Philip Dick - The Complete Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol. 4:

"I don't believe he'd say that."

"Then talk to him."

"How?"

Kathy pointed to the TV set in the corner of the restaurant. "Turn it on and listen."

Rising to his feet, Johnny said, "I don't have to; I've already given my decision. I'll be at my hotel, if you should change your mind." He walked away from the table, leaving her sitting there. Would she call after him? He listened as he walked. She did not call.

A moment later he was out of the restaurant, standing on the sidewalk. She had called his bluff, and so it ceased to be a bluff; it became the real thing. He actually had quit.

Stunned, he walked aimlessly on. And yet – he had been right. He knew that. It was just that… damn her, he thought. Why didn't she give in? Because of Louis, he realized. Without the old man she would have gone ahead and done it, traded her controlling, voting stock for the Ganymede property. Damn Louis Sarapis, not her, he thought furiously.

What now? he asked himself. Go back to New York? Look for a new job? For instance approach Alfonse Gam? There was money in that, if he could land it. Or should he stay here in Michigan, hoping that Kathy would change her mind?

She can't keep on, he decided. No matter what Sarapis tells her. Or rather, what she believes he's telling her. Whichever it is.

Hailing a cab, he gave the driver the address of his hotel room. A few moments later he was entering the lobby of the Antler Hotel, back where he had started early in the morning. Back to the forbidding empty room, this time merely to sit and wait. To hope that Kathy would change her mind and call him. This time he had no appointment to go to; the appointment was over.

When he reached his hotel room he heard his phone ringing.

For a moment Johnny stood at the door, key in hand, listening to the phone on the other side of the door, the shrill noise reaching him as he stood in the hall. Is it Kathy? he wondered. Or is it him?

He put the key in the lock, turned it and entered the room; sweeping the receiver off its hook he said, "Hello."

Drumming and far-off, the voice, in the middle of its monotonous monologue, its recitation to itself, was murmuring, "… no good at all, Barefoot, to leave her. Betrayal of your job; thought you understood your responsibilities. Same to her as it was to me, and you never would have walked off in a fit of pique and left me. I deliberately left the disposition of my body to you so you'd stay on. You can't…" At that point Johnny hung up, chilled.

The phone rang again, at once.

This time he did not take it off the hook. The hell with you, he said to himself. He walked to the window and stood looking down at the street below, thinking to himself of the conversation he had held with old Louis years ago, the one that had made such an impression in his mind. The conversation in which it had come out that he had failed to go to college because he wanted to die. Looking down at the street below, he thought, Maybe I ought to jump. At least there'd be no more phones… no more of it.

The worse part, he thought, is its senility. Its thoughts are not clear, not distinct; they're dream-like; irrational. The old man is not genuinely alive. He is not even in half-life. This is a dwindling away of consciousness toward a nocturnal state. And we are forced to listen to it as it unwinds, as it develops step by step, to final, total death.

But even in this degenerative state, it had desires. It wanted, and strongly. It wanted him to do something; it wanted Kathy to do something; the remnants of Louis Sarapis were vital and active, and clever enough to find ways of pursuing him, of getting what was wanted. It was a travesty of Louis's wishes during his lifetime, and yet it could not be ignored; it could not be escaped.

The phone continued to ring.

Maybe it isn't Louis, he thought then. Maybe it's Kathy. Going to it he lifted the receiver. And put it back down at once. The drumming once more, the fragments of Louis Sarapis's personality… he shuddered. And is it just here, is it selective?

He had a terrible feeling that it was not selective.

Going to the TV set at the far end of the room he snapped the switch. The screen grew into lighted animation, and yet, he saw, it was strangely blurred. The dim outlines of – it seemed to be a face.

And everyone, he realized, is seeing this. He turned to another channel. Again the dully-formed features, the old man half-materialized here on the television screen. And from the set's speaker the murmur of indistinct words. "…told you time and again your primary responsibility is to…" Johnny shut the set off; the ill-formed face and words sank out of existence, and all that remained, once more, was the ringing phone.

He picked up the phone and said, "Louis, can you hear me?"

"… when election time comes they'll see. A man with the spirit to campaign a second time, take the financial responsibility, after all it's only for the wealthy men, now, the cost of running…" The voice droned on. No, the old man could not hear him. It was not a conversation; it was a monologue. It was not authentic communication.

And yet the old man knew what was occurring on Earth; he seemed to understand, to somehow see, that Johnny had quit his job.

Hanging up the phone he seated himself and lit a cigarette.

I can't go back to Kathy, he realized, unless I'm willing to change my mind and advise her not to sell. And that's impossible; I can't do that. So that's out. What is there left for me?

How long can Sarapis hound me? Is there any place I can go?

Going to the window once more he stood looking down at the street below.

At a newsstand, Claude St. Cyr tossed down coins, picked up the newspaper.

"Thank you, sir or madam," the robot vender said.

The lead article… St. Cyr blinked and wondered if he had lost his mind. He could not grasp what he was reading – or rather unable to read. It made no sense; the homeostatic news-printing system, the fully automated micro-relay newspaper, had evidently broken down. All he found was a procession of words, randomly strung together. It was worse than Finnegans Wake.

Or was it random? One paragraph caught his eye.

At the hotel window now ready to leap. If you expect to conduct any more business with her you better get over there. She's dependent on him, needs a man since her husband, that Paul Sharp, abandoned her. The Antler Hotel, room 604. I think you have time. Johnny is too hot-headed; shouldn't have tried to bluff her. With my blood you can't be bluffed and she's got my blood, I…

St. Cyr said rapidly to Harvey, who stood beside him, "Johnny Barefoot's in a room at the Antler Hotel about to jump, and this is old Sarapis telling us, warning us. We better get over there."

Glancing at him, Harvey said, "Barefoot's on our side; we can't afford to have him take his life. But why would Sarapis -"

"Let's just get over there," St. Cyr said, starting toward his parked 'copter. Harvey followed on the run.

All at once the telephone stopped ringing. Johnny turned from the window – and saw Kathy Sharp standing by it, the receiver in her hand. "He called me," she said. "And he told me, Johnny, where you were and what you were going to do."

"Nuts," he said, "I'm not going to do anything." He moved back from the window.

"He thought you were," Kathy said.

"Yes, and that proves he can be wrong." His cigarette, he saw, had burned down to the filter; he dropped it into the ashtray on the dresser and stubbed it out.

"My grandfather was always fond of you," Kathy said. "He wouldn't like anything to happen to you."