PHILIP K. DICK – THE ZAP GUN

Swallowing, perspiring, Klug hesitated and then said, “My credit’s no good, Jack?”

“Your credit’s good. Any credit is good. But you don’t have any. You don’t even know what the word means. Credit means—”

“I know,” Klug broke in. “It means the ability to pay later for what’s bought now. But if I had five hundred of this number ready for the Fall market—”

“Let me ask you something,” Lanferman said.

“Sure, Jack. Mr. Lanferman.”

“How, in that strange brain of yours, do you conceive a method by which you can advertise? This would be a high-cost item at every level, especially at retail. You couldn’t merchandise it through one buyer for a chain of autodepts. It would have to go to cog-class families and be exposed in cog mags. And that’s expensive.”

“Hmm,” Klug said.

Lars spoke up. “Klug, let me ask you something.”

“Mr. Lars.” Klug extended his hand eagerly.

“Do you honestly believe that a war-game constitutes a morally adequate product to deliver over to children? Can you fit this into that theory of yours about ‘ameliorating’ the iniquities of modern—”

“Oh wait,” Klug said, raising his hand. “Wait, Mr. Lars.”

“I’m waiting.” He waited.

“Through capture the child learns the futility of war.”

Lars eyed him skeptically. Like hell he does, he thought.

“I mean it.” Vigorously, Klug’s head bobbed up and down in a convinced determined nod of self-assent. “Listen, Mr. Lars; I know the story. Temporarily, I admit it, my firm is in bankruptcy, but I still have cog inside knowledge. I understand, and I’m sympathetic. Believe me. I’m really very, totally sympathetic; I couldn’t agree more with what you’re doing. Honestly.”

“What am I doing?”

“I don’t merely mean you, Mr. Lars, although you’re one of the foremost—” Klug groped urgently for the means to express his fervid ideas, now that he had ensnared an audience. To Klug, Lars observed, an audience consisted of anyone above the number of zero, and above the age of two. Cog and pursap alike; Klug would have pleaded with them all. Because what he was doing, what he wanted, was so important.

Pete Freid said, “Make a model for some simple toy, Klug.” His tone was gentle. “Something the autodept networks can market for a couple of beans. With maybe one moving part. You’d run off a few thousand for him, wouldn’t you, Jack? If he brought in a really simple piece?”

To Vincent Klug he said, “Give me specs and I’ll build the prototype for you and maybe get a cost analysis.” To Jack he quickly explained, “I mean on my own time, of course.”

Sighing, Lanferman said, “You can use our shops. But please for God’s sake don’t kill yourself trying to bail out this guy. Klug was in the toy business, and a goddam failure, before you were out of college. He’s had a hatful of chances and muffed every one.”

Klug stared at the floor drearily.

“I’m one of the foremost what?” Lars asked him.

Without raising his head Klug said, “The foremost healing and constructive forces in our sick society. And you, who are so few, must never be harmed.”

After a suitable interval Lars, Pete Freid and Jack Lanferman howled with laughter.

“Okay,” Klug said. With a sort of miserable, beaten-dog, philosophic slumped shrug he began gathering up his twelve tiny soldiers and his Monitor-citadel. He looked ever increasingly glum and deflated, and clearly he was going to leave—which, for him, was unusual. In fact unheard of.

Lars said, “Don’t interpret our reaction as—”

“It’s not misunderstood,” Klug said in a faraway voice. “The last thing any of you wants to hear is that you’re not pandering to the sick inclinations of a depraved society. It’s easier for you to pretend you’ve been bought by a bad system.”

“I never heard such strange logic in my life,” Jack Lanferman said, genuinely puzzled. “Have you, Lars?”

Lars said, “I think I know what he means, only he’s not able to say it. Klug means that we’re in weapons design and manufacture and so we feel we’ve got to be tough. It’s our great and bounden duty, as the Common Prayer Book says. People who invent and implement devices that blow up other people should be cynical. Only the fact is we’re loveable.”

“Yes,” Klug said, nodding. “That’s the word. Love is the basis of your lives, all three of you. You all share it, but especially you, Lars. Compare yourselves to the dreadful police and military agencies who are the real and awful personages in power. Compare your motivation to KACH in particular, and the FBI and KVB. SeRKeb and Natsec. Their basis—”

“Upper gastro-intestinal irritation is the basis of my life,” Pete said. “Especially late Saturday night.”

Jack said, “I have colonic trouble.”

“I have a chronic urinary infection,” Lars said. “Bacteria keep forming, in particular if I drink too much orange juice.”

Sadly, Klug snapped his huge sample-case shut. “Well, Mr. Lanferman,” he said as he walked gradually off sagging with the weight of the loaded case as if the air were slowly leaking out of him, “I appreciate your time.”

Pete said, “Remember what I said, Klug. Give me something with just one moving part and I’ll—”

“Thank you very much,” Klug said and, with a sort of vague dignity, turned the corner of the corridor. He was gone.

“Out of his mind,” Jack said after a pause. “Look what Pete offered him: his time and skill. And I offered him the use of our shops. And he walked off.” Jack shook his head. “I don’t get it. I don’t really understand what makes that guy tick. After all these years.”

“Are we really loveable?” Pete asked. “I mean seriously; I want to know. Somebody say.”

The final, irrefutable answer came from Jack Lanferman. “What the hell does it matter?” Jack said.

11

And yet it did matter, Lars thought as he rode by high-velocity express back from San Francisco to his office in New York. Two principles governed history: the power-inspired and the—what Klug said—the healing principle, idly referred to as “love.”

Reflexively he examined the late edition ‘pape placed considerately before him by the hostess. It had one good big headline:

New Sat Not Peep-East, says SeRKeb Speculation Planet-Wide as to Origin UN-W NATSEC Asked to Investigate.

They who had asked, Lars discovered, were a mysterious, dim organization called the “United States Senate.” Spokesman: a transparent shade named President Nathan Schwarzkopf. Like the League of Nations, such bodies perpetuated themselves, even though they had ceased to be even a chowder and marching society.

And in the USSR, an equally insubstantial entity called the Supreme Soviet had by now yelped nervously for someone to take an interest in the unaccounted-for new satellite, one among over seven hundred, but still a peculiar one.

“May I have a phone?” Lars asked the ship’s hostess.

A vidphone was brought to his seat, plugged in. Presently he was talking to the screening sharpy at the switchboard at Festung Washington, D.C.

“Let me have General Nitz.” He gave his cog-code, all twenty portions of it, verifying it by inserting his thumb into the slot of the vidphone. The miles of strung-together gimmicks analyzed and transmitted his print and, at the switchboard in the subsurface Kremlin, the autonomic circuit switched him obediently to the human functionary who stood first in the long progression which acted as a shield between General Nitz and—well, reality.

The express ship had begun its gliding, slow decent at Wayne Morse Field in New York by the time Lars got through to General Nitz.

The carrot-shaped face materialized, wide at the top, tapering to a near-point, with horizontal, slubby, deeply countersunk eyes and gray hair that looked—and might well be—gummed in place, being artificial. And then, hooking in a stricture at the trachea, that wonderful insignia-impregnated hard-as-black-iron hoop collar. The medals themselves, awesome to behold, were not immediately visible. They lay below the scanner of the vid-camera.

“General,” Lars said, “I assume the Board is in session. Shall I come directly there?”

Sardonically—it was his natural mode of address—General Nitz purred, “Why, Mr. Lars? Tell me why. Had you intended to reach them by floating to the ceiling of the sec-con chamber or having the conference table-rap spirit messages?”

” ‘Them,’ ” Lars said, disconcerted. “Who do you mean, General?”

General Nitz rang off without answering.

The empty screen faced Lars like a vacuity echoing the tone of Nitz’ voice.

Of course, Lars reflected, in a situation of this magnitude he himself did not count. General Nitz had too much else to worry about.

Shaken, Lars sat back and endured the rather rough landing of the ship, a hurried landing as if the pilot was eager to get his vessel out of the sky. Now would not be the time to ‘coat to Peep-East, he thought drily. They’re probably as nervewracked as UN-W Natsec, if not more so… if it’s true that they didn’t put that satellite up. And evidently we believe them.

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