Clans of the Alphane Moon Read online

  Abruptly, obliterating his tranquil state, a sharp, highly-articulated rumination by the slime mold reached him. “As long as it is confession-of-feeling-and-deeds time I suggest that your wife lay on the table the full account of her brief affair with Bunny Hentman.” It corrected itself, “I retract the expression, ‘lay on the table,’ as unbelievably unfortunate. However my basic point remains: so anxious was she that you obtain employment with high financial return—”

  “Let me say it,” Mary said.

  “Please do,” the slime mold agreed. “And I will speak up again only if you are remiss as regards completeness of account.”

  Mary said, “I had a very short affair with Bunny Hentman, Chuck. Just prior to my leaving Terra. That’s all there is.”

  “There is more,” the slime mold contradicted.

  “Details?” she said hotly. “Do I have to tell exactly when and where we—”

  “Not that. Another aspect of your relationship with Hentman.”

  “All right.” Resignedly Mary nodded. “During those four days,” she said to Chuck, “I told Bunny that as I saw it, using all my experience with marital break-ups, I foresaw—based on my knowledge of your personality—that you’d try to kill me. If you failed in your suicide attempt.” She was silent, then. “I don’t know why I told him. Maybe I was scared. Evidently I had to tell someone and I was with him quite a bit, then.”

  So it had not been Joan. He felt a little better about the whole thing, knowing this. And he could hardly blame Mary for what she had done. It was a wonder she hadn’t gone to the police; evidently she was telling the truth when she said she loved him. This shed new light on her; she had forfeited a chance to injure him, and at a time of great crisis.

  “Maybe we’ll have more children while we’re here on this moon,” Mary said. “Like the slime molds… we arrived and we’ll increase in numbers until we become legion. The majority.” She laughed in an odd, soft way, and, in the darkness, relaxed against him, as she had not done in ages.

  In the sky the Alphane ships continued to appear and both he and Mary remained silent, planning out schemes by which to obtain the children. It would be difficult, he realized soberly, perhaps even more tricky than anything they had done so far. But possibly the remains of the Hentman organization could assist them. Or some of the slime mold’s countless business contacts among Terrans and non-Terrans. Both were distinct possibilities. And Hentman’s agent who had infiltrated the CIA, his former boss Jack Elwood… but Elwood was now in jail. Anyhow if unhappily enough their efforts failed, as Mary said they would be having more children; this did not make up for the ones lost, but it would be a good omen, one that could not be overlooked.

  “Do you love me, too?” Mary asked, her lips close to his ear.

  “Yes,” he said truthfully. And then he said, “Ouch.” Because without warning she had bitten him, nearly severing the lobe of his ear.

  That, too, seemed to him an omen.

  But of what he could not quite yet tell.

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  ALSO AVAILABLE:

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  VINTAGE BOOKS

  Available at your local bookstore, or call toll-free to order:

  1-800-793-2665 (credit cards only).

  FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, MAY 2002

  Copyright © 1964 by Ace Books, Inc.,

  copyright renewed 1992 by Laura Coelho,

  Christopher Dick, and Isa Hackett

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks

  of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publicatin Data

  Dick, Philip K.

  Clans of the Alphane moon / Philip K. Dick.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-49451-1

  1. Psychiatric hospital patients—Fiction.

  2. Psychiatric hospitals—Fiction. 3. Mentally ill—Fiction.

  4. Satellites—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3554.I3 C5 2002

  813′.54—dc21

  2001056757

/>   www.vintagebooks.com

  v3.0

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  About the Author

  Other Books By This Author

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Copyright