“Take your quinidine to Cheyenne,” Cas Stone said to the pharmacist.
“To Cheyenne?” the pharmacist quavered. “There aren’t any through roads over the Sierras any more. I’d never get there.”
In as calm a voice as possible, June Raub said, “Perhaps he isn’t actually ill; perhaps it’s only hypochondria, from being isolated and alone up there all these years. Something about the way he detailed each symptom made me suspect that.” However, hardly anyone heard her. The three representatives from Bolinas, she noticed, had gone quietly over beside the radio and were stooping down to listen to the reading. “Maybe he won’t die,” she said, half to herself.
At that, the glasses man glanced up at her. She saw on his face an expression of shock and numbness, as if the realization that the man in the satellite might be sick and would die was too much for him. The illness of his own daughter, she thought, had not affected him so.
A silence fell over the people in the furthest part of the Hall, and June Raub looked to see what had happened.
At the door, a gleaming platform of machinery had rolled into sight Hoppy Harrington had arrived.
“Hoppy, you know what?” Cas Stone called. “Dangerfield said he’s got something wrong with him, maybe his heart.”
They all became silent, waiting for the phocomelus to speak.
Hoppy rolled past them and up to the radio; he halted his ‘mobile, sent one of his manual extensions over to delicately diddle at the tuning knob. The three representatives from Bolinas respectfully stood aside. Static rose, then faded, and the voice of Walt Dangerfield came in clear and strong. The reading was still in progress, and Hoppy, in the center of his machinery, listened intently. ‘He, and the others in the room, continued to listen without speaking until at last the sound faded out as the satellite passed beyond the range of reception. Then, once again, there was only the static.
All of a sudden, in a voice exactly like Dangerfield’s, the phocomelus said, “Well, my dear friends, what’ll we have next to entertain us?”
This time the imitation was so perfect that several people in the room gasped. Others clapped, and Hoppy smiled. “How about some more of that juggling?” the pharmacist called. “I like that.”
“’Juggling,’” the phocomelus said, this time exactly in the pharmacist’s quavering, prissy voice. “ ‘I like that.’
“No,” Cas Stone said, “I want to hear him do Dangerfield; do some more of that, Hoppy. Come on.”
The phocomelus spun his ‘mobile around so that he faced the audience. “Hoode hoode hoo,” he chuckled in the low, easy-going tones which they all knew so well. June Raub caught her breath; it was eerie, the phoce’s ability to mimic. It always disconcerted her … if she shut her eyes she could imagine that it actually was Dangerfield still talking, still in contact with them. She did so, deliberately pretending to herself. He’s not sick, he’s not dying, she told herself; listen to him. As if in answer to her own thoughts, the friendly voice was murmuring, “I’ve got a little pain here in my chest, but it doesn’t amount to a thing; don’t worry about it, friends. Upset stomach, most likely. Over-indulgence. And what do we take for that? Does anybody out there remember?”
A man in the audience shouted, “I remember: alkalize with Alka Seltzer!”
“Hoode hoode hoo,” the warm voice chuckled. “That’s right. Good for you. Now let me give you a tip on how to store gladiola bulbs all through the winter without fear of annoying pests. Simply wrap them in aluminum foil.”
People in the room clapped, and June Raub heard someone close by her say, “That’s exactly what Dangerfield would have said.” It was the glasses man from Bolinas. She opened her eyes and saw the expression on his face. I must have looked like that, she realized, that night when I first heard Hoppy imitating him.
“And now,” Hoppy continued, still in Dangerfield’s voice, “I’ll perform a few feats of skill that I’ve been working on. I think you’ll all get a bang out of this, dear friends. Just watch.”
Eldon Blaine, the glasses man from Bolinas, saw the phocomelus place a coin on the floor several feet from his ‘mobile. The extensions withdrew, and Hoppy, still murmuring in Dangerfield’s voice, concentrated on the coin until all at once, with a clatter, it slid across the floor toward him. The people in the Hall clapped. Flushing with pleasure, the phocomelus nodded to them and then once more set the coin down away from him, this time farther than before.
Magic, Eldon thought. What Pat said; the phoces can do that in compensation for not having been born with arms or legs, it’s nature’s way of helping them survive. Again the coin slid toward the ‘mobile and again the people in the Foresters’ Hall applauded.
To Mrs. Raub, Eldon said, “He does this every night?”
“No,” she answered. “He does various tricks; I’ve never seen this one before, but of course I’m not always here—I have so much to do, helping to keep our community functioning. It’s remarkable, isn’t it?”
Action at a distance, Eldon realized. Yes, it is remarkable. And we must have him, he said to himself. No doubt of it now. For when Walt Dangerfield dies—and it is becoming obvious that he will, soon—we would have this memory of him, this reconstruction, embodied in this phoce. Like a phonograph record, to be played back forever.
“Does he frighten you?” June Raub asked.
“No,” Eldon said. “Should he?”
“I don’t know,” she said in a thoughtful voice.
“Has he ever transmitted to the satellite?” Eldon asked. “A lot of other handles have. Odd he hasn’t, with his ability.”
June Raub said, “He intended to. Last year he started building a transmitter; he’s been working on it off and on, but evidently nothing came of it. He tries all sorts of projects … he’s always busy. You can see the tower. Come outside a minute and I’ll show you.”
He followed her to the door of the Foresters’ Hall. Together, they stood outside in the darkness until they were able to see. Yes, there it was, a peculiar, crooked mast, rising up into the night sky but then breaking off abruptly.
“That’s his house,” June Raub said. “It’s on his roof. And he did it without any help from us; he can amplify the impulses from his brain into what he calls his servo-assists, and that way he’s quite strong, much more so than any unfunny man.” She was silent a moment “We all admire him. He’s done a lot for us.”
“Yes,” Eldon said.
“You came here to nap him away from us,” June Raub said quietly. “Didn’t you?”
Startled, he protested, “No, Mrs. Raub—honest, we came to listen to the satellite; you know that.”
“It’s been tried before,” Mrs. Raub said. “You can’t nap him because he won’t let you. He doesn’t like your community down there; he knows about your ordinance. We have no such discrimination up here and he’s grateful for that, He’s very sensitive about himself.”
Disconcerted, Eldon Blaine moved away from the woman, back toward the door of the Hall.
“Wait,” Mrs. Raub said. “You don’t have to worry: I won’t say anything to anyone. I don’t blame you for seeing him and wanting him for your own community. You know, he wasn’t born here in West Marin. One day, about three years ago, he came rolling into town on his ‘mobile, not this one but the older one the Government built before the Emergency. He had rolled all the way up from San Francisco, he told us. He wanted to find a place where he could settle down, and no one had given him that, up until us.”
“Okay,” Eldon murmured. “I understand.”
“Everything nowadays can be napped,” Mrs. Raub said. “All it take is sufficient force. I saw your police-cart parked down the road, and I know that the two men with you are on your police force. But floppy does what he wants. I think if you tried to coerce him he’d kill you it wouldn’t be much trouble for him and he wouldn’t mind.”
After a pause Eldon said, “I—appreciate your candor.”
Together, silently, they re-entered the Foresters’ Hall.
All eyes were on Hoppy Harrington, who was still immersed in his imitation of Dangerfield. “ … it seems to go away when I eat,” the phocomelus was saying, “And that makes me think it’s an ulcer, not my heart. So if any doctors are listening and they have access to a transmitter—“
A man in the audience interrupted, “I’m going to get hold of my doctor in San Rafael; I’m not kidding when I say that. We can’t have another dead man circling around and around the Earth.” It was the same man who had spoken before; he sounded even more earnest now. “Or if as Mrs. Rab says it’s just in his mind, couldn’t we get Doc Stockstill to help him?”