and then,” Dangerfield was saying when next Stockstill could make his words out, “Arnold Klein rapped me on the noggin and I shoved him over, which is exactly what he deserved. Do you follow? I wonder how many hundreds of my avid listeners are getting this; I see lights lit up—they’re trying to contact me on a lot of frequencies. Wait, Doe. I have to answer a few Of these calls. Who knows, some of them might be other, better analysts.” He added, in parting, “And at lower rates.”

There was silence. Then Dangerfield was back.

“Just people telling me I did right to rap Arnold Klein on the noggin,” he said cheerfully. “So far the votes are in favor four to one. Shall I continue?”

“Please do,” Stockstill said, scratching notes.

“Well,” Dangerfield said, “and then there was Jenny Linhart. That was in the low sixth.”

The satellite, in its orbit, had come closer; the reception was now loud and clear. Or perhaps it was that Hoppy Harrington’s equipment was especially good. Doctor Stockstill leaned back in his chair, smoked his cigarette, and listened, as the voice grew until it boomed and echoed in the room.

How many times, he thought, Hoppy must have sat here receiving the satellite. Building up his plans, preparing for the day. And now it is over. Had the phocomelus—Bill Keller—taken the wizened, dried-up little thing with him? Or was it still somewhere nearby?

Stockstill did not look around; he kept his attention on the voice which came to him so forcefully, now. He did not let himself notice anything else in the room.

In a strange but soft bed in an unfamiliar room, Bonny Keller woke to sleepy confusion. Diffuse light, yellow and undoubtedly the early-morning sun, poured about her, and above her a man whom she knew well bent over her, reaching down his arms. It was Andrew Gill and for a moment she imagined—she deliberately allowed herself to imagine—that it was seven years ago, E Day again.

“Hi,” she murmured, clasping him to her. “Stop,” she said, then. “You’re crushing me and you haven’t shaved yet. What’s going on?” She sat up, all at once, pushing him away.

Gill said, “Just take it easy.” Tossing the covers aside, he picked her up, carried her across the room, toward the door.

“Where are we going?” she asked. “To Los Angeles? This way—with you carrying me in your arms?”

“We’re going to listen to somebody.” With his shoulder he pushed the door open and carried her down the small, low-ceilinged hall.

“Who?” she demanded. “Hey, I’m not dressed.” All she on was her underwear, which she had slept in.

Ahead, she saw the Hardys’ living room, and there, at the radio, their faces suffused with an eager, youthful joy, stood Stuart McConchie, the Hardys, and several men whom she realized were employees of Mr. Hardy.

From the speaker came the voice they had heard last night, or was it that voice? She listened, as Andrew Gill seated himself with her on his lap. “ ... and then Jenny Linhart said to me,” the voice was saying, “that I resembled, in her estimation, a large poodle. It had to do with the—way my big sister was cutting my hair, I think. I did look like a large poodle. It was not an insult. It was merely an observation; it showed she was aware of me. But that’s some improvement over not being noticed at all, isn’t it?” Dangerfield was silent, then, as if waiting for an answer.

“Who’s he talking to?” she said, still befuddled by sleep, still not fully awake. And then she realized what it meant. “He’s alive,” she said. And Hoppy was gone. “Goddamn it,” she said loudly, “will somebody tell me what happened?” She squirmed off Andrew’s lap and stood shivering; the morning air was cold.

Ella Hardy said, “We don’t know what happened. He apparently came back on the air sometime during the night. We hadn’t turned the radio off, and so we heard it; this isn’t his regular time to transmit to us.”

“He appears to be talking to a doctor,” Mr. Hardy said. “Possibly a psychiatrist who’s treating him.”

“Dear God,” Bonny said, doubling up. “It isn’t—possible—he’s being psychoanalyzed.” But, she thought, where did Hoppy go? Did he give up? Was the strain of reaching Out that far too much for him, was that it? Did he, after all, have limitations, like every other living thing? She returned quickly to her bedroom, still listening, to get her clothes. No one noticed; they were all so intent on the radio.

To think, she said to herself as she dressed, that the old witchcraft could help him. .It was incredibly funny; she trembled with cold and merriment as she buttoned her shirt. Dangerfield, on a couch up in his satellite, gabbling away about his childhood ... oh God, she thought, and she hurried back to the living room to catch it all.

Andrew met her, stopping her in the hall “It faded out,” he said. “It’s gone, now.”

“Why?” Her laughter ceased; she was terrified.

“We were lucky to get it at all. He’s all right, I think.”

“Oh,” she said, “I’m so scared. Suppose he isn’t?”

Andrew said, “But he is.” He put his big hands on her shoulders. “You heard him; you heard the quality of his voice.”

“That analyst,” she said, “deserves a Hero First Class medal.”

“Yes,” he said gravely. “Analyst Hero First Class, you’re entirely right.” He was silent, then, still touching her but standing a little distance from her. “I apologize for barging in on you- and dragging you out of bed. But I knew you’d want to hear.”

“Yes,” she agreed.

“Is it still essential to you that we go further on? All the way to Los Angeles?”

“Well,” she said, “you do have business here. We could stay here a while at least. And see if he remains okay.” She was still apprehensive, still troubled about Hoppy.

Andrew said, “One can never be really sure, and that’s what makes life a problem, don’t you agree? Let’s face it—he is mortal; someday he has to perish anyhow. Like the rest of us.” He gazed down at her. -

“But not now,” she said. “If it only can be later, a few years from now—I could stand it then.” She took hold of his hands and then leaned forward and kissed him. Time, she thought. The love we felt for each other in the past; the love we have for Dangerfield right now, and for him in the future. Too bad it is a powerless love; too bad it can’t automatically knit him up whole and sound once more, this feeling we have for one another—and for him.

“Remember E Day?” Andrew asked.

“Oh yes, I certainly do,” she said.

“Any further thoughts on it?”

Bonny said, “I’ve decided I love you.” She moved quickly away from him, flushing at having said such a thing. “The good news,” she murmured. “I’m carried away; please excuse me, I’ll recover.”

“But you mean it,” he said, perceptively.

“Yes.” She nodded.

Andrew said, “I’m getting a little old, now.”

“We all are,” she said. “I creak, when I first get up ... perhaps you noticed, just now.”

“No,” he said. “Just so long as your teeth stay in your head, as they are.” He looked at her uneasily. “I don’t know exactly what to say to you, Bonny. I feel that we’re going to achieve a great deal here; I hope so, anyhow. Is it a base, onerous thing, coming here to arrange for new machinery for my factory? Is that—“ He gestured. “Crass?”

“It’s lovely,” she answered.

Coming into the hall, Mrs. Hardy said, “We picked him up again for a just a minute, and he was still talking about his childhood. I would say now that we won’t hear again until the regular time at four in the afternoon. What about breakfast? We have three eggs to divide among us; my husband managed to pick them from a peddler last week.”

“Eggs,” Andrew Gill repeated. “What kind? Chicken?”

“They’re large and brown,” Mrs. Hardy said. “I’d guess so, but we can’t be positive until we open them.”

Bonny said, “It sounds marvelous.” She was very hungry, now. “I think we should pay for them, though; you’ve already given us so much—a place to stay and dinner last night.” It was virtually unheard of, these days, and certainly it was not what she had expected to find in the - city.

“We’re in business together,” Mrs. Hardy pointed out. “Everything we have is going to be pooled, isn’t it?”

“But I have nothing to offer.” She felt that keenly, all at once, and she hung her head. I can only take, she thought. Not give.

However, they did not seem to agree. Taking her by the hand, Mrs. Hardy led her toward the kitchen area. “You can help fix,” she explained. “We have potatoes, too. You can peel them. We serve our employees breakfast; we always eat together—it’s cheaper, and they don’t have kitchens, they live in rooms, Stuart and the others. We have to watch out for them.”

You’re very good people, Bonny thought. So this is the city—this is what we’ve been hiding from, throughout these years. We heard the awful stories, that it was only ruins, with predators creeping about, derelicts and opportunists and flappers, the dregs of what it had once been ... and we had fled from that, too, before the war. We had already become to afraid to live here.

As they entered the kitchen she heard Stuart McConchie saying to Dean Hardy,” ... and besides playing the nose-flute this rat—“ He broke off, seeing her. “An anecdote about life here,” he apologized. “It might shock you. It has to do with a brilliant animal, and many people find them unpleasant.”

“Tell me about it,” Bonny said. “Tell me about the rat who plays the nose-flute.”

“I may be getting two brilliant animals mixed together,” Stuart said as he began heating water for the imitation coffee. He fussed with the pot and then, satisfied, leaned back against the wood-burning stove, his hands in his pockets. “Anyhow, I think the veteran said that it also had worked out a primitive system of bookkeeping. But that doesn’t sound right.” He frowned.

“It does to me,” Bonny said.

“We could use a rat like that working here,” Mr. Hardy said. “We’ll be needing a good bookkeeper, with our business expanding, as it’s going to be.”

Outside, along San Pablo Avenue, horse-drawn cars began to move; Bonny heard the sharp sound of the hoofs striking. She heard the stirrings of activity, and she went to the window to peep out. Bicycles, too, and a mammoth old wood-burning truck. And people on foot, many of them.

From beneath a board shack an animal emerged and with caution crossed the open to disappear beneath the porch of a building on the far side of the street. After a moment it reappeared, this time followed by another animal, both of them short-legged and squat, perhaps mutations of bulldogs. The second animal tugged a clumsy sleigh-like platform after it; the platform, loaded with various valuable objects, most of them food, slid and bumped on its runners over the irregular pavement after the two animals hurrying for cover.

At the window, Bonny continued to watch attentively, but the two short-legged animals did not reappear. She was just about to turn away when she caught sight of something else moving into its first activity of the day. A round metal hull, splotched over with muddy colors and bits of leaves and twigs, shot into sight, halted, raised two slender antennae quiveringly into the early morning sun.

What in the world is it? Bonny wondered. And then she realized that she was seeing a Hardy Homeostatic trap in action.

Good luck, she thought.

The trap, after pausing and scouting in all directions, hesitated and then at last doubtfully took off on the trail of the two bulldog-like animals. It disappeared around the side of a nearby house, solemn and dignified, much too slow in its pursuit, and she had to smile.

The business of the day had begun. All around her the city was awakening, back once more into its regular life.