“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.

It did not seem so interesting to Stuart, now that he had realized that. He moved away, back toward his booth, where his lunch waited.

The frycook was saying, “Is it a good world, there? Tell me if it’s better than this or worse.”

“Worse,” Hoppy said. And then he said, “Worse for you. It’s what everybody deserves; it’s justice.”

“Better for you, then,” Connie said, in a questioning way.

“Yes,” the phoce said.

“Listen,” Stuart said to the waitress from where he sat, “can’t you see it’s just psychological compensation because he’s defective? It’s how he keeps going, imagining that. I don’t see how you can take it seriously.”

“I don’t take it seriously,” Connie said. “But it’s interesting; I’ve read about mediums, like they’re called. They go into trances and can commune with the next world, like he’s doing. Haven’t you ever heard of that? It’s a scientific fact, I think. Isn’t it, Tony?” She turned to the frycook for support.