The moron, Stuart thought. Doesn’t he know Fergesson would never let us have a beer on our lunch hour? It’s a rule; if we have a beer we’re supposed to never come back to the store and he’ll mail us our check.

“Listen,” he said to the phoce, turning around in his seat, “when you’ve worked for Fergesson a little longer you’ll know better than to say something stupid like that.”

Flushing, the phoce murmured, “What do you mean?”

The frycook said, “Fergesson don’t allow his employees to drink; it’s against his religion, isn’t it, Stuart?”

“That’s right,” Stuart said. “And you better learn that.”

“I wasn’t aware of that,” the phoce said, “and anyhow I wasn’t going to have a beer myself. But I don’t see what right an employer has to tell his employees what they can’t have on their own time. It’s their lunch hour and they should have ‘a beer if they want it.” His voice was sharp, full of grim indignation. He was no longer kidding.

Stuart said, “He doesn’t want his salesmen coming in smelling like a brewery; I think that’s his right. It’d offend some old lady customer.”

“I can see that for the salesmen like you,” Hoppy said, “but I’m not a salesman; I’m a repairman, and I’d have a beer if I wanted it.”

The frycook looked uneasy. “Now look, Hoppy—” he began.

“You’re too young to have a beer,” Stuart said. Now everyone in the place was listening and watching.

The phoce had flushed a deep red. “I’m of age,” he said in a quiet, taut voice.

“Don’t serve him any beer,” Connie, the waitress, said to the frycook. “He’s just a kid.”

Reaching into his pocket with his extensor, Hoppy brought Out his wallet; he laid it open on the counter. “I’m twentyone,” he said.

Stuart laughed. “Bull.” He must have some phony identification in there, he realized. The nut printed it himself or forged it or something. He has to be exactly like everyone; he’s got an obsession about it.

Examining the identification in the wallet, the frycook said, “Yeah, it says he’s of age. But Hoppy, remember that other time you were in here and I served you a beer; remember—”

“You have to serve me,” the phoce said.

Grunting, the frycook went and got a bottle of Hamm’s beer, which he placed, unopened, before Hoppy.

“An opener,” the phoce said.

The frycook went and got an opener; he tossed it on the counter, and Hoppy pried open the bottle.

Taking a deep breath, the phoce drank the beer.

What’s going on? Stuart wondered, noticing the way that the frycook and Connie—and even a couple of the patrons—were watching Hoppy. Does he pass out or something? Goes berserk, maybe? He felt repelled and at the same time deeply uneasy. I wish I was through with my food, he thought; I wish I was out of here. Whatever it is, I don’t want to be a witness to it. I’m going back to the shop and watch the rocket again, he decided. I’m going to watch Dangerfield’s flight, something vital to America, not this freak; I don’t have time to waste on this.

But he stayed where he was, because something was happening some peculiar thing involving Hoppy Harrington; he could not draw his attention away from it, try as he might.

In the center of his cart the phocomelus had sunk down, as if he were going to sleep. He lay with his head resting on the tiller which steered the cart, and his eyes became almost shut; his eyes had a glazed look.

“Jeez,” the frycook said. “He’s doing it again.” He appealed around to the rest of them, as if asking them to do something, but no one stirred; they all stood or sat where they were.

“I knew he would,” Connie said in a bitter, accusing Voice.

The phoce’s lips trembled and in a mumble he said, “Ask me. Now somebody ask me.”

“Ask you what?” the frycook said angrily. He made a gesture of disgust, turned and walked away, back to his grill.

“Ask me,” Hoppy repeated, in a dull, far-off voice, as if he were speaking in a kind of fit. Watching, Stuart realized that it was a fit, a kind of epilepsy. He yearned to be out of the place and away, but still he could not stir; he still, like the others, had to go on watching.

Connie said to Stuart, “Can’t you push him back to the store? Just start pushing!” She glowered at him, but it wasn’t his fault; Stuart shrank away and gestured to show his helplessness.

Mumbling, the phoce flopped about on his cart, his plastic and metal manual extensors twitching. “Ask me about it,” he was saying. “Come on, before it’s too late; I can tell you now, I can see.”

At his grill the frycook said loudly, “I wish one of you guys would ask him. I wish you’d get it over with; I know somebody’s going to ask him and if you don’t I will—I got a couple of questions.” He threw down his spatula and made his way back to the phoce. “Hoppy,” he said loudly, “you said last time it was all dark. Is that right? No light at all?”

The phoce’s lips twitched. “Some light. Dim light. Yellow, like it’s about burned out.”

Beside Stuart appeared the middle-aged jeweler from across the street. “I was here last time,” he whispered to Stuart. “Want to know what it is he sees? I can tell you; listen, Stu, he sees beyond.”

“Beyond what?” Stuart said, standing up so that he could watch and hear better; everyone had moved closer, now, so as not to miss anything.

“You know,” Mr. Crody said. “Beyond the grave. The after life. You can laugh, Stuart, but it’s true; when he has a beer he goes into this trance, like you see him in now, and he has occult vision or something. You ask Tony or Connie and some of these other people; they were here, too.”

Now Connie was leaning over the slumped, twitching figure in the center of the cart. “Hoppy, what’s the light from? Is it God?” She laughed nervously. “You know, like in the Bible. I mean, is it true?”

Hoppy said mumblingly, “Gray darkness. Like ashes. Then a great flatness. Nothing but fires burning, light is from the burning fires. They burn forever. Nothing alive.”

“And where are you?” Connie asked.

“I’m—floating,” Hoppy said. “Floating near the ground… no, now I’m very high. I’m weightless, I don’t have a body any more so I’m high up, as high as I want to be. I can hang here, if I want; I don’t have to go back down. I like it up here and I can go around the Earth forever. There it is down below me and I can just keep going around and around.”

Going up beside the cart, Mr. Crody the jeweler said, “Uh, Hoppy, isn’t ‘there anybody else?’ Are each of us doomed to isolation?”

Hoppy mumbled, “I—see others, now. I’m drifting back down, I’m landing among the grayness. I’m walking about.”

Walking, Stuart thought. On what? Legs but no body; what an after life. He laughed to himself. What a performance, he thought. What crap. But he, too, came up beside the cart, now, squeezing in to be able to see.

“Is it that you’re born into another life, like they teach in the East?” an elderly lady customer in a cloth coat asked.

“Yes,” Hoppy said, surprisingly. “A new life. I have a different body; I can do all kinds of things.”

“A step up,” Stuart said.

“Yes,” Hoppy mumbled. “A step up. I’m like everybody else; in fact I’m better than anybody else. I can do anything they can do and a lot more. I can go wherever I want, and they can’t. They can’t move.”

“Why can’t they move?” the frycook demanded.

“Just can’t,” Hoppy said. “They can’t go into the air or on roads or ships; they just stay. It’s all different from this. I can see each of them, like they’re dead, like they’re pinned down and dead. Like corpses.”

“Can they talk?” Connie asked.

“Yes,” the phoce said, “they can converse with each other. But—they have to—” He was silent, and then he smiled; his thin, twisted face showed joy. “They can only talk through me.”

I wonder what that means, Stuart thought. It sounds like a megalomaniacal daydream, where he rules the world. Compensation because he’s defective… just what you’d expect a phoce to imagine.