Philip Dick: A Maze of Death

But we’re leaving, Morley thought. As in Goethe’s Faust, “In the beginning was the deed.” The deed and not the word, as Goethe, anticipating the twentieth century existentialists, had pointed out.

“You’ll want to come back,” Gossim opined.

“Hmm,” Seth Morley said.

“And you know what I’ll say to that?” Gossim said loudly. “If I get a request from you—both of you Morleys—to come back here to Tekel Upharsin Kibbutz, I’ll say, ‘We don’t have any need of a marine biologist; we don’t even have an ocean. And we’re not going to build so much as a puddle so that you can have a legitimate reason for working here.’”

“I never asked for a puddle,” Morley said.

“But you’d like one.”

“I’d like any kind of body of water,” Morley said. “That’s the whole point; that’s why we’re leaving and that’s why we won’t be coming back.”

“You’re sure Delmak-O has a body of water?” Gossim inquired.

“I assume—” Morley began, but Gossim cut him off.

“That,” Gossim said, “is what you assumed about Tekel Upharsin. That’s how your trouble began.”

“I assumed,” Morley said, “that if you advertised for a marine biologist—” He sighed, feeling weary. There was no point trying to influence Gossim; the engineer—and chief officer of the kibbutz—had a closed mind. “Just let me eat my cheese,” Morley said, and tried an additional slice. But he had grown tired of the taste; he had eaten too much. “The hell with it,” he said, tossing his knife down. He felt irritable and he did not like Gossim; he felt no desire to continue the conversation. What mattered was the fact that no matter how he felt, Gossim could not revoke the transfer. It carried an override, and that was the long and the short of it… to quote William S. Gilbert.

“I hate your bloody guts,” Gossim said.

Morley said, “I hate yours, too.”

“A Mexican standoff,” Niemand said. “You see, Mr. Gossim, you can’t make us stay; all you can do is yell.”

Making an obscene gesture toward Morley and Niemand Gossim strode off, parting the group gathered there, and disappeared somewhere on the far side. The office was quiet, now. Seth Morley immediately began to feel better.

“Arguments wear you out,” his wife said.

“Yes,” he agreed. “And Gossim wears me out. I’m tired just from this one interchange, forgetting the eight full years of it which preceded today. I’m going to go select a noser.” He rose, made his way from the office and into the midday sun.

A noser is a strange craft, he said to himself as he stood at the edge of the parking field surveying the lines of inert vessels. First of all, they were incredibly cheap; he could gain possession of one of these for less than four silver dollars. Secondly, they could go but never return; nosers were strictly one-way ships. The reason, of course, was simple: a noser was too small to carry fuel for a return trip. All the noser could do was kick off from a larger ship or a planetary surface, head for its destination, and quietly expire there. But—they did their job. Sentient races, human and otherwise, flocked throughout the galaxy aboard the little pod-like ships.

Goodbye, Tekel Upharsin, Morley said to himself, and made a brief, silent salute to the rows of orange bushes growing beyond the noser parking lot.

Which one should we take? he asked himself. They all looked alike: rusty, discarded. Like the contents of a used car lot back on Terra. I’ll choose the first one with a name on it beginning with M, he decided, and began reading the individual names.

The Morbid Chicken. Well, that was it. Not very transcendental, but fitting; people, including Mary, were always telling him that he had a morbid streak. What I have, he said to himself, is a mordant wit. People confuse the two terms because they sound similar.

Looking at his wristwatch he saw that he had time to make a trip to the packaging department of the citrus products factory. So he made off in that direction.

“Ten pint jars of class AA marmalade,” he said to the shipping clerk. It was either get them now or not at all.

“Are you sure you’re entitled to ten more pints?” The clerk eyed him dubiously, having had dealings with him before.

“You can check on my marmalade standing with Joe Perser,” Morley said. “Go ahead, pick up the phone and give him a call.”

“I’m too busy,” the clerk said. He counted out ten pint jars of the kibbutz’s main product and passed them to Morley in a bag, rather than in a cardboard carton.

“No carton?” Morley said.

“Scram,” the clerk said.

Morley got one of the jars out, making sure that they were indeed class AA. They were. “Marmalade from Tekel Upharsin Kibbutz!” the label declared. “Made from genuine Seville oranges (group 3-B mutational subdivision). Take a pot of sunny Spain into your kitchen or cooking cubicle!”

“Fine,” Morley said. “And thanks.” He lugged the bulky paper bag from the building and out once more into the bright sun of midday.

Back again at the noser parking area he began getting the pints of marmalade stored away in the Morbid Chicken. The one good thing this kibbutz produces, he said to himself as he placed the jars one by one within the magnetic grip-field of the storage compartment. I am afraid this is one thing I’ll miss.

He called Mary on his neck radio. “I’ve picked out a noser,” he informed her. “Come on down to the parking area and I’ll show it to you.”

“Are you sure it’s a good one?”

“You know you can take my mechanical ability for granted,” Morley said testily. “I’ve examined the rocket engine, wiring, controls, every life-protect system, everything, completely.” He pushed the last jar of marmalade away in the storage area and shut the door firmly.

She arrived a few minutes later, slender and tanned in her khaki shirt, shorts and sandals. “Well,” she said, surveying the Morbid Chicken, “it looks rundown to me. But if you say it’s okay it is, I guess.”

“I’ve already begun loading,” Morley said.

“With what?”

Opening the door of the storage compartment he showed her the ten jars of marmalade.

After a long pause Mary said, “Christ.”

“What’s the matter?”

“You haven’t been checking the wiring and the engine. You’ve been out scrounging up all the goddam marmalade you could talk them out of.” She slammed the storage area door shut with venomous ire. “Sometimes I think you’re insane. Our lives depend on this goddam noser working. Suppose the oxygen system fails or the heat circuit fails or there’re microscopic leaks in the hull. Or—”

“Get your brother to look at it,” he interrupted. “Since you have so much more trust in him than you do in me.”

“He’s busy. You know that.”

“Or he’d be here,” Morley said, “picking out which noser for us to take. Rather than me.”

His wife eyed him intently, her spare body drawn up in a vigorous posture of defiance. Then, all at once, she sagged in what appeared to be half-amused resignation. “The strange thing is,” she said, “that you have such good luck—I mean in relation to your talents. This probably is the best noser here. But not because you can tell the difference but because of your mutant-like luck.”

“It’s not luck. It’s judgment.”

“No,” Mary said, shaking her head. “That’s the last thing it is. You have no judgment—not in the usual sense, anyhow. But what the hell. We’ll take this noser and hope your luck is holding as well as usual. But how can you live like this, Seth?” She gazed up plaintively into his face. “It’s not fair to me.”

“I’ve kept us going so far.”