Thirteen

   Peddling rapidly, the final image of the Great C extension and the hunter still strong in his mind, Pete guided his bicycle along the curving way that led among stone hills. Passing a steep shoulder, he was suddenly confronted with a number of small, moving figures who occupied the trail before him.
   His action was automatic.
   “Look out!” he shouted, twisting the handlebars and braking.
   He struck stone, was thrown. The bicycle clattered and skidded on ahead. He scraped his elbow, his hip, his knee. In the instant preceding pain, he exclaimed, “Bugs!” with equal surprise and disgust.
   As he recovered himself, rubbing and dusting, the nearest bug turned to him.
   “Hey, big fella,” it observed, “you squoosh one of us and it’ll rain on you.”
   “That’s ants,” Pete said, and, “Damn it! You want to play in traffic, you’re asking to be hit!”
   “This ain’t exactly the rush hour,” the bug said, returning its attention to a dusty brown sphere about eight inches in diameter. It began pushing this along the trail while Pete checked his radio set for damage.
   “Here’s another!” hollered one of the bugs from up ahead.
   “Great! I’m coming.”
   The dials glowed. The usual interim static peppered the air. Pete decided that the radio had fared better than had his back and hip. Heading then toward his bicycle, he came abreast of the bug once more. This time a telltale breeze caused him to dilate his nostrils.
   “Say, bug, just what the—”
   “Watch it!” snapped the chitinous wayfarer.
   Pete’s recoil was only partly sufficient. A brown, crumbly mass struck his left foot and broke there.
   He looked up the road to where another of the bugs stood laughing.
   “You did that on purpose!” he said, shaking his fist.
   “No, he didn’t,” said the bug at his side. “He was tossing it to me. Here.”
   The bug pushed the brown ball over. He began cleaning Pete’s boot, adding the substance to his sphere.
   “That’s manure,” Pete said.
   “What do you expect to find a dung beetle pushing along the road—sour lemon balls?”
   “Just get it off my foot. Wait a minute!”
   “Wait, what? You want it now? Sorry. Finders keepers…”
   “No, no. Take it off. But—as an expert on such matters, tell me—that’s a cow-pie, isn’t it?”
   “Right,” said the bug, adding the last of the material to his ball. “Best kind. It heats up nice and uniform. Not too much. Just right.”
   “That means a cow has passed this way.”
   The bug chuckled.
   “There is a meaningful relationship between the phenomena.”
   “Bug, you’re all right,” Pete said, “shit and all. I might have missed this sign if it hadn’t been for you. You see, I am looking for a man in a cart drawn by a cow, an inc—”
   “Named Tibor McMasters,” the bug stated, patting the ball smooth and moving ahead once again. “We spoke with him a while back. Our Pilg coincides with his own for some distance.”
   Pete recovered his bicycle, twisting its handlebars back into position. Outside of that, there seemed to be no damage. He moved it onto the trail and walked with it, pacing the bug.
   “Have you any idea where he is now?” he asked.
   “At the other end of the trail,” the bug replied. “With the cow.”
   “Was he all right when you talked with him?”
   “He was. But his cart was giving him some difficulty. Needed lube for one wheel. Went off looking for some. Headed for the autofac, along with some runners.”
   “Where is that?”
   “Off over those hills.” It paused to gesture. “Not too far. The trail is marked.”
   It patted at the dung ball.
   “… Every now and then,” it added. “Just keep your eyes open.”
   “Thanks, bug. What did you mean when you said you’re on a Pilg? I didn’t know bugs went on Pilgs.”
   “Well,” it said, “the old lady’s getting ready to drop a mess of eggs. She wants the proper observances. The full rigamarole. They’re going to be hatched at God’s own mountain, where the younguns will see Him first thing they make their way out.”
   “Your god sits on a mountain in plain sight?” Pete inquired.
   “Well, a hill to you, or a mound,” the bug replied, “and of course his only his dead, corruptible, earthly form that remains.”
   “What does your god look like?”
   “Somewhat like ourselves, only God-sized. He is harder than our chitin, which is as it should be, but His body is pitted and weathered now. His eyes are covered with a million fracture lines, but they are still unshattered. He is partly buried in the sand, but still He looks down and out from His mount, across the world, seeing into our burrows and our hearts.”
   “Where is this place?” Pete asked.
   “Oh, no! That’s a bug secret. Just us Chosen can go there. Anybody else would strip the Body, steal the sacred Name.”
   “Sorry,” Pete said, “I wasn’t trying to pry.”
   “It’s your kind that did Him in,” the bug went on bitterly. “Caught Him there on His mountain with your damn war.”
   “I had nothing to do with that,” Pete said.
   “I know, I know. You’re too young, like all the rest. What do you want with the inc?”
   “I want to go along with him to protect him. It’s dangerous for him to be alone, the way he is.”
   “You’re right. Someone might want to steal that rig of his for the parts. Or the cow, to eat. You’d better get going then, Mister—”
   “Pete. Pete Sands.”
   “You’d better catch the inc then, Pete before someone else does. He’s little, like us, and would squoosh easier. I feel sorry for anyone like that.” Pete swung himself atop his bicycle again. “Try not to ride over any of the spoor, will you, Pete? It makes it dry out faster and it’s hard to scrape up.”
   “All right, bug. I’ll look out.—You other bugs get out of my way. Coming through!” He rolled forward. He began to pedal. “So long,” he called back.
   “May Veedoubleyou protect the inc till you find him,” said the bug, continuing on up the incline.

   It was several hours later when he located the autofac, following the bug’s direction and an occasional spot of spoor. “Off over those hills. Not too far,” the bug had said. But the hills had continued on for a godawful rocky while before they led down into a place of scrubby bushes and desiccated weeds. He dismounted and walked with the bicycle. The day was well on toward evening by then, but the world was still a warm place, with heat lines fluttering above baked stone, shadows unfolding extra footage across scorched sands, and a sunset like a fire in a chemical factory destroying the west for his eyes. Weeds tangled themsleves in the bicycle chain, caught at his ankles. But they also indicated that a cart had passed among them, drawn by a single, hoofed beast. He followed this track toward a yarrow thicket and into it. The stiff brushes played tunes on the spokes.
   He pushed on through, coming at last to an opening that admitted him to a clear, smooth area inthe center of which the sun’s oblique rays described the outline of a large, circular piece of metal.
   He parked the bicycle and advanced cautiously. No telling what a rundown autofac might find offensive.
   He drew near. He cleared his throat. How does one address an autofac?
   “Uh—Your Fabricatorship?” he ventured.
   Nothing.
   “… Processor, Producer, Distributor, Maintainer,” he went on, a portion of the ritual now occuring to him, “Great Maker—Good on warranties, excluding labor and parts. I, a humble consumer, Pete Sands by name, beg leave to make representations before you.”
   The lid of the autofac moved aside. A stalk rose from the uncovered shaft. It extended a bullhorn which turned in his direction.
   “Which is it?” it bellowed. “The abortion or the lube?”
   “Beg pardon?”
   “You mean you haven’t made up your mind yet?” it roared. “I am going to electrocute you right now!”
   “No! Wait! I—”
   Pete felt a mild tingling in the soles of his feet. It lasted but a moment, and he began to back away then, noting the dark wisps of smoke that now emerged from the cavity, smelling of ozone and fried insulation.
   “Not so fast!” came a roar. “What is that thing behind you?”
   “Oh—my bike,” he replied.
   “I see the problem. Bring it here.”
   “There is no problem with the bike. I came to ask you about an inc named Tibor McMasters, and whether he had come to you—”
   “The bicycle!” it shrieked. “The bicycle!”
   With that, a long flexible grappel emerged from the pit and seized the vehicle’s frame just beneath the seat. It raised it from the ground and drew it toward the shaft. Pete caught at the handlebars as it passed by, digging in with his heels and pulling back on it.
   “Let go of my bike! Damn it! I just want some information!”
   It wrenched it away from him and drew it down into the opening.
   “Customer to stand by for maintenance and repairs!” it shouted.
   The arm emerged again and deposited a red-vinyl-and-tube-aluminum chair, a rack of Readers’ Digests, a stand ashtray, and a section of pale green partitioning on which was hung a Playboy calendar, a faded and fly-specked print of Crater Lake, and signs saying the CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS RIGHT; SMILE; THINK; I DON’T GET ULCERS. I GIVE THEM; and ONLY YOU CAN PREVENT FOREST FIRES.
   Sighing, Pete seated himself and began reading an article on the cure for cancer.
   A humming noise arose from deep in the pit, rapidly growing into a roar, accompanied by an irregular banging and the screeches of tearing metal. Moments later he heard the lift grinding its way upward.
   “Service with maximum efficiency!” the voice brayed. “Stand by to receive product!”
   Pete rose and retreated from the shaft opening. Three arms were then extended in rapid succession. Each of them clutched a shiny tricycle.
   “God damn it!” he cried. “You ruined my bike!” The arms hesitated, halted.
   “The customer is not satisfied?” a soft, lethal voice inquired.
   “Well—they are beautiful tricycles,” he said. “Real quality workmanship. Anyone can see that. It is just that I needed only one, full-size—and with two wheels, one front and one rear.”
   “All right. Stand by for adjustment!”
   “While you are about it,” Pete said, “could you tell me what occurred when Tibor McMasters came here?”
   The tricycles were withdrawn and the noises began again. Above them, the voice roared out, “The little phoc left me an order and didn’t come back for it or the abortion. Here!” A carton of lube was expelled from the opening and landed near his feet. “That’s his order! Give it to him yourself if you want—and tell him I don’t need people like him for customers!”
   Pete snatched up the carton and continued to back away, as the noises under the ground had grown to an ominous, thunderlike level, so that now the earth began to tremble from their vibration.
   “Your order is now ready!” it rambled. “Stand By!” Pete turned and ran, crashing back through the thicket.
   A shadow darkened the heavens, and he threw himself into the lea of a boulder and covered his head with his hands.
   It began to rain pogo sticks.

Fourteen

   Tibor watched the evening change clothes about him, saw the landscape divide and depart, up and down, dark. How did it go, that desolate little poem? It was Rilke’s “Abend”:


Der Abend wechselt langsam die Gewander,
die ihm Rand von alien Baumen halt;
du schaust: und von dir scheiden sich die Lander,
ein himmelfahrendes und eins, das fallt;



und lassen dich, zu keinem ganz gehorend,
nicht ganz so dunkel wie das Haus, das schweigt,
nicht ganz so sicher Ewiges beschworend
wie das, was Stern wird jede Nacht und steigt;



und lassen die (unsaglich zu entwirrn)
dein Leben, bang und riesenhaft und reifend,
so dasz es, bald begrenzt und bald begreifend,
abwechselnd Stern in dir wird und Gestirn.


   He knows how I feel, he decided, to none belonging, not so surely promised to eternity as all this, confused, alone, afraid. If I could turn to stone and stars now, I would. The God of Wrath gave me legs and arms. He took them back again. Did that really happen? Yes, it did. I’m sure of it. Why did he give me limbs if I couldn’t keep them? Just to hold anything and feel it for a time would be so fine. I thought it was sadistic, but the Christian version is a masochist now that I think of it, a turning upon, oneself of all bad things, which is just as bad in its own way. He loves everybody, democratically, in fact relentlessly. But he created people so that they could not go through life without hurting him. He wanted something painful to love. They’re both of them sick. They have to be. How horrible I feel, how worthless. But I still don’t want to die. I am afraid to use the bullhorn again, though. Now that it is dark. No telling what might hear it and come now.
   Tibor began to weep. The night sounds—chirps, buzzes, the dry rasping of twigs on bark—were smothered by his sobs.
   There came a jolt and a creak, as an extra weight was added to his cart. Oh god! What’s that? he thought. I am totally helpless. I will have to lie here and let it eat me. It is too dark to see where I could even direct the extensor to defend myself. It’s somewhere behind me, advancing now—
   He felt a cold, moist touch upon his neck, then fur. It came up beside him. It licked his cheek.
   “Toby! Toby…”
   It was the dog the lizards had given him. It had run off earlier, and he had assumed it was on its way back to its former owners. Now he saw the muzzle outlined against the sky, tongue rolling, teeth white, approximating a smile.
   “You’ve stayed with me after all,” he said. “I don’t have anything to feed you. I hope you found something yourself. Stay with me. Curl up and sleep here beside me. Please. I’ll keep talking to you, Toby. Good dog, good dog… Sorry I can’t pet you. In this light, I might misjudge and crush your skull. Stay, though. Stay.
   If I make it through the night, he thought… if I make it it’ll be because of you.
   “I’ll reward you someday,” he promised the dog, who stirred at the emphatic tone of his voice. “I will save your life. If you save mine, if I am alive when help comes—I promise! If I am still living when you yourself are ever in danger, you will hear a roaring and a rushing, and a rolling, and the brush will churn! Leaves and dust will fly up, and you will know I am on my way, from wherever I am, to aid you! The thunder and violent rolling of my salvation of you will terrify anyone. I will protect you, cherish you, exactly as you are getting me through this night tonight. That is my sacred solemn promise before God Himself.”
   The dog thumped his tail.

   Pete Sands, walking under the moon, across the nighted plain, hiking between the tracks of the cow cart, pausing periodically to assure himself they remain: Shouldn’t be abroad after dark. Should find some sheltered place and bed down. Want more distance between me and that schizy autofac, though. Guess I’ve probably come far enough. But now I feel vulnerable, exposed. Flat, empty, this place. But there were trees in the distance when the light went away. This still seems the proper direction. That right track is getting wobbly. Without the lube, that tire could go. Is he all right? My hip is sore. Lost my hat, too. Now my head will turn red and peel. Then red again. Then peel again. It never tans over… How is Tibor faring? How strong are those manual grippers? I wonder. Could he protect himself? My knee hurts, too. There’s one problem he’ll never have. Life would be so much simpler if Lufteufel had had the decency to die back when he should have and everybody knew it. Now, though… What will I do if he really turns up? Supposing he pets dogs and gives candy to children these days? Supposing he has a wife and ten kids who love him? Supposing… Hell! Too much supposing. What would Lurine say? I don’t know what Lurine would say… Where’d that damn track go?
   He squatted and searched the ground. It had become gravelly, digesting the ruts. Rising again, he shrugged and continued on. No reason to assume a sudden change of direction. Continue in a straight line for now.
   He reinspected the trail periodically, but it retained a coarse, stony texture. I’ll have to search it out in the morning, he decided.
   Trudging ahead, he noted a faint flickering off to his left, just becoming apparent about the edge of a cluster of stones. Moving farther, more of the light reached him, finally revealing itself as a small campfire. Only one figure was outlined in its vicinity, a being with a strangely pointed head. It was kneeling, its attention apparently focused on the flames.
   Pete slowed, studying the tableau. Moments later, the breeze brought him a tangy odor and his mouth grew moist. It had been a long while since last he had eaten.
   He stood but a moment longer,, then turned and made his way toward the fire, moving slowly, cautiously. As he drew nearer, he caught a glint of the light on a metal headpiece. It was a spiked helmet, of a sort he was not likely to forget too readily. Then he glimpsed the features below it. Yes, no mistake there.
   He moved ahead quickly then.
   “Hunter!” he said. “You are the same man. Aren’t you? Back at the Great C’s—”
   The man laughed, three deep-chested explosions that shook the flames he tended.
   “Yes, yes! Come and sit down! I hate to eat alone.”
   Pete dropped his pack and hunkered beside it, across the fire from the man.
   “I’d’ve sworn you were dead,” he said. “All that blood. You were limp. I thought it had killed you. Then when it dragged you inside… I was sure you were gone.”
   The man nodded, turning the little spits of bone on which chunks of meat were skewered.
   “I can see how you might have been misled,” he said. “Here!”
   The man drew a kabob from the fire and passed it to him. Pete licked his fingers for insulation and accepted it. The meat was good, juicy. Pete debated asking what it was, and decided against it. A hunter can always find something edible. Best to leave it at that.
   The man ate with an unnatural precision, and Pete could see the reason as he studied his face: his lower lip had been badly cut, split deeply.
   “Yes,” the man muttered, “the blood could have been deceiving—part from my mouth and part from a recent head wound that reopened. That’s why I was wearing the armor.” He tapped the headpiece. “Good thing, too. Kept it from pulping my skull.”
   “But how,” Pete said, “did you get away from it?”
   “Oh. No real problem,” he replied. “I came out of it just as it dragged me inside. I’d already loosened the cranial bolt to the springing point. One twist was what I said and one twist was what it took. With my fingers. Presto!” He snapped his fingers. He popped another piece of meat into his mouth. “Then it was down and I was up and that was it. Pity. But then, I’d given it every break. You know that, don’t you?”
   “You were most fair with it,” Pete said, finishing his kabob and eyeing the others that still sizzled.
   The man passed him another.
   And his hands are still steady, Pete thought, accepting the meat. All in a day’s work. Competency, expertise—nerves like fine-spun filaments of platinum, joints like neatly mashed gears and stainless-steel ball bearings. Skill, guts—that’s what it takes to be a hunter. But he’s got heart, too. Compassion. How many of us would be that concerned over something that wanted to devour us?
   “After I left that place,” the hunter said, “I continued on my way, pleased to see that you had had the good sense to clear out.”
   Oh my god! Pete thought. I hope he was really unconscious, not just saying that. What if he heard me asking the C to take him instead of me? But then, I really thought he was dead. I just told him so. So even if he did hear me say it, he’d know that—that was why. But I could have told him that now, just to look good, even though it wasn’t what I had in mind when I said it. On the other hand, if he heard it he must be a big enough man to have forgiven me—in which case he is pretending he didn’t hear it—which means that I will never know. Oh my god! And here I am eating his kabobs.
   “What became of your bike?” the hunter asked him.
   “The autofac turned it into pogo sticks,” Pete said.
   The hunter smiled.
   “Not surprising,” he said. “Once their naderers go, they do the damnedest things. But you were carrying something you didn’t have before. Did it actually fill an order properly before it ruined your bike?”
   “Someone else’s order,” Pete said. “Its delivery sequence is off, too.”
   “What are you going to do with all that lube?”
   “I am taking it to a man who probably needs it,” Pete said, recalling the C’s statement that the hunter was after Tibor. Easily a piece of misinformation. Still…
   He stuffed his mouth to avoid answering anything further without at least a ten-second pause for thought.
   Why would he be looking for Tibor, though? he wondered. What could he want of him? What would make Tibor worth hunting? To anyone else, that is… ?
   When they finished eating, Pete knew that he should offer the man one of his remaining cigarettes. He did so, and he took one for himself. They lit them with a brand from the fire and sprawled then near the boulders, resting, smoking.
   “I don’t know,” Pete said, “about the propriety of the question. So please excuse me if I am being impolite. I don’t meet so many hunters that I am up on the etiquette. I was just wondering: Are you hunting anything or anyone in particular just now, or are you—between hunts?”
   “Oh, I’m on a hunt all right,” the man said. “I’m looking for a little phocomelus named Tibor McMasters. I think the trail is fairly warm now, too.”
   “Oh, really?” said Pete, drawing on his cigarette, one hand beneath his head, his eyes on the stars. “What did he do?”
   “Oh, nothing, nothing yet. He is not especially important. Just part of a bigger design.”
   “Oh.” Now what do I say? he wondered. Then, “By the way, my name is Pete. Pete Sands.”
   “I know.”
   “I forgot to introduce myself earlier, and—You know? How could you?”
   “Because I know of everyone in Charlottesville, Utah—everyone with any connection with Tibor McMasters, that is. It’s a small town. There aren’t that many of you.”
   “Efficient,” Pete said, feeling as if barbs inserted painlessly into his flesh were now being drawn. “Your employer must have gone to a lot of trouble and expense. It would have been easier to approach the man back in town.”
   “But fruitless, there,” the other replied. “And the difficulty and the cost mean nothing to my employer.”
   Pete waited, smoking. He felt positive that it would be a breach of etiquette to inquire as to his employer’s identity. Perhaps if I just wait he will volunteer it, he decided.
   The fire crackled. In the distance, something howled and something else chuckled.
   “My name is Schuld, Jack Schuld,” the hunter said, extending his hand.
   Pete turned onto his side and clasped it. The grip was, as he suspected, powerful enough to crush his own, while sufficiently controlled to show this without exerting considerable force. Releasing it, Pete leaned back and contemplated stellar geometries. A meteor smeared white fire across the sky. When the stars threw down their spears, he remembered, And water’d heaven with their tears … What came next? He could not recall.
   “Tibor is on a dangerous Pilg,” Schuld said, “and he has recently expressed a desire to convert to the religion wherein you would take your ministry.”
   “You are indeed thorough,” Pete observed.
   “Yes, I’d say so. You Christians aren’t doing so well these days,” he continued, “and even a single convert comes to mean a lot in a little place like Charlottesville, Utah. Right?”
   “I can’t deny it,” Pete said.
   “So your superior has sent you to take care of the catechumen, to see that he comes to no harm while finishing his job for the competition.”
   “I do want to find him and protect him,” Pete said.
   “And the subject of his search? Have you any curiosity concerning the one he has been commissioned to portray?”
   “Oh, I sometimes wonder whether the man is still really living,” Pete said.
   “Man?” Schuld said. “You can still call him that?”
   “Well, unlike our competitors, I do not really see him as fitted for any larger role.”
   “I was not talking theology,” Schuld said. “I was simply noting your reference to humanity when speaking of one who has forfeited all right to any human considerations. Adolph Eichmann was an altar boy by comparison. We are speaking of the beast who destroyed most of the world.”
   “I cannot deny the act, but neither can I judge it. How can I know his motives, his intent?”
   “Look, around you. Anytime. Anywhere. Their effects are manifest in every phase of existence now. He is, to put it bluntly and concisely, an inhuman monster.”
   Pete nodded.
   “Maybe,” he said. “If he truly understood the nature and quality of his actions, then I suppose he was something unspeakable at the time.”
   “Try Carleton Lufteufel. It can be spoken. There is not a living creature on Earth today that has not known pain because of him. There is nothing to which he does not owe a sea of misery, a continent of despair. He has been marked from the day he made his decision.”
   “I had heard that hunters were mercenaries, that they do not act out of conviction.”
   “You anticipate me, Pete. I have not named him as my quarry.”
   Pete chuckled. So did Schuld.
   “But they are fortunate times, when desire and circumstance are conjoined,” Schuld finally said.
   “Then why do you seek Tibor?” Pete asked. “I do not quite understand the connection.”
   “The beast is wary,” the other replied, “but I doubt his suspicions would extend to a phocomelus.”
   “I begin to see.”
   “Yes. I will lead him to him. Tibor can have his likeness. I will have his flesh.”
   Pete shuddered. The situation had twisted and darkened, but might, for all that, be turning to his advantage.
   “Are you planning to make a quick, clean thing of it?” he asked.
   “No,” Schuld replied. “I am charged to make certain that it is just the opposite. I am, you see, employed by a worldwide secret police organization which has been searching for Lufteufel for years—for just this purpose.”
   “I understand,” Pete said. “I can almost wish that I did not know this. Almost…”
   “I am telling you this because it will make it easier for me if one of you knows. As for Tibor, he has been a member of the Servants of Wrath, and its symbols may still have some hold over him. You, on the other hand, represent the opposing camp. Do you see what I mean?”
   “You mean, will I cooperate?”
   “Yes. Will you?”
   “I do not think myself capable of stopping a person such as you.”
   “That is not what I asked.”
   “I know.” Damn it! I wish I could talk to Abernathy right now, he thought. But there is no way to get off the call. But he would not give me a real answer. I have to decide this one for myself. Tibor must not be permitted to meet Lufteufel. There ought to be a way. I will have time to find a way—and then let Schuld do the job for me. There is nothing else for me to say now, but, “All right, Jack. I’ll cooperate.”
   “Good,” Schuld replied. “I knew that you would.” He felt that powerful hand clasp his shoulder for an instant. In that same instant he felt hemmed in by the stone and the stars.

Fifteen

   Into the world, the day, spilling: here: the queries of birds, tentative, then self-assured: here: dew like breath on glass, retreating, gone: here: bands of color that flee the east, fading, fading, blue: here: like a wax doll, half melted: Tibor, soft in the collapsed cart; cock-eared hound by his side, watching the world come around.
   A yawn then, a blinking, slow memory. Tibor bunched and relaxed his shoulder muscles. Isometrics. Stretching. Bunching. Relaxing.
   “Good morning, Toby. Another day. This one will tell it, I guess. You are a good dog. Damn good. Best dog I ever knew. You can get down now. Hunt up breakfast if you know how. It’s the only way you’ll get any, I’m afraid.”
   Toby jumped down, relieved himself beside a tree, circled the cart, sniffed the ground. Tibor activated the extensor and proceeded with his own simple ablutions.
   I suppose I should try the bullhorn again, now, he thought. But I am afraid to. I really am. It is my last hope. If it fails me, nothing else remains.
   He hesitated a long while. He searched the sky, the trees.
   The blue jay? Is that what I am looking for? he wondered. I don’t know what I am looking for. I guess that I am not truly awake yet. There goes Toby into the brush. I wonder if I will ever see him again? I may be dead by the time he gets back. No telling what—Stop it! Okay. A cup of coffee would be nice. It would be so nice. A last cup… All right! I’ll try the horn. He raised it, turned it on, and called out: “Hallo! This is Tibor McMasters. I have had an accident. My cart is stuck. I am caught here. If anyone can hear me, I need help. Can you hear me? Can you help me? Is anyone there?”
   Nothing. He waited for perhaps fifteen minutes and tried again. Again nothing.
   Three more attempts. An hour drawn and quartered. Toby returned, discussed something with the cow, lay down in the shade.
   Faintly… Was that a shout? Or a tricking of the ear? A thing compounded of hope, fear, background sounds? The cry of an animal?
   He began to perspire, straining to hear through the natural noises, listening for it to come again. Toby whined.
   Turning, Tibor saw that the dog had risen to its feet and was facing back along the trail, ears pointed, body tense.
   He switched on the horn and raised it once again. “Hallo! Hallo! Over here! Up here! I am trapped! Caught in a collapsed cart! This is Tibor McMasters! I have had an accident! Can you hear me?”
   “Yes!” The word echoed among the hills. “We are coming!”
   Tibor began to laugh. His eyes were moist. He chuckled. At that moment, he thought he glimpsed the blue jay darting away among the trees. But he could not be certain.
   “We are going to finish this Pilg yet, Toby,” he said. “We are going to make it, I think.”
   It was another ten minutes before Pete Sands and Jack Schuld rounded the bend of the trail and came into view. Toby laid his ears flat and growled, backing up against the cart.
   “It’s all right, Toby,” Tibor said. “I know one of them. He is here to do the Christian thing. Be a handy Samaritan and look over my shoulder afterward. And I need him. The price is right, whatever.”
   “Tibor!” Pete called out. “Are you hurt?”
   “No, it’s just the cart,” he answered. “Threw a wheel.”
   They approached.
   “I see the wheel,” Pete said. He glanced at his companion. “This is Jack Schuld. I met him on the trail yesterday. This is Tibor McMasters, Jack—a great artist.”
   Tibor nodded.
   “I can’t shake hands,” he said.
   Schuld smiled.
   “I’ll lend you mine,” he said. “We’ll have that wheel back on in no time. Pete has some lube.”
   Schuld crossed to the wheel, raised it from the brush where it had come to rest, rolled it toward the cart.
   Nimble, Tibor thought. All connoisseurs of the movements of the unmaimed would probably agree on that. What does he want?
   Toby snarled as Schuld brought the wheel around to the front of the cart.
   “Back up, Toby! Go away now! They’re helping me,” Tibor said.
   The dog slunk off a dozen paces and sat down, watching.
   Pete brought the lube around.
   “We’re going to have to raise the cart,” he said. “I wonder… ?”
   “I’ll raise it,” Schuld said.
   As they worked, Tibor said, “I suppose I should ask what you are doing out this way.”
   Pete looked up and smiled. Then he sighed.
   “You know,” he said. “You left early because you didn’t want me along. All right. But I had to follow—just because of the possibility of things like this.” He gestured at the cart.
   “All right,” Tibor said. “All right. As it turns out, I am not ungrateful. Thanks for showing up.”
   “May I take that as an indication that I will be welcome for the balance of the journey?”
   Tibor chuckled.
   “Let’s just say that I can’t object to your presence now.”
   “I guess that will have to do.”
   Pete turned his attention back to the work.
   “Where did you meet Mr. Schuld?”
   “He saved me in an encounter with the Great C’s extension.”
   “Handy,” Tibor said.
   Schuld laughed and Tibor was jolted as the man crouched beneath the cart, then stood, raising it on his shoulders.
   “Jack Schuld is handy,” he said. “Yes, he is,” and, “Indeed. Fit it on over the hub now, Pete.”
   I suppose that I should feel happy to have people around me again, thought Tibor, after everything I have encountered recently. Still …
   “There,” Pete said. “You can lower it now.”
   Schuld eased the cart down, moved out from beneath it. Pete began tightening a nut.
   “I am much obliged,” Tibor said.
   “Think nothing of it,” Schuld replied. “Glad to be of help. Your friend tells me you are on a Pilg.”
   “That’s right. Part of a commission I have—”
   “Yes, he told me about that, too. Off to get a glimpse of old Lufteufel for your mural. Worthy project, I’d say. And I believe you are getting warm.”
   “You know something about him?”
   “I think so. There have been rumors, you know. I travel a lot. I hear them all. Some say that’s his town to the north. No, you can’t see it from here. But keep going this way and you’ll eventually come to a settlement. That’s the one—they say.”
   “Do you believe the rumors?”
   Schuld rubbed his dark chin and a faraway look came into his eyes.
   “I would think the odds are pretty good,” he said. “Yes. I fancy I could find him there.”
   “I don’t suppose he uses his real name anymore,” Tibor said. “He has probably assumed a different identity.”
   Schuld nodded.
   “I understand that to be the case.”
   “Do you know it?”
   “The name? No. The identity? I think so. I have heard that he is a veterinarian now, that he makes his home in a remodeled fallout shelter, has a feebleminded girl living there with him.”
   “Is this place in the town proper?”
   “No. Out a ways from town. Easy to miss—they say.”
   Pete sighed and stood. He plucked a bunch of leaves and began wiping his hands. He finished the job on his trousers.
   “There,” he said. “Now if we push and you can make the cow pull, we should be able to get it back on the trail. Then we can see how it holds up. Give me a hand now, Jack, will you?”
   Schuld moved away, circling to the rear of the cart.
   “All right, ready,” Pete said.
   “Ready.”
   “Push!”
   “Giddap!” Tibor said.
   The cart creaked, rocked forward, back, forward, forward, continued on along the ditch, caught the incline, rose with it. A minute later, they had it back on the trail.
   “Try it now,” Pete said. “See how it moves on the level.”
   Tibor set out.
   “Better,” he said. “I can feel the difference. Much better.”
   “Good.”
   They continued on along the trail then, up, down, around, about the hills.
   “How far are you going?” Tibor asked Schuld.
   “A good distance,” the man replied. “I am going through that town we spoke of. We might as well go that far together.”
   “Yes. Do you think you might have time to point that place out to me?”
   “Lufteufel’s? Surely. I’ll try. I’ll show you where I think it is. You see, I want to help.”
   “Well, that would be very helpful,” Tibor said. “When do you think we will reach it?”
   “Perhaps sometime tomorrow.”
   Tibor nodded.
   “What do you really think about him?” he asked.
   “A good question,” the hunter replied, “and one I knew you would get to sooner or later. What do I think of him?” He pulled his nose. He ran his fingers through his hair. “I have traveled widely,” he said, “and I have seen much of the world, both before and after. I lived through the days of the destruction. I saw the cities die, the countryside wilt. I saw the pallor come upon the land. There was still some beauty in the old days, you know. The cities were hectic, dirty places, but at certain moments—usually times of arrival and departure—looking down upon them at night, all lit up, say, from a plane in a cloudless sky—you could almost, for that moment, call up a vision out of St. Augustine. Urbi et orbi, perhaps, for that clear instant. And once you got away from the towns, on a good day, there was a lot of green and brown, sprinkled with all the other colors, clear running water, sweet air—But the day came. The wrath descended. Sin, guilt, and retribution? The manic psychoses of those entities we referred to as states, institutions, systems—the powers, the thrones, the dominations—the things which perpetually merge with men and emerge from them? Our darkness, externalized and visible? However you look upon these matters, the critical point was reached. The wrath descended. The good, the evil, the beautiful, the dark, the cities, the country—the entire world—all were mirrored for an instant within the upraised blade. The hand that held that blade was Carleton Lufteufel’s. In the moment that it plunged toward our heart, it was no longer the hand of a man, but that of the Deus Irae, the God of Wrath Himself. That which remains exists by virtue of His sufferance. If there is to be any religion at all, I see this as the only tenable credo. What other construction could be placed upon the events? That is how I see Carleton Lufteufel, how I feel he must be preserved in your art. That is why I am willing to point him out for you.”
   “I see,” said Tibor, waiting for Pete’s reaction, disappointed when none was forthcoming. Then, “It does make sense,” he said, partly to irritate Pete. “The greatest painters of the Renaissance had a go at depicting the other. But none of them actually got to see their subject, to glimpse the visage of God. I am going to do it, and when men look upon that painting they will know that I have, for it will be true. They will say, ‘Tibor McMasters has seen, and he has shown what he saw.’ “
   Schuld slapped the side of the cart and chuckled.
   “Soon,” he said. “Soon.”

   That evening, as they were gathering kindling for a campfire, Pete said to Schuld, “You took him in entirely, I’d say. That business about wanting to see Lufteufel preserved in his art, I mean.”
   “Pride,” Schuld replied. “It was easy. Got his mind off me and onto himself quickly. Now I am a part of his Pilg: Guide. I will speak to him again later this evening, confidentially. Perhaps if you were to take a brief walk after dinner…”
   “Of course.”
   “When I have finished, any second thoughts he may have had as to my sincerity will be laid to rest. Everything should proceed smoothly afterward.”
   The subtlety and sense of timing of a thermostat or a cardiac pacemaker, Pete decided—that’s what it takes to be a hunter—a feeling for the rhythm of things and a power over them. This is going well. Only Tibor must not really see Lufteufel…
   “I believe you,” Pete said. Then, “I don’t quite know how to put this, though, so I will simply be direct: Do either of the two religions involved in this mean anything to you personally?”
   A huge stick snapped between Schuld’s hands.
   “No,” he said.
   “I didn’t think so, but I wanted to clear that up first. As you know, one of them means something to me.”
   “Obviously.”
   “What I am getting at is the fact that we Christians would not be overjoyed at seeing Lufteufel actually represented in that mural.”
   “A false religion, a false god, as you would have it. What difference does it make what they stick in their church?”
   “Power,” Pete said. “You can appreciate that. From a strictly temporal standpoint, having the real thing—as they see it—would give them something more. Call it mana. If we suddenly had a piece of the True Cross, it would whip up our zeal a bit, put a little more fire into our activities. You must be familiar with the phenomenon. Call it inspiration.”
   Schuld laughed.
   “Whatever Tibor paints, they will believe it is the real thing. The results will be the same.”
   He wants me to say that I believe in the God of Wrath and am afraid of him, Pete thought. I won’t do it.
   “Such being the case, we would as soon it were not Lufteufel,” Pete said.
   “Why?’
   “Because we would look on that as blasphemy, as a mockery of God as we see Him. They would be deifying not just any man, but the man responsible for all our present woes, the man you yourself referred to as an inhuman monster.”
   Schuld snapped another stick.
   “Yes, of course,” he said. “He doesn’t deserve a neatly dug hole in the ground, let alone worship. I see your point. What do you propose doing?”
   “Use us for your cover,” Pete said, “as you had planned. Locate him. Get as close as you feel necessary to satisfy yourself as to his identity. Then tell Tibor you were mistaken. He is not the man. Our ways part there. We go on, continuing our search. You remain behind or depart and double back—whichever is easier—and do what you must do. Lufteufel is thus removed from our field of consideration.”
   “What will you do then?”
   “I don’t know. Keep going. Maybe locate a substitute. I don’t know. But at least Carleton Lufteufel will be out of the picture.”
   “That, then, is your real reason for being here? Not just the protection of Tibor?”
   “It might have figured in the decision—a little.”
   Schuld laughed again.
   “How far were you willing to go to insure Tiber’s not seeing him? I wonder. Might it extend to actual violence?”
   Pete snapped a stick of his own.
   “You said it,” he said. “I didn’t.”
   “I may be doing you people a favor just by doing my job,” Schuld said.
   “Maybe.”
   “Too bad I didn’t know about it sooner. If a man is going to labor for two masters, he might as well draw good wages from both of them.”
   “Christianity is broke,” Pete said. “But I’ll remember you in my prayers.”
   Schuld slapped him on the shoulder.
   “Pete, I like you,” he said. “Okay. We’ll do it your way. Tibor doesn’t have to know.”
   “Thanks.”
   Beneath that Swiss movement, Pete wondered as they headed back, what is the spark—the mainspring—really like, hunter? The money they will pay you? The hate? Or something else?
   There came a sharp yelp. Schuld had kicked Toby, who had emerged before him, snarling. It could have been an accident, but, “Damn dog!” he said. “It hates me.”

Sixteen

   Pete Sands set up his radio gear by moonlight, working in the middle of a small glade about a quarter of a mile back along the road from the site of their encampment.
   Neat, he thought, the way it worked out, Schuld’s suggesting what I was going to do anyway: take this walk.
   He plugged in the earphone, cranked the transmitter.
   “Dr. Abernathy,” he said, raising the microphone. “Pete Sands here. Hello?”
   There followed a brief burst of static, then, “Hello, Pete. This is Abernathy. How is it going?”
   “I’ve located Tibor,” Pete said.
   “Is he aware of your presence?”
   “Yes. We are traveling together now. I am calling from just outside our camp.”
   “Oh. So you have joined him. What are your plans?”
   “They are somewhat complicated,” Pete said. “There is a third party involved—a fellow named Jack Schuld. I met him yesterday. He saved my life, actually. He seems to have a pretty good idea as to Lufteufel’s whereabouts. He has offered to guide us to him. We may reach the place tomorrow.”
   Pete smiled at the sharp intake of breath on the other end. He continued: “I have made a deal with him, however. He will not point him out to Tibor. He is going to confess to a case of mistaken identity and we will bypass the real Lufteufel and continue on.”
   “Wait a minute, Pete. I do not understand you. Why go through all that in the first place then? Why go that route at all?”
   “Well,” Pete said lamely, “he will do me this favor in return for our company on the way.”
   “Pete, what ate you leaving out? It doesn’t make sense. There has to be more to it than that.”
   “All right. He is an assassin. He is on his way to kill Lufteufel. He thinks he would seem less suspicious traveling in the company of an inc.”
   “Pete! That makes you a party to murder!”
   “Not really. I disapprove of murder. We discussed that earlier. And he may even have a legal right to do this—as an executioner. He is in the employ of a police organization—at least he says he is, and I believe him. Whatever, I am powerless to stop him, no matter what my feelings. If you got a good look at him, you would know what I mean. I thought you would be happy to learn—”
   “—of a man’s death. Pete, I don’t like this at all.”
   “Then suggest something else, sir.”
   “Could you get away from this Schuld? You and Tibor sneak off during the night? Just go on by yourselves?”
   “Too late. Tiber would not cooperate if I couldn’t give him an awfully good reason—and I can’t. He believes Schuld can show him his man. And I am certain we could not sneak off anyway. Schuld is too alert a fellow. He’s a hunter.”
   “Do you think you could warn Lufteufel when you reach him?”
   “No,” Pete said, “not now that I’ve set it up for Tibor to miss him completely or only to glimpse him without knowing who he is. I didn’t think you would take it this way.”
   “I am trying to protect you from an occasion for sin.”
   “I don’t see it as such.”
   “… Most likely mortal.”
   “I hope not. I guess that I am going to have to play it by ear now. I will let you know what happens.”
   “Wait, Pete! Listen! Try to find some way to part company with that Schuld fellow as fast as possible. If it weren’t for him, you wouldn’t even be going near Lufteufel. You are not responsible for Schuld’s actions unless you are in a position to influence them by action or the withholding of action yourself. Morally as well as practically, you are better off without him. Get out! Get away from him!”
   “And leave Tibor?”
   “No, take Tibor with you.”
   “Against his will? Kidnap him, you mean?”
   There was silence, then a little static.
   Finally, “I don’t know how to tell you to do it,” he said. “That is your problem. But you must look for a way.”
   “I will see what I can do,” Pete said, “but it doesn’t look promising.”
   “I will continue to pray,” Dr. Abernathy replied. “When will you call me again?”
   “Tomorrow evening, I guess. I probably won’t be able to get off a call during the day.”
   “All right. I will be waiting. Good night.”
   “Good night.”
   The static gave way to crickets. Pete disassembled the gear.

   “Tibor,” Schuld said, stirring the fire, “Tibor McMasters, on his way to immortality.”
   “Huh?” said Tibor. He had been staring into the flames, finding the face of a girl named Fay Blame who had been more than kind to him in the past. If He had left me those arms and legs, he had been thinking, I could go back and tell her how I really feel. I could hold her, run my fingers through her hair, mold her form like a sculptor. She would let me, too, I think. I would be like other men. I…
   “Huh?”
   “Immortality,” Schuld repeated. “Better than progeny, even, for they have a way of disappointing, embarrassing, hurting their begetters. But painting is ‘the grandchild of nature and related to God.’ “
   “I do not understand,” Tibor said.
   “ ‘Though the poet is as free as the painter in the invention of his fictions, they are not so satisfactory to men as paintings,’ “ Schuld said, “ ‘for, though poetry is able to describe forms, actions, and places in words, the painter deals with the actual similitude of the forms, in order to represent them. Now tell me which is the nearer to the actual man: the name of the man or the image of the man. The name of the man differs in different countries, but his form is never changed but by death.’”
   “I think I see what you mean,” Tibor said.
   “ ‘… And this is true knowledge and the legitimate issue of nature.’ Leonardo da Vinci wrote that in one of his notebooks. It feels right, too. And it will fit the present case so well. You will be remembered, Tibor McMasters, not for a passel of snot-nosed brats creeping toward eternity’s rim, dull variations on the DNA you’re stuck with, but for the exercise of your power to create the other image—the deathless similitude of a particular form. And you will be father to a vision that rises above nature itself, that is superior to it because divine. Among all men, you have been singled out for this measure of immortality.”
   Tibor smiled.
   “It is quite a responsibility they’ve given me,” he said.
   “You are very modest,” Schuld said, “and more than a little naive. Do you think you were chosen simply because you were the best painter in town when the SOWs needed a murch? There is more to it than that. Would you believe that Charlottesville, Utah, was chosen to house the murch before it was your town? Would you believe that your town was chosen because you are the greatest artist alive today?”
   Tibor turned and stared at him. “Father Handy never indicated anything like that,” he said.
   “He gets his orders, as do those from whom he takes them.”
   “You have lost me—again,” Tibor said. “How could you know these things?”
   Schuld smiled and stared at him, head tilted upward, eyes half lidded, his face almost pulsing in the flame-light.
   “Because I gave the first order,” he said. “I wanted you for my artist. I am the head of the Servants of Wrath, the temporal leader of the true religion of the Deus Irae.”
   “My God!” said Tibor.
   “Yes,” said Schuld. “For obvious reasons, I waited until now to tell you. I was not about to proclaim myself in front of Pete Sands.”
   “Is Schuld your real name?” Tibor asked him.
   “The name of a man differs in different countries. Schuld will do. I joined you at this point in your Pilg because I intend personally to see that you find the proper man. Pete will doubtless try to misdirect you. He has his orders, of course. But I will see to it that you are not misled. I will name Lufteufel, give you his form at the proper time. Nothing the Old Church can do will prevent it. I want you to be aware of this.”
   “I felt there was something unusual about you,” Tibor said. Indeed I did, he thought. But not this. I know little of the hierarchical setup of the Servants of Wrath. Just that there is one. I had always assumed the murch represented a local decision in terms of ulterior decoration. It does make sense, though, when you think about it. Lufteufel is at the center of the religion. Anything involving him personally would warrant attention at the highest levels. And this man Schuld is the boss. If he were going to appear at all, this is the perfect time. No one else could have known, would have known, could have come up with that reason or effected this tuning. I believe him.
   “I believe you,” Tibor said. “And it is somewhat—overwhelming. Thank you for your confidence in me. I will try to be worthy of it.”
   “You are,” Schuld said, “which is why you were chosen. And I will tell you now that it may be a sudden thing, that I may have to arrange the encounter quite unexpectedly. Pete’s presence requires this. You must be prepared at any time from now on to record what I indicate, at a moment’s notice.”
   “I will keep my camera ready,” Tibor said, activating his extensor and moving the device into a new position, “and my eyes, of course—they are always ready.”
   “Good. That is all that I really require, for now. Once you have captured the image, neither Pete nor his entire church can take it away from you. The murch will proceed, as planned.”
   “Thank you,” said Tibor. “You have made me happy. I hope that Pete does not interfere—”
   Schuld rose and squeezed his shoulder.
   “I like you,” he said. “Have no fear. I have planned everything.”

   Stowing his gear, Pete Sands thought of Dr. Abernathy’s words, and he thought of Schuld, and of Carleton Lufteufel.
   He cannot come out and tell me to kill Lufteufel, even though he knows that would solve our problem. He cannot even disregard Schuld’s intention in this direction, once he has heard of it. It is a damnable dilemma which cleaves all the way back to the basic paradox involved in loving everyone, even the carnifex about to poleax you. Logically, if you do nothing you die and he has his way. If you are the only one practicing such a philosophy, it dies with you. A few others—all right—he gets them, too, and it still dies. The noble ideal, caritas, passes from the world. If we kill to prevent this, though, we betray it. It gets Zen-like here: Do nothing and the destroyer moves. Do something and you destroy it yourself. Yet you are charged to preserve it. How? The answer is supposed to be that it is a divine law and will win out anyhow. I crack the koan simultaneously with an act of giving up on it. Then I am granted insight into its meaning. Or, in Christian terms, my will is empowered upon an especially trying occasion and I am granted an extraordinary measure of grace. I don’t feel any of it flowing this way at the moment, though. In fact, I begin to feel that I am beating my brains out against an impossible situation. I don’t want to kill Lufteufel, really. I don’t want to kill anybody. My reasons are not theological. They are just simple humanitarian things. I don’t like to cause pain. It may well be that if that poor bastard is still living, he has done a lot of suffering on his own already. I don’t know. I don’t care to know. Also, I’m squeamish.
   Pete hefted his pack and moved on out of the glade.
   With this, he thought as he walked, where is that caritas I am supposed to be practicing? Not too much of that around either. Can I love Carleton Lufteufel—or anyone—on such a plane that what they are, what they have done, counts for nothing? Where only the fact of existence is sufficient qualification as target for the arrow of this feeling? This would indeed be God-like, and is, I suppose, the essence of the ideal that we should strive to emulate the greater love. I don’t know. There have been occasions when I have felt that way, however briefly. What lay at their heart? Biochemistry, perhaps. Looking for ultimate causes is really an impossible quest. I remember that day, though, with Lurine. “What’s ein Todesstachel?” she had asked, and I told her of the sting of death and then oh God had felt it coming into my side piercing like a metal gaff twisting hooking oh Lord driving my body to an agonized Totentanz about the room Lurine trying to restrain me and up then looking along the pole from Earth to heaven ascending to the Persons then three who held me and into the eyes that saw oh Lurine the heart of my quest and your question there here and everywhere the pain never to cease and piercing the joy that is beyond and quickens as it slays again in the heart of the wood and the night oh Everyone I am here I did not ask to but I did—Ahead, he could make out the forms of Schuld and Tibor in the firelight. They were laughing, they seemed to be happy and that should be good. He felt something brush against his leg. Looking down, he saw that it was Toby. He reached out to pat the upturned head.

   Alice held the doll, crooning to it, swaying. She rocked back and forth from one foot to the other. The corridor slanted gently before her. Squatting, she placed the doll on the truck. With a small push, she started it on its journey down the tunnel. She laughed as it sped away. When it struck the wall and turned over, she screamed.
   “No! No! No! No!”
   Running to it, she raised the doll and held it.
   “No,” she said. “Be all right.”
   She set the truck upright, reinstalled the doll.
   “Now!” she said, pushing it again.
   Her laughter followed it as it spun on its way, avoiding the obstacles which had collected in the corridor until it came to a crate filled with plastic tiles. When it struck there, the doll was hurled several feet and its head came off, to continue bouncing on down along the hall.
   “No! No!”
   Panting, she snatched up the body and pursued the head.
   “Be all right,” she said when she had retrieved it. “Be all right.”
   But she could not get the head to go back on again. Clutching them together, she ran to the room with the closed door and opened it.
   “Daddy!” she said. “Daddy! Daddy fix!”
   The room was empty, dim, disorderly. She climbed up onto the unmade bed, seating herself in its middle.
   “Gone away,” she said, cradling the doll in her lap. “Be all right. Please be all right.”
   She held the head in place and watched it through moist prisms which formed without sobs. The rest of the room came to seem so much darker.

   The cow dozed, head depressed, beside the tree where she was tethered. In his cart, Tibor ruminated: Where then is the elation? My dream, the substance of my masterpiece, my life’s work—is almost within reach. It would have been so much more joyous a thing had He not appeared to me and done the things that He did. Now that I am assured the chance to frame Him in my art, the landscape of my joy divides and leaves me, not so dark as a silent house, but so confused, with my life gigantic, ripening to the point of bursting, with fear and ambition the last things left. To change it all to stone and stars—yes, I must try. Only, only now, it will be harder than I thought it would. That I still have that strength, that I still have it…
   “Pete,” he said, as the other came into the camp, Toby at his heels, tail a-wag. “How was your walk?”
   “Pleasant,” Pete said. “It’s a nice night.”
   “I think there is a little wine left,” Schuld said. “Why don’t we all have a drink and finish it off?”
   “All right. Let’s.”
   He passed the bottle among them.
   “The last of the wine,” he said, disposing of the empty flask over his shoulder and into the trees. “No bread left either. How long till the day when the last of you must say that, Pete? Whatever made you choose the career that you did, times being what they are?”
   Pete shrugged.
   “Hard to say. Obviously, it wasn’t a matter of popularity. Why does anyone choose anything and let it dominate his life? Looking for some sort of truth, I suppose, some form of beauty…”
   “Don’t forget goodness,” Schuld said.
   “That, too.”
   “I see. Aquinas cleaned up the Greeks for you, so Plato is okay. Hell, you even baptized Aristotle’s bones, for that matter, once you found a use for his thoughts. Take away the Greek logicians and the Jewish mystics and you wouldn’t have much left.”
   “We count the Passion and the Resurrection for something,” Pete said.
   “Okay. I left out the Oriental mystery religions. And for that matter, the Crusades, the holy wars, the Inquisition.”
   “You’ve made your point,” Pete said. “I am weary of these things and have trouble enough with the way my own mind works. You want to argue, join a debating team.
   Schuld laughed.
   “Yes, you are right. No offense meant, I assure you. I know your religion has troubles enough on the inside. No sense to dredging after more.”
   “What do you mean?”
   “To quote a great mathematician, Eric Bell, ‘All creeds tend to split into two, each of which in turn splits into two more, and so on, until after a certain finite number of generations (which can be easily calculated by logarithms) there are fewer human beings in any given region, no matter how large, than there are creeds, and further attenuations of the original dogma embodied in the first creed dilute it to a transparent gas too subtle to sustain faith in any human being, no matter how small.’ In other words, you are falling apart on your own. Every little settlement across the land has its own version of the faith.”
   Pete brightened.
   “If that is truly a natural law,” he said, “then it applies across the board. The SOWs will suffer its effects just as we do. Only we have a tradition born of two thousand years’ experience in weathering its operation. I find that encouraging.”
   “But supposing,” Schuld said, “just supposing—what if the SOWs are right and you are wrong? What if there is really a divine influence acting to suspend this law for them? What then?”
   Pete bowed his head, raised it, and smiled again.
   “It is as the Arabs say, ‘If it is the will of God it comes to pass.’ “
   “Allah,” Schuld corrected.
   “What’s in a name? They differ from country to country.”
   “That istrue. And from generation to generation. For that matter, given one more generation, everything may be different. Even the substance.”
   “Possibly,” Pete said, rising to his feet. “Possibly. You have just reminded me that my bladder is brimming. Excuse me.”
   As Pete headed off into the bushes, Tibor said, “Perhaps it was better not to antagonize him so. After all, it may just make him more difficult to deal with when the times comes to distract him or mislead him or whatever you have in mind for when we find Lufteufel.”
   “I know what I am doing,” Schuld said. “I want to demonstrate how tenuous, how misguided, a thing it is that he represents.”
   “I already know that you know more about religion than he does,” Tibor said, “being head of your whole church and all, and him just a trainee. You don’t have to show me that. I’d just as soon the rest of the trip went pleasantly and that we were all friends.”
   Schuld laughed.
   “Just wait and watch,” he said. “You will see that everything turns out properly.”
   This is not at all the way that I envisaged this Pilg, Tibor thought. I wish that I could have done it alone, found Lufteufel by myself, taken his likeness without fuss or bother, gone back to Charlottesville and finished my work. That is all. I have a great aversion to disputes of any kind. Now this, here, with them. I don’t want to take sides. My feelings are with Pete, though. He didn’t start it. I don’t want a lesson in theology at his expense. I wish that it would just stop.
   Pete returned.
   “Getting a bit nippy,” he said, stooping to toss more sticks onto the fire.
   “It is just you,” Schuld said, “feeling the outer darkness pressing in upon you, finally.”
   “Oh, for Christ’s sake!” Pete said, straightening. “If you’re so damn gone on that dippy religion, why don’t you join it? Go bow down before the civil servant who gave the order that screwed things up! Model plaster busts of him from Tiber’s murch! Play bingo at his feet! Hold raffles and Day of Wrath benefit picnics, too, while you’re at it! You’ve still got a lot to learn, and that will all come later. But in the meantime, I just plain don’t give a shit!”
   Schuld roared with laughter.
   “Very good, Pete! Very good!” he said. “I’m glad the rigor mortis has left your tongue intact. And you’ve reminded me of something I must go do now myself.”
   Schuld trudged off into the bushes, still chuckling.
   “Damn that man!” Pete said. It is hard to keep recalling that he saved my life and that love is the name of the game. What has gotten into him that he is becoming my cross for today! That air-cooled, fuel-injection system with its absolutely balanced compression and exhaust cycle now seems aimed at running me down, backing over the remains to make it a perfect squash and leaving me there as flat and decorative as Tiber’s murch. I am just going to refuse to talk to him if he starts in again.
   “Why did he get that way all of a sudden?” Pete said, half to himself.
   “I think that he has something against Christianity,” Tibor said.
   “I never would have guessed. Funny, though. He told me religion doesn’t mean much to him.”
   “He did? That is strange, isn’t it?”
   “How do you see what he was talking about, Tibor?”
   “Sort of the way you do,” Tibor said. “I don’t think I give a shit either.”
   Then they heard the howl, ending in a brief, intense yelp and a very faint whine. Then nothing.
   “Toby!” Tibor screamed, activating the battery-powered circuit and driving his cart in the direction of the cry. “Toby!”
   Pete spun about, raced to catch up with him. The cart broke through a stand of bushes, pushed past the gnarled hulk of a tree.
   “Toby …” he heard Tibor say, as the cart screeched to a halt. Then, “You—killed—him—”
   “Any other response would not have been personally viable,” he heard Schuld’s voice reply. “I maintain a standard reactive posture of nullification against subhuman forms which transgress. It’s a common experience with me, this challenge. They detect my—”
   Flailing, the extensor lashed out like a snapped cable and caught Schuld across the face. The man stumbled back catching hold of a tree. He drew himself erect then. His helmet had been knocked to the ground. Rolling, it had come to a halt beside the body of the dog, whose neck was twisted back at an unnatural angle. As Pete struggled to push his way through the brush, he saw that Schuld’s lip had opened again and blood fell from his mouth, running down his chin, dripping. The head wound he had mentioned was also visible now, and it too began to darken moistly. Pete froze at the sight, for it was ghastly in the half-shadows and the ever-moving light from the fire. Then he realized that Schuld was looking at him. In that moment, an absolute hatred filled him, and he breathed the words, “I know you!” involuntarily. Schuld smiled and nodded, as if waiting for something.
   But then Tibor, who had also been watching, wailed, “Murderer!” and the extensor snapped forward once more, knocking Schuld to the ground.
   “No, Tibor!” Pete screamed, the vision broken, “Stop!”
   Schuld sprang to his feet, half of his face masked with blood, the more-human half wary now, wide-eyed and twisting toward fear. He turned and began to run.
   The extensor snaked after, took a turn about his feet, tightened and lifted, sending him sprawling once more.
   The cart creaked several feet forward and Pete raced about it.
   By the time he reached the front, Schuld had risen to his knees, his face and breast a filthy, bloody abomination.
   “No!” Pete shouted again, rushing to interpose himself between Tibor and his victim.
   But the extensor was faster. It fell once more, knocking Schuld over backward.
   Pete rushed to straddle the fallen man and raised his arms before Tibor.
   “Don’t do it, Tibor!” he cried. “You’ll kill him! Do you hear me! You can’t do it! For the love of God, Tibor! He’s a man! Like you and me! It’s murder! Don’t —”
   Pete had braced himself for the blow, but it did not come. Instead, the extensor plunged in from his left and the manual gripper seized hold of his forearm. The cart creaked and swayed at the strain, but Pete was raised into the air—three, four feet above the ground. Then, suddenly, the extensor moved like a cracking whip and he was hurled toward a clump of bushes. He heard Schuld’s moaning as he fell.
   He was scratched and poked, but not severely jolted, as the shrubs collapsed to cushion him. He heard the cart creaking again. Then, for several moments, he was unable to move, tangled and enmeshed as he was. As he struggled to free himself, he heard a bubbly gasp, followed by a rasping, choking sound.
   Tearing at the twigs and limblets, he was finally able to sit up and behold what Tibor had done.
   The extensor was projected out and up, rigid now as a steel pole. Higher above the ground than Pete himself had dangled, hung Schuld, the gripper tight about his throat. His eyes and his tongue protruded. The veins in his forehead stood out like cords. Even as Pete stared, his limbs completed their Totentanz, fell slack, hung limp.
   “No,” Pete said softly, realizing that it was already too late, that there was nothing at all that he could do.
   Tibor, I pray that you never realize what you have done, he thought, raising his hand to cover his eyes, for he was unable to close them or move them. It was planned, Tibor, planned down to the last detail. Except for this. Except for this… It was me. Me that he wanted. Wanted to kill him. Him. At the last moment, the very last moment, he would have shouted. Shouted out to you, Tibor. Shouted, “Ecce! Ecce! Ecce!” And you would have known, you would have felt, you would have beheld, as he desired, planned, required, the necessary death, at my hands, of Carleton Lufteufel. Hanging there, now, all blood and dirt, with eyes that look straight out, forever, across the surface of the world—he wanted me to do that for him, to him, with you to bear witness, here and forever, here and in the great murch in Charlottesville, to bear witness to all the world of the transfiguration of a twisted, tormented being who desired both adoration and punishment, worship and death—here revealed, suddenly, as I slew him, here transfigured, instantly, for you, for all the world, at the moment of his death—the Deus Irae. And God! It could have happened that way! It could have. But you are blinded now with madness and with hate, my friend. May they take this vision with them when they go, I pray. May you never know what you have done. May you never. May you never. Amen.

Seventeen

   Rain ... A gray world, a chill world: Idaho. Basque country. Sheep. Jai alai. A language they say the Devil himself could not master…
   Pete trudged beside the creaking cart. Thank the Lord it was not difficult, he thought, to convince Tibor that Lufteufel’s place was nowhere near the spot Schuld had said it was. Two weeks. Two weeks, and Tibor is still hurting. He must never know how close he really was. He sees Schuld now as a madman. I wish that I could, too. The most difficult thing was the burial. I should have been able to say something, but I was as dumb as that girl with the broken doll in her lap we passed the next day, seated there at the crossroads. I should have managed some sort of prayer. After all, he was a man, he had an immortal soul… Empty, though, my mouth. My lips were stuck together. We go on… A necessary errand of fools. So long as Tibor can be made to feel that Lufteufel is still somewhere ahead, we must go on. Forever, if it comes to that, looking for a man who is already dead. It was Tiber’s fault, too, to think that God’s vision could indeed be captured, to believe that a mortal artist could daub an epiphany with his colors. It was wrong, it was presumption of the highest order. Yet… He needs me now more than ever, shaken as he is. We must go on… where? Only God knows. The destination is no longer important. I cannot leave him, and he cannot go back—He chuckled. “Empty-handed” was the wrong term.
   “What’s funny?” Tibor said, up on the cart.
   “Us.”
   “Why?”
   “We haven’t the sense to get out of the rain.”
   Tibor snorted. Proper as he was, he commanded a somewhat better view than Pete.
   “If that is all that concerns you, I see a building down the hill. It looks like part of a barn. We may be nearing a settlement. There seems to be something more in the distance.”
   “Let’s head for the barn,” Pete said.
   “We are already soaked. Can’t get any wetter.”
   “This isn’t doing your cart any good.”
   “That is true. All right. The barn.”
   “A painter named Wyeth liked scenes like that,” Pete said when the shelter came into his view, hoping to route Tiber’s thoughts away from his brooding. “I saw some of his pictures in a book once.”
   “Rainscapes?”
   “No. Barns. Country stuff.”
   “Was he good?”
   “I think so.”
   “Why?”
   “His pictures looked exceptionally real.”
   “Real in what way?”
   “The way things actually look.”
   Tibor laughed.
   “Pete,” he said, “there are an infinite number of ways of showing how things actually look. They are all of them right, because they show it. Yet each artist goes about it differently. It is partly what you choose to emphasize and partly how you do it. It is plain that you have never painted.”
   “True,” Pete said, ignoring the water running down his neck, pleased to have gotten Tibor talking on a subject that held more than a little of his attention. Then a peculiar thought struck him.
   “Such being the case,” he said suddenly, “if—when we find Lufteufel, how will you fulfill your commission honestly, properly, if there are an infinite number of ways you might go about it? Emphasis means showing one thing at the expense of another. How will you get a true portrait that way?”
   Tibor shook his head vigorously.
   “You misunderstood me. There are all those ways of doing it, but only one is the best.”
   “How do you know which one it is?” Pete asked.
   Tibor was silent for a time. Then, “You just do,” he said. “It feels—appropriate.”
   “I still don’t understand.”
   Tibor was silent again.
   “Neither do I,” he finally said.

   Inside the barn there was straw. Pete unhitched the cow and she munched it. He closed the door. He lay back in the straw and listened to the rain.
   God! I’m tired! It has been a long pair of weeks, he thought. Haven’t called Abernathy since right after it happened. Nothing new to say, though. Go on, he told me. Do not let Tibor know. Lead him through the land. Continue to search. My prayers go with you. Good night.
   It was the only way. He saw that clearly now. There was a sweetish smell to the damp straw. A tangle of stiff leather hung from a nail overhead. Rain dripped from several holes in the roof. A rusted machine occupied a far corner. Pete thought of the beetles and the Great C extension, of the autofac and the twisted trail from Charlottesville; he thought of the card game that night, with Tibor, Abernathy, and Lurine; and of Tiber’s sudden grasping at the faith; he thought of Lurine; he recalled his vision of Deity above the hook, and as suddenly that of the lidless-eyed regarder of the world and all in it; Lufteufel, then, hung high, dark, hideous in his ultimate frustration; he thought of Lurine…
   He realized that he had been asleep. The rain had stopped. He heard Tiber’s snores. The cow was chewing her cud. He stretched. He scratched himself and sat up.

   Tibor watched the shadows among the overhead beams. If he had not taken back the arms and legs, he thought, I could never have killed that strange man, that hunter, that Jack Schuld. He was too strong. Only the manipulators could have served. Why leave me with the devices that would help me kill? For a while things seemed to be going so well… It seemed as if everything were near to completion, as if a few days more would have seen a successful end to the Pilg. It seemed as if the image might soon be captured and the job finished. I had—hope. Then, so quickly after… despair. Is that an aspect of the God of Wrath? Perhaps Pete raised a valid question. What to emphasize in such a study? Even if I am to look upon his face, is it possible that, this time, I may be unable to do a painting correctly? How can I capture the essence of such a being in surface and color? It—it passeth understanding… I miss Toby. He was a good dog. I loved him. But that poor madman—I am sorry I killed him. He could not help it that he was mad. If I had kept those arms and legs the whole thing would have been different… I might have given up and walked home. After all, I am not even certain I could paint with real hands. God, if you ever want to give them back, though… No, I do not think I will ever have them again. It—I do not understand. I was wrong in accepting this commission. I am certain of that now. I wanted to depict that which may not be shown, that which cannot be understood. It is an impossible job. Pride. There is nothing else to me other than my skill. I know that I am good. It is all that I have, though, and I have made too much of it. I had felt, somehow, that it was more than sufficient, not just to make me the equal of a whole man, but to surpass other men, to surpass even the human. I wanted all the future generations of worshipers to look at that work and to see this. It was not the God of Wrath I wanted them to look upon with awe, but the skill of Tibor McMasters. I wanted that awe, their wonder, their admiration—their worship. I wanted deification through my art, I see that now. My pride brought me the entire way. I do not know what I am going to do now. Go on, go on, of course. I must do that. This is not at all how I thought things might turn out.
   The rain had stopped. He tensed and relaxed his muscles. He looked up. The cow was chewing her cud. He heard Pete’s snores. No. Pete was sitting up, looking his way.

   “Tibor?” Pete said.
   “Yes?”
   “Where is that snoring coming from?”
   “I don’t know. I thought it was you.”
   Pete stood, listening. He looked about the barn, turned, and moved toward a stall. He looked within. He would have dismissed it as a bundle of rags and trash if it had not been for the snoring. He leaned nearer and was engulfed by the aura of wine fumes which surrounded it. He drew back quickly.
   “What is it?” Tibor called out.
   “Some bum,” Pete said, “sleeping one off, I think.”
   “Oh. Maybe he could tell us about the settlement up ahead. He might even know something more…”
   “I doubt that,” Pete said. Holding his breath, he returned and examined the figure more closely: an untrimmed beard stained a number of colors, ancient crumbs of food still trapped within it, a glistening line of saliva down through its strands, framing teeth which had gone beyond yellow to a brownish cast, several of them broken, many missing, the remainder worn; the heavily lined face could be seen as sallow in the light which fell upon it through the nearest hole in the roof; nose broken at least twice; heavy encrustations of pus at the corners of the eyes, dried upon the lashes; hair wiry, tangled long and gray pale as smoke. A tension of pain lay upon that face even in sleep, so that tics, twitches, and sudden tightnesses animated it unnaturally, as though swarms of insects moved beneath the skin, fighting, breeding, dying. Over-all, the form was thin, wasted, dehydrated. “An old drunk,” Pete said, turning back again. “That’s all. Can’t know too much about the settlement. They probably ran him out of it.”
   The rain has stopped and there is still some light, Pete thought. Best we leave him here and get moving again. Whatever he has to tell us will hardly be worth the hearing, and we would be stuck with a hangover bum on our hands.
   “Let’s just leave him and go,” he told Tibor.
   As he moved away, the man moaned and muttered, “Where are you?”
   Pete was silent.
   “Where are you?” came the croaking voice once more, followed by a thrashing about from within the stall.
   “Maybe he is ill,” Tibor said.
   “I do not doubt it.”
   “Come here,” said the voice, “come here…”
   Pete looked at Tibor.
   “Maybe there is something we can do,” Tibor said.
   Pete shook his head, moved back to the stall.
   Just as he looked about the partition, the man said, “There you are,” but he was not looking at Pete. He was addressing a jug he had withdrawn from beneath a mound of straw. He uncorked it but lacked the strength to raise it to his lips. He threw his head back then and turned it to the side. He tipped the jug toward his mouth, sucked upon it. Some of the wine splashed over his face. As he uprighted the jug, he was seized with a spell of coughing. Ragged, breaking sounds emerged from his chest, his throat, his mouth. When he spat, Pete could not tell whether it was blood or wine residue that reddened the spittle so. Pete moved to withdraw.
   “I see you,” the man said suddenly, his voice slightly firmer than it had been. “Don’t go away. Help old Tom.” His voice slid into a practiced whine then. “Please, mister, can you spare a—help? A help for me? M’arms don’t work so good. Must’ve slept on ‘em funny.”
   “What do you want?” Pete asked.
   “Hold this jug for me, please. I don’t want to spill any.”
   “All right,” Pete said.
   Holding his breath, he entered the stall and knelt beside the old man. He raised the frail shoulders with his right arm, gripped the jug with his left hand. “Here,” he said, and he held it tilted while the other drew a long series of swallows from it.
   “Thank you,” said the man, coughing less vigorously than before, but still showering Pete’s wrist and forearm.
   Pete lowered him quickly and set down the jug. He began to draw away, but a bony hand snatched his wrist.
   “Don’t go, don’t go. I’m Tom, Tom Gleason. Where you from?”
   “Utah. Charlottesville, Utah,” Pete said, struggling not to breathe.
   “Denver,” said Tom, “that’s all, thank you. It was a nice city. Good people, you know? Someone always had the price of a flop and—what’s the word? Thunderbird!” He chuckled. “What’s the price? Thirty twice. You want a drink, mister? You have some of this. Ain’t bad. Found it in the cellar of an old place off the road, back—” His hand flopped. “What way? Oh hell! There’s more there. Have some. Still plenty here.”
   “Thanks,” Pete said. “No.”
   “You ever been to Denver?”
   “No.”
   “Remember how nice it was before they burned it. The people were nice, you know? They—”
   Pete exhaled, breathed, gagged.
   “Yeah, gets me that way, too,” Tom said. “Burning a nice place like that. Why’d they do it, anyhow?”
   “It was a war,” Pete said. “Cities get bombed when you have wars.”
   “I didn’t want no war. It was such a nice place. No reason to bomb a nice place like Denver. I got burned when they did it.” His hand plucked feebly at his tattered shirt. “Want to see my scars?”
   “That’s all right.”
   “I got ‘em. Got plenty. Had me in a field hospital for a while. Threw me out soon as I got better. It wasn’t nice anymore. Hardly anything to drink, or eat either. Those was rough times. I don’t remember so much anymore, but I went a lot of places after that. Nothing left like Denver was, though. Nothing nice left. People ain’t so nice anymore either, you know? Hard to get a little juice from folks nowadays. Sure you don’t want none?”
   “Better save it,” Pete said. “Hard to get.”
   “That’s the truth. Help me to another, will you?”
   “Okay.”
   While he was doing this, Tibor called out, “How is he?”
   Pete said, “Coming around.” Then, “Wait awhile.”
   On an impulse then, he asked Tom, “Do you know who Carleton Lufteufel was?”
   The old man looked at him blankly, shook his head.
   “Might have heard the name. Might not. Don’t remember so well anymore. Friend… ?”
   “Just a name to me, too,” Pete said. “But I’ve got a friend here—a poor little inc, who has been looking all over for him. Probably, he’ll never find him. Probably, he’ll just go on and on and die looking.”
   Tom’s eyes brimmed over.
   “Poor little inc,” he said, “poor little inc…”
   “Can you say the name?” Pete asked.
   “What name?”
   “Carleton Lufteufel.”
   “Gimme another drink, please.”
   Pete held him again.
   “Now?” he said. “Now can you say Carleton Lufteufel?”
   “Carleton Lufteufel,” Tom said. “I can still talk. Just my memory that’s bad…”
   “Would you—” No, it was ridiculous. Tibor would see right through it. Or would he? Pete wondered. Tom Gleason was about the right age. Tibor already thought he was ill, knew he had been drinking. And more important, perhaps, Tibor’s faith in his own judgment seemed to have waned since the killing of Schuld/Lufteufel. If I act convinced, Pete thought, will it be enough of an extra push to make him believe? If I act convinced and Tom states it for a fact? We could go on forever, wandering, looking, without another opportunity like this, a chance to return to Charlottesville, to finish my studies, to see Lurine again. And if I could succeed, think of the irony! Think of the Servants of Wrath bowing down, praying to, venerating, adoring, not their god in the form of Carleton Lufteufel, but one of his victims: a worthless derelict, a drunken brain-scarred old drifter, a panhandler, a wino, a man—a man who had never done anything to or for his fellows, a maimed human cipher who had never wielded power of any sort; just a man, at his lowest. Think of him in the SOWs’ place of honor! I have to try.
   “Would you do a kindness for my poor little inc friend?” he asked.
   “Do a what? A kindness? God, yes… There’s enough misery in the world. If it’s not too hard, that is. I’m not the man I used to be. What’s he want?”
   “He wants to see Carleton Lufteufel, a man we will never find. All that he wants to do is take his picture. Would you—would you say that you are Carleton Lufteufel, that you were once Chairman of the ERDA? And if he asks you, that you gave the bomb order? That’s all. Would you do it? Can you?”
   “One more drink,” Tom said.
   Pete raised him to the jug.
   “Is everything all right?” Tibor called out.
   “Yes,” Pete called back. “This may be very important! We may have had a stroke of luck, if I can get this fellow back into shape… Hold on!”
   He lowered the jug. Tom eased away from his arm and sat unassisted. And then, by degrees, his eyes shut. He had passed out. Either that, or—god forbid; he was dead.
   “Tom,” Pete said.
   Silence. And the inertness of a million years: something below the level of life, something still inanimate which had never made it up to sentience. And probably never would.
   Shit, Pete Sands thought. He took the bottle of wine, put the screw-type lid back on it, sat for a time. “The piece of luck I was talking about,” he called loudly. “Do you believe at all in destiny?”
   “What?” Tibor yelled back, with signs of irritation.
   Reaching into his pocket, Pete Sands got out his roll of silver dimes, always kept there. The all-purpose winning possession, he thought; he got a good grip on the roll of dimes and then tapped it against Tom’s cheekbone. Nothing. No response. Pete then tore the heavy brown-paper wrapper away from the dunes. The metal corns slithered and tinkled against one another, manifesting themselves into visibility.
   “Carleton Lufteufel,” ol’ Tom muttered, eyes still shut. “That poor little inc. I wouldn’t want the poor blighted inc wandering till he got hurt. It’s a rough world out there, you know?” Ol’ Tom opened his eyes; they were clear and lucid as he surveyed the many dimes in Pete’s palm. “Chairman of the ERDA, whatever that is—and I gave the bomb order, if the inc asks me. Okay; I got it straight. Carleton Lufteufel, that’s me.” He coughed and spat again, ran his fingers through his hair. “You wouldn’t have a comb, would you? If I’m going to have my picture took—” He held out his hand. Pete gave him the dimes. All of them.
   “Afraid not,” Pete said.
   “You help me up then. Carleton Lufteufel, ERDA, bomb order if he asks.” Ol’ Tom put the dimes away, out of sight; all at once they were gone. As if they had never been.
   Pete said loudly, “This is extraordinary. You think there’s a supernatural entity which guides men along every step of their lives? You think that, Tibor? I never thought so, not before. But my god. I have been talking with this man since he woke up. He is not well, but then he has been through a lot.” He prodded Tom Gleason. “Tell my friend who you are,” he said.
   Tom showed a broken-toothed smile. “Name’s Carleton Lufteufel.”
   Tibor gasped. “Are you joking?”
   “Wouldn’t joke about my own name now, son. A man might use a lot of them in a lot of different places. But at a time like this, when someone’s been looking so hard for me, there’s no point in denying it. Yes, I’m Carleton Lufteufel. I used to be Chairman of the ERDA.”
   Tibor stared at him without moving.
   “I gave the bomb order,” the old man added, then.
   Tibor continued to stare.
   Tom appeared a trifle uneasy, but held his ground, held his smile.
   But the moments passed, and Tibor still did not respond. Finally Tom’s face slackened.
   A little longer; then, “You ever been in Denver?”
   “No,” Tibor said.
   Pete wanted to scream, but then Tom said, “It was a nice city. Pretty. Good people. Then came the war. They burned it, you know…” His face underwent contortions and his eyes glistened.
   “I was Chairman of the ERDA. I gave the bomb order,” he said again.
   Tiber’s head moved and his tongue licked over the control unit. An extensor moved, activating a stereo, full-color, wide-angle, tel-scope, fast-action, shirtbutton-sized war-surplus camera the Servants of Wrath had provided him for this purpose.
   I will never know the best way, Tibor thought. I will never do the perfect job with a subject like this. But then it does not matter. I will do the best that I can, the best that I can to show this subject as he is, to give them their murch, as they want it, to glorify their god, as they would see him glorified, not to my greater honor and glory, or even to his, but simply to fulfill this commission, as I promised. Whether it was destiny or simply luck does not matter. Our journey is over. The Pilg has been completed. I have his likeness. What can I say to him now that this is done?
   “I’m pleased to meet you,” Tibor said. “I just took your picture. I hope that is all right with you.”
   “Sure, son, sure. Glad to be of help. I’m going to have to get back to rest now, though, if your friend here will give me a hand. I’m ailing, you know.”
   “Is there anything we could do?”
   “No, thanks. I’ve got plenty of medicine laid by. You’re nice people. Have a good trip.”
   “Thank you, sir.”
   Tom flipped one hand at him, as Pete caught his arm and steered him back to the stall.
   Home! Tibor thought, his eyes filling with tears. We can go home now…
   He waited for Pete to come and harness the cow.

   That night they sat by a small fire Pete had kindled. The clouds had blown, over and the stars shone in the fresh-washed sky. They had eaten dry rations. Pete had found a half jar of instant coffee in an abandoned farmhouse. It was stale, but it was hot and black and steamed attractively under the breeze from the south.
   “There were times,” Tibor said, “when I thought I would never make it.”
   Pete nodded.
   “Still mad I came along?” he asked.
   Tibor chuckled.
   “Go on, push your advantage,” he said. “… Hell of a way to get converts.”
   “Are you still going Christian?”
   “Still thinking about it. Let me finish this job first.”
   “Sure.” Pete had tried to get through to Abernathy earlier, but the storm system had blanked him out. No hurry now though, he thought. It is all right. Over.
   “Want to see his picture again?”
   “Yes.”
   Tibor’s extensor moved, withdrew the picture from its case, passed it down to him.
   Pete studied Tom Gleason’s tired, old features. Poor guy, he thought. May be dead by now. Not a thing we could have done for him, though. What if—? Supposing it was no coincidence? Supposing it was something more than luck that gave him to us? The irony I saw in Lufteufel’s victim deified… Could it run deeper even than irony? He turned the picture, looking into the eyes, a bit brighter for the moment as the man had realized he was making someone happy, a touch of pain in the lowering, the tightening of the brows as he had recalled his nice Denver gone…
   Pete drank his coffee, passed the picture back to Tibor.
   “You don’t seem unhappy,” Tibor said, “that the competition is getting what it wants.”
   Pete shrugged.
   “It’s not that big a thing to me,” he said. “After all, it’s only a picture.”
   Tibor replaced it in his case.
   “Did he look the way you thought he would?” he asked.
   Pete nodded, thinking back over faces he had known.
   “Pretty much,” he said. “Have you decided how you will handle it?”
   “I’ll give them a good job. I know that.”
   “More coffee?”
   “Thanks.”
   Tibor extended his cup. Pete filled it, added some to his own. He looked up at the stars then, listened to the noises of the night, breathed the warm wind—how warm it had become!—and sipped the coffee. “Too bad I didn’t find some cigarettes, too.”

Eighteen

   At the side of the dust-run serving as a road, the cretin girl Alice remained in silence, and a thousand years passed as sun came and day held a time and finally fell into darkness. She knew he was dead, even before the lizzy approached her.
   “Miss.” .
   She did not look up.
   “Miss, come along with us.”
   “No!” she said, violently.
   “The cadaver—”
   “I no want!”
   Seating itself beside her, the lizzy said in a patient voice, “By custom you’re supposed to claim it.” Time passed; she kept her eyes shut, so as not to see, and with her hands over her ears she could not be certain if it was speaking further or not. At last it touched her on the shoulder. “You’re a retard, aren’t you?”
   “No.”
   “You’re too retarded to know what I’m saying. He’s dressed as a hunter, but he’s the old man you were shacking up with, the rat man. He is the rat man, isn’t he? Disguised. What was he doing disguised? Trying to get away from enemies, was he?” The lizzy laughed roughly, then, the scales of its body ambient in the noise of its voice. “Didn’t work. They bashed his face in. You should see it; nothing but pulp and—”
   She leaped up and ran, then ran back for her forgotten doll. The lizzy had the doll, and the lizzy grinned at her, not giving the doll to her but pressing it against its scaly chest. Mockery of her.
   “He good man!” she shouted frantically, as she scrabbled for the doll, her doll.
   “No, he wasn’t a good man. He wasn’t even a good rat catcher. A lot of times, more than you know, he sold old gristly rats for the price supposed to be the going rate for young plump ones. What did he used to do, before he was a rat catcher?”
   Alice said, “Bombs.”
   “Your daddy.”
   “Yes, my daddy.”
   “Well, since he was your daddy we’ll bring you the corpse. You stay here.” The lizzy rose, dropped the doll before her, and ambulated off, after its fashion.
   Seated by the doll, she watched the lizzy go, feeling the tears running silently down her cheeks. Knew it wouldn’t work, she thought. Knew they’d get him. Maybe for bad rats; tough old ones… like it just now said.
   Why is it all like this? she wondered. He gave me this doll, a long time ago. Now he won’t give me nothing more again. Ever. Something is wrong, she realized. But why? People, they are here for a time and then even if you love them they are gone and it is for always, they are never back, not now.
   Once more she shut her eyes and sat rocking back and forth.
   When again she looked, a man who wasn’t a lizard was coming along the dust-rut road toward her. It was her daddy. As she leaped up joyfully she realized that something had happened to him, and she faltered, taken aback by the transformation in him. Now he stood straighter, and his face had a kindness glowing about it, a warm expression, without the twistedness she had become accustomed to.
   Her daddy approached, step by step, in a certain measured fashion, as if in solemn dance toward her, and then he seated himself silently, indicating to her to be seated, too. It was odd, she thought, that he did not speak, that he only gestured. There was about him a peacefulness she had never witnessed before, as if time had rolled back for him, malting him both younger and—more gentle. She liked him better this way; the fear she had always felt toward him began to leave her, and she reached out, haltingly, to touch his arm.
   Her fingers passed through his arm. And it came to her, then, in an instant, in a twinkling of an eye, a flash of insight, that this was only his spirit, that as the lizzy had said, her daddy was dead. His spirit had stopped on its way back to be with her, to spend a final moment resting by the side of the road with her. This was why he did not speak. Spirits could not be heard.
   “Can you hear me?” she asked.
   Smiling, her daddy nodded.
   An unusual sense of understanding things began to course through her, a kind of alertness which she could not recall from any time ever. It was as if a… she struggled for the word. A membrane of some nature had been removed from her mind; she could see in the sense that she could comprehend now what she had never comprehended. Gazing around her, she saw in truth, in very truth, a different world, a world comprehensible at last, even if only for an interval.
   “I love you,” she said.
   Again he smiled.
   “Will I see you again?” she asked him.
   He nodded.
   “But I have to—” She hesitated, because these were difficult thoughts. “Pass across first, before that time.”
   Smiling, he nodded.
   “You feel better, don’t you,” she said. It was evident beyond any doubt, from every aspect of him. “What is gone from you is something terrible,” she said. Until now, now that it had gone, she had never understood how dreadful it was. “It was an evil about you. Is that why you feel better? Because now the evil about you—”
   Rising silently to his feet, her daddy began to move away, along the dim marks of the road.
   “Wait,” she said.
   But he could not or would not wait. He continued on away, now, his back to her, growing smaller, smaller, and then at last he disappeared; she watched him go and then she saw what remained of him travel through a clump of tangled rubbish and debris—through, not around, ghostly and pale as he had become; he did not step aside to avoid it. And he had become very small, now, only three or so feet high, fading and sinking, dwindling into bits of mere light which drifted suddenly away in swirls which the wind carried off, and were absorbed by the day.
   Two lizzys came toiling along toward her, both of them looking perplexed and somewhat angry.
   “It’s gone,” the first lizzy said to her. “Your corpse is gone—your father’s, I mean.”
   “Yes,” Alice said. “I know.”
   “It was stolen, I guess,” the other lizzy said. Half to itself it added, “Something dragged it off… maybe ate it.”
   Alice said, “It rose.”
   “It what?” Both lizzys stared at her, and then simultaneously they broke into laughter. “Rose from the dead? How do you know? Did it come floating by here?”
   “Yes,” she said. “And stayed a moment to sit with me.
   Cautiously, one lizzy said to its companion, in a totally changed tone of voice, “A miracle.”
   “Just a retard,” the other said. “Prattling nonsense, like they do. Burned-out brain muttering. It was just a dead human, nothing more.”
   With genuine curiosity, the other lizzy asked the girl, “Where’d it go from here? Maybe we can catch up with it. Maybe it can tell the future and heal!”
   “It dissipated,” Alice said.
   The lizzys blinked, and then one of them rustled its scales uneasily and muttered, “This is no retard; did you hear that word she used? Retards don’t use words like that, not words like ‘dissipated.’ Are you sure this is the right girl?”
   Alice, with her doll held tight, turned to go. A few of the particles of light which had comprised her daddy’s transformed being brushed about her, like moonbeams visible in the day, like a magic, living dust spreading out across the landscape of the world, to become progressively finer and finer, always more rare, but never completely to disappear. At least not for her. She could still sense the bits, the traces, of him around her, in the air itself, hovering and lingering, and in a certain real sense, speaking a message.
   And the membrane which had, all her life, occluded her mind—it remained gone. Her thoughts continued clear and distinct, and so they were to remain, for the rest of her life.
   We have advanced up the manifold one move, she thought. My father and I… he beyond visible sight, and I into visible sight at last.
   Around her the world sparkled in the warmth of day, and it seemed to her that it had permanently changed as well. What are these transformations? she asked herself. Certainly they will last; certainly they will endure. But she could not really be positive, because she had never witnessed anything like it before. In any case, what she perceived on all sides of her as she walked away from the puzzled lizards was good. Perhaps, she thought, it is springtime. The first spring since the war. She thought, The contamination is lifting from us all, finally, as well as from the place we live. And she knew why.

   Dr. Abernathy felt the world’s oppression lift but he did not have any insight as to why it had lifted. At the moment it began he had taken a walk to market for the purchase of vegetables. On the way back he smiled to himself, enjoying the air because it had—what was it once called?—he could not remember. Oh yes: ozone. Negative ions, he thought. The smell of new life. Associated with the vernal equinox; that which charged the Earth from solar flares, perhaps, from the great source.
   Somewhere, he thought, a good event has happened, and it spreads out. He saw to his amazement palm trees. All at once he stopped, stood clasping his basket of string beans and beets. The warm air, the palm trees… funny, he thought, I never noticed any palm trees growing around here. And dry dusty land, as if I’m in the Middle East. Another world; touches of another continuum. I don’t understand, he thought. What is breaking through? As if my eyes are now opened, in a special way.
   To his right, a few people who had been shopping had seated themselves along the way, for rest. He saw young people, dusty from the walk, sweating, but full of a purity new to him. A pretty girl with dark hair, somewhat chubby, she had unfastened her shirt; it did not bother him; he was not offended by her naked breasts. The film is scrubbed away, he thought, and again he wondered why. A good deed done? Hardly. There was no such deed. He paused, standing there, admiring the young people, the bareness of the girl who did not seem self-conscious at all although she saw him, a Christian, gazing.
   Somehow goodness has Arrived, he decided. As Milton wrote once, “Out of evil comes good.” Notice, he said to himself, the relative disparity of the two terms; evil is the most powerful term for what is bad, and good—it barely surpasses its opposite. The Fall of Satan, the Fall of Man, the crucifixion of Christ… out of those dreadful, evil acts came good; out of the Fall of Man and the expulsion from the Garden, man learned love. From a Trinity of Evil emerged at last a Trinity of Good! It is a balanced thing.
   Then, he thought, possibly the world has been cleared of its oppressive film by an evil act… or am I getting into subtleties? In any case, he sensed the difference; it was real.
   I swear to god I’m somewhere in Syria, he thought. In the Levant. Back in time, too, perhaps… thousands of years, possibly. He stood gazing around him, inhaling and excited, amazed.
   To his right, the ruins of a prewar U. S. Post Office substation.
   Old ruins, he thought. The antique world. Reborn, somehow, in this our present. Or have I been carried back? Not me back, he decided, but it transported in time, as through a weak spot, to enter here and suffuse us. Or me. Probably no one else sees it. My god, he thought, this is like Pete Sands and his drugs, except that I haven’t taken anything. This is the sundering of the normal and the entry into or else the invasion by the paranormal which he experiences; this, he realized, is a vision, and I must try to fathom it.
   He walked slowly across the stubble and dirt of the field, toward the ruins of the small U. S. Post Office substation. Against its standing wall lounged several people, enjoying midday rest and the sun. The sun! What vigor carried invisibly in its light, now!
   They do not see what I see, he decided. Nothing is changed for them. What happened to bring this on? An ordinary sunny day in the world… if I interpret what I see as if it is mere symbol: a sunny day, representing in the highest order the termination of the authority of evil, of that obscure dominion? Yes, something evil has perished, he realized, and, understanding that, his heart gladdened.
   Something of substance which was evil, he thought, has become only shadow. It has somehow lost an essential personification. Did Tibor take the God of Wrath’s picture, and in so doing steal his soul?
   He chuckled with delight, standing there by the ruins of the old U. S. Post Office substation, the sun radiating down on him, the fields murmuring with the buzz and drone of satisfaction, the mild endless hum of life. Well, he said to himself, amused, if Carleton Lufteufel’s soul can be stolen, then he is not a god but a man, like any of the rest of us. Gods have nothing to fear from cameras. Except, he thought, pleased at his pun, a fear of (he laughed delightedly) exposure.
   Several half-dozing people glanced up at him and smiled mildly, not knowing why he was laughing and yet sharing in it themselves.
   More somberly, Dr. Abernathy thought, The Servants of Wrath may be with us for a long time—false religions are as long-lasting as the real, it would seem—but the reality of it has faded and fled from the world, and what remains is hollow and without the mekkis, the power, it had.
   I will be interested in seeing the photograph which Tibor and Pete Sands bring back, he decided. As they say, Better a devil known.
   By snaring his image they have broken him, he realized. They have reduced him to mortal size.
   The palm trees rustled in the warm midday wind, acquainting him further, without words, in the sunny mystery of redemption. He was wondering, however, whom he could tell his pun to. The false god, he repeated in rapture, since normally he was very bad at jokes, cannot survive exposure. He must always be concealed. We have lured him out and frozen his visage. And he is doomed.
   And so, he informed himself, by means of a project engineered by the guile and ambitions of the Servants of Wrath themselves, we Christians, evidently defeated, have triumphed; this portrait has initiated a process of perishing for him, by its very authenticity—or rather the fact that the Servants of Wrath will insist on its authenticity, collaborating in their own downfall. Thus the True God uses evil to refine the good, and good to refine evil,, which is to say, in the final analysis we discover that God Himself has been served by everyone. By every event, whether good or bad.
   I mean, he thought, labeled good or bad. Good or bad, truth or error, the wrong road or the right road, ignorance and malice and wisdom and love… they are, he thought, to be viewed as, Omniae vitae ad Deum ducent. All lives, like all roads, lead—not to Rome, but to God.
   Walking on now, he reflected that he should put this in a sermon along with his pun; it was something to tell people, to make them smile as those resting persons by the ruins of the old U. S. Post Office substation had smiled. Even if they did not understand thoughts so complex, they could still take pleasure in them.
   To enjoy things again… the world’s oppression, vanquished by an act invisible to everyone, could not hold men back; they could bask and smile and unbutton their shirts to catch the sun and enjoy the humor of a simple priest.
   I would like to know what did happen, he thought. But God occludes men to fulfill His will.
   Maybe, Dr. Abernathy decided, it is better that way.
   Firmly gripping his basket of string beans and beets, he continued on in the direction of Charlottesville and his little church.

Nineteen

   The murch which Tibor McMasters painted did slowly become known throughout the world and was at last rated as equal to the works of the great masters of the Italian Renaissance, most of which were known in the form of prints, the originals having been destroyed.
   Seventeen years after Tiber’s death, an official pronouncement of authentication was made by the Servants of Wrath hierarchy. It was indeed the visage of the God of Wrath, Carleton Lufteufel. There could be no doubt. Any disputing this was henceforth illegal and carried a penalty of emasculation for men, one ear removed for women. This was to insure reverence in an irreverent world, faith in a society which had become faithless, and belief in a world which had already discovered that most of what it believed were in actuality lies.
   At the time of his death, Tibor was subsisting on a small annual pension from the Church, plus a guaranteed maintenance of his cart, with alfalfa hay for two cows: because of the excellence of his work he was given two cows, not one, to pull his cart. When he passed by, people recognized him and hailed him. He gave out a laborious autograph to tourists. Children yelled at him and did not jeer; Tibor was liked by everyone, and although he became eccentric and irascible in his old age, he was considered an asset to the community… this despite the fact that after rendering the true portrait of the God of Wrath he never painted anything of note again.
   It was said that among his effects were certain diary-like entries he had jotted down from time to time, in which, to himself alone, he had expressed toward the end certain reservations as to the authenticity of his own great murch. However, no one saw such personal holographs. If they existed at all, the Servants of Wrath who sequestered his corpus of papers either filed them away behind locked metal doors or, more likely, destroyed them.
   His last two cows were killed and stuffed and placed, one on each side of his great murch, to gaze solemnly—and glassily—at the tourists who came to pay homage to the renowned painting. Tibor McMasters himself was finally made a saint of the Church. His grave site is unknown. Several cities proudly claim it.

Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along after the Bomb

Philip Kindred Dick

I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI

Dr. Bloodmoney,
or How We Got Along after the Bomb
by Philip K. Dick

I

   Early in the bright sun-yellowed morning, Stuart McConchie swept the sidewalk before Modern TV Sales & Service, hearing the cars along Shattuck Avenue and the secretaries hurrying on high heels to their offices, all the stirrings and fine smells of a new week, a new time in which a good salesman could accomplish things. He thought about a hot roll and coffee for his second breakfast, along about ten. He thought of customers whom he had talked to returning to buy, all of them perhaps today, his book of sales running over, like that cup in the Bible. As he swept he sang a song from a new Buddy Greco album and he thought too how it might feel to be famous, a world-famous great singer that everyone paid to see at such places as Harrah’s in Reno or the fancy expensive clubs in Las Vegas which he had never seen but heard so much about.
   He was twenty-six years old and he had driven, late on certain Friday nights, from Berkeley along the great ten lane highway to Sacramento and across the Sierras to Reno, where one could gamble and find girls; he worked for Jim Fergesson, the owner of Modern TV, on a salary and commission basis, and being a good salesman he made plenty. And anyhow this was 1981 and business was not bad. Another good year, booming from the start, where America got bigger and stronger and everybody took more home.
   “Morning, Stuart.” Nodding, the middle-aged jeweler from across Shattuck Avenue passed by. Mr. Crody, on his way to his own little store.
   All the stores, the offices, opening, now; it was after nine and even Doctor Stockstill, the psychiatrist and specialist in psychosomatic disorders, appeared, key in hand, to start up his high-paying enterprise in the glass-sided office building which the insurance company had built with a bit of its surplus money. Doctor Stockstill had parked his foreign car in the lot; he could afford to pay five dollars a day. And now came the tall, long-legged pretty secretary of Doctor Stockstill’s, a head taller than he. And, sure enough as Stuart watched, leaning on his broom, the furtive first nut of the day sidled guiltily toward the psychiatrist’s office.
   It’s a world of nuts, Stuart thought, watching. Psychiatrists make a lot. If I had to go to a psychiatrist I’d come and go by the back door. Nobody’d see me and jeer. He thought, Maybe some of them do; maybe Stockstill has a back door. For the sicker ones, or rather (he corrected his thought) the ones who don’t want to make a spectacle out of themselves; I mean the ones who simply have a problem, for instance worry about the Police Action in Cuba, and who aren’t nuts at all, just—concerned.
   And he was concerned, because there was still a good chance that he might be called up for the Cuban War, which had now become bogged down in the mountains once more, despite the new little anti-personnel bombs that picked out the greasy gooks no matter how well dug in. He himself did not blame the president—it wasn’t the president’s fault that the Chinese had decided to honor their pact. It was just that hardly anyone came home from fighting the greasy gooks free of virus bone infections. A thirty-year-old combat veteran returned looking like some dried mummy left out of doors to hang for a century… and it was hard for Stuart McConchie to imagine himself picking up once more after that, selling stereo TV again, resuming his career in retail selling.
   “Morning, Stu,” a girl’s voice came, startling him. The small, dark-eyed waitress from Edy’s candy store. “Day dreaming so early?” She smiled as she passed on by along the sidewalk.
   “Heck no,” he said, again sweeping vigorously.
   Across the street the furtive patient of Doctor Stockstill’s, a man black in color, black hair and eyes, light skin, wrapped tightly in a big overcoat itself the color of deep night, paused to light a cigarette and glance about. Stuart saw the man’s hollow face, the staring eyes and the mouth, especially the mouth. It was drawn tight and yet the flesh hung slack, as if the pressure, the tension there, had long ago ground the teeth and the jaw away; the tension remained there in that unhappy face, and Stuart looked away.
   Is that how it is? he wondered. To be crazy? Corroded away like that, as if devoured by… he did not know what by. Time or perhaps water; something slow but which never stopped. He had seen such deterioration before, in watching the psychiatrist’s patients come and go, but never this bad, never this complete.
   The phone rang from inside Modern TV, and Stuart turned to hurry toward it. When next he looked out onto the street the black-wrapped man had gone, and once more the day was regaining its brightness, its promise and smell of beauty. Stuart’ shivered, picked up his broom.
   I know that man, he said to himself. I’ve see his picture or he’s come into the store. He’s either a customer—an old one, maybe even a friend of Fergesson’s—or he’s an important celebrity.
   Thoughtfully, he swept on.


   To his new patient, Doctor Stockstill said, “Cup of coffee? Or tea or Coke?” He read the little card which Miss Purcell had placed on his desk. “Mr. Tree,” he said aloud. “Any relation to the famous English literary family? Iris Tree, Max Beerbohm…”
   In a heavily-accented voice Mr. Tree said, “That is not actually my name, you know.” He sounded irritable and impatient. “It occurred to me as I talked to your girl.”
   Doctor Stockstill glanced questioningly at his patient.
   “I am world-famous,” Mr. Tree said. “I’m surprised you don’t recognize me; you must be a recluse or worse.” He ran a hand shakily through his long black hair. “There are thousands, even millions of people in the world, who hate me and would like to destroy me. So naturally I have to take steps; I have to give you a made-up name.” He cleared his throat and smoked rapidly at his cigarette; he held the cigarette European style, the burning end within, almost touching his palm.
   Oh my god, Doctor Stockstill thought. This man, I do recognize him. This is Pruno Bluthgeld, the physicist. And he is right; a lot of people both here and in the East would like to get their hands on him because of his miscalculation back in 1972. Because of the terrible fall-out from the high-altitude blast which wasn’t supposed to hurt anyone; Bluthgeld’s figures proved it in advance.
   “Do you want me to know who you are?” Doctor Stockstill asked. “Or shall we accept you simply as ‘Mr. Tree’? It’s up to you; either way is satisfactory to me.”
   “Let’s simply get on,” Mr. Tree grated.
   “All right.” Doctor Stockstill made himself comfortable, scratched with his pen against the paper on his clipboard. “Go ahead.”
   “Does an inability to board an ordinary bus—you know, with perhaps a dozen persons unfamiliar to you—signify anything?” Mr. Tree watched him intently.
   “It might,” Stockstill said.
   “I feel they’re staring at me.”
   “For any particular reason?”
   “Because,” Mr. Tree said, “of the disfiguration of my face.”
   Without an overt motion, Doctor Stockstill managed to glance up and scrutinize his patient. He saw this middleaged man, heavy-set, with black hair, the stubble of a beard dark against his unusually white skin. He saw circles of fatigue and tension beneath the man’s eyes, and the expression in the eyes, the despair. The physicist had bad skin and he needed a haircut, and his entire face was marred by the worry within him… but there was no “disfiguration.” Except for the strain visible there, it was an ordinary face; it would not have attracted notice in a group.
   “Do you see the blotches?” Mr. Tree said hoarsely. He pointed at his cheeks, his jaw. “The ugly marks that set me apart from everybody?”
   “No,” Stockstill said, taking a chance and speaking directly.
   “There’re there,” Mr. Tree said. “Thery’re on the inside of the skin, of cdurse. But people notice them anyhow and stare. I can’t ride on a bus or go into a restaurant or a theater; I can’t go to the San Francisco opera or the ballet or the symphony orchestra or even a nightclub to watch one of those folk singers; if I do succeed in getting inside I have to leave almost at once because of the staring. And the remarks.”
   “Tell me what they say.”
   Mr. Tree was silent.
   “As you said yourself,” Stockstill said, “you are world-famous—and isn’t it natural for people to murmur when a world-famous personage comes in and seats ‘himself among them? Hasn’t this been true for years? And there is controversy about your work, as you pointed out… hostility and perhaps one hears disparaging remarks. But everyone in the public eye—”
   “Not that,” Mr. Tree broke in. “I expect that; I write articles and appear on the TV, and I expect that; I know that. This—has to do with my private life. My most innermost thoughts.” He gazed at Stockstill and said, “They read my thoughts and they tell me about my private personal life, in every detail. They have access to my brain.”
   Paranoia sensitiva, Stockstill thought, although of course there have to be tests… the Rorschach in particular. It could be advanced insidious schizophrenia; these could be the final stages of a life-long illness process. Or—
   “Some people can see the blotches on my face and read my personal thoughts more accurately than others,” Mr. Tree said. “I’ve noted quite a spectrum in ability—some are barely aware, others seem to make an instantaneous Gestalt of my differences, my stigmata. For example, as I came up the sidewalk to your office, there was a Negro sweeping on the other side… he stopped work and concentrated on me, although of course he was too far away to jeer at me. Nevertheless, he saw. It’s typical of lower class people, I’ve noticed. More so than educated or cultured people.”
   “I wonder why that is,” Stockstill said, making notes.
   “Presumably, you would know, if you’re competent at all. The woman who recommended you said you were exceptionally able.” Mr. Tree eyed him, as if seeing no sign of’ ability as yet.
   “I think I had better get a background history from you,” Stockstill said. “I see that Bonny Keller recommended me. How is Bonny? I haven’t seen her since last April or so… did her husband give up his job with that rural grammar school as he was talking about?”
   “I did not come here to discuss George and Bonny Keller,” Mr. Tree said. “I am desperately pressed, Doctor. They may decide to complete their destruction of me any time now; this harassment has gone on for so long now that—” He broke off. “Bonny thinks I’m ill, and I have great respect for her.” His tone was low, almpst inaudible. “So I said I’d come here, at least once.”
   “Are the Kellers still living up in West Marin?”
   Mr. Tree nodded.
   “I have a summer place up there,” Stockstill said. “I’m a sailing buff; I like to get out on Tomales Bay every chance I get. Have you ever tried sailing?”
   “No.”
   “Tell me when you were born and where.”
   Mr. Tree said, “In Budapest, in 1934.”
   Doctor Stockstill, skillfully questioning, began to obtain in detail the life-history of his patient, fact by fact. It was essential for what he had to do: first diagnose and then, if possible, heal. Analysis and then therapy. A man known all over the world who had delusions that strangers were staring at him—how in this case could reality be sorted out from lantasy? WThat was the frame of reference which would distinguish them one from the other?
   It would be so easy, Stockstill realize, to find pathology here. So easy—and so tempting. A man this hated… I share their opinion, he said to himself, the they that Bluthgeld—or rather Tree—talks about. After all, I’m part of society, too, part of the civilization menaced by the grandiose, extravagant miscalculations of this man. It could have been—could someday be—my children blighted because this man had the arrogance to assume that he could not err.
   But there was more to it than that. At the time, Stockstill had felt a twisted quality about the man; he had watched him being interviewed on TV, listened to him speak, read his fantastic anti-communist speeches—and come to the tentative conclusion that Bluthgeld had a profound hatred for people, deep and pervasive enough to make him want, on some unconscious level, to err, to make him want to jeopardize the lives of millions.
   No wonder that the Director of the FBI, Richard Nixon, had spoken out so vigorously against “militant amateur anti-communists in high scientific circles.” Nixon had been alarmed, too, long before the tragic error of 1972. The elements of paranoia, with the delusions not only of reference but of grandeur, had been palpable; Nixon, a shrewd judge of men, had observed them, and so had many others.
   And evidently they had been correct.
   “I came to America,” Mr. Tree was saying, “in order to escape the Communist agents who wanted to murder me. They were after me even then… so of course were the Nazis. They were all after me.”
   “I see,” Stockstill said, writing.
   “They still are, but ultimately they will fail,” Mr. Tree said hoarsely, lighting a new cigarette. “For I have God on my side; He sees my need and often He has spoken to me, giving me the wisdom I need to survive my pursuers. I am at present at work on a new project, out at Livermore; the results of this will be definitive as regards our enemy.”
   Our enemy, Stockstill thought. Who is our enemy… isn’t it you, Mr. Tree? Isn’t it you sitting here rattling off your paranoid delusions? How did you ever get ‘the high post that you hold? Who is responsible for giving you power over the lives of others—and letting you keep that power even after the fiasco of 1972? You—and they—are surely our enemies.
   All our fears about you are confirmed; you are deranged—your presence here proves it. Or does it? Stockstill thought, No, it doesn’t, and perhaps I should disqualify myself; perhaps it is unethical for me to try to deal with you. Considering the way I feel… I can’t take a detached, disinterested position regarding you; I can’t be genuinely scientific, and hence my analysis, my diagnosis, may well prove faulty.
   “Why are you looking at me like this?” Mr. Tree was saying.
   “Beg pardon?” Stockstill murmured.
   “Are you repelled by my disfigurations?” Mr. Tree said.
   “No-no,” Stockstill said. “It isn’t that.”
   “My thoughts, then? You were reading them and their disgusting character causes you to wish I had not consulted you?” Rising to his feet, Mr. Tree moved abruptly toward the office door. “Good day.”
   “Wait.” Stockstill came after him. “Let’s get the biographical material concluded, at least; we’ve barely begun.”
   Mr. Tree, eying him, said presently, “I have confidence in Bonny Keller; I know her political opinions… she is not a part of the international Communist conspiracy seeking to kill me at any opportunity.” He reseated himself, more composed, now. But his posture was one of wariness; he would not permit himself to relax a moment in Stockstill’s presence, the psychiatrist knew. He would not open up, reveal himself candidly. He would continue to be suspicious—and perhaps rightly, Stockstill thought.


   As he parked his car Jim Fergesson, the owner of Modern TV, saw his salesman Stuart McConchie leaning on his broom before the shop, not sweeping but merely daydreaming or whatever it was he did. Following McConchie’s gaze he saw that the salesman was enjoying not the sight of some girl passing by or some unusual car—Stu liked girls and cars, and that was normal—but was instead looking in the direction of patients entering the office of the doctor across the street. That wasn’t normal. And what business of McConchie’s was it anyhow?
   “Look,” Fergesson called as he walked rapidly toward the entrance of his shop. “You cut it out; someday maybe you’ll be sick, and how’ll you like some goof gawking at you when you try to seek medical help?”
   “Hey,” Stuart answered, turning his head, “I just saw some important guy go in there but I can’t recall who.”
   “Only a neurotic watches other neurotics,” Fergesson said, and passed on into the store, to the register, which he opened and began to fill with change and bills for the day ahead.
   Anyhow, Fergesson thought, wait’ll you see what I hired for a TV repairman; you’ll really have something to stare at.
   “Listen, McConchie,” Fergessson said. “You know that kid with no arms and legs that comes by on that cart? That phocomelus with just those dinky flippers whose mother took that drug back in the early ‘60s? The one that always hangs around because he wants to be a TV repairman?”
   Stuart, standing with his broom, said, “You hired him.”
   “Yeah, yesterday while you were out selling.”
   Presently McConchie said, “It’s bad for business.”
   “Why? Nobody’ll see him; he’ll be downstairs in the repair department. Anyhow you have to give those people jobs; it isn’t their fault they have no arms or legs, it’s those Germans’ fault.”
   Ater a pause Stuart McConchie said, “First you hire me, a Negro, and now a phoce. Well, I have to hand it to you, Fergesson; you’re trying to do right.”
   Feeling anger, Fergesson said, “I not only try, I do; I’m not just daydreaming, like you. I’m a man who makes up his mind and acts.” He went to open the store safe. “His name is Hoppy. He’ll be in this morning. You ought to see him move stuff with his electronic hands; it’s a marvel of modern science.”
   “I’ve seen,” Stuart said.
   “And it pains you.”
   Gesturing, Stuart said, “It’s—unnatural.”
   Fergesson glared at him. “Listen, don’t say anything along the lines of razzing to the kid; if I catch you or any of the other salesmen or anybody who works for me—”
   “Okay,” Stuart muttered.
   “You’re bored,” Fergesson said, “and boredom is bad because it means you’re not exerting yourself fully; you’re slacking off, and on my time. If you worked hard, you wouldn’t have time to lean on that broom and poke fun at poor sick people going to the doctor. I forbid you to stand outside on the sidewalk ever again; if I catch you you’re fired.”
   “Oh Christ, how am I supposed to come and go and go eat? How do I get into the store in the first place? Through the wall?”
   “You can come and go,” Fergesson decided, “but you can’t loiter.”
   Glaring after him dolefully, Stuart McConchie protested, “Aw cripes!”
   Fergesson however paid no attention to his TV salesman; he began turning on displays and signs, preparing for the day ahead.

II

   The phocomelus Hoppy Harrington generally wheeled up to Modern TV Sales & Service about eleven each morning. He generally glided into the shop, stopping his cart by the counter, and if Jim Fergesson was around he asked to be allowed to go downstairs to watch the two TV repairmen at work. However, if Fergesson was not around, Hoppy gave up and after a while wheeled off, because he knew that the salesmen would not let him go downstairs;’ they merely ribbed him, gave him the run-around. He did not mind. Or at least as far as Stuart McConchie could tell, he did not mind.
   But actually, Stuart realized; he did not understand Hoppy, who had a sharp face with bright eyes and a quick, nervous manner of speech which often became jumbled into a stammer. He did not understand him psychologically. Why did Hoppy want to repair TV sets? What was so great about that? The way the phoce hung around, one would think it was the most exalted calling of all. Actually, repairwork was hard, dirty, and did not pay too well. But Hoppy was passionately determined to become a TV repairman, and now he had succeeded, because Fergesson was determined to do right by all the minority groups in the world. Fergesson was a member of the American Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP and the Help for the Handicapped League—the latter being, as far as Stuart could tell, nothing but a lobby group on an international scale, set up to promote soft berths for all the victims of modern medicine and science, such as the multitude from the Bluthgeld Catastrophe of 1972.
   And what does that make me? Stuart asked himself as he sat upstairs in the store’s office, going over his sales book. I mean, he thought, with a phoce working here… that practically makes me a radiation freak, too, as if being colored was a sort of early form of radiation burn. He felt gloomy thinking about it.
   Once upon a time, he thought, all the people on Earth were white, and then some horse’s ass set off a high-altitude bomb back say around ten thousand years ago, and some of us got seared and it was permanent; it affected our genes. So here we are today.
   Another salesman, Jack Lightheiser, came and sat down at the desk across from him and lit a Corina cigar. “I hear Jim’s hired that kid on the cart,” Lightheiser said. “You know why he did it, don’t you? For publicity. The S.F. newspapers’ll write it up. Jim loves getting his name in the paper. It’s a smart move, when you get down to it. The first retail dealer in the East Bay to hire a phoce.”
   Stuart grunted.
   “Jim’s got an idealized image of himself,” Lightheiser said. “He isn’t just a merchant; he’s a modern Roman, he’s civic-minded. After all, he’s an educated man—he’s got a master’s degree from Stanford.”
   “That doesn’t mean anything any more,” Stuart said. He himself had gotten a master’s degree from Cal, back in 1975, and look where it had got him.
   “It did when he got it,” Lightheiser said. “After all, he graduated back in 1947; he was on that GI Bill they had.”
   Below them, at the front door of Modern TV, a cart appeared, in the center of which, at a bank of controls, sat a slender figure. Stuart groaned and Lightheiser glanced at him.
   “He’s a pest,” Stuart said.
   “He won’t be when he gets started working,” Lightheiser said. “The kid is all brain, no body at all, hardly. That’s a powerful mind he’s got, and he also has ambition. Cod, he’s only seventeen years old and what he wants to do is work, get out of school and work. That’s admirable.”
   The two of them watched Hoppy on his cart; Hoppy was wheeling toward the stairs which descended to the TV repair department.
   “Do the guys downstairs know, yet?” Stuart asked.
   “Oh sure, Jim told them last night. They’re philosophical; you know how TV repairmen are—they griped about it but it doesn’t mean anything; they gripe all the’ time anyhow.”
   Hearing the salesman’s voice, Hoppy glanced sharply up. His thin, bleak face confronted them; his eyes blazed and he said stammeringly, “Hey, is Mr. Fergesson in right now?”
   “Naw,” Stuart said.
   “Mr. Fergesson hired me,” the phoce said.
   “Yeah,” Stuart said. Neither he nor Lightheiser moved; they remained seated at the desk, gazing down at the phoce.
   “Can I go downstairs?” Hoppy asked.
   Lightheiser shrugged.
   “I’m going out for a cup of coffee,” Stuart said, rising to his feet. “I’ll be back in ten minutes; watch the floor for me, okay?”
   “Sure,” Lightheiser said, nodding as he smoked his cigar.
   When Stuart reached the main floor he found the phoce still there; he had not begun the difficult descent down to the basement.
   “Spirit of 1972,” Stuart said as he passed the cart.
   The phoce flushed and stammered, “I was born in 1964; it had nothing to do with that blast.” As Stuart went out the door onto the sidewalk the phoce called after him anxiously, “It was that drug, that thalidomide. Everybody knows that.”
   Stuart said nothing; he continued on toward the coffee shop.


   It was difficult for the phocomelus to maneuver his cart down the stairs to the basement where the TV ‘repairmen worked at their benches, but after a time he managed to do so, gripping the handrail with the manual extensors which the U.S. Government had thoughtfully provided. The extensors were really not much good; they had been fitted years ago, and were not only partly worn out but were—as he knew from reading the current literature on the topic—obsolete. In theory, the Government was bound to replace his equipment with the more recent models; the Remington Act specified that, and he had written the senior California senator, Aif M. Partland, about it. As yet, however, he had received no answer. But he was patient. Many times he had written letters to U.S. Congressmen, on a variety of topics, and often the answers were tardy or merely mimeographed and sometimes there was no answer at all.
   In this. case, however, Hoppy Harrington had, the law on his side, and it was only a matter of time before he compelled someone in authority to give him that which he was entitled to. He felt grim about it, patient and grim. They had to help him, whether they wanted to or not. His father, a sheep rancher in the Sonoma Valley, had taught him that: taught him always to demand what he was entitled to.
   Sound blared. The repairmen at work; Hoppy paused, opened the door and faced the two men at the long, littered bench with its instruments and meters, its dials and tools and television sets in all stages of decomposition. Neither repairman noticed him.
   “Listen,” one of the repairmen said all at once, startling him. “Manual jobs are looked down on. Why don’t you go ‘into something mental, why don’t you go back to school and get a degree?” The repairman turned to stare at him questioningly.
   No, Hoppy thought. I want to work with—my hands.
   “You could be a scientist,” the other repairman said, not ceasing his work; he was tracing a circuit, studying his voltmeter.
   “Like Bluthgeld,” Hoppy said.
   The repairman laughed at that, with sympathetic understanding.
   “Mr. Fergesson said you’d give me something to work on,” Hoppy said. “Some easy set to fix, to start with. Okay?” He waited, afraid that they were not going to respond, and then one of them pointed to a record changer. “What’s the matter with it?” Hoppy said, examining the repair tag. “I know I can fix it.”
   “Broken spring,” one of the repairmen said. “It won’t shut off after the last record.”
   “I see,” Hoppy said. He picked up the record changer with his two manual extensors and rolled to the far end of the bench, where there was a cleared space. “I’ll work here.” The repairmen did not protest, so he picked up pliers. This is easy, he thought to himself. I’ve practiced at home; he concentrated on the record changer but also watching the two repairmen out of the corner of his eye. I’ve practiced many times; it nearly always works, and all the time it’s better, more accurate. More predictable. A spring is a little object, he thought, as little as they come. So light it almost blows away. I see the break in you, he thought. Molecules of metal not touching, like before. He concentrated on that spot, holding the pliers so that the repairman nearest him could not see; he pretended to tug at the spring, as if trying to remove it.
   As he finished the job he realized that someone was standing behind him, had come up to watch; he turned, and it was Jim Fergesson, his employer, saying nothing but just standing there with a peculiar expression on his face, his hands stuck in his pockets.
   “All done,” Hoppy said nervously.
   Fergesson said, “Let’s see.” He took hold of the changer, lifted it up into the overhead fluorescent light’s glare.
   Did he see me? Hoppy wondered. Did he understand, and if so, what does he think? Does he mind, does he really care? Is he—horrified?
   There was silence as Fergesson inspected the changer.
   “Where’d you get the new spring?” he asked suddenly.
   “I found it lying around,” Hoppy said, at once.
   It was okay. Fergesson, if he had seen, had not understood. The phocomelus relaxed and felt glee, felt a superior pleasure take the place of his anxiety; he grinned at the two repairmen, looked about for the next job expected of him.
   Fergesson said, “Does it make you nervous to have people watch you?”
   “No,”. Hoppy said. “People can stare at me all they want; I know I’m different. I’ve been stared at since I was born.”
   “I mean when you work.”
   “No,” he said, and his voice sounded loud—perhaps too loud—in his ears. “Before I had a cart,” he said, “before the Government provided me anything, my dad used to carry me around on his back, in a sort of knapsack. Like’ a papoose.” He laughed uncertainly.
   “I see,” Fergesson said.
   “That was up around Sonoma,” Hoppy said. “Where I grew up. We had sheep. One time a ram butted me and I flew through the air. Like a ball.” Again he laughed; the two repairmen regarded him silently, both of them pausing in their work.
   “I’ll bet,” one of them said after a moment, “that you rolled when you hit the ground.”
   “Yes,” Hoppy said, laughing. They all laughed, now, himself and Fergesson and the two repairmen; they imagined how it looked, Hoppy Harrington, seven years old, with no arms or legs, only a torso and head, rolling over the ground, howling with fright and pain—but it was funny; he knew it. He told it so it would be funny; he made it become that way.
   “You’re a lot better set up now, with your cart,” Fergesson said.
   “Oh yes,” he said. “And I’m designing a new one, my own design; all electronic—I read an article on brain-wiring, they’re using it in Switzerland and Germany. You’re wired directly to the motor centers of the brain so there’s no lag; you can move even quicker than—a regular physiological structure.” He started to say, than a human. “I’ll have it perfected in a couple of years,” he said, “and it’ll be an improvement even on the Swiss models. And then I can throw away this Government junk.”
   Fergesson said in a solemn, formal voice, “I admire your spirit.”
   Laughing, Hoppy said with a stammer, “Th-thanks, Mr. Fergesson.”
   One of the repairmen handed him a multiplex FM tuner. “It drifts. See what you can do for the alignment.”
   “Okay,” Hoppy said, taking it in his metal extensors. “I sure will. I’ve done a lot of aligning, at home; I’m experienced with that.” He had found such work easiest of all: he barely had to concentrate on the set. It was as if the task were made to order for him and his abilities.


   Reading the calendar on her kitchen wall, Bonny Keller saw that this was the day her friend Bruno Bluthgeld saw her psychiatrist Doctor Stockstill at his office in Berkeley. In fact, he had already seen Stockstill, had had his first hour of therapy and had left. Now he no doubt was driving back to Livermore and his own office at the Radiation Lab, the lab at which she had worked years ago before she had gotten pregnant: she had met Doctor Bluthgeld, there, back in 1975. Now she was thirty-one years old and living in West Marin; her husband George was now vice-principal of the local grammar school, and she was very happy.
   “Well, not very happy. Just moderately—tolerably—happy. She still took analysis herself—once a week now instead of three times—and in many respects she understood herself, her unconscious drives and paratactic systematic distortions of the reality situation. Analysis, six years of it, had done a great deal for her, but she was not cured. There was really no such thing as being cured; the “illness” was life itself, and a constant growth (or rather a viable growing adaptation) had to continue, or psychic stagnation would result.
   She was determined not to become stagnant. Right now she was in the process of reading The Decline of the West in the original German; she had gotten fifty pages read, and it was well worth it. And who else that she knew had read it, even in the English?
   Her interest in German culture, in its literary and philosophical works, had begun years ago through her contact with Doctor Bluthgeld. Although she had taken three years of German in college, she had not seen it as a vital part of her adult life; like so much that she had carefully learned, it had fallen into the unconscious, once she had graduated and gotten a job. Bluthgeld’s magnetic presence had reactivated and enlarged many of her academic interests, her love of music and art… she owed a great deal to Bluthgeld, and she was grateful.
   Now, of course, Bluthgeld was sick, as almost everyone at Livermore knew. The man had profound conscience, and he had never ceased to suffer since the error of 1972– which, as they all knew, all those who had been a part of Livermore in those days, was not specifically his fault; it was not his personal burden, but he had chosen to make it so, and because of that he had become ill, and more ill with each passing year.
   Many trained people, and the finest apparati, the foremost computers of the day, had been involved in the faulty calculation—not faulty in terms of the body of knowledge available in 1972 but faulty in relationship to the reality situation. The enormous masses of radioactive clouds had not drifted off but had been attracted by the Earth’s gravitational field, and had returned to the atmosphere; no one bad been more surpised than the staff at Livermore. Now, of course, the Jamison-French Layer was more completely understood; even the popular magazines such as Time and US News could lucidly explain what had gone wrong and why. But this was nine years later.
   Thinking of the Jamison-French Layer, Bonny remembered the event of the day, which she was missing. She went at once to the TV set in the living room and switched it on. Has it been fired off yet? she wondered, examining her watch. No, not for another half hour. The screen lighted, and sure enough, there was the rocket and its tower, the personnel, trucks, gear; it was decidedly still on the ground, and probably Walter Dangerfield and Mrs. Dangerfield had not even boarded it yet.
   The first couple to emigrate to Mars, she said to herself archly, wondering how Lydia Dangerfield felt at this moment… the tall blond woman, knowing ‘that their chances of getting to Mars were computed at only about sixty per cent. Great equipment, vast diggings and constructions, awaited them, but so what if they were incinerated along the way? Anyhow, it would impress the Soviet bloc, which had failed to establish its colony on Luna; the Russians had cheerfully suffocated or starved—no one knew exactly for sure. In any case, the colony was gone. It had passed out of history as it had come in, mysteriously.
   The idea of NASA sending just a couple, one man and his wife, instead of a group, appalled her; she felt instinctively that they were courting failure by not randomizing their bets. It should be a few people leaving New York, a few leaving California, she thought as she watched on the TV screen the technicians giving the rocket last-minute inspections. What do they call that? Hedging your bets? Anyhow, not all the eggs should be in this one basket… and yet this was how NASA had always done it: one astronaut at a time from the beginning, and plenty of publicity. When Henry Chancellor, back in 1967, had burned to particles in his space platform, the entire world had watched on TV—grief-stricken, to be sure, but nonetheless they had been permitted to watch. And the public reaction had set back space exploration in the West five years.
   “As you can see now,” the NBC announcer said in a soft but urgent voice, “final preparations are being made. The arrival of Mr. and Mrs. Dangerfield is expected momentarily. Let us review just for the sake of the record the enormous preparations made to insure—”
   Blah, Bonny Keller said to herself, and, with a shudder, shut off the TV. I can’t watch, she said to herself.
   On the other hand, what was there to do? Merely sit biting her nails for the next six hours—for the next two weeks, in fact? The only answer would have been not to remember that this was the day the First Couple was being fired off. However, it was too late now not to remember.
   She like to think of them as that, the first couple… like something out of a sentimental, old-time, science-fiction story. Adam and Eve, once over again, except that in actuality Walt Dangerfield was no Adam; he had more the quality of the last, not the first man, with his wry, mordant wit, his halting, almost cynical manner of speech as he faced the reporters. Bonny admired him; Dangerfield was no punk, no crewcut-haired young blond automaton, hacking away at the Air Forces’ newest task. Walt was a real person, and no doubt that was why NASA had selected him. His genes—they were probably stuffed to overflowing with four thousand years of culture, the heritage of mankind built right in. Walt and Lydia would found a Nova Terra… there would be lots of sophisticated little Dangerfields strolling about Mars, declaiming intellectually and yet with that amusing trace of sheer jazziness that Dangerfield had.
   “Think of it as a long freeway,” Dangerfield had once said in an interview, answering a reporter’s query about the hazards of the trip. “A million miles of ten lanes… with no oncoming traffic, no slow trucks. Think of it as being four o’clock in the morning… just your vehicle, no others. So like the guys says, what’s to worry?” And then his good smile.
   Bending, Bonny turned the TV set back on.
   And there, on the screen, was the round, bespectacled face of Walt Dangerfield; he wore his space suit—all but the helmet—and beside him stood Lydia, silent, as Walt answered questions.
   “I hear,” Walt was drawling, with a chewing-movement of his jaw, as if he were masticating the question before answering, “that there’s a LOL in Boise, Idaho who’s worried about me.” He glanced up, as someone in the rear of the room asked something. “A LOL?” Walt said, “Well, —that was the great now-departed Herb Caen’s term for Little Old Ladies… there’s always one of them, everywhere. Probably there’s one on Mars already, and we’ll be living down the street from her. Anyhow, this one in Boise, or so I understand, is a little nervous about Lydia and myself, afraid something might happen to us. So she’s sent us a good luck charm.” He displayed it, holding it clumsily with the big gloved fingers of his suit. The reporters all murmured with amusement. “Nice, isn’t it?” Dangerfield said. “I’ll tell you what it does; it’s good for rheumatism.” The reporters laughted. “In case we get rheumatism while we’re on Mars. Or is it gout? I think it’s gout, she said in her letter.” He glanced at his wife. “Gout, was it?”
   I guess, Bonny thought, they don’t make charms to ward off meteors or radiation. She felt sad, as if a premonition had come over her. Or was it just because this was Bruno Bluthgeld’s day at the psychiatrist’s? Sorrowful thoughts emanating from that fact, thoughts about death and radiation and miscalculation and terrible, unending illness.
   I don’t believe Bruno has become a paranoid schizophrenic, she said to herself. This is only a situation deterioration, and with the proper psychiatric help—a few pills here and there—he’ll be okay. It’s an endocrine disturbance manifesting itself psychically, and they can do wonders with that; it’s not a character defect, a psychotic constitution, unfolding itself in the face of stress.
   But what do I know, she thought glqomily. Bruno had to practically sit there and tell us “they” were poisoning his drinking water before either George or I grasped how ill he was… he merely seemed depressed.
   Right this moment she could imagine Bruno with a prescription for some pill which stimulated the cortex or suppressed the diencephalon; in any case the modern Western equivalent for contemporary Chinese herbal medicine would be’ in action, altering the metabolism of Bruno’s brain, clearing away the delusions like so many cobwebs. And all would be well again; she and George and Bruno would be together again with their West Marin Baroque Recorder Consort, playing Bach and Handel in the evenings… it would be like old times. Two wooden Black Forest (genuine) recorders and, then herself at the piano. The house full of baroque music and the smell of home-baked bread, and a bottle of Buena Vista wine from the oldest winery in California…
   On the television screen Walt Dangerfield was wise-cracking in his adult way, a sort of Voltaire and Will Rogers combined. “Oh yeah,” he was saying to a lady reporter who wore a funny large hat. “We expect to uncover a lot of strange life forms on Mars.” And he eyed her hat, as if saying, “There’s one now, I think.” And again, the reporters all laughed. “I think it moved,” Dangerfield said, indicating the hat to his quiet, cool-eyed wife. “It’s coming for us, honey.”
   He really loves her, Bonny realized, watching the two of them. I wonder if George ever felt toward me the way Walt Dangerfield feels toward his wife; I doubt it, frankly. If he did, he never would have allowed me to have those two therapeutic abortions. She felt even more sad, now, and she got up’ and walked away from the TV set, her back to it.
   They ought to send George to Mars, she thought with bitterness. Or better yet, send us all, George and me and the Dangerfields; George can have an affair with Lydia Dangerfield—if he’s able—and I can bed down with Walt; I’d be a fair to adequate partner in the great adventure. Why not?
   I wish something would happen, she said to herself. I wish Bruno would call and say Doctor Stockstill had cured him, or I wish Dangerfield would suddenly back out of going, or the Chinese would start World War Three, or George would really hand the school board back that awful contract as he’s been saying he’s going to. Something, anyhow. Maybe, she thought, I ought to get out my potter’s wheel and pot; back to so-called creativity, or– anal play or whatever it is. I could make a lewd pot. Design it, fire it in Violet Clatt’s kiln, sell it down in San Anselmo at Creative Artworks, Inc., that society ladies’ place that rejected my welded jewelry last year. I know they’d accept a lewd pot if it was a good lewd pot.


   At Modern TV, a small crowd had collected in the front of the store to watch the large stereo color TV set, the Dangerfields’ flight being shown to all Americans everywhere, in their homes and at their places of work. Stuart McConchie stood with his arms folded, back of the crowd, also watching.
   “The ghost of John L. Lewis,” Walt Dangerfield was saying in his dry way, “would appreciate the true meaning of portal to portal pay… if it hadn’t been for him, they’d probably be paying me about five dollars to make this trip, on the grounds that my job doesn’t actually begin until I get there.” He had a sobered expression, now; it was almost time for him and Lydia to enter the cubicle of the ship. “Just remember this… if something happens to us, if we get lost, don’t come out looking for us. Stay home and I’m sure Lydia and I will turn up somewhere.”
   “Good luck,” the’ reporters were murmuring, as officials and technicians of NASA appeared and began bundling the Dangerfields off, out of view of the TV cameras.
   “Won’t be long,” Stuart said to Lightheiser, who now stood beside him, also watching.
   “He’s a sap to go,” Lightheiser said, chewing on a toothpick. “He’ll never come back; they make no bones about that.”
   “Why should he want to come back?” Stuart said. “What’s so great about it here?” ‘He felt envious of Walt Dangerfield; he wished it was he, Stuart McConchie, up there before the TV cameras, in the eyes of the entire world.
   Up the stairs from the basement came Hoppy Harrington on his cart, wheeling eagerly forward. “Have they shot him off?” he asked Stuart in a nervous, quick voice, peering at the screen. “He’ll be burned up; it’ll be like that time in ‘65; I don’t remember it, naturally, but—”
   “Shut up, will you,” Lightheiser said softly, and the phocomelus, flushing, became silent. They all watched, then, each with his own private thoughts and reactions as on the TV screen the last inspection team was lifted by an overhead boom from the nose cone of the rocket. The countdown would soon begin; the rocket was fueled. checked over, and now the two people were entering it. The small group around the TV set stirred and murmured.
   Sometime later today, sometime in the afternoon, their waiting would be rewarded, because Dutchman IV would take off; it would orbit the Earth for an hour or so, and the people would stand at the TV screen watching that, seeing the rocket go around and around, and then finally the decision would be made and someone below in the blockhouse would fire off the final stage and the orbiting rocket would change trajectory and leave the world. They had seen it before; it was much like this every time, but this was new because the people in this one this time would never be returning. It was well worth spending a day in front of the set; the crowd of people was ready for the wait.
   Stuart McConchie thought about lunch and then after that he would come back here and watch again; he would station himself here once more, with the others. He would get little or no work done today, would sell no TV sets to anybody. But this was more important. He could not miss this. That might be me up there someday, he said to himself; maybe I’ll emigrate later on when I’m earning enough to get married, take my wife and kids and start a new life up there on Mars, when they get a really good colony going, not just machines.
   He thought of himself in the nose cone, like Walt Dangerfield, strapped next to a woman of great physical attractiveness. Pioneers, he and her, founding a new civilization on a new planet. But then his stomach rumbled and he realized how hungry he was; he could not postpone lunch much longer.
   Even as he stood watching the great upright rocket on the TV screen, his thoughts turned toward soup and rolls and beef, stew and apple pie with ice cream on it, up at Fred’s Fine Foods.