Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick (21 page)

Uneasily, Ed hung his coat in the closet. He came over and kissed her. Her lips were ice cold. “I'll tell you all about it. But what do you say we have something to eat? I'm starved.”

Ruth studied him intently. She got down from the arm of the couch. “I'll change and fix dinner.”

She hurried into the bedroom and slipped off her shoes and nylons. Ed followed her. “I didn't mean to worry you,” he said carefully. “After you left me today I realized you were right.”

“Oh?” Ruth unfastened her blouse and skirt, arranging them over a hanger. “Right about what?”

“About me.” He manufactured a grin and made it glow across his face. “About… what happened.”

Ruth hung her slip over the hanger. She studied her husband intently as she struggled into her tight-fitting jeans. “Go on.”

The moment had come. It was now or never. Ed Fletcher braced himself and chose his words carefully. “I realized,” he stated, “that the whole darn thing was in my mind. You were right, Ruth. Completely right. And I even realize what caused it.”

Ruth rolled her cotton T-shirt down and tucked it in her jeans. “What was the cause?”

“Overwork.”

“Overwork?”

“I need a vacation. I haven't had a vacation in years. My mind isn't on the job. I've been daydreaming.” He said it firmly, but his heart was in his mouth. “I need to get away. To the mountains. Bass fishing. Or—” He searched his mind frantically. “Or—”

Ruth came toward him ominously.“Ed!” she said sharply.“Look at me!” “What's the matter?” Panic shot through him. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Where were you this afternoon?”

Ed's grin faded. “I told you. I went for a walk. Didn't I tell you? A walk. To think things over.”

“Don't lie to me, Eddie Fletcher! I can tell when you're lying!” Fresh tears welled up in Ruth's eyes. Her breasts rose and fell excitedly under her cotton shirt. “Admit it! You didn't go for a walk!”

Ed stammered weakly. Sweat poured off him. He sagged helplessly against the door. “What do you mean?”

Ruth's black eyes flashed with anger. “Come on! I want to know where you were! Tell me! I have a right to know. What really happened?”

Ed retreated in terror, his resolve melting like wax. It was going all wrong. “Honest. I went out for a—”

“Tell me!” Ruth's sharp fingernails dug into his arm. “I want to know where you were—and who you were with!”

Ed opened his mouth. He tried to grin, but his face failed to respond.“I don't know what you mean.”

“You know what I mean. Who were you with? Where did you go? Tell me! I'll find out sooner or later.”

There was no way out. He was licked—and he knew it. He couldn't keep it from her. Desperately he stalled, praying for time. If he could only distract her, get her mind on something else. If she would only let up, even for a second. He could invent something—a better story. Time—he needed more time. “Ruth, you've got to—”

Suddenly there was a sound: the bark of a dog, echoing through the dark house.

Ruth let go, cocking her head alertly. “That was Dobbie. I think some-body's coming.”

The doorbell rang.

“You stay here. I'll be right back.” Ruth ran out of the room, to the front door. “Darn it.” She pulled the front door open.

“Good evening!” The young man stepped quickly inside, loaded down with objects, grinning broadly at Ruth. “I'm from the Sweep-Rite Vacuum Cleaner Company.”

Ruth scowled impatiently.“Really, we're about to sit down at the table.”

“Oh, this will only take a moment.” The young man set down the vacuum cleaner and its attachments with a metallic crash. Rapidly, he unrolled a long illustrated banner, showing the vacuum cleaner in action. “Now, if you'll just hold this while I plug in the cleaner—”

He bustled happily about, unplugging the TV set, plugging in the cleaner, pushing the chairs out of his way.

“I'll show you the drape scraper first.” He attached a hose and nozzle to the big gleaming tank. “Now, if you'll just sit down I'll demonstrate each of these easy-to-use attachments.” His happy voice rose over the roar of the cleaner. “You'll notice—”

Ed Fletcher sat down on the bed. He groped in his pocket until he found his cigarettes. Shakily he lit one and leaned back against the wall, weak with relief.

He gazed up, a look of gratitude on his face. “Thanks,” he said softly. “I think we'll make it—after all. Thanks a lot.”

FOSTER, YOU'RE DEAD

School was agony, as always. Only today it was worse. Mike Foster finished weaving his two watertight baskets and sat rigid, while all around him the other children worked. Outside the concrete-and-steel building the late-afternoon sun shone cool. The hills sparkled green and brown in the crisp autumn air. In the overhead sky a few
NATS
circled lazily above the town.

The vast, ominous shape of Mrs. Cummings, the teacher, silently approached his desk. “Foster, are you finished?”

“Yes, ma'am,” he answered eagerly. He pushed the baskets up. “Can I leave now?”

Mrs. Cummings examined his baskets critically. “What about your trap-making?” she demanded.

He fumbled in his desk and brought out his intricate small-animal trap. “All finished, Mrs. Cummings. And my knife, it's done, too.” He showed her the razor-edged blade of his knife, glittering metal he had shaped from a discarded gasoline drum. She picked up the knife and ran her expert finger doubtfully along the blade.

“Not strong enough,” she stated. “You've oversharpened it. It'll lose its edge the first time you use it. Go down to the main weapons-lab and examine the knives they've got there. Then hone it back some and get a thicker blade.”

“Mrs. Cummings,” Mike Foster pleaded,“could I fix it
tomorrow?
Could I leave right now, please?”

Everybody in the classroom was watching with interest. Mike Foster flushed; he hated to be singled out and made conspicuous, but he
had
to get away. He couldn't stay in school one minute more.

Inexorable, Mrs. Cummings rumbled, “Tomorrow is digging day. You won't have time to work on your knife.”

“I will,” he assured her quickly. “After the digging.”

“No, you're not too good at digging.” The old woman was measuring the boy's spindly arms and legs. “I think you better get your knife finished today. And spend all day tomorrow down at the field.”

“What's the use of digging?” Mike Foster demanded, in despair.

“Everybody has to know how to dig,” Mrs. Cummings answered patiently. Children were snickering on all sides; she shushed them with a hostile glare. “You all know the importance of digging. When the war begins the whole surface will be littered with debris and rubble. If we hope to survive we'll have to dig down, won't we? Have any of you ever watched a gopher digging around the roots of plants? The gopher knows he'll find something valuable down there under the surface of the ground. We're all going to be little brown gophers. We'll all have to learn to dig down in the rubble and find the good things, because that's where they'll be.”

Mike Foster sat miserably plucking his knife, as Mrs. Cummings moved away from his desk and up the aisle. A few children grinned contemptuously at him, but nothing penetrated his haze of wretchedness. Digging wouldn't do him any good. When the bombs came he'd be killed instantly. All the vaccination shots up and down his arms, on his thighs and buttocks, would be of no use. He had wasted his allowance money: Mike Foster wouldn't be alive to catch any of the bacterial plagues. Not unless—

He sprang up and followed Mrs. Cummings to her desk. In an agony of desperation he blurted, “Please, I have to leave. I have to do something.”

Mrs. Cummings's tired lips twisted angrily. But the boy's fearful eyes stopped her. “What's wrong?” she demanded. “Don't you feel well?”

The boy stood frozen, unable to answer her. Pleased by the tableau, the class murmured and giggled until Mrs. Cummings rapped angrily on her desk with a writer. “Be quiet,” she snapped. Her voice softened a shade. “Michael, if you're not functioning properly, go downstairs to the psyche clinic. There's no point trying to work when your reactions are conflicted. Miss Groves will be glad to optimum you.”

“No,”Foster said.

“Then what is it?”

The class stirred. Voices answered for Foster; his tongue was stuck with misery and humiliation. “His father's an anti-P,” the voices explained. “They don't have a shelter and he isn't registered in Civic Defense. His father hasn't even contributed to the
NATS
. They haven't done anything.”

Mrs. Cummings gazed up in amazement at the mute boy. “You don't have a shelter?”

He shook his head.

A strange feeling filled the woman. “But—” She had started to say,
But you'll die up here.
She changed it to “But where'll you go?”

“Nowhere,” the mild voices answered for him. “Everybody else'll be down in their shelters and he'll be up here. He doesn't even have a permit for the school shelter.”

Mrs. Cummings was shocked. In her dull, scholastic way she had assumed every child in the school had a permit to the elaborate subsurface chambers under the building. But of course not. Only children whose parents were part of CD, who contributed to arming the community. And if Foster's father was an anti-P …

“He's afraid to sit here,” the voices chimed in calmly. “He's afraid it'll come while he's sitting here, and everybody else will be safe down in the shelter.”

He wandered slowly along, hands deep in his pockets, kicking at dark stones on the sidewalk. The sun was setting. Snub-nosed commuter rockets were unloading tired people, glad to be home from the factory strip a hundred miles to the west. On the distant hills something flashed: a radar tower revolving silently in the evening gloom. The circling
NATS
had increased in number. The twilight hours were the most dangerous; visual observers couldn't spot high-speed missiles coming in close to the ground. Assuming the missiles came.

A mechanical news-machine shouted at him excitedly as he passed. War, death, amazing new weapons developed at home and abroad. He hunched his shoulders and continued on, past the little concrete shells that served as houses, each exactly alike, sturdy reinforced pillboxes. Ahead of him bright neon signs glowed in the settling gloom: the business district, alive with traffic and milling people.

Half a block from the bright cluster of neons he halted. To his right was a public shelter, a dark tunnel-like entrance with a mechanical turnstile glowing dully. Fifty cents admission. If he was here, on the street, and he had fifty cents, he'd be all right. He had pushed down into public shelters many times, during the practice raids. But other times, hideous, nightmare times that never left his mind, he hadn't had the fifty cents. He had stood mute and terrified, while people pushed excitedly past him; and the shrill shrieks of the sirens thundered everywhere.

He continued slowly, until he came to the brightest blotch of light, the great, gleaming showrooms of General Electronics, two blocks long, illuminated on all sides, a vast square of pure color and radiation. He halted and examined for the millionth time the fascinating shapes, the display that always drew him to a hypnotized stop whenever he passed.

In the center of the vast room was a single object. An elaborate pulsing blob of machinery and support struts, beams and walls and sealed locks. All spotlights were turned on it; huge signs announced its hundred and one advantages—as if there could be any doubt.

THE NEW 1972 BOMBPROOF READIATION-SEALED SUBSURFACE SHELTER
IS HERE! CHECK THESE STAR_STUDDED FEATURES:

• automatic descent-lift—jam-proof, self-powered, e-z locking
  

• triple-layer hull guaranteed to withstand 5
  g
  pressure without buckling
  

• A-powered heating and refrigeration system—self-servicing air-purification network
  

• three decontamination stages for food and water
  

• four hygienic stages for pre-burn exposure
  

• complete antibiotic processing
  

• e-z payment plan
  

He gazed at the shelter a long time. It was mostly a big tank, with a neck at one end that was the descent tube, and an emergency escape-hatch at the other. It was completely self-contained: a miniature world that supplied its own light, heat, air, water, medicines, and almost inexhaustible food. When fully stocked there were visual and audio tapes, entertainment, beds, chairs, vidscreen, everything that made up the above-surface home. It was, actually, a home below the ground. Nothing was missing that might be needed or enjoyed. A family would be safe, even comfortable, during the most severe H-bomb and bacterial-spray attack.

It cost twenty thousand dollars.

While he was gazing silently at the massive display, one of the salesmen stepped out onto the dark sidewalk, on his way to the cafeteria.“Hi, sonny,” he said automatically, as he passed Mike Foster. “Not bad, is it?”

“Can I go inside?” Foster asked quickly. “Can I go down in it?”

The salesman stopped, as he recognized the boy. “You're that kid,” he said slowly, “that damn kid who's always pestering us.”

“I'd like to go down in it. Just for a couple minutes. I won't bust anything—I promise. I won't even touch anything.”

The salesman was young and blond, a good-looking man in his early twenties. He hesitated, his reactions divided. The kid was a pest. But he had a family, and that meant a reasonable prospect. Business was bad; it was late September and the seasonal slump was still on. There was no profit in telling the boy to go peddle his newstapes; but on the other hand it was bad business encouraging small fry to crawl around the merchandise. They wasted time; they broke things; they pilfered small stuff when nobody was looking.

“No dice,” the salesman said. “Look, send your old man down here. Has he seen what we've got?”

“Yes,” Mike Foster said tightly.

“What's holding him back?” The salesman waved expansively up at the great gleaming display. “We'll give him a good trade-in on his old one, allowing for depreciation and obsolescence. What model has he got?”

“We don't have any,” Mike Foster said.

The salesman blinked. “Come again?”

“My father says it's a waste of money. He says they're trying to scare people into buying things they don't need. He says—”

“Your father's an anti-P?”

“Yes,” Mike Foster answered unhappily.

The salesman let out his breath. “Okay, kid. Sorry we can't do business. It's not your fault.” He lingered. “What the hell's wrong with him? Does he put on the
NATS
?”

“No.”

The salesman swore under his breath. A coaster, sliding along, safe because the rest of the community was putting up thirty percent of its income to keep a constant-defense system going. There were always a few of them, in every town. “How's your mother feel?” the salesman demanded. “She go along with him?”

“She says—” Mike Foster broke off.“Couldn't I go down in it for a little while? I won't bust anything. Just
once.
”

“How'd we ever sell it if we let kids run through it? We're not marking it down as a demonstration model—we've got roped into that too often.” The salesman's curiosity was aroused. “How's a guy get to be anti-P? He always feel this way, or did he get stung with something?”

“He says they sold people as many cars and washing machines and television sets as they could use. He says
NATS
and bomb shelters aren't good for anything, so people never get all they can use. He says factories can keep turning out guns and gas masks forever, and as long as people are afraid they'll keep paying for them because they think if they don't they might get killed, and maybe a man gets tired of paying for a new car every year and stops, but he's never going to stop buying shelters to protect his children.”

“You believe that?” the salesman asked.

“I wish we had that shelter,” Mike Foster answered. “If we had a shelter like that I'd go down and sleep in it every night. It'd be there when we needed it.”

“Maybe there won't be a war,” the salesman said. He sensed the boy's misery and fear, and he grinned good-naturedly down at him. “Don't worry all the time. You probably watch too many vidtapes—get out and play, for a change.”

“Nobody's safe on the surface,” Mike Foster said. “We have to be down below. And there's no place I can go.”

“Send your old man around,” the salesman muttered uneasily. “Maybe we can talk him into it. We've got a lot of time-payment plans. Tell him to ask for Bill O'Neill. Okay?”

Mike Foster wandered away, down the black evening street. He knew he was supposed to be home, but his feet dragged and his body was heavy and dull. His fatigue made him remember what the athletic coach had said the day before, during exercises. They were practicing breath suspension, holding a lungful of air and running. He hadn't done well; the others were still redfaced and racing when he halted, expelled his air, and stood gasping frantically for breath.

“Foster,” the coach said angrily,“you're dead. You know that? If this had been a gas attack—” He shook his head wearily.“Go over there and practice by yourself. You've got to do better, if you expect to survive.”

But he didn't expect to survive.

When he stepped up onto the porch of his home, he found the living room lights already on. He could hear his father's voice, and more faintly his mother's from the kitchen. He closed the door after him and began unpeeling his coat.

“Is that you?” his father demanded. Bob Foster sat sprawled out in his chair, his lap full of tapes and report sheets from his retail furniture store. “Where have you been? Dinner's been ready half an hour.” He had taken off his coat and rolled up his sleeves. His arms were pale and thin, but muscular. He was tired; his eyes were large and dark, his hair thinning. Restlessly, he moved the tapes around, from one stack to another.

“I'm sorry,” Mike Foster said.

His father examined his pocket watch; he was surely the only man who still carried a watch. “Go wash your hands. What have you been doing?” He scrutinized his son. “You look odd. Do you feel all right?”

“I was downtown,” Mike Foster said.

“What were you doing?”

“Looking at the shelters.”

Wordless, his father grabbed up a handful of reports and stuffed them into a folder. His thin lips set; hard lines wrinkled his forehead. He snorted furiously as tapes spilled everywhere; he bent stiffly to pick them up. Mike Foster made no move to help him. He crossed to the closet and gave his coat to the hanger. When he turned away his mother was directing the table of food into the dining room.