Squatted beside the fire, with the warmth of it upon his face and hands, he felt a smug contentment that seemed strangely out of place — the contentment of a man who had reduced his needs to the strictly basic — and with the contentment came a full-bodied confidence that was just as out of place. It seemed almost as if he could look ahead and see that everything would be all right. But it was not prescience. There were hunchers who had prescience or who seemed to have it, but he was not one of them. It was rather as if he could sense ahead of him the pattern of all rightness, but with no specific detail, with no idea of the future’s shape, nor of its direction. An assurance only, something that was akin to plain, old-fashioned hunch, a feeling for the future — but nothing more than that.
The steak was sizzling and he could smell the potato baking and he grinned at steak and baked potato as a breakfast menu. Although it was all right. There was nothing at the moment that was not all right.
He remembered Dalton slumped spineless in the chair, with the clenched cigar and the brush-pile hair, raging at the butcher plant as another outrage committed upon the businessman by the maliciousness of Fishhook. And he tried to recall from what planet of which sun the butcher plant had come and the name, it seemed to him, should be at his command, although he could not put it on his tongue.
The butcher plant, he thought, and how many other things? What would be the total score if all of Fishhook’s contributions should be totaled up?
There were the drugs, for one thing, an entire new pharmacopoeia brought from other stars to alleviate and to cure the ills of Man. And as a result of this, all of Man’s old bugaboos, all of his old killers, were being held at bay. Given another generation — given, at the most, two more generations — and the entire concept of illness would be wiped off the human slate. The human race would then emerge as a people healthful both in body and in mind.
There were new fabrics and new metals and many different foodstuffs. There were new architectural ideas and materials; there were new perfumes, unfamiliar literatures, alien principles in art. And there was dimensino, an entertainment medium that had replaced all the standard human entertainment — the movies, radio and TV.
For in dimensino you did not merely see and hear; you participated. You became a part of the portrayed situation. You identified yourself with one of the characters, or with more than one of them, and you lived out the action and emotion. For a time you ceased to be yourself; you became the person of your choice in the drama dimensino created.
Almost every home had its dimensino room, rigged with the apparatus which picked up the weird, alien impulses that made you someone else — that lifted you out of the commonplace, out of the humdrum rut of your ordinary life and sent you off on wild adventure or on strange assignments or pitched you headlong into exotic places and fantastic situations.
And all of these, the food, the fabrics, the dimensino, were monopolies of Fishhook.
For all of these, thought Blaine, Fishhook had gained the hatred of the people — the hatred of not understanding, of being left outside, of being helped as no other single agency had ever helped the human race.
The steak was done, and Blaine propped the greenwood stick against a bush while he dug into the coals to hook out the potatoes and the corn.
He sat beside the fire and ate as the sun came up and the breeze died down and the world, on the threshold of another day, appeared to hold its breath. The first sunlight came through the grove of cottonwoods and turned some of the leaves into golden coins, and the brook grew hushed as the daytime sounds took up — the bawling of the cattle on the hill above, the hum of cars passing on the road, the distant drone of a cruising plane far up in the sky.
On the road, down by the bridge, a closed panel truck pulled up and stopped. The driver got out and lifted the hood and crawled halfway under it. Then he crawled out again and went back to the cab. Inside of it he hunted until he found what he was looking for, then got out again. He placed a kit of tools on the fender and unwrapped it, and the clinking of the tools as he unwrapped them came clearly up the hill.
It was an ancient truck — gas engine and with wheels, but it had some jet assistance. There were not many such vehicles left, except, perhaps, in junk yards.
An independent operator, Blaine told himself. Getting along the best he could, competing with the big truck lines by cutting down his rates and keeping down his overhead in any way he could.
The truck’s original paint had faded and peeled off in places, but painted over this, in sharp, fresh color, were complicated hex signs, guaranteed, no doubt, to fend off the evil of the world.
The truck, Blaine saw, had an Illinois license.
The driver got his tools laid out, then crawled back beneath the hood. The sound of hammering and the screech of stubborn, rusty bolts floated up the hill.
Blaine finished off his breakfast. There were two steaks left and two potatoes and by now the coals were growing black. He stirred up the coals and put on more wood, speared the two steaks on the stick and broiled them carefully.
The pounding and the screeching kept on beneath the hood. A couple of times the man crept out and rested, then went back to work.
When the steaks were finished, Blaine put the two potatoes in his pocket and went marching down the hill, carrying the two steaks on their stick as another man might take a banner into battle.
At the sound of his footsteps crunching on the road, the driver came out from beneath the hood and turned around to face him.
“Good morning,” said Blaine, being as happy as he could. “I saw you down here while I was getting breakfast.”
The driver regarded him with considerable suspicion.
“I had some food left over,” Blaine told him, “so I cooked it up for you. Although, perhaps, you’ve eaten.”
“No, I haven’t,” said the driver, with a show of interest. “I intended to in the town just down the road, but it was still closed tight.”
“Well, then,” said Blaine and handed him the stick with the two steaks impaled upon it.
The man took the stick and held it as if he feared that it might bite him. Blaine dug in his pockets and pulled out the two potatoes.
“There was some corn,” he said, “but I ate it all. There were only three ears of it.”
“You mean you’re giving this to me?”
“Certainly,” said Blaine. “Although you can throw it back into my face if that’s the way you feel.”
The man grinned uneasily. “I sure could use it,” he declared. “The next town is thirty miles and with this,” he gestured at the truck, “I don’t know when I’ll get there.”
“There isn’t any salt,” said Blaine, “but it’s not so bad without it.”
“Well,” said the man, “since you’ve been so kind . . .”
“Sit down,” said Blaine, “and eat. What’s the matter with the engine?”
“I’m not sure. Could be the carburetor.”
Blaine took off his jacket and folded it. He laid it neatly on the fender. He rolled up his sleeves.
The man found a seat on a rock beside the road and began to eat.
Blaine picked up a wrench and climbed up on the fender.
“Say,” said the man, “where did you get this stuff?”
“Up on the hill,” said Blaine. “The farmer had a lot of it.”
“You mean you stole it?”
“Well, what would you do if you were out of work and had no money and were trying to get home?”
“Whereabouts is home?”
“Up in South Dakota.”
The man took a big bite of steak, and his mouth became so full he could talk no longer.