The Variable Man

by Philip Kindred Dick

  Dixon twisted nervously. Only a few minutes. Any time, now. He shaded his eyes and peered up at the sky. No sign of them yet. He wondered about Reinhart. No signal had come up from below. Clearly, Reinhart had run into trouble. No doubt there was desperate fighting going on in the maze of underground tunnels, the intricate web of passages that honeycombed the earth below the mountains.

  In the air, Sherikov’s few defense ships were taking on the police raiders. Outnumbered, the defense ships darted rapidly, wildly, putting up a futile fight.

  Sherikov’s guards streamed out onto the plain. Crouching and running, they advanced toward the stalled cars. The police airships screeched down at them, guns thundering.

  Dixon held his breath. When the missiles arrived—

  The first missile struck. A section of the mountain vanished, turned to smoke and foaming gasses. The wave of heat slapped Dixon across the face, spinning him around. Quickly he re-entered his ship and took off, shooting rapidly away from the scene. He glanced back. A second and third missile had arrived. Great gaping pits yawned among the mountains, vast sections missing like broken teeth. Now the missiles could penetrate to the underground laboratories below.

  On the ground, the surface cars halted beyond the danger area, waiting for the missile attack to finish. When the eighth missile had struck, the cars again moved forward. No more missiles fell.

  Dixon swung his ship around, heading back toward the scene. The laboratory was exposed. The top sections of it had been ripped open. The laboratory lay like a tin can, torn apart by mighty explosions, its first floors visible from the air. Men and cars were pouring down into it, fighting with the guards swarming to the surface.

  Dixon watched intently. Sherikov’s men were bringing up heavy guns, big robot artillery. But the police ships were diving again. Sherikov’s defensive patrols had been cleaned from the sky. The police ships whined down, arcing over the exposed laboratory. Small bombs fell, whistling down, pin-pointing the artillery rising to the surface on the remaining lift stages.

  Abruptly Dixon’s vidscreen clicked. Dixon turned toward it.

  Reinhart’s features formed. “Call off the attack.” His uniform was torn. A deep bloody gash crossed his cheek. He grinned sourly at Dixon, pushing his tangled hair back out of his face. “Quite a fight.”

  “Sherikov—”

  “He’s called off his guards. We’ve agreed to a truce. It’s all over. No more needed.” Reinhart gasped for breath, wiping grime and sweat from his neck. “Land your ship and come down here at once.”

  “The variable man?”

  “That comes next,” Reinhart said grimly. He adjusted his gun tube. “I want you down here, for that part. I want you to be in on the kill.”

  Reinhart turned away from the vidscreen. In the corner of the room Sherikov stood silently, saying nothing. “Well?” Reinhart barked. “Where is he? Where will I find him?”

  Sherikov licked his lips nervously, glancing up at Reinhart. “Commissioner, are you sure—”

  “The attack has been called off. Your labs are safe. So is your life. Now it’s your turn to come through.” Reinhart gripped his gun, moving toward Sherikov. “Where is he?”

  For a moment Sherikov hesitated. Then slowly his huge body sagged, defeated. He shook his head wearily. “All right. I’ll show you where he is.” His voice was hardly audible, a dry whisper. “Down this way. Come on.”

  Reinhart followed Sherikov out of the room, into the corridor. Police and guards were working rapidly, clearing the debris and ruins away, putting out the hydrogen fires that burned everywhere. “No tricks, Sherikov.”

  “No tricks.” Sherikov nodded resignedly. “Thomas Cole is by himself. In a wing lab off the main rooms.”

  “Cole?”

  “The variable man. That’s his name.” The Pole turned his massive head a little. “He has a name.”

  Reinhart waved his gun. “Hurry up. I don’t want anything to go wrong. This is the part I came for.”

  “You must remember something, Commissioner.”

  “What is it?”

  Sherikov stopped walking. “Commissioner, nothing must happen to the globe. The control turret. Everything depends on it, the war, our whole—”

  “I know. Nothing will happen to the damn thing. Let’s go.”

  “If it should get damaged—”

  “I’m not after the globe. I’m interested only in—in Thomas Cole.”

  They came to the end of the corridor and stopped before a metal door. Sherikov nodded at the door. “In there.”

  Reinhart moved back. “Open the door.”

  “Open it yourself. I don’t want to have anything to do with it.”

  Reinhart shrugged. He stepped up to the door. Holding his gun level he raised his hand, passing it in front of the eye circuit. Nothing happened.

  Reinhart frowned. He pushed the door with his hand. The door slid open. Reinhart was looking into a small laboratory. He glimpsed a workbench, tools, heaps of equipment, measuring devices, and in the center of the bench the transparent globe, the control turret.

  “Cole?” Reinhart advanced quickly into the room. He glanced around him, suddenly alarmed. “Where—”

  The room was empty. Thomas Cole was gone.

  When the first missile struck, Cole stopped work and sat listening.

  Far off, a distant rumble rolled through the earth, shaking the floor under him. On the bench, tools and equipment danced up and down. A pair of pliers fell crashing to the floor. A box of screws tipped over, spilling its minute contents out.

  Cole listened for a time. Presently he lifted the transparent globe from the bench. With carefully controlled hands he held the globe up, running his fingers gently over the surface, his faded blue eyes thoughtful. Then, after a time, he placed the globe back on the bench, in its mount.

  The globe was finished. A faint glow of pride moved through the variable man. The globe was the finest job he had ever done.

  The deep rumblings ceased. Cole became instantly alert. He jumped down from his stool, hurrying across the room to the door. For a moment he stood by the door listening intently. He could hear noise on the other side, shouts, guards rushing past, dragging heavy equipment, working frantically.

  A rolling crash echoed down the corridor and lapped against his door. The concussion spun him around. Again a tide of energy shook the walls and floor and sent him down on his knees.

  The lights flickered and winked out.

  Cole fumbled in the dark until he found a flashlight. Power failure. He could hear crackling flames. Abruptly the lights came on again, an ugly yellow, then faded back out. Cole bent down and examined the door with his flashlight. A magnetic lock. Dependent on an externally induced electric flux. He grabbed a screwdriver and pried at the door. For a moment it held. Then it fell open.

  Cole stepped warily out into the corridor. Everything was in shambles. Guards wandered everywhere, burned and half-blinded. Two lay groaning under a pile of wrecked equipment. Fused guns, reeking metal. The air was heavy with the smell of burning wiring and plastic. A thick cloud that choked him and made him bend double as he advanced.

  “Halt,” a guard gasped feebly, struggling to rise. Cole pushed past him and down the corridor. Two small robot guns, still functioning, glided past him hurriedly toward the drumming chaos of battle. He followed.

  At a major intersection the fight was in full swing. Sherikov’s guards fought Security police, crouched behind pillars and barricades, firing wildly, desperately. Again the whole structure shuddered as a great booming blast ignited some place above. Bombs? Shells?

  Cole threw himself down as a violet beam cut past his ear and disintegrated the wall behind him. A Security policeman, wild-eyed, firing erratically. One of Sherikov’s guards winged him and his gun skidded to the floor.

  A robot cannon turned toward him as he made his way past the intersection. He began to run. The cannon rolled along behind him, aiming itself uncertainly. Cole hunched ove
r as he shambled rapidly along, gasping for breath. In the flickering yellow light he saw a handful of Security police advancing, firing expertly, intent on a line of defense Sherikov’s guards had hastily set up.

  The robot cannon altered its course to take them on, and Cole escaped around a corner.

  He was in the main lab, the big chamber where Icarus himself rose, the vast squat column.

  Icarus! A solid wall of guards surrounded him, grim-faced, hugging guns and protection shields. But the Security police were leaving Icarus alone. Nobody wanted to damage him. Cole evaded a lone guard tracking him and reached the far side of the lab.

  It took him only a few seconds to find the force field generator. There was no switch. For a moment that puzzled him—and then he remembered. The guard had controlled it from his wrist.

  Too late to worry about that. With his screwdriver he unfastened the plate over the generator and ripped out the wiring in handfuls. The generator came loose and he dragged it away from the wall. The screen was off, thank God. He managed to carry the generator into a side corridor.

  Crouched in a heap, Cole bent over the generator, deft fingers flying. He pulled the wiring to him and laid it out on the floor, tracing the circuits with feverish haste.

  The adaptation was easier than he had expected. The screen flowed at right angles to the wiring, for a distance of six feet. Each lead was shielded on one side; the field radiated outward, leaving a hollow cone in the center. He ran the wiring through his belt, down his trouser legs, under his shirt, all the way to his wrists and ankles.

  He was just snatching up the heavy generator when two Security police appeared. They raised their blasters and fired point-blank.

  Cole clicked on the screen. A vibration leaped through him that snapped his jaw and danced up his body. He staggered away, half-stupefied by the surging force that radiated out from him. The violet rays struck the field and deflected harmlessly.

  He was safe.

  He hurried on down the corridor, past a ruined gun and sprawled bodies still clutching blasters. Great drifting clouds of radioactive particles billowed around him. He edged by one cloud nervously. Guards lay everywhere, dying and dead, partly destroyed, eaten and corroded by the hot metallic salts in the air. He had to get out—and fast.

  At the end of the corridor a whole section of the fortress was in ruins. Towering flames leaped on all sides. One of the missiles had penetrated below ground level.

  Cole found a lift that still functioned. A load of wounded guards was being raised to the surface. None of them paid any attention to him. Flames surged around the lift, licking at the wounded. Workmen were desperately trying to get the lift into action. Cole leaped onto the lift. A moment later it began to rise, leaving the shouts and the flames behind.

  The lift emerged on the surface and Cole jumped off. A guard spotted him and gave chase. Crouching, Cole dodged into a tangled mass of twisted metal, still white-hot and smoking. He ran for a distance, leaping from the side of a ruined defense-screen tower, onto the fused ground and down the side of a hill. The ground was hot underfoot. He hurried as fast as he could, gasping for breath. He came to a long slope and scrambled up the side.

  The guard who had followed was gone, lost behind in the rolling clouds of ash that drifted from the ruins of Sherikov’s underground fortress.

  Cole reached the top of the hill. For a brief moment he halted to get his breath and figure where he was. It was almost evening. The sun was beginning to set. In the darkening sky a few dots still twisted and rolled, black specks that abruptly burst into flame and fused out again.

  Cole stood up cautiously, peering around him. Ruins stretched out below, on all sides, the furnace from which he had escaped. A chaos of incandescent metal and debris, gutted and wrecked beyond repair. Miles of tangled rubbish and half-vaporized equipment.

  He considered. Everyone was busy putting out the fires and pulling the wounded to safety. It would be awhile before he was missed. But as soon as they realized he was gone they’d be after him. Most of the laboratory had been destroyed. Nothing lay back that way.

  Beyond the ruins lay the great Ural peaks, the endless mountains, stretching out as far as the eye could see.

  Mountains and green forests. A wilderness. They’d never find him there.

  Cole started along the side of the hill, walking slowly and carefully, his screen generator under his arm. Probably in the confusion he could find enough food and equipment to last him indefinitely. He could wait until early morning, then circle back toward the ruins and load up. With a few tools and his own innate skill he would get along fine. A screwdriver, hammer, nails, odds and ends—

  A great hum sounded in his ears. It swelled to a deafening roar. Startled, Cole whirled around. A vast shape filled the sky behind him, growing each moment. Cole stood frozen, utterly transfixed. The shape thundered over him, above his head, as he stood stupidly, rooted to the spot.

  Then, awkwardly, uncertainly, he began to run. He stumbled and fell and rolled a short distance down the side of the hill. Desperately, he struggled to hold onto the ground. His hands dug wildly, futilely, into the soft soil, trying to keep the generator under his arm at the same time.

  A flash, and a blinding spark of light around him.

  The spark picked him up and tossed him like a dry leaf. He grunted in agony as searing fire crackled about him, a blazing inferno that gnawed and ate hungrily through his screen. He spun dizzily and fell through the cloud of fire, down into a pit of darkness, a vast gulf between two hills. His wiring ripped off. The generator tore out of his grip and was lost behind. Abruptly, his force field ceased.

  Cole lay in the darkness at the bottom of the hill. His whole body shrieked in agony as the unholy fire played over him. He was a blazing cinder, a half-consumed ash flaming in a universe of darkness. The pain made him twist and crawl like an insect, trying to burrow into the ground. He screamed and shrieked and struggled to escape, to get away from the hideous fire. To reach the curtain of darkness beyond, where it was cool and silent, where the flames couldn’t crackle and eat at him.

  He reached imploringly out, into the darkness, groping feebly toward it, trying to pull himself into it. Gradually, the glowing orb that was his own body faded. The impenetrable chaos of night descended. He allowed the tide to sweep over him, to extinguish the searing fire.

  Dixon landed his ship expertly, bringing it to a halt in front of an overturned defense tower. He leaped out and hurried across the smoking ground.

  From a lift Reinhart appeared, surrounded by his Security police. “He got away from us! He escaped!”

  “He didn’t escape,” Dixon answered. “I got him myself.”

  Reinhart quivered violently. “What do you mean?”

  “Come along with me. Over in this direction.” He and Reinhart climbed the side of a demolished hill, both of them panting for breath. “I was landing. I saw a figure emerge from a lift and run toward the mountains, like some sort of animal. When he came out in the open I dived on him and released a phosphorus bomb.”

  “Then he’s—dead?”

  “I don’t see how anyone could have lived through a phosphorus bomb.” They reached the top of the hill. Dixon halted, then pointed excitedly down into the pit beyond the hill. “There!”

  They descended cautiously. The ground was singed and burned clean. Clouds of smoke hung heavily in the air. Occasional fires still flickered here and there. Reinhart coughed and bent over to see. Dixon flashed on a pocket flare and set it beside the body.

  The body was charred, half destroyed by the burning phosphorus. It lay motionless, one arm over its face, mouth open, legs sprawled grotesquely. Like some abandoned rag doll, tossed in an incinerator and consumed almost beyond recognition.

  “He’s alive!” Dixon muttered. He felt around curiously. “Must have had some kind of protection screen. Amazing that a man could—”

  “It’s him? It’s really him?”

  “Fits the description.”
Dixon tore away a handful of burned clothing. “This is the variable man. What’s left of him, at least.”

  Reinhart sagged with relief. “Then we’ve finally got him. The data is accurate. He’s no longer a factor.”

  Dixon got out his blaster and released the safety catch thoughtfully. “If you want, I can finish the job right now.”

  At that moment Sherikov appeared, accompanied by two armed Security police. He strode grimly down the hillside, black eyes snapping. “Did Cole—” He broke off. “Good God.”

  “Dixon got him with a phosphorus bomb,” Reinhart said noncommittally. “He had reached the surface and was trying to get into the mountains.”

  Sherikov turned wearily away. “He was an amazing person. During the attack he managed to force the lock on his door and escape. The guards fired at him, but nothing happened. He had rigged up some kind of force field around him. Something he adapted.”

  “Anyhow, it’s over with,” Reinhart answered. “Did you have SRB plates made up on him?”

  Sherikov reached slowly into his coat. He drew out a manila envelope. “Here’s all the information I collected about him, while he was with me.”

  “Is it complete? Everything previous has been merely fragmentary.”

  “As near complete as I could make it. It includes photographs and diagrams of the interior of the globe. The turret wiring he did for me. I haven’t had a chance even to look at them.” Sherikov fingered the envelope. “What are you going to do with Cole?”

  “Have him loaded up, taken back to the city—and officially put to sleep by the Euthanasia Ministry.”

  “Legal murder?” Sherikov’s lips twisted. “Why don’t you simply do it right here and get it over with?”

  Reinhart grabbed the envelope and stuck it in his pocket. “I’ll turn this right over to the machines.” He motioned to Dixon. “Let’s go. Now we can notify the fleet to prepare for the attack on Centaurus.” He turned briefly back to Sherikov. “When can Icarus be launched?”