However, they did not seem to agree. Taking her by the hand, Mrs. Hardy led her toward the kitchen area. “You can help fix,” she explained. “We have potatoes, too. You can peel them. We serve our employees breakfast; we always eat together—it’s cheaper, and they don’t have kitchens, they live in rooms, Stuart and the others. We have to watch out for them.”
You’re very good people, Bonny thought. So this is the city—this is what we’ve been hiding from, throughout these years. We heard the awful stories, that it was only ruins, with predators creeping about, derelicts and opportunists and flappers, the dregs of what it had once been … and we had fled from that, too, before the war. We had already become to afraid to live here.
As they entered the kitchen she heard Stuart McConchie saying to Dean Hardy, “… and besides playing the nose-flute this rat—” He broke off, seeing her. “An anecdote about life here,” he apologized. “It might shock you. It has to do with a brilliant animal, and many people find them unpleasant.”
“Tell me about it,” Bonny said. “Tell me about the rat who plays the nose-flute.”
“I may be getting two brilliant animals mixed together,” Stuart said as he began heating water for the imitation coffee. He fussed with the pot and then, satisfied, leaned back against the wood-burning stove, his hands in his pockets. “Anyhow, I think the veteran said that it also had worked out a primitive system of bookkeeping. But that doesn’t sound right.” He frowned.
“It does to me,” Bonny said.
“We could use a rat like that working here,” Mr. Hardy said. “We’ll be needing a good bookkeeper, with our business expanding, as it’s going to be.”
Outside, along San Pablo Avenue, horse-drawn cars began to move; Bonny heard the sharp sound of the hoofs striking. She heard the stirrings of activity, and she went to the window to peep out. Bicycles, too, and a mammoth old wood-burning truck. And people on foot, many of them.
From beneath a board shack an animal emerged and with caution crossed the open to disappear beneath the porch of a building on the far side of the street. After a moment it reappeared, this time followed by another animal, both of them short-legged and squat, perhaps mutations of bulldogs. The second animal tugged a crummy sleigh-like platform after it; the platform, loaded with various valuable objects, most of them food, slid and bumped on its runners over the irregular pavement after the two animals hurrying for cover.
At the window, Bonny continued to watch attentively, but the two short-legged animals did not reappear. She was just about to turn away when she caught sight of something else moving into its first activity of the day. A round metal hull, splotched over with muddy colors and bits of leaves and twigs, shot into sight, halted, raised two slender antennae quiveringly into the early morning sun.
What in the world is it? Bonny wondered. And then she realized that she was seeing a Hardy Homeostatic trap in action.
Good luck, she thought.
The trap, after pausing and scouting in all directions, hesitated and then at last doubtfully took off on the trail of the two bulldog-like animals. It disappeared around the side of a nearby house, solemn and dignified, much too slow in its pursuit, and she had to smile.
The business of the day had begun. All around her the city was awakening, back once more into its regular life.
Dr. Bloodmoney Page 26
