Dr. Bloodmoney (33 page)

It had been an unbalanced trade. Hoppy Harrington had gotten the losing end of it, by far; the body which he had received in exchange for his own had lasted only a few minutes, at the most.

“Did you know,” Bill Keller said, speaking haltingly as if it was still difficult for him to control the phocomelus’ body, “that Hoppy got up in the satellite for a while? Everybody was excited about that; they woke me up in the night to tell me and I woke Edie. That’s how I got here,” he added, with a strained, earnest expression on his face.

“And what are you going to do now?” Stockstill asked.

The phoce said, “I have to get used to this body; it’s heavy. I feel gravity … I’m used to just floating about. You know what? I think these extensors are swell. I can do a lot with them already.” The extensors whipped about, touched a picture on the wall, flicked in the direction of the transmitter. “I have to go find Edie,” the phoce said. “I want to tell her I’m okay; I bet she probably thinks I died.”

Turning on the microphone, Stockstill said, “Walter Dangerfield, this is Doctor Stockstill in West Marin. Can you hear me? If you can, give me an answer. I’d like to resume the therapy we were attempting the other day.” He paused, then repeated what he had said.

“You’ll have to try a lot of times,” the phoce said, watching him. “It’s going to be hard because he’s so weak; he probably can’t get up to his feet and he didn’t understand what was happening when Hoppy took over.”

Nodding, Stockstill pressed the microphone button and tried again.

“Can I go?” Bill Keller asked. “Can I look for Edie now?”

“Yes,” Stockstill said, rubbing his forehead; he drew his faculties together and said, “You’ll be careful, what you do… you may not be able to switch again.”

“I don’t want to switch again,” Bill said. “This is fine, because for the first time there’s no one in here but me.” In explanation, he added, “I mean, I’m alone; I’m not just part of someone else. Of course, I switched before, but it was to that blind thing—Edie tricked me into it and it didn’t do at all. This is different.” The thin phoce-face broke into a smile.

“Just be careful” Stockstill repeated.

“Yes sir,” the phoce said dutifully. “I’ll try; I had bad luck with the owl but it wasn’t my fault because I didn’t want to get swallowed. That was the owl’s idea.”

Stockstill thought, But this was yours. There is a difference; I can see that. And it is very important. Into the microphone he repeated, “Walt, this is Doctor Stockstill down below; I’m still trying to reach you. I think we can do a lot to help you pull through this, if you’ll do as I tell you. I think we’ll try some free association, today, in an effort to get at the root causes of your tension. In any case, it won’t do any harm; I think you can appreciate that.”

From the loudspeaker came only static.

Is it hopeless? Stockstill wondered. Is it worth keeping on?

He pressed the mike button once more, saying, “Walter, the one who usurped your authority in the satellite—he’s dead, now, so you don’t have to worry regarding him. When you feel strong enough I’ll give you more details. Okay? Do you agree?” He listened. Still only static.

The phoce, rolling about the room on his ’mobile, like a great trapped beetle, said, “Can I go to school now that I’m out?”

“Yes,” Stockstill murmured.

“But I know a lot of things already,” Bill said, “from listening with Edie when she was in school; I won’t have to go back and repeat, I can go ahead, like her. Don’t you think so?”

Stockstill nodded.

“I wonder what my mother will say,” the phoce said.

Jarred, Stockstill said, “What?” And then he realized who was meant. “She’s gone,” he said. “Bonny left with Gill and McConchie.”

“I know she left,” Bill said plaintively. “But won’t she be coming back sometime?”

“Possibly not,” Stockstill said. “Bonny’s an odd woman, very restless. You can’t count on it.” It might be better if she didn’t know, he said to himself. It would be extremely difficult for her; after all, he realized, she never knew about you at all. Only Edie and I knew. And Hoppy. And, he thought, the owl. “I’m going to give up,” he said suddenly, “on trying to reach Dangerfield. Maybe some other time.”

“I guess I bother you,” Bill said.

Stockstill nodded.

“I’m sorry,” Bill said. “I was trying to practice and I didn’t know you were coming by. I didn’t mean to upset you; it happened suddenly in the night—I rolled here and got in under the door before Hoppy understood, and then it was too late because I was close.” Seeing the expression on the doctor’s face, he ceased.

“It’s—just not like anything I ever ran into before,” Stockstill said. “I knew you existed. But that was about all.”

Bill said, with pride, “You didn’t know I was learning to switch.”

“No,” Stockstill agreed.

“Try talking to Dangerfield again,” Bill said. “Don’t give up, because I know he’s up there. I won’t tell you how I know because if I do you’ll get more upset.”

“Thank you,” Stockstill said. “For not telling me.”

Once more he pressed the mike button. The phoce opened the door and rolled outside, onto the path; the ’mobile stopped a little way off, and the phoce looked back indecisively.

“Better go find your sister,” Stockstill said. “It’ll mean a great deal to her, I’m sure.”

When next he looked up, the phoce had gone. The ’mobile was nowhere in sight.

“Walt Dangerfield,” Stockstill said into the mike, “I’m going to sit here trying to reach you until either you answer or I know you’re dead. I’m not saying you don’t have a genuine physical ailment, but I am saying that part of the cause lies in your psychological situation, which in many respects is admittedly bad. Don’t you agree? And after what you’ve gone through, seeing your controls taken away from you—”

From the speaker a far-off, laconic voice said, “Okay, Stockstill. I’ll make a stab at your free association. If for no other reason than to prove to you by default that I actually am desperately physically ill.”

Doctor Stockstill sighed and relaxed. “It’s about time. Have you been picking me up all this time?”

“Yes, good friend,” Dangerfield said. “I wondered how long you’d ramble on. Evidently forever. You guys are persistent, if nothing else.”

Leaning back, Stockstill shakily lit up a special deluxe Gold Label cigarette and said, “Can you lie down and make yourself comfortable?”

“I
am
lying down,” Dangerfield said tartly. “I’ve been lying down for five days, now.”

“And you should become thoroughly passive, if possible. Become supine.”

“Like a whale,” Dangerfield said. “Just lolling in the brine—right? Now, shall I dwell on childhood incest drives? Let’s see … I think I’m watching my mother and she’s combing her hair at her vanity table. She’s very pretty. No, sorry, I’m wrong. It’s a movie and I’m watching Norma Shearer. It’s the late-late show on TV.” He laughed faintly.

“Did your mother resemble Norma Shearer?” Stockstill asked; he had pencil and paper out, now, and was making notes.

“More like Betty Grable,” Dangerfield said. “If you can remember her. But that probably was before your time. I’m old, you know. Almost a thousand years … it ages you, to be up here, alone.”

“Just keep talking,” Stockstill said. “Whatever comes into your mind. Don’t force it, let it direct itself instead.”

Dangerfield said, “Instead of reading the great classics to the world maybe I can free-associate as to childhood toilet traumas, right? I wonder if that would interest mankind as much. Personally, I find it pretty fascinating.”

Stockstill, in spite of himself, laughed.

“You’re human,” Dangerfield said, sounding pleased. “I consider that good. A sign in your favor.” He laughed his old, familiar laugh. “We both have something in common; we both consider what we’re doing here as being very funny indeed.”

Nettled, Stockstill said, “I want to help you.”

“Aw, hell,” the faint, distant voice answered. “I’m the one who’s helping you, Doc. You know that, deep down in your unconscious. You need to feel you’re doing something worthwhile again, don’t you? When do you first remember ever having had that feeling? Just lie there supine, and I’ll do the rest from up here.” He chuckled. “You realize, of course, that I’m recording this on tape; I’m going to play our silly conversations every night over New York—they love this intellectual stuff, up that way.”

“Please,” Stockstill said. “Let’s continue.”

“Hoode hoode hoo,” Dangerfield chortled. “By all means. Can I dwell on the girl I loved in the fifth grade? That was where my incest fantasies really got started.” He was silent for a moment and then he said in a reflective voice, “You know, I haven’t thought of Myra for years. Not in twenty years.”

“Did you take her to a dance or some such thing?”

“In the
fifth grade?”
Dangerfield yelled. “Are you some kind of a nut? Of course not. But I did kiss her.” His voice seemed to become more relaxed, more as it had been in former times. “I never forgot that,” he murmured.

Static, for a moment, supervened.

“… and then,” Dangerfield was saying when next Stockstill could make his words out, “Arnold Klein rapped me on the noggin and I shoved him over, which is exactly what he deserved. Do you follow? I wonder how many hundreds of my avid listeners are getting this; I see lights lit up—they’re trying to contact me on a lot of frequencies. Wait, Doc. I have to answer a few of these calls. Who knows, some of them might be other, better analysts.” He added, in parting, “And at lower rates.”

There was silence. Then Dangerfield was back.

“Just people telling me I did right to rap Arnold Klein on the noggin,” he said cheerfully. “So far the votes are in favor four to one. Shall I continue?”

“Please do,” Stockstill said, scratching notes.

“Well,” Dangerfield said, “and then there was Jenny Linhart. That was in the low sixth.”

The satellite, in its orbit, had come closer; the reception was now loud and clear. Or perhaps it was that Hoppy Harrington’s equipment was especially good. Doctor Stockstill leaned back in his chair, smoked his cigarette, and listened, as the voice grew until it boomed and echoed in the room.

How many times, he thought, Hoppy must have sat here receiving the satellite. Building up his plans, preparing for the day. And now it is over. Had the phocomelus—Bill Keller—taken the wizened, dried-up little thing with him? Or was it still somewhere nearby?

Stockstill did not look around; he kept his attention on the voice which came to him so forcefully, now. He did not let himself notice anything else in the room.

In a strange but soft bed in an unfamiliar room, Bonny Keller woke to sleepy confusion. Diffuse light, yellow and undoubtedly the early-morning sun, poured about her, and above her a man whom she knew well bent over her, reaching down his arms. It was Andrew Gill and for a moment she imagined—she deliberately allowed herself to imagine—that it was seven years ago, E Day again.

“Hi,” she murmured, clasping him to her. “Stop,” she said, then. “You’re crushing me and you haven’t shaved yet. What’s going on?” She sat up, all at once, pushing him away.

Gill said, “Just take it easy.” Tossing the covers aside, he picked her up, carried her across the room, toward the door.

“Where are we going?” she asked. “To Los Angeles? This way—with you carrying me in your arms?”

“We’re going to listen to somebody.” With his shoulder he pushed the door open and carried her down the small, low-ceilinged hall.

“Who?” she demanded. “Hey, I’m not dressed.” All she had on was her underwear, which she had slept in.

Ahead, she saw the Hardys’ living room, and there, at the radio, their faces suffused with an eager, youthful joy, stood Stuart McConchie, the Hardys, and several men whom she realized were employees of Mr. Hardy.

From the speaker came the voice they had heard last night, or was it that voice? She listened, as Andrew Gill seated himself with her on his lap. “… and then Jenny Linhart said to me,” the voice was saying, “that I resembled, in her estimation, a large poodle. It had to do with the way my big sister was cutting my hair, I think. I did look like a large poodle. It was not an insult. It was merely an observation; it showed she was aware of me. But that’s some improvement over not being noticed at all, isn’t it?” Dangerfield was silent, then, as if waiting for an answer.

“Who’s he talking to?” she said, still befuddled by sleep, still not fully awake. And then she realized what it meant. “He’s alive,” she said. And Hoppy was gone. “Goddamn it,” she said loudly, “will somebody tell me what happened?” She squirmed off Andrew’s lap and stood shivering; the morning air was cold.

Ella Hardy said, “We don’t know what happened. He apparently came back on the air sometime during the night. We hadn’t turned the radio off, and so we heard it; this isn’t his regular time to transmit to us.”

“He appears to be talking to a doctor,” Mr. Hardy said. “Possibly a psychiatrist who’s treating him.”

“Dear God,” Bonny said, doubling up. “It isn’t possible—he’s being psychoanalyzed.” But, she thought,
where did Hoppy go? Did he give up?
Was the strain of reaching out that far too much for him, was that it? Did he, after all, have limitations, like every other living thing? She returned quickly to her bedroom, still listening, to get her clothes. No one noticed; they were all so intent on the radio.