Dick,Philip K - Complete Stories 4 - The Minority Report an

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The Complete Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol. 4:

The Minority Report and Other Classic Stories

by Philip K. Dick

eVersion 4.0 / Scan Notes at EOF

Contents

Autofac

SERVICE CALL

CAPTIVE MARKET

THE MOLD OF YANCY

THE MINORITY REPORT

RECALL MECHANISM

THE UNRECONSTRUCTED M

EXPLORERS WE

WAR GAME

IF THERE WERE No BENNY CEMOLI

NOVELTY ACT

WATERSPIDER

WHAT THE DEAD MEN SAY

ORPHEUS WITH CLAY FEET

THE DAYS OF PERKY PAT

STAND-BY

WHAT'LL WE Do WITH RAGLAND PARK?

OH, TO BE A BLOBEL!

NOTES

"More than anyone else in the field, Mr. Dick really puts you inside people's minds." -

Wall Street Journal

Many thousands of readers worldwide consider Philip K. Dick to have been the greatest

science fiction writer on any planet. Since his untimely death in 1982, interest in Dick's work

has continued to mount and his reputation has been enhanced by a growing body of critical

attention. The Philip K. Dick Award is now presented annually to a distinguished work of science

fiction, and the Philip K. Dick Society is devoted to the study and promulgation of his works.

This collection includes all of the writer's earliest short and medium-length fiction

(including several previously unpublished stories) covering the years 1954-1964, and featuring

such fascinating tales as The Minority Report (the inspiration for Steven Spielberg's film),

Service Call, Stand By, The Days of Perky Pat, and many others. Here, readers will find Dick's

initial explorations of the themes he so brilliantly brought to life in his later work.

Dick won the prestigious Hugo Award for best novel of 1963 for The Man in the High Castle

and in the last year of his life, the now-classic film Blade Runner was made from his novel Do

Androids Dream Electric Sheep?

The classic stories of Philip K. Dick offer an intriguing glimpse into the early

imagination of one of science fiction's most enduring and respected names.

"A useful acquisition for any serious SF library or collection." -Kirkus Reviews

"Awe-inspiring." -The Washington Post

CITADEL PRESS BOOKS are published by

Kensington Publishing Corp. 850 Third Avenue New York, NY 10022

any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, excepting brief

quotes used in reviews.

The excerpt by Philip K. Dick that appears in the beginning of this volume is

from a collection of interviews with the author conducted by Paul Williams and

published in Only Apparently Real, Arbor House, 1986. Used with permission.

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All Kensington titles, imprints, and distributed lines are available at special

quantity discounts for bulk purchases for sales promotions, premiums, fund-raising,

educational, or institutional use. Special book excerpts or customized printings can

also be created to fit specific needs. For details, write or phone the office of the

Kensington special sales manager: Kensington Publishing Corp., 850 Third Avenue,

New York, NY 10022, attn: Special Sales Department.

Citadel Press and the Citadel Logo are trademarks of Kensington Publishing Corp.

First Kensington printing: May 2002

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Printed in the United States of America

Cataloging data may be obtained from the Library of Congress.

ISBN 0-8065-2379-4

INTRODUCTION

By James Tiptree, Jr.

How do you KNOW YOU'RE READING PHILIP K. DICK?

I think, first and pervasively, it was the strangeness. Strange, Dick was and is. I think

it was that which kept me combing the SF catalogs for more by him, waiting for each new book to

come out. One hears it said, "X just doesn't think like other people." About Dick, it was true. In

the stories, you can't tell what's going to happen next.

And yet his characters are seemingly designed to be ordinary people -- except for the

occasional screaming psychotic female who is one of Dick's specialties, and is always treated with

love. They are ordinary people caught up in wildly bizarre situations, running a police force with

the help of the mumblings of precognitive idiots, facing a self-replicating factory that has taken

over the earth. Indeed, one of the factors in the strangeness is the care Dick takes to set his

characters in the world of reality, an aspect most other writers ignore.

In how many other science fiction stories do you know what the hero does for a living when

he isn't caught up in the particular plot? Oh, he may be a member of a space crew, or, vaguely, a

scientist. Or Young Werther. In Dick, you are introduced to the hero's business concerns on page

one. That's not literally true of the short stories in this volume (I went back and checked), but

the impression of the pervasiveness of "grubby" business concerns is everywhere, especially in the

novels. The hero is in the antique business, say; as each new marvel turns up, he ruminates as to

whether it is saleable. When the dead talk, they offer business advice. Dick never sheds his

concern that we know how his characters earn their bread and butter. It is a part of the peculiar

"grittiness" of Dick's style.

Another part of the grittiness is the jerkiness of the dialog. I can never decide whether

Dick's dialog is purely unreal, or more real than most. His people do not interact as much as they

deliver monologs to carry on the plot, or increase the reader's awareness of a situation.

And the situations are purely Dick. His "plots" are like nothing else in SF. If Dick

writes a time-travel story, say, it will have a twist on it that makes it sui generis. Quite

typically, the central gee-whiz marvel will not be centered, but will come at you obliquely, in

the course, for instance, of a political election.

And any relation between Dick and a nuts-and-bolts SF writer is a pure coincidence. In my

more sanguine moments, I concede that he probably knows what happens when you plug in a lamp and

turn it on, but beyond that there is little evidence of either technology or science. His science,

such as it is, is all engaged in the technology of the soul, with a smattering of abnormal

psychology.

So far I have perhaps emphasized his oddities at the expense of his merits. What keeps you

reading Dick? Well, for one thing, the strangeness, as I said, but within it there is always the

atmosphere of striving, of men desperately trying to get some necessary job done, or striving at

least to understand what is striking at them. A large percentage of Dick's heroes are tortured

men; Dick is expert at the machinery of despair.

And another beauty is the desolations. When Dick gives you a desolation, say after the

bomb, it is a desolation unique of its kind. There is one such in this book. But amid the

desolation you often find another of Dick's characteristic touches, the little animals.

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The little animals are frequently mutants, or small robots who have taken on life. They

are unexplained, simply noted by another character in passing. And what are they doing? They are

striving, too. A freezing sparrow hugs a rag around itself, a mutant rat plans a construction,

"peering and planning." This sense of the ongoing busy-ness of life, however doomed, of a

landscape in which every element has its own life, is trying to live, is typically and profoundly

Dick. It carries the quality of compassion amid the hard edges and the grit, the compassion one

suspects in Dick, but that never appears frontally. It is this quality of love, always quickly

suppressed, that gleams across Dick's rubbled plains and makes them unique and memorable.

James Tiptree, Jr.

December, 1986

I used to believe the universe was basically hostile. And that I was misplaced in it, I

was different from it. . . fashioned in some other universe and placed here, you see. So that it

zigged while I zagged. And that it had singled me out only because there was something weird about

me. I didn't really groove with the universe.

I had a lot of fears that the universe would discover just how different I was from it. My

only suspicion about it was that it would find out the truth about me, and its reaction would be

perfectly normal: it would get me. I didn't feel that it was malevolent, just perceptive. And

there's nothing worse that a perceptive universe if there's something weird about you.

But this year I realized that that's not true. That the universe is perceptive, but it's

friendly. . . I just don't feel that I'm different from the universe anymore.

- Philip K. Dick in an interview, 1974.

(from ONLY APPARENTLY REAL)

Autofac

I

Tension hung over the three waiting men. They smoked, paced back and forth, kicked

aimlessly at weeds growing by the side of the road. A hot noonday sun glared down on brown fields,

rows of neat plastic houses, the distant line of mountains to the west.

"Almost time," Earl Ferine said, knotting his skinny hands together. "It varies according

to the load, a half second for every additional pound."

Bitterly, Morrison answered, "You've got it plotted? You're as bad as it is. Let's pretend

it just happens to be late."

The third man said nothing. O'Neill was visiting from another settlement; he didn't know

Ferine and Morrison well enough to argue with them. Instead, he crouched down and arranged the

papers clipped to his aluminum check-board. In the blazing sun, O'Neill's arms were tanned, furry,

glistening with sweat. Wiry, with tangled gray hair, horn-rimmed glasses, he was older than the

other two. He wore slacks, a sports shirt and crepe-soled shoes. Between his fingers, his fountain

pen glittered, metallic and efficient.

"What're you writing?" Ferine grumbled.

"I'm laying out the procedure we're going to employ," O'Neill said mildly. "Better to

systemize it now, instead of trying at random. We want to know what we tried and what didn't work.

Otherwise we'll go around in a circle. The problem we have here is one of communication; that's

how I see it."

"Communication," Morrison agreed in his deep, chesty voice. "Yes, we can't get in touch

with the damn thing. It comes, leaves off its load and goes on -- there's no contact between us

and it."

"It's a machine," Ferine said excitedly. "It's dead -- blind and deaf."

"But it's in contact with the outside world," O'Neill pointed out. "There has to be some

way to get to it. Specific semantic signals are meaningful to it; all we have to do is find those

signals. Rediscover, actually. Maybe half a dozen out of a billion possibilities."

A low rumble interrupted the three men. They glanced up, wary and alert. The time had

come.

"Here it is," Ferine said. "Okay, wise guy, let's see you make one single change in its

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routine."

The truck was massive, rumbling under its tightly packed load. In many ways, it resembled

conventional human-operated transportation vehicles, but with one exception -- there was no

driver's cabin. The horizontal surface was a loading stage, and the part that would normally be

the headlights and radiator grill was a fibrous spongelike mass of receptors, the limited sensory

apparatus of this mobile utility extension.

Aware of the three men, the truck slowed to a halt, shifted gears and pulled on its

emergency brake. A moment passed as relays moved into action; then a portion of the loading

surface tilted and a cascade of heavy cartons spilled down onto the roadway. With the objects

fluttered a detailed inventory sheet.

"You know what to do," O'Neill said rapidly. "Hurry up, before it gets out of here."

Expertly, grimly, the three men grabbed up the deposited cartons and ripped the protective

wrappers from them. Objects gleamed: a binocular microscope, a portable radio, heaps of plastic

dishes, medical supplies, razor blades, clothing, food. Most of the shipment, as usual, was food.

The three men systematically began smashing objects. In a few minutes, there was nothing but a

chaos of debris littered around them.

"That's that," O'Neill panted, stepping back. He fumbled for his check-sheet. "Now let's

see what it does."

The truck had begun to move away; abruptly it stopped and backed toward them. Its

receptors had taken in the fact that the three men had demolished the dropped-off portion of the

load. It spun in a grinding half circle and came around to face its receptor bank in their

direction. Up went its antenna; it had begun communicating with the factory. Instructions were on

the way.

A second, identical load was tilted and shoved off the truck.

"We failed," Ferine groaned as a duplicate inventory sheet fluttered after the new load.

"We destroyed all that stuff for nothing."

"What now?" Morrison asked O'Neill. "What's the next strategem on our board?"

"Give me a hand." O'Neill grabbed up a carton and lugged it back to the truck. Sliding the

carton onto the platform, he turned for another. The other two men followed clumsily after him.

They put the load back onto the truck. As the truck started forward, the last square box was again

in place.

The truck hesitated. Its receptors registered the return of its load. From within its

works came a low sustained buzzing.

"This may drive it crazy," O'Neill commented, sweating. "It went through its operation and

accomplished nothing."

The truck made a short, abortive move toward going on. Then it swung purposefully around

and, in a blur of speed, again dumped the load onto the road.

"Get them!" O'Neill yelled. The three men grabbed up the cartons and feverishly reloaded

them. But as fast as the cartons were shoved back on the horizontal stage, the truck's grapples

tilted them down its far-side ramps and onto the road.

"No use," Morrison said, breathing hard. "Water through a sieve."

"We're licked," Ferine gasped in wretched agreement, "like always. We humans lose every

time."

The truck regarded them calmly, its receptors blank and impassive. It was doing its job.

The planetwide network of automatic factories was smoothly performing the task imposed on it five

years before, in the early days of the Total Global Conflict.

"There it goes," Morrison observed dismally. The truck's antenna had come down; it shifted

into low gear and released its parking brake.

"One last try," O'Neill said. He swept up one off the cartons and ripped it open. From it

he dragged a ten-gallon milk tank and unscrewed the lid. "Silly as it seems."

"This is absurd," Ferine protested. Reluctantly, he found a cup among the littered debris

and dipped it into the milk. "A kid's game!"

The truck has paused to observe them.

"Do it," O'Neill ordered sharply. "Exactly the way we practiced it."

The three of them drank quickly from the milk tank, visibly allowing the milk to spill

down their chins; there had to be no mistaking what they were doing.

As planned, O'Neill was the first. His face twisting in revulsion, he hurled the cup away

and violently spat the milk into the road.

"God's sake!" he choked.

The other two did the same; stamping and loudly cursing, they kicked over the milk tank

and glared accusingly at the truck.

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"It's no good!" Morrison roared.

Curious, the truck came slowly back. Electronic synapses clicked and whirred, responding

to the situation; its antenna shot up like a flagpole.

"I think this is it," O'Neill said, trembling. As the truck watched, he dragged out a

second milk tank, unscrewed its lid and tasted the contents. "The same!" he shouted at the truck.

"It's just as bad!"

From the truck popped a metal cylinder. The cylinder dropped at Morrison's feet; he

quickly snatched it up and tore it open.

STATE NATURE OF DEFECT

The instruction sheets listed rows of possible defects, with neat boxes by each; a punch-

stick was included to indicate the particular deficiency of the product.

"What'll I check?" Morrison asked. "Contaminated? Bacterial? Sour? Rancid? Incorrectly

labeled? Broken? Crushed? Cracked? Bent? Soiled?"

Thinking rapidly, O'Neill said, "Don't check any of them. The factory's undoubtedly ready

to test and resample. It'll make its own analysis and then ignore us." His face glowed as frantic

inspiration came. "Write in that blank at the bottom. It's an open space for further data."

"Write what?"

O'Neill said, "Write: the product is thoroughly pizzled."

"What's that?" Ferine demanded, baffled.

"Write it! It's a semantic garble -- the factory won't be able to understand it. Maybe we

can jam the works."

With O'Neill's pen, Morrison carefully wrote that the milk was pizzled. Shaking his head,

he resealed the cylinder and returned it to the truck. The truck swept up the milk tanks and

slammed its railing tidily into place. With a shriek of tires, it hurtled off. From its slot, a

final cylinder bounced; the truck hurriedly departed, leaving the cylinder lying in the dust.

O'Neill got it open and held up the paper for the others to see.

A FACTORY REPRESENTATIVE

WILL BE SENT OUT.

BE PREPARED TO SUPPLY COMPLETE DATA

ON PRODUCT DEFICIENCY.

For a moment, the three men were silent. Then Ferine began to giggle. "We did it. We

contacted it. We got across."

"We sure did," O'Neill agreed. "It never heard of a product being pizzled."

Cut into the base of the mountains lay the vast metallic cube of the Kansas City factory.

Its surface was corroded, pitted with radiation pox, cracked and scarred from the five years of

war that had swept over it. Most of the factory was buried subsurface, only its entrance stages

visible. The truck was a speck rumbling at high speed toward the expanse of black metal. Presently

an opening formed in the uniform surface; the truck plunged into it and disappeared inside. The

entrance snapped shut.

"Now the big job remains," O'Neill said. "Now we have to persuade it to close down

operations -- to shut itself off."

II

Judith O'Neill served hot black coffee to the people sitting around the living room. Her

husband talked while the others listened. O'Neill was as close to being an authority on the

autofac system as could still be found.

In his own area, the Chicago region, he had shorted out the protective fence of the local

factory long enough to get away with data tapes stored in its posterior brain. The factory, of

course, had immediately reconstructed a better type offence. But he had shown that the factories

were not infallible.

"The Institute of Applied Cybernetics," O'Neill explained, "had complete control over the

network. Blame the war. Blame the big noise along the lines of communication that wiped out the

knowledge we need. In any case, the Institute failed to transmit its information to us, so we

can't transmit our information to the factories -- the news that the war is over and we're ready

to resume control of industrial operations."

"And meanwhile," Morrison added sourly, "the damn network expands and consumes more of our

natural resources all the time."

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"I get the feeling," Judith said, "that if I stamped hard enough, I'd fall right down into

a factory tunnel. They must have mines everywhere by now."

"Isn't there some limiting injunction?" Ferine asked nervously. "Were they set up to

expand indefinitely?"

"Each factory is limited to its own operational area," O'Neill said, "but the network

itself is unbounded. It can go on scooping up our resources forever. The Institute decided it gets

top priority; we mere people come second."

"Will there be anything left for us?" Morrison wanted to know.

"Not unless we can stop the network's operations. It's already used up half a dozen basic

minerals. Its search teams are out all the time, from every factory, looking everywhere for some

last scrap to drag home."

"What would happen if tunnels from two factories crossed each other?"

O'Neill shrugged. "Normally, that won't happen. Each factory has its own special section

of our planet, its own private cut of the pie for its exclusive use."

"But it could happen."

"Well, they're raw material-tropic; as long as there's anything left, they'll hunt it

down." O'Neill pondered the idea with growing interest. "It's something to consider. I suppose as

things get scarcer --"

He stopped talking. A figure had come into the room; it stood silently by the door,

surveying them all.

In the dull shadows, the figure looked almost human. For a brief moment, O'Neill thought

it was a settlement latecomer. Then, as it moved forward, he realized that it was only quasi-

human: a functional upright biped chassis, with data-receptors mounted at the top, effectors and

proprioceptors mounted in a downward worm that ended in floor-grippers. Its resemblance to a human

being was testimony to nature's efficiency; no sentimental imitation was intended.

The factory representative had arrived.

It began without preamble. "This is a data-collecting machine capable of communicating on

an oral basis. It contains both broadcasting and receiving apparatus and can integrate facts

relevant to its line of inquiry."

The voice was pleasant, confident. Obviously it was a tape, recorded by some Institute

technician before the war. Coming from the quasi-human shape, it sounded grotesque; O'Neill could

vividly imagine the dead young man whose cheerful voice now issued from the mechanical mouth of

this upright construction of steel and wiring.

"One word of caution," the pleasant voice continued. "It is fruitless to consider this

receptor human and to engage it in discussions for which it is not equipped. Although purposeful,

it is not capable of conceptual thought; it can only reassemble material already available to it."

The optimistic voice clicked out and a second voice came on. It resembled the first, but

now there were no intonations or personal mannerisms. The machine was utilizing the dead man's

phonetic speech-pattern for its own communication.

"Analysis of the rejected product," it stated, "shows no foreign elements or noticeable

deterioration. The product meets the continual testing-standards employed throughout the network.

Rejection is therefore on a basis outside the test area; standards not available to the network

are being employed."

"That's right," O'Neill agreed. Weighing his words with care, he continued, "We found the

milk substandard. We want nothing to do with it. We insist on more careful output."

The machine responded presently. "The semantic content of the term 'pizzled' is unfamiliar

to the network. It does not exist in the taped vocabulary. Can you present a factual analysis of

the milk in terms of specific elements present or absent?"

"No," O'Neill said warily; the game he was playing was intricate and dangerous. "

'Fizzled' is an overall term. It can't be reduced to chemical constituents."

"What does 'pizzled' signify?" the machine asked. "Can you define it in terms of alternate

semantic symbols?"

O'Neill hesitated. The representative had to be steered from its special inquiry to more

general regions, to the ultimate problem of closing down the network. If he could pry it open at

any point, get the theoretical discussion started. . .

" 'Pizzled,' " he stated, "means the condition of a product that is manufactured when no

need exists. It indicates the rejection of objects on the grounds that they are no longer wanted."

The representative said, "Network analysis shows a need of high-grade pasteurized milk-

substitute in this area. There is no alternate source; the network controls all the synthetic

mammary-type equipment in existence." It added, "Original taped instructions describe milk as an

essential to human diet."

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O'Neill was being outwitted; the machine was returning the discussion to the specific.

"We've decided," he said desperately, "that we don't want any more milk. We'd prefer to go without

it, at least until we can locate cows."

"That is contrary to the network tapes," the representative objected. "There are no cows.

All milk is produced synthetically."

"Then we'll produce it synthetically ourselves," Morrison broke in impatiently. "Why can't

we take over the machines? My God, we're not children! We can run our own lives!"

The factory representative moved toward the door. "Until such time as your community finds

other sources of milk supply, the network will continue to supply you. Analytical and evaluating

apparatus will remain in this area, conducting the customary random sampling."

Ferine shouted futilely, "How can we find other sources? You have the whole setup! You're

running the whole show!" Following after it, he bellowed, "You say we're not ready to run things --

you claim we're not capable. How do you know? You don't give us a chance! We'll never have a

chance!"

O'Neill was petrified. The machine was leaving; its one-track mind had completely

triumphed.

"Look," he said hoarsely, blocking its way. "We want you to shut down, understand. We want

to take over your equipment and run it ourselves. The war's over with. Damn it, you're not needed

anymore!"

The factory representative paused briefly at the door. "The inoperative cycle," it said,

"is not geared to begin until network production merely duplicates outside production. There is at

this time, according to our continual sampling, no outside production. Therefore network

production continues." Without warning, Morrison swung the steel pipe in his hand. It slashed

against the machine's shoulder and burst through the elaborate network of sensory apparatus that

made up its chest. The tank of receptors shattered; bits of glass, wiring and minute parts

showered everywhere.

"It's a paradox!" Morrison yelled. "A word game -- a semantic game they're pulling on us.

The Cyberneticists have it rigged." He raised the pipe and again brought it down savagely on the

unprotesting machine. "They've got us hamstrung. We're completely helpless."

The room was in uproar. "It's the only way," Ferine gasped as he pushed past O'Neill.

"We'll have to destroy them -- it's the network or us." Grabbing down a lamp, he hurled it in the

"face" of the factory representative. The lamp and the intricate surface of plastic burst; Ferine

waded in, groping blindly for the machine. Now all the people in the room were closing furiously

around the upright cylinder, their impotent resentment boiling over. The machine sank down and

disappeared as they dragged it to the floor.

Trembling, O'Neill turned away. His wife caught hold of his arm and led him to the side of

the room.

"The idiots," he said dejectedly. "They can't destroy it; they'll only teach it to build

more defenses. They're making the whole problem worse."

Into the living room rolled a network repair team. Expertly, the mechanical units detached

themselves from the half-track mother-bug and scurried toward the mound of struggling humans. They

slid between people and rapidly burrowed. A moment later, the inert carcass of the factory

representative was dragged into the hopper of the mother-bug. Parts were collected, torn remnants

gathered up and carried off. The plastic strut and gear was located. Then the units restationed

themselves on the bug and the team departed.

Through the open door came a second factory representative, an exact duplicate of the

first. And outside in the hall stood two more upright machines. The settlement had been combed at

random by a corps of representatives. Like a horde of ants, the mobile data-collecting machines

had filtered through the town until, by chance, one of them had come across O'Neill.

"Destruction of network mobile data-gathering equipment is detrimental to best human

interests," the factory representative informed the roomful of people. "Raw material intake is at

a dangerously low ebb; what basic materials still exist should be utilized in the manufacture of

consumer commodities."

O'Neill and the machine stood facing each other.

"Oh?" O'Neill said softly. "That's interesting. I wonder what you're lowest on -- and what

you'd really be willing to fight for."

Helicopter rotors whined tinnily above O'Neill's head; he ignored them and peered through

the cabin window at the ground not far below.

Slag and ruins stretched everywhere. Weeds poked their way up, sickly stalks among which

insects scuttled. Here and there, rat colonies were visible: matted hovels constructed of bone and

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rubble. Radiation had mutated the rats, along with most insects and animals. A little farther,

O'Neill identified a squadron of birds pursuing a ground squirrel. The squirrel dived into a

carefully prepared crack in the surface of slag and the birds turned, thwarted.

"You think we'll ever have it rebuilt?" Morrison asked. "It makes me sick to look at it."

"In time," O'Neill answered. "Assuming, of course, that we get industrial control back.

And assuming that anything remains to work with. At best, it'll be slow. We'll have to inch out

from the settlements."

To the right was a human colony, tattered scarecrows, gaunt and emaciated, living among

the ruins of what had once been a town. A few acres of barren soil had been cleared; drooping

vegetables wilted in the sun, chickens wandered listlessly here and there, and a fly-bothered

horse lay panting in the shade of a crude shed.

"Ruins-squatters," O'Neill said gloomily. "Too far from the network -- not tangent to any

of the factories."

"It's their own fault," Morrison told him angrily. "They could come into one of the

settlements."

"That was their town. They're trying to do what we 're trying to do -- build up things

again on their own. But they're starting now, without tools or machines, with their bare hands,

nailing together bits of rubble. And it won't work. We need machines. We can't repair ruins; we've

got to start industrial production."

Ahead lay a series of broken hills, chipped remains that had once been a ridge. Beyond

stretched out the titanic ugly sore of an H-bomb crater, half filled with stagnant water and

slime, a disease-ridden inland sea.

And beyond that -- a glitter of busy motion.

"There," O'Neill said tensely. He lowered the helicopter rapidly. "Can you tell which

factory they're from?"

"They all look alike to me," Morrison muttered, leaning over to see. "We'll have to wait

and follow them back, when they get a load."

"If they get a load," O'Neill corrected.

The autofac exploring crew ignored the helicopter buzzing overhead and concentrated on its

job. Ahead of the main truck scuttled two tractors; they made their way up mounds of rubble,

probes burgeoning like quills, shot down the far slope and disappeared into a blanket of ash that

lay spread over the slag. The two scouts burrowed until only their antennas were visible. They

burst up to the surface and scuttled on, their treads whirring and clanking.

"What are they after?" Morrison asked.

"God knows." O'Neill leafed intently through the papers on his clipboard. "We'll have to

analyze all our back-order slips."

Below them, the autofac exploring crew disappeared behind. The helicopter passed over a

deserted stretch of sand and slag on which nothing moved. A grove of scrub-brush appeared and

then, far to the right, a series of tiny moving dots.

A procession of automatic ore carts was racing over the bleak slag, a string of rapidly

moving metal trucks that followed one another nose to tail. O'Neill turned the helicopter toward

them and a few minutes later it hovered above the mine itself.

Masses of squat mining equipment had made their way to the operations. Shafts had been

sunk; empty carts waited in patient rows. A steady stream of loaded carts hurled toward the

horizon, dribbling ore after them. Activity and the noise of machines hung over the area, an

abrupt center of industry in the bleak wastes of slag.

"Here comes that exploring crew," Morrison observed, peering back the way they had come.

"You think maybe they'll tangle?" He grinned. "No, I guess it's too much to hope for."

"It is this time," O'Neill answered. "They're looking for different substances, probably.

And they're normally conditioned to ignore each other."

The first of the exploring bugs reached the line of ore carts. It veered slightly and

continued its search; the carts traveled in their inexorable line as if nothing had happened.

Disappointed, Morrison turned away from the window and swore. "No use. It's like each

doesn't exist for the other."

Gradually the exploring crew moved away from the line of carts, past the mining operations

and over a ridge beyond. There was no special hurry; they departed without having reacted to the

ore-gathering syndrome.

"Maybe they're from the same factory," Morrison said hopefully.

O'Neill pointed to the antennas visible on the major mining equipment. "Their vanes are

turned at a different vector, so these represent two factories. It's going to be hard; we'll have

to get it exactly right or there won't be any reaction." He clicked on the radio and got hold of

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the monitor at the settlement. "Any results on the consolidated back-order sheets?"

The operator put him through to the settlement governing offices.

"They're starting to come in," Ferine told him. "As soon as we get sufficient samplings,

we'll try to determine which raw materials which factories lack. It's going to be risky, trying to

extrapolate from complex products. There may be a number of basic elements common to the various

sublets."

"What happens when we've identified the missing element?" Morrison asked O'Neill. "What

happens when we've got two tangent factories short on the same material?"

"Then," O'Neill said grimly, "we start collecting the material ourselves -- even if we

have to melt down every object in the settlements."

III

In the moth-ridden darkness of night, a dim wind stirred, chill and faint. Dense

underbrush rattled metallically. Here and there a nocturnal rodent prowled, its senses hyper-

alert, peering, planning, seeking food.

The area was wild. No human settlements existed for miles; the entire region had been

seared flat, cauterized by repeated H-bomb blasts. Somewhere in the murky darkness, a sluggish

trickle of water made its way among AUTOFAC slag and weeds, dripping thickly into what had once

been an elaborate labyrinth of sewer mains. The pipes lay cracked and broken, jutting up into the

night darkness, overgrown with creeping vegetation. The wind raised clouds of black ash that

swirled and danced among the weeds. Once an enormous mutant wren stirred sleepily, pulled its

crude protective night coat of rags around it and dozed off.

For a time, there was no movement. A streak of stars showed in the sky overhead, glowing

starkly, remotely. Earl Ferine shivered, peered up and huddled closer to the pulsing heat-element

placed on the ground between the three men.

"Well?" Morrison challenged, teeth chattering.

O'Neill didn't answer. He finished his cigarette, crushed it against a mound of decaying

slag and, getting out his lighter, lit another. The mass of tungsten -- the bait -- lay a hundred

yards directly ahead of them.

During the last few days, both the Detroit and Pittsburgh factories had run short of

tungsten. And in at least one sector, their apparatus overlapped. This sluggish heap represented

precision cutting tools, parts ripped from electrical switches, high-quality surgical equipment,

sections of permanent magnets, measuring devices -- tungsten from every possible source, gathered

feverishly from all the settlements.

Dark mist lay spread over the tungsten mound. Occasionally, a night moth fluttered down,

attracted by the glow of reflected starlight. The moth hung momentarily, beat its elongated wings

futilely against the interwoven tangle of metal and then drifted off, into the shadows of the

thick-packed vines that rose up from the stumps of sewer pipes.

"Not a very damn pretty spot," Ferine said wryly.

"Don't kid yourself," O'Neill retorted. "This is the prettiest spot on Earth. This is the

spot that marks the grave of the autofac network. People are going to come around here looking for

it someday. There's going to be a plaque here a mile high."

"You're trying to keep your morale up," Morrison snorted. "You don't believe they're going

to slaughter themselves over a heap of surgical tools and light-bulb filaments. They've probably

got a machine down in the bottom level that sucks tungsten out of rock."

"Maybe," O'Neill said, slapping at a mosquito. The insect dodged cannily and then buzzed

over to annoy Ferine. Ferine swung viciously at it and squatted sullenly down against the damp

vegetation.

And there was what they had come to see.

O'Neill realized with a start that he had been looking at it for several minutes without

recognizing it. The search-bug lay absolutely still. It rested at the crest of a small rise of

slag, its anterior end slightly raised, receptors fully extended. It might have been an abandoned

hulk; there was no activity of any kind, no sign of life or consciousness. The search-bug fitted

perfectly into the wasted, fire-drenched landscape. A vague tub of metal sheets and gears and flat

treads, it rested and waited. And watched.

It was examining the heap of tungsten. The bait had drawn its first bite.

"Fish," Ferine said thickly. "The line moved. I think the sinker dropped."

"What the hell are you mumbling about?" Morrison grunted. And then he, too, saw the search-

bug. "Jesus," he whispered. He half rose to his feet, massive body arched forward. "Well, there's

one of them. Now all we need is a unit from the other factory. Which do you suppose it is?"

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O'Neill located the communication vane and traced its angle. "Pittsburgh, so pray for

Detroit. . . pray like mad."

Satisfied, the search-bug detached itself and rolled forward. Cautiously approaching the

mound, it began a series of intricate maneuvers, rolling first one way and then another. The three

watching men were mystified -- until they glimpsed the first probing stalks of other search-bugs.

"Communication," O'Neill said softly. "Like bees."

Now five Pittsburgh search-bugs were approaching the mound of tungsten products. Receptors

waving excitedly, they increased their pace, scurrying in a sudden burst of discovery up the side

of the mound to the top. A bug burrowed and rapidly disappeared; The whole mound shuddered; the

bug was down inside, exploring the extent of the find.

Ten minutes later, the first Pittsburgh ore carts appeared and began industriously

hurrying off with their haul.

"Damn it!" O'Neill said, agonized. "They'll have it all before Detroit shows up."

"Can't we do anything to slow them down?" Ferine demanded helplessly. Leaping to his feet,

he grabbed up a rock and heaved it at the nearest cart. The rock bounced off and the cart

continued its work, unperturbed.

O'Neill got to his feet and prowled around, body rigid with impotent fury. Where were

they? The autofacs were equal in all respects and the spot was the exact same linear distance from

each center. Theoretically, the parties should have arrived simultaneously. Yet there was no sign

of Detroit -- and the final pieces of tungsten were being loaded before his eyes.

But then something streaked past him.

He didn't recognize it, for the object moved too quickly. It shot like a bullet among the

tangled vines, raced up the side of the hill-crest, poised for an instant to aim itself and

hurtled down the far side. It smashed directly into the lead cart. Projectile and victim shattered

in an abrupt burst of sound.

Morrison leaped up. "What the hell?"

"That's it!" Ferine screamed, dancing around and waving his skinny arms. "It's Detroit!"

A second Detroit search-bug appeared, hesitated as it took in the situation, and then

flung itself furiously at the retreating Pittsburgh carts. Fragments of tungsten scattered

everywhere -- parts, wiring, broken plates, gears and springs and bolts of the two antagonists

flew in all directions. The remaining carts wheeled screechingly; one of them dumped its load and

rattled off at top speed. A second followed, still weighed down with tungsten. A Detroit search-

bug caught up with it, spun directly in its path and neatly overturned it. Bug and cart rolled

down a shallow trench, into a stagnant pool of water. Dripping and glistening, the two of them

struggled, half submerged.

"Well," O'Neill said unsteadily, "we did it. We can start back home." His legs felt weak.

"Where's our vehicle?"

As he gunned the truck motor, something flashed a long way off, something large and

metallic, moving over the dead slag and ash. It was a dense clot of carts, a solid expanse of

heavy-duty ore carriers racing to the scene. Which factory were they from?

It didn't matter, for out of the thick tangle of black dripping vines, a web of counter-

extensions was creeping to meet them. Both factories were assembling their mobile units. From all

directions, bugs slithered and crept, closing in around the remaining heap of tungsten. Neither

factory was going to let needed raw material get away; neither was going to give up its find.

Blindly, mechanically, in the grip of inflexible directives, the two opponents labored to assemble

superior forces.

"Come on," Morrison said urgently. "Let's get out of here. All hell is bursting loose."

O'Neill hastily turned the truck in the direction of the settlement. They began rumbling

through the darkness on their way back. Every now and then, a metallic shape shot by them, going

in the opposite direction.

"Did you see the load in that last cart?" Ferine asked, worried. "It wasn't empty."

Neither were the carts that followed it, a whole procession of bulging supply carriers

directed by an elaborate high-level surveying unit.

"Guns," Morrison said, eyes wide with apprehension. "They're taking in weapons. But who's

going to use them?"

"They are," O'Neill answered. He indicated a movement to their right. "Look over there.

This is something we hadn't expected."

They were seeing the first factory representative move into action.

As the truck pulled into the Kansas City settlement, Judith hurried breathlessly toward

them. Fluttering in her hand was a strip of metal-foil paper.

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Dick, Philip K - Complete Stories 4 - The Minority Report an

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