Dan shook off the hand Sipich put on his arm.
“Can’t even play my record,” he said loudly. He looked down at the record, and then around at their faces. “Oh, my God—” He threw the glassful of brandy against the wall. It splattered and ran down the wallpaper in streaks.
Some of the women gasped.
“Dan,” Sipich said in a whisper. “Dan, cut it out.”
Pat Reilly was playing “Night and Day” louder, to cover up the sounds of the talk. It wouldn’t do any good, though, if Anthony was listening. Dan Hollis went over to the piano and stood by Pat’s shoulder, swaying a little. “Pat,” he said, “don’t play that. Play this.” And he began to sing, softly, hoarsely, miserably, “Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me . . .“
“Dan!” Ethel Hollis screamed. She tried to run across the room to him. Mary Sipich grabbed her arm and held her back. “Dan,” Ethel screamed again, “stop—”
“My God, be quiet!” hissed Mary Sipich, and pushed her toward one of the men, who put his hand over her mouth and held her still.
happy birthday, dear Danny,” Dan sang, “happy birthday to me!” He stopped and looked down at Pat Reilly. “Play it, Pat. Play it, so I can sing right. You know I can’t carry a tune unless somebody plays it!”
Pat Reilly put his hands on the keys and began “Lover”—in a slow waltz tempo, the way Anthony liked it. Pat’s face was white. His hands fumbled.
Dan Hollis stared over at the dining-room door. At Anthony’s mother, and at Anthony’s father, who had gone to join her. “You had him,” he said. Tears gleamed on his cheeks as the candlelight caught them. “You had to go and have him . . .“ He closed his eyes, and the tears squeezed out. He sang loudly, “You are my sunshine . . . my only sunshine . . . you make me happy . . . when I am blue . . ."
Anthony came into the room.
Pat stopped playing. He froze. Everybody froze. The breeze rippled the curtains. Ethel Hollis couldn’t even try to scream—she had fainted.
". . . please don’t take my sunshine . . . away . . .“ Dan’s voice faltered into silence. His eyes widened. He put both hands out in front of him, the empty glass in one, the record in the other. He hiccuped and said, “No—”
“Bad man,” Anthony said, and thought Dan Hollis into something like nothing anyone would have believed possible, and then he thought the thing into a grave deep, deep in the cornfield.
The glass and the record thumped on the rug. Neither broke.
Anthony’s purple gaze went around the room.
Some of the people began mumbling. They all tried to smile. The sound of mumbling filled the room like a far-off approval. Out of the murmuring came one or two clear voices:
“Oh, it’s a very good thing,” said John Sipich.
“A good thing,” said Anthony’s father, smiling. He’d had more practice in smiling than most of them. “A wonderful thing.”
“It’s swell . . . just swell,” said Pat Reilly, tears leaking from eyes and nose, and he began to play the piano again, softly, his trembling hands feeling for “Night and Day.”
Anthony climbed up on top of the piano, and Pat played for two hours.
Afterward, they watched television. They all went into the front room, and lit just a few candles, and pulled up chairs around the set. It was a small-screen set, and they couldn’t all sit close enough to it to see, but that didn’t matter. They didn’t even turn the set on. It wouldn’t have worked anyway, there being no electricity in Peaksville.
They just sat silently, and watched the twisting, writhing shapes on the screen, and listened to the sounds that came out of the speaker, and none of them had any idea of what it was all about. They never did. It was always the same.
“It’s real nice,” Aunt Amy said once, her pale eyes on the meaningless flickers and shadows. “But I liked it a little better when there were cities outside and we could get real—”
“Why, Amy!” said Mom. “It’s good for you to say such a thing. Very good. But how can you mean it? Why, this television is much better than anything we ever used to get!”
“Yes,” chimed in John Sipich. “It’s fine. It’s the best show we’ve ever seen!”
He sat on the couch with two other men, holding Ethel Hollis flat against the cushions, holding her arms and legs and putting their hands over her mouth so she couldn’t start screaming again.
“It’s really good!” he said again.
Mom looked out of the front window, across the darkened road, across Henderson’s darkened wheat field to the vast, endless, gray nothingness in which the little village of Peaksville floated like a soul—the huge nothingness that was most evident at night, when Anthony’s brassy day had gone.
It did no good to wonder where they were—no good at all. Peaksville was just someplace. Someplace away from the world. It was wherever it had been since that day three years ago when Anthony had crept from her womb and old Doc Bates—God rest him—had screamed and dropped him and tried to kill him, and Anthony had whined and done the thing. Had taken the village someplace. Or had destroyed the world and left only the village, nobody knew which.
It did no good to wonder about it. Nothing at all did any good—except to live as they must live. Must always, always live, if Anthony would let them.
These thoughts were dangerous, she thought.
She began to mumble. The others started mumbling, too. They had all been thinking, evidently.
The men on the couch whispered and whispered to Ethel Hollis, and when they took their hands away she mumbled, too.
While Anthony sat on top of the set and made television, they sat around and mumbled and watched the meaningless, flickering shapes far into the night.
Next day it snowed, and killed off half the crops but it was a good day.
All of the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER 60-13554 COPYRIGHT, 1953, 1954, 1958, 1959, BY BALLANTINE BOOKS, INC. COPYRIGHT CQ 1960 BY FREDERIK POHL
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Ballantine Books edition published by arrangement with Doubleday & Company, Inc., New York
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