Philip Dick: The Man in the High Castle

“Maybe so,” Frink said.

“Try it. Do some original designs. Or work directly on the metal. Play around. Like a kid plays.”

“No,” Frink said.

“You have no faith,” McCarthy said. “You’ve completely lost faith in yourself—right? Too bad. Because I know you could do it.” He walked away from the workbench.

It is too bad, Frink thought. But nevertheless it’s the truth. It’s a fact. I can’t get faith or enthusiasm by willing it. Deciding to.

That McCarthy, he thought, is a damn good shop foreman. He has the knack of needling a man, getting him to put out his best efforts, to do his utmost in spite of himself. He’s a natural leader; he almost inspired me, for a moment, there. But—McCarthy had gone off, now; the effort had failed.

Too bad I don’t have my copy of the oracle here, Frink thought. I could consult it on this; take the issue to it for its five thousand years of wisdom. And then he recalled that there was copy of the I Ching in the lounge of the business office of W-M Corporation. So he made his way from the work area, along the corridor, hurriedly through the business office to the lounge.

Seated in one of the chrome and plastic lounge chairs, he wrote his question out on the back of an envelope: “Should I attempt to go into the creative private business outlined to me just now?” And then he began throwing the coins.

The bottom line was a Seven, and so was the second and then the third. The bottom trigam in Ch’ien, he realized. That sounded good; Ch’ien was the creative. Then line Four, an eight. Yin. And line Five, also eight, a yin line. Good lord, he thought excitedly; one more yin line and I’ve got Hexagram Eleven, T’ai, Peace. Very favorable judgment. Or—his hands trembled as he rattled the coins. A yang line and hence Hexagram Twenty-six, Ta Ch’u, the Taming Power of the Great. Both have favorable judgments, and it has to be one or the other. He threw the three coins.

Yin. A six. It was Peace.

Opening the book, he read the judgment.

PEACE. The small departs.

The great approaches.

Good fortune. Success.

So I ought to do as Ed McCarthy says. Open my little business. Now the six at the top, my one moving line. He turned the page. What was the text? He could not recall; probably favorable because the hexagram itself was so favorable. Union of heaven and earth—but the first and last lines were outside the hexagram always, so possibly the six at the top…

His eyes picked out the line, read it in a flash.

The wall falls back into the moat.

Use no army now.

Make your commands known within your own town.

Perseverance brings humiliation.

My busted back! he exclaimed, horrified. And the commentary.

The change alluded to in the middle of the hexagram has begun to take place. The wall of the town sinks back into the moat from which it was dug. The hour of doom is at hand…

It was, beyond doubt, one of the most dismal lines in the entire book, of more than three thousand lines. And yet the judgment of the hexagram was good.

Which was he supposed to follow?

And how could they be so different? It had never happened to him before, good fortune and doom mixed together in the oracle’s prophecy; what a weird fate, as if the oracle had scraped the bottom of the barrel, tossed up every sort of rag, bone, and turd of the dark, then reversed itself and poured in the light like a cook gone barmy. I must have pressed two buttons at once, he decided; jammed the works and got this schlimazl’ s eye view of reality. Just for a second—fortunately. Didn’t last.

Hell, he thought, it has to be one or the other; it can’t be both. You can’t have good fortune and doom simultaneously.

Or… can you?

The jewelry business will bring good fortune; the judgment refers to that. But the line, the goddam line; it refers to something deeper, some future catastrophe probably not even connected with the jewelry business. Some evil fate that’s in store for me anyhow …

War! he thought. Third World War! All frigging two billion of us killed, our civilization wiped out. Hydrogen bombs falling like hail.

Oy gewalt! he thought. What’s happening? Did I start it in motion? Or is someone else tinkering, someone I don’t even know? Or—the whole lot of us. It’s the fault of those physicists and that synchronicity theory, every particle being connected with every other; you can’t fart without changing the balance in the universe. It makes living a funny joke with nobody around to laugh. I open a book and get a report on future events that even God would like to file and forget. And who am I? The wrong person; I can tell you that.

I should take my tools, get my motors from McCarthy, open my shop, start my piddling business, go on despite the horrible line. Be working, creating in my own way right up to the end, living as best I can, as actively as possible, until the wall falls back into the moat for all of us, all mankind. That’s what the oracle is telling me. Fate will poleax us eventually anyhow, but I have my job in the meantime; I must use my mind, my hands.

The judgment was for me alone, for my work. But the line; it was for us all.

I’m too small, he thought, I can only read what’s written, glance up and then lower my head and plod along where I left off as if I hadn’t seen; the oracle doesn’t expect me to start running up and down the streets, squalling and yammering for public attention.

Can anyone alter it? he wondered. All of us combined… or one great figure… or someone strategically placed, who happens to be in the right spot. Chance. Accident. And our lives, our world, hanging on it.

Closing the book, he left the lounge and walked back to the main work area. When he caught sight of McCarthy, he waved him over to one side where they could resume talk.

“The more I think about it,” Frink said, “the more I like your idea.”

“Fine,” McCarthy said. “Now listen. Here’s what you do. You have to get money from Wyndam-Matson.” He winked, a slow, intense, frightened twitch of his eyelid. “I figured out how. I’m going to quit and go in with you. My designs, see. What’s wrong with that? I know they’re good.”

“Sure,” Frink said, a little dazed.

“I’ll see you after work tonight,” McCarthy said. “At my apartment. You come over around seven and have dinner with Jean and me—if you can stand the kids.”

“Okay,” Frink said.

McCarthy gave him a slap on the shoulder and went off.

I’ve gone a long way, Frink said to himself. In the last ten minutes. But he did not feel apprehensive; he felt, now, excitement.

It sure happened fast, he thought as he walked over to his bench and began collecting his tools. I guess that’s how those kinds of things happen. Opportunity, when it comes—

All my life I’ve waited for this. When the oracle says “something must be achieved” it means this. The time is truly great. What is the time, now? What is this moment? Six at the top in Hexagram Eleven changes everything to Twenty-six, Taming Power of the Great. Yin becomes yang; the line moves and a new Moment appears. And I was so off stride I didn’t even notice!

I’ll bet that’s why I got that terrible line; that’s the only way Hexagram Eleven can change to Hexagram Twenty-six, by that moving six at the top. So I shouldn’t get my ass in such an uproar.

But, despite his excitement and optimism, he could not get the line completely out of his mind.

However, he thought ironically, I’m making a damn good try; by seven tonight maybe I’ll have managed to forget it like it never happened.

He thought, I sure hope so. Because this get-together with Ed is big. He’s got some surefire idea; I can tell. And I don’t intend to find myself left out.