Ubik (7 page)

Now armed, the other inertials returned; they waited for Joe 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 constricted with panic.

Joe said harshly, “Runciter goes first.” He touched a button 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 damaged. Once we’re back in our own ship, he reflected, after 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 trapped 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 more of them into the elevator. We could have squeezed the rest of the women in.” He glared at Joe accusingly, his hands shaking with agitation.

“We’ll be more exposed to assassination than they will,” Joe said. “Hollis will expect any survivors of the blast to make use of the elevator, as we’re doing. That’s probably why they left the power on. They know we have to get back to our ship.”

Wendy Wright said, “You already told us that, Joe.”

“I’m trying to rationalize what I’m doing,” he said. “Leaving the rest of them down there.”

“What about that new girl’s talent?” Wendy said. “That sullen, dark girl with the disdainful attitude; Pat something. You could have had her go back into the past, before Runciter’s injury; she could have changed all this. Did you forget about her ability?”

“Yes,” Joe said tightly. He had, in the aimless, smoky confusion.

“Let’s go back down,” Tito Apostos said. “Like you say, Hollis’ people will be waiting for us at ground level; like you said, we’re in more danger by—”

“We’re at the surface,” Don Denny said. “The elevator’s stopped.” Wan and stiff, he licked his lips apprehensively as the doors automatically slid aside.

They faced a moving sidewalk that led upward to a concourse, at the end of which, beyond air-membrane doors, the base of their upright ship could be distinguished. Exactly as they had left it. And no one stood between them and it. Peculiar, Joe Chip thought. Were they sure the exploding humanoid bomb would get us all? Something in the way they planned it must have gone wrong, first in the blast itself, then in their leaving the power on—and now this empty corridor.

“I think,” Don Denny said, as Al Hammond and Joe carried Runciter from the elevator and onto the moving sidewalk, “the fact that the bomb floated to the ceiling fouled them up. It seemed to be a fragmentation type, and most of the flak hit the walls above our heads. I think it never occurred to them that any of us might survive; that would be why they left the power on.”

“Well, thank god it floated up then,” Wendy Wright said. “Good lord, it’s chilly. The bomb must have put this place’s heating system out of action.” She trembled visibly.

The moving sidewalk carried them forward with shattering slowness; it seemed to Joe that five or more minutes passed before the sidewalk evicted them at the two-stage air-membrane doors. The crawl forward, in some ways, seemed to him the worst part of everything which had happened, as if Hollis had arranged this purposely.

“Wait!” a voice called from behind them; footsteps sounded, and Tito Apostos turned, his gun raised, then lowered.

“The rest of them,” Don Denny said to Joe, who could not turn around; he and Al Hammond had begun maneuvering Runciter’s body through the intricate system of the air-membrane doors. “They’re all there; it’s okay.” With his gun he waved them toward him. “Come on!”

The connecting plastic tunnel still linked their ship with the concourse; Joe heard the characteristic dull clunk under his feet and wondered,
Are they letting us go?
Or, he thought, Are they waiting for us in the ship? It’s as if, he thought, some malicious force is playing with us, letting us scamper and twitter like debrained mice. We amuse it. Our efforts entertain it. And when we get just so far its fist will close around us and drop our squeezed remains, like Runciter’s, onto the slow-moving floor.

“Denny,” he said. “You go into the ship first. See if they’re waiting for us.”

“And if they are?” Denny said.

“Then you come back,” Joe said bitingly, “and tell us and we give up. And then they kill the rest of us.”

Wendy Wright said, “Ask Pat whatever her name is to use her ability.” Her voice was low but insistent. “Please, Joe.”

“Let’s try to get into the ship,” Tito Apostos said. “I don’t like that girl; I don’t trust her talent.”

“You don’t understand her or it,” Joe said. He watched skinny, small Don Denny scamper up the tunnel, fiddle with the switching arrangement which controlled the entrance port of the ship, then disappear inside. “He’ll never come back,” he said, panting; the weight of Glen Runciter seemed to have grown; he could hardly hold onto him. “Let’s set Runciter down here,” he said to Al Hammond. Together, the two of them lowered Runciter to the floor of the tunnel. “For an old man he’s heavy,” Joe said, standing erect again. To Wendy he said, “I’ll talk to Pat.” The others had caught up now; all of them crowded agitatedly into the connecting tunnel. “What a fiasco,” he gasped. “Instead of what we hoped to be our big enterprise. You never know. Hollis really got us this time.” He motioned Pat up beside him. Her face was smudged and her synthetic sleeveless blouse had been ripped; the elastic band which—fashionably—compressed her breasts could be seen: It had elegant embossed pale-pink fleurs-de-lis imprinted on it, and for no logical reason the perception of this unrelated, meaningless sense-datum registered in his mind. “Listen,” he said to her, putting his hand on her shoulder and looking into her eyes; she calmly returned his gaze. “Can you go back? To a time before the bomb was detonated? And restore Glen Runciter?”

“It’s too late now,” Pat said.

“Why?”

“That’s it. Too much time has passed. I would have had to do it right away.”

“Why didn’t you?” Wendy Wright asked her, with hostility.

Swinging her gaze, Pat eyed her. “Did
you
think of it? If you did, you didn’t say. Nobody said.”

“You don’t feel any responsibility, then,” Wendy said. “For Runciter’s death. When your talent could have obviated it.”

Pat laughed.

Returning from the ship, Don Denny said, “It’s empty.”

“Okay,” Joe said, motioning to Al Hammond. “Let’s get him into the ship and into cold-pac.” He and Al once more picked up the dense, hard-to-manage body; they continued on into the ship; the inertials scrambled and shoved around him, eager for sanctuary—he experienced the pure physical emanation of their fear, the field surrounding them—and himself too. The possibility that they might actually leave Luna alive made them more rather than less desperate; their stunned resignation had now completely gone.

“Where’s the key?” Jon Ild shrilled in Joe’s ear as he and Al Hammond stumbled groggily toward the cold-pac chamber. He plucked at Joe’s arm. “The key, Mr. Chip.”

Al Hammond explained, “The ignition key. For the ship. Runciter must have it on him; get it before we drop him into the cold-pac, because after that we won’t be able to touch him.”

Digging in Runciter’s various pockets, Joe found a leather key case; he passed it to Jon Ild. “Now we can put him into cold-pac?” he said with savage anger. “Come on, Hammond; for chrissakes, help me get him into the ’pac.” But we didn’t move swiftly enough, he said to himself. It’s all over. We failed. Well, he thought wearily, so it goes.

The initial rockets came on with a roar; the ship shuddered as, at the control console, four of the inertials haltingly collaborated in the task of programing the computerized command-receptors.

Why did they let us go? Joe asked himself as he and Al Hammond stood Runciter’s lifeless—or apparently lifeless—body upright in the floor-to-ceiling cold-pac chamber; automatic clamps closed about Runciter’s thighs and shoulders, supporting him, while the cold, glistening with its own simulated life, sparkled and shone, dazzling Joe Chip and Al Hammond. “I don’t understand it,” he said.

“They fouled up,” Hammond said. “They didn’t have any back-up planned behind the bomb. Like the bomb plotters who tried to kill Hitler; when they saw the explosion go off in the bunker all of them assumed—”

“Before the cold kills us,” Joe said, “let’s get out of this chamber.” He prodded Hammond ahead of him; once outside, the two of them together twisted the locking wheel into place. “God, what a feeling,” he said. “To think that a force like that preserves life. Of a sort.”

Francy Spanish, her long braids scorched, halted him as he started toward the fore section of the ship. “Is there a communication circuit in the cold-pac?” she asked. “Can we consult with Mr. Runciter now?”

“No consultation,” Joe said, shaking his head. “No earphone, no microphone. No protophasons. No half-life. Not until we get back to Earth and transfer him to a moratorium.”

“Then, how can we tell if we froze him soon enough?” Don Denny asked.

“We can’t,” Joe said.

“His brain may have deteriorated,” Sammy Mundo said, grinning. He giggled.

“That’s right,” Joe said. “We may never hear the voice or the thoughts of Glen Runciter again. We may have to run Runciter Associates without him. We may have to depend on what’s left of Ella; we may have to move our offices to the Beloved Brethren Moratorium at Zürich and operate out of there.” He seated himself in an aisle seat where he could watch the four inertials haggling over the correct way to direct the ship. Somnambulantly, engulfed by the dull, dreary ache of shock, he got out a bent cigarette and lit it.

The cigarette, dry and stale, broke apart as he tried to hold it between his fingers. Strange, he thought.

“The bomb blast,” Al Hammond said, noticing. “The heat.”

“Did it age us?” Wendy asked, from behind Hammond; she stepped past him and seated herself beside Joe. “I feel old. I
am
old; your package of cigarettes is old; we’re all old, as of today, because of what has happened. This was a day for us like no other.”

With dramatic energy the ship rose from the surface of Luna, carrying with it, absurdly, the plastic connective tunnel.

SEVEN

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“Our best move,” Joe Chip said, “seems to be this. We’ll land at Zürich.” He picked up the microwave audiophone provided by Runciter’s expensive, well-appointed ship and dialed the regional code for Switzerland. “By putting him in the same moratorium as Ella we can consult both of them simultaneously; they can be linked up electronically to function in unison.”

“Protophasonically,” Don Denny corrected.

Joe said, “Do any of you know the name of the manager of the Beloved Brethren Moratorium?”

“Herbert something,” Tippy Jackson said. “A German name.”

Wendy Wright, pondering, said, “Herbert Schoenheit von Vogelsang. I remember it because Mr. Runciter once told me it means ‘Herbert, the beauty of the song of birds.’ I wish I had been named that. I remember thinking that at the time.”

“You could marry him,” Tito Apostos said.

“I’m going to marry Joe Chip,” Wendy said in a somber, introspective voice, with childlike gravity.

“Oh?” Pat Conley said. Her light-saturated black eyes ignited. “Are you really?”

“Can you change that too?” Wendy said. “With your talent?”

Pat said, “I’m living with Joe. I’m his mistress. Under our arrangement I pay his bills. I paid his front door, this morning, to let him out. Without me he’d still be in his conapt.”

“And our trip to Luna,” Al Hammond said, “would not have taken place.” He eyed Pat, a complex expression on his face.

“Perhaps not today,” Tippy Jackson pointed out, “but eventually. What difference does it make? Anyhow, I think that’s fine for Joe to have a mistress who pays his front door.” She nudged Joe on the shoulder, her face beaming with what struck Joe as salacious approval. A sort of vicarious enjoying of his private, personal activities; in Mrs. Jackson a voyeur dwelt beneath her extroverted surface.

“Give me the ship’s over-all phone book,” he said. “I’ll notify the moratorium to expect us.” He studied his wrist watch. Ten more minutes of flight.

“Here’s the phone book, Mr. Chip,” Jon Ild said, after a search; he handed him the heavy square box with its keyboard and microscanner.

Joe typed out SWITZ, then ZUR, then BLVD BRETH MORA. “Like Hebrew,” Pat said from behind him. “Semantic condensations.” The microscanner whisked back and forth, selecting and discarding; at last its mechanism popped up a punch card, which Joe fed into the phone’s receptor slot.

The phone said tinnily, “This is a recording.” It expelled the punch card vigorously. “The number which you have given me is obsolete. If you need assistance, place a red card in—”

“What’s the date on that phone book?” Joe asked Ild, who was returning it to its handy storage shelf.

Ild examined the information stamped on the rear of the box. “1990. Two years old.”

“That can’t be,” Edie Dorn said. “This ship didn’t exist two years ago. Everything on it and in it is new.”

Tito Apostos said, “Maybe Runciter cut a few corners.”

“Not at all,” Edie said. “He lavished care, money and engineering skill on
Pratfall II
. Everybody who ever worked for him knows that; this ship is his pride and joy.”

“
Was
his pride and joy,” Francy Spanish corrected.

“I’m not ready to admit that,” Joe said. He fed a red card into the phone’s receptor slot. “Give me the current number of the Beloved Brethren Moratorium in Zürich, Switzerland,” he said. To Francy Spanish he said, “This ship is still his pride and joy because he still exists.”

A card, punched into significance by the phone, leaped out; he transferred it to its receptor slot. This time the phone’s computerized workings responded without irritation; on the screen a sallow, conniving face formed, that of the unctuous busybody who ran the Beloved Brethren Moratorium. Joe remembered him with dislike.

“I am Herr Herbert Schoenheit von Vogelsang. Have you come to me in your grief, sir? May I take your name and address, were it to happen that we got cut off?” The moratorium owner poised himself.

Joe said, “There’s been an accident.”

“What we deem an ‘accident,’ ” von Vogelsang said, “is ever yet a display of god’s handiwork. In a sense, all life could be called an ‘accident.’ And yet in fact—”

“I don’t want to engage in a theological discussion,” Joe said. “Not at this time.”

“This is the time, out of all times, when the consolations of theology are most soothing. Is the deceased a relative?”

“Our employer,” Joe said. “Glen Runciter of Runciter Associates, New York. You have his wife Ella there. We’ll be landing in eight or nine minutes; can you have one of your transport cold-pac vans waiting?”

“He is in cold-pac now?”

“No,” Joe said. “He’s warming himself on the beach at Tampa, Florida.”

“I assume your amusing response indicates yes.”

“Have a van at the Zürich spaceport,” Joe said, and rang off. Look who we’ve got to deal through, he reflected, from now on. “We’ll get Ray Hollis,” he said to the inertials grouped around him.

“Get him instead of Mr. Vogelsang?” Sammy Mundo asked.

“Get him in the manner of getting him dead,” Joe said. “For bringing this about.” Glen Runciter, he thought, frozen upright in a transparent plastic casket ornamented with plastic rosebuds. Wakened into half-life activity one hour a month. Deteriorating, weakening, growing dim…Christ, he thought savagely. Of all the people in the world. A man that vital. And vitalic.

“Anyhow,” Wendy said, “he’ll be closer to Ella.”

“In a way,” Joe said, “I hope we got him into the cold-pac too—” He broke off, not wanting to say it. “I don’t like moratoriums,” he said. “Or moratorium owners. I don’t like Herbert Schoenheit von Vogelsang. Why does Runciter prefer Swiss moratoriums? What’s the matter with a moratorium in New York?”

“It is a Swiss invention,” Edie Dorn said. “And according to impartial surveys, the average length of half-life of a given individual in a Swiss moratorium is two full hours greater than an individual in one of ours. The Swiss seem to have a special knack.”

“The U.N. ought to abolish half-life,” Joe said. “As interfering with the natural process of the cycle of birth and death.”

Mockingly, Al Hammond said, “If god approved of half-life, each of us would be born in a casket filled with dry ice.”

At the control console, Don Denny said, “We’re now under the jurisdiction of the Zürich microwave transmitter. It’ll do the rest.” He walked away from the console, looking glum.

“Cheer up,” Edie Dorn said to him. “To be brutally harsh about it, consider how lucky all of us are; we might be dead now. Either by the bomb or by being lasered down after the blast. It’ll make you feel better, once we land; we’ll be so much safer on Earth.”

Joe said, “The fact that we had to go to Luna should have tipped us off.” Should have tipped Runciter off, he realized. “Because of that loophole in the law dealing with civil authority on Luna. Runciter always said, ‘Be suspicious of any job order requiring us to leave Earth.’ If he were alive he’d be saying it now. ‘Especially don’t bite if it’s Luna where they want us. Too many prudence organizations have bitten on that.’ ” If he does revive at the moratorium, he thought, that’ll be the first thing he says. “I always was suspicious of Luna,” he’ll say. But not quite suspicious enough. The job was too much of a plum; he couldn’t resist it. And so, with that bait, they got him. As he always knew they would.

The ship’s retrojets, triggered off by the Zürich microwave transmitter, rumbled on; the ship shuddered.

“Joe,” Tito Apostos said, “you’re going to have to tell Ella about Runciter. You realize that?”

“I’ve been thinking about it,” Joe said, “since we took off and started back.”

The ship, slowing radically, prepared by means of its various homeostatic servo-assist systems to land.

“And in addition,” Joe said, “I have to notify the Society as to what’s happened. They’ll rake us over the coals; they’ll point out right away that we walked into it like sheep.”

Sammy Mundo said, “But the Society is our friend.”

“Nobody,” Al Hammond said, “after a fiasco like this, is our friend.”

A solar-battery-powered chopper marked BELOVED BRETHREN MORATORIUM waited at the edge of the Zürich field. Beside it stood a beetle-like individual wearing a Continental outfit: tweed toga, loafers, crimson sash and a purple airplane-propeller beanie. The proprietor of the moratorium minced toward Joe Chip, his gloved hand extended, as Joe stepped from the ship’s ramp onto the flat ground of Earth.

“Not exactly a trip replete with joy, I would judge by your appearance,” von Vogelsang said as they briefly shook hands. “May my workmen go aboard your attractive ship and begin—”

“Yes,” Joe said. “Go aboard and get him.” Hands in his pockets, he meandered toward the field’s coffee shop, feeling bleakly glum. All standard operating procedure from now on, he realized. We got back to Earth; Hollis didn’t get us—we’re lucky. The Lunar operation, the whole awful, ugly, rat-trap experience, is over. And a new phase begins. One which we have no direct power over.

“Five cents, please,” the door of the coffee shop said, remaining shut before him.

He waited until a couple passed by him on their way out; neatly he squeezed by the door, made it to a vacant stool and seated himself. Hunched over, his hands locked together before him on the counter, he read the menu. “Coffee,” he said.

“Cream or sugar?” the speaker of the shop’s ruling monad turret asked.

“Both.”

The little window opened; a cup of coffee, two tiny paper-wrapped sacks of sugar and a test-tube-like container of cream slid forward and came to rest before him on the counter.

“One international poscred, please,” the speaker said.

Joe said, “Charge this to the account of Glen Runciter of Runciter Associates, New York.”

“Insert the proper credit card,” the speaker said.

“They haven’t let me carry around a credit card in five years,” Joe said. “I’m still paying off what I charged back in—”

“One poscred, please,” the speaker said. It began to tick ominously. “Or in ten seconds I will notify the police.”

He passed the poscred over. The ticking stopped.

“We can do without your kind,” the speaker said.

“One of these days,” Joe said wrathfully, “people like me will rise up and overthrow you, and the end of tyranny by the homeostatic machine will have arrived. The day of human values and compassion and simple warmth will return, and when that happens someone like myself who has gone through an ordeal and who genuinely needs hot coffee to pick him up and keep him functioning when he has to function will get the hot coffee whether he happens to have a poscred readily available or not.” He lifted the miniature pitcher of cream, then set it down. “And furthermore, your cream or milk or whatever it is, is sour.”

The speaker remained silent.

“Aren’t you going to do anything?” Joe said. “You had plenty to say when you wanted a poscred.”

The pay door of the coffee shop opened and Al Hammond came in; he walked over to Joe and seated himself beside him. “The moratorium has Runciter in their chopper. They’re ready to take off and they want to know if you intend to ride with them.”

Joe said, “Look at this cream.” He held up the pitcher; in it the fluid plastered the sides in dense clots. “This is what you get for a poscred in one of the most modern, technologically advanced cities on Earth. I’m not leaving here until this place makes an adjustment, either returning my poscred or giving me a replacement pitcher of fresh cream so I can drink my coffee.”

Putting his hand on Joe’s shoulder, Al Hammond studied him. “What’s the matter, Joe?”

“First my cigarette,” Joe said. “Then the two-year-old obsolete phone book in the ship. And now they’re serving me week-old sour cream. I don’t get it, Al.”

“Drink the coffee black,” Al said. “And get over to the chopper so they can take Runciter to the moratorium. The rest of us will wait in the ship until you come back. And then we’ll head for the nearest Society office and make a full report to them.”

Joe picked up the coffee cup, and found the coffee cold, inert and ancient; a scummy mold covered the surface. He set the cup back down in revulsion. What’s going on? he thought. What’s happening to me? His revulsion became, all at once, a weird, nebulous panic.

“Come on, Joe,” Al said, his hand closing firmly around Joe’s shoulder. “Forget the coffee; it isn’t important. What matters is getting Runciter to—”

“You know who gave me that poscred?” Joe said. “Pat Conley. And right away I did what I always do with money; I frittered it away on nothing. On last year’s cup of coffee.” He got down from the stool, urged off it by Al Hammond’s hand. “How about coming with me to the moratorium? I need back-up help, especially when I go to confer with Ella. What should we do, blame it on Runciter? Say it was his decision for us all to go to Luna? That’s the truth. Or maybe we should tell her something else, tell her his ship crashed or he died of natural causes.”

“But Runciter will eventually be linked up to her,” Al said. “And he’ll tell her the truth. So you have to tell her the truth.”

They left the coffee shop and made their way to the chopper belonging to the Beloved Brethren Moratorium. “Maybe I’ll let Runciter tell her,” Joe said as they boarded. “Why not? It was his decision for us to go to Luna; let him tell her himself. And he’s used to talking to her.”

“Ready, gentlemen?” von Vogelsang inquired, seated at the controls of the chopper. “Shall we wind our doleful steps in the direction of Mr. Runciter’s final home?”

Joe groaned and stared out through the window of the chopper, fixing his attention on the buildings that made up the installations of Zürich Field.

“Yeah, take off,” Al said.

As the chopper left the ground the moratorium owner pressed a button on his control panel. Throughout the cabin of the chopper, from a dozen sources, the sound of Beethoven’s
Missa Solemnis
rolled forth sonorously, the many voices saying,
“Agnus dei, qui tollis peccata mundi,”
over and over again, accompanied by an electronically augmented symphony orchestra.