Philip K. Dick is Dead, Alas

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Philip K. Dick is Dead, Alas Page 28

by Michael Bishop

21

  LONE BOY entered the Happy Puppy Pet Emporium. Mr. Kemmings, the manager, was alone in the shop.

  Cal had been gone two weeks now, and Lone Boy feared that the authorities had sent him to a federal prison—possibly even the decrepit, overcrowded one in Atlanta still housing Cuban prisoners of war from the successful invasion of that island in 1975. Its communist dictator Fidel Castro had been hanged on live television at an undisclosed site in the States, but many of the soldiers still loyal to his dishonored cause remained incarcerated in the Atlanta pen.

  Nixon justified the cost of keeping them there by using them as exchange bait in any international situation in which American citizens were taken hostage, a policy that had proved a brilliant and popular political coup. Loan himself admired it immensely, but the thought that Cal Pickford might be sitting in a cell next to an embittered, die-hard Castroite amplified his feelings of guilt. He had betrayed Pickford to avoid the inconvenience of a LAC refresher course. He had sold him out for a Daredevil comic book.

  “What can I do for you, Lone Boy?” said Mr. Kemmings.

  “I want to buy a pet.”

  “For your girls, I’d imagine. A parakeet? A Brezhnev bear?”

  “My girls already have Brezhnev bears. One each.” Gifts, Loan resentfully told himself, from that ruthless American patriot Grace Rinehart. Bitch of all bitches.

  “Oh, really? Where did you get them?”

  Uh-oh. Mr. K’s feelings are hurt you didn’t buy your pigs from him. Hurriedly, Lone Boy said, “They were given to us by a family friend. Hey, would I buy one of those skinned Ruski mutants from anybody but you?”

  Mr. K’s face uncrinkled from its disappointment, crinkled again from pleasure. “Well, if they’ve already got ‘bears’, what else do you think they’d like?”

  “Not for the girls, sir. For me.”

  “Oh. A dog? Dogs’re man’s best friends. Of course, parrots can be good company, too, and they live a long time.”

  Lone Boy made no answer. He walked deeper into the shop. He halted only when he had reached the smeared glass cage holding the boa constrictor that Cal and his boss had always jocularly called My Main Squeeze. The snake, snoozing in a dun-colored stack of its own coils, seemed to have increased in girth since Lone Boy’s last visit. Looking at it, he shuddered… but knew that it was the perfect gift to terrify and humiliate the woman who’d forced him to do a great evil to avoid a little personal pain.

  “This.”

  Mr. Kemmings was startled. “Squeeze? You don’t really want Squeeze. Nobody wants Squeeze. He’s expensive.”

  “That’s all right. I’ve been saving.”

  “So’s his food, Lone Boy. You have to feed him mice.”

  “That’s okay, too. I don’t go ga-ga over mice.”

  “It’ll be a pretty big shock for the twins, Lone. Sort of like making them watch Squeeze eat their Brezhnev bears.”

  “I’m not going to take it home. I’m buying the boa for someone greatly in sympathy with reptilian ways.”

  Mr. K. nodded, but Loan could tell that he did not really want to sell. His reluctance would have dissuaded him from writing a check for My Main Squeeze except that Lone Boy could still see the Bonner-Pickfords’ husky dead in their bathtub. Further, insomnia plagued his nights, and he could no longer sit down to eat without suffering a surge of nausea that had limited his recent fare to white rice, apples and tea. Grace Rinehart had to pay.

  “Have you made any plans to get Squeeze to your friend?” Mr. K. asked. “Do you have a car?”

  “It’ll be a hassle—but I’ll manage, I’ll manage.”

  Cal cradled the gelding’s forefoot between his legs, working at it with a hoof pick. A pair of quarter horses that Hiram Berthelot had bought from Brown Thrasher Barony were already well pedicured (Horsy Stout had taken care of them), but the feet of Berthelot’s four middle-aged quarter horses needed work. Over the winter their hooves had grown extra horn, or split, or both. And once the tardy spring roundup began, these horses would be at a risky disadvantage if Cal failed to trim, file, and pick.

  “Doin’ fine, now,” he soothed the gelding. “Just hold steady.”

  It was backbreaking work. Cal had been at it for nearly eleven hours. The saddle of muscles near his lower spine creaked like old leather, and a numbing ache blanketed him dorsally from shoulders to hips. Somehow, though, it felt good. G-O-O-D.

  Can’t say I’m crazy about the way I got this job, Cal thought, but the job itself is the job I was born for.

  Right now, his foremost anxiety was that Lia might already be expecting him home. Also troubling was his nagging awareness that she still bitterly resented Grace Rinehart for causing Vike’s death and for blackmailing both of them with the Damoclean sword of those stolen manuscripts. Lia viewed his employment on Berthelot Acres as slavery, while he regarded it as salvation, a private Return to Your Roots program that had given him back his real identity. Or, at least, part of it. Nowadays, you couldn’t hope for much more.

  The horse trap and stable on Berthelot Acres lay about half a mile from the mansion itself. Cal was glad to be at this remove. That he spent most of his work time alone did not bother him. In fact, Berthelot—four days after Miss Emily’s funeral, two days after the phone call to the pet shop—had told Cal to do all that was necessary to get ready for a roundup by mid-May. Cal had not seen the man since. Preparing for a roundup—even in Georgia—was a straightforward, if fatiguing and time-consuming, operation, and Cal had been doing it alone to keep from having to hire extra hands until it was time to gather the cattle.

  A portable radio on the floor near his stool played a song by Hank Williams, Jr. Next, an upbeat ditty by Berle Haggard (like Miss Grace, a recipient of the Medal of Freedom). Country-western stuff dominated the airwaves nowadays, and although Cal could get one soft-rock FM station from Atlanta—at least in good weather—the saccharine pap passing for rock ‘n’ roll on that station made him want to puke. Better a patriotic twang from a guy in a Stetson than a sappy lovesong from another Barry Manilow clone.

  And then the seven o’clock news. It began with an account of British casualties and successes in the Falkland Islands since the arrival of its naval task force. Cal listened with less than half his attention, dumbfounded that this strange little war was really taking place.

  A pox on their little war, he thought. Finish cleaning up this horse’s foot and get your broken-back body home to Lia.

  “How’s it going, Cal?”

  Cal dropped the pick and toppled off his stool.

  His new boss, Hiram Berthelot, had entered the prefab stable. The man reached down, clicked off the radio, and lifted Cal off the hay-strewn floor. He seemed to be alone. No Secret Service man had come into the corrugated building with him, and neither—much to Cal’s relief—had Miss Grace.

  “Fine,” Cal said brightly. “Okay.”

  The Secretary of Agriculture was stocky, four or five inches shorter than Cal—an impressive figure despite his lack of height. His expression was one of bulldog pertinacity and playfulness, and his body suggested power, an amiable, lived-in power that did not have to demonstrate itself to prove that it was there.

  Largely because of Arvill Rudd’s approval, Cal had liked this man—at least in the abstract—almost from the beginning of his career in Washington. Berthelot had tweaked the President about imposing a price ceiling on beef in ‘73, during the tenure of his predecessor, and he had managed to keep his nose clean—so far as the media would let you know, anyway—in the six years of his own secretaryship. Now, in fact, King Richard was apparently secretly grooming Berthelot to follow him as president.

  “You’re here awfully late. I’m glad you are, I wanted to talk to you. But your missus might be worrying.”

  “It’s possible she’ll be late, too. Her practice has picked up considerably since I came to work over here.”

  “Grace thinks the world of her, I know that much.”

  Yeah, yeah, though
t Cal. Grace thinks the world of whomever she can most easily manipulate. Not excluding yours truly. The object of a seduction attempt on the Wiedenhoedt horse farm.

  And, Cal told himself, the secretary was as untrustworthy as his famous wife. You couldn’t trust anyone in this administration, and if Berthelot sometimes seemed an okay sort—wielding amiable as opposed to vengeful power—well, that was only in comparison to the other current members of King Richard’s court.

  And so Cal found himself growing increasingly suspicious of his new boss’s visit and immediate motives.

  Hoping to conclude their conversation quickly, he told the man what he had to do before they could begin their late roundup of Santa Gertrudis calves. One more horse to pedicure. The repair of a compressible branding chute. A bulk purchase of Cutter 3-way vaccine. The sharpening of every dehorning tube in the equipment shack. And, after all that, the hiring of a decent roundup crew. Which here in Meriwether County, Cal thought, will be like flushing all-star ice-hockey players from the African bush…

  “Wait a minute,” Berthelot said. “Hold it.”

  “It sounds like a lot, sir. But we should be hard at work by the end of the week—if I can find five semiexperienced guys.”

  “We’ll mechanize as much of the work as we can. On the other hand, you’re going to miss this spring’s roundup.”

  “I beg your pardon.” He felt his stomach tighten. Miss this spring’s roundup? Wasn’t that one of the reasons he’d been hired? To oversee the branding, vaccinating, castrating, and dehorning of the secretary’s precious calves? Had he changed his mind? Had he or Grace decided to indict Cal for possessing The Doctor in High Dudgeon, No-Knock Nocturne, and all the other anti-Nixon novels that some anonymous No-Knock had stolen from his trunk?

  The secretary said, “Don’t worry. I’m not firing you. You’ll be back for the fall roundup.”

  “Back? Back from what? I don’t get it, sir.”

  “The President and I want you to undertake a special mission. How would you like to visit Von Braunville?”

  “The Moon?”

  “Unless they’ve moved it, that’s where Von Braunville is.”

  “But why?”

  “Since ‘78 we’ve sent civilians from six different professions up there. A teacher. A journalist. A theologian. An athlete. A poet. The mayor of New York. How would you like to be the first… well, the first cowboy to set foot on the lunar surface.”

  “Not very much, sir.” But immediately he recalled the phantom Phil Dick’s admonition to try risk taking and Horsy Stout’s advice to visit the Moon if ever he got the chance. In the wake of these memories, a disorienting dizziness assailed Cal. He grabbed the top of a stall to steady himself.

  “Look, it’s an honor.”

  “But why a cowboy? And why me?”

  “Actually, your mission will be to oversee the shipment of six cavies—Brezhnev bears—to our personnel in the Censorinus crater. Three males, three females, two of which will already be pregnant. Once you’re up there, Cal, you’ll show our people how to take care of their new pets. You’ll return on the very next t-ship sent out from Kennedy Port, and your entire stay—traveling time included—won’t be much more than three weeks.”

  “Cowboys aren’t cavy keepers, Mr. Secretary.”

  “Yes, I know. But shipping heifers to the Moon is out of the question. Consider the Brezhnev bears shippable stand-ins.”

  Pets to improve the morale of moonbase personnel, Cal thought. And me, blackmailed again, their tin-can-riding Hopalong Castaway, rootin’ tutelary drover of a miniherd of guinea pigs.

  “There’s a man over in Alabama I can get to boss this roundup, Cal. He’s done it before. Once you’re back, you’re back for good, and you won’t be sidetracked again.”

  “Didn’t the other civilians have to take some training in Texas before NASA’d let them go up?”

  “The training time got shorter with each candidate. They’ll do you in a week. But you leave day after tomorrow. Forget your work here. Start thinking lunar adventure.”

  “I’ll go on one condition.” Foolish bravado, thought Cal, but it’s worth a shot.

  “You’re in no position to lay down conditions, I’m afraid.”

  “Nevertheless.”

  “Okay. For my curiosity’s sake, if for no other, what is it?”

  “That the Brezhnev bears that we take up are purchased by NASA from the Happy Puppy Pet Emporium.”

  Berthelot boomed with laughter, bending over to accommodate his biggest guffaws. Then, sputtering, he said, “Done.”

  “Done?”

  “Sure. I don’t give a damn whose Brezhnev bears get sent. You think the Happy Puppy’s got a couple of pregnant females?”

  “Probably.”

  “Because every person up there should have one. Eventually, at least. And why ship fifty when they’re such prolific breeders?”

  No, that would be stupid, Cal thought. But what if moonbase personnel don’t want them? Cal smothered this question because the President, the Secretary of Agriculture, and NASA’s Texas-based bigwigs had clearly already decided exactly what Von Braunville’s inhabitants required to stay happy and productive.

  “Your loyalty to Mr. Kemmings is admirable, Cal. I hope it’s a trait you transfer to your current boss as well.”

  When Cal did not reply, the secretary said, “We’ll have NASA requisition all six cavies from the Pet Emporium. Mr. Kemmings can expect payment by Friday—as soon as his ‘bears’ have a clean bill of health from a USDA cavy inspector. I’ll send one of our men to West Georgia Commons tomorrow to check them out.”

  “Doesn’t NASA have to take bids on the animals?”

  “What the hell do you want?” Hiram Berthelot flashed. “Your old boss to sell us these cavies? Or NASA to go through the legal procurement channels that your ‘condition’—since you’ve decided to pull strings—nullifies? Please tell me.”

  My God, thought Cal, I’ve riled him. Of course I have. I ask for an exemption from the rules, which he grants, and then I hint that he’s not playing fair.

  Abashedly, Cal said, “I’d like NASA to buy them from Mr. K.”

  “Done. I said so, didn’t I? Now shut up about it.”

  Immediately, though, the secretary was smiling again. He had worn blue jeans, a denim jacket, and a pair of work boots to the corrugated-metal building, and he helped Cal put up the horses for the night. He moved with contagious energy around the machine-shed stable, filling six big coffee tins with rolled oats and murmuring nonsense to the horses as he slotted the cans into place in their stalls. Then, in the drifting twilight, he walked with Cal to the rust-pocked Dart under an elm not far from the shed.

  “Your dinner’s gonna be cold. Better scram.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  But, to Cal’s surprise, Berthelot climbed into the front seat and sat there with his hands on his thighs.

  “You want a ride up to your house, sir?”

  “No, Cal. I want you to go to your trunk, open it, and fetch me the spiral binder lying on top of your spare.”

  The muscles in Cal’s lower back seized and spasmed. A chill clutched his chest. How had the bastard known? How had he found out? Like a zombie, Cal did as Berthelot had just asked. Then he reached the binder through the window to his boss and squeezed in behind the steering wheel.

  “Ah, yes. The Dream Impeachment of Harper Mocton. By the late Philip K. Dick.”

  “How did you know I still had it?”

  “Because you had all the other illicit Dick titles. Why would you neglect to acquire this one?”

  Cal was desolate. Venus was rising in the April sky, above a stand of pines, but the sight of it failed to alleviate either his bitterness or his sense of loss. The thief had missed this binder only because Cal had been carrying it around in the trunk of his car. And, with his other manuscripts stolen and Viking dead as a result of the break-in, he’d taken heart from this small victory. All else might be gone, but he s
till had his copy of the novel in which Dick had envisioned a bloodless popular uprising against presidential arrogance. And accidentally retaining The Dream Impeachment of Harper Mocton, out of all the titles in his trunk, seemed to Cal a sign of… well, of divine favor. Now, though, he was about to lose both his samizdat manuscript and the small triumph of his uninterrupted ownership of it.

  Berthelot handed the binder back to Cal. “I don’t want this. Just wanted to see if my hunch was correct. Before coming into the shed, I peeked under these seats.” He slammed the front seat with the heel of his hand. “Nothing. And since the trunk was locked, I had to bully you into opening it to prove to myself that you still had the binder. The No-Knock would’ve found it if it’d been in your apartment, and he didn’t.”

  “I could’ve put it in a safety-deposit box. I could’ve hid it in a hollow tree somewhere.”

  “Could’ve. But didn’t. I was right.” Cal held the binder on his lap, waiting for the other shoe to drop. The Berthelots already had plenty of blackmail material on the Bonner-Pickfords. Why had the secretary bothered to scare him to death making him bring forth this manuscript? Simply to impress him with his ratiocinative abilities?

  “What’d you think of the book?” Berthelot said, nodding at it.

  “Vile, seditious garbage. Trash in every possible sense of the term. Sci-fi schlock unworthy of publication.”

  Berthelot smiled. “No. What do you really think of it?”

  Why? Cal wondered. Are you going to tape my response?

  “It’s weird,” he said aloud, “but it has real literary merit. Besides, I like what happens to Harper Mocton in it. I wish—” Go ahead, Cal. Hand this smiling, two-legged piranha your liver. “I wish we could do the same to our own royal quack.”

  “Ah.”

  Venus twinkled above the nearby hills like the white-hot head of an invisible candle. An odor of horse manure and machine oil lilted through the Dart on the twilight breeze.

  “I think you should know that along with the guinea pigs, Cal, you’ll be accompanied to Censorinus by President Nixon.”

  In a second-story chamber of the Berthelot mansion, mirrors and video screens abut one another on the walls. They give the chamber windows on every occupant’s soul, eyes on the outer world, and a fractured looking-glass review of Grace Rinehart’s cinematic past. Each of these glass rectangles is a shard in a silent kaleidoscope of images. None of the mirrors now has a human face in it, but all the video screens stutter with dramatis personae, some of whom are twenty years dead, some of whom are broadcasting live, all of whom are as silent as mimes.

 

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