Ubik

Chapter 2

Upright in her transparent casket, encased in an effluvium of icy mist, Ella Runciter lay with her eyes shut, her hands lifted permanently toward her impassive face. It had been three years since he had seen Ella, and of course she had not changed. She never would, now, at least not in the outward physical way. But with each resuscitation into active half-life, into a return of cerebral activity, however short, Ella died somewhat. The remaining time left to her pulse-phased out and ebbed.

Knowledge of this underwrote his failure to rev her up more often. He rationalized this way: that it doomed her, that to activate her constituted a sin against her. As to her own stated wishes, before her death and in early half-life encounters—this had become handily nebulous in his mind. Anyway, he would know better, being four times as old as she. What had she wished? To continue to function with him as co-owner of Runciter Associates; something vague on that order. Well, he had granted this wish. Now, for example. And six or seven times in the past. He did consult her at each crisis of the organization. He was doing so at this moment.

Damn this earphone arrangement, he grumbled as he fitted the plastic disc against the side of his head. And this microphone; all impediments to natural communication. He felt impatient and uncomfortable as he shifted about on the inadequate chair which Vogelsang or whatever his name was had provided him; he watched her rev back into sentience and wished she would hurry. And then in panic he thought, maybe she isn’t going to make it; maybe she’s worn out and they didn’t tell me. Or they don’t know. Maybe, he thought, I ought to get that Vogelsang creature in here to explain. Maybe something terrible is wrong.

Ella, pretty and light-skinned; her eyes, in the days when they had been open, had been bright and luminous blue. That would not again occur; he could talk to her and hear her answer; he could communicate with her… but he would never again see her with eyes opened; nor would her mouth move. She would not smile at his arrival. When he departed she would not cry. Is this worth it? he asked himself. Is this better than the old way, the direct road from full-life to the grave? I still do have her with me, in a sense, he decided. The alternative is nothing.

In the earphone; words, slow and uncertain, formed circular thoughts of no importance, fragments of the mysterious dream which she now dwelt in. How did it feel, he wondered, to be in half-life? He could never fathom it from what Ella had told him; the basis of it, the experience of it, couldn’t really be transmitted. Gravity, she had told him, once; it begins not to affect you and you float, more and more. When half-life is over, she had said, I think you float out of the System, out into the stars. But she did not know either; she only wondered and conjectured. She did not, however, seem afraid. Or unhappy. He felt glad of that.

“Hi, Ella,” he said clumsily into the microphone.

“Oh,” her answer came, in his ear; she seemed startled. And yet of course her face remained stable. Nothing showed; he looked away. “Hello, Glen,” she said, with a sort of childish wonder, surprised, taken aback, to find him here. “What—” She hesitated. “How much time has passed?”

“Couple years,” he said.

“Tell me what’s going on.”

“Aw, christ,” he said, “everything’s going to pieces, the whole organization. That’s why I’m here; you wanted to be brought into major policy-planning decisions, and god knows we need that now, a new policy, or anyhow a revamping of our scout structure.”

“I was dreaming,” Ella said. “I saw a smoky red light, a horrible light. And yet I kept moving toward it. I couldn’t stop.”

“Yeah,” Runciter said, nodding. “The Bardo Thodol, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, tells about that. You remember reading that; the doctors made you read it when you were—” He hesitated. “Dying,” he said then.

“The smoky red light is bad, isn’t it?” Ella said.

“Yeah, you want to avoid it.” He cleared his throat. “Listen, Ella, we’ve got problems. You feel up to hearing about it? I mean, I don’t want to overtax you or anything; just say if you’re too tired or if there’s something else you want to hear about or discuss.”

“It’s so weird. I think I’ve been dreaming all this time, since you last talked to me. Is it really two years? Do you know, Glen, what I think? I think that other people who are around me—we seem to be progressively growing together. A lot of my dreams aren’t about me at all. Sometimes I’m a man and sometimes a little boy; sometimes I’m an old fat woman with varicose veins… and I’m in places I’ve never seen, doing things that make no sense.”

“Well, like they say, you’re heading for a new womb to be born out of. And that smoky red light—that’s a bad womb; you don’t want to go that way. That’s a humiliating, low sort of womb. You’re probably anticipating your next life, or whatever it is.” He felt foolish, talking like this; normally he had no theological convictions. But the half-life experience was real and it had made theologians out of all of them. “Hey,” he said, changing the subject. “Let me tell you what’s happened, what made me come here and bother you. S. Dole Melipone has dropped out of sight.”

A moment of silence, and then Ella laughed. “Who or what is an S. Dole Melipone? There can’t be any such thing.” The laugh, the unique and familiar warmth of it, made his spine tremble; he remembered that about her, even after so many years. He had not heard Ella’s laugh in over a decade.

“Maybe you’ve forgotten,” he said.

Ella said, “I haven’t forgotten; I wouldn’t forget an S. Dole Melipone. Is it like a hobbit?”

“It’s Raymond Hollis’ top telepath. We’ve had at least one inertial sticking close to him ever since G. G. Ashwood first scouted him, a year and a half ago. We never lose Melipone; we can’t afford to. Melipone can, when necessary, generate twice the PSI field of any other Hollis employee. And Melipone is only one of a whole string of Hollis people who’ve disappeared—anyhow, disappeared as far as we’re concerned. As far as all prudence organizations in the Society can make out. So I thought, Hell, I’ll go ask Ella what’s up and what we should do. Like you specified in your will—remember?”

“I remember.” But she sounded remote. “Step up your ads on TV. Warn people. Tell them…” Her voice trailed off into silence then.

“This bores you,” Runciter said gloomily.

“No. I—” She hesitated and he felt her once more drift away. “Are they all telepaths?” she asked after an interval.

“Telepaths and precogs mostly. They’re nowhere on Earth; I know that. We’ve got a dozen inactive inertials with nothing to do because the PSIs they’ve been nullifying aren’t around, and what worries me even more, a lot more, is that requests for anti-PSIs have dropped—which you would expect, given the fact that so many PSIs are missing. But I know they’re on one single project; I mean, I believe. Anyhow, I’m sure of it; somebody’s hired the bunch of them, but only Hollis knows who it is or where it is. Or what it’s all about.” He lapsed into brooding silence then. How would Ella be able to help him figure it out? he asked himself. Stuck here in this casket, frozen out of the world—she knew only what he told her. Yet, he had always relied on her sagacity, that particular female form of it, a wisdom not based on knowledge or experience but on something innate. He had not, during the period she had lived, been able to fathom it; he certainly could not do so now that she lay in chilled immobility. Other women he had known since her death—there had been several—had a little of it, trace amounts perhaps. Intimations of a greater potentiality which, in them, never emerged as it had in Ella.

“Tell me,” Ella said, “what this Melipone person is like.”

“A screwball.”

“Working for money? Or out of conviction? I always feel wary about that, when they have that PSI mystique, that sense of purpose and cosmic identity. Like that awful Sarapis had; remember him?”

“Sarapis isn’t around any more. Hollis allegedly bumped him off because he connived to set up his own outfit in competition with Hollis. One of his precogs tipped Hollis off.” He added, “Melipone is much tougher on us than Sarapis was. When he’s hot it takes three inertials to balance his field, and there’s no profit in that; we collect—or did collect—the same fee we get with one inertial. Because the Society has a rate schedule now which we’re bound by.” He liked the Society less each year; it had become a chronic obsession with him, its uselessness, its cost. Its vainglory. “As near as we can tell, Melipone is a money-Psi. Does that make you feel better? Is that less bad?” He waited, but heard no response from her. “Ella,” he said. Silence. Nervously he said, “Hey, hello there, Ella; can you hear me? Is something wrong?” Oh, god, he thought. She’s gone.

A pause, and then thoughts materialized in his right ear. “My name is Jory.” Not Ella’s thoughts; a different elan, more vital and yet clumsier. Without her deft subtlety.

“Get off the line,” Runciter said in panic. “I was talking to my wife Ella; where’d you come from?”

“I am Jory,” the thoughts came, “and no one talks to me. I’d like to visit with you awhile, mister, if that’s okay with you. What’s your name?”

Stammering, Runciter said, “I want my wife, Mrs. Ella Runciter; I paid to talk to her, and that’s who I want to talk to, not you.”

“I know Mrs. Runciter,” the thoughts clanged in his ear, much stronger now. “She talks to me, but it isn’t the same as somebody like you talking to me, somebody in the world. Mrs. Runciter is here where we are; it doesn’t count because she doesn’t know any more than we do. What year is it, mister? Did they send that big ship to Proxima? I’m very interested in that; maybe you can tell me. And if you want, I can tell Mrs. Runciter later on. Okay?”

Runciter popped the plug from his ear, hurriedly set down the earphone and the rest of the gadgetry; he left the stale, dust-saturated office and roamed about among the chilling caskets, row after row, all of them neatly arranged by number. Moratorium employees swam up before him and then vanished as he churned on, searching for the owner.

“Is something the matter, Mr. Runciter?” the von Vogelsang person said, observing him as he floundered about. “Can I assist you?”

“I’ve got some thing coming in over the wire,” Runciter panted, halting. “Instead of Ella. Damn you guys and your shoddy business practices; this shouldn’t happen, and what does it mean?” He followed after the moratorium owner, who had already started in the direction of office 2-A. “If I ran my business this way—”

“Did the individual identify himself?”

“Yeah, he called himself Jory.”

Frowning with obvious worry, von Vogelsang said, “That would be Jory Miller. I believe he’s located next to your wife. In the bin.”

“But I can see it’s Ella!”

“After prolonged proximity,” von Vogelsang explained, “there is occasionally a mutual osmosis, a suffusion between the mentalities of half-lifers. Jory Miller’s cephalic activity is particularly good; your wife’s is not. That makes for an unfortunately one-way passage of protophasons.”

“Can you correct it?” Runciter asked hoarsely; he found himself still spent, still panting and shaking. “Get that thing out of my wife’s mind and get her back—that’s your job!”

Von Vogelsang said, in a stilted voice, “If this condition persists your money will be returned to you.”

“Who cares about the money? Snirt the money.” They had reached office 2-A now; Runciter unsteadily reseated himself, his heart laboring so that he could hardly speak. “If you don’t get this Jory person off the line,” he half gasped, half snarled, “I’ll sue you; I’ll close down this place!”

Facing the casket, von Vogelsang pressed the audio outlet into his ear and spoke briskly into the microphone. “Phase out, Jory; that’s a good boy.” Glancing at Runciter he said, “Jory passed at fifteen; that’s why he has so much vitality. Actually, this has happened before; Jory has shown up several times where he shouldn’t be.” Once more into the microphone he said, “This is very unfair of you, Jory; Mr. Runciter has come a long way to talk to his wife. Don’t dim her signal, Jory; that’s not nice.” A pause as he listened to the earphone. “I know her signal is weak.” Again he listened, solemn and froglike, then removed the earphone and rose to his feet.

“What’d he say?” Runciter demanded. “Will he get out of there and let me talk to Ella?”

Von Vogelsang said, “There’s nothing Jory can do. Think of two AM radio transmitters, one close by but limited to only five-hundred watts of operating power. Then another, far off, but on the same or nearly the same frequency, and utilizing five-thousand watts. When night comes—”

“And night,” Runciter said, “has come.” At least for Ella. And maybe himself as well, if Hollis’ missing teeps, para-kineticists, precogs, resurrectors and animators couldn’t be found. He had not only lost Ella; he had also lost her advice, Jory having supplanted her before she could give it.

“When we return her to the bin,” von Vogelsang was blabbing, “we won’t install her near Jory again. In fact, if you’re agreeable as to paying the somewhat larger monthly fee, we can place her in a high-grade isolated chamber with walls coated and reinforced with Teflon-26 so as to inhibit hetero-psychic infusion, from Jory or anybody else.”

“Isn’t it too late?” Runciter said, surfacing momentarily from the depression into which this happening had dropped him.

“She may return. Once Jory phases out. Plus anyone else who may have gotten into her because of her weakened state. She’s accessible to almost anyone.” Von Vogelsang chewed his lip, palpably pondering. “She may not like being isolated, Mr. Runciter. We keep the containers—the caskets, as they’re called by the lay public—close together for a reason. Wandering through one another’s mind gives those in half-life the only—”

“Put her in solitary right now,” Runciter broke in. “Better she be isolated than not exist at all.”

“She exists,” von Vogelsang corrected. “She merely can’t contact you. There’s a difference.”

Runciter said, “A metaphysical difference which means nothing to me.”

“I will put her in isolation,” von Vogelsang said, “but I think you’re right; it’s too late. Jory has permeated her permanently, to some extent at least. I’m sorry.”

Runciter said harshly, “So am I.”