Philip Dick: Time Out of Joint

They argued about it. The afternoon wore on, slowly, sleepily, with little or nothing happening.

At five, when Margo Nielson snatched up her coat and car keys and started out of the house, Sammy was nowhere in sight. Off playing, no doubt. But she couldn't take time to round him up; she had to pick up Vic right away or he'd conclude she wasn't coming and so take the bus home.

She hurried back into the house. In the living room her brother, sipping from his can of beer, raised his head and murmured, "Back already?"

"I haven't left," she said. "I can't find Sammy. Would you keep your eye open for him while I'm gone?"

"Certainly," Ragle said. But his face showed such weariness that at once she forgot about leaving. His eyes, red-rimmed and swollen, fastened on her compellingly; he had taken off his tie, rolled up his shirt-sleeves, and as he drank his beer his arm trembled. Spread out everywhere in the living room the papers and notes for his work formed a circle of which he was the center. He could not even get out; he was surrounded. "Remember, I have to get this in the mail and postmarked by six," he said.

In front of him his files made up a leaning, creaking stack. He had been collecting material for years. Reference books, charts, graphs, and all the contest entries that he had mailed in before, month after month of them... in several ways he had reduced his entries so that he could study them. At this moment, he was using what he called his "sequence" scanner; it involved opaque replicas of entries, in which the point admitted light to flash in the form of a dot. By having the entries fly by in order, he could view the dot in motion. The dot of light bounced in and out, up and down, and to him its motions formed a pattern. To her it never formed a pattern of any sort. But that was why he was able to win. She had entered the contest a couple of times and won nothing.

"How far along are you?" she asked.

Ragle said, "Well, I've got it placed in time. Four o'clock, P.M. Now all I have to do--" he grimaced, "is get it in space."

Tacked up on the long plywood board was today's entry on the official form supplied by the newspaper. Hundreds of tiny squares, each of them numbered by rank and file. Ragle had marked off the file, the time element. It was file 344; she saw the red pin stuck in at that point. But the _place_. That was harder, apparently.

"Drop out for a few days," she urged. "Rest. You've been going at it too hard the last couple of months."

"If I drop out," Ragle said, scratching away with his ballpoint pen, "I have to drop back a flock of notches. I'd lose--" He shrugged. "Lose everything I've won since January 15." Using a slide rule, he plotted a junction of lines.

Each entry that he submitted became a further datum for his files. And so, he had told her, his chances of being correct improved each time. The more he had to go on, the easier it was for him. But instead, it seemed to her, he was having more and more trouble. Why? she had asked him, one day. "Because I can't afford to lose," he explained. "The more times I'm correct, the more I have invested." The contest dragged on. Perhaps he had even lost track of his investment, the mounting plateau of his winnings. He always won. It was a talent, and he had made good use of it. But it was a vicious burden to him, this daily chore that had started out as a joke, or at best a way of picking up a couple of dollars for a good guess. And now he couldn't quit.

I guess that's what they want, she thought. They get you involved, and maybe you never live long enough to collect. But he had collected; the _Gazette_ paid him regularly for his correct entries. She did not know how much it came to, but apparently it ran close to a hundred dollars a week. Anyhow it supported him. But he worked as hard -- harder -- than if he had a regular job. From eight in the morning, when the paper was tossed on the porch, to nine or ten at night. The constant research. Refining of his methods. And, over everything else, the abiding dread of making an error. Of turning in a wrong entry and being disqualified.

Sooner or later, they both knew, it had to happen.

"Can I get you some coffee?" Margo said. "I'll fix you a sandwich or something before I go. I know you didn't have any lunch."

Preoccupied, he nodded.

Putting down her coat and purse, she went into the kitchen and searched in the refrigerator for something to feed him. While she was carrying the dishes out to the table, the back door flew open and Sammy and a neighborhood dog appeared, both of them fluffed up and breathless.

"You heard the refrigerator door," she said, "didn't you?"

"I'm real hungry," Sammy said, gasping. "Can I have one of those frozen hamburgers? You don't have to cook it; I'll eat it like it is. It's better that way -- it lasts longer!"

She said, "You go get into the car. As soon as I've fixed Uncle Ragle a sandwich we're driving down to the store and pick up Dad. And take that old dog back out; he doesn't live here."

"Okay," Sammy said. "I bet I can get something to eat at the store." The back door slammed as he and the dog departed.

"I found him," she said to Ragle when she brought in the sandwich and glass of apple cider. "So you don't have to worry about what he's doing; I'll take him downtown with me."

Accepting the sandwich, Ragle said, "You know, maybe I'd have been better off if I'd got mixed up playing the ponies."

She laughed. "You wouldn't have won anything."

"Maybe so." He began reflexively to eat. But he did not touch the apple cider; he preferred the warm beer from the can that he had been nursing for an hour or so. How can he do that intricate math and drink warm beer? she asked herself as she found her coat and purse and rushed out of the house to the car. You'd think it would muddle up his brain. But he's used to it. During his stint in the service he had got the habit of swilling warm beer day in, day out. For two years he and a buddy had been stationed on a minuscule atoll in the Pacific, manning a weather station and radio transmitter.

Late-afternoon traffic, as always, was intense. But the Volkswagen sneaked through the openings, and she made good time. Larger, clumsier cars seemed bogged down, like stranded land turtles.

The smartest investment we ever made, she said to herself. Buying a small foreign car. And it'll never wear out; those Germans build with such precision. Except that they had had minor clutch trouble, and in only fifteen thousand miles... but nothing was perfect. In all the world. Certainly not in this day and age, with H-bombs and Russia and rising prices.

Pressed to the window, Sammy said, "Why can't we have one of those Mercs? Why do we have to have a dinky little car that looks like a beetle?" His disgust was manifest.

Feeling outraged -- her son a traitor right here at her bosom -- she said, "Listen, young man; you know absolutely nothing about cars. You don't have to make payments or steer through this darn traffic, or wax them. So you keep your opinions to yourself."

Grumpily, Sammy said, "It's like a kid's car."

"You tell your father that," she said. "When we get down to the store."

"I'm scared to," Sammy said.

She made a left turn against traffic, forgetting to signal, and a bus beeped at her. Damn big buses, she thought. Ahead was the entrance to the store's parking lot; she shifted down into second and drove up across the sidewalk, past the vast neon sign that read

LUCKY PENNY SUPERMARKET

"Here we are," she said to Sammy. "I hope we didn't miss him."

"Let' go in," Sammy cried.

"No," she said. "We'll wait here."

They waited. Inside the store, the checkers finished up with a long line of miscellaneous persons, most of whom pushed the stainless-wire baskets. The automatic doors flew open and shut, open and shut. In the lot, cars started up.