Philip K. Dick - The Zapgun

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PHILIP K. DICK
THE ZAP GUN
Being that Most Excellent Account of Travails and Contayning Many Pretie Hystories By Him Set
Foorth in Comely Colours and Most Delightfully Discoursed Upon as Beautified and Well Furnished
Divers Good and Commendable in the Gesiht of Men of That Most Lamentable Wepens Fasoun Designer
Lars Powderdry and What Nearly Became of Him Due to Certain Most Dreadful Forces.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The guidance-system of weapons-item 207, which consists of six hundred miniaturized electronic
components, can best be plowshared as a lacquered ceramic owl which appears to the unenlightened
only as an ornament; the informed knowing, however, that the owl's head, when removed, reveals a
hollow body in which cigars or pencils can be stored.
Official report of the UN-W Natsec Board of Wes-bloc, October 5, 2003, by Concomody A (true
identity for security reasons not to be given out; vide Board rulings XV 4-5-6-7-8).
1
"Mr. Lars, sir."
"I'm afraid I only have a moment to talk to your viewers. Sorry." He started on, but the autonomic
TV interviewer, camera in its hand, blocked his path. The metal smile of the creature glittered
confidently.
"You feel a trance coming on, sir?" the autonomic interviewer inquired hopefully, as if perhaps
such could take place before one of the multifax alternate lens-systems of its portable camera.
Lars Powderdry sighed. From where he stood on the footers' runnel he could see his New York
office. See, but not reach it. Too many people—the pursaps!—were interested in him, not his work.
And the work of course was all that mattered.
He said wearily, "The time factor. Don't you understand? In the world of weapons fashions—"
"Yes, we hear you're receiving something really spectacular," the autonomic interviewer gushed,
picking up the thread of discourse without even salutationary attention to Lars' own meaning.
"Four trances in one week. And it's almost come all the way through! Correct, Mr. Lars, sir?"
The autonomic construct was an idiot. Patiently he tried to make it understand. He did not bother
to address himself to the legion of pursaps, mostly ladies, who viewed this early-morning
show—Lucky Bagman Greets You, or whatever it was called. Lord knew he didn't know. He had no time
in his workday for such witless diversions as this. "Look," he said, this time gently, as if the
autonomic interviewer were really alive and not merely an arbitrarily endowed sentient concoction
of the ingenuity of Wes-bloc technology of 2004 A.D. Ingenuity, he reflected, wasted in this
direction... although, on a closer thought, was this so much more an abomination than his own
field? A reflection unpleasant to consider.
He repressed it from his mind and said, "In weapons fashions an item must arise at a certain time.
Tomorrow, next week or next month is too late."
Tell us what it is," the interviewer said, and hung with bated avidity on the anticipated answer.
How could anyone, even Mr. Lars of New York and Paris, disappoint all the millions of viewers
throughout Wes-bloc, in a dozen countries? To let them down would be to serve the interests of
Peep-East, or so the autonomic interviewer wished to convey. But it was failing.
Lars said, "It's frankly none of your business." And stalked past the small bunch of footers who
had assembled to gawk, stalked away from the warm glow of instant-exposure before public
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observation and to the uptrack of Mr. Lars, Incorporated, the single-story structure arranged as
if by intention among high-rise offices whose size alone announced the essential nature of their
function.
Physical size, Lars reflected as he reached the outer, public lobby of Mr. Lars, Incorporated, was
a false criterion. Even the autonomic interviewer wasn't fooled; it was Lars Powderdry that it
wished to expose to its audience, not the industrial entities within easy reach. However much the
entities would have delighted in seeing their akprop—acquisition-propaganda—experts thundering
into the attentive ears of its audience.
The doors of Mr. Lars, Incorporated, shut, tuned as they were to his own cephalic pattern. He
sealed off, safe from the gaping multitude whose attention had been jazzed up by professionals. On
their own the pursaps would have been reasonable about it; that is, they would be apathetic.
"Mr. Lars."
"Yes, Miss Bedouin." He halted. "I know. The drafting department can't make head or tail of sketch
285." To that he was resigned. Having seen it himself, after Friday's trance, he knew how muddied
it was.
"Well, they said—" She hesitated, young and small, ill-equipped temperamentally to carry the
grievances of others around in her possession as their spokesman.
"I'll talk to them direct," he said to her humanely. "Frankly, to me it looked like a self-
programming eggbeater mounted on triangular wheels." And what can you destroy, he reflected, with
that?
"Oh, they seem to feel it's a fine weapon," Miss Bedouin said, her natural, hormone-enriched
breasts moving in synchronicity with his notice of them. "I believe they just can't make out the
power source. You know, the erg structure. Before you go to 286—"
"They want me," he said, "to take a better look at 285. Okay." It did not bother him. He felt
amiably inclined, because this was a pleasant April day and Miss Bedouin (or, if you liked to
think about it that way, Miss Bed) was pretty enough to restore any man's sanguineness. Even a
fashion designer—a weapons fashion designer.
Even, he thought, the best and only weapons fashion designer in all Wes-bloc.
To turn up his equal—and even this was in doubt, as far as he was concerned—one would have to
approach that other hemisphere, Peep-East. The Sino-Soviet bloc owned or employed or however they
handled it—in any case had available to them—services of a medium like himself.
He had often wondered about her. Her name was Miss Topchev, the planet-wide private police agency
KACH had informed him. Lilo Topchev. With only one office, and that at Bulganingrad rather than
New Moscow.
She sounded reclusive to him, but KACH did not orate on subjective aspects of its scrutiny-
targets. Perhaps, he thought, Miss Topchev knitted her weapons sketches... or made them up, while
still in the trance-state, in the form of gaily colored ceramic tile. Anyhow something artistic.
Whether her client—or more accurately employer—the Peep-East governing body SeRKeb, that grim,
uncolored and unadorned holistic academy of cogs, against which his own hemisphere had for so many
decades now pitted every resource within itself, liked it or not.
Because of course a weapons fashion designer had to be catered to. In his own career he had
managed to establish that.
After all, he could not be compelled to enter his five-days-a-week trance. And probably neither
could Lilo Topchev.
Leaving Miss Bedouin, he entered his own office, removing his outer cape, cap and slippers, and
extended these discarded items of street-wear to the handicloset.
Already his medical team, Dr. Todt and nurse Elvira Funt, had sighted him. They rose and
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approached respectfully, and with them his near-psionically gifted quasi-subordinate, Henry
Morris. One never knew—he thought, constructing their reasoning on the basis of their alert,
alarmed manner—when a trance might come on. Nurse Funt had her intravenous machinery tagging
hummingly behind her and Dr. Todt, a first-class product of the superior West German medical
world, stood ready to whip out delicate devices for two distinct purposes: first, that no cardiac
arrest during the trance-state occur, no infarcts to the lungs or excessive suppression of the
vagus nerve, causing cessation of breathing and hence suffocation, and second—and without this
there was no point to it all—that mentation during the trance-state be established in a permanent
record, obtainable after the state had ended.
Dr. Todt was, therefore, essential in the business at Mr. Lars, Incorporated. At the Paris office
a similar, equally skilled crew awaited on stand-by. Because it often happened that Lars Powderdry
got a more powerful emanation at that locus than he did in hectic New York.
And in addition his mistress Maren Faine lived and worked there.
It was a weakness—or, as he preferred supposing, a strength of weapons fashion designers, in
contrast to their miserable counterparts in the world of clothing—that they liked women. His
predecessor, Wade, had been heterosexual, too—had in fact killed himself over a little coloratura
of the Dresden Festival ensemble. Mr. Wade had suffered auricular fibrillation at an ignoble time:
while in bed at the girl's Vienna condominium apartment at two in the morning, long after The
Marriage of Figaro had dropped curtain, and Rita Grandi had discarded the silk hose, blouse, etc.,
for—as the alert homeopape pics had disclosed—nothing.
So, at forty-three years of age, Mr. Wade, the previous weapons fashion designer for Wes-bloc, had
left the scene—and left vacant his essential post. But there were others ready to emerge and
replace him.
Perhaps that had hurried Mr. Wade. The job itself was taxing—medical science did not precisely
know to what degree or how. And there was, Lars Powderdry reflected, nothing quite so disorienting
as knowing that not only are you indispensable but that simultaneously you can be replaced. It was
the sort of paradox that no one enjoyed, except of course UN-W Natsec, the governing Board of Wes-
bloc, who had contrived to keep a replacement always visible in the wings.
He thought, And they've probably got another one waiting right now.
They like me, he thought. They've been good to me and I to them: the system functions.
But ultimate authorities, in charge of the lives of billions of pursaps, don't take risks. They do
not cross against the DON'T WALK signs of cog life.
Not that the pursaps would relieve them of their posts... hardly. Removal would descend, from
General George McFarlane Nitz, the C. in C. on Natsec's Board. Nitz could remove anyone. In fact
if the necessity (or perhaps merely the opportunity) arose to remove himself—imagine the
satisfaction of disarming his own person, stripping himself of the brain-pan i.d. unit that caused
him to smell right to the autonomic sentries which guarded Festung Washington!
And frankly, considering the cop-like aura of General Nitz, the Supreme Hatchet-man implications
of his—
"Your blood-pressure, Mr. Lars." Narrow, priest-like, somber Dr. Todt advanced, machinery in tow.
"Please, Lars."
Beyond Dr. Todt and nurse Elvira Funt a slim, bald, pale-as-straw but highly professional-looking
young man in peasoup green rose, a folio under his arm. Lars Powderdry at once beckoned to him.
Blood-pressure readings could wait. This was the fella from KACH, and he had something with him.
"May we go into your private office, Mr. Lars?" the KACH-man asked.
Leading the way Lars said, "Photos."
"Yes, "sir." The KACH-man shut the office door carefully after them. "Of her sketches of—" he
opened the folio, examined a Xeroxed document—"last Wednesday. Their codex AA-335." Finding a
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vacant spot on Lars' desk he began spreading out the stereo pics. "Plus one blurred shot of a
mockup at the Rostok Academy assembly-lab... of—" Again he consulted his poop sheet—"SeRKeb codex
AA-330." He stood aside so that Lars could inspect.
Seating himself Lars lit a Cuesta Rey astoria and did not inspect. He felt his wits become turgid,
and the cigar did not help. He did not enjoy snooping dog-like over spy-obtained pics of the
output of his Peep-East equivalent, Miss Topchev. Let UN-W Natsec do the analysis! He had so much
as said this to General Nitz on several occasions, once at a meeting of the total Board, with
everyone present sunk within his most dignified and stately presgarms—his prestige capes, miter,
boots, gloves... probably spider-silk underwear with ominous slogans and ukases, stitched in
multicolored thread.
There, in that solemn environment, with the burden of Atlas on the backs of even the
concomodies—those six drafted, involuntary fools—in formal session, Lars had mildly asked that for
chrissakes couldn't they do the analysis of the enemy's weapons?
No. And without debate. Because (listen closely, Mr. Lars) these are not Peep-East's weapons.
These are his plans for weapons. We will evaluate them when they've passed from prototype to
autofac production, General Nitz had intoned. But as regards this initial stage... he had eyed
Lars meaningfully.
Lighting an old-fashioned—and illegal—cigarette, the pale, bald young KACH-man murmured, "Mr.
Lars, we have something more. It may not interest you, but since you seem to be waiting anyhow..."
He dipped deep into the folio.
Lars said, "I'm waiting because I hate this. Not because I want to see any more. God forbid."
"Umm." The KACH-man brought forth an additional eight-by-ten glossy and leaned back.
It was a non-stereo pic—taken from a great distance, possibly even from an eye-spy, satellite,
then severely processed—of Lilo Topchev.
2
"Oh, yes," Lars said with vast caution. "I asked for that, didn't I?" Unofficially, of course. As
a favor by KACH to him personally, with absolutely nothing in writing—with what the old-timers
called "a calculated risk."
"You can't tell too much from this," the KACH-man admitted.
"I can't tell anything." Lars glared, baffled.
The KACH-man shrugged with professional nonchalance, and said, "We'll try again. You see, she
never goes anywhere or does anything. They don't let her. It may be just a cover-story, but they
say her trance-states tend to come on involuntarily, in a pseudo-epileptoid pattern. Possibly drug-
induced, is our guess off the record, of course. They don't want her to fall down in the middle of
the public runnels and be flattened by one of their old surface-vehicles."
"You mean they don't want her to bolt to Wes-bloc."
The KACH-man gestured philosophically.
"Am I right?" Lars asked.
"Afraid not. Miss Topchev is paid a salary equal to that of the prime mover of SeRKeb, Marshal
Paponovich. She has a top-floor high-rise view conapt, a maid, butler, Mercedes-Benz hovercar. As
long as she cooperates—"
"From this pic," Lars said, "I can't even tell how old she is. Let alone what she looked like."
"Lilo Topchev is twenty-three."
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The office door opened and short, sloppy, unpunctual, on-the-brink-of-being-relieved-of-his-
position but essential Henry Morris conjured himself into their frame of reference. "Anything for
me?"
Lars said, "Come here." He indicated the pic of Lilo Topchev.
Swiftly the KACH-man restored the pic to its folio. "Classified, Mr. Lars! 20-20. You know; for
your eyes alone."
Lars said, "Mr. Morris is my eyes." This was, evidently, one of KACH's more difficult
functionaries. "What is your name?" Lars asked him, and held his pen ready at a notepad.
After a pause the KACH-man relaxed. "An ipse dixit, but—do whatever you wish with the pic, Mr.
Lars." He returned it to the desk, no expression on his sunless, expert face. Henry Morris came
around to bend over it, squinting and scowling, his fleshy jowls wobbling as he visibly
masticated, as if trying to ingest something of substance from the blurred pic.
The vidcom on Lars' desk pinged and his secretary Miss Grabhorn said, "Call from the Paris office.
Miss Faine herself, I believe." The most minuscule trace of disapproval in her voice, a tiny
coldness.
"Excuse me," Lars said to the KACH-man. But then, still holding his pen poised, he said, "Let's
have your name anyhow. Just for the record. In the rare case I might want to get in touch with you
again."
The KACH-man, as if revealing something foul, said reluctantly, "I'm Don Packard, Mr. Lars." He
fussed with his hands. The question made him oddly ill-at-ease.
After writing this down, Lars fingered the vidcom to on and the face of his mistress lit,
illuminated from within like some fair, dark-haired jack-o-lantern. "Lars!"
"Maren!" His tone was of fondness, not cruelty. Maren Faine always aroused his protective
instincts. And yet she annoyed him in the fashion that a loved child might. Maren never knew when
to stop.
"Busy?"
"Yeah."
"Are you flying to Paris this afternoon? We can have dinner together and then, oh my God, there's
this gleckik blue jazz combo—"
"Jazz isn't blue," Lars said. "It's pale green." He glanced at Henry Morris. "Isn't jazz a very
pale green?" Henry nodded.
Angrily, Maren Faine said. "You make me wish—"
"I'll call you back," Lars said to her. "Dear." He shut down the vidcom. "I'll look at the weapons
sketches now," he said to the KACH-man. Meanwhile, narrow Dr. Todt and nurse Elvira Funt had
entered his office unannounced; reflexively he extended his arm for the first blood-pressure
reading of the day, as Don Packard rearranged the sketches and began to point out details which
seemed meaningful to the police agency's own very second-rate privately maintained weapons
analysts.
Work, at Mr. Lars, Incorporated, had on this day, in this manner, begun. It was, somehow, Lars
thought, not encouraging. He was disappointed at the useless pic of Miss Topchev; perhaps that had
summoned his mood of pessimism. Or was there more to come?
He had, at ten a.m. New York time, an appointment with General Nitz' rep, a colonel named—God,
what was his name? Anyhow, at that time Lars would receive the Board's reaction to the last batch
of mockups constructed by Lanferman Associates in San Francisco from earlier Mr. Lars,
Incorporated, sketches.
"Haskins," Lars said.
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"Pardon?" the KACH-man said.
"It's Colonel Haskins. Do you know," he said meditatively to Henry Morris, "that Nitz has fairly
regularly avoided having anything to do with me, lately? Have you noted that puny bit of fact?"
Morris said, "I note everything, Lars. Yes, it's in my death-rattle file." Death-rattle... the
fireproof Third-World-War proof, Titanian bolecricket-proof, well-hidden file-cases which were
rigged to detonate in the event of Morris' death. He carried on his person a triggering mechanism
sensitive to his heartbeat. Even Lars did not know where the files currently existed; probably in
a hollow lacquered ceramic owl made from the guidance-system of item 207 in Morris' girlfriend's
boy-friend's bathroom. And they contained all the originals of all the weapons-sketches which had
ever emanated from Mr. Lars, Incorporated.
"What does it mean?" Lars asked.
"It means," Morris said, protruding his lower jaw and waggling it, as if expecting it to come off,
"that General Nitz despises you."
Taken aback, Lars said, "Because of that one sketch? Two-oh-something, that p-thermotropic virus
equipped to survive in dead space for a period greater than—"
"Oh no." Morris shook his head vigorously. "Because you're fooling yourself and him. Only he isn't
fooled any more. In contrast to you."
"How?"
Morris said, "I hate to say it in front of all these people."
"Go on and say it!" Lars said. But he felt sick. I really fear the Board, he realized. "Client?"
Is that what they are to me? Boss; that's the realistic word. UN-W Natsec groomed me, found me and
built me up over the years, to replace Mr. Wade. I was there. I was ready and waiting eagerly when
Wade Sokolarian died. And this knowledge that I have of someone else waiting right now, prepared
for the day when I suffer cardiac arrest or experience the malfunction, the loss, of some other
vital organ, waiting, too, in case I become difficult—
And, he thought, I am already difficult.
"Packard," he said to the KACH-man, "you're an independent organization. You operate anywhere in
the world. Theoretically anyone can employ you."
"Theoretically," Packard agreed. "You mean KACH itself, not me personally. I'm hired."
"I thought you wanted to hear why General Nitz despises you," Henry Morris said.
"No," Lars said. "Keep it to yourself." I'll hire someone from KACH, a real pro, he decided, to
scan UN-W, the whole apparatus if necessary, to find out what they're really up to regarding me.
Especially, he thought, the success to which their next weapons medium has been brought; that's
the crucial region for me to have exact knowledge about.
I wonder what they'd do, he thought, if they knew that it had so often occurred to me that I
always could go over to Peep-East. If they, to insure their own safety, to shore up their absolute
position of authority, tried to replace me—
He tried to imagine the size, shape and color of someone following him, imprinting their own
footsteps in his tracks. Child or youth, old woman or plump middle-aged man... Wes-bloc
psychiatrists, yoked to the state as servants, undoubtedly could turn up the psionic talent of
contacting the Other World, the hyper-dimensional universe that he entered into during his trance-
states. Wade had had it Lilo Topchev had it. He had lots of it. So undoubtedly it existed
elsewhere. And the longer he stayed in office the longer the Board had to ferret it out. "May I
say one thing," Morris said, deferentially. "Okay." He waited, setting himself. "General Nitz knew
something was wrong when you turned down that honorary colonelcy in the UN-West Armed Forces."
Staring at him, Lars said, "But that was a gag! Just a piece of paper."
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"No," Morris said. "And you knew better—know better right now. Unconsciously, on an intuitive
level. It would have made you legally subject to military jurisdiction."
To no one in particular, the KACH-man said. "It's true. They've called up virtually everyone they
sent those gratis commissions to. Put them in uniform." His face had become professionally
impassive.
"God!" Lars felt himself cringe. It had been merely a whim, declining the honorary commission. He
had given a gag answer to a gag document. And yet, now, on closer inspection—
"Am I right?" Henry Morris asked him, scrutinizing him.
"Yes," Lars said, after a pause. "I knew it." He gestured. "Well, the hell with it." He turned his
attention back to the KACH-collected weapons sketches. Anyhow, it was deeper than that; his
troubles with UN-W Natsec went back farther and penetrated further than any inane scheme such as
honorary commissions which all at once became the basis of mandatory military subjugation. What he
objected to lay in an area where written documents did not exist. An area, in fact, which he did
not care to think about.
Examining Miss Topchev's sketches he found himself confronted by this repellent aspect of his
work—the lives of all of them, the Board included.
Here it was. And not by accident. It pervaded each design; he leafed among them and then tossed
them back on his desk.
To the KACH-man he said, "Weapons! Take them back; put them in your envelope." There was not one
weapon among them.
"As regards the concomodies—" Henry Morris began.
"What," Lars said to him, "is a concomody?"
Morris, taken aback, said, "What do you mean, 'What is a concomody?' You know. You sit down with
them twice a month." He gestured in irritation. "You know more about the six concomodies on the
Board than anyone else in Wes-bloc. Let's face it, everything you do is for them."
"I'm facing it," Lars said calmly. He folded his arms, sat back. "But suppose when that TV
autonomic interviewer out there asked me whether I was receiving something really spectacular I
told it the truth."
There was silence and then the KACH-man stirred and said. "That's why they'd like you in uniform.
You wouldn't be facing any TV cameras. There wouldn't be any opportunity for something to go
wrong." He left the sketches where they were on Lars' desk.
"Maybe it's already gone wrong," Morris said, still studying his boss.
"No," Lars said, presently. "If it had you'd know." Where Mr. Lars, Incorporated, stands, he
thought, there'd just be a hole. Neat, precise, without a disturbance in the process to the
adjoining high-rise structures. And achieved in roughly six seconds.
"I think you're nuts," Morris decided. "You're sitting here at your desk day after day, looking at
Lilo's sketches, going quietly nuts. Every time you go into a trance a piece of you falls out."
His tone was harsh. "It's too costly to you. And the upshot will be that one day a TV interviewer
will nab you and say, 'What's cooking, Mr. Lars, sir?' and you'll say something you shouldn't" Dr.
Todt, Elvira Funt, the KACH-man, all of them watched him with dismay but no one did or said
anything. At his desk Lars stonily regarded the far wall and the Utrillo original which Maren
Faine had given him at Christmas, 2003.
"Let's talk about something else," Lars said. "Where no pain's attached." He nodded to Dr. Todt,
who seemed more narrow and priest-like than ever. "I think I'm psychologically ready now, doctor.
We can instigate the autism, if you have your gadgets and you know what else set up." Autism—a
noble reference, dignified.
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"I want an EEG first," Dr. Todt said. "Just as a safety factor." He rolled the portable EEG
machine forward. The preliminaries to the day's trance-state in which he lost contact with the
given, shared universe, the koinos kosmos, and involvement in that other, mystifying realm,
apparently an idios kosmos, a purely private world, began. But a purely private world in which an
aisthesis koine, a common Something, dwelt What a way, Lars thought, to earn a living.
3
Greetings! said the letter, delivered by 'stant mail. You have been selected out of millions of
your friends and neighbors.
You are now a concomody.
It can't be, Surley G. Febbs thought as he reread the printed form. It was a meager document, size-
wise, with his name and number Xeroxed in. It looked no more serious than a bill from his conapt
building's utility committee asking him to vote on a rate-increase. And yet here it was in his
possession, formal evidence which would admit him, incredibly, into Festung, Washington, D.C. and
its subsurface kremlin, the most heavily guarded spot in Wes-bloc.
And not as a tourist.
They found me typical! he said to himself. Just thinking this he felt typical. He felt swell and
powerful and slightly drunk, and he had difficulty standing. His legs wobbled and he walked
unsteadily across his miniature living room and seated himself on his Ionian fnoolfur (imitation)
couch.
"But I really know why they picked me," Febbs said aloud. "It's because I know all about weapons."
An authority; that's what he was, due to all the hours—six or seven a night, because like everyone
else his work had been recently cut from twenty to nineteen hours per week—that he spent scanning
edutapes at the Boise, Idaho, main branch of the public library.
And not only an authority on weapons. He could remember with absolute clarity every fact he had
ever learned—as for example on the manufacture of red-stained glass in France during the early
thirteenth century. I know the exact part of the Byzantine Empire from which the mosaics of the
Roman period which they melted down to form the cherished red glass came, he said to himself, and
exulted. It was about time that someone with universal knowledge like himself got on the UN-W
Natsec Board instead of the usual morons, the mass pursaps who read nothing but the headlines of
the homeopapes and naturally the sports and animated cartoon strips and of course the dirty stuff
about sex, and otherwise poisoned their empty minds with toxic, mass-produced garbage which was
deliberately produced by the large corporations who really ran things, if you knew the inside
story—as for instance I. G. Farben. Not to mention the much bigger electronics, guidance-systems
and rocket trusts that evolved later, like A. G. Beimler of Bremen who really owned General
Dynamics and I.B.M. and G.E., if you happened to have looked deeply into it. As he had.
Wait'll I sit down at the Board across from Commander-in-chief Supreme UN-West General George
Nitz, he said to himself.
I'll bet, he thought, I can tell him more facts about the hardware in the, for instance, Metro-
gretel homeostatic anti-entrope phase-converter sine-wave oscillator that Boeing is using in their
LL-40 peak-velocity interplan rocket than all the so-called "experts" in Festung Washington.
I mean, I won't be just replacing the concomody whose time on the Board expired and so I got this
form. If I can get those fatheads to listen, I can replace entire bureaus.
This certainly beat sending letters to the Boise Star-Times 'pape and to Senator Edgewell. Who
didn't even respond with a form-letter any more, he was so, quote, busy. In fact this beat even
the halcyon days, seven years ago, when due to the inheritance of a few UN-West gov bonds he had
published his own small fact-sheet type of newsletter, which he had 'stant-mailed out at random to
people in the vidphone book, plus of course to every government official in Washington. That
had—or might well have had, if there weren't so many lardheads, Commies and bureaucrats in
power—altered history... for example in the area of cleaning up the importation of disease-causing
protein molecules which regularly rode to Earth on ships returning from the colony planets, and
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which accounted for the flu that he, Febbs, had contracted in '99 and really never recovered
from—as he had told the health-insurance official at his place of business, the New Era of
Cooperative-Financing Savings & Loan Corporation of Boise, where Febbs examined applications for
loans with an eye to detecting potential deadbeats.
In detecting deadbeats he was unmatched. He could look an applicant, especially a Negro, over in
less than one microsecond and discern the actual composition of their ethical psychic-structure.
Which everyone at NECFS&LC knew, including Mr. Rumford, the branch manager. Although due to his
egocentric personal ambitions and greed Mr. Rumford had deliberately sabotaged Febbs' repeated
formal requests, over the last twelve years, for a more than routinely stipulated pay raise.
Now that problem was over. As a concomody he would receive a huge wage. He recalled, and felt
momentary embarrassment, that often he had in his letters to Senator Edgewell among many other
things complained about the salaries which the six citizens drafted onto the Board as concomodies
received.
So now to the vidphone, to ring up Rumford, who was still at his high-rise conapt probably eating
breakfast, and tell him to stuff it.
Febbs dialed and shortly found himself facing Mr. Rumford who still wore his Hong Kong-made silk
bathrobe.
Taking a deep breath, Surley G. Febbs uttered, "Mr. Rumford, I just wanted to tell you—"
He broke off, intimidated. Old habits die slowly. "I got a notice from the UN-W Natsec people in
Washington," he heard his voice declare, thin and unsteady. "So, um, you can g-get someone else t-
to do all your d-dirty-type jobs for you. And just in case you're interested, I let around six
months ago a really bad apple take out a ten-thousand poscred loan, and he'll n-never pay it
back."
He then slammed the receiver down, perspiring, but weak with the wholesome joy that now lodged
everywhere inside him.
And I'm not going to tell you who that bad apple is, he said to himself. You can comb the minned
mass of records on your own time, pay my replacement to do it. Up yours, Mr. Rumford.
Going into the tiny kitchen of his conapt he quick-unfroze a pack of stewed apricots, his
customary breakfast. Seated at the table which extended, plank-like from the wall, he ate and
meditated.
Wait until the Organization hears about this, he reflected. By this he meant the Superior Warriors
of Caucasian Ancestry of Idaho and Oregon. Chapter Fifteen. Especially Roman Centurion Skeeter W.
Johnstone, who just recently by means of an aa-35 disciplinary edict had demoted Febbs from the
rank of Legionnaire Class One to Helot Class Fifty.
I'll be hearing from the Organization's Praetorian Headquarters at Cheyenne, he realized. From
Emperor-of-the-Sun Klaus himself! They'll want to make me an R.C.—and probably kick out Johnstone
on his tail.
There were a lot of others who would get what they deserved now. For instance that thin librarian
at the main branch of the Boise pub-libe who had denied him access to the eight closed cases of
microtapes of all the twentieth century pornographic novels. This means your job, he said to
himself, arid imagined the expression on her dried, wart-like face as she received the news from
General Nitz himself.
As he ate his stewed apricots, he pictured in his mind the great bank of computers at Festung
Washington, D.C. as they had examined million after million of file cards and all the data on
them, determining who was really typical in his buying habits and who was only faking it, like the
Strattons in the conapt across from his who always tried to appear typical but who in no true
ontological sense made it.
I mean, Febbs thought joyfully, I'm Aristotle's Universal Man, such as society has tried to breed
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genetically for five thousand years! And Univox-50R at Festung Washington finally recognized it!
When a weapon-component is at last put before me officially, he thought with grim assurance, I'll
know how to plowshare it, all right. They can count on me. I'll come up with a dozen ways to
plowshare it, and all of them good. Based on my knowledge and skill.
What's odd is that they'd still need the other five concomodies. Maybe they'll realize that. Maybe
instead of giving me only a one-sixth slice they'll give me all the components. They might as
well.
It would go about like this:
General Nitz (amazed): Good God, Febbs! You're completely right. This stage one of the Brownian
movement-restriction field-induction coil, portable subtype, can be easily plowshared into an
inexpensive source to chill beer on excursions lasting over seven hours. Whew! Gollee!
Febbs: However, I think you're still missing the basic point, General. If you'll look more closely
at my official abstract on the—
The vidphone rang, then, interrupting his thoughts; he rose from the breakfast table, hurried to
answer it.
On the screen a middle-aged female Wes-bloc bureaucrat appeared. "Mr. Surley G. Febbs of Conapt
Building 300685?"
"Yes," he said, nervously.
"You received your notice by 'stant mail of your induction as concomody to the UN-W Natsec Board
as of this following Tuesday."
"Yes!"
"I am calling, Mr. Febbs, to remind you that under no circumstances are you to convey, reveal,
expound, announce or otherwise inform any person or organization or info-media or autonomic
extension thereof capable of receiving, recording and/or transmitting, communicating and/or
telecasting data in any form whatsoever, that you have been legally named by due and official
process to the UN-W Natsec Board as Concomody A, as per paragraph III in your written notice,
which you are required under penalty of law to read and strictly observe."
Surley Febbs, inside himself, fainted dead away. He had failed to read all the way down the
notice. Of course the identity of the six concomodies on the Board was a matter of strict secrecy!
And already he had told Mr. Rumford.
Or had he? Frantically, he tried to recall his exact words. Hadn't he merely said he received a
notice? Oh God. If they found out—
"Thank you, Mr. Febbs," the female official said, and rang off. Febbs stood in silence, gradually
hinging himself back together.
I'll have to call Mr. Rumford again, he realized. Make certain he thinks I'm quitting for health
reasons. Some pretext. I've lost my conapt, have to leave the area. Anything!
He found himself shaking.
A new scene bloomed frighteningly in his mind.
General Nitz (grayly, with menace): So you told, Febbs.
Febbs: You need me, General. You really do! I can plowshare better than anyone drafted
before—Univox-50R knows what it's talking about. In the name of God, sir! Give me a chance to
prove my superior worth.
General Nitz (moved): Well, all right, Febbs. I can see you're not quite like anyone else. We can
afford to treat you differently, because the fact is that in all my long years of dealing with all
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file:///F|/rah/Philip%20K.Dick/Dick%20The%20Zap%20Gun.txtPHILIPK.DICKTHEZAPGUNBeingthatMostExcellentAccountofTravailsandContayningManyPretieHystoriesByHimSetFoorthinComelyColoursandMostDelightfullyDiscoursedUponasBeautifiedandWellFurnishedDiversGoodandCommendableintheGesihtofMenofThatMostLamentabl...

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