Philip Dick - The Science Fiction Anthology

“You lie,” said Halvorsen. “I worked. Good God, how I worked! Nobody wanted my work. They wanted me, to wear in their buttonholes like a flower. They were getting to me. Another year and I wouldn’t have been an artist any more.”

“ Ja? ” asked the old man. “Tell me about it.”

Halvorsen told him, sometimes weeping with self-pity and weakness, sometimes cursing the old man for not letting him die, sometimes quietly describing this statuette or that portrait head, or raving wildly against the mad folly of the world.

At the last he told the old man about Lucy.

“You cannot have everything, you know,” said his listener.

“I can have her,” answered the artist harshly. “You wouldn’t let me die, so I won’t die. I’ll go back and I’ll take her away from that fat-head Malone that she ought to marry. I’ll give her a couple of happy years working herself to skin and bones for me before she begins to hate it—before I begin to hate it.”

“You can’t go back,” said the old man. “I’m Cerberus. You understand that? The girl is nothing. The society you come from is nothing. We have a place here.... Sister, can he sit up?”

The woman smiled and cranked his bed. Halvorsen saw through a picture window that he was in a mountain-rimmed valley that was very green and dotted with herds and unpainted houses.

“Such a place there had to be,” said the old man. “In the whole geography of Europe, there had to be a Soltau Valley with winds and terrain just right to deflect the dust.”

“Nobody knows?” whispered the artist.

“We prefer it that way. It’s impossible to get some things, but you would be surprised how little difference it makes to the young people. They are great travelers, the young people, in their sweaty coveralls with radiation meters. They think when they see the ruined cities that the people who lived in them must have been mad. It was a little travel party like that which found you. The boy was impressed by something you said, and I saw some interesting things in your hands. There isn’t much rock around here; we have fine deep topsoil. But the boys could get you stone.

“There should be a statue of the Mayor for one thing, before I die. And from the Rathaus the wooden angels have mostly broken off. Soltau Valley used to be proud of them—could you make good copies? And of course cameras are useless and the best drawings we can do look funny. Could you teach the youngers at least to draw so faces look like faces and not behinds? And like you were saying about you and Labuerre, maybe one younger there will be so crazy that he will want to learn it all, so Soltau will always have an artist and sculptor for the necessary work. And you will find a Lucy or somebody better. I think better.”

“Hush,” warned the nurse. “You’re exciting the patient.”

“It’s all right,” said Halvorsen eagerly. “Thanks, but it’s really all right.”

The following advertisement appeared in the July 1953 issue of several magazines:

MASTERY OF ALL KNOWLEDGE CAN BE YOURS!

What is the secret source of those profound

principles that can solve the problems of life?

Send for our FREE booklet of explanation.

Do not be a leaf in the wind! YOU

can alter the course of your life!

Tap the treasury of Wisdom through the ages!

The Perpetual Order of Seekers After Truth

POSAT

an ancient secret society

Most readers passed it by with scarcely a glance. It was, after all, similar to the many that had appeared through the years under the name of that same society. Other readers, as their eyes slid over the familiar format of the ad, speculated idly about the persistent and mildly mysterious organization behind it. A few even resolved to clip the attached coupon and send for the booklet—sometime—when a pen or pencil was nearer at hand.

Bill Evans, an unemployed pharmacist, saw the ad in a copy of Your Life and Psychology that had been abandoned on his seat in the bus. He filled out the blanks on the coupon with a scrap of stubby pencil. “You can alter the course of your life!” he read again. He particularly liked that thought, even though he had long since ceased to believe it. He actually took the trouble to mail the coupon. After all, he had, literally, nothing to lose, and nothing else to occupy his time.

Miss Elizabeth Arnable was one of the few to whom the advertisement was unfamiliar. As a matter of fact, she very seldom read a magazine. The radio in her room took the place of reading matter, and she always liked to think that it amused her cats as well as herself. Reading would be so selfish under the circumstances, wouldn’t it? Not but what the cats weren’t almost smart enough to read, she always said.

It just so happened, however, that she had bought a copy of the Antivivisectionist Gazette the day before. She pounced upon the POSAT ad as a trout might snap at a particularly attractive fly. Having filled out the coupon with violet ink, she invented an errand that would take her past the neighborhood post office so that she could post it as soon as possible.

Donald Alford, research physicist, came across the POSAT ad tucked at the bottom of a column in The Bulletin of Physical Research . He was engrossed in the latest paper by Dr. Crandon, a man whom he admired from the point of view of both a former student and a fellow research worker. Consequently, he was one of the many who passed over the POSAT ad with the disregard accorded to any common object.

He read with interest to the end of the article before he realized that some component of the advertisement had been noted by a region of his brain just beyond consciousness. It teased at him like a tickle that couldn’t be scratched until he turned back to the page.

It was the symbol or emblem of POSAT, he realized, that had caught his attention. The perpendicularly crossed ellipses centered with a small black circle might almost be a conventionalized version of the Bohr atom of helium. He smiled with mild skepticism as he read through the printed matter that accompanied it.

“I wonder what their racket is,” he mused. Then, because his typewriter was conveniently at hand, he carefully tore out the coupon and inserted it in the machine. The spacing of the typewriter didn’t fit the dotted lines on the coupon, of course, but he didn’t bother to correct it. He addressed an envelope, laid it with other mail to be posted, and promptly forgot all about it. Since he was a methodical man, it was entrusted to the U.S. mail early the next morning, together with his other letters.

Three identical forms accompanied the booklet which POSAT sent in response to the three inquiries. The booklet gave no more information than had the original advertisement, but with considerable more volubility. It promised the recipient the secrets of the Cosmos and the key that would unlock the hidden knowledge within himself—if he would merely fill out the enclosed form.

Bill Evans, the unemployed pharmacist, let the paper lie unanswered for several days. To be quite honest, he was disappointed. Although he had mentally disclaimed all belief in anything that POSAT might offer, he had watched the return mails with anticipation. His own resources were almost at an end, and he had reached the point where intervention by something supernatural, or at least superhuman, seemed the only hope.

He had hoped, unreasonably, that POSAT had an answer. But time lay heavily upon him, and he used it one evening to write the requested information—about his employment (ha!), his religious beliefs, his reason for inquiring about POSAT, his financial situation. Without quite knowing that he did so, he communicated in his terse answers some of his desperation and sense of futility.