Philip Dick - World of Chance

Verrick turned away as the foreman announced:

"All loaded—the crypt, the stuff we found in the build­ing, the snap-models of the layout..."

Verrick followed his foreman back to the ship and almost immediately they were on their way back to A.G. Chemie.

Herb Moore appeared as the yellowed cube was lowered to a lab table. "This is his crypt?" he asked as he began rubbing dirt from the translucent shield that covered John Preston's withered body. "Get this stuff off," he ordered.

"It's old," one of the technicians protested. "We'll have to work carefully or it'll turn to powder."

Moore grabbed a cutting tool and began severing the shield from its base.

The shield split, brittle and dry with age. Moore clawed it away and from the opened cube a cloud of musty air billowed out and swirls of dust danced in their faces and made them cough and pull back.

Round the work-table vidcameras ground away, making a permanent record of the procedure.

Moore impatiently signalled. Two technicians lifted the wizened body and held it at eye-level. Moore poked at the face with a pointed probe, then suddenly grabbed the right arm. It came off without resistance and Moore stood holding it foolishly.

The body was a plastic dummy.

"Imitation!" He threw the arm down violently.

Moore walked all around the dummy, saying nothing to Verrick until he had examined it from all sides. Finally he took hold of the hair and tugged. The skull-covering came off, disclosing a metal hemisphere. Moore tossed the wig to one of the robots and then turned his back on the exhibit.

"It looks exactly like the photograph," Verrick said admiringly as he stepped nearer to the table.

Moore laughed. "Naturally! The dummy was made first and then photographed. But it's probably about the way Preston looked." His eyes flickered. " Looks, I mean."

Eleanor Stevens detached herself from the watching group and approached the dummy cautiously. "You think he's still alive in his own body?" Eleanor asked. "That isn't possible!"

Moore didn't answer. He was staring at the dummy; he had picked up the arm again and was mechanically pulling loose the fingers one by one. The look on his face was nothing Eleanor had ever seen before.

Abruptly he shook himself and hurried to the door. "Pellig should be entering the defence network. I want to be part of things when that happens."

Verrick and Eleanor followed quickly after him, the dummy forgotten.

"This should be interesting," Verrick muttered as he hurried to his office. Expectation gleamed in his heavy face as he snapped on the screen the ipvic technicians had set up for him. With Eleanor standing nervously behind him he prepared himself for the sight of Keith Pellig stepping from the transport to the field at Batavia.

Keith Pellig took a deep breath of warm fresh air and then glanced round. The field was crowded. Hordes of Directorate bureaucrats and milling groups of passengers were waiting fussily for ships; a constant din of noise and furious activity; the roar of ships and loudspeakers; the rumble of surface vehicles.

Al Davis noted all this as he halted the Pellig body and waited for Miss Lloyd to catch up with him.

"There he is," she gasped, bright-eyed and entranced by the sights. She began waving frantically. "Walter!"

A thin-faced man in his middle forties was edging through the throng of people. He was a typical classified official of the Directorate, one of its vast army of desk men.

He waved to Miss Lloyd and called out, but his words were lost in the general uproar.

Davis had to keep moving; he had to get rid of the chattering girl and her middle-aged companion and move towards the Directorate buildings. Down his sleeve and into his right hand ran the slender wire that fed his thumb-gun. The first moment the Quizmaster appeared in front of him—a quick movement of his hand, thumb raised, a tide of lethal energy released...

At that moment he caught sight of the expression on Walter's face.

Al Davis blindly moved the Pellig body towards the street and the lines of surface cars. Walter was a telepath, of course. There had been a flash of recognition as he had caught Davis's thoughts during a brief run-through of his programme of assassination. A group of people separated them and the Pellig body sprawled against a railing. With one bound Davis carried it over the railing.

He glanced back—Walter was not far behind him.

Davis strode on. He had to keep moving. Surface cars honked and roared; he ignored them.

Full realization was just beginning to hit him; any of the crowd might be a telepath. The word passed on, scanned from one mind to the next... The network was a chain ring; he had run up against the first link. He halted, then ducked into a shop. He dimly sensed rather than saw the group of figures quietly entering the entrance behind him. He ducked down, then dashed down an aisle between counters. What next? They were at both doors; he had trapped himself. He thought frantically, des­perately. What next?

While he was trying to decide, a silent whoosh picked him up. He was back at A.G. Chemie. Before his eyes a miniature Pellig raced and darted on the microscopic screen; the next operator in the automaton's body was already working to solve the problem of escape. Davis sagged limply into a chair.

On the screen Keith Pellig burned through the plate-plastic window of the shop and floundered into the street. People screamed in horror. While everyone else raced about, the fat red-faced assistant stood as if turned to stone, his lips twitching, his body jerking. Suddenly he collapsed in a blubbery heap.

The scene shifted as Pellig escaped from the pack of people clustered in front of the store. The assistant was lost from sight. Al Davis was puzzled. Had Pellig des­troyed him? Pellig turned a corner, hesitated, then dis­appeared into a theatre.

The theatre was dark and Pellig blundered in confusion: bad tactics Davis realized. The darkness wouldn't affect the pursuers, who depended not on sight but on telepathic contact.

The operator in Pellig now realized his mistake and sought an exit. But already vague shapes were moving in on him. He hesitated, then dashed into a lavatory. From here he burned his way through the wall with his thumb-gun and emerged into an alley. There he stood considering trying to make up his mind. The vast shape of the Direct­torate building loomed ahead, a golden tower that caught the sunlight and sparkled it back. Pellig took a deep breath and started towards it at a relaxed trot... .

The body stumbled. A new operator, dazed with sur­prise, fought for control. The body smashed into a heap of garbage, struggled up, and then loped on. There were no visible pursuers. The body reached a busy street and hailed a taxi.

The cab roared off in the direction of the Directorate tower. Pellig relaxed against the cushions, and non­chalantly lit a cigarette. Calmly lounging in the back seat of a public taxi Keith Pellig sped towards the Directorate offices, his thumb-gun resting loosely on his lap.

Major Shaeffer stood in front of his desk and bellowed with fright.

"It's not possible," drummed the disorganized thoughts of the Corpsman nearest to him.

"There must be a reason," Shaeffer managed to think back.

"We lost him." Incredulous, fearful, the thoughts dinned back and forth throughout the network. "Walter Reming­ton picked him up as he stepped off the ship. He had him. And then——"

"You let him get away."

"Shaeffer, he disappeared. At the second station he ceased to exist."

"How?"

"I don't know. Remington passed him to Allison at the shop. The assassin began to run. Allison kept mental touch easily."

"The assassin must have raised a shield."