Philip K. Dick - Through a Scanner Darkly

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A SCANNER DARKLY

by Philip K. Dick

United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in

Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published by Doubleday & Co., Inc.,

New York, in 1977.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Excerpt from "The Other Side of the Brain: An Appositional Mind" by Joseph E. Bogen, M.D., which

appeared in _Bulletin of the Los Angeles Neurological Societies_, Vol. 34, No. 3, July 1969. Used

by permission. Excerpt from "The Split Brain in Man" by Michael S. Gazzaniga which appeared in

_Scientific American_, August 1967, Vol. 217. Used by permission. Untitled poem reprinted from

University of Pittsburgh Press. Used by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press. Other

German quotes from Goethe's _Faust_, Part one, and from Beethoven's opera _Fidelio_.

ISBN 0-679-73665-4

First Vintage Books Edition, December 1991

For information about the Philip K. Dick Society, write to:

PKDS, Box 611, Glen Ellen, CA 95442.

A SCANNER DARKLY

Once a guy stood all day shaking bugs from his hair. The doctor told him there were no

bugs in his hair. After he had taken a shower for eight hours, standing under hot water hour after

hour suffering the pain of the bugs, he got out and dried himself, and he still had bugs in his

hair; in fact, he had bugs all over him. A month later he had bugs in his lungs.

Having nothing else to do or think about, he began to work out theoretically the life

cycle of the bugs, and, with the aid of the _Britannica_, try to determine specifically which bugs

they were. They now filled his house. He read about many different kinds and finally noticed bugs

outdoors, so he concluded they were aphids. After that decision came to his mind it never changed,

no matter what other people told him . . . like "Aphids don't bite people."

They said that to him because the endless biting of the bugs kept him in torment. At the 7-

11 grocery store, part of a chain spread out over most of California, he bought spray cans of Raid

and Black Flag and Yard Guard. First he sprayed the house, then himself. The Yard Guard seemed to

work the best.

As to the theoretical side, he perceived three stages in the cycle of the bugs. First,

they were carried to him to contaminate him by what he called Carrier-people, which were people

who didn't understand their role in distributing the bugs. During that stage the bugs had no jaws

or mandibles (he learned that word during his weeks of scholarly research, an unusually bookish

occupation for a guy who worked at the Handy Brake and Tire place relining people's brake drums).

The Carrier-people therefore felt nothing. He used to sit in the far corner of his living room

watching different Carrier-people enter--most of them people he'd known for a while, but some new

to him--covered with the aphids in this particular nonbiting stage. He'd sort of smile to himself,

because he knew that the person was being used by the bugs and wasn't hip to it.

"What are you grinning about, Jerry?" they'd say.

He'd just smile.

In the next stage the bugs grew wings or something, but they really weren't precisely

wings; anyhow, they were appendages of a functional sort permitting them to swarm, which was how

they migrated and spread--especially to him. At that point the air was full of them; it made his

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living room, his whole house, cloudy. During this stage he tried not to inhale them.

Most of all he felt sorry for his dog, because he could see the bugs landing on and

settling all over him, and probably getting into the dog's lungs, as they were in his own.

Probably--at least so his empathic ability told him--the dog was suffering as much as he was.

Should he give the dog away for the dog's own comfort? No, he decided: the dog was now,

inadvertently, infected, and would carry the bugs with him everywhere.

Sometimes he stood in the shower with the dog, trying to wash the dog clean too. He had no

more success with him than he did with himself. It hurt to feel the dog suffer; he never stopped

trying to help him. In some respect this was the worst part, the suffering of the animal, who

could not complain.

"What the fuck are you doing there all day in the shower with the goddamn dog?" his buddy

Charles Freck asked one time, coming in during this.

Jerry said, "I got to get the aphids off him." He brought Max, the dog, out of the shower

and began drying him. Charles Freck watched, mystified, as Jerry rubbed baby oil and talc into the

dog's fur. All over the house, cans of insect spray, bottles of talc, and baby oil and skin

conditioners were piled and tossed, most of them empty; he used many cans a day now.

"I don't see any aphids," Charles said. "What's an aphid?"

"It eventually kills you," Jerry said. "That's what an aphid is. They're in my hair and my

skin and my lungs, and the goddamn pain is unbearable--I'm going to have to go to the hospital."

"How come I can't see them?"

Jerry put down the dog, which was wrapped in a towel, and knelt over the shag rug. "I'll

show you one," he said. The rug was covered with aphids; they hopped up everywhere, up and down,

some higher than others. He searched for an especially large one, because of the difficulty people

had seeing them. "Bring me a bottle or jar," he said, "from under the sink. We'll cap it or put a

lid on it and then I can take it with me when I go to the doctor and he can analyze it."

Charles Freck brought him an empty mayonnaise jar. Jerry went on searching, and at last

came across an aphid Jeaping up at least four feet in the air. The aphid was over aP inch long. He

caught it, carried it to the jar, carefully dropped it in, and screwed on the lid. Then he held it

up triumphantly. "See?" he said.

"Yeahhhhh," Charles Freck said, his eyes wide as he scrutinized the contents of the jar.

"What a big one! Wow!"

"Help me find more for the doctor to see," Jerry said, again squatting down on the rug,

the jar beside him.

"Sure," Charles Freck said, and did so.

Within half an hour they had three jars full of the bugs. Charles, although new at it,

found some of the largest.

It was midday, in June of 1994. In California, in a tract area of cheap but durable

plastic houses, long ago vacated by the straights. Jerry had at an earlier date sprayed metal

paint over all the windows, though, to keep out the light; the illumination for the room came from

a pole lamp into which he had screwed nothing but spot lamps, which shone day and night, so as to

abolish time for him and his friends. He liked that; he liked to get rid of time. By doing that he

could concentrate on important things without interruption. Like this: two men kneeling down on

the shag rug, finding bug after bug and putting them into jar after jar.

"What do we get for these," Charles Freck said, later on in the day. "I mean, does the

doctor pay a bounty or something? A prize? Any bread?"

"I get to help perfect a cure for them this way," Jerry said. The pain, constant as it

was, had become unbearable; he had never gotten used to it, and he knew he never would. The urge,

the longing, to take another shower was overwhelming him. "Hey, man," he gasped, straightening up,

"you go on putting them in the jars while I take a leak and like that." He started toward the

bathroom.

"Okay," Charles said, his long legs wobbling as he swung toward a jar, both hands cupped.

An ex-veteran, he still had good muscular control, though; he made it to the jar. But then he said

suddenly, "Jerry, hey--those bugs sort of scare me. I don't like it here by myself." He stood up.

"Chickenshit bastard," Jerry said, panting with pain as he halted momentarily at the

bathroom.

"Couldn't you--"

"I got to take a leak!" He slammed the door and spun the knobs of the shower. Water poured

down.

"I'm afraid out here." Charles Freck's voice came dimly, even though he was evidently

yelling loud.

"Then go fuck yourself!" Jerry yelled back, and stepped into the shower. What fucking good

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are friends? he asked himself bitterly. No good, no good! No fucking good!

"Do these fuckers sting?" Charles yelled, right at the door.

"Yeah, they sting," Jerry said as he rubbed shampoo into his hair.

"That's what I thought." A pause. "Can I wash my hands and get them off and wait for you?"

Chickenshit, Jerry thought with bitter fury. He said nothing; he merely kept on washing.

The bastard wasn't worth answering . . . He paid no attention to Charles Freck, only to himself.

To his own vital, demanding, terrible, urgent needs. Everything else would have to wait. There was

no time, no time; these things could not be postponed. Everything else was secondary. Except the

dog; he wondered about Max, the dog.

Charles Freck phoned up somebody who he hoped was holding. "Can you lay about ten deaths

on me?"

"Christ, I'm entirely out--I'm looking to score myself. Let me know when you find some, I

could use some."

"What's wrong with the supply?"

"Some busts, I guess."

Charles Freck hung up and then ran a fantasy number in his head as he slumped dismally

back from the pay phone booth--you never used your home phone for a buy call-- to his parked

Chevy. In his fantasy number he was driving past the Thrifty Drugstore and they had a huge window

display; bottles of slow death, cans of slow death, jars and bathtubs and vats and bowls of slow

death, millions of caps and tabs and hits of slow death, slow death mixed with speed and junk and

barbiturates and psychedelics, everything--and a giant sign: YOUR CREDIT IS GOOD HERE. Not to

mention: LOW LOW PRICES, LOWEST IN TOWN.

But in actuality the Thrifty usually had a display of nothing: combs, bottles of mineral

oil, spray cans of deodorant, always crap like that. But I bet the pharmacy in the back has slow

death under lock and key in an unstepped-on, pure, unadulterated, uncut form, he thought as he

drove from the parking lot onto Harbor Boulevard, into the afternoon traffic. About a fifty-pound

bag.

He wondered when and how they unloaded the fifty-pound bag of Substance D at the Thrifty

Pharmacy every morning, from wherever it came from--God knew, maybe from Switzerland or maybe from

another planet where some wise race lived. They'd deliver probably real early, and with armed

guards--the Man standing there with Laser rifles looking mean, the way the Man always did. Anybody

rip off my slow death, he thought through the Man's head, I'll snuff them.

Probably Substance D is an ingredient in every legal medication that's worth anything, he

thought. A little pinch here and there according to the secret exclusive formula at the issuing

house in Germany or Switzerland that invented it. But in actuality he knew better; the authorities

snuffed or sent up everybody selling or transporting or using, so in that case the Thrifty

Drugstore--all the millions of Thrifty Drugstores--would get shot or bombed out of business or

anyhow fined. More likely just fined. The Thrifty had pull. Anyhow, how do you shoot a chain of

big drugstores? Or put them away?

They just got ordinary stuff, he thought as he cruised along. He felt lousy because he had

only three hundred tabs of slow death left in his stash. Buried in his back yard under his

camellia, the hybrid one with the cool big blossoms that didn't burn brown in the spring. I only

got a week's supply, he thought. What then when I'm out? Shit.

Suppose everybody in California and parts of Oregon runs out the same day, he thought.

Wow.

This was the all-time-winning horror-fantasy that he ran in his head, that every doper

ran. The whole western part of the United States simultaneously running out and everybody crashing

on the same day, probably about 6A.M. Sunday morning, while the straights were getting dressed up

to go fucking pray.

Scene: The First Episcopal Church of Pasadena, at 8:30 A.M. on Crash Sunday.

"Holy parishioners, let us call on God now at this time to request His intervention in the

agonies of those who are thrashing about on their beds withdrawing."

"Yeah, yeah." The congregation agreeing with the priest.

"But before He intervenes with a fresh supply of--"

A black-and-white evidently had noticed something in Charles Freck's driving he hadn't

noticed; it had taken off from its parking spot and was moving along behind him in traffic, so far

without lights or siren, but . . .

Maybe I'm weaving or something, he thought. Fucking goddamn fuzzmobile saw me fucking up.

I wonder what.

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COP: "All right, what's your name?"

"My _name?_" (CAN'T THINK OF NAME.)

"You don't know your own name?" Cop signals to other cop in prowl car. "This guy is really

spaced."

"Don't shoot me here." Charles Freck in his horror-fantasy number induced by the sight of

the black-and-white pacing him. "At least take me to the station house and shoot me there, out of

sight."

To survive in this fascist police state, he thought, you gotta always be able to come up

with a name, your name. At all times. That's the first sign they look for that you're wired, not

being able to figure out who the hell you are.

What I'll do, he decided, is I'll pull off soon as I see a parking slot, pull off

voluntarily before he flashes his light, or does anything, and then when he glides up beside me

I'll say I got a loose wheel or something mechanical.

They always think that's great, he thought. When you give up like that and can't go on.

Like throwing yourself on the ground the way an animal does, exposing your soft unprotected

defenseless underbelly. I'll do that, he thought.

He did so, peeling off to the right and bumping the front wheels of his car against the

curb. The cop car went on by.

Pulled off for nothing, he thought. Now it'll be hard to back out again, traffic's so

heavy. He shut off his engine. Maybe I'll just sit here parked for a while, he decided, and alpha

meditate or go into various different altered states of consciousness. Possibly by watching the

chicks going along on foot. I wonder if they manufacture a bioscope for horny. Rather than alpha.

Horny waves, first very short, then longer, larger, larger, finally right off the scale.

This is getting me nowhere, he realized. I should be out trying to locate someone holding.

I've got to get my supply or pretty soon I'll be freaking, and then I won't be able to do

anything. Even sit at the curb like I am. I not only won't know who I am, I won't even know where

I am, or what's happening.

What is happening? he asked himself. What day is this? If I knew what day I'd know

everything else; it'd seep back bit by bit.

Wednesday, in downtown L.A., the Westwood section. Ahead, one of those giant shopping

malls surrounded by a wall that you bounced off like a rubber ball--unless you had a credit card

on you and passed in through the electronic hoop. Owning no credit card for any of the malls, he

could depend only on verbal report as to what the shops were like inside. A whole bunch,

evidently, selling good products to the straights, especially to the straight wives. He watched

the uniformed armed guards at the mall gate checking out each person. Seeing that the man or woman

matched his or her credit card and that it hadn't been ripped off, sold, bought, used

fraudulently. Lots of people moved on in through the gate, but he figured many were no doubt

windowshopping. Not all that many people can have the bread or the urge to buy this time of day,

he reflected. It's early, just past two. At night; that was when. The shops all lit up. He could--

all the brothers and sisters could--see the lights from without, like showers of sparks, like a

fun park for grownup kids.

Stores this side of the mall, requiring no credit card, with no armed guards, didn't

amount to much. Utility stores: a shoe and a TV shop, a bakery, small-appliance repair, a

laundromat. He watched a girl who wore a short plastic jacket and stretch pants wander along from

store to store; she had nice hair, but he couldn't see her face, see if she was foxy. Not a bad

figure, he thought. The girl stopped for a time at a window where leather goods were displayed.

She was checking out a purse with tassels; he could see her peering, worrying, scheming on the

purse. Bet she goes on in and requests to see it, he thought.

The girl bopped on into the store, as he had figured.

Another girl, amid the sidewalk traffic, came along, this one in a frilly blouse, high

heels, with silver hair and too much makeup. Trying to look older than she is, he thought.

Probably not out of high school. After her came nothing worth mentioning, so he removed the string

that held the glove compartment shut and got out a pack of cigarettes. He lit up and turned on the

car radio, to a rock station. Once he had owned a tape-cartridge stereo, but finally, while loaded

one day, he had neglected to bring it indoors with him when he locked up the car; naturally, when

he returned the whole stereo tape system had been stolen. That's what carelessness gets you, he

had thought, and so now he had only the crummy radio. Someday they'd take that too. But he knew

where he could get another for almost nothing, used. Anyhow, the car stood to be wrecked any day;

its oil rings were shot and compression had dropped way down. Evidently, he had burned a valve on

the freeway coming home one night with a whole bunch of good stuff; sometimes when he had really

scored heavy he got paranoid--not about the cops so much as about some other heads ripping him

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off. Some head desperate from withdrawing and dingey as a motherfucker.

A girl walked along now that made him take notice. Black hair, pretty, cruising slow; she

wore an open midriff blouse and denim white pants washed a lot. Hey, I know her, he thought.

That's Bob Arctor's girl. That's Donna.

He pushed open the car door and stepped out. The girl eyed him and continued on. He

followed.

Thinks I'm fixing to grab-ass, he thought as he snaked among the people. How easily she

gained speed; he could barely see her now as she glanced back. A firm, calm face . . . He saw

large eyes that appraised him. Calculated his speed and would he catch up. Not at this rate, he

thought. She can really move.

At the corner people had halted for the sign to say WALK instead of DON'T WALK; cars were

making wild left turns. But the girl continued on, fast but with dignity, threading her path among

the nut-o cars. The drivers glared at her with indignation. She didn't appear to notice.

"Donna!" When the sign flashed WALK he hurried across after her and caught up with her.

She declined to run but merely walked rapidly. "Aren't you Bob's old lady?" he said. He managed to

get in front of her to examine her face.

"No," she said. "No." She came toward him, directly at him; he retreated backward, because

she held a short knife pointed at his stomach. "Get lost," she said, continuing to move forward

without slowing or hesitating.

"Sure you are," he said. "I met you at his place." He could hardly see the knife, only a

tiny section of blade metal, but he knew it was there. She would stab him and walk on. He

continued to retreat backward, protesting. The girl held the knife so well concealed that probably

no one else, the others walking along, could notice. But he did; it was going right at him as she

approached without hesitation. He stepped aside, then, and the girl traveled on, in silence.

"_Jeez!_" he said to the back of her. I know it's Donna, he thought. She just doesn't

flash on who I am, that she knows me. Scared, I guess; scared I'm going to hustle her. You got to

be careful, he thought, when you come to a strange chick on the street; they're all prepared now.

Too much has happened to them.

Funky little knife, he thought. Chicks shouldn't carry those; any guy could turn her wrist

and the blade back on her any time he wanted. I could have. If I really wanted to get her. He

stood there, feeling angry. I know that was Donna, he thought.

As he started to go back toward his parked car, he realized that the girl had halted, out

of the movement of passers-by, and now stood silently gazing at him.

He walked cautiously toward her. "One night," he said, "me and Bob and another chick had

some old Simon and Garfunkel tapes, and you were sitting there--" She had been filling capsules

with high-grade death, one by one, painstakingly. For over an hour. El Primo. Numero Uno: Death.

After she had finished she had laid a cap on each of them and they had dropped them, all of them

together. Except her. I just sell them, she had said. If I start dropping them I eat up all my

profits.

The girl said, "I thought you were going to knock me down and bang me."

"No," he said. "I just wondered if you . . ." He hesitated. "Like, wanted a ride. On the

sidewalk?" he said, startled. "In broad daylight?"

"Maybe in a doorway. Or pull me into a car."

"I _know_ you," he protested. "And Arctor would snuff me if I did that."

"Well, I didn't recognize you." She came toward him three steps. "I'm sorta nearsighted."

"You ought to wear contacts." She had, he thought, lovely large dark warm eyes. Which

meant she wasn't on junk.

"I did have. But one fell out into a punch bowl. Acid punch, at a party. It sank to the

bottom, and I guess someone dipped it up and drank it. I hope it tasted good; it cost me thirty-

five dollars, originally."

"You want a ride where you're going?"

"You'll bang me in the car."

"No," he said, "I can't get it on right now, these last couple of weeks. It must be

something they're adulterating all the stuff with. Some chemical."

"That's a neat-o line, but I've heard it before. Everybody bangs me." She amended that.

"Tries to, anyhow. That's what it's like to be a chick. I'm suing one guy in court right now, for

molestation and assault. We're asking punitive damages in excess of forty thousand."

"How far'd he get?"

Donna said, "Got his hand around my boob."

"That isn't worth forty thousand."

Together, they walked back toward his car.

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"You got anything to sell?" he asked. "I'm really hurting. I'm virtually out, in fact,

hell, I am out, come to think of it. Even a few, if you could spare a few."

"I can get you some."

"Tabs," he said. "I don't shoot up."

"Yes." She nodded intently, head down. "But, see, they're real scarce right now--the

supply's temporarily dried up. You probably discovered that already. I can't get you very many,

but--"

"When?" he broke in. They had reached his car; he halted, opened the door, got in. On the

far side Donna got in. They sat side by side.

"Day after tomorrow," Donna said. "If I can git ahold of this guy. I think I can."

Shit, he thought. Day after tomorrow. "No sooner? Not like, say, tonight?"

"Tomorrow at the earliest."

"How much?"

"Sixty dollars a hundred."

"Oh, Jeez," he said. "That's a burn."

"They're super good. I've got them from him before; they're really not what you usually

buy into. Take my word for it--they're worth it. Actually, I prefer to get them from him rather

than from anybody else--when I can. He doesn't always have them. See, he just took a trip down

south, I guess. He just got back. He picked them up himself, so I know they're good for sure. And

you don't have to pay me in advance. When I get them. Okay? I trust you."

"I never front," he said.

"Sometimes you have to."

"Okay," he said. "Then can you get me at least a hundred?" He tried to figure, rapidly,

how many he could get; in two days he probably could raise one hundred twenty dollars and get two

hundred tabs from her. And if he ran across a better deal in the meantime, from other people who

were holding, he could forget her deal and buy from them. That was the advantage of never

fronting, that plus never being burned.

"It's lucky for you that you ran into me," Donna said as he started up his car and backed

out into traffic. "I'm supposed to see this one dude in about an hour, and he'd probably take all

I could get . . . you'd have been out of luck. This was your day." She smiled, and he did too.

"I wish you could get them sooner," he said.

"If I do . . ." Opening her purse, she got out a little note pad and a pen that had SPARKS

BATTERY TUNE-UP stamped on it. "How do I get hold of you, and I forget your name."

"Charles B. Freck," he said. He told her his phone number--not his, really, but the one he

made use of at a straight friend's house, for messages like this--and laboriously she wrote it

down. What difficulty she had writing, he thought. Peering and slowly scrawling . . . They don't

teach the chicks jack shit in school any more, he thought. Flat-out illiterate. But foxy. So she

can't hardly read or write; so what? What matters with a fox is nice tits.

"I think I remember you," Donna said. "Sort of. It's all hazy, that night; I was really

out of it. All I definitely remember was getting the powder into those little caps--Librium caps--

we dumped the original contents. I must have dropped half. I mean, on the floor." She gazed at him

meditatively as he drove. "You seem like a mellow dude," she said. "And you'll be in the market

later on? After a while you'll want more?"

"Sure," he said, wondering to himself if he could beat her price by the time he saw her

again; he felt he could, most likely. Either way he won. That is, either way he scored.

Happiness, he thought, is knowing you got some pills.

The day outside the car, and all the busy people, the sunlight and activity, streamed past

unnoticed; he was happy.

Look what he had found by chance--because, in fact, a black-and-white had accidentally

paced him. An unexpected new supply of Substance D. What more could he ask out of life? He could

probably now count on two weeks lying ahead of him, nearly _half a month_, before he croaked or

nearly croaked--withdrawing from Substance D made the two the same. Two weeks! His heart soared,

and he smelled, for a moment, coming in from the open windows of the car, the brief excitement of

spring.

"Want to go with me to see Jerry Fabin?" he asked the girl. "I'm taking a load of his

things over to him at the Number Three Federal Clinic, where they took him last night. I'm just

carting over a little at a time, because there's a chance he might get back out and I don't want

to have to drag it all back."

"I'd better not see him," Donna said.

"You know him? Jerry Fabin?"

"Jerry Fabin thinks I contaminated him originally with those bugs."

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"Aphids."

"Well, _then_ he didn't know what they were. I better stay away. Last time I saw him he

got really hostile. It's his receptor sites, in his brain, at least I think so. It seems like it,

from what the government pamphlets say now."

"That can't be restored, can it?" he said.

"No," Donna said. "That's irreversible."

"The clinic people said they'd let me see him, and they said they believed he could work

some, you know--" He gestured. "Not be--" Again he gestured; it was hard to find words for that,

what he was trying to say about his friend.

Glancing at him, Donna said, "You don't have speechcenter damage, do you? In your--what is

it called?--occipital lobe."

"No," he said. Vigorously.

"Do you have any kind of damage?" She tapped her head.

"No, it's just . . . you know. I have trouble saying it about those fucking clinics; I

hate the Neural-Aphasia Clinics. One time I was there visiting a guy, he was trying to wax a floor-

- they said he couldn't wax the floor, I mean he couldn't figure out how to do it . . . What got

me was he kept trying. I mean not just for like an hour; he was still trying a month later when I

came back. Just like he had been, over and over again, when I first saw him there, when I first

went to visit him. He couldn't figure out why he couldn't get it right. I remember the look on his

face. He was sure he'd get it right if he kept trying to flash on what he was doing wrong. 'What

am I doing wrong?' he kept asking them. There was no way to tell him. I mean, they told him--hell,

I told him--but he still couldn't figure it out."

"The receptor sites in his brain are what I've read usually goes first," Donna said

placidly. "Someone's brain where he's gotten a bad hit or like that, like too heavy." She was

watching the cars ahead. "Look, there's one of those new Porsches with two engines." She pointed

excitedly. "Wow."

"I knew a guy who hot-wired one of those new Porsches," he said, "and got it out on the

Riverside Freeway and pushed it up to one seventy-five--wipe-out." He gestured. "Right into the

ass of a semi. Never saw it, I guess." In his head he ran a fantasy number: himself at the wheel

of a Porsche, but noticing the semi, all the semis. And everyone on the freeway--the Hollywood

Freeway at rush hour--noticing him. Noticing him for sure, the lanky big-shouldered good-looking

dude in the new Porsche going two hundred miles an hour, and all the cops' faces hanging open

helplessly.

"You're shaking," Donna said. She reached over and put her hand on his arm. A quiet hand

that he at once responded to. "Slow down."

"I'm tired," he said. "I was up two nights and two days counting bugs. Counting them and

putting them in bottles. And finally when we crashed and got up and got ready the next morning to

put the bottles in the car, to take to the doctor to show him, there was nothing in the bottles.

Empty." He could feel the shaking now himself, and see it in his hands, on the wheel, the shaking

hands on the steering wheel, at twenty miles an hour. "Every fucking one," he said. "Nothing. No

bugs. And then I realized, I fucking realized. It came to me, about his brain, Jerry's brain."

The air no longer smelled of spring and he thought, abruptly, that he urgently needed a

hit of Substance D; it was later in the day than he had realized, or else he had taken less than

he thought. Fortunately, he had his portable supply with him, in the glove compartment, way back.

He began searching for a vacant parking slot, to pull over.

"Your mind plays tricks," Donna said remotely; she seemed to have withdrawn into herself,

gone far away. He wondered if his erratic driving was bumming her. Probably so.

Another fantasy film rolled suddenly into his head, without his consent: He saw, first, a

big parked Pontiac with a bumper jack on the back of it that was slipping and a kid around

thirteen with long thatched hair struggling to hold the car from rolling, meanwhile yelling for

assistance. He saw himself and Jerry Fabin running out of the house together, Jerry's house, down

the beer-can-littered driveway to the car. Himself, he grabbed at the car door on the driver's

side to open it, to stomp the brake pedal. But Jerry Fabin, wearing only his pants, without even

shoes, his hair all disarranged and streaming--he had been sleeping--Jerry ran past the car to the

back and knocked, with his bare pale shoulder that never saw the light of day, the boy entirely

away from the car. The jack bent and fell, the rear of the car crashed down, the tire and wheel

rolled away, and the boy was okay.

"Too late for the brake," Jerry panted, trying to get his ugly greasy hair from his eyes

and blinking. "No time."

'S he okay?" Charles Freck yelled. His heart still pounded.

"Yeah." Jerry stood by the boy, gasping. "Shit!" he yelled at the boy in fury. "Didn't I

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tell you to wait until we were doing it with you? And when a bumper jack slips--shit, man, you

can't hold back five thousand pounds!" His face writhed. The boy, little Ratass, looked miserable

and twitched guiltily. "I repeatedly and repeatedly told you!"

"I went for the brake," Charles Freck explained, knowing his idiocy, his own equal fuckup,

great as the boy's and equally lethal. His failure as a full-grown man to respond right. But he

wanted to justify it anyhow, as the boy did, in words. "But now I realize--" he yammered on, and

then the fantasy number broke off; it was a documentary rerun, actually, because he remembered the

day when this had happened, back when they were all living together. Jerry's good instinct--

otherwise Ratass would have been under the back of the Pontiac, his spine smashed.

The three of them plodded gloomily back toward the house, not even chasing the tire and

wheel, which was still rolling off.

"I was asleep," Jerry muttered as they entered the dark interior of the house. "It's the

first time in a couple weeks the bugs let up enough so I could. I haven't got any sleep at all for

five days--I been runnin' and runnin'. I thought they were maybe gone; they've _been_ gone. I

thought they finally gave up and went somewhere else, like next door and out of the house

entirely. Now I can feel them again. That tenth No Pest Strip I got, or maybe it's the eleventh--

they cheated me again, like they did with all the others." But his voice was subdued now, not

angry, just low and perplexed. He put his hand on Ratass's head and gave him a sharp smack. "You

dumb kid--when a bumper jack slips get the hell out of there. Forget the car. Don't ever get

behind it and try to push back against all that mass and block it with your body."

"But, Jerry, I was afraid the axle--"

"Fuck the axle. Fuck the car. It's your life." They passed on through the dark living

room, the three of them, and the rerun of a now gone moment winked out and died forever.

"Gentlemen of the Anaheim Lions Club," the man at the microphone said, "we have a

wonderful opportunity this afternoon, for, you see, the County of Orange has provided us with the

chance to hear from--and then put questions to and of--an undercover narcotics agent from the

Orange County Sheriff's Department." He beamed, this man wearing his pink waffle-fiber suit and

wide plastic yellow tie and blue shirt and fake leather shoes; he was an overweight man, overaged

as well, overhappy even when there was little or nothing to be happy about.

Watching him, the undercover narcotics agent felt nausea.

"Now, you will notice," the Lions Club host said, "that you can barely see this

individual, who is seated directly to my right, because he is wearing what is called a scramble

suit, which is the exact same suit he wears--and in fact must wear--during certain parts, in fact

most, of his daily activities of law enforcement. Later he will explain why."

The audience, which mirrored the qualities of the host in every possible way, regarded the

individual in his scramble suit.

"This man," the host declared, "whom we will call Fred, because this is the code name

under which he reports the information he gathers, once within the scramble suit, cannot be

identified by voice, or by even technological voiceprint, or by appearance. He looks, does he not,

like a vague blur and nothing more? Am I right?" He let loose a great smile. His audience,

appreciating that this was indeed funny, did a little smiling on their own.

The scramble suit was an invention of the Bell Laboratories, conjured up by accident by an

employee named S. A. Powers. He had, a few years ago, been experimenting with disinhibiting

substances affecting neural tissue, and one night, having administered to himself an IV injection

considered safe and mildly euphoric, had experienced a disastrous drop in the GABA fluid of his

brain. Subjectively, he had then witnessed lurid phosphene activity projected on the far wall of

his bedroom, a frantically progressing montage of what, at the time, he imagined to be modern-day

abstract paintings.

For about six hours, entranced, S. A. Powers had watched thousands of Picasso paintings

replace one another at flashcut speed, and then he had been treated to Paul Klees, more than the

painter had painted during his entire lifetime. S. A. Powers, now viewing Modigliani paintings

replace themselves at furious velocity, had conjectured (one needs a theory for everything) that

the Rosicrucians were telepathically beaming pictures at him, probably boosted by microrelay

systems of an advanced order; but then, when Kandinsky paintings began to harass him, he recalled

that the main art museum at Leningrad specialized in just such nonobjective moderns, and decided

that the Soviets were attempting telepathically to contact him.

In the morning he remembered that a drastic drop in the GABA fluid of the brain normally

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produced such phosphene activity; nobody was trying telepathically, with or without microwave

boosting, to contact him. But it did give him the idea for the scramble suit. Basically, his

design consisted of a multifaced quartz lens hooked to a miniaturized computer whose memory banks

held up to a million and a half physiognomic fraction-representations of various people: men and

women, children, with every variant encoded and then projected outward in all directions equally

onto a superthin shroudlike membrane large enough to fit around an average human.

As the computer looped through its banks, it projected every conceivable eye color, hair

color, shape and type of nose, formation of teeth, configuration of facial bone structure--the

entire shroudlike membrane took on whatever physical characteristics were projected at any

nanosecond, and then switched to the next. Just to make his scramble suit more effective, S. A.

Powers programmed the computer to randomize the sequence of characteristics within each set. And

to bring the cost down (the federal people always liked that), he found the source for the

material of the membrane in a by-product of a large industrial firm already doing business with

Washington.

In any case, the wearer of a scramble suit was Everyman and in every combination (up to

combinations of a million and a half sub-bits) during the course of each hour. Hence, any

description of him--or her--was meaningless. Needless to say, S. A. Powers had fed his own

personal physiognomic characteristics into the computer units, so that, buried in the frantic

permutation of qualities, his own surfaced and combined . . . on an average, he had calculated, of

once each fifty years per suit, served up and reassembled, given enough time per suit. It was his

closest claim to immortality.

"Let's hear it for the vague blur!" the host said loudly, and there was mass clapping.

In his scramble suit, Fred, who was also Robert Arctor, groaned and thought: This is

terrible.

Once a month an undercover narcotics agent of the county was assigned at random to speak

before bubblehead gatherings such as this. Today was his turn. Looking at his audience, he

realized how much he detested straights. They thought this was all great. They were smiling. They

were being entertained.

Maybe at this moment the virtually countless components of his scramble suit had served up

S. A. Powers.

"But to be serious for just a moment," the host said, "this man here . . ." He paused,

trying to remember.

"Fred," Bob Arctor said. S. A. Fred.

"Fred, yes." The host, invigorated, resumed, booming in the direction of his audience,

"You see, Fred's voice is like one of those robot computer voices down in San Diego at the bank

when you drive in, perfectly toneless and artificial. It leaves in our minds no characteristics,

exactly as when he reports to his superiors in the Orange County Drug Abuse, ah, Program." He

paused meaningfully. "You see, there is a dire risk for these police officers because the forces

of dope, as we know, have penetrated with amazing skill into the various law-enforcement

apparatuses throughout our nation, or may well have, according to most informed experts. So for

the protection of these dedicated men, this scramble suit is necessary."

Slight applause for the scramble suit. And then expectant gazes at Fred, lurking within

its membrane.

"But in his line of work in the field," the host added finally, as he moved away from the

microphone to make room for Fred, "he, of course, does not wear this. He dresses like you or I,

although, of course, in the hippie garb of those of the various subculture groups within which he

bores in tireless fashion."

He motioned to Fred to rise and approach the microphone. Fred, Robert Arctor, had done

this six times before, and he knew what to say and what was in store for him: the assorted degrees

and kinds of asshole questions and opaque stupidity. The waste of time for him out of this, plus

anger on his part, and a sense of futility each time, and always more so.

"If you saw me on the street," he said into the microphone, after the applause had died

out, "you'd say, 'There goes a weirdo freak doper.' And you'd feel aversion and walk away."

Silence.

"I don't look like you," he said. "I can't afford to. My life depends on it." Actually, he

did not look that different from them. And anyhow, he would have worn what he wore daily anyhow,

job or not, life or not. He liked what he wore. But what he was saying had, by and large, been

written by others and put before him to memorize. He could depart some, but they all had a

standard format they used. Introduced a couple of years ago by a gung-ho division chief, it had by

now become writ.

He waited while that sank in.

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"I am not going to tell you first," he said, "what I am attempting to do as an undercover

officer engaged in tracking down dealers and most of all the source of their illegal drugs in the

streets of our cities and corridors of our schools, here in Orange County. I am going to tell you"-

-he paused, as they had trained him to do in PR class at the academy-- "what I am afraid of," he

finished.

That gaffed them; they had become all eyes.

"What I fear," he said, "night and day, is that our children, your children and my

children . . ." Again he paused. "I have two," he said. Then, extra quietly, "Little ones, very

little." And then he raised his voice emphatically. "But not too little to be addicted,

calculatedly addicted, for profit, by those who would destroy this society." Another pause. "We do

not know as yet," he continued presently, more calmly, "specifically who these men--or rather

animals--are who prey on our young, as if in a wild jungle abroad, as in some foreign country, not

ours. The identity of the purveyors of the poisons concocted of brain-destructive filth shot

daily, orally taken daily, smoked daily by several million men and women--or rather, that were

once men and women-- is gradually being unraveled. But finally we will, before God, know for

sure."

A voice from the audience: "Sock it to 'em!"

Another voice, equally enthusiastic: "Get the commies!"

Applause and reprise severally.

Robert Arctor halted. Stared at them, at the straights in their fat suits, their fat ties,

their fat shoes, and he thought, Substance D can't destroy their brains; they have none.

"Tell it like it is," a slightly less emphatic voice called up, a woman's voice.

Searching, Arctor made out a middle-aged lady, not so fat, her hands clasped anxiously.

"Each day," Fred, Robert Arctor, whatever, said, "this disease takes its toll of us. By

the end of each passing day the flow of profits--and where they go we--" He broke off. For the

life of him he could not dredge up the rest of the sentence, even though he had repeated it a

million times, both in class and at previous lectures.

All in the large room had fallen silent.

"Well," he said, "it isn't the profits anyhow. It's something else. What you see happen."

They didn't notice any difference, he noticed, even though he had dropped the prepared

speech and was wandering on, by himself, without help from the PR boys back at the Orange County

Civic Center. What difference anyhow? he thought. So what? What, really, do they know or care? The

straights, he thought, live in their fortified huge apartment complexes guarded by their guards,

ready to open fire on any and every doper who scales the wall with an empty pillow-case to rip off

their piano and electric clock and razor and stereo that they haven't paid for anyhow, so he can

get his fix, get the shit that if he doesn't he maybe dies, outright flatout dies, of the pain and

shock of withdrawal. But, he thought, when You're living inside looking safely out, and your wall

is electrified and your guard is armed, why think about that?

"If you were a diabetic," he said, "and you didn't have money for a hit of insulin, would

you steal to get the money? Or just die?"

Silence.

In the headphone of his scramble suit a tinny voice said, "I think you'd better go back to

the prepared text, Fred. I really do advise it."

Into his throat mike, Fred, Robert Arctor, whatever, said, "I forget it." Only his

superior at Orange County GHQ, which was not Mr. F., that is to say, Hank, could hear this. This

was an anonymous superior, assigned to him only for this occasion.

"Riiiight," the official tinny prompter said in his earphone. "I'll read it to you. Repeat

it after me, but try to get it to sound casual." Slight hesitation, riffling of pages. "Let's see

. . . 'Each day the profits flow--where they go we--' That's about where you stopped."

"I've got a block against this stuff," Arctor said.

"'--will soon determine,'" his official prompter said, unheeding, " 'and then retribution

will swiftly follow. And at that moment I would not for the life of me be in their shoes.'"

"Do you know why I've got a block against this stuff?" Arctor said. "Because this is what

gets people on dope." He thought, This is why you lurch off and become a doper, this sort of

stuff. This is why you give up and leave. In disgust.

But then he looked once more out at his audience and realized that for them this was not

so. This was the only way they could be reached. He was talking to nitwits. Mental simps. It had

to be put in the same way it had been put in first grade: _A_ is for Apple and the Apple is Round.

"_D_," he said aloud to his audience, "is for Substance D. Which is for Dumbness and

Despair and Desertion, the desertion of your friends from you, you from them, everyone from

everyone, isolation and loneliness and hating and suspecting each other. _D_," he said then, "is

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