Ubik

Chapter 16

The diversity of cars impressed him. Many years represented, many makes and many models. The fact that they mostly came in black could not be laid at Jory’s door; this detail was authentic.

But how did Jory know it?

That’s peculiar, he thought; Jory’s knowledge of the minutiae of 1939, a period in which none of us lived—except Glen Runciter.

Then all at once he realized why. Jory had told the truth; he had constructed—not this world—but the world, or rather its phantasmagoric counterpart, of their own time. Decomposition back to these forms was not of his doing; they happened despite his efforts. These are natural atavisms, Joe realized, happening mechanically as Jory’s strength wanes. As the boy says, it’s an enormous effort. This is perhaps the first time he has created a world this diverse, for so many people at once. It isn’t usual for so many half-lifers to be interwired.

We have put an abnormal strain on Jory, he said to himself. And we paid for it.

A square old Dodge taxi sputtered past; Joe waved at it, and the cab floundered noisily to the curb. Let’s test out what Jory said, he said to himself, as to the early boundary of this quasi world now. To the driver he said, “Take me for a ride through town; go anywhere you want. I’d like to see as many streets and buildings and people as possible, and then, when you’ve driven through all of Des Moines, I want you to drive me to the next town and we’ll see that.”

“I don’t go between towns, mister,” the driver said, holding the door open for Joe. “But I’ll be glad to drive you around Des Moines. It’s a nice city, sir. You’re from out of state, aren’t you?”

“New York,” Joe said, getting inside the cab.

The cab rolled back out into traffic. “How do they feel about the war back in New York?” the driver asked presently. “Do you think we’ll be getting into it? Roosevelt wants to get us—”

“I don’t care to discuss politics or the war,” Joe said harshly.

They drove for a time in silence.

Watching the buildings, people and cars go by, Joe asked himself again how Jory could maintain it all. So many details, he marveled. I should be coming to the edge of it soon; it has to be just about now.

“Driver,” he said, “are there any houses of prostitution here in Des Moines?’

“No,” the driver said.

Maybe Jory can’t manage that, Joe reflected. Because of his youth. Or maybe he disapproves. He felt, all at once, tired. Where am I going? he asked himself. And what for? To prove to myself that what Jory told me is true? I already know it’s true; I saw the doctor wink out. I saw Jory emerge from inside Don Denny; that should have been enough. All I’m doing this way is putting more of a load on Jory, which will increase his appetite. I’d better give up, he decided. This is pointless.

And, as Jory had said, the Ubik would be wearing off anyhow. This driving around Des Moines is not the way I want to spend my last minutes or hours of life. There must be something else.

Along the sidewalk a girl moved in a slow, easy gait; she seemed to be window-shopping. A pretty girl, with gay, blond pigtails, wearing an unbuttoned sweater over her blouse, a bright red skirt and high-heeled little shoes. “Slow the cab,” he instructed the driver. “There, by that girl with the pigtails.”

“She won’t talk to you,” the driver said. “She’ll call a cop.”

Joe said, “I don’t care.” It hardly mattered at this point.

Slowing, the old Dodge bumbled its way to the curb; its tires protested as they rubbed against the curb. The girl glanced up.

“Hi, miss,” Joe said.

She regarded him with curiosity; her warm, intelligent, blue eyes widened a little, but they showed no aversion or alarm. Rather, she seemed slightly amused at him. But in a friendly way. “Yes?” she said.

“I’m going to die,” Joe said.

“Oh, dear,” the girl said, with concern. “Are you—”

“He’s not sick,” the driver put in. “He’s been asking after girls; he just wants to pick you up.”

The girl laughed. Without hostility. And she did not depart.

“It’s almost dinnertime,” Joe said to her. “Let me take you to a restaurant, the Matador; I understand that’s nice.” His tiredness now had increased; he felt the weight of it on him, and then he realized, with muted, weary horror, that it consisted of the same fatigue which had attacked him in the hotel lobby, after he had shown the police citation to Pat. And the cold. Stealthily, the physical experience of the cold-pac surrounding him had come back. The Ubik is beginning to wear off, he realized. I don’t have much longer.

Something must have showed in his face; the girl walked toward him, up to the window of the cab. “Are you all right?” she asked.

Joe said, with effort, “I’m dying, miss.” The wound on his hand, the teeth marks, had begun to throb once more. And were again becoming visible. This alone would have been enough to fill him with dread.

“Have the driver take you to the hospital,” the girl said.

“Can we have dinner together?” Joe asked her.

“Is that what you want to do?” she said. “When you’re—whatever it is. Sick? Are you sick?” She opened the door of the cab then. “Do you want me to go with you to the hospital? Is that it?”

“To the Matador,” Joe said. “We’ll have braised fillet of Martian mole cricket.” He remembered then that that imported delicacy did not exist in this time period. “Market steak,” he said. “Beef. Do you like beef?”

Getting into the cab, the girl said to the driver, “He wants to go to the Matador.”

“Okay, miss,” the driver said. The cab rolled out into traffic once more. At the next intersection the driver made a U-turn; now Joe realized, we are on our way to the restaurant. I wonder if I’ll make it there. Fatigue and cold had invaded him completely; he felt his body processes begin to close down, one by one. Organs that had no future; the liver did not need to make red blood cells, the kidneys did not need to excrete wastes, the intestines no longer served any purpose. Only the heart, laboring on, and the increasingly difficult breathing; each time he drew air into his lungs he sensed the concrete block that had situated itself on his chest. My gravestone, he decided. His hand, he saw, was bleeding again; thick, slow blood appeared, drop by drop.

“Care for a Lucky Strike?” the girl asked him, extending her pack toward him. “ ‘They’re toasted,’ as the slogan goes. The phrase ‘L.S.M.F.T.’ won’t come into existence until—”

Joe said, “My name is Joe Chip.”

“Do you want me to tell you my name?”

“Yes,” he grated, and shut his eyes; he couldn’t speak any further, for a time anyhow. “Do you like Des Moines?” he asked her presently, concealing his hand from her. “Have you lived here a long time?”

“You sound very tired, Mr. Chip,” the girl said.

“Oh, hell,” he said, gesturing. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Yes, it does.” The girl opened her purse, rummaged briskly within it. “I’m not a deformation of Jory’s; I’m not like him—” She indicated the driver. “Or like these little old stores and houses and this dingy street, all these people and their neolithic cars. Here, Mr. Chip.” From her purse she brought an envelope, which she passed to him. “This is for you. Open it right away; I don’t think either of us should have delayed so long.”

With leaden fingers he tore open the envelope.

In it he found a certificate, stately and ornamented. The printing on it, however, swam; he was too weary now to read. “What’s it say?” he asked her, laying it down on his lap.

“From the company that manufactures Ubik,” the girl said. “It is a guarantee, Mr. Chip, of a free, lifetime supply, free because I know your problem regarding money, your, shall we say, idiosyncrasy. And a list, on the reverse, of all the drugstores which carry it. Two drugstores—and not abandoned ones—in Des Moines are listed. I suggest we go to one first, before we eat dinner. Here, driver.” She leaned forward and handed the driver a slip of paper already written out. “Take us to this address. And hurry; they’ll be closing soon.”

Joe lay back against the seat, panting for breath.

“We’ll make it to the drugstore,” the girl said, and patted his arm reassuringly.

“Who are you?” Joe asked her.

“My name is Ella. Ella Hyde Runciter. Your employer’s wife.”

“You’re here with us,” Joe said. “On this side; you’re in cold-pac.”

“As you well know. I have been for some time,” Ella Runciter said. “Fairly soon I’ll be reborn into another womb, I think. At least, Glen says so. I keep dreaming about a smoky red light, and that’s bad; that’s not a morally proper womb to be born into.” She laughed a rich, warm laugh.

“You’re the other one,” Joe said. “Jory destroying us, you trying to help us. Behind you there’s no one, just as there’s no one behind Jory. I’ve reached the last entities involved.”

Ella said caustically, “I don’t think of myself as an ‘entity’, I usually think of myself as Ella Runciter.”

“But it’s true,” Joe said.

“Yes.” Somberly, she nodded.

“Why are you working against Jory?”

“Because Jory invaded me,” Ella said. “He menaced me in the same way he’s menaced you. We both know what he does; he told you himself, in your hotel room. Sometimes he becomes very powerful; on occasion, he manages to supplant me when I’m active and trying to talk to Glen. But I seem to be able to cope with him better than most half-lifers, with or without Ubik. Better, for instance, than your group, even acting as a collective.”

“Yes,” Joe said. It certainly was true. Well proved.

“When I’m reborn,” Ella said, “Glen won’t be able to consult with me any more. I have a very selfish, practical reason for assisting you, Mr. Chip; I want you to replace me. I want to have someone whom Glen can ask for advice and assistance, whom he can lean on. You will be ideal; you’ll be doing in half-life what you did in full-life. So, in a sense, I’m not motivated by noble sentiments; I saved you from Jory for a good common-sense reason.” She added, “And god knows I detest Jory.”

“After you’re reborn,” Joe said, “I won’t succumb?’

“You have your lifetime supply of Ubik. As it says on the certificate I gave you.”

Joe said, “Maybe I can defeat Jory.”

“Destroy him, you mean?” Ella pondered. “He’s not invulnerable. Maybe in time you can learn ways to nullify him. I think that’s really the best you can hope to do; I doubt if you can truly destroy him—in other words consume him—as he does to half-lifers placed near him at the moratorium.”

“Hell,” Joe said. “I’ll tell Glen Runciter the situation and have him move Jory out of the moratorium entirely.”

“Glen has no authority to do that.”

“Won’t Schoenheit von Vogelsang—”

Ella said, “Herbert is paid a great deal of money annually, by Jory’s family, to keep him with the others and to think up plausible reasons for doing so. And—there are Jorys in every moratorium. This battle goes on wherever you have half-lifers; it’s a verity, a rule, of our kind of existence.” She lapsed into silence then; for the first time he saw on her face an expression of anger. A ruffled, taut look that disturbed her tranquility. “It has to be fought on our side of the glass,” Ella said. “By those of us in half-life, those that Jory preys on. You’ll have to take charge, Mr. Chip, after I’m reborn. Do you think you can do that? It’ll be hard. Jory will be sapping your strength always, putting a burden on you that you’ll feel as—” She hesitated. “The approach of death. Which it will be. Because in half-life we diminish constantly anyhow. Jory only speeds it up. The weariness and cooling-off come anyhow. But not so soon.”

To himself Joe thought, I can remember what he did to Wendy. That’ll keep me going. That alone.

“Here’s the drugstore, miss,” the driver said. The square, upright old Dodge wheezed to the curb and parked.

“I won’t go in with you,” Ella Runciter said to Joe as he opened the door and crept shakily out. “Goodby. Thanks for your loyalty to Glen. Thanks for what you’re going to be doing for him.” She leaned toward him, kissed him on the cheek; her lips seemed to him ripe with life. And some of it was conveyed to him; he felt slightly stronger. “Good luck with Jory.” She settled back, composed herself sedately, her purse on her lap.

Joe shut the cab door, stood, then made his way haltingly into the drugstore. Behind him the cab thud-thudded off; he heard but did not see it go.

Within the solemn, lamplit interior of the drugstore a bald pharmacist wearing a formal dark vest, bow tie and sharply pressed sharkskin trousers, approached him. “Afraid we’re closing, sir. I was just coming to lock the door.”

“But I’m in,” Joe said. “And I want to be waited on.” He showed the pharmacist the certificate which Ella had given him; squinting through his round, rimless glasses, the pharmacist labored over the gothic printing. “Are you going to wait on me?” Joe asked.

“Ubik,” the pharmacist said. “I believe I’m out of that. Let me check and see.” He started off.

“Jory,” Joe said.

Turning his head the pharmacist said, “Sir?”

“You’re Jory,” Joe said. I can tell now, he said to himself. I’m learning to know him when I encounter him. “You invented this drugstore,” he said, “and everything in it except for the spray cans of Ubik. You have no authority over Ubik; that comes from Ella.” He forced himself into motion; step by step he edged his way behind the counter to the shelves of medical supplies. Peering in the gloom over one shelf after the other, he tried to locate the Ubik. The lighting of the store had dimmed; the antique fixtures were fading.

“I’ve regressed all the Ubik in this store,” the pharmacist said in a youthful, high-pitched Jory voice. “Back to the liver and kidney balm. It’s no good now.”

“I’ll go to the other drugstore that has it,” Joe said. He leaned against a counter, painfully drawing in slow, irregular gulps of air.

Jory, from within the balding pharmacist, said, “It’ll be closed.”

“Tomorrow,” Joe said. “I can hold out until tomorrow morning.”

“You can’t,” Jory said. “And, anyhow, the Ubik at that drugstore will be regressed too.”

“Another town,” Joe said.

“Wherever you go, it’ll be regressed. Back to the salve or back to the powder or back to the elixir or back to the balm. You’ll never see a spray can of it, Joe Chip.” Jory, in the form of the bald-headed pharmacist, smiled, showing celluloid-like dentures.

“I can—” He broke off, gathering his meager vitality to him. Trying, by his own strength, to warm his stiffening, cold-numbed body. “Bring it up to the present,” he said. “To 1992.”

“Can you, Mr. Chip?” The pharmacist handed Joe a square pasteboard container. “Here you are. Open it and you’ll see—”

Joe said, “I know what I’ll see.” He concentrated on the blue jar of liver and kidney balm. Evolve forward, he said to it, flooding it with his need; he poured whatever energy he had left onto the container. It did not change. This is the regular world, he said to it. “Spray can,” he said aloud. He shut his eyes, resting.

“It’s not a spray can, Mr. Chip,” the pharmacist said. Going here and there in the drugstore he shut off lights; at the cash register he punched a key and the drawer rattled open. Expertly, the pharmacist transferred the bills and change from the drawer into a metal box with a lock on it.

“You are a spray can,” Joe said to the pasteboard container which he held in his hand. “This is 1992,” he said, and tried to exert everything; he put the entirety of himself into the effort.

The last light blinked out, turned off by the pseudo pharmacist. A dull gleam shone into the drugstore from the street-lamp outside; by it, Joe could make out the shape of the object in his hand, its boxlike lines. Opening the door, the pharmacist said, “Come on, Mr. Chip. Time to go home. She was wrong, wasn’t she? And you won’t see her again, because she’s so far on the road to being reborn; she’s not thinking about you any more, or me or Runciter. What Ella sees now are various lights: red and dingy, then maybe bright orange—”

“What I hold here,” Joe said, “is a spray can.”

“No,” the pharmacist said. “I’m sorry, Mr. Chip. I really am. But it’s not.”

Joe set the pasteboard container down on a nearby counter. He turned, with dignity, and began the long, slow journey across the drugstore to the front door which the pharmacist held open for him. Neither of them spoke until Joe, at last, passed through the doorway and out onto the nocturnal sidewalk.

Behind him the pharmacist emerged too; he bent and locked the door after the two of them.

“I think I’ll complain to the manufacturer,” Joe said. “About the—” He ceased talking. Something constricted his throat; he could not breathe and he could not speak. Then, temporarily, the blockage abated. “Your regressed drugstore,” he finished.

“Goodnight,” the pharmacist said. He remained for a moment, eying Joe in the evening gloom. Then, shrugging, he started off.

To his left, Joe made out the dark shape of a bench where people waited for a streetcar. He managed to reach it, to seat himself. The other persons, two or three, whichever it was, squeezed away from him, either out of aversion or to give him room; he could not tell which, and he didn’t care. All he felt was the support of the bench beneath him, the release of some of his vast inertial weight. A few more minutes, he said to himself. If I remember right. Christ, what a thing to have to go through, he said to himself. For the second time.

Anyhow, we tried, he thought as he watched the yellow fliekering lights and neon signs, the flow of cars going in both directions directly before his eyes. He thought to himself, Runciter kicked and struggled; Ella has been scratching and biting and gouging for a long time. And, he thought, I damn near evolved the jar of Ubik liver and kidney balm back to the present. I almost succeeded. There was something in knowing that, an awareness of his own great strength. His final transcendental attempt.

The streetcar, a clanging metal enormity, came to a grating halt before the bench. The several people beside Joe rose and hurried out to board it by its rear platform.

“Hey, mister!” the conductor yelled to Joe. “Are you coming or aren’t you?”

Joe said nothing. The conductor waited, then jerked his signal cord. Noisily, the streetcar started up; it continued on, and then at last disappeared beyond his range of vision. Lots of luck, Joe said to himself as he heard the racket of the streetcar’s wheels die away. And so long.

He leaned back, closed his eyes.

“Excuse me.” Bending over him in the darkness; a girl in a synthetic ostrich-leather coat. He looked up at her, jarred into awareness. “Mr. Chip?” she said. Pretty and slender, dressed in hat, gloves, suit and high heels. She held something in her hand; he saw the outline of a package. “Of New York? Of Runciter Associates? I don’t want to give this to the wrong person.”

“I’m Joe Chip,” he said. For a moment he thought the girl might be Ella Runciter. But he had never seen her before. “Who sent you?” he said.

“Dr. Sonderbar,” the girl said. “The younger Dr. Sonderbar, son of Dr. Sonderbar the founder.”

“Who’s that?” The name meant nothing to him, and then he remembered where he had seen it. “The Liver and Kidney man,” he said. “Processed oleander leaves, oil of peppermint, charcoal, cobalt chloride, zinc oxide—” Weariness overcame him; he stopped talking.

The girl said, “By making use of the most advanced techniques of modern-day science, the reversion of matter to earlier forms can be reversed, and at a price any conapt owner can afford. Ubik is sold by leading home-art stores throughout Earth. So look for it at the place you shop, Mr. Chip.”

Fully conscious now, he said, “Look for it where?” He struggled to his feet, stood inexpertly swaying. “You’re from 1992; what you said came from Runciter’s TV commercial.”

An evening wind rustled at him and he felt it tug at him, drawing him away with it; he seemed to be like some ragged bundle of webs and cloth, barely holding together.

“Yes, Mr. Chip.” The girl handed him a package. “You brought me from the future, by what you did there inside the drugstore a few moments ago. You summoned me directly from the factory. Mr. Chip, I could spray it on you, if you’re too weak to. Shall I? I’m an official factory representative and technical consultant; I know how to apply it.” She took the package swiftly back from his trembling hands; tearing it open, she immediately sprayed him with Ubik. In the dusk he saw the spray can glint. He saw the happy, colored lettering.

“Thanks,” he said after a time. After he felt better. And warmer.

The girl said, “You didn’t need as much this time as you did in the hotel room; you must be stronger than before. Here, take the can of it; you might need it before morning.”

“Can I get more?” Joe said. “When this runs out?”

“Evidently so. If you got me here once. I would assume you can get me here again. The same way.” She moved away from him, merging with the shadows created by the dense walls of closed-up nearby stores.

“What is Ubik?” Joe said, wanting her to stay.

“A spray can of Ubik,” the girl answered, “is a portable negative ionizer, with a self-contained, high-voltage, low-amp unit powered by a peak-gain helium battery of 25kv. The negative ions are given a counter-clockwise spin by a radically biased acceleration chamber, which creates a centripetal tendency to them so that they cohere rather than dissipate. A negative ion field diminishes the velocity of anti-protophasons normally present in the atmosphere; as soon as their velocity falls they cease to be anti-protophasons and, under the principle of parity, no longer can unite with protophasons radiated from persons frozen in cold-pac; that is, those in half-life. The end result is that the proportion of protophasons not canceled by anti-protophasons increases, which means—for a specific time, anyhow—an increment in the net put-forth field of protophasonic activity… which the affected half-lifer experiences as greater vitality plus a lowering of the experience of low cold-pac temperatures. So you can see why regressed forms of Ubik failed to—”

Joe said reflexively, “To say ‘negative ions’ is redundant. All ions are negative.”

Again the girl moved away. “Maybe I’ll see you again,” she said gently. “It was rewarding to bring you the spray can; maybe next time—”

“Maybe we can have dinner together,” Joe said.

“I’ll look forward to it.” She ebbed farther and farther away.

“Who invented Ubik?” Joe asked.

“A number of responsible half-lifers whom Jory threatened. But principally by Ella Runciter. It took her and them working together a long, long time. And there still isn’t very much of it available, as yet.” Ebbing from him in her trim, covert way, she continued to retreat and then, by degrees, was gone.

“At the Matador,” Joe called after her. “I understand Jory did a good job materializing it. Or regressing it just right, whatever it is he does.” He listened, but the girl did not answer.

Carefully carrying the spray can of Ubik, Joe Chip walked out to greet the evening traffic, searching for a cab.

Under a streetlight he held up the spray can of Ubik, read the printing on the label.

“Thanks,” Joe said to the spray can. We are served by organic ghosts, he thought, who, speaking and writing, pass through this our new environment. Watching, wise, physical ghosts from the full-life world, elements of which have become for us invading but agreeable splinters of a substance that pulsates like a former heart. And of all of them, he thought, thanks to Glen Runciter. In particular. The writer of instructions, labels and notes. Valuable notes.

He raised his arm to slow to a grumpy halt a passing 1936 Graham cab.