Philip Dick - CANTATA-141

Rights Conservation Democratic Party in all its full and healthy glory. Some minion on Schwarz'

staff slipped up, there, and should be fired.

He turned on the TV, then, to see if there was any later news. Had TD's engineering corps got the higher-yield power supply in operation yet, and if so, had the aperture been affected in the way anticipated ? By now a lot more emigrants should have joined the Chaffys and the Hadleys there on the other side. He wondered if the Pithecanthropi-Sinanthropi people had taken notice already ... had the crucial Augenblick, as the Germans put it, arrived by now ? While he had slept ?

On the TV screen the image gathered, became stable and fixed. But it was not what he had expected. The image had a certain grainy texture, familiar to him; it was emanating from a satellite which was still too far away. The sound, too, was distorted. It would, of course, clear up as the satellite moved closer, if it was moving in this direction and not away. What was going on ? What was this peculiar program, anyhow ? He leaned toward the speaker, trying to untangle the garble of words.

The video image became clarified, then. It was a head, the mutual head of the mutants George

Walt. Its mouth opened and it spoke. 'I am king, now,' George Walt declared. 'I have at my disposal up here an entire army of what you'd like to think of as "near" men but which are actually - as you are about to find out and not from me - the legitimate tenants of this world and every other alternative Earth running parallel to us. You'd be surprised at the type of scientific discoveries which the Peking race - and I call them that merely as a means by which to identify them - have made over the centuries. They can, for instance, warp time and also space to suit their needs. They've tapped sources of energy unknown to you Homo sapiens. I have with me here in the Golden Door Moments of Bliss satellite the wisest and kindest philosopher from among their great people. Just a moment.' George Walt's head disappeared from the screen.

Merciful lord, Jim Briskin thought. He sat staring at the TV set, unable to take his eyes from it.

George Walt are back, and they're out of their mind.

That's all we need, Jim said to himself. A crazy George Walt up there in their satellite, spinning around us. Now we've really got troubles.

His vidphone rang; automatically, he made his way over to answer it. 'Not just now,' he murmured. 'Call me later; I'm busy - '

'Don't hang up.' It was Tito Cravelli, sweating and agitated. 'I see you've got your TV set on.

He ... they have been broadcasting all morning, since about eight o'clock East Coast time.

They're going to bring that Peke sage back on again; this is a video tape, it's running over and over again. Get a load of this so-called philosopher; you've never seen anything like it in your life. And then call me back.' Tito hung up.

Jim Briskin numbly returned to the TV set to listen and watch.

'I can walk through wood,' the TV set was saying, but it was not George Walt, now. It was as

Tito had said, a Peking man, Sinanthropus telecasting from the Golden Door Moments of Bliss satellite. So George Walt... now you're in politics, Jim Briskin said to himself. And in a big way, too.

And we thought we were bad off before.

'Not only can I walk through wood,' the white-haired, massive-browed, enormous-chinned, ancient-looking Sinanthropus said, in reasonably good but somewhat mumbled English, 'but I

can make myself invisible. The god of air empowers me wherever I go. He fills the sails of life with his magic breath, capable of accomplishing all things. Poor, puny Homo sapiens creatures!

How could you conceivably expect to infest our world, with the Wind God himself present ?'

By the Wind God, Jim Briskin realized with a sickened, enervating start, was meant George Walt.

He had never before quite thought of them that way, but there it was.

Let's see how President Schwarz decides to handle this,, he said to himself. A Wind God in a satellite over our heads millions of fossil men straining to get at us. Darius Pethel can have his defective Jiffi-scuttler back; it's time we got rid of it, and by the quickest route possible. But how did this ancient Sinanthropus so-called philosopher get across to our world ? Didn't anybody at

TD notice his coming through ?

They must have opened their own nexus, he decided. Either that or what he says is actually true; he can make himself invisible.

It was a gloomy prospect, having to wake up in the early morning and face this, to say the least.

And somebody has really lost this election now, he decided. Either Bill Schwarz or myself, depending on whom the electorate, in its understandable frenzy, decides to blame.

Going back to the kitchen table he seated himself and resumed eating his breakfast, now cold. As he mechanically ate, he pondered the chances of successfully shooting down the Golden Door satellite; surely that was the most likely next move for President Schwarz. After all, the exact position of the satellite at any given moment was known; it was - or had been until recently -

printed on the entertainment page of every homeopape.

What I'm afraid of now, he realized, is that I'll look out the window of my decently private conapt and see Peking man walking along the sidewalk, and not just one but many of them.

He decided not to look, just to be on the safe side. At least not for a while. Instead he concentrated on finishing his breakfast, tasteless as it had become. As trivial a task as it was, at least it was a familiar event; it helped restore his sense of the regularity of reality.

Turning from the TV set Sal Heim released his emotion in an explosion of words. 'Call someone,' he said to his wife. 'Call Jim Briskin. Wait a minute; call Bill Schwarz at the White

House - I'll talk to him direct myself. This is a national emergency; anybody with half an eye can see that Party loyalty is out, you can wipe your nose on it. Let me know as soon as you have Bill

Schwarz on the line.' He returned to watching the TV.

'Not only can I walk through wood and across the surface of water,' the great old Peking man on the screen was saying, 'But I can annihilate time.'

Good grief, Sal thought. This is awful. They can do all kinds of things we can't; they're centuries ahead of us. Who around here that I know can annihilate time ? No one. He groaned aloud.

Pat said hecticly, 'I can't reach President Schwarz. The lines are tied up. Everybody must be...'

'Of course they are,' Sal said. 'The authorities know what this means. It's hopeless to try to get through to Schwarz. He'll have to get on the TV himself and tell the nation that a state of war exists between us and these dawn men. Or is this stuff on all channels ?' Savagely, he turned the knob. The same image appeared on every other channel; the satellite was blanketing the airwaves. He was not surprised. I might have known, he said to himself with envenomed bitterness. Next we'll be picking them up on the vidphone.

'But more important than anything else,' the white-haired Peking man on the TV screen was saying, 'I can work exceeding wonderful, powerful magic. For I am a mighty magician; I can cause the stars to fall from the vault of the heavens and confusion to blind the eyes of all my foes. What do you respond to that, tiny Homo sapiens ? You should have cogitated on that before you invested our world. Facilis descensus Averno. You see, through my use of supernatural forces, entirely unknown to your little race, I can speak in German.'

'Latin,' Sal murmured. 'You damn fool dawn man; that's Latin. So you don't know everything.

Get off the TV so President Schwarz can declare war.' The image, however, remained.

Standing by his chair Patricia said, 'I guess this finishes Jim at the polls.'