"I think we're ready to vote on Mr. Barnes," Miss Costigan, the youngest member of the board, said. "I for one am in favor of accepting him, at least on a provisional basis. Does anyone feel otherwise?"

Mrs. Tallman said to Mr. Barnes, "We killed our last teacher, you know. That's why we need another. That's why we sent Mr. Stroud out looking up and down the Coast until he found you."

"We killed him because he lied to us," Miss Costigan said. "You see, his real reason for coming here had nothing to do with teaching. He was looking for some man named Jack Tree, who it turned out lived in this area. Our Mrs. Keller, a respected member of this community and the wife of George Keller, here, our principal, is a dear friend of Mr. Tree, and she brought the news of the situation to us and of course we acted, legally and officially, through our chief of police, Mr. Earl Colvig."

"I see," Mr. Barnes said woodenly, listening without interrupting.

Speaking up, Orion Stroud said, "The jury which sentenced and executed him was composed of myself, Cas Stone, who's the largest land-owner in West Marin, Mrs. Tallman and Mrs. June Raub. I say 'executed' but you understand that the act -- when he was shot, the shooting itself -- was done by Earl.

That's Earl's job, after the West Marin Official Jury has made its decision." He eyed the new teacher.

"It sounds," Mr. Barnes said, "very formal and law-abiding to me. Just what I'd be interested in."

He smiled at them all, and the tension in the room relaxed; people murmured.

A cigarette -- one of Andrew Gill's special deluxe Gold Labels -- was lit up; its good, rich smell wafted to them all, cheering them and making them feel more friendly to the new teacher and to one another.

Seeing the cigarette, Mr. Barnes got a strange expression on his face and he said in a husky voice, "You've gottobacco up here? After seven years?" He clearly could not believe it.

Smiling in amusement, Mrs. Tallman said, "We don't have any tobacco, Mr. Barnes, because of course no one does. But we do have a tobacco expert. He fashions these special deluxe Gold Labels for us out of choice, aged vegetable and herbal materials the nature of which remains -- and justly so -- his individual secret."

"How much do they cost?" Mr. Barnes asked.

"In terms of State of California boodle money," Orion Stroud said, "about a hundred dollars apiece. In terms of pre-war silver, a nickel apiece."

"I have a nickel," Mr. Barnes said, reaching shakily into his coat pocket; he fished about, brought up a nickel and held it toward the smoker, who was George Keller, leaning back in his chair with his legs crossed to make himself comfortable.

"Sorry," George said, "I don't want to sell. You better go directly to Mr. Gill; you can find him during the day at his shop. It's here in Point Reyes Station but of course he gets all around; he has a horse-drawn VW minibus."

"I'll make a note of that," Mr. Barnes said. He put his nickel away, very carefully.

"Do you intend to board the ferry?" the Oakland official asked. "If not, I wish you'd move your car, because it's blocking the gate."

"Sure," Stuart McConchie said. He got back into his car, flicked the reins that made Edward Prince of Wales, his horse, begin pulling. Edward pulled, and the engineless 1975 Pontiac passed back through the gate and out onto the pier.

The Bay, choppy and blue, lay on both sides, and Stuart watched through the windshield as a gull swooped to seize some edible from the pilings. Fishing lines, too. . . men catching their evening meals.

Several of the men wore the remains of Army uniforms. Veterans who perhaps lived beneath the pier.

Stuart drove on.

If only he could afford to telephone San Francisco. But the underwater cable was out again, and the lines had to go all the way down to San Jose and up the other side, along the peninsula, and by the time the call reached San Francisco it would cost him five dollars in silver money. So, except for a rich person, that was out of the question; he had to wait the two hours until the ferry left. . . but could he stand to wait that long?

He was after something important.

He had heard a rumor that a huge Soviet guided missile had been found, one which had failed to go off; it lay buried in the ground near Belmont, and a farmer had discovered it while plowing. The farmer was selling it off in the form of individual parts, of which there were thousands in the guidance system alone. The farmer wanted a penny a part, your choice. And Stuart, in his line of work, needed many such parts. But so did lots of other people. So it was first come, first serve; unless he got across the Bay to Belmont fairly soon, it would be too late.

He sold (another man made them) small electronic traps. Vermin had mutated and now could avoid or repel the ordinary passive trap, no matter how complicated. The cats in particular had become different, and Mr. Hardy built a superior cat trap, even better than his rat and dog traps. The vermin were dangerous; they killed and ate small children almost at will -- or at least so one heard. And of course wherever possible they themselves were caught and eaten in return. Dogs in particular, if stuffed with rice, were considered delicious; the little local Berkeley newspaper which came out once a week had recipes for dog soup, dog stew, even dog pudding.

Meditating about dog pudding made Stuart realize how hungry he was. It seemed to him that he had not stopped being hungry since the first bomb fell; his last really adequate meal had been the lunch at Fred's Fine Foods that day he had run into Hoppy Harrington the phocomelus doing his phony vision act.

And where, he wondered suddenly, was that little phoce now? He hadn't thought of him in years.

Now, of course, one saw many phoces, and almost all of them on their 'mobiles, exactly as Hoppy had been, placed dead center each in his own little universe, like an armless, legless god. The sight still repelled Stuart, but there were so many repellent sights these days. . .

On the surface of the Bay to his right a legless veteran propelled himself out onto the water aboard a raft, rowing himself toward a pile of debris that was undoubtedly a sunken ship. On the hulk a number of fishing lines could be seen; they belonged to the veteran and he was in the process of checking them. Watching the raft go, Stuart wondered if it could reach the San Francisco side. He could offer the man fifty cents for a one-way trip; why not? Stuart got out of his car and walked to the edge of the pier.

"Hey," he yelled, "come here." From his pocket he got a penny; he tossed it down onto the pier and the veteran saw it, heard it. At once he spun the raft about and came paddling rapidly back, straining to make speed, his face streaked with perspiration. He grinned up friendlily at Stuart, cupping his ear.

"Fish?" he called. "I don't have any yet today, but maybe later on how about a small shark?

Guaranteed safe." He held up the battered Geiger counter which he had connected to his waist by a length of rope -- in case it fell from the raft or someone tried to steal it, Stuart realized.

"No," Stuart said, squatting down at the edge of the pier. "I want to get over to San Francisco; I'll pay you a quarter for one way."

"But I got to leave my lines to do that," the veteran said, his smile fading. "I got to collect them all or somebody'd steal them while I was gone."

"Thirty-five cents," Stuart said.

In the end they agreed, at a price of forty cents. Stuart locked the legs of Edward Prince of Wales together so no one could steal him, and presently he was out on the Bay, bobbing up and down aboard the veteran's raft, being rowed across to San Francisco.

"What field are you in?" the veteran asked him. "You're not a tax collector, are you?" He eyed him calmly.

"Naw," Stuart said. "I'm a small trap man."

"Listen, my friend," the veteran said, "I got a pet rat lives under the pilings with me? He's smart; he can play the flute. I'm not putting you under an illusion, it's true. I made a little wooden flute and he plays it, through his nose. . . it's practically an Asiatic nose-flute like they have in India. Well, I did have him, but the other day he got run over. I saw the whole thing happen; I couldn't go get him or nothing. He ran across the pier to get something, maybe a piece of cloth. . . he has this bed I made him but he gets -- I mean he got -- cold all the time because they mutated, this particular line, they lost their hair."

"I've seen those," Stuart said, thinking how well the hairless brown rat evaded even Mr. Hardy's electronic vermin traps. "Actually I believe what you said," he said. "I know rats pretty well. But they're nothing compared to those little striped gray-brown tabby cats. . . I'll bet you had to make the flute, he couldn't construct it himself."

"True," the veteran said. "But he was an artist. You ought to have heard him play; I used to get a crowd at night, after we were finished with the fishing. I tried to teach him the Bach 'Chaconne in D.' "

"I caught one of those tabby cats once," Stuart said, "that I kept for a month until it escaped. It could make little sharp-pointed things out of tin can lids. It bent them or something; I never did see how it did it, but they were wicked."

The veteran, rowing, said, "What's it like south of San Francisco these days? I can't come up on land." He indicated the lower part of his body. "I stay on the raft. There's a little trap door, when I have to go to the bathroom. What I need is to find a dead phoce sometime and get his cart. They call them phocomobiles."

"I knew the first phoce," Stuart said, "before the war. He was brilliant; he could repair anything."

He lit up an imitation-tobacco cigarette; the veteran gaped at it longingly. "South of San Francisco it's as you know all flat. So it got hit bad and it's just farmland now. Nobody ever rebuilt there, and it was mostly those little tract houses so they left hardly any decent basements. They grow peas and corn and beans down there. What I'm going to see is a big rocket a farmer just found; I need relays and tubes and other electronic gear for Mr. Hardy's traps." He paused. "You ought to have a Hardy trap."

"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 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 years ago? The child must have been conceived very close to the day the war began. But she had not been conceived before the bombs fell; that was clear. Perhaps it was on that very day, he ruminated. Just like Bonny, to rush out while the bombs were falling, while the world was coming to an end, to have a brief, frenzied spasm of love with someone, perhaps with 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 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; 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 seven 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 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, carefully 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 beard and blind eyes. . . her brother, still no larger that 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.

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 live?"

"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."

"Would he be born, then?" Edie regarded him with large, dark eyes.

"No," Stockstill said. "He's not located that way. He'd have to be removed -- surgically. But he wouldn't live. The only way he can live is as he is now, inside you." Parasitically, he thought, not saying the word. "We'll worry about that when the time comes, if it ever does."

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 woman that keeps coming back to Philip.

And spoils his life. We listen every night. The satellite."

"Of course." It was Walt Dangerfield's reading of the Maugham book, the disc jockey as he passed in his daily orbit above their heads. Eerie, Doctor Stockstill thought, this parasite dwelling 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 hedream about us?

Bending, Doctor Stockstill kissed the girl on her forehead. "Okay," he said. "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."