Dick, Philip K - Now Wait for Last Year

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Philip K. Dick - Now wait for last yearPhilip K. Dick

Now Wait for Last Year

Scanned by Jan Klaassen, version 1.0, June 11-12 2001

To Nancy Hackett

...A way where you might tread the Sun, and be

More bright than he.

Henry Vaughan

ONE

The apertyx-shaped building, so familiar to him, gave off its usual smoky gray

light as Eric Sweetscent collapsed his wheel and managed to park in the tiny

stall allocated him. Eight o'clock in the morning, he thought drearily. And

already his employer Mr Virgil L. Ackerman had opened TF&D Corporation's offices

for business. Imagine a man whose mind is most sharp at eight a.m., Dr

Sweetscent mused. It runs against God's clear command. A fine world they're

doling out to us; the war excuses any human aberration, even the old man's.

Nonetheless he started toward the in-track – only to be halted by the calling of

his name. 'Say, Mr Sweetscent! Just a moment, sir!' The twangy – and highly

repellant – voice of a robant; Eric stopped reluctantly, and now the thing

coasted up to him, all arms and legs flapping energetically. 'Mr Sweet-scent of

Tijuana Fur & Dye Corporation?'

The slight got across to him. 'Dr Sweetscent. Please.'

'I have a bill, doctor.' It whipped a folded white slip from its metal pouch.

'Your wife Mrs Katherine Sweetscent charged this three months ago on her

Dreamland Happy Times For All account. Sixty-five dollars plus sixteen per cent

charges. And the law, now; you understand. I regret delaying you, but it is,

ahem, illegal.' It eyed him alertly as he, with massive reluctance, fished out

his checkbook.

'What's the purchase?' he asked gloomily as he wrote the check.

'It was a Lucky Strike package, doctor. With the authentic ancient green. Circa

1940, before World War Two when the package changed. "Lucky Strike green has

gone to war," you know.' It giggled.

He couldn't believe it; something was wrong. 'But surely,' he protested, 'that

was supposed to be put on the company account.'

'No, doctor,' the robant declared. 'Honest injun. Mrs Sweetscent made it

absolutely clear that this purchase was for her private use.' It managed to add,

then, an explanation which he knew at once to be spurious. But whether it

originated in the robant or with Kathy – that he could not tell, at least not

immediately. 'Mrs Sweetscent,' the robant stated piously, 'is building a

Pitts-39.'

'The hell she is.' He tossed the made-out check at the robant; as it strove to

catch the fluttering bit of paper he continued on, toward the in-track.

A Lucky Strike package. Well, he reflected grimly, Kathy is off again. The

creative urge, which can only find an outlet in spending. And always above and

beyond her own salary – which, he had to admit to himself, was a bit greater

than his own, alas. But in any case, why hadn't she told him? A major purchase

of that sort ...

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The answer, of course, was obvious. The bill itself pointed out the problem in

all its depressing sobriety. He thought, Fifteen years ago I would have said –

did say – that the combined incomes of Kathy and me would be enough and

certainly ought to be enough to maintain any two semi-reasonable adults at any

level of opulence. Even taking into account the wartime inflation.

However, it had not quite worked out that way. And he felt a deep, abiding

intuition that it just never quite would.

Within the TF&D Building he dialed the hall leading to his own office,

squelching the impulse to drop by Kathy's office upstairs for an immediate

confrontation. Later, he decided. After work, perhaps at dinner. Lord, and he

had such a full schedule ahead of him; he had no energy – and never had had in

the past — for this endless squabbling.

'Morning, doctor.'

'Hi,' Eric said, nodding to fuzzy Miss Perth, his secretary; this time she had

sprayed herself a shiny blue, inlaid with sparkling fragments that reflected the

outer office's overhead lighting. 'Where's Himmel?' No sign of the final-stage

quality-control inspector, and already he perceived reps from subsidiary outfits

pulling up at the parking lot.

'Bruce Himmel phoned to say that the San Diego public library is suing him and

he may have to go to court and so he'll probably be late.' Miss Perth smiled at

him engagingly, showing spotless synthetic ebony teeth, a chilling affectation

which had migrated with her from Amarillo, Texas, a year ago. 'The library cops

broke into his conapt yesterday and found over twenty of their books that he'd

stolen – you know Bruce, he has that phobia about checking things out... how is

it put in Greek?'

He passed on into the inner office which was his alone; Virgil Ackerman had

insisted on it as a suitable mark of prestige – in lieu of a raise in salary.

And there, in his office, at his window, smoking a sweet-smelling Mexican

cigarette and gazing out at the austere brown hills of Baja California south of

the city, stood his wife Kathy. This was the first time he had met up with her

this morning; she had risen an hour ahead of him, had dressed and eaten alone

and gone on in her own wheel.

'What's up?' Eric said to her tightly.

'Come on in and shut the door.' Kathy turned but did not look toward him; the

expression on her exquisitely sharp face was meditative.

He closed the door. 'Thanks for welcoming me into my own office.'

'I knew that damn bill collector would intercept you this morning,' Kathy said

in a faraway voice.

'Almost eighty greens.' he said. 'With the fines.'

'Did you pay it?' Now for the first time she glanced at him; the flutter of her

artificially dark lashes quickened, revealing her concern.

'No,' he said sardonically. 'I let the robant gun me down where I stood, there

in the parking lot.' He hung his coat in his closet. 'Of course I paid it. It's

mandatory, ever since the Mole obliterated the entire class of credit-system

purchasing. I realize you're not interested in this, but if you don't pay

within—'

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'Please,' Kathy said. 'Don't lecture me. What did it say? That I'm building a

Pitts-39? It lied; I got the Lucky Strike green package as a gift. I wouldn't

build a babyland without telling you; after all, it would be yours, too.'

'Not Pitts-39,' Eric said. 'I never lived there, in '39 or any other time.' He

seated himself at his desk and punched the viscombox. 'I'm here, Mrs Sharp,' he

informed Virgil's secretary. 'How are you today, Mrs Sharp? Get home all right

from that war-bond rally last night? No warmongering pickets hit you on the

head?' He shut off the box. To Kathy he explained, 'Lucile Sharp is an ardent

appeaser. I think it's nice for a corporation to permit its employees to engage

in political agitation, don't you? And even nicer than that is the fact that it

doesn't cost you a cent; political meetings are free.'

Kathy said, 'But you have to pray and sing. And they do get you to buy those

bonds.'

'Who was the cigarette package for?'

'Virgil Ackerman, of course.' She exhaled cigarette smoke in twin gray trails.

'You suppose I want to work elsewhere?'

'Sure, if you could do better.'

Kathy said thoughtfully, 'It's not the high salary that keeps me here, Eric,

despite what you think. I believe we're helping the war effort.'

'Here? How?'

The office door opened; Miss Perth stood outlined, her luminous, fuzzy,

horizontally inclined breasts brushing the frame as she turned toward him and

said, 'Oh, doctor, sorry to bother you but Mr Jonas Ackerman is here to see you

– Mr Virgil's great-grandnephew from the Baths.'

'How are the Baths, Jonas?' Eric said, holding out his hand; the

great-grandnephew of the firm's owner came toward him and they shook in

greeting. 'Anything bubble out during the night shift?'

'If it did,' Jonas said, 'it imitated a workman and left by the front gate.' He

noticed Kathy then. 'Morning, Mrs Sweetscent. Say, I saw that new config you

acquired for our Wash-35, that bug-shaped car. What is that, a Volkswagen? Is

that what they were called?'

'An air-flow Chrysler,' Kathy said. 'It was a good car but it had too much

unsprung metal in it. An engineering error that ruined it on the market.'

'God,' Jonas said, with feeling. To know something really thoroughly; how that

must feel. Down with the fliegemer Renaissance – I say specialize in one area

until—' He broke off, seeing that both the Sweetscents had a grim, taciturn cast

about them. 'I interrupted?'

'Company business takes priority,' Eric said, 'over the creature pleasures.' He

was glad of the intervention by even this junior member of the organization's

convoluted blood hierarchy. 'Please scram out of here, Kathy,' he said to his

wife, and did not trouble himself to make his tone jovial. 'We'll talk at

dinner. I've got too much to do to spend my time haggling over whether a robant

bill collector is mechanically capable of telling lies or not.' He escorted his

wife to the office door; she moved passively, without resistance. Softly, Eric

said, 'Like everyone else in the world it's busy deriding you, isn't it? They're

all talking.' He shut the door after her.

Presently Jonas Ackerman shrugged and said, 'Well, that's marriage these days.

Legalized hate.'

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'Why do you say that?'

'Oh, the overtones came through in that exchange; you could feel it in the air

like the chill of death. There ought to be an ordinance that a man can't work

for the same outfit as his wife; hell, even in the same city.' He smiled, his

thin, youthful face all at once free of seriousness. 'But she really is good,

you know; Virgil gradually let go all his other antique collectors after Kathy

started here ... but of course she's mentioned that to you.'

'Many times.' Almost every day, he reflected caustically.

'Why don't you two get divorced?'

Eric shrugged, a gesture designed to show a deep philosophical nature. He hoped

it truly did so.

The gesture evidently fell short, because Jonas said, 'Meaning that you like

it?'

'I mean,' he said resignedly, 'that I've been married before and it was no

better, and if I divorce Kathy I'll marry again – because as my brainbasher puts

it I can't find my identity outside the role of husband and daddy and big

butter-and-egg-man wage earner – and the next damn one will be the same because

that's the kind I select. It's rooted in my temperament.' He raised his head and

eyed Jonas with as good a show of masochistic defiance as he could manage. 'What

did you want, Jonas?'

'Trip,' Jonas Ackerman said brightly. 'To Mars, for all of us, including you.

Conference! You and I can nab seats a good long way from old Virgil so we won't

have to discuss company business and the war effort and Gino Molinari. And since

we're taking the big goat it'll be six hours each way. And for God's sake, let's

not find ourselves standing up all the way to Mars and back – let's make sure we

do get seats.'

'How long will we be there?' He frankly did not look forward to the trip; it

would separate him from his work too long.

'We'll undoubtedly be back tomorrow or the day after. Listen; it'll get you out

of your wife's path: Kathy's staying here. It's an irony, but I've noticed that

when the old fellow's actually at Wash-35 he never likes to have his antique

experts around him ... he likes to slide into the, ahem, magic of the place ...

more so all the time as he gets older. When you're one hundred and thirty you'll

begin to understand – so will I, maybe. Meanwhile we have to put up with him.'

He added, somberly, 'You probably know this, Eric, because you are his doctor.

He never will die; he'll never make the hard decision – as it's called – no

matter what fails and has to be replaced inside him. Sometimes I envy him for

being – optimistic. For liking life that much; for thinking it's so important.

Now, we puny mortals; at our age—' He eyed Eric. 'At a miserable thirty or

thirty-three—'

'I've got plenty of vitality,' Eric said. 'I'm good for a long time. And life

isn't going to get the best of me.' From his coat pocket he brought forth the

bill which the robant collector had presented to him. 'Think back. Did a package

of Lucky Strike with the green show up at Wash-35 about three months ago? A

contribution from Kathy?'

After a long pause Jonas Ackerman said, 'You poor suspicious stupid creak.

That's all you can manage to brood about. Listen, doctor; if you can't get your

mind on your job, you're finished; there's twenty artiforg surgeons with

applications in our personnel files just waiting to go to work for a man like

Virgil, a man of his importance in the economy and war effort. You're really

just plain not all that good.' His expression was both compassionate and

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disapproving, a strange mixture which had the effect of waking Eric Sweetscent

abruptly. 'Personally, if my heart gave out – which it no doubt will do one of

these days – I wouldn't particularly care to go to you. You're too tangled in

your own personal affairs. You live for yourself, not the planetary cause. My

God, don't you remember? We're fighting a life-and-death war. And we're losing.

We're being pulverized every goddam day!'

True, Eric realized. And we've got a sick, hypochondriacal, dispirited leader.

And Tijuana Fur & Dye Corporation is one of those vast industrial props that

maintain that sick leader, that manage just barely to keep the Mole in office.

Without such warm, high-placed personal friendships as that of Virgil Ackerman,

Gino Molinari would be out or dead or in an old folks' rest home. I know it. And

yet – individual life must go on. After all, he reflected, I didn't choose to

get entangled in my domestic life, my boxer's clinch with Kathy. And if you

think I did or do, it's because you're morbidly young. You've failed to pass

from adolescent freedom into the land which I inhabit: married to a woman who is

economically, intellectually, and even this, too, even erotically my superior.

Before leaving the building Dr Eric Sweetscent dropped by the Baths, wondering

if Bruce Himmel had shown up. He had; there he stood, beside the huge

reject-basket full of defective Lazy Brown Dogs.

'Turn them back into groonk,' Jonas said to Himmel, who grinned in his empty,

disjointed fashion as the youngest of the Ackermans tossed him one of the

defective spheres which rolled off TF&D's assembly lines along with those

suitable for wiring into the command guidance structure of interplanetary

spacecraft. 'You know,' he said to Eric, 'if you took a dozen of these control

syndromes – and not the defective ones but the ones going into shipping cartons

for the Army – you'd find that compared with a year ago or even six months ago

their reaction time has slowed by several microseconds.'

'By that you mean,' Eric said, 'our quality standards have dropped?'

It seemed impossible. TF&D's product was too vital. The entire network of

military operations depended on these head-sized spheres.

'Exactly.' It did not appear to bother Jonas. 'Because we were rejecting too

many units. We couldn't show a profit.'

Himmel stammered, 'S-sometimes I wish we were back in the Martian bat guano

business.'

Once the corporation had collected the dung of the Martian flap bat, had made

its first returns that way and so had been in position to underwrite the greater

economic aspects of another non-terrestrial creature, the Martian print amoeba.

This august unicellular organism survived by its ability to mimic other life

forms – those of its own size, specifically – and although this ability had

amused Terran astronauts and UN officials, no one had seen an industrial usage

until Virgil Ackerman of bat guano fame had come upon the scene. Within a matter

of hours he had presented a print amoeba with one of his'current mistress's

expensive furs; the print amoeba had faithfully mimicked it, whereupon, for all

intents and purposes, between Virgil and the girl two mink stoles existed.

However, the amoeba had at last grown tired of being a fur and had resumed its

own form. This conclusion left something to be desired.

The answer, developed over a period of many months, consisted of killing the

amoeba during its interval of mimicry and then subjecting the cadaver to a bath

of fixing-chemicals which had the capacity to lock the amoeba in that final

form; the amoeba did not decay and hence could not later on be distinguished

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from the original. It was not long before Virgil Ackerman had set up a receiving

plant at Tijuana, Mexico, and was accepting shipments of ersatz furs of every

variety from his industrial installations on Mars. And almost at once he had

broken the natural fur market on Earth.

The war, however, had changed all that.

But, then, what hadn't the war changed? And who had ever thought, when the Pact

of Peace was signed with the ally, Lilistar, that things would go so badly?

Because according to Lilistar and its Minister Freneksy this was the dominant

military power in the galaxy; its enemy, the reegs, was inferior militarily and

in every other way and the war would undoubtedly be a short one.

War itself was bad enough, Eric ruminated, but there was nothing quite like a

losing war to make one stop and think, to try – futilely – to second-guess one's

past decisions – such as the Pact of Peace, to name one example, and an example

which currently might have occurred to quite a number of Terrans had they been

asked. But these days their opinions were not being solicited by the Mole or by

the government of Lilistar itself. In fact it was universally believed – openly

noised about at bars as well as in the privacy of living rooms – that even the

Mole's opinion was not being asked.

As soon as hostilities with the reegs had begun, Tijuana Fur & Dye had converted

from the luxury trade of ersatz fur production to war work, as, of course, had

all other industrial enterprises. Supernaturally accurate duplication of

rocketship master syndromes, the ruling monad Lazy Brown Dog, was fatalistically

natural for the type of operation which TF&D represented; conversion had been

painless and rapid. So here now, meditatively, Eric Sweetscent faced this basket

of rejects, wondering – as had everyone at one time or another in the

corporation – how these sub-standard and yet still quite complex units could be

put to some economic advantage. He picked one up and handled it; in terms of

weight it resembled a baseball, in terms of size a grapefruit. Evidently nothing

could be done with these failures which Himmel had rejected, and he turned to

toss the sphere into the maw of the hopper, which would return the fixed plastic

into its original organic cellular form.

'Wait,' Himmel croaked.

Eric and Jonas glanced at him.

'Don't melt it down,' Himmel said. His unsightly body twisted with

embarrassment; his arms wound themselves about, the long, knobby fingers

writhing. Idiotically, his mouth gaped as he mumbled, 'I – don't do that any

more. Anyhow, in terms of raw material that unit's worth only a quarter of a

cent. That whole bin's worth only about a dollar.'

'So?' Jonas said. They still have to go back to—'

Himmel mumbled, 'I'll buy it.' He dug into his trouser pocket, straining to find

his wallet; it was a long and arduous struggle but at last he produced it.

'Buy it for what?' Jonas demanded.

'I have a schedule arranged,' Himmel said, after an agonized pause. 'I pay a

half cent apiece for Lazy Brown Dog rejects, twice what they're worth, so the

company's making a profit. So why should anyone object?' His voice rose to a

squeak.

Pondering him, Jonas said, 'No one's objecting. I'm just curious as to what you

want it for.' He glanced sideways at Eric as if to ask. What do you say about

this?

Himmel said, 'Urn, I use them.' With gloom he turned and shambled toward a

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nearby door. 'But they're all mine because I paid for them in advance out of my

salary,' he said over his shoulder as he opened the door. Defensively, his face

dark with resentment and with the corrosive traces of deeply etched phobic

anxiety, he stood aside.

Within the room – a storeroom, evidently – small carts rolled about on

silver-dollar-sized wheels; twenty or more of them, astutely avoiding one

another in their zealous activity.

On board each cart Eric saw a Lazy Brown Dog, wired in place and controlling the

movements of the cart.

Presently Jonas rubbed the side of his nose, grunted, said, 'What powers them?'

Stooping, he managed to snare a cart as it wheeled by his foot; he lifted it up,

its wheels still spinning futilely.

'Just a little cheap ten-year A-battery,' Himmel said. 'Costs another half

cent.'

'And you built these carts?'

'Yes, Mr Ackerman.' Himmel took the cart from him and set it back on the floor;

once more it wheeled industriously off. 'These are the ones too new to let go,'

he explained. 'They have to practice.'

'And then,' Jonas said, 'you give them their freedom.'

That's right.' Himmel bobbed his large-domed, almost bald head, his horn-rimmed

glasses sliding forward on his nose.

'Why?' Eric said.

Now the crux of the matter had been broached; Himmel turned red, twitched

miserably, and yet displayed an obscure, defensive pride. 'Because,' he blurted,

'they deserve it.'

Jonas said, 'But the protoplasm's not alive; it died when the chemical

fixing-spray was applied. You know that. From then on it – all of these – is

nothing but an electronic circuit, as dead as – well, as a robant.'

With dignity Himmel answered, 'But I consider them alive, Mr Ackerman. And just

because they're inferior and incapable of guiding a rocketship in deep space,

that doesn't mean they have no right to live out their meager lives. I release

them and they wheel around for, I expect, six years or possibly longer; that's

enough. That gives them what they're entitled to.'

Turning to Eric, Jonas said, 'If the old man knew about this—'

'Mr Virgil Ackerman knows about this,' Himmel said at once. 'He approves of it.'

He amended, 'Or rather, he lets me do it; he knows I'm reimbursing the company.

And I build the carts at night, on my own time; I have an assembly line –

naturally very primitive, but effective – in my conapt where I live.' He added,

'I work till around one o'clock every night.'

'What do they do after they're released?' Eric asked. 'Just roam the city?'

'God knows,' Himmel said. Obviously that part was not his concern; he had done

his job by building the carts and wiring the Lazy Brown Dogs in functioning

position. And perhaps he was right; he could hardly accompany each cart, defend

it against the hazards of the city.

'You're an artist,' Eric pointed out, not sure if he was amused or revolted or

just what. He was not impressed; that much he was sure of: the entire enterprise

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had a bizarre, zany quality – it was absurd. Himmel ceaselessly at work both

here and at his conapt, seeing to it that the factory rejects got their place in

the sun ... what next? And this, while everyone else sweated out the folly, the

greater, collective absurdity, of a bad war.

Against that backdrop Himmel did not look so ludicrous. It was the times.

Madness haunted the atmosphere itself, from the Mole on down to this

quality-control functionary who was clearly disturbed in the clinical,

psychiatric sense.

Walking off down the hall with Jonas Ackerman, Eric said, 'He's a pook.' That

was the most powerful term for aberrance in currency.

'Obviously,' Jonas said, with a gesture of dismissal. 'But this gives me a new

insight into old Virgil, the fact that he'd tolerate this and certainly not

because it gives him a profit – that's not it. Frankly I'm glad. I thought

Virgil was more hard-boiled; I'd have expected him to bounce this poor nurt

right out of here, into a slave-labor gang on its way to Lilistar. God, what a

fate that would be. Himmel is lucky.'

'How do you think it'll end?' Eric asked. 'You think the Mole will sign a

separate treaty with the reegs and bail us out of this and leave the 'Starmen to

fight it alone – which is what they deserve?'

'He can't,' Jonas said flatly. 'Freneksy's secret police would swoop down on us

here on Terra and make mincemeat out of him. Kick him out of office and replace

him overnight with someone more militant. Someone who likes the job of

prosecuting the war.'

'But they can't do that,' Eric said. 'He's our elected leader, not theirs.' He

knew, however, that despite these legal considerations Jonas was right. Jonas

was merely appraising their ally realistically, facing the facts.

'Our best bet,' Jonas said, 'is simply to lose. Slowly, inevitably, as we're

doing.' He lowered his voice to a rasping whisper. 'I hate to talk defeatist

talk—'

'Feel free.'

Jonas said, 'Eric, it's the only way out, even if we have to look forward to a

century of occupation by the reegs as our punishment for picking the wrong ally

in the wrong war at the wrong time. Our very virtuous first venture into

interplanetary militarism, and how we picked it – how the Mole picked it.' He

grimaced.

'And we picked the Mole,' Eric reminded him. So the responsibility, ultimately,

came back to them.

Ahead, a slight, leaflike figure, dry and weightless, drifted all at once toward

them, calling in a thin, shrill voice, 'Jonas! And you, too, Sweetscent – time

to get started for the trip to Wash-35.' Virgil Ackerman's tone was faintly

peevish, that of a mother bird at her task; in his advanced age Virgil had

become almost hermaphroditic, a blend of man and woman into one sexless,

juiceless, and yet vital entity.

TWO

Opening the ancient, empty Camel cigarettes package, Virgil Ackerman said as he

flattened its surfaces, 'Hits, cracks, taps, or pops. Which do you take,

Sweetscent?'

Taps,' Eric said.

The old man peered at the marking stamped on the inside glued bottom fold of the

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now two-dimensional package. 'It's cracks. I get to cork you on the arm –

thirty-two times.' He ritualistically tapped Eric on the shoulder, smiling

gleefully, his natural-style ivory teeth pale and full of animated luster. 'Far

be it from me to injure you, doctor; after all, I might need a new liver any

moment now... I had a bad few hours last night after I went to bed and I think –

but check me on this – it was due to toxemia once again. I felt loggy.'

In the seat beside Virgil Ackerman, Dr Eric Sweetscent said, 'How late were you

up and what did you do?'

'Well, doctor, there was this girl.' Virgil grinned mischievously at Harvey,

Jonas, Ralf and Phyllis Ackerman, those members of the family who sat around him

in his thin, tapered interplan ship as it sped from Terra toward Wash-35 on

Mars. 'Need I say more?'

His great-grandniece, Phyllis, said severely, 'Oh Christ, you're too old. Your

heart'll give out again right in the middle. And then what'll she – whoever she

is – think? It's undignified to die during you know what.' She eyed Virgil

reprovingly.

Virgil screeched, Then the dead man's control in my right fist, carried for such

emergencies, would summon Dr Sweet-scent here, and he'd dash in and right there

on the spot, without removing me, he'd take out that bad, collapsed old heart

and stick in a brand new one, and I'd—' He giggled, then patted away the saliva

from his lower lip and chin with a folded linen handkerchief from his breast

coat pocket, 'I'd continue.' His paper-thin flesh glowed and beneath it his

bones, the outline of his skull, fine and clearly distinguishable, quivered with

delight and the joy of tantalizing them; they had no entree into this world of

his, the private life which he, because of his privileged position, enjoyed even

now during the days of privation which the war had brought on.

'"Mille tre,"' Harvey said sourly, quoting Da Ponte's libretto. 'But with you,

you old craknit, it's – however you say a billion and three in Italian. I hope

when I'm your age—'

'You won't ever be my age,' Virgil chortled, his eyes dancing and flaming up

with the vitality of enjoyment. 'Forget it, Harv. Forget it and go back to your

fiscal records, you walking, droning-on abacus. They won't find you dead in bed

with a woman; they'll find you dead with a—' Virgil searched his mind. 'With an,

ahem, inkwell.'

'Please,' Phyllis said drily, turning to look out at the stars and the black sky

of 'tween space.

Eric said to Virgil, 'I'd like to ask you something. About a pack of Lucky

Strike green. About three months ago—'

'Your wife loves me,' Virgil said. 'Yes, it was for me, doctor; a gift without

strings. So ease your feverish mind; Kathy's not interested. Anyhow, it would

cause trouble. Women, I can get; artiforg surgeons – well.. .' He reflected.

'Yes. When you think about it I can get that, too.'

'Just as I told Eric earlier today,' Jonas said. He winked at Eric, who

stoically did not show any response.

'But I like Eric,' Virgil continued. 'He's a calm type. Look at him right now.

Sublimely reasonable, always the cerebral type, cool in every crisis; I've

watched him work many times, Jonas; I ought to know. And willing to get up at

any hour of the night.. . and that sort you don't see much.'

'You pay him,' Phyllis said shortly. She was, as always, taciturn and withdrawn;

Virgil's attractive great-grandniece, who sat on the corporation's board of

directors, had a piercing, raptorlike quality – much like the old man's, but

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without his sly sense of the peculiar. To Phyllis, everything was business or

dross. Eric reflected that had she come onto Himmel there would be no more

little carts wheeling about; in Phyllis' world there was no room for the

harmless. She reminded him a little of Kathy. And, like Kathy, she was

reasonably sexy; she wore her hair in one long braided pigtail dyed a

fashionable ultramarine, set off by autonomic rotating earrings and (this he did

not especially enjoy) a nose ring, sign of nubility with the higher bourgeois

circles.

'What's the purpose of this conference?' Eric asked Virgil Ackerman. 'Can we

start discussing it now to save time?' He felt irritable.

'A pleasure trip,' Virgil said. 'Chance to get away from the gloomy biz we're

in. We have a guest meeting us at Wash-35; he may already be there... he's got a

Blank Check; I've opened my babyland to him, the first time I've let anybody but

myself experience it freely.'

'Who?' Harv demanded. 'After all, technically Wash-35 is the property of the

corporation, and we're on the board.'

Jonas said acidly, 'Virgil probably lost all his authentic Horrors of War

flipcards to this person. So what else could he do but throw open the gates of

the place to him?'

'I never flip with my Horrors of War cards or my FBI cards,' Virgil said. 'And

by the way I have a duplicate of the Sinking of the Panay. Eton Hambro – you

know, the fathead who's board chairman of Manfrex Enterprises – gave it to me on

my birthday. I thought everyone knew I had a complete file but evidently not

Hambro. No wonder Freneksy's boys are running his six factories for him these

days.'

'Tell us about Shirley Temple in The Littlest Rebel,' Phyllis said in a bored

tone, still looking out at the panorama of stars beyond the ship. 'Tell us how

she—'

'You've seen that.' Virgil sounded testy.

'Yes, but I never get tired of it,' Phyllis said. 'No matter how hard I try I

still can't find it anything but engrossing, right down to the last miserable

inch of film.' She turned to Harv. 'Your lighter.'

Rising from his seat, Eric walked to the lounge of the small ship, seated

himself at the table, and picked up the drink list. His throat felt dry; the

bickering that went on within the Ackerman clan always made him dully thirsty,

as if he were in need of some reassuring fluid ... perhaps, he thought, a

substitute for the primordial milk: the Urmilch of life. I deserve my own

babyland, too, he thought half in jest. But only half.

To everyone but Virgil Ackerman, the Washington, D.C., of 1935 was a waste of

time, since only Virgil remembered the authentic city, the authentic time and

place, the environment now so long passed away. In every detail, therefore,

Wash-35 consisted of a painstakingly elaborate reconstruction of the specific

limited universe of childhood which Virgil had known, constantly refined and

improved in matters of authenticity by his antique procurer – Kathy Sweetscent –

without really ever being in a genuine sense changed: it had coagulated, cleaved

to the dead past... at least as far as the rest of the clan were concerned. But

to Virgil it of course sprouted life. There, he blossomed. He restored his

flagging biochemical energy and then returned to the present, to the shared,

current world which he eminently understood and manipulated but of which he did

not psychologically feel himself a native.

And his vast regressive babyland had caught on: become a fad. On lesser scales

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