Paycheck. Part 26

It was not until late that evening that Hooker managed to establish contact with Oakland. Pleased with himself, beaming in self-satisfaction, he appeared at the Scheins' quarters during their dinner hour. 'All set,' he announced. 'Say, you know there are actually nine nine fluke-pits in Oakland? I didn't know that. Which you want? I've got one with the radio code of Red Vanilla.' He chuckled. 'They're tough and suspicious down there; it was hard to get any of them to answer.' fluke-pits in Oakland? I didn't know that. Which you want? I've got one with the radio code of Red Vanilla.' He chuckled. 'They're tough and suspicious down there; it was hard to get any of them to answer.'

Leaving his evening meal, Norman hurried to the Mayor's quarters, Hooker puffing along after him.

The transmitter, sure enough, was on, and static wheezed from the speaker of its monitoring unit. Awkwardly, Norm seated himself at the microphone. 'Do I just talk?' he asked Hooker Glebe.

'Just say, This is Pinole Fluke-pit calling. Repeat that a couple of times and then when they acknowledge, you say what you want to say.' The Mayor fiddled with controls of the transmitter, fussing in an important fashion.

'This is Pinole Fluke-pit,' Norm said loudly into the microphone.

Almost at once a clear voice from the monitor said, 'This is Red Vanilla Three answering.' The voice was cold and harsh; it struck him forcefully as distinctly alien. Hooker was right. 'Do you have Connie Companion down there where you are?'

'Yes we do,' the Oakland fluker answered.

'Well, I challenge you,' Norman said, feeling the veins in his throat pulse with the tension of what he was saying. 'We're Perky Pat in this area; we'll play Perky Pat against your Connie Companion. Where can we meet?'

'Perky Pat,' the Oakland fluker echoed. 'Yeah, I know about her. What would the stakes be, in your mind?'

'Up here we play for paper money mostly,' Norman said, feeling that his response was somehow lame.

'We've got lots of paper money,' the Oakland fluker said cuttingly. 'That wouldn't interest any of us. What else?'

'I don't know.' He felt hampered, talking to someone he could not see; he was not used to that. People should, he thought, be face to face, then you can see the other person's expression. This was not natural. 'Let's meet halfway,' he said, 'and discuss it. Maybe we could meet at the Berkeley Fluke-it; how about that?'

The Oakland fluker said, 'That's too far. You mean lug our Connie Companion layout all that way? It's too heavy and something might happen to it.'

'No, just to discuss rules and stakes,' Norman said.

Dubiously, the Oakland fluker said, 'Well, I guess we could do that. But you better understand - we take Connie Companion doll pretty d.a.m.n seriously; you better be prepared to talk terms.'

'We will,' Norm a.s.sured him.

All this time Mayor Hooker Glebe had been cranking the handle of the generator; perspiring, his face bloated with exertion, he motioned angrily for Norm to conclude his palaver.

'At the Berkeley Flukepit,' Norm finished. 'In three days. And send your best player, the one who has the biggest and most authentic layout. Our Perky Pat layouts are works of art, you understand.'

The Oakland fluker said, 'We'll believe that when we see them. After all, we've got carpenters and electricians and plasterers here, building our layouts; I'll bet you're all unskilled.'

'Not as much as you think,' Norm said hotly, and laid down the microphone. To Hooker Glebe - who had immediately stopped cranking - he said, 'We'll beat them. Wait'll they see the garbage disposal unit I'm making for my Perky Pat; did you know there were people back in the ol-days, I mean real alive human beings, who didn't have garbage disposal units?'

'I remember,' Hooker said peevishly. 'Say, you got a lot of cranking for your money; I think you gypped me, talking so long.' He eyed Norm with such hostility that Norm began to feel uneasy. After all, the Mayor of the pit had the authority to evict any fluker he wished; that was their law.

'I'll give you the fire alarm box I just finished the other day,' Norm said. 'In my layout it goes at the corner of the block where Perky Pat's boy friend Leonard lives.'

'Good enough,' Hooker agreed, and his hostility faded. It was replaced, at once, by desire. 'Let's see it, Norm. I bet it'll go good in my layout; a fire alarm box is just what I need to complete my first block where I have the mailbox. Thank you.'

'You're welcome,' Norm sighed, philosophically.

When he returned from the two-day trek to the Berkeley Flukepit his face was so grim that his wife knew at once that the parley with the Oakland people had not gone well.

That morning a careboy had dropped cartons of a synthetic tea-like drink; she fixed a cup of it for Norman, waiting to hear what had taken place eight miles to the south.

'We haggled,' Norm said, seated wearily on the bed which he and his wife and child all shared. 'They don't want money; they don't want goods - naturally not goods, because the darn careboys are dropping regularly down there, too.'

'What will they accept, then?'

Norm said, 'Perky Pat herself.' He was silent, then.

'Oh good Lord,' she said, appalled.

'But if we win,' Norm pointed out, 'we win Connie Companion.'

'And the layouts? What about them?'

'We keep our own. It's just Perky Pat herself, not Leonard, not anything else.'

'But,' she protested, 'what'll we do do if we lose Perky Pat?' if we lose Perky Pat?'

'I can make another one,' Norm said. 'Given time. There's still a big supply of thermoplastics and artificial hair, here in the pit. And I have plenty of different paints; it would take at least a month, but I could do it. I don't look forward to the job, I admit. But-' His eyes glinted. 'Don't look on the dark side; imagine what it would be like to win Connie Companion doll imagine what it would be like to win Connie Companion doll. I think we may well win; their delegate seemed smart and, as Hooker said, tough ... but the one I talked to didn't strike me as being very flukey. You know, on good terms with luck.'

And, after all, the element of luck, of chance, entered into each stage of the game through the agency of the spinner.

'It seems wrong,' Fran said, 'to put up Perky Pat herself. But if you say so-' She managed to smile a little. 'I'll go along with it. And if you won Connie Companion - who knows? You might be elected Mayor when Hooker dies. Imagine, to have won somebody else's doll doll - not just the game, the money, but the - not just the game, the money, but the doll itself doll itself.'

'I can win,' Norm said soberly. 'Because I'm very flukey.' He could feel it in him, the same flukeyness that had got him through the hydrogen war alive, that had kept him alive ever since. You either have it or you don't, he realized. And I do.

His wife said, 'Shouldn't we ask Hooker to call a meeting of everyone in the pit, and send the best player out of our entire group. So as to be the surest of winning.'

'Listen,' Norm Schein said emphatically. 'I'm the best player. I'm going. And so are you; we made a good team, and we don't want to break it up. Anyhow, we'll need at least two people to carry Perky Pat's layout.' All in all, he judged, their layout weighed sixty pounds.

His plan seemed to him to be satisfactory. But when he mentioned it to the others living in the Pinole Fluke-pit he found himself facing sharp disagreement. The whole next day was filled with argument.

'You can't lug your layout all that way yourselves,' Sam Regan said. 'Either take more people with you or carry your layout in a vehicle of some sort. Such as a cart.' He scowled at Norm.

'Where'd I get a cart?' Norm demanded.

'Maybe something could be adapted,' Sam said. 'I'll give you every bit of help I can. Personally, I'd go along but as I told my wife this whole idea worries me.' He thumped Norm on the back. 'I admire your courage, you and Fran, setting off this way. I wish I had what it takes.' He looked unhappy.

In the end, Norm settled on a wheelbarrow. He and Fran would take turns pushing it. That way neither of them would have to carry any load above and beyond their food and water, and of course knives by which to protect them from the do-cats.

As they were carefully placing the elements of their layout in the wheelbarrow, Norm Schein's boy Timothy came sidling up to them. 'Take me along, Dad,' he pleaded. 'For fifty cents I'll go as guide and scout, and also I'll help you catch food along the way.'

'We'll manage fine,' Norm said. 'You stay here in the fluke-pit; you'll be safer here.' It annoyed him, the idea of his son tagging along on an important venture such as this. It was almost - sacrilegious.

'Kiss us goodbye,' Fran said to Timothy, smiling at him briefly; then her attention returned to the layout within the wheelbarrow. 'I hope it doesn't tip over,' she said fearfully to Norm.

'Not a chance,' Norm said. 'If we're careful.' He felt confident.

A few moments later they began wheeling the wheel-barrow up the ramp to the lid at the top, to upstairs. Their journey to the Berkeley Flukepit had begun.

A mile outside the Berkeley Flukepit he and Fran began to stumble over empty drop-canisters and some only partly empty: remains of past care parcels such as littered the surface near their own pit. Norm Schein breathed a sigh of relief; the journey had not been so bad after all, except that his hands had become blistered from gripping the metal handles of the wheelbarrow, and Fran had turned her ankle so that now she walked with a painful limp. But it had taken them less time than he had antic.i.p.ated, and his mood was one of buoyancy.

Ahead, a figure appeared, crouching low in the ash. A boy. Norm waved at him and called, 'Hey, sonny - we're from the Pinole pit; we're supposed to meet a party from Oakland here ... Do you remember me?'

The boy, without answering, turned and scampered off.

'Nothing to be afraid of,' Norm said to his wife. 'He's going to tell their Mayor. A nice old fellow named Ben Fennimore.'

Soon several adults appeared, approaching warily.

With relief, Norm set the legs of the wheelbarrow down into the ash, letting go and wiping his face with his handkerchief. 'Has the Oakland team arrived yet?' he called.

'Not yet,' a tall, elderly man with a white armband and ornate cap answered. 'It's you Schein, isn't it?' he said, peering. This was Ben Fennimore. 'Back already with your layout.' Now the Berkeley flukers had begun crowding around the wheelbarrow, inspecting the Scheins' layout. Their faces showed admiration.

'They have Perky Pat here,' Norm explained to his wife. 'But-' He lowered his voice. 'Their layouts are only basic. Just a house, wardrobe and car ... they've built almost nothing. No imagination.'

One Berkeley fluker, a woman, said wonderingly to Fran, 'And you made each of the pieces of furniture yourselves?' Marveling, she turned to the man beside her. 'See what they've accomplished, Ed?'

'Yes,' the man answered, nodding. 'Say,' he said to Fran and Norm, 'can we see it all set up? You're going to set it up in our pit, aren't you?'

'We are indeed,' Norm said.

The Berkeley flukers helped push the wheelbarrow the last mile. And before long they were descending the ramp, to the pit below the surface.

'It's a big pit,' Norm said knowingly to Fran. 'Must be two thousand people here. This is where the University of California was.'

'I see,' Fran said, a little timid at entering a strange pit; it was the first time in years - since the war, in fact - that she had seen any strangers. And so many at once. It was almost too much for her; Norm felt her shrink back, pressing against him in fright.

When they had reached the first level and were starting to unload the wheelbarrow, Ben Fennimore came up to them and said softly, 'I think the Oakland people have been spotted; we just got a report of activity upstairs. So be prepared.' He added, 'We're rooting for you, of course, because you're Perky Pat, the same as us.'

'Have you ever seen Connie Companion doll?' Fran asked him.

'No ma'am,' Fennimore answered courteously. 'But naturally we've heard about it, being neighbors to Oakland and all. I'll tell you one thing ... we hear that Connie Companion doll is a bit older than Perky Pat. You know - more, um, mature mature.' He explained, 'I just wanted to prepare you.'

Norm and Fran glanced at each other. 'Thanks,' Norm said slowly. 'Yes, we should be as much prepared as possible. How about Paul?'

'Oh, he's not much,' Fennimore said. 'Connie runs things; I don't even think Paul has a real apartment of his own. But you better wait until the Oakland flukers get here; I don't want to mislead you - my knowledge is all hearsay, you understand.'

Another Berkeley fluker, standing nearby, spoke up. 'I saw Connie once, and she's much more grown up than Perky Pat.'

'How old do you figure Perky Pat is?' Norm asked him.

'Oh, I'd say seventeen or eighteen,' Norm was told.

'And Connie?' He waited tensely.

'Oh, she might be twenty-five, even.'

From the ramp behind them they heard noises. More Berkeley flukers appeared, and, after them, two men carrying between them a platform on which, spread out, Norm saw a great, spectacular layout.

This was the Oakland team, and they weren't a couple, a man and wife; they were both men, and they were hard-faced with stern, remote eyes. They jerked their heads briefly at him and Fran, acknowledging their presence. And then, with enormous care, they set down the platform on which their layout rested.

Behind them came a third Oakland fluker carrying a metal box, much like a lunch pail. Norm, watching, knew instinctively that in the box lay Connie Companion doll. The Oakland fluker produced a key and began unlocking the box.

'We're ready to begin playing any time,' the taller of the Oakland men said. 'As we agreed in our discussion, we'll use a numbered spinner instead of dice. Less chance of cheating that way.'

'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 out 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.' He 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 st.i.tched by hand, you can see that. Interesting; what we heard was correct. Perky Pat isn't a grownup, 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. 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 boy friend ...' 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,' Fran 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 right.'