Philip Dick - We Can Build You

"We don't have to do business with him," Pris said.

"We can tell him to go back to Seattle," I said.

"Don't kid me! We can't tell him anything. He'll be knocking at the door bright and early tomorrow, like he said. Grinding us down, hounding us--" Maury gaped at me.

"Don't let him bother you," Pris said.

I said, "I think Barrows is a desperate man. His vast economic venture is failing, this colonizing the Moon; don't you all feel that? This is not a powerful, successful man we're facing. It's a man who put everything behind buying real estate on the Moon and then subdividing it and building domes to hold in heat and air, and building converters to turn ice into water--and he can't get people to go there. I feel sorry for him."

They all regarded me intently.

"Barrows has turned to this fraud as a last-ditch effort," I said, "this fakery of setting up villages of simulacra posing as human settlers. It's a scheme hatched out of despair. When I first heard it I thought possibly I was hearing another one of those bold visions that men like Barrows get, that the rest of us never have because we're mere mortals. But now I'm not sure at all. I think he's running scared, so scared that he's lost his senses. This idea isn't reasonable. He can't hope to fool anyone. The Federal Government would catch on right away."

"How?" Maury asked.

"The Department of Health inspects every person who intends to emigrate. It's the Government's business. How's Barrows even going to get them off Earth?"

Maury said, "Listen. It's none of our business how sound this scheme of his is. We're not in a position to judge. Only time will tell and if we don't do business with him even time won't tell."

"I agree," Pris said. "We should confine ourselves to deciding what's in it for us."

"Nothing's in it for us if he's caught and goes to prison," I said. "Which he will. Which he deserves to be. I say we've got to disengage, not do business with this man of any kind. It's shaky, risky, dishonest, and downright stupid. Our own ideas are nutty enough."

The Lincoln said, "Could Mr. Stanton be here?"

"What?" Maury said.

"I think we would be advantaged if Mr. Stanton were here and not in Seattle, as you tell me he is."

We all looked at one another.

"He's right," Pris said. "We ought to get the Edwin M. Stanton back. He'd be of use to us; he's so inflexible."

"We need iron," I agreed. "Backbone. We're bending too much."

"Well, we can get it back," Maury said. "Tonight even. We can charter a private plane, fly to the Sea-Thc Airfield outside Seattle, drive into Seattle and search until we find it and then come back here. Have it tomorrow morning when we confront Barrows."

"But we'd be dead on our feet," I pointed out, "at best. And it might take us days to find it. It may not even be in Seattle, by now; it may have flown on to Alaska or to Japan-- even taken off for one of Barrows' subdivisions on the Moon."

We sipped our Dixie cups of bourbon morosely, all but the Lincoln; it had put its aside.

"Have you ever had any kangaroo tail soup?" Maury said.

We all looked at him, including the simulacrum.

"I have a can around here somewhere," Maury said. "We can heat it up on the hotplate; it's terrific. I'll make it."

"Let me out," I said.

"No thanks," Pris said.

The simulacrum smiled its gentle, wan smile.

"I'll tell you how I happened to get it," Maury said. "I was in the supermarket, in Boise, waiting in line. The checker was saying to some guy, 'No, we're not going to stock any kangaroo tail soup anymore.' All of a sudden from the other side of the display--it was boxes of cereal or something-- this hollow voice issues: 'No more kangaroo tail soup? Ever?' And this guy comes hurrying around with his cart to buy up the last cans. So I got a couple. Try it, it'll make you all feel better."

I said, "Notice how Barrows worked us down. He calls the simulacra automatons first and then he calls them gimmicks and then he winds up calling them dolls."

"It's a technique," Pris said, "a sales technique. He's cutting the ground out from under us."

"Words," the simulacrum said, "are weapons."

"Can't you say anything to him?" I asked the simulacrum. "All you did was debate with him."

The simulacrum shook its head no.

"Of course it can't do anything," Pris said. "Because it argues fair, like we did in school. That's the way they debated back in the middle of the last century. Barrows doesn't argue fair, and there's no audience to catch him. Right, Mr. Lincoln?"

The simulacrum did not respond, but its smile seemed-- to me--to become even sadder, and its face longer and more lined with care.

"Things are worse now than they used to be," Maury said. But, I thought, we still have to do something. "He may have the Stanton under lock and key, for all we know. He may have it torn down on a bench somewhere, and his engineers are making one of their own slightly redesigned so as not to infringe on our patents." I turned to Maury. "Do we actually have patents?"

"Pending," Maury said. "You know how it works." He did not sound encouraging. "I don't doubt he can steal what we have, now that he's seen our idea. It's the kind of thing that if you know it can be done, you can do it yourself, given enough time."

"Okay," I said, "so it's like the internal combustion engine. But we've got a headstart; let's start manufacturing them at the Rosen factory as soon as possible. Let's get ours on the market before Barrows does."

They all looked at me wide-eyed.

"I think you've got something there," Maury said, chewing his thumb. "What else can we do anyhow? You think your dad could get the assembly line going right away? Is he pretty fast on converting over, like this?"

"Fast as a snake," I said.

Pris said derisively, "Don't put us on. Old Jerome? It'll be a year before he can make dies to stamp the parts out with, and the wiring'!! have to be done in Japan--he'll have to fly to Japan to arrange for that, and he'll want to take a boat, like before."

"Oh," I said, "you've thought about it, I see."

"Sure," Pris said sneeringly. "I actually considered it seriously."

"In any case," I said, "it's our only hope; we've got to get the goddam things on the retail market--we've wasted enough time as it is."

"Agreed," Maury said. "What we'll do is, tomorrow we'll go to Boise and commission old Jerome and your funny brother Chester to start work. Start making die stampers and flying to Japan--but what'll we tell Barrows?"

That stumped us. Again we were all silent.

"We'll tell him," I announced, "that the Lincoln busted. That it broke down and we've withdrawn it from market. And then he won't want the thing so he'll go back home to Seattle."

Maury, coming over beside me, said in a low voice, "You mean cut the switch on it. Shut it off."

I nodded.

"I hate to do that," Maury said. We both glanced at the Lincoln, which was regarding us with melancholy eyes.

"He'll insist on seeing it for himself," Pris pointed out. "Let him back on it a couple of times, if he wants to. Let him shake it like a gum machine; if we have to cut it off it won't do a thing."

"Okay," Maury agreed.

"Good," I said. "Then we've decided."

We shut off the Lincoln then and there. Maury, as soon as the deed was done, went downstairs and out to his car and drove home, saying he was going to bed. Pris offered to drive me to my motel in my Chevvy, taking it home herself and picking me up the next morning. I was so tired that I accepted her offer.

As she drove me through closed-up Ontario she said, "I wonder if all wealthy, powerful men are like that."

"Sure. All those who made their own money--not the ones who inherit it, maybe."

"It was dreadful," Pris said. "Shutting the Lincoln off. To see it--stop living, as if we had killed it again. Don't you think?"