The Book of Philip K Dick (1973) (16 page)

“She won’t move you now,” Stephen said to Thelma, “but she will eventually. Sooner or later she’ll move you away from here, some night when you’re sleeping. Eventually she’ll make up her mind.” He grinned starkly. “Remember, I can talk to her, silently in her mind. Any time I want.”

“Will you?” Thelma asked the girl.

Doris faltered miserably. “I—don’t know. Will I? … Maybe so. It’s so—bewildering.”

Porter sat up straight in his chair, leaned back, and belched loudly. “It’s strange to hear you all conjecturing,” he said. “As a matter of fact, you won’t touch Thelma.” To the old woman he said, “There’s nothing to worry about. I can see this stalemate going on. The four of us balance each other—we’ll stay where we are.”

Thelma sagged. “Maybe Stephen’s right. If we have to keep on living this way, doing nothing—”

“We’ll be here,” Porter said, “but we won’t be living the way we’ve been living.”

“What do you mean?” Thelma demanded. “How will we be living? What’s going to happen?”

“It’s hard to probe you,” Stephen said to Porter peevishly. “These are things you’ve seen, not things you’re thinking. Have the commune governments changed their position? Are they finally going to call us in?”

“The governments won’t call us in,” Porter said. “We’ll never be invited into the communes, any more than we were invited into Washington and Moscow. We’ve had to stand outside waiting.” He glanced up and stated enigmatically, “That waiting is about over.”

It was early morning. Ed Garby brought the rumbling, battered truck into line behind the other surface cars leaving the commune. Cold, fitful sunlight filtered down on the concrete squares that made up the commune installations; today was going to be another cloudy day, exactly like the last. Even so, the exit check-gate ahead was already clogged with outgoing traffic.

“A lot of them, this morning,” his wife murmured. “I guess they can’t wait any longer for the ash to lift.”

Ed clutched for his pass, buried in his sweat-gummed shirt pocket. “The gate’s a bottleneck,” he muttered resentfully. “What are they doing, getting into the cars?”

There were four guards, today, not the usual one. A squad of armed troops that moved back and forth among the stalled cars, peering and murmuring, reporting through their neck-mikes to the commune offices below surface. A massive truck loaded with workers pulled suddenly away from the line and onto a side road. Roaring and belching clouds of foul blue gas, it made a complete circle and lumbered back toward the center of the commune, away from the exit gate. Ed watched it uneasily.

“What’s it doing, turning back?” Fear clutched him. “They’re turning us back!”

“No, they’re not,” Barbara said quietly. “Look—there goes a car through.”

An ancient wartime pleasure car precariously edged through the gate and out onto the plain beyond the commune. A second followed it and the two cars gathered speed to climb the long low ridge that became the first tangle of trees.

A horn honked behind Ed. Convulsively, he moved the car forward. In Barbara’s lap the baby wailed anxiously; she wound its seedy cotton blanket around it and rolled up the window. “It’s an awful day. If we didn’t have to go—” She broke off. “Here come the guards. Get the pass out.” Ed greeted the guards apprehensively.

“Morning.” Curtly, one of the guards took his pass, examined it, punched it, and filed it away in a steel-bound notebook. “Each of you prepare your thumb for prints,” he instructed. A black, oozing pad was passed up. “Including the baby.”

Ed was astounded. “Why? What the hell’s going on?”

The twins were too terrified to move. Numbly, they allowed the guards to take their prints. Ed protested weakly, as the pad was pushed against his thumb. His wrist was grabbed and yanked forward. As the guards walked around the truck to get at Barbara, the squad leader placed his boot on the running board and addressed Ed briefly.

“Five of you. Family?”

Ed nodded mutely. “Yeah, my family.”

“Complete? Any more?”

“No. Just us five.”

The guard’s dark eyes bored down at him. “When are you coming back?”

“Tonight.” Ed indicated the metal notebook in which his pass had been filed. “It says, before six.”

“If you go through that gate,” the guard said, “you won’t be coming back. That gate only goes one way.”

“Since when?” Barbara whispered, face ashen.

“Since last night. It’s your choice. Go ahead out there, get your business done, consult your soothsayer. But don’t come back.” The guard pointed to the side road. “If you want to turn around, that road takes you to the descent ramps. Follow the truck ahead—it’s turning back.”

Ed licked his dry lips. “I can’t. My kid—she’s got bone cancer. The old woman started her healing, but she isn’t well, not yet. The old woman says today she can finish.”

The guard examined a dog-eared directory. “Ward 9, sixth level. Go down there and they’ll fix up your kid. The docs have all the equipment.” He closed the book and stepped back from the car, a heavy-set man, red-faced, with bristled, beefy skin. “Let’s get started, buddy. One way or the other. It’s your choice.”

Automatically, Ed moved the car forward. “They must have decided,” he muttered, dazed. “Too many people going out. They want to scare us … they know we can’t live out there. We’d die out there!”

Barbara quietly clutched the baby. “We’ll die here eventually.”

“But it’s nothing but ruins out there!”

“Aren’t they out there?”

Ed choked helplessly. “We can’t come back—suppose it’s a mistake?”

The track ahead wavered toward the side road. An uncertain hand signal was made; suddenly the driver yanked his hand in and wobbled the truck back toward the exit gate. A moment of confusion took place. The truck slowed almost to a stop; Ed slammed on his brakes, cursed, and shifted into low. Then the truck ahead gained speed. It rumbled through the gate and out onto the barren ground. Without thinking, Ed followed it. Cold, ash-heavy air swept into the cabin as he gained speed and pulled up beside the truck. Even with it he leaned out and shouted, “Where you going? They won’t let you back!”

The driver, a skinny little man, bald and bony, shouted angrily back, “Goddamn it, I’m not coming back! The hell with them—I got all my food and bedding in here—I got every damn thing I own. Let them try to get me back!” He gunned up his truck and pulled ahead of Ed.

“Well,” Barbara said quietly, “it’s done. We’re outside.”

“Yeah,” Ed agreed shakily. “We are. A yard, a thousand miles—it’s all the same.” In panic, he turned wildly to his wife. “What if they don’t take us? I mean, what it we get there and they don’t want us. All they got is that old broken-down wartime shelter. There isn’t room for anybody—and look behind us.”

A line of hesitant, lumbering trucks and cars was picking its way uncertainly from the gate, streaming rustily out onto the parched plain. A few pulled out and swung back; one pulled over to the side of the road and halted while its passengers argued with bitter desperation.

“They’ll take us,” Barbara said. “They want to help us—they always wanted to.”

“But suppose they can’t!”

“I think they can. There’s a lot of power there, if we ask for it. They couldn’t come to us, but we can go to them. We’ve been held back too long, separated from them too many years. If the government won’t let them in, then we’ll have to go outside.”

“Can we live outside?” Ed asked hoarsely.

“Yes.”

Behind them a horn honked excitedly. Ed gained speed. “It’s a regular exodus. Look at them pouring out. Who’ll be left?”

“There’ll be plenty left,” Barbara answered. “All the big shots will stay behind.” She laughed breathlessly. “Maybe they’ll be able to get the war going again. It’ll give them something to do, while we’re away.”

THE COMMUTER

THE little fellow was tired. He pushed his way slowly through the throng of people, across the lobby of the station, to the ticket window. He waited his turn impatiently, fatigue showing in his drooping shoulders, his sagging brown coat.

“Next,” Ed Jacobson, the ticket seller, rasped.

The little fellow tossed a five dollar bill on the counter. “Give me a new commute book. Used up the old one.” He peered past Jacobson at the wall clock. “Lord, is it really that late?”

Jacobson accepted the five dollars. “OK, mister. One commute book. Where to?”

“Macon Heights,” the little fellow stated.

“Macon Heights.” Jacobson consulted his board. “Macon Heights. There isn’t any such place.”

The little man’s face hardened in suspicion. “You trying to be funny?”

“Mister, there isnt any Macon Heights. I can’t sell you a ticket unless there is such a place.”

“What do you mean? I live there!”

“I don’t care. I’ve been selling tickets for six years and there is no such place.”

The little man’s eyes popped with astonishment. “But I have a home there. I go there every night. I—”

“Here.” Jacobson pushed him his chart board. “You find it.”

The little man pulled the board over to one side. He studied it frantically, his finger trembling as he went down the list of towns.

“Find it?” Jacobson demanded, resting his arms on the counter. “It’s not there, is it?”

The little man shook his head, dazed. “I don’t understand. It doesn’t make sense. Something must be wrong. There certainly must be some—”

Suddenly he vanished. The board fell to the cement floor. The little fellow was gone—winked out of existence.

“Holy Caesar’s Ghost,” Jacobson gasped. His mouth opened and closed. There was only the board lying on the cement floor.

The little man had ceased to exist.

“What then?” Bob Paine asked.

“I went around and picked up the board.”

“He was really gone?”

“He was gone, all right.” Jacobson mopped his forehead. “I wish you had been around. Like a light he went out. Completely. No sound. No motion.”

Paine lit a cigarette, leaning back in his chair. “Had you ever seen him before?”

“No.”

“What time of day was it?”

“Just about now. About five.” Jacobson moved toward the ticket window. “Here comes a bunch of people.”

“Macon Heights.” Paine turned the pages of the State city guide. “No listing in any of the books. If he reappears I want to talk to him. Get him inside the office.”

“Sure. I don’t want to have nothing to do with him. It isn’t natural.” Jacobson turned to the window. “Yes, lady.”

“Two round trip tickets to Lewisburg.”

Paine stubbed his cigarette out and lit another. “I keep feeling I’ve heard the name before.” He got up and wandered over to the wall map. “But it isn’t listed.”

“There is no listing because there is no such place,” Jacobson said. “You think I could stand here daily, selling one ticket after another, and not know?” He turned back to his window. “Yes, sir.”

“I’d like a commute book to Macon Heights,” the little fellow said, glancing nervously at the clock on the wall. “And hurry it up.”

Jacobson closed his eyes. He hung on tight. When he opened his eyes again the little fellow was still there. Small wrinkled face. Thinning hair. Glasses. Tired, slumped coat.

Jacobson turned and moved across the office to Paine. “He’s back.” Jacobson swallowed, bis face pale. “It’s him again.”

Paine’s eyes flickered. “Bring him right in.”

Jacobson nodded and returned to his window. “Mister,” he said, “could you please come inside?” He indicated the door. “The Vice-President would like to see you for a moment.”

The little man’s face darkened. “What’s up? The train’s about to take off.” Grumbling under his breath, he pushed the door open and entered the office. “This sort of thing has never happened before. It’s certainly getting hard to purchase a commute book. If I miss the train I’m going to hold your company—”

“Sit down,” Paine said, indicating the chair across from his desk. “You’re the gentleman who wants a commute book to Macon Heights?”

“Is there something strange about that? What’s the matter with all of you? Why can’t you sell me a commute book like you always do?”

“Like—like we always do?”

The little man held himself in check with great effort. “Last December my wife and I moved out to Macon Heights. I’ve been riding your train ten times a week, twice a day, for six months. Every month I buy a new commute book.”

Paine leaned toward him. “Exactly which one of our trains do you take, Mr.—”

“Critchet. Ernest Critchet. The B train. Don’t you know your own schedules?”

“The B train?” Paine consulted a B train chart, running his pencil along it. No Macon Heights was listed. “How long is the trip? How long does it take?”

“Exactly forty-nine minutes.” Critchet looked up at the wall clock. “If I ever get on it.”

Paine calculated mentally. Forty-nine minutes. About thirty miles from the city. He got up and crossed to the big wall map.

“What’s wrong?” Critchet asked with marked suspicion.

Paine drew a thirty-mile circle on the map. The circle crossed a number of towns, but none of them was Macon Heights. And on the B line there was nothing at all.

“What sort of place is Macon Heights?” Paine asked. “How many people, would you say?”

“I don’t know. Five thousand, maybe. I spend most of my time in the city. I’m a bookkeeper over at Bradshaw Insurance.”

“Is Macon Heights a fairly new place?”

“It’s modern enough. We have a little two-bedroom house, a couple years old.” Critchet stirred restlessly. “How about my commute book?”

“I’m afraid,” Paine said slowly, “I can’t sell you a commute book.”

“What? Why not?”

“We don’t have any service to Macon Heights.”

Critchet leaped up. “What do you mean?” “There’s no such place. Look at the map yourself.”

Critched gaped, his face working. Then he turned angrily to the wall map, glaring at it intently.

“This is a curious situation, Mr. Critchet,” Paine murmured. “It isn’t on the map, and the State city directory doesn’t list it. We have no schedule that includes it. There are no commute books made up for it. We don’t—”

He broke off. Critchet had vanished. One moment he was there, studying the wall map. The next moment he was gone. Vanished. Puffed out.