Philip Dick - Ubik

After a pause Joe said, “What about Pat Conley?”

“Yeah, she’s with you; in half-life, interwired to the rest of the group.”

“Are the regressions due to her talent? Or to the normal decay of half-life?” Tensely, he waited for Runciter’s answer; everything, as he saw it, hung on this one question.

Runciter snorted, grimaced, then said hoarsely, “The normal decay. Ella experienced it. Everyone who enters half-life experiences it.”

“You’re lying to me,” Joe said. And felt a knife shear through him.

Staring at him, Runciter said, “Joe, my god, I saved your life; I broke through to you enough just now to bring you back into full half-life functioning—you’ll probably go on indefinitely now. If I hadn’t been waiting here in this hotel room when you came crawling through that door, why, hell—hey, look, goddam it; you’d be lying on that rundown bed dead as a doornail by now if it wasn’t for me. I’m Glen Runciter; I’m your boss and I’m the one fighting to save all your lives—I’m the only one out here in the real world plugging for you.” He continued to stare at Joe with heated indignation and surprise. A bewildered, injured surprise, as if he could not fathom what was happening. “That girl,” Runciter said, “that Pat Conley, she would have killed you like she killed—” He broke off.

Joe said, “Like she killed Wendy and Al, Edie Dorn, Fred Zafsky, and maybe by now Tito Apostos.”

In a low but controlled voice Runciter said, “This situation is very complex, Joe. It doesn’t admit to simple answers.”

“You don’t know the answers,” Joe said. “That’s the problem. You made up answers; you had to invent them to explain your presence here. All your presences here, your so-called manifestations.”

“I don’t call them that; you and Al worked out that name. Don’t blame me for what you two—”

“You don’t know any more than I do,” Joe said, “about what’s happening to us and who’s attacking us. Glen, you can’t say who we’re up against because you don’t know.”

Runciter said, “I know I’m alive; I know I’m sitting out here in this consultation lounge at the moratorium.”

“Your body in the coffin,” Joe said. “Here at the Simple Shepherd Mortuary . Did you look at it?”

“No,” Runciter said, “but that isn’t really—”

“It had withered,” Joe said. “Lost bulk like Wendy’s and Al’s and Edie’s—and, in a little while, mine. Exactly the same for you; no better, no worse.”

“In your case I got Ubik—” Again Runciter broke off; a difficult-to-decipher expression appeared on his face: a combination perhaps of insight, fear and—but Joe couldn’t tell. “I got you the Ubik,” he finished.

“What is Ubik?” Joe said.

There was no answer from Runciter.

“You don’t know that either,” Joe said. “You don’t know what it is or why it works. You don’t even know where it comes from.”

After a long, agonized pause, Runciter said, “You’re right, Joe. Absolutely right.” Tremulously, he lit another cigarette. “But I wanted to save your life; that part’s true. Hell, I’d like to save all your lives.” The cigarette slipped from his fingers; it dropped to the floor, rolled away. With labored effort, Runciter bent over to grope for it. On his face showed extreme and clear-cut unhappiness. Almost a despair.

“We’re in this,” Joe said, “and you’re sitting out there, out in the lounge, and you can’t do it; you can’t put a stop to the thing we’re involved in.”

“That’s right.” Runciter nodded.

“This is cold-pac,” Joe said, “but there’s something more. Something not natural to people in half-life. There are two forces at work, as Al figured out; one helping us and one destroying us. You’re working with the force or entity or person that’s trying to help us. You got the Ubik from them.”

“Yes.”

Joe said, “So none of us know even yet who it is that’s destroying us—and who it is that’s protecting us; you outside don’t know, and we in here don’t know. Maybe it’s Pat.”

“I think it is,” Runciter said. “I think there’s your enemy.”

Joe said, “Almost. But I don’t think so.” I don’t think, he said to himself, that we’ve met our enemy face to face, or our friend either.

He thought, But I think we will. Before long we will know who they both are.

“Are you sure,” he asked Runciter, “absolutely sure, that you’re beyond doubt the only one who survived the blast? Think before you answer.”

“Like I said, Zoe Wirt—”

“Of us,” Joe said. “She’s not here in this time segment with us. Pat Conley, for example.”

“Pat Conley’s chest was crushed. She died of shock and a collapsed lung, with multiple internal injuries, including a damaged liver and a leg broken in three places. Physically speaking, she’s about four feet away from you; her body, I mean.”

“And it’s the same for all the rest? They’re all here in cold-pac at the Beloved Brethren Moratorium ?”

Runciter said, “With one exception. Sammy Mundo. He suffered massive brain damage and lapsed into a coma out of which they say he’ll never emerge. The cortical—”

“Then he’s alive. He’s not in cold-pac. He’s not here.”

“I wouldn’t call it ‘alive.’ They’ve run encephalograms on him; no cortical activity at all. A vegetable, nothing more. No personality, no motion, no consciousness—there’s nothing happening in Mundo’s brain, nothing in the slightest.”

Joe said, “So, therefore, you naturally didn’t think to mention it.”

“I mentioned it now.”

“When I asked you.” He reflected. “How far is he from us? In Zurich?”

“We set down here in Zurich, yes. He’s at the Carl Jung Hospital. About a quarter mile from this moratorium.”

“Rent a telepath,” Joe said. “Or use G. G. Ashwood. Have him scanned.” A boy, he said to himself. Disorganized and immature. A cruel, unformed, peculiar personality. This may be it, he said to himself. It would fit in with what we’re experiencing, the capricious contradictory happenings. The pulling off of our wings and then the putting back. The temporary restorations, as in just now with me here in this hotel room, after my climb up the stairs.

Runciter sighed. “We did that. In brain-injury cases like this it’s a regular practice to try to reach the person telepathically. No results; nothing. No frontal-lobe cerebration of any sort. Sorry, Joe.” He wagged his massive head in a sympathetic, tic-like motion; obviously, he shared Joe’s disappointment.

“Did you ring for me, sir?” Herbert Schoenheit von Vogelsang scuttled into the consultation lounge, cringing like a medieval toady. “Shall I put Mr. Chip back with the others? You’re done, sir?”

Runciter said, “I’m done.”

“Did your—”

“Yes, I got through all right. We could hear each other fine this time.” He lit a cigarette; it had been hours since he had had one, had found a free moment. By now the arduous, prolonged task of reaching Joe Chip had depleted him. “Do you have an amphetamine dispenser nearby?” he asked the moratorium owner.

“In the hall outside the consultation lounge.” The eager-to-please creature pointed.

Leaving the lounge, Runciter made his way to the amphetamine dispenser; he inserted a coin, pushed the choice lever, and, into the drop slot, a small familiar object slid with a tinkling sound.

The pill made him feel better. But then he thought about his appointment with Len Niggelman two hours from now and wondered if he could really make it. There’s been too much going on, he decided. I’m not ready to make my formal report to the Society; I’ll have to vid Niggelman and ask for a postponement.