Vintage PKD (7 page)

And we think we’ve got it bad here, he said to himself.

The individual in the seat next to him, a middle-aged man wearing the gray pith helmet, sleeveless shirt, and shorts of bright red popular with the businessman class, remarked, “It’s going to be another hot one.”

“Yes.”

“What you got there in that great big carton? A picnic lunch for a hovel of Martian colonists?”

“Ceramics,” Hnatt said.

“I’ll bet you fire them just by sticking them outdoors at high noon.” The businessman chuckled, then picked up his morning ’pape, opened it to the front page. “Ship from outside the Sol system reported crash-landed on Pluto,” he said. “Team being sent to find it. You suppose it’s
things
? I can’t stand those things from other war systems.”

“It’s more likely one of our own ships reporting back,” Hnatt said.

“Ever seen a Proxima thing?”

“Only pics.”

“Grisly,” the businessman said. “If they find that wrecked ship on Pluto and it is a thing I hope they laser it out of existence; after all we do have a law against them coming into our system.”

“Right.”

“Can I see your ceramics? I’m in neckties, myself. The Werner simulated-handwrought living tie in a variety of Titanian colors— I have one on, see? The colors are actually a primitive life form that we import and then grow in cultures here on Terra. Just how we induce them to reproduce is our trade secret, you know, like the formula for Coca-Cola.”

Hnatt said, “For a similar reason I can’t show you these ceramics, much as I’d like to. They’re new. I’m taking them to a Pre-Fash precog at P. P. Layouts; if he wants to miniaturize them for the Perky Pat layouts then we’re in: it’s just a question of flashing the info to the P. P. disc jockey—what’s his name?—circling Mars. And so on.”

“Werner handwrought ties are part of the Perky Pat layouts,” the man informed him. “Her boyfriend Walt has a closetful of them.” He beamed. “When P. P. Layouts decided to min our ties—”

“It was Barney Mayerson you talked to?”

“
I
didn’t talk to him; it was our regional sales manager. They say Mayerson is difficult. Goes on what seems like impulse and once he’s decided it’s irreversible.”

“Is he ever wrong? Declines items that become fash?”

“Sure. He may be a precog but he’s only human. I’ll tell you one thing that might help. He’s very suspicious of women. His marriage broke up a couple of years ago and he never got over it. See, his wife became pregnant
twice
, and the board of directors of his conapt building, I think it’s 33, met and voted to expel him and his wife because they had violated the building code. Well, you know 33; you know how hard it is to get into any of the buildings in that low range. So instead of giving up his apt he elected to divorce his wife and let her move, taking their child. And then later on apparently he decided he made a mistake and he got embittered; he blamed himself, naturally, for making a mistake like that. A natural mistake, though; for God’s sake, what wouldn’t you and I give to have an apt in 33 or 34? He never remarried; maybe he’s a Neo-Christian. But anyhow when you go to try to sell him on your ceramics, be very careful about how you deal with the feminine angle; don’t say ‘these will appeal to the ladies’ or anything like that. Most retail items are purchased—”

“Thanks for the tip,” Hnatt said, rising; carrying his case of ceramics he made his way down the aisle to the exit. He sighed. It was going to be tough, possibly even hopeless; he wasn’t going to be able to lick the circumstances which long predated his relationship with Emily and her pots, and that was that.

Fortunately he managed to snare a cab; as it carried him through downtown cross-traffic he read his own morning ’pape, in particular the lead story about the ship believed to have returned from Proxima only to crash on Pluto’s frozen wastes—an understatement! Already it was conjectured that this might be the well-known interplan industrialist Palmer Eldritch, who had gone to the Prox system a decade ago at the invitation of the Prox Council of humanoid types; they had wanted him to modernize their autofacs along Terran lines. Nothing had been heard from Eldritch since. Now this.

It would probably be better for Terra if this wasn’t Eldritch coming back, he decided. Palmer Eldritch was too wild and dazzling a solo pro; he had accomplished miracles in getting autofac production started on the colony planets, but—as always he had gone too far, schemed too much. Consumer goods had piled up in unlikely places where no colonists existed to make use of them. Mountains of debris, they had become, as the weather corroded them bit by bit, inexorably. Snowstorms, if one could believe that such still existed somewhere . . . there were places which were actually cold. Too cold, in actual fact.

“Thy destination, your eminence,” the autonomic cab informed him, halting before a large but mostly subsurface structure. P. P. Layouts, with employees handily entering by its many thermal-protected ramps.

He paid the cab, hopped from it, and scuttled across a short open space for a ramp, his case held with both hands; briefly, naked sunlight touched him and he felt—or imagined—himself sizzle. Baked like a toad, dried of all life-juices, he thought as he safely reached the ramp.

Presently he was subsurface, being allowed into Mayerson’s office by a receptionist. The rooms, cool and dim, invited him to relax but he did not; he gripped his display case tighter and tensed himself and, although he was not a Neo-Christian, he mumbled a prolix prayer.

“Mr. Mayerson,” the receptionist, taller than Hnatt and impressive in her open-bodice dress and resort-style heels, said, speaking not to Hnatt but to the man seated at the desk. “This is Mr. Hnatt,” she informed Mayerson. “This is Mr. Mayerson, Mr. Hnatt.” Behind Mayerson stood a girl in a pale green sweater and with absolutely white hair. The hair was too long and the sweater too tight. “This is Miss Fugate, Mr. Hnatt. Mr. Mayerson’s assistant. Miss Fugate, this is Mr. Richard Hnatt.”

At the desk Barney Mayerson continued to study a document without acknowledging the entrance of anyone and Richard Hnatt waited in silence, experiencing a mixed bag of emotions; anger touched him, lodged in his windpipe and chest, and of course
Angst
, and then, above even those, a tendril of growing curiosity. So this was Emily’s former husband, who, if the living necktie salesman could be believed, still chewed mournfully, bitterly, on the regret of having abolished the marriage. Mayerson was a rather heavy-set man, in his late thirties, with unusually—and not particularly fashionable—loose and wavy hair. He looked bored but there was no sign of hostility about him. But perhaps he had not as yet—

“Let’s see your pots,” Mayerson said suddenly.

Laying the display case on the desk Richard Hnatt opened it, got out the ceramic articles one by one, arranged them, and then stepped back.

After a pause Barney Mayerson said, “No.”

“ ‘No’?” Hnatt said. “No what?”

Mayerson said, “They won’t make it.” He picked up his document and resumed reading it.

“You mean you decided just like that?” Hnatt said, unable to believe that it was already done.

“Exactly like that,” Mayerson agreed. He had no further interest in the display of ceramics; as far as he was concerned Hnatt had already packed up his pots and left.

Miss Fugate said, “Excuse me, Mr. Mayerson.”

Glancing at her Barney Mayerson said, “What is it?”

“I’m sorry to say this, Mr. Mayerson,” Miss Fugate said; she went over to the pots, picked one up and held it in her hands, weighing it, rubbing its glazed surface. “But I get a distinctly different impression than you do. I feel these ceramic pieces will make it.”

Hnatt looked from one to the other of them.

“Let me have that.” Mayerson pointed to a dark gray vase; at once Hnatt handed it to him. Mayerson held it for a time. “No,” he said finally. He was frowning, now. “I still get no impression of this item making it big. In my opinion you’re mistaken, Miss Fugate.” He set the vase back down. “However,” he said to Richard Hnatt, “in view of the disagreement between myself and Miss Fugate—” He scratched his nose thoughtfully. “Leave this display with me for a few days; I’ll give it further attention.” Obviously, however, he would not.

Reaching, Miss Fugate picked up a small, oddly shaped piece and cradled it against her bosom almost tenderly. “This one in particular. I receive very powerful emanations from it. This one will be the most successful of all.”

In a quiet voice Barney Mayerson said, “You’re out of your mind, Roni.” He seemed really angry, now; his face was violent and dark. “I’ll vid you,” he said to Richard Hnatt. “When I’ve made my final decision. I see no reason why I should change my mind, so don’t be optimistic. In fact don’t bother to leave them.” He shot a hard, harsh glance toward his assistant, Miss Fugate.

Chapter One

from 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.”

“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 subsurface 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 fluid 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 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 moment.” 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 head and spoke firmly 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.

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 cheesecloth 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 Runciter 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. Nothing 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 importance, 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 shrilly squawked their harangues of late. Defend your privacy, 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, nullify these intrusions—at moderate cost to you.

“Prudence organizations.” He liked the term; it had dignity and it was accurate. He knew this from personal experience; 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 signing of a work contract an anti-telepath had been dispatched, had installed himself on the moratorium premises. The telepath 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 organization surveyed his establishment routinely once a month.

“Thanks very much, Mr. Vogelsang,” Runciter said, following 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 organizations be, in fact, rackets? Claiming a need for their services when sometimes no need actually exists?

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 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 genuine, 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.