Ubik (6 page)

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.”

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 probably—’ ”

“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 connection 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; obviously, 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 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 receded; 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 collectively, 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, mysterious voices appeared to me and told me things.”

“You’re Francesca Spanish?” Runciter asked her, patiently; 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.

A bald-headed man, wagging a goatish beard, pointed to himself. He wore old-fashioned, hip-hugging gold lamé trousers, 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 Siamese 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 sandals.

“You’re an anti-animator,” Runciter said, reading the appropriate sheet. “The only one we use.” To Joe he said, “I wonder if we’ll need him; maybe we should substitute another 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 spasmodic, wobbling, ticlike gesture; as if, Joe thought, the anemic 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 Melipone; 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, 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 proximity 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 mechanisms 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 mask; 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, unnatural-looking individual with pasted-down hair, muddy skin plus a peculiar protruding Adam’s apple—clad, for this occasion, 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.

“You suppose this bunch of inertials is the best combination 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. Apostos, bald-headed and bearded, his gold lamé trousers glittering, 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’ people—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 studied 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.

SIX

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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 organization—and you people, in particular—available to us. This subsurface hotel suite, decorated by Mr. Howard’s artistically 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 presence 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 surrounding 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 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, however, 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 bedrooms.”

“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 employees 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 professional 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 contraindicated that, as I explained.”

“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 decided. “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 settlement? 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 living 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 shoulders 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 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 ladder 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 authentic visitation. I can distinguish the difference.”

“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 perambulated 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, extending 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 riffraff, 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 everyone realizes when Runciter Associates is mentioned. I’m already delighted at your activity, with one small exception that I perceive your tester there dingling with his equipment. 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. “You’re not an employee of Mr. Mick; you’re my employee.”

“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. Probably 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, examined 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 left behind. Joe, get all that junk of yours together in one 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—

Squeaking 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 stammered.

“Who else?” Joe said thickly, trying to breathe; the acrid smoke constricted his chest. His head rang from the concussion 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.

“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,” Al 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 humanoid 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 kill 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.