Philip K. Dick - Complete Stories 1 - The Short Happy Life o

The Complete Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol. 1

The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford and Other Stories

by Philip K Dick

eVersion 4.0 / Scan Notes at EOF

Contents

STABILITY

ROOG

THE LITTLE MOVEMENT

BEYOND LIES THE WUB

THE GUN

THE SKULL

THE DEFENDERS

MR. SPACESHIP

PIPER IN THE WOODS

THE INFINITES

THE PRESERVING MACHINE

EXPENDABLE

THE VARIABLE MAN

THE INDEFATIGABLE FROG

THE CRYSTAL CRYPT

THE SHORT HAPPY LIFE OF THE BROWN OXFORD

The Builder

MEDDLER

Paycheck

The Great C

OUT IN THE GARDEN

THE KING OF THE ELVES

COLONY

PRIZE SHIP

NANNY

NOTES

Carol Publishing Group edition, 1999

Individual stories were copyrighted in their year of first publication.

For reasons of space this information has been placed in the back of this volume.

except by a newspaper or magazine reviewer who wishes to quote

brief passages in connection with a review.

A Citadel Twilight Book

Published by Carol Publishing Group

Citadel Twilight is a registered trademark of Carol Communications, Inc.

Editorial, sales and distribution, rights and permissions inquiries should be addressed to

Carol Publishing Group, 120 Enterprise Avenue, Secaucus, N.J. 07094

In Canada: Canadian Manda Group, One Atlantic Avenue, Suite 105, Toronto, Ontario M6K3E7

Carol Publishing Group books may be purchased in bulk at special discounts for sales promotions,

fund-raising, or educational purposes. Special editions can be created to specifications. For details,

contact Special Sales Department, Carol Publishing Group, 120 Enterprise Avenue, Secaucus, N.J. 07094

Manufactured in the United States of America

ISBN 0-8065-1153-2

15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 87-50155

IN MEMORY

OF PHILIP K. DICK

1928-1982

PREFACE

By Philip K. Dick

I will define science fiction, first, by saying what sf is not. It cannot be defined as "a story

(or novel or play) set in the future," since there exists such a thing as space adventure, which is

set in the future but is not sf: it is just that: adventures, fights and wars in the future in space

involving super-advanced technology. Why, then, is it not science fiction? It would seem to be,

and Doris Lessing (e.g.) supposes that it is. However, space adventure lacks the distinct new idea

that is the essential ingredient. Also, there can be science fiction set in the present: the alternate

world story or novel. So if we separate sf from the future and also from ultra-advanced

technology, what then do we have that can be called sf?

We have a fictitious world; that is the first step: it is a society that does not in fact exist,

but is predicated on our known society; that is, our known society acts as a jumping-off point for

it; the society advances out of our own in some way, perhaps orthogonally, as with the alternate

world story or novel. It is our world dislocated by some kind of mental effort on the part of the

author, our world transformed into that which it is not or not yet. This world must differ from the

given in at least one way, and this one way must be sufficient to give rise to events that could not

occur in our society -- or in any known society present or past. There must be a coherent idea

involved in this dislocation; that is, the dislocation must be a conceptual one, not merely a trivial

or bizarre one -- this is the essence of science fiction, the conceptual dislocation within the

society so that as a result a new society is generated in the author's mind, transferred to paper, and

from paper it occurs as a convulsive shock in the reader's mind, the shock of dysrecognition. He

knows that it is not his actual world that he is reading about.

Now, to separate science fiction from fantasy. This is impossible to do, and a moment's

thought will show why. Take psionics; take mutants such as we find in Ted Sturgeon's wonderful

MORE THAN HUMAN. If the reader believes that such mutants could exist, then he will view

Sturgeon's novel as science fiction. If, however, he believes that such mutants are, like wizards

and dragons, not possible, nor will ever be possible, then he is reading a fantasy novel. Fantasy

involves that which general opinion regards as impossible; science fiction involves that which

general opinion regards as possible under the right circumstances. This is in essence a judgment-

call, since what is possible and what is not possible is not objectively known but is, rather, a

subjective belief on the part of the author and of the reader.

Now to define good science fiction. The conceptual dislocation -- the new idea, in other

words -- must be truly new (or a new variation on an old one) and it must be intellectually

stimulating to the reader; it must invade his mind and wake it up to the possibility of something

he had not up to then thought of. Thus "good science fiction" is a value term, not an objective

thing, and yet, I think, there really is such a thing, objectively, as good science fiction.

I think Dr. Willis McNelly at the California State University at Fullerton put it best when

he said that the true protagonist of an sf story or novel is an idea and not a person. If it is good sf

the idea is new, it is stimulating, and, probably most important of all, it sets off a chain-reaction

of ramification-ideas in the mind of the reader; it so-to-speak unlocks the reader's mind so that

that mind, like the author's, begins to create. Thus sf is creative and it inspires creativity, which

mainstream fiction by-and-large does not do. We who read sf (I am speaking as a reader now, not

a writer) read it because we love to experience this chain-reaction of ideas being set off in our

minds by something we read, something with a new idea in it; hence the very best science fiction

ultimately winds up being a collaboration between author and reader, in which both create -- and

enjoy doing it: joy is the essential and final ingredient of science fiction, the joy of discovery of

newness.

(in a letter) May 14,1981

FOREWORD

By Steven Owen Godersky

There is a current coin-of-phrase that touts Philip K. Dick as the greatest science fiction

mind on any planet. Well, that and a trajectory to Lagrange-5 are hyperbolic. The returns simply

are not all in. The best is a tale that has yet to be written.

There are some things, though, that might make us feel a little more secure about Phil

Dick's contribution to this planet, not that his reputation needs any particular help today. The

scope, the integrity and the intellectual magnificence of Phil's work are internationally revered.

He is regarded by many as the most "serious" of the modern science fiction authors, and the

interest in his works has continued to mount since his untimely death in 1982. His reputation has

been further enhanced by a growing body of scholarly criticism. If we take a measured look at his

accomplishments there are three powerful themes that permeate almost every novel and story.

The first and most prominent theme today, can be seen in Phil's watershed work on the

question of what divides humanity from all the intricacies of its creations. This is part of the

central preoccupation of all consequential writers. But Phil rephrased the question What does it

mean to be human? to What is it like not to be human? He posed the problem intellectually, after

his fashion, but then he made us feel his answers. In the best and really highest tradition of Mary

Shelley he struck on empathy as the difference; in his own word, caritas. I do not have to be a

futurist to predict that both his search and his discovery will become ever more important to us as

we rush along the strange road that science calls progress.

Phil's second theme is one of perspective; what I have come to think of as the care and

feeding of scale-model gods. Though the arena of his ideas was so very large, what he trusted

was, he once wrote, "very small." In a literary era of superstars and superheroes Phil reminds us

that our aspirations and abilities are not so different from, and not less important than, those of

the great and powerful.

Think of Tung Chien in Faith of Our Fathers, and Ragel Gumm in Time Out of Joint.

Their prosaic drudgery proves central to the fate of their worlds. Recall Herb Ellis in Prominent

Author, an ordinary guy rewrites the Old Testament for inch-tall goatherds. Reflect on the

significance of Herb Sousa's gumballs in Holy Quarrel; on the moral influence of wub-fur, in

NotBy Its Cover, and the battle with the sentient pinball machine in Return Match. Small is

written large. Large is written small. Shop clerks and storekeepers are just as likely as warlords

and messiahs to be at Dick's ontological foci. Old Mrs. Berthelsen, in Captive Market, possesses

the ultimate secret of time and space, and uses it to sell vegetables out of a wagon.

When reading Dick you don't much see mile-long spaceships flaming into the sun. What

you do see is one broken-down robot in a ditch. Or, more frightening, one butterfly trapped in a

time warp. In Phil Dick's stories, we see that everything, human or otherwise, is connected,

everyone is important; what causes pain to one causes pain to all. As John Brunner points out, it

certainly caused pain to Phil himself.

Phil Dick's third major theme is his fascination with war and his fear and hatred of it. One

hardly sees critical mention of it, yet it is as integral to his body of work as oxygen is to water.

Perhaps Dick, who began his writing career in Berkeley, California, absorbed the

sensibilities of a town that had a carefully nurtured liberal commitment. Perhaps Joe McCarthy

and the Korean War sensitized a beginning writer's imagination. We know little of his juvenile

years during the Second World War. But we can identify, early and consistently, a mistrust of the

military mentality, a fear of what he had seen of the total war machine on either side. He had a

great disinclination to accept the slogans of the period that supported the ends over the means.

Victory at all cost for Democracy, for Freedom, for the Flag are hollow aphorisms when the price

of victory is totalitarian submission to a heartless military bureaucracy: Phil feared this particular

future for all of us.

From Phil's earliest stories, The Defenders, The Variable Man, A Surface Raid and To

Serve the Master, to his later fiction, such as Faith of Our Fathers, and The Exit Door Leads In,

the winners and the losers show their humanity largely in their rejection of warfare and

aggression. For Dick, the only acceptable struggle was against the evil he recognized as "the

forces of dissolution." Phil Dick was anti-military long before it became fashionable in the

Sixties. He continued, through his whole career, to value humanity and its foibles, no matter how

small and vulnerable, over the organized terror of the modern state, no matter how expedient.

So here it is; a look into an eclectic and vigorous mind. This indispensable collection of

Phil Dick's less than novel-length fiction may disturb you. It may frighten you, because some of

Phil's people live very close to home. But these stories will not leave you unchanged. A strange

wind may blow through your door late at night, and the shadows of familiar objects may quiver

in the light. Is some Palmer Eldritch figure hurrying now to approach our world? Even if you're

not a pre-cog, don't say you weren't warned.

INTRODUCTION

By Roger Zelazny

When I was approached to write this introduction I declined. It had nothing to do with my

attitude toward Phil Dick's work. It was, rather, because I felt that I had already said everything I

had to say on the subject. It was then pointed out to me that I had said these things in a variety of

different places. Even if I had nothing to add, a judicious rehashing in a place such as this might

do a service for readers who, in all likelihood, hadn't seen or heard it all before.

So I thought about it. I also looked at some of the things I had written earlier. What might

be worth repeating, what worth adding, after this time? I had only met Phil on a few occasions, in

California and in France; and it had almost been by accident that we had once fallen into

collaborating on a book. During our collaboration we had exchanged letters and spoken often on

the telephone. I liked him and I was very impressed by his work. His sense of humor generally

came through in our phone conversations. I remember once when he mentioned some royalty

statements he'd just received. He'd said, "I've gotten so-and-so many hundred in France, so-and-

so many hundred in Germany, so-and-so many hundred in Spain. . . . Gee! this sounds like the

catalog aria from Don Giovanni!" It was always a more immediate form of verbal wit than the

cosmic ironies he played with in his fiction.

I'd said something about his humor before. I'd also remarked on the games he played with

consensus reality. I'd even generalized a bit about his characters. But why paraphrase when after

all these years I've finally found a legitimate reason for quoting myself?

These characters are often victims, prisoners, manipulated men and women. It is

generally doubtful whether they will leave the world with less evil in it than they found there. But

you never know. They try. They are usually at bat in the last half of the ninth inning with the tying

run on base, two men out, two strikes and three balls riding, with the game being called on

account of rain at any second. But then, what is rain? Or a ballpark?

The worlds through which Phil Dick's characters move are subject to cancellation or

revision without notice. Reality is approximately as dependable as a politician's promise.

Whether it is a drug, a time-warp, a machine or an alien entity responsible for the bewildering

shifting of situations about his people, the result is the same: Reality, of the capital "R" variety,

has become as relative a thing as the dryness of our respective Martinis. Yet the struggle goes

on, the fight continues. Against what? Ultimately, Powers, Principalities, Thrones, and

Dominations, often contained in hosts who are themselves victims, prisoners, manipulated men

and women.

All of which sounds like grimly serious fare. Wrong. Strike the "grimly," add a comma and

the following: but one of the marks of Phil Dick's mastery lies in the tone of his work. He is

possessed of a sense of humor for which I am unable to locate an appropriate adjective. Wry,

grotesque, slapstick, satirical, ironic. . . . None of them quite fits to the point of generality, though

all may be found without looking too far. His characters take pratfalls at the most serious

moments; pathetic irony may invade the most comic scene. It is a rare and estimable quality to

direct such a show successfully.

I'd said that in PHILIP K. DICK: ELECTRIC SHEPHERD (edited by Bruce Gillespie,

Norstrilia Press, 1975), and I still agree with it.

It is good now to see that Phil is finally getting some of the attention he deserved, both

critically and at the popular level. My main regret is that it comes so late. He was often broke

when I knew him, past the struggling author age but still struggling to make ends meet. I was

heartened that for his last year or so he finally enjoyed financial security and even a measure of

affluence. The last time I saw him he actually seemed happy and looked a bit relaxed. This was

back when Bladerunner was being filmed, and we spent dinner and a long evening just talking,

joking, reminiscing.

Much has been made of his later mysticism. I can't speak with firsthand knowledge of

everything he might have believed, partly because it seemed to keep changing and partly because

it was often difficult to know when he was kidding and when he was serious. My main

impression from a number of conversations, though, was that he played at theology the way other

people might play at chess problems, that he liked asking the classic science fiction writer's

question -- "What if?" -- of anything he came across in the way of religious and philosophical

notions. It was obviously a dimension of his work, and I've often wondered where another ten

years would have taken his thinking. Impossible to guess now, really.

I recall that, like James Blish, he was fascinated by the problem of evil, and its

juxtaposition with the sometime sweetness of life. I'm sure he wouldn't mind my quoting from the

last letter I received from him (dated 10 April 1981):

Two items were presented to me for my inspection within a period of fifteen minutes: first,

a copy of WIND IN THE WILLOWS, which I had never read. . . . A moment after I looked it over

someone showed me a two-page photograph in the current Time of the attempted assassination

of the President. There the wounded, there the Secret Service man with the Uzi machine gun,

there all of them on the assassin. My brain had to try to correlate WIND IN THE WILLOWS and

that photograph. It could not. It never will be able to. I brought the Grahame book home and sat

reading it while they tried to get the Columbia to lift off, in vain, as you know. This morning when

I woke up I could not think at all; not even weird thoughts, such as assail one upon rising -- no

thoughts, just a blank. As if my own computers had, in my brain, ceased speaking to one

another, like at the Cape. It is hard to believe that the scene of the attempted assassination and

WIND IN THE WILLOWS are part of the same universe. Surely one of them is not real. Mr. Toad

sculling a little boat down the stream, and the man with the Uzi. . . . It is futile to try to make the

universe add up. But I guess we must go on anyhow.

I felt at the time I received it that that tension, that moral bafflement, was a capsule

version of a feeling which informed much of his writing. It is not a thing that was ever actually

resolved for him; he seemed too sophisticated to trust any pat answer. He'd said a lot of things in

a lot of places over the years, but the statement I most remember, which most fits the man I used

to talk with, is one I quoted in my foreword to Greg Rickman's first interview volume, PHILIP K.

DICK: IN HIS OWN WORDS (Fragments West/Valentine Press, 1984). It was from a 1970 letter

Phil had written to SF Commentary:

I know only one thing about my novels. In them, again and again, this minor man asserts

himself in all his hasty, sweaty strength. In the ruins of Earth's cities he is busily constructing a

little factory that turns out cigars or imitation artifacts that say, "Welcome to Miami, the pleasure

center of the world." In A. Lincoln, Simulacrum he operates a little business that produces corny

electronic organs -- and, later on, human-like robots which ultimately become more of an

irritation than a threat. Everything is on a small scale. Collapse is enormous; the positive little

figure outlined against the universal rubble is, like Tagomi, Runciter, Molinari, gnat-sized in

scope, finite in what he can do. . . and yet in some sense great. I really do not know why. I

simply believe in him and I love him. He will prevail. There is nothing else. At least nothing else

that matters. That we should be concerned about. Because if he is there, like a tiny father-figure,

everything is all right.

Some reviewers have found "bitterness" in my writing. I am surprised, because my mood

is one of trust. Perhaps they are bothered by the fact that what I trust is so very small. They want

something vaster. I have news for them: there is nothing vaster. Nothing more, I should say. But

really, how much do we have to have? Isn't Mr. Tagomi enough? I know it counts. I am satisfied.

I suppose I've recalled it twice now because I like to think of that small element of trust,

of idealism, in Phil's writings. Perhaps I'm imposing a construction, though, in doing this. He was

a complex person, and I've a feeling he left a lot of different people with a lot of different

impressions. This in mind, the best I can render of the man I knew and liked -- mostly at long -

distance -- is obviously only a crude sketch, but it's the best I have to show. And since much of

this piece is self-plagiarism, I feel no guilt in closing with something else I've said before:

The subjective response. . . when a Philip Dick book has been finished and put aside is

that, upon reflection, it does not seem so much that one holds the memory of a story; rather, it is

the after effects of a poem rich in metaphor that seem to remain.

This I value, partly because it does defy a full mapping, but mainly because that which is

left of a Phil Dick story when the details have been forgotten is a thing which comes to me at odd

times and offers me a feeling or a thought; therefore, a thing which leaves me richer for having

known it.

It is gratifying to know that he is being acclaimed and remembered with fetidness in many

places. I believe it will last. I wish it had come a lot sooner.

Roger Zelazny

October, 1986

STABILITY

ROBERT BENTON slowly spread his wings, flapped them several times and sailed

majestically off the roof and into the darkness.

He was swallowed up by the night at once. Beneath him, hundreds of tiny dots of light

betokened other roofs, from which other persons flew. A violet hue swam close to him, then

vanished into the black. But Benton was in a different sort of mood, and the idea of night races

did not appeal to him. The violet hue came close again and waved invitingly. Benton declined,

swept upward into the higher air.

After a while he leveled off and allowed himself to coast on air currents that came up

from the city beneath, the City of Lightness. A wonderful, exhilarating feeling swept through

him. He pounded his huge, white wings together, flung himself in frantic joy into the small

clouds that drifted past, dived at the invisible floor of the immense black bowl in which he flew,

and at last descended toward the lights of the city, his leisure time approaching an end.

Somewhere far down a light more bright than the others winked at him: the Control

Office. Aiming his body like an arrow, his white wings folded about him, he headed toward it.

Down he went, straight and perfect. Barely a hundred feet from the light he threw his wings out,

caught the firm air about him, and came gently to rest on a level roof.

Benton began to walk until a guide light came to life and he found his way to the entrance

door by its beam. The door slid back at the pressure of his fingertips and he stepped past it. At

once he began to descend, shooting downward at increasing speed. The small elevator suddenly

stopped and he strode out into the Controller's Main Office.

"Hello," the Controller said, "take off your wings and sit down."

Benton did so, folding them neatly and hanging them from one of a row of small hooks

along the wall. He selected the best chair in sight and headed toward it.

"Ah," the Controller smiled, "you value comfort."

"Well," Benton answered, "I don't want it to go to waste."

The Controller looked past his visitor and through the transparent plastic walls. Beyond

were the largest single rooms in the City of Lightness. They extended as far as his eyes could see,

and farther. Each was --

"What did you want to see me about?" Benton interrupted. The Controller coughed and

rattled some metal paper-sheets.

"As you know," he began, "Stability is the watchword. Civilization has been climbing for

centuries, especially since the twenty-fifth century. It is a law of nature, however, that civilization

must either go forward or fall backward; it cannot stand still."

"I know that," Benton said, puzzled. "I also know the multiplication table. Are you going

to recite that, too?"

The Controller ignored him.

"We have, however, broken that law. One hundred years ago --"

One hundred years ago! It hardly seemed as far back as that when Eric Freidenburg of the

States of Free Germany stood up in the International Council Chamber and announced to the

assembled delegates that mankind had at last reached its peak. Further progress forward was

impossible. In the last few years, only two major inventions has been filed. After that, they had all

watched the big graphs and charts, seen the lines going down and down, according to their

squares, until they dipped into nothing. The great well of human ingenuity had run dry, and then

Eric had stood up and said the thing everyone knew, but was afraid to say. Naturally, since it had

been made known in a formal fashion, the Council would have to begin work on the problem.

There were three ideas of solution. One of them seemed more humane than the other two.

This solution was eventually adopted. It was -- Stabilization!

There was great trouble at first when the people learned about it, and mass riots took place

in many leading cities. The stock market crashed, and the economy of many countries went out of

control. Food prices rose, and there was mass starvation. War broke out. . . for the first time in

three hundred years! But Stabilization had begun. Dissenters were destroyed, radicals were carted

off. It was hard and cruel but seemed to be the only answer. At last the world settled down to a

rigid state, a controlled state in which there could be no change, either backward or forward.

Each year every inhabitant took a difficult, week-long examination to test whether or not

he was backsliding. All youths were given fifteen years of intensive education. Those who could

not keep up with the others simply disappeared. Inventions were inspected by Control Offices to

make certain that they could not upset Stability. If it seemed that they might --

"And that is why we cannot allow your invention to be put into use," the Controller

explained to Benton. "I am sorry."

He watched Benton, saw him start, the blood drain from his face, his hands tremble.

"Come now," he said kindly, "don't take it so hard; there are other things to do. After all,

you are not in danger of the Cart!"

But Benton only stared. At last he said,

"But you don't understand: I have no invention. I don't know what you're talking about."

"No invention!" the Controller exclaimed. "But I was here the day you entered it yourself!

I saw you sign the statement of ownership! You handed me the model!"

He stared at Benton. Then he pressed a stud on his desk and said into a small circle of

light, "Send me up the information on number 34500-D, please."

A moment passed, and then a tube appeared in the circle of light. The Controller lifted the

cylindrical object out and passed it to Benton.

"You'll find your signed statement there," he said, "and it has your fingerprints in the print

squares. Only you could have made them."

Numbly, Benton opened the tube and took out the papers inside. He studied them a few

moments, and then slowly put them back and handed the tube to the Controller.

"Yes," he said, "that's my writing, and those are certainly my prints. But I don't

understand, I never invented a thing in my life, and I've never been here before! What is this

invention?"

"What is it!" the Controller echoed, amazed. "Don't you know?"

Benton shook his head. "No, I do not," he said slowly.

"Well, if you want to find out about it, you'll have to go down to the Offices. All I can tell

you is that the plans you sent us have been denied rights by the Control Board. I'm only a

spokesman. You'll have to take it up with them."

Benton got up and walked to the door. As with the other, this one sprang open to his touch

and he went on through into the Control Offices. As the door closed behind him the Controller

called angrily, "I don't know what you're up to, but you know the penalty for upsetting Stability!"

"I'm afraid Stability is already upset," Benton answered and went on.

The Offices were gigantic. He stared down from the catwalk on which he stood, for below

him a thousand men and women worked at whizzing, efficient machines. Into the machines they

were feeding reams of cards. Many of the people worked at desks, typing out sheets of

information, filling charts, putting cards away, decoding messages. On the walls stupendous

graphs were constantly being changed. The very air was alive with the vitalness of the work

being conducted, the hum of the machines, the tap-tap of the typewriters, and the mumble of

voices all merged together in a quiet, contented sound. And this vast machine, which cost

countless dollars a day to keep running so smoothly, had a word: Stability!

Here, the thing that kept their world together lived. This room, these hard working people,

the ruthless man who sorted cards into the pile marked "for extermination" were all functioning

together like a great symphony orchestra. One person off key, one person out of time, and the

entire structure would tremble. But no one faltered. No one stopped and failed at his task. Benton

walked down a flight of steps to the desk of the information clerk.

"Give me the entire information on an invention entered by Robert Benton, 34500-D," he

said. The clerk nodded and left the desk. In a few minutes he returned with a metal box.

"This contains the plans and a small working model of the invention," he stated. He put

the box on the desk and opened it. Benton stared at the contents. A small piece of intricate

machinery sat squatly in the center. Underneath was a thick pile of metal sheets with diagrams on

them. "Can I take this?" Benton asked.

"If you are the owner," the clerk replied. Benton showed his identification card, the clerk

studied it and compared it with the data on the invention. At last he nodded his approval, and

Benton closed the box, picked it up and quickly left the building via a side exit.

The side exit let him out on one of the larger underground streets, which was a riot of

lights and passing vehicles. He located his direction, and began to search for a communications

car to take him home. One came along and he boarded it. After he had been traveling for a few

minutes he began to carefully lift the lid of the box and peer inside at the strange model. "What

have you got there, sir?" the robot driver asked.

"I wish I knew," Benton said ruefully. Two winged flyers swooped by and waved at him,

danced in the air for a second and then vanished. "Oh, fowl," Benton murmured, "I forgot my

wings." Well, it was too late to go back and get them, the car was just then beginning to slow

down in front of his house. After paying the driver he went inside and locked the door, something

seldom done. The best place to observe the contents was in his "consideration" room, where he

spent his leisure time while not flying. There, among his books and magazines he could observe

the invention at ease.

The set of diagrams was a complete puzzle to him, and the model itself even more so. He

stared at it from all angles, from underneath, from above. He tried to interpret the technical

symbols of the diagrams, but all to no avail.

There was but one road now open to him. He sought out the "on" switch and clicked it.

For almost a minute nothing happened. Then the room about him began to waver and give

way. For a moment it shook like a quantity of jelly. It hung steady for an instant, and then

vanished.

He was falling through space like an endless tunnel, and he found himself twisting about

frantically, grasping into the blackness for something to take hold of. He fell for an interminable

time, helplessly, frightened. Then he had landed, completely unhurt. Although it had seemed so,

the fall could not have been very long. His metallic clothes were not even ruffled. He picked

himself up and looked about.

The place where he had arrived was strange to him. It was a field. . . such as he had

supposed no longer to exist. Waving acres of grain waved in abundance everywhere. Yet, he was

certain that in no place on earth did natural grain still grow. Yes, he was positive. He shielded his

eyes and gazed at the sun, but it looked the same as it always had. He began to walk.

After an hour the wheat fields ended, but with their end came a wide forest. He knew

from his studies that there were no forests left on earth. They had perished years before. Where

was he, then?

He began to walk again, this time more quickly. Then he started to run. Before him a

small hill rose and he raced to the top of it. Looking down the other side he stared in

bewilderment. There was nothing there but a great emptiness. The ground was completely level

and barren, there were no trees or any sign of life as far as his eyes could see, only the extensive

bleached out land of death.

He started down the other side of the hill toward the plain. It was hot and dry under his

feet, but he went forward anyway. He walked on, the ground began to hurt his feet --

unaccustomed to long walking -- and he grew tired. But he was determined to continue. Some

small whisper within his mind compelled him to maintain his pace without slowing down.

"Don't pick it up," a voice said.

"I will," he grated, half to himself, and stooped down.

Voice! From where! He turned quickly, but there was nothing to be seen. Yet the voice

had come to him and it had seemed -- for a moment -- as if it were perfectly natural for voices to

come from the air. He examined the thing he was about to pick up. It was a glass globe about as

big around as his fist.

"You will destroy your valuable Stability," the voice said.

"Nothing can destroy Stability," he answered automatically. The glass globe was cool and

nice against his palm. There was something inside, but heat from the glowing orb above him

made it dance before his eyes, and he could not tell exactly what it was.

"You are allowing your mind to be controlled by evil things," the voice said to him. "Put

the globe down and leave."

"Evil things?" he asked, surprised. It was hot, and he was beginning to feel thirsty. He

started to thrust the globe inside his tunic.

Philip K. Dick - Complete Stories 1 - The Short Happy Life o

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: