PHILIP K. DICK – THE ZAP GUN

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 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.”

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.

“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.

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