Philip Dick: Time Out of Joint

"You darn kids," a raspy voice muttered. A gray-haired elderly woman, immense in a shapeless silk wrapper, peered into the room. She had furred slippers on her feet. "I told you no piping after ten o'clock. Cut it out." She glared at them all, from half-shut eyes. At that point she noticed Ragle and Vic. "Oh," she said, with suspicion. "Who are you?"

They tell her, Ragle thought, and then she flounders back down the steps in a state of panic. And the tanks -- or whatever the MPs come in -- arrive at the bottom. Ted the driver has had plenty of time, by now. So has the waitress. So has everyone.

Anyhow, he thought, we've been out and we've seen that it is 1998, not 1959, and a war is in progress, and the kids now talk like and dress like West African natives and the girls wear men's clothing and shave their heads. And money as we know it has dropped out somewhere along the line. Along with diesel trucks. But, he thought with sudden pessimism, we didn't learn what it's all about. Why they set up the old town, the old cars and streets, kidded us for years

"Who are these two gentlemen?" the elderly woman inquired.

A pause, and then one of the girls, with a mischievous grin, said, "Looking for rooms."

"What?" the old woman said, with disbelief.

"Sure," a boy said. "They showed up here looking for a room to rent. Stumbling around. Don't you gotcha porch light on?"

"No," the old woman said. She got out a handkerchief and wiped at her soft, wrinkled forehead; under the pressure the flesh yielded. "I had retired." To Ragle and Vic, she said, "I'm Mrs. McFee. I own this apartment house. What kind of rooms did you want?"

Before Ragle could think of an answer, Vic said, "Anything will do. What do you have?" He glanced at Ragle, showing his relief.

"Well," she said, beginning to waddle back out onto the stairs, "if you two gentlemen will follow me, I'll just show you." On the stairs, she gripped the railing and swung her head to peer back at them. "Come on," she said, gasping for breath. Her face had swollen with exertion. "I've got some very attractive property. You wanted something together, the two of you?" Eying them doubtfully, she said, "Let's step into my office and I can chat with you about your employment and--" she started on down again, step by step -- "other particulars."

At the bottom, with much muttering and gasping she located a light switch; a bare bulb winked on, showing them the path that led along the side of the house to the front porch. On the porch an old-fashioned cane rocking chair could be seen. Old-fashioned even from their standpoint. Some things never change, Ragle thought.

"Right in here," Mrs. McFee called. "If you will." She disappeared into the house; he and Vic trailed after her, into a cluttered, dark, clothy-smelling living room filled with bric-a-brac, chairs, lamps, framed pictures on the walls, carpets, and, on the mantel, greeting cards by the score. Over the mantel, knitted or woven in many colors, hung a streamer with the words:

ONE HAPPY WORLD BRINGS BLESSINGS

OF JOY TO ALL MANKIND

"What I'd appreciate knowing," Mrs. McFee said, lowering herself into an easy chair, "is if you're regularly employed." Leaning forward she tugged a massive ledger from a desk, onto her lap.

"Yes," Ragle said. "We're regularly employed."

"What sort of business?"

Vic said, "Grocery business. I operate the produce section of a supermarket."

"A what?" the old woman gasped, twisting her head to hear. In its cage a black and yellow bird of some variety squawked hoarsely. "Be quiet, Dwight," she said.

Vic said, "Fruits and vegetables. Retail selling."

"What sort of vegetables?"

"All kinds," he said, with annoyance.

"Where do you get them?"

"From truckers," Vic said.

"Oh," she said, grunting. "And I suppose," she said to Ragle, "you're the inspector."

Ragle said nothing.

"I don't trust you vegetable men," Mrs. McFee said. "There was one of you around -- I don't think it was you, but it might have been -- last week. They looked good, but oh my, I would have died if I'd eaten any. They had r.a. written all over them. I can tell. Of course, the man assured me they didn't grow toptop; came from way down in the cellars. Showed me the tag that swore they grew a mile down. But I can smell r.a." Ragle thought, _Radio-activity_. Produce grown up on the surface, exposed to fallout. There've been bombings, in the past. Contamination of crops. Understanding rushed over him; the scene of trucks being loaded with food grown underground. _The cellars_. Dangerous peddling of contaminated tomatoes and melons.

"No r.a. in our stuff," Vic said. "Radio-activity," he said under his breath, for Ragle's benefit.

"Yes," Ragle said.

Vic said, "We're -- from a long distance from here. We just got in tonight."

"I see," Mrs. McFee said.

"We've both been ill," Vic said. "What's been happening?"

"What do you mean?" the old woman said, pausing in her task of flipping the pages of her ledger. She had put on a pair of horn-rimmed glasses; behind them her eyes, magnified, had a shrewd, alert glint.

"What's been happening?" Ragle demanded. "The war," he said. "Will you tell us?"

Mrs. McFee wet her finger and again turned pages. "Funny you don't know about the war."

"Tell us," Vic said fiercely. "For Christ's sake!"

"Are you enlisters?" Mrs. McFee said.

"No," Ragle said.

"I'm patriotic, but I won't have enlisters living in my house. Causes too much trouble."

We'll never get a straight story from her, Ragle thought. It's hopeless. We might as well give up.

On a table rested an upright frame of tinted photographs, all of a young man in uniform. Ragle bent to examine the photographs. "Who is he?" he said.

"My son," Mrs. McFee said. "He's stationed down at Anvers Missille Station. I haven't seen him in three years. Not since the war began."

That recently, Ragle thought. Perhaps the same time that they built the--

When the contest began. Where Will the Little Green Man Be Next? Almost three years...

He said, "Any hits, down there?"

"I don't understand you," Mrs. McFee said.

"Never mind," Ragle said. Aimlessly, he roamed about the room. Through a wide arch of dark-shiny wood he could see a dining room. Solid central table, many chairs, wall shelves, glass cupboards with plates and cups. And, he saw, a piano. Wandering over to the piano he picked up a handful of the sheet music resting on the rack. All cheap popular sentimental tunes, mostly to do with soldiers and girls.

One of the tunes had the title:

LOONIES ON THE RUN MARCH

Carrying the sheet music back with him, he handed it to Vic. "See," he said. "Read the words."

Together, they read the verse under the music staff.

You're a goon, Mister Loon,

One World you'll never sunder.

A buffoon, Mister Loon,

Oh what a dreadful blunder.

The sky you find so cozy;

The future tinted rosy;

But Uncle's gonna spank -- you wait!

So hands ina sky, hands ina sky,

BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE!!

"Do you play, mister?" the old woman was asking.

Ragle said to her, "The enemy -- they're the lunatics, aren't they?"

The sky, he thought. The Moon. Luna.

It wasn't himself and Vic that the MPs hunted. It was the enemy. The war was being fought between Earth and the Moon. And if the kids upstairs could take him and Vic for lunatics, then lunatics had to be human beings. Not creatures. They were colonists, perhaps.

A civil war.

I know what I do, now. I know what the contest is, and what I am. I'm the savior of this planet. When I solve a puzzle I solve the time and place the next missile will strike. I file one entry after another. And these people, whatever they call themselves, hustle an anti-missile unit to that square on the graph. To that place and at that time. And so everyone stays alive, the kids upstairs with their nose-flutes, the waitress, Ted the driver, my brother-in-law, Bill Black, the Kesselmans, the Keitelbeins.