PREVIOUS 

1939
The taxi let him off on the roof field of his conapt building; he descended by moving ramp and arrived at his own door. With a coin that someone had given him - Al or Pat, he could not knowingly remember - he opened the door and entered.
The living room smelled faintly of burned grease, an odor he had not come across since childhood. Going into the kitchen he discovered the reason. His stove had reverted. Back to an ancient Buck natural-gas model with clogged burners and encrusted oven door which did not close entirely. He gazed at the old, much-used stove dully - then discovered that the other kitchen appliances had undergone similar metamorphoses. The homeopape machine had vanished entirely. The toaster had dissolved sometime during the day and reformed itself as a rubbishy, quaint, nonautomatic model. Not even pop-up, he discovered as he poked bleakly at it. The refrigerator that greeted him was an enormous belt-driven model, a relic that had floated into being from god knew what distant past; it was even more obsolete than the turret-top GE shown in the TV commercial. The coffeepot had undergone the least change; as a matter of fact, in one respect it had improved - it lacked the coin slot, operating obviously toll-free. This aspect was true of all the appliances, he realized. All that remained, anyhow. Like the homeopape machine, the garbage-disposal unit had entirely vanished. He tried to remember what other appliances he had owned, but already memory had become vague; he gave up and returned to the living room.
The TV had receded back a long way; he found himself confronted by a dark, wood-cabinet, Atwater-Kent, tuned radio-frequency oldtime AM radio, complete with antenna and ground wires. God in heaven, he said to himself, appalled.
But why hadn't the TV set reverted instead to formless metals and plastics? Those, after all, were its constituents; it had been constructed out of them, not out of an earlier radio. Perhaps this weirdly verified a discarded ancient philosophy, that of Plato's idea objects, the universals which, in each class, were real. The form TV set had been a template imposed as successor to other templates, like the procession of frames in a movie sequence. Prior forms, he reflected, must carry on an invisible, residual life in every object. The past is latent, is submerged, but still there, capable of rising to the surface once the later imprinting unfortunately - and against ordinary experience - vanishes. The man contains - not the boy - but earlier men, he thought. History began a long time ago.
The dehydrated remnants of Wendy. The procession of forms that normally takes place - that procession ceased. And the last form wore off, with nothing subsequent: no newer form, no next stage of what we see as growth, to take its place. This must be what we experience as old age; from this absence comes degeneration and senility. Only in this instance it happened abruptly - in a matter of hours.
But this old theory - didn't Plato think that something survived the decline, something inner not able to decay? The ancient dualism: body separated from soul. The body ending as Wendy did, and the soul - out of its nest the bird, flown elsewhere. Maybe so, he thought. To be reborn again, as the Tibetan Book of the Dead says. It really is true. Christ, I hope so. Because in that case we all can meet again. In, as in Winnie-the-Pooh, another part of the forest, where a boy and his bear will always be playing ... a category, he thought, imperishable. Like all of us. We will all wind up with Pooh, in a clearer, more durable new place.
For curiosity's sake he turned on the prehistoric radio set; the yellow celluloid dial glowed, the set gave off a loud sixty-cycle hum, and then, amid static and squeals, a station came on.
'Time for Pepper Young's Family,' the announcer said, and organ music gurgled. 'Brought to you by mild Camay, the soap of beautiful women. Yesterday Pepper discovered that the labor of months had come to an unexpected end, due to the -' Joe shut the radio off at that point. A pre-World War Two soap opera, he said to himself, marveling. Well, it followed the logic of the form reversions taking place in this, the dying half-world - or whatever it was.
Looking around the living room he discovered a baroque-legged, glass-topped coffee table on which a copy of Liberty magazine rested. Also pre-World War Two; the magazine featured a serial entitled 'Lightning in the Night,' a futuristic fantasy supposing an atomic war. He turned the pages numbly, then studied the room as a whole, seeking to identify other changes.
The tough, neutral-colored floor had become wide, softwood boards; in the center of the room a faded Turkish rug lay, impregnated with years of dust.
One single picture remained on the wall, a glass-covered framed print in monochrome showing a dying Indian on horse-back. He had never seen it before. It stirred no memories. And he did not care for it one bit.
The vidphone had been replaced by a black, hook-style, upright telephone. Pre-dial. He lifted the receiver from the hook and heard a female voice saying, 'Number, please.' At that he hung up.
The thermostatically controlled heating system had evidently departed. At one end of the living room he perceived a gas heater, complete with large tin flue running up the wall almost to the ceiling.
Going into the bedroom, he looked in the closet, rummaged, then assembled an outfit: black oxfords, wool socks, knickers, blue cotton shirt, camel's-hair sports coat and golf cap. For more formal wear he laid out on the bed a pinstriped, blue-black, double-breasted suit suspenders, wide floral necktie and white shirt with celluloid collar. Jeez, he said to himself in dismay as, in the closet, he came across a golf bag with assorted clubs. What a relic.
Once more he returned to the living room. This time he noticed the spot where his polyphonic audio components had formerly been assembled. The multiplex FM tuner, the high-hysteresis turntable and weightless tracking arm - speakers, horns, multitrack amplifier, all had vanished. In their place a tall, tan wooden structure greeted him; he made out the crank handle and did not need to lift the lid to know what his sound-system now consisted of. Bamboo needles, a pack of them on the bookcase beside the Victrola. And a ten-inch 78-speed black-label Victor record of Ray Noble's orchestra playing 'Turkish Delight.' So much for his tape and LP collection.
And by tomorrow he would probably find himself equipped with a cylinder phonograph, screw-driven. And, to play on it, a shouted recitation of the Lord's Prayer.
A fresh-looking newspaper lying at the far end of the overstuffed sofa attracted his attention. He picked it up and read the date: Tuesday, 12 September 1939. He scanned the headlines.

FRENCH CLAIM SIEGFRIED LINE DENTED
REPORT GAINS IN AREA NEAR SAARBRUCKEN
Major battle said to be shaping up
along Western Front

Interesting, he said to himself. World War Two had just begun. And the French thought they were winning it. He read another headline.

POLISH REPORT CLAIMS GERMAN FORCES HALTED
SAY INVADERS THROW NEW FORCES INTO BATTLE WITHOUT NEW GAINS

The newspaper had cost three cents. That interested him too. What could you get now for three cents? he asked himself. He tossed the newspaper back down, and marveled once again at its freshness. A day or so old, he guessed. No more than that. So I now have a time fix; I know precisely how far back the regression has carried.
Wandering about the conapt, searching out the various changes, he found himself facing a chest of dresser drawers in the bedroom. On the top rested several framed, glasscovered photographs.
All were of Runciter. But not the Runciter he knew. These were of a baby, a small boy, then a young man. Runciter as he once had been, but still recognizable.
Getting out his wallet, he found only snapshots of Runciter, none of his family, none of friends. Runciter everywhere! He returned the wallet to his pocket, then realized with a jolt that it had been made of natural cowhide, not plastic. Well, that fitted. In the old days there had been organic leather available. So what? he said to himself. Bringing the wallet out once more, he somberly scrutinized it; he rubbed the cowhide and experienced a new tactile sensation, a pleasant one. Infinitely superior to plastic, he decided.
Back in the living room again, he poked about, searching for the familiar mail slot, the recessed wall cavity which should have contained today's mail. It had vanished; it no longer existed. He pondered, trying to envision oldtime mail practices. On the floor outside the conapt door? No.
In a box of some kind; he recalled the term 'mailbox'. Okay, it would be in the mailbox, but where had mailboxes been located? At the main entrance of the building? That - dimly - seemed right. He would have to leave his conapt. The mail would be found on the ground floor, twenty stories below.
'Five cents, please,' his front door said when he tried to open it. One thing, anyhow, hadn't changed. The toll door had an innate stubbornness to it; probably it would hold out after everything else. After everything except it had long since reverted, perhaps in the whole city. .. if not the whole world.
He paid the door a nickel, hurried down the hall to the moving ramp which he had used only minutes ago. The ramp, however, had now reverted to a flight of inert concrete stairs. Twenty flights down, he reflected. Step by step. Impossible; no one could walk down that many stairs. The elevator. He started toward it, then remembered what had happened to Al. Suppose this time I see what he saw, he said to himself. An old iron cage hanging from a wire cable, operated by a senile borderline moron wearing an official elevator-operator's cap. Not a vision of 1939 but a vision of 1909, a regression much greater than anything I've run into so far.
Better not to risk it. Better to take the stairs.
Resigned, he began to descend.
He had gotten almost halfway down when something ominous flicked alive in his brain. There was no way by which he could get back up - either to his conapt or to the roof field where the taxi waited. Once on the ground floor he would be confined there, maybe forever. Unless the spray can of Ubik was potent enough to restore the elevator or the moving ramp. Surface travel, he said to himself. What the hell will that consist of by the time I get down there? Train? Covered wagon?
Clattering down two steps at a time, he morosely continued his descent. Too late now to change his mind. When he reached ground level he found himself confronted by a large lobby, including a marble-topped table, very long, on which two ceramic vases of flowers - evidently iris - rested. Four wide steps led down to the curtained front door; he grasped the faceted glass knob of the door and swung it open.
More steps. And, on the right, a row of locked brass mailboxes, each with a name, each requiring a key. He had been right; this was as far as the mail was brought. He located his own box, finding a strip of paper at the bottom of it reading JOSEPH CHIP 2075, plus a button which, when pressed, evidently rang upstairs in his conapt.
The key. He had no key. Or did he? Fishing in his pockets, he discovered a ring on which several diversely shaped metal keys dangled; perplexed, he studied them, wondering what they were for. The lock on the mailbox seemed unusually small; obviously, it took a similar-size key. Selecting the most meager key on the ring, he inserted. it in the lock of the mailbox, turned it. The brass door of the box fell open. He peered inside.
Mors certa et hora certa
Within the box lay two letters and a square package wrapped in brown paper, sealed with brown tape. Purple three-cent stamps with a portrait of George Washington; he paused to admire these unusual memorabilia from the past and then, ignoring the letters, tore open the square package, finding it rewardingly heavy. But, he realized suddenly, it's the wrong shape for a. spray can; it's not tall enough. Fear touched him. What if it was not a free sample of Ubik? It had to be; it just had to be. Otherwise - Al all over again. Mors certa et hora certa, he said to himself as he dropped the brown-paper wrappings and examined the pasteboard container within.

UBIK LIVER AND KIDNEY BALM

Inside the container he found a blue glass jar with a large lid. The label read:
DIRECTIONS FOR USE.
This unique analgesic formula, developed over a period of forty years by Dr Edward Sonderbar, is guaranteed to end forever annoying getting up at night. You will sleep peacefully for the first time, and with superlative comfort. Merely dissolve a teaspoonful of UBIK LIVER AND KIDNEY BALM in a glass of warm water and drink immediately one half-hour before retiring. If pain or irritation persists, increase dosage to one tablespoonful. Do not give to children.
Contains processed oleander leaves, saltpeter, oil of peppermint, N-Acetyl-p- aminophenol, zinc oxide, charcoal, cobalt chloride, caffeine, extract of digitalis, steroids in trace amounts, sodium citrate, ascorbic acid, artificial coloring and flavoring.
UBIK LIVER AND KIDNEY BALM is potent and effective if handled as per instructions. Inflammable. Use rubber gloves. Do not allow to get in eyes. Do not splash on skin. Do not inhale over long periods of time. Warning: prolonged or excessive use may result in habituation.
This is insane, Joe said to himself. He read the list of ingredients once more, feeling growing, baffled anger. And a mounting helpless sensation that took root and spread through every part of him. I'm finished, he said to himself. This stuff isn't what Runciter advertised on TV; this is some arcane mixture of old-time patent medicines, skin salves, pain killers, poisons, inert nothings - plus, of all things, cortisone. Which didn't exist before World War Two. Obviously, the Ubik which he described to me in the taped TV commercial, this sample of it anyhow, has reverted. An irony that is just plain too much: the substance created to reverse the regressive change process has itself regressed. I should have known as soon as I saw the old purple three-cent stamps.
He looked up and down the street. And saw, parked at the curb, a classic, museum-piece surface car. A LaSalle. Can I get to Des Moines in a 1939 LaSalle automobile? he asked himself. Eventually, if it remains stable, perhaps a week from now. But by then it won't matter. And, anyhow, the car won't remain stable. Nothing - except maybe my front door - will.
However, he walked over to the LaSalle to examine it at close range. Maybe it's mine, he said to himself; maybe one of my keys fits its ignition. Isn't that how surface cars operated? On the other hand, how am I going to drive it? I don't know how to pilot an oldtime automobile, especially one with - what did they call it? - manual transmission. He opened the door and slid onto the seat behind the driver's steering wheel; there he sat, plucking aimlessly at his lower lip and trying to think the situation through.
Ubik liver and kidney balm
Maybe I ought to drink down a tablespoon of Ubik liver and kidney balm, he said to himself grimly. With those ingredients it ought to kill me fairly thoroughly. But it did not strike him as the kind of death he could welcome. The cobalt chloride would do it, very slowly and agonizingly, unless the digitalis managed it first. And there were of course, the oleander leaves. They could hardly be overlooked. The whole combination would melt his bones into jelly. Inch by inch.
Wait a minute, he thought. Air transportation existed in 1939. If I could get to the New York Airport - possibly in this car - I could charter a flight. Rent a Ford trimotor plane complete with pilot. That would get me to Des Moines.
He tried his various keys and at last found one which switched on the car's ignition. The starter motor cranked away, and then the engine caught; with a healthy rumble the engine continued to turn over, and the sound of it pleased him. Like the genuine cowhide wallet, this particular regression struck him as an improvement; being completely silent, the transportation of his own time lacked this palpable touch of sturdy realism. Now the clutch, he said to himself. Over on the left. With his foot he located it. Clutch down to the floor, then shift the lever into gear. He tried it - and obtained a horrid clashing noise, metal whirring against metal. Evidently, he had managed to let up on the clutch. He tried it again. This time he successfully got it into gear.
Lurching, the car moved forward; it bucked and shuddered but it moved. It limped erratically up the street, and he felt within him a certain measured renewal of optimism. And now let's see if we can find, the goddam airfield, he said to himself. Before it's too late, before we're back to the days of the Gnome rotary engine with its revolving outside cylinders and its castor-oil lubricant. Good for fifty miles of hedge-hopping flight at seventy-five miles per hour.

airfield
An hour later he arrived at the airfield, parked and surveyed the hangars, the windsock, the old biplanes with their huge wooden props. What a sight, he reflected. An indistinct page out of history. Recreated remnants of another millennium, lacking any connection with the familiar, real world. A phantasm that had drifted into sight only momentarily; this, too, would be gone soon: it would no more survive than had contemporary artifacts. The process of devolution would sweep this away like it had everything else.
He got shakily from the LaSalle - feeling acutely carsick- and trudged toward the main building of the airfield.
'What can I charter with this?' he asked, laying all his money out on the counter before the first official-looking person he caught sight of. 'I want to get to Des Moines as quickly as possible. I want to take off right away.'
The field official, bald-headed, with a waxed mustache and small, round, gold-rimmed eyeglasses, inspected the hills silently. 'Hey, Sam,' he called with a turn of his apple-like round head. 'Come here and look at this money.'
A second individual, wearing a striped shirt with billowing sleeves, shiny seersucker trousers and canvas shoes, stumped over. 'Fake money,' he said after he had taken his look. 'Play money. Not George Washington and not Alexander Hamilton.' Both Officials scrutinized Joe.
Joe said, 'I have a '39 LaSalle parked in the parking lot. I'll trade it for a one-way flight to Des Moines on any plane that'll get me there. Does that interest you?'
Presently the official with the little gold-rimmed glasses said meditatively, 'Maybe Oggie Brent would be interested.'
'Brent?' the official in the seersucker pants said, raising his eyebrows. 'You mean that Jenny of his? That plane's over twenty years old. It wouldn't get to Philadelphia.'
'How about McGee?'
'Sure, but he's in Newark.'
'Then, maybe Sandy Jespersen. That Curtiss-Wright of his would make it to Iowa. Sooner or later.' To Joe the official said, 'Go out by hangar three and look for a red and white Curtiss biplane. You'll see a little short guy, sort of fat, fiddling around with it. If he don't take you up on it nobody here will, unless you want to wait till tomorrow for Ike McGee to come back here in his Fokker trimotor.'
'Thanks,' Joe said, and left the building; he strode rapidly toward hangar three, already seeing what looked like a red and white Curtiss-Wright biplane. At least I won't be making the trip in a World War JN training plane, he said to himself. And then he thought, How did I know that 'Jenny' is a nickname for a JN trainer? Good god, he thought. Elements of this period appear to be developing corresponding coordinates in my mind. No wonder I was able to drive the LaSalle; I'm beginning to phase mentally with this time-continuum in earnest!
A short fat man with red hair puttered with an oily rag at the wheels of his biplane; he glanced up as Joe approached.
'Are you Mr Jespersen?' Joe asked.
'That's right.' The man surveyed him, obviously mystified by Joe's clothes, which had not reverted. 'What can I do for you?' Joe told him.
'You want to trade a LaSalle, a new LaSalle, for a one-way trip to Des Moines?' Jespersen cogitated, his brows knitting. 'Might as well be both ways; I got to fly back here anyway. Okay, I'll take a look at it. But I'm not promising anything; I haven't made up my mind.'
Together they made their way to the parking lot.
'I don't see any '39 LaSalle,' Jespersen said suspiciously. The man was right. The LaSalle had disappeared. In its place Joe saw a fabric-top Ford coupe, a tinny and small car, very old, 1929, he guessed. A black 1929 Model-A Ford. Nearly worthless; he could tell that from Jespersen's expression.
Obviously, it was now hopeless. He would never get to Des Moines. And, as Runciter had pointed out in his TV commercial, this meant death - the same death that had overtaken Wendy and Al.
It would be only a matter of time.
Better, he thought, to die another way. Ubik, he thought. He opened the door of his Ford and got in.
There, on the seat beside him, rested the bottle which he had received in the mail. He picked it up - And discovered something which did not really surprise him. The bottle, like the car, had again regressed. Seamless and flat, with scratch marks on it, the kind of bottle made in a wooden mold. Very old indeed; the cap appeared to be handmade, a soft tin screw-type dating from the late nineteenth century. The label, too, had changed; holding the bottle up, he read the words printed on it.

ELIXIR OF UBIQUE. GUARANTEED TO RESTORE LOST
MANLINES AND TO BANISH VAPORS OF ALL KNOWN
KINDS AS WELL AS TO RELIEVE REPRODUCTIVE
COMPLAINTS IN BOTH MEN AND WOMEN. A BENEFICENT
AID TO MANKIND WHEN SEDULOUSLY EMPLOYED AS
INDICATED.

And, in smaller type, a further inscription; he had to squint in order to read the smudged, minute script.

Don't do it, Joe. There's another way.
Keep trying. You'll find it. Lots of luck.

Runciter, he realized. Still playing his sadistic cat-and- mouse games with us. Goading us into keeping going a little longer. Delaying the end as long as possible. God knows why. Maybe, he thought, Runciter enjoys our torment. But that isn't like him; that's not the Glen Runciter I knew.
However, Joe put the Elixir of Ubique bottle down, abandoning the idea of making use of it.
And wondered what Runciter's elusive, hinted-at other way might be.

11

Taken as directed, Ubik provides uninterrupted sleep without morning-after grogginess. You awaken fresh, ready to tackle all those little annoying problems facing you. Do not exceed recommended dosage.

'Hey, that bottle you have,' Jespersen said; he peered into the car, an unusual note in his voice. 'Can I look at it?'
Joe Chip wordlessly passed the aviator the flat bottle of Elixir of Ubique.
'My grandmother used to talk about this,' Jespersen said, holding the bottle up to the light. 'Where'd you get it? They haven't made this since around the time of the Civil War.'
'I inherited it,' Joe said.
'You must have. Yeah, you don't see these handmade flasks any more. The company never put out very many of these in the first place. This medicine was invented in San Francisco in 1850. Never sold in stores; the customers had to order it made up. It came in three strengths. This what you have here, this is the strongest of the three.' He eyed Joe. 'Do you know what's in this?'
'Sure,' Joe said. 'Oil of peppermint, zinc oxide, sodium citrate, charcoal -'
'Let it go,' Jespersen interrupted. Frowning, he appeared to be busily turning something over in his mind. Then, at last, his expression changed. He had come to a decision. 'I'll fly you to Des Moines in exchange for this flask of Elixir of Ubique: Let's get started; I want to do as much of the flying as possible in daylight.' He strode away from the '29 Ford, taking the bottle with him.
Ten minutes later the Curtiss-Wright biplane had been gassed, the prop manually spun, and, with Joe Chip and Jespersen aboard, it began weaving an erratic, slowly path down the runway, bouncing into the air and then collapsing back again. Joe gritted his teeth and hung on.
'We're carrying so much weight,' Jespersen said without emotion; he did not seem alarmed. The plane at last wobbled up into the air, leaving the runway permanently behind; noisily it droned over the rooftops of buildings, on its way west.
Joe yelled, 'How long will it take to get there?'
'Depends on how much tailwind we get. Hard to say. Probably around noon tomorrow if our luck hold out.'
'Will you tell me now,' Joe yelled, 'what's in the bottle?'
'Gold flakes suspended in a base composed mostly of mineral oil,' the pilot yelled back.
'How much gold? Very much?'
Jespersen turned his head and grinned without answering. He did not have to say; it was obvious.
The old Curtiss-Wright biplane blurpled on, in the general direction of Iowa.

At three in the afternoon the following day they reached the airfield at Des Moines. Having landed the plane, the pilot sauntered off for parts unknown, carrying his flask of gold flakes with him. With aching, cramped stiffness, Joe climbed from the plane, stood for a time rubbing his numb legs, and then unsteadily headed toward the airport office, as little of it as there was.
'Can I use your phone?' he asked an elderly rustic official who sat hunched over a weather map, absorbed in what he was doing.
'If you got a nickel.' The official, with a jerk of his cowlick head, indicated the public phone.
Joe sorted through his money, casting out all the coins which had Runciter's profile on them; at last he found an atithentic buffalo nickel of the period and laid it before the elderly official.
'Ump,' the official grunted without looking up.
Locating the local phone book, Joe extracted from it the number of the Simple Shepherd Mortuary. He gave the number to the operator, and presently his party responded.
'Simple Shepherd Mortuary. Mr Bliss speaking.'
'I'm here to attend the services for Glen Runciter,' Joe said. 'Am I too late?' He prayed silently that he was not.
'Services for Mr Runciter are in progress right now,' Mr Bliss said. 'Where are you, sir? Would you like us to send a vehicle to fetch you?' He seemed fussily disapproving.
'I'm at the airport,' Joe said.
'You should have arrived earlier,' Mr Bliss chided. 'I doubt very much if you'll be able to attend any of the services. However, Mr Runciter will be lying in state for the balance of today and tomorrow morning. Watch for our car, Mr -'
'Chip,' Joe said.
'Yes, you have been expected. Several of the bereaved have asked that we maintain a vigil for you as well as for a Mr Hammond and a' - He paused - 'a Miss Wright. Are they with you?'
'No,' Joe said. He hung up, then seated himself on a curved, polished wooden bench where he could watch cars approaching the airport. Anyhow, he said to himself, I'm here in time to join the rest of the group. They haven't left town yet, and that's what matters.
The elderly official called, 'Mister, come over here a sec.' Getting up, Joe crossed the waiting room. 'What's wrong?'
'This nickel you gave me.' The official had been scrutinizing it all this time.
'It's a buffalo nickel,' Joe said. 'Isn't that the right coin for this period?'
'This nickel is dated 1940.' The elderly official eyed him unblinkingly.
With a groan Joe got out his remaining coins, again sorted among them; at last he found a 1938 nickel and tossed it down before the official. 'Keep them both,' he said, and once more seated himself on the polished, curved bench.
'We get counterfeit money every now and then,' the official said.
Joe said nothing; he turned his attention to the semihighboy Audiola radio playing by itself off in a corner of the waiting room. The announcer was plugging a toothpaste called Ipana. I wonder how long I'm going to have to wait here, Joe asked himself. It made him nervous, now that he had come so close physically to the inertials. I'd hate to make it this far, he thought, within a few miles, and then - He stopped his thoughts at that point and simply sat.
Half an hour later a 1930 Willys-Knight put-putted onto the airfield's parking lot; a hempen homespun individual wearing a conspicuously black suit emerged and shaded his eyes with the flat of his hand in order to see into the waiting room.
Joe approached him. 'Are you Mr Bliss?' he asked.
'Certainly, I am.' Bliss briefly shook hands with him, meanwhile emitting a strong smell of Sensen, then got back at once into the Willys-Knight and restarted the motor. 'Come along, Mr Chip. Please hurry. We may still be able to attend a part of the service. Father Abernathy generally speaks quite a while on such important occasions as this.'
Joe got into the front seat beside Mr Bliss. A moment later they clanked onto the road leading to downtown Des Moines, rushing along at speeds sometimes reaching forty miles an hour.
'You're an employee of Mr Runciter?' Bliss asked.
'Right,' Joe said. 'Unusual line of business that Mr Runciter was in. I'm not quite sure I understand it.' Bliss honked at a red setter which had ventured onto the asphalt pavement; the dog retreated, giving the Willys-Knight its pompous right of way. 'What does "psionic" mean? Several of Mr Runciter's employees have used the term.'
'Parapsychological powers,' Joe said. 'Mental force operating directly, without any intervening physical agency.'
'Mystical powers, you mean? Like knowing the future? The reason I ask that is that several of your people have talked about the future as if it already exists. Not to me; they didn't say anything about it except to each other, but I overheard - you know how it is. Are you people mediums, is that it?'
'In a manner of speaking.'
'What do you foresee about the war in Europe?'
Joe said, 'Germany and Japan will lose. The United States will get into it on 7 December 1941.' He lapsed into silence then, not feeling inclined to discuss it; he had his own problems to occupy his attention.
'I'm a Shriner, myself,' Bliss said.
What is the rest of the group experiencing? Joe wondered. This reality? The United States of 1939? Or, when I rejoin them, will my regression be reversed, placing me at a later period? A good question. Because, collectively, they would have to find their way back fifty-three years, to the reasonable and proper formconstituents of contemporary, unregressed time. If the group as a whole had experienced the same amount of regression as he had, then his joining them would not help him or them - except in one regard: he might be spared the ordeal of undergoing further world decay. On the other hand, this reality of 1939 seemed fairly stable; in the last twenty-four hours it had managed to remain virtually constant. But, he reflected, that might be due to my drawing nearer to the group.
On the other hand, the 1939 jar of Ubik liver and kidney balm had reverted back an additional eighty-odd years: from spray can to jar to wooden-mold bottle within a few hours. Like the 1908 cage elevator which Al alone had seen.
But that wasn't so. The short, fat pilot, Sandy Jespersen, had also seen the wooden-mold bottle, the Elixir of Ubique, as it had become finally. This was not a private vision; it had, in fact, gotten hun here to Des Moines. And the pilot had seen the reversion of the LaSalle as well. Something entirely different had overtaken Al, it would seem. At least, he hoped so. Prayed so.
Suppose, he reflected, we can't reverse our regression; suppose we remain here the balance of our lives. Is that so bad? We can get used to nine-tube screen-grid highboy Philco radios, although that won't really be necessary, inasmuch as the superheterodyne circuit has already been invented -although I haven't as yet run across one. We can learn to drive American Austin motorcars selling for $445 - a sum that had popped into his mind seemingly at random but which, he intuited, was correct. Once we get jobs and earn money of this period, he said to himself, we won't be traveling aboard antique Curtiss-Wright biplanes; after all, four years ago, in 1935, transpacific service by four-engine China clippers was inaugurated. The Ford trimotor is an eleven-year-old plane by now to these people it's a relic, and the biplane I came here on is - even to them - a museum piece. That LaSalle I had, before it reverted, was a considerable piece of machinery; I felt real satisfaction driving it.
'What about Russia?' Mr Bliss was asking. 'In the war, I mean. Do we wipe out those Reds? Can you see that far ahead?'
Joe said, 'Russia will fight on the same side as the USA.' And all the other objects and entities and artifacts of this world, he mulled. Medicine will be a major drawback; let's see -just about now they should be using the sulfa drugs.
It's going to be serious for us when we become ill. And - dental work isn't going to be much fun either; they're still working with hot drills and novocaine. Fluoride toothpastes haven't even come into being; that's another twenty years in the future.
'On our side?' Bliss sputtered. 'The Communists? That's impossible; they've got that pact with the Nazis.'
'Germany will violate that pact,' Joe said. 'Hitler will attack the Soviet Union in June 1941.'
'And wipe it out, I hope.'
Startled out of his preoccupations, Joe turned to look closely at Mr Bliss driving his nine-year-old Willys-Knight.
Bliss said, 'Those Communists are the real menace, not the Germans. Take the treatment of the Jews. You know who makes a lot out of that? Jews in this country, a lot of them not citizens but refugees living on public welfare. I think the Nazis certainly have been a little extreme in some of the things they've done to the Jews, but basically there's been the Jewish question for a long time, and something, although maybe not so vile as those concentration camps, had to be done about it. We have a similar problem here in the United States, both with Jews and with the niggers. Eventually we're going to have to do something about both.'
'I never actually heard the term "nigger" used,' Joe said, and found himself appraising this era a little differently, all at once. I forgot about this, he realized.
'Lindbergh is the one who's right about Germany,' Bliss said. 'Have you ever listened to him speak? I don't mean what the newspapers write it up like, but actually -' He slowed the car to a stop for a semaphore-style stop signal. 'Take Senator Borah and Senator Nye. If it wasn't for them, Roosevelt would be selling munitions to England and getting us into a war that's not our war. Roosevelt is so darn interested in repealing the arms embargo clause of the neutrality bill; he wants us to get into the war. The American people aren't going to support him. The American people aren't interested in fighting England's war or anybody else's war.' The signal clanged and a green semaphore swung out. Bliss shifted into low gear and the Willys-Knight bumbled forward, melding with downtown Des Moines' midday traffic.
'You're not going to enjoy the next five years,' Joe said. 'Why not? The whole state of Iowa is behind me in what I believe. You know what I think about you employees of Mr Runciter? From what you've said and from what those others said, what I overheard, I think you're professional agitators.' Bliss glanced at Joe with uncowed bravado.
Joe said nothing; he watched the oldtime brick and wood and concrete buildings go by, the quaint cars - most of which appeared to be black - and wondered if he was the only one of the group who had been confronted by this particular aspect of the world of 1939. In New York, he told himself, it'll be different; this is the Bible Belt, the isolationist Middle West. We won't be living here; we'll be on either the East Coast or the West. But instinctively he sensed that a major problem for all of them had exposed itself just now. We know too much, he realized, to live comfortably in this time segment. If we had regressed twenty years, or thirty years, we could probably make the psychological transition; it might not be interesting to once more live through the Gemini spacewalks and the creaking first Apollo flights, but at least it would be possible. But at this point in time - They're still listening to ten-inch 78 records of 'Two Black Crows.' And Joe Penner. And 'Mert and Marge.' The Depression is still going on. In our time we maintain colonies on Mars, on Luna; we're perfecting workable interstellar flight - these people have not been able to cope with the Dust Bowl of Oklahoma.
This is a world that lives in terms of William Jennings Bryan's oratory; the Scopes 'Monkey Trial' is a vivid reality here. He thought, There is no way we can adapt to their viewpoint, their moral, political, sociological environment. To them we're professional agitators, more alien than the Nazis, probably even more of a menace than the Communist Party. We're the most dangerous agitators that this time segment has yet had to deal with. Bliss is absolutely right.
'Where are you people from?' Bliss was asking. 'Not from any part of the United States; am I correct?'
Joe said, 'You're correct. We're from the North American Confederation.' From his pocket he brought forth a Runciter quarter, which he handed to Bliss. 'Be my guest,' he said.
Glancing at the coin, Bliss gulped and quavered, 'The profile on this coin - this is the deceased! This is Mr Runciter!' He took another look and blanched. 'And the date. 1990.'
'Don't spend it all in one place,' Joe said.

rejoining the group
When the Willys-Knight reached the Simple Shepherd Mortuary the service had already ended. On the wide, white, wooden steps of the two-story frame building a group of people stood, and Joe recognized all of them. There at last they were: Edie Dorn, Tippy Jackson, Jon Ild, Francy Spanish, Tito Apostos, Don Denny, Sammy Mundo, Fred Zafsky and - Pat. My wife, he said to himself, impressed once again by the sight of her, the dramatic dark hair, the intense coloring of her eyes and skin, all the powerful contrasts radiating from her.
'No,' he said aloud as he stepped from the parked car. She's not my wife; she wiped that out.' But, he remembered, she kept the ring. The unique wrought-silver and jade wedding ring which she and I picked out... that's all that remains. But what a shock to see her again. To regain, for an instant, the ghostly shroud of a marriage that has been abolished. That had in fact never existed - except for this ring. And, whenever she felt like it, she could obliterate the ring too.
'Hi, Joe Chip,' she said in her cool, almost mocking voice; her intense eyes fixed on him, appraising him.
'Hello,' he said awkwardly. The others greted him too, but that did not seem so important; Pat had snared his attention.
'No Al Hammond?' Don Denny asked.
Joe said, 'Al's dead. Wendy Wright is dead.'
'We know about Wendy,' Pat said. Calmly.
'No, we didn't know,' Don Denny said. 'We assumed but we weren't sure. I wasn't sure.' To Joe he said, 'What happened to them? What killed them?'
'They wore out,' Joe said.
'Why?' Tito Apostos said hoarsely, crowding into the circle of people surrounding Joe.
Pat Conley said, 'The last thing you said to us, Joe Chip, back in New York, before you went off with Hammond -'
'I know what I said,' Joe said.
Pat continued, 'You said something about years. "It had been too long," you said. What does that mean? Something about time.'
'Mr Chip,' Edie Dorn said agitatedly, 'Since we came here to this place, this town has radically changed. None of us understand it. Do you see what we see?' With her hand she indicated the mortuary building, the the street and the other buildings.
'I'm not sure,' Joe said, 'what it is you see.'
'Come on, Chip,' Tito Apostos said with anger. 'Don't mess around; simply tell us for chrissakes, what this place looks like to you. That vehicle.' He gestured toward the Willys-Knight. 'You arrived in that. Tell us what it is; tell us what you arrived in.' They all waited, all of them intently watching Joe. 'Mr Chip,' Sammy Mundo stammered, 'that's a real old automobile, that's what it is; right?' He giggled. 'How old is it exactly?'
After a pause Joe said, 'Sixty-two years old.'
'That would make it 1930,' Tippy Jackson said to Don Denny. 'Which is pretty close to what we figured.'
'We figured 1939,' Don Denny said to Joe in a level voice. A moderate, detached, mature, baritone voice. Without undue emotionality. Even under these circumstances.
Joe said, 'It's fairly easy to establish that. I took a look at a newspaper at my conapt back in New York. 12 September. So today is 13 September 1939. The French think they've breached the Siegfried Line.'
'Which, in itself,' Jon Ild said, 'is a million laughs.'
'I hoped,' Joe said, 'that you as a group were experiencing a later reality. Well, so it goes.'
'If it's 1939 it's 1939,' Fred Zafsky said in a squeaky, high-pitched voice. 'Naturally, we all experience it; what else can we do?' He flapped his long arms energetically, appealing to the others for their agreement. 'Flurk off, Zafsky,' Tito Apostos said with annoyance. To Pat, Joe Chip said, 'What do you say about this?' She shrugged. 'Don't shrug,' he said. 'Answer.' 'We've gone back in time,' Pat said. 'Not really,' Joe said.
'Then what have we done?' Pat said. 'Gone forward in time, is that it?'
Joe said, 'We haven't gone anywhere. We're where we've always been. But for some reason - for one of several possible reasons - reality has receded; it's lost its underlying support and it's ebbed back to previous forms. Forms it took fifty-three years ago. It may regress further. I'm more interested, at this point, in knowing if Runciter has manifested himself to you.'
'Runciter,' Don Denny said, this time with undue emotionality, 'is lying inside this building in his casket, dead as a herring. That's the only manifestation we've had of him, and that's the only one we're going to get.'
'Does the word "Ubik" mean anything to you, Mr Chip?' Francesca Spanish said.
It took him a moment to absorb what she had said. 'Jesus Christ,' he said then. 'Can't you distinguish manifestations of-'
'Francy has dreams,' Tippy Jackson said. 'She's always had them. Tell him your Ubik dream, Francy.' To Joe she said, 'Francy will now tell you her Ubik dream, as she calls it. She had it last night.'
'I call it that because that's what it is,' Francesca Spanish said fiercely; she clasped her hands together in a spasm of excited agitation. 'Listen, Mr Chip, it wasn't like any dream, I've ever had before. A great hand came down from the sky, like the arm and hand of God. Enormous, the size of a mountain. And I knew at the time how important it was; the hand was closed, made into a rocklike fist, and I knew it contained something of value so great that my life and the lives of everyone else on Earth depended on it. And I waited for the fist to open, and it did open. And I saw what it contained.'
'An aerosol spray can,' Don Denny said dryly.
'On the spray can,' Francesca Spanish continued, 'there was one word, great golden letters, glittering; golden fire spelling out UBIK. Nothing else. Just that strange word. And then the hand closed up again around the spray can and the hand and arm disappeared, drawn back up into a sort of gray overcast. Today before the funeral services I looked in a dictionary and I called the public library, but no one knew that word or even what language it is and it isn't in the dictionary. It isn't English, the librarian told me. There's a Latin word very close to it: ubique. It means -'
'Everywhere,' Joe said.
Francesca Spanish nodded. 'That's what it means. But no Ubik, and that's how it was spelled in the dream.'
'They're the same word,' Joe said. 'Just different spellings.'
'How do you know that?' Pat Conley said archly.
'Runciter appeared to me yesterday,' Joe said. 'In a taped TV commercial that he made before his death.' He did not elaborate; it seemed too complex to explain, at least at this particular time.
'You miserable fool,' Pat Conley said to him.
'Why?' he asked.
'Is that your idea of a manifestation of a dead man? You might as well consider letters he wrote before his death 'manifestations." Or interoffice memos that he transcribed over the years. Or even-'
Joe said, 'I'm going inside and take a last look at Runciter.' He departed from the group, leaving them standing there, made his way up the wide board steps and into the dark, cool interior of the mortuary.
Emptiness. He saw no one, only a large chamber with pewlike rows of seats and, at the far end, a casket surrounded by flowers. Off in a small sideroom an old- fashioned reed pump organ and a few wooden folding chairs. The mortuary smelled of dust and flowers, a sweet, stale mixture that repelled him. Think of all the Iowans, he thought, who've embraced eternity in this listless room. Varnished floors, handkerchiefs, heavy dark wool suits... everything but pennies placed over the dead eyes. And the organ playing symmetric little hymns.
He reached the casket, hesitated, then looked down.
A singed, dehydrated heap of bones lay at one end of the casket, culminating in a paper-like skull that leered up at him, the eyes recessed like dried grapes. Tatters of cloth with bristle-like woven spines had collected near the tiny hudy, as if blown there by wind. As if the body, breathing, had cluttered itself with them by its wheezing, meager processes - inhalation and exhalation which had now chised. Nothing stirred. The mysterious change, which had also degraded Wendy Wright and Al, had reached its end, evidently a long time ago. Years ago, he thought, remembering Wendy.
Had the others in the group seen this? Or had it happened since the services? Joe reached out, took hold of the oak lid of the casket and shut it; the thump of wood against wood echoed throughout the empty mortuary, but no one heard it. No one appeared.
Blinded by tears of fright, he made his way back out of the dust-stricken, silent room. Back into the weak sunlight of late afternoon.
'What's the matter?' Don Denny asked him as he rejoined the group.
Joe said, 'Nothing.'
'You look scared out of your goony wits,' Pat Conley said acutely.
'Nothing!' He stared at her with deep, infuriated hostility.
Tippy Jackson said to him, 'While you were in there did you by any chance happen to see Edie Dorn?'
'She's missing,' Jon Il said by way of explanation. 'But she was just out here,' Joe protested. 'All day she's been saying she felt terribly cold and tired,' Don Denny said. 'It may be that she went back to the hotel, she said something about it earlier, that she wanted to lie down and take a nap right after the services. She's probably all right.'
Joe said, 'She's probably dead.' To all of them he said, 'I thought you understood. If any one of us gets separated from the group he won't survive; what happened to Wendy and Al and Runciter -' He broke off.
'Runciter was killed in the blast,' Don Denny said. 'We were all killed in the blast,' Joe said. 'I know that because Runciter told me; he wrote it on the wall of the men's room back at our New York offices. And I saw I again on-'
'What you're saying is insane,' Pat Conley said sharply, interrupting him. 'Is Runciter dead or isn't he? Are we dead or aren't we? First you say one thing, then you say another. Can't you be consistent?'
'Try to be consistent,' Jon Ild put in. The others, their faces pinched and creased with worry, nodded in mute agreement.
Joe said, 'I can tell you what the graffiti said. I can tell you about the worn-out tape recorder, the instructions that came with it; I can tell you about Runciter's TV commercial, the note in the carton of cigarettes in Baltimore - I can tell you about the label on the flask of Elixir of Ubique. but I can't make it all add up. In any case, we have to get to your hotel to try to reach Edie Dorn before she withers away and irreversibly expires. Where can we get a taxi?'
'The mortuary has provided us with a car to use while we're here,' Don Denny said. 'That Pierce-Arrow sitting over there.' He pointed.
They hurried toward it.
'We're not all of us going to be able to fit in,' Tippy Jackson said as Don Denny tugged the solid iron door open and got inside.
'Ask Bliss if we can take the Willys-Knight,' Joe said; he started up the engine of the Pierce-Arrow and, as soon as everyone possible had gotten into the car, drove out onto the busy main street of Des Moines. The Willys-Knight lullowed close behind, its horn honking dolefully to tell Joe it was there.

12

Pop tasty Ubik into your toaster, made only from fresh fruit and healthful all-vegetable shortening. Ubik makes breakfast a feast, puts zing into your thing! Safe when handled as directed.

One by one, Joe Chip said to himself as he piloted the big car through traffic, we're succumbing. Something is wrong with my theory. Edie, by being with the group, should have been immune. And I - It should have been me, he thought. Sometime during my slow flight from New York.
'What we'll have to do,' he said to Don Denny, 'is make sure that anyone who feels tired - that seems to be the first warning - tells the rest of us. And isn't allowed to wander away.'
Twisting around to face those in the back seat, Don said, 'Do you all hear that? As soon as any of you feels tired, even a little bit, report it to either Mr Chip or myself.' He turned back toward Joe. 'And then what?' he asked.
'And then what, Joe?' Pat Conley echoed. 'What do we do then? Tell us how we do it, Joe. We're listening.'
Joe said to her, 'It seems strange to me that your talent isn't coming into play. This situation appears to me to be made for it. Why can't you go back fifteen minutes and compel Edie Dorn not to wander off? Do what you did when I first introduced you to Runciter.'
'G. G. Ashwood introduced me to Mr Runciter,' Pat said. 'So you're not going to do anything,' Joe said. Sammy Mundo giggled and said, 'They had a fight last night while we were eating dinner, Miss Conley and Miss Dorn. Miss Conley doesn't like her; that's why she won't help.'
'I liked Edie,' Pat said.
'Do you have any reason for not making use of your talent?' Don Denny asked her. 'Joe's right; it's very strange and difficult to understand - at least for me - why exactly you don't try to help.'
After a pause Pat said, 'My talent doesn't work any more. It hasn't since the bomb blast on Luna.'
'Why didn't you say so?' Joe said.
Pat said, 'I didn't feel like saying so, goddam it. Why should I volunteer information like that, that I can't do anything? I keep trying and it keeps not working; nothing happens. And it's never been that way before. I've had the talent virtually my entire life.'
'When did-' Joe began.
'With Runciter,' Pat said. 'On Luna, right away. Before you asked me.'
'So you knew that long ago,' Joe said.
'I tried again in New York, after you showed up from Zürich and it was obvious that something awful had happened to Wendy. And I've been trying now; I started as soon as you said Edie was probably dead. Maybe it's because we're back in this archaic time period; maybe psionic talents don't work in 1939. But that wouldn't explain Luna. Unless we had already traveled back here and we didn't realize it.' She lapsed into brooding, introverted silence; dully, she gazed out at the streets of Des Moines, a bitter expression on her potent, wild face.
It fits in, Joe said to himself. Of course, her time-traveling talent no longer functions. This is not really 1939, and we are outside of time entirely; this proves that Al was right. The graffiti was right. This is half-life, as the couplets told us.
He did not, however, say this to the others with him in the car. Why tell them it's hopeless? he said to himself. They're going to find it out soon enough. The smarter ones, such as Denny, probably understand it already. Based on what I've said and what they themselves have gone through.
'This really bothers you,' Don Denny said to him, 'that her talent no longer works.'
'Sure.' He nodded. 'I hoped it might change the situation.'
'There's more,' Denny said with acute intuition. 'I can tell by your' - He gestured - 'tone of voice, maybe. Anyhow, I know. This means something. It's important. It tells you something.'
'Do I keep going straight here?' Joe said, slowing the Pierce-Arrow at an intersection.
'Turn right,' Tippy Jackson said.
Pat said, 'You'll see a brick building with a neon sign going up and down. The Meremont Hotel, it's called. A terrible place. One bathroom for every two rooms, and a tub instead of a shower. And the food. Incredible. And the only drink they sell is something called Nehi.'
'I liked the food,' Don Denny said. 'Genuine cowmeat, rather than protein synthetics. Authentic salmon -'
'Is your money good?' Joe asked. And then he heard a high-pitched whine, echoing up and down the street behind him. 'What's that mean?' he asked Denny.
'I don't know,' Denny said nervously.
Sammy Mundo said, 'It's a police siren. You didn't give a signal before you turned.'
'How could I?' Joe said. 'There's no lever on the steering column.'
'You should have made a hand signal,' Sammy said. The siren had become very close now, Joe, turning his head, saw a motorcycle pulling up abreast with him. He slowed: the car, uncertain as to what he should do. 'Stop at the curb,' Sammy advised him.
Joe stopped the car at the curb.
Stepping from his motorcycle, the cop strolled up to Joe, a young, rat-faced man with hard, large eyes; he studied Joe and then said, 'Let me see your license, mister.'
'I don't have one,' Joe said. 'Make out the ticket and let us go.' He could see the hotel now. To Don Denny he said, 'You better get over there, you and everyone else.' The Willys-Knight continued on toward it. Don Denny, Pat, Sammy Mundo and Tippy Jackson abandoned the car; they trotted after the Willys-Knight, which had' begun to slow to a stop across from the hotel, leaving Joe to face the cop alone.
The cop said to Joe, 'Do you have any identification?'
Joe handed him his wallet. With a purple indelible pencil the cop wrote out a ticket, tore it from his pad and passed it to Joe. 'Failure to signal. No operator's license. The citatation tells where and when to appear.' The cop slapped his ticket book shut, handed Joe his wallet, then sauntered back to his motorcycle. He revved up his motor and then zoomed out into the traffic without looking back.
For some obscure reason Joe glanced over the citation before putting it away in his pocket. And read it once again - slowly. In purple indelible pencil the familiar scrawled handwriting said:

You are in much greater danger than I thought.
What Pat Conley said is

There the message ceased. In the middle of a sentence. He wondered how it would have continued. Was there anything more on the citation? He turned it over, found nothing, returned again to the front side. No further handwriting, but, in squirrel agate type at the bottom of the slip of paper, the following inscription:

Try Archer's Drugstore for reliable
household remedies and medicinal
preparations of tried and tested value.
Economically priced.

Not much to go on, Joe reflected. But still - not what should have appeared at the bottom of a Des Moines traffic citation; it was, clearly, another manifestation, as was the purple handwriting above it.
Getting out of the Pierce-Arrow, he entered the nearest store, a magazine, candy and tobacco-supply shop. 'May I use your phone book?' he asked the broad-beamed, middle-aged proprietor.
'In the rear,' the proprietor said amiably, with a jerk of his heavy thumb.
Archer's Drugstore
Joe found the phone book and, in the dim recesses of the dark little store, looked up Archer's Drugstore. He could not find it listed.
Closing the phone book, he approached the proprietor, who at the moment was engaged in selling a roll of Necco wafers to a boy. 'Do you know where I can find Archer's Drugstore?' Joe asked him.
'Nowhere,' the proprietor said. 'At least, not any more.'
'Why not?'
'It's been closed for years.'
Joe said, 'Tell me where it was. Anyhow. Draw me a map.'
'You don't need a map; I can tell you where it was.' The big man leaned forward, pointing out the door of his shop. 'You see that barber pole there? Go over there and then look north. That's north.' He indicated the direction. 'You'll see an old building with gables. Yellow in color. There's a couple of apartments over it still being used, but the store premises downstairs, they're abandoned. You'll be able to make out the sign, though: Archer's Drugs. So you'll know when you've found it. What happened is that Ed Archer came down with throat cancer and -' 'Thanks,' Joe said, and started out of the store, back into the pale midafternoon sunlight; he walked rapidly across the street to the barber pole, and, from that position, looked due north.
He could see the tall, peeling yellow building at the periphery of his range of vision. But something about it struck him as strange. A shimmer, an unsteadiness, as if the building faded forward into stability and then retreated into insubstantial uncertainty. An oscillation, each phase lasting a few seconds and then blurring off into its opposite, a fairly regular variability as if an organic pulsation underlay the structure. As if, he thought, it's alive.
Maybe, he thought, I've come to the end. He began to walk toward the abandoned drugstore, not taking his eyes from it; he watched it pulse, he watched it change between its two states, and then, as he got closer and closer to it, he discerned the nature of its alternate conditions. At the amplitude of greater stability it became a retail home-art outlet of his own time period, homeostatic in operation, a self-service enterprise selling ten-thousand commodities for the modern conapt; he had patronized such highly functional computer-controlled pseudo merchants throughout his adult life.
And, at the amplitude of insubstantiality, it resolved itself into a tiny, anachronistic drugstore with rococo ornamentation. In its meager window displays he saw hernia belts, rows of corrective eyeglasses, a mortar and pestle, jars of assorted tablets, a hand-printed sign reading LEECHES, huge glass-stoppered bottles that contained a Pandora's heritage of patent medicines and placebos ... and, painted on a flat wood board running across the top of the windows, the words ARCHER'S DRUGSTORE. No sign whatever of an empty, abandoned, closed-up store; its 1939 stage had somehow been excluded. He thought, so in entering it I either revert further or I find myself back roughly in my own time. And - it's the further reversion, the pre-1939 phase, that I evidently need.
Presently he stood before it, experiencing physically the tidal tug of the amplitudes; he felt himself drawn back, then ahead, then back again. Pedestrians Clumped by, taking no notice; obviously, none of them saw what he saw: they perceived neither Archer's Drugstore nor the 1992 homeart outlet. That mystified him most of all.
As the structure swung directly into its ancient phase he stepped forward, crossed the threshold. And entered Archer's Drugstore.
To the right a long marble-topped counter. Boxes on the shelves, dingy in color, the whole store had a black quality to it, not merely in regard to the absence of light but rather a protective coloration, as if it had been constructed to blend, to merge with shadows, to be lit all times opaque. It had a heavy, dense quality; it pulled him down, weighing on him like something installed permanently on his back. And it had ceased to oscillate. At least for him, now that he had entered it. He wondered if he had made the right choice; now, too late, he considered the alternative, what it might have meant. A return - possibly - to his own time. Out of this devolved world of constantly declining timebinding capacity - out perhaps, forever. Well, he thought, so it goes. He wandered about the drugstore observing the brass and the wood, evidently walnut ... he came at last to the prescription window at the rear.
A wispy young man, wearing a gray, many-buttoned suit with vest, appeared and silently confronted him. For a long time Joe and the man looked at each other, neither speaking. The only sound came from a wall clock with Latin numerals on its round face; its pendulum ticked back and forth inexorably. After the fashion of clocks. Everywhere.
Joe said, 'I'd like a jar of Ubik.'
'The salve?' the druggist said. His lips did not seem properly synchronized with his words; first Joe saw the man's mouth open, the lips move, and then, after a measurable interval, he heard the words.
'Is it a salve?' Joe said. 'I thought it was for internal use.' The druggist did not respond for an interval. As if a gulf separated the two of them, an epoch of time. Then at last his mouth again opened, his lips again moved. And, presently, Joe heard words. 'Ubik has undergone many alterations as the manufacturer has improved it. You may be familiar with the old Ubik, rather than the new.' The druggist turned to one side, and his movement had a stop-action quality; he flowed in a slow, measured, dancelike step, an esthetically pleasing rhythm but emotionally jolting. 'We have had a great deal of difficulty obtaining Ubik of late,' he said as he flowed back; in his right hand he held a flat leaded tin which he placed before Joe on the prescription counter. 'This comes in the form of a powder to which you add coal tar. The coal tar comes separate; I can supply that to you at very little cost. The Ubik powder, however, is dear. Forty dollars.'
'What's in it?' Joe asked. The price chilled him.
'That is the manufacturer's secret.'
Joe picked up the sealed tin and held it to the light. 'Is it all right if I read the label?'
'Of course.'
In the dim light entering from the street he at last managed to make out the printing on the label of the tin. It continued the handwritten message on the traffic citation, picking up at the exact point at which Runciter's writing had abruptly stopped.

absolutely untrue. She did not - repeat,
not - try to use her talent following the
bomb blast. She did not try to restore
Wendy Wright or Al Hammond or Edie Dorn.
She's lying to you, Joe, and that makes
me rethink the whole situation. I'll
let you know as soon as I come to a
conclusion. Meanwhile be very careful.
By the way: Ubik powder is of universal
healing value it directions for use are
rigorously and conscientiously followed.

'Can I make you out a check?' Joe asked the druggist. 'I don't have forty dollars with me and I need the Ubik badly. It's literally a matter hanging between life and death.' He reached into his jacket pocket for his checkbook.
'You're not from Des Moines, are you?' the druggist said. 'I can tell by your accent. No, I'd have to know you to take a check that large. We've had a whole rash of bad checks the last few weeks, all by people from out of town.'
'Credit card, then?'
The druggist said, 'What is a "credit card"?'
Laying down the tin of Ubik, Joe turned and walked wordlessly out of the drugstore onto the sidewalk. He crossed the street, starting in the direction of the hotel, then paused to look back at the drugstore.
He saw only a dilapidated yellow building, curtains in its upstairs windows, the ground floor boarded up and deserted; through the spaces between the boards he saw gaping darkness, the cavity of a broken window. Without life.
And that is that, he realized. The opportunity to buy a tin of Ubik powder is gone. Even if I were to find forty dollars lying on the pavement. But, he thought, I did get the rest of Runciter's warning. For what it's worth. It may not even be true. It may be only a deformed and misguided opinion by a dying brain. Or by a totally dead brain - as in the case of the TV commercial. Christ, he said to himself dismally. Suppose it is true?
Persons here and there on the sidewalk stared up absorbedly at the sky. Noticing them, Joe looked up too. Shielding his eyes against the slanting shafts of sun, he distinguished a dot exuding white trails of smoke: a high- flying monoplane industriously sky-writing. As he and the other pedestrians watched, the already dissipating streamers spelled out a message.

KEEP THE OLD SWIZER UP, JOE!

Easy to say, Joe said to himself. Easy enough to write out in the form of words.
Hunched over with uneasy gloom - and the first faint intimations of returning terror - he shuffled off in the direction of the Meremont Hotel.

Don Denny met him in the high-ceilinged, provincial, crimson-carpeted lobby. 'We found her,' he said. 'It's all over - for her, anyhow. And it wasn't pretty, not pretty at all. Now Fred Zafsky is gone. I thought he was in the other car, and they thought he went along with us. Apparently, he didn't get into either car; he must be back at the mortuary.'
'It's happening faster now,' Joe said. He wondered how much difference Ubik - dangled toward them again and again in countless different ways but always out of reach - would have made. I guess we'll never know, he decided. 'Can we get a drink here?' he asked Don Denny. 'What about money? Mine's worthless.'
'The mortuary is paying for everything. Runciter's instructions to them.'
'The hotel tab too?' It struck him as odd. How had that been managed? 'I want you to look at this citation,' he said to Don Denny. 'While no one else is with us.' He passed the slip of paper over to him. 'I have the rest of the message; that's where I've been getting it.'
Denny read the citation, then reread it. Then, slowly, handed it back to Joe. 'Runciter thinks Pat Conley is lying,' he said.
'Yes,' Joe said. 'You realize what that would mean?' His voice rose sharply. 'It means she could have nullified all this. Everything that's happened to us, starting with Runciter's death.'
Joe said, 'It could mean more than that.'
Eying him, Denny said, 'You're right. Yes, you're absolutely right.' He looked startled and, then, acutely responsive. Awareness glittered in his face. Of an unhappy, stricken kind.
'I don't particularly feel like thinking about it,' Joe said. 'I don't like anything about it. It's worse. A lot worse than what I thought before, what Al Hammond believed, for example. Which was bad enough.'
'But this could be it,' Denny said.
'Throughout all that's been happening,' Joe said, 'I've kept trying to understand why. I was sure if I knew why -' But Al never thought of this, he said to himself. Both of us let it drop out of our minds. For a good reason.
Denny said, 'Don't say anything to the rest of them. This may not be true; and even if it is, knowing it isn't going to help them.'
'Knowing what?' Pat Conley said from behind them. 'What isn't going to help them?' She came around in front of them now, her black, color-saturated eyes wise and calm. Serenely calm. 'It's a shame about Edie Dorn,' she said. 'And Fred Zafsky; I guess he's gone too. That doesn't really leave very many of us, does it? I wonder who'll be next.' She seemed undisturbed, totally in control of herself. 'Tippy is lying down in her room. She didn't say she felt tired, but I think we must assume she is. Don't you agree?'
After a pause Don Denny said, 'Yes, I agree.'
'How did you make out with your citation, Joe?' Pat said. She held out her hand. 'Can I take a look at it?'
Joe passed it to her. The moment, he thought, has come; everything is now rolled up into the present. Into one instant.
'How did the policeman know my name?' Pat asked, after she had glanced over it; she raised her eyes, looked intently at Joe and then at Don Denny. 'Why is there something here about me?'
She doesn't recognize the writing, Joe said to himself. Because she's not familiar with it. As the rest of us are. 'Runciter,' he said. 'You're doing it, aren't you, Pat?' he said. 'It's you, your talent. We're here because of you.'
'And you're killing us off,' Don Denny said to her. 'One by one. But why?' To Joe he said, 'What reason could she have? She doesn't even know us, not really.'
Is this why you came to Runciter Associates?' Joe asked her. He tried - but failed - to keep his voice steady; in his ears it wavered and he felt abrupt contempt for himself. G.G. Ashwood scouted you and brought you in. Was he working for Hollis, is that it? Is that what really happened to us - not the bomb blast but you?'
Pat smiled. And the lobby of the hotel blew up in Joe Chip's face.

13

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Darkness hummed about him, clinging to him like coagulated, damp, warm wool. The terror he had felt as intimation fused with the darkness became whole and real. I wasn't careful, he realized. I didn't do what Runciter told I me to do; I let her see the citation.
'What's the matter, Joe?' Don Denny's voice, edged with great worry. 'What's wrong?'
'I'm okay.' He could see a little now the darkness had grown horizontal lines of gray, as if it had begun to decompose. 'I just feel tired,' be said, and realized how really tired his body had become. He could not remember such fatigue. Never before in his life.
Don Denny said, 'Let me help you to a chair.' Joe felt his hand clamped over his shoulder; he felt Denny guiding him, and this made him afraid, this need to be led. He pulled away.
'I'm okay,' he repeated. The shape of Denny had started to form near him; he concentrated on it, then once again distinguished the turn-of-the-century lobby with its ornate crystal chandelier and its complicated yellow light. 'Let me sit down,' he said and, groping, found a cane-bottomed chair.
To Pat, Don Denny said harshly, 'What did you do to him?'
She didn't do anything to me,' Joe said, trying to make his voice firm. But it dipped shrilly, with unnatural overtones. As if it's speeded up, he thought. High-pitched. Not my own.
'That's right,' Pat said. 'I didn't do anything to him or to anybody else.'
Joe said, 'I want to go upstairs and lie down.'
'I'll get you a room,' Don Denny said nervously; he hovered near Joe, appearing and then disappearing as the hights of the lobby ebbed. The light waned into dull red, then grew stronger, then waned once more. 'You stay there tn that chair, Joe; I'll be right back.' Denny hurried off in the direction of the desk. Pat remained.
the staircase
'Anything I can do for you?' Pat asked pleasantly.
'No,' he said. It took vast effort, saying the word aloud; it clung to the internal cavern lodged in his heart, a hollowness which grew with each second. 'A cigarette, maybe,' he said, and saying the full sentence exhausted him; he felt his heart labor. The difficult beating increased his burden; it was a further weight pressing down on him, a huge hand squeening. 'Do you have one?' he said, and managed to look up at her through the smoky red light The fitful, flickering glow of an unrobust locality.
'Sorry,' Pat said. 'No got.'
Joe said, 'What's - the matter with me?'
'Cardiac arrest, maybe,' Pat said.
'Do you think there's a hotel doctor?' he managed to say.
'I doubt it.'
'You won't see? You won't look?'
Pat said, 'I think it's merely psychosomatic. You're not realy sick. You'll recover.'
Returning, Don Denny said, 'I've got a room for you, Joe. On the second floor, Room 203.' He paused, and Joe felt his scrutiny, the concern of his gaze. 'Joe, you look awful. Frail. Like you're about to blow away. My God, Joe, do you know what you look like? You look like Edie Dorn looked when we found her.'
'Oh, nothing like that,' Pat said. 'Edie Dorn is dead. Joe isn't dead. Are you, Joe?'
Joe said, 'I want to go upstairs. I want to lie down.' Somehow he got to his feet; his heart thudded, seemed to hesitate, to not beat for a moment, and then it resumed, slamming like an upright iron ingot crashing against cement; each pulse of it made his whole body shudder. 'Where's the elevator?' he said.
'I'll lead you over to it,' Denny said; again his hand clamped over Joe's shoulder. 'You're like a feather,' Denny said. 'What's happening to you, Joe? Can you say? Do you know? Try to tell me.'
'He doesn't know,' Pat said.
'I think he should have a doctor,' Denny said. 'Right away.'
'No,' Joe said. Lying down will help me, he said to himself; he felt an oceanic pull, an enormous tide tugging at him: it urged him to lie down. It compelled him toward one thing alone, to stretch out, on his back, alone, upstairs in his hotel room. Where no one could see him. I have to get away, he said to himself. I've got to be by myself. Why? he wondered. He did not know; it had invaded him as an instinct, nonrational, impossible to understand or explain.
'I'll go get a doctor,' Denny said. 'Pat, you stay here with him. Don't let him out of your sight. I'll be back as soon as I can.' He started off, Joe dimly saw his retreating form. Denny appeared to shrink, to dwindle. And then he was entirely gone. Patricia Conley remained, but that did not make him feel less alone. His isolation, in spite of her physical presence, had become absolute.
'Well, Joe,' she said. 'What do you want? What can I do for you? Just name it.'
'The elevator,' he said.
'You want me to lead you over to the elevator? I'll be glad to.' She started off, and, as best he could, he followed. it seemed to him that she walked unusually fast; she did not wait and she did not look back - he found it almost impossible to keep her in sight. Is it my imagination, he asked himself, that she's moving so rapidly? It must be me; I'm slowed down, compressed by gravity. His world had assumed the attribute of pure mass. He perceived himself in one mode only: that of an object subjected to the pressure of weight. One quality, one attribute. And one exsperience. Inertia.
'Not so fast,' he said. He could not see her now; she had lithely trotted beyond his range of vision. Standing there, not able to move any farther, he panted; he felt his face drip and his eyes sting from the salty moisture. 'Wait,' he said.
Pat reappeared. He distinguished her face as she bent to peer at him. Her perfect and tranquil expression. The disinterestedness of her attention, its scientific detachment. 'Want me to wipe your face?' she asked; she brought out a handkerchief, small and dainty and lace-edged. She smiled, the same smile as before.
'Just get me into the elevator.' He compelled his body to move forward. One step. Two. Now he could make out the elevator, with several persons waiting for it. The old-fashioned dial above the sliding doors with its clock hand. The hand, the baroque needle, wavered between three and four; it retired to the left, reaching the three, then wavered between three and two.
'It'll be here in a sec,' Pat said. She got her cigarettes and lighter from her purse, lit up, exhaled trails of gray smoke from her nostrils. 'It's a very ancient kind of elevator,' she said to him, her arms folded sedately. 'You know what I think? I think it's one of those old open iron cages. Do they scare you?'
The needle had passed two now it hovered above one, then plunged down firmly. The doors slid aside.
Joe saw the grill of the cage, the latticework. He saw the uniformed attendant, seated on a stool, his hand on the rotating control. 'Going up,' the attendant said. 'Move to the back, please.'
'I'm not going to get into it,' Joe said.
'Why not?' Pat said. 'Do you think the cable will break? Is that what frightens you? I can see you're frightened.'
'This is what Al saw,' he said.
'Well, Joe,' Pat said, 'the only other way up to your room is the stairs. And you aren't going to be able to climb stairs, not in your condition.'
'I'll go up by the stairs.' He started away, seeking to locate the stairs. I can't see! he said to himself. I can't find them! The weight on him crushed his lungs, making it difficult and painful to breathe; he had to halt, concentrating on getting air into him - that alone. Maybe it is a heart attack, he thought. I can't go up the stairs if it is. But the longing within him had grown even greater, the overpowering need to be alone. Locked in an empty room, entirely unwitnessed, silent and supine. Stretched out, not needing to speak, not needing to move. Not required to cope with anyone or any problem. And no one will even know where I am, he told himself. That seemed, unaccountably, very important; he wanted to be unknown and invisible, to live unseen. Pat especially, he thought; not her; she can't be near me.
'There we are,' Pat said. She guided him, turning him slightly to the left. 'Right in front of you. Just take hold of the railing and go bump-de-bump upstairs to bed. See?' She ascended skillfully, dancing and twinkling, poising herself, then scrambling weightlessly to the next step. 'Can you make it?'
Joe said, 'I - don't want you. To come with me.'
'Oh, dear.' She cluck-clucked with mock dolefulness; her black eyes shone. 'Are you afraid I'll take advantage of your condition? Do something to you, something harmful?'
'No.' He shook his head. 'I - just want. To be. Alone.' Gripping the rail, he managed to pull himself up onto the first step. Halting there, he gazed up, trying to make out the top of the flight. Trying to determine how far away it was, how many steps he had left.
'Mr Denny asked me to stay with you. I can read to you or get you things. I can wait on you.'
He dimbed another step. 'Alone,' he gasped.
Pat said, 'May I watch you climb? I'd like to see how long it takes you. Assuming you make it at all.'
'I'll make it.' He placed his foot on the next step, gripped the railing and hoisted himself up. His swollen heart choked off his throat; he shut his eyes and wheezed in strangled air.
'I wonder,' Pat said, 'if this is what Wendy did. She was the first; right?'
Joe gasped, 'I was. In love with. Her.'
'Oh, I know. G.G. Ashwood told me. He read your mind. G.G. and I got to be very good friends; we spent a lot of time together. You might say we had an affair. Yes, you could say that'
'Our theory,' Joe said, 'was the right.' He took a deeper breath. 'One,' he succeeded in saying; he ascended another step and then, with tremendous effort, another. 'That you and G.G. Worked it out with Ray Hollis. To infiltrate.'
'Quite right,' Pat agreed.
'Our best inertials. And Runciter. Wipe us all out' He made his way up one more step. 'We're not in half-life. We're not-'
'Oh, you can die,' Pat said. 'You're not dead; not you, in particular, I mean. But you are dying off one by one. But why talk about it? Why bring it up again? You said it all a little while ago, and frankly, you bore me, going over it again and again. You're really a very dull, pedantic person, Joe. Almost as dull as Wendy Wright. You two would have made a good pair.'
'That's why Wendy died first,' he said. 'Not because she had separated. From the group. But because -' He cringed as the pain in his heart throbbed up violently; he had tried for another step, but this time he had missed. He stumbled, then found himself seated, huddled like - yes, he thought. Wendy in the closet: huddled like this. Reaching out his hand, he took hold of the sleeve of his coat. He tugged.
The fabric tore. Dried and starved, the material parted like cheap gray paper; it had no strength ... like something fashioned by wasps. So there was no doubt about it. He would soon be leaving a trail behind him, bits of crumbled cloth. A trail of debris leading to a hotel room and yearned-for isolation. His last labored actions governed by a tropism. An orientation urging him toward death, decay and nonbeing. A dismal alchemy controlled him: culminating in the grave.
He ascended another step.
I'm going to make it, he realized. The force goading me on is feasting on my body; that's why Wendy and Al and Edie - and undoubtedly Zafsky by now - deteriorated physically as they died, leaving only a discarded husklike weightless shell, containing nothing, no essence, no juices, no substantial density. The force thrust itself against the weight of many gravities, and this is the cost, this using up of the waning body. But the body, as a source supply, will be enough to get me up there; a biological necessity is at work, and probably at this point not even Pat, who set it into motion, can abort it. He wondered how she felt now as she watched him climb. Did she admire him? Did she feel contempt? He raised his head, searched for her; he made her out, her vital face with its several hues. Only interest there. No malevolence. A neutral expression. He did not feel surprise. Pat had made no move to hinder him and no move to help him. It seemed right, even to him.
'Feel any better?' Pat asked.
'No,' he said. And, getting halfway up, lunged onto the next step.
'You look different. Not so upset.'
Joe said, 'Because I can make it. I know that.'
'It's not much further,' Pat agreed.
'Farther,' he corrected.
'You're incredible. So trivial, so small. Even in your own death spasms you-' She corrected herself, catlike and clever. 'Or what probably seem subjectively to you as death spasms. I shouldn't have used that term, "death spasms." It might depress you. Try to be optimistic. Okay?'
'Just tell me,' he said. 'How many steps. Left'
'Six.' She slid away from him, gliding upward noiselessly, effortlessly. 'No, sorry. Ten. Or is it nine? I think it's nine.'
Again he climbed a step. Then the next. And the next. He did not talk; he did not even try to see. Going by the hardness of the surface against which he rested, he crept snail-like from step to step, feeling a kind of skill develop in him, an ability to tell exactly how to exert himself, how to use his nearly bankrupt power.
'Almost there,' Pat said cheerily from above him. 'What do you have to say, Joe? Any comments on your great climb? The greatest climb in the history of man. No, that's not true. Wendy and Al and Edie and Fred Zafsky did it before you. But this is the only one I've actually watched.'
Joe said, 'Why me?'
'I want to watch you, Joe, because of your low-class little scheme back in Zürich. Of having Wendy Wright spend the night with you in your hotel room. Now, tonight, this will be different. You'll be alone.'
'That night, too,' Joe said. 'I was. Alone.' Another step. He coughed convulsively, and out of him, in drops hurled from his streaked face, his remaining capacity expelled itself uselessly.
'She was there; not in your bed but in the room somewhere. You slept through it, though.' Pat laughed.
'I'm trying,' Joe said. 'Not to cough.' He made it up two more steps and knew that he had almost reached the top. How long had he been on the stairs? he wondered. No way for him to tell.
He discovered then, with a shock, that he had become cold as well as exhausted. When had this happened? he asked himself. Sometime in the past; it had infiltrated so gradually that before now he had not noticed it. Oh, God, he said to himself and shivered frantically. His bones seemed almost to quake. Worse than on Luna, far worse. Worse, too, than the chill which had hung over his hotel room in Zürich. Those had been harbingers.
Metabolism, he reflected, is a burning process, an active furnace. When it ceases to function, life is over. They must be wrong about hell, he said to himself. Hell is cold; everything there is cold. The body means weight and heat; now weight is a force which I am succumbing to, and heat, my heat, is slipping away. And, unless I become reborn, it will never return. This is the destiny of the universe. So at least I won't be alone.
But he felt alone. It's overtaking me too soon, he realized. The proper time hasn't come; something has hurried this up - some conniving thing has accelerated it, out of malice and curiosity: a polymorphic, perverse agency which likes to watch. An infantile, retarded entity which enjoys what's happening. It has crushed me like a bentlegged insect, he said to himself. A simple bug which does nothing but hug the earth. Which can never fly or escape. Can only descend step by step into what is deranged and foul. Into the world of the tomb which a perverse entity surrounded by its own filth inhabits. The thing we call Pat.
'Do you have your key?' Pat asked. 'To your room? Think how awful you'd feel to get up to the second floor and find you had lost your key and couldn't get into your room.'
'I have it.' He groped in his pockets.
His coat ripped away, tattered and in shreds; it fell from him and, from its top pocket, the key slid. It fell two steps down, below him. Beyond reach. Pat said briskly, 'I'll get it for you.' Darting by him she scooped up the key, held it to the light to examine it, then laid it at the top of the flight of stairs, on the railing. 'Right up here,' she said, 'where you can reach it when you're through climbing. Your reward. The room, I think, is to the left, about four doors down the hall. You'll have to move slowly, but it'll be a lot easier once you're off the stairs. Once you don't have to climb.' 'I can see,' he said. 'The key. And the top, I can see the top of the stairs.' With both arms grasping the bannister he dragged himself upward, ascended three steps in one agonizing expenditure of himself. He felt it deplete him; the weight on him grew, the cold grew, and the substantiality of himself waned. But - He had reached the top.
'Goodby, Joe,' Pat said. She hovered over him, kneeling slightly so that he could see her face. 'You don't want Don Denny bursting in, do you? A doctor won't be able to help you. So I'll tell him that I got the hotel people to call a cab and that you're on your way across town to a hospital. That way you won't be bothered. You can be entirely by yourself Do you agree?'
'Yes,' he said.
'Here's the key.' She pushed the cold metal thing into his hand, closed his fingers about it. 'Keep your chin up, as they say here in '39. Don't take any wooden nickels. They say that too.' She slipped away then, onto her feet; for an instant she stood there, scrutinizing him, and then she darted off down the hall to the elevator. He saw her press the button, wait; he saw the doors slide open, and then Pat disappeared.
Gripping the key he rose lurchingly to a crouched position; he balanced himself against the far wall of the corridor, then turned to the left and began to walk step by step, still supporting himself by means of the wall. Darkness, he thought. It isn't lit He squeezed his eyes shut, opened them, blinked. Sweat from his face still blinded him, still stung; he could not tell if the corridor were genuinely dark or whether his power of sight was fading out.
By the time he reached the first door he had been reduced to crawling; he tilted his head up, sought for the number on the door. No, not this one. He crept on.
When he found the proper door he had to stand erect, propped up, to insert the key in the lock. The effort finished him. The key still in his hand, he fell; his head struck the door and he flopped back onto the dust-choked carpet, smelling the odor of age and wear and frigid death. I can't get in the room, he realized. I can't stand up any more.
But he had to. Out here he could be seen.
Gripping the knob with both hands he tugged himself onto his feet one more time. He rested his weight entirely against the door, as he tremblingly poked the key in the direction of the knob and the lock; this way, once he had turned the key, the door would fall open and he would be inside. And then, he thought, if I can close the door after me and if I can get to the bed, it'll be over.
The lock grated. The metal unit hauled itself back. The door opened and he pitched forward, arms extended. The floor rose toward him and he made out shapes in the carpet, swirls and designs and floral entities in red and gold, but worn into roughness and lusterlessness; the colors had dimmed, and as he struck the floor, feeling little if any pain, he thought, This is very old, this room. When this place was first built they probably did use an open iron cage for an elevator. So I saw the actual elevator, he said to himself, the authentic, original one.
He lay for a time, and then, as if called, summoned into motion, stirred. He lifted himself up onto his knees, placed his hands flat before him ... my hands, he thought; good God. Parchment hands, yellow and knobby, like the ass of a cooked, dry turkey. Bristly skin, not like human skin; pin-feathers, as if I've devolved back millions of years to something that flies and coasts, using its skin as a sail.
Opening his eyes, he searched for the bed; he strove to identify it. The far window, admitting gray light through its web of curtains. A vanity table, ugly, with lank legs. Then the bed, with brass knobs capping its railed sides, bent and irregular, as if years of use had twisted the railings, warped the varnished wooden headboards. I want to get on it even so, he said to himself; he reached toward it, slid and dragged himself farther into the room.
And saw then a figure seated in an everstuffed chair, facing him. A spectator who had made no sound but who now stood up and came rapidly toward him.
Glen Runciter in the hotel room, UBIK
Glen Runciter.
'I couldn't help you climb the stairs,' Runciter said, his heavy face stern. 'She would have seen me. Matter of fact, I was afraid she'd come all the way into the room with you, and then we'd be in trouble because she -' He broke off, bent and hoisted Joe up to his feet as if Joe had no weight left in him, no remaining material constituents. 'We'll talk about that later. Here.' He carried Joe under his arm, across the room - not to the bed but to the overstuffed chair in which he himself had been sitting. 'Can you hold on a few seconds longer?' Runciter asked. 'I want to shut and lock the door. In case she changes her mind.'
'Yes,' Joe said.
Runciter strode in three big steps to the door, slammed it and bolted it, came at once back to Joe. Opening a drawer of the vanity table, he hastily brought out a spray can with bright stripes, balloons and lettering glorifying its shiny surfaces. 'Ubik,' Runciter said, he shook the can mightily, then stood before Joe, aiming it at him. 'Don't thank me for this,' he said, and sprayed prolongedly left and right; the air flickered and shimmered, as if bright particles of light had been released, as if the sun's energy sparkled here in this worn-out elderly hotel room. 'Feel better? It should work on you right away; you should already be getting a reaction.' He eyed Joe with anxiety.

14

It takes more than a bag to seal in food flavor; it takes Ubik plastic wrap - actually four layers in one. Keeps freshness in, air and moisture out. Watch this simulated test.

'Do you have a cigarette?' Joe said. His voice shook, but not from weariness. Nor from cold. Both had gone. I'm tense, he said to himself. But I'm not dying. That process has been stopped by the Ubik spray.
As Runciter said it would, he remembered, in his taped TV commercial. If I could find it I would be all right; Runciter promised that. But, he thought somberly, it took a long time. And I almost didn't get to it.
'No filter tips,' Runciter said. 'They don't have filtration devices on their cigarettes in this backward, no-good time period.' He held a pack of Camels toward Joe. 'I'll light it for you.' He struck a match and extended it.
'It's fresh,' Joe said.
'Oh, hell, yes. Christ, I just now bought it downstairs at the tobacco counter. We're a long way into this. Well past the stage of clotted milk and stale cigarettes.' He grinned starkly, his eyes determined and bleak, reflecting no light. 'In it,' he said, 'not out of it. There's a difference.' He lit a cigarette for himself too; leaning back, he smoked in silence, his expression still grim. And, Joe decided, tired. But not the kind of tiredness that be himself had undergone.
Joe said, 'Can you help the rest of the group?'
'I have exactly one can of this Ubik. Most of it I had to use on you.' He gestured with resentment; his fingers convulsed in a tremor of unresigned anger. 'My ability to alter things here is limited. I've done what I could.' His head jerked as he raised his eyes to glare at Joe. 'I got through to you - all of you - every chance I could, every way I could. I did everything that I had the capacity to bring about. Damn little. Almost nothing.' He lapsed then into smoldering, brooding silence.
'The graffiti on the bathroom walls,' Joe said. 'You wrote that we were dead and you were alive.'
'I am alive,' Runciter rasped.
'Are we dead, the rest of us?'
After a long pause, Runciter said, 'Yes.'
'But in the taped TV commercial -'
'That was for the purpose of getting you to fight. To find Ubik. It made you look and you kept on looking too. I kept trying to get it to you, but you know what went wrong; she kept drawing everyone into the past - she worked on us all with that talent of hers. Over and over again she regressed it and made it worthless.' Runciter added, 'Except for the fragmentary notes I managed to slip to you in conjunction with the stuff.' Urgently, he pointed his heavy, determined finger at Joe, gesturing with vigor. 'Look what I've been up against. The same thing that got all of you, that's killed you off one by one. Frankly, it's amazing to me that I was able to do as much as I could.'
Joe said, 'When did you figure out what was taking place? Did you always know? From the start?'
'"The start,"' Runater echoed bitingly. 'What's that mean? It started months or maybe even years ago; God knows how long Hollis and Mick and Pat Conley and S. Dole Melipone and G.G. Ashwood have been hatching it up, working it over and reworking it like dough. Here's what happened. We got lured to Luna. We let Pat Conley come with us, a woman we didn't know, a talent we didn't understand - which possibly even Hollis doesn't understand. An ability anyhow connected with time reversion; not, strictly speaking, the ability to travel through time for instance, she can't go into the future. In a certain sense, she can't go into the past either; what she does, as near as I can comprehend it, is start a counter-process that uncovers the prior stages inherent in configurations of matter. But you know that; you and Al figured it out.' He ground his teeth with wrath. 'Al Hammond - what a loss. But I couldn't do anything; I couldn't break through then as I've done now.'
'Why were you able to now?' Joe asked. Runciter said, 'Because this is as far back as she is able to carry us. Normal forward flow has already resumed; we're again flowing from past into present into future. She evidently stretched her ability to its limit. 1939; that's the limit. What she's done now is shut off her talent. Why not? She's accomplished what Ray Hollis sent her to us to do.'
'How many people have been affected?'
'Just the group of us who were on Luna there in that subsurface room. Not even Zoe Wirt. Pat can circumscribe the range of the field she creates. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, the bunch of us took off for Luna and got blown up in an accidental explosion; we were put into cold-pac by solicitous Stanton Mick, but no contact could be established - they didn't get us soon enough.'
Joe said, 'Why wouldn't the bomb blast be enough?' Lifting an eyebrow, Runciter regarded him. 'Why use Pat Conley at all?' Joe said. He sensed, even in his weary, shaken state, something wrong. 'There's no reason for all this reversion machinery, this sinking us into a retrograde time momentum back here to 1939. It serves no purpose.'
'That's an interesting point,' Runciter said; he nodded slowly, a frown on his rugged, stony face. 'I'll have to think about it. Give me a little while.' He walked to the window, stood gazing out at the stores across the Street.
'It strikes me,' Joe said, 'that what we appear to be faced with is a malignant rather than a purposeful force. Not so much someone trying to kill us or nullify us, someone trying to eliminate us from functioning as a prudence organization, but -' He pondered; he almost had it. 'An irresponsible entity that's enjoying what it's doing to us. The way it's killing us off one by one. It doesn't have to prolong all this. That doesn't sound to me like Ray Hollis; he deals in cold, practical murder. And from what I know about Stanton Mick-'
'Pat herself,' Runciter interrupted brusquely; he turned away from the window. 'She's psychologically a sadistic person. Like tearing wings off flies. Playing with us.' He watched for Joe's reaction.
Joe said, 'It sounds to me more like a child.'
~But look at Pat Conley; she's spiteful and jealous. She got Wendy first because of emotional animosity. She followed you all the way up the stairs just now, enjoying it: gloating over it, in fact.'
'How do you know that?' Joe said. You were waiting here in this room, he said to himself; you couldn't have seen it. And - how had Runciter known he would come to this particular room?
Letting out his breath in a ragged, noisy rush, Runciter said, 'I haven't told you all of it. As a matter of fact...' he ceased speaking, chewed his lower lip savagely, then abruptly resumed. 'What I've said hasn't been strictly true. I don't hold the same relationship to this regressed world that the rest of you do; you're absolutely right I know too much. It's because I enter it from outside, Joe.'
'Manifestations,' Joe said.
'Yes. Thrust down into this world, here and there. At strategic points and times. Like the traffic citation. Like Archer's -'
~You didn't tape that TV commercial,' Joe said. 'That was live.'
Runciter, with reluctance, nodded.
'Why the difference,' Joe said, 'between your situation and ours?'
'You want me to stay?'
'Yes.' He prepared himself, already knowing what he would hear.
'I'm not dead, Joe. The graffiti told the truth. You're all in cold-pac and I'm-' Runciter spoke with difficulty, not looking directly at Joe. 'I'm sitting in a consultation lounge: at the Beloved Brethren Moratorium. All of you are interwired, on my instructions; kept together as a group. I'm out here trying to reach you. That's where I am when I say I'm outside; that's why the manifestations, as you call them. For one week now I've been trying to get you all functioning in half-life, but - it isn't working. You're fadin out one by one.'
After a pause Joe said, 'What about Pat Conley?'
'Yeah, she's with you; in half-life, interwired to the rest of the group.'
'Are the regressions due to her talent? Or to the normal decay of half-life?' Tensely, he waited for Runciter's answer, everything, as he saw it, hung on this one question.
Runciter snorted, grimaced, then said hoarsely, 'The normal decay. Ella experienced it. Everyone who enters half-life experiences it.'
'You're lying to me,' Joe said. And felt a knife shear through him.
Staring at him, Runciter said, 'Joe, my god, I saved your life; I broke through to you enough just now to bring back into full half-life functioning - you'll probably go on indefinitely now. If I hadn't been waiting here in this hotel room when you came crawling through that door, why, hell - hey, look, goddam it; you'd be lying on that rundown bed dead as a doornail by now if it wasn't for me. I'm Glen Runciter, I'm your boss and I'm the one fighting to save all your lives - I'm the only one out here in the real world plugging for you.' He continued to stare at Joe with heated indignation and surprise. A bewildered, injured surprise, as if he could not fathom what was happening. 'That girl,' Runciter said, 'that Pat Conley, she would have killed you like she killed -' He broke off.
Joe said, 'Like she killed Wendy and Al, Edie Dorn, like Zafsky, and maybe by now Tito Apostos.'
In a low but controlled voice Runciter said, 'This situation is very complex, Joe. It doesn't admit to simple answers.'
'You don't know the answers'
'You don't know the answers,' Joe said. 'That's the problem. You made up answers; you had to invent them lo explain your presence here. All your presences here, your so-called manifestations.'
'I don't call them that; you and Al worked out that name. Don't blame me for what you two-'
'You don't know any more than I do,' Joe said, 'about what's happening to us and who's attacking us. Glen, you don't say who we're up against because you don't know.'
Runciter said, 'I know I'm alive; I know I'm sitting out here in this consultation lounge at the moratorium.'
'Your body in the coffin,' Joe said. 'Here at the Simple Shepherd Mortuary. Did you look at it?'
'No,' Runciter said, 'but that isn't really -'
'It had withered,' Joe said. 'Lost bulk like Wendy's and Al's and Edie's - and, in a little while, mine. Exactly the same for you; no better, no worse.'
'In your case I got Ubik -' Again Runciter broke off; a difficult-to-decipher expression appeared on his face: a combination perhaps of insight, fear and - but Joe couldn't tell. 'I got you the Ubik,' he finished.
What is Ubik?' Joe said.
There was no answer from Runciter.
'You don't know that either,' Joe said. 'You don't know what it is or why it works. You don't even know where it comes from.'
After a long, agonized pause, Runciter said, 'You're right, Joe. Absolutely right.' Tremulously, he lit another cigarette. 'But I wanted to save your life; that part's true. Hell, I'd like to save all your lives.' The cigarette slipped from his fingers; it dropped to the floor, rolled away. With labored effort, Runciter bent over to grope for it. On his face showed extreme and clearcut unhappiness. Almost a despair.
'We're in this,' Joe said, 'and you're sitting out there, out in the lounge, and you can't do it, you can't put a stop~to the thing we're involved in.'
'That's right.' Runciter nodded.
'This is cold-pac,' Joe said, 'but there's something more. Something not natural to people in half-life. There are two forces at work, as Al figured out, one helping us and one destroying us. You're working with the force or entity or person that's trying to help us. You got the Ubik from, them.'
'Yes.'
Joe said, 'So none of us know even yet who it is that's destroying us - and who it is that's protecting us; you outside don't know, and we in here don't know. Maybe it's Pat.'
'I think it is,' Runciter said. 'I think there's your enemy.' Joe said, 'Almost. But I don't think so.' I don't think, he said to himself; that we've met our enemy face to face, or our friend either.
He thought, But I think we will. Before long we will know who they both are.
'Are you sure,' he asked Runciter, 'absolutely sure, that you're beyond doubt the only one who survived the blast? Think before you answer.'
'Like l said, Zoe Wirt-'
'Of us,' Joe said. 'She's not here in this time segment with us. Pat Conley, for example.'
'Pat Conley's chest was crushed. She died of shock and a collapsed lung, with multiple internal injuries, including a damaged liver and a leg broken in three places. Physically speaking, she's about four feet away from you; her body, I mean.'
'And it's the same for all the rest? They're all here in cold-pac at the Beloved Brethren Moratorium?'
Runciter said, 'With one exception. Sammy Mundo. He suffered massive brain damage and lapsed into a coma out of which they say he'll never emerge. The cortical -'
'Then he's alive. He's not in cold-pac. He's not here.'
'I wouldn't call it "alive." They've run encephalograms on him; no cortical activity at all. A vegetable, nothing more. No personality, no motion, no consciousness - there's nothing happening in Mundo's brain, nothing in the slightest.'
Joe said, 'So, therefore, you naturally didn't think to mention it.'
'I mentioned it now.'
'When I asked you.' He reflected. 'How far is he from us. In Zürich?'
'We set down here in Zürich, yes. He's at the Carl Jung hospital. About a quarter mile from this moratorium.'
'Rent a telepath,' Joe said. 'Or use G.G. Ashwood. Have him scanned.' A boy, he said to himself. Disorganized and immature. A cruel, unformed, peculiar personality. This may be it, he said to himself. It would fit in with what we're experiencing, the capricious, contradictory happenings. The pulling off of our wings and then the putting back. The temporary restorations, as in just now with me here in this hotel room, after my climb up the stairs.
Runciter sighed. 'We did that. In brain-injury cases like this it's a regular practice to try to reach the person telepathically. No results; nothing. No frontal-lobe cerebration of any sort. Sorry, Joe.' He wagged his massive head in a sympathetic, tic-like motion; obviously, he shared Joe's disappointment.

* * *

moratorium
Removing the plastic disk from its place, its firm adhesic to his ear, Glen Runciter said into the microphone, 'I'll talk to you again later.' He now set down all the communications apparatus, rose stiffly from the chair and momentarily stood facing the misty, immobile, icebound shape of Joe Chip resting within its transparent plastic casket. Upright and silent, as it would be for the rest of eternity.
'Did you ring for me, sir?' Herbert Schoenheit von Vogelsang scuttled into the consultation lounge, cringing like a medieval toady. 'Shall I put Mr Chip back with others? You're done, sir?'
Runciter said, 'I'm done.'
'Did your-'
'Yes, I got through all right. We could hear each other fine this time.' He lit a cigarette; it had been hours since he had had one, had found a free moment. By now - arduous, prolonged task of reaching Joe Chip had depleted him. 'Do you have an amphetamine dispenser nearby?' asked the moratorium owner.
'In the hall outside the consultation lounge.' The eager-. to-please creature pointed.
Leaving the lounge, Runciter made his way to the amphetamine dispenser; he inserted a coin, pushed the choice lever, and, into the drop slot, a small familiar object slid with a tinkling sound.
The pill made him feel better. But then he thought about his appointment with Len Niggelman two hours from now; and wondered if he could really make it. There's been too much going on, he decided. I'm not ready to make my formal report to the Society; I'll have to vid Niggelman and ask for a postponement.
Using a pay phone, he called Niggehnan back in the North American Confederation. 'Len,' he said, 'I can't do any more today. I've spent the last twelve hours trying to get through to my people in cold-pac, and I'm exhausted. Would tomorrow be okay?'
Niggelman said, 'The sooner you file your official, formal statement with us, the sooner we can begin action against Ray Hollis. My legal department says it's open and shut; they're champing at the bit.'
They think they can make a civil charge stick?' 'Civil and criminal. They are been talking to the New York district attorney. But until you make a formal, notarized report to us -'
'Tomorrow,' Runciter promised. 'After I get some sleep. This has damn near finished me off.' This loss of all my best people, he said to himself. Especially Joe Chip. My organization is depleted and we won't be able to resume commercial operations for months, maybe years. God, he thought, where am I going to get inertials to replace those I've lost? And where am I going to find a tester like Joe?
Niggelman said, 'Sure, Glen. Get a good night's sleep and then meet me in my office tomorrow, say at ten o'clock our time.'
'Thanks,' Runciter said. He rang off, then threw himself heavily down on a pink-plastic couch across the corridor from the phone. I can't find a tester like Joe, he said to himself. The fact of the matter is that Runciter Associates is finished.
The moratorium owner came in, then, putting in another of his untimely appearances. 'Can I get you anything, Mr Runciter? A cup of coffee? Another amphetamine, perhaps a twelve-hour spansule? In my office I have some twenty-four-hour spansules; one of those would get you back up into action for hours, if not all night.'
'All right,' Runciter said, 'I intend to sleep.'
'Then how about a 'Flap away,' Runciter grated. The moratorium owner scuttled off, leaving him alone. Why did I have to pick this place? Runciter asked himself. I guess because Ella's here. It is, after all, the best; that's why she's here, and, hence, why they're all here. Think of them, he reflected, so many who were so recently on this side of the casket. What a catastrophe.
Ella, he said to himself, remembering. I'd better talk to her again for a moment, to let her know how things are going. That's, after all, what I told her I'd do.
Getting to his feet, he started off in search of the moratorium owner.
Am I going to get that damn Jory this time? he asked himself. Or will I be able to keep Ella in focus long enough to tell her what Joe said? It's become so hard to hang onto her now, with Jory growing and expanding and feeding on her and maybe on others over there in half-life. The moratorium should do something about him; Jory's a hazard to everyone here. Why do they let him go on? he asked himself.
He thought, Maybe because they can't stop him. Maybe there's never been anyone in half-life like Jory before.

15

Could it be that I have bad breath, Tom? Well Ed, if you're worried about that, try today's new Ubik, with powerful germicidal foaming action, guaranteed saft when taken as directed.

The door of the ancient hotel room swung open. Don Denny, accompanied by a middle-aged, responsible - looking man with neatly trimmed gray hair, entered. Denny, his face strained with apprehension, said, 'How are you, Joe? Why aren't you lying down? For chrissake, get onto the bed.'
'Please lie down, Mr Chip,' the doctor said as he set his medical bag on the vanity table and opened it up. 'Is there pain along with the enervation and the difficult respiration?' He approached the bed with an old-fashioned stethoscope and cumbersome blood - pressure - reading equipment. 'Do you have any history of cardiac involvement, Mr Chip? Or your mother or father? Unbutton your shirt, please.' He drew up a wooden chair beside the bed, seated himself expectantly on it.
Joe said, 'I'm okay now.'
'Let him listen to your heart,' Denny said tersely.
'Okay.' Joe stretched out on the bed and unbuttoned his shirt. 'Runciter managed to get through to me,' he said to Denny. 'We're in cold-pag he's on the other side trying to reach us. Someone else is trying to injure us. Pat didn't do it, or, anyhow, she didn't do it alone. Neither she nor Runciter knows what's going on. When you opened the door did you see Runciter?'
'No,' Denny said.
'He was sitting across the room from me,' Joe said. 'Two, three minutes ago. "Sorry, Joe," he said; that was the last thing he said to me and then he cut contact, stopped communicating, just canceled himself out. Look on the vanity table and see if he left the spray can of Ubik.'
Denny searched, then held up the brightly illuminated can. 'Here it is. But it seems empty.' Denny shook it.
'Almost empty,' Joe said. 'Spray what's left on yourself. Go ahead.' He gestured emphatically.
'Don't talk, Mr Chip,' the doctor said, listening to his stethoscope. He then rolled up Joe's sleeve and began winding inflatable rubber fabric around his arm in preparation for the blood-pressure test.
'How's my heart?' Joe asked.
'Appears normal,' the doctor said. 'Although slightly fast.' 'See?' Joe said to Don Denny. 'I've recovered.' Denny said, 'The others are dying, Joe.' Half sitting up, Joe said, 'All of them?' 'Everyone that's left.' He held the can but did not use it. 'Pat, too?' Joe asked.
'When I got out of the elevator on the second floor here I found her. It had just begun to hit her. She seemed terribly surprised; apparently, she couldn't believe it.' He set the can down again. 'I guess she thought she was doing it. With her talent.'
Joe said, 'That's right; that's what she thought. Why won't you use the Ubik?'
'Hell, Joe, we're going to die. You know it, and I know it.' He removed his horn-rimmed glasses and rubbed his eyes. 'After I saw Pat's condition I went into the other rooms, and that's when I saw the rest of them. Of us. That's why we took so long getting here; I had Dr Taylor examine them. I couldn't believe they'd dwindle away so fast. The acceleration has been so goddam great. In just the last hour-'
'Use the Ubik,' Joe said. 'Or I'll use it on you.'
Don Denny again picked up the can, again shook it, pointed the nozzle toward himself. 'All right,' he said. 'If that's what you want. There really isn't any reason not to. This is the end, isn't it? I mean, they're all dead; only you and I are left, and the Ubik is going to wear off you in a few hours. And you won't be able to get any more. Which will leave me.' His decision made, Denny depressed the button of the spray can; the shimmering, palpitating vapor, filled with particles of metallic light that danced nimbly, formed at once around him. Don Denny disappeared, concealed by the nimbus of radiant, ergic excitement.
Jory
Pausing in his task of reading Joe's blood pressure, Dr Taylor twisted his head to see. Both he and Joe watched as the vapor now condensed; puddles of it glistened on the carpet, and down the wall behind Denny it drizzled in bright streaks.
The cloud concealing Denny evaporated.
The person standing there, in the center of the vaporizing stain of Ubik that had saturated the worn and dingy carpet, was not Don Denny.
An adolescent boy, mawkishly slender, with irregular black-button eyes beneath tangled brows. He wore an anachronistic costume: white drip-dry shirt, jeans and laceless leather slippers. Clothes from the middle of the century. On his elongated face Joe saw a smile, but it was a misshapen smile, a thwarted crease that became now almost a jeering leer. No two features matched: his ears had too many convolutions in them to fit with his chitinous eyes. His straight hair contradicted the interwoven, curly bristles of his brows. And his nose, Joe thought, too thin, too sharp, far too long. Even his chin failed to harmonize with the balance of his face; it had a deep chisel mark in it, a cleft obviously penetrating far up into the bone ... Joe thought, as if at that point the manufacturer of this creature struck it a blow aimed at obliterating it. But the physical material, the base substance, had been too dense; the boy had not fractured and split apart. He existed in defiance of even the force that had constructed him; he jeered at everything else and it, too.
'Who are you?' Joe said.
The boys fingers writhed, a twitch protecting him evidently from a stammer. 'Sometimes I call myself Matt, and sometimes Bill,' he said. 'But mostly I'm Jory. That's my real name - Jory.' Gray, shabby teeth showed as he spoke. And a grubby tongue.
After an interval Joe said, 'Where's Denny? He never came into this room, did he?' Dead, he thought, with the others.
'I ate Denny a long time ago,' the boy Jory said. 'Right at the beginning, before they came here from New York. First I ate Wendy Wright Denny came second.'
Joe said, 'How do you mean "ate"?' Literally? he wondered, his flesh undulating with aversion; the gross physical motion rolled through him, engulfing him, as if his body wanted to shrink away. However, he managed more or less to conceal it.
'I did what I do,' Jory said. 'It's hard to explain, but I've been doing it a long time to lots of half-life people. I eat their life, what remains of it. There's very little in each person, so I need a lot of them. I used to wait until they had been in half-life awhile, but now I have to have them immediately. If I'm going to be able to live myself. If you come close to me and listen - I'll hold my mouth open - you can hear their voices. Not all of them, but anyhow the last ones I ate. The ones you know.' With his fingernail he picked at an upper incisor, his head tilted on one side as he regarded Joe, evidently waiting to hear his reaction. 'Don't you have anything to say?' he said.
'It was you who started me dying, down there in the lobby.' 'Me and not Pat. I ate her out in the hall by the elevator, and then I ate the others. I thought you were dead,' He rotated the can of Ubik, which he still held. 'I can't figure this out. What's in it, and where does Runciter get it?' He scowled. 'But Runciter can't be doing it; you're right. He's on the outside. This originates from within our environment. It has to, because nothing can come in from outside except words.'
Joe said, 'So there's nothing you can do to me. You can't eat me because of the Ubik.'
'I can't eat you for a while. But the Ubik will wear off.'
'You don't know that; you don't even know what it is or where it comes from.' I wonder if I can kill you, he thought. The boy Jory seemed delicate. This is the thing that got Wendy, he said to himself. I'm seeing it face to face, as I knew I eventually would. Wendy, Al, the real Don Denny - all the rest of them. It even ate Runciter's corpse as it lay in the casket at the mortuary; there must have been a flicker of residual protophasic activity in or near it, or something, anyhow, which attracted him.
The doctor said, 'Mr Chip, I didn't have a chance to finish taking your blood pressure. Please lie back down.'
Joe stared at him, then said, 'Didn't he see you change, Jory? Hasn't he heard what you've been saying?'
'Dr Taylor is a product of my mind,' Jory said. 'Like every other fixture in this pseudo world.'
'I don't believe it,' Joe said. To the doctor he said, 'You heard what he's been saying, didn't you?'
With a hollow whistling pop the doctor disappeared.
'See?' Jory said, pleased.
'What are you going to do when I'm killed off?' Joe asked the boy. 'Will you keep on maintaining this 1939 world, this pseudo world, as you call it?'
'Of course not. There'd be no reason to.'
'Then it's all for me, just for me. This entire world.'
Jory said, 'It's not very large. One hotel in Des Moines. And a street outside the window with a few people and cars. And maybe a couple of other buildings thrown in: stores across the street for you to look at when you happen to see out.'
'So you're not maintaining any New York or Zürich or -'
'Why should I? No one's there. Wherever you and the others of the group went, I constructed a tangible reality corresponding to their minimal expectations. When you flew here from New York I created hundreds of miles of countryside, town after town - I found that very exhausting. I had to eat a great deal to make up for that. In fact, that's the reason I had to finish off the others so soon after you got here. I needed to replenish myself.'
Joe said, 'Why 1939? Why not our own contemporary world, 1992?'
'The effort; I can't keep objects from regressing. Doing it all alone, it was too much for me. I created 1992 at first, but then things began to break down. The coins, the cream, the cigarettes - all those phenomena that you noticed. And then Runciter kept breaking through from outside; that made it even harder for me. Actually, it would have been better if he hadn't interfered.' Jory grinned slyly. 'But I didn't worry about the reversion. I knew you'd figure it was Pat Conley. It would seem like her talent because it's sort of like what her talent does. I thought maybe the rest of you would kill her. I would enjoy that.' His grin increased.
'What's the point of keeping this hotel and the street outside going for me now?' Joe said. 'Now that I know?'
'But I always do it this way.' Jory's eyes widened.
Joe said, 'I'm going to kill you.' He stepped toward Jory in an uncoordinated half-falling motion. Raising his open hands he plunged against the boy, trying to capture the neck, searching for the bent-pipestem windpipe with all his fingers.
Snarling, Jory bit him. The great shovel teeth fastened deep into Joe's right hand. They hung on as, meanwhile, Jory raised his head, lifting Joe's hand with his jaw; Jory stared at him with unwinking eyes, snoring wetly as he tried to close his jaws. The teeth sank deeper and Joe felt the pain of it throughout him. He's eating me, he realized. 'You can't,' he said aloud; he hit Jory on the snout, punching again and again. 'The Ubik keeps you away,' he said as he cuffed Jory's jeering eyes. 'You can't do it to me.'
'Gahm grau,' Jory bubbled, working his jaw sideways like a sheep's. Grinding Joe's hand until the pain became too much for Joe to stand. He kicked Jory. The teeth released his hand; he crept backward, looking at the blood rising from the punctures made by the troll teeth. Jesus, he said to himself, appalled.
'You can't do to me,' Joe said, 'what you did to them.' Locating the spray can of Ubik, he pointed the nozzle toward the bleeding wound which his hand had become. He pressed the red plastic stud and a weak stream of particles emerged and settled in a film over the chewed, torn flesh. The pain immediately departed. Before his eyes the wound healed.
'And you can't kill me,' Jory said. He still grinned.
Joe said, 'I'm going downstairs.' He walked unsteadily to the door of the room and opened it. Outside lay the dingy hall; he started forward, step by step, treading carefully. The floor, however, seemed substantial. Not a quasi- or irreal world at all.
'Don't go too far,' Jory said from behind him. 'I can't keep too great an area going. Like, if you were to get into one of those cars aid drive for miles ... eventually you'd reach a point where it breaks down. And you wouldn't like that any better than I do.'
'I don't see what I have to lose.' Joe reached the elevator, pressed the down button.
Jory called after him, 'I have trouble with elevators. They're complicated. Maybe you should take the stairs.'
After waiting a little longer, Joe gave up; as Jory had advised, he descended by the stairs - the same flight up which he had so recently come, step by step, in an agony of effort.
Well, he thought, that's one of the two agencies who're at work; Jory is the one who's destroying us - has destroyed us, except for me. Behind Jory there is nothing; he is the end. Will I meet the other? Probably not soon enough for it to matter, he decided. He looked once more at his hand. Completely well.
Reaching the lobby, he gazed around him, at the people, the great chandelier overhead. Jory, in many respects, had done a good job, despite the reversion to these older forms. Real, he thought, experiencing the floor beneath his feet. I can't get over it.
He thought, Jory must have had experience. He must have done this many times before.
Going to the hotel desk, he said to the clerk, 'You have a restaurant that you'd recommend?'
'Down the street,' the clerk said, pausing in his task of sorting mail. 'To your right. The Matador. You'll find it excellent, sir.'
'I'm lonely,' Joe said, on impulse. 'Does the hotel have any source of supply? Any girls?'
The clerk said in a clipped, disapproving voice, 'Not this hotel, sir; this hotel does not pander.'
'You keep a good clean family hotel,' Joe said.
'We like to think so, sir.'
'I was just testing you,' Joe said. 'I wanted to be sure what kind of hotel I was staying in.' He left the counter, recrossed the lobby, made his way down the wide marble stairs, through the revolving door and onto the pavement outside.

16

Wake up to a hearty, lip-smacking bowlful of nutritious, nourishing Ubik toasted flakes, the adult cereal that's more crunchy, more tasty, more ummmish. Ubik breakfast cereal the whole-bowl taste treat! Do not exceed recommended portion at any one meal.

The diversity of cars impressed him. Many years represented, many makes and many models. The fact that they mostly came in black could not be laid at Jory's door; this detail was authentic.
But how did Jory know it?
That's peculiar, he thought; Jory's knowledge of the minutiae of 1939, a period in which none of us lived - except Glen Runciter.
Then all at once he realized why. Jory had told the truth; he had constructed - not this world - but the world, or rather its phantasmagoric counterpart, of their own time. Decomposition back to these forms was not of his doing; they happened despite his efforts. These are natural atavisms, Joe realized, happening mechanically as Jory's strength wanes. As the boy says, it's an enormous effort. This is perhaps the first time he has created a world this diverse, for so many people at once. It isn't usual for so many half-lifers to be interwired.
We have put an abnormal strain on Jory, he said to himself. And we paid for it.
A square old Dodge taxi sputtered past; Joe waved at it, and the cab floundered noisily to the curb. Let's test out what Jory said, he said to himself, as to the early boundary of this quasi world now. To the driver he said, 'Take me for a ride through town; go anywhere you want. I'd like to see as many streets and buildings and people as possible, and then, when you've driven through all of Des Moines, I want you to drive me to the next town and we'll see that.'
'I don't go between towns, mister,' the driver said, holding the door open for Joe. 'But I'll be glad to drive you around Des Moines. It's a nice city, sir. You're from out of state, aren't you?'
'New York,' Joe said, getting inside the cab.
The cab rolled back out into traffic. 'How do they feel about the war back in New York?' the driver asked presently. 'Do you think we'll be getting into it? Roosevelt wants to get us-'
'I don't care to discuss politics or the war,' Joe said harshly.
They drove for a time in silence.
Watching the buildings, people and cars go by, Joe asked himself again how Jory could maintain it all. So many details, he marveled. I should be coming to the edge of it soon; it has to be just about now.
'Driver,' he said, 'are there any houses of prostitution I here in Des Moines?'
'No,' the driver said.
Maybe Jory can't manage that, Joe reflected. Because of his youth. Or maybe he disapproves. He felt, all at once, tired. Where am I going? he asked himself. And what for? To prove to myself that what Jory told me is true? I already know it's true', I saw the doctor wink out. I saw Jory emerge from inside Don Denny; that should have been enough. All I'm doing this way is putting more of a load on Jory, which will increase his appetite. I'd better give up, he decided. This is pointless.
And, as Jory had said, the Ubik would be wearing off anyhow. This driving around Des Moines is not the way I want to spend my last minutes or hours of life. There must be something else.
Along the sidewalk a girl moved in a slow, easy gait; she seemed to be window-shopping. A pretty girl, with gay, blond pigtails, wearing an unbuttoned sweater over her blouse, a bright red skirt and high-heeled little shoes. 'Slow the cab,' he instructed the driver. 'There, by that girl with the pigtails.'
'She won't talk to you,' the driver said. 'She'll call a cop.' Joe said, 'I don't care.' It hardly mattered at this point. Slowing, the old Dodge bumbled its way to,the curb; its tires protested as they rubbed against the curb. The girl glanced up.
Ella
'Hi, miss,' Joe said.
She regarded him with curiosity; her warm, intelligent, blue eyes widened a little, but they showed no aversion or alarm. Rather, she seemed slightly amused at him. But in a friendly way. 'Yes?' she said.
'I'm going to die,' Joe said.
'Oh, dear,' the girl said, with concern. 'Are you -' 'He's not sick,' the driver put in. 'He's been asking after girls; he just wants to pick you up.'
The girl laughed. Without hostility. And she did not depart.
'It's almost dinnertime,' Joe said to her. 'Let me take you to a restaurant, the Matador; I understand that's nice.' His tiredness now had increased; he felt the weight of it on him, and then he realized, with muted, weary horror, that it consisted of the same fatigue which had attacked him in the hotel lobby, after he had shown the police citation to Pat. And the cold. Stealthily, the physical experience of the cold-pac surrounding him had come back. The Ubik is beginning to wear off, he realized. I don't have much longer.
Something must have showed in his face; the girl walked toward him, up to the window of the cab. 'Are you all right?' she asked.
Joe said, with effort, 'I'm dying, miss.' The wound on his hand, the teeth marks, had begun to throb once more. And were again becoming visible. This alone would have been enough to fill him with dread.
'Have the driver take you to the hospital,' the girl said.
'Can we have dinner together?' Joe asked her.
'Is that what you want to do?' she said. 'When you're - whatever it is. Sick? Are you sick?' She opened the door of the cab then.
'Do you want me to go with you to the hospital? Is that it?'
'To the Matador,' Joe said. 'We'll have braised fillet of Martian mole cricket.' He remembered then that that imported delicacy did not exist in this time period. 'Market steak,' he said. 'Beef. Do you like beef'?'
Getting into the cab, the girl said to the driver, 'He wants to go to the Matador.'
'Okay, miss,' the driver said. The cab rolled out into traffic once more. At the next intersection the driver made a U-turn; now Joe realized, we are on our way to the restaurant. I wonder if I'll make it there. Fatigue and cold had invaded him completely; he felt his body processes begin to close down, one by one. Organs that had no future; the liver did not need to make red blood cells, the kidneys did not need to excrete wastes, the intestines no longer served any purpose. Only the heart, laboring on, and the increasingly difficult breathing; each time he drew air into his lungs he sensed the concrete block that had situated itself on his chest. My gravestone, he decided. His hand, he saw, was bleeding again; thick, slow blood appeared, drop by drop.
'Care for a Lucky Strike?' the girl asked him, extending her pack toward him. '"They're toasted," as the slogan goes. The phrase "LSMFT" won't come into existence until -'
Joe said, 'My name is Joe Chip.'
'Do you want me to tell you my name?' 'Yes,' he grated, and shut his eyes; he couldn't speak any further, for a time anyhow. 'Do you like Des Moines?' he asked her presently, concealing his hand from her. 'Have you lived here a long time?'
'You sound very tired, Mr Chip,' the girl said.
'Oh, hell,' he said, gesturing. 'It doesn't matter.'
'Yes, it does.' The girl opened her purse, rummaged briskly within it. 'I'm not a deformation of Jory's; I'm not like him -' She indicated the driver 'Or like these little old stores and houses and this dingy street, all these people and their neolithic cars. Here, Mr Chip.' From her purse she brought an envelope, which she passed to him. 'This is for you. Open it right away; I don't think either of us should have delayed so long.'
With leaden fingers he tore open the envelope.
In it he found a certificate, stately and ornamented. The printing on it, however, swam; He was too weary now to read. 'What's it say?' he asked her, laying it down on his lap. 'From the company that manufactes Ubik,' the girl said. 'It is a guarantee, Mr Chip, of a free, lifetime supply, Free because I know your problem, regarding money, your, shall we say, idiosyncrasy. And a list, on the reverse, of all the drugstores which carry it. Two drugstores - and not abandoned ones - in Des Moines are listed. I suggest we go to one first, before we eat dinner. Here, driver.' She leaned forward and handed the driver a slip of paper already written out. 'Take us to this address. And hurry; they'll be closing soon.'
Joe lay back against the seat, panting for breath.
'We'll make it to the drugstore' the girl said, and patted his arm reassuringly.
Who are you?' Joe asked her.
'My name is Ella. Ella Hyde Runciter. Your employer's wife.
You're here with us,' Joe said 'On this side; you're in cold-pac.'
As you well know, I have been for some time,' Ella Runciter said. 'Fairly soon I'll be reborn into another womb, I think. At least, Glen says so. I keep dreaming about a smoky red light, and that's bad; that's not a morally proper womb to be born into.' She laughed a rich, warm laugh.
I've reached the last entities involved.
'You're the other one,' Joe said. 'Jory destroying us, you trying to help us. Behind you there's no one, just as there's no one behind Jory. I've reached the last entities involved.'
Ella said caustically, 'I don't think of myself as an "entity"; I usually think of myself as Ella Runciter.'
'But it's true,' Joe said.
'Yes.' Somberly, she nodded.
'Why are you working against Jory?'
'Because Jory invaded me,' Ella said. 'He menaced me in the same way he's menaced you. We both know what he does; he told you himself, in your hotel room. Sometimes he becomes very powerful; on occasion, he manages to supplant me when I'm active and trying to talk to Glen. But I seem to be able to cope with him better than most half-lifers, with or without Ubik. Better, for instance, then your group, even acting as a collective.'
'Yes,' Joe said. It certainly was true. Well proved.
'When I'm reborn,' Ella said, 'Glen won't be able to consult with me any more. I have a very selfish, practical reason for assisting you, Mr Chip; I want you to replace me. I want to have someone whom Glen can ask for advice and assistance, whom he can lean on. You will be ideal; you'll be doing in half-life what you did in full-life. So, in a sense, I'm not motivated by noble sentiments; I saved you from Jory for a good common-sense reason.' She added, 'And God knows I detest Jory.'
'After you're reborn,' Joe said, 'I won't succumb?'
'You have your lifetime supply of Ubik. As it says on the certificate I gave you.'
Joe said, 'Maybe I can defeat Jory.'
'Destroy him, you mean?' Ella pondered. 'He's not invulnerable. Maybe in time you can learn ways to nullify him. I think that's really the best you can hope to do; I doubt if you can truly destroy him - in other words consume him - as he does to half-lifers placed near him at the moratorium.'
'Hell,' Joe said. 'I'll tell Glen Runciter the situation and have him move Jory out of the moratorium entirely.'
'Glen has no authority to do that.'
'Won't Schoenheit von Vogelsang -'
Ella said, 'Herbert is paid a great deal of money annually, by Jory's family, to keep him with the others and to think up plausible reasons for doing so. And - there are Jorys in every moratorium. This battle goes on wherever you have half-lifers; it's a verity, a rule, of our kind of existence.' She lapsed into silence then; for the first time he saw on her face an expression of anger. A ruffled, taut look that disturbed her tranquility. 'It has to be fought on our side of the glass,' Ella said. 'By those of us in half-life, those that Jory preys on. You'll have to take charge, Mr Chip, after I'm reborn. Do you think you can do that? It'll be hard. Jory will be sapping your strength always, putting a burden on you that you'll feel as -' She hesitated. 'The approach of death. Which it will be. Because in half-life we diminish constantly anyhow. Jory only speeds it up. The weariness and cooling-off come anyhow. But not so soon.'
To himself Joe thought, I can remember what he did to Wendy. That'll keep me going. That alone.
Here's the drugstore, miss,' the driver said. The square, upright old Dodge wheezed to the curb and parked.
'I won't go in with you,' Ella Runciter said to Joe as he opened the door and crept shakily out. 'Goodby. Thanks for your loyalty to Glen. Thanks for what you're going to be doing for him.' She leaned toward him, kissed him on the cheek; her lips seemed to him ripe with life. And some of it was conveyed to him; he felt slightly stronger.
'Good luck with Jory.' She settled back, composed herself sedately, her purse on her lap.
Joe shut the cab door, stood, then made his way haltingly into the drugstore. Behind him the cab thub-thubbed off; he heard but did not see it go.
Within the solemn, lamplit interior of the drugstore a bald pharmacist, wearing a formal dark vest, bow tie and sharply pressed sharkskin trousers, approached him. 'Afraid we're closing, sir. I was just coming to lock the door.'
'But I'm in,' Joe said. 'And I want to be waited on.' He showed the pharmacist the certificate which Ella had given him; squinting through his round, rimless: glasses, the pharmacist labored over the gothic printing. 'Are you going to wait on me?' Joe asked.
'Ubik,' the pharmacist said. 'I believe I'm out of that. Let me check and see.' He started off.
'Jory,' Joe said.
Turning his head the pharmacist said, 'Sir?'
'You're Jory,' Joe said. I can tell now, he said to himself I'm learning to know him when I encounter him. 'You invented this drugstore,' he said, 'and everything in it except for the spray cans of Ubik. You have no authority over Ubik; that comes from Ella.' He forced himself into motion; step by step he edged his way behind the counter to the shelves of medical supplies. Peering in the gloom over one shelf after the other, he tried to locate the Ubik. The lighting of the store had dimmed; the antique fixtures were fading.
'I've regressed all the Ubik in this store,' the pharmacist said in a youthful, high-pitched Jory voice. 'Back to the liver and kidney balm. It's no good now.'
'I'll go to the other drugstore that has it,' Joe said. He leaned against a counter, painfully drawing in slow, irregular gulps of air.
Jory, from within the balding pharmacist, said, 'It'll be closed.'
'Tomorrow,' Joe said. 'I can hold out until tomorrow morning.'
'You can't,' Jory said. 'And, anyhow, the Ubik at that drugstore will be regressed too~'
'Another town,' Joe said.
'Wherever you go, it'll be regressed. Back to the salve or back to the powder or back to the elixir or back to the balm. You'll never see a spray can of it, Joe Chip.' Jory, in the form of the bald-headed pharmacist, smiled, showing celluloid-like dentures.
'I can -' He broke off, gathering his meager vitality to him. Trying, by his own strength, to warm his stiffening, cold-numbed body. 'Bring it up to the present,' he said. 'To 1992.'
'Can you, Mr Chip?' The pharmacist handed Joe a square pasteboard container. 'Here you are. Open it and you'll see -'
Joe said, 'I know what I'll see.' He concentrated on the blue jar of liver and kidney balm. Evolve forward, he said to it, flooding it with his need; he poured whatever energy he had left onto the container. It did not change. This is the regular world, he said to it. 'Spray can,' he said aloud. He shut his eyes, resting.
'It's not a spray can, Mr Chip,' the pharmacist said. Going here and there in the drugstore he shut off lights; at the cash register he punched a key and the drawer rattled open. Expertly, the pharmacist transferred the bills and change from the drawer into a metal box with a lock on it.
'You are a spray can,' Joe said to the pasteboard container which he held in his hand. 'This is 1992,' he said, and tried to exert everything; he put the entirety of himself into the effort.
The last light blinked out, turned off by the pseudo pharmacist. A dull gleam shone into the drugstore from the streetlamp outside; by it, Joe could make out the shape of the object in his hand, its boxlike lines. Opening the door, the pharmacist said, 'Come on, Mr Chip. Time to go home. She was wrong, wasn't she? And you won't see her again, because she's so far on the road to being reborn; she's not thinking about you any more, or me or Runciter. What Ella sees now are various lights: red and dingy, then maybe bright orange -'
'What I hold here,' Joe said, 'is a spray can.'
'No,' the pharmacist said. 'I'm sorry, Mr Chip. I really am. But it's not.'
Joe set the pasteboard container down on a nearby counter. He turned, with dignity, and began the long, slow journey across the drugstore to the front door which the pharmacist held open for him. Neither of them spoke until Joe, at last, passed through the doorway and out onto the nocturnal sidewalk.
Behind him the pharmacist emerged too; he bent and locked the door after the two of them.
'I think I'll complain to the manufacturer,' Joe said. 'About the - ' He ceased talking. Something constricted his throat he could not breathe and he could not speak. Then, temporarily, the blockage abated. 'Your regressed drugstore,' he finished.
'Goodnight,' the pharmacist said. He remained for a moment, eying Joe in the evening gloom. Then, shrugging, he started off.
To his left, Joe made out the dark shape of a bench where people waited for a streetcar. He managed to reach it, to seat himself. The other persons, two or three, whichever it was, squeezed away from him, either out of aversion or to give him room; he could not tell which, and he didn't care. All he felt was the support of the bench beneath him, the release of some of his vast inertial weight. A few more minutes, he said to himself. If I remember right. Christ, what a thing to have to go through, he said to himself. For the second time. Anyhow, we tried, he thought, as he watched the yellow flickering lights and neon signs, the flow of cars going in both directions directly before his eyes. He thought to himself, Runciter kicked and struggled; Ella has been scratching and biting and gouging for a long time. And, he thought, I damn near evolved the jar of Ubik liver and kidney balm back to the present. I almost succeeded. There was something in knowing that, an awareness of his own great strength. His final transcendental attempt.
The streetcar, a clanging metal enormity, came to a grating halt before the bench. The several people beside Joe rose and hurried out to board it by its rear platform.
'Hey, mister!' the conductor yelled to Joe. 'Are you coming or aren't you?'
Joe said nothing. The conductor waited, then jerked his signal cord. Noisily, the streetcar started up; it continued on, and then at last disappeared beyond his range of vision. Lots of luck, Joe said to himself as he heard the racket of the streetcar's wheels die away. And so long.
He leaned back, closed his eyes.
'Excuse me.' Bending over him in the darkness a girl in a synthetic ostrich-leather coat; he looked up at her, jarred into awareness. 'Mr Chip?' she said. Pretty and slender, dressed in hat, gloves, suit and high heels. She held something in her hand; he saw the outline of a package. 'Of New York? Of Runciter Associates? I don't want to give this to the wrong person.'
'I'm Joe Chip,' he said. For a moment he thought the girl might be Ella Runciter. But he had never seen her before. 'Who sent you?' he said.
'Dr Sonderbar,' the girl said. 'The younger Dr Sonderbar, son of Dr Sonderbar the founder.'
'Who's that?' The name meant nothing to him, and then he remembered where he had seen it. 'The Liver and Kidney man,' he said. 'Processed oleander leaves, oil of peppermint, charcoal, cobalt chloride, zinc oxide -' Weariness overcame him; he stopped talking.
The girl said, 'By making use of the most advanced techniques of modern-day science, the reversion of matter to earlier forms can be reversed, and at a price any conapt owner can afford. Ubik is sold by leadinghome-art stores throughout Earth. So look for it at the place you shop, Mr Chip.'
Fully conscious, now, he said, 'Look for it where?' He struggled to his feet, stood inexpertly swaying. 'You're from 1992; what you said came from Runciter's TV commercial.' An evening wind rustled at him and he felt it tug at him, drawing him away with it, he seemed to be like some ragged bundle of webs and cloth, barely holding together.
'Yes, Mr Chip.' The girl handed him a package. 'You brought me from the future, by what you did there inside the drugstore a few moments ago. You summoned me directly from the factory. Mr Chip, I could spray it on you, if you're too weak to. Shall I? I'm an official factory representative and technical consultant; I know how to apply it.' She took the package swiftly back from his trembling hands; tearing it open, she immediately sprayed him with Ubik. In the dusk he saw the spray can glint. He saw the happy, colored lettering.
'Thanks,' he said after a time. After he felt better. And warmer.
The girl said, 'You didn't need as much this time as you did in the hotel room; you must be stronger than before. Here, take the can of it, you might need it before morning.'
'Can I get more?' Joe said. 'When this runs out?'
'Evidently so. If you got me here once, I would assume you can get me here again. The same way.' She moved away from him, merging with the shadows created by the dense walls of closed-up nearby stores.
'What is Ubik?'
'What is Ubik?' Joe said, wanting her to stay. 'A spray can of Ubik,' the girl answered, 'is a portable negative ionizer, with a self-contained, high-voltage, lowamp unit powered by a peak-gain helium battery of 25kv. The negative ions are given a counterclockwise spin by a radically biased acceleration chamber, which creates a centripetal tendency to them so that they cohere rather than dissipate. A negative ion field diminishes the velocity of anti-protophasons normally present in the atmosphere; as soon as their velocity falls they cease to be anti- protophasons and, under the principle of parity, no longer can unite with protophasons radiated from persons frozen in cold-pac; that is, those in half-life. The end result is that the proportion of protophasons not canceled by anti-protophasons increases, which means - for a specific time, anyhow - an increment in the net put-forth field of protophasonic activity ... which the affected half-lifer experiences as greater vitality plus a lowering of the experience of low cold-pac temperatures. So you can see why regressed forms of Ubik failed to -'
Joe said reflexively, 'To say "negative ions" is redundant. All ions are negative.'
Again the girl moved away. 'Maybe I'll see you again,' she said gently. 'It was rewarding to bring you the spray can; maybe next time -'
'Maybe we can have dinner together,' Joe said.
'I'll look forward to it.' She ebbed farther and farther away.
'Who invented Ubik?' Joe asked.
'A number of responsible half-lifers whom Jory threatened. But principally Ella Runciter. It took her and them working together a long, long time. And there still isn't very much of it available, as yet.' Ebbing from him in her trim, covert way, she continued to retreat and then, by degrees, was gone.
'At the Matador,' Joe called after her. 'I understand Jory did a good job materializing it. Or regressing it just right, whatever it is he does.' He listened, but the girl did not answer.
Carefully carrying the spray can of Ubik, Joe Chip walked out to greet the evening traffic, searching for a cab.
Under a streetlight he held up the spray can of Ubik, read the printing on the label.

          I THINK HER NAME IS MYRA LANEY.
          LOOK ON REVERSE SIDE OF CONTAINER
          FOR ADDRESS AND PHONE NUMBER.

17

I am Ubik. Before the universe was, I am. I made the suns. I made the worlds. I created the lives and the places they inhabit; I move them here, I put them there. They go as I say, they do as I tell them. I am the word and my name is never spoken, the name which no one knows. I am called Ubik but that is not my name. I am. I shall always be.

Glen Runciter could not find the moratorium owner.
'Are you sure you don't know where he is?' Runciter asked Miss Beason, the moratorium owner's secretary. 'It's essential that I talk to Ella again.'
'I'll have her brought out,' Miss Beason said. 'You may use office 4-B; please wait there, Mr Runciter; I will have your wife for you in a very short time. Try to make yourself comfortable.'
Locating office 4-B, Runciter paced about restlessly. At last a moratorium attendant appeared, wheeling in Ella's casket on a handtruck. 'Sorry to keep you waiting,' the attendant said; he began at once to set up the electonic communing mechanism, humming happily as he worked.
In short order the task was completed. The attendant checked the circuit one last time, nodded in satisfaction, then started to leave the office.
'Thats is for you,' Runciter said, and handed him several fifty cent pieces which he had scrounged from his various pockets 'I appreciate the rapidity with which you accomplished the job.'
'Thank you, Mr Runciter,' the attendant said. He glanced at the coins, then frowned. 'What kind of money is this?' he said.
Runciter took a good long look at the fifty-cent pieces. He saw at once what the attendant meant; very definitely, the coins were not as they should be. Whose profile is this? he asked himself. Who's this on all three coins? Not the right person at all. And yet he's familiar. I know him.
And then he recognized the profile. I wonder what this means, he asked himself. Strangest thing I've ever seen. Most things in life eventually can be explained. But - Joe Chip on a fifty-cent piece?
It was the first Joe Chip money he had ever seen.
He had an intuition, chillingly, that if he searched his pockets, and his billfold, he would find more.
This was just the beginning.