Philip Dick: Time Out of Joint

"Don't you remember?"

"No," he said.

"Then I have things for you to read. A sort of reorientation kit." Stooping, she reached behind the counter and brought out a flat manila envelope; she opened it on the counter. "First," she said, "the January 14, 1996 copy of _Time_, with your picture on the cover and your biography inside. Complete, in so far as public knowledge about you goes."

"What have they been told?" he said, thinking of Mrs. McFee and her garble of suspicions and rumors.

"That you have a respiratory condition that requires you to live in seclusion in South America. In a back-country town in Peru called Ayacucho. It's all in the biography." She held out a small book. "A grammar school text on current history. Used as the official text in One Happy World schools."

Ragle said, "Explain the 'One Happy World' slogan to me."

"It's not a slogan. It's the official nomenclature for the group that believes there's no future in interplanetary travel. One Happy World is good enough, better in fact than a lot of arid wastes that the Lord never intended man to occupy. You know of course what 'lunatics' means."

"Yes," he said. "Lunar colonists."

"Not quite. But it's there in the book, along with an account of the origins of the war. And there's one more thing." From the folder she brought out a pamphlet with the title:

THE STRUGGLE AGAINST TYRANNY

"What's this?" Ragle said, accepting it. The pamphlet gave him an eerie feeling, the strong shock of familiarity, long association.

Mrs. Keitelbein said, "It's a pamphlet circulated among the thousands of workers at Ragle Gumm, Inc. In your various plants. You haven't given up your economic holdings, you understand. You volunteered to serve the government for a nominal sum -- a gesture of patriotism. Your talent to be put to work saving people from lunatic bombings. But after you had worked for the government -- the One Happy World Government -- for a few months, you had an important change of heart. You always did see patterns sooner than anyone else."

"Can I take these back to town?" he said. He wanted to be ready for tomorrow's puzzle; it was in his bones.

"No," she said. "They know you got out. If you go back they'll make another try at wiping out your memories. I'd rather you stayed here and read them. It's about eleven o'clock. There's time. I know you're thinking about tomorrow. You can't help it."

"Are we safe here?" Vic said.

"Yes," she said.

"No MPs will come by and look in?" Vic said.

"Look out the window," Mrs. Keitelbein said.

Both Vic and Ragle went to the drugstore window and peered out at the street.

The street had gone. They faced dark, empty fields.

"We're between towns," Mrs. Keitelbein said. "Since you set foot in here we've been in motion. We're in motion now. For a month now we've been able to penetrate Old Town, as the Seabees call it. They built it, so they named it." Pausing, she said, "Didn't it ever occur to you to wonder where you lived? The name of your town? The county? State?"

"No," Ragle said, feeling foolish.

"Do you know where it is now?"

"No," he admitted.

Mrs. Keitelbein said, "It's in Wyoming. We're in western Wyoming, near the Idaho border. Your town was built up as a reconstruction of several old towns which got blown away in the early days of the war. The Seabees recreated the environment fairly well, based on texts and records. The ruins that Margo wants the city to clear for the health of the children, the ruins in which we planted the phone book and word-slips and magazines, is a bit of the genuine old town of Kemmerer. An archaic county armory."

Seating himself at the counter, Ragle began to read his biography in _Time_.

In his hands the pages of the magazine opened, spread out, presented him with the world of reality. Names, faces, experiences drifted up at him and resumed their existences. And no men in overalls came slipping in at him from the outside darkness; no one disturbed him. This time he was allowed to sit by himself, gripping the magazine, bent over it and absorbed in it.

_More with Moraga_, he thought. The old campaign, the 1987 presidential elections. And, he thought, _win with Wolfe_. The winning team. In front of him the lean, bumbling shape of the Harvard law professor, and then his Vice President. What a contrast, he thought. Disparity responsible for a civil war. And on the same ticket, too. Try to capture everybody's vote. Wrap it all up... but can it be done? Law professor from Harvard and ex-railroad foreman. Roman and English law, and then a man who jotted down the weight of sacks of salt.

"Remember John Moraga?" he asked Vic.

Confusion stirred on Vic's face. "Naturally," he muttered.

"Funny that an educated man could turn out to be so gullible," Ragle said. "Cat's paw for the economic interests. Too naïve, probably. Too cloistered." Too much theory and too little experience, he thought.

"I don't agree with you," Vic said in a voice that grew abruptly hard with conviction. "A man dedicated to seeing his principles carried out in practice, despite all odds."

Ragle glanced up at him in astonishment. The tight expression of certitude. Partisanship, he thought. Debates in the bars at night: I wouldn't be caught dead using a salad bowl made out of Lunar Ore. Don't buy Lunar. The boycott. And all in the name of principles.

Ragle said, "Buy Ant-Ore."

"Buy at home," Vic agreed, without hesitation.

"Why?" Ragle said. "What's the difference? Do you think of the Antarctic continent as home?" He was puzzled. "Lun-Ore or Ant-Ore. Ore is ore." The great foreign policy debate. The Moon will never be worth anything to us economically, he thought to himself. Forget about it. But suppose it is worth something? What then?

In 1993 President Moraga signed into law the bill that terminated American economic development on Luna. Hurray! Zeeeeep! Zeeeeep!

Fifth Avenue ticker-tape parade.

And then the insurrection. The wolves, he thought.

"'Win with Wolfe'," he said aloud.

Vic said fiercely, "In my opinion a bunch of traitors."

Standing apart from the two of them, Mrs. Keitelbein listened and watched.

"The law clearly states that in case of presidential disability the Vice President becomes full and acting President," Ragle said. "So how can you start talking about traitors?"

"Acting President isn't the same as President. He was just supposed to see that the real President's wishes were carried out. He wasn't supposed to distort and destroy the President's foreign policies. He took advantage of the President's illness. Restoring funds to the Lunar projects to please a bunch of California liberals with a lot of starry-eyed dreamy notions and no practical sense--" Vic gasped with indignation. "Mentality of teen-agers yearning to drive fast and far in souped-up cars. See beyond the next range of mountains."

Ragle said, "You got that from some newspaper column. Those aren't your ideas."

"Freudian explanation, something to do with vague sexual promptings. Why else go to the Moon? All that talk about 'ultimate goal of life.' Phony nonsense." Vic jabbed his finger at him. "And it isn't legal."

"If it isn't legal," Ragle said, "it doesn't matter if it's vague sexual promptings or not." You're getting your logic muddled, he thought. Having it both ways. It's immature and it's against the law. Say anything against it, whatever comes to your mind. Why are you so set against Lunar exploration? Smell of the alien? Contamination? The unfamiliar seeping in through the chinks in the walls...

The radio shouted, "...desperately ill with a kidney disorder, President John Moraga at his villa in South Carolina declares that only with painstaking scrutiny and the most solemn attention to the best interests of the nation will he consider--"