Philip K. Dick
UBIK
Friends, this is clean-up time and we're discounting all our silent, electric Ubiks by this much money. Yes, we're throwing away the blue-book. And remember: every Ubik on our lot has been used only as directed.
At three-thirty A.M. on the night of June 5, 1992, the top telepath in the Sol System fell off the map in the offices of Runciter Associates in New York City. That started vid-phones ringing. The Runciter organization had lost track of too many of Hollis' psis during the last two months; this added disappearance wouldn't do.
"Mr. Runciter? Sorry to bother you." The technician in charge of the night shift at the map room coughed nervously as the massive, sloppy head of Glen Runciter swam up to fill the vidscreen. "We got this news from one of our inertials. Let me look." He fiddled with a disarranged stack of tapes from the recorder which monitored incoming messages. "Our Miss Dorn reported it; as you may recall she had followed him to Green River, Utah, where -"
Sleepily, Runciter grated, "Who? I can't keep in mind at all times which inertials are following what teep or precog." With his hand he smoothed down his ruffled gray mass of wirelike hair. "Skip the rest and tell me which of Hollis' people is missing now."
"S. Dole Melipone," the technician said.
"What? Melipone's gone? You kid me."
PHILIP K. DICK
"I not kid you," the technician assured him. "Edie Dorn and two other inertials followed him to a motel named the Bonds of Erotic Polymorphic Experience, a sixty-unit sub-surface structure catering to businessmen and their hookers who don't want to be entertained. Edie and her colleagues didn't think he was active, but just to be on the safe side we had one of our own telepaths, Mr. G. G. Ashwood, go in and read him. Ashwood found a scramble pattern surrounding Melipone's mind, so he couldn't do anything; he therefore went back to Topeka, Kansas, where he's currently scouting a new possibility."
Runciter, more awake now, had lit a cigarette; chin in hand, he sat propped up somberly, smoke drifting across the scanner of his end of the bichannel circuit. "You're sure the teep was Melipone? Nobody seems to know what he looks like; he must use a different physiognomic template every month. What about his field?"
"We asked Joe Chip to go in there and run tests on the magnitude and minitude of the field being generated there at the Bonds of Erotic Polymorphic Experience Motel. Chip says it registered, at its height, 68.2 blr units of telepathic aura, which only Melipone, among all the known telepaths, can produce." The technician finished, "So that's where we stuck Melipone's identflag on the map. And now he - it - is gone."
"Did you look on the floor? Behind the map?"
"It's gone electronically. The man it represents is no longer on Earth or, as far as we can make out, on a colony world either."
Runciter said, "I'll consult my dead wife."
"It's the middle of the night. The moratoriums are closed now."
"Not in Switzerland," Runciter said, with a grimacing smile, as if some repellent midnight fiuid had crept up into his aged throat. "Goodeve." Runciter hung up.
As owner of the Beloved Brethren Moratorium, Herbert Schoenheit von Vogelsang, of course, perpetually came to
UBIK 5 work before his employees. At this moment, with the chilly, echoing building just beginning to stir, a worried-looking clerical individual with nearly opaque glasses and wearing a tabby-fur blazer and pointed yellow shoes waited at the reception counter, a claim-check stub in his hand. Obviously, he had shown up to holiday-greet a relative. Resurrection Day - the holiday on which the half-lifers were publicly honored - lay just around the corner; the rush would soon be beginning.
"Yes, sir," Herbert said to him with an affable smile. "I'll take your stub personally."
"It's an elderly lady," the customer said. "About eighty, very small and wizened. My grandmother."
"Twill only be a moinent." Herbert made his way back to the cold-pac bins to search out number 3054039-B.
When he located the correct party he scrutinized the lading report attached. It gave only fifteen days of half-life remaining. Not very much, he reflected; automatically he pressed a portable protophason amplifier into the transparent plastic hull of the casket, tuned it, listened at the proper frequency for indication of cephalic activity.
Faintly from the speaker a voice said, "...and then Tillie sprained her ankle and we never thought it'd heal; she was so foolish about it, wanting to start walking immediately..."
Satisfied, he unplugged the amplifier and located a union man to perform the actual task of carting 3054039-B to the consultation lounge, where the customer would be put in touch with the old lady.
"You checked her out, did you?" the customer asked as he paid the poscreds due.
"Personally," Herbert answered. "Functioning perfectly." He kicked a series of switches, then stepped back. "Happy Resurrection Day, sir."
"Thank you." The customer seated himself facing the casket, which steamed in its envelope of cold-pac; he pressed an earphone against the side of his hcad and spoke firmly
6 PHILIP K. DICK
into the microphone. "Flora, dear, can you hear me? I think I can hear you already. Flora?"
When I pass, Herbert Schoenheit von Vogelsang said to himself, I think I'll will my heirs to revive me one day a century. That way I can observe the fate of all mankind. But that meant a rather high maintenance cost to the heirs - and he knew what that meant. Sooner or later they would rebel, have his body taken out of cold-pac and - god forbid - buried.
"Burial is barbaric," Herbert muttered aloud. "Remnant of the primitive origins of our culture."
"Yes, sir," his secretary agreed, at her typewriter.
In the consultation lounge several customers now communed with their half-lifer relations, in rapt quiet, distributed at intervals each with his separate casket. It was a tranquil sight, these faithfuls, coming as they did so regularly to pay homage. They brought messages, news of what took place in the outside world; they cheered the gloomy half-lifers in these intervals of cerebral activity. And - they paid Herbert Schoenheit von Vogelsang. It was a profitable business, operating a moratorium.
"My dad seems a little frail," a young man said, catching Herbert's attention. "I wonder if you could take a moment of your time to check him over. I'd really appreciate it,"
"Certainly," Herbert said, accompanying the customer across the lounge to his deceased relative. The lading for this one showed only a few days remaining; that explained the vitiated quality of cerebration. But still... he turned up the gain of the protophason amplifier, and the voice from the half-lifer became a trifle stronger in the earphone. He's almost at an end, Herbert thought. It seemed obvious to him that the son did not want to see the lading, did not actually care to know that contact with his dad was diminishing, finally. So Herbert said nothing; he merely walked off, leaving the son to commune. Why tell him that this was probably the last time he would come here? He would find out soon enough in any case.
UBIK
A truck had now appeared at the loading platform at the rear of the moratorium; two men hopped down from it, wearing familiar pale-blue uniforms. Atlas Interplan Van and Storage, Herbert perceived. Delivering another half-lifer who had just now passed, or here to pick up one which had expired. Leisurely, he started in that direction, to supervise; at that moment, however, his secretary called to him. "Herr Schoenheit von Vogelsang; sorry to break into your meditation, but a customer wishes you to assist in revving up his relative." Her voice took on special coloration as she said, "The customer is Mr. Glen Runciter, all the way here from the North American Confederation."
A tall, elderly man, with large hands and a quick, sprightly stride, came toward him. He wore a varicolored Dacron wash-and-wear suit, knit cummerbund and dip-dyed cheese-cloth cravat. His head, massive like a tomcat's, thrust forward as he peered through slightly protruding, round and warm and highly alert eyes. Runciter kept, on his face, a professional expression of greeting, a fast attentiveness which fixed on Herbert, then almost at once strayed past him, as if Run-citer had already fastened onto future matters. "How is Ella?" Runciter boomed, sounding as if he possessed a voice electronically augmented. "Ready to be cranked up for a talk? She's only twenty; she ought to be in better shape than you or me." He chuckled, but it had an abstract quality; he always smiled and he always chuckled, his voice always boomed, but inside he did not notice anyone, did not care; it was his body which smiled, nodded and shook hands. Noth-ing touched his mind, which remained remote; aloof, but amiable, he propelled Herbert along with him, sweeping his way in great strides back into the chilled bins where the half-lifers, including his wife, lay.
"You have not been here for some time, Mr. Runciter," Herbert pointed out; he could not recall the data on Mrs. Runciter's lading sheet, how much half-life she retained.
Runciter, his wide, flat hand pressing against Herbert's back to urge him along, said, "This is a moment of impor-
8 PHILIP K. DICK
tance, von Vogelsang. We, my associates and myself, are in a line of business that surpasses all rational understanding. I'm not at liberty to make disclosures at this time, but we consider matters at present to be ominous but not however hopeless. Despair is not indicated - not by any means. Where's Ella?" He halted, glanced rapidly about.
"I'll bring her from the bin to the consultation lounge for you," Herbert said; customers should not be here in the bins. "Do you have your numbered claim-check, Mr. Runciter?"
"God, no," Runciter said. "I lost it months ago. But you know who my wife is; you can find her. Ella Runciter, about twenty. Brown hair and eyes." He looked around him impatiently. "Where did you put the lounge? It used to be located where I could find it."
"Show Mr. Runciter to the consultation lounge," Herbert said to one of his employees, who had come meandering by, curious to see what the world-renowned owner of an anti-psi organization looked like.
Peering into the lounge, Runciter said with aversion, "It's full. I can't talk to Ella in there." He strode after Herbert, who had made for the moratorium's files. "Mr. von Vogelsang," he said, overtaking him and once more dropping his big paw onto the man's shoulder; Herbert felt the weight of the hand, its persuading vigor. "Isn't there a more private sanctum sanctorum for confidential communications? What I have to discuss with Ella my wife is not a matter which we at Runciter Associates are ready at this time to reveal to the world."
Caught up in the urgency of Runciter's voice and presence, Herbert found himself readily mumbling, "I can make Mrs. Runciter available to you in one of our offices, sir." He wondered what had happened, what pressure had forced Runciter out of his bailiwick to make this belated pilgrimage to the Beloved Brethren Moratorium to crank up - as Runciter crudely phrased it - his half-lifer wife. A business crisis of some sort, he theorized. Ads over TV and in the homeopapes by the various anti-psi prudence establishments had
UBIK 9
shrilly squawked their harangues of late. Defend your pri-vacy, the ads yammered on the hour, from all media. Is a stranger tuning in on you? Are you really alone? That for the telepaths... and then the queasy worry about precogs. Are your actions being predicted by someone you never met? Someone you would not want to meet or invite into your home? Terminate anxiety; contacting your nearest prudence organization will first tell you if in fact you are the victim of unauthorized intrusions, and then, on your instructions, nul-lify these intrusions - at moderate cost to you.
"Prudence organizations." He liked the term; it had dig-nity and it was accurate. He knew this from personal expe-rience; two years ago a telepath had infiltrated his moratorium staff, for reasons which he had never discovered. To monitor confidences between half-lifers and their visitors, probably; perhaps those of one specific half-lifer - anyhow, a scout from one of the anti-psi organizations had picked up the telepathic field, and he had been notified. Upon his sign-ing of a work contract an anti-telepath had been dispatched, had installed himself on the moratorium premises. The te-lepath had not been located but it had been nullified, exactly as the TV ads promised. And so, eventually, the defeated telepath had gone away. The moratorium was now psi-free, and, to be sure it stayed so, the anti-psi prudence organi-zation surveyed his establishment routinely once a month.
"Thanks very much, Mr. Vogelsang," Runciter said, fol-lowing Herbert through an outer office in which clerks worked to an empty inner room that smelled of drab and unnecessary micro-documents.
Of course, Herbert thought musingly to himself, I took their word for it that a telepath got in here; they showed me a graph they had obtained, citing it as proof. Maybe they faked it, made up the graph in their own labs. And I took their word for it that the telepath left; he came, he left - and I paid two thousand poscreds. Could the prudence or-ganizations be, in fact, rackets? Claiming a need for their services when sometimes no need actually exists?
10PHILIP K. DICK
Pondering this he set off in the direction of the files once more. This time Runciter did not follow him; instead, he thrashed about noisily, making his big frame comfortable in terms of a meager chair. Runciter sighed, and it seemed to Herbert, suddenly, that the massively built old man was tired, despite his customary show of energy.
I guess when you get up into that bracket, Herbert decided, you have to act in a certain way; you have to appear more than a human with merely ordinary failings. Probably Runciter's body contained a dozen artiforgs, artificial organs grafted into place in his physiological apparatus as the gen-uine, original ones, failed. Medical science, he conjectured, supplies the material groundwork, and out of the authority of his mind Runciter supplies the remainder. I wonder how old he is, he wondered. Impossible any more to tell by looks, especially after ninety.
"Miss Beason," he instructed his secretary, "have Mrs. Ella Runciter located and bring me the ident number. She's to be,taken to office 2-A." He seated himself across from her, busied himself with a pinch or two of Fribourg & Treyer Princes snuff as Miss Beason began the relatively simple job of tracking down Glen Runciter's wife.
2
The best way to ask for beer is to sing out Ubik. Made from select hops, choice water, slow-aged for
perfect flavor Ubik is the nation's number-one choice in beer. Made only in Cleveland.
Upright in her transparent casket, encased in an effluvium of icy mist, Ella Runciter lay with her eyes shut, her hands lifted permanently toward her impassive face. It had been three years since he had seen Ella, and of course she had not changed. She never would, now, at least not in the out-ward physical way. But with each resuscitation into active half-life, into a return of cerebral activity, however short, Ella died somewhat. The remaining time Ieft to her pulse-phased out and ebbed.
Knowledge of this underwrote his failure to rev her up more often. He rationalized this way: that it doomed her, that to activate her constituted a sin against her. As to her own stated wishes, before her death and in early half-life encounters - this had become handily nebulous in his mind. Anyway, he would know better, being four times as old as she. What had she wished? To continue to function with him as co-owner of Runciter Associates; something vague on that order. Well, he had granted this wish. Now, for example. And six or seven times in the past. He did consult her at each crisis of the organization. He was doing so at this mo-ment.
12 PHILIP K. DICK
Damn this earphone arrangement, he grumbled as he fitted the plastic disc against the side of his head. And this micro-phone; all impediments to natural communication. He felt impatient and uncomfortable as he shifted about on the in-adequate chair which Vogelsang or whatever his name was had provided him; he watched her rev back into sentience and wished she would hurry. And then in panic he thought, Maybe she isn't going to make it; maybe she's worn out and they didn't tell me. Or they don't know. Maybe, he thought, I ought to get that Vogelsang creature in here to explain. Maybe something terrible is wrong.
Ella, pretty and light-skinned; her eyes, in the days when they had been open, had been bright and luminous blue. That would not again occur; he could talk to her and hear her answer; he could communicate with her... but he would never again see her with eyes opened; nor would her mouth move. She would not smile at his arrival. When he departed she would not cry. Is this worth it? he asked himself. Is this better than the old way, the direct road from full-life to the grave? I still do have her with me, in a sense, he decided. The alternative is nothing.
In the earphone words, slow and uncertain, formed: cir-cular thoughts of no importance, fragments of the mysterious dream which she now dwelt in. How did it feel, he wondered, to be in half-life? He could never fathom it from what Ella had told him; the basis of it, the experience of it, couldn't really be transmitted. Gravity, she had told him, once; it begins not to affect you and you float, more and more. When half-life is over, she had said, I think you float out of the System, out into the stars. But she did not know either; she only wondered and conjectured. She did not, however, seem afraid. Or unhappy. He felt glad of that.
"Hi, Ella," he said clumsily into the microphone.
"Oh," her answer came, in his ear; she seemed startled. And yet of course her face remained stable. Nothing showed; he looked away. "Hello, Glen," she said, with a sort of
UBIK 13
childish wonder, surprised, taken aback, to find him here. "What -" She hesitated. "How much time has passed?"
"Couple years," he said.
"Tell me what's going on."
"Aw, christ," he said, "everything's going to pieces, the whole organization. That's why I'm here; you wanted to be brought into major policy-planning decisions, and god knows we need that now, a new policy, or anyhow a revamping of our scout structure."
"I was dreaming," Ella said. "I saw a smoky red light, a horrible light. And yet I kept moving toward it. I couldn't stop."
"Yeah," Runciter said, nodding. "The Bardo Thodol, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, tells about that. You remem-ber reading that; the doctors made you read it when you were -" He hesitated. "Dying," he said then.
"The smoky red light is bad, isn't it?" Ella said.
"Yeah, you want to avoid it." He cleared his throat. "Lis-ten, Ella, we've got problems. You feel up to hearing about it? I mean, I don't want to overtax you or anything; just say if you're too tired or if there's something else you want to hear about or discuss."
"It's so weird. I think I've been dreaming all this time, since you last talked to me. Is it really two years? Do you know, Glen, what I think? I think that other people who are around me - we seem to be progressively growing together. A lot of my dreams aren't about me at all. Sometimes I'm a man and sometimes a little boy; sometimes I'm an old fat woman with varicose veins... and I'm in places I've never seen, doing things that make no sense."
"Well, like they say, you're heading for a new womb to be born out of. And that smoky red light - that's a bad womb; you don't want to go that way. That's a humiliating, low sort of womb. You're probably anticipating your next life, or whatever it is." He felt foolish, talking like this; normally he had no theological convictions. But the half-life
experience was real and it had made theologians out of all of them. "Hey," he said, changing the subject. "Let me tell you what's happened, what made me come here and bother you. S. Dole Melipone has dropped out of sight."
A moment of silence, and then Ella laughed. "Who or what is an S. Dole Melipone? There can't be any such thing." The laugh, the unique and familiar warmth of it, made his spine tremble; he remembered that about her, even after so many years. He had not heard Ella's laugh in over a decade.
"Maybe you've forgotten," he said.
Ella said, "I haven't forgotten; I wouldn't forget an S. Dole Melipone. Is it like a hobbit?"
"It's Raymond Hollis' top telepath. We've had at least one inertial sticking close to him ever since G. G. Ashwood first scouted him, a year and a half ago. We never lose Melipone; we can't afford to. Melipone can when necessary generate twice the psi field of any other Hollis employee. And Me-lipone is only one of a whole string of Hollis people who've disappeared - anyhow, disappeared as far as we're con-cerned. As far as all prudence organizations in the Society can make out. So I thought, Hell, I'll go ask Ella what's up and what we should do. Like you specified in your will - remember?"
"I remember." But she sounded remote. "Step up your ads on TV. Warn people. Tell them..." Her voice trailed off into silence then.
"This bores you," Runciter said gloomily.
"No. I -" She hesitated and he felt her once more drift away. "Are they all telepaths?" she asked after an interval.
"Telepaths and precogs mostly. They're nowhere on Earth; I know that. We've got a dozen inactive inertials with nothing to do because the Psis they've been nullifying aren't around, and what worries me even more, a lot more, is that requests for anti-psis have dropped - which you would ex-pect, given the fact that so many Psis are missing. But I know they're on one single project; I mean, I believe. Anyhow, I'm sure of it; somebody's hired the bunch of them, but only
Hollis knows who it is or where it is. Or what it's all about." He lapsed into brooding silence then. How would Ella be able to help him figure it out? he asked himself. Stuck here in this casket, frozen out of the world - she knew only what he told her. Yet, he had always relied on her sagacity, that particular female form of it, a wisdom not based on knowl-edge or experience but on something innate. He had not, during the period she had lived, been able to fathom it; he certainly could not do so now that she lay in chilled immo-bility. Other women he had known since her death - there had been several - had a little of it, trace amounts perhaps. Intimations of a greater potentiality which, in them, never emerged as it had in Ella.
"Tell me," Ella said, "what this Melipone person is like."
"A screwball."
"Working for money? Or out of conviction? I always feel wary about that, when they have that psi mystique, that sense of purpose and cosmic identity. Like that awful Sarapis had; remember him?"
"Sarapis isn't around any more. Hollis allegedly bumped him off because he connived to set up his own outfit in com-petition with Hollis. One of his precogs tipped Hollis off." He added, "Melipone is much tougher on us than Sarapis was. When he's hot it takes three inertials to balance his field, and there's no profit in that; we collect - or did col-lect - the same fee we get with one inertial. Because the Society has a rate schedule now which we're bound by." He liked the Society less each year; it had become a chronic obsession with him, its uselessness, its cost. Its vainglory. "As near as we can tell, Melipone is a money-Psi. Does that make you feel better? Is that less bad?" He waited, but heard no response from her. "Ella," he said. Silence. Nervously he said, "Hey, hello there, Ella; can you hear me? Is some-thing wrong?" Oh, god, he thought. She's gone.
A pause, and then thoughts materialized in his right ear. "My name is Jory." Not Ella's thoughts; a different elan, more vital and yet clumsier. Without her deft subtlety.
16
"Get off the line," Runciter said in panic. "I was talking to my wife Ella; where'd you come from?"
"I am Jory," the thoughts came, "and no one talks to me. I'd like to visit with you awhile, mister, if that's okay with you. What's your name?"
Stammering, Runciter said, "I want my wife, Mrs. Ella Runciter; I paid to talk to her, and that's who I want to talk to, not you."
"I know Mrs. Runciter," the thoughts clanged in his ear, much stronger now. "She talks to me, but it isn't the same as somebody like you talking to me, somebody in the world. Mrs. Runciter is here where we are; it doesn't count because she doesn't know any more than we do. What year is it, mister? Did they send that big ship to proxima? I'm very interested in that; maybe you can tell me. And if you want, I can tell Mrs. Runciter later on. Okay?"
Runciter popped the plug from his ear, hurriedly set down the earphone and the rest of the gadgetry; he left the stale, dust-saturated office and roamed about among the chilling caskets, row after row, all of them neatly arranged by num-ber. Moratorium employees swam up before him and then vanished as he churned on, searching for the owner.
"Is something the matter, Mr. Runciter?" the von Vo-gelsang person said, observing him as he floundered about. "Can I assist you?"
"I've got some thing coming in over the wire," Runciter panted, halting. "Instead of Ella. Damn you guys and your shoddy business practices; this shouldn't happen, and what does it mean?" He followed after the moratorium owner, who had already started in the direction of office 2-A. "If I ran my business this way -"
"Did the individual identify himself?"
"Yeah, he called himself Jory."
Frowning with obvious worry, von Vogelsang said, "That would be Jory Miller. I believe he's located next to your wife. In the bin."
"But I can see it's Ella!"
UBIK
17
"After prolonged proximity," von Vogelsang explained, "there is occasionally a mutual osmosis, a suffusion between the mentalities of half-lifers. Jory Miller's cephalic activity is particularly good; your wife's is not. That makes for an un-fortunately one-way passage of protophasons."
"Can you correct it?" Runciter asked hoarsely; he found himself still spent, still panting and shaking. "Get that thing out of my wife's mind and get her back - that's your job!"
Von Vogelsang said, in a stilted voice, "If this condition persists your money will be returned to you."
"Who cares about the money? Snirt the money." They had reached office 2-A now; Runciter unsteadily reseated himself, his heart laboring so that he could hardly speak. "If you don't get this Jory person off the line," he half gasped, half snarled, "I'll sue you; I'll close down this place!"
Facing the casket, von Vogelsang pressed the audio outlet into his ear and spoke briskly into the microphone. "Phase out, Jory; that's a good boy." Glancing at Runciter he said, "Jory passed at fifteen; that's why he has so much vitality. Actually, this has happened before; Jory has shown up sev-eral times where he shouldn't be." Once more into the mi-crophone he said, "This is very unfair of you, Jory; Mr. Runciter has come a long way to talk to his wife. Don't dim her signal, Jory; that's not nice." A pause as he listened to the earphone. "I know her signal is weak." Again he listened, solemn and froglike, then removed the earphone and rose to his feet.
"What'd he say?" Runciter demanded. "Will he get out of there and let me talk to Ella?"
Von Vogelsang said, "There's nothing Jory can do. Think of two AM radio transmitters, one close by but limited to only five-hundred watts of operating power. Then another, far off, but on the same or nearly the same frequency, and utilizing five-thousand watts. When night comes -"
"And night," Runciter said, "has come." At least for Ella. And maybe himself as well, if Hollis' missing teeps, para-kineticists, precogs, resurrectors and animators couldn't be
found. He had not only lost Ella; he had also lost her advice, Jory having supplanted her before she could give it.
"When we return her to the bin," von Vogelsang was blabbing, "we won't install her near Jory again. In fact, if you're agreeable as to paying the somewhat larger monthly fee, we can place her in a high-grade isolated chamber with walls coated and reinforced with Tefion-26 so as to inhibit hetero-psychic infusion - from Jory or anybody else."
"Isn't it too late?" Runciter said, surfacing momentarily from the depression into which this happening had dropped him.
"She may return. Once Jory phases out. Plus anyone else who may have gotten into her because of her weakened state. She's accessible to almost anyone." Von Vogelsang chewed his lip, palpably pondering. "She may not like being isolated, Mr. Runciter. We keep the containers - the caskets, as they're called by the lay public - close together for a reason. Wandering through one another's mind gives those in half-life the only -"
"Put her in solitary right now," Runciter broke in. "Better she be isolated than not exist at all."
"She exists," von Vogelsang corrected. "She merely can't contact you. There's a difference."
Runciter said, "A metaphysical difference which means nothing to me."
"I will put her in isolation," von Vogelsang said, "but I think you're right; it's too late. Jory has permeated her per-manently, to some extent at least. I'm sorry."
Runciter said harshly, "So am I."
3
Instant Ubik has all the fresh flavor of just-brewed drip coffee. Your husband will say, Christ, Sally, I used to think your coffee was only so-so, But now, wow! Safe when taken as directed.
Still in gay pinstripe clown-style pajamas, Joe Chip hazily seated himself at his kitchen table, lit a cigarette and, after inserting a dime, twiddled the dial of his recently rented'pape machine. Having a hangover, he dialed off interplan news, hovered momentarily at domestic news and then selected gossip.
"Yes sir," the 'pape machine said heartily. "Gossip. Guess what Stanton Mick, the reclusive, interplanetarily known speculator and financier, is up to at this very moment." Its works whizzed and a scroll of printed matter crept from its slot; the ejected roll, a document in four colors, niftily incised with bold type, rolled across the surface of the neo-teakwood table and bounced to the floor. His head aching, Chip re-trieved it, spread it out flat before him.
MICK HITS WORLD BANK FOR TWO TRIL
(AP) London. What could Stanton Mick, the reclusive, in-terplanetarily known speculator and financier be up to? the business community asked itself as rumor leaked out of White-hall that the dashing but peculiar industrial magnate, who once offered to build free of charge a fleet by which Israel could colonize and make fertile otherwise desert areas of
20
Mars, had asked for and may possibly receive a staggering and
unprecedented loan of
"This isn't gossip," Joe Chip said to the 'pape machine. "This is speculation about fiscal transactions. Today I want to read about which TV star is sleeping with whose drug-addicted wife." He had as usual not slept well, at least in terms of REM - rapid eye movement - sleep. And he had resisted taking a soporific because, very unfortunately, his week's supply of stimulants, provided him by the autonomic pharmacy of his conapt building, had run out - due, admittedly, to his own oral greed, but nonetheless gone. By law he could not approach the pharmacy for more until next Tuesday. Two days away, two long days.
The 'pape machine said, "Set the dial for low gossip."
He did so and a second scroll, excreted by the 'pape ma-chine without delay, emerged; he zommed in on an excellent caricature drawing of Lola Herzburg-Wright, licked his lips with satisfaction at the naughty exposure of her entire right ear, then feasted on the text.
Accosted by a cutpurse in a fancy N.Y. after-hours mowl the other night, LOLA HERZBURG-WRIGHT bounced a swift right jab off the chops of the do-badder which sent him reeling onto the table where KING EGON GROAT OF SWEDEN and an unidentified miss with astonishingly large
The ring-construct of his conapt door jangled; startled, Joe Chip glanced up, found his cigarette attempting to burn the formica surface of his neo-teakwood table, coped with that, then shuffled blearily to the speaktube mounted handily by the release bolt of the door. "Who is it?" he grumbled; checking with his wrist watch, he saw that eight o'clock had not arrived. Probably the rent robot, he decided. Or a cred-itor, He did not trigger off the release bolt of the door.
An enthusiastic male voice from the door's speaker ex-claimed, "I know it's early, Joe, but I just hit town. G. G.
Ashwood here; I've got a firm prospect that I snared ia
Topeka - I read this one as magnificent and I want your confirmation before I lay the pitch in Runciter's lap. Any-how, he's in Switzerland."
Chip said, "I don't have my test equipment in the apt."
"I'll shoot over to the shop and pick it up for you."
"It's not at the shop." Reluctantly, he admitted, "It's in my car. I didn't get around to unloading it last night." In actuality, he had been too pizzled on papapot to get the trunk of his hovercar open. "Can't it wait until after nine?" he asked irritably. G. G. Ashwood's unstable manic energy an-noyed him even at noon... this, at seven-forty, struck him as downright impossible: worse even than a creditor.
"Chip, dearie, this is a sweet number, a walking sympos-ium of miracles that'll curl the needles of your gauges and, in addition, give new life to the firm, which it badly needs. And furthermore -"
"It's an anti what?" Joe Chip asked. "Telepath?"
"I'll lay it on you right out in front," G. G. Ashwood declared. "I don't know. Listen, Chip." Ashwood lowered his voice. "This is confidential, this particular one. I can't stand down here at the gate gum-flapping away out loud; somebody might overhear. In fact I'm already picking up the thoughts of some gloonk in a ground-level apt; he -"
"Okay," . Joe Chip said, resigned. Once started, G. G. Ashwood's relentless monologs couldn't be aborted anyhow. He might as well listen to it. "Give me five minutes to get dressed and find out if I've got any coffee left in the apt anywhere." He had a quasi memory of shopping last night at the conapt's supermarket, in particular a memory of tear-ing out a green ration stamp, which could mean either coffee or tea or cigarettes or fancy imported snuff.
"You'll like her," G. G. Ashwood stated energetically. "Although, as often happens, she's the daughter of a -"
"Her?" In alarm Joe Chip said, "My apt's unfit to be seen; I'm behind in my payments to the building clean-up robots - they haven't been inside here in two weeks."
"I'll ask her if she cares."
"Don't ask her. I care. I'll test her out down at the shop, on Runciter's time."
"I read her mind and she doesn't care."
"How old is she?" Maybe, he thought, she's only a child. Quite a few new and potential inertials were children, having developed their ability in order to protect themselves against their psionic parents.
"How old are you, dear?" G. G. Ashwood asked faintly, turning his head away to speak to the person with him. "Nine-teen," he reported to Joe Chip.
Well, that shot that. But now he had become curious. G. G. Ashwood's razzle-dazzle wound-up tightness usually man-ifested itself in conjunction with attractive women; maybe this girl fell into that category. "Give me fifteen minutes," he told G.G. If he worked fast, and skulked about in a clean-up campaign, and if he missed both coffee and breakfast, he could probably effect a tidy apt by then. At least it seemed worth trying.
He rang off, then searched in the cupboards of the kitchen for a broom (manual or self-powered) or vacuum cleaner (helium battery or wall socket). Neither could be found. Evidently he had never been issued any sort of cleaning equipment by the building's supply agency. Hell of a time, he thought, to find that out. And he had lived here four years.
Picking up the vidphone, he dialed 214, the extension for the maintenance circuit of the building, "Listen," he said, when the homeostatic entity answered. "I'm now in a posi-tion to divert some of my funds in the direction of settling my bill vis-a-vis your clean-up robots. I'd like them up here right now to go over my apt, I'll pay the full and entire bill when they're finished."
"Sir, you'll pay your full and entire bill before they start."
By now he had his billfold in hand; from it he dumped his supply of Magic Credit Keys - most of which, by now, had been voided. Probably in perpetuity, his relationship with
money and the payment of pressing debts being such as it
was. "I'll charge my overdue bill against my Triangular Magic Key," he informed his nebulous antagonist. "That will trans-fer the obligation out of your jurisdiction; on your books it'll show as total restitution."
"Plus fines, plus penalties."
"I'll charge those against my Heart-Shaped -"
"Mr. Chip, the Ferris & Brockman Retail Credit Auditing and Analysis Agency has published a special flier on you. Our recept-slot received it yesterday and it remains fresh in our minds. Since July you've dropped from a triple G status creditwise to quadruple G. Our department - in fact this entire conapt building - is now programed against an exten-sion of services and/or credit to such pathetic anomalies as yourself, sir. Regarding you, everything must hereafter be handled on a basic-cash subfloor. In fact, you'll probably be on a basic-cash subfloor for the rest of your life. In fact -"
He hung up. And abandoned the hope of enticing and/or threatening the clean-up robots into entering his muddled apt. Instead, he padded into the bedroom to dress; he could do that without assistance.
After he had dressed - in a sporty maroon wrapper, twin-kle-toes turned-up shoes and a felt cap with a tassel - he poked about hopefully in the kitchen for some manifestation of coffee. None. He then focused on the living room and found, by the door leading to the bathroom, last night's greatcape, every spotty blue yard of it, and a plastic bag which contained a half-pound can of authentic Kenya coffee, a great treat and one which only while pizzled would he have risen to. Especially in view of his current abominable finan-cial situation.
Back in the kitchen he fished in his various pockets for a dime, and, with it, started up the coffeepot. Sniffing the - to him - very unusual smell, he again consulted his watch, saw that fifteen minutes had passed; he therefore vigorously strode to the apt door, turned the knob and pulled on the release bolt.
The door refused to open. It said, "Five cents, please."
24
He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing. "I'll pay you tomorrow," he told the door. Again he tried the knob. Again it remained locked tight. "What I pay you," he in-formed it, "is in the nature of a gratuity; I don't have to pay you."
"I think otherwise," the door said. "Look in the purchase contract you signed when you bought this conapt."
In his desk drawer he found the contract; since signing it he had found it necessary to refer to the document many times. Sure enough; payment to his door for opening and shutting constituted a mandatory fee. Not a tip.
"You discover I'm right," the door said. It sounded smug.
From the drawer beside the sink Joe Chip got a stainless steel knife; with it he began systematically to unscrew the bolt assembly of his apt's money-gulping door.
"I'll sue you," the door said as the first screw fell out.
Joe Chip said, "I've never been sued by a door. But I guess I can live through it."
A knock sounded on the door. "Hey, Joe, baby, it's me, G. G. Ashwood. And I've got her right here with me. Open up."
"Put a nickel in the slot for me," Joe said. "The mechanism seems to be jammed on my side."
A coin rattled down into the works of the door; it swung open and there stood G. G. Ashwood with a brilliant look on his face. It pulsed with sly intensity, an erratic, gleaming triumph as he propelled the girl forward and into the apt.
She stood for a moment staring at Joe, obviously no more than seventeen, slim and copper-skinned, with large dark eyes. My god, he thought, she's beautiful. She wore an ersatz canvas workshirt and jeans, heavy boots caked with what appeared to be authentic mud. Her tangle of shiny hair was tied back and knotted with a red bandanna. Her rolled-up sleeves showed tanned, competent arms. At her imitation
leather belt she carried a knife, a field-telephone unit and an emergency pack of rations and water. On her bare, dark forearm he made out a tattoo. CAVEAT EMPTOR, it read. He wondered what that meant.
"This is Pat," G. G. Ashwood said, his arm, with osten-tatious familiarity, around the girl's waist. "Never mind her last name." Square and puffy, like an overweight brick, wear-ing his usual mohair poncho, apricot-colored felt hat, argyle ski socks and carpet slippers, he advanced toward Joe Chip, self-satisfaction smirking from every molecule in his body: He had found something of value here, and he meant to make the most of it. "Pat, this is the company's highly skilled, first-line electrical type tester."
Coolly, the girl said to Joe Chip, "Is it you that's electrical? Or your tests?"
"We trade off," Joe said. He felt, from all around him, the miasma of his uncleaned-up apt; it radiated the specter of debris and clutter, and he knew that Pat had already noticed. "Sit down," he said awkwardly. "Have a cup of actual coffee."
"Such luxury," Pat said, seating herself at the kitchen table; reflexively she gathered the week's heap of 'papes into a neater pile. "How can you afford real coffee, Mr. Chip?"
G. G. Ashwood said, "Joe gets paid a hell of a lot. The firm couldn't operate without him." Reaching out he took a cigarette from the package lying on the table.
"Put it back," Joe Chip said. "I'm almost out and I used up my last green ration stamp on the coffee."
"I paid for the door," G.G. pointed out. He offered the pack to the girl. "Joe puts on an act; pay no attention. Like look how he keeps his place. Shows he's creative; all geniuses live like this. Where's your test equipment, Joe? We're wast-ing time."
To the girl, Joe said, "You're dressed oddly."
"I maintain the subsurface vidphone lines at the Topeka Kibbutz," Pat said. "Only women can hold jobs involving
26
manual labor at that particular kibbutz. That's why I applied there, instead of the Wichita Falls Kibbutz." Her black eyes blazed pridefully.
Joe said, "That inscription on your arm, that tattoo; is that Hebrew?"
"Latin." Her eyes veiled her amusement. "I've never seen an apt so cluttered with rubbish. Don't you have a mistress?" .
"These electrical-expert types have no time for tarradid-dle," G. G. Ashwood said irritably. "Listen, Chip, this girl's parents work for Ray Hollis. If they knew she was here they'd give her a frontal lobotomy."
To the girl, Joe Chip said, "They don't know you have a counter talent?"
"No." She shook her head. "I didn't really understand it either until your scout sat down with me in the kibbutz caf-eteria and told me. Maybe it's true." She shrugged. "Maybe not. He said you could show me objective proof of it, with your testing battery."
"How would you feel," he asked her, "if the tests show that you have it?"
Reflecting, Pat said, "It seems so - negative. I don't do anything; I don't move objects or turn stones into bread or give birth without impregnation or reverse the illness process in sick people. Or read minds. Or look into the future - not even common talents like that. I just negate somebody else's ability. It seems -" She gestured. "Stultifying."
"As a survival factor for the human race," Joe said, "it's as useful as the psi talents. Especially for us Norms. The anti-psi factor is a natural restoration of ecological balance. One insect learns to fly, so another learns to build a web to trap him. Is that the same as no flight? Clams developed hard shells to protect them; therefore, birds learn to fly the clam up high in the air and drop him on a rock. In a sense, you're a life form preying on the Psis, and the Psis are life forms that prey on the Norms. That makes you a friend of the Norm class. Balance, the full circle, predator and prey. It
appears to be an eternal system; and, frankly, I can't see how it could be improved."
"I might be considered a traitor," Pat said.
"Does it bother you?"
"It bothers me that people will feel hostile toward me. But I guess you can't live very long without arousing hostility; you can't please everybody, because people want different things. Please one and you displease another."
Joe said, "What is your anti-talent?"
"It's hard to explain."
"Like I say," G. G. Ashwood said, "it's unique; I've never heard of it before."
"Which psi talent does it counteract?" Joe asked the girl.
"Precog," Pat said. "I guess." She indicated G. G. Ash-wood, whose smirk of enthusiasm had not dimmed. "Your scout Mr. Ashwood explained it to me. I knew I did some-thing funny; I've always had these strange periods in my life, starting in my sixth year. I never told my parents, because I sensed that it would displease them."
"Are they precogs?" Joe asked.
"Yes."
"You're right. It would have displeased them. But if you used it around them - even once - they would have known, Didn't they suspect? Didn't you interfere with their ability?"
Pat said, "I -" She gestured. "I think I did interfere but they didn't know it." Her face showed bewilderment.
"Let me explain," Joe said, "how the anti-precog generally functions. Functions, in fact, in every case we know of. The precog sees a variety of futures, laid out side by side like cells in a beehive. For him one has greater luminosity, and this he picks. Once he has picked it the anti-precog can do nothing; the anti-precog has to be present when the precog is in the process of deciding, not after. The anti-precog makes all futures seem equally real to the precog; he aborts his talent to choose at all. A precog is instantly aware when an anti-precog is nearby because his entire relation to the future
is altered. In the case of telepaths a similar impairment -"
"She goes back in time," G. G. Ashwood said.
Joe stared at him.
"Back in time," G.G. repeated, savoring this; his eyes shot shafts of significance to every part of Joe Chip's kitchen. "The precog affected by her still sees one predominant fu-ture; like you said, the one luminous possibility. And he chooses it, and he's right. But why is it right? Why is it luminous? Because this girl -" He shrugged in her direction. "Pat controls the future; that one luminous possibility is lu-minous because she's gone into the past and changed it. By changing it she changes the present, which includes the pre-cog; he's affected without knowing it and his talent seems to work, whereas it really doesn't. So that's one advantage of her anti-talent over other anti-precog talents. The other - and greater - is that she can cancel out the precog's decision after he's made it. She can enter the situation later on, and this problem has always hung us up, as you know; if we didn't get in there from the start we couldn't do anything. In a way, we never could truly abort the precog ability as we've done with the others; right? Hasn't that been a weak link in our services?" He eyed Joe Chip expectantly.
"Interesting," Joe said presently.
"Hell - 'interesting'?" G. G. Ashwood thrashed about in-dignantly. "This is the greatest anti-talent to emerge thus far!"
In a low voice Pat said, "I don't go back in time." She raised her eyes, confronted Joe Chip half apologetically, half belligerently. "I do something, but Mr. Ashwood has built it up all out of proportion to reality."
"I can read your mind," G.G. said to her, looking a little nettled. "I know you can change the past; you've done it."
Pat said, "I can change the past but I don't go into the past; I don't time-travel, as you want your tester to think."
"How do you change the past?" Joe asked her.
"I think about it. One specific aspect of it, such as one incident, or something somebody said. Or a little thing that
happened that I wish hadn't happened. The first time I did this, as a child -"
"When she was six years old," G.G. broke in, "living in Detroit, with her parents of course, she broke a ceramic antique statue that her father treasured."
"Didn't your father foresee it?" Joe asked her. "With his precog ability?"
"He foresaw it," Pat answered, "and he punished me the week before I broke the statue. But he said it was inevitable; you know the precog talent: They can foresee but they can't change anything. Then after the statue did break - after I broke it, I should say - I brooded about it, and I thought about that week before it broke when I didn't get any dessert at dinner and had to go to bed at five P.M. I thought Christ - or whatever a kid says - isn't there some way these unfor-tunate events can be averted? My father's precog ability didn't seem very spectacular to me, since he couldn't alter events; I still feel that way, a sort of contempt. I spent a month trying to will the damn statue back into one piece; in my mind I kept going back to before it broke, imagining what it had looked like... which was awful. And then one morn-ing when I got up - I even dreamed about it at night - there it stood. As it used to be." Tensely, she leaned toward Joe Chip; she spoke in a sharp, determined voice. "But neither of my parents noticed anything. It seemed perfectly normaI to them that the statue was in one piece; they thought it had always been in onc piece, I was the only one who remem-bered." She smiled, leaned back, took another of his ciga-rettes from the pack and lit up.
"I'll go get my test equipment from the car," Joe said, starting toward the door.
"Five cents, please," the door said as he seized its knob.
"Pay the door," Joe said to G. G. Ashwood.
When he had lugged his armload of testing apparatus from the car to his apt he told the hrm's scout to hit the road.
30 PHILIP K. DICK
"What?" G.G. said, astounded. "But I found her; the bounty is mine. I spent almost ten days tracing the field to her; I -"
Joe said to him, "I can't test her with your field present, as you well know. Talent and anti-talent fields deform each other; if they didn't we wouldn't be in this line of business." He held out his hand as G.G. got grumpily to his feet. "And leave me a couple of nickels. So she and I can get out of here."
"I have change," Pat murmured. "In my purse."
"You can measure the force she creates," G.G. said, "by the loss within my field. I've seen you do it that way a hundred times."
Joe said, briefly, "This is different."
"I don't have any more nickels," G.G. said. "I can't get out."
Glancing at Joe, then at G.G., Pat said, "Have one of mine." She tossed G.G. a coin, which he caught, an expres-sion of bewilderment on his face. The bewilderment then, by degrees, changed to aggrieved sullenness.
"You sure shot me down," he said as he deposited the nickel in the door's slot. "Both of you," he muttered as the door closed after him. "I discovered her. This is really a cutthroat business, when -" His voice faded out as the door clamped shut. There was, then, silence.
Presently Pat said, "When his enthusiasm goes, there isn't much left of him."
"He's okay," Joe said; he felt a usual feeling: guilt. But not very much. "Anyhow he did his part. Now -"
"Now it's your turn," Pat said. "So to speak. May I take off my boots?"
"Sure," he said. He began to set up his test equipment, checking the drums, the power supply; he started trial mo-tions of each needle, releasing specific surges and recording their effect.
"A shower?" she asked as she set her boots neatly out of the way.
UBIK 31
"A quarter," he murmured. "It costs a quarter." He glanced up at her and saw that she had begun unbuttoning her blouse. "I don't have a quarter," he said.
"At the kibbutz," Pat said, "everything is free."
"Free!" He stared at her. "That's not economically fea-sible. How can it operate on that basis? For more than a month?"
She continued unperturbedly unbuttoning her blouse. "Our salaries are paid in and we're credited with having done our job. The aggregate of our earnings underwrites the kib-butz as a whole. Actually, the Topeka Kibbutz has shown a profit for several years; we, as a group, are putting in more than we're taking out." Having unbuttoned her blouse, she laid it over the back of her chair. Under the blue, coarse blouse she wore nothing, and he perceived her breasts: hard and high, held well by the accurate muscles of her shoulders.
"Are you sure you want to do that?" he said. "Take off your clothes, I mean?"
Pat said, "You don't remember."
"Remember what?"
"My not taking off my clothes. In another present. You didn't like that very well, so I eradicated that; hence this." She stood up lithely.
"What did I do," he asked cautiously, "when you didn't take off your clothes? Refuse to test you?"
"You mumbled something about Mr. Ashwood having overrated my anti-talent."
Joe said, "I don't work that way; I don't do that."
"Here." Bending, her breasts wagging forward, she rum-maged in the pocket of her blouse, brought forth a folded sheet of paper which she handed him. "From the previous present, the one I abolished."
He read it, read his one-line evaluation at the end. "Anti-psi field generated - inadequate. Below standard through-out. No value against precog ratings now in existence." And then the codemark which he employed, a circle with a stroke dividing it. Do not hire, the symbol meant. And only he and
32 PHILIP K. DICK
Glen Runciter knew that. Not even their scouts knew the meaning of the symbol, so Ashwood could not have told her. Silently he returned the paper to her; she refolded it and returned it to her blouse pocket.
"Do you need to test me?" she asked. "After seeing that?"
"I have a regular procedure," Joe said. "Six indices which -"
Pat said, "You're a little, debt-stricken, ineffective bu-reaucrat who can't even scrape together enough coins to pay his door to let him out of his apt." Her tone, neutral but devastating, rebounded in his ears; he felt himself stiffen, wince and violently flush.
"This is a bad spot right now," he said. "I'll be back on my feet financially any day now. I can get a loan. From the firm, if necessary." He rose unsteadily, got two cups and two saucers, poured coffee from the coffeepot. "Sugar?" he said. "Cream?"
"Cream," Pat said, still standing barefoot, without her blouse.
He fumbled for the doorhandle of the refrigerator, to get out a carton of milk.
"Ten cents, please," the refrigerator said. "Five cents for opening my door; five cents for the cream."
"It isn't cream," he said. "It's plain milk." He continued to pluck - futilely - at the refrigerator door. "Just this one time," he said to it. "I swear to god I'll pay you back. To-night."
"Here," Pat said; she slid a dime across the table toward him. "She should have money," she said as she watched him put the dime in the slot of the refrigerator. "Your mistress. You really have failed, haven't you? I knew it when Mr. Ashwood -"
"It isn't," he grated, "always like this."
"Do you want me to bail you out of your problems, Mr. Chip?" Hands in the pockets of her jeans, she regarded him expressionlessly, no emotion clouding her face. Only alert-ness. "You know I caa, Sit down and write out your eval-
UBIK 33
uation report on me. Forget the tests. My talent is unique
anyway; you can't measure the field I produce - it's in the
past and you're testing me in the present, which simply takes
place as an automatic consequence. Do you agree?"
He said, "Let me see that evaluation sheet you have in
your blouse. I want to look at it one more time. Before I
ecide."
From her blouse she once more brought forth the folded-
up yellow sheet of paper; she calmly passed it across the table
to him and he reread it. My writing, he said to himself; yes,
it's true. He returned it to her and, from the collection of
testing items, took a fresh, clean sheet of the same familiar
yellow paper.
On it he wrote her name, then spurious, extraordinarily
high test results, and then at last his conclusions. His new
conclusions. "Has unbelievable power. Anti-psi field unique
in scope. Can probably negate any assembly of precogs im-
aginable." After that he scratched a symbol: this time two
crosses, both underlined. Pat, standing behind him, watched
him write; he felt her breath on his neck.
"What do the two underlined crosses mean?" she asked.
" 'Hire her,' " Joe said. " 'At whatever cost required.' "
"Thank you." She dug into her purse, brought out a hand-
ful of poscred bills, selected one and presented it to him. A
big one. "This will help you with expenses. I couldn't give
it to you earlier, before you made your official evaluation of
me. You would have canceled very nearly everything and
you would have gone to your grave thinking I had bribed
you. Ultimately you would have even decided that I had no
counter-talent." She then unzipped her jeans and resumed
her quick, furtive undressing.
Joe Chip examined what he had written, not watching her.
The underlined crosses did not symbolize what he had told
her. They meant: Watch this person. She is a hazard to the
firm. She is dangerous.
He signed the test paper, folded it and passed it to her.
She at once put it away in her purse.
34 PHILIP K. DICK
"When can I move my things in here?" she asked as she padded toward the bathroom. "I consider it mine as of now, since I've already paid you what must be virtually the entire month's rent."
"Anytime," he said.
The bathroom said, "Fifty cents, please. Before turning on the water."
Pat padded back into the kitchen to reach into her purse.
4
Wild new Ubik salad dressing, not Italian, not French, but an entirely new and different taste treat that's waking up the world. Wake up to Ubik and be wild! Safe when taken as directed.
Back in New York once more, his trip to the Beloved Breth-ren Moratorium completed, Glen Runciter landed via a silent and impressive all-electric hired limousine on the roof of the central installation of Runciter Associates. A descent chute dropped him speedily to his fifth-floor office. Presently - at nine-thirty A.M. local time - he sat in the massive, old-fash-ioned, authentic walnut-and-leather swivel chair, behind his desk, talking on the vidphone to his public-relations depart-ment.
"Tamish, I just now got back from Zurich. I conferred with Ella there." Runciter glared at his secretary, who had cautiously entered his personal oversized office, shutting the door behind her. "What do you want, Mrs. Frick?" he asked her.
Withered, timorous Mrs. Frick, her face dabbed with spots of artificial color to compensate for her general ancient gray-ness, made a gesture of disavowal; she had no choice but to bother him.
"Okay, Mrs. Frick," he said patiently. "What is it?"
"A new client, Mr. Runciter. I think you should see her." She both advanced toward him and retreated, a difficult ma-
36 PHILIP K. DICK
neuver which Mrs. Frick alone could carry off. It had taken her ten decades of practice.
"As soon as I'm off the phone," Runciter told her. Into the phone he said, "How often do our ads run on prime-time TV planetwide? Still once every third hour?"
"Not quite that, Mr. Runciter. Over the course of a full day, prudence ads appear on an average of once every third hour per UHF channel, but the cost of prime time -"
"I want them to appear every hour," Runciter said. "Ella thinks that would be better." On the trip back to the Western Hemisphere he had decided which of their ads he liked the most. "You know that recent Supreme Court ruling where a husband can legally murder his wife if he can prove she wouldn't under any circumstances give him a divorce?"
"Yes, the so-called -"
"I don't care what it's called; what matters is that we have a TV ad made up on that already. How does that ad go? I've been trying to remember it."
Tamish said, "There's this man, an ex-husband, being tried. First comes a shot of the jury, then the judge, then a pan-up on the prosecuting attorney, cross-examining the ex-husband. He says, 'It would seem, sir, that your wife - ' "
"That's right," Runciter said with satisfaction; he had, originally, helped write the ad. It was, in his opinion, another manifestation of the marvelous multifacetedness of his mind.
"Is it not the assumption, however," Tamish said, "that the missing Psis are at work, as a group, for one of the larger investment houses? Seeing as how this is probably so, per-haps we should stress one of our business-establishment com-mercials. Do you perhaps recall this one, Mr. Runciter? It shows a husband home from his job at the end of the day; he still has on his electric-yellow cummerbund, petal skirt, knee-hugging hose and military-style visored cap. He seats himself wearily on the living-room couch, starts to take off one of his gauntlets, then hunches over, frowns and says, 'Gosh, Jill, I wish I knew what's been wrong with me lately. Sometimes, with greater frequency almost every day, the
UBIK 37
least little remark at the office makes me think that, well, somebody's reading my mind!' Then she says, 'If you're wor-ried about that, why don't we contact our nearest prudence organization? They'll lease us an inertial at prices easy on our budget, and then you'll feel like your old self again!' Then this great smile appears on his face and he says, 'Why, this nagging feeling is already - ' "
Again appearing in the doorway to Runciter's office, Mrs. Frick said, "Please, Mr. Runciter." Her glasses quivered.
He nodded. "I'll talk to you later, Tamish. Anyhow, get hold of the networks and start our material on the hour basis as I outlined." He rang off, then regarded Mrs. Frick silently. "I went all the way to Switzerland," he said presently, "and had Ella roused, to get that information, that advice."
"Mr. Runciter is free, Miss Wirt." His secretary tottered to one side, and a plump woman rolled into the office. Her head, like a basketball, bobbled up and down; her great round body propelled itself toward a chair, and there, at once, she seated herself, narrow legs dangling. She wore an unfashionable spider-silk coat, looking like some amiable bug wound up in a cocoon not spun by itself; she looked encased. However, she smiled. She seemed fully at ease. In her late forties, Runciter decided. Past any period in which she might have had a good figure.
"Ah, Miss Wirt," he said. "I can't give you too much time; maybe you should get to the point. What's the problem?"
In a mellow, merry, incongruous voice Miss Wirt said, "We're having a little trouble with telepaths. We think so but we're not sure. We maintain a telepath of our own - one we know about and who's supposed to circulate among our employees. If he comes across any Psis, telepaths or precogs, any kind, he's supposed to report to -" She eyed Runciter brightly. "To my principal. Late last week he made such a report. We have an evaluation, done by a private firm, on the capacities of the various prudence agencies. Yours is rated foremost."
"I know that," Runciter said; he had seen the evaluation,
38 PHILIP K. DICK
as a matter of fact. As yet, however, it had brought him little if any greater business. But now this. "How many telepaths," he said, "did your man pick up? More than one?"
"Two at least."
"Possibly more?"
"Possibly." Miss Wirt nodded.
"Here is how we operate," Runciter said. "First we mea-sure the psi field objectively, so we can tell what we're dealing with. That generally takes from one week to ten days, de-pending on -"
Miss Wirt interrupted, "My employer wants you to move in your inertials right away, without the time-consuming and expensive formality of making tests."
"We wouldn't know how many inertials to bring in. Or what kind. Or where to station them. Defusing a psi oper-ation has to be done on a systematic basis; we can't wave a magic wand or spray toxic fumes into corners. We have to balance Hollis' people individual by individual, an anti-talent for every talent. If Hollis has gotten into your operation he's done it the same way: Psi by Psi. One gets into the personnel department, hires another; that person sets up a department or takes charge of a department and requisitions a couple more... sometimes it takes them months. We can't undo in twenty-four hours what they've constructed over a long period of time. Big-time Psi activity is like a mosaic; they can't afford to be impatient, and neither can we."
"My employer," Miss Wirt said cheerfully, "is impatient."
"I'll talk to him." Runciter reached for the vidphone. "Who is he and what's his number?"
"You'll deal through me."
"Maybe I won't deal at all. Why won't you tell me who you represent?" He pressed a covert button mounted under the rim of his desk; it would bring his resident telepath, Nina Freede, into the next office, where she could monitor Miss Wirt's thought processes. I can't work with these people, he said to himself, if I don't know who they are. For all I know, Ray Hollis is trying to hire me.
UBIK 39
"You're hidebound," Miss Wirt said. "All we're asking for is speed. And we're only asking for that because we have to have it. I call tell you this much: Our operation which they've infested isn't on Earth. From the standpoint of po-tential yield, as well as from an investment standpoint, it's our primary project. My principal has put all his negotiable assets into it. Nobody is supposed to know about it. The greatest shock to us, in finding telepaths on the site -"
"Excuse me," Runciter said; he rose, walked to the office door. "I'll find out how many people we have about the place who're available for use in this connection." Shutting his office door behind him, he looked into each of the adjoining offices until he spied Nina Freede; she sat alone in a minor sideroom, smoking a cigarette and concentrating. "Find out who she represents," he said to her. "And then find out how high they'll go." We've got thirty-eight idle inertials, he re-flected. Maybe we can dump all of them or most of them into this. I may finally have found where Hollis' smart-assed talents have sneaked off to. The whole goddam bunch of them.
He returned to his own office, reseated himself behind his desk.
"If telepaths have gotten into your operation," he said to Miss Wirt, his hands folded before him, "then you have to face up to and accept the realization that the operation per se is no longer secret. Independent of any specific technical info they've picked up. So why not tell me what the project is?"
Hesitating, Miss Wirt said, "I don't know what the project
1S.
"Or where it is?"
"No." She shook her head.
Runciter said, "Do you know who your employer is?"
"I work for a subsidiary firm which he financially controls; I know who my immediate employer is - that's a Mr. Shepard Howard - but I've never been told whom Mr. Howard rep-resents."
40 PHILIP K. DICK
"If we supply you with the inertials you need, will we know where they are being sent?"
"Probably not."
"Suppose we never get them back?"
"Why wouldn't you get them back? After they've decon-taminated our operation."
"Hollis' men," Runciter said, "have been known to kill inertials sent out to negate them. It's my responsibility to see that my people are protected; I can't do that if I don't know where they are."
The concealed microspeaker in his left ear buzzed and he beard the faint, measured voice of Nina Freede, audible to him alone. "Miss Wirt represents Stanton Mick. She is his confidential assistant. There is no one named Shepard How-ard. The project under discussion exists primarily on Luna; it has to do with Techprise, Mick's research facilities, the controlling stock of which Miss Wirt keeps in her name. She does not know any technical details; no scientific evaluations or memos or progress reports are ever made available to her by Mr. Mick, and she resents this enormously. From Mick's staff, however, she has picked up a general idea of the nature of the project. Assuming that her secondhand knowledge is accurate, the Lunar project involves a radical, new, low-cost interstellar drive system, approaching the velocity of light, which could be leased to every moderately affluent political or ethnological group. Mick's idea seems to be that the drive system will make colonization feasible on a mass basic un-derstructure. And hence no longer a monopoly of specific governments."
Nina Freede clicked off, and Runciter leaned back in his leather and walnut swivel chair to ponder.
"What are you thinking?" Miss Wirt asked brightly.
"I'm wondering," Runciter said, "if you can afford our services. Since I have no test data to go on, I can only estimate how many inertials you'll need... but it may run as high as forty." He said this knowing that Stanton Mick could
UBIK 41
afford - or could figure out how to get someone else to un-
erwrite - an unlimited number of inertials.
" 'Forty,' " Miss Wirt echoed. "Hmm. That is quite a
few."
"The more we make use of, the sooner we can get the job
done. Since you're in a hurry, we'll move them all in at one
time. If you are authorized to sign a work contract in the
name of your employer" - he pointed a steady, unyielding
finger at her; she did not blink - "and you can come up with
a retainer now, we could probably accomplish this within
seventy-two hours." He eyed her then, waitirig.
The microspeaker in his ear rasped, "As owner of Tech-
prise she is fully bonded. She can legally obligate her firm
up to and including its total worth. Right now she is calcu-
lating how much this would be, if converted on today's mar-
ket." A pause. "Several billion poscreds, she has decided.
But she doesn't want to do this; she doesn't like the idea of
committing herself to both a contract and retainer. She would
prefer to have Mick's attorneys do that, even if it means
several days' delay."
But they're in a hurry, Runciter reflected. Or so they say.
The microspeaker said, "She has an intuition that you
know - or have guessed - whom she represents. And she's
afraid you'll up your fee accordingly. Mick knows his rep-
utation. He considers himself the world's greatest mark. So
he negotiates in this manner: through someone or some firm
as a front. On the other hand, they want as many inertials
as they can get. And they're resigned to that being enor-
mously expensive."
"Forty inertials," Runciter said idly; he scratched with his pen
at a small sheet of blank paper, on his desk for just such pur-
poses. "Let's see. Six times fifty times three. Times forty."
Miss Wirt, still smiling her glazed, happy smile, waited
with visible tension.
"I wonder," he murmured, "who paid Hollis to put his
employees in the middle of your project."
42 PHILIP K. DICK
"That doesn't really matter, does it?" Miss Wirt said. "What matters is that they're there."
Runciter said, "Sometimes one never finds out. But as you say - it's the same as when ants find their way into your kitchen. You don't ask why they're there; you just begin the job of getting them back out." He had arrived at a cost figure.
It was enormous.
"I'll - have to think it over," Miss Wirt said, she raised her eyes from the shocking sight of his estimate and half rose to her feet. "Is there somewhere, an office, where I can be alone? And possibly phone Mr. Howard?"
Runciter, also rising, said, "It's rare for any prudence or-ganization to have that many inertials available at one time. If you wait, the situation will change. So if you want them you'd better act."
"And you think it would really take that many inertials?"
Taking Miss Wirt by the arm, he led her from his office and down the hall. To the firm's map room. "This shows," he told her, "the location of our inertials plus the inertials of other prudence organizations. In addition to that it shows - or tries to show - the location of all of Hollis' Psis." He systematically counted the psi ident-flags which, one by one, had been removed from the map; he wound up holding the final one: that of S. Dole Melipone. "I know now where they are," he said to Miss Wirt, who had lost her mechanical smile as she comprehended the significance of the unposi-tioned ident-flags. Taking hold of her damp hand, he de-posited Melipone's flag among her damp fingers and closed them around it. "You can stay here and meditate," he said. "There's a vidphone over there -" He pointed. "No one will bother you. I'll be in my office." He left the map room, thinking, I really don't know that this is where they are, all those missing Psis. But it's possible. And - Stanton Mick had waived the routine procedure of making an objective test.
UBIK 43
Therefore, if he wound up hiring inertials which he did not need it would be his own fault.
Legalistically speaking, Runciter Associates was required to notify the Society that some of the missing Psis - if not all - had been found. But he had five days in which to file the notification... and he decided to wait until the last day. This kind of business opportunity, he reflected, happens once in a lifetime.
"Mrs. Frick," he said, entering her outer office. "Type up a work contract specifying forty -" He broke off.
Across the room sat two persons. The man, Joe Chip, looked haggard and hungover and more than usually glum... looked, in fact, about as always, the glumness ex-cepted. But beside him lounged a long-legged girl with bril-liant, tumbling black hair and eyes; her intense, distilled beauty illuminated that part of the room, igniting it with heavy, sullen fire. It was, he thought, as if the girl resisted being attractive, disliked the smoothness of her skin and the sensual, swollen, dark quality of her lips.
She looks, he thought, as if she just now got out of bed. Still disordered. Resentful of the day - in fact, of every day.
Walking over to the two of them, Runciter said, "I gather G.G. is back from Topeka."
"This is Pat," Joe Chip said. "No last name." He indicated Runciter, then sighed. He had a peculiar defeated quality hanging over him, and yet, underneath, he did not seem to have given up. A vague and ragged hint of vitality lurked behind the resignation; it seemed to Runciter that Joe most nearly could be accused of feigning spiritual downfall... the real article, however, was not there.
"Anti what?" Runciter asked the girl, who still sat sprawl-ing in her chair, legs extended.
The girl murmured, "Anti-ketogenesis."
"What's that mean?"
"The prevention of ketosis," the girl said remotely. "As by the administration of glucose."
44 PHILIP K. DICK
To Joe, Runciter said, "Explain."
"Give Mr. Runciter your test sheet," Joe said to the girl.
Sitting up, the girl reached for her purse, rummaged, then produced one of Joe's wrinkled yellow score sheets, which she unfolded, glaneed at and passed to Runciter.
"Amazing score," Runciter said. "Is she really this good?" he asked Joe. And then he saw the two underlined crosses, the graphic symbol of indictment - of, in fact, treachery.
"She's the best so far," Joe said.
"Come into my office," Runciter said to the girl; he led the way, and, behind them, the two of them followed.
Fat Miss Wirt, all at once, breathless, her eyes rolling, appeared. "I phoned Mr. Howard," she informed Runciter. "He has now given me my instructions." She thereupon per-ceived Joe Chip and the girl named Pat; for an instant she hesitated, then plunged on, "Mr. Howard would like the formal arrangements made right away. So may we go ahead now? I've already acquainted you with the urgency, the time factor." She smiled her glassy, determined smile. "Do you two mind waiting?" she asked them. "My business with Mr. Runciter is of a priority nature."
Glancing at her, Pat laughed, a low, throaty laugh of con-tempt.
"You'll have to wait, Miss Wirt," Runciter said. He felt afraid; he looked at Pat, then at Joe, and his fear quickened. "Sit down, Miss Wirt," he said to her, and indicated one of the outer-office chairs.
Miss Wirt said, "I can tell you exactly, Mr. Runciter, how many inertials we intend to take. Mr. Howard feels he can make an adequate determination of our needs, of our prob-lem."
"How many?" Runciter asked.
"Eleven," Miss Wirt said.
"We'll sign the contract in a little while," Runciter said. "As soon as I'm free." With his big, wide hand he guided Joe and the girl into his inner office; he shut the door behind them and seated himself. "They'll never make it," he said
UBIK 45
to Joe. "With eleven. Or fifteen. Or twenty. Especially not with S. Dole Melipone involved on the other side." He felt tired as well as afraid. "This is, as I assumed, the potential trainee that G.G. scouted in Topeka? And you believe we should hire her? Both you and G.G. agree? Then we'll hire her, naturally." Maybe I'll turn her over to Mick, he said to himself. Make her one of the eleven. "Nobody has managed to tell me yet," he said, "which of the psi talents she counters."
"Mrs. Frick says you flew to Zurich," Joe said. "What did Ella suggest?"
"More ads," Runciter said. "On TV. Every hour." Into his intercom he said, "Mrs. Frick, draw up an agreement of employment between ourselves and a Jane Doe; specify the starting salary that we and the union agreed on last Decem-ber; specify -"
"What is the starting salary?" the girl Pat asked, her voice suffused with sardonic suspicion of a cheap, childish sort.
Runciter eyed her. "I don't even know what you can do."
"It's precog, Glen," Joe Chip grated. "But in a different way." He did not elaborate; he seemed to have run down, like an old-time battery-powered watch.
"Is she ready to go to work?" Runciter asked Joe. "Or is this one we have to train and work with and wait for? We've got almost forty idle inertials and we're hiring another; forty less, I suppose, eleven. Thirty idle employees, all drawing full scale while they sit around with their thumbs in their noses. I don't know, Joe; I really don't. Maybe we ought to fire our scouts. Anyway, I think I've found the rest of Hollis' Psis. I'll tell you about it later." Into his intercom he said, "Specify that we can discharge this Jane Doe without notice, without severance pay or compensation of any kind; nor is she eligible, for the first ninety days, for pension, health or sick-pay benefits." To Pat he said, "Starting salary, in all cases, begins at four hundred 'creds per month, figuring on twenty hours a week. And you'll have to join a union. The Mine, Mill and Smelter-workers Union; they're the one that
46 PHILIP K. DICK
signed up all the prudence-organization employees three years ago. I have no control over that."
"I get more," Pat said, "maintaining vidphone relays at the Topeka Kibbutz. Your scout Mr. Ashwood said -"
"Our scouts lie," Runciter said. "And, in addition, we're not legally bound by anything they say. No prudence orga-nization is." The office door opened and Mrs. Frick crept unsteadily in with the typed-out agreement. "Thank you, Mrs. Frick," Runciter said, accepting the papers. "I have a twenty-year-old wife in cold-pac," he said to Joe and Pat. "A beautiful woman who when she talks to me gets pushed out of the way by some weird kid named Jory, and then I'm talking to him, not her. Ella frozen in half-life and dimming out - and that battered crone for my secretary that I have to look at all day long." He gazed at the girl Pat, with her black, strong hair and her sensual mouth; in him he felt unhappy cravings arise, cloudy and pointless wants that led nowhere, that returned to him empty, as in the completion of a geometrically perfect circle.
"I'll sign," Pat said, and reached for the desk pen.
5
Can't make the frug contest, Helen; stomach's upset. I'll fix you Ubik! Ubik drops you back in the thick of things fast. Taken as di-rected, Ubik speeds relief to head and stomach. Remember: Ubik is only seconds away. Avoid pro-longed use.
During the long days of forced, unnatural idleness, the anti-telepath Tippy Jackson slept regularly until noon. An elec-trode planted within her brain perpetually stimulated EREM - extremely rapid eye movement - sleep, so while tucked within the percale sheets of her bed she had plenty to do.
At this particular moment her artificially induced dream state centered around a mythical Hollis functionary endowed with enormous psionic powers. Every other inertial in the Sol System had either given up or been melted down into lard. By process of elimination, the task of nullifying the field generated by this supernatural entity had devolved to her.
"I can't be myself while you're around," her nebulous opponent informed her. On his face a feral, hateful expres-sion formed, giving him the appearance of a psychotic squir-rel.
In her dream Tippy answered, "Perhaps your definition of your self-system lacks authentic boundaries. You've erected a precarious structure of personality on unconscious factors over which you have no control. That's why you feel threat-ened by me."
48 PHILIP K. DICK
"Aren't you an employee of a prudence organization?"
the Hollis telepath demanded, looking nervously about.
"If you're the stupendous talent you claim to be," Tippy
said, "you can tell that by reading my mind."
"I can't read anybody's mind," the telepath said. "My
talent is gone. I'll let you talk to my brother Bill. Here, Bill;
talk to this lady. Do you like this lady?"
Bill, looking more or less like his brother the telepath,
said, "I like her fine because I'm a precog and she doesn't
postscript me." He shuffied his feet and grinned, revealing
great, pale teeth, as blunt as shovels. " 'I, that am curtailed
of this fair proportion, cheated of feature by dissembling
nature - ' " He paused, wrinkling his forehead. "How does
it go, Matt?" he asked his brother.
deformed, unfinished, sent before my time into this
breathing world, scarce half made up,' " Matt the squirrel-
like telepath said, scratching meditatively at his pelt.
"Oh, yeah." Bill the precog nodded. "I remember. 'And
that so lamely and unfashionable that dogs bark at me as I
halt by them.' From Richard the Third," he explained to
Tippy. Both brothers grinned. Even their incisors were blunt.
As if they lived on a diet of uncooked seeds.
Tippy said, "What does that mean?"
"It means," both Matt and Bill said in unison, "that we're
going to get you."
The vidphone rang, waking Tippy up.
Stumbling groggily to it, confounded by floating colored
bubbles, blinking, she lifted the receiver and said, "Hello."
God, it's late, she thought, seeing the clock. I'm turning into
a vegetable. Glen Runciter's face emerged on the screen.
"Hello, Mr. Runciter," she said, standing out of sight of the
phone's scanner. "Has a job turned up for me?"
"Ah, Mrs. Jackson," Runciter said, "I'm glad I caught
you. A group is forming under Joe Chip's and my direction;
eleven in all, a major work assignment for those we choose.
We've been examining everyone's history. Joe thinks yours
looks good, and I tend to agree. How loag will it take you
U BIK 49
to get down here?" His tone seemed adequately optimistic, but on the little screen his face looked hard-pressed and careworn.
Tippy said, "For this one will I be living -"
"Yes, you'll have to pack." Chidingly he said, "We're supposed to be packed and ready to go at all times; that's a rule I don't ever want broken, especially in a case like this where there's a time factor."
"I am packed. I'll be at the New York office in fifteen minutes. All I have to do is leave a note for my husband, who's at work."
"Well, okay," Runciter said, looking preoccupied; he was probably already reading the next name on his list. "Good-bye, Mrs. Jackson." He rang off.
That was a strange dream, she thought as she hastily un-buttoned her pajamas and hurried back into the bedroom for her clothes. What did Bill and Matt say that poetry was from? Richard the Third, she remembered, seeing in her mind once more their flat, big teeth, their unformed, knob-like, identical heads with tufts of reddish hair growing from them like patches of weeds. I don't think I've ever read Richard the Third, she realized. Or, if I did, it must have been years ago, when I was a child.
How can you dream lines of poetry you don't know? she asked herself. Maybe an actual nondream telepath was get-ting at me while I slept. Or a telepath and a precog working together, the way I saw them in my dream. It might be a good idea to ask our research department whether Hollis does, by any remote chance, employ a brother team named Matt and Bill.
Puzzled and uneasy, she began as quickly as possible to dress.
Lighting a green all-Havana Cuesta-Rey palma-supreme, Glen Runciter leaned back in his noble chair, pressed a but-ton of his intercom and said, "Make out a bounty check,
50 PHILIP K. DICK
Mrs. Frick. Payable to G. G. Ashwood, for one-hundred poscreds."
"Yes, Mr. Runciter."
He watched G. G. Ashwood, who paced with manic rest-lessness about the big office with its genuine hardwood floor against which G.G.'s feet clacked irritatingly. "Joe Chip can't seem to tell me what she does," Runciter said.
"Joe Chip is a grunk," G.G. said.
"How come she, this Pat, can travel back into time, and no one else can? I'll bet this talent isn't new; you scouts probably just missed noticing it up until now. Anyhow, it's not logical for a prudence organization to hire her; it's a talent, not an anti-talent. We deal in -"
"As I explained, and as Joe indicated on the test report, it aborts the precogs out of business."
"But that's only a side-effect." Runciter pondered mood-ily. "Joe thinks she's dangerous. I don't know why."
"Did you ask him why?"
Runciter said, "He mumbled, the way he always does. Joe never has reasons, just hunches. On the other hand, he wants to include her in the Mick operation." He shuffled through, rooted among and rearranged the personnel-department doc-uments before him on his desk. "Ask Joe to come in here so we can see if we've got our group of eleven set up." He ex-amined his watch. "They should be arriving about now. I'm going to tell Joe to his face that he's crazy to include this Pat Conley girl if she's so dangerous. Wouldn't you say, G. G.?"
G. G. Ashwood said, "He's got a thing going with her."
"What sort of thing?"
"A sexual understanding."
"Joe has no sexual understanding. Nina Freede read his mind the other day and he's too poor even to -" He broke off, because the office door had opened; Mrs. Frick teetered her way in carrying G.G.'s bounty check for him to sign. "I know why he wants her along on the Mick operation," Run-citer said as he scratched his signature on the check. "So he can keep an eye on her. He's going too; he's going to measure
UBIK 51
the psi field despite what the client stipulated. We have to know what we're up against. Thank you, Mrs. Frick." He waved her away and held the check out to G. G. Ashwood. "Suppose we don't measure the psi field and it turns out to be too intense for our inertials. Who gets blamed?"
"We do," G.G. said.
"I told them eleven wasn't enough. We're supplying our best; we're doing the best we can. After all, getting Stanton Mick's patronage is a matter of great importance to us. Amazing, that someone as wealthy and powerful as Mick could be so short-sighted, so goddam miserly. Mrs. Frick, is Joe out there? Joe Chip?"
Mrs. Frick said, "Mr. Chip is in the outer office with a number of other people."
"How many other people, Mrs. Frick? Ten or eleven?"
"I'd say about that many, Mr. Runciter. Give or take one or two."
To G. G. Ashwood, Runciter said, "That's the group. I want to see them, all of them, together. Before they leave for Luna." To Mrs. Frick he said, "Send them in." He puffed vigorously on his green-wrapped cigar.
She gyrated out.
"We know," Runciter said to G.G., "that as individuals they perform well. It's all down here on paper." He rattled the documents on his desk. "But how about together? How great a polyencephalic counter-field will they generate to-gether? Ask yourself that, G.G. That is the question to ask."
"I guess time will tell," G. G. Ashwood said.
"I've been in this business a long time," Runciter said. From the outer office people began to file in. "This is my contribution to contemporary civilization."
"That puts it well," G.G. said. "You're a policeman guard-ing human privacy."
"You know what Ray Hollis says about us?" Runciter said. "He says we're trying to turn the clock back." He eyed the individuals who had begun to fill up his office; they gathered near one another, none of them speaking. They waited for
52 PHILIP K. DICK
him. What an ill-assorted bunch, he thought pessimistically. A young stringbean of a girl with glasses and straight lemon-yellow hair, wearing a cowboy hat, black lace mantilla and Bermuda shorts; that would be Edie Dorn. A good-looking, older, dark woman with tricky, deranged eyes who wore a silk sari and nylon obi and bobby socks; Francy something, a part-time schizophrenic who imagined that sentient beings from Betelgeuse occasionally landed on the roof of her con-apt building. A woolly-haired adolescent boy wrapped in a superior and cynical cloud of pride, this one, in a floral mumu and Spandex bloomers, Runciter had never encountered be-fore. And so it went: five females and - he counted - five males. Someone was missing.
Ahead of Joe Chip the smoldering, brooding girl, Patricia Conley, entered. That made the eleventh; the group had all appeared.
"You made good time, Mrs. Jackson," he said to the man-nish, thirtyish, sand-colored lady wearing ersatz vicuna trou-sers and a gray sweatshirt on which had been printed a now faded full-face portrait of Bertrand Lord Russell. "You had less time than anybody else, inasmuch as I notified you last."
Tippy Jackson smiled a bloodless, sand-colored smile.
"Some of you I know," Runciter said, rising from his chair and indicating with his hands that they should find chairs and make themselves comfortable, smoking if necessary. "You, Miss Dorn; Mr, Chip and I chose you first because of your topnotch activity vis-a-vis S. Dole Melipone, whom you even-tually lost through no fault of your own."
"Thank you, Mr. Runciter," Edie Dorn said in a wispy, shy trickle of a voice; she blushed and stared wide-eyed at the far wall. "It's good to be a part of this new undertaking," she added with undernourished conviction.
"Which one of you is Al Hammond?" Runciter asked, consulting his documents.
An excessively tall, stoop-shouldered Negro with a gentle expression on his elongated face made a motion to indicate himself.
UBIK 53
"I've never met you before," Runciter said, reading the material from Al Hammond's file. "You rate highest among our anti-precogs. I should, of course, have gotten around to meeting you. How many of the rest of you are anti-precog?" Three additional hands appeared. "The four of you," Run-citer said, "will undoubtedly get a great bloop out of meeting and working with G. G. Ashwood's most recent discovery, who aborts precogs on a new basis. Perhaps Miss Conley herself will describe it to us." He nodded toward Pat -
And found himself standing before a shop window on Fifth Avenue, a rare-coin shop; he was studying an uncirculated U.S. gold dollar and wondering if he could afford to add it to his collection.
What collection? he asked himself, startled. I don't collect coins. What am I doing here? And how long have I been wandering around window-shopping when I ought to be in my office supervising - he could not remember what he gen-erally supervised; a business of some kind, dealing in people with abilities, special talents. He shut his eyes, trying to focus his mind. No, I had to give that up, he realized. Because of a coronary last year, I had to retire. But I was just there, he remembered. Only a few seconds ago. In my office. Talking to a group of people about a new project. He shut his eyes. It's gone, he thought dazedly. Everything I built up.
When he opened his eyes he found himself back in his office; he faced G. G. Ashwood, Joe Chip and a dark, in-tensely attractive girl whose name he did not recall. Other than that his office was empty, which for reasons he did not understand struck him as strange.
"Mr. Runciter," Joe Chip said, "I'd like you to meet Pa-tricia Conley."
The girl said, "How nice to be introduced to you at last, Mr. Runciter." She laughed and her eyes flashed exultantly. Runciter did not know why.
Joe Chip realized, She's been doing something. "Pat," he said aloud, "I can't put my finger on it but things are dif-ferent." He gazed wonderingly around the office; it appeared
54 PHILIP K. DICK
as it had always: too loud a carpet, too many unrelated art objects, on the walls original pictures of no artistic merit whatever. Glen Runciter had not changed; shaggy and gray, his face wrinkled broodingly, he returned Joe's stare - he too seemed perplexed. Over by the window G. G. Ashwood, wearing his customary natty birch-bark pantaloons, hemp-rope belt, peekaboo see-through top and train-engineer's tall hat, shrugged indifferently. He, obviously, saw nothing wrong,
"Nothing is different," Pat said.
"Everything is different," Joe said to her. "You must have gone back into time and put us on a different track; I can't prove it and I can't specify the nature of the changes -"
"No domestic quarreling on my time," Runciter said frowningly.
Joe, taken aback, said, " 'Domestic quarreling'?" He saw, then, on Pat's finger the ring: wrought-silver and jade; he remembered helping her pick it out. Two days, he thought, before we got married. That was over a year ago, despite how bad off I was financially. That, of course, is changed now; Pat, with her salary and her money-minding propensity, fixed that. For all time.
"Anyhow, to continue," Runciter said. "We must each of us ask ourselves why Stanton Mick took his business to a prudence organization other than ours. Logically, we should have gotten the contract; we're the finest in the business and we're located in New York, where Mick generally prefers to deal. Do you have any theory, Mrs. Chip?" He looked hope-fully in Pat's direction.
Pat said, "Do you really want to know, Mr. Runciter?"
"Yes." He nodded vigorously. "I'd very much like to know."
"I did it," Pat said.
"How?"
"With my talent."
Runciter said, "What talent? You don't have a talent; you're Joe Chip's wife."
UBIK 55
At the window G. G. Ashwood said, "You came in here to meet Joe and me for lunch."
"She has a talent," Joe said. He tried to remember, but already it had become foggy; the memory dimmed even as he tried to resurrect it. A different time track, he thought. The past. Other than that, he could not make it out; there the memory ended. My wife, he thought, is unique; she can do something no one else on Earth can do. In that case, why isn't she working for Runciter Associates? Something is wrong.
"Have you measured it?" Runciter asked him. "I mean, that's your job. You sound as if you have; you sound sure of yourself."
"I'm not sure of myself," Joe said. But I am sure about my wife, he said to himself. "I'll get my test gear," he said. "And we'll see what sort of a field she creates."
"Oh, come on, Joe," Runciter said angrily. "If your wife has a talent or an anti-talent you would have measured it at least a year ago; you wouldn't be discovering it now." He pressed a button on his desk intercom. "Personnel? Do we have a file on Mrs. Chip? Patricia Chip?"
After a pause the intercom said, "No file on Mrs. Chip. Under her maiden name, perhaps?"
"Conley," Joe said. "Patricia Conley."
Again a pause. "On a Miss Patricia Conley we have two items: an initial scout report by Mr. Ashwood, and then test findings by Mr. Chip." From the slot of the intercom repros of the two documents slowly dribbled forth and dropped to the surface of the desk.
Examining Joe Chip's findings, Runciter said, scowling, "Joe, you better look at this; come here." He jabbed a finger at the page, and Joe, coming over beside him, saw the twin underlined crosses; he and Runciter glanced at each other, then at Pat.
"I know what it reads," Pat said levelly. " 'Unbelievable power. Anti-psi field unique in scope.' " She concentrated, trying visibly to remember the exact wording. " 'Can prob-ably - ' "
56 PHILIP K. DICK
"We did get the Mick contract," Runciter said to Joe Chip. "I had a group of eleven inertials in here and then I suggested to her -"
Joe said, "That she show the group what she could do. So she did. She did exactly that. And my evaluation was right." With his fingertip he traced the symbols of danger at the bottom of the sheet. "My own wife," he said.
"I'm not your wife," Pat said. "I changed that, too. Do you want it back the way it was? With no changes, not even in details? That won't show your inertials much. On the other hand, they're unaware anyhow... unless some of them have retained a vestigial memory as Joe has. By now, though, it should have phased out."
Runciter said bitingly, "I'd like the Mick contract back; that much, at least."
"When I scout them," G. G. Ashwood said, "I scout them." He had become gray.
"Yes, you really bring in the talent," Runciter said.
The intercom buzzed and the quaking, elderly voice of Mrs. Frick rasped, "A group of our inertials are waiting to see you, Mr. Runciter; they say you sent for them in con-nection with a new joint work project. Are you free to see them?"
"Send them in," Runciter said.
Pat said, "I'll keep this ring." She displayed the silver and jade wedding ring which, in another time track, she and Joe had picked out; this much of the alternate world she had elected to retain. He wondered what - if any - legal basis she had kept in addition. None, he hoped; wisely, however, he said nothing. Better not even to ask.
The office door opened and, in pairs, the inertials entered; they stood uncertainly for a moment and then began seating themselves facing Runciter's desk. Runciter eyed them, then pawed among the rat's nest of documents on his desk; ob-viously, he was trying to determine whether Pat had changed in any way the composition of the group.
"Edie Dorn," Runciter said. "Yes, you're here." He
UBIK 57
glanced at her, then at the man beside her. "Hammond. Okay, Hammond. Tippy Jackson." He peered inquiringly.
"I made it as quick as I could," Mrs. Jackson said. "You didn't give me much time, Mr. Runciter."
"Jon Ild," Runciter said.
The adolescent boy with the tousled, woolly hair grunted in response. His arrogance, Joe noted, seemed to have re-ceded; the boy now seemed introverted and even a little shaken. It would be interesting, Joe thought, to find out what he remembers - what all of them, individually and collec-tively, remember.
"Francesca Spanish," Runciter said.
The luminous, gypsy-like dark woman, radiating a peculiar jangled tautness, spoke up. "During the last few minutes, Mr. Runciter, while we waited in your outer office, myste-rious voices appeared to me and told me things."
"You're Francesca Spanish?" Runciter asked her, pa-tiently; he looked more than usually tired.
"I am; I have always been; I will always be." Miss Spanish's voice rang with conviction. "May I tell you what the voices revealed to me?"
"Possibly later," Runciter said, passing on to the next personnel document.
"It must be said," Miss Spanish declared vibrantly.
"All right," Runciter said. "We'll take a break for a couple of minutes." He opened a drawer of his desk, got out one of his amphetamine tablets, took it without water. "Let's hear what the voices revealed to you, Miss Spanish." He glanced toward Joe, shrugging.
"Someone," Miss Spanish said, "just now moved us, all of us, into another world. We inhabited it, lived in it, as citizens of it, and then a vast, all-encompassing spiritual agency restored us to this, our rightful universe."
"That would be Pat," Joe Chip said. "Pat Conley. Who just joined the firm today."
"Tito Apostos," Runciter said. "You're here?" He craned his neck, peering about the room at the seated people.
58 PHILIP K. DICK
A bald-headed man, wagging a goatish beard, pointed to himself. He wore old-fashioned, hip-hugging gold lame trou-sers, yet somehow created a stylish effect. Perhaps the egg-sized buttons of his kelp-green mitty blouse helped; in any case he exuded a grand dignity, a loftiness surpassing the average. Joe felt impressed.
"Don Denny," Runciter said.
"Right here, sir," a confident baritone like that of a Sia-mese cat declared; it arose from within a slender, earnest-looking individual who sat bolt-upright in his chair, his hands on his knees. He wore a polyester dirndl, his long hair in a snood, cowboy chaps with simulated silver stars. And san-dals.
"You're an anti-animator," Runciter said, reading the ap-propriate sheet. "The only one we use." To Joe he said, "I wonder if we'll need him; maybe we should substitute an-other anti-telepath - the more of those the better."
Joe said, "We have to cover everything. Since we don't know what we're getting into."
"I guess so." Runciter nodded. "Okay, Sammy Mundo."
A weak-nosed young man, dressed in a maxiskirt, with an undersized, melon-like head, stuck his hand up in a spas-modic, wobbling, ticlike gesture; as if, Joe thought, the ane-mic body had done it by itself. He knew this particular person. Mundo looked years younger than his chronological age; both mental and physical growth processes had ceased for him long ago. Technically, Mundo had the intelligence of a raccoon; he could walk, eat, bathe himself, even - after a fashion - talk. His anti-telepathic ability, however, was considerable. Once, alone, he had blanked out S. Dole Me-lipone; the firm's house magazine had rambled on about it for months afterward.
"Oh, yes," Runciter said. "Now we come to Wendy Wright."
As always, when the opportunity arose, Joe took a long, astute look at the girl whom, if he could have managed it,
UBIK 59
he would have had as his mistress, or, even better, his wife. It did not seem possible that Wendy Wright had been born out of blood and internal organs like other people. In prox-imity to her he felt himself to be a squat, oily, sweating, uneducated nurt whose stomach rattled and whose breath wheezed. Near her he became aware of the physical mech-anisms which kept him alive; within him machinery, pipes and valves and gas-compressors and fan belts had to chug away at a losing task, a labor ultimately doomed. Seeing her face, he discovered that his own consisted of a garish rnask; noticing her body made him feel like a low-class windup toy. All her colors possessed a subtle quality, indirectly lit. Her eyes, those green and tumbled stones, looked impassively at everything; he had never seen fear in them, or aversion, or contempt. What she saw she accepted. Generally she seemed calm. But more than that she struck him as being durable, untroubled and cool, not subject to wear, or to fatigue, or to physical illness and decline. Probably she was twenty-five or -six, but he could not imagine her looking younger, and certainly she would never look older. She had too much control over herself and outside reality for that.
"I'm here," Wendy said, with soft tranquility.
Runciter nodded. "Okay; that leaves Fred Zafsky." He fixed his gaze on a flabby, big-footed, middle-aged, unnat-ural-looking individual with pasted-down hair, muddy skin plus a peculiar protruding Adam's apple - clad, for this oc-casion, in a shift dress the color of a baboon's ass. "That must be you."
"Right you are," Zafsky agreed, and sniggered. "How about that?"
"Christ," Runciter said, shaking his head. "Well, we have to include one anti-parakineticist, to be safe. And you're it." He tossed down his documents and looked about for his green cigar. To Joe he said, "That's the group, plus you and me. Any last-minute changes you want to make?"
"I'm satisfied," Joe said.
60 PHILIP K. DICK
"You suppose this bunch of inertials is the best combi-nation we can come up with?" Runciter eyed him intently.
"Yes," Joe said.
"And it's good enough to take on Hollis' Psis?"
"Yes," Joe said.
But he knew otherwise.
It was not something he could put his finger on. It certainly was not rational. Potentially, the counter-field capacity of the eleven inertials had to be considered enormous. And yet -
"Mr. Chip, can I have a second of your time?" Mr. Apos-tos, bald-headed and bearded, his gold lamb trousers glit-tering, plucked at Joe Chip's arm. "Could I discuss an experience I had late last night? In a hypnagogic state I seem to have contacted one, or possibly two, of Mr. Hollis' peo-ple - a telepath evidently operating in conjunction with one of their precogs. Do you think I should tell Mr. Runciter? Is it important?"
Hesitating, Joe Chip looked toward Runciter. Seated in his worthy, beloved chair, trying to relight his all-Havana cigar, Runciter appeared terribly tired; the wattles of his face sagged. "No," Joe said. "Let it go."
"Ladies and gentlemen," Runciter said, raising his voice above the general noise. "We're leaving now for Luna, you eleven inertials, Joe Chip and myself and our client's rep, Zoe Wirt; fourteen of us in all. We'll use our own ship." He got out his round, gold, anachronistic pocket watch and stud-ied it. "Three-thirty. Pratfall II will take off from the main roof-field at four." He snapped his watch shut and returned it to the pocket of his silk sash. "Well, Joe," he said, "we're in this for better or worse. I wish we had a resident precog who could take a look ahead for us." Both his face and the tone of his voice drooped with worry and the cares, the irreversible burden, of responsibility and age.
6
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"Welcome to Luna," Zoe Wirt said cheerfully, her jolly eyes enlarged by her red-framed, triangular glasses. "Via myself, Mr. Howard says hello to each and every one of you, and most especially to Mr. Glen Runciter for making his orga-nization - and you people, in particular - available to us. This subsurface hotel suite, decorated by Mi. Howard's art-istically talented sister Lada, lies just three-hundred linear yards from the industrial and research facilities which Mr. Howard believes to have been infiltrated. Your joint pres-ence in this room, therefore, should already be inhibiting the psionic capabilities of Hollis' agents, a thought pleasing to all of us." She paused, looked over them all. "Are there any questions?"
Tinkering with his test gear, Joe Chip ignored her; despite their client's stipulation, he intended to measure the sur-rounding psionic field. During the hour-long trip from Earth he and Glen Runciter had decided on this.
"I have a question," Fred Zafsky said, raising his hand. He giggled. "Where is the bathroom?"
"You will each be given a miniature map," Zoe Wirt said, "on which this is indicated." She nodded to a drab female
62 PHILIP K. DICK
assistant, who began passing out brightly colored, glossy paper maps. "This suite," she continued, "is complete with a kitchen all the appliances of which are free, rather than coin-operated. Obviously, outright blatant expense has been incurred in the constructing of this living unit, which is ample enough for twenty persons, possessing, as it does, its own self-regulating air, heat, water, and unusually varied food supply, plus closed-circuit TV and high-fidelity polyphonic phonograph sound-system - the two latter facilities, how-ever, unlike the kitchen, being coin-operated. To aid you in utilizing these recreation facilities, a change-making machine has been placed in the game room."
"My map," Al Hammond said, "shows only nine bed-rooms."
"Each bedroom," Miss Wirt said, "contains two bunk-type beds; hence eighteen accommodations in all. In addition, five of the beds are double, assisting those of you who wish to sleep with each other during your stay here."
"I have a rule," Runciter said irritably, "about my em-ployees sleeping with one another."
"For or against?" Zoe Wirt inquired.
"Against." Runciter crumpled up his map and dropped it to the metal, heated floor. "I'm not accustomed to being told -"
"But you will not be staying here, Mr. Runciter," Miss Wirt pointed out. "Aren't you returning to Earth as soon as your employees begin to function?" She smiled her profes-sional smile at him.
Runciter said to Joe Chip, "You getting any readings as to the psi field?"
"First," Joe said, "I have to obtain a reading on the counter-field our inertials are generating."
"You should have done that on the trip," Runciter said.
"Are you attempting to take measurements?" Miss Wirt inquired alertly. "Mr. Howard expressly eontraindicated that, as I explained."
UBIK 63
"We're taking a reading anyway," Runciter said.
"Mr. Howard -"
"This isn't Stanton Mick's business," Runciter told her.
To her drab assistant, Miss Wirt said, "Would you ask Mr, Mick to come down here, please?" The assistant scooted off in the direction of the syndrome of elevators. "Mr. Mick will tell you himself," Miss Wirt said to Runciter. "Meanwhile, please do nothing; I ask you kindly to wait until he arrives."
"I have a reading now," Joe said to Runciter. "On our own field. It's very high." Probably because of Pat, he de-cided. "Much higher than I would have expected," he said. Why are they so anxious for us not to take readings? he wondered. It's not a time factor now; our inertials are here and operating.
"Are there closets," Tippy Jackson asked, "where we can put away our clothes? I'd like to unpack."
"Each bedroom," Miss Wirt said, "has a large closet, coin-operated. And to start you all off -" She produced a large plastic bag. "Here is a complimentary supply of coins." She handed the rolls of dimes, nickels and quarters to Jon Ild. "Would you distribute these equally? A gesture of goodwill by Mr. Mick."
Edie Dorn asked, "Is there a nurse or doctor in this set-tlement? Sometimes I develop psychosomatic skin rashes when I'm hard at work; a cortisone-base ointment usually helps me, but in the hurry I forgot to bring some along."
"The industrial, research installations adjoining these liv-ing quarters," Miss Wirt said, "keep several doctors on standby, and in addition there is a small medical ward with beds for the ill."
"Coin-operated?" Sammy Mundo inquired.
"All our medical care," Miss Wirt said, "is free. But the burden of proof that he is genuinely ill rests on the shoul-ders of the alleged patient." She added, "All medication-dispensing machines, however, are coin-operated. I might say, in regard to this, that you will find in the game room of
64 PHILIP K. DICK
this suite a tranquilizer-dispensing machine. And, if you wish, we can probably have one of the stimulant-dispensing machines moved in from the adjoining installations."
"What about hallucinogens?" Francesca Spanish inquired. "When I'm at work I function better if I can get an ergot-base psychedelic drug; it causes me to actually see who I'm up against, and I find that helps."
Miss Wirt said, "Our Mr. Mick disapproves of all the ergot-base hallucinogenic agents; he feels they're liver-toxic. If you have brought any with you, you're free to use them. But we will not dispense any, although I understand we have them."
"Since when," Don Denny said to Francesca Spanish, "did you begin to need psychedelic drugs in order to hallucinate? Your whole life's a waking hallucination."
Unfazed, Francesca said, "Two nights ago I received a particularly impressive visitation."
"I'm not surprised," Don Denny said.
"A throng of precogs and telepaths descended from a lad-der spun of finest natural hemp to the balcony outside my window. They dissolved a passageway through the wall and manifested themselves around my bed, waking me up with their chatter. They quoted poetry and languid prose from oldtime books, which delighted me; they seemed so -" She groped for the word. "Sparkling. One of them, who called himself Bill -
"Wait a minute," Tito Apostos said. "I had a dream like that, too." He turned to Joe. "Remember, I told you just before we left Earth?" His hands convulsed excitedly. "Didn't I?"
"I dreamed that too," Tippy Jackson said. "Bill and Matt. They said they were going to get me."
His face twisting with abrupt darkness, Runciter said to Joe, "You should have told me."
"At the time," Joe said, "you -" He gave up. "You looked tired. You had other things on your mind."
Francesca said sharply, "It wasn't a dream; it was an au-thentic visitation. I can distinguish the difference."
U BIK 65
"Sure you can, Francy," Don Denny said. He winked at Joe.
"I had a dream," Jon Ild said. "But it was about hovercars. I was memorizing their license-plate numbers. I memorized sixty-five, and I still remember them. Want to hear them?"
"I'm sorry, Glen," Joe Chip said to Runciter. "I thought only Apostos experienced it; I didn't know about the others. I -" The sound of elevator doors sliding aside made him pause; he and the others turned to look.
Potbellied, squat and thick-legged, Stanton Mick peram-bulated toward them. He wore fuchsia pedal-pushers, pink yakfur slippers, a snakeskin sleeveless blouse, and a ribbon in his waist-length dyed white hair. His nose, Joe thought; it looks like the rubber bulb of a New Delhi taxi horn, soft and squeezable. And loud. The loudest noise, he thought, that I have ever seen.
"Hello, all you top anti-psis," Stanton Mick said, extend-ing his arms in fulsome greeting. "The exterminators are here - by that, I mean yourselves." His voice had a squeaky, penetrating castrato quality to it, an unpleasant noise that one might expect to hear, Joe Chip thought, from a hive of metal bees. "The plague, in the form of various psionic riff-raff, descended upon the harmless, friendly, peaceful world of Stanton Mick. What a day that was for us in Mickville - as we call our attractive and appetizing Lunar settlement here. You have, of course, already started work, as I knew you would. That's because you're tops in your field, as every-one realizes when Runciter Associates is mentioned. I'm already delighted at your activity, with one small excep-tion that I perceive your tester there dingling with his equip-ment. Tester, would you look my way while I'm speaking to you?"
Joe shut off his polygraphs and gauges, killed the power supply.
"Do I have your attention now?" Stanton Mick asked him. "Yes," Joe said.
"Leave your equipment on," Runciter ordered him.
66 PHILIP K. DICK
"You're not an employee of Mr. Mick; you're my em-ployee."
"It doesn't matter," Joe said to him. "I've already gotten a reading on the psi field being generated in this vicinity." He had done his job. Stanton Mick had been too slow in arriving.
"How great is their field?" Runciter asked him.
Joe said, "There is no field."
"Our inertials are nullifying it? Our counter-field is greater?"
"No," Joe said. "As I said: There is no psi field of any sort within range of my equipment. I pick up our own field, so as far as I can determine my instruments are functioning; I consider that an accurate feedback. We're producing 2000 blr units, fluctuating upward to 2100 every few minutes. Prob-ably it will gradually increase; by the time our inertials have been functioning together, say, twelve hours, it may reach as high as -"
"I don't understand," Runciter said. All the inertials now were gathering around Joe Chip; Don Denny picked up one of the tapes which had been excreted by the polygraph, ex-amined the unwavering line, then handed the tape to Tippy Jackson. One by one the other inertials examined it silently, then looked toward Runciter. To Stanton Mick, Runciter said, "Where did you get the idea that Psis had infiltrated your operations here on Luna? And why didn't you want us to run our normal tests? Did you know we would get this result?"
"Obviously, he knew," Joe Chip said. He felt sure of it.
Rapid, agitated activity crossed Runciter's face; he started to speak to Stanton Mick, then changed his mind and said to Joe in a low voice, "Let's get back to Earth; let's get our inertials right out of here now."
Aloud, to the others, he said, "Collect your possessions; we're flying back to New York. I want all of you in the ship within the next fifteen minutes; any of you who aren't in will be Jeft behind. Joe, get all that junk of yours together in one
UBIK 67
heap; I'll help you lug it to the ship, if I have to - anyhow, I want it out of here and you with it." He turned in Mick's direction once again, his face puffy with anger; he started to speak -
Squeakirig in his metal-insect voice, Stanton Mick floated to the ceiling of the room, his arms protruding distendedly and rigidly. "Mr. Runciter, don't let your thalamus override your cerebral cortex. This matter calls for discretion, not haste; calm your people down and let's huddle together in an effort to mutually understand." His rotund, colorful body bobbed about, twisting in a slow, transversal rotation so that now his feet, rather than his head, extended in Runciter's direction.
"I've heard of this," Runciter said to Joe. "It's a self-destruct humanoid bomb. Help me get everybody out of here. They just now put it on auto; that's why it floated upward."
The bomb exploded.
Smoke, billowing in ill-smelling masses which clung to the ruptured walls and floor, sank and obscured the prone, twitching figure at Joe Chip's feet.
In Joe's ear Don Denny was yelling, "They killed Runciter, Mr. Chip. That's Mr. Runciter." In his excitement he stam-mered.
"Who else?" Joe said thickly, trying to breathe; the acrid smoke constricted his chest. His head rang from the con-cussion of the bomb, and, feeling an oozing warmth on his neck, he found that a flying shard had lacerated him.
Wendy Wright, indistinct although close by, said, "I think everyone else is hurt but alive."
Bending down beside Runciter, Edie Dorn said, "Could we get an animator from Ray Hollis?" Her face looked crushed in and pale.
"No," Joe said; he, too, bent down. "You're wrong," he said to Don Denny. "He's not dead."
But on the twisted floor Runciter lay dying. In two minutes, three minutes, Don Denny would be correct.
68 PHILIP K. DICK
"Listen, everybody," Joe said aloud. "Since Mr. Runciter is injured, I'm now in charge - temporarily, anyhow, until we can get back to Terra."
"Assuming," Al Hammond said, "we get back at all." With a folded handkerchief he patted a deep cut over his right eye.
"How many of you have hand weapons?" Joe asked. The inertials continued to mill without answering. "I know it's against Society rules," Joe said. "But I know some of you carry them. Forget the illegality; forget everything you've ever learned pertaining to inertials on the job carrying guns."
After a pause Tippy Jackson said, "Mine is with my things. In the other room."
"Mine is here with me," Tito Apostos said; he already held, in his right hand, an old-fashioned lead-slug pistol.
"If you have guns," Joe said, "and they're in the other room where you left your things, go get them."
Six inertials started toward the door.
To Al Hammond and Wendy Wright, who remained, Joe said, "We've got to get Runciter into cold-pac."
"There're cold-pac facilities on the ship," AI Hammond said.
"Then we'll lug him there," Joe said. "Hammond, take one end and I'll lift up the other. Apostos, you go ahead of us and shoot any of Hollis' employees who try to stop us."
Jon Ild, returning from the next room with a laser tube, said, "You think Hollis is in here with Mr. Mick?"
"With him," Joe said, "or by himself. We may never have been dealing with Mick; it may have been Hollis from the start." Amazing, he thought, that the explosion of the hu-manoid bomb didn't kill the rest of us. He wondered about Zoe Wirt. Evidently, she had gotten out before the blast; he saw no sign of her. I wonder what her reaction was, he thought, when she found out she wasn't working for Stanton Mick, that her employer - her real employer - had hired us, brought us here, to assassinate us. They'll probably have to
UBIK 69
kiil her too. Just to be on the safe side. She certainly won't be of any more use; in fact, she'll be a witness to what happened.
Now armed, the other inertials returned; they waited for 3oe to tell them what to do. Considering their situation, the eleven inertials seemed reasonably self-possessed.
"If we can get Runciter into cold-pac soon enough," Joe explained, as he and Al Hammond carried their apparently dying employer toward the elevators, "he can still run the firm. The way his wife does." He stabbed the elevator button with his elbow. "There's really very little chance," he said, "that the elevator will come. They probably cut off all power at the same moment as the blast."
The elevator, however, did appear. With haste he and Al Hammond carried Runciter aboard it.
"Three of you who have guns," Joe said, "come along with us. The rest of you -"
"The hell with that," Sammy Mundo said. "We don't want to be stuck down here waiting for the elevator to come back. It may never come back." He started forward, his face con-stricted with panic.
Joe said harshly, "Runciter goes first." He touched a but-ton and the doors shut, enclosing him, Al Hammond, Tito Apostos, Wendy Wright, Don Denny - and Glen Runciter. "It has to be done this way," he said to them as the elevator ascended. "And anyhow, if Hollis' people are waiting they'll get us first. Except that they probably don't expect us to be armed."
"There is that law," Don Denny put in.
"See if he's dead yet," Joe said to Tito Apostos.
Bending, Apostos examined the inert body. "Still some shallow respiration," he said presently. "So we still have a chance."
"Yes, a chance," Joe said. He remained numb, as he had been both physically and psychologically since the blast; he felt cold and torpid and his eardrums appeared to be dam-aged. Once we're back in our own ship, he reflected, after
70 PHILIP K. DICK
we get Runciter into the cold-pac, we can send out an assist call, back to New York, to everyone at the firm. In fact, to all the prudence organizations. If we can't take off they can come to get us.
But in reality it wouldn't work that way. Because by the time someone from the Society got to Luna, everyone trap-ped sub-surface, in the elevator shaft and aboard the ship, would be dead. So there really was no chance.
Tito Apostos said, "You could have let