XIII

   Bill Keller heard the small animal, the snail or slug, near him and at once he got into it. But he been tricked; it was sightless. He was out but he could not see or hear, he could only move.
   “Let me back,” he called to his sister in panic. “Look what you did, you put me into something wrong.” You did it on purpose, he said to himself as he moved. He moved on and on, searching for her.
   If I could reach out, he thought. Reach—upward. But he had nothing to reach with, no limbs of any sort. What am I now that I’m finally out? he asked himself as he tried to reach up. What do they call those things up there that shine? Those lights in the sky… can I see them without having eyes? No, he thought, I can’t.
   He moved on, raising himself now and then as high as possible and then sinking back, once more to crawl, to do the one thing possible for him in his new life, his born, outside life.


   In the sky, Walt Dangerfield moved, in his satellite, although he was resting with his head in his hands. The pain inside him grew, changed, absorbed him until, as before, he could imagine nothing else.
   And then he thought he saw something. Beyond the window of the satellite—a flash far off, along the rim of the Earth’s darker edge. What was that? he asked himself. An explosion, like the ones he had seen and cringed from seven years ago – . . the flares ignited over the surface of the Earth. Were they beginning again?
   On his feet he stood peering out, hardly breathing. Seconds passed and there were no further explosions. And the one he had seen; it had been peculiarly vague and shadowy, with a diffuseness that had made it seem somehow unreal, as if it was only imagined.
   As if, he thought, it was more a recollection of a fact than the fact itself. It must be some sort of sidereal echo, he concluded. A remnant left over from E Day, still reverberating in space somehow… but harmless, now. More so all the time.
   And yet it frightened him. Like the pain inside him, it was too odd to be dismissed; it seemed to be dangerous and he could not forget it.
   I feel ill, he repeated to himself, resuming his litany based on his great discomfort. Can’t they get me down? Do I have to stay up here, creeping across the sky again and again—forever?
   For his own needs he put on a tape of the Bach B Minor Mass; the giant choral sound filled the satellite and made him forget. The pain inside, the dull, elderly explosion briefly outlined beyond the window—both began to leave his mind.
   “Kyrie eleison,” he murmured to himself. Greek words, embedded in the Latin text; strange. Remnants of the past… still alive, at least for him. I’ll play the B Minor Mass for the New York area, he decided. I think they’ll like it; a lot of intellectuals, there. Why should I only play what they request anyhow? I ought to be teaching them, not following. And especially, he thought, if I’m not going to be around much longer… I better get going and do an especially bang-up job, here at the end.
   All at once his vehicle shuddered. Staggering, he caught hold of the wall nearest him; a concussion, series of shock waves, passing through. Objects fell and collided and burst; he looked around amazed.
   Meteor? he wondered.
   It seemed to him almost as if someone were attacking him.
   He shut off the B Minor Mass and stood, listening and waiting. Far off through the window he saw another dull explosion and he thought, they may get me. But why? It won’t be long anyhow before I’m finished… why not wait? And then the thought came to him, But damn it, I’m alive now, and I better act alive; I’m not utterly dead yet.
   He snapped on his transmitter and said into the mike, “Sorry for the pause, folks. But I sure felt giddy there for a while; I had to lie down and I didn’t notice the tape had ended. Anyhow—”
   Laughing his laugh, he watched through the window of the satellite for more of the strange explosions. There was one, faint and farther off… he felt a measure of relief. Maybe they wouldn’t get him after all; they seemed to be losing track of the range, as if his location were a mystery to them.
   I’ll play the corniest record I can think of, he decided, as an act of defiance. “Bei Mir Bist Du Schon”; that ought to do it. Whistling in the dark, as they say, and he laughed again, thinking about it; what an act of defiance it was, by God. It would certainly come as a surprise to whoever was trying to eradicate him—if that was in fact what they wanted to do.
   Maybe they’re just plain tired of my corny talk and my corny readings, Dangerfield conjectured. Well, if so—this will fix them.
   “I’m back,” he said into his mike. “At least for a while. Now, what was I about to do? Does anybody remember?”
   There were no more concussions. He had a feeling that, for the time being, they had ceased.
   “Wait,” he said, “I’ve got a red light on; somebody’s calling me from below. Hold on.”
   From his tape library he selected the proper tape, carried it to the transport and placed it on the spindle.
   “I’ve got a request for ‘Bei Mir Bist Du Schön,’ “ he said, with grim relish, thinking of their dismay down below. “Can you beat that?” No, you can’t, he said to himself. And—by the Andrews Sisters. Dangerfield is striking back. Grinning, he started the tape into motion.
   Edie Keller, with a delicious shiver of exultation, watched the angle worm crawling slowly across the ground and new with certitude that her brother was in it.
   For inside her, down in her abdomen, the mentality of the worm now resided; she heard its monotonous voice. “Boom, boom, boom,” it went, in echo of its nondescript biological processes.
   “Get out of me, worm,” she said, and giggled. What did the worm think about its new existence? Was it as dumbfounded as Bill probably was? I have to keep my eye on him, she realized, meaning the creature wriggling across the ground. For he might get lost. “Bill,” she said, bending over him, “you look funny. You’re all red and long; did you know that?” And then she thought, What I should have done was put him in the body of another human being. Why didn’t I do that? Then it would be like it ought to be; I would have a real brother, outside of me, who I could play with.
   But, on the other hand, she would have a strange, new person inside her. And that did not sound like much fun.
   Who would do? she asked herself. One of the kids at school? An adult? I bet Bill would like to be in an adult. Mr. Barnes, maybe. Or Hoppy Harrington, who was afraid of Bill anyhow. Or—she screeched with delight, Mama. It would be so easy; I could snuggle up close to her, lay against her… and Bill could switch, and I’d have my own mama inside me—and wouldn’t that be wonderful? I could make her do anything I wanted. And she couldn’t tell me what to do.
   And Edie thought, She couldn’t do any more unmentionable things with Mr. Barnes any more, or with anybody else. I’d see to that. I know Bill wouldn’t behave that way; he was as shocked as I was.
   “Bill,” she said, kneeling down and carefully picking up the angleworm; she held it in the palm of her hand. “Wait until you hear my plan—you know what? We’re going to fix Mama for the bad things she does.” She held the worm against her side, where the hard lump within lay. “Get back inside now. You don’t want to be a worm anyhow; it’s no fun.”
   Her brother’s voice once more came to her. “You pooh-pooh; I hate you, I’ll never forgive you. You put me in a blind thing with no legs or nothing; all I could do was drag myself around!”
   “I know,” she said, rocking back and forth, cupping the now-useless worm in her hand still. “Listen, did you hear me? You want to do that, Bill, what I said? Shall I get Mama to let me lie against her so you can do you-knowwhat? You’d have eyes and ears; you’d be a full-grown person.”
   Nervously, Bill said, “I don’t know. I don’t think I want to walk around being Mama; it sort of scares me.”
   “Sissy,” Edie said. “You better do it or you may never get out ever again. Well, who do you want to be if not Mama? Tell me and I’ll fix it up; I cross my heart and promise to fall down black and hard.”
   “I’ll see,” Bill said. “I’ll talk to the dead people and see what they say about it. Anyhow I don’t know if it’ll work; I had trouble getting out into that little thing, that worm.”
   “You’re afraid to try,” she laughed; she tossed the worm away, into the bushes at the end of the school grounds. “Sissy! My brother is a big baby sissy!”
   There was no answer from Bill; he had turned his thoughts away from her and her world, into the regions which only he could reach. Talking to those old crummy, sticky dead, Edie said to herself. Those empty pooh-pooh dead that never have, any fun or nothing.
   And then a really stunning idea came to her. I’ll fix it so he gets out and into that crazy man Mr. Tree who they’re all talking about right now, she decided. Mr. Tree stood up in the Foresters’ Hall last night and said those dumb religious things about repenting, and so if Bill acts funny and doesn’t know what to do or say, nobody will pay any attention.
   Yet, that posed the awful problem of her finding herself containing a crazy man. Maybe I could take poison like I’m always saying, she decided. I could swallow a lot of oleander leaves or castor beans or something and get rid of him; he’d be helpless, he couldn’t stop me.
   Still, it was a problem; she did not relish the idea of having that Mr. Tree-she had seen him often enough not to like him—inside herself. He had a nice dog, and that was about all…
   Terry, the dog. That was it. She could lie down against Terry and Bill could get out and into the dog and everything would be fine.
   But dogs had a short life. And Terry was already seven years old; according to her mother and father. He had been born the same time almost as she and Bill.
   Darn it, she thought. It’s hard to decide; it’s a real problem, what to do with Bill who wants so bad to get out and see and hear things. And then she thought, Who of all the people I know would I like most to have living inside my stomach? And the answer was: her father.
   “You want to walk around as Daddy?” she asked Bill. But Bill did not answer; he was still turned away, conversing with the great majority beneath the ground.
   I think, she decided, that Mr. Tree would be the best because he lives out in the country with sheep and doesn’t see too many people, and it would be easier on Bill that way because he wouldn’t have to know very much about talking. He’d just have Terry out there and all the sheep, and then with Mr. Tree being crazy now it’s really perfect. Bill could do a lot better with Mr. Tree’s body than Mr. Tree is doing, I bet, and all I have to worry about really is chewing the right number of poisonous oleander leaves—enough to kill him but not me. Maybe two would do. Three at the most, I guess.
   Mr. Tree went crazy at the perfect time, she decided. He doesn’t know it, though. But wait’ll he finds out; won’t he be surprised. I might let him live for a while inside me, just so he’d realize what happened; I think that would be fun. I never liked him, even though Mama does, or says she does. He’s creepy. Edie shuddered.
   Poor, poor Mr. Tree, she thought delightedly. You aren’t going to ruin any more meetings at the Foresters’ Hall because where you’ll be you won’t be able to preach to anybody, except maybe to me and I won’t listen.
   Where can I do it? she asked herself. Today; I’ll ask Mama to take us out there after school. And if she won’t do it, I’ll hike out there by myself.
   I can hardly wait, Edie said to herself, shivering with anticipation.
   The bell for class rang, and, together with the other children, she started into the building. Mr. Barnes was waiting at the ‘door of the single classroom which served all the children from first grade to sixth; as she passed him, deep in thought, he said to her, “Why so absorbed; Edie? What’s on your weighty mind today?”
   “Well,” she said, halting, “you were for a while. Now it’s Mr. Tree instead.”
   “Oh yes,” Mr. Barnes said, nodding. “So you heard about that.”
   The other children had passed on in, leaving them alone. So Edie said, “Mr. Barnes, don’t you think you ought to stop doing what you’re doing with my mama? It’s wrong; Bill says so and he knows.”
   The school teacher’s face changed color, but he did not speak. Instead he walked away from her, into the room and up to his desk, still darkly flushed. Did I say it wrong? Edie wondered. Is he mad at me now? Maybe he’ll make me stay after, for punishment, and maybe he’ll tell Mama and she’ll spank me.
   Feeling discouraged, she seated herself and opened the precious, ragged, fragile, coverless book to the story of Snow White; it was their reading assignment for the day.


   Lying in the damp rotting leaves beneath the old live oak trees, in the shadows, Bonny Keller clasped Mr. Barnes to her and thought to herself that this was probably the last time; she was tired of it and Hal was scared, and that, she had learned from long experience, was a fatal combination.
   “All right,” she murmured, “so she knows. But she knows on a small child’s level; she has no real understanding.”
   “She knows it’s wrong,” Barnes answered.
   Bonny sighed.
   “Where is she now?” Barnes asked.
   “Behind that by tree over there. Watching.”
   Hal Barnes sprang to his feet as if stabbed; he whirled around, wide-eyed, then sagged as he comprehended the truth. “You and your malicious wit,” he muttered. But he did not return to her; he stayed on his feet, a short distance off, looking glum and uneasy. “Where is she really?”
   “She hiked out to Jack Tree’s sheep ranch.”
   “But—” He gestured. “The man’s insane! Won’t he be– well, isn’t it dangerous?”
   “She just went out to play with Terry, the verbose canine.” Bonny sat up and began picking bits of humus from her hair. “I don’t think he’s even there. The last time anybody saw Bruno, he—”
   “‘Bruno,’” Barnes echoed. He regarded her queerly.
   “I mean Jack.” Her heart labored.
   “He said the other night something about having been responsible for the high-altitude devices in 1972.” Barnes continued to scrutinize her; she waited, her pulse throbbing in her throat. Well, it was bound to come out sooner or later.
   “He’s insane,” she ‘pointed out. “Right? He believes—”
   “He believes,” Hal Barnes said, “that he’s Bruno Bluthgeld, isn’t that right?”
   Bonny shrugged. “That, among other things.”
   “And he is, isn’t he? And Stockstill knows it, you know it—that Negro knows it.”
   “No,” she said, “that Negro doesn’t know it, and stop saying ‘that Negro.” His name is Stuart McConchie; I talked to Andrew about him and he says he’s a very fine, intelligent, enthusiastic and alive person.”
   Barnes said, “So Doctor Bluthgeld didn’t die in the Emergency. He came here. He’s been ‘here, living among us. The man most responsible for what happened.”
   “Go murder him,” Bonny said.
   Barnes grunted.
   “I mean it,” Bonny said. “I don’t care any more. Frankly I wish you would.” It would be a good manly act, she said to herself. It would be a distinct change.
   “Why have you tried to shield a person like that?”
   “I don’t know.” She did not care to discuss it. “Let’s go back to town,” she said. His company wearied her and she had begun to think once again about Stuart McConchie. “I’m out of cigarettes,” she said. “So you can drop me off at the cigarette factory.” She walked toward Barnes’ horse, which, tied to a tree, complacently cropped the long grass.
   “A darky,” Barnes said, with bitterness. “Now you’re going to shack up with him. That certainly makes me feel swell.”
   “Snob,” she said. “Anyhow, you’re afraid to go on; you want to quit. So the next time you see Edie you can truthgully say, ‘I am not doing anything shameful and evil with your mama, scout’s honor.’ Right?” She mounted the horse, picked up the reins and waited. “Come on, Hal.”
   An explosion lit up the sky.
   The horse bolted, and Bonny leaped from it, throwing herself from its side to roll, sliding, into the shrubbery of the oak forest. Bruno, she thought; can it be him really? She lay clasping her head, sobbing with pain; a branch had laid her scalp open and blood dripped through her fingers and ran down her wrist. Now Barnes bent over her; he tugged her up, turned her over. “Brunb,” she said. “Goddamn him. Somebody will have to kill him; they should have done it long ago—they should have done it in 1970 because he was insane then.” She got her handkerchief out and mopped at her scalp. “Oh dear,” she said. “I really am hurt. That was a real fall.”
   “The horse is gone, too,”Barnes said.
   “It’s an evil god,” she said, “who gave him that power, whatever it is. I know it’s him, Hal. We’ve seen a lot of strange things over the years, so why not this? The ability to re-create the war, to bring it back, like he said last night. Maybe he’s got us snared in time. Could that be it? We’re stuck fast; he’s—” She broke off as a second white flash broke overhead, traveling at enormous speed; the trees around them lashed and bent and she heard, here and there, the old oaks splinter.
   “I wonder where the horse went,” Barnes murmured, rising cautiously to his feet and peering around.
   “Forget the horse,” she said. “We’ll have to walk back; that’s obvious. Listen, Hal. Maybe Hoppy can do something; he has funny powers, too. I think we ought to go to him and tell him. He doesn’t want to be incinerated by a lunatic. Don’t you agree? I don’t see anything else we can do at this point.”
   “That’s a good idea,” Barnes said, but he was still looking for the horse; he did not seem really to be listening.
   “Our punishment,” Bonny said.
   “What?” he murmured.
   “You know. For what Edie calls our ‘shameful, evil doings.’ I thought the other night… maybe we should have been killed with the others; maybe it’s a good thing this is happening.”
   “There’s the horse,” Barnes said, walking swiftly from her. The horse was caught; his reins had become tangled in a bay limb.
   The sky, now, had become sooty black. She remembered that color; it had never entirely departed anyhow. It had merely lessened.
   Our little fragile world, Bonny thought, that we labored to build up, after the Emergency . – . this puny society with out tattered school books, our “deluxe” cigarettes, our wood-burning trucks—it can’t stand much punishment; it can’t stand this that Bruno is doing or appears to be doing. One blow again directed at us and we will be gone; the brilliant animals will perish, all the new, odd species will disappear as suddenly as they arrived. Too bad, she thought with grief. It’s unfair; Terry, the verbose dog—him, too. Maybe we were too ambitious; maybe we shouldn’t have dared to try to rebuild and go on.
   “I think we did pretty well, she thought, all in all. We’ve been alive; we’ve made love and drunk Gill’s Five Star, taught our kids in a peculiar-windowed school building, put out News & Views, cranked up a car radio and listened daily to W. Somerset Maugham. What more could be asked of us? Christ, she thought. It isn’t fair, this thing now. It isn’t right at all. We have our horses to protect, our crops, our lives…
   Another explosion occurred, this time further off. To the south, she realized. Near the site of the old ones. San Francisco.
   Wearily, she shut her eyes. And just when this McConchie has shown up, too, she thought. What lousy, stinking luck.


   The dog, placing himself across the path, barring her way, groaned in his difficult voice, “Treezzz bizzzzeeeeee. Stopppppp.” He woofed in warning. She was not supposed to continue on to the wooden shack.
   Yes, Edie thought, I know he’s busy. She had seen the explosions in the sky. “Hey, you know what?” she said to the dog.
   “Whuuuuut?” the dog asked, becoming curious; he had a simple mind, as she well knew; he was easily taken in.
   “I learned how to throw a stick so far nobody can find it,” she said. She bent, picked up a nearby stick. “Want me to prove it?”
   Within her Bill said, “Who’re you talking to?” He was agitated, now that the time was drawing near. “Is it Mr. Tree?”
   “No,” she said, “just the dog.” She waved the stick. “Bet you a paper ten dollar bill if I throw it you can’t find it.”
   “Surrrrre I cannnnnn,” the dog said, and whined in eagerness; this was his favorite sort of sport. “Buuuut I cannnn’t bettttt,” he added. “I haaaaave no monnnnnneyyyy.”
   From the wooden shack walked Mr. Tree, all at once; taken by surprise, both she and the dog stopped what they were doing. Mr. Tree paid no attention to them; he continued on up a small hill and then disappeared down the far side, out of sight.
   “Mr. Tree!” Edie called. “Maybe he isn’t busy now,” she said to the dog. “Go ask him, okay? Tell him I want to talk to him a minute.”
   Within her Bill said restlessly, “He’s not far off now, is he? I know he’s there. I’m ready; I’m going to try real hard this time. He can do almost anything, can’t he? See and walk and hear and smell—isn’t that right? It’s not like that worm.”
   “He doesn’t have any teeth,” Edie said, “but he has everything else that most people have.” As the dog obediently loped off in pursuit of Mr. Tree she began walking along the path once more. “It won’t be long,” she said. “I’ll tell him—” She had it all worked out. “I’ll say, ‘Mr. Tree, you know what? Well, I swallowed one of those duckcallers hunters use, and if you lean close you can hear it.’ How’s that?”
   “I don’t know,” Bill said desperately. “What’s a ‘duckcaller’? What’s a duck, Edie? Is it alive?” He sounded more and more confused, as if the situation were to much for him.
   “You sissy,” she hissed. “Be quiet.” The dog had reached Tree and now ‘the man had turned; he was starting back toward her, frowning.
   “I am very busy, Edie,” Mr. Tree called. “Later—I’ll talk to you later; I can’t be interrupted now.” He raised his arms and made a bizarre motion toward her, as if he were keeping time to some music; he scowled and swayed, and she felt like laughing, he looked so foolish.
   “I just want to show you something,” she called back.
   “Later!” He started away, then spoke to the dog.
   “Yessirr,” the dog growled, and loped back toward the girl. “Nooo,” the dog told her. “Stoppppp.”
   Darn it, Edie thought. We can’t do it today; we’ll have to come back maybe tomorrow.
   “Gooo awayyyy,” the dog was saying to her, and it bared its fangs; it had been given the strongest possible instructions.
   Edie said, “Listen, Mr. Tree—” And then she stopped, because there was no longer any Mr. Tree there. The dog turned, whined, and within her Bill moaned.
   “Edie,” Bill cried, “he’s gone; I can feel it. Now where’ll I go to get out? What’ll I do?”
   High up in the air, a tiny black speck blew and tumbled; the girl watched it drift as if it were caught in some violent spout of wind. It was Mr. Tree and his arms stuck out as he rolled over and over, dropping and rising like a kite. What’s happened to him? she wondered dismally, knowing that Bill was right; their chance, their plan, was gone forever now.
   Something had hold of Mr. Tree and it was killing him. It lifted him higher and higher, and then Edie shrieked. Mr. Tree suddenly dropped. He fell like a stone straight at the ground; she shut her eyes and the dog, Terry, let out a howl of stark dismay.
   “What is it?” Bill was clamoring in despair. “Who did it to him? They took him away, didn’t they?”
   “Yes,” she said, and opened her eyes.
   Mr. Tree lay on the ground, broken and crooked, with his legs and anns sticking up at all angles. He was dead; she knew that and so did the dog. The dog trotted over to him, halted, turned to her with a stricken, numbed look. She said nothing; she stopped, too, a distance away. It was awful, what they—whoever it was—had done to Mr. Tree. It was like the glasses man from Bolinas, she thought; it was a killing.
   “Hoppy did it,” Bill moaned. “Hoppy killed Mr. Tree from a distance because he was afraid of him; Mr. Tree’s down with the dead, now, I can hear him talking. He’s saying that; he says Hoppy reached out all the way from his house where he is and grabbed Mr. Tree and picked him up and flung him everywhere!”
   “Gee,” Edie said. I wonder how come Hoppy did that, she wondered. Because of the explosions Mr. Tree was making in the sky, was that it? Did they bother Hoppy? Make him sore?
   She felt fright. That Hoppy, she thought; he can kill from so far off; nobody else can do that. We better be careful. Very careful. Because he could kill all of us; he could fling us all around or squeeze us.
   “I guess News & Views will put this on the first page,” she said, half to herself, half to Bill.
   “What’s News & Views?” Bill protested in anguish. “I don’t understand what’s going on; can’t you explain it to me? Please.”
   Edie said, “We better go back to town now.” She started slowly away, leaving the dog sitting there beside the squashed remains of Mr. Tree. I guess, she thought, it’s a good thing you didn’t switch, because if you had been inside Mr. Tree you would have been killed.
   And, she thought, he would be alive inside me. At least until I got the oleander leaves chewed and swallowed. And maybe he would have found a way to stop that. He had funny powers; he could make those explosions, and he might somehow have done that inside me.
   “We can try somebody else,” Bill said, hopefully. “Can’t we? Do you want to try that—what do you call it again? That dog? I think I’d like to be that dog; it can run fast and catch things and see a long way, can’t it?”
   “Not now,” she said, still frightened, wanting to get away. “Some other time. You’d better wait.” And she began to run back along the path, in the direction of town.

XIV

   Orion Stroud, seated in the center of the Foresters’ Hall where he could clearly be heard by everyone, rapped for order and said:
   “Mrs. Keller and Doctor Stockstill asked that the West Marin Official Jury and also the West Marin Governing Citizens’ Council convene to hear a piece of vital news regarding a killing that just took place today.”
   Around him, Mrs. Tallman and Cas Stone and Fred Quinn and Mrs. Lully and Andrew Gill and Earl Colvig and Miss Costigan—he glanced from one to the next, satisfied that everyone was present. They all watched with fixed attention, knowing that this was really important. Nothing like this had ever happened in their community before. This was not a killing like that of the glasses man or of Mr. Austurias.
   “I understand,” Stroud said, “that it was discovered that Mr. Jack Tree who’s been living among us—”
   From the audience a voice said, “He was Bluthgeld.”
   “Right,” Stroud said, nodding. “But he’s dead now so there’s nothing to worry about; you have to get that through your heads. And it was Hoppy that done it. Did it, I mean.” He glanced at Paul Dietz apologetically. “Have to use proper grammar,” he said, “because this is all going to be in News & Views–right Paul?”
   “A special edition,” Paul said, nodding in agreement.
   “Now you understand, we’re not here to decide if Hoppy ought to be punished for what he did. There’s no problem there because Bluthgeld was a noted war criminal and what’s more he was beginning to use his magical powers to restart some of the old war. I guess everybody in this room knows that, because you all saw the explosions. Now—” He glanced toward Gill. “There’s a newcomer, here, a Negro named Stuart McConchie, and ordinarily I have to admit we don’t welcome darkies to West Marin, but I understand that McConchie was tracking down Bluthgeld, so he’s going to be allowed to settle in West Marin if he so desires.”
   The audience rustled with approval.
   “Mainly what we’re here for,” Stroud continued, “is to vote some sort of reward to Hoppy to show our appreciation. We probably would all have been killed, due to Bluthgeld’s magical powers. So we owe him a real debt of gratitude. I see he isn’t here, because he’s busy at work in his house, fixing things; after all, he’s our handy and that’s a pretty big responsibility, right there. Anyhow, has anybody got an idea of how the people here can express their appreciation for Hoppy’s timely killing of Doctor Bluthgeld?” Stroud looked around questioningly.
   Rising to his feet, Andrew Gill cleared his throat and said, “I think it’s appropriate for me to say a few words. First, I want to thank Mr. Stroud and this community for welcoming my new business associate, Mr. McConchie. And then I want to offer one reward that might be appropriate regarding Hoppy’s great service to this community and to the world at large. I’d like to contribute a hundred special deluxe Gold Label cigarettes.” He paused, starting to reseat himself, and then added, “And a case of Gill’s Five Star.”
   The audience applauded, whistled, stamped in approval.
   “Well,” Stroud said, smiling, “that’s really something I guess Mr. Gill is aware of what Hoppy’s action spared us all. There’s a whole lot of oak trees knocked over along Bear Valley Ranch Road, from the concussion of the blasts Bluthgeld was setting off. Also, as you may know, I understand that he was beginning to turn his attemtion south toward San Francisco—”
   “That’s correct,” Bonny Keller spoke up.
   “So,” Stroud said, “Maybe those poeple down there will want to pitch in and contribute something to Hoppy as a token of appreciation. I guess the best we can do, and it’s good but I wish there was more, is turn over Mr. Gill’s gift of the hundred special deluxe Gold Label cigarettes and the case of brandy… Hoppy will appreciate that, but I was actually thinking of something more in the line of a memorial, like a statue or a park or at least a plaque of some sort. And—I’d be willing to donate the land, and I know Cas Stone would, too.”
   “Right,” Gas Stone declared emphatically.
   “Anybody else got an idea?” Stroud asked. “You, Mrs. Tallman; I’d like to hear from you.”
   Mrs. Tallman said, “It would be fitting to elect Mr. Harrington to an honorary public office, such as President of the West Marin Governing Citizens’ Council for instance, or as clerk of the School Trustees Board, That, of course, in addition to the park or memorial and the brandy and cigarettes.”
   “Good idea,” Stroud said. “Well? Anybody else? Because let’s be realistic, folks; Hoppy saved our lives. That Bluthgeld had gone out of his mind, as everybody who was at the reading last night knows… he would have put us right back where we were seven years ago, and all our hard work in rebuilding would have gone for nothing. Nothing at all.”
   The audience murmured its agreement.
   “When you have magic like he had,” Stroud said, a physicist like Bluthgeld with all that knowledge… the world never was in such danger before; am I right? It’s just lucky Hoppy can move objects at a distance; it’s lucky for us that Hoppy’s been practicing that all these years now because nothing else would have reached out like that, over all that distance, and mashed that Bluthgeld like it did.”
   Fred Quinn spoke up, “I talked to Edie Keller who witnessed it and she tells me that Bluthgeld got flung right up into the air before Hoppy mashed him; tossed all around.”
   “I know,” Stroud said. “I interviewed Edie about it.” He looked around the room, at all the people. “If anybody wants details, I’m sure Edie would give them. Right, Mrs. Keller?”
   Bonny, seated stiffly, her face pale, nodded.
   “You still scared, Bonny?” Stroud asked.
   “It was terrible,” Bonny said quietly.
   “Sure it was,” Stroud said, “but Hoppy got him.” And then he thought to himself, That makes Hoppy pretty formidable, doesn’t it? Maybe that’s what Bonny’s thinking. Maybe that’s why she’s so quiet.
   “I think the best thing to do,” Cas Stone said, “is to go right to Hoppy and say, ‘Hoppy, what do you want that sye can do for you in token of our appreciation?’ We’ll put it right to him. Maybe there’s something he wants very badly that we don’t know about.”
   Yes, Stroud thought to himself. You have quite a point there, Cas. Maybe he wants many things we don’t know about, and maybe one day—not too far off—he’ll want to get them. Whether we form a delegation and go inquire after that or not.
   “Bonny,” he said to Mrs. Keller, “I wish you’d speak up; you’re sitting there so quiet.”
   Bonny Keller murmured, “I’m just tired.”
   “Did you know Jack Tree was Bluthgeld?”
   Silently, she nodded.
   “Was it you, then,” Stroud asked, “who told Hoppy?”
   “No,” she said. “I intended to; I was on my way. But it had already happened. He knew.”
   I wonder how he knew, Stroud asked himself.
   “That Hoppy,” Mrs. Lully said in a quavering voice, “he seems to be able to do almost anything… why, he’s even more powerful than that Mr. Bluthgeld, evidently.”
   “Right,” Stroud agreed.
   The audience murmured nervously.
   “But he’s put all his abilities to use for the welfare ot our community,” Andrew Gill said. “Remember that. Remember he’s our handy and he helps bring in Dangerfield when the signal’s weak, and he does tricks for us, and imitations when we can’t get Dangerfield at all—he does a whole lot of things, including saving our lives from another nuclear holocaust. So I say, God bless Hoppy and his abilities. I think we should thank God that we have a funny here like him.”
   “Right,” Cas Stone said.
   “I agree,” Stroud said, with caution. “But I think we ought to sort of put it to Hoppy that maybe from now on—” He hesitated. “Our killings should be like with Austurias, done legally, by our Jury. I mean, Hoppy did right and he had to act quickly and all . .. but the Jury is the legal body that’s supposed to decide. And Earl, here should do the actual act. In the future, I mean. That doesn’t include Bluthgeld because having all That magic he was different.” You can’t kill a man with powers like that through the ordinary methods, he realized. Like Hoppy, for instance… suppose someone tried to kill him; it would be next to impossible.
   He shivered.
   “What’s the matter, Orion?” Cas Stone asked, acutely.
   “Nothing,” Orion Stroud said. “Just thinking what we can do to reward Hoppy to show our appreciation; it’s a weighty problem because we owe him so much.”
   The audience murmured, as the individual members discussed with one another how to reward Hoppy.


   George Keller, noticing his wife’s pale, drawn features, said, “Are you okay?” He put his hand on her shoulder but she leaned away.
   “Just tired,” she said. “I ran for a mile, I think, when those explosions began. Trying to reach Hoppy’s house.”
   “How did you know Hoppy could do it?” he asked.
   “Oh,” she said, “we all know that; we all surely know he’s the only one of us who has anything remotely resembling that kind of strength. It came into our—” She corrected herself. “My mind right away, as soon as I saw the explosions.” She glanced at her husband.
   “Who were you with?” he said.
   “Barnes. We were hunting chanterelle mushrooms under the oaks along Bear Valley Ranch Road.”
   George Keller said, “Personally I’m afraid of Hoppy. Look—he isn’t even here. He has a sort of contempt for us all. He’s always late getting to the Hall; do you know what I mean? Do you sense it? And it gets more true all the time, perhaps as he sharpens his abilities.”
   “Perhaps,” Bonny murmured.
   “What do you think will happen to us now?” George asked her. “Now that we’ve killed BluthgeldP We’re better off, a lot safer. It’s a load off everybody’s mind. Someone should notify Dangerfleld so he can broadcast it from the satellite.”
   “Hoppy could do that,” Bonny said in a remote voice. “He can do anything. Almost anything.”
   In the speaker’s chafr, Orion Stroud rapped for order. “Who wants to be in the delegation that goes down to Hoppy’s house and confers the reward and notification of honor on him?” He looked all around the room. “Somebody start to volunteer.”
   “I’ll go,” Andrew Gill spoke up.
   “Me, too,” Fred Quinn said.
   Bonny said, “I’ll go.”
   To her, George said, “Do you feel well enought to?”
   “Sure.” She nodded listlessly. “I’m fine, now. Except for the gash on my head.” Automatically she touched the bandage.
   “How about you, Mrs. Tallman?” Stroud was saying.
   “Yes, I’ll go,” Mrs. Taliman answered, but her voice trembled.
   “Afraid?” Stroud asked.
   “Yes,” she said.
   “Why?”
   Mrs. Taliman hesitated. “I—don’t know, Orion.”
   “I’ll go, too,” Orion Stroud announced. “That’s five of us, three men and two women; that’s just about right. We’ll take the brandy and the cigaboos along and announce the rest—about the plaque, and him being President of the Council and clerk and all that.”
   “Maybe,” Bonny said in a low voice, “we ought to send a delegation there that will stone him to death.”
   George Keller sucked in his breath and said, “For God’s sake, Bonny.”
   “I mean it,” she said.
   “You’re behaving in an incredible way,” he said, furious and surprised; he did not understand her. “What’s the matter?”
   “But of course it wouldn’t do any good,” she said. “He’d mash us before we got near his house. Maybe he’ll mash me now.” She smiled. “For saying that.”
   “Then shut up!” He stared at her in great fear.
   “All right,” she said. “I’ll be quiet. I don’t want to be flung up into the air and then dropped all the way to the ground, the way Jack was.”
   “I should think not.” He was trembling.
   “You’re a coward,” she said mildly. “Aren’t you? I wonder why I in all this time didn’t realize it before. Maybe that’s why I feel the way I do about you.”
   “And what way’s that?”
   Bonny smiled. And did not answer. It was a hard, hateful and rigidly cold smile and he did not understand it; he glanced away, wondering once again if all the rumors he had heard about his wife, over the years, could be true after all. She was so cold, so independent. George Keller felt miserable.
   “Christ,” he said, “you call me a coward because I don’t want to see my wife mashed flat.”
   “It’s my body and my existence,” Bonny said. “I’ll do with it what I want. I’m not afraid of Hoppy; actually I am, but I don’t intend to act afraid, if you can comprehend the difference. I’ll go down there to that tar-paper house of his and face him honestly. I’ll thank him but I think I’ll tell him that he must be more careful in the future. We insist on it.”
   He couldn’t help admiring her. “Do that,” he urged. “It would be a good thing, dear. He should understand that, how we feel.”
   “Thank you,” she said remotely. “Thanks a lot, George, for your encouragement.” She turned away, then, listening to Orion Stroud.
   George Keller felt more miserable than ever.


   First it was necessary to visit Andrew Gill’s factory to pick up the special deluxe Gold Label cigarettes and the Five Star brandy; Bonny, along with Orion Stroud and Gill, left the Foresters’ Hall and walked up the road together, all of them conscious of the gravity of their task.
   “What’s this business relationship you’re going into with McConchie?” Bonny asked Andrew Gill.
   Gill said, “Stuart is going to bring automation to my factory.”
   Not believing him she said, “And you’re going to advertise over the satellite, I suppose. Singing commercials, as they used to be called. How will they go? Can I compose one for you?”
   “Sure,” he said, “if it’ll help business.”
   “Are you serious, about this automation?” It occurred to her now that perhaps he actually was.
   Gill said, “I’ll know more when I’ve visited Stuart’s boss in Berkeley. Stuart and I are going to make the trip very shortly. I haven’t seen Berkeley in years. Stuart says it’s building up again—not as it was before, of course. But even that may eventually come some day.”
   “I doubt that,” Bonny said. “But I don’t care anyhow; it wasn’t so good as all that. Just so it builds back some.”
   Glancing about to make sure that Orion could not hear him, Gill said to her, “Bonny, why don’t you come along with Stuart and me?”
   Astonished, she said, “Why?”
   “It would do you good to break with George. And maybe you could manage to make the break with him final. You should, for his sake and yours.”
   Nodding, she said, “But—” It seemed to her out of the question; it went too far. Appearances would not be maintained. “Then everyone would know,” she said. “Don’t you think?”
   Gill said, “Bon, they know already.”
   “Oh.” Chastened, she nodded meekly. “Well, what a surprise. I’ve been living under a delusion, evidently.”
   “Come to Berkeley with us,” Gill said, “and start over. In a sense that’s what I’m going to be doing; it marks the end of rolling cigarettes by band, one at a time, on a little cloth and rod machine. It means I’ll have a true factory in the old sense, the pre-war sense.”
   “‘The pre-war sense,’” she echoed. “Is that good?”
   “Yes,” Gill said. “I’m damn sick and tired of rolling them by hand. I’ve been trying to free myself for years; Stuart has shown me the way. At least, I hope so.” He crossed his fingers.
   They reached his factory, and there were the men at work in the rear, rollins away. Bonny thought, So this portion of our lives is soon to be over with forever. I must be sentimental because I cling to it. But Andrew is right. This is no way to produce goods; it’s too tedious, too slow. And too few cigarettes are made, really, when you get right down to it. With authentic machinery, Andrew can supply the entire country—assuming that the transportation, the means of delivery, is there.
   Among the workmen Stuart McConchie crouched by a barrel of Gill’s fine ersatz tobacco, inspecting it. Well, Bonny thought, he either has Andrew’s special deluxe formula by now or he isn’t interested in it. “Hello,” she said to him. “Can you sell his cigarettes once they start rolling off the assembly line in quantity? Have you worked that part out?”.
   “Yes,” McConchie said. “We’ve set up plans for distribution on a mass basis. My employer, Mr. Hardy—”
   “Don’t give me a big sales pitch,” she interrupted. “I believe you if you say so; I was just curious.” She eyed him critically. “Andy wants me to travel to Berkeley with you. What do you say?”
   “Sure,” he said vaguely.
   “I could be your receptionist,” Bonny said. “At your central offices. Right in the center of the city. Correct?” She laughed, but neither Stuart McConchie nor Gill joined her. “Is this sacred?” she asked. “Am I treading on holy topics when I joke? I apologize, if I am.”
   “It’s okay,” McConchie said. “We’re just concerned; there’re still a number of details to work out.”
   “Maybe I will go along,” Bonny said. “Maybe it’ll solve my problems, finally.”
   Now it was McConchie’s turn to scrutinize her. “What problems do you have? This seems a nice environment here, to bring up your daughter in; and your old man being principal of—”
   “Please,” she said. “I don’t care to hear a summary of my blessings. Spare me.” She walked off, to join Gill who was packaging cigarettes in a metal box for presentation to the phocomelus.
   The world is so innocent, she thought to herself. Even yet, even after all that’s happened to us. Gill wants to cure me of my—restlessness. Stuart McConchie can’t imagine what I could wish for that I don’t have right here. But maybe they’re right and I’m wrong. Maybe I’ve made my life unduly complicated… maybe there’s a machine in Berkeley that will save me, too. Perhaps my problems can be automated out of existence.
   Off in a corner, Orion Stroud was writing out a speech which he intended to deliver to Hoppy. Bonny smiled, thinking of the solemnity of it all. Would Hoppy be impressed? Would he perhaps be amused or even filled with bitter contempt? No, she thought; he will like it—I have an intuition. It is just the sort of display that he yearns for. Recognition of him; that will please him terribly.
   Is Hoppy preparing to receive us? she wondered. Has he washed his face, shaved, put on an especially clean suit… is he waiting expectantly for us to arrive? Is this the achievement of his life, the pinnacle?
   She tried to imagine the phocomelus at this moment. Hoppy had, a few hours ago, killed a man, and she knew from what Edie said the people all believed he had killed the glasses man. The town rat catcher, she said to herself, and shivered. Who will be next? And will he get a presentation next time—for each one, from now on?
   Maybe we will be returning again and again to make one presentation after another, she thought. And she thought, I will go to Berkeley; I want to get as far away from here as possible.
   And, she thought, as soon as possible. Today, if I can. Right now. Hands in her coat pockets, she walked quickly back to join Stuart McConchie and Gill; they were conferring, now, and she stood as close to them as she could, listening to their words with complete raptness.


   Doubtfully, Doctor Stockstill said to the phocomelus, “Are you sure he can hear me? This definitely transmits all the way to the satellite?” He touched the mike button again, experimentally.
   “I can’t possibly assure you that he can hear you,” Hoppy said with a snigger. “I can only assure you that this is a five hundred watt transmitter; that’s not very much by the old standards but it’s enough to reach him. I’ve reached him with it a number of times.” He grinned his sharp, alert grin, his intelligent gray eyes alive with splinters of light. “Go ahead. Does he have a couch up there, or can that be skipped?” The phocomelus laughed, then.
   Doctor Stockstill said, “The couch can be skipped.” He pressed the mike button and said, “Mr. Dangerfield, this is a—doctor, down below here in West Marin. I’m concerned with your condition. Naturally. Everyone down here is. I, urn, thought maybe I could help you.”
   “Tell him the truth,” Hoppy said. “Tell him you’re an analyst.”
   Cautiously, Stockstill said into the microphone, “Formerly I was an analyst, a psychiatrist. Of course, now I’m a G.P. Can you hear me?” He listened to the loudspeaker mounted in the corner but heard only static. “He’s not picking me up,” he said to Hoppy, feeling discouragement.
   “It takes time to establish contact,” floppy said. “Try again.” He giggled. “So you think it’s just in his mind. Hypochondria. Are you so sure? Well, you might as well assume that because if it’s not, there is practically nothing you can do anyhow.”
   Doctor Stockstill pressed the mike button and said, “Mr. Dangerfield, this is Stockstill, speaking from Marin County, California; I’m a doctor.” It seemed to him absolutely hopeless; why go on? But on the other hand—
   “Tell him about Bluthgeld,” Hoppy said suddenly.
   “Okay,” Stockstill said. “I will.”
   “You can tell him my name,” floppy said. “Tell him I did it; listen, Doctor—this is how he’ll sound when he tells it.” The phocomelus assumed a peculiar expression and from his mouth, as before, issued the voice of Walt Dangerfield. “Well, friends, I have a bit of good, good news here… I think you’ll all enjoy this. Seems as if—” The phocomelus broke off, because from the speaker came a faint sound.
   “… hello, Doctor. This is Walt Dangerfield.”
   Doctor Stockstill said instantly into the microphone, “Good. Dangerfield, what I want to talk to you about is the pains you’ve been having. Now, do you have a paper bag up there in the satellite? We’re going to try a little carbon dioxide therapy, you and I. I want you to take the paper bag and blow into it. You keep blowing into it and inhaling from it, so that you’re finally inhaling pure carbon dioxide. Do you understand? It’s just a little idea, but it has a sound basis behind it. You see, too much oxygen triggers off certain diencephalic responses which set up a vicious cycle in the autonomic nervous system. One of the systems of a too-active autonomic nervous system is hyperperistalsis, and you may be suffering from that. Fundamentally, it’s an anxiety symptom.”
   The phocomelus shook his head, turned and rolled away.
   “I’m sorry…” the voice from the speaker came faintly. “I don’t understand, Doctor. You say breathe into a paper bag? What about a polyethylene container? Couldn’t asphyxiation result?” The voice, querulous and unreasonable, stumbled uncertainly on, “Is there any way I can synthesize phenobarbital out of the constituents available to me up here? I’ll give you an inventory list and possibly—” Static interrupted Dangerfield; when he next was audible he was talking about something else. Perhaps, Doctor Stockstill thought, the man’s faculties were wandering.
   “Isolation in space,” Stockstill broke in, “breeds its own disruptive phenomena, similar to what once was termed ‘cabin fever.’ Specific to this is the feedback of free-floating anxiety so that it assumes a somatic consequence.” He felt, as he talked, that he was doing it all wrong; that he had failed already. The phocomelus had retired, too disgusted to listen—he was off somewhere else entirely, puttering. “Mr. Dangerfield,” Stockstill said, “what I want to do is interrupt this feedback and the carbon dioxide trit’k might do just that. Then when tension symptoms have eased, we can begin a form of psychotherapy; including recall of forgotten traumatic material.”
   The disc jockey said drily, “My traumatic material isn’t forgotten, Doctor; I’m experiencing it right now. It’s all around me. It’s a form of claustrophobia and I have it very, very bad.”
   “Claustrophobia,” Doctor Stockstill said, “is a phobia lireetly traceable to the diencephalon in that it’s a disturbance of the sense of spaciality. It’s connected with the panic reaction to the presence or the imagined presence of danger; it’s a repressed desire to flee.”
   Dangerfield said, “Well, where can I flee to, Doctor? Let’s be realistic. What in Christ’s name can psychoanalysis do for me? I’m a sick man; I need an operation, not the crap you’re giving me.”
   “Are you sure?” Stockstill asked, feeling ineffective and foolish. “Now, this will admittedly take time, but you and I have at least established basic contact; you know I’m down here trying to help you and I know that you’re listening.” You are listening, aren’t you? he asked silently. “So I think we’ve accomplished something already.”
   He waited. There was only silence.
   “Hello, Dangerfield?” he said into the microphone.
   Silence.
   From behind him the phocomelus said, “He’s either cut himself off or the satellite’s too far, now. Do you think you’re helping him?”
   “I don’t know,” Stockstill said. “But I know it’s worth trying.”
   “If you had started a year ago—”
   “But nobody knew.” We took Dangerfield for granted, like the sun, Stockstill realized. And now, as Hoppy says, it’s a little late.
   “Better luck tomorrow afternoon,” Hoppy said, with a faint—almost sneering—smile. And yet Stockstill felt in it a deep sadness. Was Hoppy sorry for him, for his futile efforts? Or for the man in the satellite passing above them? It was difficult to tell.
   “I’ll keep trying,” Stockstill said.
   There was a knock at the door.
   floppy said, “That will be the official delegation.” A broad, pleased smile appeared on his pinched features; his face seemed to swell, to fill with warmth. “Excuse me.” He wheeled his ‘mobile to the door, extended a manual extensor, and flung the door open.
   There stood Orion Stroud, Andrew Gill, Cas Stone, Bonny Keller and Mrs. Taliman, all looking nervous and ill-at-ease. “Harrington,” Stroud said, “we. have something for you, a little gift.”
   “Fine,” Hoppy said, grinning back at Stockstill. “See?” he said to the doctor. “Didn’t I tell you? It’s their appreciation.” To the delegation he said, “Come on in; I’ve been waiting.” He held the door wide and they passed on inside his house.
   “What have you been doing?” Bonny asked Doctor Stockstill, seeing him standing by the transmitter and microphone.
   Stockstill said, “Trying to reach Dangerfield.”
   “Therapy?” she said.
   “Yes.” He nodded.
   “No luck, though.”
   “We’ll try again tomorrow,” Stockstill said.
   Orion Stroud, his presentation momentarily forgotten, said to Doctor Stockstill, “That’s right; you used to be a psychiatrist.”
   Impatiently, Hoppy said, “Well, what did you bring me?” He peered past Stroud, at Gill; he made out the sight of the container of cigarettes and the case of brandy. “Are those mine?”
   “Yes,” Gill said. “In appreciation.”
   The container and the case were lifted from his hands; he blinked as they sailed toward the phoce and came to rest on the floor directly in front of the ‘mobile. Avidly, Hoppy plucked them open with his extensors.
   “Uh,” Stroud said, disconcerted, “we have a statement to make. Is it okay to do so now, Hoppy?” He eyed the phocomelus with apprehension.
   “Anything else?” Hoppy demanded, the boxes open, now. “What else did you bring me to pay me back?”


   To herself as she watched the scene Bonny thought, I had no idea he was so childish. Just a little child… we should have brought much more and it should have been wrapped gaily, with ribbons and cards, with as much color as possible. He must not be disappointed, she realized. Our lives depend on it, on his being—placated.
   “Isn’t there more?” Hoppy was saying peevishly.
   “Not yet,” Stroud said. “But there will be.” He shot a swift, flickering glance at the others in the delegation. “Your real presents, Hoppy, have to be prepared with care. This is just a beginning.”
   “I see,” the phocomelus said. But he did not sound convinced.
   “Honest,” Stroud said. “It’s the truth, floppy.”
   “I don’t smoke,” Hoppy said, surveying the cigarettes; he picked up a handful and crushed them, letting the bits drop. “It causes cancer.”
   “Well,” Gill began, “there’re two sides to that. Now—”
   The phocomelus sniggered. “I think that’s all you’re going to give me,” he said.
   “No, there will certainly be more,” Stroud said.
   The room was silent, except for the static coming from the speaker.
   Off in the corner an object, a transmitter tube, rose and sailed through the air, burst loudly against the wall, sprinkling them all with fragments of broken glass.
   “‘More,’” Hoppy mimicked, in Stroud’s deep, portentous voice. “‘There will certainly be more.’”

XV

   For thirty-six hours Walt Dangerileld had lain on his bunk in a state of semi-consciousness, knowing now that it was not an ulcer; it was cardiac arrest which he was experiencing, and it was probably going to kill him in a very short time. In spite of what Stockstill, the analyst, had said.
   The transmitter of the satellite had continued to broadcast a tape of light concert music over and over again; the sound of soothing strings filled his ears in a travesty of unavailing comfort. He did not even have the strength to get up and make his way to the controls to shut it off.
   That psychoanalyst, he thought bitterly. Talking about breathing into a paper bag. It had been like a dream… the faint voice, so full of self-confidence. So utterly false in its premises.
   Messages were arriving from all over the world as the satellite passed through its orbit again iand again; his recording equipment caught them and retained them, but that was all. Dangerfield could no longer answer.
   I guess I have to tell them, he said to himself. I guess the time—the time we’ve been expecting, all of us—has finally come at last.
   On his hands and knees he crept until he reached the seat by the microphone, the seat in which for seven years he had broadcast to the world below. After he had sat there for a time resting he turned on one of the many tape recorders, picked up the mike, and began dictating a message which, when it had been completed, would play endlessly, replacing the concert music.
   “My friends, this is Walt Dangerfield talking and wanting to thank you all for the times we have had together, speaking back and forth, us all keeping in touch. I’m afraid though that this complaint of mine makes it impossible for me to go on any longer. So with great regret I’ve got to sign off for the last time—” He went on, painfully, picking his words with care, trying to make them, his audience below, as little unhappy as possible. But nevertheless he told them the truth; he told them that it was the end for him and that they would have to find some way to communicate without him, and then he rang off, shut down the microphone, and in a weary reflex, played the tape back.
   The tape was blank. There was nothing on it, although he had talked for almost fifteen minutes.
   Evidently the equipment had for some reason broken down, but he was too ill to care; he snapped the mike back on, set switches on the control panel, and this time prepared to deliver his message live to the area below. Those people there would just have to pass the word on to the others; there was no other way.
   “My friends,” he began once more, “this is Walt Dangerfield. I have some bad news to give you but—” And then he realized that he was talking into a dead mike. The loudspeaker above his head had gone silent; nothing was being transmitted. Otherwise he would have heard his own voice from the monitoring system.
   As he sat there, trying to discover what was wrong, he noticed something else, something far stranger and more ominous.
   Systems on all sides of him were in motion. Had been in motion for some time, by the looks of them. The highspeed recording and playback decks which he had never used—all at once the drums were spinning, for the first time in seven years. Even as he watched he saw relays click on and off; a drum halted, another one began to turn, this time at slow speed.
   I don’t understand, he said to himself. What’s happening?
   Evidently the systems were receiving at high speed, recording, and now one of them had started to play back, but what had set all this in motion? Not he. Dials showed him that the satellite’s transmitter was on the air, and even as he realized that, realized that messages which had been picked up and recorded were now being played over the air, he heard the speaker above his head return to life.
   “Hoode hoode hoo,” a voice—his voice—chuckled. “This is your old pal, Walt Dangerfield, once more, and forgive that concert music. Won’t be any more of that.”
   When did I say that? he asked himself as he sat dully listening. He felt shocked and puzzled. His voice sounded so vital, so full of good spirits; how could I sound like that now? he wondered. That’s the way I used to sound, years ago, when I had my health, and when she was still alive.
   “Well,” his voice murmured on, “that bit of indisposition I’ve been suffering from… evidently mice got into the supply cupboards, and you’ll laugh to think of Walt Dangerfield fending off mice up here in the sky, but ‘tis true. Anyhow, part of my stores deteriorated and I didn’t happen to notice… but it sure played havoc with my insides. However– And he heard himself give his familiar chuckle. “I’m okay now. I know you’ll be glad to hear that, all you people down there who were so good as to transmit your get-well messages, and for that I give you thanks.”
   Getting from from the seat before the microphone, Walt Dangerfleld made his way unsteadily to his bunk; he lay down, closing his eyes, and then he thought once more of the pain in his chest and what it meant. Angina peetoris, he thought, is supposed to be more like a great fist pressing down; this is more a burning pain. If I could look at the medical data on the microfilm again… maybe there’s some fact I failed to read. For instance, this is directly under the breastbone, not off to the left side. Does that mean anything?
   Or maybe there’s nothing wrong with me, he thought to himself as he struggled to get up once more. Maybe Stockstill, that psychiatrist who wanted me to breathe carbon dioxide, was right; maybe it’s just in my mind, from the years of isolation here.
   But he did not think so. It felt far too real for that.
   There was one other fact about his ifiness that bewildered him. For all his efforts, he could not make a thing out of that fact, and so he had not even bothered to mention it to the several doctors and hospitals below. Now it was too late, because now he was too sick to operate the controls of the transmitter.
   The pain seemed always to get worse when his satellite was passing over Northern California.


   In the middle of the night the din of Bill Keller’s agitated murmurings woke his sister up. “What is it? Edie said sleepily, trying to make out what he wanted to tell her. She sat up in her bed, now, rubbing her eyes as the murmurings rose to a crescendo.
   “Hoppy Harrington!” he was saying, deep down inside her. “He’s taken over the satellite! Hoppy’s taken over Dangerfield’s satellite!” He chattered on and on excitedly, repeating it again and again.
   “How do you know?”
   “Because Mr. Bluthgeld says so; he’s down below now but he can still see what’s going on above. He can’t do anything and he’s mad. He still knows all about us. He hates Hoppy because Hoppy mashed him.”
   “What about Dangerfield?” she asked. “Is he dead yet?”
   “He’s not down below,” her brother said, after a long pause. “So I guess not.”
   “Who should I tell?” Edie said. “About what Hoppy did?”
   “Tell Mama,” her brother said urgently. “Go right in now.”
   Climbing from the bed, Edie scampered to the door and up the hail to their parents’ bedroom; she flung the door open, calling, “Mama, I have to tell you something—” And then her voice failed her, because her mother was not there. Only one sleeping figure lay in the bed, her father, alone. Her mother—she knew instantly and completely– had gone and she would not be coming back.
   “Where is she?” Bill clamored from within her. “I know she’s not here; I can’t feel her.”
   Slowly, Edie shut the door of the bedroom. What’ll I do? she asked herself. She walked aimlessly, shivering from the night cold. “Be quiet,” she said to Bill, and his murmurings sank down a little.
   “You have to find her,” Bill was saying.
   “I can’t,” she said. She knew it was hopeless. “Let me think what to do instead,” she said, going back into her bedroom for her robe and slippers.


   To Ella Hardy, Bonny said, “You have a very nice home here. It’s strange to be back in Berkeley after so long, though.” She felt overwhelmingly tired. “I’m going to have to turn in,” she said. It was two in the morning. Glancing at Andrew Gill and Stuart she said, “We made awfully good time getting here, didn’t we? Even a year ago it would have taken another three days.”
   “Yes,” Gill said, and yawned. He looked tired, too; he had done most of the driving because it was his horsecar they had taken.
   Mr. Hardy said, “Along about this time, Mrs. Keller, we generally tune in a very late pass by the satellite.”
   “Oh,” she said, not actually caring but knowing it was inevitable; they would have to listen at least for a few moments to be polite. “So you get two transmissions a day, down here.”
   “Yes,” Mrs. Hardy said, “and frankly we find it worth staying up for this late one, although in the last few weeks…” She gestured. “I suppose you know as well as we do. Dangerfield is such a sick man.”
   They were all silent, for a moment.
   Hardy said, “To face the brutal fact, we haven’t been able to pick him up at all the last day or so, except for a program of light opera that he has played over and over again automatically… so—” He glanced around at the four of them “That’s why we were pinning so many hopes on this late transmission, tonight.”
   To herself, Bonny thought, There’s so much business to conduct tomorrow, but he’s right; we must stay up for this. We must know what is going on in the satellite; it’s too important to us all. She felt sad. Walt Dangerfield, she thought, are you dying up there alone? Are you already dead and we don’t know yet?
   Will the light opera music go on forever? she wondered. At least until the satellite at last falls back to the Earth or drifts off into space and finally is attracted by the sun?
   “I’ll turn it on,” Hardy said, inspecting his watch. He crossed the room to the radio, turned it on carefully. “It takes it a long time to warm up,” he apologized. “I think there’s a weak tube; we asked the West Berkeley Handyman’s Association to inspect it but they’re so busy, they’re too tied up, they said. I’d look at it myself, but—” He shrugged ruefully. “Last time I tried to fix it, I broke it worse.”
   Stuart said, “You’re going to frighten Mr. Gill away.”
   “No,” Gill said. “I understand. Radios are in the province of the handies. It’s the same up in West Marin.”
   To Bonny, Mrs. Hardy said, “Stuart says you used to live here.”
   “I worked at the radiation lab for a while,” Bonny said. “And then I worked out at Livermore, also for the University. Of course—” She hesitated. “It’s so changed. I wouldn’t know Berkeley, now. As we came through I saw nothing I recognized except perhaps San Pablo Avenue itself. All the little shops—they look new.”
   “They are,” Dean Hardy said. Now static issued from the radio and he bent attentively, his ear close to it. “Generally we pick up this late transmission at about 640 kc. Excuse me.” He turned his back to them, intent on the radio.
   “Turn up the fat lamp,” Gill said, “so he can see better to tune it.”
   Bonny did so, marveling that even here in the city they were still dependent on the primitive fat lamp; she had supposed that their electricity had long since been restored, at least on a partial basis. In some ‘ways, she realized, they were actually behind West Marin. And in Bolinas—.
   “Ah,” Mr. Hardy said, breaking into her thoughts. “I think I’ve got him. And it’s not light opera.” His face glistened, beamed.
   “Oh dear,” Ella Hardy said, “I pray to heaven he’s better.” She clasped her hands together with anxiety.
   From the speaker a friendly, informal, familiar voice boomed out loudly, “Hi there, all you night people down below. Who do you suppose this is, saying hello, hello and hello.” Dangerfield laughed. “Yes, folks, I’m up and around, on my two feet once more. And just twirling all these little old knobs and controls like crazy… yes sir.” His voice was warm, and around Bonny the faces in the room relaxed, too, and smiled in company with the pleasure contained in the voice. The faces nodded, agreed.
   “You hear him?” Ella Hardy said. “Why, he’s better. He is; you can tell. He’s not just saying it, you can tell the difference.”
   “Hoode hoode hoo,” Dangerfield said. “Well, now, let us see; what news is there? You heard about that public enemy number one, that one-time physicist we all remember so well. Our good buddy Doctor Bluthgeld, or should I say Doctor Bloodmoney? Anyhow, I guess you all know by now that dear Doctor Bloodmoney is no longer with us. Yes, that’s right.”
   “I heard a rumor about that,” Mr. Hardy said excitedly. “A peddler who hitched a balloon ride out of Marin County—”
   “Shhh,” Ella Hardy said, listening.
   “Yes indeed,” Dangerfield was saying. “A certain party up in Northern California took care of Doctor B. For good. And we owe a debt of sheer unadulterated gratitude to that certain little party because—well, just considen this, folks; that party’s a bit handicapped. And yet he was able to do what no one else could have done.” Now Dangerfield’s voice was hard, unbending; it was a new sound which they had not heand from him ever before. They glanced at one another uneasily. “I’m talking about Hoppy Harrington, my friends. You don’t know that name? You should, because without Hoppy not one of you would be alive.”
   Hardy, rubbing his chin and frowning, shot a questioning look at Ella.
   “This Hoppy Harrington,” Dangerfield continued, “mashed Doctor B. from a good four miles away, and it was easy. Very easy. You think it’s impossible for someone to reach out and touch a man four miles off? That’s miiiiighty long arms, isn’t it, folks? And mighty strong hands. Well, I’ll tell you something even more remarkable.” The voice became confidential; it dropped to an intimate near-whisper. “Hoppy has no arms and no hands at all.” And Darigerfield, then, was silent.
   Bonny said quietly, “Andrew, it’s him, isn’t it?”
   Twisting around in his chair to face her, Gill said, “Yes, dean. I think so.”
   “Who?” Stuart McConchie said.
   Now the voice from the radio resumed, more calmly this time, but also more bleakly. The voice had become chilly and stark. “There was an attempt made,” it stated, “to reward Mr. Harrington. It wasn’t much. A few cigarettes and some bad whiskey—if you can call that a ‘reward.’ And some empty phrases delivered by a cheap local politico. That was all—that was it for the man who saved us all. I guess they figured—”
   Ella Hardy said, “That is not Dangerfield.”
   To Gill and Bonny, Mr. Hardy said, “Who is it? Say.”
   Bonny said, “It’s Hoppy.” Gill nodded.
   “Is he up there?” Stuart said. “In the satellite?”
   “I don’t know,” Bonny said. But what did it matter? “He’s got control of it; that’s what’s important.” And we thought by coming to Berkeley we would get away, she said to herself. That we would have left Hoppy. “I’m not surprised,” she said. “He’s been preparing a long time; everything else has been practice, for this.”
   “But enough of that,” the voice from the radio declared, in a lighter tone, now. “You’ll hear more about the man who saved us all; I’ll keep you posted, from time to time… old Walt isn’t going to forget. Meanwhile, let’s have a little music. What about a little authentic five-string banjo music, friends? Genuine authentic U.S. American oldtime folk music… ‘Out on Penny’s Farm,’ played by Pete Seeger, the greatest of the folk music men.”
   There was a pause, and then, from the speaker, came the sound of a full symphony orchestra.
   Thoughtfully, Bonny said, “Hoppy doesn’t have it down quite right. There’re a few circuits left he hasn’t got control of.”
   The symphony orchestra abruptly ceased. Silence obtained again, and then something spilled out at the incorrect speed; it squeaked frantically and was chopped off. In spite of herself, Bonny smiled. At last, belatedly, there came the sound of the five-string banjo.


Hard times in the country,
Out on Penny’s farm.


   It was a folksy tenor voice twanging away, along with the banjo. The people in the room sat listening, obeying out of long habit; the music emanated from the radio and for seven years they had depended on this; they had learned this and it had become a part of their physical bodies, this response. And yet—Bonny felt the shame and despair around hen. No one in the room fully understood what had happened; she herself felt only a numbed confusion. They had Dangerfield back and yet they did not; they had the outer form, the appearance, but what was it really, in essence? It was some labored apparition, like a ghost; it was not alive, not viable. It went through the motions but it was empty and dead. It had a peculiar preserved quality, as if somehow the cold, the loneliness, had combined to form around the man in the sateffite a new shell. A case which fitted over the living substance and snuffed it out.
   The killing, the slow destruction of Dangerfield, Bonny thought, was deliberate, and it came—not from space, not from beyond—but from below, from the familiar landscape. Dangerfield had not died from the years of isolation; he had been stricken by careful instruments issuing up from the very world which he struggled to contact. If he could have cut himself off from us, she thought, he would be alive now. At the very moment he listened to us, received us, he was being killed—and did not guess.
   He does not guess even now, she decided. It probably baffles him, if he is capable of perception at this point, capable of any form of awareness.
   “This is terrible,” Gill was saying in a monotone.
   “Terrible,” Bonny agreed, “but inevitable. He was too vulnerable up there. If Hoppy hadn’t done it someone else would have, one day.”
   “What’ll we do?” Mr. Hardy said. “If you folks are so sure of this, we better—”
   “Oh,” Bonny said, “we’re sure. There’s no doubt. You think we ought to form a delegation and call on Hoppy again? Ask him to stop? I wonder what he’d say.” I wonder, she thought, how near we would get to that familiar little house before we were demolished. Perhaps we are too close even now, right here in this room.
   Not for the world, she thought, would I go any nearer. I think in fact I will move farther on; I will get Andrew Gill to go with me and if not him then Stuart, if not Stuart then someone. I will keep going; I will not stay in one place and maybe I will be safe from Hoppy. I don’t care about the others at this point, because I am too scared; I only care about myself.
   “Andy,” she said to Gill, “listen. I want to go.”
   “Out of Berkeley, you mean?”
   “Yes.” She nodded. “Down the coast to Los Angeles. I know we could make it; we’d get there and we’d be okay there, I know it.”
   Gill said, “I can’t go, dear. I have to return to West Marin; I have my business—I can’t give it up.”
   Appalled, she said, “You’d go back to West Marin?”
   “Yes. Why not? We can’t give up just because Hoppy has done this. That’s not reasonable to ask of us. Even Hoppy isn’t asking that.”
   “But he will,” she said. “He’ll ask everything, in time; I know it, I can foresee it.”
   “Then we’ll wait,” Gill said. “Until then. Meanwhile, let’s do our jobs.” To Hardy and Stuart McConchie he said, “I’m going to turn in, because Christ—we have plenty to discuss tomorrow.” He rose to his feet. “Things may work themselves out. We mustn’t despair.” He whacked Stuart on the back. “Right?”
   Stuart said, “I hid once in the sidewalk. Do I have to do that again?” He looked around at the rest of them, seeking an answer.
   “Yes,” Bonny said.
   “Then I will,” he said. “But I came up out of the sidewalk; I didn’t stay there. And I’ll come up again.” He, too, rose. “Gill, you can stay with me in my place. Bonny, you can stay with the Hardys.”
   “Yes,” Ella Hardy said, stirring. “We have plenty of room for you, Mrs. Keller. Until we can find a more permanent arrangement.”
   “Good,” Bonny said, automatically. “That’s swell.” She rubbed her eyes. A good night’s sleep, she thought. It would help. And then what? We will just have to see.
   If, she thought, we are alive tomorrow.
   To her, Gill said suddenly, “Bonny, do you find this hard to believe about Hoppy? Or do you find it easy? Do you know him that well? Do you understand him?”
   “I think,” she said, “it’s very ambitious of him. But it’s what we should have expected. Now he has reached out farther than any of us; as he says, he’s now got long, long arms. He’s compensated beautifully. You have to admire him”
   “Yes,” Gill admitted. “I do. Very much.”
   “If I only thought this would satisfy him,” she said, “I wouldn’t be so afraid.”
   “The man I feel sorry for,” Gill said, “is Dangerfield. Having to lie there passively, sick as he is, and just listen.”
   She nodded, but she refused to imagine it; she could not bear to.


   Hurrying down the path in her robe and slippers, Edie Keller groped her way toward Hoppy Harrington’s house.
   “Hurry,” Bill said, from within her. “He knows about us, they’re telling me; they say we’re in danger. If we can get close enough to him I can do an imitation of someone dead that’ll scare him, because he’s afraid of dead people. Mr. Blaine says that’s because to him the dead are like fathers, lots of fathers, and—”
   “Be quiet,” Edie said. “Let me think.” In the darkness she had gotten mixed up. She could not find the path through the oak forest, now, and she halted, breathing deeply, trying to orient herself by the dull light of the partial moon overhead.
   It’s to the right, she thought. Down the hill. I must not fall; he’d hear the noise, he can hear a long way, almost everything. Step by step she descended, holding her breath.
   “I’ve got a good imitation ready,” Bill was mumbling; he would not be quiet. “It’s like this: when I get near him I switch with someone dead, and you won’t like that because it’s—sort of squishy, but it’s just for a few minutes and then they can talk to him direct, from inside you. Is that okay, because once he hears—”
   “It’s okay,” she said, “just for a little while.”
   “Well, then you know what they say? They say ‘We have been taught a terrible lesson for our folly. This is God’s way of making us see.’ And you know what that is? That’s the minister who used to make sermons when Hoppy was a baby and got. carried on his Dad’s back to church. He’ll remember that, even though it was years and years ago. It was the most awful moment in his life; you know why? Because that minister, he was making everybody in the church look at Hoppy and that was wrong, and Hoppy’s father never went back after that. But that’s a lot of the reason why Hoppy is like he is today, because of that minister. So he’s really terrified of that minister, and when he hears his voice again—”
   “Shut up,” Edie said desperately. They were now above Hoppy’s house; she saw the lights below. “Please, Bill, please.”
   “But I have to explain to you,” Bill went on. “When I—”
   He stopped. Inside her there was nothing. She was empty.
   “Bill,” she said.
   He had gone.
   Before her eyes, in the dull moonlight, something she had never seen before bobbed. It rose, jiggled, its long pale hair streaming behind it like a tail; it rose until it hung directly before her face. It nad tiny, dead eyes and a gaping mouth, it was nothing but a little hard round head, like a baseball. From its mouth came a squeak, and then it fluttered upward once more, released. She watched it as it gained more and more height, rising above the trees in a swimming motion, ascending in the unfamiliar atmosphere which it had never known before.
   “Bill,” she said, “he took you out of me. He put you outside.” And you are leaving, she realized; Hoppy is making you go. “Come back,” she said, but it didn’t matter because he could not live outside of her. She knew that. Doctor Stockstill had said that. He could not be born, and Hoppy had heard him and made him born, knowing that he would die.
   You won’t get to do your imitation, she realized. I told you to be quiet and you wouldn’t. Straining, she saw—or thought she saw—the hard little object with the streamers of hair hair now above her… and then it disappeared, silently.
   She was alone.
   Why go on now? It was over. She turned, walked back up the hillside, hen head lowered, eyes shut, feeling her way. Back to her house, her bed. Inside she felt raw; she felt the tearing loose. If you only could have been quiet, she thought. He would not have heard you. I told you, I told you so.
   She plodded on back.


   Floating in the atmosphere, Bill Keller saw a little, heard a little, felt the trees and the animals alive and moving among them. He felt the pressure at work on him, lifting him, but he remembered his imitation and he said it. His voice came out tiny in the cold air; then his ears picked it up and he exclaimed.
   “We have been taught a terrible lesson for our folly,” he squeaked, and his voice echoed in his ears, delighting him.
   The pressure on him let go; he bobbed up, swimming happily, and then he dove. Down and down he went and just before he touched the ground he went sideways until, guided by the living presence within, he hung suspended above Hoppy Harrington’s antenna andhouse.
   “This is God’s way!” he shouted in his thin, tiny voice. “We can see that it is time to call a halt to high-altitude nuclear testing. I want all of you to write letters to President Johnson!” He did not know who President Johnson was. A living person, perhaps. He looked around for him but he did not see him; he saw oak forests of animals, he saw a bird with noiseless wings that drifted, huge-beaked, eyes staring. Bill squeaked in fright as the noiseless, brownfeathered bird glided his way.
   The bird made a dreadful sound, of greed and the desire to rend.
   “All of you,” Bill cried, fleeing through the dark, chill air. “You must write letters in protest!”
   The glittering eyes of the bird followed behind him as he and it glided above the trees, in the dim moonlight.
   The owl reached him. And crunched him in a single instant.

XVI

   Once more he was within. He could no longer see or hear; it had been for a short time and now it was over.
   The owl, hooting, flew on.
   Bill Keller said to the owl, “Can you hear me?”
   Maybe it could, maybe not; it was only an owl, it did not have any sense, as Edie had had. It was not the same. Can I live inside you? he asked it, hidden away in here where no one knows… you have your flights that you make, your passes. With him, in the owl, were the bodies of mice and a thing that stirred and scratched, big enough to keep on trying to live.
   Lower, he told the owl. He saw, by means of the owl, the oaks; he saw clearly, as if everything were full of light. Millions of individual objects lay immobile and then he spied one that crept—it was alive and the owl turned that way. The creeping thing, suspecting nothing, hearing no sound, wandered on, out into the open.
   An instant later it had been swallowed. The owl flew on.
   Good, he thought. And, is there more? This goes on all night, again and again, and then there is bathing when it rains, and the long, deep sleeps. Are they the best part? They are.
   He said, “Fergesson don’t allow his employees to drink; it’s against his religion, isn’t it?” And then he said “Hoppy, what’s the light from? Is it God? You know, like in the Bible. I mean, is it truer
   The owl hooted.
   “Hoppy,” he said, from within the owl, “you said last time it was all dark. Is that right? No light at all?”
   A thousand dead things within him yammered for attention. He listened, repeated, picked among them.
   “You dirty little freak,” he said. “Now listen. Stay down here; we’re below street-level. You moronic jackass, stay where you are, you are, you are. I’ll go upstairs and get those. People. Down here .you clear. Space. Space for them.”
   Frightened, the owl flapped; it rose higher, trying to evade him. But he continued, sorting and picking and listening on.
   “Stay down here,” he repeated. Again the lights of Hoppy’s house came into view; the owl had circled, returned to it, unable to get away. He made it stay where he wanted it. He brought it closer and closer in its passes to Hoppy. “You moronic jackass,” he said. “Stay where you are.”
   The owl flew lower, hooting in its desire to leave. It was caught and it knew it. The owl hated him.
   “The president must listen to our pleas,” he said, “before it is too late.”
   With a furious effort the owl performed its regular technique; it coughed him up and he sank in the direction of the ground, trying to – catch the currents of air. He crashed among humus and plant-growth; he rolled, giving little squeaks until finally he came to rest in a hollow.
   Released, the owl soared off and disappeared.
   “Let man’s compassion be witness to this,” he said as he lay in the hollow; he spoke in the minister’s voice from long ago. “it is ourselves who have done this; we see here the results of mankind’s own folly.”
   Lacking the owl eyes he saw only vaguely; the illumination seemed to be gone and all that remained were several nearby shapes. They were trees.
   He saw, too, the form of Hoppy’s house outlined against the dim night sky. It was not far off.
   “Let me in,” Bill said, moving his mouth. He rolled about in the hollow; he thrashed until the leaves stirred. “I want to come in.”
   An animal, hearing him, moved further off, warily.
   “In, in, in,” Bill said. “I can’t stay out here long; I’ll die. Edie, where are you?” He did not feel her nearby; he felt only the presence of the phocomelus within the house.
   As best he could, he rolled that way.


   Early in the morning, Doctor Stockstill arrived at Hoppy Harrington’s tar-paper house to make his fourth attempt at treating Walt Dangerfield. The transmitter, he noticed, was on, and so were lights here and there; puzzled, he knocked on the door.
   The door opened and there sat Hoppy Harrington in the center of his ‘mobile. Hoppy regarded him in an odd, cautious, defensive fashion.
   “I want to make another try,” Stockstill said, knowing how useless it was but wanting to go ahead anyhow. “Is it okay?”
   “Yes sir,” Hoppy said. “It’s okay.”
   “Is Dangerfield still alive?”
   “Yes sir. I’d know if he was dead.” Hoppy wheeled aside to admit him. “He must still be up there.”
   “What’s happened?” Stockstill said. “Have you been up all night?”
   “Yes,” Hoppy said. “Learning to work things.” He wheeled the ‘mobile about, frowning. “It’s hard,” he said, apparently preoccupied.
   “I think that idea of carbon dioxide therapy was a mistake, now that I look back on it,” Stockstill said as he seated himself at the microphone. “This time I’m going to try some free association with him, if I can get him to.”
   The phocomelus continued to wheel about; now the ‘mobile bumped into the end of a table. “I hit that by mistake,” Hoppy said. “I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to.”
   Stockstill said, “You seem different.”
   “I’m the same; I’m Bill Keller,” the phocomelus said. “Not Hoppy Harrington.” With his right manual extensor he pointed. “There’s Hoppy. That’s him, from now on.”
   In the corner lay a shriveled dough-like object several inches long; its mouth gaped in congealed emptiness. It had a human-like quality to it, and Stockstill went over to pick it up.
   “That was me,” the phocomelus said. “But I got close enough last night to switch. He fought a lot, but he was afraid, so I won. I kept doing one imitation after another. The minister one got him.”
   Stockstill, holding the wizened little homunculus, said nothing.
   “Do you know how to work the transmitter?” the phocomelus asked, presently. “Because I don’t. I tried, but I can’t. I got the lights to work; they turn on and off. I practiced that all night.” To demonstrate, he rolled his ‘mobile to the wall, where with his manual extensor he snapped the light switch up and down.
   After a time Stockstill said, looking down at the dead, tiny form he held in his hand, “I knew it wouldn’t survive.
   “It did for a while,” the phocomelus said. “For around an hour; that’s pretty good, isn’t it? Part of that time it was in an owl; I don’t know if that counts.”
   “I—better get to work trying to contact Dangerfield,” Stockstill said finally. “He may die any time.”
   “Yes,” the phocomelus said, nodding. “Want me to take that?” He held out an extensor and Stockstill handed him the homunculus. “That owl ate me,” the phoce said. “I didn’t like that, but it sure had good eyes; I liked that part, using its eyes.”
   “Yes,” Stockstill said reflexively. “Owls have tremendously good eyesight; that must have been quite an experience.” This, that he had held in his hand—it did not seem at all possible to him. And yet, it was not so strange; the phoce had moved Bill only a matter of a few inches—that had been enough. And what was that in comparison to what he had done to Doctor Bluthgeld? Evidently after that the phoce had lost track because Bill, free from his sister’s body, had mingled with first one substance and then another. And at last he had found the phoce and mingled with him, too; had, at the end, supplanted him in his own body.
   It had been an unbalanced trade. Hoppy Harrington had gotten the losing end of it, by far; the body which he had received in exchange for his own had lasted only a few minutes, at the most.
   “Did you know,” Bill Keller said, speaking haltingly as if it was still difficult for him to control the phocomelus’ body, “that Hoppy got up in the satellite for a while? Everybody was excited about that; they woke me up in the night to tell me and I woke Edie. That’s how I got here,” he added, with a strained, earnest expression on his face.
   “And what are you going to do now?” Stockstil asked.
   The phoce said, “I have to get used to this body; it’s heavy. I feel gravity… I’m used to just floating about. You know what? I think these extensors are swell. I can do a lot with them already.” The extensors whipped about, touched a picture on the wall, flicked in the direction of the transmitter. “I have to go find Edie,” the phoce said. “I want to tell her I’m okay; I bet she probably thinks I died.”
   Turning on the microphone, Stockstill said, “Walter Dangerfield, this is Doctor Stockstill in West Marin. Can you hear me? If you can, give me an answer. I’d like to resume the therapy we were attempting the other day.” He paused, then repeated what he had said.
   “You’ll have to try a lot of times,” the phoce said, watching him. “It’s going to be hard because he’s so weak; he probably can’t get up to his feet and he didn’t understand what was happening when Hoppy tpok over.”
   Nodding, Stockstill pressed the microphone button and tried again.
   “Can I go?” Bill Keller asked. “Can I look for Edie now?”
   “Yes,” Stockstull said, rubbing his forehead; he drew his faculties together and said, “You’ll be careful, what you do… you may not be able to switch again.”
   “I don’t want to switch again,” Bill said. “This is fine, because for the first time there’s no one in here but me.” In explanation, he added, “I mean, I’m alone; I’m not just part of someone else. Of course, I switched before, but it was to that blind thing—Edie tricked me into it and it didn’t do at all. This is different.” The thin phoce-f ace broke into a smile.
   “Just be careful” Stockstill repeated.
   “Yes sir,” the phoce said dutifully. “I’ll try; I had bad luck with the owl but it wasn’t my fault because I didn’t want to get swallowed. That was the owl’s idea.”
   Stockstill thought, But this was yours. There is a difference; I can see that. And it is very important. Into the microphone he repeated, “Walt, this is Doctor Stockstill down below; I’m still trying to reach you. I think we can do a lot to help you pull through this, if you’ll do as I tell you. I think we’ll try some free association, today, in an effort to get at the root causes of your tension. In any case, it won’t do any harm; I think you can appreciate that.”
   From the loudspeaker came only static.
   Is it hopeless? Stockstill wondered. Is it worth keeping on?
   He pressed the mike button once more, saying, “Walter, the who usurped your authority in the satellite—he’s dead, now, so you don’t have to worry regarding him. When you feel strong enough I’ll give you more details. Okay? Do you agree?” He listened. Still only static.
   The phoce, rolling about the room on his ‘mobile, like a great trapped beetle, said, “Can I go to school now that I’m out?”
   “Yes,” Stockstill murmured.
   “But I know a lot of things already,” Bill said, “from listening with Edie when she was in school; I won’t have to go back and repeat, I can go ahead, like her. Don’t you think so?”
   Stockstill nodded.
   “I wonder what my mother will say,” the phoce said.
   Jarred, Stockstill said, “What?” And then he realized who was meant. “She’s gone,” he said. “Bonny left with GiU and McConchie.”
   “I know she left,” Bill said plaintively. “But won’t she be coming back sometime?”
   “Possibly not,” Stockstill said. “Bonny’s an odd woman, very restless. You can’t count on it.” It might be better if she didn’t know, he said to himself. It would be extremely difficult for her; after all, he realized, she never knew about you at all. Only Edie and I knew. And Hoppy. And, he thought, thç owl. “I’m going to give up,” he said suddenly, “on trying to reach Dangerfield. Maybe some other time.”
   “I guess I bother you,” Bill said.
   Stockstill nodded.
   “I’m sorry,” Bill said. “I was trying to practice and I didn’t know you were coming by. I didn’t mean to upset you; it happened suddenly in the night—I rolled here and got in under the door before Hoppy understood, and then it was too late because I was close.” Seeing the expression on the doctor’s face, he ceased.
   “It’s—just not like anything I ever ran into before,” Stockstill said. “I knew you existed. But that was about all.”
   Bill said, with pride, “You – didn’t know I was learning to switch.”
   “No,” Stockstill agreed.
   “Try talldng to Dangerfield again,” Bill said. “Don’t give up, because I know he’s up there. I won’t tell you how I know because if I do you’ll get more upset.”
   “Thank you,” Stockstill said. “For not telling me.”
   Once more he pressed the mike button. The phoce opened the door and rolled outside, onto the path; the ‘mobile stopped a little way off, and the phoce looked back indecisively.
   “Better go find your sister,” Stockstill said. “It’ll mean a great deal to her, I’m sure.”
   When next he looked up, the phoce had gone. The ‘mobile was nowhere in sight.
   “Walt Dangerfield,” Stockstill said into the mike, “I’m going to sit here trying to reach you until either you answer or I know you’re dead. I’m not saying you don’t have a genuine physical ailment, but I am saying that part of the cause lies in your psychological situation, which in many respects is admittedly bad. Don’t you agree? And after what you’ve gone through, seeing your controls taken away from you—”
   From the speaker a far-off, laconic voice said, “Okay, Stockstil. I’ll make a stab at your free association. If for no other reason than to prove to you by default that I actually am desperately physically ill.”
   Doctor Stockstill sighed and relaxed. “It’s about time, Have you been picking me up all this time?”
   “Yes, good friend,” Dangerfield said. “I wondered how long you’d ramble on. Evidently forever. You guys are persistent, if nothing else.”
   Leaning back, Stockstill shakily lit up a special deluxe Gold Label cigarette and said, “Can you lie down and make yourself comfortable?”
   “I am lying down,” Dangerfield said tartly. “I’ve been lying down for five days, now.”
   “And you should become thoroughly passive, if possible. Become supine.”
   “Like a whale,” Dangerfield said. “Just lolling in the brine—right? Now, shall I dwell on childhood incest drives? Let’s see… I think I’m watching my mother and she’s combing her hair at her vanity table. She’s very pretty. No, sorry, I’m wrong. It’s a movie and I’m watching Norma Shearer. It’s the late-late show on TV.” He laughed faintly.
   “Did your mother resemble Norma Shearer?” Stockstill asked; he had pencil and paper out, now, and was making notes.
   “More like Betty Grable,” Dangerfield said. “If you can remember her. But that probably was before your time. I’m old, you know. Almost a thousand years… it ages you, to be up here, alone.”
   “Just keep talking,” Stockstill said. “Whatever comes into your mind. Don’t force it, let it direct itself instead.”
   Dangerfield said, “Instead of reading the great classics to the world maybe I can free-associate as to childhood toilet traumas, right? I wonder if that would interest mankind as much. Personally, I find it pretty fascinating.”
   Stockstill, in spite of himself, laughed.
   “You’re human,” Dangerfield said, sounding pleased. “I consider that good. A sign in your favor.” He laughed his old, familiar laugh. “We both have something in common; we both consider what we’re doing here as being very funny indeed.”
   Nettled, Stockstill said, “I want to help you.”
   “Aw, hell,” the faint, distant voice answered. “I’m the one who’s helping you, Doc. You know that, deep down in your unconscious. You need to feel you’re doing something worthwhile again, don’t you? When do you first remember ever having had that feeling? Just lie there supine, and Ill do the rest from up here.” He chuckled. “You realize, of course, that I’m recording this on tape; I’m going to play our silly conversations every night over New York– they love this intellectual stuff, up that way.”
   “Please,” Stockstill said. “Let’s continue.”
   “Hoode hoode hoo,” Dangerfield chortled. “By all means. Can I dwell on the girl I loved in the fifth grade? That was where my incest fantasies really got started.” He was silent for a moment and then he said in a reflective voice, “You know, I haven’t thought of Myra for years. Not in twenty years.”
   “Did you take her to a dance or some such thing?”
   “In the fifth grade?” Dangerfield yelled. “Are you some kind of a nut? Of course not. But I did kiss her.” His voice seemed to become more relaxed, more as it had been in former times. “I never forgot that,” he murmured.
   Static, for a moment, supervened.
   “… and then,” Dangerfieid was saying when next Stockstill could make his words out, “Arnold Klein rapped me on the noggin and I shoved him over, which is exactly what he deserved. Do you follow? I wonder how many hundreds of my avid listeners are getting this; I see lights lit up—they’re trying to contact me on a lot of frequencies. Wait, Doe. I have to answer a few Of these calls. Who knows, some of them might be other, better analysts.” He added, in parting, “And at lower rates.”
   There was silence. Then Dangerfield was back.
   “Just people telling me I did right to rap Arnold Klein on the noggin,” he said cheerfully. “So far the votes are in favor four to ohe. Shall I continue?”
   “Please do,” Stockstill said, scratching notes.
   “Well,” Dangerfield said, “and then there was Jenny Linhart. That was in the low sixth.”
   The satellite, in its orbit, had come closer; the reception was now loud and clear. Or perhaps it was that Hoppy Harrington’s equipment was especially good. Doctor Stockstill leaned back in his chair, smoked his cigarette, and listened, as the voice grew until it boomed and echoed in the room.
   How many times, he thought, Hoppy must have sat here receiving the satellite. Building up his plans, preparing for the day. And now it is over. Had the phocomelus—Bill Keller—taken the wizened, dried-up little thing with him? Or was it still somewhere nearby?
   Stockstill did not look around; he kept his attention on the voice which came to him so forcefully, now. He did not let himself notice anything else in the room.
   In a strange but soft bed in an unfamiliar room, Bonny Keller woke to sleepy confusion. Diffuse light, yellow and undoubtedly the early-morning sun, poured about her, and above her a man whom she knew well bent over her, reaching down his arms. It was Andrew Gill and for a moment she imagined—she deliberately allowed herself to imagine—that it was seven years ago, E Day again.
   “Hi,” she murmured, clasping him to her. “Stop,” she said, then. “You’re crushing me and you haven’t shaved yet. What’s going on?” She sat up, all at once, pushing him away.
   Gill said, “Just take it easy.” Tossing the covers aside, he picked her up, carried her across the room, toward the door.
   “Where are we going?” she asked. “To Los Angeles? This way—with you carrying me in your arms?”
   “We’re going to listen to somebody.” With his shoulder he pushed the door open and carried her down the small, low-ceilinged hall.
   “Who?” she demanded. “Hey, I’m not dressed.” All she on was her underwear, which she had slept in.
   Ahead, she saw the Hardys’ living room, and there, at the radio, their faces suffused with an eager, youthful joy, stood Stuart McConchie, the Hardys, and several men whom she realized were employees of Mr. Hardy.
   From the speaker came the voice they had heard last night, or was it that voice? She listened, as Andrew Gill seated himself with her on his lap. “… and then Jenny Linhart said to me,” the voice was saying, “that I resembled, in her estimation, a large poodle. It had to do with the—way my big sister was cutting my hair, I think. I did look like a large poodle. It was not an insult. It was merely an observation; it showed she was aware of me. But that’s some improvement over not being noticed at all, isn’t it?” Dangerfield was silent, then, as if waiting for an answer.
   “Who’s he talking to?” she said, still befuddled by sleep, still not fully awake. And then she realized what it meant. “He’s alive,” she said. And Hoppy was gone. “Goddamn it,” she said loudly, “will somebody tell me what happened?” She squirmed off Andrew’s lap and stood shivering; the morning air was cold.
   Ella Hardy said, “We don’t know what happened. He apparently came back on the air sometime during the night. We hadn’t turned the radio off, and so we heard it; this isn’t his regular time to transmit to us.”
   “He appears to be talking to a doctor,” Mr. Hardy said. “Possibly a psychiatrist who’s treating him.”
   “Dear God,” Bonny said, doubling up. “It isn’t —possible—he’s being psychoanalyzed.” But, she thought, where did Hoppy go? Did he give up? Was the strain of reaching Out that far too much for him, was that it? Did he, after all, have limitations, likp every other living thing? She returned quickly to her bedroom, still listening, to get her clothes. No one noticed; they were all so intent on the radio.
   To think, she said to herself as she dressed, that the old witchcraft could help him. .It was incredibly funny; she trembled with cold and merriment as she buttoned her shirt. Dangerfield, on a couch up in his satellite, gabbling away about his childhood… oh God, she thought, and she hurried back to the living room to catch it all.
   Andrew met her, stopping her in the hall “It faded out,” he said. “It’s gone, now.”
   “Why?” Her laughter ceased; she was terrified.
   “We were lucky to get it at all. He’s all right, I think.”
   “Oh,” she said, “I’m so scared. Suppose he isn’t?”
   Andrew said, “But he is.” He put his big hands on her shoulders. “You heard him; you heard the quality of his voice.”
   “That analyst,” she said, “deserves a Hero First Class medal.”
   “Yes,” he said gravely. “Analyst Hero First Class, you’re entirely right.” He was silent, then, still touching her but standing a little distance from her. “I apologize for barging in on you– and dragging you out of bed. But I knew you’d want to hear.”
   “Yes,” she agreed.
   “Is it still essential to you that we go further on? All the way to Los Angeles?”
   “Well,” she said, “you do have business here. We could stay here a while at least. And see if he remains okay.” She was still apprehensive, still troubled about Hoppy.
   Andrew said, “One can never be really sure, and that’s what makes life a problem, don’t you agree? Let’s face it—he is mortal; someday he has to perish anyhow. Like the rest of us.” He gazed down at her. -
   “But not now,” she said. “If it only can be later, a few years from now—I could stand it then.” She took hold of his hands and then leaned forward and kissed him. Time, she thought. The love we felt for each other in the past; the love we have for Dangerfield right now, and for him in the future. Too bad it is a powerless love; too bad it can’t automatically knit him up whole and sound once more, this feeling we have for one another—and for him.
   “Remember E Day?” Andrew asked.
   “Oh yes, I certainly do,” she said.
   “Any further thoughts on it?”
   Bonny said, “I’ve decided I love you.” She moved quickly away from him, flushing at having said such a thing. “The good news,” she murmured. “I’m carried away; please excuse me, I’ll recover.”
   “But you mean it,” he said, perceptively.
   “Yes.” She nodded.
   Andrew said, “I’m getting a little old, now.”
   “We all are,” she said. “I creak, when I first get up… perhaps you noticed, just now.”
   “No,” he said. “Just so long as your teeth stay in your head, as they are.” He looked at her uneasily. “I don’t know exactly what to say to you, Bonny. I feel that we’re going to achieve a great deal here; I hope so, anyhow. Is it a base, onerous thing, coming here to arrange for new machinery for my factory? Is that—” He gestured. “Crass?”
   “It’s lovely,” she answered.
   Coming into the hall, Mrs. Hardy said, “We picked him up again for a just a minute, and he was still talking about his childhood. I would say now that we won’t hear again until the regular time at four in the afternoon. What about breakfast? We have three eggs to divide among us; my husband managed to pick them from a peddler last week.”
   “Eggs,” Andrew Gill repeated. “What kind? Chicken?”
   “They’re large and brown,” Mrs. Hardy said. “I’d guess so, but we can’t be positive until we open them.”
   Bonny said, “It sounds marvelous.” She was very hungry, now. “I think we should pay for them, though; you’ve already given us so much—a place to stay and dinner last night.” It was virtually unheard of, these days, and certainly it was not what she had expected to find in the – city.
   “We’re in business together,” Mrs. Hardy pointed out. “Everything we have is going to be pooled, isn’t it?”
   “But I have nothing to offer.” She felt that keenly, all at once, and she hung her head. I can only take, she thought. Not give.
   However, they did not seem to agree. Taking her by the hand, Mrs. Hardy led her toward the kitchen area. “You can help fix,” she explained. “We have potatoes, too. You can peel them. We serve our employees breakfast; we always eat together—it’s cheaper, and they don’t have kitchens, they live in rooms, Stuart and the others. We have to watch out for them.”
   You’re very good people, Bonny thought. So this is the city—this is what we’ve been hiding from, throughout these years. We heard the awful stories, that it was only ruins, with predators creeping about, derelicts and opportunists and flappers, the dregs of what it had once been… and we had fled from that, too, before the war. We had already become to afraid to live here.
   As they entered the kitchen she heard Stuart McConchie saying to Dean Hardy,”. .. and besides playing the nose-flute this rat—” He broke off, seeing her. “An anecdote about life here,” he apologized. “It might shock you. It has to do with a brilliant animal, and many people find them unpleasant.”
   “Tell me about it,” Bonny said. “Tell me about the rat who plays the nose-flute.”
   “I may be getting two brilliant animals mixed together,” Stuart said as he began heating water for the imitation coffee. He fussed with the pot and tien, satisfied, leaned back against the wood-burning stove, his hands in his pockets. “Anyhow, I think the veteran said that it also had worked out a primitive system of bookkeeping. But that doesn’t sound right.” He frowned.
   “It does to me,” Bonny said.
   “We could use a rat like that working here,” Mr. Hardy said. “We’ll be needing a good bookkeeper, with our business expanding, as it’s going to be.”
   Outside, along San Pablo Avenue, horse-drawn cars began to move; Bonny heard the sharp sound of the hoofs striking. She heard the stirrings of activity, and she went to the window to peep out. Bicycles, too, and a mammoth old wood-burning truck. And people on foot, many of them.
   From beneath a board shack an animal emerged and with caution crossed the open to disappear beneath the porch of a building on the far side of the street. After a moment it reappeared, this time followed by another animal, both of them short-legged and squat, perhaps mutations of bulldogs. The second animal tugged a crumsy sleigh-like platform after it; the platform, loaded with various valuable objects, most of them food, slid and bumped on its runners over the irregular pavement after the two animals hurrying for cover.
   At the window, Bonny continued to watch attentively, but the two short-legged animals did not reappear. She was just about to turn away when she caught sight of something else moving into its first activity of the day. A round metal hull, splotched over with muddy colors and bits of leaves and twigs, shot into sight, halted, raised two slender antennae quiveringly into the early morning sun.
   What in the world is it? Bonny wondered. And then she realized that she was seeing a Hardy Homeostatic trap in action.
   Good luck, she thought.
   The trap, after pausing and scouting in all directions, hesitated and then at last doubtfully took off on the trail of the two bulldog-like animals. It disappeared around the side of a nearby house, solemn and dignified, much too slow in its pursuit, and she had to smile.
   The business of the day had begun. All around her the city was awakening, back once more into its regular life.

Fair Game

Philip Kindred Dick

Fair Game
by Philip K. Dick

   Professor Anthony Douglas lowered gratefully into his red-leather easy chair and sighed. A long sigh, accompanied by labored removal of his shoes and numerous grunts as he kicked them into the corner. He folded his hands across his ample middle and lay back, eyes closed.
   “Tired?” Laura Douglas asked, turning from the kitchen stove a moment, her dark eyes sympathetic.
   “You’re darn right.” Douglas surveyed the evening paper across from him on the couch. Was it worth it? No, not really. He felt around in his coat pocket for his cigarettes and lit up slowly, leisurely. “Yeah, I’m tired, all right. We’re starting a whole new line of research. Whole flock of bright young men in from Washington today. Briefcases and slide rules.”
   “Not—”
   “Oh, I’m still in charge.” Professor Douglas grinned expansively. “Perish the thought.” Pale gray cigarette smoke billowed around him. “It’ll be another few years before they’re ahead of me. They’ll have to sharpen up their slide rules just a little bit more…”
   His wife smiled and continued preparing dinner. Maybe it was the atmosphere of the little Colorado town. The sturdy, impassive mountain peaks around them. The thin, chill air. The quiet citizens. In any case, her husband seemed utterly unbothered by the tensions and doubts that pressured other members of his profession. A lot of aggressive newcomers were swelling the ranks of nuclear physics these days. Old-timers were tottering in their positions, abruptly insecure. Every college, every physics department and lab was being invaded by the new horde of skilled young men. Even here at Bryant College, so far off the beaten track.
   But if Anthony Douglas worried, he never let it show. He rested happily in his easy chair, eyes shut, a blissful smile on his face. He was tired—but at peace. He sighed again, this time more from pleasure than fatigue.
   “It’s true,” he murmured lazily. “I may be old enough to be their father, but I’m still a few jumps ahead of them. Of course, I know the ropes better. And—”
   “And the wires. The ones worth pulling.”
   “Those, too. In any case, I think I’ll come off from this new line we’re doing just about…”
   His voice trailed off.
   “What’s the matter?” Laura asked.
   Douglas half rose from his chair. His face had gone suddenly white. He stared in horror, gripping the arms of his chair, his mouth opening and closing.
   At the window was a great eye. An immense eye that gazed into the room intently, studying him. The eye filled the whole window.
   “Good God!” Douglas cried.
   The eye withdrew. Outside there was only the evening gloom, the dark hills and trees, the street. Douglas sank down slowly in his chair.
   “What was it?” Laura demanded sharply. “What did you see? Was somebody out there?”
   Douglas clasped and unclasped his hands. His lips twitched violently. “I’m telling you the truth, Bill. I saw it myself. It was real. I wouldn’t say so, otherwise. You know that. Don’t you believe me?”
   “Did anybody else see it?” Professor William Henderson asked, chewing his pencil thoughtfully. He had cleared a place on the dinner table, pushed back his plate and silver and laid out his notebook. “Did Laura see it?”
   “No. Laura had her back turned.”
   “What time was it?”
   “Half an hour ago. I had just got home. About six-thirty. I had my shoes off, taking it easy.” Douglas wiped his forehead with a shaking hand.
   “You say it was unattached? There was nothing else? Just the—eye?”
   “Just the eye. One huge eye looking in at me. Taking in everything. As if…”
   “As if what?”
   “As if it was looking down a microscope.”
   Silence.
   From across the table, Henderson’s red-haired wife spoke up. “You always were a strict empiricist, Doug. You never went in for any nonsense before. But this… It’s too bad nobody else saw it.”
   “Of course nobody else saw it!”
   “What do you mean?”
   “The damn thing was looking at me. It was me it was studying.” Douglas’s voice rose hysterically. “How do you think I feel—scrutinized by an eye as big as a piano! My God, if I weren’t so well integrated, I’d be out of my mind!”
   Henderson and his wife exchanged glances. Bill, dark-haired and handsome, ten years Douglas’s junior. Vivacious Jean Henderson, lecturer in child psychology, lithe and full-bosomed in her nylon blouse and slacks.
   “What do you make of this?” Bill asked her. “This is more along your line.”
   “It’s your line,” Douglas snapped. “Don’t try to pass this off as a morbid projection. I came to you because you’re head of the Biology Department.”
   “You think it’s an animal? A giant sloth or something?”
   “It must be an animal.”
   “Maybe it’s a joke,” Jean suggested. “Or an advertising sign. An oculist’s display. Somebody may have been carrying it past the window.”
   Douglas took a firm grip on himself. “The eye was alive. It looked at me. It considered me. Then it withdrew. As if it had moved away from the lens.” He shuddered. “I tell you it was studying me!”
   “You only?”
   “Me. Nobody else.”
   “You seem curiously convinced it was looking down from above,” Jean said.
   “Yes, down. Down at me. That’s right.” An odd expression flickered across Douglas’s face. “You have it, Jean. As if it came from up there.” He jerked his hand upward.
   “Maybe it was God,” Bill said thoughtfully.
   Douglas said nothing. His face turned ash white and his teeth chattered.
   “Nonsense,” Jean said. “God is a psychological transcendent symbol expressing unconscious forces.”
   “Did it look at you accusingly?” asked Bill. “As if you’d done something wrong?”
   “No. With interest. With considerable interest.” Douglas raised himself. “I have to get back. Laura thinks I’m having some kind of fit. I haven’t told her, of course. She’s not scientifically disciplined. She wouldn’t be able to handle such a concept.”
   “It’s a little tough even for us,” Bill said.
   Douglas moved nervously toward the door. “You can’t think of any explanation? Something thought extinct that might still be roaming around these mountains?”
   “None that we know of. If I should hear of any—”
   “You said it looked down,” Jean said. “Not bending down to peer in at you. Then it couldn’t have been an animal or terrestrial being.” She was deep in thought. “Maybe we’re being observed.”
   “Not you,” Douglas said miserably. “Just me.”
   “By another race,” Bill put in. “You think—”
   “Maybe it’s an eye from Mars.”
   Douglas opened the front door carefully and peered out. The night was black. A faint wind moved through the trees and along the highway. His car was dimly visible, a black square against the hills. “If you think of anything, call me.”
   “Take a couple of phenobarbitals before you hit the sack,” Jean suggested. “Calm your nerves.”
   Douglas was out on the porch. “Good idea. Thanks.” He shook his head. “Maybe I’m out of my mind. Good Lord. Well, I’ll see you later.”
   He walked down the steps, gripping the rail tightly. “Good night!” Bill called. The door closed and the porch light clicked off.
   Douglas went cautiously toward his car. He reached out into the darkness, feeling for the door handle. One step. Two steps. It was silly. A grown man—practically middle-aged—in the twentieth century. Three steps.
   He found the door and opened it, sliding quickly inside and locking it after him. He breathed a silent prayer of thanks as he snapped on the motor and the headlights. Silly as hell. A giant eye. A stunt of some sort.
   He turned the thoughts over in his mind. Students? Jokesters? Communists? A plot to drive him out of his mind? He was important. Probably the most important nuclear physicist in the country. And this new project…
   He drove the car slowly forward, onto the silent highway. He watched each bush and tree as the car gained speed.
   A Communist plot. Some of the students were in a left-wing club. Some sort of Marxist study group. Maybe they had rigged up—
   In the glare of the headlights something glittered. Something at the edge of the highway.
   Douglas gazed at it, transfixed. Something square, a long block in the weeds at the side of the highway, where the great dark trees began. It glittered and shimmered. He slowed down, almost to a stop.
   A bar of gold, lying at the edge of the road.
   It was incredible. Slowly, Professor Douglas rolled down the window and peered out. Was it really gold? He laughed nervously. Probably not. He had often seen gold, of course. This looked like gold. But maybe it was lead, an ingot of lead with a gilt coating.
   But—why?
   A joke. A prank. College kids. They must have seen his car go past toward the Hendersons’ and knew he’d soon be driving back.
   Or—or it really was gold. Maybe an armored car had gone past. Turned the corner too swiftly. The ingot had slid out and fallen into the weeds. In that case there was a little fortune lying there, in the darkness at the edge of the highway.
   But it was illegal to possess gold. He’d have to return it to the Government. But couldn’t he saw off just a little piece? And if he did return it there was no doubt a reward of some kind. Probably several thousand dollars.
   A mad scheme flashed briefly through his mind. Get the ingot, crate it up, fly it to Mexico, out of the country. Eric Barnes owned a Piper Cub. He could easily get it into Mexico. Sell it. Retire. Live in comfort the rest of his life.
   Professor Douglas snorted angrily. It was his duty to return it. Call the Denver Mint, tell them about it. Or the police department. He reversed his car and backed up until he was even with the metal bar. He turned off the motor and slid out onto the dark highway. He had a job to do. As a loyal citizen—and, God knew, fifty tests had shown he was loyal—there was a job for him here. He leaned into the car and fumbled in the dashboard for the flashlight. If somebody had lost a bar of gold, it was up to him…
   A bar of gold. Impossible. A slow, cold chill settled over him, numbing his heart. A tiny voice in the back of his mind spoke clearly and rationally to him: Who would walk off and leave an ingot of gold?
   Something was going on.
   Fear gripped him. He stood frozen, trembling with terror. The dark, deserted highway. The silent mountains. He was alone. A perfect spot. If they wanted to get him—
   They?
   Who?
   He looked quickly around. Hiding in the trees, most likely. Waiting for him. Waiting for him to cross the highway, leave the road and enter the woods. Bend down and try to pick up the ingot. One quick blow as he bent over; that would be it.
   Douglas scrambled back into his car and snapped on the motor. He raced the motor and released the brake. The car jerked forward and gained speed. His hands shaking, Douglas bore down desperately on the wheel. He had to get out. Get away before—whoever they were got him.
   As he shifted into high he took one last look back, peering around through the open window. The ingot was still there, still glowing among the dark weeds at the edge of the highway. But there was a strange vagueness about it, an uncertain waver in the nearby atmosphere.
   Abruptly the ingot faded and disappeared. Its glow receded into darkness.
   Douglas glanced up, and gasped in horror.
   In the sky above him, something blotted out the stars. A great shape, so huge it staggered him. The shape moved, a disembodied circle of living presence, directly over his head.
   A face. A gigantic, cosmic face peering down. Like some great moon, blotting out everything else. The face hung for an instant, intent on him—on the spot he had just vacated. Then the face, like the ingot, faded and sank into darkness.
   The stars returned. He was alone.
   Douglas sank back against the seat. The car veered crazily and roared down the highway. His hands slid from the wheel and dropped at his sides. He caught the wheel again, just in time.
   There was no doubt about it. Somebody was after him. Trying to get him. But no Communists or student practical jokers. Or any beast, lingering from the dim past.
   Whatever it was, whoever they were, had nothing to do with Earth. It—they—were from some other world. They were out to get him.
   Him.
   But—why?
   Pete Berg listened closely. “Go on,” he said when Douglas halted.
   “That’s all.” Douglas turned to Bill Henderson. “Don’t try to tell me I’m out of my mind. I really saw it. It was looking down at me. The whole face this time, not just the eye.”
   “You think this was the face that the eye belonged to?” Jean Henderson asked.
   “I know it. The face had the same expression as the eye. Studying me.”
   “We’ve got to call the police,” Laura Douglas said in a thin, clipped voice. “This can’t go on. If somebody’s out to get him—”
   “The police won’t do any good.” Bill Henderson paced back and forth. It was late, after midnight. All the lights in the Douglas house were on. In one corner old Milton Erick, head of the Math Department, sat curled up, taking everything in, his wrinkled face expressionless.
   “We can assume,” Professor Erick said calmly, removing his pipe from between his yellow teeth, “they’re a nonterrestrial race. Their size and their position indicate they’re not Earthbound in any sense.”
   “But they can’t just stand in the sky!” Jean exploded. “There’s nothing up there!”
   “There may be other configurations of matter not normally connected or related to our own. An endless or multiple coexistence of universe systems, lying along a plane of coordinates totally unexplainable in present terms. Due to some singular juxtaposition of tangents, we are, at this moment, in contact with one of these other configurations.”
   “He means,” Bill Henderson explained, “that these people after Doug don’t belong to our universe. They come from a different dimension entirely.”
   “The face wavered,” Douglas murmured. “The gold and the face both wavered and faded out.”
   “Withdrew,” Erick stated. “Returned to their own universe. They have entry into ours at will, it would seem, a hole, so to speak, that they can enter through and return again.”
   “It’s a pity,” Jean said, “they’re so damn big. If they were smaller—”
   “Size is in their favor,” Erick admitted. “An unfortunate circumstance.”
   “All this academic wrangling!” Laura cried wildly. “We sit here working out theories and meanwhile they are after him!”
   “This might explain gods,” Bill said suddenly.
   “Gods?”
   Bill nodded. “Don’t you see? In the past these beings looked across the nexus at us, into our universe. Maybe even stepped down. Primitive people saw them and weren’t able to explain them. They built religions around them. Worshipped them.”
   “Mount Olympus,” Jean said. “Of course. And Moses met God at the top of Mount Sinai. We’re high up in the Rockies. Maybe contact only comes at high places. In the mountains, like this.”
   “And the Tibetan monks are situated in the highest land mass in the world,” Bill added. “That whole area. The highest and the oldest part of the world. All the great religions have been revealed in the mountains. Brought down by people who saw God and carried the word back.”
   “What I can’t understand,” Laura said, “is why they want him.” She spread her hands helplessly. “Why not somebody else? Why do they have to single him out?”
   Bill’s face was hard. “I think that’s pretty clear.”
   “Explain,” Erick rumbled.
   “What is Doug? About the best nuclear physicist in the world. Working on top-secret projects in nuclear fission. Advanced research. The Government is underwriting everything Bryant College is doing because Douglas is here.”
   “So?”
   “They want him because of his ability. Because he knows things. Because of their size-relationship to this universe, they can subject our lives to as careful a scrutiny as we maintain in the biology labs of—well, of a culture of Sarcina Pulmonum. But that doesn’t mean they’re culturally advanced over us.”
   “Of course!” Pete Berg exclaimed. “They want Doug for his knowledge. They want to pirate him off and make use of his mind for their own cultures.”
   “Parasites!” Jean gasped. “They must have always depended on us. Don’t you see? Men in the past who have disappeared, spirited off by these creatures.” She shivered. “They probably regard us as some sort of testing ground, where techniques and knowledge are painfully developed—for their benefit.”
   Douglas started to answer, but the words never escaped his mouth. He sat rigid in his chair, his head turned to one side.
   Outside, in the darkness beyond the house, someone was calling his name.
   He got up and moved toward the door. They were all staring at him in amazement.
   “What is it?” Bill demanded. “What’s the matter, Doug?”
   Laura caught his arm. “What’s wrong? Are you sick? Say something! Doug!”
   Professor Douglas jerked free and pulled open the front door. He stepped out onto the porch. There was a faint moon. A soft light hovered over everything.
   “Professor Douglas!” The voice again, sweet and fresh—a girl’s voice.
   Outlined by the moonlight, at the foot of the porch steps, stood a girl. Blonde-haired, perhaps twenty years old. In a checkered skirt, pale Angora sweater, a silk kerchief around her neck. She was waving at him anxiously, her small face pleading.
   “Professor, do you have a minute? Something terrible has gone wrong with…” Her voice trailed off as she moved nervously away from the house, into the darkness.
   “What’s the matter?” he shouted.
   He could hear her voice faintly. She was moving off.
   Douglas was torn with indecision. He hesitated, then hurried impatiently down the stairs after her. The girl retreated from him, wringing her hands together, her full lips twisting wildly with despair. Under her sweater, her breasts rose and fell in an agony of terror, each quiver sharply etched by the moonlight.
   “What is it?” Douglas cried. “What’s wrong?” He hurried angrily after her. “For God’s sake, stand still!”
   The girl was still moving away, drawing him farther and farther away from the house, toward the great green expanse of lawn, the beginning of the campus. Douglas was overcome with annoyance. Damn the girl! Why couldn’t she wait for him?
   “Hold on a minute!” he said, hurrying after her. He started out onto the dark lawn, puffing with exertion. “Who are you? What the hell do you —”
   There was a flash. A bolt of blinding light crashed past him and seared a smoking pit in the lawn a few feet away.
   Douglas halted, dumfounded. A second bolt came, this one just ahead of him. The wave of heat threw him back. He stumbled and half fell. The girl had abruptly stopped. She stood silent and unmoving, her face expressionless. There was a peculiar waxy quality to her. She had become, all at once, utterly inanimate.
   But he had no time to think about that. Douglas turned and lumbered back toward the house. A third bolt came, striking just ahead of him. He veered to the right and threw himself into the shrubs growing near the wall. Rolling and gasping, he pressed against the concrete side of the house, squeezing next to it as hard as he could.
   There was a sudden shimmer in the star-studded sky above him. A faint motion. Then nothing. He was alone. The bolts ceased. And—
   The girl was gone, also.
   A decoy. A clever imitation to lure him away from the house, so he’d move out into the open where they could take a shot at him.
   He got shakily to his feet and edged around the side of the house. Bill Henderson and Laura and Berg were on the porch, talking nervously and looking around for him. There was his car, parked in the driveway. Maybe, if he could reach it—
   He peered up at the sky. Only stars. No hint of them. If he could get in his car and drive off, down the highway, away from the mountains, toward Denver, where it was lower, maybe he’d be safe.
   He took a deep, shuddering breath. Only ten yards to the car. Thirty feet. If he could once get in it—
   He ran. Fast. Down the path and along the driveway. He grabbed open the car door and leaped inside. With one quick motion he threw the switch and released the brake.
   The car glided forward. The motor came on with a sputter. Douglas bore down desperately on the gas. The car leaped forward. On the porch, Laura shrieked and started down the stairs. Her cry and Bill’s startled shout were lost in the roar of the engine.
   A moment later he was on the highway, racing away from town, down the long, curving road toward Denver.

   He could call Laura from Denver. She could join him. They could take the train east. The hell with Bryant College. His life was at stake. He drove for hours without stopping, through the night. The sun came up and rose slowly in the sky. More cars were on the road now. He passed a couple of diesel trucks rumbling slowly and cumbersomely along.
   He was beginning to feel a little better. The mountains were behind. More distance between him and them…
   His spirits rose as the day warmed. There were hundreds of universities and laboratories scattered around the country. He could easily continue with his work someplace else. They’d never get him, once he was out of the mountains.
   He slowed his car down. The gas gauge was near empty.
   To the right of the road was a filling station and a small roadside cafe. The sight of the cafe reminded him he hadn’t eaten breakfast. His stomach was beginning to protest. There were a couple of cars pulled up in front of the cafe. A few people were sitting inside at the counter.
   He turned off the highway and coasted into the gas station.
   “Fill her up!” he called to the attendant. He got out on the hot gravel, leaving the car in gear. His mouth watered. A plateful of hotcakes, side order of ham, steaming black coffee… “Can I leave her here?”
   “The car?” The white-clad attendant unscrewed the cap and began filling the tank. “What do you mean?”
   “Fill her up and park her for me. I’ll be out in a few minutes. I want to catch some breakfast.”
   “Breakfast?”
   Douglas was annoyed. What was the matter with the man? He indicated the cafe. A truck driver had pushed the screen door open and was standing on the step, picking his teeth thoughtfully. Inside, the waitress hustled back and forth. He could already smell the coffee, the bacon frying on the griddle. A faint tinny sound of a jukebox drifted out. A warm, friendly sound. “The cafe.”
   The attendant stopped pumping gas. He put down the hose slowly and turned toward Douglas, a strange expression on his face. “What cafe?” he said.
   The cafe wavered and abruptly winked out. Douglas fought down a scream of terror. Where the cafe had been there was only an open field.
   Greenish brown grass. A few rusty tin cans. Bottles. Debris. A leaning fence. Off in the distance, the outline of the mountains.
   Douglas tried to get hold of himself. “I’m a little tired,” he muttered. He climbed unsteadily back into the car. “How much?”
   “I just hardly began to fill the—”
   “Here.” Douglas pushed a bill at him. “Get out of the way.” He turned on the motor and raced out onto the highway, leaving the astonished attendant staring after him.
   That had been close. Damn close. A trap. And he had almost stepped inside.
   But the thing that really terrified him wasn’t the closeness. He was out of the mountains and they had still been ahead of him.
   It hadn’t done any good. He wasn’t any safer than last night. They were everywhere.
   The car sped along the highway. He was getting near Denver—but so what? It wouldn’t make any difference. He could dig a hole in Death Valley and still not be safe. They were after him and they weren’t going to give up. That much was clear.
   He racked his mind desperately. He had to think of something, some way to get loose.
   A parasitic culture. A race that preyed on humans, utilized human knowledge and discoveries. Wasn’t that what Bill had said? They were after his know-how, his unique ability and knowledge of nuclear physics. He had been singled out, separated from the pack because of his superior ability and training. They would keep after him until they got him. And then—what?
   Horror gripped him. The gold ingot. The decoy. The girl had looked perfectly real. The cafe full of people. Even the smells of food. Bacon frying. Steaming coffee.
   God, if only he were just an ordinary person, without skill, without special ability. If only—
   A sudden flapping sound. The car lurched. Douglas cursed wildly. A flat. Of all times…
   Of all times.
   Douglas brought the car to a halt at the side of the road. He switched off the motor and put on the brake. For a while he sat in silence. Finally he fumbled in his coat and got out a mashed package of cigarettes. He lit up slowly and then rolled the window down to let in some air.
   He was trapped, of course. There was nothing he could do. The flat had obviously been arranged. Something on the road, sprinkled down from above. Tacks, probably.
   The highway was deserted. No cars in sight. He was utterly alone, between towns. Denver was thirty miles ahead. No chance of getting there. Nothing around him but terribly level fields, desolated plains.
   Nothing but level ground—and the blue sky above.
   Douglas peered up. He couldn’t see them, but they were there, waiting for him to get out of his car. His knowledge, his ability, would be utilized by an alien culture. He would become an instrument in their hands. All his learning would be theirs. He would be a slave and nothing more.
   Yet, in a way, it was a complement. From a whole society, he alone had been selected. His skill and knowledge, over everything else. A faint glow rose in his cheeks. Probably they had been studying him for some time. The great eye had no doubt often peered down through its telescope, or microscope, or whatever it was, peered down and seen him. Seen his ability and realized what that would be worth to its own culture.
   Douglas opened the car door. He stepped out onto the hot pavement. He dropped his cigarette and calmly stubbed it out. He took a deep breath, stretching and yawning. He could see the tacks now, bright bits of light on the surface of the pavement. Both front tires were flat.
   Something shimmered above him. Douglas waited quietly. Now that it had finally come, he was no longer afraid. He watched with a kind of detached curiosity. The something grew. It fanned out over him, swelling and expanding. For a moment it hesitated. Then it descended.
   Douglas stood still as the enormous cosmic net closed over him. The strands pressed against him as the net rose. He was going up, heading toward the sky. But he was relaxed, at peace, no longer afraid.
   Why be afraid? He would be doing much the same work as always. He would miss Laura and the college, of course, the intellectual companionship of the faculty, the bright faces of the students. But no doubt he would find companionship up above. Persons to work with. Trained minds with which to communicate.
   The net was lifting him faster and faster. The ground fell rapidly away. The Earth dwindled from a flat surface to a globe. Douglas watched with professional interest. Above him, beyond the intricate strands of the net, he could see the outline of the other universe, the new world toward which he was heading.
   Shapes. Two enormous shapes squatting down. Two incredibly huge figures bending over. One was drawing in the net. The other watched, holding something in its hand. A landscape. Dim forms too vast for Douglas to comprehend.
   At last, a thought came. What a struggle.
   It was worth it, thought the other creature.
   Their thoughts roared through him. Powerful thoughts, from immense minds.
   I was right. The biggest yet. What a catch!
   Must weigh all of twenty-four ragets!
   At last!
   Suddenly Douglas’s composure left him. A chill of horror flashed through his mind. What were they talking about? What did they mean?
   But then he was being dumped from the net. He was falling. Something was coming up at him. A flat, shiny surface. What was it?
   Oddly, it looked almost like a frying pan.

Nanny

Philip Kindred Dick

Nanny
by Philip K. Dick

   “When I look back,” Mary Fields said, “I marvel that we ever could have grown up without a Nanny to take care of us.”
   There was no doubt that Nanny had changed the whole life of the Fields’s house since she had come. From the time the children opened their eyes in the morning to their last sleepy nod at night, Nanny was in there with them, watching them, hovering about them, seeing that all their wants were taken care of.
   Mr. Fields knew, when he went to the office, that his kids were safe, perfectly safe. And Mary was relieved of a countless procession of chores and worries. She did not have to wake the children up, dress them, see that they were washed, ate their meals, or anything else. She did not even have to take them to school. And after school, if they did not come right home, she did not have to pace back and forth in anxiety, worried that something had happened to them.
   Not that Nanny spoiled them, of course. When they demanded something absurd or harmful (a whole storeful of candy, or a policeman’s motorcycle) Nanny’s will was like iron. Like a good shepherd she knew when to refuse the flock its wishes.
   Both children loved her. Once, when Nanny had to be sent to the repair shop, they cried and cried without stopping. Neither their mother nor their father could console them. But at last Nanny was back again, and everything was all right. And just in time! Mrs. Fields was exhausted.
   “Lord,” she said, throwing herself down. “What would we do without her?”
   Mr. Fields looked up. “Without who?”
   “Without Nanny.”
   “Heaven only knows,” Mr. Fields said. After Nanny had aroused the children from sleep—by emitting a soft, musical whirr a few feet from their heads—she made certain that they were dressed and down at the breakfast table promptly, with faces clean and dispositions unclouded. If they were cross Nanny allowed them the pleasure of riding downstairs on her back.
   Coveted pleasure! Almost like a roller coaster, with Bobby and Jean hanging on for dear life and Nanny flowing down step by step in the funny rolling way she had.
   Nanny did not prepare breakfast, of course. That was all done by the kitchen. But she remained to see that the children ate properly and then, when breakfast was over, she supervised their preparations for school. And after they had got their books together and were all brushed and neat, her most important job: seeing that they were safe on the busy streets.
   There were many hazards in the city, quite enough to keep Nanny watchful. The swift rocket cruisers that swept along, carrying businessmen to work. The time a bully had tried to hurt Bobby. One quick push from Nanny’s starboard grapple and away he went, howling for all he was worth. And the time a drunk started talking to Jean, with heaven knows what in mind. Nanny tipped him into the gutter with one nudge of her powerful metal side.
   Sometimes the children would linger in front of a store. Nanny would have to prod them gently, urging them on. Or if (as sometimes happened) the children were late to school, Nanny would put them on her back and fairly speed along the sidewalk, her treads buzzing and flapping at a great rate.
   After school Nanny was with them constantly, supervising their play, watching over them, protecting them, and at last, when it began to get dark and late, dragging them away from their games and turned in the direction of home.
   Sure enough, just as dinner was being set on the table, there was Nanny, herding Bobby and Jean in through the front door, clicking and whirring admonishingly at them. Just in time for dinner! A quick run to the bathroom to wash their faces and hands.
   And at night—
   Mrs. Fields was silent, frowning just a little. At night … “Tom?” she said.
   Her husband looked up from his paper. “What?”
   “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something. It’s very odd, something I don’t understand. Of course, I don’t know anything about mechanical things. But Tom, at night when we’re all asleep and the house is quiet, Nanny—”
   There was a sound.
   “Mommy!” Jean and Bobby came scampering into the living room, their faces flushed with pleasure. “Mommy, we raced Nanny all the way home, and we won!”
   “We won,” Bobby said. “We beat her.”
   “We ran a lot faster than she did,” Jean said.
   “Where is Nanny, children?” Mrs. Fields asked.
   “She’s coming. Hello, Daddy.”
   “Hello, kids,” Tom Fields said. He cocked his head to one side, listening. From the front porch came an odd scraping sound, an unusual whirr and scrape. He smiled.
   “That’s Nanny,” Bobby said.
   And into the room came Nanny.
   Mr. Fields watched her. She had always intrigued him. The only sound in the room was her metal treads, scraping against the hardwood floor, a peculiar rhythmic sound. Nanny came to a halt in front of him, stopping a few feet away. Two unwinking photocell eyes appraised him, eyes on flexible wire stalks. The stalks moved speculatively, weaving slightly. Then they withdrew.
   Nanny was built in the shape of a sphere, a large metal sphere, flattened on the bottom. Her surface had been sprayed with a dull green enamel, which had become chipped and gouged through wear. There was not much visible in addition to the eye stalks. The treads could not be seen. On each side of the hull was the outline of a door. From these the magnetic grapples came, when they were needed. The front of the hull came to a point, and there the metal was reinforced. The extra plates welded both fore and aft made her look almost like a weapon of war. A tank of some land. Or a ship, a rounded metal ship that had come up on land. Or like an insect. A sowbug, as they are called.
   “Come on!” Bobby shouted.
   Abruptly Nanny moved, spinning slightly as her treads gripped the floor and turned her around. One of her side doors opened. A long metal rod shot out. Playfully, Nanny caught Bobby’s arm with her grapple and drew him to her. She perched him on her back. Bobby’s legs straddled the metal hull. He kicked with his heels excitedly, jumping up and down.
   “Race you around the block!” Jean shouted. “Giddup!” Bobby cried. Nanny moved away, out of the room with him. A great round bug of whirring metal and relays, clicking photocells and tubes. Jean ran beside her. There was silence. The parents were alone again. “Isn’t she amazing?” Mrs. Fields said. “Of course, robots are a common sight these days. Certainly more so than a few years ago. You see them everywhere you go, behind counters in stores, driving buses, digging ditches—”
   “But Nanny is different,” Tom Fields murmured.
   “She’s—she’s not like a machine. She’s like a person. A living person. But after all, she’s much more complex than any other kind. She has to be. They say she’s even more intricate than the kitchen.”
   “We certainly paid enough for her,” Tom said.
   “Yes,” Mary Fields murmured. “She’s very much like a living creature.” There was a strange note in her voice. “Very much so.”
   “She sure takes care of the kids,” Tom said, returning to his newspaper.
   “But I’m worried.” Mary put her coffee cup down, frowning. They were eating dinner. It was late. The two children had been sent up to bed. Mary touched her mouth with her napkin. “Tom, I’m worried. I wish you’d listen to me.”
   Tom Fields blinked. “Worried? What about?”
   “About her. About Nanny.”
   “Why?”
   “I—I don’t know.”
   “You mean we’re going to have to repair her again? We just got through fixing her. What is it this time? If those kids didn’t get her to—”
   “It’s not that.” “What, then?”
   For a long time his wife did not answer. Abruptly she got up from the table and walked across the room to the stairs. She peered up, staring into the darkness. Tom watched her, puzzled.
   “What’s the matter?”
   “I want to be sure she can’t hear us.”
   “She? Nanny?”
   Mary came toward him. “Tom, I woke up last night again. Because of the sounds. I heard them again, the same sounds, the sounds I heard before. And you told me it didn’t mean anything!”
   Tom gestured. “It doesn’t. What does it mean?”
   “I don’t know. That’s what worries me. But after we’re all asleep she comes downstairs. She leaves their room. She slips down the stairs as quietly as she can, as soon as she’s sure we’re all asleep.”
   “But why?”
   “I don’t know! Last night I heard her going down, slithering down the stairs, as quiet as a mouse. I heard her moving around down here. And then—”
   “Then what?”
   “Tom, then I heard her go out the back door. Out, outside the house. She went into the back yard. That was all I heard for awhile.”
   Tom rubbed his jaw. “Go on.”
   “I listened. I sat up in bed. You were asleep, of course. Sound asleep. No use trying to wake you. I got up and went to the window. I lifted the shade and looked out. She was out there, out in the back yard.”
   “What was she doing?”
   “I don’t know.” Mary Fields’s face was lined with worry. “I don’t know! What in the world would a Nanny be doing outside at night, in the back yard?”
   It was dark. Terribly dark. But the infrared filter clicked into place, and the darkness vanished. The metal shape moved forward, easing through the kitchen, its treads half-retracted for greatest quiet. It came to the back door and halted, listening.
   There was no sound. The house was still. They were all asleep upstairs. Sound asleep.
   The Nanny pushed, and the back door opened. It moved out onto the porch, letting the door close gently behind it. The night air was thin and cold. And full of smells, all the strange, tingling smells of the night, when spring has begun to change into summer, when the ground is still moist and the hot July sun has not had a chance to kill all the little growing things.
   The Nanny went down the steps, onto the cement path. Then it moved cautiously onto the lawn, the wet blades of grass slapping its sides. After a time it stopped, rising up on its back treads. Its front part jutted up into the air. Its eye stalks stretched, rigid and taut, waving very slightly. Then it settled back down and continued its motion forward.
   It was just going around the peach tree, coming back toward the house, when the noise came.
   It stopped instantly, alert. Its side doors fell away and its grapples ran out their full lengths, lithe and wary. On the other side of the board fence, beyond the row of shasta daisies, something had stirred. The Nanny peered, clicking filters rapidly. Only a few faint stars winked in the sky overhead. But it saw, and that was enough.
   On the other side of the fence a second Nanny was moving, making its way softly through the flowers, coming toward the fence. It was trying to make as little noise as possible. Both Nannies stopped, suddenly unmoving, regarding each other—the green Nanny waiting in its own yard, the blue prowler that had been coming toward the fence.
   The blue prowler was a larger Nanny, built to manage two young boys. Its sides were dented and warped from use, but its grapples were still strong and powerful. In addition to the usual reinforced plates across its nose there was a gouge of tough steel, a jutting jaw that was already sliding into position, ready and able.
   Mecho-Products, its manufacturer, had lavished attention on this jaw-construction. It was their trademark, their unique feature. Their ads, their brochures, stressed the massive frontal scoop mounted on all their models. And there was an optional assist: a cutting edge, power-driven, that at extra cost could easily be installed in their “Luxury-line” models.
   This blue Nanny was so equipped.
   Moving cautiously ahead, the blue Nanny reached the fence. It stopped and carefully inspected the boards. They were thin and rotted, put up a long time ago. It pushed its hard head against the wood. The fence gave, splintering and ripping. At once the green Nanny rose on its back treads, its grapples leaping out. A fierce joy filled it, a bursting excitement. The wild frenzy of battle.
   The two closed, rolling silently on the ground, their grapples locked. Neither made any noise, the blue Mecho-Products Nanny nor the smaller, lighter, pale-green Service Industries, Inc., Nanny. On and on they fought, hugged tightly together, the great jaw trying to push underneath, into the soft treads. And the green Nanny trying to hook its metal point into the eyes that gleamed fitfully against its side. The green Nanny had the disadvantage of being a medium-priced model; it was outclassed and outweighed. But it fought grimly, furiously.
   On and on they struggled, rolling in the wet soil. Without sound of any kind. Performing the wrathful, ultimate task for which each had been designed.
   “I can’t imagine,” Mary Fields murmured, shaking her head. “I just don’t know.”
   “Do you suppose some animal did it?” Tom conjectured. “Are there any big dogs in the neighborhood?”
   “No. There was a big red Irish setter, but they moved away, to the country. That was Mr. Petty’s dog.”
   The two of them watched, troubled and disturbed. Nanny lay at rest by the bathroom door, watching Bobby to make sure he brushed his teeth. The green hull was twisted and bent. One eye had been shattered, the glass knocked out, splintered. One grapple no longer retracted completely; it hung forlornly out of its little door, dragging uselessly.
   “I just don’t understand,” Mary repeated. “I’ll call the repair place and see what they say. Tom, it must have happened sometime during the night. While we were asleep. The noises I heard—”
   “Shhh,” Tom muttered warningly. Nanny was coming toward them, away from the bathroom. Clicking and whirring raggedly, she passed them, a limping green tub of metal that emitted an unrhythmic, grating sound. Tom and Mary Fields unhappily watched her as she lumbered slowly into the living room. “I wonder,” Mary murmured.
   “Wonder what?”
   “I wonder if this will happen again.” She glanced up suddenly at her husband, eyes full of worry. “You know how the children love her … and they need her so. They just wouldn’t be safe without her. Would they?”
   “Maybe it won’t happen again,” Tom said soothingly. “Maybe it was an accident.” But he didn’t believe it; he knew better. What had happened was no accident.
   From the garage he backed his surface cruiser, maneuvered it until its loading entrance was locked against the rear door of the house. It took only a moment to load the sagging, dented Nanny inside; within ten minutes he was on his way across town to the repair and maintenance department of Service Industries, Inc.
   The serviceman, in grease-stained white overalls, met him at the entrance. “Troubles?” he asked wearily; behind him, in the depths of the block-long building, stood rows of battered Nannies, in various stages of disassembly. “What seems to be the matter this time?”
   Tom said nothing. He ordered the Nanny out of the cruiser and waited while the serviceman examined it for himself.
   Shaking his head, the serviceman crawled to his feet and wiped grease from his hands. “That’s going to run into money,” he said. “The whole neural transmission’s out.”
   His throat dry, Tom demanded: “Ever seen anything like this before? It didn’t break; you know that. It was demolished.”
   “Sure,” the serviceman agreed tonelessly. “It pretty much got taken down a peg. On the basis of those missing chunks—” He indicated the dented anterior hull-sections. “I’d guess it was one of Mecho’s new jaw-models.”
   Tom Fields’s blood stopped moving in his veins. “Then this isn’t new to you,” he said softly, his chest constricting. “This goes on all the time.”
   “Well, Mecho just put out that jaw-model. It’s not half bad … costs about twice what this model ran. Of course,” the serviceman added thoughtfully, “we have an equivalent. We can match their best, and for less money.”
   Keeping his voice as calm as possible, Tom said: “I want this one fixed. I’m not getting another.”
   “I’ll do what I can. But it won’t be the same as it was. The damage goes pretty deep. I’d advise you to trade it in—you can get damn near what you paid. With the new models coming out in a month or so, the salesmen are eager as hell to—”
   “Let me get this straight.” Shakily, Tom Fields lit up a cigarette. “You people really don’t want to fix these, do you? You want to sell brand-new ones, when these break down.” He eyed the repairman intently. “Break down, or are knocked down.”
   The repairman shrugged. “It seems like a waste of time to fix it up. It’s going to get finished off, anyhow, soon.” He kicked the misshapen green hull with his boot. “This model is around three years old. Mister, it’s obsolete.”
   “Fix it up,” Tom grated. He was beginning to see the whole picture; his self-control was about to snap. “I’m not getting a new one! I want this one fixed!”
   “Sure,” the serviceman said, resigned. He began making out a work-order sheet. “We’ll do our best. But don’t expect miracles.”
   While Tom Fields was jerkily signing his name to the sheet, two more damaged Nannies were brought into the repair building.
   “When can I get it back?” he demanded.
   “It’ll take a couple of days,” the mechanic said, nodding toward the rows of semi-repaired Nannies behind him. “As you can see,” he added leisurely, “we’re pretty well full-up.”
   “I’ll wait,” Tom said tautly. “Even if it takes a month.”
   “Let’s go to the park!” Jean cried.
   So they went to the park.
   It was a lovely day, with the sun shining down hotly and the grass and flowers blowing in the wind. The two children strolled along the gravel path, breathing the warm-scented air, taking deep breaths and holding the presence of roses and hydrangeas and orange blossoms inside them as long as possible. They passed through a swaying grove of dark, rich cedars. The ground was soft with mold underfoot, the velvet, moist fur of a living world beneath their feet. Beyond the cedars, where the sun returned and the blue sky flashed back into being, a great green lawn stretched out.
   Behind them Nanny came, trudging slowly, her treads clicking noisily. The dragging grapple had been repaired, and a new optic unit had been installed in place of the damaged one. But the smooth coordination of the old days was lacking; and the clean-cut lines of her hull had not been restored. Occasionally she halted, and the two children halted, too, waiting impatiently for her to catch up with them.
   “What’s the matter, Nanny?” Bobby asked her.
   “Something’s wrong with her,” Jean complained. “She’s been all funny since last Wednesday. Real slow and funny. And she was gone, for awhile.”
   “She was in the repair shop,” Bobby announced. “I guess she got sort of tired. She’s old, Daddy says. I heard him and Mommy talking.”
   A little sadly they continued on, with Nanny painfully following. Now they had come to benches placed here and there on the lawn, with people languidly dozing in the sun. On the grass lay a young man, a newspaper over his face, his coat rolled up under his head. They crossed carefully around him, so as not to step on him.
   “There’s the lake!” Jean shouted, her spirits returning.
   The great field of grass sloped gradually down, lower and lower. At the far end, the lowest end, lay a path, a gravel trail, and beyond that, a blue lake. The two children scampered excitedly, filled with anticipation. They hurried faster and faster down the carefully-graded slope, Nanny struggling miserably to keep up with them.
   “The lake!”
   “Last one there’s a dead Martian stinko-bug!”
   Breathlessly, they rushed across the path, onto the tiny strip of green bank against which the water lapped. Bobby threw himself down on his hands and knees, laughing and panting and peering down into the water. Jean settled down beside him, smoothing her dress tidily into place. Deep in the cloudy-blue water some tadpoles and minnows moved, minute artificial fish too small to catch.
   At one end of the lake some children were floating boats with flapping white sails. At a bench a fat man sat laboriously reading a book, a pipe jammed in his mouth. A young man and woman strolled along the edge of the lake together, arm in arm, intent on each other, oblivious of the world around them.
   “I wish we had a boat,” Bobby said wistfully.
   Grinding and clashing, Nanny managed to make her way across the path and up to them. She stopped, settling down, retracting her treads. She did not stir. One eye, the good eye, reflected the sunlight. The other had not been synchronized; it gaped with futile emptiness. She had managed to shift most of her weight on her less-damaged side, but her motion was bad and uneven, and slow. There was a smell about her, an odor of burning oil and friction.
   Jean studied her. Finally she patted the bent green side sympathetically. “Poor Nanny! What did you do, Nanny? What happened to you? Were you in a wreck?”
   “Let’s push Nanny in,” Bobby said lazily. “And see if she can swim. Can a Nanny swim?”
   Jean said no, because she was too heavy. She would sink to the bottom and they would never see her again.
   “Then we won’t push her in,” Bobby agreed.
   For a time there was silence. Overhead a few birds fluttered past, plump specks streaking swiftly across the sky. A small boy on a bicycle came riding hesitantly along the gravel path, his front wheel wobbling.
   “I wish I had a bicycle,” Bobby murmured.
   The boy careened on past. Across the lake the fat man stood up and knocked his pipe against the bench. He closed his book and sauntered off along the path, wiping his perspiring forehead with a vast red handkerchief.
   “What happens to Nannies when they get old?” Bobby asked wonderingly. “What do they do? Where do they go?”
   “They go to heaven.” Jean lovingly thumped the green dented hull with her hand. “Just like everybody else.”
   “Are Nannies born? Were there always Nannies?” Bobby had begun to conjecture on ultimate cosmic mysteries. “Maybe there was a time before there were Nannies. I wonder what the world was like in the days before Nannies lived.”
   “Of course there were always Nannies,” Jean said impatiently. “If there weren’t, where did they come from?”
   Bobby couldn’t answer that. He meditated for a time, but presently he became sleepy … he was really too young to solve such problems. His eyelids became heavy and he yawned. Both he and Jean lay on the warm grass by the edge of the lake, watching the sky and the clouds, listening to the wind moving through the grove of cedar trees. Beside them the battered green Nanny rested and recuperated her meager strength.
   A little girl came slowly across the field of grass, a pretty child in a blue dress with a bright ribbon in her long dark hair. She was coming toward the lake.
   “Look,” Jean said. “There’s Phyllis Casworthy. She has an orange Nanny.”
   They watched, interested. “Who ever heard of an orange Nanny?” Bobby said, disgusted. The girl and her Nanny crossed the path a short distance down, and reached the edge of the lake. She and her orange Nanny halted, gazing around at the water and the white sails of toy boats, the mechanical fish.
   “Her Nanny is bigger than ours,” Jean observed.
   “That’s true,” Bobby admitted. He thumped the green side loyally. “But ours is nicer. Isn’t she?”
   Their Nanny did not move. Surprised, he turned to look. The green Nanny stood rigid, taut. Its better eye stalk was far out, staring at the orange Nanny fixedly, unwinkingly.
   “What’s the matter?” Bobby asked uncomfortably.
   “Nanny, what’s the matter?” Jean echoed.
   The green Nanny whirred, as its gears meshed. Its treads dropped and locked into place with a sharp metallic snap. Slowly its doors retracted and its grapples slithered out.
   “Nanny, what are you doing?” Jean scrambled nervously to her feet. Bobby leaped up, too. “Nanny! What’s going on?”
   “Let’s go.” Jean said, frightened. “Let’s go home.”
   “Come on, Nanny,” Bobby ordered. “We’re going home, now.”
   The green Nanny moved away from them; it was totally unaware of their existence. Down the lake-side the other Nanny, the great orange Nanny, detached itself from the little girl and began to flow.
   “Nanny, you come back!” the little girl’s voice came, shrill and apprehensive.
   Jean and Bobby rushed up the sloping lawn, away from the lake. “She’ll come!” Bobby said. “Nanny! Please come!”
   But the Nanny did not come.
   The orange Nanny neared. It was huge, much more immense than the blue Mecho jaw-model that had come into the back yard that night. That one now lay scattered in pieces on the far side of the fence, hull ripped open, its parts strewn everywhere.
   This Nanny was the largest the green Nanny had ever seen. The green Nanny moved awkwardly to meet it, raising its grapples and preparing its internal shields. But the orange Nanny was unbending a. square arm of metal, mounted on a long cable. The metal arm whipped out, rising high in the air. It began to whirl in a circle, gathering ominous velocity, faster and faster.
   The green Nanny hesitated. It retreated, moving uncertainly away from the swinging mace of metal. And as it rested warily, unhappily, trying to make up its mind, the other leaped.
   “Nanny!” Jean screamed.
   “Nanny! Nanny!”
   The two metal bodies rolled furiously in the grass, fighting and struggling desperately. Again and again the metal mace came, bashing wildly into the green side. The warm sun shone benignly down on them. The surface of the lake eddied gently in the wind.
   “Nanny!” Bobby screamed, helplessly jumping up and down.
   But there was no response from the frenzied, twisting mass of crashing orange and green.
   “What are you going to do?” Mary Fields asked, tight-lipped and pale.
   “You stay here.” Tom grabbed up his coat and threw it on; he yanked his hat down from the closet shelf and strode toward the front door.
   “Where are you going?”
   “Is the cruiser out front?” Tom pulled open the front door and made his way out onto the porch. The two children, miserable and trembling, watched him fearfully.
   “Yes,” Mary murmured, “it’s out front. But where—”
   Tom turned abruptly to the children. “You’re sure she’s—dead?”
   Bobby nodded. His face was streaked with grimy tears. “Pieces … all over the lawn.”
   Tom nodded grimly. “I’ll be right back. And don’t worry at all. You three stay here.”
   He strode down the front steps, down the walk, to the parked cruiser. A moment later they heard him drive furiously away.
   He had to go to several agencies before he found what he wanted. Service Industries had nothing he could use; he was through with them. It was at Allied Domestic that he saw exactly what he was looking for, displayed in their luxurious, well-lighted window. They were just closing, but the clerk let him inside when he saw the expression on his face.
   “I’ll take it,” Tom said, reaching into his coat for his checkbook.
   “Which one, sir?” the clerk faltered.
   “The big one. The big black one in the window. With the four arms and the ram in front.”
   The clerk beamed, his face aglow with pleasure. “Yes sir!” he cried, whipping out his order pad. “The Imperator Delux, with power-beam focus. Did you want the optional high-velocity grapple-lock and the remote-control feedback? At moderate cost, we can equip her with a visual report screen; you can follow the situation from the comfort of your own living room.”
   “The situation?” Tom said thickly.
   “As she goes into action.” The clerk began writing rapidly. “And I mean action–this model warms up and closes in on its adversary within fifteen seconds of the time its activated. You can’t find faster reaction in any single-unit models, ours or anybody else’s. Six months ago, they said fifteen second closing was a pipe dream.” The clerk laughed excitedly. “But science strides on.”
   A strange cold numbness settled over Tom Fields. “Listen,” he said hoarsely. Grabbing the clerk by the lapel he yanked him closer. The order pad fluttered away; the clerk gulped with surprise and fright. “Listen to me,” Tom grated, “you’re building these things bigger all the time– aren’t you? Every year, new models, new weapons. You and all the other companies—building them with improved equipment to destroy each other.”
   “Oh,” the clerk squeaked indignantly, “Allied Domestic’s models are never destroyed. Banged up a little now and then, perhaps, but you show me one of our models that’s been put out of commission.” With dignity, he retrieved his order pad and smoothed down his coat. “No, sir,” he said emphatically, “our models survive. Why, I saw a seven-year-old Allied running around, an old Model 3-S. Dented a bit, perhaps, but plenty of fire left. I’d like to see one of those cheap Protecto-Corp. models try to tangle with that.”
   Controlling himself with an effort, Tom asked: “But why? What’s it all for? What’s the purpose in this—competition between them?”
   The clerk hesitated. Uncertainly, he began again with his order pad. “Yes sir,” he said. “Competition; you put your finger right on it. Successful competition, to be exact. Allied Domestic doesn’t meet competition—it demolishes it.”
   It took a second for Tom Fields to react. Then understanding came. “I see,” he said. “In other words, every year these things are obsolete. No good, not large enough. Not powerful enough. And if they’re not replaced, if I don’t get a new one, a more advanced model—”
   “Your present Nanny was, ah, the loser?” The clerk smiled knowingly. “Your present model was, perhaps, slightly anachronistic? It failed to meet present-day standards of competition? It, ah, failed to come out at the end of the day?”
   “It never came home,” Tom said thickly.
   “Yes, it was demolished … I fully understand. Very common. You see, sir, you don’t have a choice. It’s nobody’s fault, sir. Don’t blame us; don’t blame Allied Domestic.”
   “But,” Tom said harshly, “when one is destroyed, that means you sell another one. That means a sale for you. Money in the cash register.”
   “True. But we all have to meet contemporary standards of excellence. We can’t let ourselves fall behind … as you saw, sir, if you don’t mind my saying so, you saw the unfortunate consequences of falling behind.”
   “Yes,” Tom agreed, in an almost inaudible voice. “They told me not to have her repaired. They said I should replace her.”
   The clerk’s confident, smugly-beaming face seemed to expand. Like a miniature sun, it glowed happily, exaltedly. “But now you’re all set up, sir. With this model you’re right up there in the front. Your worries are over, Mr… .” He halted expectantly. “Your name, sir? To whom shall I make out this purchase order?”
   Bobby and Jean watched with fascination as the delivery men lugged the enormous crate into the living room. Grunting and sweating, they set it down and straightened gratefully up.
   “All right,” Tom said crisply. “Thanks.”
   “Not at all, mister.” The delivery men stalked out, noisily closing the door after them.
   “Daddy, what is it?” Jean whispered. The two children came cautiously around the crate, wide-eyed and awed.
   “You’ll see in a minute.”
   “Tom, it’s past their bedtime,” Mary protested. “Can’t they look at it tomorrow?”
   “I want them to look at it now.” Tom disappeared downstairs into the basement and returned with a screwdriver. Kneeling on the floor beside the crate he began rapidly unscrewing the bolts that held it together. “They can go to bed a little late, for once.”
   He removed the boards, one by one, working expertly and calmly. At last the final board was gone, propped up : against the wall with the others. He unclipped the book of instructions and the 90-day warranty and handed them to Mary. “Hold onto these.”
   “It’s a Nanny!” Bobby cried.
   “It’s a huge, huge Nanny!”
   In the crate the great black shape lay quietly, like an enormous metal tortoise, encased in a coating of grease. Carefully checked, oiled, and fully guaranteed. Tom nodded. “That’s right. It’s a Nanny, a new Nanny. To take the place of the old one.”
   “For us?”
   “Yes.” Tom sat down in a nearby chair and lit a cigarette. “Tomorrow morning we’ll turn her on and warm her up. See how she runs.”
   The children’s eyes were like saucers. Neither of them could breathe or speak.
   “But this time,” Mary said, “you must stay away from the park. Don’t take her near the park. You hear?”
   “No,” Tom contradicted. “They can go in the park.”
   Mary glanced uncertainly at him. “But that orange thing might—”
   Tom smiled grimly. “It’s fine with me if they go into the park.” He leaned toward Bobby and Jean. “You kids go into the park any time you want. And don’t be afraid of anything. Of anything or anyone. Remember that.”
   He kicked the end of the massive crate with his toe.
   “There isn’t anything in the world you have to be afraid of. Not anymore.”
   Bobby and Jean nodded, still gazing fixedly into the crate.
   “All right, Daddy,” Jean breathed.
   “Boy, look at her!” Bobby whispered. “Just look at her! I can hardly wait till tomorrow!”
   Mrs. Andrew Casworthy greeted her husband on the front steps of their attractive three-story house, wringing her hands anxiously.
   “What’s the matter?” Casworthy grunted, taking off his hat. With his pocket handkerchief he wiped sweat from his florid face. “Lord, it was hot today. What’s wrong? What is it?”
   “Andrew, I’m afraid—”
   “What the hell happened?”
   “Phyllis came home from the park today without her Nanny. She was bent and scratched yesterday when Phyllis brought her home, and Phyllis is so upset I can’t make out—”
   “Without her Nanny?”
   “She came home alone. By herself. All alone.”
   Slow rage suffused the man’s heavy features. “What happened?”
   “Something in the park, like yesterday. Something attacked her Nanny. Destroyed her! I can’t get the story exactly straight, but something black, something huge and black … it must have been another Nanny.”
   Casworthy’s jaw slowly jutted out. His thickset face turned ugly dark red, a deep unwholesome flush that rose ominously and settled in place. Abruptly, he turned on his heel.
   “Where are you going?” his wife fluttered nervously.
   The paunchy, red-faced man stalked rapidly down the walk toward his sleek surface cruiser, already reaching for the door handle.
   “I’m going to shop for another Nanny,” he muttered. “The best damn Nanny I can get. Even if I have to go to a hundred stores. I want the best—and the biggest.”
   “But, dear,” his wife began, hurrying apprehensively after him, “can we really afford it?” Wringing her hands together anxiously, she raced on: “I mean, wouldn’t it be better to wait? Until you’ve had time to think it over, perhaps. Maybe later on, when you’re a little more—calm.”
   But Andrew Casworthy wasn’t listening. Already the surface cruiser boiled with quick, eager life, ready to leap forward. “Nobody’s going to get ahead of me,” he said grimly, his heavy lips twitching. “I’ll show them, all of them. Even if I have to get a new size designed. Even if I have to get one of those manufacturers to turn out a new model for me!”
   And, oddly, he knew one of them would.

The Hanging Stranger

Philip Kindred Dick

The Hanging Stranger
by Philip K. Dick

   At five o’clock Ed Loyce washed up, tossed on his hat and coat, got his car out and headed across town toward his TV sales store. He was tired. His back and shoulders ached from digging dirt out of the basement and wheeling it into the back yard. But for a forty-year-old man he had done okay. Janet could get a new vase with the money he had saved; and he liked the idea of repairing the foundations himself.
   It was getting dark. The setting sun cast long rays over the scurrying commuters, tired and grim-faced, women loaded down with bundles and packages, students, swarming home from the university, mixing with clerks and businessmen and drab secretaries. He stopped his Packard for a red light and then started it up again. The store had been open without him; he’d arrive just in time to spell the help for dinner, go over the records of the day, maybe even close a couple of sales himself. He drove slowly past the small square of green in the center of the street, the town park. There were no parking places in front of LOYCE TV SALES AND SERVICE. He cursed under his breath and swung the car in a U-turn. Again he passed the little square of green with its lonely drinking fountain and bench and single lamppost.
   From the lamppost something was hanging. A shapeless dark bundle, swinging a little with the wind. Like a dummy of some sort. Loyce rolled down his window and peered out. What the hell was it? A display of some kind? Sometimes the Chamber of Commerce put up displays in the square.
   Again he made a U-turn and brought his car around. He passed the park and concentrated on the dark bundle. It wasn’t a dummy. And if it was a display it was a strange kind. The hackles on his neck rose and he swallowed uneasily. Sweat slid out on his face and hands.
   It was a body. A human body.
   “Look at it!” Loyce snapped. “Come on out here!”
   Don Fergusson came slowly out of the store, buttoning his pin-stripe coat with dignity. “This is a big deal, Ed. I can’t just leave the guy standing there.”
   “See it?” Ed pointed into the gathering gloom. The lamppost jutted up against the sky—the post and the bundle swinging from it. “There it is. How the hell long has it been there?” His voice rose excitedly. “What’s wrong with everybody? They just walk on past!”
   Don Fergusson lit a cigarette slowly. “Take it easy, old man. There must be a good reason, or it wouldn’t be there.”
   “A reason! What kind of a reason?”
   Fergusson shrugged. “Like the time the Traffic Safety Council put that wrecked Buick there. Some sort of civic thing. How would I know?”
   Jack Potter from the shoe shop joined them. “What’s up, boys?”
   “There’s a body hanging from the lamppost,” Loyce said. “I’m going to call the cops.”
   “They must know about it,” Potter said. “Or otherwise it wouldn’t be there.”
   “I got to get back in.” Fergusson headed back into the store. “Business before pleasure.”
   Loyce began to get hysterical. “You see it? You see it hanging there? A man’s body! A dead man!”
   “Sure, Ed. I saw it this afternoon when I went out for coffee.”
   “You mean it’s been there all afternoon?”
   “Sure. What’s the matter?” Potter glanced at his watch. “Have to run. See you later, Ed.”
   Potter hurried off, joining the flow of people moving along the sidewalk. Men and women, passing by the park. A few glanced up curiously at the dark bundle—and then went on. Nobody stopped. Nobody paid any attention.
   “I’m going nuts,” Loyce whispered. He made his way to the curb and crossed out into traffic, among the cars. Horns honked angrily at him. He gained the curb and stepped up onto the little square of green.
   The man had been middle-aged. His clothing was ripped and torn, a gray suit, splashed and caked with dried mud. A stranger. Loyce had never seen him before. Not a local man. His face was partly turned away, and in the evening wind he spun a little, turning gently, silently. His skin was gouged and cut. Red gashes, deep scratches of congealed blood. A pair of steel-rimmed glasses hung from one ear, dangling foolishly. His eyes bulged. His mouth was open, tongue thick and ugly blue.
   “For Heaven’s sake,” Loyce muttered, sickened. He pushed down his nausea and made his way back to the sidewalk. He was shaking all over, with revulsion—and fear.
   Why? Who was the man? Why was he hanging there? What did it mean?
   And—why didn’t anybody notice?
   He bumped into a small man hurrying along the sidewalk. “Watch it!” the man grated. “Oh, it’s you, Ed.”
   Ed nodded dazedly. “Hello, Jenkins.”
   “What’s the matter?” The stationery clerk caught Ed’s aim “You look sick.”
   “The body. There in the park.”
   “Sure, Ed.” Jenkins led him into the alcove of LOYCE TV SALES AND SERVICE. “Take it easy.”
   Margaret Henderson from the jewelry store joined them. “Something wrong?”
   “Ed’s not feeling well.”
   Loyce yanked himself free. “How can you stand here? Don’t you see it? For God’s sake—”
   “What’s he talking about?” Margaret asked nervously.
   “The body!” Ed shouted. “The body hanging there!”
   More people collected. “Is he sick? It’s Ed Loyce. You okay, Ed?”
   “The body!” Loyce screamed, struggling to get past them. Hands caught at him. He tore loose. “Let me go! The police! Get the police!”
   “Ed—”
   “Better get a doctor!”
   “He must be sick.”
   “Or drunk.”
   Loyce fought his way through the people. He stumbled and half fell. Through a blur he saw rows of faces, curious, concerned, anxious. Men and women halting to see what the disturbance was. He fought past them toward his store. He could see Fergusson inside talking to a man, showing him an Emerson TV set. Pete Foley in the back at the service counter, setting up a new Philco. Loyce shouted at them frantically. His voice was lost in the roar of traffic and the murmuring around him.
   “Do something!” he screamed. “Don’t stand there! Do something! Something’s wrong! Something’s happened! Things are going on!”
   The crowd melted respectfully for the two heavy-set cops moving efficiently toward Loyce.
   “Name?” the cop with the notebook murmured.
   “Loyce.” He mopped his forehead wearily. “Edward C. Loyce. Listen to me. Back there—”
   “Address?” the cop demanded. The police car moved swiftly through traffic, shooting among the cars and buses. Loyce sagged against the seat, exhausted and confused. He took a deep shuddering breath.
   “1368 Hurst Road.”
   “That’s here in Pikeville?”
   “That’s right.” Loyce pulled himself up with a violent effort. “Listen to me. Back there. In the square. Hanging from the lamppost—”
   “Where were you today?” the cop behind the wheel demanded.
   “Where?” Loyce echoed.
   “You weren’t in your shop, were you?”
   “No.” He shook his head. “No, I was home. Down in the basement.”
   “In the basement?”
   “Digging. A new foundation. Getting out the dirt to pour a cement frame. Why? What has that to do with—”
   “Was anybody else down there with you?”
   “No. My wife was downtown. My kids were at school.” Loyce looked from one heavy-set cop to the other. Hope flickered across his face, wild hope. “You mean because I was down there I missed—the explanation? I didn’t get in on it? Like everybody else?”
   After a pause the cop with the notebook said: “That’s right. You missed the explanation.”
   “Then it’s official? The body—it’s supposed to be hanging there?”
   “It’s supposed to be hanging there. For everybody to see.”
   Ed Loyce grinned weakly. “Good Lord. I guess I sort of went off the deep end. I thought maybe something had happened. You know, something like the Ku Klux Klan. Some kind of violence. Communists or Fascists taking over.” He wiped his face with his breast-pocket handkerchief, his hands shaking. “I’m glad to know it’s on the level.”
   “It’s on the level.” The police car was getting near the Hall of Justice. The sun had set. The streets were gloomy and dark. The lights had not yet come on.
   “I feel better,” Loyce said. “I was pretty excited there, for a minute. I guess I got all stirred up. Now that I understand, there’s no need to take me in, is there?”
   The two cops said nothing.
   “I should be back at my store. The boys haven’t had dinner. I’m all right, now. No more trouble. Is there any need of—”
   “This won’t take long,” the cop behind the wheel interrupted. “A short process. Only a few minutes.”
   “I hope it’s short,” Loyce muttered. The car slowed down for a stoplight. “I guess I sort of disturbed the peace. Funny, getting excited like that and—”
   Loyce yanked the door open. He sprawled out into the street and rolled to his feet. Cars were moving all around him, gaining speed as the light changed. Loyce leaped onto the curb and raced among the people, burrowing into the swarming crowds. Behind him he heard sounds, snouts, people running.
   They weren’t cops. He had realized that right away. He knew every cop in Pikeville. A man couldn’t own a store, operate a business in a small town for twenty-five years without getting to know all the cops.
   They weren’t cops—and there hadn’t been any explanation. Potter, Fergusson, Jenkins, none of them knew why it was there. They didn’t know—and they didn’t care. That was the strange part.
   Loyce ducked into a hardware store. He raced toward the back, past the startled clerks and customers, into the shipping room and through the back door. He tripped over a garbage can and ran up a flight of concrete steps. He climbed over a fence and jumped down on the other side, gasping and panting.
   There was no sound behind him. He had got away.
   He was at the entrance of an alley, dark and strewn with boards and ruined boxes and tires. He could see the street at the far end. A street light wavered and came on. Men and women. Stores. Neon signs. Cars.
   And to his right—the police station.
   He was close, terribly close. Past the loading platform of a grocery store rose the white concrete side of the Hall of Justice. Barred windows. The police antenna. A great concrete wall rising up in the darkness. A bad place for him to be near. He was too close. He had to keep moving, get farther away from them.
   Them?
   Loyce moved cautiously down the alley. Beyond the police station was the City Hall, the old-fashioned yellow structure of wood and gilded brass and broad cement steps. He could see the endless rows of offices, dark windows, the cedars and beds of flowers on each side of the entrance.
   And—something else.
   Above the City Hall was a patch of darkness, a cone of gloom denser than the surrounding night. A prism of black that spread out and was lost into the sky.
   He listened. Good God, he could hear something. Something that made him struggle frantically to close his ears, his mind, to shut out the sound. A buzzing. A distant, muted hum like a great swarm of bees.
   Loyce gazed up, rigid with horror. The splotch of darkness, hanging over the City Hall. Darkness so thick it seemed almost solid. In the vortex something moved. Flickering shapes. Things, descending from the sky, pausing momentarily above the City Hall, fluttering over it in a dense swarm and then dropping silently onto the roof.
   Shapes. Fluttering shapes from the sky. From the crack of darkness that hung above him.
   He was seeing—them.
   For a long time Loyce watched, crouched behind a sagging fence in a pool of scummy water.
   They were landing. Coming down in groups, landing on the roof of the City Hall and disappearing inside. They had wings. Like giant insects of some kind. They flew and fluttered and came to rest—and then crawled crab-fashion, sideways, across the roof and into the building.
   He was sickened. And fascinated. Cold night wind blew around him and he shuddered. He was tired, dazed with shock. On the front steps of the City Hall were men, standing here and there. Groups of men coming out of the building and halting for a moment before going on.
   Were there more of them?
   It didn’t seem possible. What he saw descending from the black chasm weren’t men. They were alien—from some other world, some other dimension. Sliding through this slit, this break in the shell of the universe. Entering through this gap, winged insects from another realm of being.
   On the steps of the City Hall a group of men broke up. A few moved toward a waiting car. One of the remaining shapes started to re-enter the City Hall. It changed its mind and turned to follow the others.
   Loyce closed his eyes in horror. His senses reeled. He hung on tight, clutching at the sagging fence. The shape, the man-shape, had abruptly fluttered up and flapped after the others. It flew to the sidewalk and came to rest among them.
   Pseudo-men. Imitation men. Insects with ability to disguise themselves as men. Like other insects familiar to Earth. Protective coloration. Mimicry.
   Loyce pulled himself away. He got slowly to his feet. It was night. The alley was totally dark. But maybe they could see in the dark. Maybe darkness made no difference to them.
   He left the alley cautiously and moved out onto the street. Men and women flowed past, but not so many, now. At the bus stops stood waiting groups. A huge bus lumbered along the street, its lights flashing in the evening gloom.
   Loyce moved forward. He pushed his way among those waiting and when the bus halted he boarded it and took a seat in the rear, by the door. A moment later the bus moved into life and rumbled down the street.
   Loyce relaxed a little. He studied the people around him. Dulled, tired faces. People going home from work. Quite ordinary faces. None of them paid any attention to him. All sat quietly, sunk down in their seats, jiggling with the motion of the bus.
   The man sitting next to him unfolded a newspaper. He began to read the sports section, his lips moving. An ordinary man. Blue suit. Tie. A businessman, or a salesman. On his way home to his wife and family.
   Across the aisle a young woman, perhaps twenty. Dark eyes and hair, a package on her lap. Nylons and heels. Red coat and white Angora sweater. Gazing absently ahead of her.
   A high school boy in jeans and black jacket.
   A great triple-chinned woman with an immense shopping bag loaded with packages and parcels. Her thick face dim with weariness.
   Ordinary people. The kind that rode the bus every evening. Going home to their families. To dinner.
   Going home—with their minds dead. Controlled, filmed over with the mask of an alien being that had appeared and taken possession of them, their town, their lives. Himself, too. Except that he happened to be deep in his cellar instead of in the store. Somehow, he had been overlooked. They had missed him. Their control wasn’t perfect, foolproof.
   Maybe there were others.
   Hope flickered in Loyce. They weren’t omnipotent. They had made a mistake, not got control of him. Their net, their field of control, had passed over him. He had emerged from his cellar as he had gone down. Apparently their power-zone was limited.
   A few seats down the aisle a man was watching him. Loyce broke off his chain of thought. A slender man, with dark hair and a small mustache. Well-dressed, brown suit and shiny shoes. A book between his small hands. He was watching Loyce, studying him intently. He turned quickly away.
   Loyce tensed. One of them? Or—another they had missed?
   The man was watching him again. Small dark eyes, alive and clever. Shrewd. A man too shrewd for them—or one of the things itself, an alien insect from beyond.
   The bus halted. An elderly man got on slowly and dropped his token into the box. He moved down the aisle and took a seat opposite Loyce.
   The elderly man caught the sharp-eyed man’s gaze. For a split second something passed between them.
   A look rich with meaning.
   Loyce got to his feet. The bus was moving. He ran to the door. One step down into the well. He yanked the emergency door release. The rubber door swung open.
   “Hey!” the driver shouted, jamming on the brakes. “What the hell—?”
   Loyce squirmed through. The bus was slowing down. Houses on all sides. A residential district, lawns and tall apartment buildings. Behind him, the bright-eyed man had leaped up. The elderly man was also on his feet. They were coming after him.
   Loyce leaped. He hit the pavement with terrific force and rolled against the curb. Pain lapped over him. Pain and a vast tide of blackness. Desperately, he fought it off. He struggled to his knees and then slid down again. The bus had stopped. People were getting off.
   Loyce groped around. His fingers closed over something. A rock, lying in the gutter. He crawled to his feet, grunting with pain. A shape loomed before him. A man, the bright-eyed man with the book.
   Loyce kicked. The man gasped and fell. Loyce brought the rock down. The man screamed and tried to roll away. “Stop! For God’s sake listen—”
   He struck again. A hideous crunching sound. The man’s voice cut off and dissolved in a bubbling wail. Loyce scrambled up and back. The others were there, now. All around him. He ran, awkwardly, down the sidewalk, up a driveway. None of them followed him. They had stopped and were bending over the inert body of the man with the book, the bright-eyed man who had come after him.
   Had he made a mistake?
   But it was too late to worry about that. He had to get out—away from them. Out of Pikeville, beyond the crack of darkness, the rent between their world and his.
   “Ed!” Janet Loyce backed away nervously. “What is it? What—”
   Ed Loyce slammed the door behind him and came into the living room. “Pull down the shades. Quick.”
   Janet moved toward the window. “But—”
   “Do as I say. Who else is here besides you?”
   “Nobody. Just the twins. They’re upstairs in their room. What’s happened? You look so strange. Why are you home?”
   Ed locked the front door. He prowled around the house, into the kitchen. From the drawer under the sink he slid out the big butcher knife and ran his finger along it. Sharp. Plenty sharp. He returned to the living room.
   “Listen to me,” he said. “I don’t have much time. They know I escaped and they’ll be looking for me.”
   “Escaped?” Janet’s face twisted with bewilderment and fear. “Who?”
   “The town has been taken over. They’re in control. I’ve got it pretty well figured out. They started at the top, at the City Hall and police department. What they did with the real humans they—”
   “What are you talking about?”
   “We’ve been invaded. From some other universe, some other dimension. They’re insects. Mimicry. And more. Power to control minds. Your mind.”
   “My mind?”
   “Their entrance is here, in Pikeville. They’ve taken over all of you. The whole town—except me. We’re up against an incredibly powerful enemy, but they have their limitations. That’s our hope. They’re limited! They can make mistakes!”
   Janet shook her head. “I don’t understand, Ed. You must be insane.”
   “Insane? No. Just lucky. If I hadn’t been down in the basement I’d be like all the rest of you.” Loyce peered out the window. “But I can’t stand here talking. Get your coat.”
   “My coat?”
   “We’re getting out of here. Out of Pikeville. We’ve got to get help. Fight this thing. They can be beaten. They’re not infallible. It’s going to be close—but we may make it if we hurry. Come on!” He grabbed her arm roughly. “Get your coat and call the twins. We’re all leaving. Don’t stop to pack. There’s no time for that.”
   White-faced, his wife moved toward the closet and got down her coat. “Where are we going?”
   Ed pulled open the desk drawer and spilled the contents out onto the floor. He grabbed up a road map and spread it open. “They’ll have the highway covered, of course. But there’s a back road. To Oak Grove. I got onto it once. It’s practically abandoned. Maybe they’ll forget about it.”
   “The old Ranch Road? Good Lord—it’s completely closed. Nobody’s supposed to drive over it.”
   “I know.” Ed thrust the map grimly into his coat. “That’s our best chance. Now call down the twins and let’s get going. Your car is full of gas, isn’t it?”
   Janet was dazed.
   “The Chevy? I had it filled up yesterday afternoon.” Janet moved toward the stairs. “Ed, I—”
   “Call the twins!” Ed unlocked the front door and peered out. Nothing stirred. No sign of life. All right so far.
   “Come on downstairs,” Janet called in a wavering voice. “We’re—going out for a while.”
   “Now?” Tommy’s voice came.
   “Hurry up,” Ed barked. “Get down here, both of you.”
   Tommy appeared at the top of the stairs. “I was doing my homework. We’re starting fractions. Miss Parker says if we don’t get this done—”
   “You can forget about fractions.” Ed grabbed his son as he came down the stairs and propelled him toward the door. “Where’s Jim?”
   “He’s coming.”
   Jim started slowly down the stairs. “What’s up, Dad?”
   “We’re going for a ride.”
   “A ride? Where?”
   Ed turned to Janet. “We’ll leave the lights on. And the TV set. Go turn it on.” He pushed her toward the set. “So they’ll think we’re still—”
   He heard the buzz. And dropped instantly, the long butcher knife out. Sickened, he saw it coming down the stairs at him, wings a blur of motion as it aimed itself. It still bore a vague resemblance to Jimmy. It was small, a baby one. A brief glimpse—the thing hurtling at him, cold, multi-lensed inhuman eyes. Wings, body still clothed in yellow T-shirt and jeans, the mimic outline still stamped on it. A strange half-turn of its body as it reached him. What was it doing?
   A stinger.
   Loyce stabbed wildly at it. It retreated, buzzing frantically. Loyce rolled and crawled toward the door. Tommy and Janet stood still as statues, faces blank. Watching without expression. Loyce stabbed again. This time the knife connected. The thing shrieked and faltered. It bounced against the wall and fluttered down.
   Something lapped through his mind. A wall of force, energy, an alien mind probing into him. He was suddenly paralyzed. The mind entered his own, touched against him briefly, shockingly. An utter alien presence, settling over him—and then it flickered out as the thing collapsed in a broken heap on the rug.
   It was dead. He turned it over with his foot. It was an insect, a fly of some kind. Yellow T-shirt, jeans. His son Jimmy… He closed his mind tight. It was too late to think about that. Savagely he scooped up his knife and headed toward the door. Janet and Tommy stood stone-still, neither of them moving.
   The car was out. He’d never get through. They’d be waiting for him. It was ten miles on foot. Ten long miles over rough ground, gulleys and open fields and hills of uncut forest. He’d have to go alone.
   Loyce opened the door. For a brief second he looked back at his wife and son. Then he slammed the door behind him and raced down the porch steps.
   A moment later he was on his way, hurrying swiftly through the darkness toward the edge of town.
   The early morning sunlight was blinding. Loyce halted, gasping for breath, swaying back and forth. Sweat ran down in his eyes. His clothing was torn, shredded by the brush and thorns through which he had crawled. Ten miles—on his hands and knees. Crawling, creeping through the night. His shoes were mud-caked. He was scratched and limping, utterly exhausted.
   But ahead of him lay Oak Grove.
   He took a deep breath and started down the hill. Twice he stumbled and fell, picking himself up and trudging on. His ears rang. Everything receded and wavered. But he was there. He had got out, away from Pikeville.
   A farmer in a field gaped at him. From a house a young woman watched in wonder. Loyce reached the road and turned onto it. Ahead of him was a gasoline station and a drive-in. A couple of trucks, some chickens pecking in the dirt, a dog tied with a string.
   The white-clad attendant watched suspiciously as he dragged himself up to the station. “Thank God.” He caught hold of the wall. “I didn’t think I was going to make it. They followed me most of the way. I could hear them buzzing. Buzzing and flitting around behind me.”
   “What happened?” the attendant demanded. “You in a wreck? A holdup?”
   Loyce shook his head wearily. “They have the whole town. The City Hall and the police station. They hung a man from the lamppost. That was the first thing I saw. They’ve got all the roads blocked. I saw them hovering over the cars coming in. About four this morning I got beyond them. I knew it right away. I could feel them leave. And then the sun came up.”
   The attendant licked his lip nervously. “You’re out of your head. I better get a doctor.”
   “Get me into Oak Grove,” Loyce gasped. He sank down on the gravel. “We’ve got to get started—cleaning them out. Got to get started right away.”
   They kept a tape recorder going all the time he talked. When he had finished the Commissioner snapped off the recorder and got to his feet. He stood for a moment, deep in thought. Finally he got out his cigarettes and lit up slowly, a frown on his beefy face.
   “You don’t believe me,” Loyce said.
   The Commissioner offered him a cigarette. Loyce pushed it impatiently away. “Suit yourself.” The Commissioner moved over to the window and stood for a time looking out at the town of Oak Grove. “I believe you,” he said abruptly.
   Loyce sagged. “Thank God.”
   “So you got away.” The Commissioner shook his head. “You were down in your cellar instead of at work. A freak chance. One in a million.”
   Loyce sipped some of the black coffee they had brought him. “I have a theory,” he murmured.
   “What is it?”
   “About them. Who they are. They take over one area at a time. Starting at the top—the highest level of authority. Working down from there in a widening circle. When they’re firmly in control they go on to the next town. They spread, slowly, very gradually. I think it’s been going on for a long time.”
   “A long time?”
   “Thousands of years. I don’t think it’s new.”
   “Why do you say that?”
   “When I was a kid… A picture they showed us in Bible League. A religious picture—an old print. The enemy gods, defeated by Jehovah. Moloch, Beelzebub, Moab, Baalin, Ashtaroth—”
   “So?”
   “They were all represented by figures.” Loyce looked up at the Commissioner. “Beelzebub was represented as—a giant fly.”
   The Commissioner grunted. “An old struggle.”
   “They’ve been defeated. The Bible is an account of their defeats. They make gains—but finally they’re defeated.”
   “Why defeated?”
   “They can’t get everyone. They didn’t get me. And they never got the Hebrews. The Hebrews carried the message to the whole world. The realization of the danger. The two men on the bus. I think they understood. Had escaped, like I did.” He clenched his fists. “I killed one of them. I made a mistake. I was afraid to take a chance.”
   The Commissioner nodded. “Yes, they undoubtedly had escaped, as you did. Freak accidents. But the rest of the town was firmly in control.” He turned from the window, “Well, Mr. Loyce. You seem to have figured everything out.”
   “Not everything. The hanging man. The dead man hanging from the lamppost. I don’t understand that. Why? Why did they deliberately hang him there?”
   “That would seem simple.” The Commissioner smiled faintly. “Bait.”
   Loyce stiffened. His heart stopped beating. “Bait? What do you mean?”
   “To draw you out. Make you declare yourself. So they’d know who was under control—and who had escaped.”
   Loyce recoiled with horror. “Then they expected failures! They anticipated—” He broke off. “They were ready with a trap.”
   “And you showed yourself. You reacted. You made yourself known.” The Commissioner abruptly moved toward the door. “Come along, Loyce. There’s a lot to do. We must get moving. There’s no time to waste.”
   Loyce started slowly to his feet, numbed. “And the man. Who was the man? I never saw him before. He wasn’t a local man. He was a stranger. All muddy and dirty, his face cut, slashed—”
   There was a strange look on the Commissioner’s face as he answered, “Maybe,” he said softly, “you’ll understand that, too. Come along with me, Mr. Loyce.” He held the door open, his eyes gleaming. Loyce caught a glimpse of the street in front of the police station. Policemen, a platform of some sort. A telephone pole—and a rope! “Right this way,” the Commissioner said, smiling coldly.
   As the sun set, the vice-president of the Oak Grove Merchants’ Bank came up out of the vault, threw the heavy time locks, put on his hat and coat, and hurried outside onto the sidewalk. Only a few people were there, hurrying home to dinner.
   “Good night,” the guard said, locking the door after him.
   “Good night,” Clarence Mason murmured. He started along the street toward his car. He was tired. He had been working all day down in the vault, examining the lay-out of the safety deposit boxes to see if there was room for another tier. He was glad to be finished.
   At the corner he halted. The street lights had not yet come on. The street was dim. Everything was vague. He looked around—and froze.
   From the telephone pole in front of the police station, something large and shapeless hung. It moved a little with the wind.
   What the hell was it?
   Mason approached it warily. He wanted to get home. He was tired and hungry. He thought of his wife, his kids, a hot meal on the dinner table. But there was something about the dark bundle, something ominous and ugly.
   The light was bad; he couldn’t tell what it was. Yet it drew him on, made him move closer for a better look. The shapeless thing made him uneasy. He was frightened by it. Frightened—and fascinated.
   And the strange part was that nobody else seemed to notice it.

Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said

Philip Kindred Dick

Part One
1
2
3
4
5
6
Part Two
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
Part Three
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
Port Four
Epilogue

Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
by Philip K. Dick

   The love in this novel is for Tessa, and the love in me is for her, too. She is my little song.

Part One

   Flow my tears, fall from your springs!
   Exiled forever let me mourn;
   Where night’s black bird her sad infamy sings,
   There let me live forlorn.