The Eye of the Sibyl and Other Classic Strories (64 page)

The Figure nodded.

Agneta said, “Travis, I think—well, I feel you should go along with this. I—” She did not want to press the point that Travis was dead. But he had to understand the situation; otherwise, as Elms said, he was doomed. “Go with us,” she said.

“You’re going, then?” Travis said, bitterly.

“Yes,” she said.

Elms, gazing at the Figure, said in a low voice, “Quite possibly I’m mistaken, but it seems to be changing.”

She looked, but saw no change. Yet Elms seemed frightened.

The Figure, in its white robe, walked slowly toward the seated Travis. The Figure halted close by Travis, stood for a time, and then, bending, bit Travis’s face.

Agneta screamed. Elms stared, and Travis, locked into his seat, thrashed. The Figure, calmly, ate him.

“Now you see,” the spokesperson for the Board of Inquiry said, “this brain must be shut down. The deterioration is severe; the experience is terrible for her; it must end now.”

I said, “No. We from the Proxima System find this turn of events highly interesting.”

“But the Savior is eating Travis!” another of the Earth persons exclaimed.

“In your religion,” I said, “is it not the case that you eat the flesh of your God and drink his blood? All that has happened here is a mirror image of that Eucharist.”

“I order her brain shut down!” the spokesperson for the Board said. His face was pale; drops of sweat stood out on his forehead.

“We should see more before we shut down,” I said. I found it highly exciting, this enactment of our own sacrament, our highest sacrament, in which our Savior consumes us, his worshippers.

“Agneta,” Elms whispered, “did you see that? Christ ate Travis. There’s nothing left but his gloves and boots.”

Oh God, Agneta Rautavaara thought. What is happening?

She moved away from the Figure, over to Elms. Instinctively.

“He is my blood,” the Figure said as it licked its lips. “I drink of this blood, the blood of eternal life. When I have drunk it, I will live forever. He is my body. I have no body of my own; I am only a plasma. By eating his body, I obtain everlasting life. This is the new truth that I proclaim, that I am eternal.”

“He’s going to eat us, too,” Elms said.

Yes, Agneta Rautavaara thought. He is. She could see now that the Figure was an Approximation. It is a Proxima life-form, she realized. He’s right; he has no body of his own. The only way he can get a body is—

“I’m going to kill him,” Elms said. He popped the emergency laser rifle from its rack and pointed it at the figure.

The Figure said, “Father, the hour has come.”

“Stay away from me,” Elms said.

“In a short time, you will no longer see me,” the Figure said, “unless I drink of your blood and eat of your body. Glorify yourself that I may live.” The Figure moved toward Elms.

Elms fired the laser rifle. The Figure staggered and bled. It was Travis’s blood, Agneta realized. In him. Not his own blood. This is terrible; she put her hands to her face, terrified.

“Quick,” she said to Elms. “Say ‘I am innocent of this man’s blood.’ Say it before it’s too late.”

“ ‘I am innocent of this man’s blood,’ ” Elms said.

The Figure fell. Bleeding, it lay dying. It was no longer a bearded man. It was something else, but Agneta Rautavaara could not tell what it was. It said,
“Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?”

As she and Elms gazed down at it, the Figure died.

“I killed it,” Elms said. “I killed Christ.” He held the laser rifle pointed at himself, groping for the trigger.

“That wasn’t Christ,” Agneta said. “It was something else. The opposite of Christ.” She took the gun from Elms.

Elms was weeping.

The Earth persons on the Board of Inquiry possessed the majority vote and they voted to abolish all activity in Rautavaara’s artificially sustained brain. This disappointed us, but there was no remedy for us.

We had seen the beginning of an absolutely stunning scientific experiment: the theology of one race grafted onto that of another. Shutting down the Earth person’s brain was a scientific tragedy. For example, in terms of the basic relationship to God, the Earth race held a diametrically opposite view from us. This of course must be attributed to the fact that they are a somatic race and we are a plasma. They drink the blood of their God; they eat his flesh; that way they become immortal. To them, there is no scandal in this. They find it perfectly natural. Yet, to us it is dreadful. That the worshipper should eat and drink its God? Awful to us; awful indeed. A disgrace and a shame—an abomination. The higher should always prey on the lower; the God should consume the worshipper.

We watched as the Rautavaara Case was closed—closed by the shutting down of her brain so that all EEG activity ceased and the monitors indicated nothing. We felt disappointment, and in addition the Earth persons voted out a verdict of censure of us for our handling of the rescue mission in the first place.

It is striking, the gulf which separates races developing in different star systems. We have tried to understand the Earth persons and we have failed. We are aware, too, that they do not understand us and are appalled in turn by some of our customs. This was demonstrated in the Rautavaara Case. But were we not serving the purposes of detached scientific study? I myself was amazed at Rautavaara’s reaction when the Savior ate Mr. Travis. I would have wished to see this most holy of the sacraments fulfilled with the others, with Rautavaara and Elms as well.

But we were deprived of this. And the experiment, from our standpoint, failed.

And we live now, too, under the ban of unnecessary moral blame.

Inert within the depths of his theta chamber, he heard the faint tone and then the synthovoice. “Five minutes.”

“Okay,” he said, and struggled out of his deep sleep. He had five minutes to adjust the course of his ship; something had gone wrong with the auto-control system. An error on his part? Not likely; he never made errors. Jason Bedford make errors? Hardly.

As he made his way unsteadily to the control module, he saw that Norman, who had been sent with him to amuse him, was also awake. The cat floated slowly in circles, batting at a pen that somehow had gotten loose. Strange, Bedford thought.

“I thought you were unconscious with me.” He examined the readout of the ship’s course. Impossible! A fifth-parsec off in the direction of Sirius. It would add a week to his journey. With grim precision he reset the controls, then sent out an alert signal to Meknos III, his destination.

“Troubles?” the Meknosian operator answered. The voice was dry and cold, the calculating monotone of something that always made Bedford think of snakes.

He explained his situation.

“We need the vaccine,” the Meknosian said. “Try to stay on course.”

Norman the cat floated majestically by the control module, reached out a paw, and jabbed at random; two activated buttons sounded faint
bleeps
and the ship altered course.

“So you did it,” Bedford said. “You humiliated me in the eyes of an alien. You have reduced me to idiocy vis-à-vis the alien mind.” He grabbed the cat. And squeezed.

“What was that strange sound?” the Meknosian operator asked. “A kind of lament.”

Bedford said quietly, “There’s nothing left to lament. Forget you heard it.” He shut off the radio, carried the cat’s body to the trash sphincter, and ejected it.

A moment later he had returned to his theta chamber and, once more, dozed. This time there would be no tampering with his controls. He dozed in peace.

When his ship docked at Meknos III, the senior member of the alien medical team greeted him with an odd request. “We would like to see your pet.”

“I have no pet,” Bedford said. Certainly it was true.

“According to the manifest filed with us in advance—”

“It is really none of your business,” Bedford said. “You have your vaccine; I’ll be taking off.”

The Meknosian said, “The safety of any life-form is our business. We will inspect your ship.”

“For a cat that doesn’t exist,” Bedford said.

Their search proved futile. Impatiently, Bedford watched the alien creatures scrutinize every storage locker and passageway of his ship. Unfortunately, the Meknosians found ten sacks of dry cat kibble. A lengthy discussion ensued among them, in their own language.

“Do I have permission,” Bedford said harshly, “to return to Earth now? I’m on a tight schedule.” What the aliens were thinking and saying was of no importance to him; he wished only to return to his silent theta chamber and profound sleep.

“You’ll have to go through decontamination procedure A,” the senior Meknosian medical officer said. “So that no spore or virus from—”

“I realize that,” Bedford said. “Let’s get it done.”

Later, when decontamination had been completed and he was back in his ship starting up the drive, his radio came on. It was one or another of the Meknosians; to Bedford they all looked alike. “What was the cat’s name?” the Meknosian asked.

“Norman,” Bedford said, and jabbed the ignite switch. His ship shot upward and he smiled.

He did not smile, however, when he found the power supply to his theta chamber missing. Nor did he smile when the backup unit could also not be located. Did I forget to bring it? he asked himself. No, he decided; I wouldn’t do that. They took it.

Two years before he reached Terra. Two years of full consciousness on his part, deprived of theta sleep; two years of sitting or floating or—as he had seen in military-preparedness training holofilms—curled up in a corner, totally psychotic.

He punched out a radio request to return to Meknos III. No response. Well, so much for that.

Seated at his control module, he snapped on the little inboard computer and said, “My theta chamber won’t function; it’s been sabotaged. What do you suggest I do for two years?”

“Right,” he said. He would have remembered. “Thank you.” Pressing the proper button, he caused the door of the tape compartment to slide open.

No tapes. Only a cat toy—a miniature punching bag—that had been included for Norman; he had never gotten around to giving it to him. Otherwise… bare shelves.

The alien mind, Bedford thought. Mysterious and cruel.

Setting the ship’s audio recorder going, he said calmly and with as much conviction as possible, “What I will do is build my next two years around the daily routine. First, there are meals. I will spend as much time as possible planning, fixing, eating, and enjoying delicious repasts. During the time ahead of me, I will try out every combination of victuals possible.” Unsteadily, he rose and made his way to the massive food storage locker.

As he stood gazing into the tightly packed locker—tightly packed with row upon row of identical snacks—he thought, On the other hand, there’s not much you can do with a two-year supply of cat kibble. In the way of variety. Are they all the same flavor?

They were all the same flavor.

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.

When there is a date following the name of a story, it is the date the manuscript of that story was first received by Dick’s agent, per the records of the Scott Meredith Literary Agency. Absence of a date means no record is available. The name of a magazine followed by a month and year indicates the first published appearance of a story. An alternate name following a story indicates Dick’s original name for the story, as shown in the agency records.

These five volumes include all of Philip K. Dick’s short fiction, with the exception of short novels later published as or included in novels, childhood writings, and unpublished writings for which manuscripts have not been found. The stories are arranged as closely as possible in chronological order of composition; research for this chronology was done by Gregg Rickman and Paul Williams.

THE LITTLE BLACK BOX (“From Ordinary Household Objects”) 5/6/63.
Worlds of Tomorrow,
Aug 1964.

I made use of this story when I wrote my novel
DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP?
Actually, the idea is better put forth in the story. Here, a religion is regarded as a menace to all political systems; therefore it, too, is a kind of political system, perhaps even an ultimate one. The concept of
caritas
(or
agape
) shows up in my writing as the key to the authentic human. The android, which is the unauthentic human, the mere reflex machine, is unable to experience empathy. In this story it is never clear whether Mercer is an invader from some other world. But he must be; in a sense all religious leaders are… but not from another planet as such.
(1978)

THE WAR WITH THE FNOOLS
Galactic Outpost,
Spring 1964.

Well, once again we are invaded. And, humiliatingly, by a life form which is absurd. My colleague Tim Powers once said that Martians could invade us simply by putting on funny hats, and we’d never notice. It’s a sort of low-budget invasion. I guess we’re at the point where we can be amused by the idea of Earth being invaded. (And this is when they really zap you.)
(1978)

A GAME OF UNCHANCE 11/9/63.
Amazing,
July 1964.

A carnival is feral; another carnival shows up and is pitted against the first one; and the antithetical interaction is preplanned in such a way that the first carnival wins. It’s as if the two opposing forces that underlie all change in the universe are rigged; in favor of thanatos, the dark force, yin or strife, which is to say, the force of destruction.
(1978)