Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along after the Bomb

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At the Foresters’ Hall, the people of West Marin sat discussing the illness of the man in the satellite. Agitated, they interrupted one another in their eagerness to speak. The reading from Of Human Bondage had begun, but no one in the room wanted to listen; they were all murmuring grim-faced, all of them alarmed, as June Raub was, to realize what would happen to them if the disc jockey were to die.

“He can’t really be that sick,” Cas Stone, the largest land-owner in West Marin, exclaimed. “I never told anybody this, but listen; I’ve got a really good doctor, a specialist in heart diseases, down in San Rafael. I’ll get him to a transmitter somewhere and he can tell Dangerfield what’s the matter with him. And he can cure him.”

“But he’s got no medicines up there,” old Mrs. Lully, the most ancient person in the community, said. “I heard him say once that his departed wife used them all up.”

“I’ve got quinidine,” the pharmacist spoke up. “That’s probably exactly what he needs. But there’s no way to get it up to him.”

Earl Colvig, who headed the West Marin Police, said, “I understand that the Army people at Cheyenne are going to make another try to reach him later this year.”

“Take your quinidine to Cheyenne,” Cas Stone said to the pharmacist.

“To Cheyenne?” the pharmacist quavered. “There aren’t any through roads over the Sierras any more. I’d never get there.”

In as calm a voice as possible, June Raub said, “Perhaps he isn’t actually ill; perhaps it’s only hypochondria, from being isolated and alone up there all these years. Something about the way he detailed each symptom made me suspect that.” However, hardly anyone heard her. The three representatives from Bolinas, she noticed, had gone quietly over beside the radio and were stooping down to listen to the reading. “Maybe he won’t die,” she said, half to herself.

At that, the glasses man glanced up at her. She saw on his face an expression of shock and numbness, as if the realization that the man in the satellite might be sick and would die was too much for him. The illness of his own daughter, she thought, had not affected him so.

A silence fell over the people in the furthest part of the Hall, and June Raub looked to see what had happened.

At the door, a gleaming platform of machinery had rolled mto sight Hoppy Harrington had arrived.

“Hoppy, you know what?” Cas Stone called. “Dangerfield said he’s got something wrong with him, maybe his heart.”

They all became silent, waiting for the phocomelus to speak.

Hoppy rolled past them and up to the radio; he halted his ‘mobile, sent one of his manual extensions over to delicately diddle at the tuning knob. The three representatives from Bolinas respectfully stood aside. Static rose, then faded, and the voice of Walt Dangerfield came in clear and strong. The reading was still in progress, and Hoppy, in the center of his machinery, listened intently. ‘He, and the others in the room, continued to listen without speaking until at last the sound faded out as the satellite passed beyond the range of reception. Then, once again, there was only the static.

All of a sudden, in a voice exactly like Dangerfield’s, the phocomelus said, “Well, my dear friends, what’ll we have next to entertain us?”

This time the imitation was so perfect that several people in the room gasped. Others clapped, and Hoppy smiled. “How about some more of that juggling?” the pharmacist called. “I like that.”

“‘Juggling,’” the phocomelus said, this time exactly in the pharmacist’s quavering, prissy voice. “ ‘I like that.’

“No,” Cas Stone said, “I want to hear him do Dangerfield; do some more of that, Hoppy. Come on.”

The phocomelus spun his ‘mobile around so that he faced the audience. “Hoode hoode hoo,” he chuckled in the low, easy-going tones which they all knew so well. June Raub caught her breath; it was eerie, the phoce’s ability to mimic. It always disconcerted her… if she shut her eyes she could imagine that it actually was Dangerfield still talking, still in contact with them. She did so, deliberately pretending to herself. He’s not sick, he’s not dying, she told herself; listen to him. As if in answer to her own thoughts, the friendly voice was murmuring, “I’ve got a little pain here in my chest, but it doesn’t amount to a thing; don’t worry about it, friends. Upset stomach, most likely. Over-indulgence. And what do we take for that? Does anybody out there remember?”

A man in the audience shouted, “I remember: alkalize with Alka Seltzer!”

“Hoode hoode hoo,” the warm voice chuckled. “That’s right. Good for you. Now let me give you a tip on how to store gladiola bulbs all through the winter without fear of annoying pests. Simply wrap them in aluminum foil.”

People in the room clapped, and June Raub heard someone close by her say, “That’s exactly what Dangerfield would have said.” It was the glasses man from Bolinas. She opened her eyes and saw the expression on his face. I must have looked like that, she realized, that night when I first heard Hoppy imitating him.

“And now,” Hoppy continued, still in Dangerfield’s voice, “I’ll perform a few feats of skill that I’ve been working on. I think you’ll all get a bang out of this, dear friends. Just watch.”

Eldon Blaine, the glasses man from Bolinas, saw the phocomelus place a coin on the floor several feet from his ‘mobile. The extensions withdrew, and Hoppy, still murmuring in Dangerfield’s voice, concentrated on the coin until all at once, with a clatter, it slid across the floor toward him. The people in the Hall clapped. Flushing with pleasure, the phocomelus nodded to them and then once more set the coin down away from him, this time farther than before.

Magic, Eldon thought. What Pat said; the phoces can do that in compensation for not having been born with arms or legs, it’s nature’s way of helping them survive. Again the coin slid toward the ‘mobile and again the people in the Foresters’ Hall applauded.

To Mrs. Raub, Eldon said, “He does this every night?”

“No,” she answered. “He does various tricks; I’ve never seen this one before, but of course I’m not always here—I have so much to do, helping to keep our community functioning. It’s remarkable, isn’t it?”

Action at a distance, Eldon realized. Yes, it is remarkable. And we must have him, he said to himself. No doubt of it now. For when Walt Dangerfield dies—and it is becoming obvious that he will, soon—we would have this memory of him, this reconstruction, embodied in this phoce. Like a phonograph record, to be played back forever.

“Does he frighten you?” June Raub asked.

“No,” Eldon said. “Should he?”

“I don’t know,” she said in a thoughtful voice.

“Has he ever transmitted to the satellite?” Eldon asked. “A lot of other handles have. Odd he hasn’t, with his ability.”

June Raub said, “He intended to. Last year he started building a transmitter; he’s been working on it off and on, but evidently nothing came of it. He tries all sorts of projects… he’s always busy. You can see the tower. Come outside a minute and I’ll show you.”

He followed her to the door of the Foresters’ Hall. Together, they stood outside in the darkness until they were able to see. Yes, there it was, a peculiar, crooked mast, rising up into the night sky but then brealdng off abruptly.

“That’s his house,” June Raub said. “It’s on his roof. And he did it without any help from us; he can amplify the impulses from his brain into what he calls his servo-assists, and that way he’s quite strong, much more so than any unfunny man.” She was silent a moment “We all admire him. He’s done a lot for us.”

“Yes,” Eldon said.

“You came here to nap him away from us,” June Raub said quietly. “Didn’t you?”

Startled, he protested, “No, Mrs. Raub—honest, we came to listen to the satellite; you know that.”

“It’s been tried before,” Mrs. Raub said. “You can’t nap him because he won’t let you. He doesn’t like your community down there; he knows about your ordinance. We have no such discrimination up here and he’s grateful for that, He’s very sensitive about himself.”

Disconcerted, Eldon Blaine moved away from the woman, back toward the door of the Hall.

“Wait,” Mrs. Raub said. “You don’t have to worry: I won’t say anything to anyone. I don’t blame you for seeing him and wanting him for your own community. You know, he wasn’t born here in West Marin. One day, about three years ago, he came rolling into town on his ‘mobile, not this one but the older one the Government built before the Emergency. He had rolled all the way up from San Francisco, he told us. He wanted to find a place where he could settle down, and no one had given him that, up until us.”

“Okay,” Eldon murmured. “I understand.”

“Everything nowadays can be napped,” Mrs. Raub said. “All it take is sufficient force. I saw your police-cart parked down the road, and I know that the two men with you are on your police force. But floppy does what he wants. I think if you tried to coerce him he’d kill you it wouldn’t be much trouble for him and he wouldn’t mind.”

After a pause Eldon said, “I—appreciate your candor.”

Together, silently, they re-entered the Foresters’ Hall.

All eyes were on Hoppy Harrington, who was still immersed in his imitation of Dangerfield. “… it seems to go away when I eat,” the phocomelus was saying, “And that makes me think it’s an ulcer, not my heart. So if any doctors are listening and they have access to a transmitter—”

A man in the audience interrupted, “I’m going to get hold of my doctor in San Rafael; I’m not kidding when I say that. We can’t have another dead man circling around and around the Earth.” It was the same man who had spoken before; he sounded even more earnest now. “Or if as Mrs. Rab says it’s just in his mind, couldn’t we get Doc Stockstill to help him?”

Eldon Blaine thought, But Hoppy was not here in the Hall when Dangerfield said those words. How can he mimic something he did not hear?

And then he understood. It was obvious. The phocomelus had a radio receiver at his house; before coming to the Foresters’ Hall he had sat by himself in his house, listening to the satellite. That meant there were two functioning radios in West Marin, compared to none at all in Bolinas. Eldon felt rage and despair. We have nothing, he realized. And these people here have everything, even an extra, private radio set, for just one person alone.

It’s like before the war, he thought blindly. They’re living as good as then. It isn’t fair.

Turning, he plunged back out of the Hall, into the night darkness. No one noticed him; they did not care. They were far too busy arguing about Dangerfield and his health to pay attention to anything else.

Coming up the road, carrying a kerosene lantern, three figures confronted him: a tall, skinny man, a young woman with dank red hair, and between them a small girl.

“Is the reading over?” the woman asked. “Are we too late?”

“I don’t know,” Eldon said, and continued on past them.

“Oh, we missed it,” the little girl was clamoring. “I told you we should have hurried!”

“Well, we’ll go on inside anyhow,” the man told her, and then their voices faded away as Eldon Blaine, despairing, continued on into the darkness, away from the sounds and presence of other people, of the wealthy West Mariners who had so much.

Hoppy Harrington, doing his imitation of Dangerfield, glanced up to see the Kellers, with their little girl, enter the room and take seats in the rear. About time, he said to himself, glad of a greater audience. But then he felt nervous, because the little girl was scrutinizing him. There was something in the way she looked at him that upset him; it had always been so, about Edie. He did not like it, and he ceased suddenly.

“Go ahead, Hoppy,” Cas Stone called.

“Go on,” other voices chimed in.

“Do that one about Kool Aid,” a woman called. “Sing that, the little tune the Kool Aid twins sing; you know.”

“‘Kool Aid, Kool Aid, can’t wait,’” Hoppy sang, but once more he stopped. “I guess that’s enough for tonight,” he said.

The room became silent.

“My brother,” the little Keller girl spoke up, “he says that Mr. Dangerfield is somewhere in this room.”

Hoppy laughed. “That’s right,” he said excitedly.

“Has he done the reading?” Edie Keller asked.

“Oh yeah, the reading’s over,” Earl Colvig said, “but we weren’t listening to that; we’re listening to floppy and watching what he does. He did a lot of funny things tonight, didn’t you, Hoppy?”

“Show the little girl that with the coin,” June Raub said. “I think she’d enjoy that.”

“Yes, do that again,” the pharmacist called from his seat. “That was good; we’d all like to see that again, I’m sure,” In his eagerness to watch he rose to his feet, forgetting the people behind him.

“My brother,” Edie said quietly, “wants to hear the reading. That’s what he came for. He doesn’t care about anything with a coin.”

“Be still,” Bonny said to her.

Brother, Hoppy thought. She doesn’t have any brother. He laughed out loud at that, and several people in the audience automatically smiled. “Your brother?” he said, wheeling his ‘mobile toward the child. “Your brother?” He halted the ‘mobile directly before her, still laughing. “I can do the reading,” he said. “I can be Philip and Mildred and everybody in the book; I can be Dangerfield—sometimes I actually am. I was tonight and that’s why your brother thinks Dangerfield’s in the room. What it is, it’s me.” He looked around at the people. “Isn’t that right, folks? Isn’t it actually Hoppy?”

“That’s right, Hoppy,” Cas Stone agreed, nodding. The others nodded, too, all of them, or at least most of them.

“Christ sake, Hoppy,” Bonny Keller said severely. “Calm down or you’ll shake yourself right off your cart.” She eyed him in her stem domineering way and he felt himself recede; he drew back in spite of himself. “What’s been going on here?” Bonny demanded.

Fred Quinn, the pharmacist, said, “Why, floppy’s been imitating Walt Dangerfield so well you’d think it was him!”

The others nodded, chiming in with their agreement.

“You have no brother, Edie,” Hoppy said to the little girl. “Why do you say your brother wants to hear the reading when you have no brother?” He laughed and laughed, The girl remained silent. “Can I see him?” he asked. “Can I talk to him? Let me hear him talk and—I’ll do an imitation of him.” Now he was laughing so hard that he could barely see; tears filled his eyes and he had to wipe them away with an extensor.

“That’ll be quite an imitation,” Cas Stone said.

“Like to hear that,” Earl Colvig said. “Do that, Hoppy.”

“I’ll do it,” Hoppy said, “as soon as he says something to me.” He sat in the center of his ‘mobile, waiting. “I’m waiting,” he said.

“That’s enough,” Bonny Keller said. “Leave my child alone.” Her cheeks were red with anger.

To Edie, ignoring the child’s mother, Hoppy said, “Where is he? Tell me where—is he nearby?”

“Lean down,” Edie said. “Toward me. And he’ll speak to you.” Her face, like her mother’s, was grim.

Hoppy leaned toward her, cocking his head on one side, in a mock-serious gesture of attention.

A voice, speaking from inside him, as if it were a part of the interior world, said, “How did you fix that record changer? How did you really do that?”

Hoppy screamed.

Everyone was staring at him, white-faced; they were on their feet, now, all of them rigid.

“I heard Jim Fergesson,” Hoppy said.

The girl regarded him calmly. “Do you want to hear my brother say more, Mr. Harrington? Say some more words to him, Bill; he wants you to say more.”

And, in Hoppy’s interior world, the voice said, “It looked like you healed it. It looked like instead of replacing that broken spring—”

Hoppy wheeled his cart wildly, spun up the aisle to the far end of the room, wheeled again and sat panting, a long way from the Keller girl; his heart pounded and he stared at her. She returned his stare silently, but now with the faint trace of a smile on her lips.

“You heard my brother, didn’t you?” she said.

“Yes,” Hoppy said. “Yes I did.”

“And you know where he is.”

“Yes.” He nodded. “Don’t do it again. Please. I won’t do any more imitations if you don’t want me to; okay?” He looked pleadingly at her, but there was no response there, no promise. “I’m sorry,” he said to her. “I believe you now.”

“Good lord,” Bonny said softly. She turned toward her husband, as if questioning him. George shook his head but did not answer.

Slowly and steadily the child said, “You can see him too, if you want, Mr. Harrington. Would you like to see what he looks like?”

“No,” he said. “I don’t want to.”

“Did he scare you?” Now the child was openly smiling at him, but her smile was empty and cold. “He paid you back because you were picking on me. It made him angry, so he did that.”

Coming up beside floppy, George Keller said, “What happened, Hop?”

“Nothing,” he said shortly.

Scared me, he thought. Fooled me, by imitating Jim Fergesson; he took me completely in, I really thought it was Jim again. Edie was conceived the day Jim Fergesson died; I know because Bonny told me once, and I think her brother was conceived simultaneously. But—it’s not true; it wasn’t Jim. It was—an imitation.

“You see,” the child said, “Bill does imitations, too.”

“Yes.” He nodded, trembling. “Yes, he does.”

“They’re good.” Edie’s dark eyes sparkled.

“Yes, very good,” Hoppy said. As good as mine, he thought. Maybe better than mine. I better be careful of him, he thought, of her brother Bill; I better stay away. I really learned my lesson.

It could have been Fergesson, he realized, in there. Reborn, what they call reincarnation; the bomb might have done it somehow in a way I don’t understand. Then it’s not an imitation and I was right the first time, but how’ll I know? He won’t tell me; he hates me, I guess because I made fun of his sister Edie. That was a mistake; I shouldn’t have done that.

“Hoode hoode hoo,” he said, and a few people turned his way; he got some attention, here and there in the room. “Well, this is your old pal,” he said. But his heart wasn’t in it; his voice shook. He grinned at them, but no one grinned back. “Maybe we can pick up the reading a little while more,” he said. “Edie’s brother wants to listen to it.” Sending out an extensor, he turned up the volume of the radio, tuned the dial.

You can have what you want, he thought to himself. The reading or anything else. How long have you been in there? Only seven years? It seems more like forever. As if—you’ve always existed. It had been a terribly old, wizened, white thing that had spoken to him. Something hard and small, floating. Lips overgrown with downy hair that hung trailing, streamers of it, wispy and dry. I bet it was Fergesson, he said to himself; it felt like him. He’s in there, inside that child.

I wonder. Can he get out?

Edie Keller said to her brother, “What did you do to scare him like you did? He was really scared.”

From within her the familiar voice said, “I was someone he used to know, a long time ago. Someone dead.”

“Oh,” she said, “so that’s it. I thought it was something like that.” She was amused. “Are you going to do any more to him?”

“If I don’t like him,” Bill said, “I may do more to him, a lot of different things, maybe.”

“How did you know about the dead person?”

“Oh,” Bill said, “because-you know why. Because I’m dead, too.” He chuckled, deep down inside her stomach; she felt him quiver.

“No you’re not,” she said. “You’re as alive as I am, so don’t say that; it isn’t right.” It frightened her.

Bill said, “I was just pretending; I’m sorry. I wish I could have seen his face. How did it look?”

“Awful,” Edie said, “when you said that. It turned all inward, like a frog’s. But you wouldn’t know what a frog looks like either; you don’t know what anything looks like, so there’s no use trying to tell you.”

“I wish I could come out,” Bill said plaintively. “I wish I could be born like everybody else. Can’t I be born later on?”

“Doctor Stockstill said you couldn’t.”

“Then can’t he make it so I could be? I thought you said—”

“I was wrong,” Edie said. “I though he could cut a little round hole and that would do it, but he said no.”

Her brother, deep within her, was silent, then.

“Don’t feel bad,” Edie said. “I’ll keep on telling you how things are.” She wanted to console him; she said, “I’ll never do again like I did that time when I was mad at you, when I stopped telling you about what’s outside; I promise.”

“Maybe I could make Doctor Stockstill let me out,” Bill said.

“Can you do that? You can’t.”

“I can if I want.”

“No,” she said. “You’re lying; you can’t do anything but sleep and talk to the dead and maybe do imitations like you did. That isn’t much; I can practically do that myself, and a lot more.”

There was no response from within.

“Bill,” she said, “you know what? Well, now two people know about you—Hoppy Harrington does and Doctor Stockstill does. And you used to say nobody would ever find out about you, so you’re not so smart. I don’t think you’re very smart.”

Within her, Bill slept.

“If you did anything bad,” she said, “I could swallow something that would poison you. Isn’t that so? So you better behave.”

She felt more and more afraid of him; she was talking to herself, trying to bolster her confidence. Maybe it would be a good thing if you did die, she thought. Only then I’d have to carry you around still, and it—wouldn’t be pleasant; I wouldn’t like that.

She shuddered.

“Don’t worry about me,” Bill said suddenly. He had become awake again or maybe he had never been asleep at all; maybe he had just been pretending. “I know a lot of things; I can take care of myself. I’ll protect you, too. You better be glad about me because I can—well, you wouldn’t understand. You know I can look at everyone who’s dead, like the man I imitated. Well, there’re a whole lot of them, trillions and trillions of them and they’re all different. When I’m asleep I hear them muttering. They’re still all around.”

“Around where?” she asked.

“Underneath us,” Bill said. “Down in the ground.”

“Brrr,” she said.

Bill laughed. “It’s true. And we’re going to be there, too. And so is Mommy and Daddy and everybody else. Everybody and everything’s there, including animals. That dog’s almost there, that one that talks. Not there yet, maybe; but it’s the same. You’ll see.”

“I don’t want to see,” she said. “I want to listen to the reading; you be quiet so I can listen. Don’t you want to listen, too? You always say you like it.”

“He’ll be there soon, too,” Bill said. “The man who does the reading up in the satellite.”

“No,” she said. “I don’t believe that; are you sure?”

“Yes,” her brother said. “Pretty sure. And even before him—do you know who the ‘glasses man’ is? You don’t, but he’ll be there very soon, in just a few minutes. And then later on—” He broke off. “I won’t say.”

“No,” she agreed. “Don’t say, please. I don’t want to hear.”

Guided by the tall, crooked mast of Hoppy’s transmitter, Eldon Blaine made his way toward the phocomelus’ house. It’s now or never, he realized. I have only a little time. No one stopped him; they were all at the Hall, including the phocomelus himself. I’ll get that radio and nap it, Eldon said to himself. If I can’t get him at least I can return to Bolinas with something. The transmitter was now close ahead; he felt the presence of Hoppy’s construction—and then all at once he was stumbling over something. He fell, floundered with his arms out. The remains of a fence, low to the ground.

Now he saw the house itself, or what remained of it. Foundations and one wall, and in the center a patchedtogether cube, a room made out of debris, protected from rain by tar paper. The mast, secured by heavy guy wires, rose directly behind a little metal chimney.

The transmitter was on.

He heard the hum even before be saw the gaseous blue light of its tubes. And from the crack under the door of the tar-paper cube more light streamed out. He found the knob, paused, and then quickly turned it; the door swung open with no resistance, almost as if something inside were expecting him.

A friendly, intimate voice murmured, and Eldon Blainé glanced around, chilled, expecting to see—incredibly—the phocomelus. But the voice came from a radio mounted on a work bench on which lay tools and meters and repair parts in utter disorder. Dangerfield, still speaking, even though the satellite surely had passed on. Contact with the satellite such as no one else had achieved, he realized. They even have that, up here in West Marin. But why was the big transmitter on? What was it doing? He began to look hastily around…

From the radio the low, intimate voice suddenly changed; it became harsher, sharper. “Glasses man,” it said, “what are you doing in my house?” It was the voice of Hoppy Harrington, and Eldon stood bewildered, rubbing his head numbly, trying to understand and knowing on a deep, instinctive level that he did not—and never really would.

“Hoppy,” he managed to say. “Where are you?”

“I’m here,” the voice from the radio said. “I’m coming closer. Wait where you are, glasses man.” The door of the room opened and Hoppy Harrington, aboard his phocomobile, his eyes sharp and blazing, confronted Eldon. “Welcome to my home,” Hoppy said caustically, and his voice now issued from him and from the speaker of the radio both. “Did you think you had the satellite, there on that set?” One of his manual extensions reached out, and the radio was shut off. “Maybe you did, or maybe you will, someday. Well, glasses man, speak up. What do you want here?”

Eldon said, “Let me go. I don’t want anything; I was just looking around.”

“Do you want the radio, is that it?” Hoppy said in an expressionless voice. He seemed resigned, not surprised in the least.

Eldon said, “Why is your transmitter on?”

“Because I’m transmitting to the satellite.”

“If you’ll let me go,” Eldon said, “I’ll give you all the glasses I have. And they represent months of scavenging all over Northern California.”

“You don’t have any glasses this time,” the phocomelus said. “I don’t see your briefcase, anyhow. But you can go, though, as far as Fm concerned; you haven’t done anything wrong, here. I didn’t give you the chance,” He laughed in his brisk, stammering way.

Eldon said, “Are you going to try to bring down the satellite?”

The phocomelus stared at him.

“You are,” Eldon said. “With that transmitter you’re going to set off that final stage that never fired; you’ll make it act as a retro-rocket and then it’ll fall back into the atmosphere and eventually come down.”

“I couldn’t do that,” floppy said, finally. “Even if I wanted to.”

“You can affect things at a distance.”

“I’ll tell you what I’m doing, glasses man.” Wheeling his ‘mobile past Eldon, the phocomelus sent an extension thrusting out to pick up an object from his work bench. “Do you recognize this? It’s a reel of recording tape. It will be transmitted to the satellite at tremendously high speed, so that hours of information are conveyed in a few moments. And at the same time, all the messages which the sateffite has been receiving during its transit will be broadcast down to me the same way, at ultra high speed This is how it was designed to work originally, glasses man. Before the Emergency, before the monitoring equipment down here was lost.”

Eldon Blaine looked at the radio on the work bench and then he stole a glance at the door. The phocomobile had moved so that the door was no longer blocked. He wondered if he could do it, if he had a chance.

“I can transmit to a distance of three hundred miles,” Hoppy was saying. “I could reach receivers up and down Northern California, but that’s all, by transmitting direct. But by sending my messages to the satellite to be recorded and then played back again and again as it moves on—”

“You can reach the entire world,” Eldon said.

“That’s right,” Hoppy said. “There’s the necessary ma• chinery aboard; it’ll obey all sorts of instructions from the ground.”

“And then you’ll be Dangerfield,” Eldon said.

The phocomelus smiled and stammered, “And no one will know the difference. I can pull if off; Fve got everything worked out. What’s the alternative. Silence. The satellite will fall silent any day, now. And then the one voice that unifies the world will be gone and the world will decay. I’m ready to cut Dangerfield off any moment, now. As soon as I’m positive that he’s really going to cease.”

“Does he know about you?”

“No,” Hoppy said.

“I’ll tell you what I think,” Eldon said. “I think Dangerfield’s been dead for a long time, and it’s actually been you we’ve been listening to.” As he spoke he moved closer to the radio on the work bench.

“That’s not so,” the phocomelus said, in a steady voice. He went on, then, “But ft won’t be long, now. It’s amazing he’s survived such conditions; the military people did a good job in selecting him.”

Eldon Blaine swept up the radio in his arms and ran toward the door.

Astonished, the phocomelus gaped at him; Eldon saw the expression on Hoppy’s face and then be was outside, running through the darkness toward the parked police cart. I distracted him, Eldon said to himself. The poor damn phoce had no idea what I was going to do. All that talk– what did it mean? Nothing. Delusions of grandeur; he wants to sit down here and talk to the entire world, receive the entire world, make it his audience… but no one can do that except Dangerfield; no one can work the machinery in the satellite from down here. The phoce would have to be inside it, up there, and it’s impossible to—

Something caught him by the back of the neck.

How? Eldon Blaine asked himself as he pitched face-forward, still clutching the radio. He’s back there in the house and I’m out here. Action at a distance… he has hold of me. Was I wrong? Can he really reach out so far?

The thing that had hold of him by the neck squeezed.