Philip Dick: The Complete Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol. 2

Of course, there was only one look he got from them. A combination of fear, reverence, and hope. The look made him feel good. It was a look for him, only. Between themselves they shouted and argued – and sometimes stabbed and fought each other furiously, rolling in their brown robes in a wild tangle. They were a passionate and strong species. He got so he admired them.

Which was good – because it made him feel better. To have the reverent awe of such a proud, sturdy face was really something. There was nothing craven about them.

About the fifth time he came there was a rather attractive structure built. Some kind of temple. A place of religious worship.

To him! They were developing a real religion about him. No doubt of it. He began going to work at nine o'clock, to give himself a full hour with them. They had, by the middle of the second week, a full-sized ritual evolved. Processions, lighted tapers, what seemed to be songs or chants. Priests in long robes. And the spiced offerings.

No idols, though. Apparently he was so big they couldn't make out his appearance. He tried to imagine what it looked like to be on their side of the shimmer. An immense shape looming up above them, beyond a wall of gray haze. An indistinct being, something like themselves, yet not like them at all. A different kind of being, obviously. Larger – but different in other ways. And when he spoke – booming echoes up and down the Jiffi-scuttler. Which still sent them fleeing in panic.

An evolving religion. He was changing them. Through his actual presence and through his answers, the precise, correct responses he obtained from the Federal Library of Information and had the Linguistics Machine translate into their language. Of course, by their time-rate they had to wait generations for the answers. But they had become accustomed to it, by now. They waited. They expected. They passed up questions and after a couple of centuries he passed down answers, answers which they no doubt put to good use.

"What in the world?" Mary demanded, as he got home from work an hour late one night. "Where have you been?"

"Working," Ellis said carelessly, removing his hat and coat. He threw himself on the couch. "I'm tired. Really tired." He sighed with relief and motioned for the couch-arm to bring him a whiskey sour.

Mary came over by the couch. "Henry, I'm a little worried."

"Worried?"

"You shouldn't work so hard. You ought to take it easy, more. How long since you've had a real vacation? A trip off Terra. Out of the System. You know, I'd just like to call that fellow Miller and ask him why it's necessary for a man your age to put in so much -"

"A man my age!" Ellis bristled indignantly. "I'm not so old."

"Of course not." Mary sat down beside him and put her arms around him affectionately. "But you shouldn't have to do so much. You deserve a rest. Don't you think?"

"This is different. You don't understand. This isn't the same old stuff. Reports and statistics and the damn filing. This is -"

"What is it?"

"This is different. I'm not a cog. This gives me something. I can't explain it to you, I guess. But it's something I have to do."

"If you could tell me more about it -"

"I can't tell you any more about it," Ellis said. "But there's nothing in the world like it. I've worked twenty-five years for Terran Development. Twenty-five years at the same reports, again and again. Twenty-five years – and I never felt this way."

"Oh, yeah?" Miller roared. "Don't give me that! Come clean, Ellis!"

Ellis opened and closed his mouth. "What are you talking about?" Horror rolled through him. "What's happened?"

"Don't try to give me the runaround." On the vidscreen Miller's face was purple. "Come into my office."

The screen went dead.

Ellis sat stunned at his desk. Gradually, he collected himself and got shakily to his feet. "Good Lord." Weakly, he wiped cold sweat from his forehead. All at once. Everything in ruins. He was dazed with the shock.

"Anything wrong?" Miss Nelson asked sympathetically.

"No." Ellis moved numbly towards the door. He was shattered. What had Miller found out? Good God! Was it possible he had -

"Mr Miller looked angry."

"Yeah." Ellis moved blindly down the hall, his mind reeling. Miller looked angry all right. Somehow he had found out. But why was he mad? Why did he care? A cold chill settled over Ellis. It looked bad. Miller was his superior – with hiring and firing powers. Maybe he'd done something wrong. Maybe he had somehow broken a law. Committed a crime. But what?

What did Miller care about them! What concern was it of Terran Development?

He opened the door to Miller's office. "Here I am, Mr Miller," he muttered. "What's the trouble?"

Miller glowered at him with rage. "All this goofy stuff about your cousin on Proxima."

"It's – uh – you mean a business friend on Centaurus VI."

"You – you swindler!" Miller leaped up. "And after all the Company's done for you."

"I don't understand," Ellis muttered. "What have -"

"Why do you think we gave you the Jiffi-scuttler in the first place?"

"Why?"

"To test! To try out, you wall-eyed Venusian stink-cricket! The Company magnanimously consented to allow you to operate a Jiffi-scuttler in advance of market presentation, and what do you do? Why, you -"

Ellis started to get indignant. After all, he had been with TD twenty-five years. "You don't have to be so offensive. I plunked down my thousand gold credits for it."

"Well, you can just mosey down to the accountant's office and get your money back. I've already sent out a directive for a construction team to crate up your Jiffi-scuttler and bring it back to receiving."

Ellis was dumbfounded. "But why?"

"Why indeed! Because it's defective. Because it doesn't work. That's why." Miller's eyes blazed with technological outrage. "The inspection crew found a leak a mile wide in it." His lip curled. "As if you didn't know."

Ellis's heart sank. "Leak?" he croaked apprehensively.

"Leak. It's a damn good thing I authorized a periodic inspection. If we depended on people like you to -"

"Are you sure? It seemed all right to me. That is, it got me here without any trouble," Ellis floundered. "Certainly no complaints from my end."

"No. No complaints from your end. That's exactly why you're not getting another one. That's why you're taking the monojet transport back home tonight. Because you didn't report the leak! And if you ever try to put something over on this office again -"

"How do you know I was aware of the – defect?"

Miller sank down in his chair, overcome with fury. "Because," he said carefully, "of your daily pilgrimage to the Linguistic Machine. With your alleged letter from your grandmother on Betelgeuse II. Which wasn't any such thing. Which was an utter fraud. Which you got through the leak in the Jiffi-scuttler!"

"How do you know?" Ellis squeaked boldly, driven to the wall. "So maybe there was a defect. But you can't prove there's any connection between your badly constructed Jiffi-scuttler and my -"

"Your missive," Miller stated, "which you foisted on our Linguistics Machine, was not a non-Terran script. It was not from Centaurus VI. It was not from any non-Terran system. It was ancient Hebrew. And there's only one place you could have got it, Ellis. So don't try to kid me."

"Hebrew!" Ellis exclaimed, startled. He turned white as a sheet. "Good Lord. The other continuum – the fourth dimension. Time, of course." He trembled. "And the expanding universe. That would explain their size. And it explains why a new group, a new generation -"

"We're taking enough of a chance as it is, with these Jiffi-scuttlers. Warping a tunnel through other space-time continua." Miller shook his head warily. "You meddler. You knew you were supposed to report any defect."