If it demands we give up the bomb I’m to push a button newly fixed under my desk, and someone responsible will come by. Cracks me up. My guess is if I push that button we can both kiss the world goodbye. That’s why, in my opinion, they’ve cleared this bit of Tenderloin and ‘plumbers’ turned up yesterday to work on the boiler in the basement.
Luckily, President Truman recognises the CIA for the fools they are. The FBI also tried to muscle in. According to one of Truman’s men the dope is they’ve losing clout since the White House found a photograph of a certain fat fruit in a pink tutu. He said I might not want to repeat that. Anyway, the President agreed to the Cynocephali’s demands to meet me. I mean, when a dog-headed thing in a silver suit turns up in the Oval Office, and Secret Service bullets bounce off it, and it says, Chill, all I want to do it talk to this guy in California… I don’t doubt the Feds will be crawling all over my life once this thing is done.
“Before we talk,” I say.
“Why me?” The Cynocephali does a passable imitation of my voice. “The obvious answer is, ‘Why not?’” It shrugs, heavy shouldered, and I’m sure it’s mocking me. It was bad enough it turned up in a belted trench. Had it worn a trilby I’d have known it for sure. “But that would be unkind. So let me say you were chosen. Very carefully.”
I run through my resumé in my head while it sips the highball and spins on my swivel chair, grinning all the while. Ex SFPD, half decent war, functioning PI? Nothing there to attract the attention of the White House, never mind my visitor. The skills I bring to the table are few. I make a decent omelette; I can find a lost dog or a missing kid. I can tell you if your wife is having an affair, if you’re too fat-headed to work that out for yourself; or your husband is paying too much attention to his secretary, whether she wants it or not. They’re not unique skills. In the Tenderloin they’re not even rare. You’d have a harder time finding a decent cook than a licensed PI.
“For my skills?”
“Skills?” It says, voice light. “No. For your absolute averageness.”
It ticks off my charms. Human, white, male, middle-aged, divorced once, unimpressive job record, near alcoholic, too sick of both political parties to bother to vote, no kids, my ex wife returns my letters unopened… I’ve been chosen, it tells me, because I’m paradigmatic of my planet’s dominant culture – that is, early Fifties America – to such an extent I’ll probably want to ask what “paradigmatic” means and waste time picking over the answer. “Instead,” it says. “We should get on.”
“With what?”
“With this irresistible offer of mine.”
I sit back in the chair usually used by my clients. Weeping widows, unhappy mobsters, crooked insurance agents, you know the types. I’m doing my best to look like someone used to cutting deals with dog-headed negotiators. I’d light a cigar, but it’s already said, almost apologetically, that it really hates smoke. A side effect of the dog stuff. And I haven’t reached a point where I want to light up simply to be rude. “The floor’s all yours,” I say.
“You’re in debt.”
Yeah, I know that. I owe seven weeks rent on this office. Some months it’s a struggle to make the mortgage on my apartment. If I don’t renew my paperwork soon the grace period is going to run out and I won’t be licensed as a PI much longer. “You’re offering help to clear my debts?”
The Cynocephali sighs and I almost light that cigar after all.
“Not your debts. Your world’s. Our articles of agreement allow us to collect now but we’re willing to help you restructure.” He sounds like a fancy loan shark, the kind you find on Wall Street in suits and big cars. “We think you’ll like our terms.”
“Low initial interest, rising later? A little more cash to sweeten the deal?”
“No more cash,” it says, looking shocked. “You’ve had that.”
“When did we have it?” I’m getting a little cross. “You’d think we’d have noticed if we’d been borrowing from dog-headed people.”
He spun his chair, sat back and steepled his fingers. I notice he has very long nails. “When I say you,” he says. “I mean Earth.”
“Who had it?” I demand. “The Soviets?”
It looks slightly shifty for a moment. As if we’ve reached small print it’s been hoping I wouldn’t read on the back of whatever imaginary bit of paper we’re arguing about. “When I say Earth, I mean this planet, just… Not you people living on it right now.”
“So this is an old debt?”
“Oh no,” it says, “the loan hasn’t been made. Won’t be for millennia. The borrowers have just chosen an inverse interest model for financing. We’d be quite within our rights to simply collect, you know. We’re trying to help.”
“Inverse interest model?”
“You, Tito Cravelli, have a mortgage?” It looks pleased with itself for having remembered the word, or perhaps for coming up with a primitive analogy I might actually understand. “If I’ve got this right, you borrowed money, bought somewhere near here to live and will pay back the bank a much bigger amount? Now, suppose your great grandfather bought where you live for you. It would cost him much less, right? Even less if his great grandfather did it. Now imagine his great grandfather settled the debt in advance. Practically nothing.”
“To me,” I say. “To him it’s probably still a lot.”
“Well, there is that. The point is, a debt is being created and must be paid.” It’s obviously decided the time’s come to get tough.
“What do you believe we owe you?”
The Secret Service agent with a bulge bigger than me under his arm who delivered my visitor, and popped ahead to check my office was safe, had suggested I be polite and assume my visitor was serious. Very serious. When I asked what that meant he said it was, need to know – and I didn’t.
But then he doesn’t know what this is about. And nor do I, but I’m about to find out and for a while… Well, until my visitor goes and the Secret Service come flooding back I’ll be the only person in the world to does.
“You borrowed an extra hundred thousand years.” It shrugs. “I know, seems like nothing, but you were time critical. That extra hundred got you out of a fix and let you reclaim the tens of millions you were about to lose. So it was a good deal, really. Now we’re here to collect.”
“How can we pay you back a hundred thousand years?”
“We don’t want years,” it says. “We have a surfit of years. You can’t get rid of years for love or money. We want your moon.”
I gape at him. I’ve handled most things, from happy undertakers to honest cops, and it’s a long time since someone threw me this kind of curve ball. But for a moment I feel the room swim around me and then settle. Cars growl in the distance. The Venetian blinds are down and still dusty, my filing cabinet is still scuffed, the gash bin is still black round the inside where I tossed in a cigar and built myself an accidental bonfire. It even still smells like my office. Still, somehow, it seems to me the world’s changed.
“They offered the Moon as collateral?”
The Cynocephali nods. “You’ll cope. It will mean an end to tides. A few changes to the ocean currents. Maybe some new weather patterns…” It hesitates, then says what it was intending to say. “Obviously, the moon produces an equatorial bulge in your oceans. You’ll find water distributes to higher latitudes.” He sees my face, sighs. “Your coastline’s going to change.”
“How badly?”
“Badly’s a loaded word. You’ll need to redraw a few maps. We haven’t modelled this in detail but I can give you a general idea.” He pulls a slab-like device from its pocket and dances its claws across the top, before turning the slab towards me. Africa’s bigger, the western edge of Europe’s mostly islands, Japan seems to have largely disappeared. “Your night sky will be darker,” it adds. “Probably take you a while to grow used to that. And there’s that whole spin thing. Your days will probably get shorter as the earth’s rotation speeds up.”
“What’s the alternative?”
It looks at me.
“You said you had an offer I’d find irresistible. There’s nothing irresistible about losing the moon. So you must have something else in mind.”
“Well,” it says, stretching the word. “We could always fold your debt into a new one with a payment plan that works for you.” Outside, a police siren howls several streets away and I wonder if it has anything to do with this meeting. The Tenderloin’s a place the SFPD try to avoid unless they have no choice. Inside my office, the overhead fan clicks away in a language only it can understand. I have Jim Beam in my bottom drawer. A humidor that once belonged to a Mexican gangster on my desk. I desperately want a cigar or a shot, preferably both, but the thing’s waiting for my reaction.
“Lay the new deal out for me,” I say.
“We take the Sun instead.”
I gape at the creature for a second time. It seems perfectly serious.
“It’s a good deal. You get to keep the Moon now and we come back later to take the Sun. I can’t offer fairer than that.”
“How much later?”
Reaching for its pad, it taps and the screen comes up with a number that, were it on a cheque, would make Wall Street dizzy with delight. If we’re talking years that’s a long long time from now. “The way to think of this,” it says, “is the future sold you out. So have to protect yourself, and the easiest way to do that is take up my offer. In fact, sign now and I’ll throw in a bonus.” It grins. “Jupiter.”
My face probably says it all.
“Largest of the gas giants? 500,000,000 odd miles away, two and a half times the mass of all the other planets in your system put together? Third brightest object in your sky?” For a split second the dog-head looks like a sulky child who’s done the wrong homework.
“What about Jupiter?”
“Just for you, just because I like you… when we do come to take the Sun, we’ll shift the Earth into a new orbit around Jupiter before we do anything else. Well, we’ll turn Jupiter into a little sun for you first, or there’d be no point moving you, would there?”
This is the point I help myself to a whisky, and listen to three minutes of small talk as it pretends to give me time to think about its offer while talking enough to ensure that isn’t possible. All the same, inside myself I know I like this deal. As some time, in the impossibly far future, we’ll give up the Sun. In return, we ‘d keep the Moon now; and, as a bonus prize, they’ll relocate the planet for us and throw in a new sun to keep us warm before they take the old one. But I don’t want it to know I’m keen.
“Yeah, right,” I say. “Like any of that’s even possible.”
It glances round my office – and for a second I see myself through its cold gaze. It’s like the Dutch settlers offering the Algonquin beads for the island that will become Manhattan. If I refuse how do I know the dog head won’t give me a stripy blanket as a present anyway. And we’ll only discover it’s a trick and the blanket is infected with smallpox when everyone begins to die.
The dog head turns its cold gaze on me.
“Of course it’s possible. The gas giant you call Jupiter is mostly hydrogen anyway. Like the sun,” it adds helpfully. “Obviously, it’s far too small to achieve stellar ignition for itself and even increasing its density won’t really help. So, we’re going to have to cheat a little.” It tips its head to one side. It could be thinking, but I suspect it’s just trying to impress me. “The planet core is tiny, of course. So that’s no real help. Our best bet is to seed the centre with tiny black holes. We’ll have to tune those carefully. Make them self-replenishing. You know the kind of thing.”
“I’ll give the White House your message.”
“Mr. Carelli, you misunderstand me.” It produces its pad again, and places it on my desk, not with a bang but forcefully enough to make the point that chitchat is at an end. “I don’t need to negotiate with local leaders. I’m already negotiating with you. Your world owes us. Decide now if we get repaid or the debt is rescheduled.”
Mostly debt collectors kick your door off its hinges on their way in, and kick your balls on the way out. This one scares me more, for all my door and privates are intact. I think about our world without a moon and that reworked map. And I think about those bastards in the far future. People I didn’t know and who might not even be people by then. They sold us out. It’s not as if we owe them anything. All the same, I want to say I got us the best deal I could.
It watches in distaste as I take a cigar from my box, bite off the end and spit it at the gash bin, reaching for my desk lighter and taking my time as I put a flame to the end. I blow smoke at the ceiling and watch it swirl as the fan folds it into the air. ‘This sun you’re going to make. It’s going to work? You guarantee that. It’s in the contract?’
It turns the pad towards me. The contract is ten lines. Simple. A real moneylender’s special. What was owed. The new deal. What will be owed. The fact the contract is entered into voluntarily with no threats applied. There is nothing about the new sun actually working, and I make the creature add this before taking the leadless pencil it offers me and signing where it points:
Tito Cravelli
Larkin Street, San Francisco
1951
Document 2
To Deputy Director
From Chief: DOI
Top Secret
POTUS asks us to confirm the Cravelli issue has been dealt with. For my own satisfaction, please confirm an EZ 21 was instigated and not an EZ 19 or below. I will let you have my decision on the other matter after I’ve heard from the bureau.
Document 3
For the eyes of the Chief; DOI only
From Deputy Director
Top Secret
I can confirm – and have confirmed with the Oval Office – that there is no evidence Tito Cavelli existed. No records of any kind are available. No copies or originals of the following:
Birth Certificate
Social Security card or number
Driver’s license
Passport
Library card
Medical Insurance card
Medical records
Dental records
School records
Exams taken or certificates issued
Army Service record
Military ID
PI license
Mortgage forms
Rent book for any building
Death certificate
Can I ask if a decision has been reached on the PKD issue?
Document 4
From Chief; DOI
To Deputy Director
Top Secret
The FBI’s new dept. of psychological affairs has asked us NOT to instigate an EZ 21 or EZ 19 on PKD. The White House has authorised JEH to use him as a test case and I include a copy of their proposed reply (plus their most recent communication to me). As of now, PKD becomes their problem. I understand they will be watching the man for life.
Document 5
From Head; Dept. of Psychological Affairs
To Chief: DOI
Top Secret
We note from your bureau’s records that the subject is of nervous disposition, dislikes authority, recently dropped out of the University of California, Berkeley, and currently works in a record store, that he recently married, and has aspirations to be a novelist.
This is, we feel, both an ideal bedrock and fertile ground on which to sow our ideas. In the first instance, we will be writing as follows.
Please note, we suggest our agent claims to work for your Deputy Director, since this will supply a plausible link between your holding letter and this reply [attached].
Document 6
To Philip K. Dick
From Joan Reiss
Dear Mr. Dick,
I’ve been passed your letter by my section head. He asks me to extend the dept’s apologies for the tardiness of this reply to your letter about Mr. Tito Cavelli, your “missing friend”. He furthe
r asks me to tell you there is no record of a Mr. Cavelli in any government file. The apartment you say Mr. Cravelli owned has been lived in by a Polish refugee for the last five years. There was no Cavelli Detective Agency at the address you gave. More to the point, the Bureau of Investigative Services in Sacramento had no record of issuing a Mr. Cavelli with a PI license. As you might know, the office block in which you say this office existed was recently demolished but we are certain of our facts.
Yours truly,
Joan Reiss
P.S. I probably shouldn’t say this – in fact, I’m supposed to be curt with you for wasting the bureau’s time – but I loved the short story you sent us and just want to say it’s as good as anything I’ve read in a magazine. You should be a writer. As we’re both fans of science fiction, I wondered if you’d like to meet? We could always have a drink after work. Do let me know if you like the idea.
They couldn’t do a thing to stop me buying it. So I did. And I’m having my fun.
* * *
A Roman dupondius, a brass coin used in the Roman Empire and Republic. The reverse (shown) depicts a moon and seven stars. The face shows Faustina the Younger, wife of Marcus Aurelius. (After 176 AD)
MAGNUS LUCRETIUS
MARK CHARAN NEWTON
People call me Felix, or sometimes Felix the Athenian. Though, I have little memory of Athens, or even Earth for that matter. I was manufactured, or so it has been explained to me, in the workshops of Athens during the two-hundred-year period where Greece had returned to ancient and more primitive city-states. During those ongoing conflicts, I was fortunate enough to be removed from the violence. I was fortunate enough to become a slave.
The Lowest Heaven Page 17
