Collected Stories 5 - The Eye of the Sibyl and Other Classic Strories

by Philip K. Dick

  "Yeah," Masters said. Thinking, unceasingly, of the phone and the one vital call which he would make.

  Back in his own office at Obelisk Books, Masters tried out a preliminary experiment--to see if this idea would work. Carefully, he wrapped a Royal Albert yellow bone-china cup and saucer in wub-fur, a favorite from his own collection. Then, after much soul-searching and trepidation, he placed the bundle on the floor of his office and, with all his declining might, stepped on it.

  The cup did not break. At least it did not seem to.

  He unwrapped the package, then and inspected the cup. He had been right; wrapped in living wub-fur it could not be destroyed.

  Satisfied, he seated himself at his desk, pondered one last time.

  The wrapper of wub-fur had made a temporary, fragile object imperishable. So the wub's doctrine of external survival had worked itself out in practice--exactly as he had expected.

  He picked up the phone, dialed his lawyer's number.

  "This is about my will," he said to his lawyer, when he had him on the other end of the line. "You know, the latest one I made out a few months ago. I have an additional clause to insert."

  "Yes, Mr. Masters," his lawyer said briskly. "Shoot."

  "A small item," Masters purred. "Has to do with my coffin. I want it mandatory on my heirs--my coffin is to be lined throughout, top, bottom and sides, with wub-fur. From Flawless, Incorporated. I want to go to my Maker clothed, so to speak, in wub-fur. Makes a better impression that way." He laughed nonchalantly, but his tone was deadly serious--and his attorney caught it.

  "If that's what you want," the attorney said.

  "And I suggest you do the same," Masters said.

  "Why?"

  Masters said, "Consult the complete home medical reference library we're going to issue next month. And make certain you get a copy that's bound in wub-fur; it'll be different from the others." He thought, then, about his wub-fur-lined coffin once again. Far underground, with him inside it, with the living wub-fur growing, growing.

  It would be interesting to see the version of himself which a choice wub-fur binding produced.

  Especially after several centuries.

  Return Match

  It was not an ordinary gambling casino. And this, for the police of S.L.A., posed a special problem. The outspacers who had set up the casino had placed their massive ship directly above the tables, so that in the event of a raid the jets would destroy the tables. Efficient, officer Joseph Tinbane thought to himself morosely. With one blast the outspacers left Terra and simultaneously destroyed all evidence of their illegal activity.

  And, what was more, killed each and every human gameplayer who might otherwise have lived to give testimony.

  He sat now in his parked aircar, taking pinch after pinch of fine imported Dean Swift Inch-kenneth snuff, then switched to the yellow tin which contained Wren's Relish. The snuff cheered him, but not very much. To his left, in the evening darkness, he could make out the shape of the outspacers' upended ship, black and silent, with the enlarged walled space beneath it, equally dark and silent--but deceptively so.

  "We can go in there," he said to his less experienced companion, "but it'll just mean getting killed." We'll have to trust the robots, he realized. Even if they are clumsy, prone to error. Anyhow they're not alive. And not being alive, in a project as this, constituted an advantage.

  "The third has gone in," officer Falkes beside him said quietly.

  The slim shape, in human clothing, stopped before the door of the casino, rapped, waited. Presently the door opened. The robot gave the proper codeword and was admitted.

  "You think they'll survive the take-off blast?" Tinbane asked. Falkes was an expert in robotics.

  "Possibly one might. Not all, though. But one will be enough." Hot for the kill, officer Falkes leaned to peer past Tinbane; his youthful face was fixed in concentration. "Use the bull-horn now. Tell them they're under arrest. I see no point in waiting."

  "The point I see," Tinbane said, "is that it's more comforting to see the ship inert and the action going on underneath. We'll wait."

  "But no more robots are coming."

  "Wait for them to send back their vid transmissions," Tinbane said. After all, that comprised evidence--of a sort. And at police HQ.it was now being recorded in permanent form. Still, his companion officer assigned to this project did have a point. Since the last of the three humanoid plants had gone in, nothing more would take place, now. Until the outspacers realized they had been infiltrated and put their typical planned pattern of withdrawal into action. "All right," he said, and pushed down on the button which activated the bull-horn.

  Leaning, Falkes spoke into the bull-horn. At once the bull-horn said,

  "As order-representatives of superior Los Angeles I and the men with me instruct everyone inside to come out onto the street collectively; I further instruct--"

  His voice, from the bull-horn, disappeared as the initial takeoff surge roared through the primary jets of the outspacers' ship. Falkes shrugged, grinned starkly at Tinbane. It didn't take them long, his mouth formed silently.

  As expected no one came out. No one in the casino escaped. Even when the structure which composed the building melted. The ship detached itself, leaving a soggy, puddled mass of wax-like matter behind it. And still no one emerged.

  All dead, Tinbane realized with mute shock.

  "Time to go in," Falkes said stoically. He began to crawl into his neo-asbestos suit, and, after a pause, so did Tinbane.

  Together, the two officers entered the hot, dripping puddle which had been the casino. In the center, forming a mound, lay two of the three humanoid robots; they had managed at the last moment to cover something with their bodies. Of the third Tinbane saw no sign; evidently it had been demolished along with everything else. Everything organic.

  I wonder what they thought--in their own dim way--to be worth preserving, Tinbane thought as he surveyed the distorted remnants of the two robots. Something alive? One of the snail-like outspacers? Probably not. A gaming table, then.

  "They acted fast," Falkes said, impressed. "For robots."

  "But we got something," Tinbane pointed out. Gingerly, he poked at the hot fused metal which had been the two robots. A section, mostly likely a torso, slid aside, revealed what the robots had preserved.

  A pinball machine.

  Tinbane wondered why. What was this worth? Anything? Personally, he doubted it.

  In the police lab on Sunset Avenue in downtown Old Los Angeles, a technician presented a long written analysis to Tinbane.

  "Tell me orally," Tinbane said, annoyed; he had been too many years on the force to suffer through such stuff. He returned the clipboard and report to the tall, lean police technician.

  "Actually it's not an ordinary construct," the technician said, glancing over his own report, as if he had already forgotten it; his tone, like the report itself, was dry, dull. This for him was obviously routine. He, too, agreed that the pinball machine salvaged by the humanoid robots was worthless--or so Tinbane guessed. "By that I mean it's not like any they've brought to Terra in the past. You can probably get more of an idea directly from the thing; I suggest you put a quarter in it and play through a game." He added, "The lab budget will provide you with a quarter which we'll retrieve from the machine later."

  "I've got my own quarter," Tinbane said irritably. He followed the technician through the large, overworked lab, past the elaborate--and in many cases obsolete--assortment of analytical devices and partly broken-apart constructs to the work area in the rear.

  There, cleaned up, the damage done to it now repaired, stood the pinball machine which the robots had protected. Tinbane inserted a coin; five metal balls at once spilled into the reservoir, and the board at the far end of the machine lit up in a variety of shifting colors.

  "Before you shoot the first ball," the technician said to him, standing beside him so that he, too, could watch, "I advise you to take a careful look at the ter
rain of the machine, the components among which the ball will pass. The horizontal area beneath the protective glass is somewhat interesting. A miniature village, complete with houses, lighted streets, major public buildings, overhead sprintship runnels... not a Terran village, of course. An Ionian village, of the sort they're used to. The detail work is superb."

  Bending, Tinbane peered. The technician was right; the detail work on the scale-model structures astounded him.

  "Tests that measure wear on the moving parts of this machine," the technician informed him, "indicate that it saw a great deal of use. There is considerable tolerance. We estimate that before another thousand games could be completed, the machine would have to go the shop. Their shop, back on Io. Which is where we understand they build and maintain equipment of this variety." He explained, "By that I mean gambling layouts in general."

  "What's the object of the game?" Tinbane asked.

  "We have here," the technician explained, "what we call a full-shift set variable. In other words, the terrain through which the steel ball moves is never the same. The number of possible combinations is--" he leafed through his report but was unable to find the exact figure--"anyhow, quite great. In the millions. It's excessively intricate, in our opinion. Anyhow, if you'll release the first ball you'll see."

  Depressing the plunger, Tinbane allowed the first ball to roll from the reservoir and against the impulse-shaft. He then drew back the springloaded shaft and snapped it into release. The ball shot up the channel and bounced free, against a pressure-cushion which imparted swift additional velocity to it.

  The ball now dribbled in descent, toward the upper perimeter of the village.

  "The initial defense line," the technician said from behind him, "which protects the village proper, is a series of mounds colored, shaped and surfaced to resemble the Ionian landscape. The fidelity is quite obviously painstaking. Probably made from satellites in orbit around Io. You can easily imagine you're seeing an actual piece of that moon from a distance of ten or more miles up."

  The steel ball encountered the perimeter of rough terrain. Its trajectory altered, and the ball wobbled uncertainly, no longer going in any particular direction.

  "Deflected," Tinbane said, noting how satisfactorily the contours of the terrain acted to deprive the ball of its descending forward motion. "It's going to bypass the village entirely."

  The ball, with severely decreased momentum, wandered into a side crease, followed the crease listlessly, and then, just as it appeared to be drifting into the lower take-up slot, abruptly hurtled from a pressure-cushion and back into play.

  On the illuminated background a score registered. Victory, of a momentary sort, for the player. The ball once again menaced the village. Once again it dribbled through the rough terrain, following virtually the same path as before.

  "Now you'll notice something moderately important," the technician said. "As it heads toward that same pressure-cushion which it just now hit. Don't watch the ball; watch the cushion."

  Tinbane watched. And saw, from the cushion, a tiny wisp of gray smoke. He turned inquiringly toward the technician.

  "Now watch the ball!" the technician said sharply.

  Again the ball struck the pressure-cushion mounted slightly before the lower take-up slot. This time, however, the cushion failed to react to the ball's impact.

  Tinbane blinked as the ball rolled harmlessly on, into the take-up slot and out of play.

  "Nothing happened," he said presently.

  "That smoke that you saw. Emerging from the wiring of the cushion. An electrical short. Because a rebound from that spot placed the ball in a menacing position--menacing to the village."

  "In other words," Tinbane said, "something took note of the effect the cushion was having on the ball. The assembly operates so as to protect itself from the ball's activity." He had seen this before, in other outspacer gambling gear: sophisticated circuitry which kept the gameboard constantly shifting in such a way as to seem alive--in such a way as to reduce the chances of the player winning. On this particular construct the player obtained a winning score by inducing the five steel balls to pass into the central layout: the replica of the Ionian hamlet. Hence the hamlet had to be protected. Hence this particular strategically located pressure-cushion required elimination. At least for the time being. Until the overall configurations of topography altered decidedly.

  "Nothing new there," the technician said. "You've seen it a dozen times before; I've seen it a hundred times before. Let's say that this pinball machine has seen ten thousand separate games, and each time there's been a careful readjustment of the circuitry directed toward rendering the steel balls neutralized. Let's say that the alterations are cumulative. So by now any given player's score is probably no more than a fraction of early scores, before the circuits had a chance to react. The direction of alteration--as in all out-spacer gambling mechanisms--has a zero win factor as the limit toward which it's moving. Just try to hit the village, Tinbane. We set up a constantly repeating mechanical ball-release and played one hundred and forty games. At no time did a ball ever get near enough to do the village any harm. We kept a record of the scores obtained. A slight but significant drop was registered each time." He grinned.

  "So?" Tinbane said,.

  "So nothing. As I told you and as my report says." The technician paused, then. "Except for one thing. Look at this."

  Bending, he traced his thin finger across the protective glass of the layout, toward a construct near the center of the replica village. "A photographic record shows that with each game that particular component becomes more articulated. It's being erected by circuitry underneath--obviously. As is every other change. But this configuration--doesn't it remind you of something?"

  "Looks like a Roman catapult," Tinbane said. "But with a vertical rather than a horizontal axis."

  "That's our reaction, too. And look at the sling. In terms of the scale of the village it's inordinately large. Immense, in fact; specifically, it's not to scale."

  "It looks as if it would almost hold--"

  "Not almost," the technician said. "We measured it. The size of the sling is exact; one of those steel balls would fit perfectly into it."

  "And then?" Tinbane said, feeling chill.

  "And then it would hurl the ball back at the player," the lab technician said calmly. "It's aimed directly toward the front of the machine, front and upward." He added, "And it's been virtually completed."

  The best defense, Tinbane thought to himself as he studied the out-spacers' illegal pinball machine, is offense. But whoever heard of it in this context?

  Zero, he realized, isn't a low enough score to suit the defensive circuitry of the thing. Zero won't do. It's got to strive for less than zero. Why? Because, he decided, it's not really moving toward zero as a limit; it's moving, instead, toward the best defensive pattern. It's too well designed. Or is it?

  "You think," he asked the lean, tall lab technician, "that the outspacers intended this?"

  "That doesn't matter. At least not from the immediate stand-point. What matters is two factors: the machine was exported--in violation of Terran law--to Terra, and it's been played by Terrans. Intentionally or not, this could be, in fact will soon be, a lethal weapon." He added, "We calculate within the next twenty games. Every time a coin is inserted, the building resumes. Whether a ball gets near the village or not. All it requires is a flow of power from the device's central helium battery. And that's automatic, once play begins." He added, "It's at work building the catapult right now, as we stand here. You better release the remaining four balls, so it'll shut itself off. Or give us permission to dismantle it--to at least take the power supply out of the circuit."

  "The outspacers don't have a very high regard for human life," Tinbane reflected. He was thinking of the carnage created by the ship taking off. And that, for them, was routine. But in view of that wholesale destruction of human life, this seemed unnecessary. What more did this accomplish?
/>   Pondering, he said, "This is selective. This would eliminate only the gameplayer."

  The technician said, "This would eliminate every gameplayer. One after another."

  "But who would play the thing," Tinbane said, "after the first fatality?"

  "People go there knowing that if there's a raid the outspacers will burn up everyone and everything," the technician pointed out. "The urge to gamble is an addictive compulsion; a certain type of person gambles no matter what the risk is. You ever hear of Russian Roulette?"

  Tinbane released the second steel ball, watched it bounce and wander toward the replica village. This one managed to pass through the rough terrain; it approached the first house comprising the village proper. Maybe I'll get it, he thought savagely. Before it gets me. A strange, novel excitement filled him as he watched the ball thud against the tiny house, flatten the structure and roll on. The ball, although small to him, towered over every building, every structure, that made up the village.

  -Every structure except the central catapult. He watched avidly as the ball moved dangerously close to the catapult, then, deflected by a major public building, rolled on and disappeared into the take-up slot. Immediately he sent the third ball hurtling up its channel.

  "The stakes," the technician said softly, "are high, aren't they? Your life against its. Must be exceptionally appealing to someone with the right kind of temperament."

  "I think," Tinbane said, "I can get the catapult before it's in action."

  "Maybe. Maybe not."

  "I'm getting the ball closer to it each time."

  The technician said, "For the catapult to work, it requires one of the steel balls; that's its load. You're making it increasingly likely that it'll acquire use of one of the balls. You're actually helping it." He added somberly, "In fact it can't function without you; the gameplayer is not only the enemy, he's also essential. Better quit, Tinbane. The thing is using you."

  "I'll quit," Tinbane said, "when I've gotten the catapult."