“Good enough,” Hooker agreed, and his hostility faded. It was replaced, at once, by desire. “Let’s see it, Norm. I bet it’ll go good in my layout; a fire alarm box is just what I need to complete my first block where I have the mailbox. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Norm sighed, philosophically.

When he returned from the two-day trek to the Berkeley Fluke-pit his face was so grim that his wife knew at once that the parley with the Oakland people had not gone well.

That morning a careboy had dropped cartons of a synthetic tea-like drink; she fixed a cup of it for Norman, waiting to hear what had taken place eight miles to the south.

“We haggled,” Norm said, seated wearily on the bed which he and his wife and child all shared. “They don’t want money; they don’t want goods—naturally not goods, because the darn careboys are dropping regularly down there, too.”

“What will they accept, then?”

Norm said, “Perky Pat herself.” He was silent, then.

“Oh good Lord,” she said, appalled.

“But if we win,” Norm pointed out, “we win Connie Companion.”

“And the layouts? What about them?”

“We keep our own. It’s just Perky Pat herself, not Leonard, not anything else.”

“But,” she protested, “what’ll we do if we lose Perky Pat?”

“I can make another one,” Norm said. “Given time. There’s still a big supply of thermoplastics and artificial hair, here in the pit. And I have plenty of different paints; it would take at least a month, but I could do it. I don’t look forward to the job, I admit. But—” His eyes glinted. “Don’t look on the dark side; imagine what it would be like to win Connie Companion doll. I think we may well win; their delegate seemed smart and, as Hooker said, tough… but the one I talked to didn’t strike me as being very flukey. You know, on good terms with luck.”

And, after all, the element of luck, of chance, entered into each stage of the game through the agency of the spinner.

“It seems wrong,” Fran said, “to put up Perky Pat herself. But if you say so—” She managed to smile a little. “I’ll go along with it. And if you won Connie Companion—who knows? You might be elected Mayor when Hooker dies. Imagine, to have won somebody else’s doll—not just the game, the money, but the doll itself

“I can win,” Norm said soberly. “Because I’m very flukey.” He could feel it in him, the same flukeyness that had got him through the hydrogen war alive, that had kept him alive ever since. You either have it or you don’t, he realized. And I do.

His wife said, “Shouldn’t we ask Hooker to call a meeting of everyone in the pit, and send the best player out of our entire group. So as to be the surest of winning.”

“Listen,” Norm Schein said emphatically. “I’m the best player. I’m going. And so are you; we make a good team, and we don’t want to break it up. Anyhow, we’ll need at least two people to carry Perky Pat’s layout.” All in all, he judged, their layout weighed sixty pounds.

His plan seemed to him to be satisfactory. But when he mentioned it to the others living in the Pinole Fluke-pit he found himself facing sharp disagreement. The whole next day was filled with argument.

“You can’t lug your layout all that way yourselves,” Sam Regan said. “Either take more people with you or carry your layout in a vehicle of some sort. Such as a cart.” He scowled at Norm.

“Where’d I get a cart?” Norm demanded.

“Maybe something could be adapted,” Sam said. “I’ll give you every bit of help I can. Personally, I’d go along but as I told my wife this whole idea worries me.” He thumped Norm on the back. “I admire your courage, you and Fran, setting off this way. I wish I had what it takes.” He looked unhappy.

In the end, Norm settled on a wheelbarrow. He and Fran would take turns pushing it. That way neither of them would have to carry any load above and beyond their food and water, and of course knives by which to protect them from the do-cats.

As they were carefully placing the elements of their layout in the wheelbarrow, Norm Schein’s boy Timothy came sidling up to them. “Take me along, Dad,” he pleaded. “For fifty cents I’ll go as guide and scout, and also I’ll help you catch food along the way.”

“We’ll manage fine,” Norm said. “You stay here in the fluke-pit; you’ll be safer here.” It annoyed him, the idea of his son tagging along on an important venture such as this. It was almost—sacreligious.

“Kiss us goodbye,” Fran said to Timothy, smiling at him briefly; then her attention returned to the layout within the wheelbarrow. “I hope it doesn’t tip over,” she said fearfully to Norm.

“Not a chance,” Norm said. “If we’re careful.” He felt confident.

A few moments later they began wheeling the wheelbarrow up the ramp to the lid at the top, to upstairs. Their journey to the Berkeley Fluke-pit had begun.

A mile outside the Berkeley Fluke-pit he and Fran began to stumble over empty drop-canisters and some only partly empty remains of past care parcels such as littered the surface near their own pit. Norm Schein breathed a sigh of relief; the journey had not been so bad after all, except that his hands had become blistered from gripping the metal handles of the wheelbarrow, and Fran had turned her ankle so that now she walked with a painful limp. But it had taken them less time than he had anticipated, and his mood was one of buoyancy.

Ahead, a figure appeared, crouching low in the ash. A boy. Norm waved at him and called, “Hey, sonny—we’re from the Pinole pit; we’re supposed to meet a party from Oakland here… do you remember me?”

The boy, without answering, turned and scampered off.

“Nothing to be afraid of,” Norm said to his wife. “He’s going to tell their Mayor. A nice old fellow named Ben Fennimore.”

Soon several adults appeared, approaching warily.

With relief, Norm set the legs of the wheelbarrow down into the ash, letting go and wiping his face with his handkerchief. “Has the Oakland team arrived yet?” he called.

“Not yet,” a tall, elderly man with a white armband and ornate cap answered. “It’s you Schein, isn’t it?” he said, peering. This was Ben Fennimore. “Back already with your layout.” Now the Berkeley flukers had begun crowding around the wheelbarrow, inspecting the Scheins’ layout. Their faces showed admiration.

“They have Perky Pat here,” Norm explained to his wife. “But—” He lowered his voice. “Their layouts are only basic. Just a house, wardrobe and car… they’ve built almost nothing. No imagination.”

One Berkeley fluker, a woman, said wonderingly to Fran, “And you made each of the pieces of furniture yourselves?” Marveling, she turned to the man beside her. “See what they’ve accomplished, Ed?”

“Yes,” the man answered, nodding. “Say,” he said to Fran and Norm, “can we see it all set up? You’re going to set it up in our pit, aren’t you?”

“We are indeed,” Norm said.

The Berkeley flukers helped push the wheelbarrow the last mile. And before long they were descending the ramp, to the pit below the surface.

“It’s a big pit,” Norm said knowingly to Fran. “Must be two thousand people here. This is where the University of California was.”

“I see,” Fran said, a little timid at entering a strange pit; it was the first time in years—since the war, in fact—that she had seen any strangers. And so many at once. It was almost too much for her; Norm felt her shrink back, pressing against him in fright.

When they had reached the first level and were starting to unload the wheelbarrow, Ben Fennimore came up to them and said softly, “I think the Oakland people have been spotted; we just got a report of activity upstairs. So be prepared.” He added, “We’re rooting for you, of course, because you’re Perky Pat, the same as us.”