Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along after the Bomb

by Philip Kindred Dick

  “I’ll tell you,” Hardy said, “what would be a good business. I’ve thought about it many times.” He faced Stuart meditatively. “Sewing machine needles. You could name your own price; you could have anything.”

  Gesturing, Stuart got up and paced about the shop. “Listen, I’ve got my eye on the big time; I don’t want to mess around with selling any more—I’m fed up with it. I sold aluminum pots and pans and encyclopedias and TV sets and now these vermin traps. They’re good traps and people want them, but I just feel there must be something else for me.

  Hardy grunted, frowning.

  “I don’t mean to insult you,” Stuart said, “but I want to grow. I have to; you either grow or you go stale, you die on the vine. The war set me back years, it set us all back. I’m just where I was ten yeas ago, and that’s not good enough.”

  Scratching his nose, Hardy said, “What did you have in mind?”

  “Maybe I could find a mutant potato that would feed everybody in the world.”

  “Just one potato?”

  “I mean a type of potato. Maybe I could become a plant breeder, like Luther Burbank. There must be millions of freak plants growing around out in the country, like there’re all those freak animals and funny people here in the city.”

  Hardy said, “Maybe you could locate an inteffigent bean.”

  “I’m not joking about this,” Stuart said quietly.

  They faced each other, neither speaking.

  “It’s a service to humanity,” Hardy said at last, “to make homeostatic vermin traps that destroy mutated cats and dogs and rats and squirrels. I think you’re acting infantile. Maybe your horse being eaten while you were over in South San Francisco—”

  Entering the room, Ella Hardy said, “Dinner is ready, and I’d like to serve it while it’s hot. It’s baked cod-head and rice and it took me three hours standing in line down at Eastshore Freeway to get the cod-head.”

  The two men rose to their feet. “You’ll eat with us?” Hardy asked Stuart.

  At the thought of the baked fish head, Stuart’s mouth watered. He could not say no and he nodded, following after Mrs. Hardy toward the little combination living room and kitchen in the rear of the building. It had been a month since be had tasted fish; there were almost none left in the Bay any longer—most of the schools had been wiped out and had never returned. And those that were caught were often ,radioactive. But it did not matter; people had become able to eat them anyhow. People could eat almost anything; their lives depended on it.

  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 Bonny Keller’s daughter, but, Doctor Stockstill thought, it isn’t George Keller’s daughter; I am certain of that… I know my business. Who had Bonny been having an affair with, seven yeas ago? The child must have been conceived very close to the day the war began. But she had not been conceived before the bomb fell; that was clear. Perhaps it was on that very day, he ruminated. Just like Bonny, to rush out while the bomb was falling, while the world was coming to an end, to have a brief, frenzied spasm of love with someone, perhaps some man she did not even know, the first man she happened onto… and now this.

  The child smiled at him and he smiled back. Superficially, Edie Keller appeared normal; she did not seem to be a funny child. How he wished, God damn it, that he had an x-ray machine. Because—

  He said aloud, “Tell me more about your brother.”

  “Well,” Edie Keller said in her frail, soft yoice, “I talk to my brother all the time and sometimes he answers but more often he’s asleep. He sleeps almost all the time.”

  “Is he asleep now?”

  For a moment the child was silent. “No, he’s awake.”

  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; Bonny and George had become worried. They knew about the brother, but they assumed him to be imaginary, a pretend playmate which kept their little daughter company. He himself had assumed so at first; the chart did not mention a brother, and yet Edie talked about him. Bill was exactly the same age as she. Born, Edie had informed the doctor, at the same time as she, of course.

  “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 years since the war Doctor Stockstill had examined many hundreds of funny people, many strange and exotic variants on the human life form which flourished now under a much more tolerant—although smokily veiled—sky. He could not be shocked. And yet, this—a child whose brother lived inside her body, down in the inguinal region. For seven years Bill Keller had dwelt inside there, and Doctor Stockstill, listening to the girl, believed her; he knew that it was possible. It was not the first case of this kind. If he had his x-ray machine he would be. able to see the tiny, wizened shape, probably no larger than a baby rabbit. In fact, with his hands he could feel the outline… he touched her side, caefully noting the firm cyst-like sack within. The head in a normal position, the body entirely within the abdominal cavity, limbs and all. Someday the girl would die and they would open her body, perform an autopsy; they would find a little wrinkled male figure, perhaps with a snowy white beard and blind eyes… her brother, still no larger than a baby rabbit.

  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. He had completed his examination; with the meager instruments and tests available to him he could do no more. He had verified the child’s account and that was something, but he could not see the embryo or consider removing it; the latter was out of the question, desirable as it was.

  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 dinner, because he does get it after a while… I think he does anyhow. Wouldn’t he have to, to liver

  “Yes,” Stockstill agreed.

  “He gets it from me,” Edie said as she put her blouse back on, buttoning it slowly. “And he wants to know what’s in it. 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. My mother tells me about New York so I told him; he wants to go there someday and see what it’s like.”

  “But he can’t see.”

  “I can, though,” Edie pointed out. “It’s almost as good.”

  “You take good care of him, don’t you?” Stockstill said, deeply touched. To the girl, it was normal; she had lived like this all her life—she did not know of any other existence. There is nothing, he realized once more, which is “outside” nature; that is a logical impossibility. In a way there are no freaks, no abnormalities, except in the statistical sense. This is an unusual situation, but it’s not something to horrify us; actually it ought to make us
happy. Life per se is good, and this is one form which life takes. There’s no special pain here, no cruelty of suffering. In fact there is solicitude and tenderness.

  “I’m afraid,” the girl 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.”

  “What would happen, then?” Edie regarded him with large, dark eyes. ‘Would he get born, then?”

  “No,” Stockstill said. “He’s not located that way; he would have to be removed surgically. But—he wouldn’t live. The only way he can live is as he’s living now, inside you.” Parasitically, he thought, not saying the word aloud. “We’ll worry about that when the time comes,” he said, patting the child on the head. “If it ever does.”

  “My mother and father don’t know,” Edie said.

  “I realize that,” Stockstill said.

  “I told them about him,” Edie said. “But—” She laughed.

  “Don’t worry. Just go on and do what you’d ordinarily do. It’ll all take care of itself.”

  Edie said, “I’m glad I have a brother; he keeps me from being lonely. Even when he’s asleep I can feel him there, I know he’s there. It’s like having a baby inside me; I can’t wheel him around in a baby carriage or anything like that, or dress him, ‘but talking to him is a lot of fun. For instance, I get to tell him about Mildred.”

  “Mildred!” He was puzzled.

  “You know.” The child smiled at his ignorance. “The girl that keeps coming back to Philip. And spoils his life. We listen every night. The satellite.”

  “Of course.” It was Dangerfield’s reading of the Maugham book. Eerie, Doctor Stockstill thought, this parasite swelling within her body, in unchanging moisture and darkness, fed by her blood, hearing from her in some unfathomable fashion a second-hand account of a famous novel… it makes Bill Keller part of our culture. He leads his grotesque social existence, too. God knows what he makes of the story. Does he have fantasies about it, about our life? Does he dream about us?

  Bending, Doctor Stockstill kissed the girl on her forehead. “Okay,” he said, leading her toward the door. “You can go, now. I’ll talk to your mother and father for a minute; there’re some very old genuine pre-war magazines out in the waiting room that you can read, if you’re careful with them.”

  “And then we can go home and have dinner,” Edie said happily, opening the door to the waiting room. George and Bonny rose to their feet, their faces taut with anxiety.

  “Come in,” Stockstill said to them. He shut the door after them. “No cancer,” he said, speaking to Bonny in particular, whom he knew so well. “It’s a growth, of course; no doubt of that. How large it may get I can’t say. But I’d say, don’t worry about it. Perhaps by the time it’s large enough to cause trouble our surgery will be advanced enough to deal with It.”

  The Kellers sighed with relief; they trembled visibly.

  “You could take her to the U.C. Hospital in San Francisco,” Stockstill said. “They are performing minor surgery there… but frankly, if I were you I’d let it drop.” Much better for you not to know, he realized. It would be hard on you to have to face it… especially you, Bonny. Because of the circumstances involving the conception; ft would be so easy to start feeling guilt. “She’s a healthy child and enjoys life,” he said. “Leave it at that. She’s had it since birth.”

  “Has she?” Bonny said. “I didn’t realize. I guess I’m not a good mother; I’m so wrapped up in community activities—”

  “Doctor Stockstill,” George Keller broke in, “let me ask you this. Is Edie a—special child?”

  “‘Special’?” Stockstill regarded him cautiously.

  “I think you know what I mean.”

  “You mean, is she a funny person?”

  George blanched, but his intense, grim expression remained; he waited for an answer. Stockstill could see that; the man would not be put off by a few phrases.

  Stockstill said, “I presume that’s what you mean. Why do you ask? Does she seem to be funny in some fashion? Does she look funny?”

  “She doesn’t look funny,” Bonny said, in a flurry of concern; she held tightly onto her husband’s ann, clinging to him. “Christ, that’s obvious; she’s perfectly normal-looking. Go to hell, George. What’s the matter with you? How can you be morbid about your own child; are you bored or something, is that it?”

  “There are funny people who don’t show it,” George Keller said. “After all, I see many children; I see all our children. I’ve developed an ability to tell. A hunch, which usually is proved correct. We’re required, we in the schools, as you know, to turn any funny children over to the State of California for special training. Now—”

  “I’m going home,” Bonny said. She turned and walked to the door of the waiting room. “Good-bye, Doctor.”

  Stockstill said, “Wait, Bonny.”

  “I don’t like this conversation,” Bonny said. “It’s ill. You’re both ill. Doctor, if you intimate in any fashion that she’s funny I won’t ever speak to you again. Or you either, George. I mean it.”

  After a pause, Stockstill said, “You’re wasting your words, Bonny. I am not intimating, because there’s nothing to intimate. She has a benign tumor in the abdominal cavity; that’s all.” He felt angry. He felt, in fact, the desire to confront her with the truth. She deserved it.

  But, he thought, after she has felt guilt, after she’s blamed herself for going out and having an affair with some man and producing an abnormal birth, then she will turn her attention to Edie; she will hate her. She will take it out on the child. It always goes like that. The child is a reproach to the parents, in some dim fashion, for what they did back in the old days or in the first moments of the war when everyone ran ‘his own crazy way, did his private, personal harm as he realized what was happening. Some of us killed to stay alive, some of us just fled, some of us made fools out of ourselves… Bonny went wild, no doubt; she let herself go. And she’s that same person now; she would do it again, perhaps has done it again. And she is perfectly aware of that.

  Again he wondered who the father was.

  Someday I am going to ask her point blank, he decided. Perhaps she doesn’t even know; it is all a blur to her, that time in our lives. Those horrible days. Or was it horrible for her? Maybe it was lovely; she could kick the traces, do what she wanted without fear because she believed, we all did, that none of us would survive.

  Bonny made the most of it, he realized, as she always does; she makes the most out of life in every contingency. I wish I were the same… he felt envious, as he watched her move from the room toward her child. The pretty, trim woman; she was as attractive now as she had been ten years ago—the damage, the impersonal change that had descended on them and their lives, did not seem to have touched her.

  The grasshopper who fiddled. That was Bonny. In the darkness of the war, with its destruction, its infinite sporting of life forms, Bonny fiddled on, scraping out her tune of joy and enthusiasm and lack of care; she could not be persuaded, even by reality, to become reasonable. The lucky ones: people like Bonny, who are stronger than the forces of change and decay. That’s what she has eluded– the forces of decay which have set in. The roof fell on us, but not on Bonny.

  He remembered a cartoon in Punch–

  Interrupting his thoughts, Bonny said, “Doctor, have you met the new teacher, Hal Barnes?”

  “No,” he said. “Not yet. I saw him at a distance only.”

  “You’d like him. He wants to play the cello, except of course he has no cello.” She laughed merrily, her eyes dancing with pure life. “Isn’t that pathetic?”

  “Very,” he agreed.’

  “Isn’t that all of us?” she said. “Our cellos are gone. And what does that leave? You tell me.”

  “Christ,” Stockstill said, “I don’t know; I haven’t the fo
ggiest idea.”

  Bonny, laughing, said, “Oh, you’re so earnest.”

  “She says that to me, too,” George Keller said, with a faint smile. “My wife sees mankind as a race of dungbeetles laboring away. Naturally, she does not include herself.”

  “She shouldn’t,” Stockstill said. “I hope she never does.”

  George glanced at him sourly, then shrugged.

  She might change, Stockstill thought, if she understood about her daughter. That might do it. It would take something like that, some odd blow unprecedented and unanticipated. She might even kill herself; the joy, the vitality, might switch to its utter opposite.

  “Kellers,” he said aloud, “introduce me to the new teacher one day soon. I’d like to meet an ex-cello player. Maybe we can make him something out of a washtub strung with baling wire. He could play it with—”

  “With horsetail,” Bonny said practically. “The bow we can make; that part is easy. What we need is a big resonating chamber, to produce the low notes. I wonder if we can find an old cedar chest. That might do. It would have to be wood, certainly.”

  George said, “A barrel, cut in half.”

  They laughed at that; Edie Keller, joining them, laughed, too, although she had not heard what her father—or rather, Stockstill thought, her mother’s husband—had said.

  “Maybe we can find something washed up on the beach,” George said. “I notice that a lot of wooden debris shows up, especially after storms. Wrecks of old Chinese ships, no doubt, from years ago.”

  Cheerfully, they departed from Doctor Stockstill’s office; he stood watching them go, the little girl between them. The three of them, he thought. Or rather, the four, if the invisible but real presence within the girl was counted.

  Deep in thought he shut the door.

  It could be my child, he thought. But it isn’t, because seven years ago Bonny was up in West Marin here and I was at my office in Berkeley. But if I had been near her that day—

  Who was up here then? he asked himself. When the bombs fell… who of us could have been with her that day? He felt a peculiar feeling toward the man, whoever he was. I wonder how he would feel, Stockstill thought, if he knew about his child… about his children. Maybe someday I’ll run into him. I can’t bring myself to tell Bonny, but perhaps I will tell him.