Philip K. Dick - Captive Market.pdf - Philip K.Dick - margozap

Captive Market

PHILIP K. DICK

v.3.0-fixed formatting, broken paragraphs, garbled text; by peragwinn 2006-02-07

Philip K. Dick is another outstanding writer of short fiction whose work at this length has been

ignored because of his more famous novels, such as the Hugo Award-winning The Man in the

High Castle. He enjoys a high reputation among academic and other "serious" critics of science

fiction and is particularly well known in Eastern and Western Europe. Dick has always stressed

the ambiguous nature of "reality" in his work, and this trend has intensified in recent years.

Webster's Seventh defines monopoly as "exclusive ownership through legal privilege,

command of supply, or concerted action." To a considerable extent, modern corporate capitalism

was built on monopoly and monopolistic practices. But monopoly, especially in terms of

"command of supply," can also be situational. If the conditions are right, an individual with the

proper skills and resources can find him/herself in control of a well-defined market whose

members have no alternative but to do business.

Saturday morning, about eleven o'clock, Mrs. Edna Berthelson was ready to make her little trip.

Although it was a weekly affair, consuming four hours of her valuable business time, she made the

profitable trip alone, preserving for herself the integrity of her find. Because that was what it was. A find,

a stroke of incredible luck. There was nothing else like it, and she had been in business fifty-three years.

More, if the years in her father's store were counted-but they didn't really count. That had been for the

experience (her father made that clear); no pay was involved. But it gave her the understanding of

business, the feel of operating a small country store, dusting pencils and unwrapping flypaper and serving

up dried beans and chasing the cat out of the cracker barrel where he Red to sleep.

Now the store was old, and so was she. The big, heavyset, black browed man who was her father

had died long ago; her own children and grandchildren had been spawned, had crept out over the world,

were everywhere. One by one they had appeared, lived in Walnut Creek, sweated through the dry,

sun-baked summers, and then gone on, leaving one by one as they had come. She and the store sagged

and settled a little more each year, became a little more frail and stem and grim. A little more themselves.

That morning very early Jackie said: "Grandmaw, where are you going?" Although he knew, of

course, where she was going. She was going out in her truck as she always did; this was the Saturday

trip. But he liked to ask; he was pleased by the stability of the answer. He liked having it always the

same.

To another question there was another unvarying answer, but this one didn't please him so much. It

came in answer to the question.

"Can I come along?"

The answer to that was always no.

Edna Berthelson laboriously carried packages and boxes from the back of the store to the rusty,

upright pickup truck. Dust lay over the truck; its red-metal sides were bent and corroded. The motor

was already on; it was wheezing and heating up in the midday sun. A few drab chickens pecked in the

dust around its wheels. Under the porch of the store a plump white shaggy sheep squatted, its face vapid,

indolent, indifferently watching the activity of the day. Cars and trucks rolled along Mount Diablo

Boulevard. Along Lafayette Avenue a few shoppers strolled, farmers and their wives, petty businessmen,

farmhands, some city women in their gaudy slacks and print shirts, sandals, bandannas. In the front of the

store the radio tinnily played popular songs.

"I asked you a question," Jackie said righteously. "I asked you where you're going."

Mrs. Berthelson bent stiffly over to lift the last armload of boxes. Most of the loading had been done

the night before by Arnie the Swede, the hulking, white-haired hired man who did the heavy work around

the store. "What?" she murmured vaguely, her gray, wrinkled face twisting with concentration. "You

know perfectly well where I'm going. "

Jackie trailed plaintively after her, as she reentered the store to look for her order book.

"Can I come? Please, can I come along? You never let me come-you never let anybody come. "

"Of course not," Mrs. Berthelson said sharply. "It's nobody's business. "

"But I want to come along," Jackie explained.

Slyly,- the little old woman turned her gray head and peered back at him, a worn, colorless bird

taking in a world perfectly understood. "So does everybody else." Thin lips twitching in a secret smile,

Mrs. Berthelson said softly: "But nobody can."

Jackie didn't like the sound of that. Sullenly, he retired to a comer, hands stuck deep in the pockets

of his jeans, not taking part in something that was denied him, not approving of something in which he

could not share. Mrs. Berthelson ignored him. She pulled her frayed blue sweater around her thin

shoulders, located her sunglasses, pulled the screen door shut after her, and strode briskly to the truck.

Getting the truck into gear was an intricate process. For a time she sat tugging crossly at the shift,

pumping the clutch up and down, waiting impatiently for the teeth to fall into place. At last, screeching

and chattering, the gears meshed; the truck leaped a little, and Mrs. Berthelson gunned the motor and

released the hand brake.

As the truck roared jerkily down the driveway, Jackie detached himself from the shade by the house

and followed along after it. His mother was nowhere in sight. Only the dozing sheep and the two

scratching chickens were visible. Even Arnie the Swede was gone, probably getting a cold Coke. Now

was a fine time. Now was the best time he had ever had. And it was going to be sooner or later anyhow,

because he was determined to come along.

Grabbing hold of the tailboard of the truck, Jackie hoisted himself up and landed facedown on the

tightly packed heaps of packages and boxes. Under him the truck bounced and bumped. Jackie hung on

for dear life; clutching at the boxes he pulled his legs under him, crouched down, and desperately sought

to keep from being flung off. Gradually, the truck righted itself, and the torque diminished. He breathed a

sigh of relief and settled gratefully down.

He was on his way. He was along, finally. Accompanying Mrs. Berthelson on her secret weekly trip,

her strange covert enterprise from which-he had heard-she made a fabulous profit. A trip which nobody

understood, and which he knew, in the deep recesses of his child's mind, was something awesome and

wonderful, something that would be well worth the trouble. He had hoped fervently that she wouldn't

stop to check her load along the way.

With infinite care, Tellman prepared himself a cup of "coffee. " First, he carried a tin cup of roasted

grain over to the gasoline drum the colony used as a mixing bowl. Dumping it in, he hurried to add a

handful of chicory and a few fragments of dried bran. Dirt-stained hands trembling, he managed to get a

fire started among the ashes and coals under the pitted metal grate. He set a pan of tepid water on the

flames and searched for a spoon.

"What are you up to?" his wife demanded from behind him.

"Uh," Tellman muttered. Nervously, he edged between Gladys and the meal. "Just fooling around." In

spite of himself, his voice took on a nagging whine. "I have a right to fix myself something, don't I? As

much right as anybody else."

"You ought to be over helping."

"I was. I wrenched something in my back." The wiry, middle-aged man ducked uneasily away from

his wife; tugging at the remains of his soiled white shirt, he retreated toward the door of the shack. "Damn

it, a person has to rest, sometimes."

"Rest when we get there." Gladys wearily brushed back her thick, dark-blonde hair. "Suppose

everybody was like you."

Tellman flushed resentfully. "Who plotted our trajectory? Who's done all the navigation work?" A

faint ironic smile touched his wife's chapped lips. "We'll see how your charts work out," she said. "Then

we'll talk about it." Enraged, Tellman plunged out of the shack, into the blinding late afternoon sunlight.

He hated the sun, the sterile white glare that began at five in the morning and lasted until nine in the

evening. The Big Blast had sizzled the water vapor from the air; the sun beat down pitilessly, sparing

nobody. But there were few left to care.

To his right was the cluster of shacks that made up the camp. An eclectic hodgepodge of boards,

sheets of tin, wire and tar paper, upright concrete blocks, anything and everything dragged from the San

Francisco ruins, forty miles west. Cloth blankets flapped dismally in doorways, protection against the vast

hosts of insects that swept across the campsite from time to time. Birds, the natural enemy of insects,

were gone. Tellman hadn't seen a bird in two years-and he didn't expect to see one again. Beyond the

camp began the eternal dead black ash, the charred face of the world, without features, without life.

The camp had been set up in a natural hollow. One side was sheltered by the tumbled ruins of what

had once been a minor mountain range. The concussion of the blast had burst the towering cliffs; rock

had cascaded into the valley for days. After San Francisco had been fired out of existence, survivors had

crept into the heaps of boulders, looking for a place to hide from the sun. That was the hardest part: the

unshielded sun. Not the insects, not the radioactive clouds of ash, not the flashing white fury of the blasts,

but the sun. More people had died of thirst and dehydration and blind insanity than from toxic poisons.

From his breast pocket, Tellman got a precious package of cigarettes. Shakily, he lit up. His thin,

clawlike hands were trembling, partly from fatigue, partly from rage and tension. How he hated the camp.

He loathed everybody in it, his wife included. Were they worth saving? He doubted it. Most of them

were barbarians, already; what did it matter if they got the ship off or not? He was sweating away his

mind and life, trying to save them. The hell with them. But then, his own safety was involved with theirs.

He stalked stiff-legged over to where Barnes and Masterson stood talking. "How's it coming?" he

demanded gruffly.

"Fine," Barnes answered. "It won't he long, now."

"One more load," Masterson said. His heavy features twitched uneasily. "I hope nothing gets fouled

up. She ought to be here any minute. "

Tellman loathed the sweaty, animal-like scent that rolled from Masterson's beefy body. Their

situation wasn't an excuse to creep around filthy as a pig . . . on Venus, things would be different.

Masterson was useful, now; he was an experienced mechanic, invaluable in servicing the turbine and jets

of the ship. But when the ship had landed and been pillaged . . .

Satisfied, Tellman brooded over the reestablishment of the rightful order. The hierarchy had collapsed

in the ruins of the cities, but it would be back strong as ever. Take Flannery, for example. Flannery was

nothing but a foul-mouthed, shanty-Irish stevedore . . . but he was in charge of loading the ship, the

greatest job at the moment. Flannery was top dog, for the time being . . . but that would change.

It had to change. Consoled, Tellman strolled away from Barnes and Masterson, over to the ship

itself. The ship was huge. Across its muzzle the stenciled identification still remained, not yet totally

obliterated by drifting ash and the searing heat of the sun.

U.S. ARMY ORDNANCE

SERIES A-3 (b)

Originally, it had been a high-velocity "massive retaliation" weapon, loaded with an H-warhead,

ready to carry indiscriminate death to the enemy. The projectile had never been launched. Soviet toxic

crystals had blown quietly into the windows and doors of the local command barracks. When launching

day arrived, there was no crew to send it off. But it didn't matter-there was no enemy, either. The rocket

had stood on its buttocks for months . . . it was still there when the first refugees straggled into the shelter

of the demolished mountains.

"Nice, isn't it?" Patricia Shelby said. She glanced up from her work and smiled blearily at Tellman.

Her small, pretty face was streaked with fatigue and eyestrain. "Sort of like the trylon at the New York

World's Fair."

"My God," Tellman said, "you remember that?"

"I was only eight," Patricia answered. In the shadow of the ship she was carefully checking the

automatic relays that would maintain the air, temperature, and humidity of the ship. "But I'll never forget it.

Maybe I was a precog-when I saw it sticking up I knew someday it would mean a lot to everybody. "

"A lot to the twenty of us," Tellman corrected. Suddenly he offered her the remains of his cigarette.

"Here-you look like you could use it."

"Thanks." Patricia continued with her work, the cigarette between her lips. "I'm almost done- Boy,

some of these relays are tiny. Just think." She held up a microscopic wafer of transparent plastic. "While

we're all out cold, this makes the difference between life and death." A strange, awed look crept into her

dark-blue eyes. "To the human race."

Tellman guffawed. "You and Flannery. He's always spouting idealistic twaddle. "

Professor John Crowley, once head of the history department at Stanford, now the nominal leader of

the colony, sat with Flannery and Jean Dobbs, examining the suppurating arm of a ten-year-old boy.

"Radiation," Crowley was saying emphatically. "The overall level is rising daily. It's settling ash that does

it. If we don't get out soon, we're done."

"It's not radiation," Flannery corrected in his ultimately certain voice. "It's toxic crystalline poisoning;

that stuff's knee-deep up in the hills. He's been playing around up there."

"Is that so?" Jean Dobbs demanded. The boy nodded his head not daring to look at her. "You're

right," she said to Flannery.

"Put some salve on it," Flannery said. "And hope he'll live. Outside of sulfathiazole there's not much

we have." He glanced at his watch, suddenly tense. "Unless she brings the penicillin, today."

"If she doesn't bring it today," Crowley said, "she'll never bring it. This is the last load; as soon as it's

stored, we're taking off."

Rubbing his hands, Flannery suddenly bellowed: "Then get out the money! "

Crowley grinned. "Right." He fumbled in one of the steel storage lockers and yanked out a handful of

paper bills. Holding a sheaf of bills up to Tellman he fanned them out invitingly. "Take your pick. Take

them all."

Nervously, Tellman said, "Be careful with that. She's probably raised the price on everything, again."

"We've got plenty." Flannery took some and stuffed it into a partly filled load being wheeled by, on its

way to the ship. "There's money blowing all over the world, along with the ash and particles of bone. On

Venus we won't need it-she might as well have it all."

On Venus, Tellman thought, savagely, things would revert to their legitimate order-with Flannery

digging sewers where he belonged. "What's she bringing mostly?" he asked Crowley and Jean Dobbs,

ignoring Flannery. "What's the last load made up of?"

"Comic books," Flannery said dreamily, wiping perspiration from his balding forehead; he was a lean,

tall, dark-haired young man. "And harmonicas."

Crowley winked at him. Uke picks, so we can lie in our hammocks all day, strumming 'Someone's in

the Kitchen with Dinah.' "

"And swizzle sticks," Flannery reminded him. "In order that we may all the more properly flatten the

bubbles of our vintage '38 champagne. "

Tellman boiled. "You-degenerate!"

Crowley and Flannery roared with laughter, and Tellman stalked off, smoldering under this new

humiliation. What kind of morons and lunatics were they? Joking at a time like this . . . He peered

miserably, almost accusingly, at the ship. Was this the kind of world they were going to found?

In the pitiless white-hot sun, the huge ship shimmered and glowed. A vast upright tube of alloy and

protective fiber mesh rising up above the tumble of wretched shacks. One more load, and they were off.

One more truckful of supplies from their only source, the meager trickle of uncontaminated goods that

meant the difference between life and death.

Praying that nothing would go wrong, Tellman turned to await the arrival of Mrs. Edna Berthelson

and her battered red pickup truck. Their fragile umbilical cord, connecting them with the opulent,

undamaged past.

On both sides of the road lay groves of lush apricot trees. Bees and flies buzzed sleepily among the

rotting fruit scattered over the soil; every now and then a roadside stand appeared, operated by

somnambulistic children. In driveways stood parked Buicks and Oldsmobiles. Rural dogs wandered here

and there. At one intersection stood a swank tavern, its neon sign blinking on and off, ghostly pale in the

midmorning sun.

Mrs. Edna Berthelson glared hostilely at the tavern, and at the cars parked around it. City people

were moving out into the valley, cutting down the old oak trees, the ancient fruit orchards, setting up

suburban homes, stopping in the middle of the day for a whiskey sour and then driving cheerfully on.

Driving at seventy-five miles an hour in their swept-back Chryslers. A column of cars that had piled up

behind her truck suddenly burst forth and swung past her. She let them go, stony-faced, indifferent.

Served them right for being in such a hurry. If she always hurried like that, she would never have had time

to pay attention to that odd ability she had found in her introspective, lonely drives; never have

discovered that she could look "ahead," never have discovered that hole in the warp of time which

enabled her to trade so easily at her own exorbitant prices. Let them hurry if they wanted. The heavy

load in the back of the truck jogged rhythmically. The motor wheezed. Against the back window a

half-dead fly buzzed.

Jackie lay stretched out among the cartons and boxes, enjoying the ride, gazing complacently at the

apricot trees and cars. Against the hot sky the peak of Mount Diablo rose, blue and white, an expanse of

cold rock. Trails of mist clung to the peak; Mount Diablo went a long way up. He made a face at a dog

standing indolently at the side of the road, waiting to cross. He waved gaily at a Pacific Telephone Co.

repairman, stringing wire from a huge reel.

Abruptly the truck turned off the state highway and onto a black surfaced side road. Now there were

fewer cars. The truck began to climb . . . the rich orchards fell behind and gave way to flat brown fields.

A dilapidated farmhouse lay to the right; he watched it with interest, wondering how old it was. When it

was out of sight, no other man-made structures followed. The fields became unkempt. Broken, sagging

fences were visible occasionally. Tom signs, no longer legible. The truck was approaching the base of

Mount Diablo . . . almost nobody came this way.

Idly, the boy wondered why Mrs. Berthelson's little trip took her in this direction. Nobody lived here;

suddenly there were no fields, only scrub grass and bushes, wild countryside, the tumbled slope of the

mountain. A rabbit hopped skillfully across the half-decayed road. Rolling hills, a broad expanse of trees

and strewn boulders . . . there was nothing here but a state fire tower, and maybe a watershed. And an

abandoned picnic area, once maintained by the state, now forgotten.

An edge of fear touched the boy. No customers lived out this way . . . he had been positive the

battered red pickup truck would head directly into town, take him and the load to San Francisco or

Oakland or Berkeley, a city where he could get out and run around, see interesting sights. There was

nothing here, only abandoned emptiness, silent and foreboding. In the shadow of the mountain, the air

was chill. He shivered. All at once he wished he hadn't come.

Mrs. Berthelson slowed the truck and shifted noisily into low. With a roar and an explosive belch of

exhaust gases, the truck crept up a steep ascent, among jagged boulders, ominous and sharp.

Somewhere far off a bird cried shrilly; Jackie listened to its thin sounds echoing dismally away and

wondered how he could attract his grandmother's attention. It would be nice to be in front, in the cabin. It

would be nice-

And then he noticed it. At first he didn't believe it . . . but he had to believe it.

Under him, the truck was beginning to fade away.

It faded slowly, almost imperceptibly. Dimmer and dimmer the truck grew; its rusty red sides became

gray, then colorless. The black road was visible underneath. In wild panic, the boy clutched at the piles of

boxes. His hands passed through them; he was riding precariously on an uneven sea of dim shapes,

among almost invisible phantoms.

He lurched and slid down. Now-hideously-he was suspended momentarily halfway through the

truck, just above the tail pipe. Groping desperately, he struggled to catch hold of the boxes directly

Philip K. Dick - Captive Market.pdf

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