Phillip K. Dick

UBIK

         ih sih die liehte heide
         in gruner varve stan
         dar suln wir alle gehen
         die sumerzeit empahen

         i see the sunstruck forest
         in green it stands complete
         there soon we all are going
         the summertime to meet

1

Friends, this is clean-up time and we're discounting all our silent, electric Ubiks by this much money. Yes' we're throwing away the bluebook. And remember: every Ubik on our lot has been used only as directed.

Glen Runciter
 At three-thirty A.M. on the night of 5 June 1992, the top telepath in the Sol System fell off the map in the offices of Runciter Associates in New York City. That started vidphones ringing. The Runciter organization had lost track of too many of Hollis' Psis during the last two months; this added disappearance wouldn't do.
'Mr Runciter? Sorry to bother you.' The technician in charge of the night shift at the map room coughed nervously as the massive, sloppy head of Glen Runciter swam up to fill the vidscreen. ,We got this news from one of our inertials. Let me look.' He fiddled with a disarranged stack of tapes from the recorder which monitored incoming messages. 'Our Miss Dorn reported it; as you may recall, she had followed him to Green River, Utah, where -'
Sleepily, Runciter grated, 'Who? I can't keep in mind at all times which inertials are following what teep or precog.' With his hand he smoothed down his ruffled gray mass of wirelike hair. 'Skip the rest and tell me which of Hollis' people is missing now.'
'S. Dole Melipone,' the technician said.
'What? Melipone's gone? You kid me.'
'I not kid you,' the technician assured him. 'Edie Dorn and two other inertials followed him to a motel named the Bonds of Erotic Polymorphic Experience, a sixty-unit subsurface structure catering to businessmen and their hookers who don't want to be entertained. Edie and her colleagues didn't think he was active, but just to be on the safe side we had one of our own telepaths, Mr G.G. Ashwood, go in and read him. Ashwood found a scramble pattern surrounding Melipone's mind, so he couldn't do anything; he therefore went back to Topeka, Kansas, where he's currently scouting a new possibility.'
Runciter, mo e awake now, had lit a cigarette; chin in hand, he sat propped up somberly, smoke drifting across the scanner of his end of the bichannel circuit. 'You're sure the teep was Melipone? Nobody seems to know what he looks like; he must use a different physiognomic template every month. What about his field?'
'We asked Joe Chip to go in there and run tests on the magnitude and minitude of the field being generated there at the Bonds of Erotic Polymorphic Experience Motel. Chip says it registered, at its height, 68.2 bir units of telepathic aura, which only Melipone, among all the known telepaths, can produce.' The technician finished, 'So that's where we stuck Melipone's ident-flag on the map. And now he - it - is gone.'
'Did you look on the floor? Behind the map?'
'It's gone electronically. The man it represents is no longer on Earth or, as far as we can make out, on a colony world either.'
Runciter said, 'I'll consult my dead wife.'
 moratorium
 'It's the middle of the night. The moratoriums are closed now.'
'Not in Switzerland,' Runciter said, with a grimacing smile, as if some repellent midnight fluid had crept up into his aged throat. 'Goodeve.' Runciter hung up.
As owner of the Beloved Brethren Moratorium, Herbert Schoenheit von Vogelsang, of course, perpetually came to work before his employees. At this moment, with the chilly, echoing building just beginning to stir, a w rried-looking clerical individual with nearly opaque glasses and wearing a tabby-fur blazer and pointed yellow shoes waited at the reception counter, a claim - check stub in his hand. Obviously, he had shown up to holida - greet a relative. Resurrection Day - the holiday on which the half - lifers were publicly honored - lay just around the corner; the rush would soon be beginning.
'Yes, sir,' Herbert said to him with an affable smile. 'l'll take your stub personally.'
'It's an elderly lady,' the customer said. 'About eighty, very small and wizened. My grandmother.'
'Twill only be a moment.' Herbert made his way back to the cold-pac bins to search out number 3054039-B.
When he located the correct party he scrutinized the lading report attached. It gave only fifteen days of half-life remaining. Not very much, he reflected; automatieally he pressed a portable protophason amplifier into the transparent plastic hull of the casket, tuned it, listened at the proper frequency for indication of cephalic activity.
Faintly from the speaker a voice said, '... and then Tillie sprained her ankle and we never thought it'd heal; she was so foolish about it, wanting to start walking immediately...'
Satisfied, he unplugged the amplifier and located a union man to perform the actual task of carting 3054039-B to the consultation lunge, where the customer would be put in touch with the old lady.
'You checked her out, did you?' the customer asked as he paid the poscreds due.
'Personally,' Herbert answered. 'Functioning perfectly.' He flicked a series of switches, then stepped back. 'Happy Resurrection Day, sir.'
'Thank you.' The customer seated himself facing the casket, which steamed in its envelope of cold-pac; he pressed an earphone against the side of his head and spoke firmly into the microphone. 'Flora, dear, can you hear me? I think I can hear you already. Flora?'
When I pass, Herbert Schoenheit von Vogelsang said to himself, I think I'll will my heirs to revive me one day a century. That way I can observe the fate of all mankind. But that meant a rather high maintenance cost to the heirs - and he knew what that meant. Sooner or later they would rebel, have his body taken out of cold-pac and - God forbid - buried.
'Burial is barbaric,' Herbert muttered aloud. 'Remnant of the primitive origins of our culture.'
'Yes, sir,' his secretary agreed, at her typewriter.
In the consultation bunge several customers now communed with their half-lifer relations, in rapt quiet, distributed at intervals each with his separate casket. It was a tranquil sight, these faithfuls, coming as they did so regularly to pay homage. They brought messages, news of what took place in the outside world; they cheered the gloomy half-lifers in these intervals of cerebral activity. And - they paid Herbert Schoenheit von Vogelsang. It was a profitable business, operating a moratorium.
'My dad seems a little frail,' a young man said, catching Herbert's attention. 'I wonder if you could take a moment of your time to check him over. I'd really appreciate it.'
'Certainly,' Herbert said, accompanying the customer across the bunge to his deceased relative. The lading for this one showed only a few days remaining; that explained the vitiated quality of cerebration. But still ... he turned up the gain of the protophason amplifier, and the voice from the half-lifer became a trifle stronger in the earphone. He's almost at an end, Herbert thought. It seemed obvious to him that the son did not want to see the lading, did not actually care to know that contact with his dad was diminishing, finally. So Herbert said nothing; he merely walked off, leaving the son to commune. Why tell him that this was probably the last time he would come here? He would find out soon enough in any case. A truck had now appeared at the loading platform at the rear of the moratorium; two men hopped down from it, wearing familiar pale-blue uniforms. Atlas Interplan Van and Storage, Herbert perceived. Delivering another half - lifer who had just now passed, or here to pick up one which had expired. Leisurely, he started in that direction, to supervise; at that moment, however, his¨secretar called to him. 'Herr Schoenheit von Vogelsang; sorry to break into your meditation, but a customer wishes you to assist in revving up his relative.' Her voice took on special coloration as she said, 'The customer is Mr Glen Runciter, all the way here from the North American Confederation.'
A tall, elderly man, with large hands and a quick, sprightly stride, came toward him. He wore a varicolored Dacron wash-and-wear suit, knit cummerbund and dip- dyed cheesecloth cravat. His head, massive like a tomcat's, thrust forward as he peered through slightly protruding, round and warm and highly alert eyes. Runciter kept, on his face, a professional expression of greeting, a fast attentiveness which fixed on Herbert, then almost at once strayed past him, as if Runciter had already fastened onto future matters. 'How is Ella?' Runciter boomed, sounding as if he possessed a voice electronically augmented. 'Ready to be cranked up for a talk? She's only twenty; she ought to be in better shape than you or me.' He chuckled, but it had an abstract quality; he always smiled and he always chuckled, his voice always boomed, but inside he did not notice anyone, did not care; it was his body which smiled, nodded and shook hands. Nothing touched his mind, which remained remote; aloof, but amiable, he propelled Herbert along with him, sweeping his way in great strides back into the chilled bins where the half-lifers, induding his wife, lay.
'You have not been here for some time, Mr Runciter,' Herbert pointed out; he could not recall the data on Mrs Runciter's lading sheet, how much half-life she retained.
Runciter, his wide, flat hand pressing against Herbert's back to urge him along, said, 'This is a moment of importance, von Vogelsang. We, my associates and myself, are in a line of business that surpasses all rational understanding. I'm not at liberty to make disclosures at this time, but we consider matters at present to be ominous but not however hopeless. Despair is not indicated - not by any means. Where's Ella?' He halted, glanced rapidly about.
'I'll bring her from the bin to the consultation bunge for you,' Herbert said; customers should not be here in the bins. 'Do you have your numbered claimcheck, Mr Runciter?'
'God, no,' Runciter said. 'I lost it months ago. But you know who my wife is; you can find her. Ella Runciter, about twenty. Brown hair and eyes.' He looked around him impatiently. 'Where did you put the lounge? It used to be located where I could find it.'
'Show Mr Runciter to the consultation lounge,' Herbert said to one of his employees, who had come meandering by, curious to see what the world-renowned owner of an anti-psi organization looked like.
Peering into the lounge, Runciter said with aversion, 'It's full. I can't talk to Ella in there.' He strode after Herbert, who had made for the moratorium's files. 'Mr von Vogelsang,' he said, overtaking him and once more dropping his big paw onto the man's shoulder; Herbert felt the weight of the hand, its persuading vigor. 'Isn't there a more private sanctum sanctorum for confidential communications? What I have to discuss with Ella my wife is not a matter which we at Runciter Associates are ready at this time to reveal to the world.'
Caught up in the urgency of Runciter's voice and presence, Herbert found himself readily mumbling, 'I can make Mrs Runciter available to you in one of our offices, sir.' He wondered what had happened, what pressure had forced Runciter out of his bailiwick to make this belated pilgrimage to the Beloved Brethren Moratorium to crank up - as Runciter crudely phrased it - his half-lifer wife. A business crisis of some sort, he theorized. Ads over TV and in the homeopapes by the various anti-psi prudence establishments had shrilly squawked their harangues of late. Defend your privacy, the ads yammered on the hour, from all media. Is a stranger tuning in on you? Are you really alone? That for the telepaths... and then the queasy worry about precogs. Are your actions being predicted by someone you never met? Someone you would not want to meet or invite into your home? Terminate anxiety; contacting your nearest prudence organization will first tell you if in fact you are the victim of unauthorized intrusions, and then, on your instructions, nullify these intrusions - at moderate cost to you.
'Prudence organizations.' He liked the term; it had dignity and it was accurate. He knew this from personal experience; two years ago a telepath had infiltrated his moratorium staff, for reasons which he had never discovered. To monitor confidences between halflivers and their visitors, probably; perhaps those of one specific halflifer - anyhow, a scout from one of the anti-psi organizations had picked up the telepathic field, and he had been notified. Upon his signing of a work contract an anti- telepath had been dispatched, had installed himself on the moratorium premises. The telepath had not been located but it had been nullified, exactly as the TV ads promised. And so, eventually, the defeated telepath had gone away. The moratorium was now psi-free, and, to be sure it stayed so, the anti-psi prudence organization surveyed his establishment routinely once a month.
'Thanks very much, Mr Vogelsang,' Runciter said, following Herbert through an outer office in which clerks worked to an emptT inner room that smelled of drab and unnecessary micro-documents.
Of course, Herbert thought musingly to himself, I took their word for it that a telepath got in here; they showed me a graph they had obtained, citing it as proof. Maybe they faked it, made up the graph in their own labs. And I took their word for it that the telepath left; he came, he left - and I paid two thousand poscreds. Could the prudence organizations be, in fact, rackets? Claiming a need for their services when sometimes no need actually exists?
Pondering this he set off in the direction of the files once more. This time Runciter did not follow him; instead, he thrashed about noisilyM making his big frame comfortable in terms of a meager chair. Runciter sighed, and it seemed to Herbert, suddenly, that the massively built old man was tired, despite his customary show of energy.
I guess when you get up into that bracket, Herbert decided, you have to act in a certain way; you have to appear more than a human with merely ordinary failings. Probably Runciter's body contained a dozen artiforgs, artificial organs grafted into place in his physiological apparatus as the genuine, original ones failed. Medical science, he conjectured, supplies the material groundwork, and out of the authority of his mind Runciter supplies the remainder. I wonder how old he is, he wondered. Impossible any more to tell by looks, especially after ninety.
'Miss Beason,' he instructed his secretary, 'have Mrs Ella Runciter located and bring me the ident number. She's to be taken to office 2-A.' He seated himself across from her, busied himself with a pinch or two of Fribourg & Treyer Princes snuff as Miss Beason began the relatively simple job of tracking down Glen Runciter's wife.

2

The best way to ask for beer is to sing out Ubik. Made from select hops, choice water, slow-aged for perfect flavor, Ubik is the nation's number-one choice in beer. Made only in Cleveland.

'reanimation'
 Upright in her transparent casket, encased in an effluvium of icy mist, Ella Runciter lay with her eyes shut, her hands lifted permanently toward her impassive face. It had been three years since he had seen Ella, and of course she had not changed. She never would, now, at least not in the outward physical way. But with each resuscitation into active half-life, into a return of celebral activity, however short, Ella died somewhat. The remaining time left to her pulse-phased out and ebbed.
Knowledge of this underwrote his failure to rev her up more often. He rationalized this way: that it doomed her, that to activate her constituted a sin against her. As to her own stated wishes, before her death and in early half-life encounters - this had become handily nebubus in his mmd. Anyway, he would know better, being four times as old as she. What had she wished? To continue to function with him as co-owner of Runciter Associates; something vague on that order. Well, he had granted this wish. Now, for example. And six or seven times in the past. He did consult her at each crisis of the organization. He was doing so at this moment.
Damn this earphone arrangement, he grumbled as he fitted the plastic disk against the side of his head. And this microphone; all impediments to natural communication. He felt impatient and uncomfortable as he shifted about on the inadequate chair which Vogelsang or whatever his name was had provided him; he watched her\rev back into sentience and wished she would hurry. And then in panic he thought, Maybe she isn't going to make it; maybe she's worn out and they didn't tell me. Or they didn't know. Maybe, he thought, I ought to get that Vogelsang creature in here to explain. Maybe something terrible is wrong.
 "The alternative is nothing."
 Ella, pretty and light-skinned; her eyes, in the days when they had been open, had been bright and luminous blue. That would not again occur; he could talk to her and hear her answer; he could communicate with her ... but he would never again see her with her eyes opened; nor would her mouth move. She would not smile at his arrival. When he departed she would not cry. Is this worth it? he asked himself. Is this better than the old way, the direct road from full-life to the grave? I still do have her with me, in a sense, he decided. The alternative is nothing.
In the earphone words, slow and uncertain, formed: circular thoughts of no importance, fragments of the mysterious dream which she now dwelt in. How did it feel, he wondered, to be in half-life? He could never fathom it from what Ella told him; the basis of it, the experience of it, couldn't really be transmitted. Gravity, she had told him, once; it begins not to affect you and you float, more and more. When half-life is over, she had said, I think you float out of the System, out into the stars. But she did not know either; she only wondered and conjectured. She did not, however, seem afraid. Or unhappy. He felt glad of that.
'Hi, Ella,' he said clumsily into the microphone.
'Oh,' her answer came, in his ear; she seemed startled. And yet of course her face remained stable. Nothing showed; he looked away. 'Hello, Glen,' she said, with a sort of childish wonder, surprised, taken aback, to find him here. 'What -' She hesitated. 'How much time has passed?'
'Couple years' he said.
'Tell me what's going on.'
'Aw, Christ,' he said, 'everything's going to pieces, the whole organization. That's why I'm here; you wanted to be brought into major policy-planning decisions, and God knows we need that now, a new policy, or anyhow a revamping of our scout structure.'
'I was dreaming,' Ella said. 'I saw a smoky red light, a horrible light. And yet I kept moving toward lt. I couldn't stop.'
 Bardo Thödol (smoky red light)
 'Yeah,' Runciter said, nodding. 'The Bardo Thödol, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, tells about that. You remember reading that; the doctors made you read it when you were -' He hesitated. 'Dying,' he said then.
'The smoky red light is bad, isn't it?' Ella said.
'Yeah, you want to avoid it.' He cleared his throat. 'Listen, Ella, we've got problems. You feel up to hearing about it? I mean, I don't want to overtax you or anything; just say if you're too tired or if there's something else you want to hear about or discuss.'
'lt's so weird. I think I've been dreaming all this time, since you last talked to me. Is it really two years? Do you know, Glen, what I think? I think that other people who are around me - we seem to be progressively growing together. A lot of my dreams aren't about me at all. Sometimes I'm a man and sometimes a little boy; sometimes I'm an old fat woman with varicose veins... and I'm in places I've never seen, doing things that make no sense.'
'Well, like they say, you're heading for a new womb to be born out of. And that smoky red light - that's a bad womb; you don't want to go that way. That's a humiliating, low sort of womb. You're probably anticipating your next life, or whatever it is.' He felt foolish, talking like this; normally he had no theological convictions. But the half-life experience was real and it had made theologians out of all of them. 'Hey,' he said, changing the subject. 'Let me tell you wh§t's happened, what made me come here and bother you. S. Dole Melipone has dropped out of sight.'
A moment of silence, and then Ella laughed. 'Who or what is an S. Dole Melipone? There can't be any such thing.' The laugh, the unique and familiar warmth of it, made his spine tremble; he remembered that about her, even after so many years. He had not heard Ella's laugh in over a decade.
'Maybe you've forgotten,' he said.
Ella said, 'I haven't forgotten; I wouldn't forget an S. Dole Melipone. Is it like a hobbit?'
'lt's Raymond Hollis' top telepath. We've had at least one inertial sticking close to him ever since G.G. Ashwood first scouted him, a year and a half ago. We never lose Melipone; we can't afford to. Melipone can when necessary generate twice the psi field of any other Hollis employee. And Melipone is only one of a whole string of Hollis people who've disappeared - anyhow, disappeared as far as we're concerned. As far as all prudence organizations in the Society can make out. So I thought, Hell, I'll go ask Ella what's up and what we should do. Like you specified in your will - remember?'
'I remember.' But she sounded remote. 'Step up your ads on TV. Warn people. Tell them ..,' Her voice trailed off into silence then.
'This bores you,' Runciter said gloomily.
'No. I-' She hesitated and he felt her once more drift away. 'Are they all telepaths?' she asked after an interval.
'Telepaths and precogs mostly. They're nowhere on Earth; I know that. We've got a dozen ieactive inertials with nothing to do because the Psis they've been nullifying aren't around, and what worries me even more, a lot more, is that requests for anti-psis have dropped - which you would expect, given the fact that so many Psis are missing. But I know they're on one single project; I mean, I believe. Anyhow I'm sure of it; somebody's hired the bunch of them, but only Hollis knows who it is or where it is. Or what it's all about.' He lapsed into brooding silence then.
How would Ella be able to help him figure it out? he asked himself. Stuck here in this casket, frozen out of the world - she knew only what he told her. Yet, he had always relied on her sagacity, that particular female form of it, a wisdom not based on knowledge or experience but on something innate. He had not, during the period she had lived, been able to fathom it; he certainly could not do so now that she lay in chilled immobility. Other omen he had known since her death - there had been several - had a little of it, trace amounts perhaps. Intimations of a greater potentiality which, in them, never emerged as it had in Ella.
 'Working for money? Or out of conviction?'
 'Tell me,' Ella said, 'what this Melipone person is like.'
'A screwball.'
'Working for money? Or out of conviction? I always feel wary about that, when they have that psi mystique, that sense of purpose and cosmic identity. ike that awful Sarapis had; remember him?'
'Sarapis isn't around any more. Hollis allegedly bumped him off because he connived to set up his own outfit in competition with Hollis. One of his precogs tipped Hollis off.' He added, 'Melipone is much tougher on us than Sarapis was. When he's hot it takes three inertials to balance his field, and, there's no profit in that; we collect - or did collect - the same fee we get with one inertial. Because the Society has a rate schedule now which we're bound by.' He liked the Society less each year; it had become a chronic obsession with him, its uselessness, its cost. Its vainglory. 'As near as we can tell, Melipone is a money-Psi. Does that make you feel better? Is that less bad?' He waited, but heard no response from her. 'Ella,' he said. Silence. Nervously he said, 'Hey, hello there, Ella; can you hear me? Is something wrong?' Oh, God, he thought. She's gone.
A pause, and then thoughts materialized in his right ear. 'My name is Jory.' Not Ella's thoughts; a different elan, more vital and yet clumsier. Without her deft subtlety.
 "I am Jory"
 'Get off the line,' Runciter said in panic. 'I was talking to my wife Ella; where'd you come from?'
'I am Jory,' the thoughts came, 'and no one talks to me. I'd like to visit with you awhile, mister, if that's okay with you. What's your name?'
Stammering, Runciter said, 'I want my wife, Mrs Ella Runciter; I paid to talk to her, and that's who I want to talk to, not you.'
'I know Mrs Runciter,' the thoughts clanged in his ear, much stronger now. 'She talks to me, but it isn't the same as somebody like you talking to me, somebody in the world. Mrs Runciter is here where we are; it doesn't count because she doesn't know any more than we do. What year is it, mister? Did they send that big ship to Proxima? I'm very interested in that; maybe you can tell me. And if you want, I can tell Mrs Runciter later on. Okay?'
Runciter popped the plug from his ear, hurriedly set down the earphone and the rest of the gadgetry; he left the stale, dust-saturated office and roamed about among the chilling caskets, row after row, all of them neatly arranged by number. Moratorium employees swam up before him and then vanished as he churned on, searching for the owner.
'Is something the matter, Mr Runciter?' the von Vogelsang person said, observing him as he floundered about. 'Can I assist you?'
'I've got some thing coming in over the wire,' Runciter panted, halting. 'Instead of Ella. Damn you guys and your shoddy business practices; this shouldn't happen, and what does it mean?' He followedGafter the moratorium owner, who had already started in the direction of office 2-A. 'If I ran my business this way -'
'Did the individual identifv himself?'
'Yeah, he called himself Jory.'
Frowning with obvious worry, von Vogelsang said, 'That would be Jory Miller. I believe he's located next to your wife. In the bin.'
'But I can see it's Ella!'
'After prolonged proximity,' von Vogelsang explained. 'there is occasionally a mutual osmosis, a suffusion between the mentalities of half-lifers. Jory Miller's cephalic activity is particularly good; your wife's is not. That makes for an unfortunately one-way passage of protophasons.
'Can you correct it?' Runciter asked hoarsely; he found himself still spent, still panting and shaking. 'Get that thin; out of my wife's mind and get her back - that's your job!'
Von Vogelsang said, in a stilted voice, 'If this condition persists your money will be retumed to you.'
'Who cares about the money? Snirt the money.' They had reached office 2-A now; Runciter unsteadily reseated himself, his heart laboring so that he could hardly speak. 'If you don't get t is Jory person off the line,' he half gasped, half snarled, 'I'll sue you; I'll close down this place!'
Facing the casket, von Vogelsang pressed the audio outlet into his ear and spoke briskly into the microphone. 'Phase out, Jory; that's a good boy.' Glancing at Runciter he said, 'Jory passed at fifteen; that's why he has so much vitality. Actually, this has happened before; Jory has shown up several times where he shouldn't be.' Once more into the microphone he said, 'This is very unfair of you, Jory; Mr Runciter has come a long way to talk ta his wife. Don't dim her signal, Jory; that's not nice.' A pause as he listened to the earphone. 'I know her signal is weak.' Again he listened, solemn and froglike, then removed the earphone and rose to his feet.
'What'd he say?' Runciter demanded. 'Will he get out of there and let me talk to Ella?'
Von Vogelsang said, 'There's nothing Jory can do. Think of two AM radio transmitters, one close by but limited to only five-hundred watts of operating power. Then another, far off, but on the same or nearly the same frequency, and utilizing five-thousand watts. When night comes -'
'And night,' Runciter said, 'has come.' At least for Ella. And maybe himself as well, if Hollis' missing teeps, parakineticists, precogs, resurrectors and animators couldn't be found. He had not only lost Ella; he had also lost her advice, Jory having supplanted her before she could give it.
'When we return her to the bin,' von Vogelsang was blabbing, 'we won't install her near Jory again. In fact, if you're agreeable as to paying the somewhat larger monthly fee, we can place her in a high-grade isolated c°amber with walls coated and reinforced with Teflon-26 so as to inhibit any hetero-psychic infusion - from Jory or anybody else.'
'Isn't it too late?' Runciter said, suffacing momentarily from the depression into which this happening had dropped him.
'She may retum. Once Jory phases out. Plus anyone else who may have gotten into her because of her weakened state. She's accessible to almost anyone.' Von Vogelsang chewed his lip, palpably pondering. 'She may not like being isolated, Mr Runciter. We keep the containers - the caskets, as they're called by the lay public - close together for a reason. Wandering through one another's mind gives those in half-life the only -'
'Put her in solitary right now,' Runciter broke in. 'Better she be isolated than not exist at all.'
'She exists,' von Vogelsang corrected. 'She merely can't contact you. There's a difference.'
Runciter said, 'A metaphysical difference which means nothing to me.'
'I will put her in isolation,' von Vogelsang said, 'but I think you're right; it's too late. Jory has permeated her permanently, to some extent at least. I'm sorry.'
Runciter said harshly, 'So am I.'

3

Instant Ubik has all the fresh flavor of just-brewed drip coffee. Your husband will say, Christ, Sally' I used to think your coffee was only so-so. But now, wow! Safe when taken as directed.

Joe Chip
 Still in gay pinstripe clown-style pajamas, Joe Chip hazily seated himself at his kitchen table, lit a cigarette and, after inserting a dime, twiddled the dial of his recently rented 'pape machine. Having a hangover, he dialed off interplan news, hovered momentarily at domestic news and then selected gossip.
'Yes, sir,' the 'pape machine said heartily. 'Gossip. Guess what Stanton Mick, the reclusive, interplanetarily known speculator and financer, is up to at this very moment.' Its works whizzed and a scroll of printed matter crept from its slot; the ejected roll, a document in four colors, niftily incised with bold type, rolled across the surface of the neo-teakwood table and bounced to the floor. His head aching, Chip retrieved it, spread it out flat before him.

MICK HITS WORLD BANK FOR TWO TRIL
(AP) London. What could Stanton Mick, the reclusive, interplanetarily known speculator and financier, be up to? the business community asked itself as rumor leaked out of Whitehall that the dashing but peculiar industrial magnate, who once offered to build free of charge a fleet by which Israel could colonize and make fertile otherwise desert areas of Mars, had asked for and may possibly receive a staggering and unprecented loan on

'This isn't gossip,' Joe Chip said to the 'pape machine. 'This is speculation about fiscal transactions. Today I want to read about which TV star is sleeping with whose drug-addicted wife.' He had as usual not slept well at least in terms of REM - rapid eye movement - sleep. And he had resisted taking a soporific because, very unfortunately his week's supply of stimulants, provided him by the autonomic pharmacy of his conapt building, had run out due, admittedly, to his own oral greed, but nonetheless gone. By law he could not approach the pharmacy for more until next Tuesday. Two days away, two long days.
The 'pape machine said, 'Set the dial for bw gossip.'
He did so and a second scroll, excreted by the 'pape machine without delay, emerged; he zommed in on an exeellent caricature drawing of Lola Herzburg-Wright licked his lips with satisfaction at the naughty exposure ol her entire right ear, then feasted on the text.

Accosted by a cutpurse in a fancy NY after-hours mowl the other night, LOLA HERZBURG-WRIGHT bounced a swift right jab off the chops of the do-badder which sent him reeling onto the table where KING EGON GROAT OF SWEDEN and an unidentified miss with astonishingly arge

The ring-construct of his conapt door jangled; startled, Joe Chip glanced up, found his cigarette attempting to burn the formica surface of his neo-teakwood table, coped with that, then shuffled blearily to the speaktube mounted handily by the release bolt of the door. 'Who is it?' he grumbled; checking with his wrist watch, he saw that eight o'clock had not arrived. Probably the rent robot, he decided. Or a creditor. He did not trigger off the release bolt of the door.
An enthusiastic male voice from the door's speaker exclaimed 'I know lt's early, Joe, but I just hit town. G.G. Ashwood here; I've got a firm prospect that I snared in Topeka - I read this one as magnificent and I want your confirmation before I lay the pitch in Runciter's lap. Anyhow, he's in Switzerland.'
Chip said, 'I don't have my test equipment in the apt.'
'I'll shoot over to the shop and pick it up for you.'
'lt's not at the shop.' Reluctantly, he admitted, 'lt's in my car. I didn't get around to unloading it last night.' In actuality, he had —been too pizzled on papapot to get the trunk of his hovercar open. 'Can't it wait until after nine?' he asked irritably. G.G. Ashwood's unstable manic energy annoyed him even at noon ... this, at seven-forty, struck him as downright as possible; worse even than a creditor.
'Chip, dearie, this is a sweet number, a walking symposium of miracles that'll curl the needles of your gauges and, in addition, give new life to the firm, which it badly needs. And furthermore -'
'lt's an anti what?' Joe chip asked. 'Telepath?'
'I'll lay it on you right out in front,' G.G. Ashwood declared. 'I don't know. Listen, Chip.' Ashwood lowered his voice. 'This is confidential, this particular one. I can't stand down here at the gate gum-flapping away out loud; somebody might overhear. In fact I'm already picking up the thoughts of some gloonk in a ground-level apt; he -'
'Okay,' Joe Chip said, resigned. Once started, G.G. Ashwood's relentless monologs couldn't be aborted anyhow. He might as well listen to it. 'Give me five minutes to get dressed and find out if I've got any coffee left in the apt anywhere.' He had a quasi memory of shopping last night at the conapt's supermarket, in particular a memory of tearing out a green ration stamp, which could mean either coffee or tea or cigarettes or fancy imported snuff.
'You'll like her,' G.G. Ashwood stated energetically. 'Although, as often happens, she's the daughter of a -'
'Her?' In alarm Joe Chip said, 'My apt's unfit to be seen;
I'm hehind in my payments to the building clean-up robots - they haven't been inside here in two weeks.' 'I'll ask her if she cares.'
'Don't ask her. I care. I'll test her out down at the shop on Runciter's time.'
'I read her mind and she doesn't care.'
'How old is she?' Maybe, he thought, she's only a child. Quite a few new and potential inertials were children, having developed their ability in order to protect themselves against their psionic parents.
'How old are you, dear?' G.G. Ashwood asked faintly. turning his head away to speak to the person with him. 'Nineteen,' he reported to Joe chip.
Well, that shot that. But now he had become curious G.G. Ashwood's razzle-dazzle wound-up tightness usually manifested itself in conjunction with attractive women: mayhe this girl fell into that category. 'Give me fifteen minutes,' he told G.G. If he worked fast, and skulked about in a clean-up campaign, and if he missed both coffee and breakfast, he could probably effect a tidy apt by then. At least it seemed worth trying.
He rang off, then searched in the cupboards of the kitchen for a broom (manual or self-powered) or vacuum cleaner (helium battery or wall-socket). Neither could be found. Evidently he had never been issued any sort of cleaning equipment by the building's supply agency. Hell of a time, he thought, to find that out. And he had lived here four years.
Picking up the vidphone, he dialed 214, the extension for the maintenance circuit of the building. 'Listen,' he said, when the homeostatic entity answered. 'I'm now in a position to divert some of my funds in the direction of settling my bill vis-a-vis your clean-up robots. I'd like them up here right now to go over my apt. I'll pay the full and entire bill when they're finished.'
'Sir, you'll pay your full and entire bill before they start.'
By now he had his billfold in hand; from it he dumped his supply of Magic Credit Keys - most of which, by now had heen voided. Probably in perpetuity, his relationship with money and the payment of pressing debts being such as it was. 'I'll charge my overdue bill against my Triangular Magic Key,' he informed his nebulous antagonist. 'That will transfer the obligation out of  our jurisdiction; on your books it'll smow as total restitution.'
'Plus fines, plus penalties.'
'I'll charge those against my Heart-Shaped -'
'Mr Chip, the Ferris & Brockman Retail Credit Auditing and Analysis Agency has published a special flier on you. Our receptor slot received it yesterday and it remains fresh in our minds. Since July you've dropped from a triple G status creditwise to quadruple G. Our department - in fact this entire conapt building - is now programed against an extension of services and/or credit to such pathetic anomalies as yourself, sir. Regarding you, everything must hereafter be handled on a basic-cash subfloor. In fact, you'll probably be on a basic-cash subfloor for the rest of your life. In fact-'
He hung up. And abandoned the hope of enticing and/or threatening the clean-up robots into entering his muddled apt. Instead, he padded into the bedroom to dress; he could do that without assistance.
After he had dressed - in a sporty maroon wrapper, twinkle-toes turned-up shoes and a felt cap with a tassel - he poked about hopefully in the kitchen for some manifestation of coffee. None. He then focused on the living room and found, by the door leading to the bathroom, last night's greatcape, every spotty blue yard of it, and a plastic bag which contained a half-pound can of authentic Kenya coffee, a great treat and one which only while pizzled would he have risen to. Especially in view of his current abominable financial situation.
Back in the kitchen he fished in his various pockets for a dime, and, with it, started up the coffeepot. Sniffing the - to him - very unusual smell, he again consulted the watch, saw that fifteen minutes had passed; he therefore vigorously strode to the apt door, turned the knob and pulled on the release holt.
 The door refused to open
 The door refused to open. It said, 'Five cents, please.'
He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing. 'I pay you tomorrow,' he told the door. Again he tried to knob. Again it remained locked tight. 'What I pay you,' he informed it, 'is in the nature or a gratuity; I don't have pay you.'
'I think otherwise,' the door said. 'Look in tre purchase contract you signed when you bought this conapt.'
In his desk drawer he found the contract; since signing it he had found it necessary to refer to the document manyz times. Sure enough; payment to his door for opening and shutting constituted a mandatory fee. Not a tip.
'You discover I'm right,' the door said. It sounded smug.
From the drawer beside the sink Joe chip got a stainless steel knife; with it he began systematically to unscrew the holt assembly of his apt's money-gulping door.
'I'll sue you,' the door said as the first screw fell out. Joe chip said, 'I've never been sued by a door. But guess I can live through it.'
A knock sounded on the door. 'Hey, Joe, baby, it's me, G.G. Ashwood. And I've got her right here with me. up.'
'Put a nickel in the slot for me,' Joe said. 'The mechanism seems to he jammed on my side.'
A coin rattled down into the works of the door; it swung open and there stood G.G. Ashwood with a brilliant look on his face. lt pulsed with sly intensity, an erratic, gleaming triumph aszhe propelled the girl forward aud into the apt.

the counter talent
 She stood for a moment staring at Joe, obviously no more than seventeen, slim and copper-skinned, with large dark eyes. My God, he thought, she's beautiful. She wore an ersatz canvas work-shirt and jeans, heavy boots caked with what appeared to be authentic mud. Her tangle of shiny hair was tied back and knolled with a red bandanna. Her rolled-up sleeves showed tanned, competent arms. At her imitation leather helt she carried a knife, a field-telephone unit and an emergency pack of rations and water. On her bare, dark forearm he made out a tattoo, CAVEAT EMPTOR, it read. He wondered what that meant.
'This is Pat,' G.G. Ashwood said, his arm, with ostentatious familiarity, around the girl's waist. 'Never mind her last name.' Square and puffy, like an overweight bricÂ, wearing his usual mohair poncho, apricot-colored felt hat, argyle ski socks and carpet slippers, he advanced toward Joe chip, self-satisfaction smirking from every molecule in his body; he had found something of value here, and he meant to make the most of it. 'Pat, this is the company's highly skilled, first-line electrical type tester.'
Coolly, the girl said to Joe chip, 'Is it you that's electrical? Or your tests?'
'We trade off,' Joe said. He felt, from all around him, the miasma of his uncleaned-up apt; it radiated the specter of debris and clutter, and he knew that Pat had already noticed. 'Sit down,' he said awkwardly. 'Have a cup of actual coffee.'
'Such luxury,' Pat said, seating herself at the kitchen table; reflexively she gathered the week's heap of 'papes into a neater pile. 'How can you afford real coffee, Mr Chip?'
G.G. Ashwood said, 'Joe gets paid a hell of a lot. The firm couldn't operate without him.' Reaching out he took a cigarette from the package lying on the table.
'Put it back,' Joe chip said. 'I'm almost out and I used up my last green ration stamp on the coffee.'
'I paid for the door,' G.G. pointed out. He offered the pack to the girl. 'Joe puts on an act; pay no attention. Like look how he keeps his place. Shows he's creative all geniuses live like this. Where's your test equipment, Joe? We're wasting time.'
To the girl Joe said, 'You're dressed oddly.'
'I maintain the subsurface vidphone lines at the Topeka Kibbutz,' Pat said. 'Only women can hold jobs involving manual labor at that particular kibbutz. That's why I applied there, instead of the Wi¢hita Falls Kibbutz.' Her black eyes blazed pridefully.
Joe said, 'That inscription on your arm, that tattoo; is that Hebrew?'
'Latin.' Her eyes veiled her amusement. 'I've never seen an apt so cluttered with rubbish. Don't you have a mistress?'
'These electrical-expert types have no time for tarradiddle,' G.G. Ashwood said irritably. 'Listen, Chip, this girl's parents work for Ray Hollis. If they knew she was here they'd give her a frontal lobotomy.'
To the girl Joe Chip said, 'They don't know you have a counter-talent?'
'No.' she shook her head. 'I didn't really understand it either until yourZscout sat down with me in the kibbutz cafeteria and told me. Maybe it's true.' She shrugged. 'Maybe not. He said you could show me objective pro[f of it, with your testing battery.'
'How would you feel,' he asked her, 'if the tests show that you have it?'
Reflecting, Pat said, 'lt seems so - negative. I don't do anything; I don't move objects or turn stones into bread or give birth without impregnation or reverse the illness process in sick people. Or read minds. Or look into the future - not even common talents like that. I just negate somebody else's ability; It seems -' she gestured. 'Stultifying.'
'As a survival factor for the human race,' Joe said, 'it's as useful as the psi talents. Especially for us Norms. The anti-psi factor is a natural restoration of ecological balance.
One insect learns to fly, so another learns to build a web to trap him. Is that the same as no flight? Clams developed hard shells to protect them; therefore, birds learn to fly the clam up high in the air and drop him on a rock. In a sense, you're a life form preying on the Psis, and the Psis are life forms that prey oe the Norms. That makes you a friend of the Norm class. Balance, the full circle, predator and prey. It appears to be an eternal system; and, frankly, I can't see how it could belimproved.'
'I might be considered a traitor,' Pat said.
'Does it bother you?'
'lt bothers me that people will feel hostile toward me. But I guess you can't live very long without arousing hostility; you can't please everybody, because people want different things. Please one and you displease another.'
Joe said, 'What is your anti-talent?'
'It's hard to explain.'
'Like I say,' G.G. Ashwood said, 'it's unique; I've never heard of it before.'
'Which psi talent does it counteract?' Joe asked the girl 'Precog,' Pat said. I guess.' She indicated G.G. Ashwood whose smirk of enthusiasm bad not dimmed. 'Your scout Mr Ashwood explained it to me. I knew I did something funny; I've always had these strange periods in my life, starting in my sixth year. I never told my parents, because I sensed that it would displease them.'
'Are they precogs?' Joe asked.
'Yes.'
'You're right. It would have displeased them. But if you used it around them - even once - they would have known. Didn't they suspect? Didn't you interfere with their ability?'
Pat said, 'I-' She gestured. 'I think I did interfere but they didn't know it.' Her face showed bewilde¢ment.
'Let me explain,' Joe said, 'how the anti-precog generally functions. Functions, in fact, in every case we know of. The precog sees a variety of futures, laid out side by side like cells in a beehive. For hirn one has greater lurninosity, and this he picks. Once he has picked it the anti-precog can do nothing; the anti-precog has to be present when the precog is in the process of deciding, not after. The anti-precog makes all futures seern equally real to the precog; he aborts his talent to choose at all. A precog is instantly aware when an anti-precog is nearby because his entire relation to the future is altered. In the case of telepaths a similar impairment -'
 "She goes back in time"
 'She goes back in time,' G.G. Ashwood said.
Joe stared at him.
'Back in time,' G.G. repeated, savoring this; his eyes shot shafts of significance to every part of Joe Chip's kitchen. 'The precog affected by her still sees one predominant future; like yow said, the one luminous possibility. And he chooses it, and he's right. But why is it right? Why is it luminous? Because this girl -' He shrugged in her direction. 'Pat controls the future; that one luminous possibility is luminous because she's gone into the past and changed it. By changing it she changes the present, which includes the precog; he's affected without knowing rt and his talent seems to work, whereas it really doesn't. So that's one advantage of her anti-talent over other anti-precog talents. The other - and greater - is that she can cancel out the preco 's decision after he's made it. She can enter the situation later on, and this problem has always hung us up, as you know, if we didn't get in there from the start we couldn't do anything. In a way, we never could truly abort the precog ability as we've done with the others; right? Hasn't that been a weak link in our services?' He eyed Joe Chip expectantly.
'Interesting,' Joe said presently.
'Hell - "interesting"?' G.G. Ashwood thrashed about indignantly. 'This is the greatest anti-talent to emerge thus far!'
In a low voice Pat said, 'I don't go back in time.' She raised her eyes, confronted Joe Chip half apologetically, half belligerently. 'I do something, but Mr. Ashwood built it up all out of proportion to reality.'
'I can read your mind,' G.G. said to her looking a little nettled. 'I know you can change the past you've done it.'
Pat said, 'I can change the past but I don't go into the past; I don't time-travel, as you want your tester to think.'
'How do you change the past?' Joe asked her.
'I think about it. One specific aspect of it such as one incident, or something somebody said. Or a little thing that happened, that I wish hadn't happe ed. The first time I did this, as a child -'
'When she was six years old,' G.G. broke in, 'living in Detroit, with her parents of course, she broke a ceramic antique statue that her father treasured.'
'Didn't your father foresee it?' Joe asked her 'with his precog ability?'
'He foresaw it,' Pat answered, 'and he punished me a week before I broke the statue. But he said it was inevitable; you know the precog talent. They can foresee but they can't change anything. Then after the statue did break - after I broke it, I hould san - I brooded about it, and I thought about that week before it broke when I didn't get any dessert at dinner and had to go to bed at five P.M.. I thought, Christ - or whatever a kid says - isn't there some way these unfortunate events can be averted? My father's precog ability didn't seem very spectacular to me, since he couldn't alter events; I still feel that way, a sort of contempt. I spent a month trying to will the damn statue back into one piece; in my mind I kept going back to before it broke, imagning what it had looked like ... which was awful. And then one morning when I got up - I even dreamed about it at night - there it stood. As it used to be.' Tensley, she leaned toward Joe Chip; she spoke in a sharp, determined voice. 'But neither of my parents noticed anything. It seemed perfectly normal to them that the statue was in one piece; they thought it had always been in one piece. I was the only one who remembered.' Sh smiled, leaned back, took another of his cgarettes from the pack and lit up.
'I'Il go get my test equipment from the car,' Joe. said, starting toward the door.
'Five cents, please,' the door said as he seized its knob.
'Pay the door,' Joe said to G.G. Ashwood.

When he had lugged his armload of testing apparatus from the car to his apt he told the firm's scout to hit the road.
'What?' G.G. said, astounded. 'But I found her, the bounty is mine. I spent almost ten days tracing the field to her; I -'
Joe said to him, 'I can't test her with your field present, as you well know. Talent and anti-talent fields deform each other; if they didn't we wouldn't be in this line of business.' He held out his hand as G.G. got grumpily to his feet. 'And leave me a couple of nickels. So she and I can get out of here.'
'I have change,' Pat murmured. 'In my purse.'
'You can measure the force she creates,' G.G. said, 'by the loss within my field. I've seen you do it that way a hundred times.'
Joe said, briefly, 'This is different.'
'I don't have any more nickels,' G.G. said. 'I can't get out.'
Glancing at Joe, then at G.G., Pat said, 'Have one of mine.' She tossed G.G. a coin, which he caught, an expression of bewilderment on his face. The bewilderment then, by degrees, changed to aggrieved sullenness.
'You sure shot me down,' he said as he deposited the nickel in the door's slot. 'Both of you,' he muttered as the door closed after him. 'I discovered her. This is really a cutthroat business, wGen -' His voice faded out as the door clamped shut. There was, then, silence.
Presently Pat said, 'When bis enthusiasm goes, there isn't much left of him.'
'He's okay,' Joe said; he felt a usual feeling: guilt. But not very much. 'Anyhow he did his part. Now -'
'Now it's your turn,' Pat said. 'So to speak. May I take off my boots?'
'Sure,' he said. He began to set up his test equipment, checking the drums, the power supply; he started trial motions of each needle, releasing specific surges and recording their effect.
'A shower?' she asked as she set her boots neatly out of the way.
'A quarter,' he murmured. 'it costs a quarter.' He glanced up at her and saw that she had begun unbuttoning her blouse. 'I don't have a quarter,' he said.
'At the kibbutz,' Pat said, 'everything is free.'
'Free!' He stared at her. 'That's not economically feasible. How can it operate on that basis? For more than a month?'
She continued unperturbedly unbuttoning her blouse. 'Our salaries are paid in and we're credited with having done our job. The aggregate of our earnings underwrites the kibbutz as a whole. Actually, the Topeka Kibbutz has shown a profit for several years; We, as a group, are putting in more than we're taking out.' Having unbuttoned her blouse, she laid it over the back of her chair. Under the blue, coarse blouse she wore nothing, and he perceived her breasts: hard and high, held well by the accurate muscles of her shoulders.
'Are you sure you want to do that?' he said. 'Take off your clothes, I mean?'
Pat said, 'You don't remember.'
'Remember what?'
'My not taking off my clothes. In another present. You didn't like that very well, so I eradicated that; hence this.' She stood up lithely.
'What did I do,' he asked cautiously, 'when you didn't take off your clothes? Refuse to test you?'
'You mumbled something about Mr Ashwood having overrated my anti-talent.'
Joe said, 'I don't work that way; I don't do that.'
'Here.' Bending, her breasts wagging forward, she rummaged in the pocket of her blouse, brought forth a folded sheet of paper which she handed him. 'From the previous present, the one I abolished.'
He read it, read his one-line evaluation at the end. 'Anti-psi field generated - inadequate. Below standard throughout. No value against precog ratings now in existence.' And then the codemark which he employed, a circle with a stroke dividing it. Do not hire, the symbol meant. And only he and Glen Runciter knew that. Not even their scouts knew the meaning of the symbol, so Ashwood couldnot have told her. Silently he returned the paper to her; she refolded it-and returned it to her blouse pocket.
'Do you need to test me?' she asked. 'After seeing that?' 'I have a regular procedure,' Joe said. 'Six indices which-'
Pat said, 'You're a little, debt-stricken, ineffective bureaucrat who can't even scrape together enough coins to pay his door to let him out of his apt.' Her tone, neutral but devastating, rebounded in his ears; he felt himself stiffen, wince and violently flush.
'This is a bad spot right now,' he said. 'I'lI be back on my feet financially any day now. I can get a loan. From the fŸrm, if necessary.' He rose unsteadily, got two cups and two saucers, poured coffee from the coffeepot. 'Sugar?' he said. 'Cream?'
'Cream,' Pat said, still standing barefoot, without her blouse.
He fumbled for the doorhandle of the refrigerator, to get out a carton of milk.
'Ten cents, please,' the refrigerator said. 'Five cents for opening my door; five cents for the cream.'
'lt isn't cream,' he said. 'lt's plain milk.' He wcontinued to pluck - futilely - at the refrigerator door. 'Just this one time,' he said to it. 'I swear to God I'll pay you back. Tonight.'
'Here,' Pat said; she slid a dime across the table toward him. 'She should have money,' she said as she watched him put the dime in the slot of the refrigerator. 'Your mistress. You really have failed, haven't you? I knew it when Mr Ashwood -'
'lt isn't,' he grated, 'always like this.'
'Do you want me to bail you out of your problems, Mr Chip?' Hands in the pockets of her jeans, she regarded him expressionlessly, no emotion clouding her face. Only alertness. 'You know I can. Sit down and write out your evaluation report on me. Forget the tests. M1 talent is unique anyway; you can't measure the field I produce - it's in the past and you're testing me in the present, which simply takes place as an automatic consequence. Do you agree?'
He said, 'Let me see that evaluation sheet you have n your blouse. I want to look at it one more time. Before I decide.'
From her blouse she once more brought forth the folded up yellow sheet of paper; she calmly passed it across the table to him and he reread it. My writing, he said to himself; yes, it's true. He returned it to her and, from the collection of testing items, took a fresh, clean sheet of the same familiar yellow paper.
On it he wrote her name, then spurious, extraordinarily high test results, and then at last his conclusions. His new conclusions. 'Has unbelievable power. Anti-psi field unique in scope. Can probably negate any assembly of precogs imaginable.' After that he scratched a symbol: this time two crosses, both underlined. Pat, standing behind him, watched him write; he felt her breath on his neck.
'What do the two underlined crosses mean?' she asked. '"Hire her,"' Joe said. '"At whatever cost required."' 'Thank you.' She dug into her purse, brought out a handful of poscred bills, selected one and presented it to him. A big one. 'This will help you with expenses. I couldn't give it to you earlier, before you made your official evaluation of me. You would have canceled very nearly everything and you would have gone to your grave thinking I had bribed you. Ultimately you would have even decided that I had no counter-talent.' She then unzipped her jeans and resumed her quick, furtive undressing.
Joe Chip examined what he had written, not watching her. The underlined crosses did not symbolize what he had told her. They meant: Watch this person. She is a hazard to the firm. See is dangerous.
He signed the test paper, folded it and passed it to her. She at once put it away in her purse.
'When can I move my things in here?' she asked as she padded toward the bathroom. 'I consider it mine as of now, since I've already paid you what must be virtually the entire month's rent.'
'Anytime,' he said.
The bathroom said, 'Fifty cents, please. Before turning on the water.'
Pat padded back into the kitchen to reach into her purse.

4

Wild new Ubik salad dressing, not Italian, not French, but an entirely new and different tas’e treat that's waking up the world. Wake up to Ubik and be wild! Safe when taken as directed.

commercials
 Back in New York once more, his trip to the Beloved Brethren Moratorium completed. Glen Runciter landed via a silent and impressive all-electric hired limousine on the roof of the central installation of Runciter Associates. A descent chute dropped him speedily to his fifth-floor office. Presently - at nine thirty A.M. local time - he sat in the massive, old-fashioned, authentic walnut - and - leather swivel chair, behind his desk, talking on the vidphone to his public - relations department.
'Tamish, I just now got back from Zürich. I conferred with Ella there.' Runciter glared at his secretary, who had cautiously entered his personal oversized office, shutting the door behind her. 'What do you want, Mrs Frick?' he asked her.
Withered, timorous Mrs Frick, her face dabbed with spots of artificial color to compensate for her general ancient grayness, made a gesture of disavowal; she had no choice but to bother him.
'Okay, Mrs Frick,' he said patiently. 'What is it?'
'A new client, Mr Runciter. I think you should see her.' She both advanced toward him and retreated, a difficult maneuver which Mrs Frick alone could carry off. It had taken her ten decades of practice.
'As soon as I'm off the phone,' Runciter told her. into the phone he said, 'How often do our ads run on prime-time TV planetwide? Still once every third hour?' 'Not quite that, Mr Runciter. Over the course of a full day, prudence ads appear on an average of once every third hour per UHF channel, but the cost of prime time -'
'I want them appear every hour,' Runciter said. 'Ella thinks that would be better.' On the trip back, to the Western Hemishere he had decided which of their ads he liked the most 'You know that recent Supreme Court ruling where a husband can legally murder his wife if he can prove she cculdn't under any circumstances give him a divorce?'
'Yes, the so-called -'
'I don't care what it's called; what matters is that we have a TV ad made up on that already. How does that ad go? I've been trying to remember it.'
Tamish said, 'There's this man, an ex-husband, being tried. First comes a shot of the jury, then the judge, then a pan-up on the prosecuting attorney cross-examining the ex-husband. He says, "lt would seem, sir, that your wife -"'
'That's right,' Runciter said with satisfaction; he had, originally, helped write the ad. It was, in his opinion, another manifestation of the marvelous multifacetedness of his mind.
'Is it not the assumption, however,' Tamish said, 'that the missing Psis are at work, as a group, for one of the large investment houses? Seeing as how this is probably so, perhaps we should stress one of our business- establishment commercials. Do you perhaps recall this one, Mr Runciter? It shows a husband home from his job at the end of the day; he still has on his electric-yellow cummer-bund, petal skit, knee-hugging hose and military-style visored cap. He seats himself wearily on the living- room couch, stats to take off one of his gauntlets, then hunches over, frowns and says, "Gosh, Jill, I wish I knew what's been wrong with me lately. Sometimes, with greater frequency almost every day, the least little remark at the office makes me think that, well, somebody's reading my mind!" Then she says. "If you're worried about that, why don't we contact our nearest prudence organization? They'll lease us an inertial at prices easy on our budget, and then you'll feel like your old self again!" Then this great smile appears on his face and he says, "Why, this nagging feeling is already -"'
Again appearing in the doorway to Runciter's office, Mrs Frick said, 'Please, Mr Runciter.' Her glasses quivered.
He nodded. 'I'll talk to you later, Tamish. Anyhow, get hold of the networks and start our material on the hour basis as I outlined.' He rang off, then regarded Mrs Frick silently. 'I went all the way to Switzerland,' he said presently, 'and had Ella roused, to get that information, that advice.'
 Sending them to the moon
 'Mr Runciter is free, Miss Wirt.' His secretary tottered to one side, and a plump woman rolled into the office. Her head, like a basketball, bobbled up and down; her great round body propelled itself toward a chair, and there at once she seated herself, narrow legs dangling. She wore an unfashionable spider-silk coat, looking like some amiable bug wound up in a cocoon not spun by itself; she looked encased. However, she smiled. She seemed fully at ease. In her late forties, Runciter decided. Past any period in which she mig t have had a good figure.
'Ah, Miss Wirt,' he said. 'I can't give you too much time; maybe you should get to the point. What's the problem?'
In a mellow, merry, incongruous voice Miss Wirt said, 'We're having a little trouble with telepaths. We think so but we're not sure. We maintain a telepath of our own one we know about and who's supposed to circulate among our employees. If he comes across any Psis, telepaths or precogs, any kind, he's supposed to report to -' She eyed Runciter brightly. 'To my principal. Late last week he made such a report. We have an evaluation, done by a private, on the capacities of the various prudence agencies. Yours is rated foremost.'
'I know that,' Runciter said; he had seen the evaluation, as a matter of fact. As yet, however, it had brought him little if any greater business. But now this. 'How many telepaths,' he said, 'did your man pick up? More than one?'
'Two at least.'
'Possibly more?'
'Possibly.' Miss Wirt nodded.
'Here is how we operate,' Runciter said. 'First we measure the psi field objectively, so we can tell what we're dealing with. That generally takes from one week to ten days, depending on -'
Miss Wirt interrupted, 'My employer wants you to move in your inertials right away, without the time-consuming and expensive formality of making tests.'
'We wouldn't know how many inertials to bring in. Ot what kind. Or where to station them. Defusing a psi operation has to be done on a systematic basis; we can't wave a magic wand or spray toxic fumes into corners. We have to balance Hollis' people individual by individual, pn anti-talent for every talent. If Hollis has gotten into your operation he's done it the same way: Psi by Psi. One gets into the personnel department, hires another; that person sets up a department or takes charge of a department and requisitions a couple more ... sometimes it takes them months. We can't undo in twentyfour hours what they've constructed over a long period of time. Big-time Psi activity is like a mosaic they can't afford to be impatient, and neither can we.'
'My employer,' Miss Wirt said cheerfully, 'is impatient.'
'I'll talk to him.' Runciter reached for the vidphone. 'Who is he and what's his number?'
'You'll deal through me.'
 his resident telepath ...
 'Maybe I won't deal at all. Why won't you tell me who you represent?' He pressed a covert button mounted under the rim of his desk; It would bring his resident telepath Nina Freede, into the next office, where she could monitor Miss Wirt's thought processes. I can't work with these people, he said to himself, if I don't know who they are. For all I know, Ray Hollis is trying to hire me.
'You're hidebound,' Miss Wirt said. 'All we're asking for is speed. And we're only asking for that because we have to have it. I can tell you this much: Our operation whichÊthey've infested isn't on Earth. From the standpoint of potential yield, as well as from an investment standpoint, it's our primary project. My principal has put all bis negotiable assets into it. Nobody is supposed to know about it. The greatest shock to us, in finding telepaths on the site -'
'Excuse me,' Runciter said; he rose, walked to the office door. 'I'll find out howümany people we have about the place who're availableŸ for use in this connection.' Shutting his office door behind him, he looked into each of the adjoining offices until he spied ina Freede; she sat alone in a minor sideroom, smoking a cigarette and concentrating. 'Find out who she represents' he said to her. 'And then find out how high they'll go.' We've got thirty-eight idle inertials, he reflected. Maybe we can dump all of them or most of them inco this. I may finally have found where Hollis' smart-assed talents have sneaked off. The whole goddam bunch of them.
He returned to his own office, reseated himself behind his desk.
'If telepaths have gotten into your operation,' he said to Miss Wirt, his hands folded before him, 'then you have to face up to and accept the realization that the operation per se is no longer secret. Independent of any specific technical info they've picked up. So why not tell me what the project is?'
Hesitating, Miss Wirt saidª 'I don't know what the project is.'
'Or where he is?'
'No.' She shook her head.
Runciter said, 'Do you know, who your employer is?'
'I work for a subsidiary firm which he financially controls; I know, who my immediate employer is - that's a Mister Shepard Howard - but I've never been told whom Mr Howard represents.'
'If we supply you with the inertials you need, will we know, where they are being sent.'
'Probably not.'
'Suppose we never get them back.'
'Why wouldn't you get them back? After they've decontaminated our operation.'
'Hollis' men,' Runciter said, 'have been known to kill inertials sent out to negate them. lt's my responsibility to see that my people are protected; I can't do that if I don't know where they are.'
The concealed microspeaker in his left ear buzzed and he heard the faint, measured voice of Nina Freede, audible to him alone. 'Miss Wirt represents Stanton Mick. She is his confidential assistant. There is no one named Shepard Howard. The project under discussion exists primarily on Luna; it has to do with Techprise, Mick's research facilities, the controlling stock of which Miss Wirt keeps in her name. She does not know any technical details; no scientific evaluations or memos or progress reports are ever made available to her by Mr Mick, and she resents this enormously. From Mick's staff, however, she has picked up a general idea of the nature of the project. Assuming that her second-hand knowledge is accurate the Lunar project involves a radical, new, low-cost interstellar drive system, approaching the velocity of light, which could be leased to every moderately affluent political or ethnological group. Mick's idea seems to be that the drive system will make colonization feasible on a mass basic understructure. And hence no longer a monopoly of specific governments.'
Nina Freede clicked off, and Runciter leaned back in his leather and walnut swivel chair to ponder.
'What are you thinking?' Miss Wirt asked brightly.
'I'm wondering,' Runciter said, 'if you can afford our services. Since I have no test data to go on, I can only estimate how many inertials you'll need ... but it may run as high as forty.' He said this knowing that Stanton Mick could afford - or could figure out how to get someone else to underwrite - an unlimited number of inertials.
'"Forty," 'Miss Wirt echoed. 'Hmm. That is quite a few.' 'The more we make use of, the sooner we can get the job done. Since you're in a hurry, we'll move them all in at one time. If you are authorized to sign a work contract in the name of your employer' He pointed a steady, unyielding finger at her; she did not blink - 'and you can come up with a retainer now, we could probably accomplish this within seventy-two hours.' He eyed her then, waiting.
The microspeaker in his ear rasped, 'As owner of Techprise she is fully bonded. She can legally obligate her firm up to and including its total worth. Right now she is calculating how much this would be, if converted on today's market.' A pause. 'Several billion poscreds, she has decided. But she doesn't want to do this; she doesn't like the idea of committing herself to both a contract and retainer. She would prefer to have Mick's attorneys do that, even if it means several days' delay.'
But they're in a hurry, Runciter reflected. Or so they say.
The microspeaker said, 'She has an intuition that you know - or have guessed - whom she represents. And she's afraid you'll up your fee accordingly. Mick knows bis reputation. He considers himself the world's greatest mark. So he negotiates in this manner: through someone or some üirm as a front. On the other hand, they want as many inertials as they can ­et. And they're resigned to that being enormously expensive.'
'Forty inertials,' Runciter said idly; he scratched with bis pen at a small sheet of blank paper, on bis desk for just such purposes. 'Let's see. Six times fifty times three. Times fortyB' Miss Wirt, still smiling her glazed, happy smile, waited with visible tension.
'I wonder,' he murmured, 'who paid Hollis to put his employees in the middle of your project.'
'That doesn't really matter, does it?' Miss Wirt said. 'What matters is that they're there.'
Runciter said, 'Sometimes one never finds out. But as you say - it's the same as when ants find their way into your kitchen. You dont ask why they're there; you just begin the job of getting them back out.' He had arrived at a cost figure.
lt was enormous.
'I'll - have to think it over,' Miss Wirt said; she raised her eyes from the shocking sight of bis estimate and half rose to her feet. 'Is there somewhere, an office, where I can be alone? And possibly phone Mr Howard?'
Runciter, also rising, said, 'It's rare for any prudence organization to have that many inertials available at one time. If you wait, the situation will change. So if you want them you'd better act.'
'And you think it would really take that many inertials?' Taking Miss Wirt by the arm, be led her from his office and down the hall. To the firm's m p room. 'This shows,' he told her, 'the location of our inertials plus the inertials of other prudence organizations. In addition to that it shows - or tries to show - the location of all of Hollis' Psis.' He systematically counted the psi ident-flags which, one by one, had been removed from the map; he wound up holding the final one: that of S. Dole Melipone. 'I know now where they are,' he said to Miss Wirt, who had lost her mechanical smile as she comprehended the significance of the unpositioned ident-flags. Taking hold of her damp hand, he deposited Melipone's flag among her damp fingers and closed them around it. 'You can stay here and meditate,' he said. 'There's a vidphone over there -' He pointed. 'No o e will bother youü I'll be in my office.' He left the map room, thinking, I really don't know that this is where they are, all those missing Psis. But it's possible. And - Stanton Mick had waived the routine procedure of making an objective test. Therefore, if he wound up hiring inertials which be did not need it would be his own fault.
Legalistically speaking, Runciter Associates was required to notify the Society that some of the missing Psis - if not all - had been found. But he had five days in which to file the notification ... and he decided to wait until the last day. This kind of business opportunity, he reflected, happens once in a lifetime.
'Mrs Frick,' he said, entering her outer office. 'Type up a work contract specifying forty -' He broke off.
Across the room sat two persons. The man, Joe Chip, looked haggard and hungover and more than usually glum ... ooked, in fact, about as always, the glumness excepted. But beside him lounged a long-legged girl with brilliant, tumbling black hair and eyes; her intense, distilled beauty illuminated that part of the room, igniting it with heavy, sullen fire. It was, he thought, as if the girl resisted being attractive, disliked the smoothness of her skin and the sensual, swollen, dark quality of her lips.
She looks, he thought, as if she just now got out of bed. Still disordered. Resentfull of the day - in fact, of every day.
Walking over to the two of them, Runciter said, 'I gather G.G. is back from Topeka.'
'This is Pat,' Joe Chip said. 'No last name.' He indicated Runciter, then sighed. He had a peculiar defeated quality hanging over him, and yet, underneath, he did not seem to have given up. A vague and ragged hint of vitality lurked behind the resignation; it seemed to Runciter that Joe most nearly could be accused of feigning spiritual downfall ...
the real article, however, was not there.
'Anti what?' Runciter asked the girl, who still sat sprawling in her chair, legs extended.
The girl murmured, 'Anti-ketogenesis.'
'What's that mean?'
'The prevention of ketosis,' the girl said remotely. 'As by the administration of glucose.'
To Joe, Runciter said, 'Explain.'
'Give Mr Runciter your test sheet,' Joe said to the girl. Sitting up, the girl reached for her purse, rummaged, then produced one of Joe's wrinkled yellow score sheets, which she unfolded, glanced at and passed to Runciter.
 two underlined crosses
 'Amazing score,' Runciter said. 'Is she really this good?' he asked Joe. And then he saw the two underlined crosses, the graphic symbol of indictment - of, in fact, treachery.
'She's the best so far,' Joe said.
'Come into my office,' Runciter said to the girl; he led the way, and, behind him, the two of them followed.
Fat Miss Wirt, all at once, breathless, her eyes rolling, appeared. 'I p-oned Mr Howard,' she informed Runciter. 'He has now given me my instructions.' She thereupon perceived Joe Chip and the girl named Pat; for an instant she hesitated, then plunged on, 'Mr Howard would like the formal arrangements made right away. So may we go ahead now? I've already acquainted you with the urgency, the time factor.' She smiled her glassy, determined smile. 'Do you two mind waiting?' she asked them. 'My business with Mr Runciter is of a priority nature.'
Glancing at her, Pat laughed, a low, throaty laugh of contempt.
'You'll have to wait, Miss Wirt,' Runciter said. He felt afraid; he looked at Pat, then at Joe, and his fear quickened. 'Sit down, Miss Wirt,' he said to her, and indicated one of the outer-office chairs. Mils Wirt said, 'I can tell you exactly, Mr Runciter, how many inertials we intend to take. Mr Howard feels he can make an adequate determination of our needs, of our problem.'
'How many?' Runciter asked.
'Eleven,' Miss Wirt said.
'We'll sign the contract in a little while,' Runciter said. 'As soon, as I'm free.' With his big, wide hand he guided Joe and the girl into his inner office; he shut the door behind them and seated himself. 'They'll never make it,' he said to Joe. 'With eleven. Or fifteen. Or twenty. Especially not with S. Dole Melipone involved on the other side.' He felt tired as well as afraid. 'This is, as I assumed, the potential trainee that G.G. scouted in Topeka? And you believe we should hire her? Both you and G.G. agree? Then we'll hire her, naturally.' Maybe I'll turn her over to Mick, he said to himself. Make her one of the eleven. 'Nobody has managed to tell me yet,' he said, 'which of the psi talents she counters.'
'Mrs Frick says you flew to Zürich,' Joe said. 'What did Ella suggest?'
'More ads,' Runciter said. 'On TV. Every hour.' Into his intercom he said, 'Mrs Frick, draw up an agreement of employment between ourselves and a Jane Doe; specify the starting salary that we and the union agreed on last December, specify -'
'What is the starting salary?' the girl Pat asked, her voice suffused with sardonic suspi©ion of a cheap, childish sort.
Runciter eyed her. 'I donAt even know what you can do.'
'lt's precog, Glen,' Joe Chip grated. 'But in a different way.' He did not elaborate he seemed to have run down, like an old-time battery-powered watch.
'Is she ready to go to work?' Runciter asked Joe. 'Or is this one we have to train and work with and wait for? We've got almost forty idle inertials and we're hiring another; forty less, I suppose, eleven. Thirty idle employees, all drawing full scale while they sit around with their thumbs in their noses. I don't know, Joe; I really don't. Maybe we ought to fire our scouts. Anyway, I think I've found the rest of Hollis' Psis. I'll tell you about it later.' Into his intercom he said, 'Specify that we can discharge this Jane Doe without notice, without severance pay or compensation of any kind; nor is she eligible, for the first ninety days, for pension, health or sick-pay benefits.' To Pat he said, 'Starting salary, in all cases, begins at four hundred 'creds per month, figuring on twenty hours a week. And you'll have to join a union. The Mine, Mill and Smelter-workers Union; they're the ?ne that signed up all the prudence organization employees three years ago. I have no control over that.'
'I get more,' Pat said, 'maintaining vidphone relays at the Topeka Kibbutz. Your scout Mr Ashwood said -'
'Our scouts lie,' Runciter said. 'And, in addition, we're not legally bound by anything they say. No prudence organization is.' The office door opened and Mrs Frick crept unsteadily in with the typed-out agreement. 'Thank you, Mrs Frick,' Runciter said, accepting the papers. 'I have a twenty-year-old wife in cold-pac,' he said to Joe and Pat. 'A beautiful woman who when she talks to me gets pushed out of the way by some weird kid named Jory, and then I'm talking to him, not her. Ella frozen in half-life and dim ing out - and that battered crone for my secretary that I have to look at all day long.' He gazed at the girl Pat, with her black, strong hair and her sensual mouth; in him he felt unhappy cravings arise, cloudy and pointless wants that led nowhere, that re(urned to him empty, as in the completion of a geometrically perfect circle.
'I'll sign,' Pat said, and reached for the desk pen.

5

Can't make the frug contest, Helen; stomach's upset. I'll fix you Ubik! Ubik drops you back in the thick of things fast. Taken as directed, Ubik speeds relief to head and stomach. Remember: Ubik is only seconds away. Avoid prolonged use.

dreaming
 During the long days of forced, unnatural idleness, the anti-telepath Tippy Jackson slept regularly until noon. An electrode planted within her brain perpetualty stimulated EREM - extremely rapid eye movement - sleep, so while tucked within the percale sheets of her bed she bad plenty to do.
At this particular moment her artificially induced dream state centered around a mythical Hollis functionary endowed within enomous psionic powers. Every other inertial in the Sol System had either given up or been melted down into lard. By process of elimination, the task of nullifying the field generated by this supernatural entity had devolved to her.
'I can't be myself while you're around,' her nebulous opponent informed her. On his face a feral, hateful expression formed, giving him the appearance of a psychotic squirrel.
In her dream Tippy answered, 'Perhaps your definition of your self-system lacks authentic boundaries. You've erected a precarious structure of personality on unconscious factors over which you have no control. That's why you feel threatRned by me.'
'Aren't you an employee of a prudence organization?' the Hollis telepath demanded, looking nervously about.
'If you're the stupendous talent you claim to be,' Tippy said, 'you can tell that by reading my mind.'
'I can't read anybody's mind,' the telepath said. 'My talent is gone. I'll let you talk to my brother Bill. Here, Bill; talk to this lady. Do you like this lady?'
Bill, looking more or less like his brother the telepath, said, 'I like her fine because I'm a precog and she doesn't postscript me.' He shuffled his feet and grinned, revealing great, pale teeth, as blunt as shovels. '"I, that am curtailed of this fair proportion, cheated of feature by dãssembling nature -"' He paused, wrinkling his forehead. 'How does it go, Matt?' he asked bis brother.
"-deformed, unfinished, sent before my time into this breathing world, scarce half made up," Matt the squirrel-like telepath said, scratching meditatively at his pelt.
'Oh, yeah.' Bull the precog nodded. 'I remember "And that so lamely and unfashionable that dogs bark at me as I halt by them." From Richard the Third,' he explained to Tippy. Both brothers grinned. Even their incisors were blunt. As if they lived on a diet of uncooked seeds.
Tippy said, 'What does that mean?'
'It means,' both Matt and Bull said in unison, 'that we're going to get you.'
The vidphone rang, waking Tippy up.
Stumbling groggily to it, confounded by floating colored bubbles, blinking, she lifted the receiver and said, 'Hello.' God, it's late, she thought, seeing the clock. I'm turning into a vegetable. Glen Runciter's face emerged on the screen. 'Hello, Mr Runciter,' she said, standing out of sight of the phone's scanner. 'Has a job turned up for me?'
'Ah, Mrs Jackson,' Runciter said, 'I'm glad I caught you. A group is forming under Joe Chip's and my direction; eleven in all, a major work assignment for those we choose. We've been examining everyone's history. Joe thinks yours looks good, and I tend to agree. How long will it take you to get down here?' His tone seemed adequately optimistic, but on the little screen his face looked hard-pressed and careworn.
Tippy said, 'For this one will I be living -'
'Yes, you'll have to pack.' Chidingly he said, 'We're supposed to be packed and ready to go at all times; that's a rule I don't ever want broken, especially in a case like this where there's a time factor.'
'I am packed. I'll be at the New York office in fifteen minutes. All I have to do is leave a note for my husband, who's at work.'
'Well, okay,' Runciter said, looking preoccupied; he was probably already reading the next n me on his list. 'Goodby, Miss Jackson.' He rang off.
That was a strange dream, she thought as she hastily unbuttoned her pajamas and hurried back into the bedroom for her clothes. What did Bill and Matt say that poetry was from? Richard the Third, she remembered, seeing in her mind once more their fat, big teeth, their unformed, knoblike, identical heads with tufts of reddish hair growing from them like patches of weeds. I don't think I've ever read Richard the Third, she realized. Or, if I did, it must have been years ago, when I was a child.
How can you dream lines of poetry you don't know? she asked herself. Maybe an actual nondream telepath was getting at me while I slept. Or a telepath and a precog working ´ogether, the way I saw them in my dream. It might be a good idea to ask our research department whether Hollis does, by any remote chance, employ a brother team named Matt and Bill.
Puzzled and uneasy, she began as quickiy as possible to dress.
Lighting a green all-Havana Cuesta-Rey palma supreme, Glen Runciter leaned back in his noble chair, pressed a button of his intercom and said, 'Make out a bounty check, Mrs Frick. Payable to G.G. Ashwood, for one-hundred poscreds.'
'Yes, Mr Runciter.'
He watched G.G. Ashwood, who paced with manic restlessness about the big office with its genuine hardwood floor against which G.G.'s feet clacked irritatingly. 'Joe Chip can't seem to tell me what she does,' Runciter said.
'Joe Chip is a grunk,' G.G. said.
'How come she, this Pat, can travel back into time, and no one else can? I'Il bet this talent isn't new; you scouts probably just missed noticing it up until now. Anyhow, it's not logical for a prudence organization to hire her; it's a talent, not an anti-talent. We deal in -'
'As I explained, and as Joe indicated on the test report, it aborts the precogs out of business.'
'But that's only a side-effect.' Runciter pondered moodily. 'Joe thinks she's dangerous. I don't know why.'
'Did you ask him why?'
Runciter said, 'He mumbled, the way he always does. Joe never has reasons, just hunches. On the other hand, he wants to include her in the Mick operation.' He shuffled through, rooted among and rearranged the personnel- department documents before him on his desk. 'Ask Joe to come in here so we can see if we've got our group of eleven set up.' He examined his watch. 'They should be arriving about now. I'm going to tell Joe to his face that he's crazy to include this Pat Conley girl if she's so dangerous. Wouldn't you say, G.G.?' G.G. Ashwood said, 'He's got a thing going with her.'
'What sort of thing?'
'A sexual understanding.'
'Joe has no sexual understanding. Nina Freede read his mind the other day and he's too poor even to -' He broke off, because the office door had opened; Mrs Frick teetered her way in carrying G.G.'s bounty check for him to sign. 'I know why he wants her along on the Mick operation' Runciter said as he scratched his signature on the check. 'So he can keep an eye on her. He's going too; he's going to measure the psi field despite what the client stipulated. We have to know what we're up against. Thank you, Mrs Frick.' He waved her away and held the check out to G.G. Ashwood. 'Suppose we don't measure the Psi field and it turns out to be too intense for our inertials. Who gets blamed?'
'We do,' G.G. said.
'I told them eleven wasn't enough. We're supplying our best; we're doing the best we can. After all, getting Stanton Mick's patronage is a matter of great importance to us. Amazing, that someone as wealthy and powerful as Mick could be so shortsighted, so goddam miserly. Mrs. Frick, is Joe out there? Joe Chip?'
Mrs Frick said, 'Mr Chip is in the outer office with a number of other people.'
'How many other people, Mrs Frick? Ten or eleven?'
'I'd say about that many, Mr Runciter. Give or take one or two.'
To G.G. Ashwood, Runciter said, 'That's the group. I want to see them, all of them, together. Before they leave for Luna.' To Mrs Frick he said, 'Send them in.' He puffed vigorousiy on his green-wrapped cigar.
She gyrated out.
'We know,' Runciter said to G.G., 'that as individuals they perform well. lt's all down here on paper.' He rattled the documents on his desk. 'But how about together? How great a polyencephalic counter-field will they generate together? Ask yourself that, G.G. That is the question to ask.'
'I guess time will tell,' G.G. Ashwood said.
'I've bee in this business a long time,' Runciter +aid. From the outer office people began to file in. 'This is my contribution to contemporary civilization.'
'That puts it well,' G.G. said. 'You're a policeman guarding human privacy.'
 the group
 'You know what Ray Hollis says about us?' Runciter said. 'He says we're trying to turn the clock back.' He eyed the individuals who had begun to fill up his office; they gathered near one another, none of them speaking. They waited for him. What an ill-assorted bunch, he thought pessimistically. A young stringbean of a girl with glasses and straight lemon-yellow hair, wearing a cowboy hat, black lace mantilla and Bermuda shorts; that would be Edie Dorn. A good-looking, older, dark woman with tricky, deranged eyes who wore a silk sari and nylon obi and bobby socks; Francy something, a part-time schizophrenic who imagined that sentient beings from Betelgeuse occasionaily landed on the roof of her conapt building. A woolly-haired adolescent boy wrapped in a superior and cynical cloud of pride; this one, in a floral mumu and Spandex bloomers, Runciter had never encountered before. And so it went: five females and - he counted - five males. Someone was missing.
Ahead of Joe Chip the smoldering, brooding girl, Patricia Conley, entered. That made the eleventh; the group had all appeared.
'You made good time, Mrs Jackson,' he said to the mannish, thirtyish, sand-colored lady wearing ersatz vicuna trousers and a gray sweatshirt on which had been printed a now faded full-face portrait of Bertrand Lord Russell. 'You had less time than anybody else] inasmuch as I notified you last.'
Tippy Jackson smiled a bloodless, sand-colored smile.
'Some of you I know,' Runciter said, rising from his chair and indicating with his hands that they should find chairs and make themselves comfortable, smoking if necessary. 'You, Miss Dorn; Mr Chip and I chose you first because of your topnotch activity vis-a-vis S. Dole Melipone, whom you eventually lost through no fault of your own.'
'Thank you, Mr Runciter,' Edie Dorn said in a wispy, shy trickle of a voice; she blushed and stared wide-eyed at the far wall. Its good to be part of this new undertaking,' she added with undernounished conviction.
'Which one of you is Al Hammond?' Runciter asked, consulting bis documents.
An excessively tall, stoop-shouldered Negro with a gentle expression on his elongated face made a motion to indicate himself.
'I've never met you before,' Runciter said, reading the material from Al Hammond's file. 'You rate highest among our anti-precogs. I should, of course, have gotten around to meeting you. How many of the rest of you are anti-precog?' Three additional hands appeared. 'The four of you,' Runciter said, 'will undoubtedly get a great bloop out of meeting and working with G.G. Bshwood's most recent discoveny, who aborts procogs on a new basis. Perhaps Miss Conley herself will describe it to us.' He nodded toward Pat -
And found himself standing before a shop window on Fifth Avenue, a rare-coin shop; he was studying an uncirculated US gold dollar and wondening if he could afford to add it to his collection.
What collection? he asked himself, startled. I don't collect coins. What am I doing here? And how long have I been wandenng around window-shopping when I ought to be in my office supervising - he could not remember what he generally supervised; a business of some kind, dealing in people with abilities, special talents. He shut his eyes, trying to focus his mind. No, I had to give that up, he realized. Eecause of a coronary last year, I had to retire. But I was just there, he remembered. Only a few seconds ago. In my office. Talking to a group of people about a new project. He shut his eyes. l7's gone, he thought dazedly. Everything I built up.
When he opened his eyes he found himself back in his office; he faced G.G. Ashwood, Joe chip and a dark, intensely attractive girl whose name he did not recall. Other than that his office was empty, which for reasons he did not understand struck him as strange.
'Mr Runciter,' Joe Chip said, 'I'd like you to meet Patricia Conley.'
The girl said, 'How nice to be introduced to you at last, Mr Runciter.' She laughed and her eyes flashed exultantly. Runciter did not know why.
Joe Chip realized, She's been doing something. 'Pat,' he said aloud, 'I can't put my finger on it but things are different.' He gazed wonderingly around the office; it appeared as it had always: too loud a carpet, too many unrelated art objects, on the walls original pictures of no artistic merit whatever. Glen Runciter had not changed; shaggy and gray, his face wrinkled broodingly, he returned Joe's stare - he too seemed perplexed. Over by the wˆndow G.G. Ashwood, wearing bis custornary natty birch-bark pantaloons, hemp-rope belt, peekaboo see-through top and train-engineer's tall hat, shrugged indifferently. He, obviously, saw nothing wrong.
 "Nothing is different"
 'Nothing is different,' Pat said.
'Everything is different,' Joe said to her. 'You must have gone back into time and put us on a different track; I can't prove it and I can't specify the nature of the changes -'
'No domestic quarreling on my time,' Runciter said frowningly.
Joe, taken aback, said, 'Domestic quarreling?' He saw, then, on Pat's finger the ring: wrought-silver and jade; he remembered helping her pick it out. Two days, he thought, before we got married. That was over a year ago, despite how bad off I was financially. That, of course, is changed now; Pat, with her salary and her money-minding propensity, fixed that. For all time.
'Anyhow, to continue,' Runciter said. 'We must each of us ask ourselves why Stanton Mick took his business to a prudence organization other than ours. Logically, we should have gotten the contract; we're the finest in the business and we're located in New York, where Mick generally prefers to deal. Do you have any theory, Mrs Chip?' He looked hopefully in Pat's direction. Pat said, 'Do you really want to know, Mr Runciter?'
'Yes,' He nodded vigorously. 'I'd very much like to know.'
'I did it,' Pat said.
'How?'
'With my talent.'
Runciter said, 'What talent? You don't have a talent; you're Joe Chip's wife.'
At die window G.G. Ashwood said, 'You came in here to meet Joe and me for lunch.'
'She has a talent,' Joe said He tried to remember, but already it had become foggy; the memory dimmed even as he tried to resurrect it. A different time track, he thought. The past. Other than that, he could not make it out there the memory ended. My wife, he thought, is unique; she can do something no one else on Earth can do. In that case, why isn't she working for Runciter Associates? Something is wrong.
'Have you measured it?' Runciter asked him. 'I mean, that's your job. You sound as if you have; you sound sure of yourself.'
'I'm not sure of myself,' Joe said. But I am sure about my wife, he said to himself. 'I'll get my test gear,' he said˜ 'And we'll see what sort of a field she creates.'
'Oh, come on, Joe,' Runciter said angrily. 'If your wife has a talent or an anti-talent you would have measured it at least a year ago; you wouldn't be disconcering it now.' He pressed a button on bis desk intencom. 'Personnel? Do we have a file on Mrs Chip? Patricia Chip?'
After a pause the intercom said, 'No file on Mrs Chip. Under her maiden name, perhaps?'
'Conley,' Joe said. 'Patricia Conley.'
Again a pause. 'On a Miss Patricia Conley we have two items: an initial scout report by Mr Ashwood, and then test findings by Mr Chip.' From the slot of the intercom repros of the two documents slowly dribbled forth and dropped to the surface of the desk.
Examining Joe Chip's findings, Runciter said, scowling, 'Joe, you better look at this; come here.' He jabbed a finger at the page, and Joe, coming over beside him, saw the twin underlined crosses; he and Runciter glanced at each other, then at Pat.
'I know what it reads,' Pat said levelly. '"Unbelievable power. Anti-psi field unique in scope." She concentrated, trying visibly to remember the exact wording. '"Can probably -"'
'We did get the Mick contract,' Runciter said to Joe Chip. 'I had a group of eleven inertials in here and then I suggested to her-'
Joe said, 'That she show the group what she could do. So she did. She did exactly that. And my evaluation was right.' With his fingertip he traced the symbols of danger at the bottom of the sheet. 'My own wife,' he said.
'I'm not your wife,' Pat said. 'I changed that, too. Do you want it back the way it was? With no changes, not even in details? That won't show your inertials much. On the other hand, they're unaware anyhow ... unless some of them have retained a vestigial memory as Joe has. By now, though, it should have phased out.'
Runciter said bitingly, 'I'd like the Mick contract back; that much, at least.'
'When I scout them,' G.G. Ashwood said, 'I scout them.' He had becorne gray.
'Yes, you reaily bring in the talent,' Runciter said.
The intercom buzzed and the quaking, elderly voice of Mrs Frick rasped, 'A group of our inertials are waiting to see you, Mr Runciter; they say you sent for them in connection with a new joint work project. Are you free to see them?'
'Send them in,' Runciter said.
Pat said, 'I'll keep this ring.' She displayed the silv r and jade wedding ring which, in another time track, she and Joe had picked out; this much of the alternate world she had elected to retain. He wondered what - if any - legal basis she had kept in addition. None, he hoped; wisely, however, he said nothÑng. Better not even to ask.
The office door opened and, in pairs, the inertials entered; they stood uncertainiy for a while facing Runciter's desk. Runciter eyed them, then pawed among the rat's nest of documents on his desk; obviously, he was trying to determine whether Pat had changed in any way the composition of the group.
'Edie Dorn,' Runciter said. 'Yes, you're here.' He glanced at her, then at the man beside her. 'Hammond. Okay, Hammond. Tippy Jackson.' He peered inquiringly.
'I made it as quick as I could,' Mrs Jackson said. 'You didn't give me much time, Mr Runciter.'
'Jon Ild,' Runciter said.
The adolescent boy with the tousled, woolly hair grunted in response. His arrogance, Joe noted, seemed to have receded; the boy now seemed introverted and even a little shaken. It would be interesting, Joe thought, to find out what he remembers - what all of them, individually and collectively, remember.
'Francesca Spanish,' Runciter said.
The luminous, gypsy-like dark woman, radiating a peculiar jangled tautness, spoke up. 'During the last few minutes, Mr Runciter, while we waited in your outer office, mysterious voices appeared to me and told me things.'
'You're Francesca Spanish?' Runciter asked her, patiently; he looked more than usually tired.
'I am; I have always been; I will always be.' Miss Spanish's voice rang with conviction. 'May I tell you what the voices revealed to me?'
'Possibly later,' Runciter said, passing on to the next personnel document.
'It must be said,' Miss Spanish declared vibrantly.
'All right,' Runciter said. 'We'll take a break for a couple of minutes.' He opened a drawer of his desk, got out one of his amphetamine tablets, took it without water. 'Let's hear what the voices revealed to you, Miss Spanish.' He glanced toward Joe, shrugging.
'Someone,' Miss Spanish said, 'just now moved us, all of us, into another world. We inhabited it, lived in it, as citizens of it, and then a vast, all-encompassing spiritual agency restored us to this, our rightful universe.'
'That would be Pat,' Joe chip said. 'Pat Conley. Who just joined the firm today.'
'Tito Apostos,' Runciter said. 'You're here?' He craned his neck, peering about the room at the seated people.
A bald-headed man, wagging a goatish beard, pointed to himself. He wore old-fashioned, hip-hugging gold lame trousers, yet somehow-created a stylish effect. Perhaps the egg-sized buttons of his kelp-green mitty blouse helped; in any case he exuded a grand dignity, a loftiness surpassing the average. Joe felt impressed.
'Don Denny,' Runciter said.
'Right here, sir,' a confident baritone like that of a Siamese cat declared; it arose from within a slender, earnest-looking individual who sat bolt-upright in his chair, his hands on his knees. He wore a polyester dirndl, his long hair in a snood, cowboy chaps with simulated silver stars. And sandals.
'You're an anti-animator,' Runciter said, reading the appropriate sheet. 'The only one we use.' To Joe he said, 'I wonder if we'll need him; maybe we should substitute another anti-telepath - the more of those the better.'
Joe said, 'We have to cover everything. Since we don't know what we're getting into.'
'I guess so.' Runciter nodded. 'Okay, Sammy Mundo.'
A weak-nosed young man, dressed in a maxiskirt, with an undersized, melon-like head, stuck his hand up in a spasmodic, wobbling ticlike gesture; as if, Joe thought, the anemic body had done it by itself. He knew this particular person. Mundo looked years younger than his chronological age; both mental and physical growth processes had ceased for him long ago. Technically, Mundo had the intelligence of a raccoon; he could walk, eat, bathe himself, even - after a fashion - talk. His anti-telepathic ability, however, was considerable. Once, alone, he had blanked out S. Dole Melipone; the firm's house magazine had rambled on about it for months afterward.
 Wendy Wright i
 'Oh, yes,' Runciter said. 'Now we come to Wendy Wright.'
As always, when the opportunity arose, Joe took a long, astute look at the girl whom, if he could have managed it, he would have had as his mistress, or even better, his wife. It did not seem possible that Wendy Wright bad been born out of blood and internal organs like other people. In proximity to her he felt himself to be a squat, oily, sweating, uneducated nurt whose stomach rattled and whose breath wheezed. Near her he became aware of the physical mechanisms which kept him alive; within him machinery, pipes and valves and gas-compressors and fan belts had to chug away at a losing task, a labor ultimately doomed. Seeing her face, he discovered that his own consisted of a garish mask; noticing her body made ]him feel like a low-class wind up toy. All her colors possessed a subtle quality, indirectly lit. Her eyes, those green and turnbled stones, looked impassively at everything; he had never seen fear in them, or aversion, or contempt. What she saw she accepted. Generally she seemed calm. But more than that she struck him as being durable, untroubled and cool, not subject to wear, or to fatigue, or to physical illn ss and decline. Probably she was twenty-five or -six, but he could not imagine her looking younger, and certainly she would never look older. She had too much control over herself and outside reality for that.
'I'm here,' Wendy said, with soft tranquility.
Runciter nodded. 'Okay; that leaves Fred Zafsky.' He fixed his gaze on a flabby, big-footed, middle-aged, unnatural-looking individual with pasted-down hain, muddy skin plus a peculiar protruding Adam's apple - clad, for this occasion, in a shift dress the color of a baboon's ass. 'That must be you.'
'Right you are,' Zafsky agreed, and sniggered. 'How about that?'
'Christ,' Runciter said, shaking his head. 'Well, we have to includeø one anti-parakineticist, to be safe. And you're it.' He tossed down his documents and looked about for his green cigar. To Joe he said, 'That's the group, plus you and me. Any last-minute changes you want to make?'
'l'm satisfied,' Joe said.
'You suppose this bunch of inertials is the best combination we can come up with?' Runciter eyed him intently.
'Yes,' Joe said.
'And it's good enough to take on Hollis' Psis?'
'Yes,' Joe said.
But he knew otherwise.
lt was not something he could put his finger on. It certainly was not rational. Potentially, the counter-field capacity of the eleven inertials had to be considered enormous. And yet -
'Mr Chip, can I have a second of your time?' Mr Apostos, bald-headed and bearded, his gold lame trousers glittening, plucked at Joe Chip's arm. 'Could I discuss an experience I had late last night? In a hypnagogic state I seem to have contacted one, or possibly two, of Mr Hollis' people - a telepath evidentiy operating in conjuction with one of their precogs. Do you think I should tell Mr Runciter? Is it important?'
Hesitating, Joe Chip looked toward Runciter. Seated in his worthy, beloved chair, trying to relight his all-Havana cigar, Runciter appeared terribly tired; the wattles of his face sagged. 'No,' Joe said. 'Let it go.'
'Ladies and gentlemen,' Runciter said, raising his voice above the general noise. 'We're leaving now for Luna, you eleven inertials, Joe Chip and myself and our client's rep, Zoe Wirt; fourteen of us in all. We'll use our own ship.' He got out his round, gold, anachronistic pocket watch and studied it. 'Three-thirty. Pratfall II will take off from the main roof field at four.' He snapped his watch- shut and returned it to the pocket of his silk sash. 'Well, Joe,' he said, 'we're in this forìbetter or worse. I wish we had a resident precog who could take a look ahead for us.' Both his face and the tone of his voice drooped with worry and the cares, the irreversible burden, of responsibility and age.

6

We wanted to give you a shave like no other you ever had. We said, it's about time a man's face got a little loving. We said With Ubik's self-winding Swiss chromium never-ending blade, the days of scrape-scrape are over. So try Ubik. And be loved. Warning: use only as directed And with caution.

Welcome to Luna
 'Welcome to Luna,' Zoe Wirt said cheerfully, her jolly eyes enlarged by her red-framed, triangular glasses. 'Via myself, Mr Howard says hallo to each and every one of you, and most especially to Mr Glen Runciter for making his organization - and you people, in particular - available to us. This subsurface hotel suite, decorated by Mr Howard's artistically talented sister Lada, lies just three-hundred linear yards from the industrial and research facilities which Mr Howard believes to have been infiltrated. Your joint presence in this room, therefore, should already be inhibiting the psionic capabilities of Hollis' agents, a thought pleasing to all of us.' She paused, looked over them all. 'Are there any questions?'
Tinkering with his test gear, Joe Chip ignored her; despite their client's stipulation, he intended to measure the surrounding psionic field. During the hour-long trip from Earth he and Glen Runciter had decided on this.
'I have a question,' Fred Zafsky said, raising his hand. He giggled. 'Where is the bathroom?'
'You will each be given a miniature map,' Zoe Wirt said, 'on which this is indicated.' She nodded to a drab female assistant, who began passing out brightly colored, glossy paper maps. 'This suite,' she continued, 'is complete with a kitchen all the appliances of which are free, rather than coin-operated. Obviously, outright blatant expense has been incurred in the constructing of this living unit, which is ample enough for twenty persons, possessing, as it does, its own self-regulating air, heat, water, an unusually varied food supply, plus closed-circuit TV and high-fidelity polyphonic phonograph sound-system - the two latter facilities, however, unlike the kitchen, being coin-operated. To aid you in utilizing these recreation facilities, a change-making machine has been placed in the game room.'
'My map,' Al Hammond said, 'shows only nine bedrooms.'
'Each bedroom,' Miss Wirt said, 'contains two bunk-type beds; hence eighteen accommodations in all. In addition, five of the beds are double, assisting those of you who wish to sleep with each other during your stay here.'
'I have a rule,' Runciter said irritably, 'about my employees sleeping with one another.'
'For or against?' Zoe Wirt inquired.
'Against,' Runciter crumpled up his map and dropped it to the metaI, heated floor. 'I'm not accustomed to being told -'
'But you will not be staying here, Mr Runciter,' Miss Wirt pointed out. 'Aren't you returning to Earth as soon as your employees begin to function?' She smiled her professional smile at him.
Runciter said to Joe Chip, 'You getting any readings as to the psi field?'
'First,' Joe said, 'I have to obtain a reading on the counter-field our inertials are generating.'
'You should have done that on the trip,' Runciter said.
'Are you attempting to take measurements?' Miss Wirt inquired alertly. 'Mr Howard expressly contraindicated that, as I explained.'
'We're taking a reading anyway,' Runciter said.
'Mr Howard -'
'This isn't Stanton Mick's business,' Runciter told her.
To her drab assistant, Miss Wirt said, 'Would you ask Mr Mick to come down here, please?' The assistant scooted off in the direction of the syndrome of elevators. 'Mr Mick will tell you himself,' Miss Wirt said to Runciter. 'Meanwhile, please do nothing; I ask you kindly to wait until he arrives.'
'I have a reading now,' Joe said to Runciter. 'On our own field. lt's very high.' Probably because of Pat, he decided. 'Much higher than I would have expected,' he said. Why are they so anxious for us not to take readings? he wondered. lt's not a time factor now; our inertials are here and operating.
'Are there closets,' Tippy Jackson asked, 'where we can put away our clothes? I'd like to unpack.'
'Each bedroom,' Miss Wirt said, 'has a large closet, coinoperated. And to start you all off-' She produced a large plastic bag. 'Here is a complimentary supply of coins.' She handedâthe rolls of dimes, nickels and quarters to Jon Ild. 'Would you distribute these equally? A gesture of goodwill by Mr Mick.'
Edie Dorn asked, 'Is there a nurse or doctor in this settlement? Sometimes I develop psychosomatic skin rashes when I'm hard at work; a cortisone-base ointment usually helps me, but in the hurry I forgot to bring some along.'
'The industrial, research installations adjoining these living quarters,' Miss Wirt said, 'keep several doctors on stadby, and in addition there is a small medical ward with beds for the ill.'
'Coin-operated?' Sammy Mundo inquired.
'All our medical care,' Miss Wirt said, 'is free. But the burden of proof that he is genuinely ill rests on the shoulders of the alleged patient.' She added, 'All medication-dispensing machines, however, are coin-operated. I might say, in regard to this, that you will find in the game room of this suite a tranquilizer-dispensing machine. And, if you wish, we can probabl@ have o e of the stimulant-dispensing machines moved in from the adjoining installations.'
'What about hallucinogens?' Francesca Spanish inquired. 'When I'm at work I function better if I can get an ergot-base psychedelic drug; it caus s me to actually see who I'm up against, and I find that helps.'
Miss Wirt said, 'Our Mr Mick disapproves of all the ergot-base hallucinogenic agents; he feels they're liver-toxic. If you have brought any with you, you're free to use them. But we will not dispense any, although I understand we have them.'
'Since when,' Don Denny said to Francesca Spanish, 'did you begin to need psychedelic drugs in order to hallucinate? Your whole life's a waking hallucination.'
Unfazed, Francesca said, 'Two nights ago I received a particulary impressive visitation.'
'I'm not surprised,' Don Denny said.
'A throng of precogs and telepaths descended from a ladder spun of finest natural hemp to the balcony outside my window. They dissolved a passageway through the wall and manifested themselves around my bed, waking me up with their chatter. They quoted poetry and language prose from oldtime books, which delighted me; they seemed so -' She groped for the word. 'Sparkling. One of them, who called himself Bill -'
'Wait a minute,' Tito Apostos said. 'I had a dream like that, too.' He turned to Joe. 'Remember, I told you just before we left Earth?' His hands convulsed excitedly. 'Didn't I?'
'I dreamed that too,' Tippy Jackson said. 'Bill and Matt. They said they were going to get me.'
His face twisting with abrupt darkness, Runciter said to Joe, 'You should have told me.'
'At the time,' Joe said, 'you -' He gave up. 'You looked tired. You had other things on your mind.'
Francesca said sharply, 'It wasn't a dream; it wa an authentic visitation. I can distinguish the difference.'
'Sure you.can, Francy,' Don Denny said. He winked at Joe.
'I had a dream,' Jon Ild said. 'But it was about hovercars. I was memorizing their license-plate numbers. I memorized sixty-five, and I still remember them. Want to hear them?'
'I'm sorry, Glen,' Joe Chip said to Runciter. 'I thought only Apostos experienced it; I didn't know about the others. I-' The sound of elevator doors sliding aside made him pause; he and the others turned to look.
 Stanton Mick exploding
 Potbellied, squat and thick-legged, Stanton Mick perambulated toward them. He wore fuchsia pedal-pushers, pink yakfur slippers, a snakeskin sleeveless blouse, and a ribbon in his waist-length dyed white hair. His nose, Joe thought; it looks like the rubber bulb of a New Delhi taxi horn, soft and squeezable. And loud. The loudest nose, he thought, that I have ever seen.
'Hello, all you top anti-psis,' Stanton Mick said, extending his arms in fulsome greeting. 'The exterminators are here - by that, I mean yourselves.' His voice had a squeaky, penetrating castrato quality to it, an unpleasant noise that one might expect to hear, Joe Chip thought, from a hive of metal-bees. 'The plague, in the form of various psionic riffraff, descended upon the harmless, friendly, peaceful world of Stanton Mick. What a day that was for us in Mickville - as we call our attractive and appetizing Lunar settlement here. You have, of course, already started work, as I knew you would. That's because you're tops in your field, as everyone realizes Òhen Runciter Associates is mentioned. I'm already delighted at your activity, with the one small exception that I perceive your tester there dingling with his equipment. Tester, would you look my way while I'm speaking to you?'
Joe shut off his polygraphs and gauges, killed the power supply. 'Do I have your attention now?' Stanton Mick asked him.
'Yes,' Joe said.
'Leave your equipment on,' Runciter ordered him. 'You're not an employee of Mr Mick; you're my employee.'
'It doesn't matter,' Joe said to him. 'I've already gotten a r ading on the psi field being generated in this vicinity.' He had done his job. Stanton Mick had been too slow in arriving.
'How great is their field?' Runciter asked him. Joe said, 'There is no field.'
'Our inertials are nullifying it? Our counter-field is greater?'
'No,' Joe said. 'As I said: There is no psi field of any sort within range of my equipment. I pick up our own field, so as far as I can determine my instruments are functioning I consider that an accurate feedback. We're producing 2000 blr units, fluctuating upward to 2100 every few minutes. Probably it will gradualy increase; by the time our inertials have been functioning together, say, twelve hours, it may reach as high as -'
'I don't understand,' Runciter said. All the inertials now were gathening around Joe Chip; Don Denny picked up one of the tapes which had been excreted by the polygraph examined the unwavering line, then handed the tape to Tippy Jackson. One by one the other inertials examined it silently, then looked toward Runciter. To Stanton Mick Runciter said, 'Where did you get the idea that Psis bad infiltrated your operations here on Luna? And why didn't you want us to run our normal tests? Did you know we would get this result?'
'Obviously, he knew,' Joe Chip said. He felt sure of it.
Rapid agitated activity crossed Runciter's face; he started to speak to Stanton Mick, then changed his mind and said to Joe in a low voice, 'Let's get back to Earth; let's get our inertials right out of here now.' Aloud, to the others, he said, 'Collect your possessions; we're flying back to New York. I want all of you in the ship within the next'fifteen minutes; any of you who aren't in will be left behind. Joe, get all that junk of yours together in one heap; I'lI help you lug it to the ship, if I have to - anyhow, I want it out of here and you with it.' He turned in Mick's direction once again, his face puffy with anger; he started to speak -
Squeaking in his metal-insect voice, Stanton Mick floated to the ceiling of the room, his arms protruding distendedly and rigidly. 'Mr Runciter, don't let your thalamus override your cerebral cortex. This matter calls for discretion, not haste; calm your people down and let's huddle together in an effort to mutually understand.' His rotund, colorful body bobbed about, twisting in a slow, transversal rotation so that now his feet, rather than his head, extended in Runciter's direction.
'I've heard of this,' Runciter said to Joe. 'lt's a self- destruct humanoid bomb. Help me get everybody out of here. They just now put it on auto; that's why it floated upward.'
The bomb exploded.

after the explosion
 Smoke, billowing in ill-smelling masses which dung to the ruptured walls and floor, sank and obscured the prone, twitching figure at Joe Chip's feet.
In Joe's ear Don Denny was yelling, 'They killed Runciter, Mr Chip. That's Mr Runciter.' In his excitement he stammered.
'Who else?' Joe said thickly, trying to breathe; the acrid smoke constricted his chest. His head rang from the concussion of the bomb, and, feeling an oozing warmth on his neck, he found that a flying shard had lacerated him.
Wendy Wright, indistinct although close by, said. 'I think everyone else is hurt but alive.'
Bending down beside Runciter, Edie Dorn said, 'Could we get an animator from Ray Hollis?' Her face looked crushed in and pale.
'No,' Joe said; he, too, bent down. 'You're wrong,' be said to Don Denny. 'He's not dead.'
But on the twisted floor Runciter lay dying. In two minutes, three minutes, Don Denny would be correct.
'Listen, everybody,' Joe said aloud. 'Since Mr Runciter is injured, I'm now in charge - temporarily, anyhow, until we can get back to Terra.'
'Assuming,' Al Hammond said, 'we get back at all.' With a folded handkerchief he patted a deep cut over bis right eye.
'How many of you have hand weapons?' Joe asked. The inertials continued to mill without answering. 'I know it's against Society rules,' Joe said. 'But I know some of you carry them. Forget the illegality; forget everything you've ever learned pertaining to inertials on the job carrying guns.
After a pause Tippy Jackson s id, 'Mine is with my things. In the other room.'
'Mine is here with me,' Tito Apostos said; he already held, in his right hand, an old-fashioned lead-slug pistol.
'If you have guns,' Joe said, 'and they're in the other room, where you left your things, go get them.'
Six inertials started toward the door.
To Al Hammond and Wendy Wright, who remained, Joe said, 'We've got to get Runcter into cold-pac.'
'There're cold-pac facilities on the ship,' Al Hammond said.
'Then we'll lug him there,' Joe said. 'Hammond, take one end and I'll Lift up the other. Apostos you go ahead of us and shoot any of Hollis' employees who try to stop us.'
Jon Ild, returning from the next room with a laser-tube, said, 'You think Hollis is in here with Mr Mick?'
'With him,' Joe said, 'or by himself. We may never have been dealing with Mick; it may have been Hollis from the start.' Amazing, he thought, that the explosion of the humanoid bomb didn't kill the rest of us. He wondered about Zoe Wirt. Evidently, she had gotten out before the last; he saw no sign of her. I wonder what her reaction was, he thought, when she found out she wasn't working for Stanton Mick, that her employeer - her real employer - had hired us, brought us here, to assassinate us. They'll probably have to kill her too. Just to be on the safe side. She certainly won't be of any more use; in fact, she'll be a witness to what happened.
Now armed, the other inertials returned; they waited for Joe to tell them what to do. Considering their situation, the eleven inertials seemed reasonably self-possessed.
'If we can get Runciter into cold-pac soon enough,' Joe explained, as he and Al Hammond carried their apparently dying employer toward the elevators, 'he can still run the firm. The way his wife does.' He stabbed the elevator button with his elbow. 'There's really very little chance,' he said, 'that the elevator will come. They probably cut off all power at the same moment as the blast.'
The elevator, however, did appear. With haste he and Al Hammond carried Runciter aboard it. us. The rest of you -'
'The hell with that,' Sammy Mundo said. 'We don't want to be stuck down here waiting for the elevator to come back. It may never come back.' He started forward, his face constricted with panic.
Joe said harshly, 'Runciter goes first.' He touched a button and the doors shut, enclosing him, Al Hammond, Tito Apostos, Wendy Wright, Don Denny - and Glen Runciter. 'lt has to be done this way,' he said to them as the elevator ascended. 'And anyhow, if Hollis' people are waiting they'll get us first. Except that they probably don't expect us to be armed.'
There is that law,' Don Denny put in.
'See if he's dead yet,' Joe said to Tito Apostos. Bending, Apostos examined the inert body. 'Still some shallow respiration' he said presently. 'So we still have a chance.'
'Yes, a chance,' Joe said. He remained numb, as he bad been both physicaliy and psychologically since the blast; he felt cold and torpid and his eardrums appeared to be damaged. Once we're on our own ship, he reflected, after we get Runciter into the cold-pac, we can send out an assist call, back to New York, to everyone at the firm. In fact, to all the prudence organizations. If we can't take off they can come to get us.
But in reality it wouldn't work that way. Because by the time someone from the Society got to Luna, everyone trapped subsurface, in the elevator shaft and aboard the ship, would be dead. So there really was no chance.
Tito Apostos said, 'You could have let more of them into the elevator. We could have squeezed the rest of the women in.' He glared at Joe accusingly, his hands shaking with agitation.
'We'll be more exposed to assassination than they will,' Joe said. 'Hollis will expect any survivors of the blast to make use of the elevator, as we're doing. That's probably why they left the power on. They know we have to get back to our ship.'
Wendy Wright said, 'You already told us that, Joe.'
'I'm trying to rationalize what I'm doing,' he said. 'Leaving the rest of them down there.'
What about that new girl's talent?' Wendy said. 'That sullen, dark girl with the disdainful attitude; Pat something. You could have had her go back into the past, before Runciter's injury; she could have changed all this. Did you forget about her ability.
'Yes,' Joe said tightly. He had, in the aimless, smoky confusion. 'Let's go back down,' Tito Apostos said. 'Like you say, Hollis' people will be waiting for us at ground level; like you said, we're in more danger by -'
'We're at the surface,' Don Denny said. 'The elevator's stopped.' Wan and stiff, he licked bis lips apprehensively as the doors automatically slid aside.
They faced a moving sidewalk that led upward to a concourse, at the end of which, beyond air-membrane doors, the base of their upright ship could be distinguished. Exactly as they bad left it. And no one stood between them and it. Peculiar, Joe Chip thought. Were they sure the exploding humanoid bomb would get us all? Something in the way they planned it must have gone wrong, first in the blast itself, then in their leaving the power on - and now this empty corridor.
'I think,' Don Denny said, as Al Hammond and Joe carried Runciter from the elevator and onto the moving sidewalk, 'the fact that the bomb floated to the ceiling fouled them up. It seemed to be a fragmentation type, and most of the flak hit the walls above our heads. I think it never occurred to them that any of us might survive; that would be why they left the power on.'
'Well, thank God it floated up then,' Wendy Wright said. 'Good lord, it's chilly. The bomb must have put this place's heating System out of action.' She trembled visibly.
The moving sidewalk carried them forward with shattering slowness; it seemed to Joe that five or more minutes passed before the sidewalk evicte them at the two-stage air-membrane doors. The crawl forward, in some ways, seemed to him the worst part of everything which bad happened, as if Hollis had arranged this purposely.
'Wait!' a voice called from behind them; footsteps sounded, and Tito Apostos turned, his gun raised, then lowered.
'The rest of them,' Don Denny said to Joe, who could not turn around; he and Al Hammond had begun maneuvering Runciter's body through the intricate system of the air-membrane doors. 'They're all there; it's okay.' With his gun he waved them toward him. 'Come on!'
The connecting plastic tunnel still linked their ship with the concourse; Joe heard the characteristic dull clunk under his feet and wondered, Are they letting us go? Or, he thought, Are they waiting for us in the ship? It's as if, he thought, some malicious force is playing with us, letting us scamper and twitter like debrained mice. We amuse it. Our efforts entertain it. And when we get just so far its first will close around us and drop our squeezed remains, like Runciter's, onto the slow-moving floor.
'Denny,' he said. 'You go into the ship first. See if they're waiting for us.'
'And if they are?' Denny said.
'Then you come back,' Joe said bitingly, 'and tell us and we give up. And then they kill the rest of us.'
Wendy Wright said, 'Ask Pat whatever her name is to use her ability.' Her voice was low but insistent. 'Please, Joe.'
'Let's try to get into the ship,' Tito Apostos said. 'I don't like that girl; I don't trust her talent.'
'You don't understand her or it,' Joe said. He watched skinny, small Don Denny scamper up the tunnel, fiddle with the switching arrangement which controlled the entrance port of the ship, then disappear inside. 'He'll never come back,' he said, panting; the weight of Glen Runciter seemed to have grown; he could hardly hold onto him. 'Let's set Runciter down here,' he said to Al Hammond. Together the two of them lowered Runciter to the floor of the tunnel.
'For an old man he's heavy' Joe said, standing erect again. To Wendy he said, 'l'll talk to Pat. The others had caught up now; all of them crowded agitatedly into the connecting tunnel. 'What a fiasco,' he gasped. Instead of what we hoped to be our big enterprise. You never know. Hollis really got us this time.' He motioned Pat up beside him. Her face was smudged and her synthetic sleeveless blouse had been ripped; the elastic band which - fashionably - compressed her breasts could be seen: It had elegant embossed pale-pink fleurs-de-lis imprinted on it, and for no logical reason the perception of this unrelated, meaningless sense-datum registered in his mind. 'Listen,' he said to her, putting his hand on her shoulder and looking into her eyes; she calmly returned bis gaze. 'Can you go back? To a time before the bomb was detonated? And restore Glen Runciter?'
'It's too late now,' Pat said.
'Why?'
'That's it. Too much time has passed. I would have had to do it right away.'
'Why didn't you?' Wendy Wright asked her, with hostility.
Swinging her gaze, Pat eyed her. 'Did you think of it? If you did, you didn't say. Nobody said.'
'You don't feel any responsibility, then,' Wendy said. 'For Runciter's death. When your talent could have obviated it.'
Pat laughed.
Returning from the ship, Don Denny said, 'lt's empty.' 'Okay,' Joe said, motioning to Al Hammond. 'Let's get him into the ship and into cold-pac.' He and Al once more picked up the dense, hard-to-manage body; they continued on into the ship; the inertials scrambled and shoved around him, eager for sanctuary - he experienced the pure physical emanation of their fear, the field surrounding them - and himself too. The possibility that they might actually leave Luna alive made them more rather than less desperate; their stunned resignation had now completely gone.
'Where's the key?' Jon Ild shrilled in Joe's ear as he and Al Hammond stumbled groggily toward the cold-pac chamber. He plucked at Joe's arm. 'The key, Mr Chip.'
Al Hammond explained, 'The ignition key. For the ship. Runciter must have it on him; get it before we drop him into the cold-pac, because after that we won't be able to touch him.'
Digging in Runciter's various pockets Joe found a leather key case; he passed it to Jon Ild. 'Now we can put him into cold-pac?' he said with savage anger. 'Come on Hammond for Chrissakes, help me get him into the 'pac.' But we didn't move swiftly enough, he said to himself. It's all over. We failed. Well, he thought wearily, so it goes.
The initial rockets came on with a roar; the ship shuddered as, at the control console, four of the inertials haltingly collaborated in the task of programing the computerized command-receptors.
Why did they let us go? Joe asked himself as he and Al Hammond stood Runciter's lifeless - or apparently lifeless - body upright in the floor to ceiling cold-pac chamber; automatic clamps closed about Runciter's thighs and shoulders, supporting him, while the cold, glistening with its own simulated life, sparkled and shone, dazzling Joe Chip and Al Hammond. 'I don't understand it,' he said.
'They fouled up,' Hammond said. 'They didn't have any back-up planned behind the bomb. Like the bomb plotters who tried to kill Hitler; when they saw the explosion go off in the bunker all of them assumed -'
'Before the cold kills us,' Joe said, 'let's get out of this chamber.' Re prodded Hammond ahead of him; once outside, the two of them together twisted the locking wheel into place. 'God, what a feeling,' he said. 'To think that a force like that preserves life. Of a sort.'
Francy Spanish her long braids scorched, halted him as he started toward the fore section of the ship. 'Is there a communication circuit in the cold-pac?' she asked. 'Can we consult with Mr Runciter now?'
'No consultation,' Joe said, shaking bis head. 'No earphone no microphone. No protophasons. No half-life. Not until we get back to Earth and transfer him to a moratorium.'
'Then, how can we tell if we froze him soon enough?' Don Denny asked.
'We can't,' Joe said.
'His brain may have deteriorated,' Sammy Mundo said, grinning. He giggled.
'That's right,' Joe said. 'We may never hear the voice or the thoughts of Glen Runciter again. We may have to run Runciter Associates without him. We may have to depend on what's left of Ella; we may have to move our offices to the Beloved Brethren Moratorium at Zürich and operate out of there.' He seated himself in an aisle seat where he could watch the four inertials haggling over the correct way to direct the ship. Somnambulantly, engulfed by the dull, dreary ache of shock, he got out a bent cigarette and lit it.
 the cigarette
 The cigarette, dry and stale, broke apart as he tried to hold it between his fingers. Strange, be thought.
'The bomb blast,' Al Hammond said, noticing. 'The heat.'
'Did it age us?' Wendy asked, from behind Hammond; she stepped past him and seated herself beside Joe. 'I feel old. I am old; your package of cigarettes is old; we're all old, as of today, because of what has happened. This was a day for us like no other.'
With dramatic energy the ship rose from the surface of Luna, carrying with it, absurdly, the plastic connective tunnel.

7

Perk up pouting household surfaces with new miracle Ubik, the easy-to-apply extra-shiny, nonstick plastic coating. Entirely harmless if used as directed. Saves endless scrubbing, glides you right out of the kitchen!

'Our best move.' Joe Chip said, 'seems to be this. We'll land at Zürich.' He picked up the microwave audiophone provided by Runciter's expensive well appointed ship and dialed the regional code for Switzerland. 'By putting him in the same moratorium as Ella we can consult both of them simultaneously they can be linked up electronically to function in unison.'
'Protophasonically' Don Denny corrected.
Joe said, 'Do any of you know the name of the manager of the Beloved Brethren Moratorium?'
'Herbert something,' Tippy Jackson said. 'A German name.'
Wendy Wright, pondering said, 'Herbert Schoenheit von Vogelsang. I remember it because Mr Runciter once told me it means "Herbert, the beauty of the song of birds." I wish I bad been named that. I remember thinking that at the time.'
'You could marry him,' Tito Apostos said.
'I'm going to marry Joe Chip.' Wendy said in a somber, introspective voice, with childlike gravity.
'Oh?' Pat Conley said. Her light saturated black eyes ignited. 'Are you really?'
'Can you change that too?' Wendy said. 'With your talent?'
Pat said. 'I'm living with Joe. I'm his mistress. Under our arrangement I pay his bills. I paid his front door, this morning, to let him out. Without me he'd still be in his conapt.'
'And our trip to Luna.' Al Hammond said, 'would not have taken place.' He eyed Pat, a complex expression on his face.
'Perhaps not today,' Tippy Jackson pointed out, 'but eventually. What difference does it make? Anyhow, I think that's fine for Joe to have a mistress who pays his front door.' She nudged Joe on the shoulder, her face beaming with what struck Joe as salacious approval. A sort of vicarious enjoying of his private, personal activities; in Mrs Jackson a voyeur dwelt beneath her extraverted surface.
'Give me the ship's over-all phone book, he said. 'I'll notify the moratorium to expect us.' He studied his wrist watch. Ten more minutes of flight.
'Here's the phone book, Mr Chip,' Jon Ild said, after a search; he handed him the heavy square box with its keyboard and microscanner.
Joe typed out SWITZ, then ZUR, then BLVD BRETH MORA. 'Like Hebrew,' Pat said from behind him. 'Semantic condensations.' The microscanner whisked back and forth, selecting and discarding; at last its mechanism popped up a punch card, which Joe fed into the phone's receptor slot.
The phone said tinnily, 'This is a recording.' It expelled the punch card vigorousiy. 'The number which you have given me is obsolete. If you need assistance, place a red card in -'
 the phone book
 'What's the date on that phone book?' Joe asked Ild, who was returning it to its handy storage shelf.
Ild examined the information stamped on the rear of the box. '1990. Two years old.'
'That can't be,' Edie Dorn said. 'This ship didn't exist two years ago. Everything on it and in it is new.'
Tito Apostos said, 'Maybe Runciter cut a few corners.'
'Not at all,' Edie said. 'He lavished care, money and engineering skill on Pratfall ii. Everybody who ever worked for him knows that; this ship is his pride and joy.'
'Was his pride and joy,' Francy Spanish corrected. 'I'm not ready to admit that,' Joe said. He fed a red card into the phone's receptor slot. 'Give me the current number of the Beloved Brethren Moratorium in Zürich, Switzerland,' he said. To Francy Spanish he said, 'This ship is still his pride and joy because he still exists.'
A card, punched into significance by the phone, leaped out; he transferred it to its receptor slot. This time the phone's computerized workings responded without irritation; on the screen a sallow, conniving face formed, that of the unctuous busybody, who ran the Beloved Brethren Moratorium. Joe remembered him with dislike.
'I am Herr Herbert Schoenheit von Vogelsang. Have you come to me in your grief, sir? May I take your name and address, were it to happen that we got cut off?' The rnoratorium owner poised himself.
Joe said, 'There's been an accident.'
'What we deem an "accident," von Vogelsang said, 'is ever yet a display of god's handiwork. In a sense, all life could be called an "accident." And yet in fact -'
'I don't want to engage in a theological discussion,' Joe said. 'Not at this time.'
'This is the time, out of all times, when the consolations of theology are most soothing. Is the deceased a relative?'
'Our employer,' Joe said. 'Glen Runciter of Runciter Associates, New York. You have his wife Ella there. We'll be landing in eight or nine minutes;' can you have one of your transport cold-pac vans waiting?'
'He is in cold-pac now?'
'No,' Joe said. 'He's warming himself on the beach at Tampa, Florida.'
'I assume your amusing response indicates yes.'
'Have a van at the Zürich spaceport,' Joe said, and rang off. Look who we've got to deal through, he reflected, from now on. 'We'll get Ray Hollis,' he said to the inertials grouped around him.
'Get him instead of Mr Vogelsang?' Sammy Mundo asked.
'Get him in the manner of getting him dead,' Joe said. 'For bringing this about.' Glen Runciter, he thought; frozen upright in a transparent plastic casket ornamented with plastic rosebuds. Wakened into half-life activity one hour a month. Deteriorating, weakening, growing dim... . Christ, he thought savagely. Of all the people in the world. A man that vital. And vitalic.
'Anyhow,' Wendy said, 'he'll be closer to Ella.'
'In a way,' Joe said, 'I hope we got him into the cold-pac too -' He broke off, not wanting to say it. 'I don't like moratoriums,' he said. 'Or moratorium owners. I don't like Herbert Schoenheit von Vogelsang. Why does Runciter prefer Swiss moratoriums? What's the matter with a moratorium in New York?'
'lt is a Swiss invention,' Edie Dorn said. 'And according to impartial surveys, the average length of half-life of a given individual in a Swiss moratorium is two full hours greater than an individual in one of ours. The Swiss seem to have a special knack.'
'The UN ought to abolish half-life,' Joe said. 'As interfering with the natural process of the cycle of birth and death.'
Mockingly, Al Hammond said, 'If God approved of half-life, each of us would be born in a casket filled with dry ice.'
At the control console, Don Denny said, 'We're now under the jurisdiction of the Zürich microwave transmitter. lt'll do the rest.' He walked away from the console, looking glum.
'Cheer up,' Edie Down said to him. 'To be brutaliy harsh about it, consider how lucky all of us are; we might be dead now. Either by the bomb or by being lasered down after the blast. It'll make you feel better, once we land; we'll be so much safer on Earth.'
Joe said, 'The fact that we had to go to Luna should have tipped us off.' Should have tipped Runciter off, he realized. 'Because of that loophole in the law dealing with civil authority on Luna. Runciter always said, "Be suspicious of any job order requiring us to leave Earth." If he were alive he'd be saying it now. "Especially don't bite if it's Luna where they want us. Too many prudence organizations have bitten on that."' If he does revive at the moratorium, he thought, that'll be the first thing he says. 'I always was suspicious of Luna,' he'll say. But not quite suspicious enough. The job was too much of a plum; he couldn't resist it. And so, with that bait, they got him. As he always knew they would.
The ship's retrojets, triggered off by the Zürich microwave transmitter, rumbled on; the ship shuddered.
'Joe,' Tito Apostos said, 'you're going to have to tell Ella about Runciter. You realize that?'
'I've been thinking about it,' Joe said, 'since we took off and started back.'
The ship, slowing' radically, prepared by means of its various homeostatic servo-assist systems to land.
'And in additiqn,' Joe said, 'I have to notify the Society as to what's happened. They'll rake us over the coals; they'll point out right away that we walked into it like sheep.'
Sammy Mundo said, 'But the Society is our friend.'
'Nobody,' Al Hammond said, 'after a fiasco like that, is our friend.'

zuerich
 A solar-battery-powered chopper marked BELOVED BRETHREN MORATORIUM waited at the edge of the Zürich field. Beside it stood a beetle-like individual wearing a continental outfit: tweed toga, loafers, crimson sash and a purple airplane-propeller beanie. The proprietor of the moratorium minced toward Joe Chip, his gloved hand extended, as Joe stepped from the ship's ramp onto the flat ground of Earth.
'Not exactly a trip replete with joy, I would judge by your appearance,' von Vogelsang said as they briefly shook hands. 'May my workmen go aboard your attractive ship and begin -'
'Yes,' Joe said. 'Go aboard and get him.' Hands in his pockets, he meandered toward the field's coffee shop, feeling bleakly glum. All standard operating. procedure from now on, he realized. We got back to Earth; Hollis didn't get us - we're lucky. The Lunar operation, the whole awful, ugly, rat-trap experience, is over. And a new phase begins. One which we have no direct power over.
'Five cents, please,' the door of the coffee shop said, remaining shut before him.
 coffee
 He waited until a couple passed by him on their way out; neatly he squeezed by the door, made it to a vacant stool and seated himself. Hunched over, his hands locked together before him on the counter, he read the menu. 'Coffee,' he said.
'Cream or sugar?' the speaker of the shop's ruling monad turret asked.
'Both.'
The little window opened; a cup of coffee, two tiny paper-wrapped sacks of sugar and a test-tube-like container of cream slid forward and came to rest before him on the counter.
'One international poscred, please,' the speaker said.
Joe said, 'Charge 'this to the account of Glen Runciter of Runciter Associates, New York.'
'Insert the proper credit card,' the speaker said.
'They haven't let me carry around a credit card in five years,' Joe said. 'I'm still paying off what I charged back in-'
'One poscred, please,' the speaker said. It began to tick ominously. 'Or in ten seconds I will notify the police.'
He passed the poscred over. The ticking stopped.
'We can do without your kind,' the speaker said.
'One of these days,' Joe said wrathfully, 'people like me will rise up and overthrow you, and the end of tyranny by the homeostatic machine will have arrived. The day of human values and compassion and simple warmth will return, and when that happens someone like myself who has gone through an ordeal and who genuinely needs hot coffee to pick him up and keep him functioning when he has to function will get the hot coffee whether he happens to have a poscred readily available or not.' He lifted the miniature pitcher of cream, then set it down. 'And further more, your cream or milk or whatever it is, is sour.'
The speaker remained silent.
'Aren't you going to do anything?' Joe said. 'You had plenty to say when you wanted a poscred.'
The pay door of the coffee shop opened and Al Hammond came in; he walked over to Joe and seated himself beside him. 'The moratorium has Runciter in their chopper. They're ready to take off and they want to know if you intend to ride with them.'
Joe said, 'Look at this cream.' He held up the pitcher; in it the fluid plastered the sides in dense clots. 'This is what you get for a poscred in one of the most modern, technologically advanced cities on Earth. I'm not leaving here until this place makes an adjustment, either returning my poscred or giving me a replacement pitcher of fresh cream so I can drink my coffee.'
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.
 Beethoven's Missa Solemnis
 As the chopper left the ground the moratorium owner pressed a button on bis 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, 'lt 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 morator ums 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 mto 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.
 'All the cigarettes in the world are stale.'
 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 remain 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 ia used to feel like, waiting in a dentist's office. Every time the nurse opened the door you thought, lt'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.'
'lt'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 moratonum. 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.
 coin
 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 basrelief 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 US 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.
 Mr Hollis
 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 bad 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.
'lt'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 resistence 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. l'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 notice then that subtle background music huge 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 organization 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 groaming 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. Centainly 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.
'In my opinion,'Al said hollowly, 'you have a will to fail. No combination of circumstances - including this - is going to change that.'
'What I actually have,' Joe said, 'is a will to succeed. Glen Runciter saw that, which is why he specified in his will that I take over in the event of his death and the failure of the Beloved Brethren Moratorium to revive him into half-life, or any other reputable moratonium as specifled by me.' Within him his confidence rose; he saw now the manifold possibiities ahead, as cleanly as if he had precog abilities. And then he remembered Pat's talent, what she could do to precogs, to any attempt to foresee the future. 'Tuba mirum spargens sonum,' the voices sang. 'Per sepulchra regionum coger omnes ante thronum.'
Reading his expression, Al said, 'You're not going to throw her out. Not with what she can do.'
'I'll rent a room at Zürich Rootes Hotel.' Joe decided. 'As per your outlined proposal.' But, he thought, Al's right. It won't work; Pat, or even something worse, will move in and destroy me. I'm doomed, in the classic sense. An image thrust itself into his agitated, fatigued mind: a bird caught in cobwebs. Age hung about the image, and this frightened him; this aspect of it seemed literal and real. And, he thought, prophetic. But he could not make out exactly how. The coins, he thought. Out of circulation, neglected by the phone. Collectors' items. Like ones found in museums. Is that it? Hard to say. He really didn't know.
'Mors stupebit,' the voices sang. 'Et natura, cum resurget creatura, judicanti responsura.' They sang on and on.

8

If money worries have you in the cellar, go visit the lady at Ubik Savings and Loan. She'll take the frets out of your debts. Suppose, for example you borrow fifty-nine poscreds on an interest-only loan. Let's see, that adds up to -

Daylight rattled through the elegant hotel room, uncovering stately shapes which, Joe Chip blinkingly saw, were articles of furnishings: great hand-printed drapes of a neo-silkscreen sort that depicted man's ascent from the unicellular organisms of the Cambrian Period to the first heavier-than-air flight at the beginning of the twentieth century. A magnificent pseudo-mahogany dresser, four variegated crypto-chrome-plated reclining chairs...
he groggily admired the splendor of the hotel room and then he realized, with a tremor of keen disappointment, that Wendy had not come knocking at the door. Or else he had not heard her, he had been sleeping too deeply.
Thus, the new empire of his hegemony had vanished in the moment it had begun.
With numbing gloom - a remnant of yesterday - pervading him, he lurched from the big bed, found his clothes and dressed. It was cold, unusually so; he noticed that and pondered on it. Then he lifted the phone receiver and dialed for room service.
 voice on the phone
 '- pay him back if at all possible,' the receiver declared in his ear. 'First, of course, it has to be established whether Stanton Mick actually involved himself, or if a mere homosimulacric substitute was in action against us, and if so why, and if not then how -' The voice droned on, speaking to itself and not to Joe. It seemed as unaware of him as if he did not exist. 'From all our previous reports,' the voice declared, 'it would appear that Mick acts generally in a reputable manner and in accord with legal and ethical practices established throughout the System. In view of this -'
Joe hung up the phone and stood dizzily swaying, trying to clear his head. Runciter's voice. Beyond any doubt. He again picked up the phone, listened once more.
'- lawsuit by Mick, who can afford and is accustomed to litigation of that nature. Our own legal staff certainly should be consulted before we make a formal report to the Society. It would be libel if made public and grounds for a suit claiming false arrest if-'
'Runciter!' Joe said. He said it loudly.
'- unable to verify probably for at least-'
Joe hung up.
I don't understand this, he said to himself.
Going into the bathroom, he splashed icy water on his face, combed bis hair with a sanitary, free hotel comb, then, after meditating for a time, shaved with the sanitary, free hotel throw-away razor. He slapped sanitary, free hotel aftershave onto his chin, neck and jowls, unwrapped the sanitary, free hotel glass and drink from it. Did the moratorium finally manage to revive him? he wondered. And wired him up to my phone? Runciter, as soon as he came around, would want to talk to me, probably before anyone else. But if so, why can't he hear me back? Why does it consist of one-way transmission only? Is it only a technical defect which will clear up?
Returning to the phone, he picked up the receiver once more with the idea of calling the Beloved Brethren Moratorium.
'- not the ideal person to manage the firm, in view of his confused personal difficulties, particularly -'
I can't call, Joe realized, He hung up the receiver. I can't even get room service.
In a corner of the lange room a chime sounded and a tinkling mechanical voice called, 'I'm your free homeopape machine, a service supplied exclusively by all the fine Rootes hotels, throughout Earth and the colonies. Simply dial the classification of news that you wish, and in a matter of seconds I'll speedily provide you with a fresh, up-to-the-minute homeopape tailored to your individual requirements; and, let me repeat, at no cost to you!'
'Okay,' Joe said, and crossed the room to the machine. Maybe by now, he reflected, news of Runciter's murder has gotten out. The news media cover all admissions to moratoriums routinely. He pressed the button marked high-type interplan info. At once the machine began to clank out a printed sheet, which he gathered up as fast as it emerged.
No mention of Runciter. Too soon? Or had the Society managed to suppress it? Or Al, he thought maybe Al slipped a few poscreds to the owner of the moratorium. But - he himself had all of Al's money. Al couldn't buy off anybody to do anything.
A knock sounded on the hotel room door.
Putting down the homeopape, Joe made bis way cautiously to the door, thinking, it's probably Pat Conley; she's trapped me here. On the other hand, it might be someone from New York, here to pick me up and take me back there. Theoretically, he conjectuned, it could even be Wendy. But that did not seem likely. Not now, not this late.
It could also be an assassin dispatched by Hollis. He could be killing us off one by one.
Joe opened the door.
Quivering with unease, wringing his pulpy hands together, Herbert Schoenheit von Vogelsang stood in the doorway mumbling. 'I don't understand it, Mr Chip. We worked all night in relays. We just are not getting a single spark. And yet we ran an electroencephalograph and the 'gram shows faint but unmistakable cerebral activity. So the afterlife is there, but we still can't seem to tap it. We've got probes at every part of the cortex now. I don't know what else we can do, sir.'
'Is there measurable brain metabolism?' Joe asked.
'Yes, sir. We called in an outside expert from another moratorium, and he detected it, using his own equipment. It's a normal amount too. Just what you'd expect immediately after death.'
'How did you know where to find me?' Joe asked.
'We called Mr Hammond in New York. Then I tried to call you, here at your hotel, but your phone has been busy all morning. That's why I found it necessary to come here in person.'
'lt's broken,' Joe said. 'The phone. I can't call out either.' The moratorium owner said, 'Mr Hammond tried to contact you too, with no success. He asked me to give you a message from him, something he wants you to do here in Zürich before you start back to New York.'
'He wants to remind me,' Joe said, 'to consult Ella.'
'To tell her about her husband's unfortunate, untimely death.'
'Can I borrow a couple of poscreds from you?' Joe said. 'So I can eat breakfast?'
'Mr Hammond warned me that you would try to borrow money from me. He informed me that he already provided you with sufficient funds to pay for your hotel room, plus a round of drinks, as well as -'
'Al based his estimate on the assumption that I would rent a more modest room than this. However, nothing smaller than this was available, which Al did not foresee. You can add it onto the statement which you will be presenting to Runciter Associates at the end of the month. I am, as Al probably told you, now acting director of the firm. You're dealing with a positive-thinking, powerful man here, who has worked his way step by step to the top. I could, as you must well realize, reconsider our basic policy decision as to which moratorium we wish to patronize; we might, for example, prefer one nearer New York.'
Grumpily, von Vogelsang reached within his tweed toga and brought out an ersatz alligator-skin wallet, which he dug into.
'lt's a harsh world we're living in,' Joe said, accepting the money. 'The rule is "Dog eat dog."'
'Mr Hammond gave me further information to pass on to you. The ship from your New York office will arrive in Zürich two hours from now. Approximately.'
'Fine,' Joe said.
'In order for you to have ample time to confer with Ella Runciter. Mr Hammond will have the ship pick you up at the moratorium. In view of this, Mr Hammond suggests that I take you back to the moratorium with me. My chopper is parked on the hotel roof.'
'Al Hammond said that? That I should return to the moratorium with you?'
'That's right.' Von Vogelsang nodded.
'A tall, stoop-shouldered Negro, about thirty years old? With gold-capped front teeth, each with an ornamental design, the one on the left a heart, the next a club, the one on the right a diamond?'
'The man who came with us from Zürich Field yesterday. Who waited with you at the moratorium.'
Joe said, 'Did he have on green felt knickers, gray golf socks, badger-hide open-midriff blouse and imitation patent-leather pumps?'
'I couldn't see what he wore. I just saw his facc on the vidscreen.'
'Did he convey any specific code words so I could be sure it was him?'
The moratorium owner, peeved, said, 'I don't understand the problem, Mr Chip. The man who talked to me on the vidphone from New York is the same man you had with you yesterday.'
'I can't take a chance,' Joe said, 'on going with you, on getting into your chopper. Maybe Ray Hollis sent you. It was Ray Hollis who killed Mr Runciter.'
His eyes like glass buttons, von Vogelsang said, 'Did you inform the Prudence Society of this?'
'We will. We'll get around to it in due time. Meanwhile we have to watch out that Hollis doesn't get the rest of us. He intended to kill us too, there on Luna.'
'You need protection,' the moratorium owner said. 'I suggest you go immediately to your phone and call the Zürich police; they'll assign a man to cover you until you leave for New York. And, as soon as you arrive in New York -'
'My phone, as I said, is broken. All I get on it is the voice of Glen Runciter. That's why no one could reach me.'
'Really? How very unusual' The moratorium owner undulated past him into the hotel room. 'May I listen?' He picked up the phone receiver questioningly.
'One poscred,' Joe said.
Digging into the pockets of his tweed toga, the moratorium owner fished out a handful of coins; his airplane-propeller beanie whirred irritably as he handed three of the coins to Joe.
'I'm only charging you what they ask around here for a cup of coffee,' Joe said. 'This ought to be worth at least that much.' Thinking that, he realized that he had had no breakfast, and that he would be facing Ella in that condition. Well, he could take an amphetamine instead; the hotel probably provided them free, as a courtesy.
Holding the phone receiver tightly against his ear, von Vogelsang said, 'I don't hear anything. Not even a dial tone. Now I hear a little static. As if from a great distance. Very faint.' He held the receiver out to Joe, who took it and also listened.
He, too, heard only the far-off static. From thousands of miles away, he thought. Eerie. As perplexing in its own way as the voice of Runciter - if that was what it had been. 'I'll return your poscred,' he said, hanging up the receiver.
'Never mind,' von Vogelsang said.
'But you didn't get to hear his voice.'
'Let's return to the moratorium. As your Mr Hammond requested.'
Joe said, 'Al Hammond is my employee. I make policy. I think I'll return to New York before I talk to Ella; in my opinion, it's more important to frame our formal notification to the Society. When you talked to Al Hammond did he say whether all the inertials left Zürich with him?'
'All but the girl who spent the night with you, here in the hotel.' Puzzled, the moratorium owner looked around the room, obviously wondering where she was. His peculiar face fused over with concern. 'Isn't she here?'
'Which girl was it?' Joe asked; his morale, already low, plunged into the blackest depths of his mind.
'Mr Hammond didn't say. He assumed you'd know. It would have been indiscreet for him to tell me her name, considering the circumstances. Didn't she -'
'Nobody showed up.' Which had it been? Pat Conley? Or Wendy? He prowled about the hotel room, reflexively working off his fear. I hope to God, he thought, that it was Pat.
'In the closet,' von Vogelsang said.
'What?' He stopped pacing.
'Maybe you ought to look in there. These more expensive suites have extra-large closets.'
Joe touched the stud of the closet door; its spring-loaded mechanism sent it flying open.
 Wendy mummified
 On the floor of the closet a huddled heap, dehydrated, almost mummified, lay curled up. Decaying shreds of what seemingly had once been cloth covered most of it, as if it had, by degrees, over a long period of time, retracted into what remained of its garments. Bending, he turned it over. It weighed only a few pounds; at the push of his hand its limbs folded out into thin bony extensions that rustled like paper. Its hair seemed enormously long; wiry and tangled, the black cloud of hair obscured its face. He crouched, not moving, not wanting to see who it was.
In a strangled voice von Vogelsang rasped, 'That's old. Completely dried-out. Like it's been here for centuries. I'll go downstairs and tell the manager.'
'It can't be an adult woman,' Joe said. These could only be the remnants of a child; they were just too small. 'It can't be either Pat or Wendy,' he said, and lifted the cloudy hair away from its face. 'lt's like it was in a kiln,' he said. 'At a very high temperature, for a long time.' The blast, he thought. The severe heat from the bomb.
He stared silently then at the shriveled, heat-darkened little face. And knew who this was. With difficulty he recognized her.
Wendy Wright.

Sometime during the night, he reasoned, she had come into the room, and then some process had started in her or around her. She had sensed it and had crept off, hiding herself in the closet, so he wouldn't know; in her last few hours of life - or perhaps minutes; he hoped it was only minutes - this had overtaken her, but she had made no sound. She hadn't wakened him. Or, he thought, she tried and she couldn't do it, couldn't attract my attention. Maybe it was after that, after trying and failing to wake me, that she crawled into this closet.
I pray to God, he thought, that it happened fast.
'You can't do anything for her?' he asked von Vogelsang. 'At your moratorium?'
'Not this late. There wouldn't be any residual half-life left, not with this complete deterioration. Is - she the girl?'
'Yes,' he said, nodding.
'You better leave this hotel. Right now. For your own safety. Hollis - it is Hollis, isn't it? - will do this to you too.'
'My cigarettes,' Joe said. 'Dried out. The two-year-old phone book in the ship. The soured cream and the coffee with scum on it, mold on it. The antiquated money.' A common thread: age. 'She said that back on Luna, after we made it up to the ship; she said, "I feel old." 'He pondered trying to control his fear; it had begun now to turn into terror. But the voice on the phone, he thought. Runciter's voice. What did that mean?
He saw no underlying pattern, no meaning. Runciter's voice on the vidphone fitted no theory which he could summon up or imagine.
'Radiation,' von Vogelsang said. 'lt would seem to me that she was exposed to extensive radioactivity, probably some time ago. An enormous amount of it, in fact.'
Joe said, 'I think she died because of the blast. The explosion that killed Runciter.' Cobalt particles, he said to himself. Hot dust that settled on her and which she inhaled. But, then, we're all going to die this way; It must have settled on all of us. I have it in my own lungs; so does Al; so do the other inertials. There's nothing that can be done in that case. lt's too late. We didn't think of that, he realized. It didn't occur to us that the explosion consisted of a micronic nuclear reaction.
No wonder Hollis allowed us to leave. And yet -
That explained Wendy's dead and it explained the dried-out cigarettes. But not the phone book, not the coins, not the corruption of the cream and coffee.
Nor did it explain Runciter's voice, the yammering monologue on the hotel room's vidphone. Which ceased when von Vogelsang lifted the receiver. When someone else tried to hear it, he realized.
I've got to get back to New York, he said to himself. All of us who were there on Luna - all of us who were present when the bomb blast went off. We have to work this out together, in fact, it's probably the only way it can be worked out. Before the rest of us die, one by one, the way Wendy did. Or in a worse way, if that's possible.
'Have the hotel management send a polyethylene bag up here,' he said to the moratorium owner. 'I'll put her in it and take her with me to New York.'
'Isn't this a matter for the police? A horrible murder like this; they should be informed.'
Joe said, 'Just get me the hag.'
'All right. lt's your employee.' The moratorium owner started off down the hall.
'Was once,' Joe said. 'Not any more.' It would have to be her first, he said to himself. But maybe, in a sense, that's better. Wendy, he thought, I'm taking you with me, taking you home.
But not as he had planned.

New York
 To the other inertials seated around the massive genuine oak conference table Al Hammond said, breaking abruptly into the joint silence, 'Joe should be back anytime now.' He looked at his wrist watch to make certain. It appeared to have stopped.
'Meanwhile,' Pat Conley said, 'I suggest we watch the late afternoon news on TV to see if Hollis has leaked out the news of Runciter's death.'
'lt wasn't in the 'pape today,' Edie Dorn said.
'The TV news is much more recent,' Pat said. She handed Al a fifty-cent piece with which to start the TV set mounted behind curtains at the fan end of the conference room, an impressive 3-d colour polyphonic mechanism which bad been a source of pride to Runciter.
'Want me to put it in the slot for you, Mr Hammond?' Sammy Mundo asked eagerly.
'Okay,' Al said; broodingly, he tossed the coin to Mundo, who caught it and trotted toward the set.
Restlessly, Walter W. Wayles, Runciter's attorney, shifted about in his chair, fiddled with his fine-veined, aristocratic hands at the clasp lock of his briefcase and said, 'You people should not have left Mr Chip in Zürich. We can do nothing until he arrives here, and it's extremely vital that all matters pertaining to Mr Runciter's will be expedited.'
'You've read the will,' Al said. 'And so has Joe Chip. We know who Runciter wanted to take over management of the firm.'
'But from a legal standpoint -' Wayles began.
'lt won't take much longer,' Al said brusquely. With his pen he scratched random lines along the borders of the list he bad made; preoccupied, he embroidered the list, then read it once again.

   STALE CIGARETTES
   OUT-OF-DATE PHONE BOOKS
   OBSOLETE MONEY
   PUTREFIED FOOD
   AD ON MATCHFOLDER
'I'm going to pass this list around the table once more,' he said aloud. 'And see if this time anyone can spot a connective link between these five occurrences or whatever you want to call them. These five things that are -' He gestured.
'Are wrong,' Jon Ild said.
Pat Conley said, 'lt's easy to see the connective between the first four. But not the matchfolder. That doesn't fit in.'
'Let me see the matchfolder again,' Al said, reaching out his hand. Pat gave him the matchfolder and, once again, he read the ad.

   AMAZING OPPORTUNITY FOR ADVANCEMENT TO ALL WHO CAN QUALIFY!

   Mr Glen Runciter of the Beloved Brethren Moratonum  of  Zürich,
   Switzerland,  doubled his income within a week of receiving our
   free shoe kit with detailed information as to how you also  can
   sell   our  authentic  simulated-leather  loafers  to  friends,
   relatives,   business   associates.   Mr   Runciter,   although
   helplessly frozen in cold-pac, earned four hundred.
Al stopped reading; he pondered, meanwhile picking at a lower tooth with bis thumbnail. Yes, he thought this is different, this ad. The others consist of obsolescence and decay. But not this.
'I wonder,' he said aloud, 'what would happen if we answered this matchfolder ad. It gives a box number in Des Moines, lowa.'
'We'd get a free shoe kit,' Pat Conley said. 'With detailed information as to how we too can -'
'Maybe,' Al interrupted, 'we'd find ourselves in contact with Glen Runciter.' Everyone at the table, including Walter W. Wayles, stared at him. 'I mean it,' he said. 'Here.' He handed the matchfolder to Tippy Jackson. 'Write them 'stant mail.'
'And say what?' Tippy Jackson asked.
'Just fill out the coupon,' Al said. To Edie Dorn he said, 'Are you absolutely sure you've had that matchfolder in your purse since late last week? Or could you have picked it up somewhere today?'
Edie Dorn said, 'I put several matchfolders into my purse on Wednesday. As I told you, this morning on my way here I happened to notice this one as I was lighting a cigarette. It definitely has been in my purse from before we went to Luna. From several days before.'
'With that ad on it?' Jon Ild asked her.
'I never noticed what the matchfolders said before; I only noticed this today. I can't say anything about it before. Who can?'
'Nobody can,' Don Denny said. 'What do you think, Al? A gag by Runciter? Did he have them printed up before his death? Or Hollis, maybe? As a sort of grotesque joke - knowing that he was going to kill Runciter? That by the time we noticed the matchfolder Runciter would be in cold-pac, in Zürich, like the matchfolder says?'
Tito Apostos said, 'How would Hollis know we'd take Runciter to Zürich? And not to New York?'
'Because Ella's there,' Don Denny answered. At the TV set Sammy Mundo stood silently inspecting the fifty-cent piece which Al had given him. His underdeveloped, pale forehead had winkled up into a perplexed frown.
'What's the matter, Sam?' Al said. He felt himself tense up inwardly; he foresaw another happening.
'Isn't Walt Disney's head supposed to be on the fifty-cent piece?' Sammy said.
'Either Disney's,' Al said, 'or if it's an older one, then Fidel Castro's. Let's see it.'
'Another obsolete coin,' Pat Conley said, as Sammy carned the fifty-cent piece to Al.
'No,' Al said, examining the coin. 'it's last year's; perfectly good datewise. Perfectly acceptable. Any machine in the world would take it. The TV set would take it.'
'Then what's the matter?' Edie Dorn asked timidly. 'Exactly what Sam said,' Al answered. 'lt has the wrong head on it.' He got up, carried the coin over to Edie, deposited it in her moist open hand. 'Who does it look like to you?'
After a pause Edie said, 'I - don't know.'
'Sure, you know,' Al said.
'Okay,' Edie said sharply, goaded into replying against her will. She pushed the coin back at him, ridding herself of it with a shiver of aversion.
 Coin with Runciter's face
 'It's Runciter,' Al said to all of them seated around the big table.
After a pause Tippy Jackson said, 'Add that to your list.' Her voice was barely audible.
'I see two processes at work,' Pat said presently, as Al reseated himself and began to make the addendum on his piece of paper. 'One, a process of deterioration; that seems obvious. We agree on that.'
Raising his head, Al said to her, 'What's the other?'
'I'm not quite sure.' Pat hesitated. 'Something to do with Runciter. I think we should look at all our other coins. And paper money too. Let me think a little longer.'
One by one, the people at the table got out their wallets, purses, rummaged in their pockets.
'I have a five-poscred note,' Jon Ild said, 'with a beautiful steel-engraving portrait of Mr Runciter. The rest -' He took a long look at what he held. 'They're normal; they're okay. Do you want to see the five-poscred note, Mr Hammond?'
Al said, 'I've got two of them. Already. Who else?' He looked around the table. Six hands had gone up. 'Eight of us,' he said, 'have what I guess we should call Runciter money, now, to some extent. Probably by the end of the day all the money will be Runciter money. Or give it two days. Anyhow, Runciter money will work; it'll start machines and appliances and we can pay our debts with it.'
'Maybe not,' Don Denny said. 'Why do you think so? This, what you call Runciter money -' He tapped a bill he held. 'Is there any reason why the banks should honor it? It's not legitimate issue; the Government didn't put it out. It's funny money; it's not real.'
'Okay,' Al said reasonably. 'Maybe it's not real; maybe the banks will refuse it. But that's not the real question.'
'The real question,' Pat Conley said, 'is, What does this second process consist of, these manifestations of Runciter?'
'That's what they are.' Don Denny nodded.' "Manifestations of Runciter" - that's the second process, along with the decay. Some coins get obsolete; others show up with Runciter's portrait or bust on them. You know what I think? I think these processes are going in opposite directions. One is a going-away, so to speak. A going-out-of-existence. That's process one. The second process is a coming-into-existence. But of something that's never existed before.'
'Wish fulfillment,' Edie Dorn said faintly.
'Pardon?' Al said.
'Maybe these are things Runciter wished for,' Edie said. 'To have his portrait on legal tender, on all our money, including metal coins. It's grandiose.'
Tito Apostos said, 'But matchfolders?'
'I guess not,' Edie agreed. 'That's not very grandiose.'
'The firm already advertises on matchfolders,' Don Denny said. 'And on TV, and in the 'papes and map. And with junk mail. Our PR department handles all that. Generally, Runciter didn't give a damn about that end of the business, and he certainly didn't give a damn about matchfolders. If this were some sort of materialization of his psyche you'd expect his face to appear on TV, not on money or matchfolders.'
'Maybe it is on TV,' Al said.
'That's right,' Pat Conley said. 'We haven't tried it. None of us have had time to watch TV.'
'Sammy,' Al said, handing him back the fifty-cent piece, 'go turn the TV set on.'
'I don't know if I want to look,' Edie said, as Sammy Mundo dropped the coin into the slot and stood off to one side, jiggling the tuning knobs.
The door of the room opened. Joe Chip stood there, and Al saw his face.
'Shut the TV set off,' Al said and got to his feet. Everyone in the room watched as he walked toward Joe. 'What happened, Joe?' he said. He waited. Joe said nothing. 'What's the matter?'
'I chartered a ship to bring me back here,' Joe said huskily.
'You and Wendy?'
Joe said, 'Write out a check for the ship. It's on the roof. I don't have enough money for it.'
To Walter W. Wayles, Al said, 'Are you able to disburse funds?'
'For something like that I can. I'll go settle with the ship.' Taking his briefcase with him, Wayles left the room. Joe remained in the doorway, again silent. He looked a hundred years older than when Al had last seen him.
'In my office.' Joe turned away from the table; he blinked, hesitated. 'I - don't think you should see. The man from the moratorium was with me when I found her. He said he couldn't do anything; it had been too long. Years.'
'"Years"?' Al said, chilled.
Joe said, 'We'll go down to my office.' He led Al out of the conference room, into the hall, to the elevator. 'On the trip back here the ship fed me tranquilizers. That's part of the bill. Actually, I feel a lot better. In a sense, I don't feel anything. It must be the tranquilizers. I guess when they wear off I'll feel it again.'
The elevator came. Together they descended, neither of them saying anything until they reached the third floor, where Joe had his office.
'I don't advise you to look.' Joe unlocked his office, led Al inside. 'It's up to you. If I got over it, you probably will.' He switched on the overhead lighting.
After a pause Al said, 'Lord God.'
'Don't open it,' Joe said.
'I'm not going to open it. This morning or last night?'
'Evidently, it happened early, before she even reached my room. We - that moratorium owner and I - found bits of cloth in the corridor. Leading to my door. But she must have been all right, or nearly all right, when she. crossed the lobby; anyhow, nobody noticed anything. And in a big hotel like that they keep somebody watching. And the fact that she managed to reach my room -'
'Yeah, that indicates she must have been at least able to walk. That seems probable, anyhow.'
Joe said, 'I'm thinking about the rest of us.'
'In what way?'
'The same thing. Happening to us.'
'How could it?'
'How could it happen to her? Because of the blast. We're going to die like that one after another. One by one. Until none of us are left. Until each of us is ten pounds of skin and hair in a plastic bag, with a few dried-up bones thrown in.
'All right,' Al said. 'There's some force at work producing rapid decay. It's been at work since - or started with - the blast there on Luna. We already knew that. We also know, or think we know, that another force, a contra-force, is at work, moving things in an opposite direction. Something connected with Runciter. Our money is beginning to have his picture on it. A matchfolder -'
'He was on my vidphone,' Joe said. 'At the hotel.'
'On it? How?'
'I don't know; he just was. Not on the screen, not the video part. Only his voice.'
'What'd he say?'
'Nothing in particular.'
Al studied him. 'Could he hear you?' he asked finally.
'No. I tried to get through. It was one-way entirely; I was listening in, and that was all.'
'So that's why I couldn't get through to you.'
'That's why.' Joe nodded.
'We were trying the TV when you showed up. You realize there's nothing in the 'papes about his death. What a mess.' He did not like the way Joe Chip looked. Old, small and tired, he reflected. Is this how it begins? We've got to establish contact with Runciter, he said to himself.
Being able to hear him isn't enough; evidently, he's trying to reach us, but - if we're going to live through this we'll have to reach him.
Joe said, 'Picking him up on TV isn't going to do us any good. It'll just be like the phone all over again. Unless he can tell us how to communicate back. Maybe he can tell us; maybe he knows. Maybe he understands what's happened.'
'He would have to understand what's happened to himself. Which is something we don't know.' In some sense, Al thought, he must be alive, even though the moratorium failed to rouse him. Obviously, the moratorium owner did his best with a client of this much importance. 'Did von Vogelsang hear him on the phone?' he asked Joe.
'He tried to hear him. But all he got was silence and then static, apparently from a long way off. I heard it too. Nothing. The sound of absolute nothing. A very strange sound.'
'I don't like that,' Al said. He was not sure why. 'I'd feel better about it if von Vogelsang had heard it too. At least that way we could be sure it was there, that it wasn't an hallucination on your part.' Or, for that matter, he thought, on all our parts. As in the case of the matchfolder.
But some of the happenings had definitely not been hallucinations; machines had rejected antiquated coins - objective machines geared to react only to physical properties. No psychological elements came into play there. Machines could not imagine.
'I'm leaving this building for a while,' Al said. 'Think of a city or a town at random, one that none of us have anything to do with, one where none of us ever go or have ever gone.'
'Baltimore,' Joe said.
'Okay, I'm going to Baltimore. I'm going to see if a store picked at random will accept Runciter currency.'
'Buy me some new cigarettes,' Joe said.
'Okay. I'll do that too; I'll see if cigarettes in a random store in Baltimore have been affected. I'll check other products as well; I'll make random samplings. Do you want to come with me, or do you want to go upstairs and tell them about Wendy?'
Joe said, 'I'll go with you.'
'Maybe we should never tell them about her.'
'I think we should,' Joe said. 'Since it's going to happen again. It may happen before we get back. It may be happening now.'
'Then we better get our trip to Baltimore over as quickly as possible,' Al said. He started out of the office. Joe Chip followed.

9

My hair is so dry, so unmanageable. What's a girl to do? Simply rub in creamy Ubik hair conditioner. In just five days you'll discover new body in your hair, new glossiness. And Ubik hairspray, used as directed, is absolutely safe.

They selected the Lucky People Supermarket on the periphery of Baltimore.
At the counter Al said to the autonomic, computerized checker, 'Give me a pack of Pall Malls.'
'Wings are cheaper,' Joe said.
Irritated, Al said, 'They don't make Wings any more. They haven't for years.'
'They make them,' Joe said, 'but they don't advertise. It's an honest cigarette that claims nothing.' To the checker he said, 'Change that from Pall Malls to Wings.'
The pack of cigarettes slid from the chute and onto the counter. 'Ninety-five cents,' the checker said.
'Here's a ten-poscred bill.' Al fed the bill to the checker, whose circuits at once whirred as it scrutinized the bill.
'Your change, sir,' the checker said; it deposited a neat heap of coins and bills before Al. 'Please move along now.'
So Runciter money is acceptable, Al said to himself as he and Joe got out of the way of the next customer, a heavy-set old lady wearing a blueberry-colored cloth coat and carrying a Mexican rope shopping bag. Cautiously, he opened the pack of cigarettes.
The cigarettes crumbled between his fingers.
'It would have proved something,' Al said, 'if this had been a pack of Pall Malls. I'm getting back in line.' He started to do so - and then discovered that the heavy-set old lady in the dark coat was arguing violently with the automatic checker.
'It was dead,' she asserted shrilly, 'by the time I got it home. Here; you can have it back.' She set a pot on the counter, it contained, Al saw, a lifeless plant, perhaps an azalea - in its moribund state it showed few features.
'I can't give you a refund,' the checker answered. 'No warranty goes with the plant life which we sell. "Buyer beware" is our rule. Please move along now.'
'And the Saturday Evening Post,' the old lady said, 'that I picked up from your newsstand, it was over a year old. What's the matter with you? And the Martian grubworm TV dinner-'
'Next customer,' the checker said; it ignored her.
Al got out of line. He roamed about the premises until he came to the cartons of cigarettes, every conceivable brand, stacked to heights of eight feet or more. 'Pick a carton,' he said to Joe.
'Dominoes,' Joe said. 'They're the same price as Wings.'
'Christ, don't pick an offbrand; pick, something like Winstons or Kools.' He himself yanked out a carton. 'It's empty.' He shook it. 'I can tell by the weight.' Something, however, inside the carton bounced about, something weightless and small; he tore the carton open and looked within it.
 carton inscription
 A scrawled note. In handwriting familiar to him, and to Joe. He lifted it out and together they both read it.

   Essential  I  get  in  touch  with  you.  Situation serious and
   certainly will get more so as time goes on. There  are  several
   possible  explanations,  which  I'll  discuss with you. Anyhow,
   don't give up. I'm sorry about Wendy Wright; in that connection
   we did all we could.
Al said, 'So he knows about Wendy. Well, maybe that means it won't happen again, to the rest of us.'
'A random carton of cigarettes,' Joe said, 'at a random store in a city picked at random. And we find a note directed at us from Glen Runciter. What do the other cartons have in them? The same note?' He lifted down a carton of L&Ms, shook it, then opened it. Ten packs of cigarettes plus ten more below them; absolutely normal. Or is it? Al asked himself. He lifted out one of the packs. 'You can see they're okay,' Joe said; he pulled out a carton from the middle of the stacks. 'This one is full too.' He did not open it, instead, he reached for another. And then another. All had packs of cigarettes in them.
And all crumbled into fragments between Al's fingers.
'I wonder how he knew we'd come here,' Al said. 'And how he knew we'd try that one particular carton.' It made no sense. And yet, here, too, the pair of opposing forces were at work. Decay versus Runciter, Al said to himself. Throughout the world. Perhaps throughout the universe. Maybe the sun will go out, Al conjectured, and Glen Runciter will place a substitute sun in its place. If he can.
Yes, he thought; that's the question. How much can Runciter do?
 tape recorder
 Put another way - how far can the process of decay go? 'Let's try something else,' Al said; he walked along the aisle, past cans, packages and boxes, coming at last to the appliance center of the store. There, on impulse, he picked up an expensive German-made tape recorder. 'This looks all right,' he said to Joe, who had followed him. He picked up a second one, still in its container. 'Let's buy this and take it back to New York with us.'
'Don't you want to open it?' Joe said. 'And try it out before you buy it?'
'I think I already know what we'll find,' Al said. 'And it's something we can't test out here.'
He carried the tape recorder toward the checkstand.

Back in New York, at Runciter Associates, they turned the tape recorder over to the firm's shop.
Fifteen minutes later the shop foreman, having taken apart the mechanism, made his report. 'All the moving parts in the tape-transport stage are worn. The rubber drive-tire has flat spots on it, pieces of rubber are all over the insides. The brakes for high-speed wind and rewind are virtually gone. It needs cleaning and lubricating throughout, it's seen plenty of use - in fact, I would say it needs a complete overhaul, including new belts.'
Al said, 'Several years of use?'
'Possibly. How long you had it?'
'I bought it today,' Al said.
'That isn't possible,' the shop foreman said. 'Or if you did they sold you-'
'I know what they sold me,' Al said. 'I knew when I got it, before I opened the carton.' To Joe he said, 'A brand-new tape recorder, completely worn out. Bought with funny money that the store is willing to accept. Worthless money, worthless article purchased; it has a sort of logic to it.'

'This is not my day,' the shop foreman said. 'This morning when I got up my parrot was dead.'
'Dead of what?' Joe asked.
'I don't know, just dead. Stiff as a board.' The shop foreman waggled a bony finger at Al. 'I'll tell you something you don't know about your tape recorder. It isn't just worn out; it's forty years obsolete. They don't use rubber drive-tires any more, or belt-run transports. You'll never get parts for it unless somebody handmakes them. And it wouldn't be worth it; the damn thing is antiquated. Junk it. Forget about it.'
'You're right,' Al said. 'I didn't know.' He accompanied Joe out of the shop and into the corridor. 'Now we're talking about something other than decay; this is a different matter. And we're going to have trouble finding edible food, anywhere, of any kind. How much of the food sold in supermarkets would be good after that many years?'
'The canned goods,' Joe said. 'And I saw a lot of canned goods at that supermarket in Baltimore.'
'And now we know why,' Al said. 'Forty years ago supermarkets sold a far greater proportion of their commodities in cans, rather than frozen. That may turn out to be our sole source; you're right.' He cogitated. 'But in one day it's jumped from two years to forty years; by this time tomorrow it may be a hundred years. And no food is edible a hundred years after it's packaged, cans or otherwise.'
'Chinese eggs,' Joe said. 'Thousand-year-old eggs that they bury in the ground.'
'And it's not just us,' Al said. 'That old woman in Baltimore; it's affecting what she bought too: her azalea.' Is the whole world going to starve because of a bomb blast on Luna? he asked himself. Why is everyone involved instead of just us?
Joe said, 'Here comes -'
'Be quiet a second,' Al said. 'I have to think something out. Maybe Baltimore is only there when one of us goes there. And the Lucky People Supermarket; as soon as we left, it passed out of existence. It could still be that only us who were on Luna are really experiencing this.'
'A philosophical problem of no importance or meaning,' Joe said. 'And incapable of being proved one way or the other.'
Al said caustically, 'It would be important to that old lady in the blueberry-colored cloth coat. And to all the rest of them.'
'Here's the shop foreman,' Joe said.
'I've just been looking at the instruction manual,' the shop foreman said, 'that came with your tape recorder.' He held the booklet out to Al, a complicated expression on his face. 'Take a look.' All at once he grabbed it back. 'I'll save you the trouble of reading; look here on the last page, where it tells who made the damn thing and where to send it for factory repairs.'
'"Made by Runciter of Zürich,"' Al read aloud. 'And a maintenance station in the North American Confederation - in Des Moines. The same as on the matchfolder.' He passed the booklet to Joe and said, 'We're going to Des Moines. This booklet is the first manifestation that links the two locations.' I wonder why Des Moines, he said to himself. 'Can you recall,' he said to Joe, 'any connection that Runciter ever had, during his lifetime, with Des Moines?'
Joe said, 'Runciter was born there. He spent his first fifteen years there. Every once in a while he used to mention it.'
'So now, after his death, he's gone back there. In some manner or other.' Runciter is in Zürich, he thought, and also in Des Moines. In Zürich he has measurable brain metabolism; his physical, half-life body is suspended in cold-pac in the Beloved Brethren Moratorium, and yet he can't be reached. In Des Moines he has no physical existence and yet, evidently, there contact can be established - in fact, by such extensions as this instruction booklet, has been established, at least in one direction, from him to us. And meanwhile, he thought, our world declines, turns back onto itself, bringing to the surface past phases of reality. By the end of the week we may wake up and find ancient clanging streetcars moving down Fifth Avenue. Trolley Dodgers, he thought, and wondered what that meant. An abandoned verbal term, rising from the past; a hazy, distant emanation, in his mind, canceling out current reality. Even this indistinct perception, still only subjective, made him uneasy; it had already become too real an entity which he had never known about before this moment. 'Trolley Dodgers,' he said aloud. A hundred years ago at least. Obsessively, the term remained lodged within awareness; he could not forget it.
'How come you know that?' the shop foreman asked. 'Nobody knows that any more; that's the old name for the Brooklyn Dodgers.' He eyed Al suspiciously.
Joe said, 'We better go upstairs. And make sure they're all right. Before we take off for Des Moines.'
'If we don't get to Des Moines soon,' Al said, 'it may turn out to be an all-day trip or even a two-day trip.' As methods of transportation devolve, he thought. From rocket propulsion to jet, from jet to piston-driven aircraft, then surface travel as the coal-fed steam train, horse-drawn cart - but it couldn't regress that far, he said to himself. And yet we've already got on our hands a forty-year-old tape recorder, run by rubber drive-tire and belts. Maybe it could really be.
He and Joe walked rapidly to the elevator, Joe pressed the button and they waited, both of them on edge, saying nothing; both withdrew into their own thoughts.
The elevator arrived clatteringly; the racket awoke Al from his introspection. Reflexively he pushed aside the iron-grill safety door.
And found himself facing an open cage with polished brass fittings, suspended from a cable. A dull-eyed uniformed operator sat on a stool, working the handle; he gazed at them with indifference. It was not indifference, however, that Al felt. 'Don't get in,' he said to Joe, holding him back. 'Look at it and think; try to remember the elevator we rode in earlier today, the hydraulic-powered, dosed, self-operated, absolutely silent-'
He ceased talking. Because the elderly clanking contraption had dimmed, and, in its place, the familiar elevator resumed its existence. And yet he sensed the presence of the other, older elevator; it lurked at the periphery of his vision, as if ready to ebb forward as soon as he and Joe turned their attention away. It wants to come back, he realized. It intends to come back. We can delay it temporarily: a few hours, probably, at the most. The momentum of the retrograde force is increasing; archaic forms are moving toward domination more rapidly than we thought. It's now a question of a hundred years at one swing. The elevator we just now saw must have been a century old.
 elevator
 And yet, he thought, we seem able to exert some control over it. We did force the actual contemporary elevator back into being. If all of us stay together, if we function as an entity of - not two - but twelve minds - 'What did you see?' Joe was saying to him. 'That made you tell me not to get in the elevator?'
Al said, 'Didn't you see the old elevator? Open cage, brass, from around 1910? With the operator sitting on his stool?'
'No,' Joe said.
'Did you see anything?'
'This.' Joe gestured. 'The normal elevator I see every day when I come to work. I saw what I always see, what I see now.' He entered the elevator, turned and stood facing Al.
Then our perceptions are beginning to differ, Al realized. He wondered what that meant.
It seemed ominous; he did not like it at all. In its dire, obscure way it seemed to him potentially the most deadly change since Runciter's death. They were no longer regressing at the same rate, and he had an acute, intuitive intimation that Wendy Wright had experienced exactly this before her death.
He wondered how much time he himself had left.
Now he became aware of an insidious, seeping, cooling-off which at some earlier and unremembered time had begun to explore him - investigating him as well as the world around him. It reminded him of their final minutes on Luna. The chill debased the surfaces of objects; it warped, expanded, showed itself as bulblike swellings that sighed audibly and popped. Into the manifold open wounds the cold drifted, all the way down into the heart of things, the core which made them live. What he saw now seemed to be a desert of ice from which stark boulders jutted. A wind spewed across the plain which reality had become; the wind congealed into deeper ice, and the boulders disappeared for the most part. And darkness presented itself off at the edges of his vision; he caught only a meager glimpse of it.
But, he thought, this is projection on my part. It isn't the universe which is being entombed by layers of wind, cold, darkness and ice; all this is going on within me, and yet I seem to see it outside. Strange, he thought. Is the whole world inside me? Engulfed by my body? When did that happen It must be a manifestation of dying, he said to himself. The uncertainty which I feel, the slowing down into entropy - that's the process, and the ice which I see is the result of the success of the process. When I blink out, he thought, the whole universe will disappear. But what about the various lights which I should see, the entrances to new wombs? Where in particular is the red smoky light of fornicating couples? And the dull dark light signifying animal greed? All I can make out, he thought, is encroaching darkness and utter loss of heat, a plain which is cooling off, abandoned by its sun.
This can't be normal death, he said to himself. This is unnatural; the regular momentum of dissolution has been replaced by another factor imposed upon it, a pressure arbitrary and forced.
Maybe I can understand it, he thought, if I can just lie down and rest, if I can get enough energy to think.
'What's the matter?' Joe asked, as, together, they ascended in the elevator.
'Nothing,' Al said curtly. They may make it, he thought, but I'm not going to.
He and Joe continued on up in empty silence.

'I feel tired,' Al said.
 As he entered the conference room Joe realized that Al was no longer with him. Turning, he looked back down the corridor; he made out Al standing alone, not coming any farther. 'What's the matter?' he asked again. Al did not move. 'Are you all right?' Joe asked, walking back toward him.
'I feel tired,' Al said.
'You don't look good,' Joe said, feeling deeply uneasy. Al said, 'I'm going to the men's room. You go ahead and join the others; make sure they're okay. I'll be along pretty soon.' He started vaguely away; he seemed, now, confused. 'I'll be okay,' he said. He moved along the corridor haltingly, as if having difficulty seeing his way.
'I'll go with you,' Joe said. 'To make sure you get there.'
'Maybe if I splash some warm water on my face,' Al said; he found the toll-free door to the men's room, and, with Joe's help, opened it and disappeared inside. Joe remained in the corridor. Something's the matter with him, he said to himself. Seeing the old elevator made a change in him. He wondered why.
Al reappeared.
'What is it?' Joe said, seeing the expression on his face. 'Take a look at this,' Al said; he led Joe into the men's room and pointed at the far wall. 'Graffiti,' he said. 'You know, words scrawled. Like you find all the time in the men's room. Read it.'
 JUMP IN THE URINAL AND STAND ON YOUR HEAD.
 In crayon, or purple ballpoint pen ink, the words read:

JUMP IN THE URINAL AND STAND ON YOUR HEAD.
I'M THE ONE THAT'S ALIVE. YOU'RE ALL DEAD.

'Is it Runciter's writing?' Al asked. 'Do you recognize it?'
'Yes,' Joe said, nodding. 'It's Runciter's writing.'
'So now we know the truth,' Al said.
'Is it the truth?'
Al said, 'Sure. Obviously.'
'What a hell of a way to learn it. From the wall of a men's room.' He felt bitter resentment rather than anything else.
'That's how graffiti is; harsh and direct. We might have watched the TV and listened to the vidphone and read the 'papes for months - forever, maybe - without finding out. Without being told straight to the point like this.'
Joe said, 'But we're not dead. Except for Wendy.'
'We're in half-life. Probably still on Pratfall II; we're probably on our way back to Earth from Luna, after the explosion that killed us - killed us, not Runciter. And he's trying to pick up the flow of protophasons from us. So far he's failed; we're not getting across from our world to his. But he's managed to reach us. We're picking him up everywhere, even places we choose at random. His presence is invading us on every side, him and only him because he's the sole person trying to -'
'He and only he,' Joe interrupted. 'Instead of "him"; you said "him."'
'I'm sick,' Al said. He started water running in the basin, began splashing it onto his face. It was not hot water, however, Joe saw, in the water fragments of ice crackled and splintered. 'You go back to the conference room. I'll be along when I feel better, assuming I ever do feel better.'
'I think I ought to stay here with you,' Joe said.
'No, goddam it - get out of here!' His face gray and filled with panic, Al shoved him toward the door of the men's room; he propelled Joe out into the corridor. 'Go on, make sure they're all right!' Al retreated back into the men's room, dutching at his own eyes; bent over, he disappeared from view as the door swung shut. Joe hesitated. 'Okay,' he said, 'I'll be in the conference room with them.' He waited, listening; heard nothing. 'Al?' he said. Christ, he thought. This is terrible. Something is really the matter with him. 'I want to see with my own eyes,' he said, pushing against the door, 'that you're all right.'
In a low, calm voice Al said, 'It's too late, Joe. Don't look.' The men's room had become dark; Al evidently had managed to turn the light off. 'You can't do anything to help me,' he said in a weak but steady voice. 'We shouldn't have separated from the others; that's why it happened to Wendy. You can stay alive at least for a while if you go find them and stick with them. Tell them that; make sure all of them understand. Do you understand?'
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.

10

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.'
 Des Moines
 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 ZUrich, 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 his 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 illdisguised 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.

          NEXT