Philip Dick - Deus Irae

“But how,” Pete said, “did you get away from it?”

“Oh. No real problem,” he replied. “I came out of it just as it dragged me inside. I’d already loosened the cranial bolt to the springing point. One twist was what I said and one twist was what it took. With my fingers. Presto!” He snapped his fingers. He popped another piece of meat into his mouth. “Then it was down and I was up and that was it. Pity. But then, I’d given it every break. You know that, don’t you?”

“You were most fair with it,” Pete said, finishing his kabob and eyeing the others that still sizzled.

The man passed him another.

And his hands are still steady, Pete thought, accepting the meat. All in a day’s work. Competency, expertise—nerves like fine-spun filaments of platinum, joints like neatly mashed gears and stainless-steel ball bearings. Skill, guts—that’s what it takes to be a hunter. But he’s got heart, too. Compassion. How many of us would be that concerned over something that wanted to devour us?

“After I left that place,” the hunter said, “I continued on my way, pleased to see that you had had the good sense to clear out.”

Oh my god! Pete thought. I hope he was really unconscious, not just saying that. What if he heard me asking the C to take him instead of me? But then, I really thought he was dead. I just told him so. So even if he did hear me say it, he’d know that—that was why. But I could have told him that now, just to look good, even though it wasn’t what I had in mind when I said it. On the other hand, if he heard it he must be a big enough man to have forgiven me—in which case he is pretending he didn’t hear it—which means that I will never know. Oh my god! And here I am eating his kabobs.

“What became of your bike?” the hunter asked him.

“The autofac turned it into pogo sticks,” Pete said.

The hunter smiled.

“Not surprising,” he said. “Once their naderers go, they do the damnedest things. But you were carrying something you didn’t have before. Did it actually fill an order properly before it ruined your bike?”

“Someone else’s order,” Pete said. “Its delivery sequence is off, too.”

“What are you going to do with all that lube?”

“I am taking it to a man who probably needs it,” Pete said, recalling the C’s statement that the hunter was after Tibor. Easily a piece of misinformation. Still…

He stuffed his mouth to avoid answering anything further without at least a ten-second pause for thought.

Why would he be looking for Tibor, though? he wondered. What could he want of him? What would make Tibor worth hunting? To anyone else, that is… ?

When they finished eating, Pete knew that he should offer the man one of his remaining cigarettes. He did so, and he took one for himself. They lit them with a brand from the fire and sprawled then near the boulders, resting, smoking.

“I don’t know,” Pete said, “about the propriety of the question. So please excuse me if I am being impolite. I don’t meet so many hunters that I am up on the etiquette. I was just wondering: Are you hunting anything or anyone in particular just now, or are you—between hunts?”

“Oh, I’m on a hunt all right,” the man said. “I’m looking for a little phocomelus named Tibor McMasters. I think the trail is fairly warm now, too.”

“Oh, really?” said Pete, drawing on his cigarette, one hand beneath his head, his eyes on the stars. “What did he do?”

“Oh, nothing, nothing yet. He is not especially important. Just part of a bigger design.”

“Oh.” Now what do I say? he wondered. Then, “By the way, my name is Pete. Pete Sands.”

“I know.”

“I forgot to introduce myself earlier, and—You know? How could you?”

“Because I know of everyone in Charlottesville, Utah—everyone with any connection with Tibor McMasters, that is. It’s a small town. There aren’t that many of you.”

“Efficient,” Pete said, feeling as if barbs inserted painlessly into his flesh were now being drawn. “Your employer must have gone to a lot of trouble and expense. It would have been easier to approach the man back in town.”

“But fruitless, there,” the other replied. “And the difficulty and the cost mean nothing to my employer.”

Pete waited, smoking. He felt positive that it would be a breach of etiquette to inquire as to his employer’s identity. Perhaps if I just wait he will volunteer it, he decided.

The fire crackled. In the distance, something howled and something else chuckled.

“My name is Schuld, Jack Schuld,” the hunter said, extending his hand.

Pete turned onto his side and clasped it. The grip was, as he suspected, powerful enough to crush his own, while sufficiently controlled to show this without exerting considerable force. Releasing it, Pete leaned back and contemplated stellar geometries. A meteor smeared white fire across the sky. When the stars threw down their spears, he remembered, And water’d heaven with their tears … What came next? He could not recall.

“Tibor is on a dangerous Pilg,” Schuld said, “and he has recently expressed a desire to convert to the religion wherein you would take your ministry.”

“You are indeed thorough,” Pete observed.

“Yes, I’d say so. You Christians aren’t doing so well these days,” he continued, “and even a single convert comes to mean a lot in a little place like Charlottesville, Utah. Right?”

“I can’t deny it,” Pete said.

“So your superior has sent you to take care of the catechumen, to see that he comes to no harm while finishing his job for the competition.”

“I do want to find him and protect him,” Pete said.

“And the subject of his search? Have you any curiosity concerning the one he has been commissioned to portray?”

“Oh, I sometimes wonder whether the man is still really living,” Pete said.

“Man?” Schuld said. “You can still call him that?”

“Well, unlike our competitors, I do not really see him as fitted for any larger role.”

“I was not talking theology,” Schuld said. “I was simply noting your reference to humanity when speaking of one who has forfeited all right to any human considerations. Adolph Eichmann was an altar boy by comparison. We are speaking of the beast who destroyed most of the world.”

“I cannot deny the act, but neither can I judge it. How can I know his motives, his intent?”

“Look, around you. Anytime. Anywhere. Their effects are manifest in every phase of existence now. He is, to put it bluntly and concisely, an inhuman monster.”

Pete nodded.

“Maybe,” he said. “If he truly understood the nature and quality of his actions, then I suppose he was something unspeakable at the time.”

“Try Carleton Lufteufel. It can be spoken. There is not a living creature on Earth today that has not known pain because of him. There is nothing to which he does not owe a sea of misery, a continent of despair. He has been marked from the day he made his decision.”

“I had heard that hunters were mercenaries, that they do not act out of conviction.”

“You anticipate me, Pete. I have not named him as my quarry.”

Pete chuckled. So did Schuld.

“But they are fortunate times, when desire and circumstance are conjoined,” Schuld finally said.

“Then why do you seek Tibor?” Pete asked. “I do not quite understand the connection.”

“The beast is wary,” the other replied, “but I doubt his suspicions would extend to a phocomelus.”

“I begin to see.”

“Yes. I will lead him to him. Tibor can have his likeness. I will have his flesh.”

Pete shuddered. The situation had twisted and darkened, but might, for all that, be turning to his advantage.