Ubik

“Fine,” Joe said.

“In order for you to have ample time to confer with Ella Runciter, Mr. Hammond will have the ship pick you up at the moratorium. In view of this, Mr. Hammond suggests that I take you back to the moratorium with me. My chopper is parked on the hotel roof.”

“Al Hammond said that? That I should return to the moratorium with you?”

“That’s right.” Von Vogelsang nodded.

“A tall, stoop-shouldered Negro, about thirty years old? With gold-capped front teeth, each with an ornamental design, the one on the left a heart, the next a club, the one on the right a diamond?”

“The man who came with us from Zurich Field yesterday. Who waited with you at the moratorium.”

Joe said, “Did he have on green felt knickers, gray golf socks, badger-hide open-midriff blouse and imitation patent-leather pumps?”

“I couldn’t see what he wore. I just saw his face on the vidscreen.”

“Did he convey any specific code words so I could be sure it was him?”

The moratorium owner, peeved, said, “I don’t understand the problem, Mr. Chip. The man who talked to me on the vidphone from New York is the same man you had with you yesterday.”

“I can’t take a chance,” Joe said, “on going with you, on getting into your chopper. Maybe Ray Hollis sent you. It was Ray Hollis who killed Mr. Runciter.”

His eyes like glass buttons, von Vogelsang said, “Did you inform the Prudence Society of this?”

“We will. We’ll get around to it in due time. Meanwhile we have to watch out that Hollis doesn’t get the rest of us. He intended to kill us too, there on Luna.”

“You need protection,” the moratorium owner said. “I suggest you go immediately to your phone and call the Zurich police; they’ll assign a man to cover you until you leave for New York. And, as soon as you arrive in New York—”

“My phone, as I said, is broken. All I get on it is the voice of Glen Runciter. That’s why no one could reach me.”

“Really? How very unusual.” The moratorium owner undulated past him into the hotel room. “May I listen?” He picked up the phone receiver questioningly.

“One poscred,” Joe said.

Digging into the pockets of his tweed toga, the moratorium owner fished out a handful of coins; his airplane-propeller beanie whirred irritably as he handed three of the coins to Joe.

“I’m only charging you what they ask around here for a cup of coffee,” Joe said. “This ought to be worth at least that much.” Thinking that, he realized that he had had no breakfast, and that he would be facing Ella in that condition. Well, he could take an amphetamine instead; the hotel probably provided them free, as a courtesy.

Holding the phone receiver tightly against his ear, von Vogelsang said, “I don’t hear anything. Not even a dial tone. Now I hear a little static. As if from a great distance. Very faint.” He held the receiver out to Joe, who took it and also listened.

He, too, heard only the far-off static. From thousands of miles away, he thought. Eerie. As perplexing in its own way as the voice of Runciter—if that was what it had been. “I’ll return your poscred,” he said, hanging up the receiver.

“Never mind,” von Vogelsang said.

“But you didn’t get to hear his voice.”

“Let’s return to the moratorium. As your Mr. Hammond requested.”

Joe said, “Al Hammond is my employee. I make policy. I think I’ll return to New York before I talk to Ella; in my opinion, it’s more important to frame our formal notification to the Society. When you talked to Al Hammond did he say whether all the inertials left Zurich with him?”

“All but the girl who spent the night with you, here in the hotel.” Puzzled, the moratorium owner looked around the room, obviously wondering where she was. His peculiar face fused over with concern. “Isn’t she here?”

“Which girl was it?” Joe asked; his morale, already low, plunged into the blackest depths of his mind.

“Mr. Hammond didn’t say. He assumed you’d know. It would have been indiscreet for him to tell me her name, considering the circumstances. Didn’t she—”

“Nobody showed up.” Which had it been? Pat Conley? Or Wendy? He prowled about the hotel room, reflexively working off his fear. I hope to god, he thought, that it was Pat.

“In the closet,” von Vogelsang said.

“What?” He stopped pacing.

“Maybe you ought to look in there. These more expensive suites have extra-large closets.”

Joe touched the stud of the closet door; its spring-loaded mechanism sent it flying open.

On the floor of the closet a huddled heap, dehydrated, almost mummified, lay curled up. Decaying shreds of what seemingly had once been cloth covered most of it, as if it had, by degrees, over a long period of time, retracted into what remained of its garments. Bending, he turned it over. It weighed only a few pounds; at the push of his hand its limbs folded out into thin bony extensions that rustled like paper. Its hair seemed enormously long; wiry and tangled, the black cloud of hair obscured its face. He crouched, not moving, not wanting to see who it was.

In a strangled voice von Vogelsang rasped, “That’s old. Completely dried-out. Like it’s been here for centuries. I’ll go downstairs and tell the manager.”

“It can’t be an adult woman,” Joe said. These could only be the remnants of a child; they were just too small. “It can’t be either Pat or Wendy,” he said, and lifted the cloudy hair away from its face. “It’s like it was in a kiln,” he said. “At a very high temperature, for a long time.” The blast, he thought. The severe heat from the bomb.

He stared silently then at the shriveled, heat-darkened little face. And knew who this was. With difficulty he recognized her.

Wendy Wright.

Sometime during the night, he reasoned, she had come into the room, and then some process had started in her or around her. She had sensed it and had crept off, hiding herself in the closet, so he wouldn’t know; in her last few hours of life—or perhaps minutes; he hoped it was only minutes—this had overtaken her, but she had made no sound. She hadn’t wakened him. Or, he thought, she tried and she couldn’t do it, couldn’t attract my attention. Maybe it was after that, after trying and failing to wake me, that she crawled into this closet.

I pray to god, he thought, that it happened fast.

“You can’t do anything for her?” he asked von Vogelsang. “At your moratorium?”

“Not this late. There wouldn’t be any residual half-life left, not with this complete deterioration. Is—she the girl?”

“Yes,” he said, nodding.

“You better leave this hotel. Right now. For your own safety. Hollis—it is Hollis, isn’t it?—will do this to you too.”

“My cigarettes,” Joe said. “Dried out. The two-year-old phone book in the ship. The soured cream and coffee with scum on it, mold on it. The antiquated money.” A common thread: age. “She said that back on Luna, after we made it up to the ship; she said, ‘I feel old.’ ” He pondered, trying to control his fear; it had begun now to turn into terror. But the voice on the phone, he thought. Runciter’s voice. What did that mean?

He saw no underlying pattern, no meaning. Runciter’s voice on the vidphone fitted no theory which he could summon up or imagine.

“Radiation,” von Vogelsang said. “It would seem to me that she was exposed to extensive radioactivity, probably some time ago. An enormous amount of it, in fact.”

Joe said, “I think she died because of the blast. The explosion that killed Runciter.” Cobalt particles, he said to himself. Hot dust that settled on her and which she inhaled. But, then, we’re all going to die this way; it must have settled on all of us. I have it in my own lungs; so does Al; so do the other inertials. There’s nothing that can be done in that case. It’s too late. We didn’t think of that, he realized. It didn’t occur to us that the explosion consisted of a micronic nuclear reaction.