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.
I THINK HER NAME IS MYRA LANEY, LOOK ON REVERSE SIDE OF CONTAINER FOR ADDRESS AND PHONE NUMBER.
“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.
Chapter 17
I am Ubik. Before the universe was, I am. I made the suns. I made the worlds. I created the lives and the places they inhabit; I move them here, I put them there. They go as I say, they do as I tell them. I am the word and my name is never spoken, the name which no one knows. I am called Ubik, but that is not my name. I am. I shall always be.
Glen Runciter could not find the moratorium owner.
“Are you sure you don’t know where he is?” Runciter asked Miss Beason, the moratorium owner’s secretary. “It’s essential that I talk to Ella again.”
“I’ll have her brought out,” Miss Beason said. “You may use office 4-B; please wait there, Mr. Runciter; I will have your wife for you in a very short time. Try to make yourself comfortable.”
Locating office 4-B, Runciter paced about restlessly. At last a moratorium attendant appeared, wheeling in Ella’s casket on a handtruck. “Sorry to keep you waiting,” the attendant said; he began at once to set up the electronic communing mechanism, humming happily as he worked.
In short order the task was completed. The attendant checked the circuit one last time, nodded in satisfaction, then started to leave the office.
“This is for you,” Runciter said, and handed him several fifty-cent pieces which he had scrounged from his various pockets. “I appreciate the rapidity with which you accomplished the job.”
“Thank you, Mr. Runciter,” the attendant said. He glanced at the coins, then frowned. “What kind of money is this?” he said.
Runciter took a good long look at the fifty-cent pieces. He saw at once what the attendant meant; very definitely, the coins were not as they should be. Whose profile is this? he asked himself. Who’s this on all three coins? Not the right person at all. And yet he’s familiar. I know him.
And then he recognized the profile. I wonder what this means, he asked himself. Strangest thing I’ve ever seen. Most things in life eventually can be explained. But—Joe Chip on a fifty-cent piece?
It was the first Joe Chip money he had ever seen.
He had an intuition, chillingly, that if he searched his pockets, and his billfold, he would find more.
This was just the beginning.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Philip K. Dick was born in Chicago in 1928 and lived most of his life in California. He briefly attended the University of California, but dropped out before completing any classes. In 1952 he began writing professionally and proceeded to write thirty-six novels and five short story collections. He won the Hugo Award for best novel in 1962 for The Man in the High Castle and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel of the year in 1974 for Flow My Tears The Policeman Said. Died of heart failure following a stroke on March 2, 1982, in Santa Ana, California.
Peter Fitting
Ubik: The Deconstruction of Bourgeois SF
Philip K. Dick’s Ubik (1969) is, for this reader, one of the most important SF works of the 1960s, for it is both deconstruction and a hint at reconstruction: it lays bare the principal ways that SF is used for ideological ends, in terms of science and of fiction, while tentatively looking towards a future freed from the restraints it has exposed. In this novel Dick has exploded and transcended the SF genre and the “representational novel” of which it is a part.