Philip Dick - The Eye of the Sibyl and Other Classic Strories

After a pause Cupertino said, “Thanks for telling me.”

“Don’t thank me; I did it to keep you from becoming agitated to the point of violence. You’re my patient and I have to think of your welfare. No punishment for you is now or ever was intended; the extent of your mental illness, your retreat from reality, fully demonstrated your remorse at the results of your stupidity.” Hagopian looked haggard and gray. “In any case leave Carol alone; it’s not your job to exact vengeance. Look it up in the Bible if you don’t believe me. Anyhow she’s being punished, and will continue to be as long as she’s physically in our hands.”

Cupertino broke the circuit.

Do I believe him? he asked himself.

He was not certain. Carol, he thought. So you doomed our cause, out of petty, domestic spite. Out of mere female bitterness, because you were angry at your husband; you doomed an entire moon to three years of losing, hateful war.

Going to the dresser in his bedroom he got out his laser beam; it had remained hidden there, in a Kleenex box, the entire three years since he had left Ganymede and come to Terra.

But now, he said to himself, it’s time to use this.

Going to the phone he dialed for a cab; this time he would travel to Los Angeles by public rocket express, rather than by his own wheel.

He wanted to reach Carol as soon as humanly possible.

You got away from me once, he said as he walked rapidly to the door of his conapt. But not this time. Not twice.

Ten minutes later he was aboard the rocket express, on his way to Los Angeles and Carol.

Before John Cupertino lay the Los Angeles Times; once more he leafed through it, puzzled, still unable to find the article. Why wasn’t it here? he asked himself. A murder committed, an attractive, sexy woman shot to death… he had walked into Carol’s place of work, found her at her desk, killed her in front of her fellow employees, then turned and, unhindered, walked back out; everyone had been too frozen with fear and surprise to interfere with him.

And yet it was not in the pape. The homeopape made absolutely no mention of it.

“You’re looking in vain,” Dr. Hagopian said, from behind his desk.

“It has to be here,” Cupertino said doggedly. “A capital crime like that— what’s the matter?” He pushed the homeopape aside, bewildered. It made no sense; it defied obvious logic.

“First,” Dr. Hagopian said wearily, “the laser beam did not exist; that was a delusion. Second, we did not permit you to visit your wife again because we knew you planned violence—you had made that perfectly clear. You never saw her, never killed her, and the homeopape before you is not the Los Angeles Times; it’s the New Detroit-G Star… which is limited to four pages because of the pulp-paper shortage here on Ganymede.”

Cupertino stared at him.

“That’s right,” Dr. Hagopian said, nodding. “It’s happened again, John; you have a delusional memory of killing her twice, now. And each event is as unreal as the other. You poor creature—you’re evidently doomed to try again and again, and each time fail. As much as our leaders hate Carol Holt Cupertino and deplore and regret what she did to us—” He gestured. “We have to protect her; it’s only just. Her sentence is being carried out; she’ll be imprisoned for twenty-two more years or until Terra manages to defeat us and releases her. No doubt if they get hold of her they’ll make her into a heroine; she’ll be in every Terran-controlled homeopape in the Sol System.”

“You’d let them get her alive?” Cupertino said, presently.

“Do you think we should kill her before they take her?” Dr. Hagopian scowled at him. “We’re not barbarians, John; we don’t commit crimes of vengeance. She’s suffered three years of imprisonment already; she’s being punished sufficiently.” He added, “And so are you as well. I wonder which of you is suffering the more.”

“I know I killed her,” Cupertino persisted. “I took a cab to her place of employment, Falling Star Associates, which controls Six-planet Educational Enterprises, in San Francisco; her office was on the sixth floor.” He remembered the trip up in the elevator, even the hat which the other passenger, a middle-aged woman, had worn. He remembered the slender, red-haired receptionist who had contacted Carol by means of her desk intercom; he remembered passing through the busy inner offices, suddenly finding himself face to face with Carol. She had risen, stood behind her desk, seeing the laser beam which he had brought out; understanding had flashed across her features and she had tried to run, to get away… but he had killed her anyhow, as she reached the far door, her hand clutching for the knob.

“I assure you,” Dr. Hagopian said. “Carol is very much alive.” He turned to the phone on his desk, dialed. “Here, I’ll call her, get her on the line; you can talk to her.”

Numbly, Cupertino waited until at last the image on the vidscreen formed. It was Carol.

“Hi,” she said, recognizing him.

Haltingly he said, “Hi.”

“How are you feeling?” Carol asked.

“Okay.” Awkwardly he said, “And you?”

“I’m fine,” Carol said. “Just a little sleepy because of being woken up so early this morning. By you.”

He rang off, then. “All right,” he said to Dr. Hagopian. “I’m convinced.” It was obviously so; his wife was alive and untouched; in fact she evidently had no knowledge even of an attempt by him on her life this time. He had not even come to her place of business; Hagopian was telling the truth.

Place of business? Her prison cell, rather. If he was to believe Hagopian. And evidently he had to.

Rising, Cupertino said, “Am I free to go? I’d like to get back to my conapt; I’m tired too. I’d like to get some sleep tonight.”

“It’s amazing you’re able to function at all,” Hagopian said, “after having had no sleep for almost fifty hours. By all means go home and go to bed. We’ll talk later.” He smiled encouragingly.

Hunched with fatigue John Cupertino left Dr. Hagopian’s office; he stood outside on the sidewalk, hands in his pockets, shivering in the night cold, and then he got unsteadily into his parked wheel.

“Home,” he instructed it.

The wheel turned smoothly away from the curb, to join traffic.

I could try once more, Cupertino realized suddenly. Why not? And this time I might be successful. Just because I’ve failed twice— that doesn’t mean I’m doomed

always to fail.

To the wheel he said, “Head toward Los Angeles.”

The autonomic circuit of the wheel clicked as it contacted the main route to Los Angeles, U.S. Highway 99.

She’ll be asleep when I get there, Cupertino realized. Probably because of that she’ll be confused enough to let me in. And then—

Perhaps now the revolt will succeed.

There seemed to him to be a gap, a weak point, in his logic. But he could not quite put his finger on it; he was too tired. Leaning back he tried to make himself comfortable against the seat of the wheel; he let the autonomic circuit drive and shut his eyes in an attempt to catch some much-needed sleep. In a few hours he would be in South Pasadena, at Carol’s one-unit dwelling. Perhaps after he killed her he could sleep; he would deserve it, then.

By tomorrow morning, he thought, if all goes well she’ll be dead. And then he thought once more about the homeopape, and wondered why there had been no mention of the crime in its columns. Strange, he thought. I wonder why not. The wheel, at one hundred and sixty miles an hour—after all, he had removed the speed governor—hurtled toward what John Cupertino believed to be Los Angeles and his sleeping wife.