“You have not been here for some time, Mr. Runciter,” Herbert pointed out; he could not recall the data on Mrs. Runciter’s lading sheet, how much half-life she retained.
Runciter, his wide, flat hand pressing against Herbert’s back to urge him along, said, “This is a moment of importance, von Vogelsang. We, my associates and myself, are in a line of business that surpasses all rational understanding. I’m not at liberty to make disclosures at this time, but we consider matters at present to be ominous but not however hopeless. Despair is not indicated – not by any means. Where’s Ella?” He halted, glanced rapidly about.
“I’ll bring her from the bin to the consultation lounge for you,” Herbert said; customers should not be here in the bins. “Do you have your numbered claim-check, Mr. Runciter?”
“God, no,” Runciter said. “I lost it months ago. But you know who my wife is; you can find her. Ella Runciter, about twenty. Brown hair and eyes.” He looked around him impatiently. “Where did you put the lounge? It used to be located where I could find it.”
“Show Mr. Runciter to the consultation lounge,” Herbert said to one of his employees, who had come meandering by, curious to see what the world-renowned owner of an anti-psi organization looked like.
Peering into the lounge, Runciter said with aversion, “It’s full. I can’t talk to Ella in there.” He strode after Herbert, who had made for the moratorium’s files. “Mr. von Vogelsang,” he said, overtaking him and once more dropping his big paw onto the man’s shoulder; Herbert felt the weight of the hand, its persuading vigor. “Isn’t there a more private sanctum sanctorum for confidential communications? What I have to discuss with Ella my wife is not a matter which we at Runciter Associates are ready at this time to reveal to the world.”
Caught up in the urgency of Runciter’s voice and presence, Herbert found himself readily mumbling, “I can make Mrs. Runciter available to you in one of our offices, sir.” He wondered what had happened, what pressure had forced Runciter out of his bailiwick to make this belated pilgrimage to the Beloved Brethren Moratorium to crank up – as Runciter crudely phrased it – his half-lifer wife. A business crisis of some sort, he theorized. Ads over TV and in the homeopapes by the various anti-psi prudence establishments had shrilly squawked their harangues of late. Defend your privacy, the ads yammered on the hour, from all media. Is a stranger tuning in on you? Are you really alone? That for the telepaths… and then the queasy worry about precogs. Are your actions being predicted by someone you never met? Someone you would not want to meet or invite into your home? Terminate anxiety; contacting your nearest prudence organization will first tell you if in fact you are the victim of unauthorized intrusions, and then, on your instructions, nullify these intrusions – at moderate cost to you.
“Prudence organizations.” He liked the term; it had dignity and it was accurate. He knew this from personal experience; two years ago a telepath had infiltrated his moratorium staff, for reasons which he had never discovered. To monitor confidences between half-lifers and their visitors, probably; perhaps those of one specific half-lifer – anyhow, a scout from one of the anti-psi organizations had picked up the telepathic field, and he had been notified. Upon his signing of a work contract an anti-telepath had been dispatched, had installed himself on the moratorium premises. The telepath had not been located but it had been nullified, exactly as the TV ads promised. And so, eventually, the defeated telepath had gone away. The moratorium was now psi-free, and, to be sure it stayed so, the anti-psi prudence organization surveyed his establishment routinely once a month.
“Thanks very much, Mr. Vogelsang,” Runciter said, following Herbert through an outer office in which clerks worked to an empty inner room that smelled of drab and unnecessary micro-documents.
Of course, Herbert thought musingly to himself, I took their word for it that a telepath got in here; they showed me a graph they had obtained, citing it as proof. Maybe they faked it, made up the graph in their own labs. And I took their word for it that the telepath left; he came, he left – and I paid two thousand poscreds. Could the prudence organizations be, in fact, rackets? Claiming a need for their services when sometimes no need actually exists?
Pondering this he set off in the direction of the files once more. This time Runciter did not follow him; instead, he thrashed about noisily, making his big frame comfortable in terms of a meager chair. Runciter sighed, and it seemed to Herbert, suddenly, that the massively built old man was tired, despite his customary show of energy.
I guess when you get up into that bracket, Herbert decided, you have to act in a certain way; you have to appear more than a human with merely ordinary failings. Probably Runciter’s body contained a dozen artiforgs, artificial organs grafted into place in his physiological apparatus as the genuine, original ones, failed. Medical science, he conjectured, supplies the material groundwork, and out of the authority of his mind Runciter supplies the remainder. I wonder how old he is, he wondered. Impossible any more to tell by looks, especially after ninety.
“Miss Beason,” he instructed his secretary, “have Mrs. Ella Runciter located and bring me the ident number. She’s to be,taken to office 2-A.” He seated himself across from her, busied himself with a pinch or two of Fribourg & Treyer Princes snuff as Miss Beason began the relatively simple job of tracking down Glen Runciter’s wife.
CHAPTER 2.
The best way to ask for beer is to sing out Ubik. Made from select hops, choice water, slow-aged for perfect flavor Ubik is the nation’s number-one choice in beer. Made only in Cleveland.
Upright in her transparent casket, encased in an effluvium of icy mist, Ella Runciter lay with her eyes shut, her hands lifted permanently toward her impassive face. It had been three years since he had seen Ella, and of course she had not changed. She never would, now, at least not in the outward physical way. But with each resuscitation into active half-life, into a return of cerebral activity, however short, Ella died somewhat. The remaining time left to her pulse-phased out and ebbed.
Knowledge of this underwrote his failure to rev her up more often. He rationalized this way: that it doomed her, that to activate her constituted a sin against her. As to her own stated wishes, before her death and in early half-life encounters – this had become handily nebulous in his mind. Anyway, he would know better, being four times as old as she. What had she wished? To continue to function with him as co-owner of Runciter Associates; something vague on that order. Well, he had granted this wish. Now, for example. And six or seven times in the past. He did consult her at each crisis of the organization. He was doing so at this moment.
Damn this earphone arrangement, he grumbled as he fitted the plastic disc against the side of his head. And this micro-phone; all impediments to natural communication. He felt impatient and uncomfortable as he shifted about on the inadequate chair which Vogelsang or whatever his name was had provided him; he watched her rev back into sentience and wished she would hurry. And then in panic he thought, Maybe she isn’t going to make it; maybe she’s worn out and they didn’t tell me. Or they don’t know. Maybe, he thought, I ought to get that Vogelsang creature in here to explain. Maybe something terrible is wrong.
Ella, pretty and light-skinned; her eyes, in the days when they had been open, had been bright and luminous blue. That would not again occur; he could talk to her and hear her answer; he could communicate with her… but he would never again see her with eyes opened; nor would her mouth move. She would not smile at his arrival. When he departed she would not cry. Is this worth it? he asked himself. Is this better than the old way, the direct road from full-life to the grave? I still do have her with me, in a sense, he decided. The alternative is nothing.
In the earphone words, slow and uncertain, formed circular thoughts of no importance, fragments of the mysterious dream which she now dwelt in. How did it feel, he wondered, to be in half-life? He could never fathom it from what Ella had told him; the basis of it, the experience of it, couldn’t really be transmitted. Gravity, she had told him, once; it begins not to affect you and you float, more and more. When half-life is over, she had said, I think you float out of the System, out into the stars. But she did not know either; she only wondered and conjectured. She did not, however, seem afraid. Or unhappy. He felt glad of that.