Philip K. Dick is Dead, Alas

by Michael Bishop

  He took a pocket calculator out of one pocket and held it up to the door as if doing something official. Then he studied the lock, mulling how to get in without a commotion. He put the calculator away and felt in his pocket for a length of clipped coat hanger that he had brought from LaGrange. He maneuvered this wire, pointed end first, into the lock opening.

  Don’t let them have a dead bolt, he prayed. Please, Holy Jesus, no dead bolt.

  The probing coat hanger bent, and Loan, cursing, had to struggle to pull it out again. Worriedly, he surveyed the backyard and the alley between the duplex and the clapboard house next door. No one was watching, but he could hear traffic grinding through town, only two blocks away. He probed at the lock some more, sweat trickling down his flanks, a mustache of moistness shining above his lip.

  Then, bitterly, he tossed the wire away. A decent LAC would’ve given us breaking-and-entering training, he thought. Watching old Hitchcock movies on TV just didn’t get it.

  A heating-and-cooling unit rested near one of the apartment’s rear windows. Lone Boy climbed on top of the unit, jimmied loose the window’s lightweight screen, and dropped this screen into the grass. The window itself was unlocked, and Loan, not believing his luck, forced it open by banging the heels of his hands against the top sash. Rattling and creaking, the window rose, and Loan could see into the Bonner-Pickfords’ bedroom. Leaning across the gap between the duplex and the cooling unit, he peered at his victims’ belongings. Startlingly, they reminded him of the kinds of junk that he and Tuyet owned: cheap pine dressers, a bookcase of planks and cinder blocks, a swag lamp. Etcetera.

  Rob your buddy, Lone Boy mockingly encouraged himself. Go in there and steal from your friend at the mall.

  Another part of him said, altogether sincerely, Just go home, Le Boi Loan. Give up this dirty mission.

  But if you don’t do it, asshole, you’ll have to get “refreshed” by the people at Miss Grace’s fuckin’ LAC.

  Yeah, well, so what?

  What do you mean, so what?

  Will that be any worse than this? Than playing thief to save your fuckin’ self some time and embarrassment?

  And it seemed to Lone Boy, suspended like a bridge between the duplex and the cooling unit, that, in this impromptu argument, his better half was mounting the stronger case. He should shut this window, climb down, and go home to Tuyet and the girls. Whatever vindictive punishment the Liberty Belle decided to mete out, well, he must accept it as his due. At least he wouldn’t have to deceive his conscience every night to get a little sleep…

  Then he heard the Growl. Off to his right, padding around the east wing of the L-shaped duplex, came the imperious Viking. Loan had to look under his arm to see the husky, but the Growl gave him to know that unless he took action, he would soon be dog meat. He could jump down and run, but felt sure that Viking would overtake him before he reached the street. He would die of blood loss, his jugular spurting like a Roman candle. Meanwhile, straddling Loan, the dog would be disgustedly gagging down the flesh and veins torn from his throat.

  Not a good choice, Lone Boy decided.

  As Viking continued to advance, stalking rather than charging, Loan realized that the dog had slipped free of the collar to which Cal usually attached his chain. Vike had probably shaken it while Loan was banging at the window. In any event, the animal’s growl got deeper and more savage-sounding with each menacing step toward the cooling unit.

  Loan closed his eyes. What would Daredevil do in a situation like this? Daredevil, Matthew Murdock’s superhero alter ego, was blind, of course, but Vike’s growl would have alerted him to danger long ago. Maybe, in fact, as the husky tried to pull free of his collar, Daredevil—with his heightened senses and reflexes—would have detected the telltale jangling of dog tags, or even the beating of the animal’s heart, and sauntered around the duplex to befriend the husky and to recinch and tighten his collar.

  Thinking, Listen, asshole, you ain’t no fuckin’ Matt Murdock and you ain’t got no super powers, Loan opened his eyes and saw that Viking was about to leap. He’ll knock your ass right into the grass, and you’ll die with his fangs dripping venom into your eyes. So do something at least halfway smart, Lone Boy, and… MOVE!

  The only way to go was through the window. Lone Boy propelled himself into the bedroom, losing his hard hat as he struck the rug. He scrambled up, tugging at the pistol under his coat. Viking had already achieved the top of the cooling unit—Loan could hear his claws scritch-scratch-scritching on the metal—and a mere second or two later came exploding jaws-agape through the window.

  “Holy Jesus!” Loan cried, stumbling backward, careening into the hall. Maybe six feet away, a hollow-paneled door stood ajar. Loan jumped for it, insinuating himself between its edge and the doorjamb. As he did, he grabbed the inside knob and slammed the door shut after him.

  A narrow bathroom contained him. He pushed a button locking the door. Viking crashed against this panel—an upright sheet of stained elm—and kept on shouldering it. Loan freed his pistol, pointed it, backed away, and climbed into the bathtub. He drew the shower curtain to and waited, glad for both a hiding place and a little breathing room—if the dog actually managed to splinter the door.

  At least, Loan thought, he’s not barking. He’s a growler. But I hope to God the neighbors don’t hear him. I’m a No-Knock now, a No-Knock without credentials. If they catch me, they’ll say I’m a fuckin’ breaker and enterer, a bad-guy Phun Ky Cong. Which’ll be the end of my Horatio Alger hopes. O my beloved Tuyet, what the screamin’ fuck am I doing here?

  With his pistol protruding from the shower curtain, Lone Boy waited. Viking had stopped ramming the door. In fact, he had stopped growling. Now he was whimpering, yapping like a chihuahua, and intermittently pacing the corridor.

  A lull, of sorts.

  It lulled Loan, who, soon enough, let his pistol barrel drop and sat down on a triangular seat built into the shower stall. A brief rest, he thought. A brief rest and then I’ll get up and do something about that furry mother.

  KRESSH!

  Loan scrambled up again, his pistol leveled on the door. The dog had resumed battering its hollow panel.

  On the second collision—KRAK!—the button locking the door popped up. On the next impact—CHOK!—the bolt pulled clear of its harbor. On the third—KLUDD!—the door banged open, admitting the husky, who came flying at Loan in a flurry of snapping teeth and redly pinwheeling eyes. The door, flapping back, hit Viking in the flank. Although he yelped, the blow did not slow his attack.

  Frantically, Lone Boy squeezed off a shot. A tranquilizer dart struck Viking in the throat; the percussion of hammer-fall grumbled like August thunder. Deafened, Lone Boy fired again and again, at least five times, panicked by the tearing pressure of the husky’s teeth on his arm. As the descending weight of the animal bore him backward into the shower spigots, he tried to resist but at last gave up and slid down the tiles like a murder victim in a grade-B movie. A moment later, he was amazed to find that he had cracked neither a vertebra nor his vulnerable pumpkin head.

  Hey, asshole, you’re okay, but you’ve filled this beautiful dog with No-Knock knockout drops.

  Lone Boy crawled out from under. Gracefully, he eeled his way over the tub’s edge and then leaned back in to look at Viking’s body. But the husky’s eyes were already filmed, like those of a reptile. The dog resembled an elegant fur coat unceremoniously dumped in the Bonner-Pickfords’ bathtub.

  You’ve got to move your skinny little tail, Loan told himself. If anybody heard all that boom-boom-booming, you’re doomed.

  And if you’re doomed, you might as well make an effort to do what Miss Grace sent you to do. Right? Yeah, right. So see if you can find Mr. Pickford’s incriminating pile of Philip K. Dick samizdat manuscripts and haul them back to Her Majesty as hurry up as ever you goddamn can.

  Arm throbbing, eyes not altogether focused, Lone Boy stumbled about the duplex apartment, rummaging it for the Dickiana that Miss Grac
e wanted. He looked in bookcases, behind the sofa, in dresser drawers, in closets, under beds, in kitchen cabinets, and finally in the olive-green trunk where Cal actually kept them. He laid the embroidered cushion on top of this trunk aside, lifted the lid, and gazed down—with a kind of addled awe—at the spiral binders that were Cal’s prize possessions.

  You’ve come this far, he thought. So finish up right and take ‘em all—they’re your passports to freedom and prosperity.

  Loan got a grocery sack from the kitchen, a double-duty bag, and filled it with the binders. Nine in all. Crazy stuff. Now Wait for Last Year. Do Androids Dream of Ambitious Veeps? Stuff like that. Gonzo-weird crap that only a pinko or maybe a dude on horse would keep around.

  That was the sad thing about home-grown US citizens. A lot of them didn’t know what they had.

  The grocery bag with nine spiral binders in it was heavy. Loan supported it at his middle, knees bent, and let himself out the front door, just as if he lived in the duplex. Then he staggered across Chipley Street to the old Swish plant and around it to where his car was parked. Although it was still afternoon, and painfully bright, no one paid him any heed. Maybe they were all still out at that fake wake at the Barony. If so, Miss Grace’s stooge had given him a fine, fine tip.

  Goddamn, Lone Boy thought, driving home to LaGrange. Free at last. Great God Almighty, I’m free at last…

  18

  WHEN THE RAINS stopped, Cal looked down. Beside him, shaking water from his muscular forearms, stood Kenneth “Horsy” Stout, Jeff Bonner’s stablehand. He had just turned off the shower spigots, and he was squinting up at Cal from his concave, ebony face with a look hinting that Cal had just blown a billion cerebral neurons.

  “S’pose to get nekkid ‘fore you hop in here,” he said. “Do it that way, you mess up your duds.”

  “Hello, Horsy,” Cal said. “I was trying to cry.”

  “Your wife gonna cry when she sees what you done to your suit.”

  “She’ll cry when she sees everybody else seeing what I’ve done to my suit.”

  “Reckon so. So whyn’t you come on out here and change, Mister Cal? ‘S mostly all ridin’ garb, but it ain’t soaked through like the duds you’re wearin’ now.”

  What have I got to lose? Cal thought. He followed the crippled dwarf, a black man in his early fifties, into the saddle room and sat down in his drenched suit in front of a locker that Horsy had just opened.

  While Cal was removing his garments, the stablehand brought him a large, fluffy towel, a clean pair of boxer shorts, an undershirt, and some black socks. In the locker, Cal found riding britches, a silk shirt with puffed sleeves (Douglas Fairbanks or Errol Flynn might have worn it in a 1930s swashbuckler), riding boots, and a polo-player’s cap.

  “I wear this crap, I’m going to look like a friggin’ dude.”

  “Gonna look like Eve’s bare-ass Big Daddy if you don’t.”

  So Cal dried himself and grudgingly pulled on the equestrian gear. Everything was a near fit, even the boots. While he was tugging them on, Horsy brought him a beer from the refrigerator and sat down on the end of the bench with a can of his own.

  Cal quit tugging at his boot long enough to take an eye-burning swallow. A malty cold roared down his throat, washing away some of his shame at being dressed like an Ivy League Tory.

  “Thanks.”

  “Sorry ‘bout Miss Emily, Mr. Cal.”

  “Did you know her?”

  “When I was little—‘course I always been little—she was one soul who didn’t treat me like no freak. So I’m sorry ‘bout her. ‘Cep’ for the horses, I’da been at her funeral.”

  “Are you always out here, then?”

  “Near ‘bout. Sometimes I gotta be other places, ‘course, but I hafta have somebody take me there.”

  “Mister Jeff? Miss Suzi?”

  “If they ain’t too busy. If they is, well, then, somebody else—‘cause I do like to travel, Mr. Cal.”

  This was news to him. Cal supposed that Horsy confined himself to Brown Thrasher Barony not merely because his duties so dictated, but also because he felt uneasy under the prying eyes of strangers. (Of course, he had once seen Horsy sitting in a tree on Highway 27, but that had been an hallucination, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to mention that.) Actually, though, Cal knew only a few basic things about Horsy, most of which he had gleaned from the Bonners or his own haphazard observations.

  Horsy had his living quarters in the stable—not in the saddle room but in one of the haylofts over the thoroughbreds’ stalls. A bed, an army footlocker, a chifforobe, a reading lamp, not much else. But he liked the privacy of this arrangement, and Suzi said that she had often seen him gamboling about the stable, swinging from rafter to rafter, climbing barricades, even tightrope-walking the tops of stalls. He inhabited the place, in short, much in the way that the hunchback Quasimodo had inhabited the cathedral of Notre Dame. His dwarfism had crippled him, causing intermittent flashes of agony in his legs, hips, and chest, but he had the upper body strength of an ape (no racial slur intended—it was a surprising compensatory fact of his unique build), and he refused to let his pain, even when severe, restrict his activity.

  As for his background, it was all local. A woman not herself a dwarf, Elizabeth Stout, had raised Kenny without any help from his father, who could have been any of four or five different men. And Kenny survived because of his mama and the fanatic protectiveness of an older brother, Eldred, who fought bullies and catcallers at the first snide or abusive syllable.

  After World War II, Eldred had laid out some of his hard-earned cash to buy Kenny a shaggy, sway-backed pony, which the Stouts had kept tethered to a chinaberry tree in the backyard. Kenny had fed it hay and broken it to the bridle.

  Now, apparently, Horsy had no surviving family in the States. In 1965, in Selma, Alabama, Eldred had suffered a ruptured spleen during a direct-action voters’ registration campaign organized by Dr. Martin Luther King. A year later, in an Atlanta hospital, he’d died from complications. As for Horsy’s other brothers and sisters—and his septuagenarian mama—they’d put their names, uncoerced, in a federal hopper for the Return to Your Roots Program begun by the Nixon Administration after the defeat of the North Vietnamese. Three years ago (about the time Jeff was taking over the Barony for Denzil Wiedenhoedt), their numbers had come up, and they’d all gone off together on an ocean liner bound for Nigeria. Sick to death of fightin’ King Richard and his followers’ bullshit, they said. Horsy had stayed at home because he liked his job and had no heavy political gripes to level at anyone. And because he was doubtful that very many horses lived in Nigeria, anyway.

  “Where do you like to travel to?” Cal asked him. “Besides into Pine Mountain.”

  “Oh, all over.”

  “Inside Georgia, you must mean. The Travel Act makes it hard for folks like us to go anywhere else.”

  Horsy finished off his Budweiser and crushed the aluminum can in his fist. “Mister Cal, I go anywhere I’ve a mind to.”

  Sure you do, Cal thought. Anywhere you’ve a mind to, even the topmost branches of a pine on Highway 27. “Well, like where?”

  “Like Selma, Alabama. Like Washington, DC. Like Santa Ana, California. Like of Von Braunville on the Moon.”

  Cal laughed, shaking his head. Horsy had a better sense of humor than he would have expected.

  “Jus’ got back from the ol’ Moon a week or so ago, Mr. Cal. Nice ‘n’ dry. Nice ‘n’ quiet. I always like it.”

  “You always like it?” Cal said, bewildered.

  “Yes, sir. Even though it warn’t only me that was there this last time but a brand-new pilot angel from the Holy Ghost. A new pilot angel that took me over during one of my spells.”

  What the hell, thought Cal. What is this crap? Horsy just got back from Von Braunville, which he’d visited with a “pilot angel”? Does that make sense, or has the Black Dwarf of Br’er Jeff’s Barony flipped his ever-lovin’ wig?

  But Cal also experience
d a sensation of macabre deja vu— what a psychotherapist might call paramnesia, the remembering of events that are only now taking place.

  “Spells, Horsy? What do you mean, spells?”

  “It’s been happenin’ to me ever since I was a young’un, Mister Cal. My pony—I called him Phineas, after a uncle of mine—well, Phineas one time cut loose with me on his back and run me up under a clothes line in this white lady’s backyard, knockin’ me on my tailbone and bustin’ my head. So now and again, ever since, I take spells that jus’ decommission me for a hour or so. While I’m down, decommissioned-like, I travel.”

  “You travel?”

  “Yes, sir. But only if a pilot—a angel, you see—comes in to fly me off to wheresoever we’re goin’. Las’ week, well, it was the Censorinus base. I had me a fine time.”

  “Nice and quiet. Nice and dry,” said Cal dazedly.

  “Yes, sir. Relaxin’, like. Even if this new pilot that took me did make me jump and tumble some.”

  Spells. Cal recalled Suzi’s speaking of Horsy’s problems in this regard. Occasionally, it seemed, he would black out and lie comatose anywhere from thirty to ninety minutes, and then awaken again, not groggy and defeated but alert and (to all appearances) refreshed. He refused to see a doctor for this condition, saying—insisting, in fact—that he’d gone as a boy: Elizabeth had taken him, and later Eldred had too, and all the doctors could tell them was that he’d suffered a strange but not life-threatening injury to the right side of his brain.

  Not life-threatening, Suzi said, if Horsy blacked out while he was lying in bed or sitting in a chair, but potentially fatal if he was stricken while doing acrobatics in the rafters. Oddly, though, these blackouts always occurred when he was somewhere relatively safe, in bed or at table, and he had survived them so long without hurting himself that even Jeff, the worrywart of the Bonner clan, had conceded that he was unlikely to kill himself or anyone else succumbing to one of his spells. Still, it was always in the backs of their minds that Horsy would probably die from an unforeseen side effect of these spells, if not from the physical complications of his dwarfism, and they had all had to work like crazy pretending that Horsy Stout was—as he himself claimed to be—“as healthy as a horse”, “as stout as a stud”.