Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick (22 page)

They ate without speaking, intent on their food and not looking at each other. Finally his father said,“What'd you see? Same old dogs, I suppose.”

“There's the new '72 models,” Mike Foster answered.

“They're the same as the '71 models.” His father threw down his fork savagely; the table caught and absorbed it. “A few new gadgets, some more chrome. That's all.” Suddenly he was facing his son defiantly. “Right?”

Mike Foster toyed wretchedly with his creamed chicken. “The new ones have a jam-proof descent-lift. You can't get stuck halfway down. All you have to do is get in it, and it does the rest.”

“There'll be one next year that'll pick you up and carry you down. This one'll be obsolete as soon as people buy it. That's what they want—they want you to keep buying. They keep putting out new ones as fast as they can. This isn't 1972, it's still 1971. What's that thing doing out already? Can't they wait?”

Mike Foster didn't answer. He had heard it all before, many times. There was never anything new, only chrome and gadgets; yet the old ones became obsolete, anyhow. His father's argument was loud, impassioned, almost frenzied, but it made no sense. “Let's get an old one, then,” he blurted out. “I don't care, any one'll do. Even a secondhand one.”

“No, you want the
new
one. Shiny and glittery to impress the neighbors. Lots of dials and knobs and machinery. How much do they want for it?”

“Twenty thousand dollars.”

His father let his breath out. “Just like that.”

“They've easy time-payment plans.”

“Sure. You pay for it the rest of your life. Interest, carrying charges, and how long is it guaranteed for?”

“Three months.”

“What happens when it breaks down? It'll stop purifying and decontaminating. It'll fall apart as soon as the three months are over.”

Mike Foster shook his head. “No. It's big and sturdy.”

His father flushed. He was a small man, slender and light, brittle-boned. He thought suddenly of his lifetime of lost battles, struggling up the hard way, carefully collecting and holding on to something, a job, money, his retail store, bookkeeper to manager, finally owner. “They're scaring us to keep the wheels going,” he yelled desperately at his wife and son. “They don't want another depression.”

“Bob,” his wife said, slowly and quietly, “you have to stop this. I can't stand any more.”

Bob Foster blinked. “What're you talking about?” he muttered. “I'm tired. These goddamn taxes. It isn't possible for a little store to keep open, not with the big chains. There ought to be a law.” His voice trailed off. “I guess I'm through eating.” He pushed away from the table and got to his feet. “I'm going to lie down on the couch and take a nap.”

His wife's thin face blazed. “You have to get one! I can't stand the way they talk about us. All the neighbors and the merchants, everybody who knows. I can't go anywhere or do anything without hearing about it. Ever since that day they put up the flag.
Anti-P.
The last in the whole town. Those things circling around up there, and everybody paying for them but us.”

“No,” Bob Foster said. “I can't get one.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” he answered simply, “I can't afford it.”

There was silence.

“You've put everything in that store,” Ruth said finally. “And it's failing anyhow. You're just like a pack rat, hoarding everything down at that ratty little hole-in-the-wall. Nobody wants wood furniture anymore. You're a relic—a curiosity.” She slammed at the table and it leaped wildly to gather the empty dishes, like a startled animal. It dashed furiously from the room and back into the kitchen, the dishes churning in its washtank as it raced.

Bob Foster sighed wearily.“Let's not fight. I'll be in the living room. Let me take a nap for an hour or so. Maybe we can talk about it later.”

“Always later,” Ruth said bitterly.

Her husband disappeared into the living room, a small, hunched-over figure, hair scraggly and gray, shoulder blades like broken wings.

Mike got to his feet. “I'll go study my homework,” he said. He followed after his father, a strange look on his face.

The living room was quiet; the vidset was off and the lamp was down low. Ruth was in the kitchen setting the controls on the stove for the next month's meals. Bob Foster lay stretched out on the couch, his shoes off, his head on a pillow. His face was gray with fatigue. Mike hesitated for a moment and then said, “Can I ask you something?”

His father grunted and stirred, opened his eyes. “What?”

Mike sat down facing him. “Tell me again how you gave advice to the President.”

His father pulled himself up. “I didn't give any advice to the President. I just talked to him.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I've told you a million times. Every once in a while, since you were a baby. You were with me.” His voice softened, as he remembered. “You were just a toddler—we had to carry you.”

“What did he look like?”

“Well,” his father began, slipping into a routine he had worked out and petrified over the years, “he looked about like he does in the vidscreen. Smaller, though.”

“Why was he here?” Mike demanded avidly, although he knew every detail. The President was his hero, the man he most admired in all the world. “Why'd he come all the way out here to
our
town?”

“He was on a tour.” Bitterness crept into his father's voice. “He happened to be passing through.”

“What kind of a tour?”

“Visiting towns all over the country.” The harshness increased. “Seeing how we were getting along. Seeing if we had bought enough
NATS
and bomb shelters and plague shots and gas masks and radar networks to repel attack. The General Electronics Corporation was just beginning to put up its big showrooms and displays—everything bright and glittering and expensive. The first defense equipment available for home purchase.” His lips twisted.“All on easy-payment plans. Ads, posters, searchlights, free gardenias and dishes for the ladies.”

Mike Foster's breath panted in his throat. “That was the day we got our Preparedness Flag,” he said hungrily. “That was the day he came to give us our flag. And they ran it up on the flagpole in the middle of the town, and everybody was there yelling and cheering.”

“You remember that?”

“I—think so. I remember people and sounds. And it was hot. It was June, wasn't it?”

“June 10, 1965. Quite an occasion. Not many towns had the big green flag, then. People were still buying cars and TV sets. They hadn't discovered those days were over. TV sets and cars are good for something—you can only manufacture and sell so many of them.”

“He gave
you
the flag, didn't he?”

“Well, he gave it to all us merchants. The Chamber of Commerce had it arranged. Competition between towns, see who can buy the most the soonest. Improve our town and at the same time stimulate business. Of course, the way they put it, the idea was if we had to
buy
our gas masks and bomb shelters we'd take better care of them. As if we ever damaged telephones and sidewalks. Or highways, because the whole state provided them. Or armies. Haven't there always been armies? Hasn't the government always organized its people for defense? I guess defense costs too much. I guess they save a lot of money, cut down the national debt by this.”

“Tell me what he said,” Mike Foster whispered.

His father fumbled for his pipe and lit it with trembling hands. “He said,
‘Here's your flag, boys. You've done a good job.'
” Bob Foster choked, as acrid pipe fumes guzzled up. “He was red-faced, sunburned, not embarrassed. Perspiring and grinning. He knew how to handle himself. He knew a lot of first names. Told a funny joke.”

The boy's eyes were wide with awe. “He came all the way out here, and you talked to him.”

“Yeah,” his father said.“I talked to him. They were all yelling and cheering. The flag was going up, the big green Preparedness Flag.”

“You said—”

“I said to him,
‘Is that all you brought us? A strip of green cloth?'
”Bob Foster dragged tensely on his pipe. “That was when I became an anti-P. Only I didn't know it at the time. All I knew was we were on our own, except for a strip of green cloth. We should have been a country, a whole nation, one hundred and seventy million people working together to defend ourselves. And instead, we're a lot of separate little towns, little walled forts. Sliding and slipping back to the Middle Ages. Raising our separate armies—”

“Will the President ever come back?” Mike asked.

“I doubt it. He was—just passing through.”

“If he comes back,” Mike whispered, tense and not daring to hope,“can we go
see
him? Can we
look
at him?”

Bob Foster pulled himself up to a sitting position. His bony arms were bare and white; his lean face was drab with weariness. And resignation. “How much was the damn thing you saw?” he demanded hoarsely. “That bomb shelter?”

Mike's heart stopped beating. “Twenty thousand dollars.”

“This is Thursday. I'll go down with you and your mother next Saturday.” Bob Foster knocked out his smoldering, half-lit pipe. “I'll get it on the easy-payment plan. The fall buying season is coming up soon. I usually do good—people buy wood furniture for Christmas gifts.” He got up abruptly from the couch. “Is it a deal?”

Mike couldn't answer; he could only nod.

“Fine,” his father said, with desperate cheerfulness. “Now you won't have to go down and look at it in the window.”

The shelter was installed—for an additional two hundred dollars—by a fast-working team of laborers in brown coats with the words
GENTERAL ELECTRONICS
stitched across their backs. The backyard was quickly restored, dirt and shrubs spaded in place, the surface smoothed over, and the bill respectfully slipped under the front door. The lumbering delivery truck, now empty, clattered off down the street and the neighborhood was again silent.

Mike Foster stood with his mother and a small group of admiring neighbors on the back porch of the house. “Well,” Mrs. Carlyle said finally, “now you've got a shelter. The best there is.”

“That's right,” Ruth Foster agreed. She was conscious of the people around her; it had been some time since so many had shown up at once. Grim satisfaction filled her gaunt frame, almost resentment. “It certainly makes a difference,” she said harshly.

“Yes,” Mr. Douglas from down the street agreed. “Now you have some place to go.” He had picked up the thick book of instructions the laborers had left. “It says here you can stock it for a whole year. Live down there twelve months without coming up once.” He shook his head admiringly. “Mine's an old '69 model. Good for only six months. I guess maybe—”

“It's still good enough for us,” his wife cut in, but there was a longing wistfulness in her voice. “Can we go down and peek at it, Ruth? It's all ready, isn't it?”

Mike made a strangled noise and moved jerkily forward. His mother smiled understandingly.“He has to go down there first. He gets first look at it—it's really for him, you know.”

Their arms folded against the chill September wind, the group of men and women stood waiting and watching, as the boy approached the neck of the shelter and halted a few steps in front of it.

He entered the shelter carefully, almost afraid to touch anything. The neck was big for him; it was built to admit a full-grown man. As soon as his weight was on the descent-lift it dropped beneath him. With a breathless
whoosh
it plummeted down the pitch-black tube to the body of the shelter. The lift slammed hard against its shock absorbers and the boy stumbled from it. The lift shot back to the surface, simultaneously sealing off the sub-surface shelter, an impassable steel-and-plastic cork in the narrow neck.

Lights had come on around him automatically. The shelter was bare and empty; no supplies had yet been carried down. It smelled of varnish and motor grease: below him the generators were throbbing dully. His presence activated the purifying and decontamination systems; on the blank concrete wall meters and dials moved into sudden activity.

He sat down on the floor, knees drawn up, face solemn, eyes wide. There was no sound but that of the generators; the world above was completely cut off. He was in a little self-contained cosmos; everything needed was here—or would be here, soon: food, water, air, things to do. Nothing else was wanted. He could reach out and touch—whatever he needed. He could stay here forever, through all time, without stirring. Complete and entire. Not lacking, not fearing, with only the sound of the generators purring below him, and the sheer, ascetic walls around and above him on all sides, faintly warm, completely friendly, like a living container.

Suddenly he shouted, a loud jubilant shout that echoed and bounced from wall to wall. He was deafened by the reverberation. He shut his eyes tight and clenched his fists. Joy filled him. He shouted again—and let the roar of sound lap over him, his own voice reinforced by the near walls, close and hard and incredibly powerful.

The kids in school knew even before he showed up the next morning. They greeted him as he approached, all of them grinning and nudging each other. “Is it true your folks got a new General Electronics Model S-72ft?” Earl Peters demanded.

“That's right,” Mike answered. His heart swelled with a peaceful confidence he had never known. “Drop around,” he said, as casually as he could. “I'll show it to you.”

He passed on, conscious of their envious faces.

“Well, Mike,” Mrs. Cummings said, as he was leaving the classroom at the end of the day. “How does it feel?”

He halted by her desk, shy and full of quiet pride. “It feels good,” he admitted.

“Is your father contributing to the
NATS
?”

“Yes.”

“And you've got a permit for our school shelter?”

He happily showed her the small blue seal clamped around his wrist. “He mailed a check to the city for everything. He said, ‘As long as I've gone this far I might as well go the rest of the way.'”

“Now you have everything everybody else has.” The elderly woman smiled across at him.“I'm glad of that. You're now a pro-P, except there's no such term. You're just—like everyone else.”