“I’LL have to know what you going to exhibit,” the girl said. “For the Fair records.”
“Labor-saving devices,” Alvah told her, “the latest and best products of human ingenuity, designed to―”
“Machines,” she said, writing. She added, looking up, “There’s a fee for the use of the fairground space. Since you’re only going to have it for a day, we’ll call it twenty twains.”
Alvah hesitated. He had no idea what a twain might be―it had sounded like “twain.” Evidently it was some sort of crude Muckfoot coinage.
“Afraid I haven’t got any of your money,” he said, producing a handful of steels from his belt change-meter. “I don’t suppose these would do?”
The girl looked at him steadily. “Gold?” she said. “Precious stones, platinum, an3rthing of that kind?” Alvah shook his head. “Sure?” Alvah shrugged despairingly. “Well,” she said after a moment, “maybe something can be arranged. I’ll let you talk to Doc about it, anyhow. He’ll have to decide. Come on.”
“Just a minute,” Alvah said, and ducked back into the floater. He found what he was looking for and trotted outside again.
“What’s that?” asked the girl, looking at the bulky kit at his waist.
“Just a few things I like to have with me.”
“Mind showing me?”
“Well―no.” He opened the kit. Cigarette lighter, flashlight, shaver, raincoat, heater, a few medicines over here, jujubes, food concentrates, things like that. Uh, I don’t know why I put this in here―it’s a distress signal for people who get lost in the subway.
“You never can tell,” said the girl, “when a thing like that will come in handy.”
“That’s true. Uh, this thing that looks like two dumbbells and a corkscrew …”
“Never mind,” said the girl. “Come along.”
The first shed they passed was occupied by things that looked like turtles with glittery four-foot shells. In the nearest stall, a man was peeling off from one of the beasts successive thin layers of this shell-stuff, which turned out to be colorless and transparent. He passed them to a woman, who dipped them into a basin and then laid them on a board to dry. The ones at the far end of the row, Alvah noticed, had flattened into discs.
The girl apparently misread his expression as curiosity. “Glass tortoise,” she told him. “For windows and so on. The young ones have more hump to their shells―almost spherical to start with. Those are for bottles and bowls and things.”
Alvah blinked noncommittally.
THEY passed a counter on which metal tools were displayed―knives, axes and the like. Similar objects, Alvah noted automatically, had only approximately similar outlines. There seemed to be no standardization at all.
“These are local,” the girl said. “The metal comes from Iron Pits, just a few miles south of here.”
In the next shed was a long row of upright rectangular frames, most of them empty. One near the end, however, was filled with some sort of insubstantial film or fabric. A tiny scarlet creature was crawling rapidly up and down this gossamer substance, working its way gradually from left to right.
“Squareweb,” the girl informed him. “This dress I’m wearing was made that way.”
Alvah verified his previous impression that the dress was opaque. Rather a pity, since it was also quite handsomely filled out. Not, he assured himself, that it made any difference―the girl was a Muckfoot, after all.
Next came a large cleared space. In it were half a dozen animals that resembled nothing in nature or nightmare except each other. They were wide and squat and at least six feet high at the shoulder. They had vaguely reptilian heads, and their scaly hides were patterned in orange and blue, rust and vermilion, yellow and poppy-red.
The oddest thing about them, barring the fact that each had three sets of legs, was the extraordinary series of protuberances that sprouted from their backs. First came an upright, slightly hollow shield sort of thing, set crossways, behind the first pair of shoulders. Behind that, something that looked preposterously like an armchair―it even had a bright-colored cushion―and then a double row of upright spines with a wide space between them.
“Trucks,” said the girl.
Alvah cleared his throat. “Look, Miss―”
“Betty Jane Hofmeyer. Call me B. J. Everybody does.”
“All right―uh―B. J. I wonder if you could explain something to me. What’s wrong with metal? And plastic, and things like that. I mean why should you people want to go to so much trouble and―and mess, when there are easier ways to do things better?”
“Each,” she said, “to his own taste. We turn here.”
A few yards ahead, the Fair ended and the settlement proper began with an unusually large building―large enough, Alvah estimated, to fill almost an entire wing of a third-class hotel in New York. Unlike the hovels he had seen farther south―which looked as if they had been excreted―it was built of some regular, smooth-surfaced material, seamless and fairly well shaped.
Alvah was so engrossed in these and other considerations that it wasn’t until the girl turned three steps inside the doorway, impatiently waiting, that he realized a minor crisis was at hand―he was being invited to enter a Muckfoot dwelling.
“Well, come on,” said B. J.
REFUSE any offers of food, transportation, etc., said the handbook, firmly, but as diplomatically as possible. Employ whatever subterfuge the situation may suggest, such as, “Thank you, but my doctor has forbidden me to touch fur,” or, “Pardon me, but I have a sore throat and am unable to eat.”
Alvah cleared his throat frantically. The situation did not suggest anything at all. Luckily, however, his stomach did.
“Maybe I’d better not come in,” he said. “I don’t feel very well. Maybe if I just sit down here quietly―”
“You can sit down inside,” said the girl briskly. If there’s anything wrong with you, Doc will look you over.”
“Well,” Alvah asked desperately, “couldn’t you bring him out here for a minute? I really don’t think―”
“Doc is a busy man. Are you coming or not?”
Alvah hesitated. There were, he told himself, only two possibilities, after alclass="underline" (a) he would somehow manage to keep his breakfast, and (b) he wouldn’t.
The nausea began as a faint, premonitory twinge when he stepped through the doorway. It increased steadily as he followed B. J. past cages filled with things that chirruped, croaked, rumbled, rustled or simply stared at him. The girl didn’t invite comment on any of them, for which Alvah was grateful. He was too busy concentrating on trying not to concentrate on his misery. .
For the same reason, he did not notice at what precise point the cages gave way to long rows of potted green plants. Alvah was just beginning to wonder if he would live to see the end of them when, still following B. J., he turned a corner and came upon a cleared space with half a dozen people in it.
One of them was the sad-faced youth, Artie. Another was a stocky man, all chest and paunch and no neck at all, who was talking to Artie while the others stood and listened. B. J. stopped and waited quietly. Alvah, perforce, did the same.
“―just a few seedlings and a couple of one-year-olds for now―we’ll see how they go. If you have more room later on … What else was I going to tell you?” The stocky man rumpled his hair nervously. “Oh, look, Artie, I had a copy of the specifications for you, but the fool bird got into a fight with a mirror and broke his … Wait a second.” He turned abruptly. “Hello, Beej. Come along to the library for a second, will you?”