Maybe, he thought, I’ve come to the end. He began to walk toward the abandoned drugstore, not taking his eyes from it; he watched it pulse, he watched it change between its two states, and then, as he got closer and closer to it, he discerned the nature of its alternate conditions. At the amplitude of greater stability it became a retail home-art outlet of his own time period, homeostatic in operation, a self-service enterprise selling ten-thousand commodities for the modern conapt; he had patronized such highly functional computer-controlled pseudo merchants throughout his adult life.
And, at the amplitude of insubstantiality, it resolved itself into a tiny, anachronistic drugstore with rococo ornamentation. In its meager window displays he saw hernia belts, rows of corrective eyeglasses, a mortar and pestle, jars of assorted tablets, a hand-printed sign reading LEECHES, huge glass-stoppered bottles that contained a Pandora’s heritage of patent medicines and placebos… and, painted on a fiat wood board running across the top of the windows, the words ARCHER’S DRUGSTORE. No sign whatever of an empty, abandoned, closed-up store; its 1939 stage had somehow been excluded. He thought, So in entering it I either revert further or I find myself back roughly in my own time. And—it’s the further reversion, the pre-1939 phase, that I evidently need.
Presently he stood before it, experiencing physically the tidal tug of the amplitudes; he felt himself drawn back, then ahead, then back again. Pedestrians clumped by, taking no notice; obviously, none of them saw what he saw: They perceived neither Archer’s Drugstore nor the 1992 home-art outlet. That mystified him most of all.
As the structure swung directly into its ancient phase he stepped forward, crossed the threshold. And entered Archer’s Drugstore.
To the right a long marble-topped counter. Boxes on the shelves, dingy in color; the whole store had a black quality to it, not merely in regard to the absence of light but rather a protective coloration, as if it had been constructed to blend, to merge with shadows, to be at all times opaque. It had a heavy, dense quality; it pulled him down, weighing on him like something installed permanently on his back. And it had ceased to oscillate. At least for him, now that he had entered it. He wondered if he had made the right choice; now, too late, he considered the alternative, what it might have meant. A return—possibly—to his own time. Out of this devolved world of constantly declining time-binding capacity—out, perhaps, forever. Well, he thought, so it goes. He wandered about the drugstore, observing the brass and the wood, evidently walnut… He came at last to the prescription window at the rear.
A wispy young man, wearing a gray, many-buttoned suit with vest, appeared and silently confronted him. For a long time Joe and the man looked at each other, neither speaking. The only sound came from a wall clock with Latin numerals on its round face; its pendulum ticked back and forth inexorably. After the fashion of clocks, everywhere,
Joe said, “I’d like a jar of Ubik.”
“The salve?” the druggist said. His lips did not seem properly synchronized with his words; first Joe saw the man’s mouth open, the lips move, and then, after a measurable interval, he heard the words.
“Is it a salve?” Joe said. “I thought it was for internal use.”
The druggist did not respond for an interval. As if a gulf separated the two of them, an epoch of time. Then at last his mouth again opened, his lips again moved. And, presently, Joe heard words. “Ubik has undergone many alterations as the manufacturer has improved it. You may be familiar with the old Ubik, rather than the new.” The druggist turned to one side, and his movement had a stop-action quality; he flowed in a slow, measured, dancelike step, an esthetically pleasing rhythm but emotionally jolting. “We have had a great deal of difficulty obtaining Ubik of late,” he said as he flowed back; in his right hand he held a flat leaded tin which he placed before Joe on the prescription counter. “This comes in the form of a powder to which you add coal tar. The coal tar comes separate; I can supply that to you at very little cost. The Ubik powder, however, is dear. Forty dollars.”
“What’s in it?” Joe asked. The price chilled him.
“That is the manufacturer’s secret.”
Joe picked up the sealed tin and held it to the light. “Is it all right if I read the label?”
“Of course.”
In the dim light entering from the street he at last managed to make out the printing on the label of the tin. It continued the handwritten message on the traffic citation, picking up at the exact point at which Runciter’s writing had abruptly stopped.
absolutely untrue. She did not—repeat, not—try to use her talent following the bomb blast. She did not try to restore Wendy Wright or Al Hammond or Edie Dorn. She’s lying to you, Joe, and that makes me rethink the whole situation. I’ll let you know as soon as I come to a conclusion. Meanwhile be very careful. By the way: Ubik powder is of universal healing value if directions for use are rigorously and conscientiously followed.
“Can I make you out a check?” Joe asked the druggist. “I don’t have forty dollars with me and I need the Ubik badly. It’s literally a matter hanging between life and death.” He reached into his jacket pocket for his checkbook.
“You’re not from Des Moines, are you?” the druggist said. “I can tell by your accent. No, I’d have to know you to take a check that large. We’ve had a whole rash of bad checks the last few weeks, all by people from out of town.”
“Credit card, then?”
The druggist said, “What is a ‘credit card’?”
Laying down the tin of Ubik, Joe turned and walked wordlessly out of the drugstore onto the sidewalk. He crossed the street, starting in the direction of the hotel, then paused to look back at the drugstore.
He saw only a dilapidated yellow building, curtains in its upstairs windows, the ground floor boarded up and deserted; through the spaces between the boards he saw gaping darkness, the cavity of a broken window. Without life.
And that is that, he realized. The opportunity to buy a tin of Ubik powder is gone. Even if I were to find forty dollars lying on the pavement. But, he thought, I did get the rest of Runciter’s warning. For what it’s worth. It may not even be true. It may be only a deformed and misguided opinion by a dying brain. Or by a totally dead brain—as in the case of the TV commercial. Christ, he said to himself dismally. Suppose it is true?
Persons here and there on the sidewalk stared up absorbedly at the sky. Noticing them, Joe looked up too. Shielding his eyes against the slanting shafts of sun, he distinguished a dot exuding white trails of smoke: a high-flying monoplane industriously skywriting. As he and the other pedestrians watched, the already dissipating streamers spelled out a message.
KEEP THE OLD SWIZER UP, JOE!
Easy to say, Joe said to himself. Easy enough to write out in the form of words.
Hunched over with uneasy gloom—and the first faint intimations of returning terror—he shuffed off in the direction of the Meremont Hotel.
Don Denny met him in the high-ceilinged, provincial, crimson-carpeted lobby. “We found her,” he said. “It’s all over—for her, anyhow. And it wasn’t pretty, not pretty at all. Now Fred Zafsky is gone. I thought he was in the other car, and they thought he went along with us. Apparently, he didn’t get into either car; he must be back at the mortuary.”
“It’s happening faster now,” Joe said. He wondered how much difference Ubik—dangled toward them again and again in countless different ways but always out of reach—would have made. I guess we’ll never know, he decided. “Can we get a drink here?” he asked Don Denny. “What about money? Mine’s worthless.”