Philip Dick - CANTATA-141

Walt's face was one of great gloom.

In his entrenched position, along with other company personnel, on the outskirts of the flank of the TD administration building in Washington, D.C., Don Stanley noted all at once, and to his complete surprise, a sudden lull in the fierce racket from the Pekes within.

'Some darn thing has happened,' Howard conjectured, also aware of the unexpected silence. 'We better get set for another rush; they're probably determined to overwhelm us this time. Before that idiot Schwarz can get army...'

'Wait,' Stanley said, listening. 'You know what I think ? I think the fliegemer Pekes are gone.'

Puzzled, Howard said, 'Gone where ?'

Rising to his haunches Stanley peered at the administration building, at the shattered windows on the nearest side, and the conviction came to him stronger than ever that the building was now, for some totally obscure and merciful reason, deserted. With caution, aware of the acute risk he was taking, he began to walk slowly step by step toward the front entrance.

'They'll pop you out of existence,' Howard called to him warningly, 'with those funny little weapons of theirs; better get back down, you half-wit.' But he, too, stood up. So did a number of armed company police.

Opening the familiar front door of the building, Stanley peeped inside.

He saw no sign of Pekes anywhere. The halls were empty and silent. The invasion by the chinless dawn men from the parallel Earth had ceased as abruptly as it had begun, and somewhat more mysteriously.

Howard, joining him, said, 'Um, we scared them off.'

'Scared them off nothing. They changed their collective minds.' Stanley started in the direction of the elevator leading to the floor one subsurface labs. "I have an intuition,' he said over his shoulder to Howard. 'And I want to verify it as soon as I can.'

When he and Howard reached the labs, Stanley discovered that he was right ... and a good thing, too. The nexus joining the two parallel Earths had vanished.

'They ... closed it down,' Howard said, wonderingly craning his neck, as if expecting to see it crop up once more in a remote corner.

'So now,' Stanley murmured, 'our problem is to reopen our own earlier nexus. The original one.

And make the try to relocate our colonists before the moment in which they're wiped out.' The chances of success struck him as being not very good, and yet of course the attempt had to be made.

'Why do you think they called their invasion off ?' Howard asked.

Stanley gestured emptily. 'Maybe they didn't like it here after all.' Who knew ? Certainly he did not. Perhaps they would never know. In any case they had their work cut out for them; several thousand men and women on the other side were wholly dependent on them for their lives. For their safe return to this world. Remembering the human skeletons which had been dredged up from the swamp a hundred years hence. Stanley felt deep forebodings. At best we can only save some of them, he realized. But that's better than nothing. Even if we save only one life, it's worth it.

'How long do you think it'll take to make contact with our people stranded over there ?' Howard asked him. 'A day ? As long as a week ?'

'Let's find out,' Stanley said shortly, and started at once in the direction of the power supply of

Dar Pethel's defective Jiffi-scuttler.

The depressing task of bringing the colonists back from alter-Earth had begun.

In November, despite the abusive broadcasts from the Golden Door Moments of Bliss satellite, or because of them, Jim Briskin succeeded in nosing out the incumbent Bill Schwarz; and thereby won the presidential election.

So now, at long last, Salisbury Heim said to himself, we have a Negro President of the United

States. A new epoch in human understanding has arrived.

At least, let's hope so.

'What we need,' Patricia said meditatively, 'is a party, so we can celebrate.'

I'm too tired to celebrate,' Sal said, It had been a tough haul from the nominating convention to this; he remembered clearly every inch of it. The worst part, it went without saying, had been the collapse of the abortive emigration program announced in Jim's Chicago speech; why that had not put a permanent end to Jim's election chances, Sal Heim did not know even at this late date.

Perhaps it was because Bill Schwarz had managed to move so adroitly, had embroiled himself -

deliberately - in the situation; hence much, if not most, of the ultimate blame had fallen on him, not on Jim.

'But we deserve to take a little time off to relax,' Pat pointed out. 'We've been working for months; if we go on this way .. .'

'One beer at one small bar,' Sal decided. 'And then bed. I'll compromise at that.' He did not especially enjoy going out in public, these days; inevitably he rubbed up against some individual who had been a part of the colonizing effort on alter-Earth or who, anyhow, had a brother-in-law who had gone trustingly over there. Such encounters had been rather unpleasant; he always found himself trying to answer questions which simply could not be answered. Why'd you get us into that ? had been the primary inquiry, asked in a variety of ways, but still always amounting to the same thing. And yet, despite this, they had won.

'I think we should get together with a few people,' Pat disagreed. 'Certainly with Jim; that goes without saying. And then Leon Turpin, if he'll join us, because after all it was Mr. Turpin who got us off the hook by bringing those people back to our world - or anyhow his engineers did.

Someone at TD did. It was TD that saved us, Sal; let's finally face it and give credit where credit is due.'

'All right,' Sal said. 'Just so long as that little Kansas City businessman who showed up with that defective 'scuttler isn't along; that's all I insist on.' The man on account of whom all the trouble had broken out in the first place. At the moment, Sal could not even recall his name, an obvious

Freudian block.

'The one I blame,' Pat said, 'is Lurton Sands.'

'Then don't invite him either,' Sal said. But there was hardly much chance of that; Sands was in prison, right now, for his crime against the sleeping bibs and his ridiculous attempt on Jim's life.

As was Cally Vale for having lasered the 'scuttler repairman. That whole business had been excessively melancholy, both intrinsically and as a conspicuous harbinger of the difficulties which it had ushered into their collective lives, difficulties which by no means were over.

'You know,' Pat said fretfully, 'there's one thing that still, right now, I can't quite get out of my mind. I keep having this sneaking, nervous anxiety that. ...' She smiled at him uneasily, her jessamine lips twitching. 'I hope I don't pass it on to you, but...'

'But deep down inside,' Sal finished for her, 'you're afraid a few of those Pekes have stayed on this side.'

'Yes.' She nodded.

Sal said, 'I get the same damn intimation, now and then. Late at night, I keep looking out of the corner of my eye, especially on the street when I see someone furtive looking hurrying away around a corner to get out of sight. And the funny thing is that from what Jim tells me, I know he feels exactly the same way. Maybe we all have a residual sense of guilt connected with the

Pekes ... after all, we did invade their world first. It's our consciences bothering us.'

Shivering, as she was wearing only a weightless Tafek-web negligee, his wife said, 'I hope that's all it is. Because I'd really hate to run into a Peke some dark night; I'd think right away that they'd opened a nexus again into our world at some point and were very carefully, secretly, ferrying a wide stream of their cousins and aunts across.'

As if we're not desperately overcrowded as it is, Sal thought, without having to cope with that any more.