“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 Sapramento. 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 grassextinguished 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 winglike 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 Sctoch—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 twoway 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.
His was not the sole satellite still circling Earth, but it was the sole one with life aboard. Everyone else had long since perished. But they had not been outfitted as he and Lydia had been, f or a decade of life on another world. He was lucky: besides food and water and air he had a million miles of video and audio tape to keep him amused. And now, with it, he kept them amused, the remnants of the civilization which had shot him up here in the first place. They had botched the job of getting him to Mars– fortunately for them. Their failure had paid them vital dividends ever since.
“Hoode hoode hoo,” Walt Dangerfield chanted into his microphone, using the transmitter which should have carried his voice back from millions of miles, not merely a couple hundred. “Things you can do with the timer out of an old R.C.A. washer-dryer combination. This item arrives from a handy in the Geneva area; thanks to you, Georg Schilper—I know everyone will be pleased to hear you give this timely tip in your own words.” He played into his transmitter the tape recording of the handyman himself speaking; the entire Great Lakes region of the United States would now know Georg Schilper’s bit of lore, and would no doubt wisely apply it at once. The world hungered for the knowledge tucked away in pockets here and there, knowledge which—without Dangerfield—would be confined to its point of origin, perhaps forever.
After the tape of Georg Schilper he put on his canned reading from Of Human Bondage and rose stiffly from his seat.
There was a pain in his chest which worried him; it had appeared one day, located beneath his breastbone, and now for the hundredth time he got down one of the microfilms of medical information and began scanning the section dealing with the heart. Does it feel like the heel of a hand squeezing my breath out of me? he asked himself. Someone pushing down with all his weight? It was difficult to recall what “weight” felt like in the first place. Or does it merely burn. .. and if so, when? Before meals or alter?
Last week he had made contact with a hospital in Tokyo, had described his symptoms. The doctors were not sure what to tell him. What you need, they had said, is an electrocardiogram, but how could he give himself a test like that up here? How could anyone, any more? The Japanese doctors Were living in the past, or else there had been more of a revival in Japan than he realized; than anyone realized.
Amazing, he thought suddenly, that I’ve survived so long. It did not seem long, though, because his time-sense had become faulty. And he was a busy man; at this moment, six of his tape recorders monitored six much-used frequencies, and before the reading from the Maugham book had ended he would be obliged to play them back. They might contain nothing or they might contain hours of meaningful talk. One never knew. If only, he thought, I had been able to make use of the high-speed transmission… but the proper decoders were no longer in existence, below. Hours could have been compressed into seconds, and he could have given each area in turn a complete account. As it was, he had to dole it out in small clusters, with much repetition. Sometimes it took months to read through a single novel, this way.