Joe said, “When did you figure out what was taking place? Did you always know? From the start?”
“ ‘The start,’ ” Runciter echoed bitingly. “What’s that mean? It started months or maybe even years ago; god knows how long Hollis and Mick and Pat Conley and S. Dole Melipone and G. G. Ashwood have been hatching it up, working it over and reworking it like dough. Here’s what happened. We got lured to Luna. We let Pat Conley come with us, a woman we didn’t know, a talent we didn’t understand—which possibly even Hollis doesn’t understand. An ability anyhow connected with time reversion; not, strictly speaking, the ability to travel through time…for instance, she can’t go into the future. In a certain sense, she can’t go into the past either; what she does, as near as I can comprehend it, is start a counter-process that uncovers the prior stages inherent in configurations of matter. But you know that; you and Al figured it out.” He ground his teeth with wrath. “Al Hammond—what a loss. But I couldn’t do anything; I couldn’t break through then as I’ve done now.”
“Why were you able to now?” Joe asked.
Runciter said, “Because this is as far back as she is able to carry us. Normal forward flow has already resumed; we’re again flowing from past into present into future. She evidently stretched her ability to its limit. 1939; that’s the limit. What she’s done now is shut off her talent. Why not? She’s accomplished what Ray Hollis sent her to us to do.”
“How many people have been affected?”
“Just the group of us who were on Luna there in that subsurface room. Not even Zoe Wirt. Pat can circumscribe the range of the field she creates. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, the bunch of us took off for Luna and got blown up in an accidental explosion; we were put into cold-pac by solicitous Stanton Mick, but no contact could be established—they didn’t get us soon enough.”
Joe said, “Why wouldn’t the bomb blast be enough?”
Lifting an eyebrow, Runciter regarded him.
“Why use Pat Conley at all?” Joe said. He sensed, even in his weary, shaken state, something wrong. “There’s no reason for all this reversion machinery, this sinking us into a retrograde time momentum back here to 1939. It serves no purpose.”
“That’s an interesting point,” Runciter said; he nodded slowly, a frown on his rugged, stony face. “I’ll have to think about it. Give me a little while.” He walked to the window, stood gazing out at the stores across the street.
“It strikes me,” Joe said, “that what we appear to be faced with is a malignant rather than a purposeful force. Not so much someone trying to kill us or nullify us, someone trying to eliminate us from functioning as a prudence organization, but—” He pondered; he almost had it. “An irresponsible entity that’s enjoying what it’s doing to us. The way it’s killing us off one by one. It doesn’t have to prolong all this. That doesn’t sound to me like Ray Hollis; he deals in cold, practical murder. And from what I know about Stanton Mick—”
“Pat herself,” Runciter interrupted brusquely; he turned away from the window. “She’s psychologically a sadistic person. Like tearing wings off flies. Playing with us.” He watched for Joe’s reaction.
Joe said, “It sounds to me more like a child.”
“But look at Pat Conley; she’s spiteful and jealous. She got Wendy first because of emotional animosity. She followed you all the way up the stairs just now, enjoying it; gloating over it, in fact.”
“How do you know that?” Joe said. You were waiting here in this room, he said to himself; you couldn’t have seen it. And—how had Runciter known he would come to this particular room?
Letting out his breath in a ragged, noisy rush, Runciter said, “I haven’t told you all of it. As a matter of fact…” He ceased speaking, chewed his lower lip savagely, then abruptly resumed. “What I’ve said hasn’t been strictly true. I don’t hold the same relationship to this regressed world that the rest of you do; you’re absolutely right: I know too much. It’s because I enter it from outside, Joe.”
“Manifestations,” Joe said.
“Yes. Thrust down into this world, here and there. At strategic points and times. Like the traffic citation. Like Archer’s—”
“You didn’t tape that TV commercial,” Joe said. “That was live.”
Runciter, with reluctance, nodded.
“Why the difference,” Joe said, “between your situation and ours?”
“You want me to say?”
“Yes.” He prepared himself, already knowing what he would hear.
“I’m not dead, Joe. The graffiti told the truth. You’re all in cold-pac and I’m—” Runciter spoke with difficulty, not looking directly at Joe. “I’m sitting in a consultation lounge at the Beloved Brethren Moratorium. All of you are interwired, on my instructions; kept together as a group. I’m out here trying to reach you. That’s where I am when I say I’m outside; that’s why the manifestations, as you call them. For one week now I’ve been trying to get you all functioning in half-life, but—it isn’t working. You’re fading out one by one.”
After a pause Joe said, “What about Pat Conley?”
“Yeah, she’s with you; in half-life, interwired to the rest of the group.”
“Are the regressions due to her talent? Or to the normal decay of half-life?” Tensely, he waited for Runciter’s answer; everything, as he saw it, hung on this one question.
Runciter snorted, grimaced, then said hoarsely, “The normal decay. Ella experienced it. Everyone who enters half-life experiences it.”
“You’re lying to me,” Joe said. And felt a knife shear through him.
Staring at him, Runciter said, “Joe, my god, I saved your life; I broke through to you enough just now to bring you back into full half-life functioning—you’ll probably go on indefinitely now. If I hadn’t been waiting here in this hotel room when you came crawling through that door, why, hell—hey, look, goddam it; you’d be lying on that rundown bed dead as a doornail by now if it wasn’t for me. I’m Glen Runciter; I’m your boss and I’m the one fighting to save all your lives—I’m the only one out here in the real world plugging for you.” He continued to stare at Joe with heated indignation and surprise. A bewildered, injured surprise, as if he could not fathom what was happening. “That girl,” Runciter said, “that Pat Conley, she would have killed you like she killed—” He broke off.
Joe said, “Like she killed Wendy and Al, Edie Dorn, Fred Zafsky, and maybe by now Tito Apostos.”
In a low but controlled voice Runciter said, “This situation is very complex, Joe. It doesn’t admit to simple answers.”
“You don’t know the answers,” Joe said. “That’s the problem. You made up answers; you had to invent them to explain your presence here. All your presences here, your so-called manifestations.”
“I don’t call them that; you and Al worked out that name. Don’t blame me for what you two—”
“You don’t know any more than I do,” Joe said, “about what’s happening to us and who’s attacking us. Glen, you can’t say who we’re up against because you don’t know.”
Runciter said, “I know I’m alive; I know I’m sitting out here in this consultation lounge at the moratorium.”
“Your body in the coffin,” Joe said. “Here at the Simple Shepherd Mortuary. Did you look at it?”
“No,” Runciter said, “but that isn’t really—”
“It had withered,” Joe said. “Lost bulk like Wendy’s and Al’s and Edie’s—and, in a little while, mine. Exactly the same for you; no better, no worse.”
“In your case I got Ubik—” Again Runciter broke off; a difficult-to-decipher expression appeared on his face: a combination perhaps of insight, fear and—but Joe couldn’t tell. “I got you the Ubik,” he finished.
“What is Ubik?” Joe said.
There was no answer from Runciter.
“You don’t know that either,” Joe said. “You don’t know what it is or why it works. You don’t even know where it comes from.�
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After a long, agonized pause, Runciter said, “You’re right, Joe. Absolutely right.” Tremulously, he lit another cigarette. “But I wanted to save your life; that part’s true. Hell, I’d like to save all your lives.” The cigarette slipped from his fingers; it dropped to the floor, rolled away. With labored effort, Runciter bent over to grope for it. On his face showed extreme and clear-cut unhappiness. Almost a despair.
“We’re in this,” Joe said, “and you’re sitting out there, out in the lounge, and you can’t do it; you can’t put a stop to the thing we’re involved in.”
“That’s right.” Runciter nodded.
“This is cold-pac,” Joe said, “but there’s something more. Something not natural to people in half-life. There are two forces at work, as Al figured out; one helping us and one destroying us. You’re working with the force or entity or person that’s trying to help us. You got the Ubik from them.”
“Yes.”
Joe said, “So none of us know even yet who it is that’s destroying us—and who it is that’s protecting us; you outside don’t know, and we in here don’t know. Maybe it’s Pat.”
“I think it is,” Runciter said. “I think there’s your enemy.”
Joe said, “Almost. But I don’t think so.” I don’t think, he said to himself, that we’ve met our enemy face to face, or our friend either.
He thought, But I think we will. Before long we will know who they both are.
“Are you sure,” he asked Runciter, “absolutely sure, that you’re beyond doubt the only one who survived the blast? Think before you answer.”
“Like I said, Zoe Wirt—”
“Of us,” Joe said. “She’s not here in this time segment with us. Pat Conley, for example.”
“Pat Conley’s chest was crushed. She died of shock and a collapsed lung, with multiple internal injuries, including a damaged liver and a leg broken in three places. Physically speaking, she’s about four feet away from you; her body, I mean.”
“And it’s the same for all the rest? They’re all here in cold-pac at the Beloved Brethren Moratorium?”
Runciter said, “With one exception. Sammy Mundo. He suffered massive brain damage and lapsed into a coma out of which they say he’ll never emerge. The cortical—”
“Then he’s alive. He’s not in cold-pac. He’s not here.”
“I wouldn’t call it ‘alive.’ They’ve run encephalograms on him; no cortical activity at all. A vegetable, nothing more. No personality, no motion, no consciousness—there’s nothing happening in Mundo’s brain, nothing in the slightest.”
Joe said, “So, therefore, you naturally didn’t think to mention it.”
“I mentioned it now.”
“When I asked you.” He reflected. “How far is he from us? In Zürich?”
“We set down here in Zürich, yes. He’s at the Carl Jung Hospital. About a quarter mile from this moratorium.”
“Rent a telepath,” Joe said. “Or use G. G. Ashwood. Have him scanned.” A boy, he said to himself. Disorganized and immature. A cruel, unformed, peculiar personality. This may be it, he said to himself. It would fit in with what we’re experiencing, the capricious contradictory happenings. The pulling off of our wings and then the putting back. The temporary restorations, as in just now with me here in this hotel room, after my climb up the stairs.
Runciter sighed. “We did that. In brain-injury cases like this it’s a regular practice to try to reach the person telepathically. No results; nothing. No frontal-lobe cerebration of any sort. Sorry, Joe.” He wagged his massive head in a sympathetic, tic-like motion; obviously, he shared Joe’s disappointment.
Removing the plastic disk from its place, its firm adhesion to his ear, Glen Runciter said into the microphone, “I’ll talk to you again later.” He now set down all the communications apparatus, rose stiffly from the chair and momentarily stood facing the misty, immobile, icebound shape of Joe Chip resting within its transparent plastic casket. Upright and silent, as it would be for the rest of eternity.
“Did you ring for me, sir?” Herbert Schoenheit von Vogelsang scuttled into the consultation lounge, cringing like a medieval toady. “Shall I put Mr. Chip back with the others? You’re done, sir?”
Runciter said, “I’m done.”
“Did your—”
“Yes, I got through all right. We could hear each other fine this time.” He lit a cigarette; it had been hours since he had had one, had found a free moment. By now the arduous, prolonged task of reaching Joe Chip had depleted him. “Do you have an amphetamine dispenser nearby?” he asked the moratorium owner.
“In the hall outside the consultation lounge.” The eager-to-please creature pointed.
Leaving the lounge, Runciter made his way to the amphetamine dispenser; he inserted a coin, pushed the choice lever, and, into the drop slot, a small familiar object slid with a tinkling sound.
The pill made him feel better. But then he thought about his appointment with Len Niggelman two hours from now and wondered if he could really make it. There’s been too much going on, he decided. I’m not ready to make my formal report to the Society; I’ll have to vid Niggelman and ask for a postponement.
Using a pay phone, he called Niggelman back in the North American Confederation. “Len,” he said, “I can’t do any more today. I’ve spent the last twelve hours trying to get through to my people in cold-pac, and I’m exhausted. Would tomorrow be okay?”
Niggelman said, “The sooner you file your official, formal statement with us, the sooner we can begin action against Hollis. My legal department says it’s open and shut; they’re champing at the bit.”
“They think they can make a civil charge stick?”
“Civil and criminal. They’ve been talking to the New York district attorney. But until you make a formal, notarized report to us—”
“Tomorrow,” Runciter promised. “After I get some sleep. This has damn near finished me off.” This loss of all my best people, he said to himself. Especially Joe Chip. My organization is depleted and we won’t be able to resume commercial operations for months, maybe years. God, he thought, where am I going to get inertials to replace those I’ve lost? And where am I going to find a tester like Joe?
Niggelman said, “Sure, Glen. Get a good night’s sleep and then meet me in my office tomorrow, say at ten o’clock our time.”
“Thanks,” Runciter said. He rang off, then threw himself heavily down on a pink-plastic couch across the corridor from the phone. I can’t find a tester like Joe, he said to himself. The fact of the matter is that Runciter Associates is finished.
The moratorium owner came in, then, putting in another of his untimely appearances. “Can I get you anything, Mr. Runciter? A cup of coffee? Another amphetamine, perhaps a twelve-hour spansule? In my office I have some twenty-four-hour spansules; one of those would get you back up into action for hours, if not all night.”
“All night,” Runciter said, “I intend to sleep.”
“Then how about a—”
“Flap away,” Runciter grated. The moratorium owner scuttled off, leaving him alone. Why did I have to pick this place? Runciter asked himself. I guess because Ella’s here. It is, after all, the best; that’s why she’s here, and, hence, why they’re all here. Think of them, he reflected, so many who were so recently on this side of the casket. What a catastrophe.
Ella, he said to himself, remembering. I’d better talk to her again for a moment, to let her know how things are going. That’s, after all, what I told her I’d do.
Getting to his feet, he started off in search of the moratorium owner.
Am I going to get that damn Jory this time? he asked himself. Or will I be able to keep Ella in focus long enough to tell her what Joe said? It’s become so hard to hang onto her now, with Jory growing and expanding and feeding on her and maybe on others over there in half-life. The moratorium should do something about him; Jory’s a hazard to everyone here. Why do they let him go on? he asked himself.
He thought, Maybe because they can’t stop him.
Maybe there’s never been anyone in half-life like Jory before.
FIFTEEN
* * *
Could it be that I have bad breath, Tom? Well, Ed, if you’re worried about that, try today’s new Ubik, with powerful germicidal foaming action, guaranteed safe when taken as directed.
The door of the ancient hotel room swung open. Don Denny, accompanied by a middle-aged, responsible-looking man with neatly trimmed gray hair, entered. Denny, his face strained with apprehension, said, “How are you, Joe? Why aren’t you lying down? For chrissake, get onto the bed.”
“Please lie down, Mr. Chip,” the doctor said as he set his medical bag on the vanity table and opened it up. “Is there pain along with the enervation and the difficult respiration?” He approached the bed with an old-fashioned stethoscope and cumbersome blood-pressure-reading equipment. “Do you have any history of cardiac involvement, Mr. Chip? Or your mother or father? Unbutton your shirt, please.” He drew up a wooden chair beside the bed, seated himself expectantly on it.
Joe said, “I’m okay now.”
“Let him listen to your heart,” Denny said tersely.
“Okay.” Joe stretched out on the bed and unbuttoned his shirt. “Runciter managed to get through to me,” he said to Denny. “We’re in cold-pac; he’s on the other side trying to reach us. Someone else is trying to injure us. Pat didn’t do it, or, anyhow, she didn’t do it alone. Neither she nor Runciter knows what’s going on. When you opened the door did you see Runciter?”
“No,” Denny said.
“He was sitting across the room from me,” Joe said. “Two, three minutes ago. ‘Sorry, Joe,’ he said; that was the last thing he said to me and then he cut contact, stopped communicating, just canceled himself out. Look on the vanity table and see if he left the spray can of Ubik.”
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