Lies, Inc., by Philip K. Dick

Lies, Inc., by Philip K. Dick

Postby admin » Tue Sep 01, 2020 6:21 am

Lies, Inc.
by Philip K. Dick
© 1964 by Ziff-Davis Publishing Co.

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Table of Contents:

• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• Chapter 8
• Chapter 9
• Chapter 10
• Chapter 11
• Chapter 12
• Chapter 13
• Chapter 14
• Chapter 15
• Chapter 16
• Chapter 17
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Re: Lies, Inc., by Philip K. Dick

Postby admin » Tue Sep 01, 2020 6:22 am

Chapter One

The SubInfo computers owned by Lies Incorporated had been caught in an unnatural act by a service mechanic. Sublnfo computer Five had transmitted information which was not a lie.

It would have to be taken apart to see why. And to whom the correct information had gone.

Probably there would be no way to discern to whom the correct information had gone. But a carrier check maintained an automatic record of all subinformation transmitted by the bank of computers located here and there on Terra. The information had to do with a rat. According to the carrier check the rat lived with a colony of other rats in a garbage dump in Oakland, California.

What importance could information dealing with a rat have? Lewis Stine, the chief mechanic for Lies Incorporated, pondered this as he broke the flow of current to SubInfo computer Five and prepared to begin taking it apart. Of course he could ask the computer ... but the computer, being programmed to lie, would of course lie -- even to Lies Incorporated itself. That was an irony which Stine did not appreciate. This problem always surfaced when it came time to dismantle one of the computers.

Any other bank of computers, Stine thought, could be asked.

Just for a moment he restored power to SubInfo computer Five and punched buttons on the console of a terminal. Whom did you transmit to? he asked.

BEN APPLEBAUM, RACHMAEL

"Fine," Stine said. At least he knew that. Somebody on Terra with the name Rachmael ben Applebaum probably now knew more about rats than he cared to know, albeit on a subliminal basis.

You're probably thinking a lot about rats these days, Mr. ben Applebaum, Stine said to himself. And you are wondering why.

Again he cut the power to the computer. And began to go to work.

***

Standing before his bathroom mirror shaving, Rachmael ben Applebaum thought about the delicious taste of cheeseburger fragments -- not a whole cheeseburger (you rarely found those) but the wonderful dried bits lying here and there among the coffee grounds, grapefruit rinds and egg shells.

I'll fly over to Bob's Big Boy, he decided, and order a cheese burger for breakfast.

And then he thought, It's those damn dreams.

Actually it was one dream over and over again. And he always had it around three a.m.; several times he had awakened, gotten out of bed, bewildered and disturbed by the intensity of the dream, and noted the clock. The place he dreamed of; it was awful. And yet, for some reason, while he was actually there -- actually dreaming -- the place seemed great. And this was the part that bothe:red him the most: that he liked it so. It seemed familiar; it seemed to be a place he regarded as home.

However, so did a number of other people --

People. They hadn't looked exactly like people, although they had talked like people.

"That's mine," Fred said, holding on to an armload of dog kibble.

"The hell you say, " Rachmael said angrily. "I saw it first. Give it here or I'll pop you."

He and Fred fought over the armload of dog kibble, and Rachmael finally won. But he won in an odd way: by biting Fred on the shoulder. He hadn't hit him; he had bitten him.

Strange, Rachmael thought as he continued to shave.

I'm going to have to see a psychiatrist, he said to himself. Maybe it's memories of a former life. Millions of years ago before I ... before I had evolved into a human being. Far lower on the evolutionary scale. Biting people, or rather biting animals. Yes, he thought; Fred was an animal of some kind. But we talked English.

In his dream he kept a secret hoard of valuables which the others in the settlement knew nothing about. He thought of them now, those precious artifacts which he cherished, which he had gone to such lengths -- and effort -- to acquire. Mostly food, of course; nothing was more important than food. And yet -- you could sometimes find string. He had a lot of string: fine brown string; he had wound it up into a heap and, during the day, he slept in the midst of it. The pile of string comforted him; it lulled him and made his dreams peaceful. All but one; there at the settlement, asleep during the day in his pile of string, he had one dreadful dream which kept coming back.

It had to do with a huge fish opening its mouth wide ... and vast ugly teeth strove to crunch him, crunch him with avid relish.

Jeez, Rachmael said. Maybe I'm not here shaving; maybe I'm just dreaming this. Maybe I'm asleep in my pile of string, and having a good dream, not the bad one; having the dream where I'm a --

He thought, A man.

So then, by inference, he thought, I'm not a man when I'm at the settlement. That would explain why I bit, and why Fred bit, That son-of-a-bitch, he said to himself. He knows where a lot of dog kibble is and he won't tell any of the rest of us. I'll find it; I'll find his trove.

But then, he realized, while I'm out doing that, maybe Fred (or someone else) will find my trove and take away my string. My wonderful string which was so hard to drag back to my hiding place; it kept snagging and catching on things ... I'll defend that string with my life, Rachmael said to himself. Any son-of-a-bitch who tries to steal it will wind up without his face.

He looked at his wristwatch. Got to hurry, he said to himself. It's late; I overslept again. And I can't get the dream out of my head. It was too vivid for a dream. It wasn't a dream; maybe it was involuntary telepathy of some kind. Or contact with an alternate universe. That's probably what it was: another Earth on which I was born as an animal rather than a human being.

Or a microwave transmission, using my brain as a transducer without an electronic interface. They have those, especially the police agencies.

He was very much afraid of the world-wide police agencies. Especially Lies, Incorporated, the worst police agency of them all. Even the Soviet police were afraid of them.

They're beaming psychotronic signals at me subliminally while I'm asleep, he thought. And then he realized how paranoid that was. Christ; no sane person would think that. And even if Lies, Incorporated did transmit microwave-boosted telepathic information to him in his sleep, would it have to do with rats?

With rats!

I'm a goddamn rat, he realized. When I go to sleep I abreact back millions of years to when I was once a rat, and I think rat thoughts and have rat ideas; I cherish what a rat cherishes. That explains my fighting with Fred for the dog kibble. It's simple: memories from the paleocortex, rather than the neocortex.

There's an anatomical explanation. Has to do with accretional layers of the brain; the brain has old layers which come to wakefulness during normal sleep.

That's the trouble with living in a police state, he said to himself; you think -- you imagine -- the police are behind everything. You get paranoid and think they're beaming information to you in your sleep, to subliminally control you. Actually the police wouldn't do that. The police are our friends.

Or was that idea beamed to me subliminally? he wondered suddenly. "The police are our friends." The hell they are!

He continued shaving, feeling glum about the whole thing. Maybe the dream will stop coming, he said to himself. Or --

Pausing, he thought, Maybe the dream is trying to tell me some thing.

For a long time he stood without moving, the razor held away from his face. Tell me what? That I'm living in a garbage dump where there's dried scraps of food, rotting food, other rats?

He trembled.

And, as best he could, continued shaving.
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Re: Lies, Inc., by Philip K. Dick

Postby admin » Tue Sep 01, 2020 6:23 am

Chapter Two

"Syn-cof?" the receptionist asked sympathetically. "Or Martian fnikjuice tea, while you wait?"

Rachmael ben Applebaum, getting out a genuine Tampa, Florida Garcia y Vega cigarillo, said, "I'll just sit, thanks." He lit the cigar, waited. For Miss Freya Holm. He wondered what she looked like. If she was as pretty as the receptionist --

A soft voice said, almost timidly, "Mr. ben Applebaum? I'm Miss Holm. If you'll come into my office --" She held the door open, and she was perfection; his Garcia y Vega cigarillo dwindled, neglected in the ashtray as he rose to his feet. She, no more than twenty, chitin-black long hair that hung freely down her shoulders, teeth white as the glossy bond of the expensive UN info mags ... he stared at her, at the small girl in the gold-spray bodice and shorts and sandals, with the single camellia over her left ear, stared and thought, And this is my police protection.

"Sure." Numbly, he passed her, entered her small, contemporarily furnished office; in one glance he saw artifacts from the extinct cultures of six planets. "But Miss Holm," he said, then, candidly.

"Maybe your employers didn't explain; there's pressure here. I've got one of the most powerful economic syndromes in the Sol system after me. Trails of Hoffman --"

"THL," Miss Holm said, seating herself at her desk and touching the on of her aud-recorder, "is the owner of Dr. Sepp von Einem's teleportation construct and hence monopolistically has made obsolete the hyper-see liners and freighters of Applebaum Enterprise." On her desk before her she had a folio, which she consulted. "You see, Mr. Rachmael ben Applebaum --" She glanced up. "I wish to keep you in data-reference distinct from your father, the late Maury Applebaum. So may I call you Rachmael?"

"Y-yes," he said, nettled by her coolness, her small, firm poise -- and the folio which lay before her; long before he had consulted Listening Instructional Educational Services -- or, as the pop mind called it in UN-egged-on derision, Lies Incorporated -- the police agency had gathered, with its many monitors, the totality of information pertaining to him and to the collapse from abrupt technological obsolescence of the once formidable Applebaum Enterprise. And --

"Your late father," Freya Holm said, "died evidently at his own instigation. Officially the UN police list it as Selbstmort ... suicide. We however --" She paused, consulting the folio. "Hmmm."

Rachmael said, "I'm not satisfied, but I'm resigned." After all, he could not bring back his heavy, red-faced, near-sighted and highly over-taxed father. Selbstmort, in the official German of the UN, or not. "Miss Holm," he began, but she cut him off, gently.

"Rachmael, the Telpor electronic entity of Dr. Sepp von Einem, researched and paid for, developed in the several interplan labs of Trails of Hoffman, could do nothing else than bring chaos to the drayage industry. Theodoric Ferry, who is chairman of the board of THL, must have known this when he financed Dr. von Einem at his Schweinfort labs where the Telpor ..."

Her voice faded.

Rachmael ben Applebaum sat with a circle of friends around a superior person, very wise and ancient. They called him Abba, which meant Daddy. When Abba spoke the entire settlement listened, and as best they could the individuals committed to memory what Abba told them. Because what that ancient person told them had an absolute quality to it; Abba had not originated in the settlement, but knew things which no one else knew, and he guided them all.

"... breakthrough occurred," Abba said in his low, gentle voice. "And yet THL owned -- outside of your father's -- the largest single holding of the now-defunct Applebaum Enterprise. Therefore, my little ones, know this: Trails of Hoffman Limited deliberately ruined a corporation which it had major investments in ... and this, I admit, has seemed strange to us."

The wise, elderly Abba faded out. Freya Holm glanced up alertly, tossed back her mass of black hair.

"And now they hound you for restitution; correct?"

Rachmael blinked; he managed to nod mutely.

Quietly, Miss Holm asked, "How long did it take a passenger liner of your father's corporation to reach Whale's Mouth with a load of, say, five hundred colonists, plus their personal effects?"

After a tormented pause he said, "We -- never even tried. Years. Even at hyper-see."

The girl, across from him, still waited, wanting to hear him say it.

"With our flagship transport," he said, "eighteen years."

"And with Dr. von Einem's teleportation instrument --"

"Fifteen minutes," he said harshly. And Whale's Mouth, the number IX planet of the Fomalhaut system, was to date the sole planet discovered either by manned or unmanned observers which was truly habitable -- truly a second Terra. Eighteen years ... and even deep-sleep would not help, for such a prolonged period; aging, although slowed down, although consciousness was dimmed, still occurred. Alpha and Prox; that had been all right; that had been short enough. But Fomalhaut, at twenty-four light years --

"We just couldn't compete," he said. "We simply could not carry colonists that far."

"Would you have tried, without von Einem's Telpor break through?"

Rachmael said, "My father --"

"Was thinking about it." She nodded. "But then he died and it was too late and now you've had to sell virtually all your ships to meet note-payment due-dates. Now, from us, Rachmael. You wanted ...?"

"I still own," he said, "our fastest, newest, biggest ship, the Omphalos. She's never been sold, no matter how great the pressure THL has put on me, within and outside the UN courts." He hesitated, then said it. "I want to go to Whale's Mouth. By ship. Not by Dr. von Einem's Telpor. And by my own ship, by what we meant to be our --" He broke off. "I want to take her all the way to Fomalhaut, on an eighteen-year voyage -- alone. And when I arrive at Whale's Mouth I'll prove --"

"Yes?" Freya said. "Prove what, Rachmael?"

As he sat there, formulating his answer, he saw again the tender, intelligent shape of Abba; but Abba did not look human. A fur of darkness and complexity covered Abba and as the wise one spoke his voice seemed shrill and eerie. Remnants of the dream, Rachmael realized; coming back at me in my waking state.

Abba said, "There lies a wonderful place. In it lies very fine food. In it lies ... in it lies ... lies."

The last word lingered in Rachmael's mind. Lies.

Across from him the girl waited for him to answer.

"Lies," he said. "Something about lies."

"Oh, the name they give us." Freya laughed.

A pun, he thought. The two words sound the same, spelled the same, but mean different things.

"That we could have done it," Rachmael said. "Had von Einem not come along with that teleportation thing, that --" He gestured and felt, within him, impotent fury. And still the word lingered in his mind, traced there by Abba, who was wise but who was not human.

Lies.

Freya said, "Telpor is one of the most vital discoveries in human history, Rachmael. Teleportation, from one star-system to another. Twenty-four light-years in fifteen minutes. When you reach Whale's Mouth by the Omphalos, I for instance will be --" She calculated. "Forty-three years old."

He was silent.

"What," Freya asked in a soft voice, "would you accomplish by your trip?"

He thought, This is Lies Incorporated that I am sitting here talking to. The last people in the world I should be talking to. I may have been programmed by them to come here, programmed subliminally, in my sleep, my dreams ... which explains the word lies.

Presently Freya said, reading from her folio, "You have, for six months now, been thoroughly checking out the Omphalos at a concealed -- even from us -- launch field and maintenance dock on Luna. She is now considered ready for the inter-system flight. Trails of Hoffman has tried, through the courts, to attach her, to claim her as their legal property; this you have managed to fight. So far. But now --"

"My lawyers tell me," Rachmael said, "that three days stand between me and THL seizing the Omphalos."

"You can't blast off within three days?"

"The deep-sleep equipment. It's a week from being readied." He let out his breath raggedly. "A subsidiary of THL manufactures vital components. They've been-held up."

Freya nodded. "And your coming here is to request us to pick up the Omphalos, with one of our veteran pilots, disappear with her for at least a week, until she's ready for the flight to Fomalhaut. Correct?"

"That's it," he said, and sat waiting.

After a pause Freya said, "You can't pilot the ship yourself?"

"I'm not good enough to lose her," Rachmael said. "They'd find me. But yours -- one of your top- line pilots." He did not look directly at her; it meant too much.

"You can pay our fee of --"

"Nothing."

"'Nothing'?"

"I have absolutely no funds. Later, as I continue to liquidate the assets of the corporation, possibly I --"

Freya said, "There's a note here from my employer, Mr. Glazer-Holliday. He observes that you're poscredless. His instructions to us --" She read the note, silently. "However, we're to cooperate with you."

"Why?"

"My employer doesn't say. We have been aware of your financial helplessness for some time." Glancing up at him she said, "We will okay the dispatch of an experienced pilot who will take --"

"Then you expect me to come here."

She gazed at him.

"Did you suggest that I come here?" he said. "Because to be honest with you I do not trust Lies Incorporated."

"Well, we lie a lot." She smiled.

"But you can save the Omphalos."

"Probably. Our pilot -- and he will be one of our best -- will take the Omphalos off where THL, where even the UN agents acting for the Secretary General, Herr Horst Bertold, won't find her."

"Probably," he echoed.

"This our man can do," Freya continued, "while you manage, if you can, to obtain the final components of the deep-sleep equipment. But I doubt if you'll obtain those components, Rachmael. There's an additional memo here to that effect, too. You're correct: Theodoric Ferry sits on its board of directors, too, and this is all legal, this monopoly which the firm possesses." Her smile was bitter. "UN sanctioned."

He was silent. Obviously it was hopeless; no matter how long the Lies Incorporated professional and ultra-veteran space pilot kept the huge liner the Omphalos lost between planets, the components would be "held up unavoidably," as the invoices, marked back-order, would read.

"I think," Freya said presently, "that your problem is not the mere obtaining of deep-sleep components. That can be handled; there are ways ... we, for instance, can -- although this will cost you a good deal of money eventually -- pick them up on the black market. Your problem, Rachmael --"

"I know," he said. His problem was not how to get to the Fomalhaut system, to its ninth planet, Whale's Mouth which --

Again the furred body phased in, the superimposition.

"There it lies," Abba said. "Lies ... lies ... lies."

Damn double exposure of reality, Rachmael said to himself; he blinked. What is this, a reality dysfunction of some kind? Or something coming from his right hemisphere to his left, some vital information available to the right which it now urged on the left?

-- which was Terra's sole thriving colony world. In fact his problem was not the eighteen-year voyage at all.

His problem was --

"Why go at all?" Abba intoned, the vast animal figure to whom they all looked for the dispensation of wisdom. "When Dr. von Einem's Telpor construct, available at a nominal cost through any of Trails of Hoffman's many retail outlets on Terra --"

Yes, yes, Rachmael thought irritably.

"-- makes the trip a mere fifteen-minute minor journey, and within financial reach of even the most modest, income-wise speaking, Terran family?" Abba smiled his tender smile. "Consider that, dear son."

Aloud, Rachmael said, "Freya, the trip by Telpor to Whale's Mouth -- it sounds fine." And forty million Terran citizens had taken advantage of it. And the aud and vid reports returning -- via the Telpor construct -- all told glowingly of a world not overcrowded, of tall grass, of odd but benign animals, of new and lovely cities built by robot-assists taken across at UN-expense to Whale's Mouth. "But --"

"But," Freya said, who was now combined with Abba into one tender and wise entity, huge and furry and pretty, "the peculiar fact is that it's a one-way trip."

Instantly he nodded. "Yes, that's it."

"Sure it is," Freya-Abba said as with a single voice.

"No one can come back," Rachmael said.

The double entity smiled in a cunning way, a sly way. "That is easily explained, my son. The Sol system is located at the axis of the universe."

"What the hell does that mean?" Rachmael said.

"The recession of the extra-galactic nebulae demonstrate von Einem's Theorem One that --" The voice turned into garbled noise, and the double impositions blurred, as if a locking control had gotten twisted; the entire image became warped and deformed, and then, suddenly, the double figure facing him was upside down.

"There must," Rachmael continued, as best he could, considering that he was now talking to a dual entity which was upside down, "out of those forty million people, be a few who want to return. But the TV and 'pape reports say they're all actually totally ecstatically happy. You've seen the endless TV shows, life at Newcolonizedland. It's --"

The upside-down figure belched. "Lies," it said.

"What?" Rachmael said.

"Too perfect, Rachmael?" The figure slowly rotated until it became right-side up, and then Abba faded out; only the girl remained.

"Statistically, malcontents must exist. Why do we never hear of them? And we can't go and take a look." Because, if you went by Telpor to Whale's Mouth and saw, you were there, as they were, to stay. So if you did find malcontents -- what could you do for them? Because you could not take them back; you could only join them. And he had the intuition that somehow this just wouldn't be of much use. Even the UN left Newcolonizedland alone, the countless UN welfare agencies, the personnel and bureaus newly set up by the present Secretary General Horst Bertold, from New Whole Germany: the largest political entity in Europe -- even they stopped at the Telpor gates. Neues Einige Deutschland ... NED. Far more powerful than the mangy, dwindling French Empire or the UK -- they were pale remnants of the past.

And New Whole Germany -- as the election to UN Secretary General of Horst Bertold showed -- was the Wave of the Future ... as the Germans themselves liked to phrase it.

"So in other words," Freya said, "you'd take an empty passenger liner to the Fomalhaut system, spend eighteen years in transit, you, the sole unteleported man, among the seven billion citizens of Terra, with the idea -- or should I say, the hope? -- that when you arrive finally at Whale's Mouth, in the year 2032, you'll find a passenger complement, five hundred or so unhappy souls who want out? And so you then can resume commercial operations ... von Einem takes them there in fifteen minutes and then eighteen years later you return them to Terra, back home to the Sol system."

"Yes," he said fiercely.

"Plus another eighteen years -- for them -- too -- for the flight back. For you thirty-six years in all. You'd return to Terra in the year --" She calculated. "2050 AD. I'd be sixty-one years old; Theodoric Ferry, even Horst Bertold, would be dead; perhaps Trails of Hoffman Limited wouldn't even exist, anymore ... certainly Dr. Sepp von Einem would be dead years ago; let's see: he's in his eighties now. No, he'd never live to see you reach Whale's Mouth, let alone return. So if all this is to make him feel bad --"

"Is it insane?" Rachmael said. "To believe, first, that some unhappy persons must be stuck at Whale's Mouth ... and yet we're not hearing, via THL's monopoly of all info media, all energy; passing back this way. And second --"

"And second," Freya said, "to want to spend eighteen years of your life in getting there to rescue them." Professional, intent, she eyed him. "Is this idealism? Or is this vengeance against Dr. von Einem because of his Telpor construct that made your family's liners and commercial carriers obsolete for inter-system travel? After all, if you do manage to leave in the Omphalos, it'll be big news, a novelty; it'll be fully covered on TV and in the 'papes, here on Terra; even the UN won't be able to squelch the story -- the first, sole, manned vessel to go to Fomalhaut, not just one of those old-time instrument packages. Why, you'd be a time capsule; we'd all be waiting for you to arrive first there and then, in 2050, back here."

"A time capsule," he said, "like the one fired off at Whale's Mouth. Which never arrived here on Terra."

She shrugged. "Passed Terra by, was attracted by the sun's gravitational field; was swallowed up unnoticed."

"Unnoticed by any tracking station? Out of over six thousand separate monitoring devices in orbit in the Sol system none detected the time capsule when it arrived?"

Frowning, Freya said, "What do you mean to imply, Rachmael?"

"This time capsule," Rachmael said, "from Whale's Mouth, the launching of which we watched years ago on TV -- it wasn't detected by our tracking stations because it never arrived. And it never arrived, Miss Holm, because despite those crowd scenes it was never sent.

"You mean what we saw on TV --"

"The vid signals, via Telpor," Rachmael said, "which showed the happy masses at Whale's Mouth cheering at the vast public launching ceremony of the time capsule -- were fakes. I've run and rerun recordings of them; the crowd noise is spurious." Reaching into his cloak he brought out a seven-inch reel of iron oxide Ampex and tape; he tossed it onto her desk. "Play it back. Carefully. There were no people cheering. And for a good reason. Because no time capsule, containing quaint artifacts from the Fomalhaut ancient civilizations, was launched from Whale's Mouth."

"But --" She stared at him in disbelief, then picked up the aud tape, held the reel uncertainly. "Why?"

"I don't know," Rachmael said. "But when the Omphalos reaches the Fomalhaut system and Whale's Mouth and I see Newcolonizedland, I'll know." And, he thought, I don't think I'll find ten or sixty malcontents out of forty million ... by that time, of course, it'll be something like a billion colonists. I'll find --

He ended the thought abruptly. He did not know.

But eventually he would know. In the little matter of eighteen years.
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Re: Lies, Inc., by Philip K. Dick

Postby admin » Tue Sep 01, 2020 6:23 am

Chapter Three

In the sybaritic living room of his villa, on his satellite as it orbited Terra, the owner of Lies, Incorporated, Matson Glazer-Holliday, sat in his human-made dressing gown smoking a prize, rare Antonio y Cleopatra cigar and listening to the aud tape of the crowd noises.

And, directly before him he watched the oscilloscope as it transformed the audio signal into a visual one.

To Freya Holm he said, "Yes, there is a cycle. You can see it, even though you can't hear it. This aud-track is continuous, running over and over again. Hence the man's right; it's a fake."

"Could Rachmael ben Applebaum have --"

"No," Matson said. "I've sequestered an aud copy from the UN info archives; it agrees. Rachmael didn't tamper with the tape; it's exactly what he claims it to be." He sat back, pondering.

Strange, he thought, that von Einem's Telpor gadget works only one way, radiating matter out ... with no return of that matter, at least by teleportation, possible. So, rather conveniently for Trails of Hoffman, all we get via Telpor as a feedback from Whale's Mouth is an electronic signal, energy alone ... and this one now exposed as a fake; as a research agency I should have discovered this long ago -- Rachmael, with all his creditors hounding him jet-balloonwise, keeping him awake night and day, hammering at him with countless technological assists, impeding him in the normal course of conducting routine business, has detected this spuriousness, and I -- damn it. Matson thought; I missed, here. He felt gloomy.

"Cutty Sark Scotch and water?" Freya asked.

He nodded absently as Freya, who was his mistress, disappeared into the liquor antechamber of the villa to see if the 1985 bottle -- worth a fortune -- were empty yet.

But, on the credit side, he had been suspicious.

From the start he had doubted the so-called "Theorem One" of Dr. von Einem; it sounded too much like a cover, this one-way transmission by the technicians of THL's multitude of retail outlets. Write home from Whale's Mouth, son, when you get there, he thought acidly; tell your old mom how it is on the colony world with its fresh air, sunshine, all those cute little animals, those wondrous buildings THL robots are constructing ... and the report-back, the letter, as electronic signal, had duly arrived. But the beloved son; he could not personally, directly report. Could not return to tell his story, and, as in the ancient story of the lion's den, all the footprints of guileless creatures led in to the den, yet none led out. It was the fable all over again -- with something even more sinister added. That of what appeared more and more to be a thoroughly phony trail of outgoing tracks: the electronic message-units. By someone who is versed in sophisticated hardware, Matson thought; someone is tinkering around, and is there any reason to look beyond the figure of Dr. Sepp von Einem himself, the inventor of the Telpor, plus Neues Einige Deutschland's very efficient technicians who ran Ferry's retail machinery?

There was something he did not like about those German technicians who manned the Telpors. So business-like. As their ancestors must have been, Matson mused. Back in the twentieth century when those ancestors, with the same affectless calm, fed bodies into ovens or living humans into ersatz shower baths which turned out to be Zyklon B hydrogen cyanide gas chambers. And financed by reputable big Third Reich business, by Herr Krupp u. Sohne. Just as von Einem is financed by Trails of Hoffman, with its vast central offices in Grosser Berlinstadt -- the new capital of New Whole Germany, the city in fact from which our distinguished UN Secretary General emanates.

"Get me," Matson said to Freya, "instead of Scotch and water, the file on Horst Bertold."

In the other room Freya rang up the autonomic research equipment wired into the walls of the villa ... electronic hardware, minned -- miniaturized -- for the most part, of a data-sorting and receiving nature, plus the file-banks, and --

Certain useful artifacts which did not involve data but which involved high-velocity A-warhead darts that, were the satellite to be attacked by any of the UN's repertory of offensive weapons, would take up the fight and abolish the missiles before they reached their target.

At his villa on his Brocard ellipse satellite Matson was safe. And, as a precaution, he conducted as much business as possible from this spot; below, in New New York City, at Lies, Incorporated's offices, he always felt naked. Felt, in fact, the nearby presence of the UN and Horst Bertold's legions of "Peace Workers," whose armed, gray-faced men and women who, in the name of Pax Terrae, roamed the world, even into the pathetic moonies, the sad, failure-but-still-extant early "colony" satellites which had come before von Einem's breakthrough and the discovery by George Hoffman of Fomalhaut IX, now called Whale's Mouth and now the colony.

Too bad, Matson thought archly, that George Hoffman didn't discover more planets in more star systems habitable by us, the frail needs of living, sentient, mentating biochemical upright bipeds which we humans are. Hundreds and hundreds of planets, but --

Instead, temperature which melted thermo-fuses. No air. No soil. No water.

One could hardly say of such worlds -- Venus had proved a typical example -- that the "living was easy." The living, in fact, on such worlds was confined to homeostatic domes with their own at, wa, and self-regu temp.

Housing, per dome, perhaps three hundred somatic souls. Rather a small number, considering that as of this year Terra's population stood at seven billion.

"Here," Freya said, sliding down to seat herself, legs tucked under her, on the deep-pile wool carpet near Matson. "The file on H.B." She opened it at random; Lies, Incorporated field reps had done a thorough job: many data existed here that, via the UN's carefully watchdogged info media, never had reached the public, even the so-called "critical" analysts and columnists. They could, by law, criticize to their hearts' content, the character, habits, abilities and shaving-customs of Herr Bertold ... except, however, the basic facts were denied them.

Not so, however, to Lies Incorporated -- an ironic sobriquet, in view of the absolutely verified nature of the data now before its owner.

It was harsh reading. Even for him.

The year of Horst Bertold's birth: 1954. Slightly before the Space Age had begun; like Matson Glazer-Holliday, Horst was a remnant of the old world when all that had been glimpsed in the sky were "flying saucers," a misnomer for a US Air Force anti-missile weapon which had, in the brief confrontation of 1982, proved ineffectual. Horst had been born to middle-class Berlin -- West Berlin, it had then been called, because, and this was difficult to remember, Germany had in those days been divided -- parents: his father had owned a meat market ... rather fitting, Matson reflected, in that Horst's father had been an SS officer and former member of an Einsatzgruppe which had murdered thousands of innocent persons of Slavic and Jewish ancestry ... although this had not interfered with Johann Bertold's meat market business in the 1950s and '60s. And then, in 1972, at the age of eighteen, young Horst himself had entered the spotlight (needless to say, the statute of limitations had run out on his father, who had never been prosecuted by the West German legal apparatus for his crimes of the' 40s, and had, in addition, evaded the commando squads from Israel who, by 1970, had closed up shop, giving up the task of tracking down the former mass-murderers). Horst, in 1972, had been a leader in the Reinholt Jugend.

Ernst Reinholt, from Hamburg, had headed a party which had striven to unify Germany once more; the deal would be that as a military and economic power she would be neutral between East and West. It had taken ten more years, but in the fracas of 1982 he had obtained from the US and the USSR what he wanted: a united, free Germany, called by its present name, and just chuck full of vim and Macht.

And, under Reinholt, Neues Einige Deutschland had played dirty pool from the start. But no one was really surprised; East and West were busy erecting tents where major popcens -- population centers such as Chicago and Moscow -- had existed, and hoping to god that the Sino-Cuban wing of the CP did not, taking advantage of the situation, move in and entrench ...

It had been the secret protocol of Reinholt and his NWC; that it would not be neutral after all. On the contrary.

New Whole Germany would take out China.

So this was the unsavory basis on which the Reich had reobtained unity. Its Waffen technicians had devised, as instructed, weapons which had, in 1987, dealt a terminal punch to People's China. Matson, examining the folio, very rapidly scanned this part, because the Reich had come up with some show-stoppers, and even the abominable US nerve gas had seemed like a field of daisies in comparison -- he did not wish to see any mention of what Krupp u. Sohne had devised as an answer to China's thousands of millions who were spilling as far west as the Volga, and toward the US, were crossing from Siberia -- taken in 1983 -- into Alaska. In any case the compact had been agreed on, and even Faust would have blanched at it; now the world had no People's China but a New Whole Germany to contend with.

And what a quid pro quo that had proved to be. Because, correctly and legally, Neues Einige Deutschland had obtained control of the sole planet-wide and hence Sol system-wide governing structure, the UN. They held it now. And the former member of the Reinholt Jugend, Horst Bertold, was its Secretary General. And had faced squarely, as he had promised when campaigning for election -- it had become, by 1985, an elective office that he would deal with the colonization problem; he would find a Final Solution to the tormented condition that (one) Terra was as overpopulated throughout as Japan had been in 1960 and (two) both the alternate planets of the Sol system and the moonies and the domes et al. had failed wretchedly.

Horst had found, via Dr. von Einem's Telpor teleportation construct, a habitable planet in a star system too far from Sol to be reached by the quondam drayage enterprise of Maury Applebaum. Whale's Mouth, and the Telpor mechanisms at Trails of Hoffman's retail outlets, were the answer.

To all appearances it was duck soup, feathers, scut included. But --

"See?" Matson said to Freya. "Here's the written transcript of Horst Bertold's speech before he was elected and before von Einem showed up with the Telpor gadget. The promise was made before teleportation to the Fomalhaut system was technologically possible -- in fact, before the existence of Fomalhaut IX was even known to unmanned elderly relay-monitors."

"So?"

Matson said grimly, "So our UN Secretary General had a mandate before he had a solution. And to the German mind that means one thing and one thing only. The cat and rat farm solution." Or, as he now suspected, the dog food factory solution.

It had been suggested, ironically, in imitation of Swift by a fiction writer of the 1950s, that the "Negro Question" in the US be solved by the building of giant factories which made Negroes into canned dog food. Satire, of course, like Swift's A Modest Proposal, that the problem of starvation among the Irish be solved by the eating of the children ... Swift himself lamenting, as a final irony, that he had no children of his own to offer to the market for consumption. Grisly. But --

This all pointed to the seriousness -- not merely of the problem of overpopulation and insufficient food production -- but to the insane, schizoid solutions seriously being considered. The brief World War Three -- never officially called that; called instead a Pacifying Action, just as the Korean War had been a "Police Action" -- had taken care of a few millions of people, but -- not quite enough. As a solution it had worked to a partial extent; and was, in many influential quarters, viewed exactly as that; as a partial solution. Not as a catastrophe but as a half-answer.

And Horst Bertold had promised the balance of the answer.

Whale's Mouth was it.

"So in my opinion," Matson murmured, to himself mostly, "I've always been suspicious of Whale's Mouth. If I hadn't read Swift and C. Wright Mills and the Herman Kahn Report for Rand Corporation ..." He glanced at Freya. "There have," he said, "always been people who would solve the problem that way." And I think, he thought, as he listened to the aud tape of the crowd noises, a tape which pretended to consist of a transcript from the launching, at Whale's Mouth, of the ritualistic, celebration-inspired time capsule back through hyper-space -- or in some such ultra-high- velocity fashion -- to Terra, that we have those people and that solution with us again.

We have, in other words, UN Secretary General Horst Bertold and Trails of Hoffman Limited and its economic multi-pseudopodia empire. And dear Dr. Sepp von Einem and his many Telpor outlets, his curiously one way teleporting machine.

"That land," Matson murmured, vaguely quoting, lord knew who, what sage of the past, "which all of us must visit one day ... that land beyond the grave. But no one had returned to report on it. And until they do --"

Freya said perceptively, "Until they do, you're going to stay suspicious. Of the whole Newcolonizedland settlement. Aud and vid signals are not good enough to convince you -- because you know how easily they can be faked." She gestured at the deck running the tape at this very moment.

"A client," Matson corrected her. "Who on a nonverbal level, what our Reich friends call thinking with the blood, suspects that if he takes his one remaining inter-stellar worthy flagship, the --" What was it called? "The Navel," he said. "The Omphalos; that's what that lofty Greek word means, by the way. Takes the Navel direct to Fomalhaut, that after eighteen years of weary deep-sleep which is not quite sleep, more a hypnagogic, restless tossing and turning at low temp, slowed-down metabolism, he will arrive at Whale's Mouth, and oddly it will not be beer and skittles. It will not be happy conapt dwellers, smiling children in autonomic schools, tame, exotic, native life forms. But -- "

But just what would he find?

If, as he suspected, the aud and vid tracks passing from Whale's Mouth to Terra via von Einem's Telpor mechanisms were covers -- what reality lay beneath?

He simply could not guess, not when forty million people were involved. The dog food factory? Are, god forbid, those forty million men, women and children dead? Is it a bone-yard, with no one there, no one even to extract the gold from their teeth -- because now we use stainless steel?

He did not know, but -- someone knew. Perhaps entire New Whole Germany, which, having cornered the lion's share of power in the UN, hence ruled throughout the nine planets of the Sol system; perhaps as a totality it, on a subrational, instinctive level, knew. As, in the 1940s, it had intuited the existence of the gas chambers beyond the cages of twittering birds and those high walls that kept out all sight and sound ... and except for that oddly acrid smoke from chimneys all day long --

"They know," Matson said aloud. Horst Bertold knew, and so did Theodoric Ferry, the owner of THL, and so did doddering but still crafty old Dr. von Einem. And the one hundred and thirty-five million inhabitants of Neues Einige Deutschland, to some degree; not verbally -- you couldn't put an expert psych rep of Lies, Incorporated in a small room with a Munich cobbler, run a few routine drug-injections, make the standard quasi-Psionic transcripts, EEGs of his para-psychological reactions, and learn, know, the literal, exact truth.

The whole matter was, damn it, still obscured. And this time it was not cages of twittering birds or shower baths but something else -- something, however, equally effective. Trails of Hoffman published 3-D, multi-color, brilliantly artistic, exciting brochures displaying the ecstatic life beyond the Telpor nexus; the TV ran ceaseless, drive-you-mad ads all day and night, of the underpopulated veldt landscape of Whale's Mouth, the balmy climate (via olfactory track), the warm the-answer-is-yes two-moon-filled nights ... it was a land of romance, freedom, experimentation, kibbutzim without the desert: cooperative living where oranges grew naturally, and as large as grapefruits, which themselves resembled melons or the breasts of the women there. But.

Matson decided carefully, "I am sending a veteran field rep across, via normal Telpor, posing as an unmarried businessman who hopes to open a watch repair retail shop at Whale's Mouth. He will have grafted subderm a high-gain transmitter; it will --"

"I know," Freya said patiently; this was evening and she obviously wished for a relaxation of the grim reality of their mutual business. "It will regularly release a signal at ultra-high-frequency on a nonused band, which will ultimately be picked up here. But that'll take weeks."

"Okay." He had it now. The Lies, Incorporated field rep would send back a letter, via Telpor, in the customary manner encoded. It was that simple. If the letter arrived: fine. If not --

"You will wait," Freya said, "and wait. And no encoded letter will come. And then you will really begin to think that our client, Mr. ben Applebaum, has tripped over something ominous and huge in the long darkness which is our collective life. And then what will you do? Go across yourself?"

"Then I'm sending you," Matson said. "As the field rep there."

"No," she said, instantly.

"So Whale's Mouth frightens you. Despite all the glossy, expensive literature available free."

"I know Rachmael is right. I knew it when he walked in the door; I knew it from your memo. I'm not going; that's that." She faced her employer-paramour calmly.

"Then I'll draw at random from the field-personnel pool." He had not been serious; why should he offer his mistress as a pawn in this? But he had proved what he wished to prove: their joint fears were not merely intellectual. At this point in their thinking neither Freya nor he would risk the crossing via Telpor to Whale's Mouth, as thousands of guileless citizens of Terra, lugging their belongings and with innocent high hopes, did daily.

I hate, he thought, to turn anyone into the goat. But --

"Pete Burnside. Rep in Detroit. We'll tell him we wish to set up a Lies Incorporated branch at Whale's Mouth under a cover name. Hardware store. Or TV fix it shop. Get his folio; see what talents he has." We'll make one of our own people, Matson thought, the victim -- and it hurt, made him sick. And yet it should have been done months ago.

But it had taken bankrupt Rachmael ben Applebaum to goose them into acting, he realized. A man pursued by those monster creditor balloons that bellow all your personal defects and secrets. A man willing to undergo a thirty-six-year trip to prove that something is foul in the land of milk and protein on the far side of those Telpor gates through which, on receipt of five posrreds, any adult Terran can avail himself for the purpose of --

God knew.

God -- and the German hierarchy dominating the UN plus THL; he had no illusions about that: they did not need to analyze the crowd-noise track of the time capsule ceremony at Whale's Mouth to know.

As he had. And his job was investigations; he was, he realized with spurting, burgeoning horror, possibly the only individual on Terra really in a position to push through and obtain an authentic glimpse of this.

Short of eighteen years of space flight ... a time-period which would allow infinite millions, even a billion if the extrapolations were correct, to pass by way of Telpor constructs on that -- to him -- terrifying one-way trip to the colony world.

If you are wise, Matson said to himself grimly, you never take one-way trips. Anywhere. Even to Boise, Idaho ... even across the street. Be certain, when you start, that you can scramble back.
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Re: Lies, Inc., by Philip K. Dick

Postby admin » Tue Sep 01, 2020 6:24 am

Chapter Four

At one in the morning, Rachmael ben Applebaum was yanked from his sleep -- this was usual, because the assorted creditor-mechanisms had been getting to him on a round-the-clock basis, now. However, this time it was no robot raptor-like creditor mechanism. This was a man. Dark, a Negro; small and shrewd-looking. Standing at Rachmael's door with i.d. papers extended.

"From Listening Instructional Educational Services," the Negro said. He added, "I hold a Class-A inter-plan vehicle pilot-license."

That woke Rachmael. "You're going to take the Omphalos off Luna?"

"If I can find her." The dark, small man smiled briefly. "May I come in? I'd like you to accompany me to your maintenance yard on Luna so there's no mistake: I know your employees there are armed; otherwise --" He followed Rachmael into the conapt living room -- the sole room, in fact: living-conditions on Terra being what they were. "Otherwise Trails of Hoffman would be ferrying equipment to their domes on Mars with the Omphalos as of last month -- right?"

"Right," Rachmael said as he blearily dressed.

"My name's Al Dosker. And I did you a small side-favor, Mr. ben Applebaum. I took out a creditor-construct waiting in the hall." He displayed, then, a side arm. "I suppose, if it got into litigation, it'd be called 'property destruct.' Anyhow, when you and I leave, no THL device is going to monitor our path." He added, half to himself, "That I could detect, anyhow." At his chest he patted a variety of bug chasers; minned electronic instruments that recorded the presence of vid and aud receptors in the vicinity.

Shortly the two men were on their way to the roof field --

And then Rachmael was back at the settlement.

"It's my food," Fred said.

Oh God, Rachmael thought. Here I am again.

***

"The thing is," Fred said amiably, as he dragged the turkey leg across the weed-pocked ground, "that a SubInfo computer screwed up. Subliminal information, right? They're repairing it, but meanwhile it's transmitted a lot to the right hemisphere hebesphere -- I forget. " He gave up trying to drag the turkey leg and extended his hand to Rachmael. "Name's Stine," he said. "Lewis Stine. I've damn near got it fixed."

Numbly, Rachmael shook hands. He wondered what had become of Dosker.

"Want to know how I'm fixing it?" Fred said.

"I'd rather know --"

"With this," Fred said, indicating the turkey leg. "It's a highly specialized piece of technogonically sophisticated --"

"You're just a goddamn rat," Rachmael said, "and you've got about four words scrambled up together. I'm living in a rat heap with other rats."

"No, I'm a highly skilled computer repairman," Fred -- or Lewis Stine -- said, looking nettled. "Or am I?" He contemplated the turkey leg. "You're right. It doesn't look like something you'd fix a computer with. Maybe I should lay back for a while and think this over. The problem is, I intended to eat that turkey leg. If that's what it is. See, while I'm working on the computer -- which is what I'm doing right now, although you'd never know it -- my thoughts are being transmitted to you because I haven't been able to shut the computer down. I mean I can shut it down, but that's contravindicated. "

"Indicated," Rachmael corrected him.

"Yeah; contraindicated. Thank you." Fred eyed him. "You a computer repairman, too?"

"God no," Rachmael said.

"Rats are highly telepathic," Fred said. "This was proved back in 1978 by the Russians. They took these rats, see, and shut them inside a lead enclosure which screened out all thoughts. Then they hooked up the rats to an encephalograph. And then --" Fred grinned. "Get this. They killed the rats. You know what the encephalogram showed?"

"Flat line," Rachmael said.

"Right. And then they quickly brought in a psychic. The psychic thought at the dead rats, and the encephalograph showed brain-wave activity. See? Isn't that clever?"

"Fascist Russians," Rachmael said hotly. He was not amused.

"You have to admit it's a clever way to prove that rats are telepathic," Fred said.

"No," Rachmael said, "it proves that psychics are telepathic. It just showed --"

"I'll mash in your head with this crescent wrench," Fred said, grabbing up the turkey leg as best he could. "All the great scientific discoveries were made by rats -- are made by rats."

"Made by the use of rats," Rachmael corrected. He could see that Fred would never get the turkey leg off the ground.

"Rats keep the human population down," Fred said, abandoning his attempts to pick up the turkey leg. "Abba explained that to us before he died. He also explained where we go when we die."

"I know," Rachmael said. "I was there. I heard him."

***

The roof field faded back in, replacing the weed-pocked settlement; Fred and his turkey leg vanished.

Dosker had parked his taxi-marked flapple off to one side. "Get in," Dosker said to him.

"Have I been here all this time?" Rachmael said.

Glancing at him, Dosker said, "I don't get you."

"Never mind," Rachmael said.

How ordinary the flapple looked. But as it arced into the night sky Rachmael blinked at its velocity; he had to accept the obvious: this was not the usual thrust which now impelled them. They had hit 3.5 Machs within nanoseconds.

As Dosker piloted the flapple he reached into the glove compartment, brought out a turkey leg and began gnawing on it. Rachmael gazed at him fixedly, stricken. "What's the matter?" Dosker said. "Haven't you ever seen a turkey leg before?"

"It's fine," Rachmael said. "Fine looking turkey leg; Damn fine." He lapsed into silence.

A computer foul-up. But being repaired. To have to be clued in by a rat ... another rat, he realized. And the tender and wise Abba had passed on to his celestial reward. But he would be reborn; always, Abba was reborn. Every year or so. He was their -- eternal leader.

"You'll direct me," Dosker was saying as he gnawed on the turkey leg. "Since even we at Lies, Incorporated don't know where you've got the Omphalos. You did a good job of berthing her, or perhaps we're beginning to slip .. or both."

"Okay." At the 3-D Lunar map he took hold of the locating trailing-arm, linked the pivot in position, then swept out a route until the terminus of the arm touched the recessed locus where his technicians worked busily at ...

I wish he'd stop gnawing on that turkey leg, Rachmael said to himself.

... at the Omphalos. Worked, while waiting for parts which would never come.

"We're off course," Dosker said abruptly. Speaking not to Rachmael but into his console mike. Shit; we've been phooed."

Phooed -- a trade term. Rachmael felt fear, because the word was a condensation of PU -- picked up. Picked up by a field, and this one was moving Dosker's small flapple out of its trajectory. At once Dosker fired the huge Whetstone-Milton rockets, tried to reassert with their enormous strength homeo-course ... but the field continued to tug, even against the millions of pounds of thrust of the twin engines, as both fired in unison, acting as retro-jets against the field exerting its presence unseen. But, on a variety of console instruments, registering.

Rachmael, after an interval of strained, wordless silence, said to Dosker, "Where's it taking us?"

"From a Three to L course, " Dosker said laconically. He set down his turkey leg, now.

"Not to Luna, then." They would not, the two of them, reach the Omphalos' place of berth; that was now clear. But --

Where instead?

"We're in T-orb," Dosker said. Orbit around the Earth, despite the push of the two W-M engines. Dosker, now, reluctantly, in a motion of admitted defeat, cut them. Fuel for them had no doubt dropped to a dangerously low level: if the field let go they would orbit anyhow, orbit without the possibility of being capable of creating a trajectory that would lead to an ultimate landing either on Luna or on Terra. "They've got us," Dosker said, then, half to Rachmael and half into the mike that projected from the ship's console. He recited a series of encoded instructions into the mike, listened, then cursed, said to Rachmael, "We're cut off aud and vid, all signal-contact; I'm not getting through to Matson. So that's it."

"That's what?" Rachmael demanded. "You mean we give up? We just orbit Terra forever and die when we run out of oxygen?" Was this the fight that Lies, Incorporated put up when faced by Trails of Hoffman? He, alone, had held out better; now he was disgusted, astonished and completely perplexed, and he watched without comprehension as Dosker inspected his bank of bug chasers at his chest. At the moment the Lies, Incorporated pilot seemed interested only in whether or not monitors were picking them up -- as well as controlling, externally, the trajectory of their ship.

Dosker said, "No monitors. Look, friend ben Applebaum." He spoke swiftly. "They cut my transmission on aud by rnicro-relay to Matson's satellite, but of course --" His dark eyes glinted with amusement. "I have on me a dead man's throttle; if a continuous signal from me is interrupted it automatically sets off an alarm at Lies, Incorporated, at its main offices in New New York and also at Matson's satellite. So by now they know something's happened." He lowered his voice, speaking almost to himself alone. "We'll have to wait to find out if they can get to us before it doesn't matter."

The ship, without power, in orbit, glided silently.

And then, jarringly, something nosed it; Rachmael fell; sliding along the floor to the far wall he saw Dosker tumble, too, and knew that this had been the locking of another ship or similar device against them -- knew and then all at once realized that at least it hadn't detonated. At least it had not been a missile. Because if it had --

"They could," Dosker said, as he got unsteadily to his feet, "have taken us out permanently." By that he, too, meant a detonating weapon. He turned toward the tri-stage entrance hatch, used for null-atmosphere penetration.

The hatch, its circular seal-controls spun from impulses emanating outside, swung open.

Three men, two of them riffraff with lasers, with the decayed eyes of those who had been bought, hamstrung, lost long ago, came first. And then a clear-faced elegant man who would never be bought because he was a great buyer in the market of men; he was a dealer, not produce for sale.

It was Theodoric Ferry, chairman of the board of Trails of Hoffman Limited. Ahead of him his two employees swung a vacuum-cleaner-like mechanism; it searched, buzzing and nosing, probing until its operators were satisfied; they nodded to Theodoric, who then addressed Rachmael.

"May I seat myself?"

After a startled pause Rachmael said, "Sure."

"Sorry, Mr. Ferry," Dosker said. "The only seat is taken." He sat at the control console in such a way that his small body had expanded at its base to fill both bucket seats; his face was hard and hating.

Shrugging, the large, white-haired man said, "All right. " He eyed Dosker. "You're Lies' top pilot, aren't you? A1 Dosker ... yes, I recognize you from the clips we've made of you. On your way to the Omphalos. But you don't need Applebaum here to tell you where she is; we can tell you." Theodoric Ferry dug into his cloak, brought out a small packet which he tossed to Al Dosker. "The locus of the dry-docks where Applebaum has got her."

"Thanks, Mr. Ferry," Dosker said with sarcasm so great that his voice was almost forged into incomprehensibility.

Theodoric said, "Now look, Dosker; you sit quietly and mind your own business. While I talk to Applebaum. I've never met him personally, but I knew his very-much-missed late father." He extended his hand.

Dosker said, "If you shake with him, Rachmael, he'll deposit a virus contamination that'll produce liver toxicity within your system inside an hour."

Glowering, Theodoric said to the Negro, "I asked you to stay in your place. A pun." He then removed the membrane-like, up-to-now invisible glove of plastic which covered his hand. So Dosker had been right, Rachmael realized as he watched Theodoric carefully deposit the glove in the ship's incinerating disposal-chute. "Anyhow," Theodoric said, almost plaintively, "we could have squirted feral airborne bacteria around by now."

"And taken out yourselves," Dosker pointed out.

Theodoric shrugged. Then, speaking carefully to Rachmael, he said, "I respect what you're trying to do. Don't laugh."

"I was not," Rachmael said, "laughing. Just surprised."

"You want to keep functioning, after the economic collapse; you want to keep your legitimate creditors from attaching the few -- actually sole -- asset that Applebaum Enterprise still possesses -- good for you, Rachmael. I'd have done the same. And you impressed Matson; that's why he's supplying you his only decent pilot."

With a mild grin, Dosker reached into his pocket for a pack of cigarillos; at once the two decayed- eyed men accompanying Theodoric caught his arm, expertly manipulated it -- the harmless pack of cigarillos fell to the floor of the ship.

One after another, the cigarillos were cut open by Theodoric's men, inspected ... the fifth one turned out to be hard; it did not yield to the sharp-bladed pocket knife, and, a moment later, a more complex analytical device showed the cigarillo to be a homeostatic cephalotropic dart.

"Whose Apha-wave pattern?" Theodoric Ferry asked Dosker.

"Yours," Dosker said tonelessly. He watched without affect as the two decayed-eyed but very expert employees of THL crushed the dart under heel, rendering it useless.

"Then you expected me," Ferry said, looking a little nonplussed.

Dosker said, "Mr. Ferry, I always expect you."

Returning once more to Rachmael, Theodoric Ferry said, "I admire you and I want to terminate this conflict between you and THL. We have an inventory of your assets. Here." He extended a sheet toward Rachmael; at that, Rachmael turned toward Dosker for advice.

"Take it," Dosker said.

Accepting the sheet, Rachmael scanned it. The inventory was accurate; these did constitute the slight totality of the remaining assets of Applebaum Enterprise. And -- glaringly, as Ferry had said, the only item of any authentic value was the Omphalos herself, the great liner plus the repair and maintenance facilities of Luna which now, hive-like, surrounded and checked her as she waited futilely ... he returned the inventory to Ferry, who, seeing his expression, nodded.

"We agree, then," Theodoric Ferry said. "Okay. Here's what I propose, Applebaum. You can keep the Omphalos. I'll instruct my legal staff to withdraw the writ to the UN courts demanding that the Omphalos be placed under a state of attachment."

Dosker, startled, grunted; Rachmael stared at Ferry.

"What," Rachmael said, then, "in return?"

"This. That the Omphalos never leave the Sol system. You can very readily develop a profitable operation transporting passengers and cargo between the nine planets and to Luna. Despite the fact --"

"Despite the fact," Rachmael said, "that the Omphalos was built as an inter-stellar carrier, not inter- plan. It's like using --"

"It's that," Ferry said, "or lose the Omphalos to us."

"So Rachmael agrees" -- Dosker spoke up -- "not to take the Omphalos to Fomalhaut. The written agreement won't mention any one particular star system, but it's not Prox and not Alpha Right, Ferry?"

After a pause Theodoric Ferry said, "Take it or leave it."

Rachmael said, "Why, Mr. Ferry? What's wrong at Whale's Mouth? This deal -- it proves I'm right." That was obvious; he saw it, Dosker saw it -- and Ferry must have known that in making it he was ratifying their intimations. Limit the Omphalos to the nine planets of the Sol system? And yet -- the corporation Applebaum Enterprise, as Ferry said, would continue; it would live on as a legal, economic entity. And Ferry would see that the UN turned a certain amount, an acceptable quantity, of commerce its way. Rachmael would wave goodbye to Lies, Incorporated, to first this small dark superior space pilot, and then, by extension, to Freya Holm, to Matson Glazer-Holliday, cut in effect himself off from the sole power which had chosen to back him.

"Go ahead," Dosker said. "Accept the idea. After all, The deep-sleep components won't arrive, but it won't matter, because you're not going into 'tween system space anyhow." He looked tired.

Theodoric Ferry said, "Your father, Rachmael; Maury would have done anything to keep the Omphalos. You know in two days we'll have her -- and once we do, there's no chance you'll ever get her back. Think about it."

"I -- know right now," Rachmael said. Lord, if he and Dosker had managed to get the Omphalos out tonight, lost her in space where THL couldn't find her ... and yet that was already over; it had ended when the field had overcome the enormous futile thrust of the twin engines of Dosker's Lies, Incorporated ship: Trails of Hoffman had stepped in too soon. In time.

All along, Theodoric Ferry had pre-thought them; it was not a moral issue: it was a pragmatic one.

"I have legal forms drawn up," Ferry said. "If you'll come with me." He nodded toward the hatch. "The law requires three witnesses. On the part of THL, we have those witnesses." He smiled, because it was over and he knew it. Turning, he walked leisurely toward the hatch. The two decayed-eyed employees followed, both men relaxed ... they passed into the open circularity of the hatch --

And then convulsed throughout, from scalp to foot, internally destroyed; as Rachmael, shocked and terrified, watched, he saw their neurological, musculature systems give out; he saw them, both men penetrated entirely so that each became, horrifying him, flopping, quivering, malfunctioning -- more than malfunctioning: each unit of their bodies fought with all other portions, so that the two heaps on the floor became warring subsyndromes within themselves, as muscle strained against muscle, visceral apparatus against diaphragmatic strength, auricular and ventricular fibrillation; both men, unable to breathe, deprived even of blood-circulation, staring, fighting within their bodies which were no longer true bodies ...

Rachmael looked away.

"Cholinesterase-destroying gas," Dosker said, behind him, and at that instant Rachmael became aware of the tube pressed to his own neck, a medical artifact which had injected into his blood stream its freight of atropine, the antidote to the vicious nerve gas of the notorious FMC Corporation, the original contractors for this, the most destructive of all anti-personnel weapons of the previous war.

"Thanks," Rachmael said to Dosker, as he saw, now, the hatch swing shut; the Trails of Hoffman satellite, with its inert field, was being detached -- within it persons who were not THL employees pried it loose from Dosker's flapple.

The dead man's throttle signaling device -- or rather null-signaling device -- had done its job; Lies, Incorporated experts had arrived and at this moment were systematically dismantling the THL equipment.

Philosophically, Theodoric Ferry stood with his hands in the pockets of his cloak, saying nothing, not even noticing the spasms of his two employees on the floor near him, as if, by deteriorating in response to the gas, they had somehow proved unworthy.

"It was nice," Rachmael managed to say to Dosker, as the hatch once more swung open, this time admitting several employees of Lies Incorporated, "that your co-workers administered the atropine to Ferry as well as to me." Generally, in this business, no one was spared.

Dosker, studying Ferry, said, "He was given no atropine."

Reaching, he withdrew the empty tube with its injecting needle from his own neck, then the counterpart item from Rachmael's. "How come, Ferry?" Dosker said.

There was, from Ferry, no answer.

"Impossible," Dosker said. "Every living organism is --" Suddenly he grabbed Ferry's arm; grunting, he swung brusquely the arm back, against its normal span -- and yanked.

Theodoric Ferry's arm, at the shoulder-joint, came off. Revealing trailing conduits and minned components, those of the shoulder still functioning, those of the arm, deprived of power, now inert.

"A sim," Dosker said. Seeing that Rachmael did not comprehend he said, "A simulacrum of Ferry that of course has no neurological system. So Ferry was never here." He tossed the arm away. "Naturally; why should a man of his stature risk himself? He's probably sitting in his demesne satellite orbiting Mars, viewing this through the sense-extensors of the sim." To the one-armed Ferry-construct he said harshly, "Are we in genuine contact with you, Ferry, through this? Or is it on homeo? I'm just curious."

The mouth of the Ferry simulacrum opened and it said, "I hear you, Dosker. Would you, as an act of humanitarian kindness, administer atropine to my two THL employees?"

"It's being done," Dosker said. He walked over to Rachmael, then. "Well, our humble ship, on acute examination, seems never to have been graced by the presence of the chairman of the board of THL." He grinned shakily. "I feel cheated."

But the offer made by Ferry via the simulacrum, Rachmael realized. That had been genuine.

Dosker said, "Let's go to Luna, now. As your advisor I'm telling you --" He put his hand, gripped harshly, on Rachmael's wrist. "Wake up. Those two gnugs will be all right, once the atropine is administered; they won't be killed and we'll release them in their THL vehicle -- minus its field, of course. You and I will go on to Luna, to the Omphalos, as if nothing happened. Or if you won't I'll use the map the sim gave me; I'm taking the Omphalos out into 'tween space where THL can't tail her, even if you don't want me to."

"But," Rachmael said woodenly, "something did happen. An offer was made."

"That offer," Dosker said, "proves that THL is willing to sacrifice a great deal to keep you from your eighteen-year trip to Fomalhaut for a look at Whale's Mouth. And --" He eyed Rachmael. "Yet that makes you less interested in getting the Omphalos out into uncharted space between planets where Ferry's trackers can't --"

I could save the Omphalos, Rachmael thought. But the man beside him was correct; this meant of course that he had to go on: Ferry had removed the block, had proved the need of the eighteen-year flight.

"But the deep-sleep components," he said.

"Just get me to her," Dosker said quietly, patiently. "Okay, Rachmael ben Applebaum? Will you do that?" The controlled and very professional voice penetrated; Rachmael nodded. "I want the locus from you, not from the chart that sim gave me; I've decided I'm not touching that. I'm waiting for you, Rachmael, for you to decide."

"Yes," Rachmael said, then, and walked stiffly to the ship's 3-D Lunar map with its trailing arm; he seated himself and began to fix the locus for the hard-eyed, dark, Lies, Incorporated ultra- experienced pilot.
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Re: Lies, Inc., by Philip K. Dick

Postby admin » Tue Sep 01, 2020 6:24 am

Chapter Five

At the Fox's Lair, the minute French restaurant in downtown San Diego, the maitre d' glanced at the name which Rachmael ben Applebaum had jotted down on the sheet with its fancy, undulating, pseudo-living letterhead and said, "Yes. Mr. Applebaum. It is --" He examined his wristwatch. "Now eight o'clock." A line of well-cloaked people waited; it was always this way on crowded Terra: all restaurants, even the bad ones, were overfilled each night from five o'clock on, and this was hardly a mediocre restaurant, let alone an outright bad one. "Genet," the maitre d' called to a waitress wearing the lace stockings and partial jacket-vest combination now popular; it left one breast, the right, exposed, and its nipple was elegantly capped by a Swiss ornament with many minned parts; the ornament, shaped like a large gold pencil eraser, played semi-classical music and lit up in a series of attractive shifting light patterns which focused on the floor ahead of her, lighting her way so that she could pass among the closely placed tiny tables of the restaurant.

"Yes, Gaspar," the girl said, with a toss of her blonde, high-piled hair.

"Escort Mr. Applebaum to table twenty-two," the maitre d' told her, and ignored, with stoic, glacial indifference, the outrage among those customers lined up wearily ahead of Rachmael.

"I don't want to --" Rachmael began, but the maitre d' cut him off.

"All arranged. She is waiting at twenty-two." And, in the maitre d's voice, everything was conveyed: full knowledge of an intricate erotic relationship which -- alas -- did not, at least as yet, exist.

Rachmael followed Genet, with her light-emanating useful Swiss-made nipple-assist, through the darkness, the noise of people eating in jammed proximity, bolting their meals with the weight of guilt hunching them, getting done and aside so that those waiting could be served before the Fox's Lair, at two a.m., closed its kitchens ... we are really pressed tight to one another, he thought, and then, all at once, Genet halted, turned; the nipple cap now radiated a soft, delightful and warm pale red aura which revealed, seated at table twenty-two, Freya Holm.

Seating himself opposite her, Rachmael said, "You don't light up."

"I could. And play the Blue Danube simultaneously." She smiled; in the darkness -- the waitress had gone on, now -- the dark-haired girl's eyes glowed. Before her rested a split of Buena Vista chablis, vintage 2002, one of the great, rare treats of the restaurant, and exceeding expensive; Rachmael wondered who would pick up the tab for this twelve-year-old California wine; lord knew he would have liked to, but -- he reflexively touched his wallet. Freya noticed. "Don't worry. Matson Glazer-Holliday owns this restaurant. There will be a tab for a mere six poscreds. For one peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich." She laughed, her dark eyes dancing in the reflected light from barely illuminated overhead Japanese lanterns. "Does this place intimidate you?" she asked him, then.

"No. I'm just generally tense." For six days now the Omphalos had been lost -- and even to him. Perhaps even to Matson. It could well be -- necessary for security purposes -- that only Al Dosker, at the multi-stage console of the ship's controls, knew where she had gone. For Rachmael, however, it had been psychologically devastating to watch the Omphalos blast out into the limitless darkness: Ferry had been right -- the Omphalos had been the sine qua non of Applebaum Enterprise; without her nothing remained.

But at least this way she might return; or more accurately, he eventually might be taken, by Lies, Incorporated, by high-velocity flapple to her, allowed to see, board her, again, to begin his eighteen-year trip. And, the other way --

"Don't dwell on Ferry's offer," Freya said softly. She nodded to the waitress, who placed a solidstem but chilled wine glass before Rachmael; he automatically, obediently, poured himself a trace of the 2002 Buena Vista white, tasted it; kept himself from taking more; he merely nodded in compliment to the wine, tried to make it appear that he was accustomed to such an outrageously, almost divinely penetrating bouquet and flavor. It made absurd everything he had drunk his life long.

"I'm not thinking of it," he said to Freya. Not, he thought, in view of what you have -- or are supposed to have -- in your purse.

Her large black leather mailpouch-style purse rested on the table beside her, within reach of his fingers.

"The components," Freya said softly, "are in the purse in a simulated gold round container, marked Eternity of Sexual Potency Fragrance #54, a routine continental scent; anyone going through my purse would expect to find it. There are twelve components, all super-min, of course. Beneath the inner lid. On India paper, on the reverse of the label, is a wiring diagram. I will rise to my feet in a moment and go to the powder room; after a few seconds -- you must sit quietly, Rachmael, because it is about a seventy-thirty possibility that THL agents are monitoring us, either directly as patrons or by instrument -- you must sit; then, when I don't return immediately, you fidget, you try to attract Genet's attention, to order some dinner for yourself or at least -- and this is vital -- obtain the menu."

He nodded, listening intently.

"She will notice you and give you a menu; it is quite stiff and large, since it contains the wine list. You will place it on the table so that it covers my purse."

Rachmael said, "And I accidentally knock your purse to the floor, and the contents spill out, and in gathering them up I --"

"Are you insane?" Quietly she said, "You cover the purse. There is a strip of titanium within the right-hand overleaf of the menu. The container of scent has a titanium-tropic ambulation-circuit; it will within two seconds register the presence of the strip and will rotate itself out of my purse, which I've left open; it will travel across the underside of the menu. The strip is at the bottom, where your right hand with complete naturalness will be resting as you hold what has been deliberately made up an awkward, stiff menu. When it touches the titanium strip the container will emit a weak charge, about ten volts; you will feel this galvanization and you will then, with your four fingers, take hold of the container, detach it from the titanium strip to which it has tropically adhered, drop it from the underside of the menu onto your lap. And then, with your other hand, you will shift the container from your lap into your pocket." She rose. "I'll be back within six minutes. Goodbye. And good luck."

He watched her go.

And then, as he sat there, he realized that he had to rise, too; had to act -- the job of transferring the deep-sleep components obtained for him from the blackmarket was difficult and delicate, because Theodoric Ferry, ever since Lies, Incorporated had taken out his satellite and its crew, its simulacrum of Ferry himself, had kept total surveillance over everything Rachmael had done; the ultimate in technological and personnel resources of Trails of Hoffman Limited had been brought into play, motivated now by Theodoric's personal animus.

What had been a remote and impersonal conflict had become once more, he reflected, that which it had always been for his father: a deeply human, immediate matter. A struggle which, at last, had brought his father's death and the disintegration of the organization.

Thinking this, Rachmael began dutifully to fidget, then rose, began hunting for the girl with the light-emanating, gay music resounding, Swiss nipple.

"A menu, sir?" Genet stood before him, holding out the great, wonderfully printed and engraved, in fact embossed, menu; he thanked her, accepted it humbly, returned to his table with the pleasant tunes of Johann Strauss in his ears.

The menu, the size of an old-fashioned antique disc record album, easily covered Freya's purse. He sat holding it open, reading the wine list, and especially the prices. Good god! It cost a fortune even for a split of good wine, here. And for a fifth of a three-year-old generic white --

All the retail establishments such as the Fox's Lair were exploiting Terra's overpopulation; people who had waited three hours to get in here to eat and drink would pay these prices -- by then they had, psychologically, no choice.

A weak electric shock made his right hand quiver; the circular container of miniaturized deep-sleep components had already made physical contact with him and, with his fingers, he pried it, clam- like, loose from its grip, its tropism; he dropped it into his lap, felt its weight.

As directed, he then reached for it with his left hand, to transfer it to his cloak pocket ...

"Sorry -- oops." A busboy, a robot, carrying a loaded, chest-high tray of dishes, had bumped him, making him totter on his chair. People everywhere, those rising, those seating themselves, the robot busboys clearing, the waitresses with their lights and tunes everywhere ... confused, Rachmael reseated himself, reached for the container on his lap.

It was gone.

Fallen to the floor? In disbelief he peered down, saw his shoes, the table legs, a discarded match folder. No round gold-like container.

They had gotten it. It was they who had sent the "busboy." And now it, too, with its load of dishes, had vanished in the general confusion.

Defeated, he sat vacantly staring. And then, at last, from the split of wine, he poured himself a second drink, lifted the glass as if in toast: a toast to the success, admitted and accepted, of the invisible extensions of THL around him that had, in the crucial instant, intervened, deprived him of what he needed essentially in order to leave the Sol system with the big Omphalos.

It did not matter now whether he made contact with Dosker aboard her; lacking the components it was insanity to leave.

Freya returned, seated herself across from him, smiled "All okay?"

Leadenly, he said, "They stopped us. Dead." For now, anyhow, he thought. But it's not finished yet.

He drank, his heart laboring, the delicate, expensive, delicious, and utterly superfluous wine -- the wine of at least temporary utter defeat.

***

On the TV screen, Omar Jones, President of Newcolonizedland, highest official in residence at the great modular settlement at Whale's Mouth, said jovially, "Well, you folks back home, all bunched together there in those little boxes you live in -- we greet you, wish you luck." The familiar, round, pleasant face beamed its smile of warmth. "And we're just wonderin', folks, when you all are going to team up with us and join us here at Newcolonizedland. Eh?" He cupped his ear. As if, Rachmael thought, it were a two-way transmission. But this was illusion. This was a video tape sent across in signal-form by way of von Einem's Telpor nexus at Schweinfort, New Whole Germany. By, through, the good offices of the UN's network of Earth satellites, relayed to TV sets throughout Terra.

Aloud, Rachmael said, "Sorry, President Omar Jones, of Newcolonizedland, Whale's Mouth." I'll visit you, he thought, but my own way. Not by a von Einem Telpor operating for five poscreds at one of Trails of Hoffman's retail outlets ... so it'll be a little while; in fact, he thought, I'd guess you, President Jones, will be dead by the time I arrive.

Although after the defeat at the Fox's Lair --

They, the opposition, had in effect severed him from his source of support, from Lies, Incorporated. He had sat across from their rep, pretty, dark-haired Freya Holm, drunk vintage wine with her, chatted, laughed. But when it came time to transfer vital components from Lies, Incorporated across a five-inch space to him ...

The vidphone in the minuscule bedroom-cubby of his conapt said Pwannnnnnk! Indicating that someone desired to contact him.

Shutting off the jolly face of President Omar Jones of Newcolonizedland, Whale's Mouth, he went to the vidphone, lifted the receiver.

On its gray, undersized screen there formed the features of Matson Glazer-Holliday. "Mr. ben Applebaum," Matson said.

"What can we do?" Rachmael said, feeling the weight of their loss. "In fact those people are probably monitoring this --"

"Oh yes; we register a tap on this vidline." Matson nodded, but he did not seem nonplussed. "We know they're not only monitoring this call but recording it, both aud and vid. However, my message to you is brief, and they're welcome to it. Contact the master circuit of your local public Xerox-spool library."

"And then?" Rachmael asked.

"Do research," Matson Glazer-Holliday said carefully. "Into the original discovery of Whale's Mouth. The first unmanned data-receptors, recorders and transmitters which were traveled from the Sol system, years ago, to the Fomalhaut system; in fact, back in the twentieth century."

Rachmael said, "But why --"

"And we'll be in touch," Matson said briskly. "Goodbye. And glad to have --" He eyed Rachmael. "Don't let that little incident at the restaurant get to you. It's routine. I assure you." He mock- saluted, and then the image on the tiny colorless -- the Vidphone Corporation of Wes-Dem provided minimal service, and, as a public utility licensed by the UN, got away with it -- the image died.

Rachmael, bewildered, hung up the aud receiver.

The records of the original unmanned monitors which had been dispatched to the Fomalhaut system years ago were public records; what could exist there that would be of value? Nevertheless he dialed the local branch of the New New York Xerox-spool public library.

"Send to my apt," he said, "the abstract, the comprehensive material available, on the initial scouting of the Fomalhaut system." By those now old-fashioned constructs which George Hoffman had utilized -- by which the habitable planet Whale's Mouth had been discovered.

Presently a robot runner appeared at his door with a variety of spools. Rachmael seated himself at his scanner, inserted the first spool, noting that it was marked A General Survey of the Fomalhaut Unmanned Inter-system Vehicle Reports, Shorter Version, by someone named G. S. Purdy.

For two hours he ran the spool. It showed that sun coming nearer and nearer, then the planets, one by one and disappointing, bitterly so, until now number nine bloomed into view; and all at once --

No more barren rocks, unblunted mountains. No airless, germless, hygienic void with methane as gas or crystallized at greater astronomical units from the sun. Suddenly he saw a swaying and undulating, blue-green frieze, and this had caused Dr. von Einem to trot out his Telpor equipment, to set up the direct link between this world and Terra. This plum-ripe landscape had gotten Trails of Hoffman interested commercially -- and had written mene, mene for Applebaum Enterprise.

The last vid monitor-reading was fifteen years old. Since then direct contact via teleportation gear had made such ancient hardware obsolete. And hence the original unmanned monitors, in orbit around Fomalhaut --

Had what? Been abandoned, according to author Purdy. Their batteries turned off by remote instruct; they still, presumably, circled the sun within the orbit of Whale's Mouth.

They were still there.

And their batteries, having been off all these years, had conserved, not expended energy. And they were of the advanced liquid-helium III type.

Was this what Matson had wanted to know?

Returning to the reference spool he ran it, ran it, again and again, until he had the datum at last. The most sophisticated vid monitor belonged to Vidphone Corporation of Wes-Dem. They would know if it, called Prince Albert B-y, was still in orbit around Fomalhaut.

He started toward his vidphone, then stopped. After all, it was tapped. So instead he left his conapt, left the huge building entirely, joined a ped-runnel until he spied a public phonebooth.

There, he called the Vidphone Corporation, its central offices in Detroit, open on a twenty-four- hour-a-day basis.

"Give me your archives," he instructed the robot switchboard.

Presently a human, wizened but efficient-looking, gnome-like official in a gray jacket, like a bookkeeper, appeared. "Yeah?"

"I'm inquiring," Rachmael said, ''as to the Prince Albert B-y mon-sat put in orb around Fomalhaut seventeen years ago. I'd like you to check as to whether it's still in orb and if it is, how it can be activated so --"

The signal went dead. At the other end the Vidphone Corporation official had hung up. He waited. The Vidphone switchboard did not come onto the wire, nor did the regular, local robot.

I'll be darned, Rachmael thought. Shaken, he left the phonebooth. He continued on aboard the runnel until at last he reached a second public phonebooth.

Entering he this time dialed Matson Glazer-Holliday's satellite. Presently he had the owner of Lies, Incorporated again facing him from the screen.

Carefully, Rachmael said, "Sorry to bother you. But I've been running info spools on the original unmanned monitors of the Fomalhaut system."

"Learn anything?"

"I asked," Rachmael said, "the Vidphone Corporarion of Wes Dem if its Prince Albert B-y --"

"And they said?"

Rachmael said, "They immediately cut the con."

"It," Matson said, "is still up. Still in orb."

"And sending out signals?"

"Not for fifteen years. At hyper-see it takes its signals one week to cross the twenty-four light-year gap to the Sol system. Rather shorter than it would require for the Omphalos to reach the Fomalhaut system.

"Is there any way to once more activate the satellite?"

"Vidphone Corp could contact it direct, through a Telpor," Matson said. "If they wanted to."

"Do they?"

After a pause Matson said, "Did they cut you off just now?"

Pondering, Rachmael said, "Can someone else give the impulse to the satellite?"

"No. Only the Vidphone Corp knows the sequence which would cause it to respond."

"Is this what you wanted me to find out?" Rachmael asked.

Smiling, Matson Glazer-Holliday said, "Goodbye, Mr. ben Applebaum. And good luck, as you continue your research." He then hung up, and once more Rachmael faced a dead screen.

At his villa, Matson turned away from the vidset to Freya Holm, who perched on the couch, legs tucked under her, wearing a high-fashion transparent spidersilk blue blouse and meter-reader's pants. "He found it," Matson said. "Right away. That about the PA B-y sat." Pacing, Matson scowled. "All right." He had decided. "Our rep, under the cover-name Bergen Phillips, will be sent to Whale's Mouth six hours from now. By way of the THL outlet at Paris. As soon as he's at Whale's Mouth he'll transmit to us, through the Telpor, an encoded document describing the true conditions." But probably THL's people would have nabbed "Bergen Phillips " by then, and, through techniques well-known in the trade, have learned all that the Lies, Incorporated veteran knew; they would then send a faked encoded message, assuring Matson that all was well-and he would never know, on receipt of such a message, whether it truly emanated from "Bergen Phillips" or from THL. However --

Freya saw it, too. "Have this rep, once he's across, give the activating sequence to the PA B-y sat. So it'll start transmitting data to the Sol system direct, once again."

"If," Matson said. "If it still will function after fifteen years. And if the Vidphone Corp does not countermand the instruct the moment data starts to flow in." However, he could tap the Vidphone. Corp's lines and pick up even that initial meager data. What he might obtain before the flow ceased coming in might be a graphic pan-shot of Whale's Mouth -- and then so what if the sat was shut off once more.

As naturally it would be, since THL controlled the Vidphone Corp.

"Just one good vid shot," Matson said. "And we'll know."

"Know what?" She reached to set down her drink glass on the nearby antique genuine glass-topped coffee table.

Matson said, "I'll tell you that, dear, when I see the shot." He went to the comboard, sent out the already implemented request for the field rep who was to cross over to Whale's Mouth to be brought to his satellite. These instructs had to be given orally and not over lines; to line it was to howl it broadcast.

In fact perhaps he had already communicated too much to Rachmael. But -- in such a business one took risks. And he could assume that Rachmael's callback had emanated from a public booth; the man, although an amateur, was at least cautious. And these days such caution was not paranoid; it was practical.

***

On the TV screen in 3-D color with olfactory track the round, jovial features of President Omar Jones of Newcolonizedland said, "You folks there on good old overcrowded Terra "-- and, behind him, faded in a scene of miles of open veldt-like park -- "you amaze us. We hear you're going to send a ship here, by hyper-see, and it'll arrive ... let's see." He pretended to be contemplating.

Before the set (not quite paid for) Jack McElhattten, a hard-working, easy-going, good-natured guy, said to his wife, "Chrissakes, look at that open land." It reminded him of his sweet, fragile childhood, of years ago and now gone, the Oregon Trail part of Wyoming west of Cheyenne. And the desire, the yearning, grew in him. "We have to emigrate," he said to Ruth then. "We owe it to our kids. They can grow up as --"

"Shh," Ruth said.

On the screen President Omar Jones of Newcolonizedland said, "In just about eighteen years, folks, that ship will arrive this way and park down. So here's what we've done; we've set aside November 24, 2032, as Flying Dutchman Day. The day that ship reaches us." He chuckled. "I'll be, um, ninety-four and, sorry to say, probably not here to participate in Flying Dutchman Day. But maybe posterity, including some of you young folks --"

"You hear that?" McElhatten said to his wife, incredulous. "Some nut is going to go the old way. Eighteen years in 'tween space! When all you have to do --"

"BE QUIET," Ruth said, furiously, trying to listen.

"-- be here to greet this Mr. Applebaum," President Omar Jones intoned in clowning solemnity. "Banners, vox-pop streamers ... we should have a population of between, well, say, one billion then, but still plenty of land. We can take up to two billion, you know, and still leave plenty of room. So come on and join us; cross over and be here to celebrate Flying Dutchman Day, folks." He waved, and, it seemed to Jack McElhatten, this man at Whale's Mouth was waving directly to him. And, within him, the yearning grew.

The frontier, he thought. Their neighbors in the tiny cramped conapt with which they shared a bathroom ... or had, up until last month, at which point the Pattersons had emigrated to Whale's Mouth. The vid-sig letters from Jerome Patterson; god, they had raved about conditions across on the other side. If anything, the info spots-ads, to be exact -- had understated the beauty of the real-sit over there. The beauty -- and the opportunity.

"We need men," President Omar Jones was declaring. "Good strong men who can do any kind of work. Are you that man? Able, willing, and get-up-and-go, over eighteen years of age? Willing to start a new life, using your mind and your hands, the skills God gave you? Think about it. What are you doing with those hands, those skills, right now?"

Doing quality-control on an autofac line, McElhatten thought to himself bitterly; a job which a pigeon could do better; fact was, a pigeon did do so, to check his work.

"Can you imagine," he said to his wife, "holding down a job where a pigeon has a better eye than you for mis-tolerances?" And that was exactly his situation; he ejected parts which were nor properly aligned, and, when he missed, the pigeon noted the miss, the defective part allowed to pass; it picked out the misaligned part, pecked a reject-button which kicked the part from the moving belt. And, as they quit and emigrated, the quality control men at Krino Associates were, one by one, replaced by pigeons.

He stayed on now, really, only because the union to which he belonged was strong enough to insist that his seniority made it mandatory for Krino to keep him on. But once he quit, once he left --

"Then," he said to Ruth, "the pigeon moves in. Okay, let it; we're going across to Whale's Mouth, and from then on I won't be competing with birds." Competing, he thought, and losing. Offering my employers the poorer showing." And Krino will be glad," he said, with misery.

"I just wish," Ruth said, "that you had a particular job lined up over there at Newcolonizedland. I mean, they talk about 'all the jobs,' but you can't take 'all the jobs.' What one job are you --" She hesitated. "Skilled for?" After all, he had worked for Krino Associates for ten years.

"I'm going to farm."

She stared at him.

"They'll give us twenty acres. We'll buy sheep here, those black faced ones. Suffolk. Take six across, five ewes and a ram, put up fences, build ourselves a house out of prefab sections --" He knew he could do it. Others had, as they had described -- not in impersonal ads -- but in letters vid- signaled back and then transcribed by Vidphone Corporation and posted on the bulletin board of the conapt building.

"But if we don't like it," Ruth murmured apprehensively, "we won't be able to come back; I mean, that seems so strange. Those teleportation machines ... working one way only."

"The extra-galactic nebulae," he said patiently. "The recession of matter outward; the universe is exploding, growing; the Telpor relates your molecules as energy configurations in this outflow --"

"I don't understand," Ruth said. "But I do know this," she said, and, from her purse, brought a leaflet.

Studying the leaflet, McElhatten scowled. "Cranks. This is hate literature, Ruth. Don't accept it." He began to crumple it up.

"They don't call themselves by a hating name. 'Friends of a United People.' They're a small group of worried, dedicated people, opposed to --"

"I know what they're opposed to," McElhatten said. Several of them worked at Krino Associates. "They say we Terrans should stay within the Sol system. Stick together. Listen." He crumpled up the leaflet. "The history of man has been one vast migration. This to Whale's Mouth; it's the greatest yet-twenty-four light-years! We ought to be proud." But naturally there'd be a few idiots and cranks opposing history.

Yes, it was history and he wanted to be part of it. First it had been New England, then Australia, Alaska, and then the try-and failure -- on Luna, then on Mars and Venus, and now -- success. At last. And if he waited too long he would be too old and there would be too many expatriates so free land would no longer be available; the government at Newcolonizedland might withdraw its land offer any time, because after all, every day people streamed over. The Telpor offices were swamped.

"You want me to go?" he asked Ruth. "Go first -- and send a message back, once I have the land and am ready to begin building? And then you and the kids can come?"

Nervously, she said, "I hate to be parted from you."

"Make up your mind."

"I guess," she said, "we should go together. If we go at all. But these -- letters. They're just impulses onto energy lines."

"Like telephone or vidphone or telegraph or TV messages. Has been for one hundred years."

"If only real letters came back."

"You have," he said derisively, "a superstitious fear."

"Maybe so," Ruth admitted. But it was a real fear nonetheless. A deep and abiding fear of a one- way trip from which they could never return, except, she thought, eighteen years from now, when that ship reaches the Fomalhaut system.

She picked up the evening 'pape, examined the article, jeering in tone, about this ship, the Omphalos. Capable of transporting five hundred, but this time carrying one sole man: the ship's owner. And, the article said, he was fleeing to escape his creditors; that was his motive.

But, she thought, he can come back from Whale's Mouth.

She envied -- without understanding why -- that man. Rachmael ben Applebaum, the 'pape said. If we could cross over now with you, she thought, if we asked --

Her husband said quietly, "If you won't go, Ruth, I'm going alone. I'm not going to sit there day after day at that quality-control station, feeling that pigeon breathing down the back of my neck."

She sighed. And wandered into the common kitchen which they shared with their right-hand neighbors, the Shorts, to see if there was anything left of their monthly ration of what the bill of lading called cof-bz. Synthetic coffee beans.

There was not. So, instead, she morosely fixed herself a cup of synthetic tea. Meanwhile, the Shorts -- who were noisy -- came and went, in and out of the kitchen. And, in her living room, her husband sat before the TV set, an enraptured child, listening to, following with devout and absorbed full attention the nightly report from Whale's Mouth. Watching the new, the next, world.

I guess, she thought, he's right.

But something deep and instinctive within her still objected. And she wondered queerly why. And she thought, then, once more of Rachmael ben Applebaum, who, the 'pape said, was attempting the eighteen-year trip without deep-sleep equipment; he had tried and failed to obtain it, the 'pape said gleefully; the guy was so marginal an operator, such a fly-by-nighter, that he had no credit, pos or otherwise. The poor man, she thought. Conscious and alone for eighteen whole years; couldn't the company that makes those deep-sleep units donate the equipment he needs?

The TV set in the living room declared, "Remember, folks, it's Old Mother Hubbard there on Terra, and the Old Woman who lived in a shoe; you've got so many children, folks, and just what do you plan to do?"

Emigrate, Ruth decided, without enthusiasm. Apparently.

And -- soon.
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Re: Lies, Inc., by Philip K. Dick

Postby admin » Tue Sep 01, 2020 6:25 am

Chapter Six

Against Rachmael ben Applebaum's tiny flapple the great hull of his one asset of economic value -- and that attached through the courts -- bumped in the darkness, and at once automatic mechanisms came into operation. A hatch whined open; inner locks shut and then retired as air passed into vacuum and replaced it, and, on his console, a green light lit. A good one.

He could safely pass from his meager rented flapple into the Omphalos, as it hung in powerless orbit around Mars at .003 astronomical units.

Directly he had crossed through the lock-series -- without use of a pressure suit or oxygen gear -- Al Dosker said to him, eyeing him and with laser pistol in hand, "I thought it might be a simulacrum, supplied by THL. But the EEG and EKG machines say you're not." He held out his hand; and Rachmael shook. "So you're making the trip anyhow, without the deep-sleep components. And you think, after eighteen years, you'll be sane? I wouldn't be." His dark" sharp- cut face was filled with compassion. "Can't you induce some fray to come along? One other person, and what a difference, especially if she's --"

"And quarrel," Rachmael said, "and wind up with one corpse. I'm taking an enormous edu-tape library; by the time I reach Fomalhaut I'll be speaking Attic Greek, Latin, Russian, Italian -- I'll be reading alchemical texts from the Middle Ages and Chinese classics in the original from the sixth century." He smiled, but it was an empty, frozen smile; he was not fooling Dosker, who knew what it was like to try an inter-system run without deep-sleep. Because Dosker had made the three-year trip to Proxima. And, on the journey back, had insisted, from his experience, on deep-sleep.

"What gets me," Rachmael said, "is that THL has gotten to the black market. That they're even able to dry up illegal supplies of minned parts." But -- the chance had been missed in the restaurant; the components had been within reach, five thousand poscreds' worth. And -- that was that.

"You know," Dosker said slowly, "that one of Lies, Incorporated's experienced field reps is crossing, using a regular Telpor terminal, like the average fella. So we may be contacting the Omphalos within the next week; you may be able to turn back; we may save you the eighteen years going, and, or have you forgotten, the eighteen years returning?"

"I'm not sure," Rachmael said, "if I make it I'll come back." He was not fooling himself; after the trip to Fomalhaut he might be physically unable to start back -- whatever conditions obtained at Whale's Mouth he might stay there because he had to. The body had its limits. So did the mind.

Anyhow they now had more to go on. Not only the failure of the old time capsule ever to reach the Sol system -- and conveniently forgotten by the media -- but the Vidphone Corporation of Wes- Dem's absolute refusal, under direct, legal request by Matson Glazer-Holliday, to reactivate its Prince Albert B-y satellite orbiting Fomalhaut. This one fact alone, Rachmael reflected, should have frightened the rational citizen. But --

The people did not know. The media had not reported it.

Matson, however, had leaked the info to the small, militant, anti emigration org, the Friends of a United People. Mostly they were old-fashioned, elderly and fearful, whose distrust of emigration by means of Telpor was based on neurotic reasons. But -- they did print pamphlets. And Vidphone Corp's refusal had duly been noted immediately in one of their Terra-wide broad-sheets.

But how many persons had seen it -- that Rachmael did not know. He had the intuition, however, that very few people had. And -- emigration continued.

As Matson said, the footprints leading into the predator's lair continued to increase in number. And still none led out.

Dosker said, "All right, I am now officially, formally surrendering the Omphalos back to you. She appears to check out through every system, so you should have nothing to fear." His dark eyes glinted. "I tell you what, ben Applebaum. During your eighteen years of null-deep-sleep you can amuse yourself as I've been, during the last week." He reached to a table, picked up a leather- backed book. "You can," he said quietly, "keep a diary."

"Of what?"

"Of a mind," Dosker said, "deteriorating. It'll be of psychiatric interest." Now he did not seem to be joking.

"So even you," Rachmael said, "consider me --"

"Without deep-sleep equipment to drop your metabolism you're making a terrible mistake to go. So maybe the diary won't be a transcript of human deterioration; maybe that's already taken place."

Wordlessly, Rachmael watched the dark, lithe man step through the lock, disappear, out of the Omphalos and into the tiny rented flapple.

The lock clanged shut. A red light flicked on above it and he was alone, here in this, his giant passenger liner, as he would be for eighteen years and maybe, he thought, maybe Dosker is right.

But still he intended to make the trip.

At three o'clock a.m. Matson Glazer-Holliday was awakened by one of his staff of automatic villa servants. "Your lord, a message from a Mr. Bergen Phillips. From Newcolonizedland. Just received. And you asked --"

"Yes." Matson sat up, spilling the covers from Freya, who slept on; he grabbed his robe, slippers. "Let's have it."

The message, typed out by routine printers of the Vidphone Corp, read:

BOUGHT MY FIRST ORANGE TREE. LOOKS LIKE A BIG CROP. COME ON JOIN MOLLY AND ME.

Now Freya stirred, sat up; her spidersilk nightgown, one strap of it, slipped from her bare, pale shoulder. "What is it?" she murmured.

"The first encoded note from B.P.," Matson said; he absently tap-tapped the folded message against his knee, pondering.

She sat up fully, reached for her pack of Bering cigarillos. "What does he report, Mat?"

Matson said, "The message is version six."

"That -- things are exactly as depicted." She was wide-awake, now; she sat lighting her cigarillo, watching him intently.

"Yes. But -- THL psychologists, waiting on the far side, could have nabbed the field rep. Washed his brain, gotten everything and then sent this; so it meant nothing. Only a transmission of one of the odd-numbered codes -- indicating in various degrees that conditions at Whale's Mouth were not as depicted -- would have been worth anything. Because of course THL psychologists would have no motive to fake those."

"So," Freya said, "you know nothing."

"But maybe he can activate the Prince Albert B-y sat." One week; it would not be long, and the Omphalos could easily be contacted by then. And, since its solo pilot did not lie in deep-sleep, he could be informed.

However, if after a week --

"If no data came from the sat," Matson said thoughtfully, "it still proves nothing. Because then Bergen will transmit message n, meaning that the sat has proved inoperative. They will do all that, too, if they have him. So still nothing!" He paced about the bedroom, then took the burning cigarillo from the girl in the rumpled bed, inhaled from it violently, until it heated up and scorched his fingers. "I," he said, "will not live out eighteen years." I will never live to know the truth about Whale's Mouth, he realized. That time-period; it was just too long to wait.

"You'll be seventy-nine," Freya said practically. "So you'll still be alive. But a jerry with artiforgs for natural organs."

But -- I'm just not that patient, Matson realized. A newborn baby grows virtually to adulthood in that time!

Freya retrieved the cigarillo, winced at its temperature. "Well, possibly you can send over --"

"I'm going over," Matson said.

Staring at him, after a moment she said, "Oh god. God."

"I won't be alone. I'll have a 'family.' At every outlet of Trails of Hoffman a Lies, Incorporated commando team --" He possessed two thousand of them, many veterans of the war; they would pass over at the same moment as he, would link up at Whale's Mouth. And, in their "personal" gear, they would convey enough detection, relay, recording and monitoring equipment to reestablish the private police agency. "So you're in charge here on Terra," he told Freya. "Until I get back." Which would be thirty-six years from now, he thought acidly. When I'm ninety-seven years old ... no, that's right: we can obtain deep-sleep mechanisms at Whale's Mouth because I remember them taking it across; that's one reason why it's so short of supply, here. Originally it was thought that if colonization didn't work they could vacate -- roanoke, they called it -- they could roanoke back to the Sol system in deep-sleep by ship ... from giant liners manufactured at Whale's Mouth from prefab sections passed across by Dr. von Einem's Telpor teleportation gates.

"A coup, Freya said, then. "In fact -- a coup d'etat."

Startled, he said, "What? God no; I never --"

"If you take two thousand top reps," Freya said, "Lies, Incorporated won't exist here; it'll be a shade. But over there -- it'll be formidable. And the UN has no army at Whale's Mouth, Matson. You're aware of that, at least on an unconscious level. Who could oppose you? Let's see. The President of Newcolonizedland, Omar Jones, is up for reelection in two years; you' d possibly want to wait --"

"At the first call from Whale's Mouth," Matson said harshly, "Omar Jones could have UN troops trotting through every Telpor instrument in the world. And their tactical weapons with them, everything up to cephalotropic missiles." And he hated -- and feared -- those.

"If a call came from Whale's Mouth. But once you're on the other side, you could handle that. You could be sure no such emergency announcement was sent out. Isn't that what we've been discussing all this time? Isn't this really why you bought Rachmael's idea -- your knowledge that all communication from the other side can be -- managed?" She waited, smoking, watching him with a feminine vigil of intensity and acuity.

Presently he said tightly, "Yes. We could do that. They may have THL psychologists armed and ready for individuals. But not for two thousand trained police. We'd have control in half an hour -- probably. Unless, unknown to us, Horst Bertold has been sending troops across." And, he pondered, why should he? All they face -- up to now -- is bewildered citizens, expatriates who want jobs, homes, new roots ... in a world they can't leave.

"And remember this, too," Freya said. She lifted the strap of her nightgown once more, then, covering her faintly freckled shoulder. "The receiving portion of the teleportation rig has to be spacially installed; every one of those over there had to be sent originally by inter-stellar hyper-see ship, and that took years. So you can stop the UN and Bertold just by rendering the receiving stations of the Tel-pors inoperative -- if they suspect."

"And if I can move quickly enough."

"But you," she said calmly, "can. Taking your best men, with their equipment ... unless --" She paused, licked her lip, as if puzzling out a purely academic problem.

Maddened, he said, "Unless what, goddamn it?"

"They may identify your reps as they cross. And you. They may be ready. I can see it now." She laughed merrily. "You pay your poscreds, smile at the nice THL bald-headed, gargoyle-like New Whole Germany technicians who run those Telpors, you stand there while they subject your body to the field of the equipment ... keep standing there innocently, fade away, reappear twenty-four light-years away at Whale's Mouth ... and are lasered dead before you're even fully formed. It takes fifteen minutes. For fifteen minutes, Mat, you would be helpless, half materialized both here and there. And all your field reps. And all their gear."

He glared at her.

"Thus," she said, "goes hubris."

"What's that?"

"The Greek word for 'pride.' For trying to rise above the station the gods have allocated you. Maybe the gods don't want you to seize control of Whale's Mouth, Matty darling. Maybe the gods don't want you to overreach yourself."

"Hell," he said, ''as long as I have to go across anyhow --"

"Sure; then why not take control? Push jovial, insipid Omar Jones aside? After all ..." She stubbed out her cigarillo. "You'd be doomed to stay there anyhow; why live the ordinary life with the ordinary hoi polloi? Here, you're strong ... but Horst Bertold and the UN, with Trails of Hoffman as their economic support, are stronger. Over there --" She shrugged, as if made weary by human aspirations -- or human vanity. Over there it was simply a different situation.

No one, he realized, could compete if he managed to move, in one sudden swoop, his entire entourage and weaponry across ... using, ironically, von Einem's own official retail stations themselves. He grinned at that; it amused him to think that THL would personally see to it that he and his veteran reps reached Newcolonizedland.

"And then in 2032," Freya said, "when Rachmael ben Applebaum, probably an unwashed, bearded, mumbling hebephrenic schizophrenic by then, shows up in his great and good ship the Omphalos, he'll discover it's a hell, there, exactly as he anticipated ... but it'll be you who'll be running it. And I'll bet that will surprise him more than a little."

Nettled, he said, "I can't think about it any more. I'm going back to sleep." He removed his robe and slippers, got wearily into the bed, aware of his years; he felt old. Wasn't he too decrepit for something like this? Not getting into bed; lord, he wasn't too old to clamber in beside Freya Holm, not yet, anyhow. But too old for what Freya had proposed -- what she had correctly, possibly even telepathically, ascertained from his unconscious mind. Yes, it was actually true.

He had, from Rachmael's initial vidphone call, at the back levels of his cognition-processes, pondered this, from the very beginning.

And this was his reason for assisting -- or rather trying to assist -- the morose, creditor-balloon- hounded Rachmael ben Applebaum.

He thought, according to published info there is a home army, so-called, at Whale's Mouth, of three hundred volunteer citizens. For use as a sort of national guard in case of a riot. Three hundred! And none of them professionals, with experience. It was a pastoral land, the ads explained. A G. of E. lacking a snake; since there was a super-abundance of everything for everyone, what was an army needed for? What have-not existed to envy what have? And what reason to try, by force, to seize his holdings?

I'll tell you, Matson Glazer-Holliday thought. The have-nots are here on this side. Myself and those who work for me; we're gradually, over the years, being ground down and overpowered by the true titans, by the UN and THL and --

The haves are across twenty-four light-years in the Fomalhaut system, at its ninth planet.

Mr. ben Applebaum, he thought to himself as he lay supine, drew, from reflex, Freya Holm against him, you will have quite a surprise when you get to Whale's Mouth.

It was a pity that he himself -- and he intuited this with certitude -- would not be alive at that date.

As to why not, however, his near-Psionic intuition told him nothing.

Beside him Freya moaned in her half-sleep, settled close to him, relaxed.

He, however, lay awake, staring into the nothingness. Deep in a new, hard thought. The like of which he had never experienced before.
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Re: Lies, Inc., by Philip K. Dick

Postby admin » Tue Sep 01, 2020 6:25 am

Chapter Seven

The monitoring and recording-transmitting satellite, Prince Albert B-y, creaked out its first video signal, a transcript of the first video telescopic records which it had taken of the surface beneath it in over a decade. Portions of the long-inert network of minned parts failed; backup systems, however, took over, and some of these failed, too. But the signal, directed toward the Sol system twenty-four light-years away, was sent out.

And, on the surface of Fomalhaut IX, an eye winked. And from it a ground-to-air missile rose and in a period so slight that only the finest measuring-devices could have detected a lapse-period at all, arrived at its target, the groaning carrot-shaped monitoring satellite which had, inoperative, silently existed -- and hence harmlessly. Up to now.

The warhead of the missile detonated. And the Prince Albert B-y ceased to exist, soundlessly, because at its altitude there was no atmosphere to transmit the event in the dimension of noise.

And, at the same time on the surface below, a powerful transmitter accepted a tape run at enormous velocity; the signal, amplified by a row of cold, superbly built surgegates, reached transmission level and was released; oddly, its frequency coincided with that of the signal just emitted by the now nonexistent satellite.

What would radiate from the two separate transmitters would blend in a cacophony of meaningless garble. Satisfied, the technicians operating the ground transmitter switched to more customary channels -- and tasks.

The deliberately deranged combined signal sped across space toward the Sol system, beamed, in its mad confusion, at a planet which, when it received this, would possess nothing but a catfight of noise.

And the satellite, reduced to its molecular level by the warhead, would emit no more signals; its life was over.

The event, the first transmission by the satellite up into the final scramble by the far more powerful surface transmitter, had consumed five minutes, including the flight -- and demolition -- of the missile: the missile and its priceless, elaborate, never-to-be-duplicated target.

-- A target which, certain circles had long ago agreed in formal session, could be readily sacrificed, were the need to arise.

That need had arisen.

And the satellite was duly gone.

At the site of the missile-launching a helmeted soldier leisurely fitted a second g.-to-a. missile into the barn, attached both its anode and cathode terminals, made sure that the activating board was relocked -- by the same key through which he had obtained official entry -- and then he, too, returned to his customary chores.

Time lapse: perhaps six minutes in all.

And the planet, Fomalhaut IX, revolved on.

***

Deep in thought as she sat in the comfortable leather, padded seat of the luxury taxi flapple, Freya Holm was startled by the sudden mechanical voice of the vehicle's articulation-circuit. "Sir or madam, I request your pardon, but a deterioration of my meta-battery forces me without choice to land for a quick-charge without delay. Please give me oral permission as an acknowledgment of your willingness otherwise we will glide to destruct."

Looking down she saw the high-rise spires of New New York, the ring of city outside the inner, old kremlin of New York itself. Late for work, she said to herself, damn it. But -- the flapple was correct; if its meta-battery, its sole power supply, were failing, to get out of the sky and on the surface at a repair station was mandatory; a long powerless glide would mean death in the form of collision with one of the tall commercial buildings below. "Yes, " she agreed, resignedly, and groaned. And today was the day.

"Thank you, sir or madam." With sputtering power the flapple spiraled down until at last, under adequate control, it coasted to a rather rough but at least not dangerous halt at one of New New York's infinite flapple service stations.

A moment later uniformed service station men swarmed over the parked flapple, searching for -- as one explained courteously to her -- for the short which had depleted the meta-battery, good normally, the attendant told her cheerfully, for twenty years.

Opening the flapple door the attendant said, "May I check under the passenger's console, please? The wiring there; those circuits take a lot of hard use -- the insulation may be rubbed off." He, a Negro, seemed to her pleasant and alert and without hesitation she moved to the far side of the cab.

The Negro attendant slid in, closed, then, the flapple door. "Moon and cow," he said, the current -- and highly temporary -- ident-code phrase of members of the police organization Lies, Incorporated.

Taken by surprise Freya murmured, "Jack Horner. Who are you? I never ran into you before," He did not look like a field rep to her.

"A 'tween space pilot. I'm Al Dosker; I know you -- you're Freya Holm." He was not smiling now; he was quiet, serious, and, as he sat beside her, perfunctorily running his fingers over the wiring of the passenger's control console he said, half chantingly, "I have no time, Freya, for small talk; I have five minutes at the most; I know where the short is because I sent this particular flapple taxi to pick you up. See?"

"I see," she said, and, within her mouth, bit on a false tooth; the tooth split and she tasted the bitter out-layer of a plastic pill: a container of Prussic acid, enough to kill her if this man proved to be from their antagonists. And, at her wrist, she wound her watch -- actually winding a low-velocity homeostatic, cyanide-tipped dart which she would control by the "watch" controls; it could either take out this man or, if others showed up, herself, in case of a failure of the oral poison. In any case she sat back rigid, waiting.

"You," the Negro said, "are Matson's mistress; you have access to him at any time; this I know -- this is why I've approached you. Tonight, at six p.m. New New York time, Matson Glazer-Holliday will arrive at an outlet of Trails of Hoffman; carrying two heavy suitcases he will request permission to emigrate. He will pay his six poscreds, or seven, if his luggage is overweight, and then be teleported to Whale's Mouth. And at the same time, at every Telpor outlet throughout Terra, a total aggregate of roughly two thousand of his toughest veteran field reps will do the same."

She said nothing; she stared straight ahead. Within her purse an aud recorder captured all this, but heaven only knew for what.

The Negro said, "On the far side he, by deploying his veterans and the wep-equipment which they will assemble from components carried in their suitcases as 'personal articles,' will attempt a coup. Will halt emigration, make at once inoperative the Telpors, toss President Omar Jones --"

"So?" she said. "If I know this, why tell me?"

"Because," Dosker said, "I am going to Horst Bertold two hours before six. I believe that is usually considered four o'clock." His voice was icy, harsh. "I am an employee of Lies, Incorporated but I did not join the organization to participate in a power play like this. On Terra, Matson G.-H. stands about where he ought to be: third in the pecking order. On Whale's Mouth --"

"And you want me," Freya said, "to do exactly what between now and four o'clock? Seven hours."

"Inform Matson that when he and the two thousand LI field reps arrive at the retail outlets of THL they will not be teleported but will be arrested and undoubtedly painlessly murdered. In the German manner.

"This," she said, "is what you want? Matson dead and them, those --" She gestured, gripping, clawing the air. "Bertold and Ferry and von Einem to run the corporate Terran Whale's Mouth political-economic entity with no one to --"

"I don't want him to try."

"Listen," Freya said bitingly. "The coup that Matson expects to carry out at Whale's Mouth is based on his assumption that a home army of three hundred ignorant volunteers exists over there. I don't think you have to worry; the problem is that Mat actually believes the lies he sees on TV; he's actually incredibly primitive and naive. Do you think it's a Promised Land over there, with a tiny volunteer army, waiting for someone to come along with real force, aided by modern wep- technology, such as Mat possesses, to harvest for the asking? If this were so, do you honestly believe Bertold and Ferry would not have done it already?"

Dosker, disconcerted, eyed her hesitantly.

"I think," she said, "that Mat is making a mistake. Not because it's immoral but because he's going to discover that, once he's over there, he and his two thousand veterans, he'll be facing --" She broke off. "I don't know. But he won't succeed in any coup d'etat. Whoever runs Newcolonizedland will handle Mat; that's what terrifies me. Sure, I'd like him to stop; I'd be glad to tell him that one of his top employees who knows all the inside details about the coup is going to, at four p.m., tip off the authorities. I'll do everything in my power, Dosker, to get him to abandon the idea, to face the fact that he's wandering idiotically into a terminal trap. My reasons and yours may not --"

"What do you think," Dosker said, "is over there, Freya?"

"Death."

"For -- everybody?" He stared at her. "Forty million? Why?"

"The days," she said, "of Gilbert and Sullivan and Jerome Kern are over. We're on a planet of seven billion. Whale's Mouth could do the job, but slowly, and there's a more efficient way, and every one of those in key posts in the UN, put in by Herr Horst Bertold, knows that way."

"No," Dosker said, his face an ugly, putty-colored gray. "That went out in 1945."

"Are you sure? Would you want to emigrate?"

He was silent. And then, stunning her, he said, "Yes."

"What? Why?"

Dosker said, "I will emigrate. Tonight at six, New New York time. With laser pistol in my left hand, and I'll kick them in the groin; I want to get at them, if that's what they're doing; I can't wait."

"You won't be able to do a thing. As soon as you emerge --"

"With my bare hands. I'll get one of them. Anyone will do."

"Start here. Start with Horst Bertold."

He stared at her, then.

"We have the wep-techs," Freya said, and then ceased speaking as the flapple door was opened by another -- cheerful -- attendant.

"Found the short, Al?" he asked.

"Yes," Al Dosker said. He fooled, fumbled, under the dash board, his face concealed. "Should be okay now. Recharge the meta-bat, stick it back in, and she can take off."

The other attendant, satisfied, departed. Freya and Al Dosker were alone once more, briefly, with the flapple door hanging open.

"You -- may be wrong," Dosker said.

Freya said, "It's got to be something like that. It can't be three hundred assorted-shape volunteer army privates, because Ferry and Bertold or at least one of them would have moved in, and that's the one fact we know: we know what they're like. There just cannot, Dosker, be a power vacuum at Whale's Mouth."

"All ready to go, miss," one of the other attendants called.

The flapple's articulation-circuit asserted, "I feel a million times better; I'm now prepared to depart for your original destination, sir or madam, as soon as the superfluous individual has disemflappled."

Dosker, trembling said, "I -- don't know what to do."

"Don't go to Ferry or Bertold. Begin at that."

He nodded. Evidently she had reached him; that part was over.

"Mat will need all the help he can get," she said, "from six o'clock on. From the moment his first field rep hits Whale's Mouth. Dosker, why don't you go? Even if you're a pilot, not a rep. Maybe you can help him."

The flapple started its motor up irritably. "Please, sir or madam, if you will request --"

"Are you teleporting?" Dosker asked her. "With them?"

Freya said, "I'm scheduled to cross at five. To rent living quarters for Mat and me. I'll be -- remember this so you can find us -- Mrs. Silvia Trent. And Mat will be Stuart Trent. Okay?"

"Okay," Dosker mumbled, backed out, shut the flapple door.

The flapple began to ascend, at once.

And she relaxed. And spat out the capsule of Prussic acid, dropped it into the disposal chute of the flapple, then reset her "watch."

What she had said to Dosker, god knew, was the truth. She knew it -- knew it and could do nothing to dissuade Matson. On the far side professionals would be in wait, and even if they didn't anticipate the coup, even if there had been no leak and they saw no connection between the two thousand male individuals scattered all over the world, applying at every Telpor outlet on Terra ... even so, she knew they would be able to handle Mat. He was just not that big and they could handle him.

But he did not believe it. Because Mat saw the possibility of power; it was a gaff that had hooked deep in his side and the wound spilled with the blood of yearning. Suppose it was true; suppose only a three-hundred-man army existed. Suppose. The hope and possibility enflamed him.

And babies, she thought, as the flapple carried her toward the New New York offices of Lies, Incorporated, are discovered under cabbages.

Sure, Mat; you keep on believing.
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Re: Lies, Inc., by Philip K. Dick

Postby admin » Tue Sep 01, 2020 6:26 am

Chapter Eight

To the pleasant, rather overextensively bosomed young female receptionist, Rachmael ben Applebaum said, "My name is Stuart Trent. My wife was teleported earlier today, so I'm anxious to slip in under the wire; I know you're about to close your office."

He had planned this for some time. It was his top card, to be played -- hopefully to the surprise of everyone.

The girl glanced searchingly at him. "You're certain, Mr. Trent, that you desire to --"

"My wife," he repeatedly harshly. "She's already over. She left at five." He added, "I have two suitcases. A leady is bringing them." And into the office of Trails of Hoffman, strode the robot-like machine, bearing the two imitation cowhide bulging suitcases.

The consummately nubile receptionist said, "Please fill out these forms, Mr. Trent. I'll make certain that the Telpor techs are ready to receive one more, because as you say, we are about to close."

The entrance gate, in fact, was now locked.

He made out the forms, feeling only a coldness, an empty mindless -- fear. Lord, it really was fear! He actually, at this late moment, when Freya had already been teleported across to Whale's Mouth, felt his autonomic nervous system secrete its hormones of cringing panic; he wanted to back out.

But this was too well-planned. If they were expecting anyone they would be expecting Matson Glazer-Holliday. No one would expect him.

However, despite his panic, he managed to fill out the forms. Because, higher than the autonomic nervous system, was the frontal lobe's awareness that the moment Freya crossed over, it was decided.

In fact, that was the reason for sending her in advance; he knew his own irresolution. Freya had been made the cat's paw of that irresolution; by having her go he forced himself to complete this.

And, he thought, for the best; we must find some way, in life, to overcome ourselves ... we're our own worst enemies.

"Your shots, Mr. Trent." A THL nurse stood by with needles. "Will you please remove your outer garments?" The nurse pointed to a small and hygienic back chamber; he entered, began removing his clothing.

Presently he had received his shots; his arms ached and he wondered dully if they had done it already. Had this been something fatal, administered over the cover of prophylactic shots?

Two elderly German technicians, both as bald as doorknobs, all at once manifested themselves, wearing the goggles of Telpor operators. The field itself, if viewed too long, caused permanent destruction of the retina. "Mein Herr," the first technician said briskly, "kindly, sir, remove the balance of your garb. Sie sollen gatzz unbedeckt sein. We wish not material, no sort, to impede the Starke of the field. All objects, including your parcels, will follow you within minutes."

Rachmael finished undressing, and terrified, followed them down a tiled hall to what suddenly loomed as a mammoth chamber, almost barren. He saw in it no elaborate Dr. Frankenstein hodge- podge of retorts and bubbling cauldrons, only the twin perpendicular poles, like the concrete walls of a good tennis court, covered with circular cup-like terminals. Between the poles he would stand, a mute ox, and the surge of the field would pass from pole to pole, engulfing him. And he would either die -- if they knew who he was -- or if not, then he would be gone from Terra for the balance of his life, or at least thirty-six years.

Lord God, he thought. I hope Freya got by all right. Anyhow the short encoded message signifying everything all right had arrived from her. He knew that.

Abba had told him. Abba reborn -- in Rachmael's own mind. Abba immortal and discorporate, to bond with one of the believers.

"Mr. Trent," a technician said (he could not discern which one it was; they looked the same), fitting his goggles in place. "Bitte; please look down so that your eyes do not perceive the field- emanations; Sie versteh'n the retinal hazard."

"Okay," he said, nodding, and looked down, then, in almost a gesture of modesty. He raised one arm, touched his bare chest with one hand, as if concealing himself -- protecting himself against what suddenly became a stunning, blinding ram-head which butted him simultaneously from both sides.

The forces, absolutely equal, made him freeze, as if poured as a polyester as he stood. Anyone watching would have thought him free to move. But he was ensnared for good by the surge passing from anode to cathode, with himself as -- what, the ion ring? His body attracted the field; he felt it infuse him as a dissolving agent.

And then the left surge stopped. He staggered, glanced up involuntarily. And thought, Abba, are you with me?

No answer from within his mind.

The two bald, goggled Reich technicians were gone. He was in a far smaller chamber, and one elderly man sat at a desk, an old-fashioned desk, carefully logging from numbered tags a huge mound of suitcases and wrapped, tied parcels.

"Your clothing," the official said, "lies in a metal basket to your right marked 121628. And if you're faint, there's a cot; you may lie down."

"I'm -- all right," Rachmael said. Abba! he thought in panic. Did they destroy you within me? Are you gone? Do I have to face this alone, now?

Silence within him.

He made his way unsteadily to his clothing. Hands shaking, he dressed, then stood uncertainly.

"Here are your two items of luggage," the bureaucrat at the desk said, without looking up. He seemed like some ancient nodding sheep, drowsing away at his chores. "Numbers 39485 and 39486. Please arrange to remove them from the premises." He then brought out an old golden pocket watch on a fob, flipped it open to read the dial. "No, excuse me. No one will be following you from the New New York nexus. Take your time."

"Thanks. " Rachmael picked up the heavy suitcases, walked toward a large double door. "Is this," he asked, "the right direction?"

"That will indeed take you out on Laughing Willow Tree Avenue," the clerk informed him.

"I want a hotel or a motel."

"Any surface vehicle can transport you." The clerk returned to his work, broke contact. He had no more info to offer.

Pushing the door open, Rachmael stepped out onto the sidewalk. And stopped dead in his tracks.

***

Acrid smoke billowed about him, stinging his nostrils. He bent in a reflexive half-crouch. Then, here now on the far side, on the ninth planet of Fomalhaut, Rachmael ben Applebaum fingered relentlessly the meager flat tin, the container in his trouser pocket: this was the wep-x that the Advance-weapons Archives had at last provided him -- radically disguised as well as radically beyond anything in the standard arsenals of the UN. The camouflage of the hyper-miniaturized time-warping construct had seemed to him, when he first viewed it, the sine quo non of misleading packages: the weapon appeared to be a bootlegged tin of prophoz from Yucatan, fully automated, helium-battery powered, guaranteed for five-year operation and gynetropic.

Briefly, he huddled in the safe shadow of a wall, the weapon out, now, visible in the palm of his hand. Even the gaily painted half witted slogan of the Central American factory had been duplicated, and, at a time like this, on a stranger-planet in another system, he read the quixotic words familiar to him since adolescence:

MORE FUN
AFTER DONE!

And with this, he thought, I'm going to get Freya back. In its witless, gaily colored way the camouflage-package of the weapon seemed more of an insult, a quasi-obscene commentary on the situation confronting him. However, he returned it to his pocket; sliding upward to an erect position he once again viewed the nebulous rolls of particles in suspension, the cloud masses derived from the molecularization of the nearby buildings. He saw, too, dim human shapes that sped at ludicrously accelerated speed, each in its own direction, as if some central control usually in operation had, at this dangerous time, where so much was at stake, clicked off, leaving each of the sprinting figures on its own.

And yet they all seemed to understand what they were doing; their activities were not undirected, not random. To his right a cluster had gathered to assemble a complex weapon; with industrious, ant-busy fingers they snapped one component after another into position in expert progression: they knew their business, and he wondered -- he could not, in the erratic light, make out their uniforms -- which faction they represented. Probably, he decided, better to conclude they belonged to THL; safer, he realized. And he would have to assume this, until otherwise proved, about each and every person whom he encountered here on this side, this Newcolonizedland which was no --

Directly before him a soldier appeared whose eyes glowed huge and unwinking, owl eyes which fixed on him and would never, now that they had perceived him, again look away.

Diving to the ground, Rachmael fumbled numbly for the prophoz tin; it had happened too soon, too unexpectedly -- he was not ready and the weapon which he had brought here to use for Freya was not even positioned to protect him, let alone her. His hand touched it, buried deep within his pocket ... and at that moment a muffled pop burst near his face as, above him, the THL soldier twisted to re-aim and fire once more.

A high-velocity dart waggled its directing fins as it spun at him. It was, he realized as he watched it descend toward him, an LSD- tipped dart; the hallucinogenic ergotic alkaloid derivative constituted -- had constituted ever since its introduction into the field of weapons of war -- a unique instrument for reducing the enemy to a condition in which he was absolutely neutralized: instead of destroying him, the LSD, injected intravenously by the dart, destroyed his world.

Sharp, quick pain snuffed at his arm; the dart had plunged into him, had embedded itself successfully.

The LSD had entered his circulatory system. He had, now, only a few minutes ahead; that realization alone generally took the target out: to know, under conditions such as these, that very shortly the entire self-system, the structure of world-character which had developed stage by stage over the years from birth on --

His thoughts ceased. The LSD had reached the cortical tissue of his frontal lobe and all abstract mentational processes had instantly shut down. He still saw the world, saw the THL soldier leisurely reloading the dart-releasing gun, the rolling clouds of A-warhead-contaminated ash, the half-ruined buildings, the ant-like scampering figures here and there. He could recognize them and understand what each was. But beyond that -- nothing.

Color, Rachmael thought as he saw the transformation in the THL soldier's face; the color- transformation -- it had already set in. Swiftly, the drug moved him to ruin; in his bloodstream it rushed him toward the end of his existence in the shared world. For me, he knew, this -- but he could not even think it, carry out the steps of a logical thought. Awareness was there, knowledge of what was happening. He watched the lips of the THL soldier become bright, phosphorescent, shiny-ink pure luminosity; the lips, forming a perfect bow, then floated off, detached themselves from the soldier's face, leaving behind the ordinary colorless lips: one hemisphere of Rachmael's brain had received the LSD and succumbed, undoubtedly the right, he being right-handed, the hemisphere on that side therefore being the undifferentiated of the two. The left still held out, still saw the mundane world; even now, deprived of abstract reasoning, no longer capable of adult cerebral processes, the higher centers of the left hemisphere of his brain fought to stabilize the picture of the world as he knew it, fought knowing that within seconds, now, that picture would give way, would collapse and let in, like some endless flood, the entirety of raw percept-data, uncontrolled, unstructured, without meaning or order, each datum unrelated to the others: the portion of his brain which imposed the framework of space and time onto incoming data would not be able to carry out its task. And, with the ringing in of that instant, he would plunge back decades. Back to the initial interval after birth-entry into a world utterly unfamiliar, utterly incomprehensible.

He had lived through that once. Each human, at the moment of birth, had. But now. Now he possessed memory, retention of the disappearing usual world. That and language; that and realization of what ordinary and expected experience would presently become.

And how long, subjectively, it would last. How long it would be before he regained -- if he did regain -- his customary world once more.

The THL soldier, his weapon reloaded, started away, already searching for the next target; he did not bother to notice Rachmael, now. He, too, knew what lay ahead. Rachmael could be forgotten; even now he no longer lived in the shared world, no longer existed.

Without thought, prompted by a brain-area silent but still functioning, Rachmael raced after the THL soldier; with no lapse of time, without a sense of having crossed intervening space, he clutched the soldier, dragged him aside and took possession of the long-bladed throwing knife holstered at the man's waist. Choking him with his left arm Rachmael yanked the blade backward in an arc that reversed itself: the blade returned, and the THL soldier followed its reverse trajectory as it approached his stomach. He struggled; in Rachmael's grip he strained, and his eyes dulled as if baked, dried out, without fluid and old, mummified by a thousand years. And, in Rachmael's hand, the knife became something he did not know.

The thing which he held ceased its horizontal motion. It moved, but in another direction which was neither up nor forward; he had never seen this direction and its weirdness appalled him, because the thing in his hand moved without moving; it progressed and yet stayed where it was, so that he did not have to change the direction of his eye focus. His gaze fixed, he watched the shining, brittle, transparent thing elaborate itself, produce from its central column slender branches like glass stalagmites; in a series of lurches, of jumps forward into the nonspacial dimension of altered movement, the tree-thing developed until its complexity terrified him. It was all over the world, now; from his hand it had jerked out into stage after stage so that, he knew, it was everywhere, and nothing else had room to exist: the tree-thing had taken up all space and crowded reality-as-it- usually-was out.

And still it grew.

He decided, then, to look away from it. In his mind he recalled in distinctness, with labored, painstaking concentration, the THL soldier; he noted the direction, in relation to the enormous, world filling tree-thing, along which the soldier could be found. He made his head turn, his eyes focus that way.

A small circle, like some far end of a declining tube, opened up and unveiled for him a minute portion of reality-as-it-usually-was. Within that circle he made out the face of the THL soldier, unchanged; it stabilized in normal luminosity and shape. And, meanwhile, throughout the endless area which was not the distant circle of the world, a multitude of noiseless, sparklike configurations flicked on and achieved form with such magnitude of brightness that even without focusing on them he experienced pain; they appalled the optic portion of his percept-system, and yet did not halt the transfer of their impressions: despite the unendurable brilliance the configurations continued to flow into him, and he knew that they had come to stay. Never, he knew. They would never leave.

For an almost unmeasurable fraction of an instant he ventured to look directly at one unusually compelling light-configuration; its furious activity attracted his gaze.

Below it, the circle which contained unaltered reality changed. At once he forced his attention back. Too late?

The THL soldier's face. Swollen eyes. Pale. The man returned Rachmael's gaze; their eyes met and each perceived the other, and then the physiognomic properties of the reality-landscape swiftly underwent a crumbling new alteration; the eyes became rocks that immediately were engulfed by a freezing wind which obliterated them with dense snow. The jaw, the cheeks and mouth and chin, even the nose disappeared as they became lesser mountains of barren, uninhabited rock that also succumbed to the snow. Only the tip of the nose projected, a peak presiding alone above a ten-thousand-mile waste that supported no life nor anything that moved. Rachmael watched, and years lapsed by, recorded by the internal clock of his perceiving mind; he knew the duration and knew the meaning of the landscape's perpetual refusal to live: he knew where he was and he recognized this which he saw. It was beyond his ability not to recognize it.

This was the hellscape.

No, he thought. It has to stop. Because now he saw tiny distant figures sprouting everywhere to populate the hellscape, and as they formed they continued the dancing, frenzied activities familiar to them -- and familiar to him, as if he were back once more and again witnessing this, and knowing with certitude that he would, within the next thousand years, be forced to scrutinize.

His fear, concentrated and directed in this one field, superimposed like a dissolving beam over the hellscape, rolled back the snow, made its thousand-year-old depth fade into thinness; the rocks once more appeared and then retreated backward into time to resume their function as features of a face. The hellscape reverted with awful obedience to what it had been, as if almost no force were needed to push it out of existence, away from the stronghold of reality in which it had a moment before entrenched itself. And this appalled him the most of all: this told him dreadful news. The merest presence of life, even the smallest possible quantity of volition, desire and intent was enough to reverse the process by which the eternal landscape of hell made itself known. And this meant that not long ago, when the hellscape first formed, he had been without any life, any at all. Not an enormous force from outside breaking in -- that was not what confronted him. There was no adversary. These, the terrible transmutations of world in every direction, had spontaneously entered as his own life had dwindled, faded, and at last -- for a moment, anyhow -- entirely shut down.

He had died.

But he was now again alive.

Where, then? Not where he had lived before.

The THL soldier's face, customary and natural, hung within the diminished, constricted aperture through which reality showed, a face relieved of the intrusion of hell-attributes. As long, Rachmael realized, as I keep that face in front of me, I'm okay. And if he talks. That would do it; that would get me through.

But he won't, he realized. He tried to kill me; he wants me dead. He did kill me. This man -- this sole link with outside -- is my murderer.

He stared at the face; in return, the eyes glared unwinkingly back, the owl eyes of cruelty that loathed him and wanted him dead, wanted him to suffer. And the THL soldier said nothing; Rachmael waited and heard no sound, even after years -- a decade had passed and another began and still no word was spoken. Or if it was he failed to hear it.

"Goddamn you," Rachmael said. His own voice did not reach him; he felt his throat tremble with the sound, but his ears detected no change, nothing. "Do something," Rachmael said. "Please."

The soldier smiled.

"Then you can hear me," Rachmael said. "Even after this long." It was amazing that this man still lived, after so many centuries. But he did not bother to reflect on that; all that mattered was the uninterrupted realness of the face before him. "Say something," Rachmael said, " or I'll break you." His words weren't right, he realized. Meaningful, familiar, but somehow not correct; he was bewildered. "Like a rod of iron," he said. "I will dash you in pieces. Like a potter's vessel. For I am like a refiner's fire." Horrified, he tried to comprehend the warpage of his language; where had the conventional, everyday --

Within him all his language disappeared; all words were gone. Some scanning agency of his brain, some organic searching device, swept out mile after mile of emptiness, finding no stored words, nothing to draw on: he felt it sweeping wider and wider, extending its oscillations into every dark reach, overlooking nothing; it wanted, would accept, anything, now; it was desperate. And still, year after year, the empty bins where words, many of them, had once been but were not now.

He said, then, "Tremens factus sum ego et timeo." Because out of the periphery of his vision he had obtained a clear glimpse of the progress of the brilliant light-based drama unfolding silently. "Libere me," he said, and repeated it, once, twice, then on and on, without cease. "Libere me Domini," he said, and for a hundred years he listened, watched the events projected soundlessly before him, witnessed forever.

"Let go of me, you bastard," the THL soldier said. His hands grasped Rachmael's neck and the pain was vast beyond compare; Rachmael let go and the face mocked him in leering hate. "And enjoy your expanded consciousness," the soldier said with malice so overwhelming that Rachmael felt throughout him unendurable somatic torment which came and then stayed.

"Mors scribitum," Rachmael said, appealing to the THL soldier. He repeated it, but there was no response. "Misere me," he said, then; he had nothing else available, nothing more to draw on. "Dies Irae," he said, trying to explain what was happening inside him. "Dies Illa." He waited hopefully; he waited years, but no help, no sound, came. I won't make it, he realized then. Time has stopped. There is no answer.

"Lots of luck," the face said, then. And began to recede, to move away. The soldier was leaving.

Rachmael hit him. Crushed the mouth. Teeth flew; bits of broken white escaped and vanished, and blood that shone with dazzling flame, like a flow of new, clear fire, exposed itself and filled his vision; the power of illumination emanating from the blood overwhelmed everything, and he saw only that -- its intensity stifled everything else and for the first time since the dart had approached him he felt wonder, not fear; this was good. This captivated and pleased him, and he contemplated it with joy.

In five centuries the blood by degrees faded. The flame lessened. Once more, drifting dimly behind the breathing color, the lusterless face of the THL soldier could be made out, uninteresting and unimportant, of no value because it had no light. It was a dreary and tiresome specter, long known, infinitely boring; he experienced excruciating disappointment to see the fire decrease and the THL soldier's features re-gather. How long, he asked himself, do I have to keep seeing this same unlit scene?

The face, however, was not the same. He had broken it. Split it open with his fist. Opened it up, let out the precious, blinding blood; the face, a ruined husk, gaped disrobed of its shell: he saw, not the mere outside, but into its genuine works.

Another face, concealed before, wriggled and squeezed out, as if wishing to escape. As if, Rachmael thought, it knows I can see it, and it can't stand that. That's the one thing it can't endure.

The inner face, emerging from the cracked-open gray-chitin mask, now tried to fold up within itself, attempted vigorously to wrap itself in its own semi-fluid tissue. A wet, limp face, made of the sea, dripping, and at the same time stinking; he smelled its salty, acrid scent and felt sick.

The oceanic face possessed a single multi-lensed eye. Beneath the beak. And when it opened its toothless mouth the wideness of the cavity divided the face entirely; the mouth separated the face into two unconnected equal parts.

"Esse homo bonus est, " Rachmael said, and wondered numbly why such a simple statement as To be a man is good sounded so peculiar to his ears. "Non homo," he said, then, to the squashed, divided sea-face, "video. Atque malus et timeo; libere me Domini." What he saw before him was not a man, not a man's face, and it was bad and it frightened him. And he could do nothing about it; he could not stop seeing it, he could not leave, and it did not go away, it would never go because there was no time at work, no possibility of change; what confronted him would peer at him forever, and his knowledge of it would dwell inside him for an equal duration, passed on by him to no one because there was no one. "Exe," he said, helplessly; he spoke pointlessly, knowing it would do no good to tell the creature to go away, since there was no way by which it could; it was as trapped as he, and probably just as terrified. "Amicus sum," he said to it, and wondered if it understood him. "Sumus amici" he said, then, even though he knew it was not so; he and the thing of water were not friends, did not even know what the other consisted of or where it had come from, and he himself, in the dull, sinking dark red expiration of decaying time, time at its wasted and entropic final phase, would stay grafted in this spot confronted by this unfamiliar thing for a million years ticked away by the ponderous moribund clock within him. And never in all that great interval would he obtain any news as to what this ugly deformed creature signified.

It means something, he realized. This thing's ocean-face; its presence at the far end of the tube, at the outer opening where I'm not, that isn't a hallucinated event inside me -- it's here for a reason; it drips and wads itself into glued-together folds and stares without winking at me and wants to keep me dead, keep me from ever getting back. Not my friend, he thought. Or rather knew. It was not an idea; it was a concrete piece of observed reality outside: when he looked at the thing he saw this fact as part of it: the non-friend attribute came along inseparably. The thing oozed; it oozed and hated together. Hated him, and with absolute contempt; in its oversplattering liquid eye he perceived its derision: not only did it not like him, it did not respect him. He wondered why.

My god, he realized. It must know something about me. Probably it has seen me before, even though I haven't seen it. He knew, then, what this meant.

It had been here all this time.
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Re: Lies, Inc., by Philip K. Dick

Postby admin » Tue Sep 01, 2020 6:26 am

Chapter Nine

In a pleasant living room he sat, and across from him a Stout man with good-intentioned features gnawed on a toothpick, eyed him with a compound of tolerant amusement and sympathy, then turned to grunt at a thin-faced middle-aged dapper man wearing gold-rimmed glasses who also watched Rachmael, but with a severe, virtually reproving frown.

"Finally coming back for a couple of breaths of real air," the stout man observed, nodding toward Rachmael.

"There's no such thing as real air," a woman seated across from the two of them said; dark- skinned, tall, with acutely penetrating chitin-black eyes, she scrutinized Rachmael and he imagined for an instant that he was seeing Freya. "All air is real; it's either that or no air at all. Unless you think there's something called false air."

The stout man chuckled, nudged his companion. "Listen to that; you hear that? I guess everything you see is real, then; there's no fake nothing." To Rachmael he said, "Everything including dying and being in --"

"Can't you discuss all those sorts of things later?" a blond curly-haired youth at the far end of the room said irritably. "This is a most particularly important summation he's making, and after all, he is our elected president; we owe him our undivided attention, every one of us." His gaze traveled around the tastefully furnished room, taking all of the people in, including Rachmael. Eleven persons in addition to himself, he realized; eleven and me, but what is me? Am I what? His mind, clouded, dwelt in some strange overcast gloom, an obscuring mist that impeded his ability to think or to understand; he could see the people, the room also. But he could not identify this place, these people, and he wondered if the breach with that which had been familiar was so complete as to include himself; had his own physical identity, his customary self, been eradicated too, and some new gathering of matter set in its place? He examined his hands, then. Just hands; he could learn nothing from them, only that he did have hands and that he could see them -- he could see everything, with no difficulty. Colors did not rise out of the walls, drapes, prints, the dresses of the seated, casual women; nothing distorted and magnified floated as a median world between this clearly tangible environment and his own lifelong established percept-system.

Beside him suddenly an attractive tall girl bent and said close to his ear, "What about a cup of syn- cof? You should drink something hot, I'll fix it for you." She added, "Actually it's imitation syn-cof, but I know you know we don't have the genuine product here, except in April."

An authoritative-looking middle-aged man, bony, hard-eyed with an intensity that implied a ceaseless judging of everyone and everything, said, "This is worse than 'real air.' Now we're talking about genuine synthetic coffee. I wonder what a syn-cof plant would look like growing in a field. Yes, that's the crop Whale's Mouth ought to invest in; we'd be rich in a week." To the woman beside him, a white-oak blonde, he said, "After all, Gretch, it's a cold hard fact that every goddamn syn-cof plant or shrub or however the dratted stuff grows back on Terra got -- how's it go? Sing it for me, Gretch." He jerked his head toward Rachmael. "Him, too; he's never heard your quaint attempts to blat out authentic Terran folk songs."

The white-oak blonde, in a listless, bored voice, murmured half to herself, half to Rachmael, whom she was now eyeing, "'The little boy that held the bowl/Was washed away in the flood.'" She continued to contemplate Rachmael, now with an expression which he could not read. "Flood," she repeated, then, her light blue eyes watchful, alert for his reaction. "See anything resembling --"

"Shut up and listen," the curly-haired youth said loudly. "Nobody expects you to grovel, but at least show the proper respect; this man --" He indicated the TV screen, on which Omar Jones, in the fashion long-familiar to Rachmael, boomed cheerily away; the President of Newcolonizedland at this moment was dilating on the rapture of one's first experience at seeing a high-grade rexeroid ingot slide from the backyard atomic furnace, which, for a nominal sum, could be included in the purchase of a home at the colony -- and at virtually no money down. The usual pitch, Rachmael thought caustically; Terra and its inhabitants had listened to this, watched this dogged PR tirade in all its many variants, its multiple adaptations to suit every occasion. "This man," the curly-haired youth finished, "is speaking for us; it's everyone here in this room up there on that screen, and as President Jones himself said in that press release last week, to deny him is for us to repudiate our own selves." He turned to a large-nosed dour individual hunched over beside him, a mildly ugly unmasculine personage who merely grimaced and continued his state of absorption in Omar Jones' monolog.

The familiar tirade -- but to these people here?

And -- Freya. Where was she? Here, too ... whe:rever here was?

Not now, he realized with utter hopelessness. I won't find her now.

Appealing to everyone in the room the curly-haired youth said, "I don't intend to be a weevil for the whole damn balance of my life. That's one thing I can tell you." In abrupt restless anger, a spasm of anger that convulsed his features, he strode toward the large image on the TV screen.

Rachmael said thickly, "Omar Jones. Where is he speaking from?" This could not be Whale's Mouth. This speech, these people listening -- all of this, everything he saw and heard, ran contrary to reason, was in fact just plain impossible. At least was if Omar Jones consisted of a manufactured fake. And he was; there lay the entire point.

If this were Whale's Mouth, these people had to know that as well as he did. But -- possibly the THL soldier, after shooting him with the LSD-tipped dart, had carted him to a Telpor station and dumped him back to the Sol System and Earth, the planetary system out of which he -- grasping his time-warping construct cammed as a tin of Yucatan helium-powered bootlegged prophoz -- had so recently emerged. And Freya. Back on Earth? Or dead at Whale's Mouth, dead here, if this was actually the colony ... but it was not. Because this and only this explained the credulous participation by the people in this room in the hypnotic, droning oration of the man on the TV screen. They simply did not know. So he was not on the ninth planet of the Fomalhaut system any longer; no doubt of it at all. The invasion by the two thousand seasoned field reps from Lies, Incorporated had failed; even with UN assistance, with UN control of all Telpor stations, UN troops and advanced weapons -- Rachmael closed his eyes wearily as acceptance of the terrible obvious fact ate out of existence any illusion that he might have held that THL could be overturned, that Sepp von Einem could be neutralized. Theodoric Ferry had handled the situation successfully. Faced with the exposure of the Whale's Mouth hoax, Ferry had reacted swiftly and expertly and now it had all been decided; for one single, limited episode the curtain had been lifted, the people of Terra had received via the UN's planet-wide communications media a picture of the actuality underlying the elaborate, complicated myth ...

Then he was not on Terra either. Because, even though THL had in the sudden great showdown toppled the combined probe constellated out of the resources of its two immense opponents, the citizens of Terra had already been briefed fully, had already been exposed systematically to the entire truth -- and nothing, short of planet-wide genocide, could reverse that.

It made no sense. Bewildered, he made his way across the room, to the window; if he could see out, find a landscape familiar or at least some aspect which linked to a comprehensible theory -- any comprehensible theory -- that would serve to reorient him in space and time ... he peered out.

Below, streets wide, with trees blossoming in pink-hued splendor; a pattern of arranged public buildings, an aesthetically satisfying syndrome clearly planned by master builders who had had at their disposal a virtually unlimited variety of materials. These streets, these impressive, durable buildings, none of the constructs beyond the window had come into existence haphazardly. And none seemed destined to crumble away.

He could not recall any urban area on Terra so free of harsh functional autofacs; either the industrial combines here were subsurface, or cammed into the overall design somehow, disguised so effectively that they blended even under his own expert scrutiny. And no creditor jet-balloons. Instinctively, he searched for sign of one; flapples cranked back and forth in their eccentric fashion -- this much was familiar. And on the ped-runnels crowds roamed busily, fragmenting at junctions and streaming beyond the range of his vision intent (this, too, was customary; this was eternal and everywhere, a verity of his life on Terra) on their errands. Life and motion: activity of a dedicated, almost obsessive seriousness; the momentum of the city told him that what he saw below had not popped obligingly into existence in response to his scrutiny. Life here had gone on for a long time before him. There was too much of it and far too much kinetic force, to be explained away as a projection of his own psyche; this which he saw was not delusional, an oscillation of the LSD injected into his blood stream by the THL soldier.

Beside him, the white-oak blonde deftly appeared, said softly in his ear, "A cup of hot syn-cof?" She paused. Still numbed, Rachmael failed to answer; he heard her, but his bewilderment stifled even a reflexive response. "It will really make you feel better," the girl continued, after a time. "I know how you feel; I know very well what you're going through because I remember going through the same experience myself when I first found myself here. I thought I had gone out of my mind." She patted him, then, on the arm. "Come on. We'll go into the kitchen."

Trustingly, he found himself accepting her small warm hand; she led him silently through the living room of people intent on the image of Omar Jones enlarged to godlike proportions on the TV screen, and presently he and the girl were seated opposite each other at a small brightly decorated plastic-surfaced table. She smiled at him, encouragingly; still unable to speak he found himself hopefully smiling back, an echo resonating in response to her relaxed friendliness. Her life, the proximity of her dynamism, her body warmth, awoke him minutely but nevertheless critically from his shock-induced apathy. Once again, for the first time since the LSD dart had plunged into him, he felt himself gain vigor; he felt alive.

He discovered, all at once, a cup of syn-cof in his hand; he sipped and as he did so he tried, against the weight of the still-formidable apathy that pervaded him, to frame a remark calculated to convey his thanks. It seemed to require a million years and all the energy available, but the task edified him: whatever had happened to him and wherever in the name of god he was, the havoc of the mind-obliterating hallucinogen had by no means truly left his system. It might well be days, even weeks, before he found himself entirely rid of it; to that he was already stoically resigned.

"Thanks," he managed, finally.

The girl said, "What did you experience?"

Haltingly, with painstaking care, he answered, "I -- got an LSD dart in me. Can't tell how long I was under." Thousands of years, he thought. From the days of Rome to present. Evolution through centuries, and each hour a year. But there was no point in communicating that; he would not be telling the girl something new. Undoubtedly, when she had lived on Terra, she had been exposed -- like everyone else at one time or another -- to at least a residual dose of the chemical lingering in one of the major population centers' water supply: the still-lethal legacy inherited from the war of '92, so taken for granted that it had become a part of nature, not desired but silently endured.

"I asked," the girl repeated, with quiet, almost professional persuasiveness, fixing the focus of his attention on her and what she was asking, "what you experienced. What did you see? Better to tell someone now, before it gets dim; later it's very difficult to recall."

"The garrison state," he said hoarsely. "Barracks. I was there. Not long; they got to me fairly fast. But I did see it."

"Anything else?" The girl did not seem perturbed. But she listened tensely, obviously determined to miss nothing. "What about the soldier who fired the dart at you? Was there anything about him? Anything odd? Weird or unexplainable?"

He hesitated. "Christ," he said, "the hallucinations; you know lysergic acid -- you're familiar with what it does. My god -- I was inundated by every kind of perception. You want to hear about the Day of Judgment again, in addition to having gone through it yourself? Or the --"

"The soldier," the white-oak-haired girl said patiently.

With a ragged, sharp-pained exhalation, Rachmael said, "Okay. I hallucinated a cyclops, of the cephalopodan variety." For an interval he became silent; the effort of putting his recollection into words exhausted his precariously limited strength. "Is that enough?" he said, then, feeling anger.

"Aquatic?" Her luminous, intelligent eyes bored steadily at him; she did not let him evade her. "Requiring, or evidently requiring --"

"A saline envelope. I could see --" He made himself breathe with regularity, halting his sentence midway. "Signs of dehydration, cracking, of the dermatoid folds. From the effluvium I'd assumed a rapid evaporation of epithelial moisture. Probably indicates a homeostatic breakdown." He looked away, at that point, no longer able to meet her steady, critical gaze; the strain was too much for his vitiated powers, his ability to collect and maintain his attention. Five years old, he said to himself. The abreaction of the drug period; regression to the space-time axis of early childhood, along with the limited range of consciousness, the minute faculties of a preschool-age kid, and this is the topic that has to be dealt with; this is just too much. And it would be, he thought, even if I could pull out and function as an adult again, with an adult's ability to reason. He rubbed his forehead, feeling the ache, the constriction; like a deep, chronic sinusitis which had flared to its most malignant stage. A pain-threshold alteration, he speculated dully. Due to the drug. Routine common discomfort, ordinary somatic promptings, everything enlarged to the point of unbearability, and signifying nothing, nothing at all.

Conscious of his grim, introverted silence, the girl said, "Under LSD before, did you ever experience a physiognomic alteration of this sort? Think back to the initial mandatory episode during your grammar-school days. Can you remember back that far?"

"That was under a control," Rachmael said. "One of those Wes-Dem Board of Education psychologists, those middle-age do-gooding ladies in blue smocks who -- what the hell did they use to call themselves? -- something like psycheleticians. Or psychedelictrix; I forget which. I guess both groups got to me at one time or another. And then of course under the McLean Mental Health Act I took it again at sixteen and again at twenty-three." But the control, he thought; that made all the difference. Someone there all the time, trained, able to do and say the right thing: able to maintain contact with the stable objective koinos kosmos so that I never forgot that what I was seeing emanated from my own psyche, type-basics, or as Jung once called them, archetypes rising out of the unconscious and swamping the personal conscious. Out of the collective, suprapersonal inner space, the great sea of non-individual life.

The sea, he thought. And that physiognomic transformation of the THL soldier; my perception of him became transmuted along those lines. So I did see a type-basic, as in the previous times; not the same one, of course, because each episode under the drug is unique.

"What would you say," the girl said, "if I told you that what you saw was not mysticomimetic at all? "

"What I saw," Rachmael said, "could not have been psycheletic; it wasn't an expansion of consciousness or a rise in the sensitivity of my percept-system."

"Why not?" The girl regarded him keenly. Now two others from the living room, having left the TV set with its booming image of never-failing President Omar Jones, appeared, the thin, severe man with gold-rimmed glasses and an elderly woman with collapsed, corrugated flesh which hung in dismal wattles, with obviously dyed black, lusterless hair and far too ornate bracelets on her flabby wrists. Both seemed aware of the direction of conversation which had come before; they listened silently, almost raptly, and now a third person joined them, a dramatically colored, heavy- lidded woman in evidently her early thirties, wearing a blue-cotton Mexican-style shirt tied at the waist and open to expose effectively shaded smooth bare skin; her richly dyed, extremely tight jeans, plus the unbuttoned top of her blouse beneath the Mexican shirt, caused to be manifest a stunning, supple body -- Rachmael found himself fixedly contemplating her, no longer aware of the conversation in progress.

"This is Miss de Rungs," the thin, severe-featured man with the gold-rimmed glasses said, nodding at the impressive, deeply hued woman in the Mexican shirt. "And this is Sheila Quam." He indicated the white-oak-haired girl who had prepared hot syn-cof for Rachmael.

The stout man, still poking at his mouth with his toothpick, appeared at the door of the kitchen, smiled a warped but friendly smile composed of jagged and irregular teeth and said, "I'm Hank Szantho." He held out his hand and Rachmael shook. "We're all weevils," he explained to Rachmael. "Like you. You're a weevil; didn't you know it? What paraworld did you tie into? Not a really bad one; huh? " He eyed Rachmael searchingly, his jaw working, his face coarse with shrewd but in no way malicious interest.

"We're all in the class together," the curly-haired youth said in a bellicose but oddly agitated voice, speaking directly to Rachmael as if challenging him, as if some hidden dispute, beyond Rachmael's perception, somehow had become involved. "We all have the illness; we all have to get well." He physically propelled a slender, short-haired, smartly dressed girl with sharply delineated delicate features; she gazed at Rachmael with a wild, vague anxiety which was almost an appeal -- he did not know in regard to what, since the curly-haired youth -- whose shoulders and musculature Rachmael noticed for the first time, appeared unusually escalated in use-value -- had released her. "Right, Gretch?" the youth demanded.

To Rachmael, in a low but entirely controlled voice, the girl said, "I'm Gretchen Borbman." She held out her hand; reflexively, he shook, and found her skin smooth and lightly cool. "Welcome to our little revolutionary organization, Mr. --" She paused politely.

He gave his name.

"Arab-Israeli?" Gretchen Borbman said. "From the Federation of Semitic Peoples? Or from that drayage firm that used to be so big and now's disappeared ... Applebaum Enterprise, wasn't it called? Any relation? What ever happened to it and to that lovely new liner, that Omphalos ... wasn't that your flagship?"

It was beyond belief that she did not know; the news media had made a cause celebre of such magnitude out of the Omphalos' flight to the Fomalhaut system that no one could fail to know, at least no one on Terra. But this was not Terra; already, the agreeable, normal milieu of humans in proximity to him, here, had washed into paleness the grotesque apparition of gummy seaweed slime that, caked to the steaming, drying cyclops-face, had stunk so acridly, rinsed in foulness: the degeneration into hydrokinetically maintained organic tissue of what had once been -- or convincingly appeared to be -- a human being, even if it was a killer-commando mercenary of Trails of Hoffman Limited.

"Yes," he said cautiously, and, deep within the appropriate section of his mentational apparatus, a conduit carried a warning signal; some sensitized mechanism woke and became thoroughly alert. And did not cease its picket-duty; it would remain in go-position until otherwise instructed; his control over it was virtually nil. "That was -- still is -- the sole valid asset of our firm. With the Omphalos we're something; without her we're not." With utmost caution he surveyed the group of people, the weevils, as they called themselves, to see if any appeared aware of the achingly recent abortive flight to Fomalhaut. None of them showed any indication; none of them spoke up or even registered a meaningful facial expression. Their joint lack of response, second by second, plunged him into alarmed, accelerated confusion. And he experienced, weirdly and as frighteningly as each time before, an unannounced oscillation of the drug-state; he felt his time-sense fluctuate radically, and everything, all objects and persons in the room, became changed. The LSD, at least briefly, had returned; this did not surprise him, but it was the wrong time; this, of all possibilities, he could do without at this palpably crucial moment.

"We get damn near no news from Terra," the stout man with the toothpick, Hank Szantho, said to him ... the voice sounded close by, but the man's shape; it had warped into a lurid color collage, the textures of his flesh and clothes exaggerated, now rapidly becoming grotesque as the light factor doubled and then doubled again until Rachmael looked into a formless blur of heated metal, red so molten and ominous that he moved his chair back, away from the sliding slag-like sheet which had replaced the man; behind it Hank Szantho bobbed, the balloon-head capriciously located, as if by whim, in the vicinity of the collage of torch-shaped fire which had a moment ago been the body and clothing and flesh of the man.

And yet the man's face, diminished in vigor and solidity as it now was, had undergone no physiognomic disfiguration; it remained the balanced countenance of a somewhat crude but amiable, tolerant, heavy-set human.

Astutely, the white-oak-haired girl Sheila Quam said to him, "I see apprehension in your eyes, Mr. ben Applebaum. Is it the hallucinogen?" To the others she said, "I think it's rephasing within his brain-metabolism once more; obviously it hasn't as yet been excreted. Give it time. Drink your cup of syn-cof." Sympathetically, she held it up, between his line of vision and Hank Szantho's nimbus of radiant color; he managed to fix his attention, make out the cup, accept it and sip. "Just wait; it'll go away. It always does, and we're very familiar with the illness, both subjectively in ourselves and objectively in each other. We help each other. " She moved her chair closer, to sit beside him; even in his condition he made note of that, and in addition the fact that this superficially slight maneuver effectively placed her between him and the dramatic, dark-complexioned woman, Miss de Rungs, and the willowy, attractive Gretchen Borbman with her springy, near-bobbed chic hair. At this loss he felt sad; a dismal awareness of his powerlessness burgeoned within him, realization that, in the drug-state, he could not fashion in any manner whatsoever a change in the flow of sense-data flowing in on him; the authority of the data, their absoluteness and degree, again reduced him to a passive device which merely registered the stimuli without responding.

Sheila Quam patted, then took gentle hold of his right hand.

"The illness," Gretchen Borbman said, "is called the Telpor Syndrome. Disjunction of the percept- system and substitution of a delusional world. It manifests itself -- when it does at all -- shortly after teleportation. No one knows why. Only a few get it, a very few. Ourselves, at this present time. We get cured one by one, get released ... but there always are new ones, such as yourself, showing up. Don't be worried, Mr. ben Applebaum; it is generally reversible. Time, rest, and of course therapy."

"Sorcerer's apprentice therapy," Hank Szantho said, from some vector of space not within Rachmael's range of sight. "S.A.T., they call it. The cephalic wash head-benders; they're in and out of here, even Dr. Lupov -- the big man from Bergholzlei in Switzerland. God, I hate those fnidgwizers; poking and messing around like we're a bunch of animals."

"'Paraworld,'" Rachmael said, after what seemed to him an almost unendurably protracted interval, due to the drug. "What is that?"

"That's what a weevil sees," the older woman with the dough-like folded face-rolls said in a cross, nagging, fretful voice, as if discussing the subject made her suffer the reoccurrence of some hated osteogenetic twinge. "Some are just dreadful; it's a terrible, terrible crime that they're allowed to get away with it, programming us with that as we're on our way over here. And of course, we are assured by those Telpor technicians that nothing, absolutely nothing of this sort could possibly happen." Her voice, shrill and accusing, tormented Rachmael's brain, amplified by the drug; the auditory pain became a fire-sheet, white, brittle, cutting, whirling like a circular saw and he put his hands up to shield his ears.

"For chrissakes," Hank Szantho said angrily, and his voice, also, reverberated hideously, but at a low pitch, like the shifting of the earth below during a major H-head excavation detonation catastrophically close. "Don't blame the Telpor people; blame the fruggin' Mazdasts -- it's their fault. Right?" He glowered around at all of them, no longer amiable and easy-going but instead harsh, threatening them with his suspicious, wrathful attention. "Go cut the eye-lens out of a Mazdast. If you can find one. If you can get close enough." His gaze, rotating from person to person, fell on Rachmael, stopped; for an interval he contemplated him, with a mixture of scorn, outrage, and compassion. By degrees his indignation ebbed, then was entirely gone. "It's tough, isn't it, Applebaum? It's no joke. Tell all these people; you saw it, didn't you? I heard you telling Sheila. Yeah." He sighed noisily, the wind escaping from him as if the knot of life which regulated the retention of vital oxygen had all at once unraveled itself out of existence. "Some get a mechanical-construct mysticomimetism; we call that The Clock."

"The Clock," Gretchen Borbman murmured, nodding somberly. "That one really isn't there; I don't believe that ever existed, and anyhow it'd just be like encountering a simulacrum, only hypnagogic in origin. A balanced person ought to recover from that without having to go through the class." She added, obviously to herself, "The goddamn class. The goddamn unending pointless disgusting class; jesus, I hate it. " She glared swiftly, furiously, around the room. "Who's the control, today? You, Sheila? I'll bet it's you." Her tone was withering, and, in Rachmael's auditory percept-system, the ferocity of it created for a moment a visual hellscape, mercifully fitful in stability; it hovered, superimposed across the surface of the plastic kitchen table, involving the syn-cof cups, the shaker of sweetex and small simulated silver pitcher of reconstituted organic butter fat in suspension -- he witnessed impotently the fusion of the harmless panorama of conventional artifacts into a tabular scene of dwarfed obscenity, of shriveled and deranged indecent entanglement among the various innocent things. And then it passed. And he relaxed, his heart under a load of nausea-like difficulty; what he had, in that fragment of time, been forced to observe appalled his biochemical substructure. Even though the drug still clung to his mind and perverted it, his body remained free -- and outraged. Already it had had enough.

"Our control," Hank Szantho said, with sardonic sentimentality, then a wink to Rachmael. "Yes, we have that, too. Let's see, Applebaum; your paraworld, the one the Mazdasts -- if they exist -- allegedly programmed you for -- all this, of course, took place during teleportation while you were demolecularized -- is listed codewise by the authorities here as the Aquatic Horror-shape version. Damn rare. Reserved, I suppose, for people who cut up their maternal grandmothers in a former life and fed them to the family cat." He beamed at Rachmael, showing huge gold-capped teeth, which, in the churning froth of excitation induced by the lysergic acid in his brain metabolism, Rachmael experienced as a display of revolting enormity, a disfigurement that made him clutch his cup of syn-cof and shut his eyes; the gold-capped teeth triggered off spasm after spasm within him, motion sickness to a degree that he had never considered possible: it was recognizable but enlarged to the magnitude of a terminal convulsion. He hung onto the table, hunched over, waited for the waves of hyperperistalsis to abate. No one spoke. In the darkness of his unlit private hellscape he writhed and fought, coped as best he could with random somatic abominations, unable even to begin to speculate on the meaning of what had been said.

"The stuff hitting you bad?" a girl's voice sounded, gently, close to his ear. Sheila Quam, he knew. He nodded.

Her hand, on the upper part of his neck, rubbing lightly with empathic concern, soothed the demented fluctuations within control of his malfunctioning, panic-dominated autonomic nervous system; he underwent a soothing, infinitely longed-for diminution of muscular contraction; her touch had started the process, the prolonged recovery-period of someone making his way out of the drug-state back to normal somatic-sensation and time. He opened his eyes, gratefully exchanged a silent glance with her. She smiled, and the rubbing, regular contact of her hand increased in sureness; seated close to him, the smell of her hair and skin enveloping him, she steadily increased the vital tactile bridge between them alive; she made it more profound, more convincing. And, gradually, the remoteness of the reality around him shifted in degree; once again the people and objects compressed in the small yellow-lit kitchen became solid. He ceased being afraid even as insight into just how fragmenting this new onrush of the drug-oscillation had been reached the again-functioning higher centers of his brain.

"'The Aquatic Horror-shape version,'" he said shakily; he took hold of Sheila Quam's obliging hand, stopped its motion -- it had done its task -- and enfolded it in his own. She did not draw away; the cool, small hand, capable of such restorative powers, such love-inspired healing, was by a frightening irony almost unbelievably fragile. It was vulnerable, he realized, to almost everything; without his immediate protection it seemed totally at the mercy of whatever malign, distorted into ominous and unnatural shape destructive entity that blossomed.

He wondered what, within that category, would manifest itself next. For himself -- and the rest of them.

And -- had this happened to Freya, too? He hoped to god not. But intuitively he knew that it had. And was still confronting her ... perhaps even more so than it did him.
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