Ubik

Chapter 9

They selected the Lucky People Supermarket on the periphery of Baltimore.

At the counter Al said to the autonomic, computerized checker, “Give me a pack of Pall Malls.”

“Wings are cheaper,” Joe said.

Irritated, Al said, “They don’t make Wings any more. They haven’t for years.”

“They make them,” Joe said, “but they don’t advertise. It’s an honest cigarette that claims nothing.” To the checker he said, “Change that from Pall Malls to Wings.”

The pack of cigarettes slid from the chute and onto the counter. “Ninety-five cents,” the checker said.

“Here’s a ten-poscred bill.” Al fed the bill to the checker, whose circuits at once whirred as it scrutinized the bill. “Your change, sir,” the checker said; it deposited a neat heap of coins and bills before Al. “Please move along now.”

So Runciter money is acceptable, Al said to himself as he and Joe got out of the way of the next customer, a heavy-set old lady wearing a blueberry-colored cloth coat and carrying a Mexican rope shopping bag. Cautiously, he opened the pack of cigarettes.

The cigarettes crumbled between his fingers.

“It would have proved something,” Al said, “if this had been a pack of Pall Malls. I’m getting back in line.” He started to do so—and then discovered that the heavy-set old lady in the dark coat was arguing violently with the autonomic checker.

“It was dead,” she asserted shrilly, “by the time I got it home. Here; you can have it back.” She set a pot on the counter; it contained, Al saw, a lifeless plant, perhaps an azalea—in its moribund state it showed few features.

“I can’t give you a refund,” the checker answered. “No warranty goes with the plant life which we sell. ‘Buyer beware’ is our rule. Please move along now.”

“And the Saturday Evening Post,” the old lady said, “that I picked up from your newsstand, it was over a year old. What’s the matter with you? And the Martian grubworm TV dinner—”

“Next customer,” the checker said; it ignored her.

Al got out of line. He roamed about the premises until he came to the cartons of cigarettes, every conceivable brand, stacked to heights of eight feet or more. “Pick a carton,” he said to Joe.

“Dominoes,” Joe said. “They’re the same price as Wings.”

“Christ, don’t pick an offbrand; pick something like Winstons or Kools.” He himself yanked out a carton. “It’s empty.” He shook it. “I can tell by the weight.” Something, however, inside the carton bounced about, something weightless and small; he tore the carton open and looked within it.

A scrawled note. In handwriting familiar to him, and to Joe. He lifted it out and together they both read it.

Al said, “So he knows about Wendy. Well, maybe that means it won’t happen again, to the rest of us.”

“A random carton of cigarettes,” Joe said, “at a random store in a city picked at random. And we find a note directed at us from Glen Runciter. What do the other cartons have in them? The same note?” He lifted down a carton of L&Ms, shook it, then opened it. Ten packs of cigarettes plus ten more below them; absolutely normal. Or is it? Al asked himself. He lifted out one of the packs. “You can see they’re okay,” Joe said; he pulled out a carton from the middle of the stacks. “This one is full too.” He did not open it; instead, he reached for another. And then another. All had packs of cigarettes in them.

And all crumbled into fragments between Al’s fingers.

“I wonder how he knew we’d come here,” Al said. “And how he knew we’d try that one particular carton.” It made no sense. And yet, here, too, the pair of opposing forces were at work. Decay versus Runciter, Al said to himself. Throughout the world. Perhaps throughout the universe. Maybe the sun will go out, Al conjectured, and Glen Runciter will place a substitute sun in its place. If he can.

Yes, he thought; that’s the question. How much can Runciter do?

Put another way—how far can the process of decay go?

“Let’s try something else,” Al said; he walked along the aisle, past cans, packages and boxes, coming at last to the appliance center of the store. There, on impulse, he picked up an expensive German-made tape recorder. “This looks all right,” he said to Joe, who had followed him. He picked up a second one, still in its container. “Let’s buy this and take it back to New York with us.”

“Don’t you want to open it?” Joe said. “And try it out before you buy it?”

“I think I already know what we’ll find,” Al said. “And it’s something we can’t test out here.” He carried the tape recorder toward the checkstand.

Back in New York, at Runciter Associates, they turned the tape recorder over to the firm’s shop.

Fifteen minutes later the shop foreman, having taken apart the mechanism, made his report. “All the moving parts in the tape-transport stage are worn. The rubber drive-tire has flat spots on it; pieces of rubber are all over the insides. The brakes for high-speed wind and rewind are virtually gone. It needs cleaning and lubricating throughout; it’s seen plenty of use—in fact, I would say it needs a complete overhaul, including new belts.”

Al said, “Several years of use?”

“Possibly. How long you had it?”

“I bought it today,” Al said.

“That isn’t possible,” the shop foreman said. “Or if you did they sold you—”

“I know what they sold me,” Al said. “I knew when I got it, before I opened the carton.” To Joe he said, “A brand-new tape recorder, completely worn out. Bought with funny money that the store is willing to accept. Worthless money, worthless article purchased; it has a sort of logic to it.”

“This is not my day,” the shop foreman said. “This morning when I got up my parrot was dead.”

“Dead of what?” Joe asked.

“I don’t know, just dead. Stiff as a board.” The shop foreman waggled a bony finger at Al. “I’ll tell you something you don’t know about your tape recorder. It isn’t just worn out; it’s forty years obsolete. They don’t use rubber drive-tires any more, or belt-run transports. You’ll never get parts for it unless somebody handmakes them. And it wouldn’t be worth it; the damn thing is antiquated. Junk it. Forget about it.”

“You’re right,” Al said. “I didn’t know.” He accompanied Joe out of the shop and into the corridor. “Now we’re talking about something other than decay; this is a different matter. And we’re going to have trouble finding edible food, anywhere, of any kind. How much of the food sold in supermarkets would be good after that many years?”

“The canned goods,” Joe said. “And I saw a lot of canned goods at that supermarket in Baltimore.”

“And now we know why,” Al said. “Forty years ago supermarkets sold a far greater proportion of their commodities in cans, rather than frozen. That may turn out to be our sole source; you’re right.” He cogitated. “But in one day it’s jumped from two years to forty years; by this time tomorrow it may be a hundred years. And no food is edible a hundred years after it’s packaged, cans or otherwise.”

“Chinese eggs,” Joe said. “Thousand-year-old eggs that they bury in the ground.”

“And it’s not just us,” Al said. “That old woman in Baltimore; it’s affecting what she bought too: her azalea.” Is the whole world going to starve because of a bomb blast on Luna? he asked himself. Why is everyone involved instead of just us?

Joe said, “Here comes—”

“Be quiet a second,” Al said. “I have to think something out, Maybe Baltimore is only there when one of us goes there. And the Lucky People Supermarket; as soon as we left, it passed out of existence. It could still be that only we who were on Luna are really experiencing this.”

“A philosophical problem of no importance or meaning,” Joe said. “And incapable of being proved one way or the other.”

Al said caustically, “It would be important to that old lady in the blueberry-colored cloth coat. And to all the rest of them.”

“Here’s the shop foreman,” Joe said.

“I’ve just been looking at the instruction manual,” the shop foreman said, “that came with your tape recorder.” He held the booklet out to Al, a complicated expression on his face. “Take a look.” All at once he grabbed it back. “I’ll save you the trouble of reading; look here on the last page, where it tells who made the damn thing and where to send it for factory repairs.”

“ ‘Made by Runciter of Zurich,’ ” Al read aloud. “And a maintenance station in the North American Confederation—in Des Moines. The same as on the matchfolder.” He passed the booklet to Joe and said, “We’re going to Des Moines. This booklet is the first manifestation that links the two locations.” I wonder why Des Moines, he said to himself. “Can you recall,” he said to Joe, “any connection that Runciter ever had, during his lifetime, with Des Moines?”

Joe said, “Runciter was born there. He spent his first fifteen years there. Every once in a while he used to mention it.”

“So now, after his death, he’s gone back there. In some manner or other.” Runciter is in Zurich, he thought, and also in Des Moines. In Zurich he has measurable brain metabolism; his physical, half-life body is suspended in cold-pac in the Beloved Brethren Moratorium, and yet he can’t be reached. In Des Moines he has no physical existence and yet, evidently, there contact can be established—in fact, by such extensions as this instruction booklet, has been established, at least in one direction, from him to us. And meanwhile, he thought, our world declines, turns back onto itself, bringing to the surface past phases of reality. By the end of the week we may wake up and find ancient clanging streetcars moving down Fifth Avenue. Trolley Dodgers, he thought, and wondered what that meant. An abandoned verbal term, rising from the past; a hazy, distant emanation, in his mind, canceling out current reality. Even this indistinct perception, still only subjective, made him uneasy; it had already become too real, an entity which he had never known about before this moment. “Trolley Dodgers,” he said aloud. A hundred years ago at least. Obsessively, the term remained lodged within awareness; he could not forget it.

“How come you know that?” the shop foreman asked.

“Nobody knows that any more; that’s the old name for the Brooklyn Dodgers.” He eyed Al suspiciously.

Joe said, “We better go upstairs. And make sure they’re all right. Before we take off for Des Moines.”

“If we don’t get to Des Moines soon,” Al said, “it may turn out to be an all-day trip or even a two-day trip.” As methods of transportation devolve, he thought. From rocket propulsion to jet, from jet to piston-driven aircraft, then surface travel as the coal-fed steam train, horse-drawn cart—but it couldn’t regress that far, he said to himself. And yet we’ve already got on our hands a forty-year-old tape recorder, run by rubber drive-tire and belts. Maybe it could really be.

He and Joe walked rapidly to the elevator; Joe pressed the button and they waited, both of them on edge, saying nothing; both withdrew into their own thoughts.

The elevator arrived clatteringly; the racket awoke Al from his introspection. Reflexively he pushed aside the iron-grill safety door.

And found himself facing an open cage with polished brass fittings, suspended from a cable. A dull-eyed uniformed operator sat on a stool, working the handle; he gazed at them with indifference. It was not indifference, however, that Al felt. “Don’t get in,” he said to Joe, holding him back. “Look at it and think; try to remember the elevator we rode in earlier today, the hydraulic-powered, closed, self-operated, absolutely silent—”

He ceased talking. Because the elderly clanking contraption had dimmed, and, in its place, the familiar elevator resumed its existence. And yet he sensed the presence of the other, older elevator; it lurked at the periphery of his vision, as if ready to ebb forward as soon as he and Joe turned their attention away. It wants to come back, he realized. It intends to come back. We can delay it temporarily: a few hours, probably, at the most. The momentum of the retrograde force is increasing; archaic forms are moving toward domination more rapidly than we thought. It’s now a question of a hundred years at one swing. The elevator we just now saw must have been a century old.

And yet, he thought, we seem able to exert some control over it. We did force the actual contemporary elevator back into being. If all of us stay together, if we function as an entity of—not two—but twelve minds—

“What did you see?” Joe was saying to him. “That made you tell me not to get in the elevator?”

Al said, “Didn’t you see the old elevator? Open cage, brass, from around 1910? With the operator sitting on his stool?”

“No,” Joe said.

“Did you see anything?”

“This.” Joe gestured. “The normal elevator I see every day when I come to work. I saw what I always see, what I see now.” He entered the elevator, turned and stood facing Al.

Then our perceptions are beginning to differ, Al realized. He wondered what that meant.

It seemed ominous; he did not like it at all. In its dire, obscure way it seemed to him potentially the most deadly change since Runciter’s death. They were no longer regressing at the same rate, and he had an acute, intuitive intimation that Wendy Wright had experienced exactly this before her death.

He wondered how much time he himself had left.

Now he became aware of an insidious, seeping, cooling-off which at some earlier and unremembered time had begun to explore him—investigating him as well as the world around him. It reminded him of their final minutes on Luna. The chill debased the surfaces of objects; it warped, expanded, showed itself as bulblike swellings that sighed audibly and popped. Into the manifold open wounds the cold drifted, all the way down into the heart of things, the core which made them live. What he saw now seemed to be a desert of ice from which stark boulders jutted. A wind spewed across the plain which reality had become; the wind congealed into deeper ice, and the boulders disappeared for the most part. And darkness presented itself off at the edges of his vision; he caught only a meager glimpse of it.

But, he thought, this is projection on my part. It isn’t the universe which is being entombed by layers of wind, cold, darkness and ice; all this is going on within me, and yet I seem to see it outside. Strange, he thought. Is the whole world inside me? Engulfed by my body? When did that happen? It must be a manifestation of dying, he said to himself. The uncertainty which I feel, the slowing down into entropy—that’s the process, and the ice which I see is the result of the success of the process. When I blink out, he thought, the whole universe will disappear. But what about the various lights which I should see, the entrances to new wombs? Where in particular is the red smoky light of fornicating couples? And the dull dark light signifying animal greed? All I can make out, he thought, is encroaching darkness and utter loss of heat, a plain which is cooling off, abandoned by its sun.

This can’t be normal death, he said to himself. This is unnatural; the regular momentum of dissolution has been replaced by another factor imposed upon it, a pressure arbitrary and forced.

Maybe I can understand it, he thought, if I can just lie down and rest, if I can get enough energy to think.

“What’s the matter?” Joe asked, as, together, they ascended in the elevator.

“Nothing,” Al said curtly. They may make it, he thought, but I’m not going to.

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.