Second Variety and Other Stories (66 page)

"This is different. I'm not a cog. This gives me something. I can't explain it to you, I guess. But
it's something I have to do."

"If you could tell me more about it --"

"I can't tell you any more about it," Ellis said. "But there's nothing in the world like it. I've worked
twenty-five years for Terran Development. Twenty-five years at the same reports, again and again.
Twenty-five years -- and I never felt this way."

"Oh, yeah?" Miller roared. "Don't give me that! Come clean, Ellis!"

Ellis opened and closed his mouth. "What are you talking about?" Horror rolled through him.
"What's happened?"

"Don't try to give me the runaround." On the vidscreen Miller's face was purple. "Come into my
office."

The screen went dead.

Ellis sat stunned at his desk. Gradually, he collected himself and got shakily to his feet. "Good

Lord." Weakly, he wiped cold sweat from his forehead. All at once. Everything in ruins. He was dazed

Lord." Weakly, he wiped cold sweat from his forehead. All at once. Everything in ruins. He was dazed

"Anything wrong?" Miss Nelson asked sympathetically.

"No." Ellis moved numbly towards the door. He was shattered. What had Miller found out?
Good God! Was it possible he had -

"Mr Miller looked angry."

"Yeah." Ellis moved blindly down the hall, his mind reeling. Miller looked angry all right.
Somehow he had found out. But why was he mad? Why did he care? A cold chill settled over Ellis. It
looked bad. Miller was his superior -- with hiring and firing powers. Maybe he'd done something wrong.
Maybe he had somehow broken a law. Committed a crime. But what?

What did Miller care about them! What concern was it of Terran Development?

He opened the door to Miller's office. "Here I am, Mr Miller," he muttered. "What's the trouble?"

Miller glowered at him with rage. "All this goofy stuff about your cousin on Proxima."

"It's -- uh -- you mean a business friend on Centaurus VI."

"You -- you swindler!" Miller leaped up. "And after all the Company's done for you."

"I don't understand," Ellis muttered. "What have --"

"Why do you think we gave you the Jiffi-scuttler in the first place?"

"Why?"

"To test! To try out, you wall-eyed Venusian stink-cricket! The Company magnanimously
consented to allow you to operate a Jiffi-scuttler in advance of market presentation, and what do you
do? Why, you --"

Ellis started to get indignant. After all, he had been with TD twenty-five years. "You don't have to
be so offensive. I plunked down my thousand gold credits for it."

"Well, you can just mosey down to the accountant's office and get your money back. I've already
sent out a directive for a construction team to crate up your Jiffi-scuttler and bring it back to receiving."

Ellis was dumbfounded. "But why?"

"Why indeed! Because it's defective. Because it doesn't work. That's why." Miller's eyes blazed
with technological outrage. "The inspection crew found a leak a mile wide in it." His lip curled. "As if you
didn't know."

Ellis's heart sank. "Leak?" he croaked apprehensively.

"Leak. It's a damn good thing I authorized a periodic inspection. If we depended on people like
you to --"

"Are you sure? It seemed all right to me. That is, it got me here without any trouble," Ellis
floundered. "Certainly no complaints from my end."

"No. No complaints from your end. That's exactly why you're not getting another one. That's
why you're taking the monojet transport back home tonight. Because you didn't report the leak! And if
you ever try to put something over on this office again --"

"How do you know I was aware of the -- defect?"

Miller sank down in his chair, overcome with fury. "Because," he said carefully, "of your daily
pilgrimage to the Linguistic Machine. With your alleged letter from your grandmother on Betelgeuse II.
Which wasn't any such thing. Which was an utter fraud. Which you got through the leak in the
Jiffi-scuttler!"

"How do you know?" Ellis squeaked boldly, driven to the wall. "So maybe there was a defect.
But you can't prove there's any connection between your badly constructed Jiffi-scuttler and my --"

"Your missive," Miller stated, "which you foisted on our Linguistics Machine, was not a
non-Terran script. It was not from Centaurus VI. It was not from any non-Terran system. It was ancient
Hebrew. And there's only one place you could have got it, Ellis. So don't try to kid me."

"Hebrew!" Ellis exclaimed, startled. He turned white as a sheet. "Good Lord. The other
continuum -- the fourth dimension. Time, of course." He trembled. "And the expanding universe. That
would explain their size. And it explains why a new group, a new generation --"

"We're taking enough of a chance as it is, with these Jiffi-scuttlers. Warping a tunnel through
other space-time continua." Miller shook his head warily. "You meddler. You knew you were supposed
to report any defect."

other space-time continua." Miller shook his head warily. "You meddler. You knew you were supposed
to report any defect."

Miller shrieked in insane rage. For a time he danced around the room. Finally he threw something
down on his desk, directly in front of Ellis. "No trouble. No, none. Look at this. I got this from the
Ancient Artifacts Archives."

"What is it?"

"Look at it! I compared one of your question sheets to this. The same. Exactly the same. All
your sheets, questions and answers, every one of them's in here. You multi-legged Ganymedean mange
beetle!"

Ellis picked up the book and opened it. As he read the pages a strange look came slowly over
his face. "Good Heavens. So they kept a record of what I gave them. They put it all together in a book.
Every word of it. And some commentaries, too. It's all here -- every single word. It did have an effect,
then. They passed it on. Wrote all of it down."

"Go back to your office. I'm through looking at you for today. I'm through looking at you forever.
Your severance check will come through regular channels."

In a trance, his face flushed with a strange excitement, Ellis gripped the book and moved dazedly
towards the door. "Say, Mr Miller. Can I have this? Can I take it along?"

"Sure," Miller said wearily. "Sure, you can take it. You can read it on your way home tonight. On
the public monojet transport."

"Henry has something to show you," Mary Ellis whispered excitedly, gripping Mrs Lawrence's
arm. "Make sure you say the right thing."

"The right thing?" Mrs Lawrence faltered nervously, a trifle uneasy. "What is it? Nothing alive, I
hope."

"No, no." Mary pushed her towards the study door. "Just smile." She raised her voice. "Henry,
Dorothy Lawrence is here."

Henry Ellis appeared at the door of his study. He bowed slightly, a dignified figure in silk dressing
gown, pipe in his mouth, fountain pen in one hand. "Good evening, Dorothy," he said in a low,
well-modulated voice. "Care to step into my study a moment?"

"Study?" Mrs Lawrence came hesitantly in. "What do you study? I mean, Mary says you've been
doing something very interesting recently, now that you're not with -- I mean, now that you're home
more. She didn't give me any idea what it was, though."

Mrs Lawrence's eyes roved curiously around the study. The study was full of reference volumes,
charts, a huge mahogany desk, an atlas, globe, leather chairs, an unbelievably ancient electric typewriter.

"Good Heavens!" she exclaimed. "How odd. All these old things."

Ellis lifted something carefully from the bookcase and held it out to her casually. "By the way -you
might glance at this."

"What is it? A book?" Mrs Lawrence took the book and examined it eagerly. "My goodness.
Heavy, isn't it?" She read the back, her lips moving. "What does it mean? It looks old. What strange
letters! I've never seen anything like it. Holy Bible." She glanced up brightly. "What is this?"

Ellis smiled faintly. "Well --"

A light dawned. Mrs Lawrence gasped in revelation. "Good Heavens! You didn't write this, did
you?"

Ellis's smile broadened into a deprecating blush. A dignified hue of modesty. "Just a little thing I
threw together," he murmured indifferently. "My first, as a matter of fact." Thoughtfully, he fingered his
fountain pen. "And now, if you'll excuse me, I really should be getting back to my work..."

When there is a date following the name of a story, it is the date the manuscript of that story was first
received by Dick's agent, per the records of the Scott Meredith Literary Agency. Absence of a date means no record is
available. The name of a magazine followed by a month and year indicates the first published appearance of a story.
An alternate name following a story indicates Dick's original name for the story, as shown in the agency records.

These five volumes include all of Philip K. Dick's short fiction, with the exception of short novels later
published as or included in novels, childhood writings, and unpublished writings for which manuscripts have not been
found. The stories are arranged as closely as possible in chronological order of composition; research for this
chronology was done by Gregg Rickman and Paul Williams.

THE COOKIE LADY 8/27/52. Fantasy Fiction, June 1953.

BEYOND THE DOOR 8/29/52. Fantastic Universe, Jan 1954.

SECOND VARIETY 10/3/52. Space Science Fiction, May 1953.

My grand theme -- who is human and who only appears (masquerades) as human? -- emerges most fully.
Unless we can individually and collectively be certain of the answer to this question, we face what is, in my view, the
most serious problem possible. Without answering it adequately, we cannot even be certain of our own selves. I
cannot even know myself, let alone you. So I keep working on this theme; to me nothing is as important a question.
And the answer comes very hard. (1976)

JON'S WORLD ("Jon") 10/21/52. Time to Come, edited by August Derleth, New York, 1954.

THE COSMIC POACHERS ("Burglar") 10/22/52. Imagination, July 1953.

PROGENY 11/3/52. If, Nov 1954.

SOME KINDS OF LIFE (The Beleaguered") 11/3/52. Fantastic Universe, Oct-Nov 1953 [under the pseudonym Richard
Phillips].

MARTIANS COME IN CLOUDS ("The Buggies") 11/5/52. Fantastic Universe, June-July 1954.

THE COMMUTER 11/19/52. Amazing, Aug-Sept 1953.

THE WORLD SHE WANTED 11/24/52. Science Fiction Quarterly, May 1953.

A SURFACE RAID 12/2/52. Fantastic Universe, July 1955.

PROJECT: EARTH ("One Who Stole") 1/6/53. Imagination, Dec 1953.

THE TROUBLE WITH BUBBLES ("Plaything") 1/13/53. If, Sept 1953.

BREAKFAST AT TWILIGHT 1/17/53. Amazing, July 1954.

There you are in your home, and the soldiers smash down the door and tell you you're in the middle of
World War III. Something's gone wrong with time. I like to fiddle with the idea of basic categories of reality, such as
space and time, breaking down. It's my love of chaos, I suppose. (1976)

A PRESENT FOR PAT 1/17/53. Startling Stories, Jan 1954.

THE HOOD MAKER ("Immunity") 1/26/53. Imagination, June 1955.

OF WITHERED APPLES 1/26/53. Cosmos Science Fiction and Fantasy, July 1954.

HUMAN IS 2/2/53. Startling Stories, Winter 1955.

To me, this story states my early conclusions as to what is human. I have not really changed my view since I
wrote this story, back in the Fifties. It's not what you look like, or what planet you were born on. It's how kind you
are. The quality of kindness, to me, distinguishes us from rocks and sticks and metal, and will forever, whatever
shape we take, wherever we go, whatever we become. For me, Human Is is my credo. May it be yours. (1976)

are. The quality of kindness, to me, distinguishes us from rocks and sticks and metal, and will forever, whatever
shape we take, wherever we go, whatever we become. For me, Human Is is my credo. May it be yours. (1976)

THE IMPOSSIBLE PLANET ("Legend") 2/11/53. Imagination, Oct 1953.

IMPOSTER 2/24/53. Astounding, June 1953.

Here was my first story on the topic of: Am I a human? Or am I just programmed to believe I am human?
When you consider that I wrote this back in 1953, it was, if I may say so, a pretty damn good new idea in sf. Of
course, by now I've done it to death. But the theme still preoccupies me. It's an important theme because it forces us
to ask: What is a human? And -- what isn't? (1976)

JAMES P. CROW 3/17/53. Planet Stories, May 1954.

PLANET FOR TRANSIENTS ("The Itinerants") 3/23/53. Fantastic Universe, Oct-Nov 1953. [Parts of this story were
adapted for the novel DEUS IRAE.]

SMALL TOWN ("Engineer") 3/23/53. Amazing, May 1954.

Here the frustrations of a defeated small person -- small in terms of power, in particular power over others -gradually
become transformed into something sinister: the force of death. In rereading this story (which is of course
a fantasy, not science fiction) I am impressed by the subtle change which takes place in the protagonist from
Trod-Upon to Treader. Verne Haskel initially appears as the prototype of the impotent human being, but this
conceals a drive at his core self which is anything but weak. It is as if I am saying, The put-upon person may be very
dangerous. Be careful as to how you misuse him; he may be a mask for thanatos: the antagonist of life; he may not
secretly wish to rule, he may wish to destroy. (1979)

SOUVENIR 3/26/53. Fantastic Universe, Oct 1954.

SURVEY TEAM 4/3/53. Fantastic Universe, May 1954.

PROMINENT AUTHOR 4/20/53. If, May 1954.

Philip K. Dick was born in Chicago in 1928 and lived most of his life in California. He attended
college for a year at Berkeley. Apart from writing, his main interest was music: at one time he ran a
record shop and also a classical music programme for a local radio station. He won the Hugo Award for
his classic novel of alternative history, The Man in the High Castle (1962). He was married five times
and had three children. He died in March 1982.