But perhaps Kongrosian was right. These were people, despite their malformity. They received mail, probably had little jobs or tasks, perhaps lived on county relief if they couldn't work. They were bothering no one and certainly they were harmless. He felt discouraged at his own reaction -- his initial, instinctive aversion.
To the elderly chupper Nat said, ‘Would you like a coin?'
He held out a platinum five-dollar piece.
Nodding, the chupper accepted the coin. ‘Thankya.'
‘Does Kongrosian live along this road?' Nat asked once again.
The chupper pointed.
‘Okay,' Jim Planck said. ‘Let's go. We're heading the right way.' He glanced urgently at Nat and Molly. ‘Come on.'
The three of them re-entered the auto-cab; Nat started it up and they drove on past the gasoline station and the old chupper, who stood expressionlessly, watching them go as if he had once more become inert, turned off like a simulacrum, a mere machine.
‘Wow,' Molly said, and let out her breath raggedly. ‘What the hell was that?'
‘Expect more,' Nat said briefly.
‘Goodness god in heaven,' Molly said. ‘Kongrosian must be nutty as they say, living here. I wouldn't live up here in this swamp for anything. I wish I hadn't come. Let's record him at the studio, okay? I feel like turning back.'
The auto-cab crawled along, passed under trailing vines, and then all at once they were facing the remains of a town.
A rotting sequence of wooden buildings with faded lettering and broken windows, and yet not abandoned. Here and there, along the weed-split sidewalks, Nat saw people; or rather, he thought, chuppers. Five or six of them making their way haltingly along, on their errands, whatever they might be; god knew what one did here. No phones, no mail. Maybe, he thought, Kongrosian finds it peaceful here.
There was no sound, except that of the mist-like rain falling.
Maybe once you get used to it -- but he did not think he could damn well ever get used to it. The factor of decay was too much at work, here. The absence of anything new, of any blossoming or growing. They can be chuppers if they want or if they have to be, he thought, but they ought to try harder, try to keep their settlement in repair. This is awful.
Like Molly he wished, now, that he hadn't come.
‘I would think a long time,' he said aloud, ‘before I'd plunk my life down in this area. But if you could do it you'd have accepted one of the most difficult aspects of life.'
‘And what's that?' Jim asked.
‘The supremacy of the past,' Nat said. In this region the past ruled thoroughly, entirely. Their collective past: the war which had preceded their immediate era, its consequences. The ecological changes in everyone's life. This was a museum, but alive. Movement, of a circular sort ... he shut his eyes. I wonder, he thought, if new chuppers are born. It must be genetically carried; I know it is. Or rather, he thought, I'm afraid it is. This is a waning sporting, and yet -- it continues on.
They have survived. And that's good for the real environment, for the evolutionary process. That's what does it, from the trilobite on. He felt sick.
And then he thought, I've seen this malformity before.
In pictures. In reconstructions. The reconstructions, the guesses, were quite good, evidently. Perhaps they had been corrected through von Lessinger's equipment. Stooped bodies, massive jaw, inability to eat meat because of a lack of incisor teeth, great difficulty speaking. ‘Molly,' he said aloud, ‘you know what these are, these chuppers?'
She nodded.
Jim Planck said Neanderthal. They're not radiation freaks; they're throwbacks.'
The auto-cab crept on, through the chuppers' town.
Searching in its blind, mechanical way for the nearby home of the world-famous concert pianist Richard Kongrosian.
9
The Theodoras Nitz commercial squeaked, ‘In the presence of strangers do you feel you don't quite exist? Do they seem not to notice you, as if you were invisible? On a bus or spaceship do you sometimes look around you and discover that no one, absolutely no one, recognizes you or cares about you and quite possibly may even -- ‘
With his carbon dioxide-powered pellet rifle, Maury Frauenzimmer carefully shot the Nitz commercial as it hung pressed against the far wall of his cluttered office. It had squeezed in during the night, had greeted him in the morning with its tinny harangue.
Broken, the commercial dropped to the floor. Maury crushed it with his solid, compacted weight and then returned the pellet rifle to its rack.
‘The mail,' Chic Strikerock said. ‘Where's today's mail?'
He had been searching everywhere in the office since his arrival.
Maury noisily sipped coffee from his cup and said, ‘Look on top of the files. Under that rag we use to clean the keys of the typewriter.' He bit into a breakfast doughnut, the sugarcovered type. He could see that Chic was behaving oddly and he wondered what it signified.
All at once Chic said, ‘Maury, I've got something I wrote out for you.' He tossed a folded piece of paper on to the desk.
Without examining it Maury knew what it was.
‘I'm resigning,' Chic said. He was pale.
‘Please don't,' Maury said. ‘Something will come along. I can keep the firm functioning.' He did not open the letter; he left it where Chic had tossed it. ‘What would you do if you left here?' Maury asked.
‘Emigrate to Mars.'
The intercom on the desk buzzed, and their secretary, Greta Trupe, said, ‘Mr Frauenzimmer, a Mr Garth McRae to see you with several other gentlemen, in a group.'
I wonder who they are, Maury wondered. ‘Don't send them in yet,' he said to Greta. ‘I'm in conference with Mr Strikerock.'
‘Go ahead and conduct your business,' Chic said. ‘I'm going. I'll leave my resignation letter there on your desk. Wish me luck.'
‘I wish you luck.' Maury felt depressed and ill. He stared down at the desk until the door opened and closed and Chic had gone. What a hell of a way to begin the day, Maury thought. Picking up the letter he opened it, glanced at it, folded it once more. He pressed a button on the desk intercom and said, ‘Miss Trupe, send in -- the name you said, McRae or whatever it was. And his party.'
‘Yes, Mr Frauenzimmer.'
The door from the outer office opened and Maury drew himself up to face what he recognized at once to be government officials; two of them wore the grey of the National Police, and the leader of the group, evidently McRae, had the bearing of a major official of the executive branch; in other words a highly-placed Ge.
Rising clumsily to his feet, Maury extended his hand and said, ‘Gentlemen, what can I do for you?'
Shaking hands with him, McRae said, ‘You're Frauenzimmer?'
‘Correct,' Maury answered. His heart laboured and he had difficulty breathing. Were they going to close him down? As they had moved in on the Vienna School of psychiatrists? ‘What have I done?' he asked, and heard his voice waver with apprehension. It was one trouble after another.
McRae smiled. ‘Nothing, so far. We're here to initiate discussion of the placing of an order with your firm. However, this involves knowledge of a Ge level. May I rip out your intercom?'
‘P-pardon?' Maury said, taken aback.
Nodding to the NP men, McRae stepped aside; the police moved in and swiftly made the intercom inoperative. They then inspected the walls, the furniture; they examined scrupulously every inch of the room and its equipment and then they nodded to McRae to continue.
McRae said, ‘All right. Frauenzimmer, we have specs with us for a sim we'd like constructed. Here.' He held out a sealed envelope. ‘Go over this. We'll wait.'