Philip K. Dick - The Divine Invasion

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THE DIVINE INVASION
by Philip K Dick
Copyright © 1981 by Philip K. Dick
All rights reserved
including the right of reproduction
in whole or in part in any form
A Timescape Book
Published by Pocket Books
A Simon & Schuster Division of
Gulf & Western Corporation
Simon & Schuster Building
Rockefeller Center
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, New York 10020
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Dick, Philip K
The divine invasion.
I. Title.
ISBN 0-671-41776-2
The time you have waited for has come. The
work is complete; the final world is here. He has
been transplanted and is alive.
--Mysterious voice in the night
CHAPTER I
It came time to put Manny in a school. The government had a special school. The law stipulated
that Manny could not go to a regular school because of his condition; there was nothing Elias Tate
could do about that. He could not get around the government ruling because this was Earth and the
zone of evil lay over everything. Elias could feel it and, probably, the boy could feel it, too.
Elias understood what the zone signified but of course the boy did not. At the age of six Manny
looked lovely and strong but he seemed half-asleep all the time, as if (Elias reflected) he had
not yet been completely born.
"You know what today is?" Elias asked.
The boy smiled.
"OK," Elias said. "Well, a lot depends on the teacher. How much do you remember, Manny? Do you
remember Rybys?" He got out a hologram of Rybys, the boy's mother, and held it to the light. "Look
at Rybys," Elias said. "Just for a second."
Someday the boy's memories would come back. Something, a disinhibiting stimulus fired at the boy
by his own prearrangement, would trigger anamnesis-the loss of amnesia, and all the memories would
flood back: his conception on CY30-CY30B, the period in Rybys's womb as she battled her dreadful
illness, the trip to Earth, perhaps even the interrogation. In his mother's
pg8 Philip K. Dick The Divine Invasion
womb Manny had advised the three of them: Herb Asher, Elias Tate and Rybys herself. But then had
come the accident, if it really had been accidental. And because of that the damage.
And, because of the damage, forgetfulness.
The two of them took the local rail to the school. A fussy little man met them, a Mr. Plaudet; he
was enthusiastic and wanted to shake hands with Manny. It was evident to Elias Tate that this was
the government. First they shake hands with you, he thought, and then they murder you.
"So here we have Emmanuel," Plaudet said, beaming.
Several other small children played in the fenced yard of the school. The boy pressed against
Elias Tate shyly, obviously wanting to play but afraid to.
"What a nice name," Plaudet said. "Can you say your name, Emmanuel?" he asked the boy, bending
down. "Can you say 'Emmanuel'?"
"God with us," the boy said.
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"I beg your pardon?" Plaudet said.
Elias Tate said, "That's what 'Emmanuel' means. That's why his mother chose it. She was killed in
an air collision before Manny was born."
"I was in a synthowomb," Manny said.
"Did the dysfunction originate from the-" Plaudet began, but Elias Tate waved him into silence.
Flustered, Plaudet consulted his clipboard of typed notes. "Let's see . . . you're not the boy's
father. You're his great-uncle."
"His father is in cryonic suspension."
"The same air collision?"
"Yes," Elias said. "He's w'aiting for a spleen."
"It's amazing that in six years they haven't been able to come up with-"
"I am not going to discuss Herb Asher's death in front of the boy," Elias said.
"But he knows his father will be returning to life?" Plaudet said.
"Of course. I am going to spend several days here at the school watching to see how you handle the
children. If I do not approve, if you use too much physical force, I am taking Manny out, law or
no law. I presume you will be teaching him the usual bullshit that goes on in these schools. It's
not something I'm especially pleased about, but neither is it something that worries me. Once I am
satisfied with the school you will be paid for a year ahead. I object to bringing him here, but
that is the law. I don't hold you personally responsible." Elias Tate smiled.
Wind blew through the canes of bamboo growing at the rim of the play area. Manny listened to the
wind, cocking his head and frowning. Elias patted him on the shoulder and wondered what the wind
was telling the boy. Does it say who you are? he wondered. Does it tell you your name?
The name, he thought, that no one is to say.
A child, a little girl wearing a white frock, approached Manny, her hand out. "Hi," she said.
"You're new.
The wind, in the bamboo, rustled on.
-----------------------------
Although dead and in cryonic suspension, Herb Asher was having his own problems. Very close to the
Cry-Labs, Incorporated, warehouse a fifty-thousand-watt FM transmitter had been located the year
before. For reasons unknown to anyone the cryonic equipment had begun picking up the powerful
nearby FM signal. Thus Herb Asher, as well as everyone else in suspension at Cry-Labs, had to
listen to elevator music all day and all night, the station being what it liked to call a
"pleasing sounds" outfit.
Right now an all-string version of tunes from Fiddler on the Roof assailed the dead at Cry-Labs.
This was especially distasteful to Herb Asher because he was in the part of his cycle where he was
under the impression that he was still alive. In his frozen brain a limited world stretched out of
an archaic nature; Herb Asher supposed himself to be back on the little planet of the CY3O-CY3OB
system where he had maintained his dome in those crucial years . . . crucial, in that he had met
Rybys Rommey, migrated back to Earth with her, after formally marrying her, and then getting
himself interrogated by the Terran authorities and,
10 Philip K. Dick The Divine Invasion
as if that were not enough, getting himself perfunctorily killed in an air collision that was in
no way his fault. Worse yet, his wife had been killed and in such a fashion that no organ
transplant would revive her; her pretty little head, as the robot doctor had explained it to Herb,
had been riven in twain-a typical robot word-choice.
However, inasmuch as Herb Asher imagined himself still back in his dome in the star system CY3O-
CY3OB, he did not realize that Rybys was dead. In fact he did not know her yet. This was before
the arrival of the supplyman who had brought him news of Rybys in her own dome.
--------------------
Herb Asher lay on his bunk listening to his favorite tape of Linda Fox. He was trying to account
for a background noise of soupy strings rendering songs from one or another of the well- known
light operas or Broadway shows or some damn thing of the late twentieth century. Apparently his
receiving and recording gear needed an overhaul. Perhaps the original signal from which he had
made the Linda Fox tape had drifted. Fuck it, he thought dismally. I'll have to do some repairing.
That meant getting out of his bunk, finding his tool kit, shutting down his receiving and
recording equipment-it meant work.
Meanwhile, he listened with eyes shut to the Fox.
Weep you no more, sad fountains;
What need you flow so fast?
Look how the snowy mountains
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Heaven's sun doth gently waste.
But my sun's heavenly eyes
View not your weeping
That now lies sleeping...
This was the best song the Fox had ever sung, from the Third and Last Booke of lute songs of John
Dowland who had lived at the time of Shakespeare and whose music the Fox had remastered for the
world of today.
Annoyed by the interference, he shut off the tape transport with his remote programmer. But,
mirabile dictu, the soupy string music continued, even though the Fox fell silent. So, resigned,
he shut off the entire audio system.
Even so, Fiddler on the Roof in the form of eighty-seven strings continued. The sound of it
filled his little dome, audible over the gjurk-gjurk of the air compressor. And then it came to
him that he had been hearing Fiddler on the Roof for-good God!-it was something like three days,
now.
This is awful, Herb Asher realized. Here I am billions of miles out in space listening to eighty-
seven strings forever and ever. Something is wrong.
Actually a lot of things had gone wrong during the recent year. He had made a dreadful mistake
in emigrating from the Sol System. He had failed to note that return to the Sol System became
automatically illegal for ten full years. This was how the dual state that governed the Sol System
guaranteed a flow of people out and away but no flow back in return. His alternative had been to
serve in the Army, which meant certain death. SKY OR FRY was the slogan showing up on government
TV commercials. You either emigrated or they burned your ass in some fruitless war.
The government did not even bother to justify war, now. They just sent you out, killed you and
recruited a replacement. It all came from the unification of the Communist Party and the Catholic
Church into one mega-apparatus, with two chiefs-of-state, as in ancient Sparta.
Here, at least, he was safe from being murdered by the government. He could, of course, be
murdered by one of the ratlike autochthons of the planet, but that was not very likely. The few
remaining autochthons had never assassinated any of the human domers who had appeared with their
microwave transmitters and psychotronic boosters, fake food (fake as far as Herb Asher was
concerned; it tasted dreadful) and meager creature comforts of complex nature, all items that
baffled the simple autochthons without arousing their curiosity.
I'll bet the mother ship is directly overhead, Herb Asher said to himself. It's beaming Fiddler
on the Roof down at me with its psychotronic gun. As a joke.
He got up from his bunk, walked unsteadily to his board and
12 Philip K. Dick The Divine Invasion
examined his number-three radar screen. The mother ship, according to the screen, was nowhere
around. So that wasn't it.
Damndest thing, he thought. He could see with his own eyes that his audio system had correctly
shut down, and still the sound oozed around the dome. And it didn't seem to emanate from one
particular spot; it seemed to manifest itself equally everywhere.
Seated at his board he contacted the mother ship. "Are you transmitting Fiddler on the Roof?" he
asked the ship's operator circuit.
A pause. Then, "Yes, we have a video tape of Fiddler on the Roof, with Topol, Norma Crane, Molly
Picon, Paul-"
"No," he broke in. "What are you getting from Fomalhaut right now? Anything with all strings?"
"Oh, you're Station Five. The Linda Fox man."
"Is that how I'm known?" Asher said.
"We will comply. Prepare to receive at high speed two new Linda Fox aud tapes. Are you set to
record?"
"I'm asking about another matter," Asher said.
"We are now transmitting at high speed. Thank you." The mother ship's operator circuit shut off;
Herb Asher found himself listening to vastly speeded-up sounds as the mother ship com- plied with
a request he had not made.
When the transmission from the mother ship ceased he contacted its operator circuit again. "I'm
getting 'Matchmaker, Matchmaker' for ten hours straight," he said. "I'm sick of it. Are you
bouncing a signal off someone's relay shield?"
The operator circuit of the mother ship said, "It is my job continually to bounce signals off
somebody's-"
"Over and out," Herb Asher said, and cut the circuit of the mother ship off.
Through the port of his dome he made out a bent figure shuffling across the frozen wasteland. An
autochthon gripping a meager bundle; it was on some errand.
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Pressing the switch of the external bullhorn, Herb Asher said, "Step in here a minute, Clem." This
was the name the human settlers had given to the autochthons, to all of them, since they all
looked alike. "I need a second opinion."
The autochthon, scowling, shuffled to the hatch of the dome and signaled for entry. Herb Asher
activated the hatch mechanism and the intermediate membrane dropped into place. The autochthon
disappeared inside. A moment later the displeased autochthon stood within the dome, shaking off
methane crystals and glowering at Herb Asher.
Getting out his translating computer, Asher spoke to the autochthon. "This will take just a
moment." His analog voice issued from the instrument in a series of clicks and clacks. "I'm
getting audio interference that I can't shut off. Is it something your people are doing? Listen."
The autochthon listened, his rootlike face twisted and dark. Finally he spoke, and his voice, in
English, assumed an unusual harshness. "I hear nothing."
"You're lying," Herb Asher said.
The autochthon said, "I am not lying. Perhaps your mind has gone, due to isolation."
"I thrive on isolation. Anyhow I'm not isolated." He had, after all, the Fox to keep him company.
"I've seen it happen," the autochthon said. "Domers like you suddenly imagine voices and shapes."
Herb Asher got out his stereo microphones, turned on his tape recorder and watched the VU meters.
They showed nothing. He turned the gain up to full. Still the VU meters remained idle; their
needles did not move. Asher coughed and at once both needles swung wildly and the overload diodes
flashed red. Well, the tape recorder simply was not picking up the soupy string music, for some
reason. He was more perplexed than ever. The autochthon, seeing all this, smiled.
Into the stereo microphones Asher said distinctly, " '0 tell me all about Anna Livia! I want to
hear all about Anna Livia. Well, you know Anna Livia? Yes, of course, we all know Anna Livia. Tell
me all. Tell me now. You'll die when you hear. Well, you know, when the old cheb went futt and did
what you know. Yes, I know, go on. Wash quit and don't be dabbling. Tuck up your sleeves and
loosen your talktapes. And don't butt me- hike !-when you bend. Or whatever-'"
14 Philip K. Dick The Divine Invasion
"What is this?" the autochthon said, listening to the translation into his own tongue. Grinning,
Herb Asher said, "A famous Terran book. 'Look, look, the dusk is growing. My branches lofty are
taking root. And my cold cher's gone ashley. Fieluhr? Filou! What age is at? It saon is late. 'Tis
endless now senne- "The man is mad," the autochthon said, and turned toward the hatch, to leave.
"It's Finnegans Wake," Herb Asher said. "I hope the translating computer got it for you. 'Can't
hear with the waters of. The chittering waters of. Flittering bats, fieldmice bawk talk. Ho! Are
you not gone ahome? What Thom Malone? Can't hear-'
The autochthon had left, convinced of Herb Asher's insanity. Asher watched him through the port;
the autochthon strode away from the dome in indignation. Again pressing the switch of the external
bullhorn, Herb Asher yelled after the retreating figure, "You think James Joyce was crazy, is that
what you think? Okay; then explain to me how come he mentions 'talktapes' which means audio tapes
in a book he wrote starting in 1922 and which he completed in 1939. Before there were tape
recorders! You call that crazy? He also has them sitting around a TV set-in a book started four
years after World War I. I think Joyce was a- The autochthon had disappeared over a ridge. Asher
released the switch on the external bullhorn.
It's impossible that James Joyce could have mentioned 'talk- tapes" in his writing, Asher thought.
Someday I'm going to get my article published; I'm going to prove that Finnegans Wake is an
information pool based on computer memory systems that didn't exist until a century after James
Joyce's era; that Joyce was plugged into a cosmic consciousness from which he derived the
inspiration for his entire corpus of work. I'll be famous forever.
What must it have been like, he wondered, to actually hear Cathy Berberian read from Ulysses? If
only she had recorded the whole book. But, he realized, we have Linda Fox.
His tape recorder was still on, still recording. Aloud, Herb Asher said, "I shall say the hundred-
letter thunder word." The needles of the VU meters swung obediently. "Here I go," Asher said, and
took a deep breath. 'This is the hundred-letter thunder word from Finnegans Wake. I forget how it
goes." He went to the bookshelf and got down the cassette of Finnegans Wake. "I shall not recite
it from memory," he said, inserting the cassette and rolling it to the first page of the text. "It
is the longest word in the English language," he said. "It is the sound made when the primordial
schism occurred in the cosmos, when part of the damaged cosmos fell into darkness and evil.
Originally we had the Garden of Eden, as Joyce points out. Joyce-"
His radio sputtered on. The foodman was contacting him, telling him to prepare to receive a
shipment. "...awake?" the radio said. Hopefully.
Contact with another human. Herb Asher shrank involun- tarily. Oh Christ, he thought. He trembled.
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No, he thought.
Please no.
The Divine Invasion
CHAPTER 2
You can tell they're after you, Herb Asher said to himself, when they bore through the ceiling.
The foodman, the most important of the several supplymen, had unscrewed the roof lock of the dome
and was descending the ladder.
"Food ration comtrix," the audio transducer of his radio announced. "Start rebolting procedure."
"Rebolting underway," Asher said.
The speaker said, "Put helmet on."
"Not necessary," Asher said. He made no move to pick up his helmet; his atmosphere flow rate would
compensate for the loss during the foodman's entry: he had redesigned it.
An alarm bell in the dome's autonomic wiring sounded.
"Put your helmet on!" the foodman said angrily.
The alarm bell ceased complaining; the pressure had restabilized. At that, the foodman grimaced.
He popped his helmet and then began to unload cartons from his comtrix.
"We are a hardy race," Asher said, helping him.
"You have amped up everything," the foodman said; like all the rovers who serviced the domes he
was sturdily built and he moved rapidly. It was not a safe job operating a comtrix shuttle between
mother ships and the domes of CY3O II. He knew it and Asher knew it. Anybody could sit in a dome;
few people could function outside.
"Can I sit down for a while?" the foodman said, when his work had ended.
"All I have is a cupee of Kaff," Asher said.
"That'll do. I haven't drunk real coffee since I got here. And that was long before you got here."
The foodman seated himself at the dining module service area.
The two men sat facing each other across the table, both of them drinking Kaff. Outside the dome
the methane messed around but here neither man felt it. The foodman perspired; he apparently found
Asher's temperature level too high.
"You know, Asher," the foodman said, "you just lie around on your bunk with all your rigs on auto.
Right?"
"I keep busy."
"Sometimes I think you domers-" The foodman paused. "Asher, you know the woman in the next dome?"
"Somewhat," Asher said. "My gear transfers data to her input circuitry every three or four weeks.
She stores it, boosts it and transmits it. I suppose. Or for all I know-"
"She's sick," the foodman said.
Startled, Asher said, "She looked all right the last time I talked to her. We used video. She did
say something about having trouble reading her terminal's displays."
"She's dying," the foodman said, and sipped his Kaff.
The word scared Asher. He felt a chill. In his mind he tried to picture the woman, but strange
scenes assailed him, mixed with soupy music. Strange concoction, he thought; video and aud
fragments, like old cloth remnants of the dead. Small and dark, the woman was. And what was her
name? "I can't think," he said, and put the palms of his hands against the sides of his face. As
if to reassure himself. Then, rising and going to his main board, he punched a couple of keys; it
showed her name on its display, retrieved by the code they used. Rybys Rommey. "Dying of what?" he
said. "What the hell do you mean?"
"Multiple sclerosis."
"You can't die of that. Not these days."
18 Philip K. Dick The Divine Invasion
"Out here you can."
"How-shit." He reseated himself; his hands shook. I'll be god damned, he thought. "How far
advanced is it?"
"Not far at all," the foodman said. "What's the matter?" He eyed Asher acutely.
"I don't know. Nerves. From the Kaff."
"A couple of months ago she told me that when she was in her late teens she suffered an-what is it
called? Aneurysm. In her left eye, which wiped out her central vision in that eye. They suspected
at the time that it might be the onset of multiple sclerosis. And then today when I talked to her
she said she's been experiencing optic neuritis, which-"
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Asher said, "Both symptoms were fed to M.E.D.?"
"A correlation of an aneurysm and then a period of remission and then double vision, blurring . .
. You're all rattled up."
"I had the strangest, most weird sensation for just a second, there," Asher said. "It's gone now.
As if this had all happened once before."
The foodman said, "You ought to call her up and talk to her. It'd be good for you as well. Get you
out of your bunk."
"Don't mastermind my life," Asher said. "That's why I moved out here from the Sol System. Did I
ever tell you what my second wife used to get me to do every morning? I had to fix her breakfast,
in bed; I had to-"
"When I was delivering to her she was crying."
Turning to his keyboard, Asher punched out and punched out and then read the display. "There's a
thirty to forty percent cure rate for multiple sclerosis."
Patiently, the foodman said, "Not out here. M.E.D. can't get to her out here. I told her to demand
a transfer back home. That's what I'd sure as hell do. She won't do it."
"She's crazy," Asher said.
"You're right. She's rattled up crazy. Everybody out here is crazy."
"I just got told that once today already."
"You want proof of it? She's proof of it. Wouldn't you go back home if you knew you were very
sick?"
"We're never supposed to surrender our domes. Anyhow it's against the law to emigrate back. No,
it's not," he corrected himself. "Not if you're sick. But our job here-"
"Oh yeah; that's right-what you monitor here is so important. Like Linda Fox. Who told you that
once today?"
"A Clem," Asher said. "A Clem walked in here and told me I'm crazy. And now you climb down my
ladder and tell me the same thing. I'm being diagnosed by Clems and foodmen. Do you hear that
sappy string music or don't you? It's all over my dome: I can't locate the source and I'm sick of
it. Okay, I'm sick and I'm crazy; how could I benefit Ms. Rommey? You said it your- self. I'm in
here totally rattled up; I'm no good to anyone.
The foodman set down his cup. "I have to go.
"Fine," Asher said. "I'm sorry; you upset me by telling me about Ms. Rommey."
"Call her and talk to her. She needs someone to talk to and you're the closest dome. I'm surprised
she didn't tell you."
Herb Asher thought, I didn't ask.
"It is the law, you know," the foodman said.
"What law?"
'If a domer is in distress the nearest neighbor-"
"Oh." He nodded. "Well, it's never come up before in my case. I mean-yeah, it is the law. I
forgot. Did she tell you to remind me of the law?"
"No," the foodman said.
After the foodman had departed, Herb Asher got the code for Rybys Rommey's dome, started to run it
into his transmitter and then hesitated. His wall clock showed 18:30 hours. At this point in his
forty-two-hour cycle he was supposed to accept a sequence of high-speed entertainment, audio- and
video-taped signals emanating from a slave satellite at CY3O III; upon storing them he was to run
them back at normal and select the material suitable for the overall dome system on his own
planet.
He took a look at the log. Fox was doing a concert that ran two hours. Linda Fox, he thought. You
and your synthesis of old-time rock, modern-day streng and the lute music of John Dowland. Jesus,
he thought; if I don't transcribe the relay of your
20 Philip K. Dick The Divine Invasion
live concert every domer on the planet will come storming in here and kill me. Outside of
emergencies-which really didn't occur -this is what I'm paid to handle: information traffic
between planets, information that connects us with home and keeps us human. The tape drums have to
turn.
He started the tape transport at its high-speed mode, set the module's controls for receive,
locked it in at the satellite's operating frequency, checked the wave form on the visual scope to
be sure that the carrier was coming in undistorted and then patched into an audio transduction of
what he was getting.
The voice of Linda Fox emerged from the strip of drivers mounted above him. As the scope showed,
there was no distortion. No noise. No clipping. All channels, in fact, were balanced; his meters
indicated that.
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Sometimes I could cry myself when I hear her, he thought. Speaking of crying.
Wandering all across this land,
My band.
In the worlds that pass above,
I love.
Play for me you spirits who are weightless.
I believe in drinking to your greatness.
My band.
And, behind Linda Fox's vocal, the vibrolutes which were her trademark. Until Fox no one had ever
thought of bringing back that sixteenth-century instrument for which Dowland had written so
beautifully and so effectively.
Shall I sue? shall I seek for grace?
Shall I pray? shall I prove?
Shall I strive to a heavenly joy
With an earthly love?
Are there worlds? Are there moons
Where the lost shall endure?
Shall I find for a heart that is pure?
These remasterings of the old lute songs, he said to himself; they bind us. Some new thing, for
scattered people as flung as if they had been dropped in haste: here and there, disarranged, in
domes, on the backs of miserable worlds and in satellites and arks-victimized by the power of
oppressive migration, and with no end in sight.
Now the Fox was singing one of his favorites:
Silly wretch, let me rail
At a voyage that is blind.
Holy hopes do require
A flurry of static. Herb Asher grimaced and cursed; the next line had been effaced. Damn, he
thought.
Again the Fox repeated the lines.
Silly wretch, let me rail
At a voyage that is blind.
Holy hopes do require
Again the static. He knew the missing line. It went:
Greater find.
Angrily, he signaled the source to replay the last ten seconds of its transmission; obligingly, it
rewound, paused, gave him the signal back, and repeated the quatrain. This time he could make out
the final line, despite the eerie static.
Silly wretch, let me rail
At a voyage that is blind.
Holy hopes do require
Your behind.
"Christ!" Asher said, and shut his tape transport down. Could he have heard that? "Your behind"?
22 Philip K. Dick The Divine Invasion
It was Yah. Screwing up his reception. This was not the first time.
The local throng of Clems had explained it to him when the interference had first set in several
months ago. In the old days before humans had migrated to the CY3O-CY3OB star system, the
autochthonic population had worshiped a mountain deity named Yah, whose abode, the autochthons had
explained, was the little mountain on which Herb Asher's dome had been erected.
His incoming microwave and psychotronic signals had gotten cooked by Yah every now and then, much
to his displeasure. And when no signals were coming in, Yah lit up his screens with faint but
obviously sentient driblets of information. Herb Asher had spent a long time fussing with his
equipment, trying to screen out this interference, but with no success. He had studied his manuals
and erected shields, but to no avail.
This, however, was the first time that Yah had wrecked a Linda Fox tune. Which, as far as Asher
was concerned, put thematter over a crucial line.
The fact of the matter was, whether it was healthy or not, he was totally dependent on the Fox.
He had long maintained an active fantasy life dealing with the Fox. He and Linda Fox lived on
Earth, in California, at one of the beach towns in the Southland (unspecified beyond that). Herb
Asher surfed and the Fox thought he was wonderful. It was like a living commercial for beer. They
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had campouts on the beach with their friends; the girls walked around nude from the waist up; the
portable radio was always tuned to a twenty-four-hour no-commercials-at-all rock station.
However, the truly spiritual was what mattered most; the topless girls at the beach were simply-
well, not vital but pleasant. The total package was highly spiritual. It was amazing how spiri-
tual an elaborated beer commercial could get.
And, at the peak of it all, the Dowland songs. The beauty of the universe lay not in the stars
figured into it but in the music generated by human minds, human voices, human hands. Vibrolutes
mixed on an intricate board by experts, and the voice of Fox. He thought, I know what I must have
to keep on going. My job is my delight: I transcribe this and I broadcast it and they pay me.
'This is the Fox," Linda Fox said.
Herb Asher switched the video to holo, and a cube formed in which Linda Fox smiled at him.
Meanwhile, the drums spun at furious speed, getting hour upon hour into his permanent possession.
"You are with the Fox," she declared, "and the Fox is with you." She pinned him with her gaze, the
hard, bright eyes. The diamond face, feral and wise, feral and true; this is the Fox / Speaking to
you. He smiled back.
"Hi, Fox," he said.
"Your behind," the Fox said.
--------------
Well, that explained the soupy string music, the endless Fiddler on the Roof. Yah was responsible.
Herb Asher's dome had been infiltrated by the ancient local deity who obviously be- grudged the
human settlers the electronic activity that they had brought. I got bugs all in my meal, Herb
Asher thought, and I got deities all in my reception. I ought to move off this mountain. What a
rinky-dink mountain it is anyhow-no more, really, than a slight hill. Let Yah have it back. The
autochthons can start serving up roasted goat meat to the deity once more. Except that all the
autochthonic goats had died out, and, along with them, the ritual.
Anyhow his incoming transmission was ruined. He did not have to replay it to know. Yah had cooked
the signal before it reached the recording heads; this was not the first time, and the
contamination always got onto the tape.
Thus I might as well say fuck it, he said to himself. And ring up the sick girl in the next dome.
He dialed her code, feeling no enthusiasm.
It took Rybys Rommey an amazingly long time to respond to his signal, and as he sat noting the
signal-register on his own board he thought, Is she finished? Or did they come and forcibly
evacuate her?
24 Philip K. Dick The Divine Invasion
His microscreen showed vague colors. Visual static, nothing more. And then there she was.
"Did I wake you up?" he said. She seemed so slowed down, so torpid. Perhaps, he thought, she's
sedated.
"No. I was shooting myself in the ass."
"What?" he said, startled. Was Yah screwing him over once again, cooking his signal? But she had
said it, all right.
Rybys said, "Chemotherapy. I'm not doing too well."
But what an uncanny coincidence, he thought. Your behind and shooting myself in the ass. I'm in an
eerie world, he thought. Things are behaving funny.
"I just now taped a terrific Linda Fox concert," he said. "I'll be broadcasting it in the next few
days. It'll cheer you up."
Her slightly swollen face showed no response. "It's too bad we're stuck in these domes. I wish we
could visit one another. The foodman was just here. In fact he brought me my medication. It's
effective but it makes me throw up."
Herb Asher thought, I wish I hadn't called.
"Is there any way you could visit me?" Rybys said.
"I have no portable air, none at all." It was of course a lie.
"I have," Rybys said.
In panic he said, "But if you're sick-"
"I can make it over to your dome."
"What about your station? What if data come in that-"
"I've got a beeper I can bring with me." Presently he said, "OK."
"It would mean a lot to me, someone to sit with for a little while. The foodman stays like half an
hour, but that's as long as he can. You know what he told me? There's been an outbreak of a form
of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis on CY3O VI. It must be a virus. This whole condition is a virus.
Christ, I'd hate to have amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. This is like the Mariana form."
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"Is it contagious?" Herb Asher said.
She did not answer directly; she said, "What I have can be cured." Obviously she wanted to
reassure him. "If the virus is around... I won't come over; it's okay." She nodded and reached to
shut off her transmitter. "I'm going to lie down," she said, "and get more sleep. With this you're
supposed to sleep as much as you can. I'll talk to you tomorrow. Good-bye."
"Come over," he said.
Brightening, she said, "Thank you."
"But be sure you bring your beeper. I have a hunch a lot of telemetric confirms are going to--"
"Oh, fuck the telemetric confirms!" Rybys said, with venom. "I'm so sick of being stuck in this
goddam dome! Aren't you going bugward sitting around watching tape-drums turn and little meters
and gauges and shit?"
"I think you should go back home," he said. "To the Sol System."
"No," she said, more calmly. "I'm going to follow exactly the M.E.D. instructions for my
chemotherapy and beat this fucking M.S. I'm not going home. I'll come over and fix you dinner. I'm
a good cook. My mother was Italian and my father is Chicano so I spice everything I fix, except
you can't get the spices out here. But I figured out how to beat that with different synthetics.
I've been experimenting."
Herb Asher said, "In this concert I'm going to be broadcasting, the Fox does a version of
Dowland's 'Shall I Sue.'
"A song about litigation?"
"No. 'Sue' in the sense of to pay court to or woo. In matters of love." And then he realized that
she was putting him on.
"Do you want to know what I think of the Fox?" Rybys said. "Recycled sentimentality, which is the
worst kind of sentimentality; it isn't even original. And she looks like her face is on upside
down. She has a mean mouth."
"I like her," he said, stiffly; he felt himself becoming mad, really mad. I'm supposed to help
you? he asked himself. Run the risk of catching what you have so you can insult the Fox?
"I'll fix you beef Stroganoff with parsley noodles," Rybys said.
"I'm doing fine," he said.
Hesitating, she said in a low, faltering voice, 'Then you don't want me to come over?"
"I-" he said.
26 Philip K. Dick
Rybys said, "I'm very frightened, Mr. Asher. Fifteen minutes from now I'm going to be throwing up
from the I-V Neurotoxite. But I don't want to be alone. I don't want to give up my dome and I
don't want to be by myself. I'm sorry if I offended you. It's just that to me the Fox is a joke.
She is a joke media personality. She is pure hype. I won't say anything more; I promise."
"Do you have the-" He amended what he intended to say. "Are you sure it won't be too much for you,
fixing dinner?"
"I'm stronger now than I will be," she said. "I'll be getting weaker for a long time."
"How long?"
"There's no way to tell."
He thought, You are going to die. He knew it and she knew it. They did not have to talk about it.
The complicity of silence was there, the agreement. A dying girl wants to cook me a dinner, he
thought. A dinner I don't want to eat. I've got to say no to her. I've got to keep her out of my
dome. The insistence of the weak, he thought; their dreadful power. It is so much easier to throw
a body block against the strong!
"Thank you," he said. "I'd like it very much if we had dinner together. But make sure you keep in
radio contact with me on your way over here-so I'll know you're okay. Promise?"
"Well, sure," she said. "Otherwise-" She smiled. "They'd find me a century from now, frozen with
pots, pans and food, as well as synthetic spices. You do have portable air, don't you?"
"No, I really don't," he said.
And knew that his lie was palpable to her.
CHAPTER 3
The meal smelled good and tasted good but halfway through Rybys Rommey excused herself and made
her way unsteadily from the central matrix of the dome-his dome-into the bath- room. He tried not
to listen; he arranged it with his percept sys- tem not to hear and with his cognition not to
know. In the bathroom the girl, violently sick, cried out and he gritted his teeth and pushed his
plate away and then all at once he got up and set in motion his in-dome audio system; he played an
early album of the Fox.
Come again!
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Sweet love doth now invite
Thy graces, that refrain
To do me due delight .
"Do you by any chance have some milk'?" Rybys said, standing at the bathroom door, her face pale.
Silently, he got her a glass of milk, or what passed for milk on their planet.
"I have anti-emetics," Rybys said as she held the glass of milk, 'but I didn't remember to bring
any with me. They're back at my dome."
"I could get them for you," he said.
28 Philip K. Dick The Divine Invasion
"You know what M.E.D. told me?" she said, her voice heavy with indignation. "They said that this
chemotherapy won't make my hair fall out but already it's coming out in-"
"Okay," he interrupted. 'Okay'?"
"I'm sorry," he said.
Rybys said, "This is upsetting you. The meal is spoiled and you're-I don't know what. If I'd
remembered to bring my anti-emetics I'd be able to keep from-" She became silent. "Next time I'll
bring them. I promise. This is one of the few albums of the Fox that I like. She was really good
then, don't you think?"
"Yes," he said tightly.
"Linda Box," Rybys said.
"What?" he said.
"Linda the box. That's what my sister and I used to call her." She tried to smile.
He said, "Please go back to your dome."
"Oh," she said. "Well-" She smoothed her hair, her hand shaking. "Will you come with me? I don't
think I can make it by myself right now. I'm really weak. I really am sick."
He thought, You are taking me with you. That's what this is. That is what is happening. You will
not go alone; you will take my spirit with you. And you know. You know it as well as you know the
name of the medication you are taking, and you hate me as you hate the medication, as you hate
M.E.D. and your illness; it is all hate, for each and every thing under these two suns. I know
you. I understand you. I see what is coming. In fact it has begun.
And, he thought, I don't blame you. But I will hang on to the Fox; the Fox will outlast you. And
so will I. You are not going to shoot down the luminiferous ether which animates our souls.
I will hang onto the Fox and the Fox will hold me in her arms and hang on to me. The two of us-we
can't be pried apart. I have dozens of hours of the Fox on audio and video tape, and the tapes are
not just for me but for everyone. You think you can kill that? he said to himself. It's been tried
before. The power of the weak, he thought, is an imperfect power; it loses in the end. Hence its
name. We call it weak for a reason.
"Sentimentality," Rybys said. "Right," he said sardonically. "Recycled at that." "And mixed
metaphors." "Her lyrics?" "What I'm thinking. When I get really angry I mix-"
"Let me tell you something," Rybys said. "One thing. If I am going to survive I can't be
sentimental. I have to be very harsh. If I've made you angry I'm sorry but that is how it is. It
is my life. Someday you may be in the spot I am in and then you'll know. Wait for that and then
judge me. If it ever happens. Meanwhile this stuff you're playing on your in-dome audio system is
crap. It has to be crap, for me. Do you see? You can forget about me; you can send me back to my
dome, where I probably really belong, but if you have anything to do with me-"
"Okay," he said. "I understand."
"Thank you. May I have some more milk? Turn down the audio and we'll finish eating. Okay?"
Amazed, he said, "You're going to keep on trying to-"
"All those creatures-and species-who gave up trying to eat aren't with us anymore." She seated
herself shakily, holding on to the table.
"I admire you."
"No," she said, "I admire you. It's harder on you. I know."
"Death-" he began.
"This isn't death. You know what this is? In contrast to what's coming out of your audio system?
This is life. The milk, please; I really need it."
As he got her more milk he said, "I guess you can't shoot down ether. Luminiferous or otherwise."
"No," she agreed, "since it doesn't exist."
"How old are you?" he said.
"Twenty-seven."
"You emigrated voluntarily?"
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