Ubik

Chapter 6

“Welcome to Luna,” Zoe Wirt said cheerfully, her jolly eyes enlarged by her red-framed, triangular glasses. “Via myself, Mr. Howard says hello to each and every one of you, and most especially to Mr. Glen Runciter for making his organization—and you people, in particular—available to us. This subsurface hotel suite, decorated by Mr. Howard’s artistically talented sister Lada, lies just three-hundred linear yards from the industrial and research facilities which Mr. Howard believes to have been infiltrated. Your joint presence in this room, therefore, should already be inhibiting the psionic capabilities of Hollis’ agents, a thought pleasing to all of us.” She paused, looked over them all. “Are there any questions?”

Tinkering with his test gear, Joe Chip ignored her; despite their client’s stipulation, he intended to measure the surrounding psionic field. During the hour-long trip from Earth he and Glen Runciter had decided on this.

“I have a question,” Fred Zafsky said, raising his hand. He giggled. “Where is the bathroom?”

“You will each be given a miniature map,” Zoe Wirt said, “on which this is indicated.” She nodded to a drab female assistant, who began passing out brightly colored, glossy paper maps. “This suite,” she continued, “is complete with a kitchen, all the appliances of which are free, rather than coin-operated. Obviously, outright blatant expense has been incurred in the constructing of this living unit, which is ample enough for twenty persons, possessing, as it does, its own self-regulating air, heat, water, and unusually varied food supply, plus closed-circuit TV and high-fidelity polyphonic phonograph sound-system—the two latter facilities, however, unlike the kitchen, being coin-operated. To aid you in utilizing these recreation facilities, a change-making machine has been placed in the game room.”

“My map,” Al Hammond said, “shows only nine bedrooms.”

“Each bedroom,” Miss Wirt said, “contains two bunk-type beds; hence eighteen accommodations in all. In addition, five of the beds are double, assisting those of you who wish to sleep with each other during your stay here.”

“I have a rule,” Runciter said irritably, “about my employees sleeping with one another.”

“For or against?” Zoe Wirt inquired.

“Against.” Runciter crumpled up his map and dropped it to the metal, heated floor. “I’m not accustomed to being told—”

“But you will not be staying here, Mr. Runciter,” Miss Wirt pointed out. “Aren’t you returning to Earth as soon as your employees begin to function?” She smiled her professional smile at him.

Runciter said to Joe Chip, “You getting any readings as to the PSI field?”

“First,” Joe said, “I have to obtain a reading on the counter-field our inertials are generating.”

“You should have done that on the trip,” Runciter said.

“Are you attempting to take measurements?” Miss Wirt inquired alertly. “Mr. Howard expressly contraindicated that, as I explained.”

“We’re taking a reading anyway,” Runciter said.

“Mr. Howard—”

“This isn’t Stanton Mick’s business,” Runciter told her.

To her drab assistant, Miss Wirt said, “Would you ask Mr. Mick to come down here, please?” The assistant scooted off in the direction of the syndrome of elevators. “Mr. Mick will tell you himself,” Miss Wirt said to Runciter. “Meanwhile, please do nothing; I ask you kindly to wait until he arrives.”

“I have a reading now,” Joe said to Runciter. “On our own field. It’s very high.” Probably because of Pat, he decided. “Much higher than I would have expected,” he said. Why are they so anxious for us not to take readings? he wondered. It’s not a time factor now; our inertials are here and operating.

“Are there closets,” Tippy Jackson asked, “where we can put away our clothes? I’d like to unpack.”

“Each bedroom,” Miss Wirt said, “has a large closet, coin-operated. And to start you all off—” She produced a large plastic bag. “Here is a complimentary supply of coins.” She handed the rolls of dimes, nickels and quarters to Jon Ild. “Would you distribute these equally? A gesture of goodwill by Mr. Mick.”

Edie Dorn asked, “Is there a nurse or doctor in this settlement? Sometimes I develop psychosomatic skin rashes when I’m hard at work; a cortisone-base ointment usually helps me, but in the hurry I forgot to bring some along.”

“The industrial, research installations adjoining these living quarters,” Miss Wirt said, “keep several doctors on standby, and in addition there is a small medical ward with beds for the ill.”

“Coin-operated?” Sammy Mundo inquired.

“All our medical care,” Miss Wirt said, “is free. But the burden of proof that he is genuinely ill rests on the shoulders of the alleged patient.” She added, “All medication-dispensing machines, however, are coin-operated. I might say, in regard to this, that you will find in the game room of this suite a tranquilizer-dispensing machine. And, if you wish, we can probably have one of the stimulant-dispensing machines moved in from the adjoining installations.”

“What about hallucinogens?” Francesca Spanish inquired. “When I’m at work I function better if I can get an ergot-base psychedelic drug; it causes me to actually see who I’m up against, and I find that helps.”

Miss Wirt said, “Our Mr. Mick disapproves of all the ergot-base hallucinogenic agents; he feels they’re liver-toxic. If you have brought any with you, you’re free to use them. But we will not dispense any, although I understand we have them.”

“Since when,” Don Denny said to Francesca Spanish, “did you begin to need psychedelic drugs in order to hallucinate? Your whole life’s a waking hallucination.”

Unfazed, Francesca said, “Two nights ago I received a particularly impressive visitation.”

“I’m not surprised,” Don Denny said.

“A throng of precogs and telepaths descended from a ladder spun of finest natural hemp to the balcony outside my window. They dissolved a passageway through the wall and manifested themselves around my bed, waking me up with their chatter. They quoted poetry and languid prose from oldtime books, which delighted me; they seemed so—” She groped for the word. “Sparkling. One of them, who called himself Bill—”

“Wait a minute,” Tito Apostos said. “I had a dream like that, too.” He turned to Joe. “Remember, I told you just before we left Earth?” His hands convulsed excitedly. “Didn’t I?”

“I dreamed that too,” Tippy Jackson said. “Bill and Matt. They said they were going to get me.”

His face twisting with abrupt darkness, Runciter said to Joe, “You should have told me.”

“At the time,” Joe said, “you—” He gave up. “You looked tired. You had other things on your mind.”

Francesca said sharply, “It wasn’t a dream; it was an authentic visitation. I can distinguish the difference.”

“Sure you can, Francy,” Don Denny said. He winked at Joe.

“I had a dream,” Jon Ild said. “But it was about hovercars. I was memorizing their license-plate numbers. I memorized sixty-five, and I still remember them. Want to hear them?”

“I’m sorry, Glen,” Joe Chip said to Runciter. “I thought only Apostos experienced it; I didn’t know about the others. I—” The sound of elevator doors sliding aside made him pause; he and the others turned to look.

Potbellied, squat and thick-legged, Stanton Mick perambulated toward them. He wore fuchsia pedal-pushers, pink yakfur slippers, a snakeskin sleeveless blouse, and a ribbon in his waist-length dyed white hair. His nose, Joe thought; it looks like the rubber bulb of a New Delhi taxi horn, soft and squeezable. And loud. The loudest nose, he thought, that I have ever seen.

“Hello, all you top anti-PSIs,” Stanton Mick said, extending his arms in fulsome greeting. “The exterminators are here—by that, I mean yourselves.” His voice had a squeaky, penetrating castrato quality to it, an unpleasant noise that one might expect to hear, Joe Chip thought, from a hive of metal bees. “The plague, in the form of various psionic riff-raff, descended upon the harmless, friendly, peaceful world of Stanton Mick. What a day that was for us in Mickville—as we call our attractive and appetizing Lunar settlement here. You have, of course, already started work, as I knew you would. That’s because you’re tops in your field, as everyone realizes when Runciter Associates is mentioned. I’m already delighted at your activity, with one small exception that I perceive your tester there dingling with his equipment. Tester, would you look my way while I’m speaking to you?”

Joe shut off his polygraphs and gauges, killed the power supply.

“Do I have your attention now?” Stanton Mick asked him.

“Yes,” Joe said.

“Leave your equipment on,” Runciter ordered him.

“You’re not an employee of Mr. Mick; you’re my employee.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Joe said to him. “I’ve already gotten a reading on the PSI field being generated in this vicinity.” He had done his job. Stanton Mick had been too slow in arriving.

“How great is their field?” Runciter asked him.

Joe said, “There is no field.”

“Our inertials are nullifying it? Our counter-field is greater?”

“No,” Joe said. “As I said: There is no PSI field of any sort within range of my equipment. I pick up our own field, so as far as I can determine my instruments are functioning; I consider that an accurate feedback. We’re producing 2000 blr units, fluctuating upward to 2100 every few minutes. Probably it will gradually increase; by the time our inertials have been functioning together, say, twelve hours, it may reach as high as—”

“I don’t understand,” Runciter said. All the inertials now were gathering around Joe Chip; Don Denny picked up one of the tapes which had been excreted by the polygraph, examined the unwavering line, then handed the tape to Tippy Jackson. One by one the other inertials examined it silently, then looked toward Runciter. To Stanton Mick, Runciter said, “Where did you get the idea that PSIs had infiltrated your operations here on Luna? And why didn’t you want us to run our normal tests? Did you know we would get this result?”

“Obviously, he knew,” Joe Chip said. He felt sure of it.

Rapid, agitated activity crossed Runciter’s face; he started to speak to Stanton Mick, then changed his mind and said to Joe in a low voice, “Let’s get back to Earth; let’s get our inertials right out of here now.”

Aloud, to the others, he said, “Collect your possessions; we’re flying back to New York. I want all of you in the ship within the next fifteen minutes; any of you who aren’t in will be left behind. Joe, get all that junk of yours together in one heap; I’ll help you lug it to the ship, if I have to—anyhow, I want it out of here and you with it.” He turned in Mick’s direction once again, his face puffy with anger; he started to speak—

Squeaking in his metal-insect voice, Stanton Mick floated to the ceiling of the room, his arms protruding distendedly and rigidly. “Mr. Runciter, don’t let your thalamus override your cerebral cortex. This matter calls for discretion, not haste; calm your people down and let’s huddle together in an effort to mutually understand.” His rotund, colorful body bobbed about, twisting in a slow, transversal rotation so that now his feet, rather than his head, extended in Runciter’s direction.

“I’ve heard of this,” Runciter said to Joe. “It’s a self-destruct humanoid bomb. Help me get everybody out of here. They just now put it on auto; that’s why it floated upward.”

The bomb exploded.

Smoke, billowing in ill-smelling masses which clung to the ruptured walls and floor, sank and obscured the prone, twitching figure at Joe Chip’s feet.

In Joe’s ear Don Denny was yelling, “They killed Runciter, Mr. Chip. That’s Mr. Runciter.” In his excitement he stammered.

“Who else?” Joe said thickly, trying to breathe; the acrid smoke constricted his chest. His head rang from the concussion of the bomb, and, feeling an oozing warmth on his neck, he found that a flying shard had lacerated him.

Wendy Wright, indistinct although close by, said, “I think everyone else is hurt but alive.”

Bending down beside Runciter, Edie Dorn said, “Could we get an animator from Ray Hollis?” Her face looked crushed in and pale.

“No,” Joe said; he, too, bent down. “You’re wrong,” he said to Don Denny. “He’s not dead.”

But on the twisted floor Runciter lay dying. In two minutes, three minutes, Don Denny would be correct.

“Listen, everybody,” Joe said aloud. “Since Mr. Runciter is injured, I’m now in charge—temporarily, anyhow, until we can get back to Terra.”

“Assuming,” Al Hammond said, “we get back at all.” With a folded handkerchief he patted a deep cut over his right eye.

“How many of you have hand weapons?” Joe asked. The inertials continued to mill without answering. “I know it’s against Society rules,” Joe said. “But I know some of you carry them. Forget the illegality; forget everything you’ve ever learned pertaining to inertials on the job carrying guns.”

After a pause Tippy Jackson said, “Mine is with my things. In the other room.”

“Mine is here with me,” Tito Apostos said; he already held, in his right hand, an old-fashioned lead-slug pistol.

“If you have guns,” Joe said, “and they’re in the other room where you left your things, go get them.”

Six inertials started toward the door.

To Al Hammond and Wendy Wright, who remained, Joe said, “We’ve got to get Runciter into cold-pac.”

“There’re cold-pac facilities on the ship,” Al Hammond said.

“Then we’ll lug him there,” Joe said. “Hammond, take one end and I’ll lift up the other. Apostos, you go ahead of us and shoot any of Hollis’ employees who try to stop us.”

Jon Ild, returning from the next room with a laser tube, said, “You think Hollis is in here with Mr. Mick?”

“With him,” Joe said, “or by himself. We may never have been dealing with Mick; it may have been Hollis from the start.” Amazing, he thought, that the explosion of the humanoid bomb didn’t kill the rest of us. He wondered about Zoe Wirt. Evidently, she had gotten out before the blast; he saw no sign of her. I wonder what her reaction was, he thought, when she found out she wasn’t working for Stanton Mick, that her employer—her real employer—had hired us, brought us here, to assassinate us. They’ll probably have to kill her too. Just to be on the safe side. She certainly won’t be of any more use; in fact, she’ll be a witness to what happened.

Now armed, the other inertials returned; they waited for Zoe to tell them what to do. Considering their situation, the eleven inertials seemed reasonably self-possessed.

“If we can get Runciter into cold-pac soon enough,” Joe explained, as he and Al Hammond carried their apparently dying employer toward the elevators, “he can still run the firm. The way his wife does.” He stabbed the elevator button with his elbow. “There’s really very little chance,” he said, “that the elevator will come. They probably cut off all power at the same moment as the blast.”

The elevator, however, did appear. With haste he and Al Hammond carried Runciter aboard it.

“Three of you who have guns,” Joe said, “come along with us. The rest of you—”

“The hell with that,” Sammy Mundo said. “We don’t want to be stuck down here waiting for the elevator to come back. It may never come back.” He started forward, his face constricted with panic.

Joe said harshly, “Runciter goes first.” He touched a button and the doors shut, enclosing him, Al Hammond, Tito Apostos, Wendy Wright, Don Denny—and Glen Runciter. “It has to be done this way,” he said to them as the elevator ascended. “And anyhow, if Hollis’ people are waiting they’ll get us first. Except that they probably don’t expect us to be armed.”

“There is that law,” Don Denny put in.

“See if he’s dead yet,” Joe said to Tito Apostos.

Bending, Apostos examined the inert body. “Still some shallow respiration,” he said presently. “So we still have a chance.”

“Yes, a chance,” Joe said. He remained numb, as he had been both physically and psychologically since the blast; he felt cold and torpid and his eardrums appeared to be damaged. Once we’re back in our own ship, he reflected, after we get Runciter into the cold-pac, we can send out an assist call, back to New York, to everyone at the firm. In fact, to all the prudence organizations. If we can’t take off they can come to get us.

But in reality it wouldn’t work that way. Because by the time someone from the Society got to Luna, everyone trapped sub-surface, in the elevator shaft and aboard the ship, would be dead. So there really was no chance.

Tito Apostos said, “You could have let more of them into the elevator. We could have squeezed the rest of the women in.” He glared at Joe accusingly, his hands shaking with agitation.

“We’ll be more exposed to assassination than they will,” Joe said. “Hollis will expect any survivors of the blast to make use of the elevator, as we’re doing. That’s probably why they left the power on. They know we have to get back to our ship.”

Wendy Wright said, “You already told us that, Joe.”

“I’m trying to rationalize what I’m doing,” he said. “Leaving the rest of them down there.”

“What about that new girl’s talent?” Wendy said. “That sullen, dark girl with the disdainful attitude; Pat something. You could have had her go back into the past, before Runciter’s injury; she could have changed all this. Did you forget about her ability?”

“Yes,” Joe said tightly. He had, in the aimless, smoky confusion.

“Let’s go back down,” Tito Apostos said. “Like you say, Hollis’ people will be waiting for us at ground level; like you said, we’re in more danger by—”

“We’re at the surface,” Don Denny said. “The elevator’s stopped.” Wan and stiff, he licked his lips apprehensively as the doors automatically slid aside.

They faced a moving sidewalk that led upward to a concourse, at the end of which, beyond air-membrane doors, the base of their upright ship could be distinguished. Exactly as they had left it. And no one stood between them and it.

Peculiar, Joe Chip thought. Were they sure the exploding humanoid bomb would get us all? Something in the way they planned it must have gone wrong, first in the blast itself, then in their leaving the power on—and now this empty corridor.

“I think,” Don Denny said, as Al Hammond and Joe carried Runciter from the elevator and onto the moving side-walk, “the fact that the bomb floated to the ceiling fouled them up. It seemed to be a fragmentation type, and most of the flak hit the walls above our heads. I think it never occurred to them that any of us might survive; that would be why they left the power on.”

“Well, thank god it floated up then,” Wendy Wright said. “Good lord, it’s chilly. The bomb must have put this place’s heating system out of action.” She trembled visibly.

The moving sidewalk carried them forward with shattering slowness; it seemed to Joe that five or more minutes passed before the sidewalk evicted them at the two-stage air-membrane doors. The crawl forward, in some ways, seemed to him the worst part of everything which had happened, as if Hollis had arranged this purposely.

“Wait!” a voice called from behind them; footsteps sounded, and Tito Apostos turned, his gun raised, then lowered.

“The rest of them,” Don Denny said to Joe, who could not turn around; he and Al Hammond had begun maneuvering Runciter’s body through the intricate system of the air-membrane doors. “They’re all there; it’s okay.” With his gun he waved them toward him. “Come on!”

The connecting plastic tunnel still linked their ship with the concourse; Joe heard the characteristic dull clunk under his feet and wondered, Are they letting us go? Or, he thought, Are they waiting for us in the ship? It’s as if, he thought, some malicious force is playing with us, letting us scamper and twitter like debrained mice. We amuse it. Our efforts entertain it. And when we get just so far its fist will close around us and drop our squeezed remains, like Runciter’s, onto the slow-moving floor.

“Denny,” he said. “You go into the ship first. See if they’re waiting for us.”

“And if they are?” Denny said.

“Then you come back,” Joe said bitingly, “and tell us and we give up. And then they kill the rest of us.”

Wendy Wright said, “Ask Pat whatever her name is to use her ability.” Her voice was low but insistent. “Please, Joe.”

“Let’s try to get into the ship,” Tito Apostos said. “I don’t like that girl; I don’t trust her talent.”

“You don’t understand her or it,” Joe said. He watched skinny, small Don Denny scamper up the tunnel, fiddle with the switching arrangement which controlled the entrance port of the ship, then disappear inside. “He’ll never come back,” he said, panting; the weight of Glen Runciter seemed to have grown; he could hardly hold onto him. “Let’s set Runciter down here,” he said to Al Hammond. Together, the two of them lowered Runciter to the floor of the tunnel. “For an old man he’s heavy,” Joe said, standing erect again. To Wendy he said, “I’ll talk to Pat.” The others had caught up now; all of them crowded agitatedly into the connecting tunnel. “What a fiasco,” he gasped. “Instead of what we hoped to be our big enterprise. You never know. Hollis really got us this time.” He motioned Pat up beside him. Her face was smudged and her synthetic sleeveless blouse had been ripped; the elastic band which—fashionably—compressed her breasts could be seen: It had elegant embossed pale-pink fleurs-de-lis imprinted on it, and for no logical reason the perception of this unrelated, meaningless sense-datum registered in his mind. “Listen,” he said to her, putting his hand on her shoulder and looking into her eyes; she calmly returned his gaze. “Can you go back? To a time before the bomb was detonated? And restore Glen Runciter?”

“It’s too late now,” Pat said.

“Why?”

“That’s it. Too much time has passed. I would have had to do it right away.”

“Why didn’t you?” Wendy Wright asked her, with hostility.

Swinging her gaze, Pat eyed her. “Did you think of it? If you did, you didn’t say. Nobody said.”

“You don’t feel any responsibility, then,” Wendy said. “For Runciter’s death. When your talent could have obviated it.”

Pat laughed.

Returning from the ship, Don Denny said, “It’s empty.”

“Okay,” Joe said, motioning to Al Hammond. “Let’s get him into the ship and into cold-pac.” He and Al once more picked up the dense, hard-to-manage body; they continued on into the ship; the inertials scrambled and shoved around him, eager for sanctuary—he experienced the pure physical emanation of their fear, the field surrounding them—and himself too. The possibility that they might actually leave Luna alive made them more rather than less desperate; their stunned resignation had now completely gone.

“Where’s the key?” Jon Ild shrilled in Joe’s ear as he and Al Hammond stumbled groggily toward the cold-pac chamber. He plucked at Joe’s arm. “The key, Mr. Chip.”

Al Hammond explained, “The ignition key. For the ship. Runciter must have it on him; get it before we drop him into the cold-pac, because after that we won’t be able to touch him.”

Digging in Runciter’s various pockets, Joe found a leather key case; he passed it to Jon Ild. “Now we can put him into cold-pac?” he said with savage anger. “Come on, Hammond; for chrissakes, help me get him into the pac.” But we didn’t move swiftly enough, he said to himself. It’s all over. We failed. Well, he thought wearily, so it goes.

The initial rockets came on with a roar; the ship shuddered as, at the control console, four of the inertials haltingly collaborated in the task of programing the computerized command-receptors.

Why did they let us go? Joe asked himself as he and Al Hammond stood Runciter’s lifeless—or apparently lifeless—body upright in the floor-to-ceiling cold-pac chamber; automatic clamps closed about Runciter’s thighs and shoulders, supporting him, while the cold, glistening with its own simulated life, sparkled and shone, dazzling Joe Chip and Al Hammond. “I don’t understand it,” he said.

“They fouled up,” Hammond said. “They didn’t have any back-up planned behind the bomb. Like the bomb plotters who tried to kill Hitler; when they saw the explosion go off in the bunker all of them assumed—”

“Before the cold kills us,” Joe said, “let’s get out of this chamber.” He prodded Hammond ahead of him; once outside, the two of them together twisted the locking wheel into place. “God, what a feeling,” he said. “To think that a force like that preserves life. Of a sort.”

Francy Spanish, her long braids scorched, halted him as he started toward the fore section of the ship. “Is there a communication circuit in the cold-pac?” she asked. “Can we consult with Mr. Runciter now?”

“No consultation,” Joe said, shaking his head. “No earphone, no microphone. No protophasons. No half-life. Not until we get back to Earth and transfer him to a moratorium.”

“Then, how can we tell if we froze him soon enough?” Don Denny asked.

“We can’t,” Joe said.

“His brain may have deteriorated,” Sammy Mundo said, grinning. He giggled.

“That’s right,” Joe said. “We may never hear the voice or the thoughts of Glen Runciter again. We may have to run Runciter Associates without him. We may have to depend on what’s left of Ella; we may have to move our offices to the Beloved Brethren Moratorium at Zurich and operate out of there.” He seated himself in an aisle seat where he could watch the four inertials haggling over the correct way to direct the ship. Somnambulantly, engulfed by the dull, dreary ache of shock, he got out a bent cigarette and lit it.

The cigarette, dry and stale, broke apart as he tried to hold it between his fingers. Strange, he thought.

“The bomb blast,” Al Hammond said, noticing. “The heat.”

“Did it age us?” Wendy asked, from behind Hammond; she stepped past him and seated herself beside Joe. “I feel old. I am old; your package of cigarettes is old; we’re all old, as of today, because of what has happened. This was a day for us like no other.”

With dramatic energy the ship rose from the surface of Luna, carrying with it, absurdly, the plastic connective tunnel.