"Not yet," Untermeyer protested thickly. But the realization was in the minds of all of them.
"Has he spawned?" Dawes asked.
The look on Charlotte's face told them the answer. "He tried to. There were a few that hatched, but none of them lived. I've seen eggs back there, but…"
She was silent. They all knew. The Biltong had become sterile in their struggle to keep the human race alive. Dead eggs, progeny hatched without life…
Fergesson slid in behind the wheel and harshly slammed the door. The door didn't close properly. The metal was sprung—or perhaps it was misshapen. His hackles rose. Here, too, was an imperfect print—a trifle, a microscopic element botched in the printing. Even his sleek, luxurious Buick was puddinged. The Biltong at his settlement was wearing out, too.
Sooner or later, what had happened to the Chicago settlement would happen to them all…
Around the park, rows of automobiles were lined up, silent and unmoving. The park was full of people. Most of the settlement was there. Everybody had something that desperately needed printing. Fergesson snapped off the motor and pocketed the keys.
"Can you make it?" he asked Charlotte. "Maybe you'd better stay here."
"I'll be all right," Charlotte said, and tried to smile.
She had put on a sports shirt and slacks that Fergesson had picked up for her in the ruins of a decaying clothing store. He felt no qualms—a number of men and women were picking listlessly through the scattered stock that littered the sidewalk. The clothing would be good for perhaps a few days.
Fergesson had taken his time picking Charlotte's wardrobe. He had found a heap of sturdy-fibered shirts and slacks in the back storeroom, material still a long way from the dread black pulverization. Recent prints? Or, perhaps—incredible but possible—originals the store owners had used for printing. At a shoe store still in business, he found her a pair of low-heeled slippers. It was his own belt she wore—the one he had picked up in the clothing store rotted away in his hands while he was buckling it around her.
Untermeyer gripped the steel box with both hands as the four of them approached the center of the park. The people around them were silent and grim-faced. No one spoke. They all carried some article, originals carefully preserved through the centuries or good prints with only minor imperfections. On their faces were desperate hope and fear fused, in a taut mask.
"Here they are," said Dawes, lagging behind. "The dead eggs."
In a grove of trees at the edge of the park was a circle of gray-brown pellets, the size of basketballs. They were hard, calcified. Some were broken. Fragments of shell were littered everywhere.
Untermeyer kicked at one egg; it fell apart, brittle and empty. "Sucked dry by some animal," he stated. "We're seeing the end, Fergesson. I think dogs sneak in here at night, now, and get at them. He's too weak to protect them."
A dull undercurrent of outrage throbbed through the waiting men and women. Their eyes were red-rimmed with anger as they stood clutching their objects, jammed in together in a solid mass, a circle of impatient, indignant humanity ringing the center of the park. They had been waiting a long time. They were getting tired of waiting.
"What the hell is this?" Untermeyer squatted down in front of a vague shape discarded under a tree. He ran his fingers over the indistinct blur of metal. The object seemed melted together like wax—nothing was distinguishable. "I can't identify it."
"That's a power lawnmower," a man nearby said sullenly.
"How long ago did he print it?" Fergesson asked.
"Four days ago." The man knocked at it in hostility. "You can't even tell what it is—it could be anything. My old one's worn out. I wheeled the settlement's original up from the vault and stood in line all day—and look what I got." He spat contemptuously. "It isn't worth a damn. I left it sitting here—no point taking it home."
His wife spoke up in a shrill, harsh wail. "What are we going to do? We can't use the old one. It's crumbling away like everything else around here. If the new prints aren't any good, then what—"
"Shut up," her husband snapped. His face was ugly and strained. His long-fingered hands gripped a length of pipe. "We'll wait a little longer. Maybe he'll snap out of it."
A murmur of hope rippled around them. Charlotte shivered and pushed on. "I don't blame him," she said to Fergesson. "But…" She shook her head wearily. "What good would it do? If he won't print copies for us that are any good…"
"He can't," John Dawes said. "Look at him!" He halted and held the rest of them back. "Look at him and tell me how he could do better."
The Biltong was dying. Huge and old, it squatted in the center of the settlement park, a lump of ancient yellow protoplasm, thick, gummy, opaque. Its pseudopodia were dried up, shriveled to blackened snakes that lay inert on the brown grass. The center of the mass looked oddly sunken. The Biltong was gradually settling, as the moisture was burned from its veins by the weak overhead sun.
"Oh, dear!" Charlotte whispered. "How awful he looks!"
The Biltong's central lump undulated faintly. Sickly, restless heavings were noticeable as it struggled to hold onto its dwindling life. Flies clustered around it in dense swarms of black and shiny blue. A thick odor hung over the Biltong, a fetid stench of decaying organic matter. A pool of brackish waste liquid had oozed from it.
Within the yellow protoplasm of the creature, its solid core of nervous tissue pulsed in agony, with quick, jerky movements that sent widening waves across the sluggish flesh. Filaments were almost visibly degenerating into calcified granules. Age and decay—and suffering.
On the concrete platform, in front of the dying Biltong, lay a heap of originals to be duplicated. Beside them, a few prints had been commenced, unformed balls of black ash mixed with the moisture of the Biltong's body, the juice from which it laboriously constructed its prints. It had halted the work, pulled its still-functioning pseudopodia painfully back into itself. It was resting—and trying not to die.
"The poor damn thing!" Fergesson heard himself say. "It can't keep on."
"He's been sitting like that for six solid hours," a woman snapped sharply in Fergesson's ear. "Just sitting there! What does he expect us to do, get down on our hands and knees and beg him?"
Dawes turned furiously on her. "Can't you see it's dying? For God's sake, leave it alone!"
An ominous rumble stirred through the ring of people. Faces turned toward Dawes—he icily ignored them. Beside him, Charlotte had stiffened to a frightened ramrod. Her eyes were pale with fear.
"Be careful," Untermeyer warned Dawes softly. "Some of these boys need things pretty bad. Some of them are waiting here for food."
Time was running out. Fergesson grabbed the steel box from Untermeyer and tore it open. Bending down, he removed the originals and laid them on the grass in front of him.
At the sight, a murmur went up around him, a murmur blended of awe and amazement. Grim satisfaction knifed through Fergesson. These were originals lacking in this settlement. Only imperfect prints existed here. Printing had been done from defective duplicates. One by one, he gathered up the precious originals and moved toward the concrete platform in front of the Biltong. Men angrily blocked his way—until they saw the originals he carried.
He laid down a silver Ronson cigarette lighter. Then a Bausch and Lomb binocular microscope, still black and pebbled in its original leather. A high-fidelity Pickering phonograph cartridge. And a shimmering Steuben crystal cup.
"Those are fine-looking originals," a man nearby said enviously. "Where'd you get them?"
Fergesson didn't reply. He was watching the dying Biltong.
The Biltong hadn't moved. But it had seen the new originals added to the others. Inside the yellow mass, the hard fibers raced and blurred together. The front orifice shuddered and then split open. A violent wave lashed the whole lump of protoplasm. Then from the opening, rancid bubbles oozed. A pseudopodium twitched briefly, struggled forward across the slimy grass, hesitated, touched the Steuben glass
.
It pushed together a heap of black ash, wadded it with fluid from the front orifice. A dull globe formed, a grotesque parody of the Steuben cup. The Biltong wavered and drew back to gather more strength. Presently it tried once more to form the blob. Abruptly, without warning, the whole mass shuddered violently, and the pseudopodium dropped, exhausted. It twitched, hesitated pathetically, and then withdrew, back into the central bulk.
"No use," Untermeyer said hoarsely. "He can't do it. It's too late."
With stiff, awkward fingers, Fergesson gathered the originals together and shakily stuffed them back in the steel box. "I guess I was wrong," he muttered, climbing to his feet. "I thought this might do it. I didn't realize how far it had gone."
Charlotte, stricken and mute, moved blindly away from the platform. Untermeyer followed her through the coagulation of angry men and women, clustered around the concrete platform.
"Wait a minute," Dawes said. "I have something for him to try."
Fergesson waited wearily, as Dawes groped inside his coarse gray shirt. He fumbled and brought out something wrapped in old newspaper. It was a cup, a wooden drinking cup, crude and ill-shaped. There was a strange wry smile on his face as he squatted down and placed the cup in front of the Biltong.
Charlotte watched, vaguely puzzled. "What's the use? Suppose he does make a print of it." She poked listlessly at the rough wooden object with the toe of her slipper. "It's so simple you could duplicate it yourself."
Fergesson started. Dawes caught his eye—for an instant the two men gazed at each other, Dawes smiling faintly, Fergesson rigid with burgeoning understanding.
"That's right," Dawes said. "I made it."
Fergesson grabbed the cup. Trembling, he turned it over and over. "You made it with what? I don't see how! What did you make it out of?"
"We knocked down some trees." From his belt, Dawes slid something that gleamed metallically, dully, in the weak sunlight. "Here—be careful you don't cut yourself."
The knife was as crude as the cup—hammered, bent, tied together with wire. "You made this knife?" Fergesson asked, dazed. "I can't believe it. Where do you start? You have to have tools to make this. It's a paradox!" His voice rose with hysteria. "It isn't possible!"
Charlotte turned despondently away. "It's no good—you couldn't cut anything with that." Wistfully, pathetically, she added, "In my kitchen I had that whole set of stainless steel carving knives—the best Swedish steel. And now they're nothing but black ash."
There were a million questions bursting in Fergesson's mind. "This cup, this knife—there's a group of you? And that material you're wearing—you wove that?"
"Come on," Dawes said brusquely. He retrieved the knife and cup, moved urgently away. "We'd better get out of here. I think the end has about come."
People were beginning to drift out of the park. They were giving up, shambling wretchedly off to forage in the decaying stores for food remnants. A few cars muttered into life and rolled hesitantly away.
Untermeyer licked his flabby lips nervously. His doughy flesh was mottled and grainy with fear. "They're getting wild," he muttered to Fergesson. "This whole settlement's collapsing—in a few hours there won't be anything. No food, no place to stay!" His eyes darted toward the car, then faded to opaqueness.
He wasn't the only one who had noticed the car.
A group of men were slowly forming around the massive dusty Buick, their faces dark. Like hostile, greedy children, they poked at it intently, examining its fenders, hood, touching its headlights, its firm tires. The men had clumsy weapons—pipes, rocks, sections of twisted steel ripped from collapsing buildings.
"They know it isn't from this settlement," Dawes said. "They know it's going back."
"I can take you to the Pittsburgh settlement," Fergesson said to Charlotte. He headed toward the car. "I'll register you as my wife. You can decide later on whether you want to go through with the legalities."
"What about Ben?" Charlotte asked faintly.
"I can't marry him, too." Fergesson increased his pace. "I can take him there, but they won't let him stay. They have their quota system. Later on, when they realize the emergency…"
"Get out of the way," Untermeyer said to the cordon of men. He lumbered toward them vengefully. After a moment, the men uncertainly retreated and finally gave way. Untermeyer stood by the door, his huge body drawn up and alert.
"Bring her through—and watch it!" he told Fergesson.
Fergesson and Dawes, with Charlotte between them, made their way through the line of men to Untermeyer. Fergesson gave the fat man the keys, and Untermeyer yanked the front door open. He pushed Charlotte in, then motioned Fergesson to hurry around to the other side.
The group of men came alive.
With his great fist, Untermeyer smashed the leader into those behind him. He struggled past Charlotte and got his bulk wedged behind the wheel of the car. The motor came on with a whirr. Untermeyer threw it into low gear and jammed savagely down on the accelerator. The car edged forward. Men clawed at it crazily, groping at the open door for the man and woman inside.
Untermeyer slammed the doors and locked them. As the car gained speed, Fergesson caught a final glimpse of the fat man's sweating, fear-distorted face.
Men grabbed vainly for the slippery sides of the car. As it gathered momentum, they slid away one by one. One huge red-haired man clung maniacally to the hood, pawing at the shattered windshield for the driver's face beyond. Untermeyer sent the car spinning into a sharp curve; the red-haired man hung on for a moment, then lost his grip and tumbled silently, face-forward, onto the pavement.
The car wove, careened, at last disappeared from view beyond a row of sagging buildings. The sound of its screaming tires faded. Untermeyer and Charlotte were on their way to safety at the Pittsburgh settlement.
Fergesson stared after the car until the pressure of Dawes' thin hand on his shoulder aroused him. "Well," he muttered, "there goes the car. Anyhow, Charlotte got away."
"Come on," Dawes said tightly in his ear. "I hope you have good shoes—we've got a long way to walk."
Fergesson blinked. "Walk? Where…?"
"The nearest of our camps is thirty miles from here. We can make it, I think." He moved away, and after a moment Fergesson followed him. "I've done it before. I can do it again."
Behind them, the crowd was collecting again, centering its interest upon the inert mass that was the dying Biltong. The hum of wrath sounded—frustration and impotence at the loss of the car pitched the ugly cacophony to a gathering peak of violence. Gradually, like water seeking its level, the ominous, boiling mass surged toward the concrete platform.
On the platform, the ancient dying Biltong waited helplessly. It was aware of them. Its pseudopodia were twisted in one last decrepit action, a final shudder of effort.
Then Fergesson saw a terrible thing—a thing that made shame rise inside him until his humiliated fingers released the metal box he carried, let it fall, splintering, to the ground. He retrieved it numbly, stood gripping it helplessly. He wanted to run off blindly, aimlessly, anywhere but here. Out into the silence and darkness and driving shadows beyond the settlement. Out in the dead acres of ash.
The Biltong was trying to print himself a defensive shield, a protective wall of ash, as the mob descended on him…
When they had walked a couple of hours, Dawes came to a halt and threw himself down in the black ash that extended everywhere. "We'll rest awhile," he grunted to Fergesson. "I've got some food we can cook. We'll use that Ronson lighter you have there, if it's got any fluid in it."
Fergesson opened the metal box and passed him the lighter. A cold, fetid wind blew around them, whipping ash into dismal clouds across the barren surface of the planet. Off in the distance, a few jagged walls of buildings jutted upward like splinters of bones. Here and there dark, ominous stalks of weeds grew.
"It's not as dead as it looks," Dawes commented, as he gathered bits of dried wood and paper from the ash a
round them. "You know about the dogs and the rabbits. And there's lots of plant seeds—all you have to do is water the ash, and up they spring."
"Water? But it doesn't—rain. Whatever the word used to be."
"We have to dig ditches. There's still water, but you have to dig for it." Dawes got a feeble fire going—there was fluid in the lighter. He tossed it back and turned his attention to feeding the fire.
Fergesson sat examining the lighter. "How can you build a thing like this?" he demanded bluntly.
"We can't." Dawes reached into his coat and brought out a flat packet of food—dried, salted meat and parched corn. "You can't start out building complex stuff. You have to work your way up slowly."
"A healthy Biltong could print from this. The one in Pittsburgh could make a perfect print of this lighter."
"I know," Dawes said. "That's what's held us back. We have to wait until they give up. They will, you know. They'll have to go back to their own star-system—it's genocide for them to stay here."
Fergesson clutched convulsively at the lighter. "Then our civilization goes with them."
"That lighter?" Dawes grinned. "Yes, that's going—for a long time, at least. But I don't think you've got the right slant. We're going to have to re-educate ourselves, every damn one of us. It's hard for me, too."
"Where did you come from?"
Dawes said quietly, "I'm one of the survivors from Chicago. After it collapsed, I wandered around—killed with a stone, slept in cellars, fought off the dogs with my hands and feet. Finally, I found my way to one of the camps. There were a few before me—you don't know it, my friend, but Chicago wasn't the first to fall."
"And you're printing tools? Like that knife?"
Dawes laughed long and loud. "The word isn't print—the word is build. We're building tools, making things." He pulled out the crude wooden cup and laid it down on the ash. "Printing means merely copying. I can't explain to you what building is; you'll have to try it yourself to find out. Building and printing are two totally different things."
Dawes arranged three objects on the ash. The exquisite Steuben glassware, his own crude wooden drinking cup and the blob, the botched print the dying Biltong had attempted.
The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick 4: The Minority Report Page 134
