the last few years to look for exciting adventures, untold riches, world fame, or some special religion. They poured in and ended up as chauffeurs, construction workers, or thugs—thirsting, wretched, tortured by vague desires, profoundly disillusioned, and certain that they had been tricked once again. Half of them, after hanging around for a month or two, returned to their homes, cursing, and spreading the word of their disillusionment to all the countries of the world. A very few became stalkers and quickly perished before they had caught onto the tricks of the trade. Some managed to get a job at the institute, but only the best-educated and smartest of them, who could at least work as lab assistants. The rest wasted evening after evening in bars, brawled over some difference of opinion, girls, or just because they were drunk, and drove the municipal police, the army, and the guards out of their minds.
The pimply driver reeked of liquor a mile away, and his eyes were rabbit red, but he was very excited and told Redrick how that morning a stiff from the cemetery showed up on their block. “He came back to his house, and the house had been locked up for years, and everyone had moved—his widow, an old lady now, and his daughter and her husband, and their children. He had died, the neighbors said, some thirty years ago, that is, before the Visitation, and now there he was. He walked around the house, sniffed and scratched, and then sat by the fence and waited. People came round from the whole neighborhood. They stared and stared but were afraid, of course, to come close. Finally somebody got a bright idea—they broke open the door to his house, making an entrance for him. And what do you think? He got up, went in, and shut the door behind him. I was late for work, so I don’t know how it turned out, but I do know that they were planning to call the institute and have someone come over and get him the hell out of there.”
“Stop,” Redrick said. “Let me off right here.”
He rummaged in his pocket. He had no change and had to break a new bill. Then he stood in the doorway and waited for the cab to drive away. Buzzard’s cottage wasn’t too bad: two stories, a glassed-in veranda with a pool table, a well-tended garden, a greenhouse, and a white gazebo under the apple trees. A filigree iron fence painted light green surrounded it ail. Redrick pushed the bell several times, the gate swung open with a creak, and Redrick slowly moved up the shady path, with rose bushes planted along the edges. Hamster was already standing on the porch. He was gnarled, black, and trembling with the desire to be of service. Impatiently he turned sideways, lowered one trembling leg in search of support, steadied himself, and dragged the other foot to meet its mate. His right arm shook convulsively in Redrick’s direction, as if to say, coming, coming, any minute.
“Hey, Red!” a woman’s voice called from the garden.
Redrick turned his head and saw bare tanned shoulders, a bright red mouth, and a waving hand among the greenery next to the lacy white roof of the gazebo. He nodded to Hamster, turned from the path, and breaking through the rose bushes, headed for the gazebo along the soft green grass.
A large red mat was spread on the lawn, and Dina Burbridge was sitting regally on it with a glass in her hand and a miniscule bathing suit on her body; a book with a bright cover lay on the mat and an ice bucket with a slender bottle neck peering over the edge sat in the shade nearby.
“Hi, Red!” Dina Burbridge said, greeting him with a wave of the glass. “Where’s the old man? Don’t tell me he’s messed up again?”
Redrick stood over her with the briefcase in his hands behind his back. Yes, Buzzard sure managed to wish himself up some marvelous children out there in the Zone. She was all silk and satin, firm and full, flawless, without a single unnecessary wrinkle—a hundred-twenty pounds of sugar-candy flesh, and emerald eyes that had an inner glow, a large wet mouth and even white teeth, and raven hair, shining in the sun and carelessly tossed over one shoulder. The sun was caressing her, pouring from her shoulders to her belly and hips, leaving deep shadows between her almost naked breasts. He stood above her and looked her over openly, and she looked up at him, laughing understandingly, and then raised the glass to her lips and took several sips.
“You want?” she asked, licking her lips. She waited just long enough for him to get the double entendre and then handed him the glass.
He turned and looked until he found a chaise longue in the shade. He sat down and stretched his legs.
“Burbridge is in the hospital,” he said. “They’re going to amputate his legs.”
Still smiling, she looked at him with one eye. The other was covered by the heavy hair that fell over her shoulder. But her smile had frozen—a sugary grin on a tan face. Then she swirled the glass, listening to the tinkle of the ice cubes.
“Both legs?”
“Both. Maybe below the knees, maybe above.”
She put down the glass and pushed back her hair. She was no longer smiling.
“Too bad,” she said. “And that means you…”
Dina Burbridge was the one person he could have told how it happened in all the details. He could have even told her how they drove back, his brass knuckles ready, and how Burbridge had begged—not for himself even, but for the children, for her and for Archie, and promised him the Golden Ball. But he didn’t tell her. He pulled out a pack of money from his breast pocket and tossed it onto the red mat right at her long naked legs. The notes fanned out in a rainbow. Dina absentmindedly picked up several and examined them, as though she had never seen one before but wasn’t that interested.
“This is the last earnings, then,” she said.
Redrick leaned over from the chaise longue and pulled the bottle from the ice bucket. He looked at the label. Water was dripping along the dark glass and Redrick held the bottle away from himself, so as not to drip on his pants. He did not like expensive whiskey, but he could force himself to have a slug at a time like this. He was just about to put the bottle to his mouth when he was stopped by indistinct sounds of protestation behind him. He looked around and saw that Hamster was painfully dragging his feet across the lawn, holding a glass of clear liquid in both hands. The exertion was making the sweat pour off his dark wooly head, and his bloodshot eyes had practically popped out of their sockets. When he saw that Redrick was looking at him he extended the glass in despair and sort of mooed and howled, opening his toothless mouth ineffectually.
“I’ll wait, I’ll wait,” Redrick said and shoved the bottle back in the bucket.
Hamster finally limped over, gave Redrick the glass, and patted his shoulder shyly with his arthritic hand.
“Thanks, Dixon,” Redrick said seriously. “That’s just what I need right now. As usual, you’re right on top of things.”
And while Hamster shook his head in embarrassment and rapture and convulsively slapped himself on the hip with his good arm, Redrick raised the glass, nodded to him, and gulped down half. Then he looked at Dina.
“You want?” he asked meaning the glass.
She did not reply. She was folding a bill in half and in half once again, and then again.
“Cut it out,” he said. “You won’t be lost. Your old man…”
She interrupted him.
“And so you dragged him out,” she said. She wasn’t asking, she was stating a fact. “You carried him, you jerk, through the whole Zone, you redheaded cretin, you dragged that bastard on your backbone, you ass. You blew an opportunity like that.”
He was watching her, his glass forgotten. She got up and stood in front of him, walking over the scattered money, and stopped, her clenched fists jammed into her smooth hip, blocking out the entire world for him with her marvelous body smelling of perfume and sweet sweat.
“He’s got all of you idiots wrapped around his finger. He’ll walk all over your bones. Just wait and see, he’ll walk on your thick skulls on crutches. He’ll show you the meaning of brotherly love and mercy!” She was screaming. “I’ll bet he promised you the Golden Ball, right? The map, the traps, right? Jerk! I can see by your dumb face that he did! Just wait, he’ll give you a map. Lord have mercy on the soul of the redheaded fool Redrick Schuhart.”
Redrick got up slowly and slapped her face hard. She shut up, sank to the grass, and buried her face in her hands.
“You fool… Red,” she muttered. “To blow an opportunity like that.”
Redrick looked down at her and finished the vodka. He thrust it at Hamster without looking at him. There was nothing to talk about. Some fine kids Burbridge conjured up in the Zone. Loving and respectful.
He went into the street and hailed a cab. He told the driver to go to the Borscht. He had to finish up his affairs. He was dying for sleep, everything was swimming before his eyes, and he fell asleep in the cab, his body slumped over the briefcase, and awoke only when the driver shook him.
