Philip Dick: The Turning Wheel

Sung-wu nodded. "Such is well known.”

"And what is right conduct?”

"Fulfilling the divine plan,” Sung-wu responded immediately.

"Maybe our whole Movement is part of the plan,” Ben Tinker said thoughtfully. Maybe the cosmic forces want us to drain the swamps and kill the grasshoppers and inoculate the children; after all, the cosmic forces put us all here.”

"If you kill me,” Sung-wu wailed, "I'll be a carrion-eating fly. I saw it, a shiny-winged blue-rumped fly crawling over the carcass of a dead lizard—In a rotting, steaming jungle in a filthy cesspool of a planet.” Tears came; he dabbed at them futilely. "In an out-of-the-way system, at the bottom of the ladder!”

Tinker was amused. Why this? '

"I've sinned.” Sung-wu sniffed and flushed. "I committed adultery.”

"Cant you purge yourself?”

"There’s no time!” His misery rose to wild despair. "My mind is still impure!” He indicated Frija, standing in the bedroom doorway, a supple white and tan shape in her household shorts. "I continue to think carnal thoughts; I can’t rid myself. In eight months the plague will turn the wheel on me—and it’ll be done! If I lived to be an old man, withered and toothless—no more appetite—” His plump body quivered in a frenzied convulsion. "There’s no time to purge and atone. According to the scanner, I’m going to die a young man!”

After this torrent of words, Tinker was silent, deep in thought. "The plague,” he said, at last. "What, exactly, are the symptom?"

Sung-wu described them, his olive face turning to a sickly green. When he had finished, the three men looked significantly at each other.

Ben Tinker got to his feet. "Come along,” he commanded briskly, taking the Bard by the arm. "I have something to show you. It is left from the old days. Sooner or later we'll advance enough to turn out our own, but right now we have only these remaining few. We have to keep them guarded and sealed.”

"This is for a good cause,” one of the sons said. "It's worth it.” He caught his brother's eye and grinned.

BARD CHAI finished reading Sung-wu s blue-slip report; he tossed it suspiciously down and eyed the younger Bard. "You’re sure? There’s no further need of investigation?”

"The cult will wither away,” Sung-wu murmured indifferently. "It lacks any real support; it's merely an escape valve, without intrinsic validity.”

Chai wasn’t convinced. He reread parts of the report again. "I suppose you’re right, but we’ve heard so many—"

"Lies,” Sung-wu said vaguely. "Rumors. Gossip. May I go?” He moved toward the door.

"Eager for your vacation?" Chai smiled understandingly. "I know how you feel. This report must have exhausted you. Rural areas, stagnant back-waters. We must prepare a better program of rural education. I’m convinced whole regions are in a jangled state. We’ve got to bring clearness to these people. It's our historic role; our class function.”

"Verily,” Sung-wu murmured, as he bowed his way out of the office and down the hall.

As he walked he fingered his beads thankfully. He breathed a silent prayer as his fingers moved over the surface of the little red pellets, shiny spheres that glowed freshly in place of the faded old—the gift of the Tinkerists. The beads would come in handy; he kept his hand on them tightly. Nothing must happen to them, in the next eight months. He had to watch them carefully, while he poked around the ruined cities of Spain—and finally came down with the plague.

He was the first Bard to wear a rosary of penicillin capsules.