Philip Dick - Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said

“And they never busted her for that?” Feeding or sheltering an escaped student meant two years in an FLC—the first time. The second time the sentence was five years.

“No, they never busted her. If she thought a pol team was about to run a spot check she’d quickly phone Pol Central and say a man was trying to break into her house. And then she’d maneuver the student outside and then lock him out, and the pols would come and there he’d be, beating on the door exactly as she said. So they’d cart him off and leave her free.” Ruth chuckled, “I heard her make one of those phone calls to Pol Central once. The way she told it, the man—”

Jason said, “Monica was my old lady for three weeks. Five years ago, roughly.”

“Did you ever see her wash her hair during that time?”

“No,” he admitted.

“And she didn’t wear underpants,” Ruth said. “Why would a good-looking man like you want to have an affair with a dirty, stringy, mangy freak like Monica Buff? You couldn’t have been able to take her anywhere; she smelled. She never bathed.”

“Hebephrenia,” Jason said.

“Yes.” Ruth nodded. “That was the diagnosis. I don’t know if you know this but finally she just wandered off, during one of her shopping trips, and never came back; we never saw her again. By now she’s probably dead. Still clutching that wicker shopping bag she got in Baja. That was the big moment in her life, that trip to Mexico. She bathed for the occasion, and I fixed up her hair—after I washed it half a dozen times. What did you ever see in her? How could you stand her?”

Jason said, “I liked her sense of humor.”

It’s unfair, he thought, comparing Ruth with a nineteen-year-old girl. Or even with Monica Buff. But—the comparison remained there, in his mind. Making it impossible for him to feel attraction toward Ruth Rae. As good—as experienced, anyhow—as she was in bed.

I am using her, he thought. As Kathy used me. As McNulty used Kathy.

McNulty. Isn’t there a microtrans on me somewhere?

Rapidly, Jason Taverner grabbed up his clothing, swiftly carried it to the bathroom. There, seated on the edge of the tub, he began to inspect each article.

It took him half an hour. But he did, at last, locate it. Small as it was. He flushed it down the toilet; shaken, he made his way back into the bedroom. So they know where I am after all, he realized. I can’t stay here after all.

And I’ve jeopardized Ruth Rae’s life for nothing.

“Wait,” he said aloud.

“Yes?” Ruth said, leaning wearily against the wall of the bathroom, arms folded under her breasts.

“Microtransmitters,” Jason said slowly, “only give approximate locations. Unless something actually tracks back to them locked on their signal.” Until then—He could not be sure. After all, McNulty had been waiting in Kathy’s apartment. But had McNulty come there in response to the microtransmitter, or because he knew that Kathy lived there? Befuddled by too much anxiety, sex, and scotch, he could not remember; he sat on the tub edge rubbing his forehead, straining to think, to recall exactly what had been said when he and Kathy entered her room to find McNulty waiting for them.

Ed , he thought. They said that Ed planted the microtrans on me. So it did locate me. But—Still, maybe it only told them the general area. And they assumed, correctly, that it would be Kathy’s pad.

To Ruth Rae he said, his voice breaking, “God damn it, I hope I haven’t got the pols oinking their asses after you; that would be too much, too goddamn much.” He shook his head, trying to clear it. “Do you have any coffee that’s super-hot?”

“I’ll go punch the stove-console.” Ruth Rae skittered barefoot, wearing only a box bangle, from the bathroom into the kitchen. A moment later she returned with a big plastic mug of coffee, marked KEEP ON TRUCKIN’. He accepted it, drank down the steaming coffee.

“I can’t stay,” he said, “any longer. And anyhow, you’re too old.”

She stared at him, ludicrously, like a warped, stomped doll. And then she ran off into the kitchen. Why did I say that? he asked himself. The pressure; my fears. He started after her.

In the kitchen doorway Ruth appeared, holding up a stoneware platter marked SOUVENIR OF KNOITS BERRY FARM. She ran blindly at him and brought it down on his head, her mouth twisting like newborn things just now alive. At that last instant he managed to lift his left elbow and take the blow there; the stoneware platter broke into three jagged pieces, and, down his elbow, blood spurted. He gazed at the blood, the shattered pieces of platter on the carpet, then at her.

“I’m sorry,” she said, whispering it faintly. Barely forming the words. The newborn snakes twisted continually, in apology.

Jason said, “I’m sorry.”

“I’ll put a Band-Aid on it.” She started for the bathroom. “No,” he said, “I’m leaving. It’s a clean cut; it won’t get infected.”

“Why did you say that to me?” Ruth said hoarsely.

“Because,” he said, “of my own fears of age. Because they’re wearing me down, what’s left of me. I virtually have no energy left. Even for an orgasm.”

“You did really well.”

“But it was the last,” he said. He made his way into the bathroom; there he washed the blood from his arm, kept cold water flowing on the gash until coagulation began. Five minutes, fifty; he could not tell. He merely stood there, holding his elbow under the faucet. Ruth Rae had gone God knew where. Probably to nark to the pols, he said wearily to himself; he was too exhausted to care.

Hell, he thought. After what I said to her I wouldn’t blame her.

“No,” Police General Felix Buckman said, shaking his head rigidly. “Jason Taverner does exist. He’s somehow managed to get the data out of all the matrix banks.” The police general pondered. “You’re sure you can lay your hands on him if you have to?”

“A downer about that, Mr. Buckman,” McNulty said. “He’s found the microtrans and snuffed it. So we don’t know if he’s still in Vegas. If he has any sense he’s hustled on. Which he almost certainly has.”

Buckman said, “You had better come back here. If he can lift data, prime source material like that, out of our banks, he’s involved in effective activity that’s probably major. How precise is your fix on him?”

“He is—was—located in one apartment of eighty-five in one wing of a complex of six hundred units, all expensive and fashionable in the West Fireflash District, a place called Copperfield II.”

“Better ask Vegas to go through the eighty-five units until they find him. And when you get him, have him air-mailed directly to me. But I still want you at your desk. Take a couple of uppers, forget your hyped-out nap, and get down here.”

“Yes, Mr. Buckman,” McNulty said, with a trace of pain. He grimaced.

“You don’t think we’re going to find him in Vegas,” Buckman said.

“No, sir.”

“Maybe we will. By snuffing the microtrans he may rationalize that he’s safe, now.”

“I beg to differ,” McNulty said. “By finding it he’d know we had bugged him to there in West Fireflash. He’d split. Fast.”

Buckman said, “He would if people acted rationally. But they don’t. Or haven’t you noticed that, McNulty? Mostly they function in a chaotic fashion.” Which, he mediated, probably serves them in good stead … it makes them less predictable.

“I’ve noticed that—”

“Be at your desk in half an hour,” Buckman said, and broke the connection. McNulty’s pedantic foppery, and the fogged-up lethargy of a hype after dark, irritated him always.

Alys, observing everything, said, “A man who’s unexisted himself. Has that ever happened before?”