The Preserving Machine Read online

  THE STRANGE IMAGINATION

  OF PHILIP K. DICK…

  Well known as one of the major science fiction novelists of the decade, Philip K. Dick has concurrently built an almost “underground” reputation for his powerful, unpredictable short stories, novelettes and novellas.

  Now, in this first major collection of Dick’s shorter work, you will find:

  • Robot psychiatrists activated by twenty-dollar coins

  • The Veterans of Unnatural Wars

  • Unicephalon 40-D, the computer President of the United States

  • Deceptive “toys” sent to Earth from Ganymede

  • • • plus time-warps, homeostatic newspapers, “web-foots” and-“crows,” unseen alien creatures among us, half-human mutations: a gallery of sparkling invention in a book you’ll never forget.

  PHILIP K. DICK is perhaps best known as the author of THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE, which won the Hugo Award as the best science fiction novel of 1962. His many other novels include SOLAR LOTTERY, EYE IN THE SKY, NOW WAIT FOR LAST YEAR, THE WORLD JONES MADE, MARTIAN TIME-SLIP, THE SIMULACRA and DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP?

  Now in his forties, Dick was born in Chicago but has lived most of his life in the San Francisco area. “Unlike most writers I have done very little traveling, since as soon as we get outside town something vital falls out of our car. Because of my antiwar convictions I dropped out of the University of California (a state-supported college, it required ROTC).” Not long after this, he began to sell his science fiction stories to a wide variety of magazines; THE PRESERVING MACHINE contains the best of his stories written over a period of almost 20 years.

  THE PRESERVING MACHINE

  by PHILIP K. DICK

  AN ACE BOOK

  Ace Publishing Corporation

  1120 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, N.Y. 10036

  the preserving machine

  Copyright ©, 1969, by Philip K. Dick

  An Ace Book. All Rights Reserved.

  Printed in U.S.A.

  THE PRESERVING MACHINE: Copyright © 1953 by Mercury Publications, Inc. From Fantasy & Science Fiction, June 1953.

  WAR GAME: Copyright © 1959 by Galaxy Publishing Corp. From Galaxy, December 1959.

  UPON THE DULL EARTH: Copyright © 1954 by Quinn Publishing Co., Inc. From Beyond #9,1954.

  ROOG: Copyright © 1952 by Mercury Press, Inc. From Fantasy & Science Fiction, February 1953.

  WAR VETERAN: Copyright © 1955 by Quinn Publishing Co., Inc. From If, March 1955.

  TOP STANDBY JOB: Copyright © 1963 by Ziff-Davis Publishing Co., Inc. From Amazing, October 1963 (as Stand-By).

  BEYOND LIES THE WUB: Copyright © 1952 by Fiction House, Inc. From Planet Stories, July 1952.

  WE CAN REMEMBER IT FOR YOU WHOLESALE: Copyright © 1966 by Mercury Publications, Inc. From Fantasy & Science Fiction, April 1966.

  CAPTIVE MARKET: Copyright © 1955 by Quinn Publishing Co., Inc. From If, April 1955.

  IF THERE WERE NO BENNY CEMOLI: Copyright © 1953 by Galaxy Publishing Corp. From Galaxy, December 1963.

  RETREAT SYNDROME: Copyright © 1964 by Galaxy Publishing Corp. From Worlds of Tomorrow, January 1965.

  THE CRAWLERS: Copyright © 1954 by Greenleaf Publications, Inc. From Imagination, July 1954.

  OH, TO BE A BLOBEL!: Copyright © 1964 by Galaxy Publishing Corp. From Galaxy, February 1964.

  WHAT THE DEAD MEN SAY: Copyright © 1964 by Galaxy Publishing Corp. From Worlds of Tomorrow, June 1964.

  PAY FOR THE PRINTER: Copyright © 1956 by Renown Publications, Inc. From Satellite, October 1956.

  CONTENTS

  300

  PAY FOR THE PRINTER

  THE PRESERVING MACHINE

  Doc Labyrinth leaned back in his lawn chair, closing his eyes gloomily. He pulled his blanket up around his knees.

  “Well?” I said. I was standing by the barbecue pit, warming my hands. It was a clear cold day. The sunny Los Angeles sky was almost cloud-free. Beyond Labyrinth’s modest house a gently undulating expanse of green stretched off until it reached the mountains—a small forest that gave the illusion of wilderness within the very limits of the city. “Well?” I said. “Then the Machine did work the way you expected?”

  Labyrinth did not answer. I turned around. The old man was staring moodily ahead, watching an enormous dun-colored beetle that was slowly climbing the side of his blanket. The beetle rose methodically, its face blank with dignity. It passed over the top and disappeared down the far side. We were alone again.

  Labyrinth sighed and looked up at me. “Oh, it worked well enough.”

  I looked after the beetle, but it was nowhere to be seen. A faint breeze eddied around me, chill and thin in the fading afternoon twilight. I moved nearer the barbecue pit.

  “Tell me about it,” I said.

  Doctor Labyrinth, like most people who read a great deal and who have too much time on their hands, had become convinced that our civilization was going the way of Rome. He saw, I think, the same cracks forming that had sundered the ancient world, the world of Greece and Rome; and it was his conviction that presently our world, our society, would pass away as theirs did, and a period of darkness would follow.

  Now Labyrinth, having thought this, began to brood over all the fine and lovely things that would be lost in the reshuffling of societies. He thought of the art, the literature, the manners, the music, everything that would be lost. And it seemed to him that of all these grand and noble things, music would probably be the most lost, the quickest forgotten.

  Music is the most perishable of things, fragile and delicate, easily destroyed.

  Labyrinth worried about this, because he loved music, because he hated the idea that some day there would be no more Brahms and Mozart, no more gentle chamber music that he could dreamily associate with powdered wigs and resined bows, with long, slender candles, melting away in the gloom.

  What a dry and unfortunate world it would be, without music! How dusty and unbearable.

  This is how he came to think of the Preserving Machine. One evening as he sat in his living-room in his deep chair, the gramophone on low, a vision came to him. He perceived in his mind a strange sight, the last score of a Schubert trio, the last copy, dog-eared, well-thumbed, lying on the floor of some gutted place, probably a museum.

  A bomber moved overhead. Bombs fell, bursting the museum to fragments, bringing the walls down in a roar of rubble and plaster. In the debris the last score disappeared, lost in the rubbish, to rot and mold.

  And then, in Doc Labyrinth’s vision, he saw the score come burrowing out, like some buried mole. Quite like a mole, in fact, with claws and sharp teeth and a furious energy.

  If music had that faculty, the ordinary, everyday instinct of survival which every worm and mole has, how different it would be! If music could be transformed into living creatures, animals with claws and teeth, then music might survive. If only a Machine could be built, a Machine to process musical scores into living forms.

  But Doc Labyrinth was no mechanic. He made a few tentative sketches and sent them hopefully around to the research laboratories. Most of them were much too busy with war contracts, of course. But at last he found the people he wanted. A small midwestem university was delighted with his plans, and they were happy to start work on the Machine at once.

  Weeks passed. At last Labyrinth received a postcard from the university. The Machine was coming along fine; in fact, it was almost finished. They had given it a trial run, feeding a couple of popular songs into it. The results? Two small mouse-like animals had come scampering out, rushing a-round the laboratory until the cat caught and ate them. But the Machine was a success.

  It came to him shortly after, packe
d carefully in a wood crate, wired together and fully insured. He was quite excited as he set to work, taking the slats from it. Many fleeting notions must have coursed through his mind as he adjusted the controls and made ready for the first transformation. He had selected a priceless score to begin with, the score of the Mozart G Minor Quintet. For a time he turned the pages, lost in thought, his mind far away. At last he carried it to the Machine and dropped it in.

  Time passed. Labyrinth stood before it, waiting nervously, apprehensive and not really certain what would greet him when he opened the compartment. He was doing a fine and tragic work, it seemed to him, preserving the music of the great composers for all eternity. What would his thanks be? What would he find? What form would this all take, before it was over?

  There were many questions unanswered. The red light of the Machine was glinting, even as he meditated. The process was over, the transformation had already taken place. He opened the door.

  “Good Lord!” he said. “This is very odd.”

  A bird, not an animal, stepped out. The mozart bird was pretty, small and slender, with the flowing plumage of a peacock. It ran a little way across the room and then walked back to him, curious and friendly. Trembling, Doc Labyrinth bent down, his hand out. The mozart bird came near. Then, all at once, it swooped up into the air.

  “Amazing,” he murmured. He coaxed the bird gently, patiently, and at last it fluttered down to him. Labyrinth stroked it for a long time, thinking. What would the rest of them be like? He could not guess. He carefully gathered up the mozart bird and put it into a box.

  He was even more surprised the next day when the beethoven beetle came out, stern and dignified. That was the beetle I saw myself, climbing along his red blanket, intent and withdrawn, on some business of its own.

  After that came the schubert animal. The schubert animal was silly, an adolescent sheep-creature that ran this way and that, foolish and wanting to play. Labyrinth sat down right then and there and did some heavy thinking.

  Just what were survival factors? Was a flowing plume better than claws, better than sharp teeth? Labyrinth was stumped. He had expected an army of stout badger creatures, equipped with claws and scales, digging, fighting, ready to gnaw and kick. Was he getting the right thing? Yet who could say what was good for survival?—the dinosaurs had been well armed, but there were none of them left. In any case the Machine was built; it was too late to turn back, now.

  Labyrinth went ahead, feeding the music of many composers into the Preserving Machine, one after another, until the woods behind his house was filled with creeping, bleating things that screamed and crashed in the night. There were many oddities that came out, creations that startled and astonished him. The brahms insect had many legs sticking in all directions, a vast, platter-shaped centipede. It was low and flat, with a coating of uniform fur. The brahms insect liked to be by itself, and it went off promptly, taking great pains to avoid the wagner animal who had come just before.

  The wagner animal was large and splashed with deep colors. It seemed to have quite a temper, and Doc Labyrinth was a little afraid of it, as were the bach bugs, the round ball-like creatures, a whole flock of them, some large, some small, that had been obtained for the Forty-Eight Preludes and Fugues. And there was the Stravinsky bird, made up of curious fragments and bits, and many others besides.

  So he let them go, off into the woods, and away they went, hopping and rolling and jumping as best they could. But already a sense of failure hung over him. Each time a creature came out he was astonished; he did not seem to have control over the results at all. It was out of his hands, subject to some strong, invisible law that had subtly taken over, and this worried him greatly. The creatures were bending, changing before a deep, impersonal force, a force that Labyrinth could neither see nor understand. And it made him afraid.

  Labyrinth stopped talking. I waited for awhile but he did not seem to be going on. I looked around at him. The old man was staring at me in a strange, plaintive way.

  “I don’t really know much more,” he said. “I haven’t been back there for a long time, back in the woods. I’m afraid to. I know something is going on, but—”

  “Why don’t we both go and take a look?”

  He smiled with relief. “You wouldn’t mind, would you? I was hoping you might suggest that. This business is beginning to get me down.” He pushed his blanket aside and stood up, brushing himself off. “Let’s go then.”

  We walked around the side of the house and along a narrow path, into the woods. Everything was wild and chaotic, overgrown and matted, an unkempt, unattended sea of green. Doc Labyrinth went first, pushing the branches off the path, stooping and wriggling to get through.

  “Quite a place,” I observed. We made our way for a time. The woods were dark and damp; it was almost sunset now, and a light mist was descending on us, drifting down through the leaves above.

  “No one comes here.” The Doc stopped suddenly, looking around. “Maybe we’d better go and find my gun. I don’t want anything to happen.”

  “You seem certain that things have got out of hand.” I came up beside him and we stood together. “Maybe it’s not as bad as you think.”

  Labyrinth looked around. He pushed some shrubbery back with his foot. “They’re all around us, everywhere, watching us. Can’t you feel it?”

  I nodded absently. “What’s this?” I lifted up a heavy, moldering branch, particles of fungus breaking from it. I pushed it out of the way. A mound lay outstretched, shapeless and indistinct, half buried in the soft ground.

  “What is it?” I said again. Labyrinth stared down, his face tight and forlorn. He began to kick at the mound aimlessly. I felt uncomfortable. “What is it, for heaven’s sake?” I said. “Do you know?”

  Labyrinth looked slowly up at me. “It’s the schubert animal,” he murmured. “Or it was, once. There isn’t much left of it, any more.”

  The schubert animal—that was the one that had rim and leaped like a puppy, silly and wanting to play. I bent down, staring at the mound, pushing a few leaves and twigs from it. It was dead all right. Its mouth was open, its body had been ripped wide. Ants and vermin were already working on it, toiling endlessly away. It had begun to stink.

  “But what happened?” Labyrinth said. He shook his head. “What could have done it?”

  There was a sound. We turned quickly.

  For a moment we saw nothing. Then a bush moved, and for the first time we made out its form. It must have been standing there watching us all the time. The creature was immense, thin and extended, with bright, intense eyes. To me, it looked something like a coyote, but much heavier. Its coat was matted and thick, its muzzle hung partly open as it gazed at us silently, studying us as if astonished to find us there.

  “The wagner animal,” Labyrinth said thickly. “But it’s changed. It’s changed. I hardly recognize it.”

  The creature sniffed the air, its hackles up. Suddenly it moved back, into the shadows, and a moment later it was gone.

  We stood for a while, not saying anything. At last Labyrinth stirred. “So, that’s what it was,” he said. “I can hardly believe it. But why? What—”

  “Adaptation,” I said. “When you toss an ordinary house cat out it becomes wild. Or a dog.”

  “Yes.” He nodded. “A dog becomes a wolf again, to stay alive. The law of the forest. I should have expected it. It happens to everything.”

  I looked down at the corpse on the ground, and then around at the silent bushes. Adaptation—or maybe something worse. An idea was forming in my mind, but I said nothing, not right away.

  “I’d like to see some more of them,” I said. “Some of the others. Let’s look around some more.”

  He agreed. We began to poke slowly through the grass and weeds, pushing branches and foliage out of the way. I found a stick, but Labyrinth got down on his hands and knees, reaching and feeling, staring near-sightedly down.

  “Even children turn into beasts,” I said. “Yo
u remember the wolf children of India? No one could believe they had been ordinary children.”

  Labyrinth nodded. He was unhappy, and it was not hard to understand why. He had been wrong, mistaken in his original idea, and the consequences of it were just now beginning to become apparent to him. Music would survive as living creatures, but he had forgotten the lesson of the Garden of Eden: that once a thing has been fashioned it begins to exist on its own, and thus ceases to be the property of its creator to mold and direct as he wishes. God, watching man’s development, must have felt the same sadness—and the same humiliation—as Labyrinth, to see His creatures alter and change to meet the needs of survival.

  That his musical creatures should survive could mean nothing to him any more, for the very thing he had created them to prevent, the brutalization of beautiful things, was happening in them, before his own eyes. Doc Labyrinth looked up at me suddenly, his face full of misery. He had insured their survival, all right, but in so doing he had erased any meaning, any value in it. I tried to smile a little at him, but he promptly looked away again.

  “Don’t worry so much about it,” I said. “It wasn’t much of a change for the wagner animal. Wasn’t it pretty much that way anyhow, rough and temperamental? Didn’t it have a proclivity towards violence—”