"Play," Fran said vigorously. And Norm, whose turn it was, picked up the spinner and spun.
"Eleven," he said. "That gets my Leonard out of the sports car repair garage and on his way to the race track." He moved the Leonard doll ahead.
Thoughtfully, Tod Morrison said, "You know, I was out the other day hauling in perishables which the careboys had dropped… Bill Ferner was there, and he told me something interesting. He met a fluker from a fluke-pit down where Oakland used to be. And at that fluke-pit you know what they play? Not Perky Pat. They never have heard of Perky Pat."
"Well, what do they play, then?" Helen asked.
"They have another doll entirely." Frowning, Tod continued, "Bill says the Oakland fluker called it a Connie Companion doll. Ever hear of that?"
"A 'Connie Companion' doll," Fran said thoughtfully. "How strange. I wonder what she's like. Does she have a boy friend?"
"Oh sure," Tod said. "His name is Paul. Connie and Paul. You know, we ought to hike down there to that Oakland Fluke-pit one of these days and see what Connie and Paul look like and how they live. Maybe we could learn a few things to add to our own layouts."
Norm said, "Maybe we could play them."
Puzzled, Fran said, "Could a Perky Pat play a Connie Companion? Is that possible? I wonder what would happen?"
There was no answer from any of the others. Because none of them knew.
As they skinned the rabbit, Fred said to Timothy, "Where did the name 'fluker' come from? It's sure an ugly word; why do they use it?"
"A fluker is a person who lived through the hydrogen war," Timothy explained. "You know, by a fluke. A fluke of fate? See? Because almost everyone was killed; there used to be thousands of people."
"But what's a 'fluke,' then? When you say a 'fluke of fate' -"
"A fluke is when fate has decided to spare you," Timothy said, and that was all he had to say on the subject. That was all he knew.
Fred said thoughtfully, "But you and I, we're not flukers because we weren't alive when the war broke out. We were born after."
"Right," Timothy said.
"So anybody who calls me a fluker," Fred said, "is going to get hit in the eye with my bull-roarer."
"And 'careboy,' " Timothy said, "that's a made-up word, too. It's from when stuff was dumped from jet planes and ships to people in a disaster area. They were called 'care parcels' because they came from people who cared."
"I know that," Fred said. "I didn't ask that."
"Well, I told you anyhow," Timothy said.
The two boys continued skinning the rabbit.
Jean Regan said to her husband, "Have you heard about the Connie Companion doll?" She glanced down the long rough-board table to make sure none of the other families was listening. "Sam," she said, "I heard it from Helen Morrison; she heard it from Tod and he heard it from Bill Ferner, I think. So it's probably true."
"What's true?" Sam said.
"That in the Oakland Fluke-pit they don't have Perky Pat; they have Connie Companion… and it occurred to me that maybe some of this – you know, this sort of emptiness, this boredom we feel now and then – maybe if we saw the Connie Companion doll and how she lives, maybe we could add enough to our own layout to -" She paused, reflecting. "To make it more complete."
"I don't care for the name," Sam Regan said. "Connie Companion; it sounds cheap." He spooned up some of the plain, utilitarian grain-mash which the careboys had been dropping, of late. And, as he ate a mouthful, he thought, I'll bet Connie Companion doesn't eat slop like this; I'll bet she eats cheeseburgers with all the trimmings, at a high-type drive-in.
"Could we make a trek down there?" Jean asked.
"To Oakland Fluke-pit?" Sam stared at her. "It's fifteen miles, all the way on the other side of the Berkeley Fluke-pit!"
"But this is important," Jean said stubbornly. "And Bill says that a fluker from Oakland came all the way up here, in search of electronic parts or something… so if he can do it, we can. We've got the dust suits they dropped us. I know we could do it."
Little Timothy Schein, sitting with his family, had overheard her; now he spoke up. "Mrs. Regan, Fred Chamberlain and I, we could trek down that far, if you pay us. What do you say?" He nudged Fred, who sat beside him. "Couldn't we? For maybe five dollars."
Fred, his face serious, turned to Mrs. Regan and said, "We could get you a Connie Companion doll. For five dollars for each of us."
"Good grief," Jean Regan said, outraged. And dropped the subject.
But later, after dinner, she brought it up again when she and Sam were alone in their quarters.
"Sam, I've got to see it," she burst out. Sam, in a galvanized tub, was taking his weekly bath, so he had to listen to her. "Now that we know it exists we have to play against someone in the Oakland Fluke-pit; at least we can do that. Can't we? Please." She paced back and forth in the small room, her hands clasped tensely. "Connie Companion may have a Standard Station and an airport terminal with jet landing strip and color TV and a French restaurant where they serve escargot, like the one you and I went to when we were first married… I just have to see her layout."
"I don't know," Sam said hesitantly. "There's something about Connie Companion doll that – makes me uneasy."
"What could it possibly be?"
"I don't know."
Jean said bitterly, "It's because you know her layout is so much better than ours and she's so much more than Perky Pat."
"Maybe that's it," Sam murmured.
"If you don't go, if you don't try to make contact with them down at the Oakland Fluke-pit, someone else will – someone with more ambition will get ahead of you. Like Norman Schein. He's not afraid the way you are."
Sam said nothing; he continued with his bath. But his hands shook.
A careboy had recently dropped complicated pieces of machinery which were, evidently, a form of mechanical computer. For several weeks the computers – if that was what they were – had sat about the pit in their cartons, unused, but now Norman Schein was finding something to do with one. At the moment he was busy adapting some of its gears, the smallest ones, to form a garbage disposal unit for his Perky Pat's kitchen.
Using the tiny special tools – designed and built by inhabitants of the fluke-pit – which were necessary in fashioning environmental items for Perky Pat, he was busy at his hobby bench. Thoroughly engrossed in what he was doing, he all at once realized that Fran was standing directly behind him, watching.
"I get nervous when I'm watched," Norm said, holding a tiny gear with a pair of tweezers.
"Listen," Fran said, "I've thought of something. Does this suggest anything to you?" She placed before him one of the transistor radios which had been dropped the day before.
"It suggests that garage-door opener already thought of," Norm said irritably. He continued with his work, expertly fitting the miniature pieces together in the sink drain of Pat's kitchen; such delicate work demanded maximum concentration.
Fran said, "It suggests that there must be radio transmitters on Earth somewhere, or the careboys wouldn't have dropped these."
"So?" Norm said, uninterested.
"Maybe our Mayor has one," Fran said. "Maybe there's one right here in our own pit, and we could use it to call the Oakland Fluke-pit. Representatives from there could meet us halfway… say at the Berkeley Fluke-pit. And we could play there. So we wouldn't have that long fifteen mile trip."
Norman hesitated in his work; he set the tweezers down and said slowly, "I think possibly you're right." But if their Mayor Hooker Glebe had a radio transmitter, would he let them use it? And if he did -
"We can try," Fran urged. "It wouldn't hurt to try."