Joe reached for the light switch.
A blow, feeble and weightless, cuffed his hand in the darkness; terrified, he withdrew his hand, shocked by the impotence of Al’s punch. It told him everything. He no longer needed to see.
“I’ll go join the others,” he said. “Yes, I understand. Does it feel very bad?”
Silence, and then a listless voice whispered, “No, it doesn’t feel very bad. I just—” The voice faded out. Once more only silence.
“Maybe I’ll see you again sometime,” Joe said. He knew it was the wrong thing to say—it horrified him to hear himself prattle out such an inanity. But it was the best he could do. “Let me put it another way,” he said, but he knew Al could no longer hear him. “I hope you feel better,” he said. “I’ll check back after I tell them about the writing on the wall in there. I’ll tell them not to come in here and look at it because it might—” He tried to think it out, to say it right. “They might bother you,” he finished.
No response.
“Well, so long,” Joe said, and left the darkness of the men’s room. He walked unsteadily down the corridor, back to the conference room; halting a moment he took a deep, irregular breath and then pushed open the conference-room door.
The TV set mounted in the far wall blared out a detergent commercial; on the great color 3-D screen a housewife critically examined a synthetic otter-pelt towel and in a penetrating, shrill voice declared it unfit to occupy a place in her bathroom. The screen then displayed her bathroom—and picked up graffiti on her bathroom wall too. The same familiar scrawl, this time reading:
LEAN OVER THE BOWL
AND THEN TAKE A DIVE.
ALL OF YOU ARE DEAD. I AM ALIVE.
Only one person in the big conference room watched, however. Joe stood alone in an otherwise empty room. The others, the entire group of them, had gone.
He wondered where they were. And if he would live long enough to find them. It did not seem likely.
TEN
* * *
Has perspiration odor taken you out of the swim? Ten-day Ubik deodorant spray or Ubik roll-on ends worry of offending, brings you back where the happening is. Safe when used as directed in a conscientious program of body hygiene.
The television announcer said, “And now back to Jim Hunter and the news.”
On the screen the sunny, hairless face of the newscaster appeared. “Glen Runciter came back today to the place of his birth, but it was not the kind of return which gladdened anyone’s heart. Yesterday tragedy struck at Runciter Associates, probably the best-known of Earth’s many prudence organizations. In a terrorist blast at an undisclosed subsurface installation on Luna, Glen Runciter was mortally wounded and died before his remains could be transferred to cold-pac. Brought to the Beloved Brethren Moratorium in Zürich, every effort was made to revive Runciter to half-life, but in vain. In acknowledgment of defeat these efforts have now ceased, and the body of Glen Runciter has been returned here to Des Moines, where it will lie in state at the Simple Shepherd Mortuary.”
The screen showed an old-fashioned white wooden building, with various persons roaming about outside.
I wonder who authorized the transfer to Des Moines, Joe Chip said to himself.
“It was the sad but inexorably dictated decision by the wife of Glen Runciter,” the newscaster’s voice continued, “which brought about this final chapter which we are now viewing. Mrs. Ella Runciter, herself in cold-pac, whom it had been hoped her husband would join—revived to face this calamity. Mrs. Runciter learned this morning of the fate which had overtaken her husband, and gave the decision to abandon efforts to awaken belated half-life in the man whom she had expected to merge with, a hope disappointed by reality.” A still photo of Ella, taken during her lifetime, appeared briefly on the TV screen. “In solemn ritual,” the newscaster continued, “grieving employees of Runciter Associates assembled in the chapel of the Simple Shepherd Mortuary, preparing themselves as best they could, under the circumstances, to pay last respects.”
The screen now showed the roof field of the mortuary; a parked upended ship opened its hatch and men and women emerged. A microphone, extended by newsmen, halted them.
“Tell me, sir,” a newsmanish voice said, “in addition to working for Glen Runciter, did you and these other employees also know him personally? Know him not as a boss but as a man?”
Blinking like a light-blinded owl, Don Denny said into the extended microphone, “We all knew Glen Runciter as a man. As a good individual and citizen whom we could trust. I know I speak for the others when I say this.”
“Are all of Mr. Runciter’s employees, or perhaps I should say former employees, here, Mr. Denny?”
“Many of us are here,” Don Denny said. “Mr. Len Niggelman, Prudence Society chairman, approached us in New York and informed us that he had heard of Glen Runciter’s death. He informed us that the body of the deceased was being brought here to Des Moines, and he said we ought to come here, and we agreed, so he brought us in his ship. This is his ship.” Denny indicated the ship out of which he and the others had stepped. “We appreciated him notifying us of the change of location from the moratorium in Zürich to the mortuary here. Several of us are not here, however, because they weren’t at the firm’s New York offices; I refer in particular to inertials Al Hammond and Wendy Wright and the firm’s field tester, Mr. Chip. The whereabouts of the three of them is unknown to us, but perhaps along with—”
“Yes,” the news announcer with the microphone said. “Perhaps they will see this telecast, which is being beamed by satellite over all of Earth, and will come here to Des Moines for this tragic occasion, as I am sure—and as you undoubtedly are sure—Mr. Runciter and also Mrs. Runciter would want them to. And now back to Jim Hunter at newsroom central.”
Jim Hunter, reappearing on the screen, said, “Ray Hollis, whose psionically talented personnel are the object of inertial nullification and hence the target of the prudence organizations, said today in a statement released by his office that he regretted the accidental death of Glen Runciter and would if possible attend the funeral services in Des Moines. It may be, however, that Len Niggelman, representing the Prudence Society (as we told you earlier), will ask that he be barred in view of the implication on the part of some prudence-organization spokesmen that Hollis originally reacted to news of Runciter’s death with ill-disguised relief.” Newscaster Hunter paused, picked up a sheet of paper and said, “Turning now to other news—”
With his foot Joe Chip tripped the pedal which controlled the TV set; the screen faded and the sound ebbed into silence.
This doesn’t fit in with the graffiti on the bathroom walls, Joe reflected. Maybe Runciter is dead, after all. The TV people think so. Ray Hollis thinks so. So does Len Niggelman. They all consider him dead, and all we have that says otherwise is the two rhymed couplets, which could have been scrawled by anyone—despite what Al thought.
The TV screen relit. Much to his surprise; he had not repressed the pedal switch. And in addition, it changed channels: Images flitted past, of one thing and then another, until at last the mysterious agency was satisfied. The final image remained.
The face of Glen Runciter.
“Tired of lazy tastebuds?” Runciter said in his familiar gravelly voice. “Has boiled cabbage taken over your world of food? That same old, stale, flat, Monday-morning odor no matter how many dimes you put into your stove? Ubik changes all that; Ubik wakes up food flavor, puts hearty taste back where it belongs, and restores fine food smell.” On the screen a brightly colored spray can replaced Glen Runciter. “One invisible puff-puff whisk of economically priced Ubik banishes compulsive obsessive fears that the entire world is turning into clotted milk, worn-out tape recorders and obsolete iron-cage elevators, plus other, further, as-yet-unglimpsed manifestations of decay. You see, world deterioration of this regressive type is a normal experience of many half-lifers, especially in the early stages when ties to the real reality are still very strong. A s
ort of lingering universe is retained as a residual charge, experienced as a pseudo environment but highly unstable and unsupported by any ergic substructure. This is particularly true when several memory systems are fused, as in the case of you people. But with today’s new, more-powerful-than-ever Ubik, all this is changed!”
Dazed, Joe seated himself, his eyes fixed on the screen; a cartoon fairy zipped airily in spirals, squirting Ubik here and there.
A hard-eyed housewife with big teeth and horse’s chin replaced the cartoon fairy; in a brassy voice she bellowed, “I came over to Ubik after trying weak, out-of-date reality supports. My pots and pans were turning into heaps of rust. The floors of my conapt were sagging. My husband Charley put his foot right through the bedroom door. But now I use economical new powerful today’s Ubik, and with miraculous results. Look at this refrigerator.” On the screen appeared an antique turret-top G.E. refrigerator. “Why, it’s devolved back eighty years.”
“Sixty-two years,” Joe corrected reflexively.
“But now look at it,” the housewife continued, squirting the old turret top with her spray can of Ubik. Sparkles of magic light lit up in a nimbus surrounding the old turret top and, in a flash, a modern six-door pay refrigerator replaced it in splendid glory.
“Yes,” Runciter’s dark voice resumed, “by making use of the most advanced techniques of present-day science, the reversion of matter to earlier forms can be reversed, and at a price any conapt owner can afford. Ubik is sold by leading home-art stores throughout Earth. Do not take internally. Keep away from open flame. Do not deviate from printed procedural approaches as expressed on label. So look for it, Joe. Don’t just sit there; go out and buy a can of Ubik and spray it all around you night and day.”
Standing up, Joe said loudly, “You know I’m here. Does that mean you can hear and see me?”
“Of course, I can’t hear you and see you. This commercial message is on videotape; I recorded it two weeks ago, specifically, twelve days before my death. I knew the bomb blast was coming; I made use of precog talents.”
“Then you are really dead.”
“Of course, I’m dead. Didn’t you watch the telecast from Des Moines just now? I know you did, because my precog saw that too.”
“What about the graffiti on the men’s-room wall?”
Runciter, from the audio system of the TV set, boomed, “Another deterioration phenomenon. Go buy a can of Ubik and it’ll stop happening to you; all those things will cease.”
“Al thinks we’re dead,” Joe said.
“Al is deteriorating.” Runciter laughed, a deep, reechoing pulsation that made the conference room vibrate. “Look, Joe, I recorded this goddam TV commercial to assist you, to guide you—you in particular because we’ve always been friends. And I knew you’d be very confused, which is exactly what you are right now, totally confused. Which isn’t very surprising, considering your usual condition. Anyhow, try to hang on; maybe once you get to Des Moines and see my body lying in state you’ll calm down.”
“What’s this ‘Ubik’?” Joe asked.
“I think, though, it’s too late to help Al.”
Joe said, “What is Ubik made of? How does it work?”
“As a matter of fact, Al probably induced the writing on the men’s-room wall. You wouldn’t have seen it except for him.”
“You really are on videotape, aren’t you?” Joe said. “You can’t hear me. It’s true.”
Runciter said, “And in addition, Al—”
“Rats,” Joe said in weary disgust. It was no use. He gave up.
The horse-jawed housewife returned to the TV screen, winding up the commercial; her voice softer now, she trilled, “If the home-art store that you patronize doesn’t yet carry Ubik, return to your conapt, Mr. Chip, and you’ll find a free sample has arrived by mail, a free introductory sample, Mr. Chip, that will keep you going until you can buy a regular-size can.” She then faded out. The TV set became opaque and silent. The process that had turned it on had turned it back off.
So I’m supposed to blame Al, Joe thought. The idea did not appeal to him; he sensed the peculiarity of the logic, its perhaps deliberate misdirectedness. Al the fall-guy; Al made into the patsy, everything explained in terms of Al. Senseless, he said to himself. And—had Runciter been able to hear him? Had Runciter only pretended to be on videotape? For a time, during the commercial, Runciter had seemed to respond to his questions; only at the end had Runciter’s words become malappropriate. He felt all at once like an ineffectual moth, fluttering at the windowpane of reality, dimly seeing it from outside.
A new thought struck him, an eerie idea. Suppose Runciter had made the videotape recording under the assumption, based on inaccurate precog information, that the bomb blast would kill him and leave the rest of them alive. The tape had been made honestly but mistakenly; Runciter had not died: They had died, as the graffiti on the men’s-room wall had said, and Runciter still lived. Before the bomb blast he had given instructions for the taped commercial to be played at this time, and the network had so done, Runciter having failed to countermand his original order. That would explain the disparity between what Runciter had said on the tape and what he had written on the bathroom walls; it would in fact explain both. Which, as far as he could make out, no other explanation would.
Unless Runciter was playing a sardonic game with them, trifling with them, first leading them in one direction, then the other. An unnatural and gigantic force, haunting their lives. Emanating either within the living world or the half-life world; or, he thought suddenly, perhaps both. In any case, controlling what they experienced, or at least a major part of it. Perhaps not the decay, he decided. Not that. But why not? Maybe, he thought, that, too. But Runciter wouldn’t admit it. Runciter and Ubik. Ubiquity, he realized all at once; that’s the derivation of the made-up word, the name of Runciter’s alleged spray-can product. Which probably did not even exist. It was probably a further hoax, to bewilder them that much more.
And, in addition, if Runciter were alive, then not one but two Runciters existed: the genuine one in the real world who was striving to reach them, and the phantasmagoric Runciter who had become a corpse in this half-life world, the body lying in state in Des Moines, Iowa. And, to carry the logic of this out to its full extent, other persons here, such as Ray Hollis and Len Niggelman, were also phantasmagoria—while their authentic counterparts remained in the world of the living.
Very confusing, Joe Chip said to himself. He did not like it at all. Granted it had a satisfying symmetrical quality, but on the other hand, it struck him as untidy.
I’ll zip over to my conapt, he decided, pick up the free sample of Ubik, then head for Des Moines. After all, that’s what the TV commercial urged me to do. I’ll be safer carrying a can of Ubik with me, as the ad pointed out in its own jingly, clever way.
One has to pay attention to such admonitions, he realized, if one expects to stay alive—or half-alive.
Whichever it is.
The taxi let him off on the roof field of his conapt building; he descended by moving ramp and arrived at his own door. With a coin that someone had given him—Al or Pat, he could not knowingly remember—he opened the door and entered.
The living room smelled faintly of burned grease, an odor he had not come across since childhood. Going into the kitchen he discovered the reason. His stove had reverted. Back to an ancient Buck natural-gas model with clogged burners and encrusted oven door which did not close entirely. He gazed at the old, much-used stove dully—then discovered that the other kitchen appliances had undergone similar metamorphoses. The homeopape machine had vanished entirely. The toaster had dissolved sometime during the day and reformed itself as a rubbishy, quaint, nonautomatic model. Not even pop-up, he discovered as he poked bleakly at it. The refrigerator that greeted him was an enormous belt-driven model, a relic that had floated into being from god knew what distant past; it was even more obsolete than the turret-top G.E. shown in the TV commercial. The coffeep
ot had undergone the least change; as a matter of fact, in one respect it had improved—it lacked the coin slot, operating obviously toll-free. This aspect was true of all the appliances, he realized. All that remained, anyhow. Like the homeopape machine, the garbage-disposal unit had entirely vanished. He tried to remember what other appliances he had owned, but already memory had become vague; he gave up and returned to the living room.
The TV set had receded back a long way; he found himself confronted by a dark, wood-cabinet, Atwater-Kent tuned radio-frequency oldtime AM radio, complete with antenna and ground wires. God in heaven, he said to himself, appalled.
But why hadn’t the TV set reverted instead to formless metals and plastics? Those, after all, were its constituents; it had been constructed out of them, not out of an earlier radio. Perhaps this weirdly verified a discarded ancient philosophy, that of Plato’s ideal objects, the universals which, in each class, were real. The form TV set had been a template imposed as a successor to other templates, like the procession of frames in a movie sequence. Prior forms, he reflected, must carry on an invisible, residual life in every object. The past is latent, is submerged, but still there, capable of rising to the surface once the later imprinting unfortunately—and against ordinary experience—vanished. The man contains—not the boy—but earlier men, he thought. History began a long time ago.
The dehydrated remnants of Wendy. The procession of forms that normally takes place—that procession ceased. And the last form wore off, with nothing subsequent: no newer form, no next stage of what we see as growth, to take its place. This must be what we experience as old age; from this absence comes degeneration and senility. Only in this instance it happened abruptly—in a matter of hours.