The Broken Bubble Read online

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  CONFESSIONS OF A CRAP ARTIST

  THE COSMIC PUPPETS

  COUNTER-CLOCK WORLD

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  THE DIVINE INVASION

  DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP?

  DR. BLOODMONEY

  DR. FUTURITY

  EYE IN THE SKY

  FLOW MY TEARS, THE POLICEMAN SAID

  GALACTIC POT-HEALER

  THE GAME-PLAYERS OF TITAN

  THE GANYMEDE TAKEOVER (with Ray Nelson)

  THE GOLDEN MAN

  A HANDFUL OF DARKNESS

  HUMPTY DUMPTY IN OAKLAND

  I HOPE I SHALL ARRIVE SOON

  IN MILTON LUMKY TERRITORY

  THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE

  THE MAN WHO JAPED

  THE MAN WHOSE TEETH WERE ALL EXACTLY ALIKE

  MARTIAN TIME-SLIP

  MARY AND THE GIANT

  A MAZE OF DEATH

  NOW WAIT FOR LAST YEAR

  OUR FRIENDS FROM FROLIX 8

  THE PENULTIMATE TRUTH

  THE PRESERVING MACHINE

  PUTTERING ABOUT IN A SMALL LAND

  RADIO FREE ALBEMUTH

  ROBOTS, ANDROIDS, AND MECHANICAL ODDITIES

  A SCANNER DARKLY

  THE SIMULACRA

  SOLAR LOTTERY

  THE THREE STIGMATA OF PALMER ELDRITCH

  TIME OUT OF JOINT

  THE TRANSMIGRATION OF TIMOTHY ARCHER

  UBIK

  UBIK (screenplay)

  THE UNTELEPORTED MAN

  VALIS

  THE VARIABLE MAN

  VULCAN’S HAMMER

  WE CAN BUILD YOU

  THE WORLD JONES MADE

  THE ZAP GUN

  Copyright © 1988 by the estate of Philip K. Dick.

  All rights reserved. No past of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher. Inquiries should be addressed to Permissions Department, William Morrow and Company, Inc., 105 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y. 10016.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data.

  Dick, Philip K.

  The Broken Bubble

  I. Title.

  PS3554.I3B76 1988 813'.54 88-914

  ISBN 1-55710-037-3

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Edition

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  1

  Luke trades big. Summer is here and Luke is mighty ready to make a deal with you, mighty ready, at three big lots, all of them busting with cars—cars—cars. What’d you think your old car’s worth? Maybe it’s worth more than you think on a brand-new Plymouth or Chevrolet four-door sedan or a Ford custom deluxe Ranch Wagon. Luke is trading big these days, buying big and selling big. Luke thinks big. Luke is big!

  Before Luke came, this wasn’t much of a town. Now it’s a really big car town. Now everybody drives a brand-new De-Soto with power windows, power seat. Come see Luke. Luke was born in Oklahoma before he moved out here to great old sunny California. Luke moved out here in 1946 after we beat the Japs. Listen to that sound truck that’s going up and down the streets. Listen to it go; it goes all the time. It pulls that big red signboard along, and all the time it’s playing the ‘Too Fat Polka’ and saying ‘Regardless of the make or condition of your old car…’ Hear that? It don’t matter what kind of old heap you got. Luke’ll give you two hundred dollars for it if you can drag walk tow push it into the lot.

  Luke wears a straw hat. He wears a double-breasted gray suit and he wears crepe-soled shoes. In his coat pocket he carries three fountain pens and two ballpoint pens. Inside his coat is an official Blue-Book Luke takes it out and tells you what your heap is worth. Look at that hot California sun pouring over Luke. Look at his big face sweat. Look at him grin. When Luke grins, he slips twenty bucks into your pocket. Luke gives away money.

  This is Automobile Row; this is the street of cars, Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco. Windows on all sides, all along and up and down, glass with words written in red-and-white poster paint; banners are pasted up high, and flags flutter, and over some lots are wads of colored aluminum strung on wire. And there are balloons and, in the evening, lights. At night the chains go up, the cars are locked, but lights come on, fine spotlights, fine big beams of color frying the bugs. And Luke has his clowns, his painted lady and gent clowns; they stand on top of the building and wave their arms. Luke has his microphones, and the salesmen call to people. Free quart of oil! Free dish! Free candy and cap gun for the kids. The steel guitar sings, and how Luke likes that. It sings like home.

  Bob Posin, holding his initialed briefcase, wondered if he had been recognized as a salesman, which in fact he was. He put cut his hand, saying, “I’m Bob Posin. From radio station KOIF. Station manager.” He was now at Looney Luke’s Used Car Lot, trying to sell air time.

  “Yeah,” Sharpstein said, picking his teeth with a silver toothpick. He wore gray slacks and a lemon yellow shirt. Like all the West Coast used car dealers, his skin was baked red and dry, flaky, around his nose. “We were wondering when we’d hear from you.”

  They meandered among the cars.

  “Nice-looking cars you have here,” Posin said.

  “All clean,” Sharpstein said. “Every one a clean car.”

  “Are you Luke?”

  “Yeah, I’m Luke.”

  “You thinking of doing anything over the air?” That was the big question.

  Rubbing his cheekbone, Sharpstein said, “What sort of coverage your station got?”

  He gave an estimate twice the actual size; in these times he was willing to say anything. Television was getting the accounts, and nothing was left now but Regal Pale beer and L & M filter cigarettes. The independent AM stations were in a bad fix.

  “We’ve been having a few spots on TV,” Sharpstein said. “Works out pretty good, but they sure cost.”

  “And why pay for coverage of the whole Northern California area when your customers are right here in San Francisco?” He had a talking point there. Station KOIF with its thousand watts of operating power reached as many people in San Francisco as did the network AM and TV stations, and at a fraction of the cost.

  They strolled to the car lot office. At the desk Posin scratched figures on a pad of paper.

  “Sounds good to me,” Sharpstein said, his arms behind his head, his foot up on the desk. “Now tell me something. I have to admit I never got around to hearing your station. You got some kind of schedule I can see?”

  KOIF went on the air at five forty-five A.M. with news and weather and Sons of the Pioneers records.

  “Yup,” Sharpstein said.

  Then five hours of popular music. Then noon news. Then two hours of popular music from records and transcriptions. Then ‘Club 17,’ the kids’ rock-and-roll show, until five. Then an hour of Span
ish-language light opera and talk and accordion music. Then dinner music from six until eight. Then—

  “In other words,” Sharpstein said, “the usual stuff.”

  “Balanced programming.” Music, news, sports, and religious. Plus spot plugs. That was what kept the station alive.

  “What about this?” Sharpstein said. “How about a plug every half hour between eight A.M. and eleven P.M.? Thirty one-minute spots a day, seven days a week.”

  Posin’s mouth fell open. Jesus Christ!

  “I’m serious,” Sharpstein said.

  Sweat fell from Posin’s arms into his nylon shirt. “Let’s see what that would run.” He wrote figures. What a bundle. Sweat stung his eyes.

  Sharpstein examined the figures. “Looks okay. It’ll be tentative, of course. We’ll try it a month and see what kind of response there is. We haven’t been satisfied with the Examiner ads.”

  “Nobody reads that,” Posin said hoarsely. Wait, he thought, until Ted Haynes, the owner of KOIF, was informed. “I’ll do your material myself. I’ll handle the material personally.”

  “You mean write it?”

  “Yes,” he said. Anything, everything.

  Sharpstein said, “We’ll supply the material. It comes from Kansas City, from the big boys. We’re part of a chain. You just put it on the air.”

  Radio station KOIF was located on narrow, steep Geary Street, in downtown San Francisco, on the top floor of the McLaughlen Building. The McLaughlen Building was a drafty, antiquated wooden office building, with a couch in the lobby. There was an elevator, an iron cage, but the station employees usually went up by the stairs.

  The door from the stairs opened onto a hallway. To the left was the front office of KOIF, with one desk, a mimeograph machine, typewriter, telephone, and two wooden chairs. To the right was the glass window of the control room. The wide-board floor, was unpainted. The ceilings, high above, were yellowed plaster, cobwebbed. Several offices were used as storerooms. Toward the back, away from the traffic noises, were the studios; the smaller of the two was the recording studio and the other, with more adequate soundproof doors and walls, was for broadcasting. In the broadcast studio was a grand piano. A corridor divided the station into two sections. The corridor cut off, from the main offices, a large room in which was an oak table on which were piles of folded and unfolded mail-outs, envelopes, cartons, like the workroom of a campaign headquarters. And, next to that, the room in which the transmitter controls were located, the board itself, a swinging mike, two Presto turntables upright record cabinets, a supply cabinet on the door of which was tacked a photograph of Eartha Kitt. And, of course, there was a bathroom, and a carpeted lounge for visitors. And a closet in which to hang coats or hats, and to store brooms.

  A door at the back of the studio corridor opened onto the roof. A catwalk led past chimneys and skylights, to a flight of shaky wooden stairs that connected with the fire escape. The roof door was unlocked. Occasionally station employees stepped out onto the catwalk for a smoke.

  The time was one-thirty in the afternoon, and KOIF was transmitting songs by the Crewcuts. Bob Posin had brought in the signed contract with Looney Luke Automotive Sales and had gone out again. At her desk in the front office, Patricia Gray typed bills from the accounts receivable file. In the control room Frank Hubble, one of the station announcers, leaned back in his chair and talked on the telephone. The music of the Crewcuts, from the PM speaker boxed in the upper corner of the wall, filled the office.

  The stairs door opened, and another announcer entered: a tall, thin, rather worried-looking man wearing a loose-fitting coat. Under his arm was a load of records.

  “Hi,” he said.

  Patricia stopped typing and said, “Have you been listening to the station?”

  “No.” Preoccupied, Jim Briskin searched for a place to put down his records.

  “Some Looney Luke material arrived. Hubble and Flannery have been giving it off and on. Some of it’s recorded and some isn’t.”

  A slow smile spread across his face. He had a long, horselike face, and the overgrown jaw that many announcers seem to have. His eyes were pale, mild; his hair was brownish gray and beginning to recede. “What’s that?”

  “The used car lot up on Van Ness.”

  His mind was on the afternoon programming. He was planning out ‘Club 17,’ his program, his three hours of tunes and talk for the kids. “How is it?” he said.

  “It’s just awful.” She put a page of material before him. Balancing his records against his hip, he read the typed pages. “Will you call Haynes and read this stuff to him? Bob called him and slurred over, he just talked about the income.”

  “Be quiet,” he said, reading.

  1A: The car you buy TODAY from Looney Luke will be a CLEAN cart And it will STAY CLEAN! Looney Luke GUARANTEES IT!

  2A (Echo): CLEAN! CLEAN! CLEAN!

  1A: A CLEAN car…CLEAN upholstering…a CLEAN DEAL from Looney Luke, the volume car dealer who OUTSELLS in big-volume sales ALL OTHER car dealers in the Bay Area.

  2A (Echo): SELLS! SELLS! SELLS!

  Instructions on the script called for the announcer to record the echo parts in advance; the counterpoint was his own voice, knocking against itself.

  “So?” he said. It seemed routine to him, the usual used car pitch.

  Pat said, “But that’s yours. For the dinner music stretch. Between the Romeo and Juliet Overture”—she looked at the evening programming—“and Till Eulenspiegel.”

  Picking up the phone, Jim dialed Ted Haynes’s home number. Presently Haynes’s measured voice was heard saying, “Who is calling?”

  “This is Jim Briskin,” he said.

  “On your phone or the station phone?”

  “Tell him about the laugh,” Pat said.

  “What?” he said, putting his hand over the mouthpiece of the phone. And then he remembered the laugh.

  The laugh was Looney Luke’s trademark. The sound truck carried it about town, and the loudspeakers in the illuminated towers of the car lot blasted it at the cars and pedestrians. It was a crazed laugh, a fun-house laugh; it went around and around, rising and falling, getting down into the belly in a slowed-down manner and then shooting up into the sinuses, all at once a sharp laugh, very shrill, a giggle. The laugh bubbled and simpered; something was wrong with it, something terrible and basic. The laugh became hysterical. Now it could not contain itself it burst frothily, fragmenting itself. Collapsing, the laugh sank down, winded, gasping, exhausted by the ordeal. And then, dragging in deep breaths, it started over. On and on it went, fifteen hours without letup, rolling out above the shiny Fords and Plymouths, over the Negro in knee boots who washed the cars, over the salesmen in their pastel suits, over the fiat lots, the, office buildings, the downtown business district of San Francisco, and ultimately over the residential sections, over the apartment houses with their single walls joining them in rows, over the new concrete houses near the Beach, over all the houses and all the stores, all the people in the town.

  “Mr. Haynes,” he said, “I have some Looney Luke material here for the dinner music program. This stuff isn’t going to go over, not with the kind of audience I have. The old ladies out by the Park don’t buy used cars. And they turn this stuff off as fast as they can get to the radio. And—”

  “I see your point,” Haynes said, “but it’s my understanding that Posin agreed to air Sharpstein’s material straight across the board each half hour. And anyhow, Jim, this is in the nature of an experiment.”

  “Okay,” he said. “But when we’re through, we won’t have any old ladies or any other sponsors. And by that time Luke will have dumped his ninety carloads of ’55 Hudsons or whatever it is he’s pushing, and then what? You suppose he’s going to keep this stuff up after he breaks the back of the other lots? This is just to knock them off.”

  “You have a point,” Haynes said.

  “Darn right I have.”

  “I suppose Posin bit on this.”

 
; “Afraid so.”

  Haynes said, “Well, we’ve signed the contract. Let’s go ahead and finish out our commitment to Sharpstein, and then in the future we’ll be more wary of this sort of thing.”

  “But,” Jim said, “you mean you want me to go ahead and give this on the dinner music? Listen to this.” He reached for the script; Pat handed it to him.

  “I know how it reads,” Haynes said. “I’ve caught it on the other independents. But I feel, considering the signed contract, we’re really obliged to go ahead with it. It would be bad business to back out.”

  Jim said, “Mr. Haynes, this will kill us.” It would kill sponsorship of the classical music, anyhow. The little restaurants who supported classical music would back off, would vanish.

  “Let’s give it a try and see,” Haynes said, with the tone of judgment. “Okay, boy? Maybe it’ll work out to the good. After all, this is currently our heaviest advertising account. You must take the long-term view. Now perhaps a few of those little fancy restaurants will act huffy for a while…but they’ll be back. Right, boy?”

  They argued a little longer, but in the end Jim gave up and said goodbye.

  “Thanks for calling me,” Haynes said. “I’m glad you feel you want to discuss this sort of problem with me, out in the open where we can talk about it.”

  Putting the phone down, Jim said, “Luke’s cars are clean cars.”

  “It’s on, then?”, Patricia said.

  He took the script into the recording studio and began putting the “2A (Echo)” part onto tape. Then he switched on the other Ampex and taped “1A” also, and combined both so that at program time he had only to start the transport going. When he had finished, he rewound the tape and played it back. From the speakers his own professional announcer’s voice said: “The car you buy today from Looney Luke…”

  While it played, he read over his mail. The first cards were requests from kids for current pop tunes, which he clipped to his continuity for the afternoon. Then a complaint from a businessman, a practical outgoing individual protesting that too much chamber music was being played on the dinner music program. Then a sweet note from a very gentle little old lady named Edith Holcum, who lived out in Stonestown, saying how much she enjoyed the lovely music and how glad she was that the station was keeping it alive.