The Philip K. Dick Reader

by Philip K. Dick

  Carl flushed. "You creeps won't get it passed." But his gruff voice lacked conviction. The Naturalists were scared; Purists had control of the Federal Council. If the election moved in their favor it was really possible the legislation to compel forced observation of the five-point Purist code might get on the books. "Nobody is going to remove my sweat glands," Carl muttered. "Nobody is going to make me submit to breath-control and teeth-whitening and hair-restorer. It's part of life to get dirty and bald and fat and old."

  "Is it true?" Betty asked her husband. "Are you really unconsciously pro-Purist?"

  Don Walsh savagely speared a remnant of rib steak. "Because I don't join either party I'm called unconsciously pro-Purist and unconsciously pro-Nat­uralist. I claim they balance. If I'm everybody's enemy than I'm nobody's enemy." He added, "Or friend."

  "You Naturalists have nothing to offer the future," Jimmy said to Carl. "What can you give the youth of the planet -- like me? Caves and raw meat and a bestial existence. You're anti-civilization."

  "Slogans," Carl retorted.

  "You want to carry us back to a primitive existence, away from social integration." Jimmy waved an excited skinny finger in his uncle's face. "You're thalamically oriented!"

  "I'll break your head," Carl snarled, half out of his chair. "You Purist squirts have no respect for your elders."

  Jimmy giggled shrilly. "I'd like to see you try. It's five years in prison for striking a minor. Go ahead -- hit me."

  Don Walsh got heavily to his feet and left the dining room.

  "Where are you going?" Betty called peevishly after him. "You're not through eating."

  "The future belongs to youth," Jimmy was informing Carl. "And the youth of the planet is firmly Purist. You don't have a chance; the Purist revolution is coming."

  Don Walsh left the apartment and wandered down the common corridor toward the ramp. Closed doors extended in rows on both sides of him. Noise and light and activity radiated around him, the close presence of families and domestic interaction. He pushed past a boy and girl making love in the dark shadows and reached the ramp. For a moment he halted, then abruptly he moved forward and descended to the lowest level of the unit.

  The level was deserted and cool and slightly moist. Above him the sounds of people had faded to dull echoes against the concrete ceiling. Conscious of his sudden plunge into isolation and silence he advanced thoughtfully between the dark grocery and dry goods stores, past the beauty shop and the liquor store, past the laundry and medical supply store, past the dentist and physical doctor, to the ante-room of the unit analyst.

  He could see the analyst within the inner chamber. It sat immobile and silent, in the dark shadows of evening. Nobody was consulting it; the analyst was turned off. Walsh hesitated, then crossed the check-frame of the ante­room and knocked on the transparent inner door. The presence of his body closed relays and switches; abruptly the lights of the inner office winked on and the analyst itself sat up, smiled and half-rose to its feet.

  "Don," it called heartily. "Come on in and sit down."

  He entered and wearily seated himself. "I thought maybe I could talk to you, Charley," he said.

  "Sure, Don." The robot leaned forward to see the clock on its wide mahogany desk. "But, isn't it dinner time?"

  "Yes," Walsh admitted. "I'm not hungry. Charley, you know what we were talking about last time... you remember what I was saying. You remember what's been bothering me."

  "Sure, Don." The robot settled back in its swivel chair, rested its almost-convincing elbows on the desk, and regarded its patient kindly. "How's it been going, the last couple of days?"

  "Not so good. Charley, I've go to do something. You can help me; you're not biased." He appealed to the quasi-human face of metal and plastic. "You can see this undistorted, Charley. How can I join one of the parties? All their slogans and propaganda, it seems so damn -- silly. How the hell can I get excited about clean teeth and underarm odor? People kill each other over these trifles... it doesn't make sense. There's going to be suicidal civil war, if that Amendment passes, and I'm supposed to join one side or the other."

  Charley nodded. "I have the picture, Don."

  "Am I supposed to go out and knock some fellow over the head because he does or doesn't smell? Some man I never saw before? I won't do it. I refuse. Why can't they let me alone? Why can't I have my own opinions? Why do I have to get in on this -- insanity?"

  The analyst smiled tolerantly. "That's a little harsh, Don. You're out of phase with your society, you know. So the cultural climate and mores seem a trifle unconvincing to you. But this is your society; you have to live in it. You can't withdraw."

  Walsh forced his hands to relax. "Here's what I think. Any man who wants to smell should be allowed to smell. Any man who doesn't want to smell should go and get his glands removed. What's the matter with that?"

  "Don, you're avoiding the issue." The robot's voice was calm, dispassion­ate. "What you're saying is that neither side is right. And that's foolish, isn't it? One side must be right."

  "Why?"

  "Because the two sides exhaust the practical possibilities. Your position isn't really a position... it's a sort of description. You see, Don, you have a psychological inability to come to grips with an issue. You don't want to commit yourself for fear you'll lose your freedom and individuality. You're sort of an intellectual virgin; you want to stay pure."

  Walsh reflected. "I want," he said, "to keep my integrity."

  "You're not an isolated individual, Don. You're a part of society... ideas don't exist in a vacuum."

  "I have a right to hold my own ideas."

  "No, Don," the robot answered gently. "They're not your ideas; you didn't create them. You can't turn them on and off when you feel like it. They operate through you... they're conditionings deposited by your environment. What you believe is a reflection of certain social forces and pressures. In your case the two mutually-exclusive social trends have produced a sort of stalemate. You're at war with yourself... you can't decide which side to join because elements of both exist in you." The robot nodded wisely. "But you've got to make a decision. You've got to resolve this conflict and act. You can't remain a spectator... you've got to be a participant. Nobody can be a spectator to life... and this is life."

  "You mean there's no other world but this business about sweat and teeth land hair?"

  "Logically, there are other societies. But this is the one you were born into. This is your society... the only one you will ever have. You either live in it, or you don't live."

  Walsh got to his feet. "In other words, I have to make the adjustment. Something has to give, and it's got to be me."

  "Afraid so, Don. It would be silly to expect everybody else to adjust to you, I wouldn't it? Three and a half billion people would have to change just to please Don Walsh. You see, Don, you're not quite out of your infantile-selfish stage. You haven't quite got to the point of facing reality." The robot smiled. "But you will."

  Walsh started moodily from the office. "I'll think it over."

  "It's for your own good, Don."

  At the door, Walsh turned to say something more. But the robot had clicked off; it was fading into darkness and silence, elbows still resting on the desk. The dimming overhead lights caught something he hadn't noticed before. The powercord that was the robot's umbilicus had a white-plastic tag wired to it. In the semi-gloom he could make out the printed words.

  PROPERTY OF THE FEDERAL COUNCIL

  FOR PUBLIC USE ONLY

  The robot, like everything else in the multi-family unit, was supplied by the controlling institutions of society. The analyst was a creature of the state, a bureaucrat with a desk and job. Its function was to equate people like Don Walsh with the world as it was.

  But if he didn't listen to the unit analyst, who was he supposed to listen to? Where else could he go?

  Three days later the election took place. The glaring headline told him nothing he didn't already know; his offic
e had buzzed with the news all day. He put the paper away in his coat pocket and didn't examine it until he got home.

  PURISTS WIN BY LANDSLIDE

  HORNEY AMENDMENT CERTAIN TO PASS

  Walsh lay back wearily in his chair. In the kitchen Betty was briskly preparing dinner. The pleasant clink of dishes and the warm odor of cooking food drifted through the bright little apartment.

  "The Purists won," Walsh said, when Betty appeared with an armload of I silver and cups. "It's all over."

  "Jimmy will be happy," Betty answered vaguely. "I wonder if Carl will be home in time for dinner." She calculated silently. "Maybe I ought to run downramp for some more coffee."

  "Don't you understand?" Walsh demanded. "It's happened! The Purists have complete power!"

  "I understand," Betty answered peevishly. "You don't have to shout. Did you sign that petition thing? That Butte Petition the Naturalists have been circulating?"

  "No."

  "Thank God. I didn't think so; you never sign anything anybody brings around." She lingered at the kitchen door. "I hope Carl has sense enough to do something. I never did like him sitting around guzzling beer and smelling like a pig in summer."

  The door of the apartment opened and Carl hurried in, flushed and scowling. "Don't fix dinner for me, Betty. I'll be at an emergency meeting." He glanced briefly at Walsh. "Now are you satisfied? If you'd put your back to the wheel, maybe this wouldn't have happened."

  "How soon will they get the Amendment passed?" Walsh asked.

  Carl bellowed with nervous laughter. "They've already passed it." He grabbed up an armload of papers from his desk and stuffed them in a waste-disposal slot. "We've got informants at Purist headquarters. As soon as the new councilmen were sworn in they rammed the Amendment through. They want to catch us unawares." He grinned starkly. "But they won't."

  The door slammed and Carl's hurried footsteps diminished down the public hall.

  "I've never seen him move so fast," Betty remarked wonderingly.

  Horror rose in Don Walsh as he listened to the rapid, lumbering footsteps of his brother-in-law. Outside the unit, Carl was climbing quickly into his surface car. The motor gunned, and Carl drove off. "He's afraid," Walsh said. "He's in danger."

  "I guess he can take care of himself. He's pretty big."

  Walsh shakily lit a cigarette. "Even your brother isn't that big. It doesn't seem possible they really mean this. Putting over an Amendment like this, forcing everybody to conform to their idea of what's right. But it's been in the cards for years... this is the last step on a large road."

  "I wish they'd get it over with, once and for all," Betty complained. "Was it always this way? I don't remember always hearing about politics when I was a child."

  "They didn't call it politics, back in those days. The industrialists ham­mered away at the people to buy and consume. It centered around this hair-sweat-teeth purity; the city people got it and developed an ideology around it."

  Betty set the table and brought in the dishes of food. "You mean the Purist political movement was deliberately started?"

  "They didn't realize what a hold it was getting on them. They didn't know their children were growing up to take such things as underarm perspiration and white teeth and nice-looking hair as the most important things in the world. Things worth fighting and dying for. Things important enough to kill those who didn't agree."

  "The Naturalists were country people?"

  "People who lived outside the cities and weren't conditioned by the stimuli." Walsh shook his head irritably. "Incredible, that one man will kill another over trivialities. All through history men murdering each other over verbal nonsense, meaningless slogans instilled in them by somebody else -- who sits back and benefits."

  "It isn't meaningless if they believe in it."

  "It's meaningless to kill another man because he has halitosis! It's mean­ingless to beat up somebody because he hasn't had his sweat glands removed and artificial waste-excretion tubes installed. There's going to be senseless warfare; the Naturalists have weapons stored up at party headquarters. Men'll be just as dead as if they died for something real."

  "Time to eat, dear," Betty said, indicating the table.

  "I'm not hungry."

  "Stop sulking and eat. Or you'll have indigestion, and you know what that means."

  He knew what it meant, all right. It meant his life was in danger. One belch in the presence of a Purist and it was a life and death struggle. There was no room in the same world for men who belched and men who wouldn't tolerate men who belched. Something had to give... and it had already given. The Amendment had been passed: the Naturalists' days were numbered.

  "Jimmy will be late tonight," Betty said, as she helped herself to lamb chops, green peas, and creamed corn. "There's some sort of Purist celebra­tion. Speeches, parades, torch-light rallies." She added wistfully, "I guess we can't go down and watch, can we? It'll be pretty, all the lights and voices, and marching."

  "Go ahead." Listlessly, Walsh spooned up his food. He ate without tasting. "Enjoy yourself."

  They were still eating, when the door burst open and Carl entered briskly. "Anything left for me?" he demanded.

  Betty half-rose, astonished. "Carl! You don't -- smell any more."

  Carl seated himself and grabbed for the plate of lamb chops. Then he recollected, and daintily selected a small one, and a tiny portion of peas. "I'm hungry," he admitted, "but not too hungry." He ate carefully, quietly.

  Walsh gazed at him dumbfounded. "What the hell happened?" he demanded. "Your hair -- and your teeth and breath. What did you do?"

  Without looking up, Carl answered, "Party tactics. We're beating a strategical retreat. In the face of this Amendment, there's no point in doing something foolhardy. Hell, we don't intend to get slaughtered." He sipped some luke-warm coffee. "As a matter of fact, we've gone underground."

  Walsh slowly lowered his fork. "You mean you're not going to fight?"

  "Hell, no. It's suicide." Carl glanced furtively around. "Now listen to me. I'm completely in conformity with the provisions of the Homey Amendment; nobody can pin a thing on me. When the cops come snooping around, keep your mouths shut. The Amendment gives the right to recant, and that's technically what we've done. We're clean; they can't touch us. But let's just not say anything." He displayed a small blue card. "A Purist membership card. Backdated; we planned for any eventuality."

  "Oh, Carl!" Betty cried delightedly. "I'm so glad. You look just -- wonderful!"

  Walsh said nothing.

  "What's the matter?" Betty demanded. "Isn't this what you wanted? You didn't want them to fight and kill each other --" Her voice rose shrilly. "Won't anything satisfy you? This is what you wanted and you're still dissatisfied. What on earth more do you want?"

  There was noise below the unit. Carl sat up straight, and for an instant color left his face. He would have begun sweating if it were still possible. "That's the conformity police," he said thickly. "Just sit tight; they'll make a routine check and keep on going."

  "Oh, dear," Betty gasped. "I hope they don't break anything. Maybe I better go and freshen up."

  "Just sit still," Carl grated. "There's no reason for them to suspect anything."

  When the door opened, Jimmy stood dwarfed by the green-tinted con­formity police.

  "There he is!" Jimmy shrilled, indicating Carl. "He's a Naturalist offi­cial! Smell him!"

  The police spread efficiently into the room. Standing around the immo­bile Carl, they examined him briefly, then moved away. "No body odor," the police sergeant disagreed. "No halitosis. Hair thick and well-groomed." He signalled, and Carl obediently opened his mouth. "Teeth white, totally brushed. Nothing nonacceptable. No, this man is all right."

  Jimmy glared furiously at Carl. "Pretty smart."

  Carl picked stoically at his plate of food and ignored the boy and the police.

  "Apparently we've broken the core of Naturalist resistance," the sergeant said into his neck-ph
one. "At least in this area there's no organized opposi­tion."

  "Good," the phone answered. "Your area was a stronghold. We'll go ahead and set up the compulsory purification machinery, though. It should be implemented as soon as possible."

  One of the cops turned his attention to Don Walsh. His nostrils twitched and then a harsh, oblique expression settled over his face. ''What's your name?" he demanded.

  Walsh gave his name.

  The police came cautiously around him. "Body odor," one noted. "But hair fully restored and groomed. Open your mouth."

  Walsh opened his mouth.

  "Teeth clean and white. But --" The cop sniffed. "Faint halitosis... stomach variety. I don't get it. Is he a Naturalist or isn't he?"

  "He's not a Purist," the sergeant said. "No Purist would have body odor. So he must be a Naturalist."

  Jimmy pushed forward. "This man," he explained, "is only a fellow hiker. He's not a party member."

  "You know him?"

  "He's -- related to me," Jimmy admitted.

  The police took notes. "He's been playing around with Naturalists, but he hasn't gone the whole way?"

  "He's on the fence," Jimmy agreed. "A quasi-Naturalist. He can be salvaged; this shouldn't be a criminal case."

  "Remedial action," the sergeant noted. "All right, Walsh," he addressed Walsh. "Get your things and let's go. The Amendment provides compulsory purification for your type of person; let's not waste time."

  Walsh hit the sergeant in the jaw.

  The sergeant sprawled foolishly, arms flapping, dazed with disbelief. The cops drew their guns hysterically and milled around the room shouting and knocking into each other. Betty began to scream wildly. Jimmy's shrill voice was lost in the general uproar.

  Walsh grabbed up a table lamp and smashed it over a cop's head. The lights in the apartment flickered and died out; the room was a chaos of yelling blackness. Walsh encountered a body; he kicked with his knee and with a groan of pain the body settled down. For a moment he was lost in the seething din; then his fingers found the door. He pried it open and scrambled out into the public corridor.