The Complete Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol. 5: The Eye of the Sibyl and Other Classic Stories

by Philip K. Dick

  As he made his way unsteadily to the control module, he saw that Norman, who had been sent with him to amuse him, was also awake. The cat floated slowly in circles, batting at a pen that somehow had gotten loose. Strange, Bedford thought.

  "I thought you were unconscious with me." He examined the readout of the ship's course. Impossible! A fifth-parsec off in the direction of Sirius. It would add a week to his journey. With grim precision he reset the controls, then sent out an alert signal to Meknos III, his destination.

  "Troubles?" the Meknosian operator answered. The voice was dry and cold, the calculating monotone of something that always made Bedford think of snakes.

  He explained his situation.

  "We need the vaccine," the Meknosian said. "Try to stay on course."

  Norman the cat floated majestically by the control module, reached out a paw, and jabbed at random; two activated buttons sounded faint bleeps and the ship altered course.

  "So you did it," Bedford said. "You humiliated me in the eyes of an alien. You have reduced me to idiocy vis-a-vis the alien mind." He grabbed the cat. And squeezed.

  "What was that strange sound?" the Meknosian operator asked. "A kind of lament."

  Bedford said quietly, "There's nothing left to lament. Forget you heard it." He shut off the radio, carried the cat's body to the trash sphincter, and ejected it.

  A moment later he had returned to his theta chamber and, once more, dozed. This time there would be no tampering with his controls. He dozed in peace.

  When his ship docked at Meknos III, the senior member of the alien medical team greeted him with an odd request. "We would like to see your pet."

  "I have no pet," Bedford said. Certainly it was true.

  "According to the manifest filed with us in advance -"

  "It is really none of your business," Bedford said. "You have your vaccine; I'll be taking off."

  The Meknosian said, "The safety of any life-form is our business. We will inspect your ship."

  "For a cat that doesn't exist," Bedford said.

  Their search proved futile. Impatiently, Bedford watched the alien creatures scrutinize every storage locker and passageway of his ship. Unfortunately, the Meknosians found ten sacks of dry cat kibble. A lengthy discussion ensued among them, in their own language.

  "Do I have permission," Bedford said harshly, "to return to Earth now? I'm on a tight schedule." What the aliens were thinking and saying was of no importance to him; he wished only to return to his silent theta chamber and profound sleep.

  "You'll have to go through decontamination procedure A," the senior Meknosian medical officer said. "So that no spore or virus from -"

  "I realize that," Bedford said. "Let's get it done."

  Later, when decontamination had been completed and he was back in his ship starting up the drive, his radio came on. It was one or another of the Meknosians; to Bedford they all looked alike. "What was the cat's name?" the Meknosian asked.

  "Norman," Bedford said, and jabbed the ignite switch. His ship shot upward and he smiled.

  He did not smile, however, when he found the power supply to his theta chamber missing. Nor did he smile when the backup unit could also not be located. Did I forget to bring it? he asked himself. No, he decided; I wouldn't do that. They took it.

  Two years before he reached Terra. Two years of full consciousness on his part, deprived of theta sleep; two years of sitting or floating or – as he had seen in military-preparedness training holofilms – curled up in a corner, totally psychotic.

  He punched out a radio request to return to Meknos III. No response. Well, so much for that.

  Seated at his control module, he snapped on the little inboard computer and said, "My theta chamber won't function; it's been sabotaged. What do you suggest I do for two years?"

  THERE ARE EMERGENCY ENTERTAINING TAPES

  "Right," he said. He would have remembered. "Thank you." Pressing the proper button, he caused the door of the tape compartment to slide open.

  No tapes. Only a cat toy – a miniature punching bag – that had been included for Norman; he had never gotten around to giving it to him. Otherwise… bare shelves.

  The alien mind, Bedford thought. Mysterious and cruel.

  Setting the ship's audio recorder going, he said calmly and with as much conviction as possible, "What I will do is build my next two years around the daily routine. First, there are meals. I will spend as much time as possible planning, fixing, eating, and enjoying delicious repasts. During the time ahead of me, I will try out every combination of victuals possible." Unsteadily, he rose and made his way to the massive food storage locker.

  As he stood gazing into the tightly packed locker – tightly packed with row upon row of identical snacks – he thought, On the other hand, there's not much you can do with a two-year supply of cat kibble. In the way of variety. Are they all the same flavor?

  They were all the same flavor.

  Notes

  All notes in italics are by Philip K. Dick. The year when the note was written appears in parentheses following the note. Most of these notes were written as story notes for the collections THE BEST OF PHILIP K. DICK (published 1977) and THE GOLDEN MAN (published 1980). A few were written at the request of editors publishing or reprinting a PKD story in a book or magazine.

  When there is a date following the name of a story, it is the date the manuscript of that story was first received by Dick's agent, per the records of the Scott Meredith Literary Agency. Absence of a date means no record is available. The name of a magazine followed by a month and year indicates the first published appearance of a story. An alternate name following a story indicates Dick's original name for the story, as shown in the agency records.

  These five volumes include all of Philip K. Dick's short fiction, with the exception of short novels later published as or included in novels, childhood writings, and unpublished writings for which manuscripts have not been found. The stories are arranged as closely as possible in chronological order of composition; research for this chronology was done by Gregg Rickman and Paul Williams.

  THE LITTLE BLACK BOX ("From Ordinary Household Objects") 5/6/63. Worlds of Tomorrow, Aug 1964.

  I made use of this story when I wrote my novel DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? Actually, the idea is better put forth in the story. Here, a religion is regarded as a menace to all political systems; therefore it, too, is a kind of political system, perhaps even an ultimate one. The concept of caritas (or agape) shows up in my writing as the key to the authentic human. The android, which is the unauthentic human, the mere reflex machine, is unable to experience empathy. In this story it is never clear whether Mercer is an invader from some other world. But he must be; in a sense all religious leaders are… but not from another planet as such. (1978)

  THE WAR WITH THE FNOOLS Galactic Outpost, Spring 1964.

  Well, once again we are invaded. And, humiliatingly, by a life form which is absurd. My colleague Tim Powers once said that Martians could invade us simply by putting on funny hats, and we'd never notice. It's a sort of low-budget invasion. I guess we're at the point where we can be amused by the idea of Earth being invaded. (And this is when they really zap you.) (1978)

  A GAME OF UNCHANCE 11/9/63. Amazing, July 1964.

  A carnival is feral; another carnival shows up and is pitted against the first one; and the antithetical interaction is preplanned in such a way that the first carnival wins. It's as if the two opposing forces that underlie all change in the universe are rigged; in favor of thanatos, the dark force, yin or strife, which is to say, the force of destruction. (1978)

  PRECIOUS ARTIFACT 12/9/63. Galaxy, Oct 1964.

  This story utilized a peculiar logic which I generally employ, which Professor Patricia Warrick pointed out to me. First you have Y. Then you do a cybernetics flipflop and you have null-Y. Okay, now you reverse it again and have null-null-Y. Okay, the question is: Does null-null Y equal Y3? Or is it a deepening of null-Y? In this story
, what appears to be the case is Y but we find out the opposite is true (null-Y). But then that turns out not to be true, so are we back to Y? Professor Warrick says that my logic winds up with Y equals null-Y. I don't agree, but I'm not sure what I do wind up with. Whatever it is, in terms of logic, it is contained in this particular story. Either I've invented a whole new logic or, ahem, I'm not playing with a full deck. (1978)

  RETREAT SYNDROME 12/23/63. Worlds of Tomorrow, Jan 1965.

  A TERRAN ODYSSEY 3/17/64 [previously unpublished; put together by PKD from sections of DR. BLOODMONEY].

  YOUR APPOINTMENT WILL BE YESTERDAY 8/27/65. Amazing, Aug 1966. [Included in adapted form in PKD's novel COUNTER-CLOCK WORLD.]

  HOLY QUARREL 9/13/65. Worlds of Tomorrow, May 1966.

  NOT BY ITS COVER 9/21/65. Famous Science Fiction, Summer 1968.

  Here I presented what used to be a wish on my part: that the Bible was true. Obviously, I was at a sort of halfway point between doubt and faith. Years later I'm still in that position; I'd like the Bible to be true, but -- well, maybe if it isn't we can make it so. But, alas, it's going to take plenty of work to do it. (1978)

  RETURN MATCH 10/14/65. Galaxy, Feb 1967.

  The theme of dangerous toys runs like a tattered thread throughout my writing. The dangerous disguised as the innocent… and what could be more innocent than a toy? This story makes me think of a set of huge speakers I looked at last week; they cost six thousand dollars and were larger than refrigerators. Our joke about them was that if you didn't go to the audio store to see them, they'd come to see you. (1978)

  FAITH OF OUR FATHERS 1/17/66. Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison, Garden City, 1967. [Hugo Award nominee]

  The title is that of an old hymn. I think, with this story, I managed to offend everybody, which seemed at the time to be a good idea, but which I've regretted since. Communism, drugs, sex, God -- I put it all together, and it's been my impression since that when the roof fell in on me years later, this story was in some eerie way involved. (1976)

  I don't advocate any of the ideas in Faith Of Our Fathers; I don't, for example, claim that the Iron Curtain countries will win the cold war -- or morally ought to. One theme in the story, however, seems compelling to me, in view of recent experiments with hallucinogenic drugs: the theological experience, which so many who have taken LSD have reported. This appears to me to be a true new frontier; to a certain extent the religious experience can now be scientifically studied… and, what is more, may be viewed as part hallucination but containing other, real components. God, as a topic in science fiction, when it appeared at all, used to be treated polemically, as in OUT OF THE SILENT PLANET. But I prefer to treat it as intellectually exciting. What if, through psychedelic drugs, the religious experience becomes commonplace in the life of intellectuals? The old atheism, which seemed to many of us - including me -- valid in terms of our experiences, or rather lack of experiences, would have to step momentarily aside. Science fiction, always probing what is about to be thought, become, must eventually tackle without preconceptions a future neo-mystical society in which theology constitutes as major a force as in the medieval period. This is not necessarily a backward step, because now these beliefs can be tested - forced to put up or shut up. I, myself, have no real beliefs about God; only my experience that He is present… subjectively, of course; but the inner realm is real too. And in a science fiction story one projects what has been a personal inner experience into a milieu; it becomes socially shared, hence discussable. The last word, however, on the subject of God may have already been said: in A.D. 840 by John Scotus Erigena at the court of the Frankish king Charles the Bald. "We do not know what God is. God Himself does not know what He is because He is not anything. Literally God is not, because He transcends being." Such a penetrating -- and Zen - mystical view, arrived at so long ago, will be hard to top; in my own experiences with psychedelic drugs I have had precious tiny illumination compared with Erigena. (1966)

  THE STORY TO END ALL STORIES FOR HARLAN ELLISON'S ANTHOLOGY DANGEROUS VISIONS Niekas, Fall 1968.

  THE ELECTRIC ANT 12/4/68. Fantasy amp; Science Fiction, Oct 1969.

  Again the theme: How much of what we call "reality" is actually out there or rather within our own head? The ending of this story has always frightened me… image of the rushing wind, the sound of emptiness. As if the character hears the final fate of the world itself. (1976)

  CADBURY, THE BEAVER WHO LACKED written 12/71 [previously unpublished].

  A LITTLE SOMETHING FOR US TEMPUNAUTS 2/13/73. Final Stage, edited by Edward L. Ferman and Barry N. Malzberg, New York, 1974.

  In this story I felt a vast weariness over the space program, which had thrilled us so at the start -- especially the first lunar landing -- and then had been forgotten and virtually shutdown, a relic of history. I wondered, if time-travel became a "program" would it suffer the same fate? Or was there an even worse possibility latent in it, within the very nature of the paradoxes of time-travel? (1976)

  The essence of the time-travel story is a confrontation of some sort, best of all by the person with himself. Really, this is the drama of much good fiction anyhow, except that in such a story as A Little Something For Us Tempunauts the moment in which the man meets himself face-to-face permits an alienation that could not occur in any other variety of writing… alienation and not understanding, as one might expect. Addison Doug-One rides alive on the casket containing the corpse of Addison Doug-Two and knows it, knows he is now two persons -- he is split as in a physical schizophrenia. And his mind also is divided rather than united; he gains no insight from this event, neither of himself nor of that other Addison Doug who can no longer reason or problem-solve, but can only lie there inert and in darkness. This irony is just one of the enormous number of ironies possible in time-travel stories; naively, one would think that to travel into the future and return would lead to an increase in knowledge rather than to a loss of it. The three tempunauts go ahead in time, return, and are trapped, perhaps forever, by ironies and within ironies, the greatest one of which, I think, is their own bewilderment at their own actions. It is as if the increase in information brought about by such a technological achievement -- information as to exactly what is going to happen - decreases true understanding. Perhaps Addison Doug knows too much.

  In writing this story I felt a weary sadness of my own, and fell into the space (I should say time) that the characters are in, more so than usual. I felt a futility about futility -- there is nothing more defeating than a strong awareness of defeat, and as I wrote I realized that what for us remains merely a psychological problem - over-awareness of the likelihood of failing and the lethal feedback from this -- would for a time-traveler be instantly converted into an existential, physical horror-chamber. We, when we're depressed, are fortunately imprisoned within our heads; once time-travel becomes a reality, however, this self-defeating psychological attitude could spell doom on a scale beyond calculation. Here again, science fiction allows a writer to transfer what usually is an internal problem into an external environment; he projects it in the form of a society, a planet, with everyone stuck, so to speak, in what formerly was one unique brain. I don't blame some readers for resenting this, because the brains of some of us are unpleasant places to be in… but on the other hand, what a valuable tool this is for us: to grasp that we do not all reatty see the universe in the same way, or, in a sense, the same universe at all. Addison Doug's dismal world suddenly spreads out and becomes the world of many people. But unlike a person reading a story, who can and will finish it and abolish his inclusion in the author's world, the people in this story are stuck fast forever. This is a tyranny not yet possible so readily… but, when you consider the power of the coercive propaganda apparatus of the modern-day state (when it's the enemy state we call it "brainwashing") you might wonder if it isn't a question of degree. Our glorious leaders of right now cannot trap us in extensions of their heads merely by lugging some old VW motor parts around, but the alarm of
the characters in this story as to what is befalling them might rightly be our own alarm in a lesser way.

  Addison Doug expresses the desire "to see no more summers." We should all object; no one should drag us, however subtly or for whatever evidently benign reasons, into that view or that desire: we should individually and collectively yearn to see as many summers as we can, even in the imperfect world we are living in now. (1973)

  THE PRE-PERSONS 12/20/73. Fantasy amp; Science Fiction, Oct 1974.

  In this I incurred the absolute hate of Joanna Russ who wrote me the nastiest letter I've ever received; at one point she said she usually offered to beat up people (she didn't use the word "people") who expressed opinions such as this. I admit that this story amounts to special pleading, and I am sorry to offend those who disagree with me about abortion on demand. I also got some unsigned hate mail, some of it not from individuals but from organizations promoting abortion on demand. Well, I have always managed to get myself into hot water. Sorry, people. But for the pre-person's sake I am not sorry. I stand where I stand: "Hier steh' Ich; Ich kann nicht anders," as Martin Luther is supposed to have said. (1978)

  THE EYE OF THE SYBIL 5/15/75 [previously unpublished].

  THE DAY MR. COMPUTER FELL OUT OF ITS TREE written summer 1977 [previously unpublished].

  THE EXIT DOOR LEADS IN 6/21/79. Rolling Stone College Papers, Fall 1979.

  CHAINS OF AIR, WEB OF AETHER ("The Man Who Knew How to Lose") 7/9/79. Stellar #5, edited by Judy-Lynn del Rey, New York, 1980. [Included in PKD's novel THE DIVINE INVASION.]

  STRANGE MEMORIES OF DEATH 3/27/80. Interzone, Summer 1984.

  I HOPE I SHALL ARRIVE SOON (titled "Frozen Journey" in its magazine appearance; "I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon" is PKD's title) 4/24/80. Playboy, Dec 1980. [Playboy Award winner]

  RAUTAVAARA'S CASE 5/13/80. Omni, Oct 1980.