“It’s—just not like anything I ever ran into before,” Stockstill said. “I knew you existed. But that was about all.”
Bill said, with pride, “You – didn’t know I was learning to switch.”
“No,” Stockstill agreed.
“Try talldng to Dangerfield again,” Bill said. “Don’t give up, because I know he’s up there. I won’t tell you how I know because if I do you’ll get more upset.”
“Thank you,” Stockstill said. “For not telling me.”
Once more he pressed the mike button. The phoce opened the door and rolled outside, onto the path; the ‘mobile stopped a little way off, and the phoce looked back indecisively.
“Better go find your sister,” Stockstill said. “It’ll mean a great deal to her, I’m sure.”
When next he looked up, the phoce had gone. The ‘mobile was nowhere in sight.
“Walt Dangerfield,” Stockstill said into the mike, “I’m going to sit here trying to reach you until either you answer or I know you’re dead. I’m not saying you don’t have a genuine physical ailment, but I am saying that part of the cause lies in your psychological situation, which in many respects is admittedly bad. Don’t you agree? And after what you’ve gone through, seeing your controls taken away from you—”
From the speaker a far-off, laconic voice said, “Okay, Stockstil. I’ll make a stab at your free association. If for no other reason than to prove to you by default that I actually am desperately physically ill.”
Doctor Stockstill sighed and relaxed. “It’s about time, Have you been picking me up all this time?”
“Yes, good friend,” Dangerfield said. “I wondered how long you’d ramble on. Evidently forever. You guys are persistent, if nothing else.”
Leaning back, Stockstill shakily lit up a special deluxe Gold Label cigarette and said, “Can you lie down and make yourself comfortable?”
“I am lying down,” Dangerfield said tartly. “I’ve been lying down for five days, now.”
“And you should become thoroughly passive, if possible. Become supine.”
“Like a whale,” Dangerfield said. “Just lolling in the brine—right? Now, shall I dwell on childhood incest drives? Let’s see… I think I’m watching my mother and she’s combing her hair at her vanity table. She’s very pretty. No, sorry, I’m wrong. It’s a movie and I’m watching Norma Shearer. It’s the late-late show on TV.” He laughed faintly.
“Did your mother resemble Norma Shearer?” Stockstill asked; he had pencil and paper out, now, and was making notes.
“More like Betty Grable,” Dangerfield said. “If you can remember her. But that probably was before your time. I’m old, you know. Almost a thousand years… it ages you, to be up here, alone.”
“Just keep talking,” Stockstill said. “Whatever comes into your mind. Don’t force it, let it direct itself instead.”
Dangerfield said, “Instead of reading the great classics to the world maybe I can free-associate as to childhood toilet traumas, right? I wonder if that would interest mankind as much. Personally, I find it pretty fascinating.”
Stockstill, in spite of himself, laughed.
“You’re human,” Dangerfield said, sounding pleased. “I consider that good. A sign in your favor.” He laughed his old, familiar laugh. “We both have something in common; we both consider what we’re doing here as being very funny indeed.”
Nettled, Stockstill said, “I want to help you.”
“Aw, hell,” the faint, distant voice answered. “I’m the one who’s helping you, Doc. You know that, deep down in your unconscious. You need to feel you’re doing something worthwhile again, don’t you? When do you first remember ever having had that feeling? Just lie there supine, and Ill do the rest from up here.” He chuckled. “You realize, of course, that I’m recording this on tape; I’m going to play our silly conversations every night over New York– they love this intellectual stuff, up that way.”
“Please,” Stockstill said. “Let’s continue.”
“Hoode hoode hoo,” Dangerfield chortled. “By all means. Can I dwell on the girl I loved in the fifth grade? That was where my incest fantasies really got started.” He was silent for a moment and then he said in a reflective voice, “You know, I haven’t thought of Myra for years. Not in twenty years.”
“Did you take her to a dance or some such thing?”
“In the fifth grade?” Dangerfield yelled. “Are you some kind of a nut? Of course not. But I did kiss her.” His voice seemed to become more relaxed, more as it had been in former times. “I never forgot that,” he murmured.
Static, for a moment, supervened.
“… and then,” Dangerfieid was saying when next Stockstill could make his words out, “Arnold Klein rapped me on the noggin and I shoved him over, which is exactly what he deserved. Do you follow? I wonder how many hundreds of my avid listeners are getting this; I see lights lit up—they’re trying to contact me on a lot of frequencies. Wait, Doe. I have to answer a few Of these calls. Who knows, some of them might be other, better analysts.” He added, in parting, “And at lower rates.”
There was silence. Then Dangerfield was back.
“Just people telling me I did right to rap Arnold Klein on the noggin,” he said cheerfully. “So far the votes are in favor four to ohe. Shall I continue?”
“Please do,” Stockstill said, scratching notes.
“Well,” Dangerfield said, “and then there was Jenny Linhart. That was in the low sixth.”
The satellite, in its orbit, had come closer; the reception was now loud and clear. Or perhaps it was that Hoppy Harrington’s equipment was especially good. Doctor Stockstill leaned back in his chair, smoked his cigarette, and listened, as the voice grew until it boomed and echoed in the room.
How many times, he thought, Hoppy must have sat here receiving the satellite. Building up his plans, preparing for the day. And now it is over. Had the phocomelus—Bill Keller—taken the wizened, dried-up little thing with him? Or was it still somewhere nearby?
Stockstill did not look around; he kept his attention on the voice which came to him so forcefully, now. He did not let himself notice anything else in the room.
In a strange but soft bed in an unfamiliar room, Bonny Keller woke to sleepy confusion. Diffuse light, yellow and undoubtedly the early-morning sun, poured about her, and above her a man whom she knew well bent over her, reaching down his arms. It was Andrew Gill and for a moment she imagined—she deliberately allowed herself to imagine—that it was seven years ago, E Day again.
“Hi,” she murmured, clasping him to her. “Stop,” she said, then. “You’re crushing me and you haven’t shaved yet. What’s going on?” She sat up, all at once, pushing him away.
Gill said, “Just take it easy.” Tossing the covers aside, he picked her up, carried her across the room, toward the door.
“Where are we going?” she asked. “To Los Angeles? This way—with you carrying me in your arms?”
“We’re going to listen to somebody.” With his shoulder he pushed the door open and carried her down the small, low-ceilinged hall.
“Who?” she demanded. “Hey, I’m not dressed.” All she on was her underwear, which she had slept in.
Ahead, she saw the Hardys’ living room, and there, at the radio, their faces suffused with an eager, youthful joy, stood Stuart McConchie, the Hardys, and several men whom she realized were employees of Mr. Hardy.
From the speaker came the voice they had heard last night, or was it that voice? She listened, as Andrew Gill seated himself with her on his lap. “… and then Jenny Linhart said to me,” the voice was saying, “that I resembled, in her estimation, a large poodle. It had to do with the—way my big sister was cutting my hair, I think. I did look like a large poodle. It was not an insult. It was merely an observation; it showed she was aware of me. But that’s some improvement over not being noticed at all, isn’t it?” Dangerfield was silent, then, as if waiting for an answer.