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  “Oh,” her answer came, in his ear; she seemed startled. And yet of course her face remained stable. Nothing showed; he looked away. “Hello, Glen,” she said, with a sort of childish wonder, surprised, taken aback, to find him here. “What—” She hesitated. “How much time has passed?”

  “Couple years,” he said.

  “Tell me what’s going on.”

  “Aw, christ,” he said, “everything’s going to pieces, the whole organization. That’s why I’m here; you wanted to be brought into major policy-planning decisions, and god knows we need that now, a new policy, or anyhow a revamping of our scout structure.”

  “I was dreaming,” Ella said. “I saw a smoky red light, a horrible light. And yet I kept moving toward it. I couldn’t stop.”

  “Yeah,” Runciter said, nodding. “The Bardo Thödol, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, tells about that. You remember reading that; the doctors made you read it when you were—” He hesitated. “Dying,” he said then.

  “The smoky red light is bad, isn’t it?” Ella said.

  “Yeah, you want to avoid it.” He cleared his throat. “Listen, Ella, we’ve got problems. You feel up to hearing about it? I mean, I don’t want to overtax you or anything; just say if you’re too tired or if there’s something else you want to hear about or discuss.”

  “It’s so weird. I think I’ve been dreaming all this time, since you last talked to me. Is it really two years? Do you know, Glen, what I think? I think that other people who are around me—we seem to be progressively growing together. A lot of my dreams aren’t about me at all. Sometimes I’m a man and sometimes a little boy; sometimes I’m an old fat woman with varicose veins…and I’m in places I’ve never seen, doing things that make no sense.”

  “Well, like they say, you’re heading for a new womb to be born out of. And that smoky red light—that’s a bad womb; you don’t want to go that way. That’s a humiliating, low sort of womb. You’re probably anticipating your next life, or whatever it is.” He felt foolish, talking like this; normally he had no theological convictions. But the half-life experience was real and it had made theologians out of all of them. “Hey,” he said, changing the subject. “Let me tell you what’s happened, what made me come here and bother you. S. Dole Melipone has dropped out of sight.”

  A moment of silence, and then Ella laughed. “Who or what is an S. Dole Melipone? There can’t be any such thing.” The laugh, the unique and familiar warmth of it, made his spine tremble; he remembered that about her, even after so many years. He had not heard Ella’s laugh in over a decade.

  “Maybe you’ve forgotten,” he said.

  Ella said, “I haven’t forgotten; I wouldn’t forget an S. Dole Melipone. Is it like a hobbit?”

  “It’s Raymond Hollis’ top telepath. We’ve had at least one inertial sticking close to him ever since G. G. Ashwood first scouted him, a year and a half ago. We never lose Melipone; we can’t afford to. Melipone can when necessary generate twice the psi field of any other Hollis employee. And Melipone is only one of a whole string of Hollis people who’ve disappeared—anyhow, disappeared as far as we’re concerned. As far as all prudence organizations in the Society can make out. So I thought, Hell, I’ll go ask Ella what’s up and what we should do. Like you specified in your will—remember?”

  “I remember.” But she sounded remote. “Step up your ads on TV. Warn people. Tell them…” Her voice trailed off into silence then.

  “This bores you,” Runciter said gloomily.

  “No. I—” She hesitated and he felt her once more drift away. “Are they all telepaths?” she asked after an interval.

  “Telepaths and precogs mostly. They’re nowhere on Earth; I know that. We’ve got a dozen inactive inertials with nothing to do because the Psis they’ve been nullifying aren’t around, and what worries me even more, a lot more, is that requests for anti-psis have dropped—which you would expect, given the fact that so many Psis are missing. But I know they’re on one single project; I mean, I believe. Anyhow, I’m sure of it; somebody’s hired the bunch of them, but only Hollis knows who it is or where it is. Or what it’s all about.” He lapsed into brooding silence then. How would Ella be able to help him figure it out? he asked himself. Stuck here in this casket, frozen out of the world—she knew only what he told her. Yet, he had always relied on her sagacity, that particular female form of it, a wisdom not based on knowledge or experience but on something innate. He had not, during the period she had lived, been able to fathom it; he certainly could not do so now that she lay in chilled immobility. Other women he had known since her death—there had been several—had a little of it, trace amounts perhaps. Intimations of a greater potentiality which, in them, never emerged as it had in Ella.

  “Tell me,” Ella said, “what this Melipone person is like.”

  “A screwball.”

  “Working for money? Or out of conviction? I always feel wary about that, when they have that psi mystique, that sense of purpose and cosmic identity. Like that awful Sarapis had; remember him?”

  “Sarapis isn’t around any more. Hollis allegedly bumped him off because he connived to set up his own outfit in competition with Hollis. One of his precogs tipped Hollis off.” He added, “Melipone is much tougher on us than Sarapis was. When he’s hot it takes three inertials to balance his field, and there’s no profit in that; we collect—or did collect—the same fee we get with one inertial. Because the Society has a rate schedule now which we’re bound by.” He liked the Society less each year; it had become a chronic obsession with him, its uselessness, its cost. Its vainglory. “As near as we can tell, Melipone is a money-Psi. Does that make you feel better? Is that less bad?” He waited, but heard no response from her. “Ella,” he said. Silence. Nervously he said, “Hey, hello there, Ella; can you hear me? Is something wrong?” Oh, god, he thought. She’s gone.

  A pause, and then thoughts materialized in his right ear. “My name is Jory.” Not Ella’s thoughts; a different élan, more vital and yet clumsier. Without her deft subtlety.

  “Get off the line,” Runciter said in panic. “I was talking to my wife Ella; where’d you come from?”

  “I am Jory,” the thoughts came, “and no one talks to me. I’d like to visit with you awhile, mister, if that’s okay with you. What’s your name?”

  Stammering, Runciter said, “I want my wife, Mrs. Ella Runciter; I paid to talk to her, and that’s who I want to talk to, not you.”

  “I know Mrs. Runciter,” the thoughts clanged in his ear, much stronger now. “She talks to me, but it isn’t the same as somebody like you talking to me, somebody in the world. Mrs. Runciter is here where we are; it doesn’t count because she doesn’t know any more than we do. What year is it, mister? Did they send that big ship to proxima? I’m very interested in that; maybe you can tell me. And if you want, I can tell Mrs. Runciter later on. Okay?”

  Runciter popped the plug from his ear, hurriedly set down the earphone and the rest of the gadgetry; he left the stale, dust-saturated office and roamed about among the chilling caskets, row after row, all of them neatly arranged by number. Moratorium employees swam up before him and then vanished as he churned on, searching for the owner.

  “Is something the matter, Mr. Runciter?” the von Vogelsang person said, observing him as he floundered about. “Can I assist you?”

  “I’ve got some thing coming in over the wire,” Runciter panted, halting. “Instead of Ella. Damn you guys and your shoddy business practices; this shouldn’t happen, and what does it mean?” He followed after the moratorium owner, who had already started in the direction of office 2-A. “If I ran my business this way—”

  “Did the individual identify himself?”

  “Yeah, he called himself Jory.”

  Frowning with obvious worry, von Vogelsang said, “That would be Jory Miller. I believe he’s located next to your wife. In the bin.”

  “But I can see it’s Ella!”

  “After prolonged proximity,” von Vogels
ang explained, “there is occasionally a mutual osmosis, a suffusion between the mentalities of half-lifers. Jory Miller’s cephalic activity is particularly good; your wife’s is not. That makes for an unfortunately one-way passage of protophasons.”

  “Can you correct it?” Runciter asked hoarsely; he found himself still spent, still panting and shaking. “Get that thing out of my wife’s mind and get her back—that’s your job!”

  Von Vogelsang said, in a stilted voice, “If this condition persists your money will be returned to you.”

  “Who cares about the money? Snirt the money.” They had reached office 2-A now; Runciter unsteadily reseated himself, his heart laboring so that he could hardly speak. “If you don’t get this Jory person off the line,” he half gasped, half snarled, “I’ll sue you; I’ll close down this place!”

  Facing the casket, von Vogelsang pressed the audio outlet into his ear and spoke briskly into the microphone. “Phase out, Jory; that’s a good boy.” Glancing at Runciter he said, “Jory passed at fifteen; that’s why he has so much vitality. Actually, this has happened before; Jory has shown up several times where he shouldn’t be.” Once more into the microphone he said, “This is very unfair of you, Jory; Mr. Runciter has come a long way to talk to his wife. Don’t dim her signal, Jory; that’s not nice.” A pause as he listened to the earphone. “I know her signal is weak.” Again he listened, solemn and froglike, then removed the earphone and rose to his feet.

  “What’d he say?” Runciter demanded. “Will he get out of there and let me talk to Ella?”

  Von Vogelsang said, “There’s nothing Jory can do. Think of two AM radio transmitters, one close by but limited to only five-hundred watts of operating power. Then another, far off, but on the same or nearly the same frequency, and utilizing five-thousand watts. When night comes—”

  “And night,” Runciter said, “has come.” At least for Ella. And maybe himself as well, if Hollis’ missing teeps, parakineticists, precogs, resurrectors and animators couldn’t be found. He had not only lost Ella; he had also lost her advice, Jory having supplanted her before she could give it.

  “When we return her to the bin,” von Vogelsang was blabbing, “we won’t install her near Jory again. In fact, if you’re agreeable as to paying the somewhat larger monthly fee, we can place her in a high-grade isolated chamber with walls coated and reinforced with Teflon-26 so as to inhibit hetero-psychic infusion—from Jory or anybody else.”

  “Isn’t it too late?” Runciter said, surfacing momentarily from the depression into which this happening had dropped him.

  “She may return. Once Jory phases out. Plus anyone else who may have gotten into her because of her weakened state. She’s accessible to almost anyone.” Von Vogelsang chewed his lip, palpably pondering. “She may not like being isolated, Mr. Runciter. We keep the containers—the caskets, as they’re called by the lay public—close together for a reason. Wandering through one another’s mind gives those in half-life the only—”

  “Put her in solitary right now,” Runciter broke in. “Better she be isolated than not exist at all.”

  “She exists,” von Vogelsang corrected. “She merely can’t contact you. There’s a difference.”

  Runciter said, “A metaphysical difference which means nothing to me.”

  “I will put her in isolation,” von Vogelsang said, “but I think you’re right; it’s too late. Jory has permeated her permanently, to some extent at least. I’m sorry.”

  Runciter said harshly, “So am I.”

  THREE

  * * *

  Instant Ubik has all the fresh flavor of just-brewed drip coffee. Your husband will say, Christ, Sally, I used to think your coffee was only so-so. But now, wow! Safe when taken as directed.

  Still in gay pinstripe clown-style pajamas, Joe Chip hazily seated himself at his kitchen table, lit a cigarette and, after inserting a dime, twiddled the dial of his recently rented ’pape machine. Having a hangover, he dialed off interplan news, hovered momentarily at domestic news and then selected gossip.

  “Yes sir,” the ’pape machine said heartily. “Gossip. Guess what Stanton Mick, the reclusive, interplanetarily known speculator and financier, is up to at this very moment.” Its works whizzed and a scroll of printed matter crept from its slot; the ejected roll, a document in four colors, niftily incised with bold type, rolled across the surface of the neo-teakwood table and bounced to the floor. His head aching, Chip retrieved it, spread it out flat before him.

  MICK HITS WORLD BANK FOR TWO TRIL

  (AP) London. What could Stanton Mick, the reclusive, interplanetarily known speculator and financier be up to? the business community asked itself as rumor leaked out of Whitehall that the dashing but peculiar industrial magnate, who once offered to build free of charge a fleet by which Israel could colonize and make fertile otherwise desert areas of Mars, had asked for and may possibly receive a staggering and unprecedented loan of

  “This isn’t gossip,” Joe Chip said to the ’pape machine. “This is speculation about fiscal transactions. Today I want to read about which TV star is sleeping with whose drug-addicted wife.” He had as usual not slept well, at least in terms of REM—rapid eye movement—sleep. And he had resisted taking a soporific because, very unfortunately, his week’s supply of stimulants, provided him by the autonomic pharmacy of his conapt building, had run out—due, admittedly, to his own oral greed, but nonetheless gone. By law he could not approach the pharmacy for more until next Tuesday. Two days away, two long days.

  The ’pape machine said, “Set the dial for low gossip.”

  He did so and a second scroll, excreted by the ’pape machine without delay, emerged; he zommed in on an excellent caricature drawing of Lola Herzburg-Wright, licked his lips with satisfaction at the naughty exposure of her entire right ear, then feasted on the text.

  Accosted by a cutpurse in a fancy N.Y. after-hours mowl the other night, LOLA HERZBURG-WRIGHT bounced a swift right jab off the chops of the do-badder which sent him reeling onto the table where KING EGON GROAT OF SWEDEN and an unidentified miss with astonishingly large

  The ring-construct of his conapt door jangled; startled, Joe Chip glanced up, found his cigarette attempting to burn the formica surface of his neo-teakwood table, coped with that, then shuffled blearily to the speaktube mounted handily by the release bolt of the door. “Who is it?” he grumbled; checking with his wrist watch, he saw that eight o’clock had not arrived. Probably the rent robot, he decided. Or a creditor. He did not trigger off the release bolt of the door.

  An enthusiastic male voice from the door’s speaker exclaimed, “I know it’s early, Joe, but I just hit town. G. G. Ashwood here; I’ve got a firm prospect that I snared in Topeka—I read this one as magnificent and I want your confirmation before I lay the pitch in Runciter’s lap. Anyhow, he’s in Switzerland.”

  Chip said, “I don’t have my test equipment in the apt.”

  “I’ll shoot over to the shop and pick it up for you.”

  “It’s not at the shop.” Reluctantly, he admitted, “It’s in my car. I didn’t get around to unloading it last night.” In actuality, he had been too pizzled on papapot to get the trunk of his hovercar open. “Can’t it wait until after nine?” he asked irritably. G. G. Ashwood’s unstable manic energy annoyed him even at noon…this, at seven-forty, struck him as downright impossible: worse even than a creditor.

  “Chip, dearie, this is a sweet number, a walking symposium of miracles that’ll curl the needles of your gauges and, in addition, give new life to the firm, which it badly needs. And furthermore—”

  “It’s an anti what?” Joe Chip asked. “Telepath?”

  “I’ll lay it on you right out in front,” G. G. Ashwood declared. “I don’t know. Listen, Chip.” Ashwood lowered his voice. “This is confidential, this particular one. I can’t stand down here at the gate gum-flapping away out loud; somebody might overhear. In fact I’m already picking up the thoughts of some gloonk in a ground-level apt; he—�
��

  “Okay,” Joe Chip said, resigned. Once started, G. G. Ashwood’s relentless monologs couldn’t be aborted anyhow. He might as well listen to it. “Give me five minutes to get dressed and find out if I’ve got any coffee left in the apt anywhere.” He had a quasi memory of shopping last night at the conapt’s supermarket, in particular a memory of tearing out a green ration stamp, which could mean either coffee or tea or cigarettes or fancy imported snuff.

  “You’ll like her,” G. G. Ashwood stated energetically. “Although, as often happens, she’s the daughter of a—”

  “Her?” In alarm Joe Chip said, “My apt’s unfit to be seen; I’m behind in my payments to the building clean-up robots—they haven’t been inside here in two weeks.”

  “I’ll ask her if she cares.”

  “Don’t ask her. I care. I’ll test her out down at the shop, on Runciter’s time.”

  “I read her mind and she doesn’t care.”

  “How old is she?” Maybe, he thought, she’s only a child. Quite a few new and potential inertials were children, having developed their ability in order to protect themselves against their psionic parents.

  “How old are you, dear?” G. G. Ashwood asked faintly, turning his head away to speak to the person with him. “Nineteen,” he reported to Joe Chip.

  Well, that shot that. But now he had become curious. G. G. Ashwood’s razzle-dazzle wound-up tightness usually manifested itself in conjunction with attractive women; maybe this girl fell into that category. “Give me fifteen minutes,” he told G.G. If he worked fast, and skulked about in a cleanup campaign, and if he missed both coffee and breakfast, he could probably effect a tidy apt by then. At least it seemed worth trying.

  He rang off, then searched in the cupboards of the kitchen for a broom (manual or self-powered) or vacuum cleaner (helium battery or wall socket). Neither could be found. Evidently he had never been issued any sort of cleaning equipment by the building’s supply agency. Hell of a time, he thought, to find that out. And he had lived here four years.