Philip Dick: A Maze of Death

Betty Jo said, “I’m not offended. It’s true. I don’t care about you, Babble, or any of the rest. I just want to be left alone.” She turned toward Ben. “We have an initial curiosity when someone lands … as we had about you. But afterward, after we see the person and listen to him a little—” She lifted her cigarette from the ashtray and inhaled its smoke silently. “No offense meant, Mr. Tallchief, as Babble just now said. We’ll get you pretty soon and you’ll be the same; I predict it. You’ll talk with us for a while and then you’ll withdraw into—” She hesitated, groping the air with her right hand as if physically searching for a word. As if a word were a three dimensional object which she could seize manually. “Take Belsnor. All he thinks about is the refrigeration unit. He has a phobia that it’ll stop working, which you would gather from his panic would mean the end of us. He thinks the refrigeration unit is keeping us from—” She gestured with her cigarette. “Boiling away.”

“But he’s harmless,” Dr. Babble said.

“Oh, we’re all harmless,” Betty Jo Berm said. To Ben she said, “Do you know what I do, Mr. Tallchief? I take pills. I’ll show you.” She opened her purse and brought out a pharmacy bottle. “Look at these,” she said as she handed the bottle to Ben. “The blue ones are stelazine, which I use as an anti-emetic. You understand: I use it for that, but that isn’t its basic purpose. Basically stelazine is a tranquilizer, in doses of less than twenty milligrams a day. In greater doses it’s an anti-hallucinogenic agent. But I don’t take it for that either. Now, the problem with stelazine is that it’s a vasodilator. I sometimes have trouble standing up after I’ve taken some. Hypostasis, I think it’s called.”

Babble grunted, “So she also takes a vasoconstrictor.”

“That’s this little white tablet,” Betty Jo said, showing him the part of the bottle in which the white tablets dwelt. “It’s methamphetamine. Now, this green capsule is—”

“One day,” Babble said, “your pills are going to hatch, and some strange birds are going to emerge.”

“What an odd thing to say,” Betty Jo said.

“I meant they look like colored birds’ eggs.”

“Yes, I realize that. But it’s still a strange thing to say.” Removing the lid from the bottle she poured out a variety of pills into the palm of her hand. “This red cap—that’s of course pentabarbital, for sleeping. And then this yellow one, it’s norpramin, which counterbalances the C.N.S. depressive effect of the mellaril. Now, this square orange tab, it’s new. It has five layers on it which time-release on the so-called ‘trickle principle.’ A very effective C.N.S. stimulant. Then a—”

“She takes a central nervous system depressor,” Babble broke in, “and also a C.N.S. stimulant.”

Ben said, “Wouldn’t they cancel each other out?”

“One might say so, yes,” Babble said.

“But they don’t,” Betty Jo said. “I mean subjectively I can feel the difference. I know they’re helping me.”

“She reads the literature on them all,” Babble said. “She brought a copy of the P.D.R. with her—Physicians’ Desk Reference—with lists of side effects, contraindications, dosage, when indicated and so forth. She knows as much about her pills as I do. In fact, as much as the manufacturers know. If you show her a pill, any pill, she can tell you what it is, what it does, what—” He belched, drew himself up higher in his chair, laughed, and then said, “I remember a pill that had as side effects—if you took an overdose—convulsions, coma and then death. And in the literature, right after it told about the convulsions, coma and death, it said, May Be Habit Forming. Which always struck me as an anticlimax.” Again he laughed, and then pried at his nose with one hairy, dark finger. “It’s a strange world,” he murmured. “Very strange.”

Ben had a little more of the Seagram’s VO. It had begun to fill him with a familiar warm glow. He felt himself beginning to ignore Dr. Babble and Betty Jo. He sank into the privacy of his own mind, his own being, and it was a good feeling.

Tony Dunkelwelt, photographer and soil-sample specialist, put his head in the door and called, “There’s another noser landing. It must be Morley.” The screen door banged shut as Dunkelwelt scuttled off.

Half-rising to her feet, Betty Jo said, “We’d better go. So at last, we’re finally all here.” Dr. Babble rose, too. “Come on, Babble,” she said, and started toward the door. “And you, Mr. Eighth-Part-Indian-Tallchief.”

Ben drank down the rest of his coffee and Seagram’s VO and got up, dizzily. A moment later and he was following them out the door and into the light of day.

Shutting off the retrojets Seth Morley shuddered, then unfastened his seat belt. Pointing, he instructed Mary to do the same.

“I know,” Mary said, “what to do. You don’t have to treat me like a child.”

“You’re sore at me,” Morley said, “even though I navigated us here perfectly. The whole way.”

“You were on automatic pilot and you followed the beam,” she said archly. “But you’re right, I should be grateful.” Her tone of voice did not sound grateful, however. But he did not care. He had other things on his mind.

He manually unbolted the hatch. Green sunlight streamed in and he saw, shielding his eyes, a barren landscape of meager trees and even more meager brush. Off to the left a gaggle of unimpressive buildings jutted irregularly. The colony.

People were approaching the noser, a gang of them. Some of them waved and he waved back. “Hello,” he said, stepping down the iron pins and dropping to the ground. Turning, he began to help Mary out, but she shook him loose and descended without assistance.

“Hi,” a plain, brownish girl called as she approached. “We’re glad to see you—you’re the last!”

“I’m Seth Morley,” he said. “And this is Mary, my wife.”

“We know,” the plain, brownish girl said, nodding. “Glad to meet you, I’ll introduce you to everyone.” She indicated a muscular youth nearby. “Ignatz Thugg.”

“Glad to meet you.” Morley shook hands with him. ‘I’m Seth Morley and this is my wife Mary.”

“I’m Betty Jo Berm,” the plain, brownish girl said. “And this gentleman—” She directed his attention toward an elderly man with stooped, fatigue posture. “Bert Kosler, our custodian.”

“Glad to meet you, Mr. Kosler.” Vigorous handshake.

“I’m glad to meet you, too, Mr. Morley. And Mrs. Morley. I hope you will enjoy it here.”

“Our photographer and soil-sample expert, Tony Dunkelwelt.” Miss Berm pointed out a long-snouted teenager who glared sullenly and did not extend his hand.

“Hello,” Seth Morley said to him.

“Lo.” The boy glowered down at his own feet.

“Maggie Walsh, our specialist in theology.”

“Glad to meet you, Miss Walsh.” Vigorous handshake. What a really nice-looking woman, Morley thought to himself. And here came another attractive woman, this one wearing a sweater stretched tight over her peek-n-squeeze bra. “What’s your field?” he asked her as they shook hands.

“Clerical work and typing. My name is Suzanne.”

“What’s your last name?”

“Smart.”

“That’s a nice name.”

“I don’t think so. They call me Susie Dumb, which isn’t really all that funny.”

“I don’t think it’s funny at all,” Seth Morley said. His wife nudged him violently in the ribs and, being welltrained, he at once cut his conversation with Miss Smart short and turned to greet a skinny, rat-eyed individual who held out a wedge-shaped hand which appeared to have sharpened, tapered edges. He felt an involuntary refusal arise within him. This was not a hand he wanted to shake, and not a person he wanted to know.