The Collected Stories of Philip K Dick

by Philip K. Dick

  Fine. Growing bigger every day.

  He watered it, tore off a few old leaves, spaded up the soil, killed a weed that had edged in, squirted fertilizer at random, and then stepped back to survey it. There was no satisfaction like that of creative activity. On the job he was a high-paid cog in the niplan economic system; he worked with verbal signs, and somebody else's signs at that. Here, he dealt directly with reality.

  Richards squatted on his haunches and surveyed what he had accomplished. It was a good sight; almost ready, almost fully grown. He leaned forward to poke cautiously at the firm sides.

  In the dwindling light of day the high-velocity transport glittered dully. Its windows had already formed: four pale squares in the tapered metal hull. The control bubble was just starting to burgeon from the center of the chassis. The jet flanges were full and developed. The input hatch and emergency locks hadn't grown into existence, yet; but it wouldn't be long.

  Richards' satisfaction rose to fever-pitch. No doubt about it; the transport was almost ripe. Any day now he could pick it … and start flying it around.

  At nine the waiting room had been full of people and cigarette smoke; now, at three-thirty, it was almost empty. One by one the visitors had given up and departed. Discarded tapes, bulging ashtrays, empty chairs surrounded the robot desk industriously grinding out its mechanical business. But in one corner, sitting bolt upright, her small hands clasped around her purse, remained a last young woman the desk hadn't been able to discourage.

  The desk tried once more. It was getting close to four; Eggerton would soon be leaving. The gross irrationality of waiting for a man about to put on his hat and coat and go home grated against the desk's sensitive nerves. And the girl had been sitting there since nine, eyes large and wide, gazing at nothing, not smoking or examining tapes, only sitting and waiting.

  "Look, lady," the desk said aloud, "there's nobody going to see Mr. Eggerton today."

  The girl smiled slightly. "It'll only take a minute."

  The desk sighed. "You're persistent. What do you want? Your firm must do a spectacular business with jobbers like you—but as I said, Mr. Eggerton never buys anything. That's how he got where he is, by throwing people like you out. I suppose you think that figure of yours is going to get you a big order." The desk added peevishly, "You ought to be ashamed, wearing a dress like that. A nice girl like you."

  "He'll sec me," the girl answered faintly.

  The desk whizzed forms through its scanner and searched for a double-entendre on the word see. "Yes, I suppose with a dress like that," it began, but at that moment the inner door lifted and John Eggerton appeared.

  "Turn yourself off" he ordered the desk; "I'm going home. Set yourself for ten; I'll be late tomorrow. The id bloc is holding a policy level conference in Pittsburgh, and I have a few things to say to them while they're together."

  The girl slid to her feet. John Eggerton was a huge, ape-shouldered man, shaggy and unkempt, his jacket hanging open and food-stained, sleeves rolled up, eyes deep-set and dark with industrial cunning. He peered at her warily as she approached.

  "Mr. Eggerton," she said, "do you have a moment? There's something I want to discuss with you."

  "I'm not buying and I'm not hiring." Eggerton's voice was gruff with fatigue. "Young lady, go back to your employer and tell them if they want to show me something to send around an experienced representative, not a kid just out of…"

  Eggerton was nearsighted. It wasn't until the girl was almost to him that he saw the card between her fingers. For a man of his size he moved with astonishing agility; with one leap he knocked the girl aside, dashed around the robot desk, and disappeared through a side exit from the office. The girl's purse clattered to the floor, its contents spilling wildly. She hesitated between them and the door, then with an exasperated hiss, rushed from the office and out into the hall. The express elevator to the roof showed red; it was already on its way up fifty stories to the building's private field.

  "Damn," the girl said. She turned and reentered the office, seething with disgust.

  The desk had begun to recover. "Why didn't you tell me you're an Immune?" it demanded. Its outrage grew—the indignation of a bureaucrat. "I gave you form s045 to fill out and line six distinctly asked for specific information on your occupation. You—deceived me!"

  The girl ignored the desk and knelt down to collect her things. Gun, magnetic bracelet, intercom neck-mike, lipstick, keys, mirror, small change, handkerchief, the twenty-four hour notice intended for John Eggerton … she was going to get hell when she appeared back at the Agency. Eggerton had even manage to avoid oral acknowledgement: the spool of recording tape spilled from her purse was blank and useless.

  "You've got a clever boss," she said to the desk, in a burst of wrath. "All day sitting here in this reeking office with all these salesmen for nothing."

  "I wondered why you were so persistent," the desk said. "I never saw a saleswoman so persistent; I should have known something was wrong. You almost got him."

  "We'll get him," the girl said, on her way out of the office, "Tell him that tomorrow, when he shows up."

  "He won't show up," the desk answered; to itself, since the girl was gone. "He won't ever come back here, not now. Not with you Immunes hanging around. A man's life is worth more than his business, even a business this size."

  The girl entered a public vid booth and dialed the Agency. "He skipped," she said to the grim-faced woman who was her immediate superior. "He didn't touch the summons-card; I guess I'm not much of a server."

  "Did he see the card?"

  "Of course; that's why he bolted."

  The older woman scratched a few tentative lines on a note pad. "Technically, we have him. I'll let our lawyers battle it out with his heirs; I'm going ahead with the twenty-four hour notice, just as if he accepted it. If he was wary before, he'll be impossible from now on; we'll never get closer than this. It's too bad you muffed this…" The woman decided. "Call his home and give his personal staff the notice of culpability. Tomorrow morning we'll release it over the regular newsmachines."

  Doris broke the circuit, held her hand over the screen to clear it, and then dialed Eggerton's personal number. To the attendant she gave the formal notice that Eggerton was legal prey for any niplan citizen. The attendant—mechanical—dutifully took the information as if it had been an order for so many dozen yards of cloth. Somehow, the machine's calmness made her more discouraged than ever. She left the booth and wandered gloomily downramp to the cocktail bar to wait for her husband.

  John Eggerton didn't seem like a parakineticist. Doris's mind imagined small wan-faced youths, withdrawn and agonized, buried in out-of-the-way towns and farms, hidden away from urban areas. Eggerton was prominent … but of course that didn't affect his chance of being picked up in the random check-net. As she sipped her Tom Collins, she tried to think of other reasons why John Eggerton would ignore his initial check notice, then his warning—fine and possible imprisonment—and now this, his last notice.

  Was Eggerton really P-K?

  Her face in the dark mirror behind the bar wavered, rings of half-shadows, nebulous succubi, a gloom of fog like that which lay over the niplan system. Her reflection might have been that of a young female parakineticist: black circles for eyes, moist lashes, dank hair around her thin shoulders, fingers too tapered and too sharp. But it was only the mirror; there were no distaff parakineticists. At least, none reported yet.

  Unnoticed, her husband came up behind her, tossed his coat over a stool, and seated himself. "How did it come off?" Harvey asked sympathetically.

  Doris started in surprise. "You scared me!"

  Harvey lit a cigarette and attracted the attention of the bartender. "Bourbon and water." He turned mildly to his wife. "Cheer up—there're other mutants to track down." He tossed her the foil from the afternoon newsmachines. "You probably know already, but your San Francisco office picked up four in a row. All of them unique; there was one party who had a
sweet little talent of speeding up metabolic processes in those he didn't care for."

  Doris nodded absently. "We heard through the Agency memos. And one could walk through walls, without falling through floors. And one animated stones."

  "Eggerton got away?"

  "Like lightning—I wouldn't think a man that big would react that fast. But maybe he isn't a man." She spun her tall cold glass between her fingers. "The Agency is going to give the public twenty-four hour notice. I've already called his home … that gives his personal staff a head start."

  "They ought to have it. After all, they've been working for him; they ought to have first crack at the bounty." Harvey was trying to be funny, but his wife didn't respond. "You think a man that big can hide out?"

  Doris shrugged. The problem was simple with the ones who hid; they gave themselves away by departing more and more from the behavior norm. It was the ones unaware of their innate difference, those who kept on functioning until discovered by accident … the so-called unconscious P-K's had forced into existence the random check system and its Agency of female Immunes. In Doris's mind, the weird thought crept that a man might not be P-K and think he was—the timeless neurotic fear that one was somehow different, oddball, when in fact one was quite normal. Eggerton, for all his industrial power and influence, might be an ordinary human being suffering from a gnawing phobia that he was P-K. Such had happened … and there were genuine P-K's wandering around blithely unaware of their alienness.

  "We need a sure-fire test," Doris said aloud, "Something an individual can apply on himself. So he can be certain."

  "Don't you have it? Can't you be positive when you get hold of them in your net?"

  "If we get hold of them. One out of ten thousand. Too damn small a number come up in the nets." Abruptly she pushed away her drink and got to her feet. "Let's go home. I'm hungry and tired; I want to go to bed."

  Harvey gathered up his coat as he paid the tab. "Sorry, honey, we're going out for dinner tonight. A fellow in the Commerce Institute, a man named Jay Richards. I met him at luncheon … as a matter of fact, you were along. We're all invited over to celebrate something."

  "Celebrate what?" Doris demanded irritably. "What do we have to celebrate?"

  "Something secret of his," Harvey answered, as he pushed open the wide street door. "He's going to spring it on us after dinner. Cheer up—it may be good for an evening's entertainment "

  Eggerton did not fly directly home. At high velocity he circled aimlessly near the first ring of residential syndromes at the edge of New York, his mind ebbing first with terror, then with outrage. His natural impulse was to head for his own lands and houses, but fear of running into more Agency servers paralyzed his will. While he was trying to make up his mind, his neck-mike came on with the relay of the Agency's call.

  He was lucky. The girl had given the twenty-four hour notice to one of his robots; and robots weren't interested in bounty.

  He landed on a randomly-selected roof field within the industrial area of Pittsburgh. No one saw him: lucky again. He was trembling as he entered the descent elevator, and began the trip down to the street level. With him were crowded a blank-faced clerk, two elderly woman, a serious young man, and the pretty daughter of some minor official. A harmless clump of people, but he wasn't fooled; at the end of twenty-four hours any and all of them would be panting for his hide. And he couldn't blame them: ten million dollars was a lot of money.

  Theoretically, he had a one-day grace period; but final notices were badly-kept secrets. Most higher-ups were undoubtedly in on it; he'd approach an old friend, be welcomed, wined and dined, given a cabin-shelter on Ganymede and plenty of supplies—and be shot between the eyes as soon as the day was up.

  He had remote units of his own industrial combine, of course; but they'd be checked off systematically. He had a variety of holding companies, dummy corporations, but the Agency would run through them if they considered it worth their time. The intuitive realization that he could easily become an object lesson to the niplan system, manipulated and exploited by the Agency, drove him to a frenzy. The female Immunes had always tripped deep-buried complexes built up in his mind from early infancy; the thought of a matriarchal culture was vitally abhorrent to him. And to pick off Eggerton was to unfasten a basic pivot of the bloc: now it occurred to him that his number on the random check might not really be random after all.

  Clever—compile the identifying serial numbers of the id bloc leaders, revolve them in the check-nets from time to time, gradually eliminate them one by one.

  He reached the street level and stood undecided, as urban traffic flowed around him noisily. Suppose the id bloc leaders simply cooperated with the check-nets? Compliance with the initial notice meant only a routine mind-probe by the protected corps of mutants society sanctioned, the telepathic castrati tolerated because of their usefulness against other mutants. Pulled at random or by design, the victim could simply permit the probe, lay his mind bare to the Agency, let the battleaxes claw and peck over the contents of his psyche, and then return to his office, cleared and safe. But this posited one item: that the industrial leader could pass the probe, that he was not P-K.

  Sweat stood out on Eggerton's heavy forehead. Wasn't he, in a roundabout way, telling himself that he was P-K? No, that wasn't it. The issue was a principle; the Agency had no moral right to probe the half-dozen men whose industrial bloc was the mainstay of the niplan system. On that point every id bloc leader agreed with him … an attack on Eggerton was an assault on the bloc itself.

  Fervently, he prayed they would see it that way. He hailed a robot taxi and ordered: "Get me over to the id bloc hall. And if anybody tries to halt you, fifty dollars says keep going."

  The vast, echoing hall was dark and gloomy when he reached it. The meeting wouldn't begin for several days, yet; Eggerton wandered aimlessly up and down the aisles, between the rows of seats where the technological and clerical staffs of the various industrial units would be placed, past the steel and plastic benches where the leaders themselves sat, up finally to the vacant speaker's stand. Faint lights glowed for him as he halted vaguely before the marble stand. The futility of his position came to him with a rush: standing here in this empty hall, he momentarily comprehended how completely he had made himself an outcast. He could yell and shout and nobody would appear. He could summon up nobody and nothing; the Agency was the legal government of the niplan system. In tilting with it he had placed himself against all organized society—powerful as he was he couldn't hope to defeat society itself.

  He left the hall hurriedly, located an expensive restaurant, and enjoyed a lavish dinner. Almost feverishly, he downed immense quantities of scarce imported delicacies; at least he could enjoy his last twenty-four hours. As he ate he gazed apprehensively at the waiters and the other diners. Bland, indifferent faces—but very soon they would see his number and image in every newsmachine. The great hunt would be on; billions of hunters after one quarry. Abruptly, he finished his meal, examined his watch, and left the restaurant. It was six in the evening.

  For an hour he squandered himself furiously in a swank bed girl mart, going from one apartment to the next, only half-seeing the occupants. He left behind a chaos—for which he paid and then abandoned the frenetic turmoil for the fresh air of the evening streets. Until eleven he wandered through the dark star-lit parks that surrounded the residential area of the city, among other dim shadows, his hands stuffed miserably in his pockets, hunched over, wretched. Somewhere far off a city clock-tower radiated an audio time signal. The twenty-four hours were leaking out and no one could stop them.

  At eleven-thirty he halted his purposeless wanderings and pulled himself together long enough to analyze his situation. He had to face it: his only chance lay back at the id bloc hall. The technological and clerical staffs wouldn't have begun to show, but most of the leaders would be staking out preferred living quarters. His wristmap showed that he had drifted five miles from the hall. Suddenly terrified, h
e made his decision.

  He flew directly back to the hall, landed on the deserted roof field, and descended to the floor of living quarters. It couldn't be put off: it was now or never.

  "Come in, John," Townsand invited good-naturedly, and then his expression changed as Eggerton briefly outlined what had taken place in his office.

  "You say they've already sent the final notice to your home?" Laura Townsand asked quickly. She had got up from the couch where she had been sitting and came immediately to the door. "Then it's too late!"

  Eggerton tossed his overcoat to the closet and sank down in an easy chair, "Too late? Maybe … too late to avoid the notice; but I'm not giving up."

  Townsand and the other id bloc leaders came around Eggerton, faces showing curiosity, sympathy, and traces of cold amusement. "You've really got yourself into something," one of the leaders said. "If you'd let us know before the final notice was sent out maybe we could have done something. But this late—"

  Eggerton strangled as he felt the boom being lowered down around him. "Wait," he said thickly, "let's get this straight. We're all in this together; it's me today and you tomorrow. If I fold under this—"

  "Take it easy," murmured voices came. "Let's work this out rationally or not at all."

  Eggerton lay back against the chair as it adjusted to his tired body. Yes, he was glad to work it out rationally.

  "As I see it," Townsand said quietly, leaning forward, his fingers pressed together, "it's not really a question of can we neutralize the Agency. Collectively, we're the economic battery of the niplan system; if we draw the props out from under the Agency it collapses. The real question is—do we want to write off the Agency?"

  Eggerton croaked wildly: "Good God, it's either us or them! Can't you see they're using this net-check and probe system to undermine us?"