In this. case, however, Hoppy Harrington had, the law on his side, and it was only a matter of time before he compelled someone in authority to give him that which he was entitled to. He felt grim about it, patient and grim. They had to help him, whether they wanted to or not. His father, a sheep rancher in the Sonoma Valley, had taught him that: taught him always to demand what he was entitled to.
Sound blared. The repairmen at work; Hoppy paused, opened the door and faced the two men at the long, littered bench with its instruments and meters, its dials and tools and television sets in all stages of decomposition. Neither repairman noticed him.
“Listen,” one of the repairmen said all at once, startling him. “Manual jobs are looked down on. Why don’t you go ‘into something mental, why don’t you go back to school and get a degree?” The repairman turned to stare at him questioningly.
No, Hoppy thought. I want to work with—my hands.
“You could be a scientist,” the other repairman said, not ceasing his work; he was tracing a circuit, studying his voltmeter.
“Like Bluthgeld,” Hoppy said.
The repairman laughed at that, with sympathetic understanding.
“Mr. Fergesson said you’d give me something to work on,” Hoppy said. “Some easy set to fix, to start with. Okay?” He waited, afraid that they were not going to respond, and then one of them pointed to a record changer. “What’s the matter with it?” Hoppy said, examining the repair tag. “I know I can fix it.”
“Broken spring,” one of the repairmen said. “It won’t shut off after the last record.”
“I see,” Hoppy said. He picked up the record changer with his two manual extensors and rolled to the far end of the bench, where there was a cleared space. “I’ll work here.” The repairmen did not protest, so he picked up pliers. This is easy, he thought to himself. I’ve practiced at home; he concentrated on the record changer but also watching the two repairmen out of the corner of his eye. I’ve practiced many times; it nearly always works, and all the time it’s better, more accurate. More predictable. A spring is a little object, he thought, as little as they come. So light it almost blows away. I see the break in you, he thought. Molecules of metal not touching, like before. He concentrated on that spot, holding the pliers so that the repairman nearest him could not see; he pretended to tug at the spring, as if trying to remove it.
As he finished the job he realized that someone was standing behind him, had come up to watch; he turned, and it was Jim Fergesson, his employer, saying nothing but just standing there with a peculiar expression on his face, his hands stuck in his pockets.
“All done,” Hoppy said nervously.
Fergesson said, “Let’s see.” He took hold of the changer, lifted it up into the overhead fluorescent light’s glare.
Did he see me? Hoppy wondered. Did he understand, and if so, what does he think? Does he mind, does he really care? Is he—horrified?
There was silence as Fergesson inspected the changer.
“Where’d you get the new spring?” he asked suddenly.
“I found it lying around,” Hoppy said, at once.
It was okay. Fergesson, if he had seen, had not understood. The phocomelus relaxed and felt glee, felt a superior pleasure take the place of his anxiety; he grinned at the two repairmen, looked about for the next job expected of him.
Fergesson said, “Does it make you nervous to have people watch you?”
“No,”. Hoppy said. “People can stare at me all they want; I know I’m different. I’ve been stared at since I was born.”
“I mean when you work.”
“No,” he said, and his voice sounded loud—perhaps too loud—in his ears. “Before I had a cart,” he said, “before the Government provided me anything, my dad used to carry me around on his back, in a sort of knapsack. Like’ a papoose.” He laughed uncertainly.
“I see,” Fergesson said.
“That was up around Sonoma,” Hoppy said. “Where I grew up. We had sheep. One time a ram butted me and I flew through the air. Like a ball.” Again he laughed; the two repairmen regarded him silently, both of them pausing in their work.
“I’ll bet,” one of them said after a moment, “that you rolled when you hit the ground.”
“Yes,” Hoppy said, laughing. They all laughed, now, himself and Fergesson and the two repairmen; they imagined how it looked, Hoppy Harrington, seven years old, with no arms or legs, only a torso and head, rolling over the ground, howling with fright and pain—but it was funny; he knew it. He told it so it would be funny; he made it become that way.
“You’re a lot better set up now, with your cart,” Fergesson said.
“Oh yes,” he said. “And I’m designing a new one, my own design; all electronic—I read an article on brain-wiring, they’re using it in Switzerland and Germany. You’re wired directly to the motor centers of the brain so there’s no lag; you can move even quicker than—a regular physiological structure.” He started to say, than a human. “I’ll have it perfected in a couple of years,” he said, “and it’ll be an improvement even on the Swiss models. And then I can throw away this Government junk.”
Fergesson said in a solemn, formal voice, “I admire your spirit.”
Laughing, Hoppy said with a stammer, “Th-thanks, Mr. Fergesson.”
One of the repairmen handed him a multiplex FM tuner. “It drifts. See what you can do for the alignment.”
“Okay,” Hoppy said, taking it in his metal extensors. “I sure will. I’ve done a lot of aligning, at home; I’m experienced with that.” He had found such work easiest of alclass="underline" he barely had to concentrate on the set. It was as if the task were made to order for him and his abilities.
Reading the calendar on her kitchen wall, Bonny Keller saw that this was the day her friend Bruno Bluthgeld saw her psychiatrist Doctor Stockstill at his office in Berkeley. In fact, he had already seen Stockstill, had had his first hour of therapy and had left. Now he no doubt was driving back to Livermore and his own office at the Radiation Lab, the lab at which she had worked years ago before she had gotten pregnant: she had met Doctor Bluthgeld, there, back in 1975. Now she was thirty-one years old and living in West Marin; her husband George was now vice-principal of the local grammar school, and she was very happy.
“Well, not very happy. Just moderately—tolerably—happy. She still took analysis herself—once a week now instead of three times—and in many respects she understood herself, her unconscious drives and paratactic systematic distortions of the reality situation. Analysis, six years of it, had done a great deal for her, but she was not cured. There was really no such thing as being cured; the “illness” was life itself, and a constant growth (or rather a viable growing adaptation) had to continue, or psychic stagnation would result.
She was determined not to become stagnant. Right now she was in the process of reading The Decline of the West in the original German; she had gotten fifty pages read, and it was well worth it. And who else that she knew had read it, even in the English?
Her interest in German culture, in its literary and philosophical works, had begun years ago through her contact with Doctor Bluthgeld. Although she had taken three years of German in college, she had not seen it as a vital part of her adult life; like so much that she had carefully learned, it had fallen into the unconscious, once she had graduated and gotten a job. Bluthgeld’s magnetic presence had reactivated and enlarged many of her academic interests, her love of music and art… she owed a great deal to Bluthgeld, and she was grateful.