He squatted down. He had worked it out with care. The answers from the Federal Library of Information had gone back to the Linguistics Machine for re-translation. The answers were now in the original tongue of the questions—but on a trifle larger piece of paper.
Ellis made like a marble game and flicked the wad of paper through the gray shimmer. It bowled over six or seven of the watching figures and rolled down the side of the hill on which they were standing. After a moment of terrified immobility the figures scampered frantically after it. They disappeared into the vague and invisible depths of their world and Ellis got stiffly to his feet again.
"Well," he muttered to himself, "that's that."
But it wasn't. The next morning there was a new group—and a new list of questions. The tiny figures pushed their microscopic square of paper through the thin spot in the wall of the tunnel and stood waiting and trembling as Ellis bent over and felt around for it.
He found it—finally. He put it in his wallet and continued on his way, stepping out at New York, frowning. This was getting serious. Was this going to be a full-time job?
But then he grinned. It was the damn oddest thing he had ever heard of. The little rascals were cute, in their own way. Tiny intent faces, screwed up with serious concern. And terror. They were scared of him, really scared. And why not? Compared to them he was a giant.
He conjectured about their world. What kind of planet was theirs? Odd to be so small. But size was a relative matter. Small, though, compared to him. Small and reverent. He could read fear and yearning, gnawing hope, as they pushed up their papers. They were depending on him. Praying he'd give them answers.
Ellis grinned. "Damn unusual job," he said to himself.
"What's this?" Peterson said, when he showed up in the Linguistics Lab at noontime.
"Well, you see, I got another letter from my friend on Centaurus VI."
"Yeah?" A certain suspicion flickered across Peterson's face. "You're not ribbing me, are you, Henry? This Machine has a lot to do, you know. Stuff's coming in all the time. We can't afford to waste any time with—"
"This is really serious stuff, Earl." Ellis patted his wallet. "Very important business. Not just gossip."
"Okay. If you say so." Peterson gave the nod to the team operating the Machine. "Let this guy use the Translator, Tommie."
"Thanks," Ellis murmured.
He went through the routine, getting a translation and then carrying the questions up to his vidphone and passing them over to the Library research staff. By nightfall the answers were back in the original tongue and with them carefully in his wallet, Ellis headed out of the Terran Development building and into his Jiffi-scuttler.
As usual, a new group was waiting.
"Here you go, boys," Ellis boomed, flicking the wad through the thin place in the shimmer. The wad rolled down the microscopic countryside, bouncing from hill to hill, the little people tumbling jerkily after it in their funny stiff-legged fashion. Ellis watched them go, grinning with interest—and pride.
They really hurried; no doubt about that. He could make them out only vaguely, now. They had raced wildly off away from the shimmer. Only a small portion of their world was tangent to the Jiffi-scuttler, apparently. Only the one spot, where the shimmer was thin. He peered intently through.
They were getting the wad open, now. Three or four of them, unprying the paper and examining the answers.
Ellis swelled with pride as he continued along the tunnel and out into his own backyard. He couldn't read their questions—and when translated, he couldn't answer them. The Linguistics Department did the first part, the Library research staff the rest. Nevertheless, Ellis felt pride. A deep, glowing spot of warmth far down inside him. The expression on their faces. The look they gave him when they saw the answer-wad in his hand. When they realized he was going to answer their questions. And the way they scampered after it. It was sort of—satisfying. It made him feel damn good.
"Not bad," he murmured, opening the back door and entering the house. "Not bad at all."
"What's not bad, dear?" Mary asked, looking quickly up from the table. She laid down her magazine and got to her feet. "Why, you look so happy! What is it?"
"Nothing. Nothing at all!" He kissed her warmly on the mouth. "You're looking pretty good tonight yourself, kid."
"Oh, Henry!" Much of Mary blushed prettily. "How sweet."
He surveyed his wife in her two-piece wraparound of clear plastic with appreciation. "Nice looking fragments you have on."
"Why, Henry! What's come over you? You seem so—so spirited?
Ellis grinned. "Oh, I guess I enjoy my job. You know, there's nothing like taking pride in your work. A job well done, as they say. Work you can be proud of."
"I thought you always said you were nothing but a cog in a great impersonal machine. Just a sort of cipher."
"Things are different," Ellis said firmly. "I'm doing a—uh—a new project. A new assignment."
"A new assignment?"
"Gathering information. A sort of—creative business. So to speak."
By the end of the week he had turned over quite a body of information to them.
He began starting for work about nine-thirty. That gave him a whole thirty minutes to spend squatting down on his hands and knees, peering through the thin place in the shimmer. He got so he was pretty good at seeing them and what they were doing in their microscopic world.
Their civilization was somewhat primitive. No doubt of that. By Terran standards it was scarcely a civilization at all. As near as he could tell, they were virtually without scientific techniques; a kind of agrarian culture, rural communism, a monolithic tribal-based organization apparently without too many members.
At least, not at one time. That was the part he didn't understand. Every time he came past there was a different group of them. No familiar faces. And their world changed, too. The trees, the crops, fauna. The weather, apparently.
Was their time rate different? They moved rapidly, jerkily. Like a vidtape speeded up. And their shrill voices. Maybe that was it. A totally different universe in which the whole time structure was radically different.
As to their attitude towards him, there was no mistaking it. After the first couple of times they began assembling offerings, unbelievably small bits of smoking food, prepared in ovens and on open brick hearths. If he got down with his nose against the gray shimmer he could get a faint whiff of the food. It smelled good. Strong and pungent. Highly spiced. Meat, probably.
On Friday be brought a magnifying glass along and watched them through it. It was meat, all right. They were bringing ant-sized animals to be killed and cooked, leading them up to the ovens. With the magnifying glass he could see more of their faces. They had strange faces. Strong and dark, with a peculiar firm look.
Of course, there was only one look he got from them. A combination of fear, reverence, and hope. The look made him feel good. It was a look for him, only. Between themselves they shouted and argued—and sometimes stabbed and fought each other furiously, rolling in their brown robes in a wild tangle. They were a passionate and strong species. He got so he admired them.
Which was good—because it made him feel better. To have the reverent awe of such a proud, sturdy face was really something. There was nothing craven about them.
About the fifth time he came there was a rather attractive structure built. Some kind of temple. A place of religious worship.
To him! They were developing a real religion about him. No doubt of it. He began going to work at nine o'clock, to give himself a full hour with them. They had, by the middle of the second week, a full-sized ritual evolved. Processions, lighted tapers, what seemed to be songs or chants. Priests in long robes. And the spiced offerings.
No idols, though. Apparently he was so big they couldn't make out his appearance. He tried to imagine what it looked like to be on their side of the shimmer. An immense shape looming up above them, beyond a wall of gray haze. An indistinct being,
something like themselves, yet not like them at all. A different kind of being, obviously. Larger—but different in other ways. And when he spoke—booming echoes up and down the Jiffi-scuttler. Which still sent them fleeing in panic.
An evolving religion. He was changing them. Through his actual presence and through his answers, the precise, correct responses he obtained from the Federal Library of Information and had the Linguistics Machine translate into their language. Of course, by their time-rate they had to wait generations for the answers. But they had become accustomed to it, by now. They waited. They expected. They passed up questions and after a couple of centuries he passed down answers, answers which they no doubt put to good use.
"What in the world?" Mary demanded, as he got home from work an hour late one night. "Where have you been?"
"Working," Ellis said carelessly, removing his hat and coat. He threw himself on the couch. "I'm tired. Really tired." He sighed with relief and motioned for the couch-arm to bring him a whiskey sour.
Mary came over by the couch. "Henry, I'm a little worried."
"Worried?"
"You shouldn't work so hard. You ought to take it easy, more. How long since you've had a real vacation? A trip off Terra. Out of the System. You know, I'd just like to call that fellow Miller and ask him why it's necessary for a man your age to put in so much—"
"A man my age!" Ellis bristled indignantly. "I'm not so old."
"Of course not." Mary sat down beside him and put her arms around him affectionately. "But you shouldn't have to do so much. You deserve a rest. Don't you think?"
"This is different. You don't understand. This isn't the same old stuff. Reports and statistics and the damn filing. This is—"
"What is it?"
"This is different. I'm not a cog. This gives me something. I can't explain it to you, I guess. But it's something I have to do."
"If you could tell me more about it—"
"I can't tell you any more about it," Ellis said. "But there's nothing in the world like it. I've worked twenty-five years for Terran Development. Twenty-five years at the same reports, again and again. Twenty-five years—and I never felt this way."
"Oh, yeah?" Miller roared. "Don't give me that! Come clean, Ellis!"
Ellis opened and closed his mouth. "What are you talking about?" Horror rolled through him. "What's happened?"
"Don't try to give me the runaround." On the vidscreen Miller's face was purple. "Come into my office."
The screen went dead.
Ellis sat stunned at his desk. Gradually, he collected himself and got shakily to his feet. "Good Lord." Weakly, he wiped cold sweat from his forehead. All at once. Everything in ruins. He was dazed with the shock.
"Anything wrong?" Miss Nelson asked sympathetically.
"No." Ellis moved numbly towards the door. He was shattered. What had Miller found out? Good God! Was it possible he had—
"Mr. Miller looked angry."
"Yeah." Ellis moved blindly down the hall, his mind reeling. Miller looked angry all right. Somehow he had found out. But why was he mad? Why did he care? A cold chill settled over Ellis. It looked bad. Miller was his superior—with hiring and firing powers. Maybe he'd done something wrong. Maybe he had somehow broken a law. Committed a crime. But what?
What did Miller care about them! What concern was it of Terran Development?
He opened the door to Miller's office. "Here I am, Mr. Miller," he muttered. "What's the trouble?"
Miller glowered at him with rage. "All this goofy stuff about your cousin on Proxima."
"It's—uh—you mean a business friend on Centaurus VI."
"You—you swindler!" Miller leaped up. "And after all the Company's done for you."
"I don't understand," Ellis muttered. "What have—"
"Why do you think we gave you the Jiffi-scuttler in the first place?"
"Why?"
"To test! To try out, you wall-eyed Venusian stink-cricket! The Company magnanimously consented to allow you to operate a Jiffi-scuttler in advance of market presentation, and what do you do? Why, you—"
Ellis started to get indignant. After all, he had been with TD twenty-five years. "You don't have to be so offensive. I plunked down my thousand gold credits for it."
"Well, you can just mosey down to the accountant's office and get your money back. I've already sent out a directive for a construction team to crate up your Jiffi-scuttler and bring it back to receiving."
Ellis was dumbfounded. "But why?"
"Why indeed! Because it's defective. Because it doesn't work. That's why." Miller's eyes blazed with technological outrage. "The inspection crew found a leak a mile wide in it." His lip curled. "As if you didn't know."
Ellis's heart sank. "Leak?" he croaked apprehensively.
"Leak. It's a damn good thing I authorized a periodic inspection. If we depended on people like you to—"
"Are you sure? It seemed all right to me. That is, it got me here without any trouble," Ellis floundered. "Certainly no complaints from my end."
"No. No complaints from your end. That's exactly why you're not getting another one. That's why you're taking the monojet transport back home tonight. Because you didn't report the leak! And if you ever try to put something over on this office again—"
"How do you know I was aware of the—defect?"
Miller sank down in his chair, overcome with fury. "Because," he said carefully, "of your daily pilgrimage to the Linguistic Machine. With your alleged letter from your grandmother on Betelgeuse II. Which wasn't any such thing. Which was an utter fraud. Which you got through the leak in the Jiffi-scuttler!"
"How do you know?" Ellis squeaked boldly, driven to the wall. "So maybe there was a defect. But you can't prove there's any connection between your badly constructed Jiffi-scuttler and my—"
"Your missive," Miller stated, "which you foisted on our Linguistics Machine, was not a non-Terran script. It was not from Centaurus VI. It was not from any non-Terran system. It was ancient Hebrew. And there's only one place you could have got it, Ellis. So don't try to kid me."
"Hebrew!" Ellis exclaimed, startled. He turned white as a sheet. "Good Lord. The other continuum—the fourth dimension. Time, of course." He trembled. "And the expanding universe. That would explain their size. And it explains why a new group, a new generation—"
"We're taking enough of a chance as it is, with these Jiffi-scuttlers. Warping a tunnel through other space-time continua." Miller shook his head warily. "You meddler. You knew you were supposed to report any defect."
"I don't think I did any harm, did I?" Ellis was suddenly terribly nervous. "They seemed pleased, even grateful. Gosh, I'm sure I didn't cause any trouble."
Miller shrieked in insane rage. For a time he danced around the room. Finally he threw something down on his desk, directly in front of Ellis. "No trouble. No, none. Look at this. I got this from the Ancient Artifacts Archives."
"What is it?"
"Look at it! I compared one of your question sheets to this. The same. Exactly the same. All your sheets, questions and answers, every one of them's in here. You multi-legged Ganymedean mange beetle!"
Ellis picked up the book and opened it. As he read the pages a strange look came slowly over his face. "Good Heavens. So they kept a record of what I gave them. They put it all together in a book. Every word of it. And some commentaries, too. It's all here—every single word. It did have an effect, then. They passed it on. Wrote all of it down."
"Go back to your office. I'm through looking at you for today. I'm through looking at you forever. Your severance check will come through regular channels."
In a trance, his face flushed with a strange excitement, Ellis gripped the book and moved dazedly towards the door. "Say, Mr. Miller. Can I have this? Can I take it along?"
"Sure," Miller said wearily. "Sure, you can take it. You can read it on your way home tonight. On the public monojet transport."
"Henry has something to show you," Mary Ellis whispered
excitedly, gripping Mrs. Lawrence's arm. "Make sure you say the right thing."
"The right thing?" Mrs. Lawrence faltered nervously, a trifle uneasy. "What is it? Nothing alive, I hope."
"No, no." Mary pushed her towards the study door. "Just smile." She raised her voice. "Henry, Dorothy Lawrence is here."
Henry Ellis appeared at the door of his study. He bowed slightly, a dignified figure in silk dressing gown, pipe in his mouth, fountain pen in one hand. "Good evening, Dorothy," he said in a low, well-modulated voice. "Care to step into my study a moment?"
"Study?" Mrs. Lawrence came hesitantly in. "What do you study? I mean, Mary says you've been doing something very interesting recently, now that you're not with—I mean, now that you're home more. She didn't give me any idea what it was, though."
Mrs. Lawrence's eyes roved curiously around the study. The study was full of reference volumes, charts, a huge mahogany desk, an atlas, globe, leather chairs, an unbelievably ancient electric typewriter.
"Good Heavens!" she exclaimed. "How odd. All these old things."
Ellis lifted something carefully from the bookcase and held it out to her casually. "By the way—you might glance at this."
"What is it? A book?" Mrs. Lawrence took the book and examined it eagerly. "My goodness. Heavy, isn't it?" She read the back, her lips moving. "What does it mean? It looks old. What strange letters! I've never seen anything like it. Holy Bible." She glanced up brightly. "What is this?"
Ellis smiled faintly. "Well—"
A light dawned. Mrs. Lawrence gasped in revelation. "Good Heavens! You didn't write this, did you?"
Ellis's smile broadened into a deprecating blush. A dignified hue of modesty. "Just a little thing I threw together," he murmured indifferently. "My first, as a matter of fact." Thoughtfully, he fingered his fountain pen. "And now, if you'll excuse me, I really should be getting back to my work…"
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.
The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick 4: The Minority Report Page 101