Philip K. Dick - The Man Who Japed

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THE MAN WHO JAPED

Philip K. Dick

v.3.0-fixed formatting, broken paragraphs; by peragwinn

FLAW IN A FANATIC FUTURE

War and famine on earth had been abolished by Moral Reclamation, and now peace and prosperity

were compulsory. And the Morec block committees, robot peeping-Toms, and youthful goon squads made

sure everybody "enjoyed" it.

It was Allen Purcell's job as the new Director of Entertainment and Propaganda to keep the people in

sober thought channels. Only someone was playing pranks—publicly, secretly. Such humor was

dangerous—and the heretic had to be stopped at all costs! And then Purcell realized that the mad japer was

familiar to him—as familiar as his own face in the morning shave-mirror!

As frightening as Orwell's 1984, THE MAN WHO JAPED is a social satire on the world of tomorrow

that is as timely as today.

THE MAN WHO JAPED

at seven a.m., Allen Purcell, the forward-looking young president of the newest and most creative of

the Research Agencies, lost a bedroom. But he gained a kitchen. The process was automatic, controlled by

an iron-oxide-impregnated tape sealed in the wall. Allen had no authority over it, but the transfiguration was

agreeable to him; he was already awake and ready to rise.

Squinting and yawning and now on his feet, he fumbled for the manual knob that released the stove. As

usual the stove was stuck half in the wall and half out into the room. But all that was needed was a firm

push. Allen pushed, and, with a wheeze, the stove emerged.

He was king of his domain: this one-room apartment within sight of the—blessed—Morec spire. The

apartment was hard won. It had been his heritage, deeded to him by his family; the lease had been

defended for over forty years. Its thin plasterboard walls formed a box of priceless worth; it was an empty

space valued beyond money.

The stove, properly unfolded, became also sink and table and food cupboard. Two chairs hinged out

from its underside, and beneath the stored supplies were dishes. Most of the room was consumed, but

sufficient space remained in which to dress.

His wife Janet, with difficulty, had gotten into her slip. Now, frowning, she held an armload of skirt and

looked around her in bewilderment. The central heating had not penetrated to their apartment as yet, and

Janet shivered.

In the cold autumn mornings she awoke with fright; she had been his wife three years but she had

never adjusted to the shifts of the room.

"What's the matter?" he asked, shedding his pajamas. The air, to him, was invigorating; he took a deep

breath.

"I'm going to reset the tape. Maybe for eleven." She resumed dressing, a slow process with much

wasted motion.

"The oven door," he said, opening the oven for her. "Lay your things there, like always."

Nodding, she did so. The Agency had to be opened promptly at eight, which meant getting up early

enough to make the half-hour walk along the clogged lanes. Even now sounds of activity filtered up from

the ground level, and from other apartments. In the hall, scuffling footsteps were audible; the line was

forming at the community bathroom.

"You go ahead," he said to Janet, wanting her dressed and ready for the day. As she started off, he

added: "Don't forget your towel."

Obediently, she collected her satchel of cosmetics, her soap and toothbrush and towel and personal

articles, and left. Neighbors assembled in the hall greeted her.

"Morning, Mrs. Purcell."

Janet's sleepy voice: "Morning Mrs. O'Neill." And then the door closed.

While his wife was gone, Allen shook two corto-thiamin capsules from the medicine well. Janet owned

all sorts of pills and sprays; in her early teens she had picked up un-dulant fever, one of the plagues revived

by the attempt to create natural farms on the colony planets. The corto-thiamin was for his hangover. Last

night he had drunk three glasses of wine, and on an empty stomach.

Entering the Hokkaido area had been a calculated risk. He had worked late at the Agency, until ten

o'clock. Tired, but still restless, he had locked up and then rolled out a small Agency ship, a one-man sliver

used to deliver rush orders to T-M. In the ship he had scooted out of Newer York, flown aimlessly, and

finally turned East to visit Gates and Sugermann. But he hadn't stayed long; by eleven he was on his way

back. And it had been necessary. Research was involved.

His Agency was totally outclassed by the giant four that made up the industry. Allen Purcell, Inc. had

no financial latitude and no backlog of ideas. Its packets were put together from day to day. His

staff—artists, historian, moral consultant, dictionist, dramatist—tried to anticipate future trends rather than

working from patterns that had been successful in the past. This was an advantage, as well as a defect.

The big four were hidebound; they constructed a standard packet perfected over the years, basically the

time-tested formula used by Major Streiter himself in the days before the revolution. Moral Reclamation, in

those days, had consisted of wandering troops of actors and lecturers delivering messages, and the major

had been a genius at media. The basic formula was, of course, adequate, but new blood was needed. The

major himself had been new blood; originally a powerful figure in the Afrikaans Empire—the re-created

Transvaal State—he had revitalized the moral forces lying dormant in his own age.

"Your turn," Janet said, returning. "I left the soap and towel, so go right in." As he started from the

room she bent to get out the breakfast dishes.

Breakfast took the usual eleven minutes. Allen ate with customary directness; the corto-thiamin had

eliminated his queasiness. Across from him Janet pushed her half-finished food away and began combing

her hair. The window—with a touch of the switch—doubled as a mirror: another of the ingenious

space-savers developed by the Committee's Housing Authority.

"You didn't get in until late," Janet said presently. "Last night, I mean." She glanced up. "Did you?"

Her question surprised him, because he had never known her to probe. Lost in the haze of her own

uncertainties, Janet was incapable of venom. But, he realized, she was not probing. She was apprehensive.

Probably she had lain awake wondering if he were all right, lain with her eyes open staring at the ceiling

until eleven-forty, at which time he had made his appearance. As he had undressed, she had said nothing;

she had kissed him as he slid in beside her, and then she had gone to sleep.

"Did you go to Hokkaido?" she wondered.

"For awhile. Sugermann gives me ideas . . . I find his talk stimulating. Remember the packet we did on

Goethe? The business about lens-grinding? I never heard of that until Sugermann mentioned it. The optics

angle made a good Morec—Goethe saw his real job. Prisms before poetry."

"But—" She gestured, a familiar nervous motion of her hands. "Sugermann's an egghead."

"Nobody saw me." He was reasonably certain of that; by ten o'clock Sunday night most people were in

bed. Three glasses of wine with Sugermann, a half hour listening to Tom Gates play Chicago jazz on the

phonograph, and that was all. He had done it a number of times before, and without untoward difficulty.

Bending down, he picked up the pair of oxfords he had worn. They were mud-spattered. And, across

each, were great drops of dried red paint.

"That's from the art department," Janet said. She had, in the first year of the Agency, acted as his

receptionist and file clerk, and she knew the office layout. "What were you doing with red paint?"

He didn't answer. He was still examining the shoes.

"And the mud," Janet said. "And look." Reaching down, she plucked a bit of grass dried to the sole of

one shoe. "Where did you find grass at Hokkaido? Nothing grows in those ruins . . . it's contaminated, isn't

it?" "Yes," he admitted. It certainly was. The island had been saturated during the war, bombed and bathed

and doctored and infested with every possible kind of toxic and lethal substance. Moral Reclamation was

useless, let alone gross physical rebuilding. Hokkaido was as sterile and dead as it had been in 1972, the

final year of the war.

"It's domestic grass," Janet said, feeling it. "I can tell." She had lived most of her life on colony planets.

"The texture's smooth. It wasn't imported . . . it grows here on Earth."

With irritation he asked: "Where on Earth?"

"The Park," Janet said. "That's the only place grass grows. The rest is all apartments and offices. You

must have been there last night."

Outside the window of the apartment the—blessed—Morec spire gleamed in the morning sun. Below it

was the Park. The Park and spire comprised the hub of Morec, its omphalos. There, among the lawns and

flowers and bushes, was the statue of Major Streiter. It was the official statue, cast during his lifetime. The

statue had been there one hundred and twenty-four years.

"I walked through the Park," he admitted. He had stopped eating; his "eggs" were cooling on his plate.

"But the paint," Janet said. In her voice was the vague, troubled fear with which she met every crisis,

the helpless sense of foreboding that always seemed to paralyze her ability to act. "You didn't do anything

wrong, did you?" She was, obviously, thinking of the lease.

Rubbing his forehead, Allen got to his feet. "It's seven-thirty. I'll have to start to work."

Janet also rose. "But you didn't finish eating." He always finished eating. "You're not sick, are you?"

"Me," he said. "Sick?" He laughed, kissed her on the mouth, and then found his coat. "When was I last

sick?"

"Never," she murmured, troubled and watching him. "There's never anything the matter with you."

At the base of the housing unit, businessmen were clustered at the block warden's table. The routine

check was in progress, and Allen joined the group. The morning smelled of ozone, and its clean scent

helped clear his head. And it restored his fundamental optimism.

The Parent Citizens Committee maintained a female functionary for each housing unit, and Mrs.

Birmingham was typical: plump, florid, in her middle fifties, she wore a flowered and ornate dress and wrote

out her reports with a powerfully authoritative fountain pen. It was a respected position, and Mrs.

Birmingham had held the post for years.

"Good morning, Mr. Purcell." She beamed as his turn arrived.

"Hello, Mrs. Birmingham." He tipped his hat, since block wardens set great store by the little civilities.

"Looks like a nice day, assuming it doesn't cloud up."

"Rain for the crops," Mrs. Birmingham said, which was a joke. Virtually all foods and manufactured

items were brought in by autofac rocket; the limited domestic supply served only as a standard of judgment,

a kind of recalled ideal. The woman made a note on her long yellow pad. "I . . . haven't seen your lovely

wife yet, today."

Allen always alibied for his wife's tardiness. "Janet's getting ready for the Book Club meeting. Special

day: she's been promoted to treasurer."

"I'm so glad," Mrs. Birmingham said. "She's such a sweet girl. A bit shy, though. She should mix more

with people."

"That's certainly true," he agreed. "She was brought up in the wide open spaces. Betelgeuse 4. Rocks

and goats."

He had expected that to end the interview—his own conduct was rarely in question—but suddenly

Mrs. Birmingham became rigid and business-like. "You were out late last night, Mr. Purcell. Did you have a

good time?"

Lord, he cursed. A juvenile must have spotted him. "Not very." He wondered how much it had seen. If

it tagged him early in the trip it might have followed the whole way.

"You visited Hokkaido," Mrs. Birmingham stated.

"Research," he said, assuming the posture of defense. "For the Agency." This was the great dialectic of

the moral society, and, in a perverse way, he enjoyed it. He was facing a bureaucrat who operated by rote,

whereas he struck through the layers of habit and hit directly. This was the success of his Agency, and it

was the success of his personal life. "Telemedia's needs take precedence over personal feeling, Mrs.

Birmingham. You certainly understand that."

His confidence did the trick, and Mrs. Birmingham's saccharine smile returned. Making a scratch with

her pen she asked: "Will we see you at the block meeting next Wednesday? That's just the day after

tomorrow."

"Certainly," Allen said. Over the decades he had learned to endure the interminable interchange, the

stuffy presence of his neighbors packed together in one room. And the whirr of the juveniles as they

surrendered their tapes to the Committee representatives. "But I'm afraid I won't have much to contribute."

He was too busy with his ideas and plans to care who lapsed and in what way. "I've been up to my neck in

work."

"Perhaps," Mrs. Birmingham said, in a partly bantering, partly haughty thought-for-this-week voice,

"there might be a few criticisms of you."

"Of me?" He winced with shock, and felt ill.

"It seems to me that when I was glancing over the reports, I noticed your name. Perhaps not. I could

be mistaken. Goodness." She laughed lightly. "If so it's certainly the first time in years. But none of us is

perfect; we're all mortal."

"Hokkaido?" he demanded. Or afterward. The paint, the grass. There it was in a rush: the wet grass

sparkling and slithering under him as he coasted dizzily downhill. The swaying staffs of trees. Above, as he

lay gaping on his back, the dark-swept sky; clouds were figments of matter against the blackness. And he,

lying stretched out, arms out, swallowing stars.

"Or afterward?" he demanded, but Mrs. Birmingham had turned to the next man in line.

the lobby of the Mogentlock Building was active and stirring with noise, a constant coming-and-going of

busy people as Allen approached the elevator. Because of Mrs. Birmingham he was late. The elevator

politely waited.

"Good morning, Mr. Purcell." The elevator's taped voice greeted him, and then the doors shut. "Second

floor Bevis and Company Import-Export. Third floor American Music Federation. Fourth floor Allen

Purcell, Inc. Research Agency." The elevator halted and opened its door.

In the outer reception lounge, Fred Luddy, his assistant, wandered about in a tantrum of discomfort.

"Morning," Allen murmured vaguely, taking off his coat.

"Allen, she's here." Luddy's face flushed scarlet. "She got here before I did; I came up and there she

was, sitting."

"Who? Janet?" He had a mental image of a Committee representative driving her from the apartment

and canceling the lease. Mrs. Birmingham, with smiles, closing in on Janet as she sat absently combing her

hair."Not Mrs. Purcell," Luddy said. He lowered his voice to a rasp. "It's Sue Frost."

Allen involuntarily craned his neck, but the inner door was closed. If Sue Frost was really sitting in

there, it marked the first time a Committee Secretary had paid a call on him.

"I'll be darned," he said.

Luddy yelped. "She wants to see you!"

The Committee functioned through a series of departmental secretaries directly responsible to Ida

Pease Hoyt, the linear descendant of Major Streiter. Sue Frost was the administrator of Telemedia, which

was the official government trust controlling mass communications. He had never dealt with Mrs. Frost, or

even met her; he worked with the acting Director of T-M, a weary-voiced, bald-headed individual named

Myron Mavis. It was Mavis who bought packets.

"What's she want?" Allen asked. Presumably, she had learned that Mavis was taking the Agency's

output, and that the Agency was relatively new. With a sinking dread he anticipated one of the Committee's

gloomy, protracted investigations. "Better have Doris block my incoming calls." Doris was one of his

secretaries. "You take over until Mrs. Frost and I are through talking."

Luddy followed after him in a dance of prayer. "Good luck, Allen. I'll hold the fort for you. If you want

the books—"

"Yes, I'll call you." He opened the office door, and there was Sue Frost.

She was tall, and she was rather large-boned and muscular. Her suit was a simple hard weave, dark

gray in color. She wore a flower in her hair, and she was altogether a strikingly handsome woman. At a

guess, she was in her middle fifties. There was little or no softness to her, nothing of the fleshy and

over-dressed motherliness that he saw in so many Committee women. Her legs were long, and, as she rose

to her feet, her right hand lifted to welcome him in a forthright—almost masculine—handshake.

"Hello, Mr. Purcell," she said. Her voice was not overly expressive. "I hope you don't mind my showing

up this way, unannounced."

"Not at all," he murmured. "Please sit down."

She reseated herself, crossed her legs, contemplated him. Her eyes, he noticed, were an almost

colorless straw. A strong kind of substance, and highly polished.

"Cigarette?" He extended his case, and she accepted a cigarette with a nod of thanks. He took one

also, feeling like a gauche young man in the company of an older and more experienced woman.

He couldn't help thinking that Sue Frost was the type of urbane career woman ultimately not proposed

to by the hero of Blake-Moffet's packets. There was an unsympathetic firmness about her. She was

decidedly not the girl from next door.

"Undoubtedly," Sue Frost began, "you recognize this." She unraveled the winding of a manila folder and

displayed a sheaf of script. On the cover of the sheaf was his Agency's stamp; she had one of his packets,

and she evidently had been reading it.

"Yes," he admitted. "That's one of ours."

Sue Frost leafed through the packet, then laid it down on Allen's desk. "Myron accepted this last month.

Then he had qualms and he sent it along the line to me. I had a chance to go over it this weekend."

Now the packet was turned so that Allen could catch the title. It was a high-quality piece he had

personally participated in; as it stood it could have gone over any of T-M's media.

"Qualms," Allen said. "How do you mean?" He had a deep, cold sensation, as if he were involved in

some eerie religious ritual. "If the packet won't go, then turn it back to us. We'll create a credit; we've done

it before."

"The packet is beautifully handled," Mrs. Frost said, smoking. "No, Myron certainly didn't want it back.

Your theme concerns this man's attempt to grow an apple tree on a colony planet. But the tree dies. The

Morec of it is—" She again picked up the packet. "I'm not certain what the Morec is. Shouldn't he have

tried to grow it?"

"Not there," Allen said.

"You mean it belonged on Earth?"

"I mean he should have been working for the good of society, not off somewhere nourishing a private

enterprise. He saw the colony as an end in itself. But they're means. This is the center."

"Omphalos," she agreed. "The navel of the universe. And the tree—"

"The tree symbolizes an Earth product that withers when it's transplanted. His spiritual side died."

"But he couldn't have grown it here. There's no room. It's all city."

"Symbolically," he explained. "He should have put down his roots here."

Sue Frost was silent for a moment, and he sat smoking uneasily, crossing and uncrossing his legs,

feeling his tension grow, not diminish. Nearby, in another office, the switchboard buzzed. Doris' typewriter

clacked.

"You see," Sue Frost said, "this conflicts with a fundamental. The Committee has put billions of dollars

and years of work into outplanet agriculture. We've done everything possible to seed domestic plants in the

colonies. They're supposed to supply us with our food. People realize it's a heartbreaking task, with endless

disappointments . . . and you're saying that the outplanet orchards will fail."

Allen started to speak and then changed his mind. He felt absolutely defeated. Mrs. Frost was gazing at

him searchingly, expecting him to defend himself in the usual fashion.

"Here's a note," she said. "You can read it. Myron's note on this, when it came to me."

The note was in pencil and went:

"Sue—

The same outfit again. Top-drawer, but too coy.

You decide.

M."

"What's he mean?" Allen said, now angered. "He means the Morec doesn't come across." She leaned

toward him. "Your Agency has been in this only three years. You started out very well. What do you

currently gross?"

"I'd have to see the books." He got to his feet. "May I get Luddy in here? I'd like him to see Myron's

note." "Certainly," Mrs. Frost said.

Fred Luddy entered the office stiff-legged with apprehension. "Thanks," he muttered, as Allen gave him

the packet. He read the note, but his eyes showed no spark of consciousness. He seemed tuned to invisible

vibrations; the meaning reached him through the tension of the air, rather than the pencilled words.

"Well," he said finally, in a daze. "You can't win them all."

"We'll take this packet back, naturally." Allen began to strip the note from it, but Mrs. Frost said:

"Is that your only response? I told you we want it; I made that clear. But we can't take it in the shape

it's in. I think you should know that it was my decision to give your Agency the go-ahead. There was some

dispute, and I was brought in from the first." From the manila folder she took a second packet, a familiar

one. "Remember this? May, 2112. We argued for hours, Myron liked this, and I liked it. Nobody else did.

Now Myron has cold feet." She tossed the packet, the first the Agency had ever done, onto the desk.

After an interval Allen said: "Myron's getting tired." "Very." She nodded agreeably.

Hunched over, Fred Luddy said: "Maybe we've been going at it too fast." He cleared his throat,

cracked his knuckles and glanced at the ceiling. Drops of warm sweat sparkled in his hair and along his

smoothly-shaved jowls. "We kind of got—excited."

Speaking to Mrs. Frost, Allen said: "My position is simple. In that packet, we made the Morec that

Earth is the center.

That's the real fundamental, and I believe it. If I didn't believe it I couldn't have developed the packet.

I'll withdraw the packet but I won't change it. I'm not going to preach morality without practicing it."

Quakily, in a spasm of agonized back-pedalling, Luddy muttered: "It's not a moral question, Al. It's a

question of clarity. The Morec of that packet doesn't come across." His voice had a ragged, guilty edge;

Luddy knew what he was doing and he was ashamed. "I—see Mrs. Frost's point. Yes I do. It looks as if

we're scuttling the agricultural program, and naturally we don't mean that. Isn't that so, Al?"

"You're fired," Allen said.

They both stared at him. Neither of them grasped that he was serious, that he had really done it.

"Go tell Doris to make out your check." Allen took the packet from the desk and held onto it. "I'm sorry,

Mrs. Frost, but I'm the only person qualified to speak for the Agency. We'll credit you for this packet and

submit another. All right?"

She stubbed out her cigarette, rising, at the same time, to her feet. "It's your decision."

"Thanks," he said, and felt a release of tension. Mrs. Frost understood his stand, and approved. And

that was crucial.

"I'm sorry," Luddy muttered, ashen. "That was a mistake on my part. The packet is fine. Perfectly

sound as it now exists." Plucking at Allen's sleeve, he drew him off in the corner. "I admit I made a

mistake." His voice sank to a jumpy whisper. "Let's discuss this further. I was simply trying to develop one

possible viewpoint among many. You want me to express myself; I mean, it seems senseless to penalize me

for working in the best interests of the Agency, as I see it."

"I meant what I said," Allen said.

"You did?" Luddy laughed. "Naturally you meant it. You're the boss." He was shaking. "You really

weren't kidding?"

Collecting her coat, Mrs. Frost moved toward the door. "I'd like to look over your Agency while I'm

here. Do you mind?"

"Not at all," Allen said. "I'd be glad to show it to you. I'm quite proud of it." He opened the door for her,

and the two of them walked out into the hall. Luddy remained in the office, a sick, erratic look on his face.

"I don't care for him," Mrs. Frost said. "I think you're better off without him."

"That wasn't any fun," Allen said. But he was feeling better.

in the hall outside Myron Mavis' office, the Telemedia workers were winding up their day. The T-M

building formed a connected hollow square. The open area in the center was used for outdoor sets. Nothing

was in process now, because it was five-thirty and everybody was leaving.

From a pay phone, Allen Purcell called his wife. "I'll be late for dinner," he said.

"Are—you all right?"

"I'm fine," he said. "But you go ahead and eat. Big doings, big crisis at the Agency. "I'll catch something

down here." He added, "I'm at Telemedia."

"For very long?" Janet asked anxiously.

"Maybe for a long, long time," he said, and hung up.

As he rejoined Sue Frost, she said to him, "How long did Luddy work for you?"

"Since I opened the Agency." The realization was sobering: three years. Presently he added: "That's the

only person I've ever let go."

At the back of the office, Myron Mavis was turning over duplicates of the day's output to a bonded

messenger of the Committee. The duplicates would be put on permanent file; in case of an investigation the

material was there to examine.

To the formal young messenger, Mrs. Frost said: "Don't leave. I'm going back; you can go with me."

The young man retired discreetly with his armload of metal drums. His uniform was the drab khaki of

the Cohorts of Major Streiter, a select body composed of male descendants of the founder of Morec.

"A cousin," Mrs. Frost said. "A very distant cousin-in-law on my father's side." She nodded toward the

young man, whose face was as expressionless as sand. "Ralf Hadler. I like to keep him around." She raised

her voice. "Ralf, go find the Getabout. It's parked somewhere in back."

The Cohorts, either singly or in bunches, made Allen uncomfortable; they were humorless, as devout as

machines, and, for their small number, they seemed to be everywhere. His fantasy was that the Cohorts

were always in motion; in the course of one day, like a foraging ant, a member of the Cohorts roamed

hundreds of miles.

"You'll come along," Mrs. Frost said to Mavis.

"Naturally," Mavis murmured. He began clearing his desk of unfinished work. Mavis was an

ulcer-mongerer, a high-strung worrier with rumpled shirt and baggy, unpressed tweeds, who flew into

fragments when things got over his head. Allen recalled tangled interviews that had ended with Mavis in

despair and his staff scurrying. If Mavis was going to be along, the next few hours would be hectic.

"We'll meet you at the Getabout," Mrs. Frost said to him. "Finish up here, first. We'll wait."

As she and Allen walked down the hall, Allen observed: "This is a big place." The idea of an

organ—even a government organ—occupying an entire building struck him as grandiose. And much of it

was underground. Telemedia, like cleanliness was next to God; after T-M came the secretaries and the

Committee itself.

"It's big," Mrs. Frost agreed, striding along the hall and holding her manila folder against her chest with

both hands. "But I don't know."

"You don't know what?"

Cryptically, she said: "Maybe it should be smaller. Remember what became of the giant reptiles."

"You mean curtail its activities?" He tried to picture the vacuum that would be created. "And what

instead?"

"Sometimes I toy with the idea of slicing T-M into a number of units, interacting, but separately run. I'm

not sure one person can or should take responsibility for the whole."

"Well," Allen said, thinking of Mavis, "I suppose it cuts into his life-expectancy."

"Myron has been Director of T-M for eight years. He's forty-two and he looks eighty. He's got only

half a stomach. Someday I expect to phone and discover he's holed up at the Health Resort, doing business

from there. Or from Other World, as they call that sanitarium of theirs."

"That's a long way off," Allen said. "Either place."

They had come to the door leading out, and Mrs. Frost halted. "You've been in a position to watch

T-M. What do you think of it? Be honest with me. Would you call it efficient?"

"The part I see is efficient."

"What about the output? It buys your packets and it frames them for a medium. What's your reaction to

the end result? Is the Morec garbled along the line? Do you feel your ideas survive projection?"

Allen tried to recall when he had last sat through a T-M concoction. His Agency monitored as a matter

of routine, collecting its own duplicates of the items based on its packets. "Last week," he said, "I watched a

television show." The woman's gray eyebrows lifted mockingly. "Half hour? Or entire hour?"

"The program was an hour but we saw only a portion of it. At a friend's apartment. Janet and I were

over playing Juggle, and we were taking a break."

"You don't mean you don't own a television set." "The people downstairs are domino for my block.

They tumble the rest of us. Apparently the packets are getting over."

They walked outside and got into the parked Getabout. Allen calculated that this zone, in terms of

leasing, was in the lowest possible range: between 1 and 14. It was not crowded.

"Do you approve of the domino method?" Mrs. Frost asked as they waited for Mavis. "It's certainly

economical." "But you have reservations."

"The domino method operates on the assumption that people believe what their group believes, no more

and no less. One unique individual would foul it up. One man who originated his own idea, instead of getting

it from his block domino."

Mrs. Frost said: "How interesting. An idea out of nothing."

"Out of the individual human mind," Allen said, aware that he wasn't being politic, but feeling, at the

same time, that Mrs. Frost respected him and really wanted to hear what he had to offer. "A rare situation,"

he admitted. "But it could occur."

There was a stir outside the car. Myron Mavis, a bulging briefcase under his arm, and the Cohort of

Major Streiter, his young face stern and his messenger parcel chained to his belt, had arrived.

"I forgot about you," Mrs. Frost said to her cousin, as the two men got in. The Getabout was small, and

there was barely room for all of them. Hadler was to drive. He started up the motor—powered by

pile-driven steam—and the car moved cautiously along the lane. Along the route to the Committee building,

they passed only three other Getabouts.

"Mr. Purcell has a criticism of the domino method," Mrs. Frost said to Myron Mavis.

Mavis grunted unintelligibly, then blinked bloodshot eyes and roused himself. "Uhuh," he muttered.

"Fine." He began pawing through a pocketful of papers. "Let's go back to five-minute spots. Hit 'em, hit

'em."

Behind the tiller, young Hadler sat very straight and rigid, his chin out-jutting. He gripped the tiller as a

person walked across the lane ahead. The Getabout had reached a speed of twenty miles an hour, and all

four of them were uneasy.

"We should either fly," Mavis grated, "or walk. Not this halfway business. All we need now is a couple

of bottles of beer, and we're back in the old days."

"Mr. Purcell believes in the unique individual," Mrs Frost said.

Mavis favored Allen with a glance. "The Resort has that on its mind, too. An obsession, day and night."

"I always assumed that was window dressing," Mrs. Frost said. "To lure people into going over."

"People go over because they're noose," Mavis declared. Noose was a derisive term contracted from

neuro-psychiatric. Allen disliked it. It had a blind, savage quality that made him think of the old hate

terms, nigger and kike. "They're weak, they're misfits, they can't take it. They haven't got the moral fiber

to stick it out here; like babies, they want pleasure. They want candy and bottled pop. Comic books from

mama Health Resort."

On his face was an expression of great bitterness. The bitterness was like a solvent that had eaten

through the wasted folds of flesh, exposing the bone. Allen had never seen Marvis so weary and

discouraged.

"Well," Mrs. Frost said, also noticing, "we don't want them anyway. It's better they should go over."

"I sometimes wonder what they do with all those people," Allen said. Nobody had accurate figures on

the number of renegades who had fled to the Resort; because of the onus, the relatives preferred to state

that the missing individual had gone to the colonies. Colonists were, after all, only failures; a noose was a

voluntary expatriate who had declared himself an enemy of moral civilization.

"I've heard," Mrs. Frost said conversationally, "that incoming supplicants are set to work in vast

slave-labor camps. Or was that the Communists who did that?"

"Both," Allen said. "And with the revenue, the Resort is building a vast empire in outer space to

dominate the universe. Huge robot armies, too. Women supplicants are—" He concluded briefly: "Ill-used."

At the tiller of the Getabout, Ralf Hadler said suddenly: "Mrs. Frost, there's a car behind us trying to

pass. What'll I do?"

"Let it pass." They all looked around. A Getabout, like their own, but with the sticker of the Pure Food

and Drug League, was nosing its way to their left side. Hadler had gone white at this unforseen dilemma,

and their Getabout was veering witlessly.

"Pull over and stop," Allen told him.

"Speed up," Mavis said, turning in his seat and peering defiantly through the rear window. "They don't

own this lane."

The Pure Food and Drug League Getabout continued to advance on them, equally uncertain of itself.

As Hadler dribbled toward the right, it abruptly seized what seemed to be its chance and shot forward.

Hadler then let his tiller slide between his hands, and two fenders scraped shatteringly.

Mavis, trembling, crept from their stopped Getabout. Mrs. Frost followed him, and Allen and young

Hadler got out on the other side. The Pure Food and Drug League car idled its motor, and the driver—alone

inside—gaped out at them. He was a middle-aged gentleman, obviously at the end of a long day at the

office.

"Maybe we could back," Mrs. Frost said, holding her manila folder aimlessly. Mavis, reduced to

impotence, wandered around the two Getabouts and poked here and there with his toe. Hadler stood like

iron, betraying no feeling.

The fenders had combined, and one car would have to be jacked up. Allen inspected the damage, noted

the angle at which the two metals had met, and then gave up. "They have tow trucks," he said to Mrs.

Frost. "Have Ralf call the Transportation Pool." He looked around him; they were not far from the

Committee building. "We can walk from here."

Without protest, Mrs. Frost started off, and he followed.

"What about me?" Mavis demanded, hurrying a few steps.

"You can stay with the car," Mrs. Frost said. Hadler had already strode toward a building and phone

booth; Mavis was alone with the gentleman from the Pure Food and Drug League. "Tell the police what

happened."

A cop, on foot, was walking over. Not far behind him came a juvenile, attracted by the convocation of

people.

"This embarrassing is," Mrs. Frost said presently, as the two of them walked toward the Committee

building.

"I suppose Ralf will go up before his block warden." The picture of Mrs. Birmingham entered his mind,

the coyly sweet malevolence of the creature situated behind her table, dealing out trouble.

Mrs. Frost said: "The Cohorts have their own inquiry setup." As they reached the front entrance of the

building, she said thoughtfully: "Mavis is completely burned out. He can't cope with any situation. He makes

no decisions. Hasn't for months."

Allen didn't comment. It wasn't his place.

"Maybe it's just as well," Mrs. Frost said. "Leaving him back there. I'd rather see Mrs. Hoyt without

him trailing along."

This was the first he had heard that they were meeting with Ida Pease Hoyt. Halting, he said: "Maybe

you should explain what you're going to do."

"I believe you know what I'm going to do," she said, continuing on.

And he did.

allen purcell returned home to his one-room apartment at the hour of nine-thirty p.m. Janet met him at

the door.

"Did you eat?" she asked. "You didn't."

"No," he admitted, entering the room.

"I'll fix you something." She set back the wall tape and restored the kitchen, which had departed at

eight. In a few minutes, "Alaskan salmon" was baking in the oven, and the near-authentic odor drifted

through the room. Janet put on an apron and began setting the table.

Throwing himself down on a chair, Allen opened the evening paper. But he was too tired to read; he

changed his mind and pushed the paper away. The meeting with Ida Pease Hoyt and Sue Frost had lasted

three hours. It had been gruelling.

"Do you want to tell me what happened?" Janet asked.

"Later." He fooled with a sugar cube at the table. "How was the Book Club? Sir Walter Scott written

anything good lately?"

"Not a thing," she said shortly, responding to the tone of his voice.

"You believe Charles Dickens is here to stay?"

She turned from the stove. "Something happened and I want to know what it is."

Her concern made him relent. "The Agency was not exposed as a vice den."

"You said on the phone you went to T-M. And you said something terrible happened at the Agency."

"I fired Fred Luddy, if you call that terrible. When'll the 'salmon' be ready?"

"Soon. Five minutes."

Allen said: "Ida Pease Hoyt offered me Mavis' job. Director of Telemedia. Sue Frost did all the

talking."

For a moment Janet stood at the stove and then she began to cry.

"Why the heck are you crying?" Allen demanded.

Between sobs she choked: "I don't know. I'm scared."

He went on fooling with the sugar cube. Now it had broken in half, so he flattened the halves to grains.

"It wasn't much of a surprise. The post is always filled from the Agencies, and Mavis has been washed up

for months. Eight years is a long time to be responsible for everybody's morality."

"Yes, you—said—he should retire." She blew her nose and rubbed her eyes. "Last year you told me

that."

"Trouble is, he really wants to do the job."

"Does he know?"

"Sue Frost told him. He finished up the meeting. The four of us sat around drinking coffee and settling

it." "Then it is settled?"

Thinking of the look on Mavis' face when he left the meeting, Allen said: "No. Not completely. Mavis

resigned; his paper is in, and Sue's statement has gone out. The routine protocol. Years of devoted service,

faithful adherence to the Principles of Moral Reclamation. I talked to him briefly in the hall afterward."

Actually, he had walked a quarter mile with Mavis, from the Committee building to Mavis' apartment. "He's

got a piece of planet in the Sirius System. They're great on cattle. According to Mavis, you can't distinguish

the taste and texture from the domestic herds."

Janet said: "What's undecided?"

"Maybe I won't take it."

"Why not?"

"I want to be alive eight years from now. I don't want to be retiring to some God-forsaken rustic

backwater ten light years away."

Pushing her handkerchief into her breast pocket, Janet bent to turn off the oven. "Once, when we were

setting up the Agency, we talked about this. We were very frank."

"What did we decide?" He remembered what they had decided. They decided to decide when the time

came, because it might very well never come. And anyhow Janet was too busy worrying about the

imminent collapse of the Agency. "This is all so useless. We're acting as if the job is some sort of plum. It's

not a plum and it never was. Nobody ever pretended it was. Why did Mavis take it? Because it seemed like

the moral thing to do."

"Public service," Janet said faintly.

"The moral responsibility to serve. To take on the burden on civic life. The highest form of

self-sacrifice, the omphalos of this whole—" He broke off.

"Rat race," Janet said. "Well, there'll be a little more money. Or does it pay less? I guess that isn't

important."

Allen said: "My family has climbed a long way. I've done some climbing, too. This is what it's for; this is

the goal. I'd like a buck for every packet I've done on the subject."

The packet Sue Frost had returned, in fact. The parable about the tree that died.

The tree had died in isolation, and perhaps the Morec of the packet was confused and obscure. But to

him it came over clearly enough: a man was primarily responsible to his fellows, and it was with his fellows

that he made his life.

"There're two men," he said. "Squatting in the ruins, off in Hokkaido. That place is contaminated.

Everything's dead, there. They have one future; they're waiting for it. Gates and Sugermann would rather

be dead than come back here. If they came back here they'd have to become social beings; they'd have to

sacrifice some part of their ineffable selves. And that is certainly an awful thing."

"That's not the only reason why they're out there," Janet said, in a voice so low that he could barely

hear her. "I guess you've forgotten. I've been there, too. You took me with you, one time. When we were

first married. I wanted to see."

He remembered. But it didn't seem important. "Probably it's a protest of some sort. They have some

point they want to make, camping there in the ruins."

"They're giving up their lives."

"That doesn't take any effort. And somebody can always save them with quick-freeze."

"But in dying they make an important point. Don't you think so? Maybe not." She reflected. "Myron

Mavis made a point, too. Not a very different point. And you must see something in what Gates and

Sugermann are doing; you keep going out there again and again. You were there last night."

He nodded. "I was."

"What did Mrs. Birmingham say?"

Without particular emotion he answered: "A juvenile saw me, and I'm down for Wednesday's block

meeting."

"Because you went there? They never reported it before."

"Maybe they never saw me before."

"Do you know about afterward? Did the juvenile see that?" "Let's hope not," he said. "It's in the paper."

He snatched up the paper. It was in the paper, and it was on page one. The headlines were large.

STREITER STATUE DESECRATED

VANDALS IN PARK

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THEMANWHOJAPEDPhilipK.Dickv.3.0-fixedformatting,brokenparagraphs;byperagwinnFLAWINAFANATICFUTUREWarandfamineonearthhadbeenabolishedbyMoralReclamation,andnowpeaceandprosperitywerecompulsory.AndtheMorecblockcommittees,robotpeeping-Toms,andyouthfulgoonsquadsmadesureeverybody"enjoyed"it.ItwasAllenPurcel...

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Philip K. Dick - The Man Who Japed

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