The Very Best of F & SF v1 (20 page)

So clean we did,
but by noon Eleanor could no longer stand. So I took her home with me, because
we were working down near the harbor section and my place was nearer.

That’s almost
the whole story—light to darkness to light—except for the end, which I don’t
really know. I’ll tell you of its beginning, though...

I dropped her
off at the head of the alleyway, and she went on toward my apartment while I
parked the car. Why didn’t I keep her with me? I don’t know. Unless it was
because the morning sun made the world seem at peace, despite its filth. Unless
it was because I was in love and the darkness was over, and the spirit of the
night had surely departed.

I parked the car
and started up the alley. I was halfway before the corner where I had met the
org when I heard her cry out.

I ran. Fear gave
me speed and strength and I ran to the corner and turned it.

The man had a
bag, not unlike the one Chuck had carried away with him, lying beside the
puddle in which he stood. He was going through Eleanor’s purse, and she lay on
the ground—so still!—with blood on the side of her head.

I cursed him and
ran toward him, switching on my cane as I went. He turned, dropped her purse,
and reached for the gun in his belt.

We were about
thirty feet apart, so I threw my cane.

He drew his gun,
pointed it at me, and my cane fell into the puddle in which he stood.

Flights of
angels sang him to his rest, perhaps.

She was
breathing, so I got her inside and got hold of a doctor—I don’t remember how,
not too clearly, anyway—and I waited and waited.

She lived for
another twelve hours and then she died. She recovered consciousness twice
before they operated on her, and not again after. She didn’t say anything. She
smiled at me once, and went to sleep again.

I don’t know.

Anything,
really.

It happened
again that I became Betty’s mayor, to fill in until November, to oversee the
rebuilding. I worked, I worked my head off, and I left her bright and shiny, as
I had found her. I think I could have won if I had run for the job that fall,
but I did not want it.

The Town Council
overrode my objections and voted to erect a statue of Godfrey Justin Holmes
beside the statue of Eleanor Schirrer which was to stand in the Square across
from cleaned-up Wyeth. I guess it’s out there now.

I said that I
would never return, but who knows? In a couple years, after some more history
has passed, I may revisit a Betty full of strangers, if only to place a wreath
at the foot of the one statue. Who knows but that the entire continent may be
steaming and clanking and whirring with automation by then, and filled with
people from shore to shining shore?

There was a
Stopover at the end of the year and I waved goodbye and climbed aboard and went
away, anywhere.

I went aboard
and went away, to sleep again the cold sleep.

Delirium of ship
among stars—

Years have
passed, I suppose. I’m not really counting them anymore. But I think of this
thing often: Perhaps there
is
a Golden Age someplace, a Renaissance for me sometime, a special
time somewhere, somewhere but a ticket, a visa, a diary-page away. I don’t know
where or when. Who does? Where are all the rains of yesterday?

In the invisible
city?

Inside me?

It is cold and
quiet outside and the horizon is infinity. There is no sense of movement.

There is no
moon, and the stars are very bright, like broken diamonds, all.

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Contents

Philip K. Dick (1928-1982) took a
writing course in 1951 with Anthony Boucher and went on to make his first
professional sale to
F&SF
not long after. (Another writer who
got his start in that same class, Ron Goulart, broke in sooner.) From there,
Mr. Dick spent three decades as a professional science fiction writer until his
early death. Posthumously, his work has flourished in print and on screen,
where film adaptations have been many and varied. His
F&SF
contributions include classics like “We Can Remember It for You
Wholesale,” “Explorers We,” and this story of a man recovering from an
accident.

At
four-fifteen
in the afternoon, T.S.T., Garson
Poole woke up in his hospital bed, knew that he lay in a hospital bed in a
three-bed ward, and realized in addition two things: that he no longer had a
right hand and that he felt no pain.

They had given
me a strong analgesic, he said to himself as he stared at the far wall with its
window showing downtown New York. Webs in which vehicles and peds darted and
wheeled glimmered in the late afternoon sun, and the brilliance of the aging
light pleased him. It’s not yet out, he thought. And neither am I.

A fone lay on
the table beside his bed; he hesitated, then picked it up and dialed for an
outside line. A moment later he was faced by Louis Danceman, in charge of
Tri-Plan’s activities while he, Garson Poole, was elsewhere.

“Thank God you’re
alive,” Danceman said, seeing him; his big, fleshy face with its moon’s surface
of pock marks flattened with relief. “I’ve been calling all—”

“I just don’t
have a right hand,” Poole said.

“But you’ll be
okay. I mean, they can graft another one on.”

“How long have I
been here?” Poole said. He wondered where the nurses
and
doctors had gone to; why weren’t they clucking and fussing about him making a
call?

“Four days,” Danceman
said. “Everything here at the plant is going splunkishly. In fact we’ve
splunked orders from three separate police systems, all here on Terra. Two in
Ohio, one in Wyoming. Good solid orders, with one-third in advance and the
usual three-year lease-option.”

“Come get me out
of here,” Poole said.

“I can’t get you
out until the new hand—”

“I’ll have it
done later.” He wanted desperately to get back to familiar surroundings; memory
of the mercantile squib looming grotesquely on the pilot screen careened at the
back of his mind; if he shut his eyes he felt himself back in his damaged craft
as it plunged from one vehicle to another, piling up enormous damage as it
went. The kinetic sensations... he winced, recalling them. I guess I’m lucky,
he said to himself.

“Is Sarah Benton
there with you?” Danceman asked.

“No.” Of course;
his personal secretary—if only for job considerations— would be hovering close
by, mothering him in her jejune, infantile way. All heavyset women like to
mother people, he thought. And they’re dangerous; if they fall on you they can
kill you. “Maybe that’s what happened to me,” he said aloud. “Maybe Sarah fell
on my squib.”

“No, no; a tie
rod in the steering fin of your squib split apart during the heavy rush-hour
traffic and you—”

“I remember.” He
turned in his bed as the door of the ward opened; a white-clad doctor and two
blue-clad nurses appeared, making their way toward his bed. “I’ll talk to you
later,” Poole said, and hung up the fone. He took a deep, expectant breath.

“You shouldn’t
be foning quite so soon,” the doctor said as he studied his chart. “Mr. Garson
Poole, owner of Tri-Plan Electronics. Maker of random ident charts that track
their prey for a circle-radius of a thousand miles, responding to unique enceph
wave patterns. You’re a successful man, Mr. Poole. But, Mr. Poole, you’re not a
man. You’re an electric ant.”

“Christ,” Poole
said, stunned.

“So we can’t
really treat you here, now that we’ve found out. We knew, of course, as soon as
we examined your injured right hand; we saw the electronic components and then
we made torso X-rays and of course they bore out our hypothesis.”

“What,” Poole
said, “is an ‘electric ant’?” But he knew; he could decipher the term.

A nurse said, “An
organic robot.”

“I see,” Poole
said. Frigid perspiration rose to the surface of his skin, across all his body.

“You didn’t know,”
the doctor said.

“No.” Poole
shook his head.

The doctor said,
“We get an electric ant every week or so. Either brought in here from a squib
accident—like yourself—or one seeking voluntary admission... one who, like
yourself, has never been told, who has functioned alongside humans, believing
himself—itself—human. As to your hand—” He paused.

“Forget my hand,”
Poole said savagely.

“Be calm.” The
doctor leaned over him, peered acutely down into Poole’s face. “We’ll have a
hospital boat convey you over to a service facility where repairs, or
replacement, on your hand can be made at a reasonable expense, either to
yourself, if you’re self-owned, or to your owners, if such there are. In any
case you’ll be back at your desk at Tri-Plan functioning just as before.”

“Except,” Poole
said, “now I know.” He wondered if Danceman or Sarah or any of the others at
the office knew. Had they—or one of them— purchased him? Designed him? A
figurehead, he said to himself; that’s all I’ve been. I must never really have
run the company; it was a delusion implanted in me when I was made... along
with the delusion that I am human and alive.

“Before you
leave for the repair facility,” the doctor said, “could you kindly settle your
bill at the front desk?”

Poole said
acidly, “How can there be a bill if you don’t treat ants here?”

“For our
services,” the nurse said. “Up until the point we knew.”

“Bill me,” Poole
said, with furious, impotent anger. “Bill my firm.” With massive effort he
managed to sit up; his head swimming, he stepped haltingly from the bed and
onto the floor. “I’ll be glad to leave here,” he said as he rose to a standing
position. “And thank you for your humane attention.”

“Thank you, too,
Mr. Poole,” the doctor said. “Or rather I should say just Poole.”

At the repair
facility he had his missing hand replaced.

It proved
fascinating, the hand; he examined it for a long time before he let the
technicians install it. On the surface it appeared organic—in fact on the
surface, it was. Natural skin covered natural flesh, and true blood filled the
veins and capillaries. But, beneath that, wires and circuits, miniaturized
components, gleamed... looking deep into the wrist he saw surge gates, motors,
multi-stage valves, all very small. Intricate. And—the hand cost forty frogs. A
week’s salary, insofar as he drew it from the company payroll.

“Is this
guaranteed?” he asked the technicians as they fused the “bone” section of the
hand to the balance of his body.

“Ninety days,
parts and labor,” one of the technicians said. “Unless subjected to unusual or
intentional abuse.”

“That sounds
vaguely suggestive,” Poole said.

The technician,
a man—all of them were men—said, regarding him keenly, “You’ve been posing?”

“Unintentionally,”
Poole said.

“And now it’s
intentional?”

Poole said, “Exactly.”

“Do you know why
you never guessed? There must have been signs... clickings and whirrings from
inside you, now and then. You never guessed because you were programmed not to
notice. You’ll now have the same difficulty finding out why you were built and
for whom you’ve been operating.”

“A slave,” Poole
said. “A mechanical slave.”

“You’ve had fun.”

“I’ve lived a
good life,” Poole said. “I’ve worked hard.”

He paid the
facility its forty frogs, flexed his new fingers, tested them out by picking up
various objects such as coins, then departed. Ten minutes later he was aboard a
public carrier, on his way home. It had been quite a day.

At home, in his
one-room apartment, he poured himself a shot of Jack Daniel’s Purple
Label—sixty years old—and sat sipping it, meanwhile gazing through his sole
window at the building on the opposite side of the street. Shall I go to the
office? he asked himself. If so, why? If not, why? Choose one. Christ, he
thought, it undermines you, knowing this. I’m a freak, he realized. An
inanimate object mimicking an animate one. But—he felt alive. Yet... he felt
differently, now. About himself. Hence about everyone, especially Danceman and
Sarah, everyone at Tri-Plan.

I think I’ll
kill myself, he said to himself. But I’m probably programmed not to do that; it
would be a costly waste which my owner would have to absorb. And he wouldn’t
want to.

Programmed. In
me somewhere, he thought, there is a matrix fitted in place, a grid screen that
cuts me off from certain thoughts, certain actions. And forces me into others.
I am not free. I never was, but now I know it; that makes it different.

Turning his
window to opaque, he snapped on the overhead light, carefully set about
removing his clothing, piece by piece. He had watched carefully as the
technicians at the repair facility had attached his new hand: he had a rather
clear idea, now, of how his body had been assembled. Two major panels, one in
each thigh; the technicians had removed the panels to check the circuit
complexes beneath. If I’m programmed, he decided, the matrix probably can be
found there.

The maze of
circuitry baffled him. I need help, he said to himself. Let’s see... what’s the
fone code for the class BBB computer we hire at the office?

He picked up the
fone, dialed the computer at its permanent location in Boise, Idaho.

“Use of this
computer is prorated at a five-frogs-per-minute basis,” a mechanical voice from
the fone said. “Please hold your mastercredit-chargeplate before the screen.”

He did so.

“At the sound of
the buzzer you will be connected with the computer,” the voice continued. “Please
query it as rapidly as possible, taking into account the fact that its answer
will be given in terms of a microsecond, while your query will—” He turned the
sound down, then. But quickly turned it up as the blank audio input of the
computer appeared on the screen. At this moment the computer had become a giant
ear, listening to him—as well as fifty thousand other queriers throughout
Terra.

“Scan me
visually,” he instructed the computer. “And tell me where I will find the
programming mechanism which controls my thoughts and behavior.” He waited. On
the fone’s screen a great active eye, multi-lensed, peered at him; he displayed
himself for it, there in his one-room apartment.

The computer
said, “Remove your chest panel. Apply pressure at your breastbone and then ease
outward.”

He did so. A
section of his chest came off; dizzily, he set it down on the floor.

“I can
distinguish control modules,” the computer said, “but I can’t tell which—” It
paused as its eye roved about on the fone screen. “I distinguish a roll of
punched tape mounted above your heart mechanism. Do you see it?” Poole craned
his neck, peered. He saw it, too. “I will have to sign off,” the computer said.

“After I have
examined the data available to me I will contact you and give you an answer.
Good day.” The screen died out.

I’ll yank the
tape out of me, Poole said to himself. Tiny... no larger two spools of thread,
with a scanner mounted between the delivery drum and the take-up drum. He could
not see any sign of motion; the spools seemed inert. They must cut in as
override, he reflected, when specific situations occur. Override to my
encephalic processes. And they’ve been doing it all my life.

He reached down,
touched the delivery drum. All I have to do is tear it out, he thought, and—

The fone screen
relit. “Mastercredit-chargeplate number 3-BNX-882-HQR446-T,” the computer’s
voice came. “This is BBB-307/DR recontacting you in response to your query of
sixteen seconds lapse, November 4, 1992. The punched tape roll above your heart
mechanism is not a programming turret but is in fact a reality-supply
construct. All sense stimuli received by your central neurological system
emanate from that unit and tampering with it would be risky if not terminal.” It
added, “You appear to have no programming circuit. Query answered. Good day.” It
flicked off.

Poole, standing
naked before the fone screen, touched the tape drum once again, with
calculated, enormous caution. I see, he thought wildly. Or do I see? This unit—

If I cut the
tape, he realized, my world will disappear. Reality will continue for others,
but not for me. Because my reality, my universe, is coming to me from this
minuscule unit. Fed into the scanner and then into my central nervous system as
it snailishly unwinds.