And the man—here and now—a scrap of bloody bone, unless someone pays a Mosaic price. But perhaps I won’t have to do it, Norvell told himself desperately.
The earpiece of his hearing aid had slipped a bit. He looked around, still shyly, and prepared to readjust it. Then he didn’t readjust it.
He didn’t need it.
The shrieking crowd, the gloating, smacking voice of the M.C., the faint creak in the wind of the tower guys, even—it all, all came through.
He could hear.
For a moment he was almost terrified. It was the decision, he told himself, not quite knowing what he meant. He hadn’t wanted to hear any of it. He hadn’t dared hear any of it. ‘He punished himself by not letting himself hear any of it—as long as he was a part of the horror.
But his resignation had been turned in.
Had he ever, really, been deaf? he puzzled. It felt the same as always. But now he could hear; and before he couldn’t. He went to Norma Lavin and put his thin arm around the shaking shoulders. “It’s going to be all right,” he said. She cowered against him wordlessly.
“I’ve got a boy coming, you know,” he told her. She gave him a distracted nod, her eyes on the tower. “And if anything happens,” he went on, “it’s only fair that they should be taken care of. Isn’t it? Sandy and Virginia, and the boy. You’ll remember?” She nodded without hearing. “There was this Field Day I heard about in Bay City,” he chattered. “There was a high wire with piranhas, just like this. There was a judge up on the ladder to one of the perches, a little drunk, I guess, and he missed his footing; or something——” She wasn’t paying attention.
He got up and joined Mundin. “If anything happens,” he said, “it’s only fair that Sandy and Virginia and the boy should be taken care of.”
“What?”
“Just remember,”
Shep was looking suspicious again. Norvell walked away.
The drumroll began and the M.C. fired the platform on which Don Lavin stood like a stone man. The crowd howled as the flames licked up and the boy hopped convulsively forward, his balance pole swaying.
The M.C. yelled furiously at the hecklers, “What the hell’s the matter with you people? Toot! Chuck gravel! What are you getting paid for?”
One of the young toughs at the far end of the pool began to swing his rattle, glancing nervously at Shep. Hubble, beside him, snapped, “A hundred more, buster. Now calm down!” The tough calmed down and gasped at the wire-walker.
A foot, two feet, the pole swaying.
He has special slippers, Norvell thought. Maybe it’ll be all right, maybe I won’t have to do anything. And then I can go back to being comfortably deaf again, buying batteries for an act of contrition, turning this nausea, these people molded from blood-streaked slime, off at will.
Three feet, four feet, and the M.C. howling with rage. “Get in there and fight, you bastards! Blow your horns! Plaster him!”
Five feet, six feet, and the crowd noise was ugly, ugly and threatening. In one section a chant bad started, one of those foot-stomping, hand-clapping things.
Six feet, seven, and the M.C. was breaking down into sobs. “We paid you to heckle and this is the way you treat us,” he blubbered. “Those fine people hi the stand. The reputation of the Stadium. Aren’t you ashamed?”
Eight feet, nine feet, ten feet. Two-thirds of the way to the second tower.
Norvell hoped. But somebody in the stands, somebody with a mighty arm and a following wind, had found the range. The half-brick at the end of its journey sailed feebly plop into the tank, and white-bellied little things tore at it and bled themselves and tore at one another. The water boiled.
Suddenly ice-cold, all business, Norvie said briskly to Mundin, “They’ll have him in a minute. Be ready to haul him out, fast Remember what I said.”
He strolled over to Willkie, who was watching the stubbornly silent hecklers in numb despair.
Another half-brick. This one hit the tower. Much flailing of the balance pole and a shriek from Norma.