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

She released the handles.

Mr. Lee, holding his gun to her, said, “Well?”

“Let’s go,” she said. “Back to the United States. Turn me over to the FBI. It doesn’t matter.”

“What did you see?” Mr. Lee said, with curiosity.

“I won’t tell you.”

“But I can learn it anyhow. From your mind.” He was probing, now, listening with his head cocked on one side. The corners of his mouth turned down as if he was pouting.

“I don’t call that much,” he said. “Mercer looks you in the face and says he can’t do anything for you—is this the man you’d lay down your life for, you and the others? You’re ill.”

“In the society of the insane,” Joan said, “the sick are well.”

“What nonsense!” Mr. Lee said.

To Bogart Crofts Mr. Lee said, “It was interesting. She became a Mercerite directly in front of me. The latency transforming itself into actuality… it proved I was correct in what I previously read in her mind.”

“We’ll have Meritan picked up any time now,” Crofts said to his superior, Secretary Herrick. “He left the television studio in Los Angeles, where he got news of Mercer’s severe injury. After that, no one seems to know what he did. He did not return to his apartment. The local police picked up his empathy box, and he was beyond a doubt not on the premises.”

“Where is Joan Hiashi?” Crofts asked.

“Being held now in New York,” Mr. Lee said.

“On what charge?” Crofts asked Secretary Herrick.

“Political agitation inimical to the safety of the United States.”

Smiling, Mr. Lee said, “And arrested by a Communist official in Cuba. It is a Zen paradox which no doubt fails to delight Miss Hiashi.”

Meanwhile, Bogart Crofts reflected, empathy boxes were being collected in huge quantities. Soon their destruction would begin. Within forty-eight hours most of the empathy boxes in the United States would no longer exist, including the one here in his office.

It still rested on his desk, untouched. It was he who originally had asked that it be brought in, and in all this time he had kept his hands off it, had never yielded. Now he walked over to it.

“What would happen,” he asked Mr. Lee, “if I took hold of these two handles? There’s no television set here. I have no idea what Wilbur Mercer is doing right now; in fact for all that I know, now he’s finally dead.”

Mr. Lee said, “If you grip the handles, sir, you will enter a—I hesitate to use the word but it seems to apply. A mystical communion. With Mr. Mercer, wherever he is; you will share his suffering, as you know, but that is not all. You will also participate in his—” Mr. Lee reflected. “ ‘World-view’ is not the correct term. Ideology? No.”

Secretary Herrick suggested, “What about trance-state ?”

“Perhaps that is it,” Mr. Lee said, frowning. “No, that is not it either. No word will do, and that is the entire point. It cannot be described—it must be experienced.”

“I’ll try,” Crofts decided.

“No,” Mr. Lee said. “Not if you are following my advice. I would warn you away from it. I saw Miss Hiashi do it, and I saw the change in her. Would you have tried Paracodein when it was popular with rootless cosmopolite masses?” He sounded angry.

“I have tried Paracodein,” Crofts said. “It did absolutely nothing for me.”

“What do you want done, Boge?” Secretary Herrick asked him.

Shrugging, Bogart Crofts said, “I mean I could see no reason for anyone liking it, wanting to become addicted to it.” And at last he took hold of the two handles of the empathy box.

Walking slowly in the rain, Ray Meritan said to himself, They got my empathy box and if I go back to the apartment they’ll get me.

His telepathic talent had saved him. As he entered the building he had picked up the thoughts of the gang of city police.

It was now past midnight. The trouble is I’m too well-known, he realized, from my damned TV show. No matter where I go I’ll be recognized.

At least anywhere on Earth.

Where is Wilbur Mercer? he asked himself. In this solar system or somewhere beyond it, under a different sun entirely? Maybe we’ll never know. Or at least I’ll never know.

But did it matter? Wilbur Mercer was somewhere; that was all that was important. And there was always a way to reach him. The empathy box was always there—or at least had been, until the police raids. And Meritan had a feeling that the distribution company which had supplied the empathy boxes, and which led a shadowy existence anyhow, would find a way around the police. If he was right about them—

Ahead in the rainy darkness he saw the red lights of a bar. He turned and entered it.

To the bartender he said, “Look, do you have an empathy box? I’ll pay you one hundred dollars for the use of it.”

The bartender, a big burly man with hairy arms, said, “Naw, I don’t have nuthin like that. Go on.”

The people at the bar watched, and one of them said, “Those are illegal now.”

“Hey, it’s Ray Meritan,” another said. “The jazz man.”

Another man said lazily, “Play some gray-green jazz for us, jazz man.” He sipped at his mug of beer.

Meritan started out of the bar.

“Wait,” the bartender said. “Hold on, buddy. Go to this address.” He wrote on a match folder, then held it out to Meritan.

“How much do I owe you?” Meritan said.

“Oh, five dollars ought to do it.”

Meritan paid and left the bar, the match folder in his pocket. It’s probably the address of the local police station, he said to himself. But I’ll give it a try anyhow.

If I could get to an empathy box one more time—

The address which the bartender had given him was an old, decaying wooden building in downtown Los Angeles. He rapped on the door and stood waiting.

The door opened. A middle-aged heavy woman in bathrobe and furry slippers peeped out at him. “I’m not the police,” he said. “I’m a Mercerite. Can I use your empathy box?”

The door gradually opened; the woman scrutinized him and evidently believed him, although she said nothing.

“Sorry to bother you so late,” he apologized.

“What happened to you, mister?” the woman said. “You look bad.”

“It’s Wilbur Mercer,” Ray said. “He’s hurt.”

“Turn it on,” the woman said, leading him with shuffling into a dark, cold parlor where a parrot slept in a huge, bent, brass-wire cage. There, on an old-fashioned radio cabinet, he saw the empathy box. He felt relief creep over him at the sight of it.

“Don’t be shy,” the woman said.

“Thanks,” he said, and took hold of the handles.

A voice said in his ear, “We’ll use the girl. She’ll lead us to Meritan. I was right to hire her in the first place.”

Ray Meritan did not recognize the voice. It was not that of Wilbur Mercer. But even so, bewildered, he held tightly onto the handles, listening; he remained frozen there, hands extended, clutching.

“The non-T force has appealed to the most credulous segment of our community, but this segment—I firmly believe—is being manipulated by a cynical minority of opportunists at the top, such as Meritan. They’re cashing in on this Wilbur Mercer craze for their own pocketbooks.” The voice, self-assured, droned on.

Ray Meritan felt fear as he heard it. For this was someone on the other side, he realized. Somehow he had gotten into empathic contact with him, and not with Wilbur Mercer.

Or had Mercer done this deliberately, arranged this? He listened on, and now he heard:

“…have to get the Hiashi girl out of New York and back here, where we can quiz her further.” The voice added, “As I told Herrick…”