You can have what you want, he thought to himself. The reading or anything else. How long have you been in there? Only seven years? It seems more like forever. As if—you’ve always existed. It had been a terribly old, wizened, white thing that had spoken to him. Something hard and small, floating. Lips overgrown with downy hair that hung trailing, streamers of it, wispy and dry. I bet it was Fergesson, he said to himself; it felt like him. He’s in there, inside that child.
I wonder. Can he get out?
Edie Keller said to her brother, “What did you do to scare him like you did? He was really scared.”
From within her the familiar voice said, “I was someone he used to know, a long time ago. Someone dead.”
“Oh,” she said, “so that’s it. I thought it was something like that.” She was amused. “Are you going to do any more to him?”
“If I don’t like him,” Bill said, “I may do more to him, a lot of different things, maybe.”
“How did you know about the dead person?”
“Oh,” Bill said, “because-you know why. Because I’m dead, too.” He chuckled, deep down inside her stomach; she felt him quiver.
“No you’re not,” she said. “You’re as alive as I am, so don’t say that; it isn’t right.” It frightened her.
Bill said, “I was just pretending; I’m sorry. I wish I could have seen his face. How did it look?”
“Awful,” Edie said, “when you said that. It turned all inward, like a frog’s. But you wouldn’t know what a frog looks like either; you don’t know what anything looks like, so there’s no use trying to tell you.”
“I wish I could come out,” Bill said plaintively. “I wish I could be born like everybody else. Can’t I be born later on?”
“Doctor Stockstill said you couldn’t.”
“Then can’t he make it so I could be? I thought you said—“
“I was wrong,” Edie said. “I though he could cut a little round hole and that would do it, but he said no.”
Her brother, deep within her, was silent, then.
“Don’t feel bad,” Edie said. “I’ll keep on telling you how things are.” She wanted to console him; she said, “I’ll never do again like I did that time when I was mad at you, when I stopped telling you about what’s outside; I promise.”
“Maybe I could make Doctor Stockstill let me out,” Bill said.
“Can you do that? You can’t.”
“I can if I want.”
“No,” she said. “You’re lying; you can’t do anything but sleep and talk to the dead and maybe do imitations like you did. That isn’t much; I can practically do that myself, and a lot more.”
There was no response from within.
“Bill,” she said, “you know what? Well, now two people know about you—Hoppy Harrington does and Doctor Stockstill does. And you used to say nobody would ever find out about you, so you’re not so smart. I don’t think you’re very smart.”
Within her, Bill slept.
“If you did anything bad,” she said, “I could swallow something that would poison you. Isn’t that so? So you better behave.”
She felt more and more afraid of him; she was talking to herself, trying to bolster her confidence. Maybe it would be a good thing if you did die, she thought. Only then I’d have to carry you around still, and it—wouldn’t be pleasant; I wouldn’t like that.
She shuddered.
“Don’t worry about me,” Bill said suddenly. He had become awake again or maybe he had never been asleep at all; maybe he had just been pretending. “I know a lot of things; I can take care of myself. I’ll protect you, too. You better be glad about me because I can—well, you wouldn’t understand. You know I can look at everyone who’s dead, like the man I imitated. Well, there’re a whole lot of them, trillions and trillions of them and they’re all different. When I’m asleep I hear them muttering. They’re still all around.”
“Around where?” she asked.
“Underneath us,” Bill said. “Down in the ground.”
“Brrr,” she said.
Bill laughed. “It’s true. And we’re going to be there, too. And so is Mommy and Daddy and everybody else. Everybody and everything’s there, including animals. That dog’s almost there, that one that talks. Not there yet, maybe; but it’s the same. You’ll see.”
“I don’t want to see,” she said. “I want to listen to the reading; you be quiet so I can listen. Don’t you want to listen, too? You always say you like it.”
“He’ll be there soon, too,” Bill said. “The man who does the reading up in the satellite.”
“No,” she said. “I don’t believe that; are you sure?”
“Yes,” her brother said. “Pretty sure. And even before him—do you know who the ‘glasses man’ is? You don’t, but he’ll be there very soon, in just a few minutes. And then later on—“ He broke off. “I won’t say.”
“No,” she agreed. “Don’t say, please. I don’t want to hear.”
Guided by the tall, crooked mast of Hoppy’s transmitter, Eldon Blaine made his way toward the phocomelus’ house. It’s now or never, he realized. I have only a little time. No one stopped him; they were all at the Hall, including the phocomelus himself. I’ll get that radio and nap it, Eldon said to himself. If I can’t get him at least I can return to Bolinas with something. The transmitter was now close ahead; he felt the presence of Hoppy’s construction—and then all at once he was stumbling over something. He fell, floundered with his arms out. The remains of a fence, low to the ground.
Now he saw the house itself, or what remained of it. Foundations and one wall, and in the center a patched-together cube, a room made out of debris, protected from rain by tar paper. The mast, secured by heavy guy wires, rose directly behind a little metal chimney.
The transmitter was on.
He heard the hum even before be saw the gaseous blue light of its tubes. And from the crack under the door of the tar-paper cube more light streamed out. He found the knob, paused, and then quickly turned it; the door swung open with no resistance, almost as if something inside were expecting him.
A friendly, intimate voice murmured, and Eldon Blainé glanced around, chilled, expecting to see—incredibly—the phocomelus. But the voice came from a radio mounted on a work bench on which lay tools and meters and repair parts in utter disorder. Dangerfield, still speaking, even though the satellite surely had passed on. Contact with the satellite such as no one else had achieved, he realized. They even have that, up here in West Marin. But why was the big transmitter on? What was it doing? He began to look hastily around … .
From the radio the low, intimate voice suddenly changed; it became harsher, sharper. “Glasses man,” it said, “what are you doing in my house?” It was the voice of Hoppy Harrington, and Eldon stood bewildered, rubbing his head numbly, trying to understand and knowing on a deep, instinctive level that he did not—and never really would.
“Hoppy,” he managed to say. “Where are you?”
“I’m here,” the voice from the radio said. “I’m coming closer. Wait where you are, glasses man.” The door of the room opened and Hoppy Harrington, aboard his phocomobile, his eyes sharp and blazing, confronted Eldon. “Welcome to my home,” Hoppy said caustically, and his voice now issued from him and from the speaker of the radio both. “Did you think you had the satellite, there on that set?” One of his manual extensions reached out, and the radio was shut off. “Maybe you did, or maybe you will, someday. Well, glasses man, speak up. What do you want here?”
Eldon said, “Let me go. I don’t want anything; I was just looking around.”
“Do you want the radio, is that it?” Hoppy said in an expressionless voice. He seemed resigned, not surprised in the least.
Eldon said, “Why is your transmitter on?”
“Because I’m transmitting to the satellite.”
“If you’ll let me go,” Eldon said, “I’ll give you all the glasses I have. And they represent months of scavenging all over Northern California.”
“You don’t have any glasses this time,” the phocomelus said. “I don’t see your briefcase, anyhow. But you can go, though, as far as Fm concerned; you haven’t done anything wrong, here. I didn’t give you the chance,” He laughed in his brisk, stammering way.
Eldon said, “Are you going to try to bring down the satellite?”
The phocomelus stared at him.
“You are,” Eldon said. “With that transmitter you’re going to set off that final stage that never fired; you’ll make it act as a retro-rocket and then it’ll fall back into the atmosphere and eventually come down.”
“I couldn’t do that,” floppy said, finally. “Even if I wanted to.”