Paycheck (2003) (30 page)

‘I don’t know,’ Sam said hesitantly. ‘There’s something about Connie Companion doll that - makes me uneasy.’

‘What could it possibly be?’

‘I don’t know.’

Jean said bitterly, ‘It’s because you know her layout is so much better than ours and she’s so much more than Perky Pat.’

‘Maybe that’s it,’ Sam murmured.

‘If you don’t go, if you don’t try to make contact with them down at the Oakland Fluke-pit, someone else will - someone with more ambition will get ahead of you. Like Norman Schein. He’s not afraid the way you are.’

Sam said nothing; he continued with his bath. But his hands shook.

A careboy had recently dropped complicated pieces of machinery which were, evidently, a form of mechanical computer. For several weeks the computers - if that was what they were - had sat about the pit in their cartons, unused, but now Norman Schein was finding something to do with one. At the moment he was busy adapting some of its gears, the smallest ones, to form a garbage disposal unit for his Perky Pat’s kitchen.

Using the tiny special tools - designed and built by inhabitants of the fluke-pit - which were necessary in fashioning environmental items for Perky Pat, he was busy at his hobby bench. Thoroughly engrossed in what he was doing, he all at once realized that Fran was standing directly behind him, watching.

‘I get nervous when I’m watched,’ Norm said, holding a tiny gear with a pair of tweezers.

‘Listen,’ Fran said, ‘I’ve thought of something. Does this suggest anything to you?’ She placed before him one of the transistor radios which had been dropped the day before.

‘It suggests that garage-door opener already thought of,’ Norm said irritably. He continued with his work, expertly fitting the miniature pieces together in the sink drain of Pat’s kitchen; such delicate work demanded maximum concentration.

Fran said, ‘It suggests that there must be radio
transmitters
on Earth somewhere, or the careboys wouldn’t have dropped these.’

‘So?’ Norm said, uninterested.

‘Maybe our Mayor has one,’ Fran said. ‘Maybe there’s one right here in our own pit, and we could use it to call the Oakland Fluke-pit. Representatives from there could meet us halfway … say at the Berkeley Flukepit. And we could play there. So we wouldn’t have that long fifteen-mile trip.’

Norman hesitated in his work; he set the tweezers down and said slowly, ‘I think possibly you’re right.’ But if their Mayor Hooker Glebe had a radio transmitter, would he let them use it? And if he did—

‘We can try,’ Fran urged. ‘It wouldn’t hurt to try.’

‘Okay,’ Norm said, rising from his hobby bench.

The short, sly-faced man in Army uniform, the Mayor of the Pinole Fluke-pit, listened in silence as Norm Schein spoke. Then he smiled a wise, cunning smile. ‘Sure, I have a radio transmitter. Had it all the time. Fifty watt output. But why would you want to get in touch with the Oakland Fluke-pit?’

Guardedly, Norm said, ‘That’s my business.’

Hooker Glebe said thoughtfully, ‘I’ll let you use it for fifteen dollars.’

It was a nasty shock, and Norm recoiled. Good Lord; all the money he and his wife had - they needed every bill of it for use in playing Perky Pat. Money was the tender in the game; there was no other criterion by which one could tell if he had won or lost. ‘That’s too much,’ he said aloud.

‘Well, say ten,’ the Mayor said, shrugging.

In the end they settled for six dollars and a fifty-cent piece.

‘I’ll make the radio contact for you,’ Hooker Glebe said. ‘Because you don’t know how. It will take time.’ He began turning a crank at the side of the generator of the transmitter. ‘I’ll notify you when I’ve made contact with them. But give me the money now.’ He held out his hand for it, and, with great reluctance, Norm paid him.

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
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 damn seriously; you better be prepared to talk terms.’

‘We will,’ Norm assured 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
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
. 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
- not just the game, the money, but the
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 anticipated, 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?’