Philip Dick - Ubik

“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?”