The Unteleported Man

by Philip K. Dick

  "At least," Hank Szantho said, "it's real."

  Eying him, Gretchen said, "Is it?" Sardonically, she smiled; it was a totally inhumane smile, and it was di­rected to all of them; he saw it sweep the room, wither­ing into dryness the accusing circle of her group-members — he saw them palpably retreat. It did not in­clude him, however; conspicuously, Gretchen exempted him, and he felt the potency, the meaning of her deci­sion to leave him out: he was not like the others and she knew it and so did he, and it meant something, a great deal. And he thought, I know what it means. She does, too.

  Just the two of us, he thought; Gretchen Borbman and I — and for a good reason. Alteration, he thought. Hank Szantho is right.

  Tilting Gretchen Borbman's face he contemplated her eyes, the expression in them; he studied her for an unmeasured time, during which she did not stir: she re­turned, silently, without blinking, his steady, probing, analytical penetration of her interior universe... neither of them stirred, and it began to appear to him, gradually, as if a melting, opening entrance had replaced the unyielding and opaque coloration of her pupils; all at once the variegated luminous matrices within which her substance seemed to lodge expanded to receive him — dizzy, he half-fell, caught himself, then blinked and righted himself; no words had passed be­tween them, and yet he understood, now; he had been right. It was true.

  He rose, walked unsteadily away; he found himself entering the living room with its untended blaring TV set — the thing dominated the room with its howls and shrieks, warping the window drapes, walls and carpets, the once-attractive ceramic lamps... he sensed and witnessed the deformity imposed by the crushing din of the TV set with its compulsively hypomanic dwarfed and stunted figure, now gesticulating in a speeded-up frenzy, as if the video technicians had allowed — or induced — the tape to seek its maximum velocity.

  At sight of him the image, the Omar Jones thing, stopped. Warily, as if surprised, it regarded him — at least seemed to; impossibly, the TV replica of the colony president fixed its attention as rigidly on him as he in return found himself doing. Both of them, caught in an instinctive, fully alert vigil, neither able to look away even for a fraction of an instant... as if, Rachmael thought, our lives, the physical preservation of both of us, has cataclysmically and without warning become jeopardized.

  And neither of us, he realized as he stared un­winkingly at the TV image of Omar Jones, can escape; we're both snared. Until or unless one of us can — can do what?

  Blurred, now, as he felt himself sink into numbed fatigue, the two remorseless eyes of the TV figure began to blend. The eyes shifted, came together, superimposed until all at once, locked, they became a clearly defined single eye the intensity of which appalled him; a wet, smoldering greatness that attracted light from every source, drew illumination and authority from every

  direction and dimension, confronted him, and any possibility of looking away now was gone.

  From behind him Gretchen Borbman's voice sounded. "You see, don't you? Some of the paraworlds are — " She hesitated, perhaps wanting to tell him in such a manner as to spare him; she wanted him to know, but with the least pain possible. " — hard to detect at first," she finished, gently. Her hand, soothing, com­forting, rested on his shoulder; she was drawing him away from the image on the TV screen, the oozing cy­clopean entity that had ceased its speeded-up harangue and, in silence, emanated in his direction its diseased malevolence.

  "This one," Rachmael managed to say hoarsely, "has a description, too? A code-identification?"

  "This," Gretchen said, "is reality."

  "Paraworld Blue — "

  Turning him around by physical force to face her, Gretchen said, stricken, " 'Paraworld Blue'? Is that what you see? On the TV screen? I don't believe it — the aquatic cephalopod with one working eye? No; I just don't believe it."

  Incredulous, Rachmael said, "I... thought you saw it. Too."

  "No!" She shook her head violently, her face now hardened, masklike; the change in her features came to him initially, in the first particle of a second, as a mere idea — and then the actual jagged carving of old, shred­ding wood replaced the traditional, expected flesh, wood burned, carbonized as if seared both to injure it and to create fright in him, the beholder: an exaggerated travesty of organic physiognomy that grimaced in a fluidity, a mercury-like flux so that the irreal emotions revealed within the mask altered without cease, some­times, as he watched, several manifesting themselves at once and merging into a configuration of affect which could not exist in any human — nor could it be read.

  Her actual — or rather her normally perceived — features, by a slow process, gradually re-emerged. The mask sank down, hidden, behind. It remained, of course, still there, but at least no longer directly confronting him. He was glad of that; relief passed through him, but then it, too, like the sight of the scorched-wood mask, sank out of range and he could no longer recall it.

  "Whatever gave you the idea," Gretchen was saying, "that I saw anything like that? No, not in the slightest." Her hand, withdrawn from his shoulder, convulsed; she moved away from him, as if retreating down a narrow­ing tube, farther and fatally, syphoned off from his presence like a drained insect, back toward the kitchen and the dense pack of others.

  "Type-basics," he said to her, appealing to her, trying to catch onto her and hold her. But she continued to shrink away anyhow. "Isn't it still possible that only a projection from the unconscious — "

  "But your projection," Gretchen said, in a voice raptor-like, sawing, "is unacceptable. To me and to everybody else."

  "What do you see?" he asked, finally. There was almost no sight of her now.

  Gretchen said, "I'm scarcely likely to tell you, Mr. ben Applebaum; you can't actually expect that, now, after what you've said."

  There was silence. And then, by labored, unnaturally retarded degrees, a groaning noise came from the speaker of the television set; the noise at last became in­telligible speech, at the proper pitch and rate: his categories of perception had again achieved a func­tioning parallel with the space-time axis of the image of Omar Jones. Or had the progression of the image resumed as before? Time had stopped or the image had stopped, or perhaps both... or was there such a thing as time at all? He tried to remember, but found himself unable to; the falling off of his capacity for abstract thought — was — what — was —

  He did not know.

  Something looked at him. With its mouth.

  It had eaten most of its own eyes.

  12

  People who are out of phase in time, Sepp von Einem thought caustically to himself, ought to be dead. Not preserved like bugs in amber. He glanced up from the encoded intel-repo and watched with distaste his mysteriously — and rather repellently — gifted proleptic co-worker, Gregory Gloch, in his clanking, whirring anti-prolepsis chamber; at the moment, the thin, tall, improperly hunched youth talked silently into the audio receptor of his sealed chamber, his mouth twisting as if composed of some obsolete plastic, not convincingly flesh-like. The mouth-motions, too, lacked authentic­ity; far too slow, von Einem observed, even for Gloch. The fool was slowing down. However, the memory spools of the chamber would still collect everything said by Gloch, at whatever rate. And the transmission subse­quently would of course be at proper time... although, of course, the frequency would be abysmal, probably doubled. At the thought of the screeching which lay ahead, von Einem groaned.

  His groan, received by the sensitive input audio sys­tem of the anti-prolepsis chamber, became processed: recorded at twenty inches of iron oxide audio tape a second it whipped in retrograde to rewind, then released itself at six inches a second to be carried to the ear­phones well fixed to Gloch's bony head. Presently Gloch responded to his reception of his superior's groan with characteristic eccentricity. His cheeks puffed out; his face turned red as he held his breath. And at the same time he grinned vacuously, his head lolling, turn­ing himself into a parody of a brain-damaged defective — a double parody, beca
use it was of course his own fantastic mentational processes which constituted the actual target of his lampoon. Disgusted, von Einem looked away, gritted his near-priceless custom-fashioned teeth, returned to his scrutiny of the intel-repo material which had newly been made available to him.

  "I'm Bill Behren," the tinny mechanical voice of the intel-repo transport announced cheerfully. "Operator of fly 33408. Now, as you may or may not remember, fly 33408 is a real winner. I mean it really gets in there and tackles its job and really gathers up the stuff, the real hot stuff. I've personally been operator for, say, fifty flies... but in all this time, none has really per­formed true-blue like this little fella. I think he — or it, whatever they are these days — deserves a vote of thanks from us all involved in this highly delicate work we do. Right, Herr von Einem?" Operator of housefly 33408 Bill Behren paused hopefully.

  "The vote of thanks," von Einem said, "goes to you, Mr. Behren, for your compound eyes."

  "How about that," operator Behren rambled on oozingly. "Well, I think we're all inspired by — "

  "The data," von Einem said. "As to the activity at the UN Advance-weapons Archives. What specifically is meant by their code number variation three of that time-warping construct they're so devoted to?" Queer for, he thought to himself; the UN wep-x personnel probably take turns going to bed with it.

  "Well, sir," operator Bill Behren of fly33408 answered vigorously, "variation three appears to be a handy-dandy little portable pack unit in the ingenious shape of a tin of chocolate-flavored psychic ener­gizers."

  On the video portion of the intel-repo playback system a wide-angle shot of the portable pack appeared; von Einem glanced toward Gloch in his whirring anti-prolepsis chamber to see if the hunched, grimacing youth was receiving this transmission. Gloch, however, obviously lagged at least fifteen minutes behind, now; it would be some time before his synchronizing gear brought this video image to him. And no way to speed it up; that would defeat the chamber's purpose.

  "Did I say 'chocolate-flavored'?" Behren droned on, in agitation. "I intended to say 'chocolate-covered.' "

  And with such weapons artifacts as this, von Einem reflected, the UN expects to survive. Of course, this assumed that the intel-repo were accurate.

  His inquiry into the certainty of fly 33408's informa­tion brought an immediate reaction from operator Behren.

  "There are just plain virtually no houseflies as in­telligent as this; I give you no niddy, Herr von Einem, no niddy at all. And here's the real substance of what 33408 has captured via his multipartis receptors: I suggest you prepare for this, as it's overwhelming." Behren cleared his throat importantly. "Ever hear of ol' Charley Falks?"

  "No," von Einem said.

  "Think back to your childhood. When you were, say, eight years old or maybe a little more. Recall a backyard and you playing, and ol' Charley Falks leaning over the fence and — "

  "This is what your verfluchte fly brought back from the UN Advance-weapons Archives?" Time for a replacement of both Behren and his dipterous insect, both of them with one arboreal, American orthopterous katydid; it could carry twice the minned receptors and recording spools of 33408 and probably would possess the same brain-convolutions as Behren and his housefly put together. Von Einem felt gloomy; in fact his depression bordered on despair. At least Theo Ferry managed to handle the tricky situation at Whale's Mouth effectively — in contrast to this. And that, more than anything else, counted.

  Effectively except for the unhappy weevils and their destroyed, ridiculous crypto-perceptions. The old com­rades back in 1945 would have known how to dispatch those Unmänner, von Einem thought to himself with irritable satisfaction. It's a clear sign of genetic decay to be possessed by such subrealities, he brooded. Inferior type-basics overwhelming weak, unstable character-structures; degenerate idioplasm involved causally, beyond doubt.

  "Ol' Charley Falks," operator Behren said, "is the individual back in your childhood days who more than any other human being formed your ontological nature. What you have been throughout your adult life depends absolutely, in total essence, on what ol' Charley — "

  "Then," von Einem said witheringly, "why is it that I fail to recall his existence?"

  "The UN wep-x tacticians," operator Behren said, "have not as yet placed him there."

  Within his anti-prolepsis membrane — the environ­ment manufactured by Krupp und Sohnen years ago which permitted him to collaborate with the convention­ally time-oriented personalities linked indirectly to him — the warped, inspired protégé of Sepp von Einem contemplated the message-packets discharged at intervals by the data-storing houses of his intricate mechanism. As always, he felt weary; the release of stimuli came too frequently for his overtaxed metab­olism... the adjusting of periodic discharge control gate lay unfortunately outside his manual reach.

  What reached him, at the moment, consisted of what seemed the most miserable idiocy he had ever en­countered; bewildered, he attempted to focus his depleted attention on it, but only ill-formed fragments of the intel-repo material constellated for his menta­tional scrutiny.

  "... fettered fetus of homemade apples lurching... searching... something like pataradical outfits of lace. Iron beds of red hot sabratondea flashes jut jib FRIB — "

  Resignedly, Gregory Gloch listened on helplessly, wondering what transistorized turret-control of the chamber had gone astray this time.

  "... medicine ice

  "man.

  "cone-shaped melting dripping

  "away — away — "

  As apathy began to seep over him an interval of almost startling meaning abruptly caught his ear; he awoke, paid rapt attention.

  "Operator Behren, here, with really thrilling data on ol' Charley Falks, who, you'll remember, was placed in the formative years of Herr von Einem on an alternate time-path by the UN wep-x tacticians in order to deflect Herr von Einem from his chosen — and militarily signifi­cant — profession to a relatively harmless vocation, that of — " And then, to his chagrin, the lucid segment of verbal data faded and the meaningless chatter — with which he had, over the years, become so familiar — resumed.

  "... fiber-glassed. Windows

  "stained with grease

  "off a polyhemispheric double-overhead-cam

  "EXTERNAL compulsion engine

  "floating out

  "into the vast gigantic money-thing-making machine

  "... diaperashis phenomenon disintegrating

  "into foul fierce

  "pressure

  "spinning spinning

  "lifting harsh

  "harsh — a breath, a beat — a being still present

  " — thank god..."

  And, in the midst of this, the steady but interrupted by the far stronger signal-strength of the babble, the authentic intel-repo continued to make its vital point; he brought his internal attention to bear on it and managed to follow its thread of meaning.

  Evidently fly-technician Behren had gathered at last the crucial material as to the UN's disposition of its near-absolute device. With vigorous, virtually relentless logic, Jaimé Weiss, the top-strategist now working under Horst Bertold — he who at one time had been von Einem's most brilliant and promising new discovery in the field of weapons inventiveness, but who had turned: gone over to the better-paying other side — this renegade had come up with the correct answer to the UN's stra­tegic needs.

  To kill off Sepp von Einem was now pointless; Telpor existed. But to abolish von Einem sometime in the past, before his discovery of the basic mechanism of telepor­tation...

  A less skilled manipulation of past-time factors would have sought as its objective cheap outright murder — the total physical elimination of Sepp von Einem. But this, of course, would simply have left the field open to others, and if one man could locate the principle on which teleportation could be effectively based, then so, eventually, given enough time, could someone else. Telpor, not Sepp von Einem, had to be blocked — and it would require the presence
of a uniquely strong per­sonality to block it. Jaimé Weiss and Bertold could not do it; they were not that formidable. In fact, probably only one man in the world could manage it... suc­cessfully.

  Sepp von Einem himself.

  To himself Gregory Gloch thought, It's a good idea. This, his professional, official appraisal of the tactical plan which the UN had put in motion to abort the evolution of the Telpor instrument, had now to be said aloud; Gloch, selecting his words carefully, spoke into the recording microphone permanently placed before his lips, simultaneously activating the tape-transport.

  "They want for their disposal," he declared, "the use of yourself, Herr von Einem — nothing else is adequate. A compliment... but one which you could no doubt do without." He paused, considered. Meanwhile, the tape-reel moved inexorably, but it was dead tape; he felt the pressure on him to produce a counter-tactic in response to what those opposed to his superior had so artfully — and skillfully — advanced. "Umm," he murmured, half to himself. He felt, now, even more truly out of phase in the time-dimension: he felt the gulf between himself and those, everyone else in the universe of sentient life, beyond his anti-prolepsis chamber. "In my estimate," he continued, "your most profitable avenue of action — " And then abruptly he ceased. Because once again the random word-salad noise had burbled into seeming spontaneous existence in his ears.

  This, however, appeared to be a radically different — startling so — interference than was customary.

  Rubbish that it was it nonetheless made sense... sense, but it had obliterated — for the time being, at least — his counter-tactical idea.

  Could this be a UN electronic signal deliberately beamed so as to disrupt the orderly functioning of his chamber?