Ubik

  Putting his hand on Joe’s shoulder, Al Hammond studied him. “What’s the matter, Joe?”

  “First my cigarette,” Joe said. “Then the two-year-old obsolete phone book in the ship. And now they’re serving me week-old sour cream. I don’t get it, Al.”

  “Drink the coffee black,” Al said. “And get over to the chopper so they can take Runciter to the moratorium. The rest of us will wait in the ship until you come back. And then we’ll head for the nearest Society office and make a full report to them.”

  Joe picked up the coffee cup, and found the coffee cold, inert and ancient; a scummy mold covered the surface. He set the cup back down in revulsion. What’s going on? he thought. What’s happening to me? His revulsion became, all at once, a weird, nebulous panic.

  “Come on, Joe,” Al said, his hand closing firmly around Joe’s shoulder. “Forget the coffee; it isn’t important. What matters is getting Runciter to—”

  “You know who gave me that poscred?” Joe said. “Pat Conley. And right away I did what I always do with money; I frittered it away on nothing. On last year’s cup of coffee.” He got down from the stool, urged off it by Al Hammond’s hand. “How about coming with me to the moratorium? I need back-up help, especially when I go to confer with Ella. What should we do, blame it on Runciter? Say it was his decision for us all to go to Luna? That’s the truth. Or maybe we should tell her something else, tell her his ship crashed or he died of natural causes.”

  “But Runciter will eventually be linked up to her,” Al said. “And he’ll tell her the truth. So you have to tell her the truth.”

  They left the coffee shop and made their way to the chopper belonging to the Beloved Brethren Moratorium. “Maybe I’ll let Runciter tell her,” Joe said as they boarded. “Why not? It was his decision for us to go to Luna; let him tell her himself. And he’s used to talking to her.”

  “Ready, gentlemen?” von Vogelsang inquired, seated at the controls of the chopper. “Shall we wind our doleful steps in the direction of Mr. Runciter’s final home?”

  Joe groaned and stared out through the window of the chopper, fixing his attention on the buildings that made up the installations of Zürich Field.

  “Yeah, take off,” Al said.

  As the chopper left the ground the moratorium owner pressed a button on his control panel. Throughout the cabin of the chopper, from a dozen sources, the sound of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis rolled forth sonorously, the many voices saying, “Agnus dei, qui tollis peccata mundi,” over and over again, accompanied by an electronically augmented symphony orchestra.

  “Did you know that Toscanini used to sing along with the singers when he conducted an opera?” Joe said. “That in his recording of Traviata you can hear him during the aria ‘Sempre Libera’?”

  “I didn’t know that,” Al said. He watched the sleek, sturdy conapts of Zürich move by below, a dignified and stately procession which Joe also found himself watching.

  “Libera me, Domine,” Joe said.

  “What’s that mean?”

  Joe said, “It means, ‘God have mercy on me.’ Don’t you know that? Doesn’t everybody know that?”

  “What made you think of it?” Al said.

  “The music, the goddam music.” To von Vogelsang he said, “Turn the music off. Runciter can’t hear it. I’m the only one who can hear it, and I don’t feel like hearing it.” To Al he said, “You don’t want to hear it, do you?”

  Al said, “Calm down, Joe.”

  “We’re carrying our dead employer to a place called the Beloved Brethren Moratorium,” Joe said, “and he says, ‘Calm down.’ You know, Runciter didn’t have to go with us to Luna; he could have dispatched us and stayed in New York. So now the most life-loving, full-living man I ever met has been—”

  “Your dark-skinned companion’s advice is good,” the moratorium owner chimed in.

  “What advice?” Joe said.

  “To calm yourself.” Von Vogelsang opened the glove compartment of the chopper’s control panel; he handed Joe a merry multicolored box. “Chew one of these, Mr. Chip.”

  “Tranquilizing gum,” Joe said, accepting the box; reflexively he opened it. “Peach-flavored tranquilizing gum.” To Al he said, “Do I have to take this?”

  “You should,” Al said.

  Joe said, “Runciter would never have taken a tranquilizer under circumstances of this sort. Glen Runciter never took a tranquilizer in his life. You know what I realize now, Al? He gave his life to save ours. In an indirect way.”

  “Very indirect,” Al said. “Here we are,” he said; the chopper had begun to descend toward a target painted on a flat roof field below. “You think you can compose yourself?” he asked Joe.

  “I can compose myself,” Joe said, “when I hear Runciter’s voice again. When I know some form of life, half-life, is still there.”

  The moratorium owner said cheerily, “I wouldn’t worry on that score, Mr. Chip. We generally obtain an adequate protophasonic flow. At first. It is later, when the half-life period has expended itself, that the heartache arises. But, with sensible planning, that can be forestalled for many years.” He shut off the motor of the chopper, touched a stud which caused the cabin door to slide back. “Welcome to the Beloved Brethren Moratorium,” he said; he ushered the two of them out onto the roof field. “My personal secretary, Miss Beason, will escort you to a consultation lounge; if you will wait there, being subliminally influenced into peace of soul by the colors and textures surrounding you, I will have Mr. Runciter brought in as soon as my technicians establish contact with him.”

  “I want to be present at the whole process,” Joe said. “I want to see your technicians bring him back.”

  To Al, the moratorium owner said, “Maybe, as his friend, you can make him understand.”

  “We have to wait in the lounge, Joe,” Al said.

  Joe looked at him fiercely. “Uncle Tom,” he said.

  “All the moratoriums work this way,” Al said. “Come on with me to the lounge.”

  “How long will it take?” Joe asked the moratorium owner.

  “We’ll know one way or another within the first fifteen minutes. If we haven’t gotten a measurable signal by then—”

  “You’re only going to try for fifteen minutes?” Joe said. To Al he said, “They’re only going to try for fifteen minutes to bring back a man greater than all of us put together.” He felt like crying. Aloud. “Come on,” he said to Al. “Let’s—”

  “You come on,” Al repeated. “To the lounge.”

  Joe followed him into the lounge.

  “Cigarette?” Al said, seating himself on a synthetic buffalo-hide couch; he held his pack up to Joe.

  “They’re stale,” Joe said. He didn’t need to take one, to touch one, to know that.

  “Yeah, so they are.” Al put the pack away. “How did you know?” He waited. “You get discouraged easier than anyone I ever ran into. We’re lucky to be alive; it could be us, all of us, in that cold-pac there. And Runciter sitting out here in this lounge with these nutty colors.” He looked at his watch.

  Joe said, “All the cigarettes in the world are stale.” He examined his own watch. “Ten after.” He pondered, having many disjointed and unconnected brooding thoughts; they swam through him like silvery fish. Fears, and mild dislikes, and apprehensions. And all the silvery fish recirculating to begin once more as fear. “If Runciter were alive,” he said, “sitting out here in this lounge, everything would be okay. I know it but I don’t know why.” He wondered what was, at this moment, going on between the moratorium’s technicians and the remains of Glen Runciter. “Do you remember dentists?” he asked Al.

  “I don’t remember, but I know what they were.”

  “People’s teeth used to decay.”

  “I realize that,” Al said.

  “My father told me what it used to feel like, waiting in a dentist’s office. Every time the nurse opened the door you thought, It’s happening. The thing I’ve been afraid
of all my life.”

  “And that’s what you feel now?” Al asked.

  “I feel, Christ, why doesn’t that halfwit sap who runs this place come in here and say he’s alive, Runciter’s alive. Or else he’s not. One way or another. Yes or no.”

  “It’s almost always yes. Statistically, as Vogelsang said—”

  “In this case it’ll be no.”

  “You have no way of knowing that.”

  Joe said, “I wonder if Ray Hollis has an outlet here in Zürich.”

  “Of course he has. But by the time you get a precog in here we’ll already know anyhow.”

  “I’ll phone up a precog,” Joe said. “I’ll get one on the line right now.” He started to his feet, wondering where he could find a vidphone. “Give me a quarter.”

  Al shook his head.

  “In a manner of speaking,” Joe said, “you’re my employee; you have to do what I say or I’ll fire you. As soon as Runciter died I took over management of the firm. I’ve been in charge since the bomb went off; it was my decision to bring him here, and it’s my decision to rent the use of a precog for a couple of minutes. Let’s have the quarter.” He held out his hand.

  “Runciter Associates,” Al said, “being run by a man who can’t keep fifty cents on him. Here’s a quarter.” He got it from his pocket, tossed it to Joe. “When you make out my paycheck add it on.”

  Joe left the lounge and wandered down a corridor, rubbing his forehead blearily. This is an unnatural place, he thought. Halfway between the world and death. I am head of Runciter Associates now, he realized, except for Ella, who isn’t alive and can only speak if I visit this place and have her revived. I know the specifications in Glen Runciter’s will, which now have automatically gone into effect; I’m supposed to take over until Ella, or Ella and he if he can be revived, decide on someone to replace him. They have to agree; both wills make that mandatory. Maybe, he thought, they’ll decide I can do it on a permanent basis.

  That’ll never come about, he realized. Not for someone who can’t manage his own personal fiscal responsibilities. That’s something else Hollis’ precog would know, he realized. I can find out from them whether or not I’ll be upgraded to director of the firm. That would be worth knowing, along with everything else. And I have to hire the precog anyhow.

  “Which way to a public vidphone?” he asked a uniformed employee of the moratorium. The employee pointed. “Thanks,” he said, and wandered on, coming at last to the pay vidphone. He lifted the receiver, listened for the dial tone, and then dropped in the quarter which Al had given him.

  The phone said, “I am sorry, sir, but I can’t accept obsolete money.” The quarter clattered out of the bottom of the phone and landed at his feet. Expelled in disgust.

  “What do you mean?” he said, stooping awkwardly to retrieve the coin. “Since when is a North American Confederation quarter obsolete?”

  “I am sorry, sir,” the phone said, “the coin which you put into me was not a North American Confederation quarter but a recalled issue of the United States of America’s Philadelphia mint. It is of merely numismatical interest now.”

  Joe examined the quarter and saw, on its tarnished surface, the bas-relief profile of George Washington. And the date. The coin was forty years old. And, as the phone had said, long ago recalled.

  “Having difficulties, sir?” a moratorium employee asked, walking over pleasantly. “I saw the phone expel your coin. May I examine it?” He held out his hand and Joe gave him the U.S. quarter. “I will trade you a current Swiss ten-franc token for this. Which the phone will accept.”

  “Fine,” Joe said. He made the trade, dropped the ten-franc piece into the phone and dialed Hollis’ international toll-free number.

  “Hollis Talents,” a polished female voice said in his ear and, on the screen, a girl’s face, modified by artificial beauty aids of an advanced nature, manifested itself. “Oh, Mr. Chip,” the girl said, recognizing him. “Mr. Hollis left word with us that you’d call. We’ve been expecting you all afternoon.”

  Precogs, Joe thought.

  “Mr. Hollis,” the girl said, “instructed us to put your call through to him; he wants to handle your needs personally. Would you hold on a moment while I put you through? So just a moment, Mr. Chip; the next voice that you hear will be Mr. Hollis’, God willing.” Her face vanished; he confronted a blank gray screen.

  A grim blue face with recessive eyes swam into focus, a mysterious countenance floating without neck or body. The eyes reminded him of flawed jewels; they shone but the faceting had gone wrong; the eyes scattered light in irregular directions. “Hello, Mr. Chip.”

  So this is what he looks like, Joe thought. Photographs haven’t caught this, the imperfect planes and surfaces, as if the whole brittle edifice had once been dropped, had broken, had then been reglued—but not quite as before. “The Society,” Joe said, “will receive a full report on your murder of Glen Runciter. They own a lot of legal talent; you’ll be in court the rest of your life.” He waited for the face to react, but it did not. “We know you did it,” he said, and felt the futility of it, the pointlessness of what he was doing.

  “As to the purpose of your call,” Hollis said in a slithering voice which reminded Joe of snakes crawling over one another, “Mr. Runciter will not—”

  Shaking, Joe hung up the receiver.

  He walked back up the corridor along which he had come; he reached the lounge once more where Al Hammond sat morosely picking apart a dry-as-dust former cigarette. There was a moment of silence and then Al raised his head.

  “It’s no,” Joe said.

  “Vogelsang came around looking for you,” Al said. “He acted very strange, and it was obvious what’s been going on back there. Six will get you eight he’s afraid to tell you outright; he’ll probably go through a long routine but it’ll boil down like you say, it’ll boil down to no. So what now?” He waited.

  “Now we get Hollis,” Joe said.

  “We won’t get Hollis.”

  “The Society—” He broke off. The owner of the moratorium had sidled into the lounge, looking nervous and haggard but attempting at the same time to emit an aura of detached, austere prowess.

  “We did what we could. At such low temperatures the flow of current is virtually unimpeded; there’s no perceptible resistance at minus 150g. The signal should have bounced out clear and strong, but all we got from the amplifier was a sixty-cycle hum. Remember, however, that we did not supervise the original cold-pac installation. Bear that in mind.”

  Al said, “We have it in mind.” He rose stiffly to his feet and stood facing Joe. “I guess that’s it.”

  “I’ll talk to Ella,” Joe said.

  “Now?” Al said. “You better wait until you know what you’re going to say. Tell her tomorrow. Go home and get some sleep.”

  “To go home,” Joe said, “is to go home to Pat Conley. I’m in no shape to cope with her either.”

  “Take a hotel room here in Zürich,” Al said. “Disappear. I’ll go back to the ship, tell the others, and report to the Society. You can delegate it to me in writing.” To von Vogelsang he said, “Bring us a pen and a sheet of paper.”

  “You know who I feel like talking to?” Joe said, as the moratorium owner scuttled off in search of pen and paper. “Wendy Wright. She’ll know what to do. I value her opinion. Why is that? I wonder. I barely know her.” He noticed then that subtle background music hung over the lounge. It had been there all this time. The same as on the chopper. “Dies irae, dies illa,” the voices sang darkly. “Solvet saeclum in favilla, teste David cum Sybilla.” The Verdi Requiem, he realized. Von Vogelsang, probably personally with his own two hands, switched it on at nine A.M. every morning when he arrived for work.

  “Once you get your hotel room,” Al said, “I could probably talk Wendy Wright into showing up there.”

  “That would be immoral,” Joe said.

  “What?” Al stared at him. “At a time like this? When the whole orga
nization is about to sink into oblivion unless you can pull yourself together? Anything that’ll make you function is desirable, in fact necessary. Go back to the phone, call a hotel, come back here and tell me the name of the hotel and the—”

  “All our money is worthless,” Joe said. “I can’t operate the phone, not unless I can find a coin collector who’ll trade me another Swiss ten-franc piece of current issue.”

  “Jeez,” Al said; he let out his breath in a groaning sigh and shook his head.

  “Is it my fault?” Joe said. “Did I make that quarter you gave me obsolete?” He felt anger.

  “In some weird way,” Al said, “yes, it is your fault. But I don’t know how. Maybe one day I’ll figure it out. Okay, we’ll both go back to Pratfall II. You can pick Wendy Wright up there and take her to the hotel with you.”

  “Quantus tremor est futurus,” the voices sang. “Quando judex est venturus, cuncta stricte discussurus.”

  “What’ll I pay the hotel with? They won’t take our money any more than the phone will.”

  Cursing, Al yanked out his wallet, examined the bills in it. “These are old but still in circulation.” He inspected the coins in his pockets. “These aren’t in circulation.” He tossed the coins to the carpet of the lounge, ridding himself, as the phone had, in disgust. “Take these bills.” He handed the paper currency to Joe. “There’s enough there for the hotel room for one night, dinner and a couple of drinks for each of you. I’ll send a ship from New York tomorrow to pick you and her up.”

  “I’ll pay you back,” Joe said. “As pro tem director of Runciter Associates, I’ll draw a higher salary; I’ll be able to pay all my debts off, including the back taxes, penalties and fines which the income-tax people—”

  “Without Pat Conley? Without her help?”

  “I can throw her out now,” Joe said.

  Al said, “I wonder.”

  “This is a new start for me. A new lease on life.” I can run the firm, he said to himself. Certainly I won’t make the mistake that Runciter made; Hollis, posing as Stanton Mick, won’t lure me and my inertials off Earth where we can be gotten at.