Philip Dick - Upon the Dull Earth

Silvia ran laughing through the night brightness, between the roses and cosmos and Shasta daisies, down the gravel paths and beyond the heaps of sweet-tasting grass swept from the lawns. Stars, caught in pools of water, glittered everywhere, as she brushed through them to the slope beyond the brick walk Cedars supported the sky and ignored the slim shape squeezing past, her brown hair Hying, her eyes flashing.

“Wait for me,” Rick complained, as he cautiously threaded his way alter her, along die half-familiar path. Silvia danced on without stopping. “Slow down!” he shouted angrily.

“Can’t — we’re late.” Without warning, Silvia appeared in front of him, blocking the path. “Empty your pockets,” she gasped, her gray eyes sparkling. “Throw away all metal. You know they can’t stand metal.”

Rick searched his pockets. In his overcoat were two dimes and a fifty-cent piece. “Do these count?”

“ Yes! ” Silvia snatched the coins and threw them into the dark heaps of calla lilies. The bits of metal hissed into the moist depths and were gone. “Anything else?” She caught hold of his arm anxiously. “They’re already on their way. Anything else, Rick?”

“Just my watch.” Rick pulled his wrist away as Silvia’s wild fingers snatched for the watch. “ That’s not going in the bushes.”

“Then lay it on the sundial—or the wall. Or in a hollow tree.” Silvia raced off again. Her excited, rapturous voice danced back to him. “Throw away your cigarette case. And your keys, your belt buckle—everything metal. You know how they hate metal. Hurry, we’re late!”

Rick followed sullenly after her. “All right, witch .”

Silvia snapped at him furiously from the darkness. “Don’t say that! It isn’t true. You’ve been listening to my sisters and my mother and—”

Her words were drowned out by the sound. Distant flapping, a long way off, like vast leaves rustling in a winter storm. The night sky was alive with the frantic pounding; they were coming very quickly this time. They were too greedy, too desperately eager to wait. Flickers of fear touched the man and he ran to catch up with Silvia.

Silvia was a tiny column of green skirt and blouse in the center of the thrashing mass. She was pushing them away with one arm and trying to manage the faucet with the other. The churning activity of wings and bodies twisted her like a reed. For a time she was lost from sight.

“Rick!” she called faintly. “Come here and help!” She pushed them away and struggled up. “They’re suffocating me!”

Rick fought his way through the wall of flashing white to the edge of the trough. They were drinking greedily at the blood that spilled from the wooden faucet. He pulled Silvia close against him; she was terrified and trembling. He held her tight until some of the violence and fury around them had died down.

“They’re hungry,” Silvia gasped feebly.

“You’re a little cretin for coming ahead. They can sear you to ash!”

“I know. They can do anything.” She shuddered, excited and frightened. “Look at them,” she whispered, her voice husky with awe. “Look at the size of them— their wingspread. And they’re white , Rick. Spotless — perfect. There’s nothing in our world as spotless as that. Great and clean and wonderful.”

“They certainly wanted the lamb’s blood.”

Silvia’s soft hair blew against his face as the wings flattered on all sides. They were leaving now, roaring up into the night sky. Not up, really—away. Back to their own world, whence they had scented the blood. But it was not only the blood—they had come because of Silvia. She had attracted them.

The girl’s gray eyes were wide. She reached up toward the rising white creatures. One of them swooped close. Grass and flowers sizzled as blinding white flames roared in a brief fountain. Rick scrambled away. The flaming figure hovered momentarily over Silvia and then there was a hollow pop . The last of the white-winged giants was gone. The air, the ground, gradually cooled into darkness and silence.

“I’m sorry,” Silvia whispered.

“Don’t do it again,” Rick managed. He was numb with shock. “It isn’t safe.”

“Sometimes I forget. I’m sorry, Rick. I didn’t mean to draw them so close.” She tried to smile. “I haven’t been that careless in months. Not since that other time, when I first brought you out here.” The avid, wild look slid across her face. “Did you see him? Power and flames! And he didn’t even touch us. He just—looked at us. That was ail. And everything’s burned up, all around.”

Rick grabbed hold of her. “Listen,” he grated. “You mustn’t call them again. It’s wrong. This isn’t their world.”

“It’s not wrong—it’s beautiful.”

“It’s not safe!” His fingers dug into her flesh until she gasped. “Stop tempting them down here!”

Silvia laughed hysterically. She pulled away from him, out into the blasted circle that the horde of angels had seared behind them as they rose into the sky. “I can’t help it,” she cried. “I belong with them. They’re my family, my people. Generations of them, back into the past.”

What do you They’re my someday I’ll join them.”

“You are a little witch!” shouted furiously.

“No,” Silvia answered, a witch, Rick. Don’t you see? I’ a saint.”

The kitchen was warm and bright. Silvia plugged in the Silex and got a big red can of coffee down from the cupboards over the sink. “You mustn’t listen to them,” she said, as she set out plates and cups and got cream from the refrigerator. “You know they don’t understand. Look at them in there.”

Silvia’s mother and her sisters, Betty Lou and Jean, stood huddled together in the living room, fearful and alert, watching the young couple in the kitchen. Walter Everett was standing by the fireplace, his face blank, remote.

“Listen to me ,” Rick said. “You have this power to attract them. You mean you’re not—isn't Walter your real father?”

“Oh, yes—of course he is. I’m completely human. Don’t I look human?”

“But you’re the only one who has the power.”

“I’m not physically different,” Silvia said thoughtfully. “I have the ability to see, that’s all. Others have had it before me—saints, martyrs. When I was a child, my mother read to me about St. Bernadette. Remember where her cave was? Near a hospital. They were hovering there and she saw none of them.”

“But the blood! It’s grotesque. There never was anything like that.”

“Oh, yes. The blood draws them, lamb’s blood especially. They hover over battlefields. Valkyries—carrying off the dead to Valhalla. That’s why saints and martyrs cut and mutilate themselves. You know where I got the idea?”

Silvia fastened a little apron around her waist and filled the Silex with coffee. “When I was nine years old, I read of it in Homer, in the Odyssey. Ulysses dug a trench in the ground and filled it with, blood to attract the spirits. The shades from the nether world.”

“That’s right,” Rick admitted reluctantly. “I remember.”

“The ghosts of people who died. They had lived once. Everybody lives here, then dies and goes there.” Her face glowed. “We’re all going to have wings! We’re all going to fly. We’ll all be filled with fire and power. We won’t be worms any more.”