The Game-Players Of Titan

by Philip K. Dick

  And now he could not reasonably dwell on the theme of suicide, because the situation had become worse, was too bad for that to be a solution. My own problems are problems of perception, he realized. Of understanding and then ac-

  cepting. What I have to remember is that they're not all in it. The detective E. B. Black isn't in it and Doctor Philipson; he or it isn't in it, either. I can get help from something, somewhere, sometime.

  "Right you are," Mary Anne said,

  "Are you a telepath?" he said to her.

  "I very much certainly darn right am."

  "But," he said, "your mother said you weren't."

  "My mother lied to you."

  Pete said, "Is Nats Katz the center of all this?"

  "Yes," she said.

  "I thought so," he said, and lay back against the seat, trying not to be sick again.

  Mary Anne said, "Here we are." The car dipped down, skimmed above the deserted pavement of a San Rafael street. "Give me a kiss," she said, "before you get out." She brought the car to a halt at the curb and looking up he saw his apartment building. The light was on in his window; Carol was still up, waiting for him, or else she had fallen asleep with the lights on.

  "A kiss," he echoed. "Really?"

  "Yes really," Mary Anne said, and leaned expectantly toward him.

  "I can't," he said.

  "Why not?"

  "Because," he said, "of what you are, the thing that you are."

  "Oh how absurd," Mary Anne said. "What's the matter with you, Pete? You're lost in dreams!"

  "I am?"

  "Yes," she said, glaring at him in exasperation. "You took dope tonight and got drunk and you were terribly excited about Carol and also you were afraid because of the police. You've been hallucinating like mad for the last two hours. You thought that psychiatrist, Doctor Philipson, was a vug, and then you thought I was a vug." To the car, Mary Anne said, "Am I a vug?"

  "No, Mary Anne," the Rushmore circuit of the car answered, for the second time.

  "See?" she said.

  "I still can't do it," he said. "Just let me out of the car." He found the door handle, opened the door, stepped out on the curb, his legs shaking under him.

  "Good night," Mary Anne said, eyeing him.

  "Good night." He started toward the door of the apartment building.

  The car said, after him, "You got me all dirty."

  "Too bad," Pete said. He opened the apartment building door with his key and passed on inside; the door shut after him.

  When he got upstairs he found Carol standing in the hall in a short, sheer yellow nightgown. "I heard the car drive up," she said. "Thank god you're back! I was so worried about you." She folded her arms, self-consciously blushing. "I should be in my robe, I know."

  "Thanks for waiting up." He passed on by her, went into the bathroom and washed his face and hands with cold water.

  "Can I fix you something to eat or drink? It's so late now."

  "Coffee," he said, "would be fine."

  In the kitchen she fixed a pot of coffee for both of them.

  "Do me a favor," Pete said. "Call Pocatello information, the vidphone autocorp, and find out if there's a Doctor E. R. Philipson listed."

  "All right." Carol clicked on the vidphone. She talked for a time with a sequence of homeostatic circuits and then she rang off. "Yes."

  "I was seeing him," Pete said. "It cost me one hundred and fifty dollars. Their rates are high. Could you tell from what the vidphone said if Philipson is a Terran?"

  "They didn't say. I got his number." She pushed the pad toward him.

  "I'll call him and ask." He clicked the vidphone back on.

  "At five-thirty in the morning?"

  "Yes," he said, dialing. A long time passed; the phone, at the other end, rang and rang. " 'Walkin' the dog see-bawh, see-bawh,'" Pete sang. " 'He have-um red whisker, he have-um green paw.' Doctors expect this," he said to Carol. There was a sharp click, then, and on the vidscreen

  a face, a wrinkled human face, formed. "Doctor Philipson?" Pete asked.

  "Yes." The doctor shook his head blearily, then scrutinized Pete. "Oh, it's you."

  "You remember me?" Pete said.

  "Of course I do. You're the man Joe Schilling sent to me; I saw you for an hour earlier tonight."

  Joe Schilling, Pete said to himself. I didn't know that. "You're not a vug, are you?" Pete said to Doctor Philipson.

  "Is that what you called me up to ask?"

  "Yes," Pete said. "It's very important."

  "I am not a vug," Doctor Philipson said, and hung up.

  Pete shut off the vidphone. "I think I'll go to bed," he said to Carol. "I'm worn out. Are you okay?"

  "Yes," she said. "A little tired."

  "Let's go to bed together," he said to her.

  Carol smiled. "All right. I'm certainly glad to have you back; do you always do things like this, go out on binges until five-thirty A.M.?"

  "No," he said. And I'll never do it again, he thought.

  As he sat on the edge of the bed removing his clothes he found something, a match folder stuffed into his left shoe, beneath his instep. He set the shoe down, held the match folder under the lamp by the bed and examined it. Carol, beside him, had already gotten into bed and apparently had gone directly to sleep.

  On the match folder, in his own hand, penciled words: WE ARE ENTIRELY SURROUNDED BY BUGS RUGS

  VUGS

  That was my discovery tonight, he remembered. My bright, crowning achievement, and I was afraid I'd somehow forget it. I wonder when I wrote that? In the bar? On the way home? Probably when I first figured it out, when I was talking to Doctor Philipson.

  "Carol," he said, "I know who killed Luckman."

  "Who?" she said, still awake.

  "We all did," Pete said. "All six of us who've lost our memories. Janice Remington, Silvanus Angst and his wife, Clem Gaines, Bill Calumine's wife and myself; we did it acting under the influence of the vugs." He held out the

  match folder to her. "Read what I wrote, here. In case I didn't remember; in case they tampered with my mind again."

  Sitting up, she took the match folder and studied it. " 'We are entirely surrounded by vugs.' Excuse me—but I have to laugh."

  He glared at her grimly.

  "That's why you placed that call to the doctor in Idaho and asked him what you did; now I understand. But he isn't a vug; you saw him yourself on the screen and heard him."

  "Yeah, that's so," he admitted.

  "Who else is a vug? Or, as you started to write it—"

  "Mary Anne McClain. She's the worst of them all."

  "Oh," Carol said, nodding. "I see, Pete. That's who you were with, tonight. I wondered. I knew it was someone. Some woman."

  Pete clicked on the vidphone by the bed. "I'm going to call Hawthorne and Black, those two cops. They're not in on it." As he dialed he said to Carol, "No wonder Pat McClain didn't want to be scanned by the police."

  "Pete, don't do it tonight." She reached out and cut the circuit off.

  "But they may get me tonight. Any time."

  "Tomorrow." Carol smiled at him coaxingly. "Please."

  "Can I call Joe Schilling, then?"

  "If you want. I just don't think you should talk to the police right now, the way you're feeling. You're in so much trouble with them already."

  He dialed information, got Joe Schilling's new number in Marin County.

  Presently Schilling's hairy, ruddy face formed on the screen, fully alert. "Yes? What is it? Pete—listen, Carol called and told me the good news, about your luck. My god, that's terrific!"

  Pete said, "Did you send me to a Doctor Philipson in Pocatello?"

  "Who?"

  Pete repeated the name. Joe Schilling's face screwed up in bafflement. "Okay," Pete said. "Sorry I woke you. I didn't think you did."

  "Wait a minute," Schilling said. "Listen, about two years ago when you were at my shop in New Mexico we had a conversation—what was it about? It was so
mething about the side effects of a methamphetamine hydrochloride. You were taking them then, and I warned you against them; there was an article in Scientific American by a psychiatrist in Idaho; I think it was this Philipson you mentioned, and he said that the methamphetamines can precipitate a psychotic episode."

  "I have a dim memory," Pete said.

  "Your theory, your answer to the article, was that you were also taking a trifluoperazine, a dihydrochloride of some sort which you swore compensated for the side effects of the methamphetamines."

  Pete said, "I took a whole bunch of methamphetamine tablets, tonight. 7.5 milligram ones, too."

  "And you also drank?"

  "Yes."

  "Oy gewalt. You remember what Philipson said in his article about a mixture of the methamphetamines and alcohol."

  "Vaguely."

  "They potentiate each other. Did you have a psychotic episode, tonight?"

  "Not by a long shot. I had a moment of absolute truth. Here, I'll read it to you." To Carol, Pete said, "Hand me back that match folder." She passed it to him and he read from it. "That was my revelation, Joe. My experience. 'There are vugs all around us.' "

  Schilling was silent a moment and then he said, "About this Doctor Philipson in Idaho. Did you go to him? Is that why you ask?"

  "I paid one hundred and fifty dollars to him tonight," Pete said. "And in my opinion I got my money's worth."

  After a pause, Schilling said, "I'm going to suggest something to you that'll surprise you. Call that detective, Hawthorne."

  "That's what I wanted to do," Pete said. "But Carol won't let me."

  "I want to talk to Carol," Joe Schilling said.

  Raising to a sitting position in the bed, Carol faced the vidscreen. "I'm right here, Joe. If you think Pete should call Hawthorne—"

  "Carol, I've known your husband for years. He has suicidal depressions. Regularly. To be blunt, dear, he's a manic-depressive; he has an affective psychosis, periodically. Tonight, because of the news about the baby, he's gone into a manic phase and I for one don't blame him. I know how it feels; it's like being reborn. I want him to call Hawthorne for a" very good reason. Hawthorne has had more to do with vugs than anyone else we know. There's no use my talking to Pete; I don't know a damn thing about vugs; maybe they are all around us, for all I know. I'm not going to try to argue Pete out of it, especially at five-thirty in the morning. I suggest you follow the same course."

  "All right," Carol said.

  "Pete," Joe Schilling said. "Remember this, when you talk to Hawthorne. Anything you say may turn up later on in the prosecutor's case against you; Hawthorne is not a friend, pure and simple. So go cautiously. Right?"

  "Yes," Pete agreed. "But tell me what dp you think; was is the mixture of methamphetamines and alcohol?"

  Joe Schilling said, sidestepping the question, "Tell me something. What did Doctor Philipson say?"

  "He said a lot of things. He said, for one, that he thought this situation was going to kill me as it had Luckman. And for me to take special care of Carol. And he said—" He paused. "There's little I can do to change matters."

  "Did he seem friendly?"

  "Yes," Pete said. "Even though he's a vug." He broke the connection, then, waited a moment and dialed the police emergency number. One of the friendly ones, he said to himself. One who's on our side, maybe.

  It took the police switchboard twenty minutes to locate Hawthorne. During that time Pete drank coffee and felt more and more sober.

  "Hawthorne?" he said at last, when the image formed. "Sorry to bother you so late at night. I can tell you who killed Luckman."

  Hawthorne said, "Mr. Garden, we know who killed Luck-

  man. We've got a confession. That's where I've been, at Carmel headquarters." He looked drawn and weary,

  "Who?" Pete demanded. "Which one of the group?"

  "It was nobody in Pretty Blue Fox. We moved our investigations back to the East Coast, where Luckman started out. The confession is by a top employee of Luckman's, a man named Sid Mosk. As yet we haven't been able to establish the motive. We're working on that."

  Pete clicked off the vidphone and sat in silence.

  What now? he asked himself. What do I do?

  "Come to bed," Carol said, lying back down and covering herself up with the blankets.

  Shutting off the lamp, Pete Garden went to bed.

  It was a mistake.

  XI

  HE AWOKE—and saw, standing by the bed, two figures, a man and a woman. "Be quiet," Pat McClain said softly, indicating Carol. The man beside her held the heat-needle pointed steadily at Pete. He was a man Pete had never seen before in his life.

  The man said, "If you make trouble we'll kill her." The heat-needle, now, was aimed at Carol. "Do you understand?"

  The clock on the bedside table read nine-thirty; bright, pale, morning sunlight spilled into the bedroom from the windows.

  "Okay," Pete said. "I understand." Patricia McClain said, "Get up and get dressed." "Where?" Pete said, sliding from the bed. "Here in front of the two of you?"

  Glancing at the man, Patricia said, "In the kitchen." The two of them followed after him, from the bedroom to the kitchen; Patricia shut the door. "You stay with him while he dresses," she said to the man. "I'll watch his wife."

  Bringing out a second heat-needle, she returned stealthily to the bedroom. "He won't make any trouble if Carol's in danger; I can pick that up from his mind. It's acutely pronounced."

  As the unfamiliar man held the heat-needle on him, Pete dressed.

  "So your wife's had luck," the man said. "Congratulations."

  Glancing at him, Pete said, "Are you Pat's husband?"

  "That's right," the man said. "Alien McClain. I'm glad to meet you at last, Mr. Garden." He smiled a thin, brief smile. "Pat's told me so much about you."

  Presently the three of them were walking down the corridor of the apartment building, toward the elevator.

  "Did you daughter get home all right last night?" Pete said.

  "Yes," Patricia said. "Very late, however. What I scanned in her mind was interesting, to say the least. Fortunately she didn't go to sleep right away; she lay thinking. And so I got it all."

  Alien McClain said, "Carol won't wake up for another hour. So there's no immediate problem of her reporting Him missing. Not until almost eleven."

  "How do you know she won't wake up?" Pete said.

  Alien said nothing.

  "You're a pre-cog?" Pete asked.

  There was no answer. But it was obviously so.

  "And," Alien McClain said to his wife—he jerked his head at Pete—"Mr. Garden, here, won't try to escape. At least, most of the parallel possibilities indicate that. Five out of six futures. A good statistic, I think." At the elevator he pressed the button.

  Pete said to Patricia, "Yesterday you were concerned about my safety. Now this." He gestured at the two heat-needles. "Why the change?"

  "Because in the meantime you were out with my daughter," Patricia said. "I wish you hadn't been. I told you that she was too young for you; I warned you away from her."

  "However," Pete pointed out, "as you read in my mind at the time, I found Mary Anne to be stunningly attractive."

  The elevator came; the doors slid open.

  In the elevator stood the detective Wade Hawthorne. He gaped at them, then fumbled inside his coat.

  Alien McClain said, "Being a pre-cog helps. You can never be surprised." With his heat-needle he shot Hawthorne in the head. Hawthorne crashed back against the far wall of the elevator, then fell sloppily and lay sprawled face-first on the floor of the elevator.

  "Get in," Patricia McClain said to Pete. He got in and so did the McClains; with the body of Wade Hawthorne they descended to the ground floor.

  Pete said to the Rushmore unit of the elevator, "They're kidnapping me and they've killed a detective. Get help."

  "Cancel that last request," Patricia McClain said to the elevator. "We don't need any help, thank you."


  "All right, miss," the Rushmore Effect said, obediently.

  The elevator doors opened; the McClains followed behind Pete, through the lobby and out onto the sidewalk.

  To Pete, Patricia McClain said, "Do you know why Hawthorne was in that elevator, riding up to your floor? I'll tell you. To arrest you."

  "No," Pete said. "He told me on the vidphone last night that they'd gotten Luckman's murderer, a man back East."

  The McClains glanced at each other but said nothing.

  "You killed an innocent man," Pete said.

  "Not Hawthorne," Patricia said. "Hardly innocent. I wish we could have gotten that E. B. Black at the same time but it wasn't along. Well, maybe later on."

  "That damn Mary Anne," Alien McClain said as they got into the car parked at the curb; it was not Pete's car. Evidently the McClains had come in it. "Somebody ought to wring her neck." He started the car and it spun upward into the morning haze. "That age is amazing. When you're eighteen you believe you know everything, you possess absolute certitude. And then when you're one hundred and fifty you know you don't."

  "You don't even know you don't," Patricia said. "You just have a queasy intimation that you don't." She sat in the back seat, behind Pete, still holding the heat-needle pointed at him.

  "I'll make a deal with you," Pete said. "I want to be

  sure Carol and the baby are all right. Whatever you want me to do—"

  Patricia interrupted, "You've already made that deal; Carol and the baby are all right. So don't worry about them. Anyhow, the last thing we would want to do is hurt them."

  "That's right," Alien said, nodding. "It would defeat everything we stand for, so to speak." He smiled at Pete. "How does it feel to have luck?"

  "You ought to know," Pete said. "You've got more children than any other man in California."

  "Yes," Alien McClain agreed, "but it's been over eighteen years since that first time, many years indeed. You really went out and tied one on last night, didn't you? Mary Anne said you were in a trance. Absolutely blind."