Upon fastening onto this weary argument, Harms had dis- patched a copy via his direct line to the ailing Procurator Maxi- mus as a means of instilling new vigor in his co-ruler.
“Now take the Giants,” Arnold the barber was saying as he valiantly tried to bleach the yellow from the cardinal’s hair. “I say you can’t count them out. Look at Eddy Tubb’s ERA for last year. So he has a sore arm; pitchers always get sore arms.
The day had begun for the Chief Prelate Cardinal Fulton Sta- tler Harms; trying to hear the news, meditating simultaneously on his enterprise vis-a-vis St. Anseim, fending off Arnold’s base-
82 Philip K. Dick The Divine Invasion
ball statistics-this constituted his morning confrontation with reality, his routine. All that remained to make it the Platonic archetypal beginning of his activity phase was the mandatory- and futile-attempt to pin down Deirdre regarding her cost over- run.
He was prepared for that; he had a new girl waiting in the wings. Dierdre, who did not know it, was about to go.
————–
At his resort city on the Black Sea the Procurator Maximus walked in slow circles as he read Deirdre Connell’ s most recent report on the chief prelate. No health problems assailed the pro- curator; he had allowed news of his “medical condition” to leak its way into the media so as to ensnare his co-ruler in a web of self-serving lies. This gave him time to study his intelligence staff’s appraisal of Deirdre Connell’s daily reports. So far it was the educated opinion of everyone who intimately served the pro- curator that Cardinal Harms had lost touch with reality and was lost in harebrained theological quests-journeys that led him fur- ther and further away from any control over the political and economic situation that was pro forma his purview.
The fake reports also gave him time to fish and relax and sun himself and figure out how to depose the cardinal in order to get one of his own people into the position of chief prelate of the C.I.C. Bulkowsky had a number of S.L. functionaries in the curia, well-trained and eager. As long as Deirdre Connell held down the post of executive secretary and mistress to the cardinal, Bulkowsky had the edge. He felt reasonably certain that Harms owned no one in the Scientific Legate’s top positions, owned no reciprocal access. Bulkowsky had no mistress; he was a family man with a plump, middle-aged wife, and three children all at- tending private schools in Switzerland. In addition, his conver- sion to Dr. Passim’s enthusiastic nonsense-the miracle of flying had of course been achieved by technological means-was a stra- tegic fraud, designed to lull the cardinal deeper into his grand dreams.
The procurator knew all about the attempt to induce Big Noo- dle to come up with verification of St. Anselm’ s Ontological Proof for the existence of God; the topic was a joke in regions domi- nated by the Scientific Legate. Deirdre Connell had been in- structed to recommend to her aging lover that he spend more and more time in his lofty venture.
Nonetheless, although wholly rooted in reality, Bulkowsky had not been able to solve certain problems of his own-matters which he concealed from his co-ruler. Decisions for the S.L. had fallen off among the youth cadres during recent months; more and more college students, even those in the hard sciences, were finding for the C.I.C., throwing aside the hammer-and-sickle pin and donning the cross. Specifically there had developed a paucity of ark engineers, with the result that three S.L. orbiting arks, with their inhabitants, had had to be abandoned. This news had not reached the media, since the inhabitants had perished. To shield the public from the grim news the designations of the re- maining S.L. arks had been changed. On computer printouts the malfunctions did not appear; the situation gave the semblance of normality. At least we did eliminate Cohn Passim, Bulkowsky reflected. A man who talks like an aud-tape of a duck played backward is no threat. The evangelist had, without suspecting it, succumbed to S.L. advanced weaponry. The balance of world power had thus been made to shift ever so slightly. Little things like that added up. Take, for instance, the presence of the S.L. agent duked in as the cardinal’s mistress and secretary. Without that- Bulkowsky felt supremely confident. The dialectical force of historic necessity was on his side. He could retire to his floating bed, half an hour from now, with a knowledge that the world situation was in hand.
“Cognac,” he said to a robot attendant. “Courvoisier Napo- leon.”
As he stood by his desk warming the snifter with the palms of his hands his wife, Galina, entered the room. “Make no appoint- ments for Thursday night,” she said. “General Yakir has planned
84 Philip K. Dick The Divine Invasion
a recital for the Moscow corps. The American chanteuse Linda Fox will be singing. Yakir expects us.”
“Certainly,” Bulkowsky said. “Have roses prepared for the end of the recital.” To a pair of robot servants he said, “Have my valet de chambre remind me.”
“Don’t nod off during the recital,” Galina said. “Mrs. Yakir will be hurt. You remember the last time.”
“The Penderecki abomination,” Bulkowsky said, remember- ing well. He had snored through the “Quia Fecit” of the “Mag- nificat” and then read about his behavior in intelligence documents a week later.
“Remember that as far as informed circles know, you are a born-again Christian,” Galina said. “What did you do about those responsible for the loss of the three arks?”
“They are all dead,” Bulkowsky said. He had had them shot.
“You could recruit replacement from the U.K.”
“We will have our own soon. I don’t trust what the U.K. sends us. Everyone is for sale. For instance, how much is that chanteuse now asking for her decision?”
“The situation is confused,” Galina said. “I have read the intelligence reports; the cardinal is offering her a large sum to decide for the C.I.C. I don’t think we should try to meet it.”
“But if an entertainer that popular were to step forth and announce that she had seen the white light and accepted sweet Jesus into her life-”
“You did.”
“But,” Bulkowsky said, “you know why.” As he had ac- cepted Jesus solemnly, with much pomp, he would presently de- clare that he had renounced Jesus and returned, wiser now, to the S.L. This would have a dire effect on the curia and, hopefully, even on the cardinal himself. The chief prelate’s morale, accord- ing to S.L. psychologists, would be shattered. The man actually supposed that one day everyone associated with the S.L. would march up to the various offices of the CIC. and convert.
“What are you doing about that doctor he sent?” Galina said. “Are there any difficulties?”
“No.” He shook his head. “The forged medical reports keep him busy.” Actually the medical information presented regularly to the physician whom the cardinal had sent were not forged. They simply pertained to someone other than Buikowsky, some minor S.L. person genuinely sick. Bulkowsky had sworn Harms’s physician to secrecy, pleading medical ethics as the issue, but of course Dr. Duffey covertly dispatched detailed re- ports on the procurator’s health to the cardinal’s staff at every opportunity. S.L. intelligence routinely intercepted them, checked to make sure they painted a sufficiently grave picture, copied them and sent them on. By and large the medical reports traveled by microwave signal to an orbiting C.I.C. communica- tions satellite and from there were beamed down to Washington, D.C. However, Dr. Duffey, in a periodic fit of cleverness, some- times simply mailed the information. This was harder to control.
Imagining that he was dealing with an ailing man, and one who had decided for Jesus, the cardinal had relaxed his stance of vigil regarding the higher activities of the S. L. The cardinal now supposed the procurator to be hopelessly incompetent.
“If Linda Fox will not decide for the S.L.,” Galina said, “why don’t you draw her aside and tell her that one day on her way to a concert engagement her private rocket-that gaudy plush thing she flies herself-will go up in a flash of flaming fire?”
Gloomily, Bulkowsky said, “Because the cardinal got to her first. He has already passed the word to her that if she doesn’t accept sweet Jesus into her life bichlorides will find her whether she wants to accept them or not.”
The tactic of poisoning Linda Fox with small doses of mer- cury was an artful one. Long before she died (if she did die) she would be as mad as a hatter-literally, since it had been mercury Poisoning, mercury used to process felt hats, that had driven the English hatters of the nineteenth century into famous organic psychosis.
I wish I had thought of that, Bulkowsky said to himself. Intel- ligence reports stated that the chanteuse had become hysterical when informed by a C.I.C. agent of what the cardinal intended if she did not decide for Jesus-hysteria and then temporary hy