“Agreed,” Norm said. Hesitantly he held out his hand. “I’m Norman Schein and this is my wife and play-partner Fran.”
The Oakland man, evidently the leader, said, “I’m Walter R. Wynn. This is my partner here, Charley Dowd, and the man with the box, that’s Peter Foster. He isn’t going to play; he just guards our layout.” Wynn glanced about, at the Berkeley flukers, as if saying, I know you’re all partial to Perky Pat, in here. But we don’t care; we’re not scared.
Fran said, “We’re ready to play, Mr. Wynn.” Her voice was low but controlled.
“What about money?” Fennimore asked.
“I think both teams have plenty of money,” Wynn said. He laid out several thousand dollars in greenbacks, and now Norm did the same. “The money of course is not a factor in this, except as a means of conducting the game.”
Norm nodded; he understood perfectly. Only the dolls themselves mattered. And now, for the first time, he saw Connie Companion doll.
She was being placed in her bedroom by Mr. Foster who evidently was in charge of her. And the sight of her took his breath away. Yes, she was older. A grown woman, not a girl at all . . . the difference between her and Perky Pat was acute. And so life-like. Carved, not poured; she obviously had been whittled out of wood and then painted—she was not a thermoplastic. And her hair. It appeared to be genuine hair.
He was deeply impressed.
“What do you think of her?” Walter Wynn asked, with a faint grin.
“Very—impressive,” Norm conceded.
Now the Oaklanders were studying Perky Pat. “Poured thermoplastic,” one of them said. “Artificial hair. Nice clothes, though; all stitched by hand, you can see that. Interesting; what we heard was correct. Perky Pat isn’t a grown-up, she’s just a teenager.”
Now the male companion to Connie appeared; he was set down in the bedroom beside Connie.
“Wait a minute,” Norm said. “You’re putting Paul or whatever his name is, in her bedroom with her? Doesn’t he have his own apartment?”
Wynn said, “They’re married.”
“Married!” Norman and Fran stared at him, dumbfounded.
“Why sure,” Wynn said. “So naturally they live together. Your dolls, they’re not, are they?”
“N-no,” Fran said. “Leonard is Perky Pat’s boyfriend . . .” Her voice trailed off. “Norm,” she said, clutching his arm, “I don’t believe him; I think he’s just saying they’re married to get the advantage. Because if they both start out from the same room—”
Norm said aloud, “You fellows, look here. It’s not fair, calling them married.”
Wynn said, “We’re not ‘calling’ them married; they are married. Their names are Connie and Paul Lathrope, of 24 Arden Place, Piedmont. They’ve been married for a year, most players will tell you.” He sounded calm.
Maybe, Norm thought, it’s true. He was truly shaken.
“Look at them together,” Frank said, kneeling down to examine the Oaklanders’ layout. “In the same bedroom, in the same house. Why, Norm; do you see? There’s just the one bed. A big double bed.” Wild-eyed, she appealed to him. “How can Perky Pat and Leonard play against them?” Her voice shook. “It’s not morally right.”
“This is another type of layout entirely,” Norm said to Walter Wynn. “This, that you have. Utterly different from what we’re used to, as you can see.” He pointed to his own layout. “I insist that in this game Connie and Paul not live together and not be considered married.”
“But they are,” Foster spoke up. “It’s a fact. Look—their clothes are in the same closet.” He showed them the closet. “And in the same bureau drawers.” He showed them that, too. “And look in the bathroom. Two toothbrushes. His and hers, in the same rack. So you can see we’re not making it up.”
There was silence.
Then Fran said in a choked voice, “And if they’re married—you mean they’ve been—intimate?”
Wynn raised an eyebrow, then nodded. “Sure, since they’re married. Is there anything wrong with that?”
“Perky Pat and Leonard have never—” Fran began, and then ceased.
“Naturally not,” Wynn agreed. “Because they’re only going together. We understand that.”
Fran said, “We just can’t play. We can’t.” She caught hold of her husband’s arm. “Let’s go back to Pinole pit—please, Norman.”
“Wait,” Wynn said, at once. “If you don’t play, you’re conceding; you have to give up Perky Pat.”
The three Oaklanders all nodded. And, Norm saw, many of the Berkeley flukers were nodding, too, including Ben Fennimore.
“They’re right,” Norm said heavily to his wife. “We’d have to give her up. We better play, dear.”
“Yes,” Fran said, in a dead, flat voice. “We’ll play.” She bent down and listlessly spun the needle of the spinner. It stopped at six.
Smiling, Walter Wynn knelt down and spun. He obtained a four.
The game had begun.
Crouching behind the strewn, decayed contents of a care parcel that had been dropped long ago, Timothy Schein saw coming across the surface of ash his mother and father, pushing the wheelbarrow ahead of them. They looked tired and worn.
“Hi,” Timothy yelled, leaping out at them in joy at seeing them again; he had missed them very much.
“Hi, son,” his father murmured, nodding. He let go of the handles of the wheelbarrow, then halted and wiped his face with his handkerchief.
Now Fred Chamberlain raced up, panting. “Hi, Mr. Schein, hi; Mrs. Schein. Hey, did you win? Did you beat the Oakland flukers? I bet you did, didn’t you?” He looked from one of them to the other and then back.
In a low voice Fran said, “Yes, Freddy. We won.”
Norm said, “Look in the wheelbarrow.”
The two boys looked. And, there among Perky Pat’s furnishings, lay another doll. Larger, fuller-figured, much older than Pat . . . they stared at her and she stared up sightlessly at the gray sky overhead. So this is Connie Companion doll, Timothy said to himself. Gee.
“We were lucky,” Norm said. Now several people had emerged from the pit and were gathering around them, listening. Jean and Sam Regan, Tod Morrison and his wife Helen, and now their Mayor, Hooker Glebe himself, waddling up excited and nervous, his face flushed, gasping for breath from the labor—unusual for him—of ascending the ramp.
Fran said, “We got a cancellation-of-debts card, just when we were most behind. We owed fifty thousand, and it made us even with the Oakland flukers. And then, after that, we got an advance-ten-squares card, and that put us right on the jackpot square, at least in our layout. We had a very bitter squabble, because the Oaklanders showed us that on their layout it was a tax lien slapped on real-estate-holdings square, but we had spun an odd number so that put us back on our own board.” She sighed. “I’m glad to be back. It was hard, Hooker; it was a tough game.”
Hooker Glebe wheezed, “Let’s all get a look at the Connie Companion doll, folks.” To Fran and Norm he said, “Can I lift her up and show them?”
“Sure,” Norm said, nodding.
Hooker picked up Connie Companion doll. “She sure is realistic,” he said, scrutinizing her. “Clothes aren’t as nice as ours generally are; they look machine-made.”
“They are,” Norm agreed. “But she’s carved, not poured.”
“Yes, so I see.” Hooker turned the doll about, inspecting her from all angles. “A nice job. She’s—um, more filled out than Perky Pat. What’s this outfit she has on? Tweed suit of some sort.”
“A business suit,” Fran said. “We won that with her; they had agreed on that in advance.”
“You see, she has a job,” Norm explained. “She’s a psychology consultant for a business firm doing marketing research. In consumer preferences. A high-paying position . . . she earns twenty thousand a year, I believe Wynn said.”
“Golly,” Hooker said. “And Pat’s just going to college; she’s still in school.” He looked troubl
ed. “Well, I guess they were bound to be ahead of us in some ways. What matters is that you won.” His jovial smile returned. “Perky Pat came out ahead.” He held the Connie Companion doll up high, where everyone could see her. “Look what Norm and Fran came back with, folks!”
Norm said, “Be careful with her, Hooker.” His voice was firm.
“Eh?” Hooker said, pausing. “Why, Norm?”
“Because,” Norm said, “she’s going to have a baby.”
There was a sudden chill silence. The ash around them stirred faintly; that was the only sound.
“How do you know?”
“They told us. The Oaklanders told us. And we won that, too— after a bitter argument that Fennimore had to settle.” Reaching into the wheelbarrow he brought out a little leather pouch; from it he carefully took a carved pink newborn baby. “We won this too because Fennimore agreed that from a technical standpoint it’s literally part of Connie Companion doll at this point.”
Hooker stared a long, long time.
“She’s married,” Fran explained. “To Paul. They’re not just going together. She’s three months pregnant, Mr. Wynn said. He didn’t tell us until after we won; he didn’t want to, then, but they felt they had to. I think they were right; it wouldn’t have done not to say.”
Norm said, “And in addition there’s actually an embryo outfit—”
“Yes,” Fran said. “You have to open Connie up, of course, to see—”
“No,” Jean Regan said. “Please, no.”
Hooker said, “No, Mrs. Schein, don’t.” He backed away.
Fran said, “It shocked us of course at first, but—”
“You see,” Norm put in, “it’s logical; you have to follow the logic. Why, eventually Perky Pat—”
“No,” Hooker said violently. He bent down, picked up a rock from the ash at his feet. “No,” he said, and raised his arm. “You stop, you two. Don’t say any more.”
Now the Regans, too, had picked up rocks. No one spoke.
Fran said, at last, “Norm, we’ve got to get out of here.”
“You’re right,” Tod Morrison told them. His wife nodded in grim agreement.
“You two go back to Oakland,” Hooker told Norman and Fran Schein. “You don’t live here anymore. You’re different than you were. You—changed.”
“Yes,” Sam Regan said slowly, half to himself. “I was right; there was something to fear.” To Norm Schein he said, “How difficult a trip is it to Oakland?”
“We just went to Berkeley,” Norm said. “To the Berkeley Fluke-pit.” He seemed baffled and stunned by what was happening. “My God,” he said, “we can’t turn around and push this wheelbarrow back all the way to Berkeley again—we’re worn out, we need rest!”
Sam Regan said, “What if somebody else pushed?” He walked up to the Scheins, then, and stood with them. “I’ll push the darn thing. You lead the way, Schein.” He looked toward his own wife, but Jean did not stir. And she did not put down her handful of rocks.
Timothy Schein plucked at his father’s arm. “Can I come this time, Dad? Please let me come.”
“Okay,” Norm said, half to himself. Now he drew himself together. “So we’re not wanted here.” He turned to Fran. “Let’s go. Sam’s going to push the wheelbarrow; I think we can make it back there before nightfall. If not, we can sleep out in the open; Timothy’ll help protect us against the do-cats.”
Fran said, “I guess we have no choice.” Her face was pale.
“And take this,” Hooker said. He held out the tiny carved baby. Fran Schein accepted it and put it tenderly back in its leather pouch. Norm laid Connie Companion back down in the wheelbarrow, where she had been. They were ready to start back.
“It’ll happen up here eventually,” Norm said, to the group of people, to the Pinole flukers. “Oakland is just more advanced; that’s all.”
“Go on,” Hooker Glebe said. “Get started.”
Nodding, Norm started to pick up the handles of the wheelbarrow, but Sam Regan moved him aside and took them himself. “Let’s go,” he said.
The three adults, with Timothy Schein going ahead of them with his knife ready—in case a do-cat attacked—started into motion, in the direction of Oakland and the south. No one spoke. There was nothing to say.
“It’s a shame this had to happen,” Norm said at last, when they had gone almost a mile and there was no further sign of the Pinole flukers behind them.
“Maybe not,” Sam Regan said. “Maybe it’s for the good.” He did not seem downcast. And after all, he had lost his wife; he had given up more than anyone else, and yet—he had survived.
“Glad you feel that way,” Norm said somberly.
They continued on, each with his own thoughts.
After a while, Timothy said to his father, “All these big flukepits to the south . . . there’s lots more things to do there, isn’t there? I mean, you don’t just sit around playing that game.” He certainly hoped not.
His father said, “That’s true, I guess.”
Overhead, a care ship whistled at great velocity and then was gone again almost at once; Timothy watched it go but he was not really interested in it, because there was so much more to look forward to, on the ground and below the ground, ahead of them to the south.
His father murmured, “Those Oaklanders; their game, their particular doll, it taught them something. Connie had to grow and it forced them all to grow along with her. Our flukers never learned about that, not from Perky Pat. I wonder if they ever will. She’d have to grow up the way Connie did. Connie must have been like Perky Pat, once. A long time ago.”
Not interested in what his father was saying—who really cared about dolls and games with dolls?—Timothy scampered ahead, peering to see what lay before them, the opportunities and possibilities, for him and for his mother and dad, for Mr. Regan also.
“I can’t wait,” he yelled back at his father, and Norm Schein managed a faint, fatigued smile in answer.
Chapter One
from THE THREE STIGMATA OF PALMER ELDRITCH
His head unnaturally aching, Barney Mayerson woke to find himself in an unfamiliar bedroom in an unfamiliar conapt building. Beside him, the covers up to her bare, smooth shoulders, an unfamiliar girl slept on, breathing lightly through her mouth, her hair a tumble of cottonlike white.
I’ll bet I’m late for work, he said to himself, slid from the bed, and tottered to a standing position with eyes shut, keeping himself from being sick. For all he knew he was several hours’ drive from his office; perhaps he was not even in the United States. However he was on Earth; the gravity that made him sway was familiar and normal.
And there in the next room by the sofa a familiar suitcase, that of his psychiatrist Dr. Smile.
Barefoot, he padded into the living room, and seated himself by the suitcase; he opened it, clicked switches, and turned on Dr. Smile. Meters began to register and the mechanism hummed. “Where am I?” Barney asked it. “And how far am I from New York?” That was the main point. He saw now a clock on the wall of the apt’s kitchen; the time was 7:30 A.M. Not late at all.
The mechanism which was the portable extension of Dr. Smile, connected by micro-relay to the computer itself in the basement level of Barney’s own conapt building in New York, the Renown 33, tinnily declared, “Ah, Mr. Bayerson.”
“Mayerson,” Barney corrected, smoothing his hair with fingers that shook. “What do you remember about last night?” Now he saw, with intense physical aversion, half-empty bottles of bourbon and sparkling water, lemons, bitters, and ice cube trays on the sideboard in the kitchen. “Who is this girl?”
Dr. Smile said, “This girl in the bed is Miss Rondinella Fugate. Roni, as she asked you to call her.”
It sounded vaguely familiar, and oddly, in some manner, tied up with his job. “Listen,” he said to the suitcase, but then in the bedroom the girl began to stir; at once he shut off Dr. Smile and stood up, feeling humble and awkward in only his underpants.
/> “Are you up?” the girl asked sleepily. She thrashed about, and sat facing him; quite pretty, he decided, with lovely, large eyes. “What time is it and did you put on the coffee pot?”
He tramped into the kitchen and punched the stove into life; it began to heat water for coffee. Meanwhile he heard the shutting of a door; she had gone into the bathroom. Water ran. Roni was taking a shower.
Again in the living room he switched Dr. Smile back on. “What’s she got to do with P. P. Layouts?” he asked.
“Miss Fugate is your new assistant; she arrived yesterday from People’s China where she worked for P. P. Layouts as their Pre-Fash consultant for that region. However, Miss Fugate, although talented, is highly inexperienced, and Mr. Bulero decided that a short period as your assistant, I would say ‘under you,’ but that might be misconstrued, considering—”
“Great,” Barney said. He entered the bedroom, found his clothes—they had been deposited, no doubt by him, in a heap on the floor—and began with care to dress; he still felt terrible, and it remained an effort not to give up and be violently sick. “That’s right,” he said to Dr. Smile as he came back to the living room buttoning his shirt. “I remember the memo from Friday about Miss Fugate. She’s erratic in her talent. Picked wrong on that U.S. Civil War Picture Window item . . . if you can imagine it, she thought it’d be a smash hit in People’s China.” He laughed.
The bathroom door opened a crack; he caught a glimpse of Roni, pink and rubbery and clean, drying herself. “Did you call me, dear?”
“No,” he said. “I was talking to my doctor.”
“Everyone makes errors,” Dr. Smile said, a trifle vacuously.
Barney said, “How’d she and I happen to—” He gestured toward the bedroom. “After so short a time.”
“Chemistry,” Dr. Smile said.
“Come on.”
“Well, you’re both precogs. You previewed that you’d eventually hit it off, become erotically involved. So you both decided—after a few drinks—that why should you wait? ‘Life is short, art is—’ ” The suitcase ceased speaking, because Roni Fugate had appeared from the bathroom, naked, to pad past it and Barney back once more into the bedroom. She had a narrow, erect body, a truly superb carriage, Barney noted, and small, up-jutting breasts with nipples no larger than matched pink peas. Or rather matched pink pearls, he corrected himself.