Philip Dick - The Zap Gun

It passed comprehension.

And those satellites, that's just an excuse, he realized. The bastards just want to keep a monopoly on their power. Anyone with half an eye who has insight into these matters, who has given long study to the human mind and society as I have, can tell this at a glance.

What I need is a lawyer, he decided. Top legal talent, which I could hire if I wanted to.

Only he did not feel Like spending the money right now.

Go to the homeopapes, then? But their pages were full of screaming sensational scare headlines about the satellites. No mass sap cared about anything else, such as human values and what was being done to certain individual citizens. As usual, the ignorant average goof was completely taken in by the trash of the day. Not so Surley G. Febbs. But that still did not get him into the kremlin below Festung Washington, D.C.

An ancient, tottering apparition approached in what appeared to be the much-darned, patched and washed remnants of a military uniform of some sort. It made its way slowly to the bench on which Febbs sat, hesitated, and then creakily lowered itself.

"Afternoon," the old man said in a rusty squeak. He sighed, coughed, rubbed his wet, liverish lips with the back of his hand.

"Mmmmmm," Febbs grunted. He did not feel like talking, especially with this tattered scarecrow. Should be in a veterans' home, he said to himself, bothering all the other jerries—the worn-out old folks who ought to have been dead a long time ago.

"Look at those kids." The ancient war veteran gestured and despite himself Febbs looked. " 'Olly, olly, oxen free.' Know what that's a corruption of? 'All the, all the, outs in free.' " The jerry chuckled. Febbs groaned. "That goes back before you were born. Games never change. Best game ever invented was Monopoly. Ever play that?"

"Mmmmmm," Febbs said.

"I got a Monopoly board," the old war vet said. "Not with me, but I know where I can lay my hands on it. At the clubhouse." Again he pointed; his finger was like a winter tree-stalk. "Want to play?"

"No," Febbs said clearly.

"Why not? It's an adult game. I play all the time, like eight hours a day sometimes. I always buy the high-priced property at the end, like Park—"

Febbs said, "I'm a concomody."

"What's that?"

"A high official of Wes-bloc."

"You a military man?"

"Hardly." Military men! Fatbutts!

"Wes-bloc," the old veteran said, "is run by military men."

"Wes-bloc," Febbs said, "is an economic, political gestalt the ultimate responsibility for the effective functioning of which rests on the shoulders of a heterogeneous Board composed of—"

"Now they're playing Snum," the old veteran said.

"What?"

"Snum. I remember that. Did you know what I was in the Big War?"

"Okay," Febbs said, and decided it was time to move along. In his present mood—denied his legal right to sit on the UN-W Natsec Board—he was not disposed to hear a prolix account of this senile, feeble, tattered old relic's onetime so-called "exploits."

"I was main-man for a T.W.G. Maintenance, but I was in uniform. We were right at the line. Ever see a T.W.G. in action? One of the finest tactical weapons ever invented but always giving trouble in the power-feed assembly. One surge and the whole turret burned out—you probably remember. Or maybe that was before your time. Anyhow, we had to keep the feedback from—"

"Okay, okay," Febbs said, writhing with irritation; he rose to his feet and started off.

"I got hit by a shatter-cone that tore loose from the sword-valve system," the old war vet was saying as Febbs departed.

Big War my foot, Febbs said to himself. Some minor rebellion of some colony. Some fracas over in a day. And "T.W.G.!" God knows what obsolete thrown-away heap of junk that was, probably back in the primordial 100 series. They ought to make mandatory the scrapping of the operators along with the weapons; it's a disgrace, an old wreck like that wasting really valuable people's time.

Since he had been driven from the park, he decided to make one more stab at entering the kremlin.

Presently he was saying to the guard on duty, "It's a violation of the Wes-bloc constitution! It's nothing but a kangaroo court that's in session down there without me. Nothing it decides on is legal without my vote. You call your superior, your O.D. You tell him that!"

The sentry stared stonily ahead.

All at once a huge black government hopper hovered overhead, to descend toward the concrete field beyond the guard's station. Instantly the guard whipped out a vid receiver-transmitter, began giving orders.

"Whozat?" Febbs asked, devoured by an ant-army of curiosity.

The hopper landed. And from it stepped—General George Nitz.

"General!" Febbs shrieked; his voice carried past the reinforced barrier controlled by the guard, to the man in uniform who had disemhoppered. "I'm your com-peer! I've got papers that prove I'm a legal rep to the Board, a concomody, and I demand that you use your authority to let me in, or I'm going to file a civil action for tort violation or some goddam such thing! I haven't talked to a lawyer yet, but I mean it, General!" His voice died away as General Nitz continued on and disappeared into the surface structure which was the meager portion of the Festung that stood above ground.

A cold Washington, D.C. wind blew about Febbs' legs. The only sound was the guard's voice as he gave instructions into his vidphone.

"Sheoot," Febbs said, in despair.

A small, dilapidated civilian for-hire type hopper now coasted up to the barrier and halted. From it a middle-aged woman in an old-fashioned grime-colored cloth coat stepped. Approaching the guard she said timidly, but with a certain air of firmness, "Young man, how do I find the UN-W Natsec Board? My name is Martha Raines and I'm a newly elected concomody." She fumbled in her purse for proof of her assertion.

The guard lowered his vidphone and said briefly, "No one with an AA-class or higher pass is to be admitted, madam. Emergency-sit priority of security rating-ruling in effect as of six a.m. time-zone one-fifty this morning. I'm sorry, madam." He turned his attention back to his vidset thereupon.

Febbs thoughtfully approached the middle-aged woman.

"Miss, I'm in exactly the same disgraceful position as you are," he informed her. "We are being denied our legal prerogatives and I have seriously considered the possibility of major litigation against the parties responsible."

"Is it those satellites?" Martha Raines asked, mouse-like. But her suspicion was almost equal to his own. "It must be them. Everyone's busy about them and they don't care about us. I came all the way from Portland, Oregon, and this just is too much for me; I voluntarily relinquished my greeting-card shop—turned it over to my sister-in-law—in order to perform my patriotic task. And now look! They're just not going to admit us—I can see that." She seemed more stunned than angry. "This is the fifth entrance I've tried at," she explained to Febbs, glad of a sympathetic audience at last. "I tried gates C, D, and then even E and F, and now here. And every time they say the same. They must be instructed to." She nodded solemnly. It was all abundantly, un-Wes-blocly clear.

"We'll get in," Febbs said. "But if every one of these—"

"We'll find the other four new concomodies," Febbs decided. "We shall act as a group. They won't dare refuse all of us—it's only by splitting us off from each other that they've been able to lord it over us. I seriously doubt if they'd turn all six of us down, because that would be to admit that they're conducting their policy-level sessions in deliberate illegality. And I bet if all six of us marched over to one of those autonomic TV interviewers, like one of Lucky Bagman's, and told it, they'd find time to take off from babbling about those satellites long enough to demand that justice be done!"