Ella Hardy said, “That is not Dangerfield.”
To Gill and Bonny, Mr. Hardy said, “Who is it? Say.”
Bonny said, “It’s Hoppy.” Gill nodded.
“Is he up there?” Stuart said. “In the satellite?”
“I don’t know,” Bonny said. But what did it matter? “He’s got control of it; that’s what’s important.” And we thought by coming to Berkeley we would get away, she said to herself. That we would have left Hoppy. “I’m not surprised,” she said. “He’s been preparing a long time; everything else has been practice, for this.”
“But enough of that,” the voice from the radio declared, in a lighter tone, now. “You’ll hear more about the man who saved us all; I’ll keep you posted, from time to time… old Walt isn’t going to forget. Meanwhile, let’s have a little music. What about a little authentic five-string banjo music, friends? Genuine authentic U.S. American oldtime folk music… ‘Out on Penny’s Farm,’ played by Pete Seeger, the greatest of the folk music men.”
There was a pause, and then, from the speaker, came the sound of a full symphony orchestra.
Thoughtfully, Bonny said, “Hoppy doesn’t have it down quite right. There’re a few circuits left he hasn’t got control of.”
The symphony orchestra abruptly ceased. Silence obtained again, and then something spilled out at the incorrect speed; it squeaked frantically and was chopped off. In spite of herself, Bonny smiled. At last, belatedly, there came the sound of the five-string banjo.
It was a folksy tenor voice twanging away, along with the banjo. The people in the room sat listening, obeying out of long habit; the music emanated from the radio and for seven years they had depended on this; they had learned this and it had become a part of their physical bodies, this response. And yet—Bonny felt the shame and despair around hen. No one in the room fully understood what had happened; she herself felt only a numbed confusion. They had Dangerfield back and yet they did not; they had the outer form, the appearance, but what was it really, in essence? It was some labored apparition, like a ghost; it was not alive, not viable. It went through the motions but it was empty and dead. It had a peculiar preserved quality, as if somehow the cold, the loneliness, had combined to form around the man in the sateffite a new shell. A case which fitted over the living substance and snuffed it out.
The killing, the slow destruction of Dangerfield, Bonny thought, was deliberate, and it came—not from space, not from beyond—but from below, from the familiar landscape. Dangerfield had not died from the years of isolation; he had been stricken by careful instruments issuing up from the very world which he struggled to contact. If he could have cut himself off from us, she thought, he would be alive now. At the very moment he listened to us, received us, he was being killed—and did not guess.
He does not guess even now, she decided. It probably baffles him, if he is capable of perception at this point, capable of any form of awareness.
“This is terrible,” Gill was saying in a monotone.
“Terrible,” Bonny agreed, “but inevitable. He was too vulnerable up there. If Hoppy hadn’t done it someone else would have, one day.”
“What’ll we do?” Mr. Hardy said. “If you folks are so sure of this, we better—”
“Oh,” Bonny said, “we’re sure. There’s no doubt. You think we ought to form a delegation and call on Hoppy again? Ask him to stop? I wonder what he’d say.” I wonder, she thought, how near we would get to that familiar little house before we were demolished. Perhaps we are too close even now, right here in this room.
Not for the world, she thought, would I go any nearer. I think in fact I will move farther on; I will get Andrew Gill to go with me and if not him then Stuart, if not Stuart then someone. I will keep going; I will not stay in one place and maybe I will be safe from Hoppy. I don’t care about the others at this point, because I am too scared; I only care about myself.
“Andy,” she said to Gill, “listen. I want to go.”
“Out of Berkeley, you mean?”
“Yes.” She nodded. “Down the coast to Los Angeles. I know we could make it; we’d get there and we’d be okay there, I know it.”
Gill said, “I can’t go, dear. I have to return to West Marin; I have my business—I can’t give it up.”
Appalled, she said, “You’d go back to West Marin?”
“Yes. Why not? We can’t give up just because Hoppy has done this. That’s not reasonable to ask of us. Even Hoppy isn’t asking that.”
“But he will,” she said. “He’ll ask everything, in time; I know it, I can foresee it.”
“Then we’ll wait,” Gill said. “Until then. Meanwhile, let’s do our jobs.” To Hardy and Stuart McConchie he said, “I’m going to turn in, because Christ—we have plenty to discuss tomorrow.” He rose to his feet. “Things may work themselves out. We mustn’t despair.” He whacked Stuart on the back. “Right?”
Stuart said, “I hid once in the sidewalk. Do I have to do that again?” He looked around at the rest of them, seeking an answer.
“Yes,” Bonny said.
“Then I will,” he said. “But I came up out of the sidewalk; I didn’t stay there. And I’ll come up again.” He, too, rose. “Gill, you can stay with me in my place. Bonny, you can stay with the Hardys.”
“Yes,” Ella Hardy said, stirring. “We have plenty of room for you, Mrs. Keller. Until we can find a more permanent arrangement.”
“Good,” Bonny said, automatically. “That’s swell.” She rubbed her eyes. A good night’s sleep, she thought. It would help. And then what? We will just have to see.
If, she thought, we are alive tomorrow.
To her, Gill said suddenly, “Bonny, do you find this hard to believe about Hoppy? Or do you find it easy? Do you know him that well? Do you understand him?”
“I think,” she said, “it’s very ambitious of him. But it’s what we should have expected. Now he has reached out farther than any of us; as he says, he’s now got long, long arms. He’s compensated beautifully. You have to admire him”
“Yes,” Gill admitted. “I do. Very much.”
“If I only thought this would satisfy him,” she said, “I wouldn’t be so afraid.”
“The man I feel sorry for,” Gill said, “is Dangerfield. Having to lie there passively, sick as he is, and just listen.”
She nodded, but she refused to imagine it; she could not bear to.
Hurrying down the path in her robe and slippers, Edie Keller groped her way toward Hoppy Harrington’s house.
“Hurry,” Bill said, from within her. “He knows about us, they’re telling me; they say we’re in danger. If we can get close enough to him I can do an imitation of someone dead that’ll scare him, because he’s afraid of dead people. Mr. Blaine says that’s because to him the dead are like fathers, lots of fathers, and—”
“Be quiet,” Edie said. “Let me think.” In the darkness she had gotten mixed up. She could not find the path through the oak forest, now, and she halted, breathing deeply, trying to orient herself by the dull light of the partial moon overhead.
It’s to the right, she thought. Down the hill. I must not fall; he’d hear the noise, he can hear a long way, almost everything. Step by step she descended, holding her breath.
“I’ve got a good imitation ready,” Bill was mumbling; he would not be quiet. “It’s like this: when I get near him I switch with someone dead, and you won’t like that because it’s—sort of squishy, but it’s just for a few minutes and then they can talk to him direct, from inside you. Is that okay, because once he hears—”
“It’s okay,” she said, “just for a little while.”