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"Why? I live on fish, and why should I hate rats? I like them."
"I like them, too," Stuart said, "but you have to be practical; you have to look to the future. Someday America may be taken over by rats if we aren't wary. We owe it to our country to catch and kill rats, especially the wiser ones that would be natural leaders."
The veteran glared at him. "Sales talk, that's all."
"I'm sincere."
"That's what I have against salesmen; they believe their own lies. You know that the best rats can ever do, in a million years of evolution, is maybe be useful as servants to we human beings. They could carry messages maybe and do a little manual work. But dangerous -" He shook his head. "How much does one of your traps sell for?"
"Ten dollars silver. No State boodle accepted; Mr. Hardy is an old man and you know how old people are, he doesn't consider boodle to be real money." Stuart laughed.
"Let me tell you about a rat I once saw that did a heroic deed," the veteran began, but Stuart cut him off.
"I have my own opinions," Stuart said. "There's no use arguing about it." They were both silent, then. Stuart enjoyed the sight of the Bay on all sides; the veteran rowed. It was a nice day, and as they bobbed along toward San Francisco, Stuart thought of the electronic parts he might be bringing back to Mr. Hardy and the factory on San Pablo Avenue, near the ruins of what had once been the west end of the University of California.
"What kind of cigarette is that?" the veteran asked presently.
"This?" Stuart examined the butt; he was almost ready to put it out and stick it away in the metal box in his pocket. The box was full of butts, which would be opened and made into new cigarettes by Tom Grandi, the local cigarette man in South Berkeley. "This," he said, "is imported. From Marin County. It's a deluxe Gold Label made by -" He paused for effect. "I guess I don't have to tell you."
"By Andrew Gill," the veteran said. "Say, I'd like to buy a whole one from you; I'll pay you a dime."
"They're worth fifteen cents apiece," Stuart said. "They have to come all the way around Black Point and Sears' Point and along the Lucas Valley Road, from beyond Nicasio somewhere."
"I had one of those Andrew Gill deluxe special Gold Labels one time," the veteran said. "It fell out of the pocket of some man who was getting on the ferry; I fished it out of the water and dried it." All of a sudden Stuart handed him the butt.
"For God's sake," the veteran said, not looking directly at him. He rowed rapidly, his lips moving, his eyelids blinking.
"I got more," Stuart said.
The veteran said, "I'll tell you what else you got; you got real humanity, mister, and that's rare today. Very rare."
Stuart nodded. He felt the truth of the veteran's words.
The little Keller girl sat shivering on the examination table, and Doctor Stockstill, surveying her thin, pale body, thought of a joke which he had seen on television years ago, long before the war. A Spanish ventriloquist, speaking through a chicken… the chicken had produced an egg.
"My son," the chicken said, meaning the egg.
"Are you sure?" the ventriloquist asked. "It's not your daughter?"
And the chicken, with dignity, answered, "I know my business."
This child was Bo
The child smiled at him and he smiled back. Superficially, Edie Keller appeared normal; she did not seem to be a fu
He said aloud, "Tell me more about your brother."
"Well," Edie Keller said in her frail, soft voice, "I talk to my brother all the time and sometimes he answers for a while but more often he's asleep. He sleeps almost all the time."
"Is he asleep now?"
For a moment the child was silent. "No," she answered.
Rising to his feet and coming over to her, Doctor Stockstill said, "I want you to show me exactly where he is."
The child pointed to her left side, low down; near, he thought, the appendix. The pain was there. That had brought the child in; Bo
"Why of course?" he had asked, as he began examining her – he had sent the parents into the other room because the child seemed reticent in front of them.
Edie had answered in her calm, solemn way. "Because he's my twin brother. How else could he be inside me?" And, like the Spanish ventriloquist's chicken, she spoke with authority, with confidence; she, too, knew her business.
In the seven years since the war Doctor Stockstill had examined many hundreds of fu
Meanwhile, Bill slept mostly, but now and then he and his sister talked. What did Bill have to say? What possibly could he know?
To the question, Edie had an answer. "Well, he doesn't know very much. He doesn't see anything but he thinks. And I tell him what's going on so he doesn't miss out."
"What are his interests?" Stockstill asked.
Edie considered and said, "Well, he, uh, likes to hear about food."
"Food!" Stockstill said, fascinated.
"Yes. He doesn't eat, you know. He likes me to tell him over and over again what I had for di
"Yes," Stockstill agreed.
"He especially likes it if I have apples or oranges. And – he likes to hear stories. He always wants to hear about places, far-away especially like New York. I want to take him there someday, so he can see what it's like. I mean, so I can see and then tell him."
"You take good care of him, don't you?" Stockstill said, deeply touched. To the girl, it was normal; she had lived like this always – she did not know of any other existence.
"I'm afraid," she said suddenly, "that he might die someday."
"I don't think he will," Stockstill said. "What's more likely to happen is that he'll get larger. And that might pose a problem; it might be hard for your body to accommodate him."