The round man digested this in silence. He shifted the cigar again. "Yaa?" He chewed the cigar with an expression of distaste, removed it, spat, and put it back. "How big of a place would ya say that is?"
"The ranch? I have no idea," Ewing said stiffly. Platt was looking mournfully down at the way his car was wedged in between the slope and the house.
The round man stared at Ewing. "Ya seen it?"
"From a distance -- I mean the house. I told you. I don't know anything about the ranch itself."
The round man thought about this. "Just one house?"
"That's all I saw."
After another pause, the round man nodded. He balanced the shotgun on his knee, took a soiled piece of paper and a - stub of pencil out of his shirt pocket, and carefully drew a heavy line across the paper. "Okay," he said. "The heck with it." He put the paper and pencil away with the same deliberation, picked up the shotgun again, and stared at Ewing. "You live here?"
Ewing nodded.
"Who else?"
"Nobody else," said Ewing, tightly. "Just my friend and me."
"Don't tell me no fairy tales. Whatja do for a living?"
Ewing said, biting the words, "I'm an experimental physicist."
Instead of grunting and looking baffled, as Ewing had expected, the round man merely nodded. "Him too?"
"Yes."
The round man breathed quietly through his nose for a while, staring at the ground somewhere near Ewing's feet, shifting the cigar from time to time. Eventually he said, "Come on down here -- climb the chain and cross over." When they had done so, he got out of the car and stood beside them in the road. "March." They started down the driveway. "Your wife know how to shoot a gun?" he asked Ewing as they went.
"No," said Ewing heavily. It was the truth.
They walked in silence down to the shaded front porch and opened the door. In the living room, Fay and the children were waiting.
"My name is Krasnow," said the round man. "Herb Krasnow. I was a shipfitter in San Diego for seven years. I was in the Marines, too, before that, so don't make the mistake of thinking I'll be afraid to use this thing."
Krasnow's face was round and unemphatic, the nose short and wide, mouth and chin blending into his full cheeks. His eyes seemed to belong to someone else; steady, under untidy black brows. He showed his teeth rarely when he spoke; when he did, momentarily, Ewing saw that they were yellow-brown stumps, widely separated. The black hair on his arms and hands was luxuriant; his fingers were the thick, spatulate fingers, with black-rimmed nails cut back almost to the quick, of a man used to working with his hands. In his shabby polo cap and stained shirt, heavy-bellied, he might have been any workman on a street repair job, or loading a truck, or driving one. Ewing realized that he had seen thousands of men like this one in his life, but had never looked closely at one before.
Krasnow pushed his cap back, and immediately looked older; wet strands of hair straggled over his brown, bald scalp. Sitting in the straight chair beside the window, he faced the Ewings and Platt, all crowded together in a row on the couch. He held the shotgun balanced on one thigh, in a way that suggested he could aim and fire it from that position, one-handed. "See, my wife died a coupla years ago," he said. "I'm all alone inna world, so I figure, what the hell? Why shouldn' I get mine?"
Ewing swallowed and said angrily, "That's a hell of a philosophy. What about those people up there on the road -- why shouldn't they get theirs?"
"You have an awful nerve," Fay said. "Who do you think you are, God? You can't do a thing like that to people!"
Krasnow shook his head. "They'd do the same to me. I take my chances, just like they took theirs. You might even knock me over and take the whole works. I'm just one guy."
Platt leaned forward over his crossed knees; he was folded up like a jackknife on the couch, all joints and bony hands. The cigarette in his fingers trembled and spilled ash. "When are you going to sleep, Krasnow?" he asked.
Krasnow pantomimed a bark of laughter. "Yaa," he said. "You hit it there. We been on the road a day and a half already, and all I got was cat-naps. That colored boy, Percy, he'd as soon kill me as look at me. I figure I got to get through two more nights, maybe three before I can sleep. I'm getting old; ten years ago I coulda done it easy."
"You must be out of your mind," Ewing said. "What you're talking about just isn't possible. You can't keep all those people under control forever -- you have to sleep sometime."
Krasnow shook his head. "Ya gotta have slaves now," he said. He used the word matter-of-factly. "Nothing else is worth anything. Ya can't get people to work for ya any other way. How's the work gonna get done?"
"What work?" Ewing demanded. "Don't you understand, everything's free now -- power, machinery, anything a Gismo will carry. Later on there'll be bigger Gismos, for things like automobiles and prefab houses. What are you going to do, build a pyramid or something? Take your Gismo, why don't you, and let those people go."
"Naa. You're talking fairy tales. Every guy goes off with his own Gismo, and that's it? Not on your sweet life, mister. There's just two ways, and you'll find that out -- ya gotta own slaves, or ya gotta be a slave."
"Power hates a vacuum," said Platt. His voice was curiously subdued; he was looking with close attention at the burning tip of his cigarette. "Trouble is, though, how you going to keep them down on the farm? First chance they get, they'll cut your throat and go over the wall. Then what?"
Krasnow looked at him directly and, it seemed, curiously. "That's something I gotta work out," he said. "Like now, I got them cars chained together, and I got demolition bombs I can set off by short wave. Live bombs, one in every car. That could be better, but it works. But later on I gotta think of something else. You're supposed to be smart, you got any ideas?"
"I might," said Platt, thin-lipped. His gaze and Krasnow's met. -
"Yeah. Well, meantime, I gotta find a place like you said. With a wall." Krasnow sighed. "I heard something about this place around the bend here, so I thought I'd take a look -- a long shot. But I can tell from the way you talk, it's no good. I'll head up the coast, like I thought at first. There's plenty of rich guys' places up north, outa the way. Haifa them big, shots are away all year. Either there'll be just a caretaker, some old geezer, or else some punks that've moved in lately. Either way, I know how to handle it."
He stood up. "Ewing, you love ya wife and kids?"
Ewing's jaw knotted with anger and fear. He said, "What's that to you?"
Krasnow nodded slowly. "Sure ya do. Okay, buster, now you listen. If ya don't want to see them killed right here, you do like I tell ya. Understand?" Ewing's throat went dry, and he could not answer. "You're coming along with me," Krasnow went on after a moment. "I like the look of ya, and I like ya family, and I can use a scientist like you. So get used to the idea. Now come on outside -- yaa, you too, everybody. I got something to show ya."
He herded them through the door. Out in the yard, blinking in the white glare, Krasnow and Platt looked sorrowfully at each other. The shadow of Krasnow's gun was a short black line on the baited ground between them. "I can't use ya, and I can't trust ya," said Krasnow. "So start runnin'."
Ewing looked on unbelievingly. He saw Platt, staring into Krasnow's eyes, shudder and stiffen. Then the tall man was whirling, all knees and elbows, diving down the slope to the terrace below -- zigzagging as he made for the shelter of the nearest pepper tree -
The gun went off with a noise like the end of the world. Deafened, uncomprehending, Ewing saw his friend's body hurl itself thrashing into the weeds. The children screamed. The bitter scent of powder filled the air. Through the leaves Ewing could see what was left of Platt's head, a gray and red tatter. The legs went on kicking, and kicking ...