He and Joe continued on up in empty silence.
As he entered the conference room Joe realized that Al was no longer with him. Turning, he looked back down the corridor; he made out Al standing alone, not coming any farther. “What’s the matter?” he asked again. Al did not move. “Are you all right?” Joe asked, walking back toward him.
“I feel tired,” Al said.
“You don’t look good,” Joe said, feeling deeply uneasy.
Al said, “I’m going to the men’s room. You go ahead and join the others; make sure they’re okay. I’ll be along pretty soon.” He started vaguely away; he seemed, now, confused. “I’ll be okay,” he said. He moved along the corridor haltingly, as if having difficulty seeing his way.
“I’ll go with you,” Joe said. “To make sure you get there.”
“Maybe if I splash some warm water on my face,” Al said; he found the toll-free door to the men’s room, and, with Joe’s help, opened it and disappeared inside. Joe remained in the corridor. Something’s the matter with him, he said to himself. Seeing the old elevator made a change in him. He wondered why.
Al reappeared.
“What is it?” Joe said, seeing the expression on his face.
“Take a look at this,” Al said; he led Joe into the men’s room and pointed at the far wall. “Graffiti,” he said. “You know, words scrawled. Like you find all the time in the men’s room. Read it.”
In crayon, or purple ballpoint pen ink, the words read:
JUMP IN THE URINAL AND STAND ON YOUR HEAD.
I’M THE ONE THAT’S ALIVE. YOU’RE ALL DEAD.
“Is it Runciter’s writing?” Al asked. “Do you recognize it?”
“Yes,” Joe said, nodding. “It’s Runciter’s writing.”
“So now we know the truth,” Al said.
“Is it the truth?”
Al said, “Sure. Obviously.”
“What a hell of a way to learn it. From the wall of a men’s room.” He felt bitter resentment rather than anything else.
“That’s how graffiti is; harsh and direct. We might have watched the TV and listened to the vidphone and read the ‘papes for months – forever, maybe – without finding out. Without being told straight to the point like this.”
Joe said, “But we’re not dead. Except for Wendy.”
“We’re in half-life. Probably still on Pratfall II; we’re probably on our way back to Earth from Luna, after the explosion that killed us – killed us, not Runciter. And he’s trying to pick up the flow of protophasons from us. So far he’s failed; we’re not getting across from our world to his. But he’s managed to reach us. We’re picking him up everywhere, even places we choose at random. His presence is invading us on every side, him and only him because he’s the sole person trying to-”
“He and only he,” Joe interrupted. “Instead of ‘him’; you said ‘him.'”
“I’m sick,” Al said. He started water running in the basin, began splashing it onto his face. It was not hot water, however, Joe saw; in the water fragments of ice crackled and splintered. “You go back to the conference room. I’ll be along when I feel better, assuming I ever do feel better.”
“I think I ought to stay here with you,” Joe said.
“No, goddam it – get out of here!” His face gray and filled with panic, Al shoved him toward the door of the men’s room; he propelled Joe out into the corridor. “Go on, make sure they’re all right!” Al retreated back into the men’s room, clutching at his own eyes; bent over, he disappeared from view as the door swung shut.
Joe hesitated. “Okay,” he said, “I’ll be in the conference room with them.” He waited, listening; heard nothing. “Al?” he said. Christ, he thought. This is terrible. Something is really the matter with him. “I want to see with my own eyes,” he said, pushing against the door, “that you’re all right.”
In a low, calm voice Al said, “It’s too late, Joe. Don’t look.” The men’s room had become dark; Al evidently had managed to turn the light off. “You can’t do anything to help me,” he said in a weak but steady voice. “We shouldn’t have separated from the others; that’s why it happened to Wendy. You can stay alive at least for a while if you go find them and stick with them. Tell them that; make sure all of them understand. Do you understand?”
Joe reached for the light switch.
A blow, feeble and weightless, cuffed his hand in the darkness; terrified, he withdrew his hand, shocked by the impotence of Al’s punch. It told him everything. He no longer needed to see.
“I’ll go join the others,” he said. “Yes, I understand. Does it feel very bad?”
Silence, and then a listless voice whispered, “No, it doesn’t feel very bad. I just-” The voice faded out. Once more only silence.
“Maybe I’ll see you again sometime,” Joe said. He knew it was the wrong thing to say – it horrified him to hear himself prattle out such an inanity. But it was the best he could do. “Let me put it another way,” he said, but he knew Al could no longer hear him. “I hope you feel better,” he said. “I’ll check back after I tell them about the writing on the wall in there. I’ll tell them not to come in here and look at it because it might-” He tried to think it out, to say it right. “They might bother you,” he finished.
No response.
“Well, so long,” Joe said, and left the darkness of the men’s room. He walked unsteadily down the corridor, back to the conference room; halting a moment he took a deep, irregular breath and then pushed open the conference-room door.
The TV set mounted in the far wall blared out a detergent commercial; on the great color 3-D screen a housewife critically examined a synthetic otter-pelt towel and in a penetrating, shrill voice declared it unfit to occupy a place in her bathroom. The screen then displayed her bathroom – and picked up graffiti on her bathroom wall too. The same familiar scrawl, this time reading;
LEAN OVER THE BOWL AND THEN TAKE A DIVE.
ALL OF YOU ARE DEAD. I AM ALIVE.
Only one person in the big conference room watched, however. Joe stood alone in an otherwise empty room. The others, the entire group of them, had gone.
He wondered where they were. And if he would live long enough to find them. It did not seem likely.
CHAPTER 10.
Has perspiration odor taken you out of the swim? Ten-day Ubik deodorant spray or Ubik roll-on ends worry of offending, brings you back where the happening is. Safe when used as directed in a conscientious program of body hygiene.
The television announcer said, “And now back to Jim Hunter and the news.”
On the screen the sunny, hairless face of the newscaster appeared. “Glen Runciter came back today to the place of his birth, but it was not the kind of return which gladdened anyone’s heart. Yesterday tragedy struck at Runciter Associates, probably the best-known of Earth’s many prudence organizations. In a terrorist blast at an undisclosed subsurface installation on Luna, Glen Runciter was mortally wounded and died before his remains could be transferred to cold-pac. Brought to the Beloved Brethren Moratorium in Zurich, every effort was made to revive Runciter to half-life, but in vain. In acknowledgment of defeat these efforts have now ceased, and the body of Glen Runciter has been returned here to Des Moines, where it will lie in state at the Simple Shepherd Mortuary.”
The screen showed an old-fashioned white wooden building, with various persons roaming about outside.
I wonder who authorized the transfer to Des Moines, Joe Chip said to himself.
“It was the sad but inexorably dictated decision by the wife of Glen Runciter,” the newscaster’s voice continued, “which brought about this final chapter which we are now viewing. Mrs. Ella Runciter, herself in cold-pac, whom it had been hoped her husband would join – revived to face this calamity. Mrs. Runciter learned this morning of the fate which had overtaken her husband, and gave the decision to abandon efforts to awaken belated half-life in the man whom she had expected to merge with, a hope disappointed by reality.” A still photo of Ella, taken during her lifetime, appeared briefly on the TV screen. “In solemn ritual,” the newscaster continued, “grieving employees of Runciter Associates assembled in the chapel of the Simple Shepherd Mortuary, preparing themselves as best they could, under the circumstances, to pay last respects.”
The screen now showed the roof field of the mortuary; a parked upended ship opened its hatch and men and women emerged. A microphone, extended by newsmen, halted them.
“Tell me, sir,” a newsmanish voice said, “in addition to working for Glen Runciter, did you and these other employees also know him personally? Know him not as a boss but as a man?”