Dick, Philip K - Dr. Bloodmoney

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DR. BLOODMONEY, OR HOW WE GOT ALONG AFTER THE BOMB
by Philip K. Dick
Copyright 1965, by Ace Books, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
I
Early in the bright sun-yellowed morning, Stuart McConchie swept the sidewalk before Modem
TV Sales & Service, hearing the cars along Shattuck Avenue and the secretaries hurrying on high
heels to their offices, all the stirrings and fine smells of a new week, a new time in which a
good salesman could accomplish things. He thought about a hot roll and coffee for his second
breakfast, along about ten. He thought of customers whom he had talked to returning to buy, all of
them perhaps today, his book of sales running over, like that cup in the Bible. As he swept he
sang a song from a new Buddy Greco album and he thought too how it might feel to be famous, a
world-famous great singer that everyone paid to see at such places as Harrah's in Reno or the
fancy expensive clubs in Las Vegas which he had never seen but heard so much about.
He was twenty-six years old and he had driven, late on certain Friday nights, from
Berkeley along the great ten lane highway to Sacramento and across the Sierras to Reno, where one
could gamble and find girls; he worked for Jim Fergesson, the owner of Modern TV, on a salary and
commission basis, and being a good salesman he made plenty. And anyhow this was 1981 and business
was not bad. Another good year, booming from the start, where America got bigger and stronger and
everybody took more home.
"Morning, Stuart." Nodding, the middle-aged jeweler from across Shattuck Avenue passed by.
Mr. Crody, on his way to his own little store.
All the stores, the offices, opening, now; it was after nine and even Doctor Stockstill,
the psychiatrist and specialist in psychosomatic disorders, appeared, key in hand, to start up his
high-paying enterprise in the glass-sided office building which the insurance company had built
with a bit of its surplus money. Doctor Stockstill had parked his foreign car in the lot; he could
afford to pay five dollars a day. And now came the tall, long-legged pretty secretary of Doctor
Stockstill's, a head taller than he. And, sure enough as Stuart watched, leaning on his broom, the
furtive first nut of the day sidled guiltily toward the psychiatrist's office.
It's a world of nuts, Stuart thought, watching. Psychiatrists make a lot. If I had to go
to a psychiatrist I'd come and go by the back door. Nobody'd see me and jeer. He thought, Maybe
some of them do; maybe Stockstill has a back door. For the sicker ones, or rather (he corrected
his thought) the ones who don't want to make a spectacle out of themselves; I mean the ones who
simply have a problem, for instance worry about the Police Action in Cuba, and who aren't nuts at
all, just--concerned.
And he was concerned, because there was still a good chance that he might be called up for
the Cuban War, which had now become bogged down in the mountains once more, despite the new little
anti-personnel bombs that picked out the greasy gooks no matter how well dug in. He himself did
not blame the president--it wasn't the president's fault that the Chinese had decided to honor
their pact. It was just that hardly anyone came home from fighting the greasy gooks free of virus
bone infections. A thirty-year-old combat veteran returned looking like some dried mummy left out
of doors to hang for a century . . . and it was hard for Stuart McConchie to imagine himself
picking up once more after that, selling stereo TV again, resuming his career in retail selling.
"Morning, Stu," a girl's voice came, startling him. The small, dark-eyed waitress from
Edy's candy store. "Day dreaming so early?" She smiled as she passed on by along the sidewalk.
"Heck no," he said, again sweeping vigorously.
Across the street the furtive patient of Doctor Stockstill's, a man black in color, black
hair and eyes, light skin, wrapped tightly in a big overcoat itself the color of deep night,
paused to light a cigarette and glance about. Stuart saw the man's hollow face, the staring eyes
and the mouth, especially the mouth. It was drawn tight and yet the flesh hung slack, as if the
pressure, the tension there, had long ago ground the teeth and the jaw away; the tension remained
there in that unhappy face, and Stuart looked away.
Is that how it is? he wondered. To be crazy? Corroded away like that, as if devoured by .
. . he did not know what by. Time or perhaps water; something slow but which never stopped. He had
seen such deterioration before, in watching the psychiatrist's patients come and go, but never
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this bad, never this complete.
The phone rang from inside Modern TV, and Stuart turned to hurry toward it. When next he
looked out onto the street the black-wrapped man had gone, and once more the day was regaining its
brightness, its promise and smell of beauty. Stuart' shivered, picked up his broom.
I know that man, he said to himself. I've see his picture or he's come into the store.
He's either a customer--an old one, maybe even a friend of Fergesson's--or he's an important
celebrity.
Thoughtfully, he swept on.
To his new patient, Doctor Stockstill said, "Cup of coffee? Or tea or Coke?" He read the
little card which Miss Purcell had placed on his desk. "Mr. Tree," he said aloud. "Any relation to
the famous English literary family? Iris Tree, Max Beerbohm . . ."
In a heavily-accented voice Mr. Tree said, "That is not actually my name, you know." He
sounded irritable and impatient. "It occurred to me as I talked to your girl."
Doctor Stockstill glanced questioningly at his patient.
"I am world-famous," Mr. Tree said. "I'm surprised you don't recognize me; you must be a
recluse or worse." He ran a hand shakily through his long black hair. "There are thousands, even
millions of people in the world, who hate me and would like to destroy me. So naturally I have to
take steps; I have to give you a made-up name." He cleared his throat and smoked rapidly at his
cigarette; he held the cigarette European style, the burning end within, almost touching his palm.
Oh my god, Doctor Stockstill thought. This man, I do recognize him. This is Pruno
Bluthgeld, the physicist. And he is right; a lot of people both here and in the East would like to
get their hands on him because of his miscalculation back in 1972. Because of the terrible fall-
out from the high-altitude blast which wasn't supposed to hurt anyone; Bluthgeld's figures
_proved_ it in advance.
"Do you want me to know who you are?" Doctor Stockstill asked. "Or shall we accept you
simply as 'Mr. Tree'? It's up to you; either way is satisfactory to me."
"Let's simply get on," Mr. Tree grated.
"All right." Doctor Stockstill made himself comfortable, scratched with his pen against
the paper on his clipboard. "Go ahead."
"Does an inability to board an ordinary bus--you know, with perhaps a dozen persons
unfamiliar to you--signify anything?" Mr. Tree watched him intently.
"It might," Stockstill said.
"I feel they're staring at me."
"For any particular reason?"
"Because," Mr. Tree said, "of the disfiguration of my face."
Without an overt motion, Doctor Stockstill managed to glance up and scrutinize his
patient. He saw this middleaged man, heavy-set, with black hair, the stubble of a beard dark
against his unusually white skin. He saw circles of fatigue and tension beneath the man's eyes,
and the expression in the eyes, the despair. The physicist had bad skin and he needed a haircut,
and his entire face was marred by the worry within him . . . but there was no "disfiguration."
Except for the strain visible there, it was an ordinary face; it would not have attracted notice
in a group.
"Do you see the blotches?" Mr. Tree said hoarsely. He pointed at his cheeks, his jaw. "The
ugly marks that set me apart from everybody?"
"No," Stockstill said, taking a chance and speaking directly.
"There're there," Mr. Tree said. "Thery're on the inside of the skin, of cdurse. But
people notice them anyhow and stare. I can't ride on a bus or go into a restaurant or a theater; I
can't go to the San Francisco opera or the ballet or the symphony orchestra or even a nightclub to
watch one of those folk singers; if I do succeed in getting inside I have to leave almost at once
because of the staring. And the remarks."
"Tell me what they say."
Mr. Tree was silent.
"As you said yourself," Stockstill said, "you are world-famous--and isn't it natural for
people to murmur when a world-famous personage comes in and seats 'himself among them? Hasn't this
been true for years? And there is controversy about your work, as you pointed out . . . hostility
and perhaps one hears disparaging remarks. But everyone in the public eye--"
"Not that," Mr. Tree broke in. "I expect that; I write articles and appear on the TV, and
I expect that; I know that. This--has to do with my private life. My most innermost thoughts." He
gazed at Stockstill and said, "They read my thoughts and they tell me about my private personal
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life, in every detail. They have access to my brain."
_Paranoia sensitiva_, Stockstill thought, although of course there have to be tests . . .
the Rorschach in particular. It could be advanced insidious schizophrenia; these could be the
final stages of a life-long illness process. Or--
"Some people can see the blotches on my face and read my personal thoughts more accurately
than others," Mr. Tree said. "I've noted quite a spectrum in ability--some are barely aware,
others seem to make an instantaneous Gestalt of my differences, my stigmata. For example, as I
came up the sidewalk to your office, there was a Negro sweeping on the other side . . . he stopped
work and concentrated on me, although of course he was too far away to jeer at me. Nevertheless,
he saw. It's typical of lower class people, I've noticed. More so than educated or cultured
people."
"I wonder why that is," Stockstill said, making notes.
"Presumably, you would know, if you're competent at all. The woman who recommended you
said you were exceptionally able." Mr. Tree eyed him, as if seeing no sign of' ability as yet.
"I think I had better get a background history from you," Stockstill said. "I see that
Bonny Keller recommended me. How is Bonny? I haven't seen her since last April or so . . . did her
husband give up his job with that rural grammar school as he was talking about?"
"I did not come here to discuss George and Bonny Keller," Mr. Tree said. "I am desperately
pressed, Doctor. They may decide to complete their destruction of me any time now; this harassment
has gone on for so long now that--" He broke off. "Bonny thinks I'm ill, and I have great respect
for her." His tone was low, almpst inaudible. "So I said I'd come here, at least once."
"Are the Kellers still living up in West Marin?"
Mr. Tree nodded.
"I have a summer place up there," Stockstill said. "I'm a sailing buff; I like to get out
on Tomales Bay every chance I get. Have you ever tried sailing?"
"No."
"Tell me when you were born and where."
Mr. Tree said, "In Budapest, in 1934."
Doctor Stockstill, skillfully questioning, began to obtain in detail the life-history of
his patient, fact by fact. It was essential for what he had to do: first diagnose and then, if
possible, heal. Analysis and then therapy. A man known all over the world who had delusions that
strangers were staring at him--how in this case could reality be sorted out from lantasy? WThat
was the frame of reference which would distinguish them one from the other?
It would be so easy, Stockstill realize, to find pathology here. So easy--and so tempting.
A man this hated . . . I share their opinion, he said to himself, the _they_ that Bluthgeld--or
rather Tree--talks about. After all, I'm part of society, too, part of the civilization menaced by
the grandiose, extravagant miscalculations of this man. It could have been--could someday be--my
children blighted because this man had the arrogance to assume that he could not err.
But there was more to it than that. At the time, Stockstill had felt a twisted quality
about the man; he had watched him being interviewed on TV, listened to him speak, read his
fantastic anti-communist speeches--and come to the tentative conclusion that Bluthgeld had a
profound hatred for people, deep and pervasive enough to make him want, on some unconscious level,
to err, to make him want to jeopardize the lives of millions.
No wonder that the Director of the FBI, Richard Nixon, had spoken out so vigorously
against "militant amateur anti-communists in high scientific circles." Nixon had been alarmed,
too, long before the tragic error of 1972. The elements of paranoia, with the delusions not only
of reference but of grandeur, had been palpable; Nixon, a shrewd judge of men, had observed them,
and so had many others.
And evidently they had been correct.
"I came to America," Mr. Tree was saying, "in order to escape the Communist agents who
wanted to murder me. They were after me even then . . . so of course were the Nazis. They were all
after me."
"I see," Stockstill said, writing.
"They still are, but ultimately they will fail," Mr. Tree said hoarsely, lighting a new
cigarette. "For I have God on my side; He sees my need and often He has spoken to me, giving me
the wisdom I need to survive my pursuers. I am at present at work on a new project, out at
Livermore; the results of this will be definitive as regards our enemy."
_Our_ enemy, Stockstill thought. Who is our enemy . . . isn't it you, Mr. Tree? Isn't it
you sitting here rattling off your paranoid delusions? How did you ever get 'the high post that
you hold? Who is responsible for giving you power over the lives of others--and letting you keep
that power even after the fiasco of 1972? You--and they--are surely our enemies.
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All our fears about you are confirmed; you are deranged--your presence here proves it. Or
does it? Stockstill thought, No, it doesn't, and perhaps I should disqualify myself; perhaps it is
unethical for me to try to deal with you. Considering the way I feel . . . I can't take a
detached, disinterested position regarding you; I can't be genuinely scientific, and hence my
analysis, my diagnosis, may well prove faulty.
"Why are you looking at me like this?" Mr. Tree was saying.
"Beg pardon?" Stockstill murmured.
"Are you repelled by my disfigurations?" Mr. Tree said.
"No-no," Stockstill said. "It isn't that."
"My thoughts, then? You were reading them and their disgusting character causes you to
wish I had not consulted you?" Rising to his feet, Mr. Tree moved abruptly toward the office door.
"Good day."
"Wait." Stockstill came after him. "Let's get the biographical material concluded, at
least; we've barely begun."
Mr. Tree, eying him, said presently, "I have confidence in Bonny Keller; I know her
political opinions . . . she is not a part of the international Communist conspiracy seeking to
kill me at any opportunity." He reseated himself, more composed, now. But his posture was one of
wariness; he would not permit himself to relax a moment in Stockstill's presence, the psychiatrist
knew. He would not open up, reveal himself candidly. He would continue to be suspicious--and
perhaps rightly, Stockstill thought.
As he parked his car Jim Fergesson, the owner of Modern TV, saw his salesman Stuart
McConchie leaning on his broom before the shop, not sweeping but merely daydreaming or whatever it
was he did. Following McConchie's gaze he saw that the salesman was enjoying not the sight of some
girl passing by or some unusual car--Stu liked girls and cars, and that was normal--but was
instead looking in the direction of patients entering the office of the doctor across the street.
That wasn't normal. And what business of McConchie's was it anyhow?
"Look," Fergesson called as he walked rapidly toward the entrance of his shop. "You cut it
out; someday maybe you'll be sick, and how'll you like some goof gawking at you when you try to
seek medical help?"
"Hey," Stuart answered, turning his head, "I just saw some important guy go in there but I
can't recall who."
"Only a neurotic watches other neurotics," Fergesson said, and passed on into the store,
to the register, which he opened and began to fill with change and bills for the day ahead.
Anyhow, Fergesson thought, wait'll you see what I hired for a TV repairman; you'll really
have something to stare at.
"Listen, McConchie," Fergessson said. "You know that kid with no arms and legs that comes
by on that cart? That phocomelus with just those dinky flippers whose mother took that drug back
in the early '60s? The one that always hangs around because he wants to be a TV repairman?"
Stuart, standing with his broom, said, "You hired him."
"Yeah, yesterday while you were out selling."
Presently McConchie said, "It's bad for business."
"Why? Nobody'll see him; he'll be downstairs in the repair department. Anyhow you have to
give those people jobs; it isn't their fault they have no arms or legs, it's those Germans'
fault."
Ater a pause Stuart McConchie said, "First you hire me, a Negro, and now a phoce. Well, I
have to hand it to you, Fergesson; you're trying to do right."
Feeling anger, Fergesson said, "I not only try, I do; I'm not just daydreaming, like you.
I'm a man who makes up his mind and acts." He went to open the store safe. "His name is Hoppy.
He'll be in this morning. You ought to see him move stuff with his electronic hands; it's a marvel
of modern science."
"I've seen," Stuart said.
"And it pains you."
Gesturing, Stuart said, "It's--unnatural."
Fergesson glared at him. "Listen, don't say anything along the lines of razzing to the
kid; if I catch you or any of the other salesmen or anybody who works for me--"
"Okay," Stuart muttered.
"You're bored," Fergesson said, "and boredom is bad because it means you're not exerting
yourself fully; you're slacking off, and on my time. If you worked hard, you wouldn't have time to
lean on that broom and poke fun at poor sick people going to the doctor. I forbid you to stand
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outside on the sidewalk ever again; if I catch you you're fired."
"Oh Christ, how am I supposed to come and go and go eat? How do I get into the store in
the first place? Through the wall?"
"You can come and go," Fergesson decided, "but you can't loiter."
Glaring after him dolefully, Stuart McConchie protested, "Aw cripes!"
Fergesson however paid no attention to his TV salesman; he began turning on displays and
signs, preparing for the day ahead.
II
The phocomelus Hoppy Harrington generally wheeled up to Modern TV Sales & Service about
eleven each morning. He generally glided into the shop, stopping his cart by the counter, and if
Jim Fergesson was around he asked to be allowed to go downstairs to watch the two TV repairmen at
work. However, if Fergesson was not around, Hoppy gave up and after a while wheeled off, because
he knew that the salesmen would not let him go downstairs;' they merely ribbed him, gave him the
run-around. He did not mind. Or at least as far as Stuart McConchie could tell, he did not mind.
But actually, Stuart realized; he did not understand Hoppy, who had a sharp face with
bright eyes and a quick, nervous manner of speech which often became jumbled into a stammer. He
did not understand him _psychologically_. Why did Hoppy want to repair TV sets? What was so great
about that? The way the phoce hung around, one would think it was the most exalted calling of all.
Actually, repairwork was hard, dirty, and did not pay too well. But Hoppy was passionately
determined to become a TV repairman, and now he had succeeded, because Fergesson was determined to
do right by all the minority groups in the world. Fergesson was a member of the American Civil
Liberties Union and the NAACP and the Help for the Handicapped League--the latter being, as far as
Stuart could tell, nothing but a lobby group on an international scale, set up to promote soft
berths for all the victims of modern medicine and science, such as the multitude from the
Bluthgeld Catastrophe of 1972.
And what does that make me? Stuart asked himself as he sat upstairs in the store's office,
going over his sales book. I mean, he thought, with a phoce working here . . . that practically
makes me a radiation freak, too, as if being colored was a sort of early form of radiation burn.
He felt gloomy thinking about it.
Once upon a time, he thought, all the people on Earth were white, and then some horse's
ass set off a high-altitude bomb back say around ten thousand years ago, and some of us got seared
and it was permanent; it affected our genes. So here we are today.
Another salesman, Jack Lightheiser, came and sat down at the desk across from him and lit
a Corina cigar. "I hear Jim's hired that kid on the cart," Lightheiser said. "You know why he did
it, don't you? For publicity. The S.F. newspapers'll write it up. Jim loves getting his name in
the paper. It's a smart move, when you get down to it. The first retail dealer in the East Bay to
hire a phoce."
Stuart grunted.
"Jim's got an idealized image of himself," Lightheiser said. "He isn't just a merchant;
he's a modern Roman, he's civic-minded. After all, he's an educated man--he's got a master's
degree from Stanford."
"That doesn't mean anything any more," Stuart said. He himself had gotten a master's
degree from Cal, back in 1975, and look where it had got him.
"It did when he got it," Lightheiser said. "After all, he graduated back in 1947; he was
on that GI Bill they had."
Below them, at the front door of Modern TV, a cart appeared, in the center of which, at a
bank of controls, sat a slender figure. Stuart groaned and Lightheiser glanced at him.
"He's a pest," Stuart said.
"He won't be when he gets started working," Lightheiser said. "The kid is all brain, no
body at all, hardly. That's a powerful mind he's got, and he also has ambition. Cod, he's only
seventeen years old and what he wants to do is work, get out of school and work. That's
admirable."
The two of them watched Hoppy on his cart; Hoppy was wheeling toward the stairs which
descended to the TV repair department.
"Do the guys downstairs know, yet?" Stuart asked.
"Oh sure, Jim told them last night. They're philosophical; you know how TV repairmen are--
they griped about it but it doesn't mean anything; they gripe all the' time anyhow."
Hearing the salesman's voice, Hoppy glanced sharply up. His thin, bleak face confronted
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them; his eyes blazed and he said stammeringly, "Hey, is Mr. Fergesson in right now?"
"Naw," Stuart said.
"Mr. Fergesson hired me," the phoce said.
"Yeah," Stuart said. Neither he nor Lightheiser moved; they remained seated at the desk,
gazing down at the phoce.
"Can I go downstairs?" Hoppy asked.
Lightheiser shrugged.
"I'm going out for a cup of coffee," Stuart said, rising to his feet. "I'll be back in ten
minutes; watch the floor for me, okay?"
"Sure," Lightheiser said, nodding as he smoked his cigar.
When Stuart reached the main floor he found the phoce still there; he had not begun the
difficult descent down to the basement.
"Spirit of 1972," Stuart said as he passed the cart.
The phoce flushed and stammered, "I was born in 1964; it had nothing to do with that
blast." As Stuart went out the door onto the sidewalk the phoce called after him anxiously, "It
was that drug, that thalidomide. Everybody knows that."
Stuart said nothing; he continued on toward the coffee shop.
It was difficult for the phocomelus to maneuver his cart down the stairs to the basement
where the TV 'repairmen worked at their benches, but after a time he managed to do so, gripping
the handrail with the manual extensors which the U.S. Government had thoughtfully provided. The
extensors were really not much good; they had been fitted years ago, and were not only partly worn
out but were--as he knew from reading the current literature on the topic--obsolete. In theory,
the Government was bound to replace his equipment with the more recent models; the Remington Act
specified that, and he had written the senior California senator, Aif M. Partland, about it. As
yet, however, he had received no answer. But he was patient. Many times he had written letters to
U.S. Congressmen, on a variety of topics, and often the answers were tardy or merely mimeographed
and sometimes there was no answer at all.
In this. case, however, Hoppy Harrington had, the law on his side, and it was only a
matter of time before he compelled someone in authority to give him that which he was entitled to.
He felt grim about it, patient and grim. They _had_ to help him, whether they wanted to or not.
His father, a sheep rancher in the Sonoma Valley, had taught him that: taught him always to demand
what he was entitled to.
Sound blared. The repairmen at work; Hoppy paused, opened the door and faced the two men
at the long, littered bench with its instruments and meters, its dials and tools and television
sets in all stages of decomposition. Neither repairman noticed him.
"Listen," one of the repairmen said all at once, startling him. "Manual jobs are looked
down on. Why don't you go 'into something mental, why don't you go back to school and get a
degree?" The repairman turned to stare at him questioningly.
No, Hoppy thought. I want to work with--my hands.
"You could be a scientist," the other repairman said, not ceasing his work; he was tracing
a circuit, studying his voltmeter.
"Like Bluthgeld," Hoppy said.
The repairman laughed at that, with sympathetic understanding.
"Mr. Fergesson said you'd give me something to work on," Hoppy said. "Some easy set to
fix, to start with. Okay?" He waited, afraid that they were not going to respond, and then one of
them pointed to a record changer. "What's the matter with it?" Hoppy said, examining the repair
tag. "I know I can fix it."
"Broken spring," one of the repairmen said. "It won't shut off after the last record."
"I see," Hoppy said. He picked up the record changer with his two manual extensors and
rolled to the far end of the bench, where there was a cleared space. "I'll work here." The
repairmen did not protest, so he picked up pliers. This is easy, he thought to himself. I've
practiced at home; he concentrated on the record changer but also watching the two repairmen out
of the corner of his eye. I've practiced many times; it nearly always works, and all the time it's
better, more accurate. More predictable. A spring is a little object, he thought, as little as
they come. So light it almost blows away. I see the break in you, he thought. Molecules of metal
not touching, like before. He concentrated on that spot, holding the pliers so that the repairman
nearest him could not see; he pretended to tug at the spring, as if trying to remove it.
As he finished the job he realized that someone was standing behind him, had come up to
watch; he turned, and it was Jim Fergesson, his employer, saying nothing but just standing there
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with a peculiar expression on his face, his hands stuck in his pockets.
"All done," Hoppy said nervously.
Fergesson said, "Let's see." He took hold of the changer, lifted it up into the overhead
fluorescent light's glare.
Did he see me? Hoppy wondered. Did he understand, and if so, what does he think? Does he
mind, does he really care? Is he--horrified?
There was silence as Fergesson inspected the changer.
"Where'd you get the new spring?" he asked suddenly.
"I found it lying around," Hoppy said, at once.
It was okay. Fergesson, if he had seen, had not understood. The phocomelus relaxed and
felt glee, felt a superior pleasure take the place of his anxiety; he grinned at the two
repairmen, looked about for the next job expected of him.
Fergesson said, "Does it make you nervous to have people watch you?"
"No,". Hoppy said. "People can stare at me all they want; I know I'm different. I've been
stared at since I was born."
"I mean when you work."
"No," he said, and his voice sounded loud--perhaps too loud--in his ears. "Before I had a
cart," he said, "before the Government provided me anything, my dad used to carry me around on his
back, in a sort of knapsack. Like' a papoose." He laughed uncertainly.
"I see," Fergesson said.
"That was up around Sonoma," Hoppy said. "Where I grew up. We had sheep. One time a ram
butted me and I flew through the air. Like a ball." Again he laughed; the two repairmen regarded
him silently, both of them pausing in their work.
"I'll bet," one of them said after a moment, "that you rolled when you hit the ground."
"Yes," Hoppy said, laughing. They all laughed, now, himself and Fergesson and the two
repairmen; they imagined how it looked, Hoppy Harrington, seven years old, with no arms or legs,
only a torso and head, rolling over the ground, howling with fright and pain--but it was funny; he
knew it. He told it so it would be funny; he made it become that way.
"You're a lot better set up now, with your cart," Fergesson said.
"Oh yes," he said. "And I'm designing a new one, my own design; all electronic--I read an
article on brain-wiring, they're using it in Switzerland and Germany. You're wired directly to the
motor centers of the brain so there's no lag; you can move even quicker than--a regular
physiological structure." He started to say, _than a human_. "I'll have it perfected in a couple
of years," he said, "and it'll be an improvement even on the Swiss models. And then I can throw
away this Government junk."
Fergesson said in a solemn, formal voice, "I admire your spirit."
Laughing, Hoppy said with a stammer, "Th-thanks, Mr. Fergesson."
One of the repairmen handed him a multiplex FM tuner. "It drifts. See what you can do for
the alignment."
"Okay," Hoppy said, taking it in his metal extensors. "I sure will. I've done a lot of
aligning, at home; I'm experienced with that." He had found such work easiest of all: he barely
had to concentrate on the set. It was as if the task were made to order for him and his abilities.
Reading the calendar on her kitchen wall, Bonny Keller saw that this was the day her
friend Bruno Bluthgeld saw her psychiatrist Doctor Stockstill at his office in Berkeley. In fact,
he had already seen Stockstill, had had his first hour of therapy and had left. Now he no doubt
was driving back to Livermore and his own office at the Radiation Lab, the lab at which she had
worked years ago before she had gotten pregnant: she had met Doctor Bluthgeld, there, back in
1975. Now she was thirty-one years old and living in West Marin; her husband George was now vice-
principal of the local grammar school, and she was very happy.
"Well, not _very_ happy. Just moderately--tolerably--happy. She still took analysis
herself--once a week now instead of three times--and in many respects she understood herself, her
unconscious drives and paratactic systematic distortions of the reality situation. Analysis, six
years of it, had done a great deal for her, but she was not cured. There was really no such thing
as being cured; the "illness" was life itself, and a constant growth (or rather a viable growing
adaptation) had to continue, or psychic stagnation would result.
She was determined not to become stagnant. Right now she was in the process of reading
_The Decline of the West_ in the original German; she had gotten fifty pages read, and it was well
worth it. And who else that she knew had read it, even in the English?
Her interest in German culture, in its literary and philosophical works, had begun years
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ago through her contact with Doctor Bluthgeld. Although she had taken three years of German in
college, she had not seen it as a vital part of her adult life; like so much that she had
carefully learned, it had fallen into the unconscious, once she had graduated and gotten a job.
Bluthgeld's magnetic presence had reactivated and enlarged many of her academic interests, her
love of music and art . . . she owed a great deal to Bluthgeld, and she was grateful.
Now, of course, Bluthgeld was sick, as almost everyone at Livermore knew. The man had
profound conscience, and he had never ceased to suffer since the error of 1972-- which, as they
all knew, all those who had been a part of Livermore in those days, was not specifically his
fault; it was not his personal burden, but he had chosen to make it so, and because of that he had
become ill, and more ill with each passing year.
Many trained people, and the finest apparati, the foremost computers of the day, had been
involved in the faulty calculation--not faulty in terms of the body of knowledge available in 1972
but faulty in relationship to the reality situation. The enormous masses of radioactive clouds had
not drifted off but had been attracted by the Earth's gravitational field, and had returned to the
atmosphere; no one bad been more surpised than the staff at Livermore. Now, of course, the Jamison-
French Layer was more completely understood; even the popular magazines such as _Time and US News_
could lucidly explain what had gone wrong and why. But this was nine years later.
Thinking of the Jamison-French Layer, Bonny remembered the event of the day, which she was
missing. She went at once to the TV set in the living room and switched it on. Has it been fired
off yet? she wondered, examining her watch. No, not for another half hour. The screen lighted, and
sure enough, there was the rocket and its tower, the personnel, trucks, gear; it was decidedly
still on the ground, and probably Walter Dangerfield and Mrs. Dangerfield had not even boarded it
yet.
The first couple to emigrate to Mars, she said to herself archly, wondering how Lydia
Dangerfield felt at this moment . . . the tall blond woman, knowing 'that their chances of getting
to Mars were computed at only about sixty per cent. Great equipment, vast diggings and
constructions, awaited them, but so what if they were incinerated along the way? Anyhow, it would
impress the Soviet bloc, which had failed to establish its colony on Luna; the Russians had
cheerfully suffocated or starved--no one knew exactly for sure. In any case, the colony was gone.
It had passed out of history as it had come in, mysteriously.
The idea of NASA sending just a couple, one man and his wife, instead of a group, appalled
her; she felt instinctively that they were courting failure by not randomizing their bets. It
should be a few people leaving New York, a few leaving California, she thought as she watched on
the TV screen the technicians giving the rocket last-minute inspections. What do they call that?
Hedging your bets? Anyhow, not all the eggs should be in this one basket . . . and yet this was
how NASA had always done it: one astronaut at a time from the beginning, and plenty of publicity.
When Henry Chancellor, back in 1967, had burned to particles in his space platform, the entire
world had watched on TV--grief-stricken, to be sure, but nonetheless they had been permitted to
watch. And the public reaction had set back space exploration in the West five years.
"As you can see now," the NBC announcer said in a soft but urgent voice, "final
preparations are being made. The arrival of Mr. and Mrs. Dangerfield is expected momentarily. Let
us review just for the sake of the record the enormous preparations made to insure--"
Blah, Bonny Keller said to herself, and, with a shudder, shut off the TV. I can't watch,
she said to herself.
On the other hand, what was there to do? Merely sit biting her nails for the next six
hours--for the next two weeks, in fact? The only answer would have been _not_ to remember that
this was the day the First Couple was being fired off. However, it was too late now not to
remember.
She like to think of them as that, the _first couple_ . . . like something out of a
sentimental, old-time, science-fiction story. Adam and Eve, once over again, except that in
actuality Walt Dangerfield was no Adam; he had more the quality of the last, not the first man,
with his wry, mordant wit, his halting, almost cynical manner of speech as he faced the reporters.
Bonny admired him; Dangerfield was no punk, no crewcut-haired young blond automaton, hacking away
at the Air Forces' newest task. Walt was a real person, and no doubt that was why NASA had
selected him. His genes--they were probably stuffed to overflowing with four thousand years of
culture, the heritage of mankind built right in. Walt and Lydia would found a Nova Terra . . .
there would be lots of sophisticated little Dangerfields strolling about Mars, declaiming
intellectually and yet with that amusing trace of sheer jazziness that Dangerfield had.
"Think of it as a long freeway," Dangerfield had once said in an interview, answering a
reporter's query about the hazards of the trip. "A million miles of ten lanes . . . with no
oncoming traffic, no slow trucks. Think of it as being four o'clock in the morning . . . just your
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vehicle, no others. So like the guys says, what's to worry?" And then his good smile.
Bending, Bonny turned the TV set back on.
And there, on the screen, was the round, bespectacled face of Walt Dangerfield; he wore
his space suit--all but the helmet--and beside him stood Lydia, silent, as Walt answered
questions.
"I hear," Walt was drawling, with a chewing-movement of his jaw, as if he were masticating
the question before answering, "that there's a LOL in Boise, Idaho who's worried about me." He
glanced up, as someone in the rear of the room asked something. "A LOL?" Walt said, "Well, --that
was the great now-departed Herb Caen's term for Little Old Ladies . . . there's always one of
them, everywhere. Probably there's one on Mars already, and we'll be living down the street from
her. Anyhow, this one in Boise, or so I understand, is a little nervous about Lydia and myself,
afraid something might happen to us. So she's sent us a good luck charm." He displayed it, holding
it clumsily with the big gloved fingers of his suit. The reporters all murmured with amusement.
"Nice, isn't it?" Dangerfield said. "I'll tell you what it does; it's good for rheumatism." The
reporters laughted. "In case we get rheumatism while we're on Mars. Or is it gout? I think it's
gout, she said in her letter." He glanced at his wife. "Gout, was it?"
I guess, Bonny thought, they don't make charms to ward off meteors or radiation. She felt
sad, as if a premonition had come over her. Or was it just because this was Bruno Bluthgeld's day
at the psychiatrist's? Sorrowful thoughts emanating from that fact, thoughts about death and
radiation and miscalculation and terrible, unending illness.
I don't believe Bruno has become a paranoid schizophrenic, she said to herself. This is
only a situation deterioration, and with the proper psychiatric help--a few pills here and there--
he'll be okay. It's an endocrine disturbance manifesting itself psychically, and they can do
wonders with that; it's not a character defect, a psychotic constitution, unfolding itself in the
face of stress.
But what do I know, she thought glqomily. Bruno had to practically sit there and tell us
"they" were poisoning his drinking water before either George or I grasped how ill he was. . . he
merely seemed depressed.
Right this moment she could imagine Bruno with a prescription for some pill which
stimulated the cortex or suppressed the diencephalon; in any case the modern Western equivalent
for contemporary Chinese herbal medicine would be' in action, altering the metabolism of Bruno's
brain, clearing away the delusions like so many cobwebs. And all would be well again; she and
George and Bruno would be together again with their West Marin Baroque Recorder Consort, playing
Bach and Handel in the evenings . . . it would be like old times. Two wooden Black Forest
(genuine) recorders and, then herself at the piano. The house full of baroque music and the smell
of home-baked bread, and a bottle of Buena Vista wine from the oldest winery in California . . .
On the television screen Walt Dangerfield was wise-cracking in his adult way, a sort of
Voltaire and Will Rogers combined. "Oh yeah," he was saying to a lady reporter who wore a funny
large hat. "We expect to uncover a lot of strange life forms on Mars." And he eyed her hat, as if
saying, "There's one now, I think." And again, the reporters all laughed. "I think it moved,"
Dangerfield said, indicating the hat to his quiet, cool-eyed wife. "It's coming for us, honey."
He really loves her, Bonny realized, watching the two of them. I wonder if George ever
felt toward me the way Walt Dangerfield feels toward his wife; I doubt it, frankly. If he did, he
never would have allowed me to have those two therapeutic abortions. She felt even more sad, now,
and she got up' and walked away from the TV set, her back to it.
They ought to send George to Mars, she thought with bitterness. Or better yet, send us
all, George and me and the Dangerfields; George can have an affair with Lydia Dangerfield--if he's
able--and I can bed down with Walt; I'd be a fair to adequate partner in the great adventure. Why
not?
I wish something would happen, she said to herself. I wish Bruno would call and say Doctor
Stockstill had cured him, or I wish Dangerfield would suddenly back out of going, or the Chinese
would start World War Three, or George would really hand the school board back that awful contract
as he's been saying he's going to. Something, anyhow. Maybe, she thought, I ought to get out my
potter's wheel and pot; back to so-called creativity, or- anal play or whatever it is. I could
make a lewd pot. Design it, fire it in Violet Clatt's kiln, sell it down in San Anselmo at
Creative Artworks, Inc., that society ladies' place that rejected my welded jewelry last year. I
know they'd accept a lewd pot if it was a _good_ lewd pot.
At Modern TV, a small crowd had collected in the front of the store to watch the large
stereo color TV set, the Dangerfields' flight being shown to all Americans everywhere, in their
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homes and at their places of work. Stuart McConchie stood with his arms folded, back of the crowd,
also watching.
"The ghost of John L. Lewis," Walt Dangerfield was saying in his dry way, "would
appreciate the true meaning of portal to portal pay . . . if it hadn't been for him, they'd
probably be paying me about five dollars to make this trip, on the grounds that my job doesn't
actually begin until I get there." He had a sobered expression, now; it was almost time for him
and Lydia to enter the cubicle of the ship. "Just remember this . . . if something happens to us,
if we get lost, don't come out looking for us. Stay home and I'm sure Lydia and I will turn up
somewhere."
"Good luck," the' reporters were murmuring, as officials and technicians of NASA appeared
and began bundling the Dangerfields off, out of view of the TV cameras.
"Won't be long," Stuart said to Lightheiser, who now stood beside him, also watching.
"He's a sap to go," Lightheiser said, chewing on a toothpick. "He'll never come back; they
make no bones about that."
"Why should he want to come back?" Stuart said. "What's so great about it here?" 'He felt
envious of Walt Dangerfield; he wished it was he, Stuart McConchie, up there before the TV
cameras, in the eyes of the entire world.
Up the stairs from the basement came Hoppy Harrington on his cart, wheeling eagerly
forward. "Have they shot him off?" he asked Stuart in a nervous, quick voice, peering at the
screen. "He'll be burned up; it'll be like that time in '65; I don't remember it, naturally, but--
"
"Shut up, will you," Lightheiser said softly, and the phocomelus, flushing, became silent.
They all watched, then, each with his own private thoughts and reactions as on the TV screen the
last inspection team was lifted by an overhead boom from the nose cone of the rocket. The
countdown would soon begin; the rocket was fueled. checked over, and now the two people were
entering it. The small group around the TV set stirred and murmured.
Sometime later today, sometime in the afternoon, their waiting would be rewarded, because
Dutchman IV would take off; it would orbit the Earth for an hour or so, and the people would stand
at the TV screen watching that, seeing the rocket go around and around, and then finally the
decision would be made and someone below in the blockhouse would fire off the final stage and the
orbiting rocket would change trajectory and leave the world. They had seen it before; it was much
like this every time, but this was new because the people in this one this time would never be
returning. It was well worth spending a day in front of the set; the crowd of people was ready for
the wait.
Stuart McConchie thought about lunch and then after that he would come back here and watch
again; he would station himself here once more, with the others. He would get little or no work
done today, would sell no TV sets to anybody. But this was more important. He could not miss this.
That might be me up there someday, he said to himself; maybe I'll emigrate later on when I'm
earning enough to get married, take my wife and kids and start a new life up there on Mars, when
they get a really good colony going, not just machines.
He thought of himself in the nose cone, like Walt Dangerfield, strapped next to a woman of
great physical attractiveness. Pioneers, he and her, founding a new civilization on a new planet.
But then his stomach rumbled and he realized how hungry he was; he could not postpone lunch much
longer.
Even as he stood watching the great upright rocket on the TV screen, his thoughts turned
toward soup and rolls and beef, stew and apple pie with ice cream on it, up at Fred's Fine Foods.
III
Almost every day Stuart McConchie ate lunch at the coffee shop up the street from Modern
TV. Today, as he entered Fred's Fine Foods, he saw to his irritation that Hoppy Harrington's cart
was parked in the back, and there was Hoppy eating his lunch in a perfectly natural and easygoing
manner, as if he were used to coming here. Goddam, Stuart thought. He's taking over; the phoces
are taking over. And I didn't even see him leave the store.
However, Stuart seated himself in a booth and picked up the menu. He can't drive me off,
he said to himself as he looked to see what the special of the day was, and how much it cost. The
end of the month had arrived, and Stuart was nearly broke. He looked ahead constantly to his twice-
monthly paycheck; it would be handed out personally by Fergesson at the end of the week.
The shrill sound of the phoce's voice reached Stuart as he sipped his soup; Hoppy was
telling a yarn of some sort, but to whom? To Connie, the waitress? Stuart turned his head and saw
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摘要：

file:///F|/rah/Philip%20K.Dick/Dick%20Dr%20Bloodmoney.txtDR.BLOODMONEY,ORHOWWEGOTALONGAFTERTHEBOMBbyPhilipK.DickCopyright1965,byAceBooks,Inc.AllRightsReservedIEarlyinthebrightsun-yellowedmorning,StuartMcConchieswept hesidewalkbeforeModemTVSales&Service,hearingthecarsalongShattuckAvenueandthesecre ...

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