THE WORLD JONES MADE BY PHILIP K. DICK

Climbing the steps, Cussick approached the youth. “All right,” he said. “I’ll bite.”

The steps sagged under his feet; a rickety platform, unstable and unsafe. As he seated himself across from the youth, the chair groaned under him. Now that he was closer he could see that the youth’s skin was mottled with deep splotches of color that might have been skin grafts. Had he been injured in the war? A faint odor of medicine hung about him, suggesting care of his frail body. Above the dome of his forehead his hair was tangled; his clothes clung in folds against his knobby frame. Now, he was peering up at Cussick, appraising him, warily studying him.

But not fearfully. There was an awkward crudeness about him, an uncertain twitch of his gaunt body. But his eyes were harsh and unyielding. He was gauche, but not afraid. It was no weak personality that faced Cussick; it was a blunt, determined young man. Cussick’s own cheery bluster faded; he felt suddenly apprehensive. He had lost the initiative.

“Twenty dollars,” Jones said.

Clumsily, Cussick fumbled in his pocket. “For what? What am I getting?”

After a moment Jones explained. “See that?” He indicated a wheel on the table. Pulling back a lever he released it; the hand on the wheel slowly turned, accompanied by a laborious metallic clicking. The face of the wheel was divided into four quarters. “You have one hundred and twenty seconds. Anything you want to ask. Then your time is up.” He took the change and dropped it in his coat pocket.

“Ask?” Cussick said huskily. “About what?”

“The future.” There was contempt in the youth’s voice, undisguised, unconcealed. It was obvious; of course, the future. What else? Irritably, his thin, hard fingers drummed. And the wheel ticked.

“But not personal?” Cussick pursued. “Not about myself?”

Lips twitching spasmodically, Jones shot back: “Of course not. You’re a nonentity. You don’t figure.”

Cussick blinked. Embarrassed, feeling his ears begin to burn, he answered as evenly as possible: “Maybe you’re wrong. Maybe I’m somebody.” Hotly, he was thinking of his position; what would this rustic punk say if he knew he was facing a Fedgov secret-service man? It was on the tip of his tongue angrily to blurt it out, to give his role away in self-defense. That, of course, would finish him off with Security. But he was harried, and uncertain.

“You’re down to ninety seconds,” Jones notified him dispassionately. Then his gaunt, stony voice took on feeling. “For God’s sake, ask something! Don’t you want to know anything? Aren’t you curious?”

Licking his lips, Cussick said: “Well, what’s the future hold? What’s going to happen?”

Disgusted, Jones shook his head. He sighed and stubbed out his cigarette. For a moment it seemed as if he wasn’t going to answer; he concentrated on the smashed cigarette butt under the sole of his shoe. Then he dragged himself upright and carefully said: “Specific questions. Do you want me to think up one for you? All right, I will. Question. Who’ll be the next Council chairman? Answer. The Nationalist candidate, a trivial individual named Ernest T. Saunders.”

“But the Nationalists aren’t a party! They’re a cultist splinter-group!”

Ignoring him, Jones went on: “Question. What are the drifters? Answer. Beings from beyond the solar system, origin unknown, nature unknown.”

Puzzled, Cussick hesitated. “Unknown up to what date?” he ventured. Plucking up his courage, he demanded: “How far can you see?”

Without particular inflection, Jones said: “I can see without error over a span of a year. After that, it fades. I can see major events, but specific details dim and I get nothing at all. As far as I can see ahead, the origin of the drifters is unknown.” Glancing at Cussick, he added, “I mention them because they’re going to be the big issue from now on.”

“They already are,” Cussick said, recalling the present sensational headlines in the cheap press: UNKNOWN FLIGHTS OF SHIPS DETECTED BY OUT-PLANET PATROLS. “You say they’re beings? Not ships? I don’t get it—you mean what we’ve sighted are the actual living creatures, not their artificially constructed—“

“Alive, yes,” Jones interrupted impatiently, almost feverishly. “But Fedgov knows it already. Right now, at high level, they have detailed reports. The reports will be out in a few weeks; the bastards are withholding them from the public. A dead drifter was hauled in by a scout coming back from Uranus.” Suddenly the wheel ceased slicking, and Jones dropped back in his chair, his flow of agitated words ceasing. “Your time is up,” he announced. “If you want to know anything more, it’ll be another twenty dollars.”

Dazed, Cussick retreated away from him, down the steps and off the platform. “No thanks,” he murmured. “That’s plenty.”

CHAPTER THREE

AT FOUR O’CLOCK the police car picked him up and carried him back to Baltimore. Cussick was seething. Excitedly, he lit a cigarette, stubbed it out, and lit another. Maybe he had something; maybe not. The Baltimore secret-service buildings stood like a vast cube of concrete on the surface of the earth, a mile outside the city. Around the cube jutted metallic dots: coordinate block houses that were the mouths of elaborate subsurface tunnels. In the blue spring sky lazily flitted a few robot interception aerial mines. The police car slowed at the first check-station; guards carrying machine guns, with grenades bobbing at their belts, steel helmets glinting in the sun, strolled leisurely over.

An ordinary inspection. The car was passed; it made its way along a ramp and into the receiving area. At that point Cussick was dropped off; the car rolled into the garage, and he found himself standing alone before the ascent ramp, his mind still in turmoil. How was he supposed to evaluate what he had found?

Before he made his report to Security Director Pearson, he let himself off at one of the pedagogic levels. A moment later he was standing in the work-littered office of his Senior Political Instructor.

Max Kaminski was laboriously examining papers heaped over his desk. It was awhile before he noticed Cussick. “Home is the sailor,” he remarked, continuing his work. “Home from the sea. And the hunter, too, for that matter. What did you bag out in the hills, this fine April afternoon?”

“I wanted to ask you something,” Cussick said awkwardly. “Before I make my report.” The tubby, round-faced man with his thick mustache and wrinkled brow had trained him; technically, Cussick was no longer under Kaminski’s jurisdiction, but he still came for advice. “I know the law… but a lot depends on personal evaluation. There seems to be a statute violation, but I’m not certain which.”

“Well,” Kaminski said, putting down his fountain pen, removing his glasses, and folding his meaty hands, “as you know, violations fall into three main classifications. It’s all based on Hoff’s Primer of Relativism; I don’t have to tell you that.” He tapped the familiar blue-bound book at the edge of his desk. “Go read your copy again.”

“I know it by heart,” Cussick said impatiently, “but I’m still confused. The individual in question isn’t asserting personal taste for statements of fact—he’s making a statement about things unknowable.”

“In particular?”

“About the future. He claims to know what’s going to happen in the next year.”

“Prediction?”

“Prophecy,” Cussick corrected. “If I understand the distinction. And I claim prophecy is self-contradictory. Nobody can have absolute knowledge about the future. By definition, the future hasn’t happened. And if knowledge existed, it would change the future—which would make the knowledge invalid.”

“What was this, a fortuneteller at some carnival?”

Cussick colored. “Yes.”

The older man’s mustache quivered angrily. “And you’re going to report it? You’re going to recommend action against some entertainer trying to make a few dollars reading palms in a traveling circus? Over-zealous kids like you… don’t you understand how serious this is? Don’t you know what a conviction means? Loss of civil rights, confinement in a forced labor camp—“ He shook his head. “So you can make a good impression on your superiors, some harmless fortuneteller is going to get the ax.”

With controlled dignity, Cussick said: “But I think it’s a violation of the law.”

“Everybody violates the law. When I tell you olives taste terrible, I’m technically violating the law. When somebody says that dogs are man’s best friend, it’s illegal. It goes on all the time—we’re not interested in that!”

Pearson had come into the office. “What’s going on?” he demanded irritably, tall and stern in his brown police uniform.

“Our young friend here has brought back the quarry,” Kaminski said sourly. “At this carnival he covered… he unearthed a fortuneteller.”

Turning to Pearson, Cussick tried to explain. “Not a regular fortuneteller; there was one of those, too.” Hearing his voice mutter out huskily, awkwardly, he rushed on: “I think this man’s a mutant, a precog of some land. He claims to know future history; he told me that somebody named Saunders is going to be the next Council chairman.”

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *