The Man in the High Castle

by Philip K. Dick

  Death at each moment, one avenue which is open to us at any point. And eventually we choose it, in spite of ourselves. Or we give up and take it deliberately. He watched the Berlin houses pass. My own Volk, he thought; you and I, again together.

  To the three SS men he said, “How are things? Any recent developments in the political situation? I’ve been away for several weeks, before Bormann’s death, in fact.”

  The man to his right answered, “There’s naturally plenty of hysterical mob support for the Little Doctor. It was the mob that swept him into office. However, it’s unlikely that when more sober elements prevail they’ll want to support a cripple and demagogue who depends on inflaming the mass with his lies and spellbinding.”

  “I see,” Wegener said.

  It goes on, he thought. The internecine hate. Perhaps the seeds are there, in that. They will eat one another at last, and leave the rest of us here and there in the world, still alive. Still enough of us once more to build and hope and make a few simple plans.

  At one o’clock in the afternoon, Juliana Frink reached Cheyenne, Wyoming. In the downtown business section, across from the enormous old train depot, she stopped at a cigar store and bought two afternoon newspapers. Parked at the curb she searched until she at last found the item.

  VACATION ENDS IN FATAL SLASHING

  Sought for questioning concerning the fatal slashing of her husband in their swank rooms at the President Garner Hotel in Denver, Mrs. Joe Cinnadella of Canon City, according to hotel employees, left immediately after what must have been the tragic climax of a marital quarrel. Razor blades found in the room, ironically supplied as a convenience by the hotel to its guests, apparently were used by Mrs. Cinnadella, described as dark, attractive, well-dressed and slender, about thirty, to slash the throat of her husband, whose body was found by Theodore Ferris, hotel employee who had picked up shirts from Cinnadella just half an hour earlier and was returning them as instructed, only to come onto the grisly scene. The hotel suite, police said, showed signs of struggle, suggesting that a violent argument had . . .

  So he’s dead, Juliana thought as she folded up the newspaper. And not only that, they don’t have my name right; they don’t know who I am or anything about me.

  Much less anxious now, she drove on until she found a suitable motel; there she made arrangements for a room and carried her possessions in from the car. From now on I don’t have to hurry, she said to herself. I can even wait until evening to go to the Abendsens’; that way I’ll be able to wear my new dress. It wouldn’t do to show up during the day with it on—you just don’t wear a formal dress like that before dinner.

  And I can finish reading the book.

  She made herself comfortable in the motel room, turning on the radio, getting coffee from the motel lunch counter; she propped herself up on the neatly made bed with the new unread clean copy of The Grasshopper which she had bought at the hotel bookshop in Denver.

  At six-fifteen in the evening she finished the book. I wonder if Joe got to the end of it? she wondered. There’s so much more in it than he understood. What is it Abendsen wanted to say? Nothing about his make-believe world. Am I the only one who knows? I’ll bet I am; nobody else really understands Grasshopper but me—they just imagine they do.

  Still a little shaky, she put it away in her suitcase and then put on her coat and left the motel room to search for a place to eat dinner. The air smelled good and the signs and lights of Cheyenne seemed particularly exciting. In front of a bar two pretty, black-eyed Indian prostitutes quarreling—she slowed to watch. Many cars, shiny ones, coasted up and down the streets; the entire spectacle had an aura of brightness and expectancy, of looking ahead to some happy and important event, rather than back . . . back, she thought, to the stale and the dreary, the used-up and thrown-away.

  At an expensive French restaurant—where a man in a white coat parked customers’ cars, and each table had a candle burning in a huge wine goblet, and the butter was served not in squares but whipped into round pale marbles—she ate a dinner which she enjoyed, and then, with plenty of time to spare, strolled back toward her motel. The Reichsbank notes were almost gone, but she did not care; it had no importance. He told us about our own world, she thought as she unlocked the door to her motel room. This, what’s around us now. In the room, she again switched on the radio. He wants us to see it for what it is. And I do, and more so each moment.

  Taking the blue Italian dress from its carton, she laid it out scrupulously on the bed. It had undergone no damage; all it needed, at most, was a thorough brushing to remove the lint. But when she opened the other parcels she discovered that she had not brought any of the new half-bras from Denver.

  “God damn it,” she said, sinking down in a chair. She lit a cigarette and sat smoking for a time.

  Maybe she could wear it with a regular bra. She slipped off her blouse and skirt and tried the dress on. But the straps of the bra showed and so did the upper part of each cup, so that would not do. Or maybe, she thought, I can go with no bra at all . . . it had been years since she had tried that . . . it recalled to her the old days in high school when she had had a very small bust; she had even worried about it, then. But now further maturity and her judo had made her a size thirty-eight. However, she tried it without the bra, standing on a chair in the bathroom to view herself in the medicine cabinet mirror.

  The dress displayed itself stunningly, but good lord, it was too risky. All she had to do was bend over to put out a cigarette or pick up a drink—and disaster.

  A pin! She could wear the dress with no bra and collect the front. Dumping the contents of her jewelry box onto the bed, she spread out the pins, relics which she had owned for years, given her by Frank or by other men before their marriage, and the new one which Joe had gotten her in Denver. Yes, a small horse-shaped silver pin from Mexico would do; she found the exact spot. So she could wear the dress after all.

  I’m glad to get anything now, she thought to herself. So much had gone wrong; so little remained anyhow of the wonderful plans.

  She did an extensive brushing job on her hair so that it crackled and shone, and that left only the need of a choice of shoes and earrings. And then she put on her new coat, got her new handmade leather purse, and set out.

  Instead of driving the old Studebaker, she had the motel owner phone for a taxi. While she waited in the motel office she suddenly had the notion to call Frank. Why it had come to her she could not fathom, but there the idea was. Why not? she asked herself. She could reverse the charges; he would be overwhelmed to hear from her and glad to pay.

  Standing behind the desk in the office, she held the phone receiver to her ear, listening delightedly to the long-distance operators talk back and forth trying to make the connection for her. She could hear the San Francisco operator, far off, getting San Francisco information for the number, then many pops and crackles in her ear, and at last the ringing noise itself. As she waited she watched for the taxi; it should be along any time, she thought. But it won’t mind waiting; they expect it.

  “Your party does not answer,” the Cheyenne operator told her at last. “We will put the call through again later and—”

  “No,” Juliana said, shaking her head. It had been just a whim anyhow. “I won’t be here. Thank you.” She hung up—the motel owner had been standing nearby to see that nothing would be mistakenly charged to him—and walked quickly out of the office, onto the cool, dark sidewalk, to stand and wait there.

  From the traffic a gleaming new cab coasted up to the curb and halted; the door opened and the driver hopped out to hurry around.

  A moment later, Juliana was on her way, riding in luxury in the rear of the cab, across Cheyenne to the Abendsens’.

  The Abendsen house was lit up and she could hear music and voices. It was a single-story stucco house with many shrubs and a good deal of garden made up mostly of climbing roses. As she started up the flagstone path she thought, Can I actually be there? Is this the High Castl
e? What about the rumors and stories? The house was ordinary, well maintained and the grounds tended. There was even a child’s tricycle parked in the long cement driveway.

  Could it be the wrong Abendsen? She had gotten the address from the Cheyenne phone book, but it matched the number she had called the night before from Greeley.

  She stepped up onto the porch with its wronght-iron railings and pressed the buzzer. Through the half-open door she could make out the living room, a number of persons standing about, Venetian blinds on the windows, a piano, fireplace, bookcases . . . nicely furnished, she thought. A party going on? But they were not formally dressed.

  A boy, tousled, about thirteen, wearing a T-shirt and jeans, flung the door wide. “Yes?”

  She said, “Is—Mr. Abendsen home? Is he busy?”

  Speaking to someone behind him in the house, the boy called, “Mom, she wants to see Dad.”

  Beside the boy appeared a woman with reddish-brown hair, possibly thirty-five, with strong, unwinking gray eyes and a smile so thoroughly competent and remorseless that Juliana knew she was facing Caroline Abendsen.

  “I called last night,” Juliana said.

  “Oh yes of course.” Her smile increased. She had perfect white regular teeth; Irish, Juliana decided. Only Irish blood could give that jawline such femininity. “Let me take your purse and coat. This is a very good time for you; these are a few friends. What a lovely dress . . . it’s House of Cherubini, isn’t it?” She led Juliana across the living room, to a bedroom where she laid Juliana’s things with the others on the bed. “My husband is around somewhere. Look for a tall man with glasses, drinking an old-fashioned.” The intelligent light in her eyes poured out to Juliana; her lips quivered—there is so much understood between us, Juliana realized. Isn’t that amazing?

  “I drove a long way,” Juliana said.

  “Yes, you did. Now I see him.” Caroline Abendsen guided her back into the living room, toward a group of men. “Dear,” she called, “come over here. This is one of your readers who is very anxious to say a few words to you.”

  One man of the group moved, detached and approached carrying his drink. Juliana saw an immensely tall man with black curly hair; his skin, too, was dark, and his eyes seemed purple or brown, very softly colored behind his glasses. He wore a hand-tailored, expensive, natural fiber suit, perhaps English wool; the suit augmented his wide robust shoulders with no lines of its own. In all her life she had never seen a suit quite like it; she found herself staring in fascination.

  Caroline said, “Mrs. Frink drove all the way up from Canon City, Colorado, just to talk to you about Grasshopper.”

  “I thought you lived in a fortress,” Juliana said.

  Bending to regard her, Hawthorne Abendsen smiled a meditative smile. “Yes, we did. But we had to get up to it in an elevator and I developed a phobia. I was pretty drunk when I got the phobia but as I recall it, and they tell it, I refused to stand up in it because I said that the elevator cable was being hauled up by Jesus Christ, and we were going all the way. And I was determined not to stand.”

  She did not understand.

  Caroline explained, “Hawth has said as long as I’ve known him that when he finally sees Christ he is going to sit down; he’s not going to stand.”

  The hymn, Juliana remembered. “So you gave up the High Castle and moved back into town,” she said.

  “I’d like to pour you a drink,” Hawthorne said.

  “All right,” she said. “But not an old-fashioned.” She had already got a glimpse of the sideboard with several bottles of whiskey on it, hors d’oeuvres, glasses, ice, mixer, cherries and orange slices. She walked toward it, Abendsen accompanying her. “Just I. W. Harper over ice,” she said. “I always enjoy that. Do you know the oracle?”

  “No,” Hawthorne said, as he fixed her drink for her.

  Astounded, she said, “The Book of Changes?”

  “I don’t, no,” he repeated. He handed her her drink.

  Caroline Abendsen said, “Don’t tease her.”

  “I read your book,” Juliana said. “In fact I finished it this evening. How did you know all that, about the other world you wrote about?”

  Hawthorne said nothing; he rubbed his knuckle against his upper lip, staring past her and frowning.

  “Did you use the oracle?” Juliana said.

  Hawthorne glanced at her.

  “I don’t want you to kid or joke,” Juliana said. “Tell me without making something witty out of it.”

  Chewing his lip, Hawthorne gazed down at the floor; he wrapped his arms about himself, rocked back and forth on his heels. The others in the room nearby had become silent, and Juliana noticed that their manner had changed. They were not happy, now, because of what she had said. But she did not try to take it back or disguise it; she did not pretend. It was too important. And she had come too far and done too much to accept anything less than the truth from him.

  “That’s—a hard question to answer,” Abendsen said finally.

  “No it isn’t,” Juliana said.

  Now everyone in the room had become silent; they all watched Juliana standing with Caroline and Hawthorne Abendsen.

  “I’m sorry,” Abendsen said, “I can’t answer right away. You’ll have to accept that.”

  “Then why did you write the book?” Juliana said.

  Indicating with his drink glass, Abendsen said, “What’s that pin on your dress do? Ward off dangerous anima-spirits of the immutable world? Or does it just hold everything together?”

  “Why do you change the subject?” Juliana said. “Evading what I asked you, and making a pointless remark like that? It’s childish.”

  Hawthorne Abendsen said, “Everyone has—technical secrets. You have yours; I have mine. You should read my book and accept it on face value, just as I accept what I see—” Again he pointed at her with his glass. “Without inquiring if it’s genuine underneath, there, or done with wires and staves and foam-rubber padding. Isn’t that part of trusting in the nature of people and what you see in general?” He seemed, she thought, irritable and flustered now, no longer polite, no longer a host. And Caroline, she noticed out of the corner of her eye, had an expression of tense exasperation; her lips were pressed together and she had stopped smiling entirely.

  “In your book,” Juliana said, “you showed that there’s a way out. Isn’t that what you meant?”

  “‘Out,’” he echoed ironically.

  Juliana said, “You’ve done a lot for me; now I can see there’s nothing to be afraid of, nothing to want or hate or avoid, here, or run from. Or pursue.”

  He faced her, jiggling his glass, studying her. “There’s a great deal in this world worth the candle, in my opinion.”

  “I understand what’s going on in your mind,” Juliana said. To her it was the old and familiar expression on a man’s face, but it did not upset her to see it here. She no longer felt as she once had. “The Gestapo file said you’re attracted to women like me.”

  Abendsen, with only the slightest change of expression, said, “There hasn’t been a Gestapo since 1947.”

  “The SD, then, or whatever it is.”

  “Would you explain?” Caroline said in a brisk voice.

  “I want to,” Juliana said. “I drove up to Denver with one of them. They’re going to show up here eventually. You should go some place they can’t find you, instead of holding open house here like this, letting anyone walk in, the way I did. The next one who rides up here—there won’t be anyone like me to put a stop to him.”

  “You say ‘the next one,’” Abendsen said, after a pause. “What became of the one you rode up to Denver with? Why won’t he show up here?”

  She said, “I cut his throat.”

  “That’s quite something,” Hawthorne said. “To have a girl tell you that, a girl you never saw before in your life.”

  “Don’t you believe me?”

  He nodded. “Sure.” He smiled at her in a shy, gentle, forlorn way. Appa
rently it did not even occur to him not to believe her. “Thanks,” he said.

  “Please hide from them,” she said.

  “Well,” he said, “we did try that, as you know. As you read on the cover of the book . . . about all the weapons and charged wire. And we had it written so it would seem we’re still taking great precautions.” His voice had a weary, dry tone.

  “You could at least carry a weapon,” his wife said. “I know someday someone you invite in and converse with will shoot you down, some Nazi expert paying you back; and you’ll be philosophizing just this way. I foresee it.”

  “They can get you,” Hawthorne said, “if they want to. Charged wire and High Castle or not.”

  You’re so fatalistic, Juliana thought. Resigned to your own destruction. Do you know that, too, the way you knew the world in your book?

  Juliana said, “The oracle wrote your book. Didn’t it?”

  Hawthorne said, “Do you want the truth?”

  “I want it and I’m entitled to it,” she answered, “for what I’ve done. Isn’t that so? You know it’s so.”

  “The oracle,” Abendsen said, “was sound asleep all through the writing of the book. Sound asleep in the corner of the office.” His eyes showed no merriment; instead, his face seemed longer, more somber than ever.

  “Tell her,” Caroline said. “She’s right; she’s entitled to know, for what she did on your behalf.” To Juliana she said, “I’ll tell you, then, Mrs. Frink. One by one Hawth made the choices. Thousands of them. By means of the lines. Historic period. Subject. Characters. Plot. It took years. Hawth even asked the oracle what sort of success it would be. It told him that it would be a very great success, the first real one of his career. So you were right. You must use the oracle quite a lot yourself, to have known.”

  Juliana said, “I wonder why the oracle would write a novel. Did you ever think of asking it that? And why one about the Germans and the Japanese losing the war? Why that particular story and no other one? What is there it can’t tell us directly, like it always has before? This must be different, don’t you think?”