Through the back windows of the house he saw the green wooden side of a large water-storage tank. The Raubs, he realized, had their own supply of water. Going outside he saw a clear, untainted stream.
At the stream a kind of contraption lurked, like a cart on wheels. He stared at it; extensions from it were busily filling buckets with water. In the center of it sat a man with no arms or legs. The man nodded his head as if conducting music, and the machinery around him responded. It was a phocomelus, Eldon realized, mounted on his phocomobile, his combination cart and manual grippers which served as mechanical substitutes for his missing limbs. What was he doing, stealing the Raubs’ water?
“Hey,” Eldon said.
At once the phocomelus turned his head; his eyes blazed at Eldon in alarm, and then something whacked into Eldon’s middle—he was thrown back, and as he wobbled and struggled to regain his balance he discovered that his arms were pinned at his sides. A wire mesh had whipped out at him from the phocomobile, had fastened in place. The phocomelus’ means of defense.
“Who are you?” the phocomelus said, stammering in his wary eagerness to know. “You don’t live around here; I don’t know you.”
“I’m from Bolinas,” Eldon said. The metal mesh crushed in until he gasped. “I’m the glasses man. Mrs. Raub, she told me to wait here.”
Now the mesh seemed to ease. “I can’t take chances,” the phocomelus said. “I won’t let you go until June Raub comes back.” The buckets once more began dipping in the water; they filled methodically until the tank lashed to the phocomobile was slopping over.
“Are you supposed to be doing that?” Eldon asked. “Taking water from the Raubs’ stream?”
“I’ve got a right,” the phocomelus said. “I give back more than I take, to everybody around here.”
“Let me go,” Eldon said. “I’m just trying to get medicine for my kid; she’s dying.”
“’My kid, she’s dying,’ “ the phocomelus mimicked, picking up the quality of his voice with startling accuracy. He rolled away from the stream, now, closer to Eldon. The ‘mobile gleamed; all its parts were new-looking and shiny. It was one of the best-made mechanical constructions that Eldon Blaine had ever seen.
“Let me go,” Eldon said, “and I’ll give you a pair of glasses free. Any pair I have.”
“My eyes are perfect,” the phocomelus said. “Everything about me is perfect. Parts are missing, but I don’t need them; I can do better without them. I can get down this hill faster than you, for instance.”
“Who built your ‘mobile?” Eldon asked. Surely in seven years it would have become tarnished and partly broken, like everything else.
“I built it,” the phocomelus said.
“How can you build your own ‘mobile? That’s a contradiction.”
“I used to be body-wired. Now I’m brain-wired; I did that myself, too. I’m the handy, up here. Those old extensors the Government built before the war—they weren’t even as good as the flesh things, like you have.” The phocomelus grimaced. He had a thin, flexible face, with a sharp nose and extremely white teeth, a face ideal for the emotion which he now showed Eldon Blaine.
“Dangerfield says that the handies are the most valuable people in the world,” Eldon said. “He declared Worldwide Handyman Week, one time we were listening, and he named different handies who were especially well-known. What’s your name? Maybe he mentioned you.”
“Hoppy Harrington,” the phocomelus said. “But I know he didn’t mention me because I keep myself in the background, still; it isn’t time for me to make my name in the world, as I’m going to be doing. I let the local people see a little of what I can do, but they’re supposed to be quiet about it.”
“Sure they’d be quiet,” Eldon said. “They don’t want to lose you. We’re missing our handy, right now, and we really feel it. Could you take on the Bolinas area for a little while, do you think? We’ve got plenty to trade you. In the Emergency hardly anybody got over the mountain to invade us, so we’re relatively untouched.”
“I’ve been down there to Bolinas,” Happy Harrington said.
“In fact I’ve traveled all around, even as far inland as Sacramento. Nobody has seen what I’ve seen; I can cover fifty miles a day in my ‘mobile.” His lean face twitched and then he stammered., “I wouldn’t go back to Bolinas because there are sea monsters in the ocean, there.”
“Who says so?” Eldon demanded. “That’s just superstition—tell me who said that about our community.”
“I think it was Dangerfield.”
“No, he couldn’t,” Eldon said. “He can be relied on, he wouldn’t peddle such trash as that. I never once heard him tell a superstition on any of his programs. Maybe he was kidding; I bet he was kidding and you took him seriously.”
“The hydrogen bombs woke up the sea monsters,” floppy said, “From their slumber in the depths.” He nodded earnestly.
“You come and see our community,” Eldon said. “We’re orderly and advanced, a lot more so than any city. We even have streetlights going again, four of them for an hour in the evening. I’m surprised a handy would believe such superstition.”
The phocomelus looked chagrined. “You never can be sure,” he murmured. “I guess maybe it wasn’t Dangerfield I heard it from.”
Below them, on the ascending road, a horse moved; the sound of its hoofs reached them and they both turned. A big fleshy man with a red face came riding up and up, toward them, peering at them. As he rode he called, “Glasses man! Is that you?”
“Yes,” Eldon said, as the horse veered into the grass-extinguished driveway of the Raub house. “You have the antibiotics, mister?”
“June Raub will bring them,” the big florid man said, reining his horse to a stop. “Glasses man, let’s see what you have. I m near-sighted but I also have an acute astigmatism in my left eye; can you help me?” He approached on foot, still peering.
“I can’t fit you,” Eldon said, “because Hoppy Harrington has me tied up.”
“For God’s sake, Happy,” the big florid man said with agitation. “Let the glasses man go so he can fit me; I’ve been waiting months and I don’t mean to wait any longer.”
“Okay, Leroy,” Happy Harrington said sullenly. And, from around Eldon, the metal mesh uncoiled and then slithered back across the ground to the waiting phocomelus in the center of his shiny, intricate ‘mobile,
As the satellite passed over the Chicago area its wing-like extended sensors picked up a flea signal, and in his earphones Walter Dangerfield heard the faint, distant, hollowed-out voice from below.
“ … and please play ‘Walzing Matilda,’ a lot of us like that. Arid play ‘The Woodpecker Song.’ And—“ The flea signal faded out, and he head only static. It had definitely not been a laser beam, he thought to himself archly.
Into his microphone, Dangerfield said, “Well, friends, we have a request here for ‘Walzing Matilda.’ “ He reached to snap a switch at the controls of a tape transport. “The great bass-baritone Peter Dawson—which is also the name of a very good branch of Scotch—in ‘Walzing Matilda.’ “ From well-worn memory he selected the correct reel of tape, and in a moment it was on the transport, turning.
As the music played, Walt Dangerfield tuned his receiving equipment, hoping once more to pick up the same flea signal. However, instead he found himself party to a two-way transmission between military units involved in police action somewhere in upstate Illinois. Their brisk chatter interested him, and he listened until the end of the music.
“Lots of luck to you boys in uniform,” he said into the microphone, then. “Catch those boodle-burners and bless you all.” He chuckled, because if ever a human being had immunity from retaliation, it was he. No one on Earth could reach him—it had been attempted six times since the Emergency, with no success. “Catch those bad guys … or should I say catch those good guys. Say, who are the good guys, these days?” His receiving equipment had picked up, in the last few weeks, a number of complaints about Army brutality. “Now let me tell you something, boys,” he said smoothly. “Watch out for those squirrel rifles; that’s all.” He began hunting through the satellite’s tape library for the recording of “The Woodpecker Song.” “That’s all, brother,” he said, and put on the tape.
Below him the world was in darkness, its night side turned his way; yet already he could see the rim of day appearing on the edge, and soon he would be passing into that once more. Lights here and there glowed like holes poked in the surface of the planet which he had left seven years ago—left for another purpose, another goal entirely. A much more noble one.