“We’ve recently had bad luck with mushrooms,” Mrs. Tallman said, the elderly lady who had been a member of the board even in the old days before the Emergency. “It’s been our tendency to leave them alone; we’ve lost several people either because they were greedy or careless or just plain ignorant.”
Stroud said, “But Mr. Barnes here isn’t ignorant. He went to the University at Davis, and they taught him how to tell a good mushroom from the poisonous ones. He doesn’t guess or pretend; right, Mr. Barnes?” He looked to the new teacher for confirmation.
“There are species which are nutritious and about which you can’t go wrong,” Mr. Barnes said, nodding. “I’ve looked through the pastures and woods in your area, and I’ve seen some fine examples; you can supplement your diet without taking any chances. I even know the Latin names.”
The board stirred and murmured. That had impressed them, Stroud realized, that about the Latin names.
“Why did you leave Oregon?” George Keller, the principal, asked bluntly.
The new teacher faced him and said, “Politics.”
“Yours or theirs?”
“Theirs,” Barnes said. “I have no politics. I teach children how to make ink and soap and how to cut the tails from lambs even if the lambs are almost grown. And I’ve got my own books.” He picked up a book from the small stack beside him, showing the board in what good shape they were. “I’ll tell you something else: you have the means here in this part of California to make paper. Did you know that?”
Mrs. Tallman said, “We knew it, Mr. Barnes, but we don’t know quite how. It has to do with bark of trees, doesn’t it?”
On the new teacher’s face appeared a mysterious expression, one of concealment. Stroud knew that Mrs. Tallman was correct, but the teacher did not want to let her know; he wanted to keep the knowledge to himself because the West Marin trustees had not yet hired him. His knowledge was not yet available—he gave nothing free. And that of course was proper: Stroud recognized that, respected Barnes for it. Only a fool gave something away for nothing.
For the first time the newest member of the board, Miss Costigan, spoke up. “I—know a little about mushrooms myself, Mr. Barnes. What’s the first thing you look for to be sure it isn’t the deadly amanita?” She eyed the new teacher intently, obviously determined to pin the man down to concrete facts.
“The death cup,” Mr. Barnes answered. “At the base of the stipe; the volva. The amanitas have it, most other kinds don’t. And the universal veil. And generally the deadly amanita has white spores … and of course white gills.” He smiled at Miss Costigan, who smiled back.
Mrs. Tallman was scrutinizing the new teacher’s stack of books. “I see you have Carl Jung’s Psychological Types. Is one of your sciences psychology? How nice, to acquire a teacher for our school who can tell edible mushrooms and also is an authority on Freud and Jung.”
“There’s no value in such stuff,” Stroud said, with irritation. “We need useful science, not academic hot air.” He felt personally let down; Mr. Barnes had not told him about that, about his interest in mere theory. “Psychology doesn’t dig any septic tanks.”
“I think we’re ready to vote on Mr. Barnes,” Miss Costigan said. “I for one am in favor of accepting him, at least on a provisional basis. Does anyone feel otherwise?”
Mrs. Tallman said to Mr. Barnes, “We killed our last teacher, you know. That’s why we need another. That’s why we sent Mr. Stroud out looking up and down the Coast until he found you.”
With a wooden expression, Mr. Barnes nodded. “I know. That does not deter me.”
“His name was Mr. Austurias and he was very good with mushrooms, too,” Mrs. Tallman said, “although actually he gathered them for his own use alone. He did not teach us anything about them, and we appreciated his reasons; it was not for that that we decided to kill him. We killed him because he lied to us. You see, his real reason for coming here had nothing to do with teaching. He was looking for some man named Jack Tree, who it turned out, lived in this area. Our Mrs. Keller, a respected member of this community and the wife of George Keller, here, our principal, is a dear friend of Mr. Tree, and she brought the news of the situation to us and of course we acted legally and officially, through our chief of police, Mr. Earl Colvig.”
“I see,” Mr. Barnes said stonily, listening without interrupting.
Speaking up, Orion Stroud said, “The jury which sentenced and executed him was composed of myself, Cas Stone, who’s the largest land-owner in West Marin, Mrs. Tallman and Mrs. June Raub. I say ‘executed,’ but you understand that the act—when he was shot, the shooting itself—was done by Earl. That’s Earl’s job, after the West Marin Official Jury has made its decision.” He eyed the new teacher.
“It sounds,” Mr. Barnes said, “very formal and law-abiding to me. Just what I’d be interested in. And—” He smiled at them all. “I’ll share my knowledge of mushrooms with you; I won’t keep it to myself, as your late Mr. Austurias did.”
They all nodded; they appreciated that. The tension in the room relaxed, the people murmured. A cigarette—one of Andrew Gill’s special deluxe Gold Labels—was lit up; its good, rich smell wafted to them all, cheering them and making them feel more friendly to the new teacher and to one another.
Seeing the cigarette, Mr. Barnes got a strange expression on his face and he said in a husky voice, “You’ve got tobacco up here? After seven years?” He clearly could not believe it.
Smiling in amusement, Mrs. Tallman said, “We don’t have any tobacco, Mr. Barnes, because of course no one does. But we do have a tobacco expert. He fashions these special deluxe Gold Labels for us out of choice, aged vegetable and herbal materials the nature of which remain—and justly so—his individual secret.”
“How much do they cost?” Mr. Barnes asked.
“In terms of State of California boodle money,” Orion Stroud said, “about a hundred dollars apiece. In terms of prewar silver, a nickel apiece.
“I have a nickel,” Mr. Barnes said, reaching shakily into his coat pocket; he fished about, brought up a nickel and held it toward the smoker, who was George Keller, leaning back in his chair with his legs crossed to make himself comfortable.
“Sorry,” George said, “I don’t want to sell. You better go directly to Mr. Gill; you can find him during the day at his shop. It’s here in Point Reyes Station but of course he gets all around; he has a horse-drawn VW minibus.”
“I’ll make a note of that,” Mr. Barnes said. He put his nickel away, very carefully.
“Do you intend to board the ferry?” the Oakland official asked. “If not, I wish you’d move your car, because it’s blocking the gate.”
“Sure,” Stuart McConchie said. He got back into his car, flicked the reins that made Edward Prince of Wales, his horse, begin pulling. Edward pulled, and the engineless 1975 Pontiac passed back through the gate and out onto the pier.
The Bay, choppy and blue, lay on both sides, and Stuart watched through the windshield as a gull swooped to seize some edible from the pilings. Fishing lines, too … men catching their evening meals. Several of the men wore the remains of Army uniforms. Veterans who perhaps lived beneath the pier. Stuart drove on.
If only he could afford to telephone San Francisco. But the underwater cable was out again, and the lines had to go all the way down to San Jose and up the other side, along the peninsula, and by the time the call reached San Francisco it would cost him five dollars in silver money. So, except for a rich person, that was out of the question; he had to wait the two hours until the ferry left … but could he stand to wait that long?
He was after something important.
He had heard a rumor that a huge Soviet guided missile had been found, one which had failed to go off; it lay buried in the ground near Belmont, and a farmer had discovered it while plowing. The farmer was selling it off in the form of individual parts, of which there were thousands in the guidance system alone. The farmer wanted a penny a part, your choi
ce. And Stuart, in his line of work, needed many such parts. But so did lots of other people. So it was first come, first serve; unless he got across the Bay to Belmont fairly soon, it would be too late—there would be no electronic parts left for him and his business.
He sold (another man made them) small electronic traps. Vermin had mutated and now could avoid or repel the ordinary passive trap, no matter how complicated. The cats in particular had become different, and Mr. Hardy built a superior cat trap, even better than his rat and dog traps.
It was theorized by some that in the years since the war cats had developed a language. At night people heard them mewing to one another in the dankness, a stilted, brisk series of gruff sounds unlike any of the old noises. And the cats ganged together in little packs and—this much at least was certain—collected food for the times ahead. It was these caches of food, cleverly stored and hidden, which had first alarmed people, much more so than the new noises. But in any case the cats, as well as the rats and dogs, were dangerous. They killed and ate small children almost at will—or at least so one heard. And of course wherever possible, they themselves were caught and eaten in return. Dogs, in particular, if stuffed with rice, were considered delicious; the little local Berkeley newspaper which came out once a week, the Berkeley Tribune, had recipes for dog soup, dog stew, even dog pudding.
Meditating about dog pudding made Stuart realize how hungry he was. It seemed to him that he had not stopped being hungry since the first bomb fell; his last really adequate meal had been the lunch at Fred’s Fine Foods that day he had run into the phoce doing his phony vision-act. And where, he wondered suddenly, was that little phoce now? He hadn’t thought of him in years.
Now, of course, one saw many phoces, and almost all of them on their ’mobiles, exactly as Hoppy had been, placed dead center each in his own little universe, like an armless, legless god. The sight still repelled Stuart, but there were so many repellent sights these days … it was one of many and certainly not the worst. What he objected to the most, he had decided, was the sight of symbiotics ambling along the street: several people fused together at some pert of their anatomy, sharing common organs. It was a sort of Bluthgeld elaboration of the old Siamese twins … but these were not limited to two. He had seen as many as six joined. And the fusions had occurred—not in the womb—but shortly afterward. It saved the lives of imperfects, those born lacking vital organs, requiring a symbiotic relationship in order to survive. One pancreas now served several people … it was a biological triumph. But in Stuart’s view, the imperfects should simply have been allowed to die.
On the surface of the Bay to his right a legless veteran propelled himself out onto the water aboard a raft, rowing himself toward a pile of debris that was undoubtedly a sunken ship. On the hulk a number of fishing lines could be seen; they belonged to the veteran and he was in the process of checking them. Watching the raft go, Stuart wondered if it could reach the San Francisco side. He could offer the man fifty cents for a one-way trip; why not? Stuart got out of his car and walked to the edge of the water.
“Hey,” he yelled. “Come here.” From his pocket he got a penny; he tossed it down onto the pier and the veteran saw it, heard it. At once he spun the raft about and came paddling rapidly back, straining to make speed, his face streaked with perspiration. He grinned up at Stuart, cupping his ear.
“Fish?” he called. “I don’t have one yet today, but maybe later. Or how about a small shark? Guaranteed safe.” He held up the battered Geiger counter which he had connected to his waist by a length of rope—in case it fell from the raft or someone tried to steal it, Stuart realized.
“No,” Stuart said, squatting down at the edge of the pier. “I want to get over to San Francisco; I’ll pay you a quarter for one way.”
“But I got to leave my lines to do that,” the veteran said, his smile fading. “I got to collect them all or somebody’d steal them while I was gone.”
“Thirty-five cents,” Stuart said.
In the end they agreed, at a price of forty cents. Stuart locked the legs of Edward Prince of Wales together so no one could steal him, and presently he was out on the Bay, bobbing up and down aboard the veteran’s raft, being rowed to San Francisco.
“What field are you in?” the veteran asked him. “You’re not a tax collector, are you?” He eyed him calmly.
“Naw,” Stuart said. “I’m a small trap man.”
“Listen, my friend,” the veteran said, “I got a pet rat lives under the pilings with me? He’s smart; he can play the flute. I’m not putting you under an illusion, it’s true. I made a little wooden flute and he plays it, through his nose … it’s practically an Asiatic nose-flute like they have in India. Well, I did have him, but the other day he got run over. I saw the whole thing happen; I couldn’t go get him or nothing. He ran across the pier to get something, maybe a piece of cloth… he has this bed I made for him but he gets—I mean he got—cold all the time because when they mutated, this particular line, they lost their hair.”
“I’ve seen those,” Stuart said, thinking how well the hairless brown rat evaded even Mr. Hardy’s electronic vermin trap. “Actually I believe what you said,” he said. “I know rats pretty well. But they’re nothing compared to those little striped gray-brown tabby cats … I’ll bet you had to make the flute, he couldn’t construct it himself.”
“True,” the veteran said. “But he was an artist. You ought to have heard him play; I used to get a crowd at night, after we were finished with the fishing. I tried to teach him the Bach Chaconne in D.”
“I caught one of those tabby cats once,” Stuart said, “that I kept for a month until it escaped. It could make little sharp-pointed things out of tin can lids. It bent them or something; I never did see how it did it, but they were wicked.”
The veteran, rowing, said, “What’s it like south of San Francisco these days? I can’t come up on land.” He indicated the lower part of his body. “I stay on the raft. There’s a little trap door, when I have to go to the bathroom. What I need is to find a dead phoce sometime and get his cart. They call them phocomobiles.”
“I knew the first phoce,” Stuart said, “before the war. He was brilliant; he could repair anything.” He lit up an imitation-tobacco cigarette; the veteran gaped at it longingly. “South of San Francisco it’s, as you know, all flat. So it got hit bad and it’s just farmland now. Nobody ever rebuilt there, and it was mostly those little tract houses so they left hardly any decent basements. They grow peas and corn and beans down there. What I’m going to see is a big rocket a farmer just found; I need relays and tubes and other electronic gear for Mr. Hardy’s traps.” He paused. “You ought to have a Hardy trap.”
“Why? I live on fish, and why should I hate rats? I like them.”
“I like them, too,” Stuart said, “but you have to be practical; you have to look to the future. Someday America may be taken over by rats if we aren’t vigilant. We owe it to our country to catch and kill rats, especially the wiser ones that would be natural leaders.”
The veteran glared at him. “Sales talk, that’s all.”
“I’m sincere.”
“That’s what I have against salesmen; they believe their own lies. You know that the best rats can ever do, in a million years of evolution, is maybe be useful as servants to us human beings. They could carry messages maybe and do a little manual work. But dangerous—” He shook his head. “How much does one of your traps sell for?”
“Ten dollars silver. No State boodle accepted; Mr. Hardy is an old man and you know how old people are, he doesn’t consider boodle to be real money.” Stuart laughed.
“Let me tell you about a rat I once saw that did a heroic deed,” the veteran began, but Stuart cut him off.
“I have my own opinions,” Stuart said. “There’s no use arguing about it.”
They were both silent, then. Stuart enjoyed the sight of the Bay on all sides; the veteran rowed. It was a nice day, and as they bobbed along toward San
Francisco, Stuart thought of the electronic parts he might be bringing back to Mr. Hardy and the factory on San Pablo Avenue, near the ruins of what had once been the west end of the University of California.
“What kind of cigarette is that?” the veteran asked presently.
“This?” Stuart examined the butt; he was almost ready to put it out and stick it away in the metal box in his pocket. The box was full of butts, which would be opened and made into new cigarettes by Tom Frandi, the local cigarette man in South Berkeley. “This,” he said, “is imported. From Marin County. It’s a special deluxe Gold Label made by—” He paused for effect. “I guess I don’t have to tell you.”
“By Andrew Gill,” the veteran said. “Say, I’d like to buy a whole one from you; I’ll pay you a dime.”
“They’re worth fifteen cents apiece,” Stuart said. “They have to come all the way around Black Point and Sear’s Point and along the Lucas Valley Road, from beyond Nicasio somewhere.”
“I had one of those Andrew Gill special deluxe Gold Labels one time,” the veteran said. “It fell out of the pocket of some man who was getting on the ferry; I fished it out of the water and dried it.”
All of a sudden Stuart handed him the butt.
“For God’s sake,” the veteran said, not looking directly at him. He rowed more rapidly, his lips moving, his eyelids blinking.
“I got more,” Stuart said.
The veteran said, “I’ll tell you what else you got; you got real humanity, mister, and that’s rare today. Very rare.”
Stuart nodded. He felt the truth of the veteran’s words.
Knocking at the door of the small wooden cabin, Bonny said, “Jack? Are you in there?” She tried the door, found it unlocked. To Mr. Barnes she said, “He’s probably out with his flock somewhere. This is lambing season and he’s been having trouble; there’re so many sports born and a lot of them won’t pass through the birth canal without help.”