1
Friends, this is clean-up time and we're discounting all our silent, electric 
Ubiks by this much money. Yes, we're throwing away the blue-book. And remember: 
every Ubik on our lot has been used only as directed. 
At three-thirty A.M. on the night of June 5, 1992, the top telepath in the Sol 
System fell off the map in the offices of Runciter Associates in New York City. 
That started vid-phones ringing. The Runciter organization had lost track of too 
many of Hollis' psis during the last two months; this added disappearance 
wouldn't do. 
"Mr. Runciter? Sorry to bother you." The technician in charge of the night shift 
at the map room coughed nervously as the massive, sloppy head of Glen Runciter 
swam up to fill the vidscreen. "We got this news from one of our inertials. Let 
me look." He fiddled with a disarranged stack of tapes from the recorder which 
monitored incoming messages. "Our Miss Dorn reported it; as you may recall she 
had followed him to Green River, Utah, where -" 
Sleepily, Runciter grated, "Who? I can't keep in mind at all times which 
inertials are following what teep or precog." With his hand he smoothed down his 
ruffled gray mass of wirelike hair. "Skip the rest and tell me which of Hollis' 
people is missing now." 
"S. Dole Melipone," the technician said. 
"What? Melipone's gone? You kid me." 
PHILIP K. DICK 
"I not kid you," the technician assured him. "Edie Dorn and two other inertials 
followed him to a motel named the Bonds of Erotic Polymorphic Experience, a 
sixty-unit sub-surface structure catering to businessmen and their hookers who 
don't want to be entertained. Edie and her colleagues didn't think he was 
active, but just to be on the safe side we had one of our own telepaths, Mr. G. 
G. Ashwood, go in and read him. Ashwood found a scramble pattern surrounding 
Melipone's mind, so he couldn't do anything; he therefore went back to Topeka, 
Kansas, where he's currently scouting a new possibility." 
Runciter, more awake now, had lit a cigarette; chin in hand, he sat propped up 
somberly, smoke drifting across the scanner of his end of the bichannel circuit. 
"You're sure the teep was Melipone? Nobody seems to know what he looks like; he 
must use a different physiognomic template every month. What about his field?" 
"We asked Joe Chip to go in there and run tests on the magnitude and minitude of 
the field being generated there at the Bonds of Erotic Polymorphic Experience 
Motel. Chip says it registered, at its height, 68.2 blr units of telepathic 
aura, which only Melipone, among all the known telepaths, can produce." The 
technician finished, "So that's where we stuck Melipone's identflag on the map. 
And now he - it - is gone." 
"Did you look on the floor? Behind the map?" 
"It's gone electronically. The man it represents is no longer on Earth or, as 
far as we can make out, on a colony world either." 
Runciter said, "I'll consult my dead wife." 
"It's the middle of the night. The moratoriums are closed now." 
"Not in Switzerland," Runciter said, with a grimacing smile, as if some 
repellent midnight fiuid had crept up into his aged throat. "Goodeve." Runciter 
hung up. 
As owner of the Beloved Brethren Moratorium, Herbert Schoenheit von Vogelsang, 
of course, perpetually came to 
UBIK 5 work before his employees. At this moment, with the chilly, echoing 
building just beginning to stir, a worried-looking clerical individual with 
nearly opaque glasses and wearing a tabby-fur blazer and pointed yellow shoes 
waited at the reception counter, a claim-check stub in his hand. Obviously, he 
had shown up to holiday-greet a relative. Resurrection Day - the holiday on 
which the half-lifers were publicly honored - lay just around the corner; the 
rush would soon be beginning. 
"Yes, sir," Herbert said to him with an affable smile. "I'll take your stub 
personally." 
"It's an elderly lady," the customer said. "About eighty, very small and 
wizened. My grandmother." 
"Twill only be a moinent." Herbert made his way back to the cold-pac bins to 
search out number 3054039-B. 
When he located the correct party he scrutinized the lading report attached. It 
gave only fifteen days of half-life remaining. Not very much, he reflected; 
automatically he pressed a portable protophason amplifier into the transparent 
plastic hull of the casket, tuned it, listened at the proper frequency for 
indication of cephalic activity. 
Faintly from the speaker a voice said, "...and then Tillie sprained her ankle 
and we never thought it'd heal; she was so foolish about it, wanting to start 
walking immediately..." 
Satisfied, he unplugged the amplifier and located a union man to perform the 
actual task of carting 3054039-B to the consultation lounge, where the customer 
would be put in touch with the old lady. 
"You checked her out, did you?" the customer asked as he paid the poscreds due. 
"Personally," Herbert answered. "Functioning perfectly." He kicked a series of 
switches, then stepped back. "Happy Resurrection Day, sir." 
"Thank you." The customer seated himself facing the casket, which steamed in its 
envelope of cold-pac; he pressed an earphone against the side of his hcad and 
spoke firmly 
6    PHILIP K. DICK 
into the microphone. "Flora, dear, can you hear me? I think I can hear you 
already. Flora?" 
When I pass, Herbert Schoenheit von Vogelsang said to himself, I think I'll will 
my heirs to revive me one day a century. That way I can observe the fate of all 
mankind. But that meant a rather high maintenance cost to the heirs - and he 
knew what that meant. Sooner or later they would rebel, have his body taken out 
of cold-pac and - god forbid - buried. 
"Burial is barbaric," Herbert muttered aloud. "Remnant of the primitive origins 
of our culture." 
"Yes, sir," his secretary agreed, at her typewriter. 
In the consultation lounge several customers now communed with their half-lifer 
relations, in rapt quiet, distributed at intervals each with his separate 
casket. It was a tranquil sight, these faithfuls, coming as they did so 
regularly to pay homage. They brought messages, news of what took place in the 
outside world; they cheered the gloomy half-lifers in these intervals of 
cerebral activity. And - they paid Herbert Schoenheit von Vogelsang. It was a 
profitable business, operating a moratorium. 
"My dad seems a little frail," a young man said, catching Herbert's attention. 
"I wonder if you could take a moment of your time to check him over. I'd really 
appreciate it," 
"Certainly," Herbert said, accompanying the customer across the lounge to his 
deceased relative. The lading for this one showed only a few days remaining; 
that explained the vitiated quality of cerebration. But still... he turned up 
the gain of the protophason amplifier, and the voice from the half-lifer became 
a trifle stronger in the earphone. He's almost at an end, Herbert thought. It 
seemed obvious to him that the son did not want to see the lading, did not 
actually care to know that contact with his dad was diminishing, finally. So 
Herbert said nothing; he merely walked off, leaving the son to commune. Why tell 
him that this was probably the last time he would come here? He would find out 
soon enough in any case. 
UBIK 
A truck had now appeared at the loading platform at the rear of the moratorium; 
two men hopped down from it, wearing familiar pale-blue uniforms. Atlas 
Interplan Van and Storage, Herbert perceived. Delivering another half-lifer who 
had just now passed, or here to pick up one which had expired. Leisurely, he 
started in that direction, to supervise; at that moment, however, his secretary 
called to him. "Herr Schoenheit von Vogelsang; sorry to break into your 
meditation, but a customer wishes you to assist in revving up his relative." Her 
voice took on special coloration as she said, "The customer is Mr. Glen 
Runciter, all the way here from the North American Confederation." 
A tall, elderly man, with large hands and a quick, sprightly stride, came toward 
him. He wore a varicolored Dacron wash-and-wear suit, knit cummerbund and 
dip-dyed cheese-cloth cravat. His head, massive like a tomcat's, thrust forward 
as he peered through slightly protruding, round and warm and highly alert eyes. 
Runciter kept, on his face, a professional expression of greeting, a fast 
attentiveness which fixed on Herbert, then almost at once strayed past him, as 
if Run-citer had already fastened onto future matters. "How is Ella?" Runciter 
boomed, sounding as if he possessed a voice electronically augmented. "Ready to 
be cranked up for a talk? She's only twenty; she ought to be in better shape 
than you or me." He chuckled, but it had an abstract quality; he always smiled 
and he always chuckled, his voice always boomed, but inside he did not notice 
anyone, did not care; it was his body which smiled, nodded and shook hands. 
Noth-ing touched his mind, which remained remote; aloof, but amiable, he 
propelled Herbert along with him, sweeping his way in great strides back into 
the chilled bins where the half-lifers, including his wife, lay. 
"You have not been here for some time, Mr. Runciter," Herbert pointed out; he 
could not recall the data on Mrs. Runciter's lading sheet, how much half-life 
she retained. 
Runciter, his wide, flat hand pressing against Herbert's back to urge him along, 
said, "This is a moment of impor- 
8 PHILIP K. DICK
tance, von Vogelsang. We, my associates and myself, are in a line of business 
that surpasses all rational understanding. I'm not at liberty to make 
disclosures at this time, but we consider matters at present to be ominous but 
not however hopeless. Despair is not indicated - not by any means. Where's 
Ella?" He halted, glanced rapidly about. 
"I'll bring her from the bin to the consultation lounge for you," Herbert said; 
customers should not be here in the bins. "Do you have your numbered 
claim-check, Mr. Runciter?" 
"God, no," Runciter said. "I lost it months ago. But you know who my wife is; 
you can find her. Ella Runciter, about twenty. Brown hair and eyes." He looked 
around him impatiently. "Where did you put the lounge? It used to be located 
where I could find it." 
"Show Mr. Runciter to the consultation lounge," Herbert said to one of his 
employees, who had come meandering by, curious to see what the world-renowned 
owner of an anti-psi organization looked like. 
Peering into the lounge, Runciter said with aversion, "It's full. I can't talk 
to Ella in there." He strode after Herbert, who had made for the moratorium's 
files. "Mr. von Vogelsang," he said, overtaking him and once more dropping his 
big paw onto the man's shoulder; Herbert felt the weight of the hand, its 
persuading vigor. "Isn't there a more private sanctum sanctorum for confidential 
communications? What I have to discuss with Ella my wife is not a matter which 
we at Runciter Associates are ready at this time to reveal to the world." 
Caught up in the urgency of Runciter's voice and presence, Herbert found himself 
readily mumbling, "I can make Mrs. Runciter available to you in one of our 
offices, sir." He wondered what had happened, what pressure had forced Runciter 
out of his bailiwick to make this belated pilgrimage to the Beloved Brethren 
Moratorium to crank up - as Runciter crudely phrased it - his half-lifer wife. A 
business crisis of some sort, he theorized. Ads over TV and in the homeopapes by 
the various anti-psi prudence establishments had 
UBIK 9
shrilly squawked their harangues of late. Defend your pri-vacy, the ads yammered 
on the hour, from all media. Is a stranger tuning in on you? Are you really 
alone? That for the telepaths... and then the queasy worry about precogs. Are 
your actions being predicted by someone you never met? Someone you would not 
want to meet or invite into your home? Terminate anxiety; contacting your 
nearest prudence organization will first tell you if in fact you are the victim 
of unauthorized intrusions, and then, on your instructions, nul-lify these 
intrusions - at moderate cost to you. 
"Prudence organizations." He liked the term; it had dig-nity and it was 
accurate. He knew this from personal expe-rience; two years ago a telepath had 
infiltrated his moratorium staff, for reasons which he had never discovered. To 
monitor confidences between half-lifers and their visitors, probably; perhaps 
those of one specific half-lifer - anyhow, a scout from one of the anti-psi 
organizations had picked up the telepathic field, and he had been notified. Upon 
his sign-ing of a work contract an anti-telepath had been dispatched, had 
installed himself on the moratorium premises. The te-lepath had not been located 
but it had been nullified, exactly as the TV ads promised. And so, eventually, 
the defeated telepath had gone away. The moratorium was now psi-free, and, to be 
sure it stayed so, the anti-psi prudence organi-zation surveyed his 
establishment routinely once a month. 
"Thanks very much, Mr. Vogelsang," Runciter said, fol-lowing Herbert through an 
outer office in which clerks worked to an empty inner room that smelled of drab 
and unnecessary micro-documents. 
Of course, Herbert thought musingly to himself, I took their word for it that a 
telepath got in here; they showed me a graph they had obtained, citing it as 
proof. Maybe they faked it, made up the graph in their own labs. And I took 
their word for it that the telepath left; he came, he left - and I paid two 
thousand poscreds. Could the prudence or-ganizations be, in fact, rackets? 
Claiming a need for their services when sometimes no need actually exists? 
10PHILIP K. DICK 
Pondering this he set off in the direction of the files once more. This time 
Runciter did not follow him; instead, he thrashed about noisily, making his big 
frame comfortable in terms of a meager chair. Runciter sighed, and it seemed to 
Herbert, suddenly, that the massively built old man was tired, despite his 
customary show of energy. 
I guess when you get up into that bracket, Herbert decided, you have to act in a 
certain way; you have to appear more than a human with merely ordinary failings. 
Probably Runciter's body contained a dozen artiforgs, artificial organs grafted 
into place in his physiological apparatus as the gen-uine, original ones, 
failed. Medical science, he conjectured, supplies the material groundwork, and 
out of the authority of his mind Runciter supplies the remainder. I wonder how 
old he is, he wondered. Impossible any more to tell by looks, especially after 
ninety. 
"Miss Beason," he instructed his secretary, "have Mrs. Ella Runciter located and 
bring me the ident number. She's to be,taken to office 2-A." He seated himself 
across from her, busied himself with a pinch or two of Fribourg & Treyer Princes 
snuff as Miss Beason began the relatively simple job of tracking down Glen 
Runciter's wife. 
2 
The best way to ask for beer is to sing out Ubik. Made from select hops, choice 
water, slow-aged for 
perfect flavor Ubik is the nation's number-one choice in beer. Made only in 
Cleveland. 
Upright in her transparent casket, encased in an effluvium of icy mist, Ella 
Runciter lay with her eyes shut, her hands lifted permanently toward her 
impassive face. It had been three years since he had seen Ella, and of course 
she had not changed. She never would, now, at least not in the out-ward physical 
way. But with each resuscitation into active half-life, into a return of 
cerebral activity, however short, Ella died somewhat. The remaining time Ieft to 
her pulse-phased out and ebbed. 
Knowledge of this underwrote his failure to rev her up more often. He 
rationalized this way: that it doomed her, that to activate her constituted a 
sin against her. As to her own stated wishes, before her death and in early 
half-life encounters - this had become handily nebulous in his mind. Anyway, he 
would know better, being four times as old as she. What had she wished? To 
continue to function with him as co-owner of Runciter Associates; something 
vague on that order. Well, he had granted this wish. Now, for example. And six 
or seven times in the past. He did consult her at each crisis of the 
organization. He was doing so at this mo-ment. 
12 PHILIP K. DICK 
Damn this earphone arrangement, he grumbled as he fitted the plastic disc 
against the side of his head. And this micro-phone; all impediments to natural 
communication. He felt impatient and uncomfortable as he shifted about on the 
in-adequate chair which Vogelsang or whatever his name was had provided him; he 
watched her rev back into sentience and wished she would hurry. And then in 
panic he thought, Maybe she isn't going to make it; maybe she's worn out and 
they didn't tell me. Or they don't know. Maybe, he thought, I ought to get that 
Vogelsang creature in here to explain. Maybe something terrible is wrong. 
Ella, pretty and light-skinned; her eyes, in the days when they had been open, 
had been bright and luminous blue. That would not again occur; he could talk to 
her and hear her answer; he could communicate with her... but he would never 
again see her with eyes opened; nor would her mouth move. She would not smile at 
his arrival. When he departed she would not cry. Is this worth it? he asked 
himself. Is this better than the old way, the direct road from full-life to the 
grave? I still do have her with me, in a sense, he decided. The alternative is 
nothing. 
In the earphone words, slow and uncertain, formed: cir-cular thoughts of no 
importance, fragments of the mysterious dream which she now dwelt in. How did it 
feel, he wondered, to be in half-life? He could never fathom it from what Ella 
had told him; the basis of it, the experience of it, couldn't really be 
transmitted. Gravity, she had told him, once; it begins not to affect you and 
you float, more and more. When half-life is over, she had said, I think you 
float out of the System, out into the stars. But she did not know either; she 
only wondered and conjectured. She did not, however, seem afraid. Or unhappy. He 
felt glad of that. 
"Hi, Ella," he said clumsily into the microphone. 
"Oh," her answer came, in his ear; she seemed startled. And yet of course her 
face remained stable. Nothing showed; he looked away. "Hello, Glen," she said, 
with a sort of 
UBIK 13 
childish wonder, surprised, taken aback, to find him here. "What -" She 
hesitated. "How much time has passed?" 
"Couple years," he said. 
"Tell me what's going on." 
"Aw, christ," he said, "everything's going to pieces, the whole organization. 
That's why I'm here; you wanted to be brought into major policy-planning 
decisions, and god knows we need that now, a new policy, or anyhow a revamping 
of our scout structure." 
"I was dreaming," Ella said. "I saw a smoky red light, a horrible light. And yet 
I kept moving toward it. I couldn't stop." 
"Yeah," Runciter said, nodding. "The Bardo Thodol, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, 
tells about that. You remem-ber reading that; the doctors made you read it when 
you were -" He hesitated. "Dying," he said then. 
"The smoky red light is bad, isn't it?" Ella said. 
"Yeah, you want to avoid it." He cleared his throat. "Lis-ten, Ella, we've got 
problems. You feel up to hearing about it? I mean, I don't want to overtax you 
or anything; just say if you're too tired or if there's something else you want 
to hear about or discuss." 
"It's so weird. I think I've been dreaming all this time, since you last talked 
to me. Is it really two years? Do you know, Glen, what I think? I think that 
other people who are around me - we seem to be progressively growing together. A 
lot of my dreams aren't about me at all. Sometimes I'm a man and sometimes a 
little boy; sometimes I'm an old fat woman with varicose veins... and I'm in 
places I've never seen, doing things that make no sense." 
"Well, like they say, you're heading for a new womb to be born out of. And that 
smoky red light - that's a bad womb; you don't want to go that way. That's a 
humiliating, low sort of womb. You're probably anticipating your next life, or 
whatever it is." He felt foolish, talking like this; normally he had no 
theological convictions. But the half-life 
14
PHILIP K. DICK 
experience was real and it had made theologians out of all of them. "Hey," he 
said, changing the subject. "Let me tell you what's happened, what made me come 
here and bother you. S. Dole Melipone has dropped out of sight." 
A moment of silence, and then Ella laughed. "Who or what is an S. Dole Melipone? 
There can't be any such thing." The laugh, the unique and familiar warmth of it, 
made his spine tremble; he remembered that about her, even after so many years. 
He had not heard Ella's laugh in over a decade. 
"Maybe you've forgotten," he said. 
Ella said, "I haven't forgotten; I wouldn't forget an S. Dole Melipone. Is it 
like a hobbit?" 
"It's Raymond Hollis' top telepath. We've had at least one inertial sticking 
close to him ever since G. G. Ashwood first scouted him, a year and a half ago. 
We never lose Melipone; we can't afford to. Melipone can when necessary generate 
twice the psi field of any other Hollis employee. And Me-lipone is only one of a 
whole string of Hollis people who've disappeared - anyhow, disappeared as far as 
we're con-cerned. As far as all prudence organizations in the Society can make 
out. So I thought, Hell, I'll go ask Ella what's up and what we should do. Like 
you specified in your will - remember?" 
"I remember." But she sounded remote. "Step up your ads on TV. Warn people. Tell 
them..." Her voice trailed off into silence then. 
"This bores you," Runciter said gloomily. 
"No. I -" She hesitated and he felt her once more drift away. "Are they all 
telepaths?" she asked after an interval. 
"Telepaths and precogs mostly. They're nowhere on Earth; I know that. We've got 
a dozen inactive inertials with nothing to do because the Psis they've been 
nullifying aren't around, and what worries me even more, a lot more, is that 
requests for anti-psis have dropped - which you would ex-pect, given the fact 
that so many Psis are missing. But I know they're on one single project; I mean, 
I believe. Anyhow, I'm sure of it; somebody's hired the bunch of them, but only 
UBIK 15
Hollis knows who it is or where it is. Or what it's all about." He lapsed into 
brooding silence then. How would Ella be able to help him figure it out? he 
asked himself. Stuck here in this casket, frozen out of the world - she knew 
only what he told her. Yet, he had always relied on her sagacity, that 
particular female form of it, a wisdom not based on knowl-edge or experience but 
on something innate. He had not, during the period she had lived, been able to 
fathom it; he certainly could not do so now that she lay in chilled immo-bility. 
Other women he had known since her death - there had been several - had a little 
of it, trace amounts perhaps. Intimations of a greater potentiality which, in 
them, never emerged as it had in Ella. 
"Tell me," Ella said, "what this Melipone person is like." 
"A screwball." 
"Working for money? Or out of conviction? I always feel wary about that, when 
they have that psi mystique, that sense of purpose and cosmic identity. Like 
that awful Sarapis had; remember him?" 
"Sarapis isn't around any more. Hollis allegedly bumped him off because he 
connived to set up his own outfit in com-petition with Hollis. One of his 
precogs tipped Hollis off." He added, "Melipone is much tougher on us than 
Sarapis was. When he's hot it takes three inertials to balance his field, and 
there's no profit in that; we collect - or did col-lect - the same fee we get 
with one inertial. Because the Society has a rate schedule now which we're bound 
by." He liked the Society less each year; it had become a chronic obsession with 
him, its uselessness, its cost. Its vainglory. "As near as we can tell, Melipone 
is a money-Psi. Does that make you feel better? Is that less bad?" He waited, 
but heard no response from her. "Ella," he said. Silence. Nervously he said, 
"Hey, hello there, Ella; can you hear me? Is some-thing wrong?" Oh, god, he 
thought. She's gone. 
A pause, and then thoughts materialized in his right ear. "My name is Jory." Not 
Ella's thoughts; a different elan, more vital and yet clumsier. Without her deft 
subtlety. 
16 PHILIP K. DICK
"Get off the line," Runciter said in panic. "I was talking to my wife Ella; 
where'd you come from?" 
"I am Jory," the thoughts came, "and no one talks to me. I'd like to visit with 
you awhile, mister, if that's okay with you. What's your name?" 
Stammering, Runciter said, "I want my wife, Mrs. Ella Runciter; I paid to talk 
to her, and that's who I want to talk to, not you." 
"I know Mrs. Runciter," the thoughts clanged in his ear, much stronger now. "She 
talks to me, but it isn't the same as somebody like you talking to me, somebody 
in the world. Mrs. Runciter is here where we are; it doesn't count because she 
doesn't know any more than we do. What year is it, mister? Did they send that 
big ship to proxima? I'm very interested in that; maybe you can tell me. And if 
you want, I can tell Mrs. Runciter later on. Okay?" 
Runciter popped the plug from his ear, hurriedly set down the earphone and the 
rest of the gadgetry; he left the stale, dust-saturated office and roamed about 
among the chilling caskets, row after row, all of them neatly arranged by 
num-ber. Moratorium employees swam up before him and then vanished as he churned 
on, searching for the owner. 
"Is something the matter, Mr. Runciter?" the von Vo-gelsang person said, 
observing him as he floundered about. "Can I assist you?" 
"I've got some thing coming in over the wire," Runciter panted, halting. 
"Instead of Ella. Damn you guys and your shoddy business practices; this 
shouldn't happen, and what does it mean?" He followed after the moratorium 
owner, who had already started in the direction of office 2-A. "If I ran my 
business this way -" 
"Did the individual identify himself?" 
"Yeah, he called himself Jory." 
Frowning with obvious worry, von Vogelsang said, "That would be Jory Miller. I 
believe he's located next to your wife. In the bin." 
"But I can see it's Ella!" 
UBIK 
17 
"After prolonged proximity," von Vogelsang explained, "there is occasionally a 
mutual osmosis, a suffusion between the mentalities of half-lifers. Jory 
Miller's cephalic activity is particularly good; your wife's is not. That makes 
for an un-fortunately one-way passage of protophasons." 
"Can you correct it?" Runciter asked hoarsely; he found himself still spent, 
still panting and shaking. "Get that thing out of my wife's mind and get her 
back - that's your job!" 
Von Vogelsang said, in a stilted voice, "If this condition persists your money 
will be returned to you." 
"Who cares about the money? Snirt the money." They had reached office 2-A now; 
Runciter unsteadily reseated himself, his heart laboring so that he could hardly 
speak. "If you don't get this Jory person off the line," he half gasped, half 
snarled, "I'll sue you; I'll close down this place!" 
Facing the casket, von Vogelsang pressed the audio outlet into his ear and spoke 
briskly into the microphone. "Phase out, Jory; that's a good boy." Glancing at 
Runciter he said, "Jory passed at fifteen; that's why he has so much vitality. 
Actually, this has happened before; Jory has shown up sev-eral times where he 
shouldn't be." Once more into the mi-crophone he said, "This is very unfair of 
you, Jory; Mr. Runciter has come a long way to talk to his wife. Don't dim her 
signal, Jory; that's not nice." A pause as he listened to the earphone. "I know 
her signal is weak." Again he listened, solemn and froglike, then removed the 
earphone and rose to his feet. 
"What'd he say?" Runciter demanded. "Will he get out of there and let me talk to 
Ella?" 
Von Vogelsang said, "There's nothing Jory can do. Think of two AM radio 
transmitters, one close by but limited to only five-hundred watts of operating 
power. Then another, far off, but on the same or nearly the same frequency, and 
utilizing five-thousand watts. When night comes -" 
"And night," Runciter said, "has come." At least for Ella. And maybe himself as 
well, if Hollis' missing teeps, para-kineticists, precogs, resurrectors and 
animators couldn't be 
18 PHILIP K. DICK
found. He had not only lost Ella; he had also lost her advice, Jory having 
supplanted her before she could give it. 
"When we return her to the bin," von Vogelsang was blabbing, "we won't install 
her near Jory again. In fact, if you're agreeable as to paying the somewhat 
larger monthly fee, we can place her in a high-grade isolated chamber with walls 
coated and reinforced with Tefion-26 so as to inhibit hetero-psychic infusion - 
from Jory or anybody else." 
"Isn't it too late?" Runciter said, surfacing momentarily from the depression 
into which this happening had dropped him. 
"She may return. Once Jory phases out. Plus anyone else who may have gotten into 
her because of her weakened state. She's accessible to almost anyone." Von 
Vogelsang chewed his lip, palpably pondering. "She may not like being isolated, 
Mr. Runciter. We keep the containers - the caskets, as they're called by the lay 
public - close together for a reason. Wandering through one another's mind gives 
those in half-life the only -" 
"Put her in solitary right now," Runciter broke in. "Better she be isolated than 
not exist at all." 
"She exists," von Vogelsang corrected. "She merely can't contact you. There's a 
difference." 
Runciter said, "A metaphysical difference which means nothing to me." 
"I will put her in isolation," von Vogelsang said, "but I think you're right; 
it's too late. Jory has permeated her per-manently, to some extent at least. I'm 
sorry." 
Runciter said harshly, "So am I." 
3 
Instant Ubik has all the fresh flavor of just-brewed drip coffee. Your husband 
will say, Christ, Sally, I used to think your coffee was only so-so, But now, 
wow! Safe when taken as directed. 
Still in gay pinstripe clown-style pajamas, Joe Chip hazily seated himself at 
his kitchen table, lit a cigarette and, after inserting a dime, twiddled the 
dial of his recently rented'pape machine. Having a hangover, he dialed off 
interplan news, hovered momentarily at domestic news and then selected gossip. 
"Yes sir," the 'pape machine said heartily. "Gossip. Guess what Stanton Mick, 
the reclusive, interplanetarily known speculator and financier, is up to at this 
very moment." Its works whizzed and a scroll of printed matter crept from its 
slot; the ejected roll, a document in four colors, niftily incised with bold 
type, rolled across the surface of the neo-teakwood table and bounced to the 
floor. His head aching, Chip re-trieved it, spread it out flat before him. 
MICK HITS WORLD BANK FOR TWO TRIL 
(AP) London. What could Stanton Mick, the reclusive, in-terplanetarily known 
speculator and financier be up to? the business community asked itself as rumor 
leaked out of White-hall that the dashing but peculiar industrial magnate, who 
once offered to build free of charge a fleet by which Israel could colonize and 
make fertile otherwise desert areas of 
20 PHILIP K. DICK
Mars, had asked for and may possibly receive a staggering and 
unprecedented loan of 
"This isn't gossip," Joe Chip said to the 'pape machine. "This is speculation 
about fiscal transactions. Today I want to read about which TV star is sleeping 
with whose drug-addicted wife." He had as usual not slept well, at least in 
terms of REM - rapid eye movement - sleep. And he had resisted taking a 
soporific because, very unfortunately, his week's supply of stimulants, provided 
him by the autonomic pharmacy of his conapt building, had run out - due, 
admittedly, to his own oral greed, but nonetheless gone. By law he could not 
approach the pharmacy for more until next Tuesday. Two days away, two long days. 

The 'pape machine said, "Set the dial for low gossip." 
He did so and a second scroll, excreted by the 'pape ma-chine without delay, 
emerged; he zommed in on an excellent caricature drawing of Lola 
Herzburg-Wright, licked his lips with satisfaction at the naughty exposure of 
her entire right ear, then feasted on the text. 
Accosted by a cutpurse in a fancy N.Y. after-hours mowl the other night, LOLA 
HERZBURG-WRIGHT bounced a swift right jab off the chops of the do-badder which 
sent him reeling onto the table where KING EGON GROAT OF SWEDEN and an 
unidentified miss with astonishingly large 
The ring-construct of his conapt door jangled; startled, Joe Chip glanced up, 
found his cigarette attempting to burn the formica surface of his neo-teakwood 
table, coped with that, then shuffled blearily to the speaktube mounted handily 
by the release bolt of the door. "Who is it?" he grumbled; checking with his 
wrist watch, he saw that eight o'clock had not arrived. Probably the rent robot, 
he decided. Or a cred-itor, He did not trigger off the release bolt of the door. 

An enthusiastic male voice from the door's speaker ex-claimed, "I know it's 
early, Joe, but I just hit town. G. G. 
Ashwood here; I've got a firm prospect that I snared ia 
UBIK 21
Topeka - I read this one as magnificent and I want your confirmation before I 
lay the pitch in Runciter's lap. Any-how, he's in Switzerland." 
Chip said, "I don't have my test equipment in the apt." 
"I'll shoot over to the shop and pick it up for you." 
"It's not at the shop." Reluctantly, he admitted, "It's in my car. I didn't get 
around to unloading it last night." In actuality, he had been too pizzled on 
papapot to get the trunk of his hovercar open. "Can't it wait until after nine?" 
he asked irritably. G. G. Ashwood's unstable manic energy an-noyed him even at 
noon... this, at seven-forty, struck him as downright impossible: worse even 
than a creditor. 
"Chip, dearie, this is a sweet number, a walking sympos-ium of miracles that'll 
curl the needles of your gauges and, in addition, give new life to the firm, 
which it badly needs. And furthermore -" 
"It's an anti what?" Joe Chip asked. "Telepath?" 
"I'll lay it on you right out in front," G. G. Ashwood declared. "I don't know. 
Listen, Chip." Ashwood lowered his voice. "This is confidential, this particular 
one. I can't stand down here at the gate gum-flapping away out loud; somebody 
might overhear. In fact I'm already picking up the thoughts of some gloonk in a 
ground-level apt; he -" 
"Okay," . Joe Chip said, resigned. Once started, G. G. Ashwood's relentless 
monologs couldn't be aborted anyhow. He might as well listen to it. "Give me 
five minutes to get dressed and find out if I've got any coffee left in the apt 
anywhere." He had a quasi memory of shopping last night at the conapt's 
supermarket, in particular a memory of tear-ing out a green ration stamp, which 
could mean either coffee or tea or cigarettes or fancy imported snuff. 
"You'll like her," G. G. Ashwood stated energetically. "Although, as often 
happens, she's the daughter of a -" 
"Her?" In alarm Joe Chip said, "My apt's unfit to be seen; I'm behind in my 
payments to the building clean-up robots - they haven't been inside here in two 
weeks." 
"I'll ask her if she cares." 
22 PHILIP K. DICK
"Don't ask her. I care. I'll test her out down at the shop, on Runciter's time." 

"I read her mind and she doesn't care." 
"How old is she?" Maybe, he thought, she's only a child. Quite a few new and 
potential inertials were children, having developed their ability in order to 
protect themselves against their psionic parents. 
"How old are you, dear?" G. G. Ashwood asked faintly, turning his head away to 
speak to the person with him. "Nine-teen," he reported to Joe Chip. 
Well, that shot that. But now he had become curious. G. G. Ashwood's 
razzle-dazzle wound-up tightness usually man-ifested itself in conjunction with 
attractive women; maybe this girl fell into that category. "Give me fifteen 
minutes," he told G.G. If he worked fast, and skulked about in a clean-up 
campaign, and if he missed both coffee and breakfast, he could probably effect a 
tidy apt by then. At least it seemed worth trying. 
He rang off, then searched in the cupboards of the kitchen for a broom (manual 
or self-powered) or vacuum cleaner (helium battery or wall socket). Neither 
could be found. Evidently he had never been issued any sort of cleaning 
equipment by the building's supply agency. Hell of a time, he thought, to find 
that out. And he had lived here four years. 
Picking up the vidphone, he dialed 214, the extension for the maintenance 
circuit of the building, "Listen," he said, when the homeostatic entity 
answered. "I'm now in a posi-tion to divert some of my funds in the direction of 
settling my bill vis-a-vis your clean-up robots. I'd like them up here right now 
to go over my apt, I'll pay the full and entire bill when they're finished." 
"Sir, you'll pay your full and entire bill before they start." 
By now he had his billfold in hand; from it he dumped his supply of Magic Credit 
Keys - most of which, by now, had been voided. Probably in perpetuity, his 
relationship with 
money and the payment of pressing debts being such as it 
UBIK 23
was. "I'll charge my overdue bill against my Triangular Magic Key," he informed 
his nebulous antagonist. "That will trans-fer the obligation out of your 
jurisdiction; on your books it'll show as total restitution." 
"Plus fines, plus penalties." 
"I'll charge those against my Heart-Shaped -" 
"Mr. Chip, the Ferris & Brockman Retail Credit Auditing and Analysis Agency has 
published a special flier on you. Our recept-slot received it yesterday and it 
remains fresh in our minds. Since July you've dropped from a triple G status 
creditwise to quadruple G. Our department - in fact this entire conapt building 
- is now programed against an exten-sion of services and/or credit to such 
pathetic anomalies as yourself, sir. Regarding you, everything must hereafter be 
handled on a basic-cash subfloor. In fact, you'll probably be on a basic-cash 
subfloor for the rest of your life. In fact -" 
He hung up. And abandoned the hope of enticing and/or threatening the clean-up 
robots into entering his muddled apt. Instead, he padded into the bedroom to 
dress; he could do that without assistance. 
After he had dressed - in a sporty maroon wrapper, twin-kle-toes turned-up shoes 
and a felt cap with a tassel - he poked about hopefully in the kitchen for some 
manifestation of coffee. None. He then focused on the living room and found, by 
the door leading to the bathroom, last night's greatcape, every spotty blue yard 
of it, and a plastic bag which contained a half-pound can of authentic Kenya 
coffee, a great treat and one which only while pizzled would he have risen to. 
Especially in view of his current abominable finan-cial situation. 
Back in the kitchen he fished in his various pockets for a dime, and, with it, 
started up the coffeepot. Sniffing the - to him - very unusual smell, he again 
consulted his watch, saw that fifteen minutes had passed; he therefore 
vigorously strode to the apt door, turned the knob and pulled on the release 
bolt. 
The door refused to open. It said, "Five cents, please." 
24 PHILIP K. DICK
He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing. "I'll pay you tomorrow," he 
told the door. Again he tried the knob. Again it remained locked tight. "What I 
pay you," he in-formed it, "is in the nature of a gratuity; I don't have to pay 
you." 
"I think otherwise," the door said. "Look in the purchase contract you signed 
when you bought this conapt." 
In his desk drawer he found the contract; since signing it he had found it 
necessary to refer to the document many times. Sure enough; payment to his door 
for opening and shutting constituted a mandatory fee. Not a tip. 
"You discover I'm right," the door said. It sounded smug. 
From the drawer beside the sink Joe Chip got a stainless steel knife; with it he 
began systematically to unscrew the bolt assembly of his apt's money-gulping 
door. 
"I'll sue you," the door said as the first screw fell out. 
Joe Chip said, "I've never been sued by a door. But I guess I can live through 
it." 
A knock sounded on the door. "Hey, Joe, baby, it's me, G. G. Ashwood. And I've 
got her right here with me. Open up." 
"Put a nickel in the slot for me," Joe said. "The mechanism seems to be jammed 
on my side." 
A coin rattled down into the works of the door; it swung open and there stood G. 
G. Ashwood with a brilliant look on his face. It pulsed with sly intensity, an 
erratic, gleaming triumph as he propelled the girl forward and into the apt. 
She stood for a moment staring at Joe, obviously no more than seventeen, slim 
and copper-skinned, with large dark eyes. My god, he thought, she's beautiful. 
She wore an ersatz canvas workshirt and jeans, heavy boots caked with what 
appeared to be authentic mud. Her tangle of shiny hair was tied back and knotted 
with a red bandanna. Her rolled-up sleeves showed tanned, competent arms. At her 
imitation 
UBIK 25
leather belt she carried a knife, a field-telephone unit and an emergency pack 
of rations and water. On her bare, dark forearm he made out a tattoo. CAVEAT 
EMPTOR, it read. He wondered what that meant. 
"This is Pat," G. G. Ashwood said, his arm, with osten-tatious familiarity, 
around the girl's waist. "Never mind her last name." Square and puffy, like an 
overweight brick, wear-ing his usual mohair poncho, apricot-colored felt hat, 
argyle ski socks and carpet slippers, he advanced toward Joe Chip, 
self-satisfaction smirking from every molecule in his body: He had found 
something of value here, and he meant to make the most of it. "Pat, this is the 
company's highly skilled, first-line electrical type tester." 
Coolly, the girl said to Joe Chip, "Is it you that's electrical? Or your tests?" 

"We trade off," Joe said. He felt, from all around him, the miasma of his 
uncleaned-up apt; it radiated the specter of debris and clutter, and he knew 
that Pat had already noticed. "Sit down," he said awkwardly. "Have a cup of 
actual coffee." 
"Such luxury," Pat said, seating herself at the kitchen table; reflexively she 
gathered the week's heap of 'papes into a neater pile. "How can you afford real 
coffee, Mr. Chip?" 
G. G. Ashwood said, "Joe gets paid a hell of a lot. The firm couldn't operate 
without him." Reaching out he took a cigarette from the package lying on the 
table. 
"Put it back," Joe Chip said. "I'm almost out and I used up my last green ration 
stamp on the coffee." 
"I paid for the door," G.G. pointed out. He offered the pack to the girl. "Joe 
puts on an act; pay no attention. Like look how he keeps his place. Shows he's 
creative; all geniuses live like this. Where's your test equipment, Joe? We're 
wast-ing time." 
To the girl, Joe said, "You're dressed oddly." 
"I maintain the subsurface vidphone lines at the Topeka Kibbutz," Pat said. 
"Only women can hold jobs involving 
26 PHILIP K. DICK
manual labor at that particular kibbutz. That's why I applied there, instead of 
the Wichita Falls Kibbutz." Her black eyes blazed pridefully. 
Joe said, "That inscription on your arm, that tattoo; is that Hebrew?" 
"Latin." Her eyes veiled her amusement. "I've never seen an apt so cluttered 
with rubbish. Don't you have a mistress?" . 
"These electrical-expert types have no time for tarradid-dle," G. G. Ashwood 
said irritably. "Listen, Chip, this girl's parents work for Ray Hollis. If they 
knew she was here they'd give her a frontal lobotomy." 
To the girl, Joe Chip said, "They don't know you have a counter talent?" 
"No." She shook her head. "I didn't really understand it either until your scout 
sat down with me in the kibbutz caf-eteria and told me. Maybe it's true." She 
shrugged. "Maybe not. He said you could show me objective proof of it, with your 
testing battery." 
"How would you feel," he asked her, "if the tests show that you have it?" 
Reflecting, Pat said, "It seems so - negative. I don't do anything; I don't move 
objects or turn stones into bread or give birth without impregnation or reverse 
the illness process in sick people. Or read minds. Or look into the future - not 
even common talents like that. I just negate somebody else's ability. It seems 
-" She gestured. "Stultifying." 
"As a survival factor for the human race," Joe said, "it's as useful as the psi 
talents. Especially for us Norms. The anti-psi factor is a natural restoration 
of ecological balance. One insect learns to fly, so another learns to build a 
web to trap him. Is that the same as no flight? Clams developed hard shells to 
protect them; therefore, birds learn to fly the clam up high in the air and drop 
him on a rock. In a sense, you're a life form preying on the Psis, and the Psis 
are life forms that prey on the Norms. That makes you a friend of the Norm 
class. Balance, the full circle, predator and prey. It 
UBIK 27
appears to be an eternal system; and, frankly, I can't see how it could be 
improved." 
"I might be considered a traitor," Pat said. 
"Does it bother you?" 
"It bothers me that people will feel hostile toward me. But I guess you can't 
live very long without arousing hostility; you can't please everybody, because 
people want different things. Please one and you displease another." 
Joe said, "What is your anti-talent?" 
"It's hard to explain." 
"Like I say," G. G. Ashwood said, "it's unique; I've never heard of it before." 
"Which psi talent does it counteract?" Joe asked the girl. 
"Precog," Pat said. "I guess." She indicated G. G. Ash-wood, whose smirk of 
enthusiasm had not dimmed. "Your scout Mr. Ashwood explained it to me. I knew I 
did some-thing funny; I've always had these strange periods in my life, starting 
in my sixth year. I never told my parents, because I sensed that it would 
displease them." 
"Are they precogs?" Joe asked. 
"Yes." 
"You're right. It would have displeased them. But if you used it around them - 
even once - they would have known, Didn't they suspect? Didn't you interfere 
with their ability?" 
Pat said, "I -" She gestured. "I think I did interfere but they didn't know it." 
Her face showed bewilderment. 
"Let me explain," Joe said, "how the anti-precog generally functions. Functions, 
in fact, in every case we know of. The precog sees a variety of futures, laid 
out side by side like cells in a beehive. For him one has greater luminosity, 
and this he picks. Once he has picked it the anti-precog can do nothing; the 
anti-precog has to be present when the precog is in the process of deciding, not 
after. The anti-precog makes all futures seem equally real to the precog; he 
aborts his talent to choose at all. A precog is instantly aware when an 
anti-precog is nearby because his entire relation to the future 
28 PHILIP K. DICK
is altered. In the case of telepaths a similar impairment -" 
"She goes back in time," G. G. Ashwood said. 
Joe stared at him. 
"Back in time," G.G. repeated, savoring this; his eyes shot shafts of 
significance to every part of Joe Chip's kitchen. "The precog affected by her 
still sees one predominant fu-ture; like you said, the one luminous possibility. 
And he chooses it, and he's right. But why is it right? Why is it luminous? 
Because this girl -" He shrugged in her direction. "Pat controls the future; 
that one luminous possibility is lu-minous because she's gone into the past and 
changed it. By changing it she changes the present, which includes the pre-cog; 
he's affected without knowing it and his talent seems to work, whereas it really 
doesn't. So that's one advantage of her anti-talent over other anti-precog 
talents. The other - and greater - is that she can cancel out the precog's 
decision after he's made it. She can enter the situation later on, and this 
problem has always hung us up, as you know; if we didn't get in there from the 
start we couldn't do anything. In a way, we never could truly abort the precog 
ability as we've done with the others; right? Hasn't that been a weak link in 
our services?" He eyed Joe Chip expectantly. 
"Interesting," Joe said presently. 
"Hell - 'interesting'?" G. G. Ashwood thrashed about in-dignantly. "This is the 
greatest anti-talent to emerge thus far!" 
In a low voice Pat said, "I don't go back in time." She raised her eyes, 
confronted Joe Chip half apologetically, half belligerently. "I do something, 
but Mr. Ashwood has built it up all out of proportion to reality." 
"I can read your mind," G.G. said to her, looking a little nettled. "I know you 
can change the past; you've done it." 
Pat said, "I can change the past but I don't go into the past; I don't 
time-travel, as you want your tester to think." 
"How do you change the past?" Joe asked her. 
"I think about it. One specific aspect of it, such as one incident, or something 
somebody said. Or a little thing that 
UBIK 29
happened that I wish hadn't happened. The first time I did this, as a child -" 
"When she was six years old," G.G. broke in, "living in Detroit, with her 
parents of course, she broke a ceramic antique statue that her father 
treasured." 
"Didn't your father foresee it?" Joe asked her. "With his precog ability?" 
"He foresaw it," Pat answered, "and he punished me the week before I broke the 
statue. But he said it was inevitable; you know the precog talent: They can 
foresee but they can't change anything. Then after the statue did break - after 
I broke it, I should say - I brooded about it, and I thought about that week 
before it broke when I didn't get any dessert at dinner and had to go to bed at 
five P.M. I thought Christ - or whatever a kid says - isn't there some way these 
unfor-tunate events can be averted? My father's precog ability didn't seem very 
spectacular to me, since he couldn't alter events; I still feel that way, a sort 
of contempt. I spent a month trying to will the damn statue back into one piece; 
in my mind I kept going back to before it broke, imagining what it had looked 
like... which was awful. And then one morn-ing when I got up - I even dreamed 
about it at night - there it stood. As it used to be." Tensely, she leaned 
toward Joe Chip; she spoke in a sharp, determined voice. "But neither of my 
parents noticed anything. It seemed perfectly normaI to them that the statue was 
in one piece; they thought it had always been in onc piece, I was the only one 
who remem-bered." She smiled, leaned back, took another of his ciga-rettes from 
the pack and lit up. 
"I'll go get my test equipment from the car," Joe said, starting toward the 
door. 
"Five cents, please," the door said as he seized its knob. 
"Pay the door," Joe said to G. G. Ashwood. 
When he had lugged his armload of testing apparatus from the car to his apt he 
told the hrm's scout to hit the road. 
30 PHILIP K. DICK
"What?" G.G. said, astounded. "But I found her; the bounty is mine. I spent 
almost ten days tracing the field to her; I -" 
Joe said to him, "I can't test her with your field present, as you well know. 
Talent and anti-talent fields deform each other; if they didn't we wouldn't be 
in this line of business." He held out his hand as G.G. got grumpily to his 
feet. "And leave me a couple of nickels. So she and I can get out of here." 
"I have change," Pat murmured. "In my purse." 
"You can measure the force she creates," G.G. said, "by the loss within my 
field. I've seen you do it that way a hundred times." 
Joe said, briefly, "This is different." 
"I don't have any more nickels," G.G. said. "I can't get out." 
Glancing at Joe, then at G.G., Pat said, "Have one of mine." She tossed G.G. a 
coin, which he caught, an expres-sion of bewilderment on his face. The 
bewilderment then, by degrees, changed to aggrieved sullenness. 
"You sure shot me down," he said as he deposited the nickel in the door's slot. 
"Both of you," he muttered as the door closed after him. "I discovered her. This 
is really a cutthroat business, when -" His voice faded out as the door clamped 
shut. There was, then, silence. 
Presently Pat said, "When his enthusiasm goes, there isn't much left of him." 
"He's okay," Joe said; he felt a usual feeling: guilt. But not very much. 
"Anyhow he did his part. Now -" 
"Now it's your turn," Pat said. "So to speak. May I take off my boots?" 
"Sure," he said. He began to set up his test equipment, checking the drums, the 
power supply; he started trial mo-tions of each needle, releasing specific 
surges and recording their effect. 
"A shower?" she asked as she set her boots neatly out of the way. 
UBIK 31
"A quarter," he murmured. "It costs a quarter." He glanced up at her and saw 
that she had begun unbuttoning her blouse. "I don't have a quarter," he said. 
"At the kibbutz," Pat said, "everything is free." 
"Free!" He stared at her. "That's not economically fea-sible. How can it operate 
on that basis? For more than a month?" 
She continued unperturbedly unbuttoning her blouse. "Our salaries are paid in 
and we're credited with having done our job. The aggregate of our earnings 
underwrites the kib-butz as a whole. Actually, the Topeka Kibbutz has shown a 
profit for several years; we, as a group, are putting in more than we're taking 
out." Having unbuttoned her blouse, she laid it over the back of her chair. 
Under the blue, coarse blouse she wore nothing, and he perceived her breasts: 
hard and high, held well by the accurate muscles of her shoulders. 
"Are you sure you want to do that?" he said. "Take off your clothes, I mean?" 
Pat said, "You don't remember." 
"Remember what?" 
"My not taking off my clothes. In another present. You didn't like that very 
well, so I eradicated that; hence this." She stood up lithely. 
"What did I do," he asked cautiously, "when you didn't take off your clothes? 
Refuse to test you?" 
"You mumbled something about Mr. Ashwood having overrated my anti-talent." 
Joe said, "I don't work that way; I don't do that." 
"Here." Bending, her breasts wagging forward, she rum-maged in the pocket of her 
blouse, brought forth a folded sheet of paper which she handed him. "From the 
previous present, the one I abolished." 
He read it, read his one-line evaluation at the end. "Anti-psi field generated - 
inadequate. Below standard through-out. No value against precog ratings now in 
existence." And then the codemark which he employed, a circle with a stroke 
dividing it. Do not hire, the symbol meant. And only he and 
32 PHILIP K. DICK
Glen Runciter knew that. Not even their scouts knew the meaning of the symbol, 
so Ashwood could not have told her. Silently he returned the paper to her; she 
refolded it and returned it to her blouse pocket. 
"Do you need to test me?" she asked. "After seeing that?" 
"I have a regular procedure," Joe said. "Six indices which -" 
Pat said, "You're a little, debt-stricken, ineffective bu-reaucrat who can't 
even scrape together enough coins to pay his door to let him out of his apt." 
Her tone, neutral but devastating, rebounded in his ears; he felt himself 
stiffen, wince and violently flush. 
"This is a bad spot right now," he said. "I'll be back on my feet financially 
any day now. I can get a loan. From the firm, if necessary." He rose unsteadily, 
got two cups and two saucers, poured coffee from the coffeepot. "Sugar?" he 
said. "Cream?" 
"Cream," Pat said, still standing barefoot, without her blouse. 
He fumbled for the doorhandle of the refrigerator, to get out a carton of milk. 
"Ten cents, please," the refrigerator said. "Five cents for opening my door; 
five cents for the cream." 
"It isn't cream," he said. "It's plain milk." He continued to pluck - futilely - 
at the refrigerator door. "Just this one time," he said to it. "I swear to god 
I'll pay you back. To-night." 
"Here," Pat said; she slid a dime across the table toward him. "She should have 
money," she said as she watched him put the dime in the slot of the 
refrigerator. "Your mistress. You really have failed, haven't you? I knew it 
when Mr. Ashwood -" 
"It isn't," he grated, "always like this." 
"Do you want me to bail you out of your problems, Mr. Chip?" Hands in the 
pockets of her jeans, she regarded him expressionlessly, no emotion clouding her 
face. Only alert-ness. "You know I caa, Sit down and write out your eval- 
UBIK 33
uation report on me. Forget the tests. My talent is unique 
anyway; you can't measure the field I produce - it's in the 
past and you're testing me in the present, which simply takes 
place as an automatic consequence. Do you agree?" 
He said, "Let me see that evaluation sheet you have in 
your blouse. I want to look at it one more time. Before I 
ecide." 
From her blouse she once more brought forth the folded- 
up yellow sheet of paper; she calmly passed it across the table 
to him and he reread it. My writing, he said to himself; yes, 
it's true. He returned it to her and, from the collection of 
testing items, took a fresh, clean sheet of the same familiar 
yellow paper. 
On it he wrote her name, then spurious, extraordinarily 
high test results, and then at last his conclusions. His new 
conclusions. "Has unbelievable power. Anti-psi field unique 
in scope. Can probably negate any assembly of precogs im- 
aginable." After that he scratched a symbol: this time two 
crosses, both underlined. Pat, standing behind him, watched 
him write; he felt her breath on his neck. 
"What do the two underlined crosses mean?" she asked. 
" 'Hire her,' " Joe said. " 'At whatever cost required.' " 
"Thank you." She dug into her purse, brought out a hand- 
ful of poscred bills, selected one and presented it to him. A 
big one. "This will help you with expenses. I couldn't give 
it to you earlier, before you made your official evaluation of 
me. You would have canceled very nearly everything and 
you would have gone to your grave thinking I had bribed 
you. Ultimately you would have even decided that I had no 
counter-talent." She then unzipped her jeans and resumed 
her quick, furtive undressing. 
Joe Chip examined what he had written, not watching her. 
The underlined crosses did not symbolize what he had told 
her. They meant: Watch this person. She is a hazard to the 
firm. She is dangerous. 
He signed the test paper, folded it and passed it to her. 
She at once put it away in her purse. 
34 PHILIP K. DICK
"When can I move my things in here?" she asked as she padded toward the 
bathroom. "I consider it mine as of now, since I've already paid you what must 
be virtually the entire month's rent." 
"Anytime," he said. 
The bathroom said, "Fifty cents, please. Before turning on the water." 
Pat padded back into the kitchen to reach into her purse. 
4 
Wild new Ubik salad dressing, not Italian, not French, but an entirely new and 
different taste treat that's waking up the world. Wake up to Ubik and be wild! 
Safe when taken as directed. 
Back in New York once more, his trip to the Beloved Breth-ren Moratorium 
completed, Glen Runciter landed via a silent and impressive all-electric hired 
limousine on the roof of the central installation of Runciter Associates. A 
descent chute dropped him speedily to his fifth-floor office. Presently - at 
nine-thirty A.M. local time - he sat in the massive, old-fash-ioned, authentic 
walnut-and-leather swivel chair, behind his desk, talking on the vidphone to his 
public-relations depart-ment. 
"Tamish, I just now got back from Zurich. I conferred with Ella there." Runciter 
glared at his secretary, who had cautiously entered his personal oversized 
office, shutting the door behind her. "What do you want, Mrs. Frick?" he asked 
her. 
Withered, timorous Mrs. Frick, her face dabbed with spots of artificial color to 
compensate for her general ancient gray-ness, made a gesture of disavowal; she 
had no choice but to bother him. 
"Okay, Mrs. Frick," he said patiently. "What is it?" 
"A new client, Mr. Runciter. I think you should see her." She both advanced 
toward him and retreated, a difficult ma- 
36 PHILIP K. DICK
neuver which Mrs. Frick alone could carry off. It had taken her ten decades of 
practice. 
"As soon as I'm off the phone," Runciter told her. Into the phone he said, "How 
often do our ads run on prime-time TV planetwide? Still once every third hour?" 
"Not quite that, Mr. Runciter. Over the course of a full day, prudence ads 
appear on an average of once every third hour per UHF channel, but the cost of 
prime time -" 
"I want them to appear every hour," Runciter said. "Ella thinks that would be 
better." On the trip back to the Western Hemisphere he had decided which of 
their ads he liked the most. "You know that recent Supreme Court ruling where a 
husband can legally murder his wife if he can prove she wouldn't under any 
circumstances give him a divorce?" 
"Yes, the so-called -" 
"I don't care what it's called; what matters is that we have a TV ad made up on 
that already. How does that ad go? I've been trying to remember it." 
Tamish said, "There's this man, an ex-husband, being tried. First comes a shot 
of the jury, then the judge, then a pan-up on the prosecuting attorney, 
cross-examining the ex-husband. He says, 'It would seem, sir, that your wife - ' 
" 
"That's right," Runciter said with satisfaction; he had, originally, helped 
write the ad. It was, in his opinion, another manifestation of the marvelous 
multifacetedness of his mind. 
"Is it not the assumption, however," Tamish said, "that the missing Psis are at 
work, as a group, for one of the larger investment houses? Seeing as how this is 
probably so, per-haps we should stress one of our business-establishment 
com-mercials. Do you perhaps recall this one, Mr. Runciter? It shows a husband 
home from his job at the end of the day; he still has on his electric-yellow 
cummerbund, petal skirt, knee-hugging hose and military-style visored cap. He 
seats himself wearily on the living-room couch, starts to take off one of his 
gauntlets, then hunches over, frowns and says, 'Gosh, Jill, I wish I knew what's 
been wrong with me lately. Sometimes, with greater frequency almost every day, 
the 
UBIK 37
least little remark at the office makes me think that, well, somebody's reading 
my mind!' Then she says, 'If you're wor-ried about that, why don't we contact 
our nearest prudence organization? They'll lease us an inertial at prices easy 
on our budget, and then you'll feel like your old self again!' Then this great 
smile appears on his face and he says, 'Why, this nagging feeling is already - ' 
" 
Again appearing in the doorway to Runciter's office, Mrs. Frick said, "Please, 
Mr. Runciter." Her glasses quivered. 
He nodded. "I'll talk to you later, Tamish. Anyhow, get hold of the networks and 
start our material on the hour basis as I outlined." He rang off, then regarded 
Mrs. Frick silently. "I went all the way to Switzerland," he said presently, 
"and had Ella roused, to get that information, that advice." 
"Mr. Runciter is free, Miss Wirt." His secretary tottered to one side, and a 
plump woman rolled into the office. Her head, like a basketball, bobbled up and 
down; her great round body propelled itself toward a chair, and there, at once, 
she seated herself, narrow legs dangling. She wore an unfashionable spider-silk 
coat, looking like some amiable bug wound up in a cocoon not spun by itself; she 
looked encased. However, she smiled. She seemed fully at ease. In her late 
forties, Runciter decided. Past any period in which she might have had a good 
figure. 
"Ah, Miss Wirt," he said. "I can't give you too much time; maybe you should get 
to the point. What's the problem?" 
In a mellow, merry, incongruous voice Miss Wirt said, "We're having a little 
trouble with telepaths. We think so but we're not sure. We maintain a telepath 
of our own - one we know about and who's supposed to circulate among our 
employees. If he comes across any Psis, telepaths or precogs, any kind, he's 
supposed to report to -" She eyed Runciter brightly. "To my principal. Late last 
week he made such a report. We have an evaluation, done by a private firm, on 
the capacities of the various prudence agencies. Yours is rated foremost." 
"I know that," Runciter said; he had seen the evaluation, 
38 PHILIP K. DICK
as a matter of fact. As yet, however, it had brought him little if any greater 
business. But now this. "How many telepaths," he said, "did your man pick up? 
More than one?" 
"Two at least." 
"Possibly more?" 
"Possibly." Miss Wirt nodded. 
"Here is how we operate," Runciter said. "First we mea-sure the psi field 
objectively, so we can tell what we're dealing with. That generally takes from 
one week to ten days, de-pending on -" 
Miss Wirt interrupted, "My employer wants you to move in your inertials right 
away, without the time-consuming and expensive formality of making tests." 
"We wouldn't know how many inertials to bring in. Or what kind. Or where to 
station them. Defusing a psi oper-ation has to be done on a systematic basis; we 
can't wave a magic wand or spray toxic fumes into corners. We have to balance 
Hollis' people individual by individual, an anti-talent for every talent. If 
Hollis has gotten into your operation he's done it the same way: Psi by Psi. One 
gets into the personnel department, hires another; that person sets up a 
department or takes charge of a department and requisitions a couple more... 
sometimes it takes them months. We can't undo in twenty-four hours what they've 
constructed over a long period of time. Big-time Psi activity is like a mosaic; 
they can't afford to be impatient, and neither can we." 
"My employer," Miss Wirt said cheerfully, "is impatient." 
"I'll talk to him." Runciter reached for the vidphone. "Who is he and what's his 
number?" 
"You'll deal through me." 
"Maybe I won't deal at all. Why won't you tell me who you represent?" He pressed 
a covert button mounted under the rim of his desk; it would bring his resident 
telepath, Nina Freede, into the next office, where she could monitor Miss Wirt's 
thought processes. I can't work with these people, he said to himself, if I 
don't know who they are. For all I know, Ray Hollis is trying to hire me.
UBIK 39
"You're hidebound," Miss Wirt said. "All we're asking for is speed. And we're 
only asking for that because we have to have it. I call tell you this much: Our 
operation which they've infested isn't on Earth. From the standpoint of 
po-tential yield, as well as from an investment standpoint, it's our primary 
project. My principal has put all his negotiable assets into it. Nobody is 
supposed to know about it. The greatest shock to us, in finding telepaths on the 
site -" 
"Excuse me," Runciter said; he rose, walked to the office door. "I'll find out 
how many people we have about the place who're available for use in this 
connection." Shutting his office door behind him, he looked into each of the 
adjoining offices until he spied Nina Freede; she sat alone in a minor sideroom, 
smoking a cigarette and concentrating. "Find out who she represents," he said to 
her. "And then find out how high they'll go." We've got thirty-eight idle 
inertials, he re-flected. Maybe we can dump all of them or most of them into 
this. I may finally have found where Hollis' smart-assed talents have sneaked 
off to. The whole goddam bunch of them. 
He returned to his own office, reseated himself behind his desk. 
"If telepaths have gotten into your operation," he said to Miss Wirt, his hands 
folded before him, "then you have to face up to and accept the realization that 
the operation per se is no longer secret. Independent of any specific technical 
info they've picked up. So why not tell me what the project is?" 
Hesitating, Miss Wirt said, "I don't know what the project 
1S. 
"Or where it is?" 
"No." She shook her head. 
Runciter said, "Do you know who your employer is?" 
"I work for a subsidiary firm which he financially controls; I know who my 
immediate employer is - that's a Mr. Shepard Howard - but I've never been told 
whom Mr. Howard rep-resents." 
40 PHILIP K. DICK
"If we supply you with the inertials you need, will we know where they are being 
sent?" 
"Probably not." 
"Suppose we never get them back?" 
"Why wouldn't you get them back? After they've decon-taminated our operation." 
"Hollis' men," Runciter said, "have been known to kill inertials sent out to 
negate them. It's my responsibility to see that my people are protected; I can't 
do that if I don't know where they are." 
The concealed microspeaker in his left ear buzzed and he beard the faint, 
measured voice of Nina Freede, audible to him alone. "Miss Wirt represents 
Stanton Mick. She is his confidential assistant. There is no one named Shepard 
How-ard. The project under discussion exists primarily on Luna; it has to do 
with Techprise, Mick's research facilities, the controlling stock of which Miss 
Wirt keeps in her name. She does not know any technical details; no scientific 
evaluations or memos or progress reports are ever made available to her by Mr. 
Mick, and she resents this enormously. From Mick's staff, however, she has 
picked up a general idea of the nature of the project. Assuming that her 
secondhand knowledge is accurate, the Lunar project involves a radical, new, 
low-cost interstellar drive system, approaching the velocity of light, which 
could be leased to every moderately affluent political or ethnological group. 
Mick's idea seems to be that the drive system will make colonization feasible on 
a mass basic un-derstructure. And hence no longer a monopoly of specific 
governments." 
Nina Freede clicked off, and Runciter leaned back in his leather and walnut 
swivel chair to ponder. 
"What are you thinking?" Miss Wirt asked brightly. 
"I'm wondering," Runciter said, "if you can afford our services. Since I have no 
test data to go on, I can only estimate how many inertials you'll need... but it 
may run as high as forty." He said this knowing that Stanton Mick could 
UBIK 41
afford - or could figure out how to get someone else to un- 
erwrite - an unlimited number of inertials. 
" 'Forty,' " Miss Wirt echoed. "Hmm. That is quite a 
few." 
"The more we make use of, the sooner we can get the job 
done. Since you're in a hurry, we'll move them all in at one 
time. If you are authorized to sign a work contract in the 
name of your employer" - he pointed a steady, unyielding 
finger at her; she did not blink - "and you can come up with 
a retainer now, we could probably accomplish this within 
seventy-two hours." He eyed her then, waitirig. 
The microspeaker in his ear rasped, "As owner of Tech- 
prise she is fully bonded. She can legally obligate her firm 
up to and including its total worth. Right now she is calcu- 
lating how much this would be, if converted on today's mar- 
ket." A pause. "Several billion poscreds, she has decided. 
But she doesn't want to do this; she doesn't like the idea of 
committing herself to both a contract and retainer. She would 
prefer to have Mick's attorneys do that, even if it means 
several days' delay." 
But they're in a hurry, Runciter reflected. Or so they say. 
The microspeaker said, "She has an intuition that you 
know - or have guessed - whom she represents. And she's 
afraid you'll up your fee accordingly. Mick knows his rep- 
utation. He considers himself the world's greatest mark. So 
he negotiates in this manner: through someone or some firm 
as a front. On the other hand, they want as many inertials 
as they can get. And they're resigned to that being enor- 
mously expensive." 
"Forty inertials," Runciter said idly; he scratched with his pen 
at a small sheet of blank paper, on his desk for just such pur- 
poses. "Let's see. Six times fifty times three. Times forty." 
Miss Wirt, still smiling her glazed, happy smile, waited 
with visible tension. 
"I wonder," he murmured, "who paid Hollis to put his 
employees in the middle of your project." 
42 PHILIP K. DICK
"That doesn't really matter, does it?" Miss Wirt said. "What matters is that 
they're there." 
Runciter said, "Sometimes one never finds out. But as you say - it's the same as 
when ants find their way into your kitchen. You don't ask why they're there; you 
just begin the job of getting them back out." He had arrived at a cost figure. 
It was enormous. 
"I'll - have to think it over," Miss Wirt said, she raised her eyes from the 
shocking sight of his estimate and half rose to her feet. "Is there somewhere, 
an office, where I can be alone? And possibly phone Mr. Howard?" 
Runciter, also rising, said, "It's rare for any prudence or-ganization to have 
that many inertials available at one time. If you wait, the situation will 
change. So if you want them you'd better act." 
"And you think it would really take that many inertials?" 
Taking Miss Wirt by the arm, he led her from his office and down the hall. To 
the firm's map room. "This shows," he told her, "the location of our inertials 
plus the inertials of other prudence organizations. In addition to that it shows 
- or tries to show - the location of all of Hollis' Psis." He systematically 
counted the psi ident-flags which, one by one, had been removed from the map; he 
wound up holding the final one: that of S. Dole Melipone. "I know now where they 
are," he said to Miss Wirt, who had lost her mechanical smile as she 
comprehended the significance of the unposi-tioned ident-flags. Taking hold of 
her damp hand, he de-posited Melipone's flag among her damp fingers and closed 
them around it. "You can stay here and meditate," he said. "There's a vidphone 
over there -" He pointed. "No one will bother you. I'll be in my office." He 
left the map room, thinking, I really don't know that this is where they are, 
all those missing Psis. But it's possible. And - Stanton Mick had waived the 
routine procedure of making an objective test. 
UBIK 43
Therefore, if he wound up hiring inertials which he did not need it would be his 
own fault. 
Legalistically speaking, Runciter Associates was required to notify the Society 
that some of the missing Psis - if not all - had been found. But he had five 
days in which to file the notification... and he decided to wait until the last 
day. This kind of business opportunity, he reflected, happens once in a 
lifetime. 
"Mrs. Frick," he said, entering her outer office. "Type up a work contract 
specifying forty -" He broke off. 
Across the room sat two persons. The man, Joe Chip, looked haggard and hungover 
and more than usually glum... looked, in fact, about as always, the glumness 
ex-cepted. But beside him lounged a long-legged girl with bril-liant, tumbling 
black hair and eyes; her intense, distilled beauty illuminated that part of the 
room, igniting it with heavy, sullen fire. It was, he thought, as if the girl 
resisted being attractive, disliked the smoothness of her skin and the sensual, 
swollen, dark quality of her lips. 
She looks, he thought, as if she just now got out of bed. Still disordered. 
Resentful of the day - in fact, of every day. 
Walking over to the two of them, Runciter said, "I gather G.G. is back from 
Topeka." 
"This is Pat," Joe Chip said. "No last name." He indicated Runciter, then 
sighed. He had a peculiar defeated quality hanging over him, and yet, 
underneath, he did not seem to have given up. A vague and ragged hint of 
vitality lurked behind the resignation; it seemed to Runciter that Joe most 
nearly could be accused of feigning spiritual downfall... the real article, 
however, was not there. 
"Anti what?" Runciter asked the girl, who still sat sprawl-ing in her chair, 
legs extended. 
The girl murmured, "Anti-ketogenesis." 
"What's that mean?" 
"The prevention of ketosis," the girl said remotely. "As by the administration 
of glucose." 
44 PHILIP K. DICK
To Joe, Runciter said, "Explain." 
"Give Mr. Runciter your test sheet," Joe said to the girl. 
Sitting up, the girl reached for her purse, rummaged, then produced one of Joe's 
wrinkled yellow score sheets, which she unfolded, glaneed at and passed to 
Runciter. 
"Amazing score," Runciter said. "Is she really this good?" he asked Joe. And 
then he saw the two underlined crosses, the graphic symbol of indictment - of, 
in fact, treachery. 
"She's the best so far," Joe said. 
"Come into my office," Runciter said to the girl; he led the way, and, behind 
them, the two of them followed. 
Fat Miss Wirt, all at once, breathless, her eyes rolling, appeared. "I phoned 
Mr. Howard," she informed Runciter. "He has now given me my instructions." She 
thereupon per-ceived Joe Chip and the girl named Pat; for an instant she 
hesitated, then plunged on, "Mr. Howard would like the formal arrangements made 
right away. So may we go ahead now? I've already acquainted you with the 
urgency, the time factor." She smiled her glassy, determined smile. "Do you two 
mind waiting?" she asked them. "My business with Mr. Runciter is of a priority 
nature." 
Glancing at her, Pat laughed, a low, throaty laugh of con-tempt. 
"You'll have to wait, Miss Wirt," Runciter said. He felt afraid; he looked at 
Pat, then at Joe, and his fear quickened. "Sit down, Miss Wirt," he said to her, 
and indicated one of the outer-office chairs. 
Miss Wirt said, "I can tell you exactly, Mr. Runciter, how many inertials we 
intend to take. Mr. Howard feels he can make an adequate determination of our 
needs, of our prob-lem." 
"How many?" Runciter asked. 
"Eleven," Miss Wirt said. 
"We'll sign the contract in a little while," Runciter said. "As soon as I'm 
free." With his big, wide hand he guided Joe and the girl into his inner office; 
he shut the door behind them and seated himself. "They'll never make it," he 
said 
UBIK 45
to Joe. "With eleven. Or fifteen. Or twenty. Especially not with S. Dole 
Melipone involved on the other side." He felt tired as well as afraid. "This is, 
as I assumed, the potential trainee that G.G. scouted in Topeka? And you believe 
we should hire her? Both you and G.G. agree? Then we'll hire her, naturally." 
Maybe I'll turn her over to Mick, he said to himself. Make her one of the 
eleven. "Nobody has managed to tell me yet," he said, "which of the psi talents 
she counters." 
"Mrs. Frick says you flew to Zurich," Joe said. "What did Ella suggest?" 
"More ads," Runciter said. "On TV. Every hour." Into his intercom he said, "Mrs. 
Frick, draw up an agreement of employment between ourselves and a Jane Doe; 
specify the starting salary that we and the union agreed on last Decem-ber; 
specify -" 
"What is the starting salary?" the girl Pat asked, her voice suffused with 
sardonic suspicion of a cheap, childish sort. 
Runciter eyed her. "I don't even know what you can do." 
"It's precog, Glen," Joe Chip grated. "But in a different way." He did not 
elaborate; he seemed to have run down, like an old-time battery-powered watch. 
"Is she ready to go to work?" Runciter asked Joe. "Or is this one we have to 
train and work with and wait for? We've got almost forty idle inertials and 
we're hiring another; forty less, I suppose, eleven. Thirty idle employees, all 
drawing full scale while they sit around with their thumbs in their noses. I 
don't know, Joe; I really don't. Maybe we ought to fire our scouts. Anyway, I 
think I've found the rest of Hollis' Psis. I'll tell you about it later." Into 
his intercom he said, "Specify that we can discharge this Jane Doe without 
notice, without severance pay or compensation of any kind; nor is she eligible, 
for the first ninety days, for pension, health or sick-pay benefits." To Pat he 
said, "Starting salary, in all cases, begins at four hundred 'creds per month, 
figuring on twenty hours a week. And you'll have to join a union. The Mine, Mill 
and Smelter-workers Union; they're the one that 
46 PHILIP K. DICK
signed up all the prudence-organization employees three years ago. I have no 
control over that." 
"I get more," Pat said, "maintaining vidphone relays at the Topeka Kibbutz. Your 
scout Mr. Ashwood said -" 
"Our scouts lie," Runciter said. "And, in addition, we're not legally bound by 
anything they say. No prudence orga-nization is." The office door opened and 
Mrs. Frick crept unsteadily in with the typed-out agreement. "Thank you, Mrs. 
Frick," Runciter said, accepting the papers. "I have a twenty-year-old wife in 
cold-pac," he said to Joe and Pat. "A beautiful woman who when she talks to me 
gets pushed out of the way by some weird kid named Jory, and then I'm talking to 
him, not her. Ella frozen in half-life and dimming out - and that battered crone 
for my secretary that I have to look at all day long." He gazed at the girl Pat, 
with her black, strong hair and her sensual mouth; in him he felt unhappy 
cravings arise, cloudy and pointless wants that led nowhere, that returned to 
him empty, as in the completion of a geometrically perfect circle. 
"I'll sign," Pat said, and reached for the desk pen. 
5 
Can't make the frug contest, Helen; stomach's upset. I'll fix you Ubik! Ubik 
drops you back in the thick of things fast. Taken as di-rected, Ubik speeds 
relief to head and stomach. Remember: Ubik is only seconds away. Avoid 
pro-longed use. 
During the long days of forced, unnatural idleness, the anti-telepath Tippy 
Jackson slept regularly until noon. An elec-trode planted within her brain 
perpetually stimulated EREM - extremely rapid eye movement - sleep, so while 
tucked within the percale sheets of her bed she had plenty to do. 
At this particular moment her artificially induced dream state centered around a 
mythical Hollis functionary endowed with enormous psionic powers. Every other 
inertial in the Sol System had either given up or been melted down into lard. By 
process of elimination, the task of nullifying the field generated by this 
supernatural entity had devolved to her. 
"I can't be myself while you're around," her nebulous opponent informed her. On 
his face a feral, hateful expres-sion formed, giving him the appearance of a 
psychotic squir-rel. 
In her dream Tippy answered, "Perhaps your definition of your self-system lacks 
authentic boundaries. You've erected a precarious structure of personality on 
unconscious factors over which you have no control. That's why you feel 
threat-ened by me." 
48 PHILIP K. DICK
"Aren't you an employee of a prudence organization?" 
the Hollis telepath demanded, looking nervously about. 
"If you're the stupendous talent you claim to be," Tippy 
said, "you can tell that by reading my mind." 
"I can't read anybody's mind," the telepath said. "My 
talent is gone. I'll let you talk to my brother Bill. Here, Bill; 
talk to this lady. Do you like this lady?" 
Bill, looking more or less like his brother the telepath, 
said, "I like her fine because I'm a precog and she doesn't 
postscript me." He shuffied his feet and grinned, revealing 
great, pale teeth, as blunt as shovels. " 'I, that am curtailed 
of this fair proportion, cheated of feature by dissembling 
nature - ' " He paused, wrinkling his forehead. "How does 
it go, Matt?" he asked his brother. 
deformed, unfinished, sent before my time into this 
breathing world, scarce half made up,' " Matt the squirrel- 
like telepath said, scratching meditatively at his pelt. 
"Oh, yeah." Bill the precog nodded. "I remember. 'And 
that so lamely and unfashionable that dogs bark at me as I 
halt by them.' From Richard the Third," he explained to 
Tippy. Both brothers grinned. Even their incisors were blunt. 
As if they lived on a diet of uncooked seeds. 
Tippy said, "What does that mean?" 
"It means," both Matt and Bill said in unison, "that we're 
going to get you." 
The vidphone rang, waking Tippy up. 
Stumbling groggily to it, confounded by floating colored 
bubbles, blinking, she lifted the receiver and said, "Hello." 
God, it's late, she thought, seeing the clock. I'm turning into 
a vegetable. Glen Runciter's face emerged on the screen. 
"Hello, Mr. Runciter," she said, standing out of sight of the 
phone's scanner. "Has a job turned up for me?" 
"Ah, Mrs. Jackson," Runciter said, "I'm glad I caught 
you. A group is forming under Joe Chip's and my direction; 
eleven in all, a major work assignment for those we choose. 
We've been examining everyone's history. Joe thinks yours 
looks good, and I tend to agree. How loag will it take you 
U BIK 49
to get down here?" His tone seemed adequately optimistic, but on the little 
screen his face looked hard-pressed and careworn. 
Tippy said, "For this one will I be living -" 
"Yes, you'll have to pack." Chidingly he said, "We're supposed to be packed and 
ready to go at all times; that's a rule I don't ever want broken, especially in 
a case like this where there's a time factor." 
"I am packed. I'll be at the New York office in fifteen minutes. All I have to 
do is leave a note for my husband, who's at work." 
"Well, okay," Runciter said, looking preoccupied; he was probably already 
reading the next name on his list. "Good-bye, Mrs. Jackson." He rang off. 
That was a strange dream, she thought as she hastily un-buttoned her pajamas and 
hurried back into the bedroom for her clothes. What did Bill and Matt say that 
poetry was from? Richard the Third, she remembered, seeing in her mind once more 
their flat, big teeth, their unformed, knob-like, identical heads with tufts of 
reddish hair growing from them like patches of weeds. I don't think I've ever 
read Richard the Third, she realized. Or, if I did, it must have been years ago, 
when I was a child. 
How can you dream lines of poetry you don't know? she asked herself. Maybe an 
actual nondream telepath was get-ting at me while I slept. Or a telepath and a 
precog working together, the way I saw them in my dream. It might be a good idea 
to ask our research department whether Hollis does, by any remote chance, employ 
a brother team named Matt and Bill. 
Puzzled and uneasy, she began as quickly as possible to dress. 
Lighting a green all-Havana Cuesta-Rey palma-supreme, Glen Runciter leaned back 
in his noble chair, pressed a but-ton of his intercom and said, "Make out a 
bounty check, 
50 PHILIP K. DICK
Mrs. Frick. Payable to G. G. Ashwood, for one-hundred poscreds." 
"Yes, Mr. Runciter." 
He watched G. G. Ashwood, who paced with manic rest-lessness about the big 
office with its genuine hardwood floor against which G.G.'s feet clacked 
irritatingly. "Joe Chip can't seem to tell me what she does," Runciter said. 
"Joe Chip is a grunk," G.G. said. 
"How come she, this Pat, can travel back into time, and no one else can? I'll 
bet this talent isn't new; you scouts probably just missed noticing it up until 
now. Anyhow, it's not logical for a prudence organization to hire her; it's a 
talent, not an anti-talent. We deal in -" 
"As I explained, and as Joe indicated on the test report, it aborts the precogs 
out of business." 
"But that's only a side-effect." Runciter pondered mood-ily. "Joe thinks she's 
dangerous. I don't know why." 
"Did you ask him why?" 
Runciter said, "He mumbled, the way he always does. Joe never has reasons, just 
hunches. On the other hand, he wants to include her in the Mick operation." He 
shuffled through, rooted among and rearranged the personnel-department 
doc-uments before him on his desk. "Ask Joe to come in here so we can see if 
we've got our group of eleven set up." He ex-amined his watch. "They should be 
arriving about now. I'm going to tell Joe to his face that he's crazy to include 
this Pat Conley girl if she's so dangerous. Wouldn't you say, G. G.?" 
G. G. Ashwood said, "He's got a thing going with her." 
"What sort of thing?" 
"A sexual understanding." 
"Joe has no sexual understanding. Nina Freede read his mind the other day and 
he's too poor even to -" He broke off, because the office door had opened; Mrs. 
Frick teetered her way in carrying G.G.'s bounty check for him to sign. "I know 
why he wants her along on the Mick operation," Run-citer said as he scratched 
his signature on the check. "So he can keep an eye on her. He's going too; he's 
going to measure 
UBIK 51
the psi field despite what the client stipulated. We have to know what we're up 
against. Thank you, Mrs. Frick." He waved her away and held the check out to G. 
G. Ashwood. "Suppose we don't measure the psi field and it turns out to be too 
intense for our inertials. Who gets blamed?" 
"We do," G.G. said. 
"I told them eleven wasn't enough. We're supplying our best; we're doing the 
best we can. After all, getting Stanton Mick's patronage is a matter of great 
importance to us. Amazing, that someone as wealthy and powerful as Mick could be 
so short-sighted, so goddam miserly. Mrs. Frick, is Joe out there? Joe Chip?" 
Mrs. Frick said, "Mr. Chip is in the outer office with a number of other 
people." 
"How many other people, Mrs. Frick? Ten or eleven?" 
"I'd say about that many, Mr. Runciter. Give or take one or two." 
To G. G. Ashwood, Runciter said, "That's the group. I want to see them, all of 
them, together. Before they leave for Luna." To Mrs. Frick he said, "Send them 
in." He puffed vigorously on his green-wrapped cigar. 
She gyrated out. 
"We know," Runciter said to G.G., "that as individuals they perform well. It's 
all down here on paper." He rattled the documents on his desk. "But how about 
together? How great a polyencephalic counter-field will they generate to-gether? 
Ask yourself that, G.G. That is the question to ask." 
"I guess time will tell," G. G. Ashwood said. 
"I've been in this business a long time," Runciter said. From the outer office 
people began to file in. "This is my contribution to contemporary civilization." 

"That puts it well," G.G. said. "You're a policeman guard-ing human privacy." 
"You know what Ray Hollis says about us?" Runciter said. "He says we're trying 
to turn the clock back." He eyed the individuals who had begun to fill up his 
office; they gathered near one another, none of them speaking. They waited for 
52 PHILIP K. DICK
him. What an ill-assorted bunch, he thought pessimistically. A young stringbean 
of a girl with glasses and straight lemon-yellow hair, wearing a cowboy hat, 
black lace mantilla and Bermuda shorts; that would be Edie Dorn. A good-looking, 
older, dark woman with tricky, deranged eyes who wore a silk sari and nylon obi 
and bobby socks; Francy something, a part-time schizophrenic who imagined that 
sentient beings from Betelgeuse occasionally landed on the roof of her con-apt 
building. A woolly-haired adolescent boy wrapped in a superior and cynical cloud 
of pride, this one, in a floral mumu and Spandex bloomers, Runciter had never 
encountered be-fore. And so it went: five females and - he counted - five males. 
Someone was missing. 
Ahead of Joe Chip the smoldering, brooding girl, Patricia Conley, entered. That 
made the eleventh; the group had all appeared. 
"You made good time, Mrs. Jackson," he said to the man-nish, thirtyish, 
sand-colored lady wearing ersatz vicuna trou-sers and a gray sweatshirt on which 
had been printed a now faded full-face portrait of Bertrand Lord Russell. "You 
had less time than anybody else, inasmuch as I notified you last." 
Tippy Jackson smiled a bloodless, sand-colored smile. 
"Some of you I know," Runciter said, rising from his chair and indicating with 
his hands that they should find chairs and make themselves comfortable, smoking 
if necessary. "You, Miss Dorn; Mr, Chip and I chose you first because of your 
topnotch activity vis-a-vis S. Dole Melipone, whom you even-tually lost through 
no fault of your own." 
"Thank you, Mr. Runciter," Edie Dorn said in a wispy, shy trickle of a voice; 
she blushed and stared wide-eyed at the far wall. "It's good to be a part of 
this new undertaking," she added with undernourished conviction. 
"Which one of you is Al Hammond?" Runciter asked, consulting his documents. 
An excessively tall, stoop-shouldered Negro with a gentle expression on his 
elongated face made a motion to indicate himself. 
UBIK 53
"I've never met you before," Runciter said, reading the material from Al 
Hammond's file. "You rate highest among our anti-precogs. I should, of course, 
have gotten around to meeting you. How many of the rest of you are anti-precog?" 
Three additional hands appeared. "The four of you," Run-citer said, "will 
undoubtedly get a great bloop out of meeting and working with G. G. Ashwood's 
most recent discovery, who aborts precogs on a new basis. Perhaps Miss Conley 
herself will describe it to us." He nodded toward Pat - 
And found himself standing before a shop window on Fifth Avenue, a rare-coin 
shop; he was studying an uncirculated U.S. gold dollar and wondering if he could 
afford to add it to his collection. 
What collection? he asked himself, startled. I don't collect coins. What am I 
doing here? And how long have I been wandering around window-shopping when I 
ought to be in my office supervising - he could not remember what he gen-erally 
supervised; a business of some kind, dealing in people with abilities, special 
talents. He shut his eyes, trying to focus his mind. No, I had to give that up, 
he realized. Because of a coronary last year, I had to retire. But I was just 
there, he remembered. Only a few seconds ago. In my office. Talking to a group 
of people about a new project. He shut his eyes. It's gone, he thought dazedly. 
Everything I built up. 
When he opened his eyes he found himself back in his office; he faced G. G. 
Ashwood, Joe Chip and a dark, in-tensely attractive girl whose name he did not 
recall. Other than that his office was empty, which for reasons he did not 
understand struck him as strange. 
"Mr. Runciter," Joe Chip said, "I'd like you to meet Pa-tricia Conley." 
The girl said, "How nice to be introduced to you at last, Mr. Runciter." She 
laughed and her eyes flashed exultantly. Runciter did not know why. 
Joe Chip realized, She's been doing something. "Pat," he said aloud, "I can't 
put my finger on it but things are dif-ferent." He gazed wonderingly around the 
office; it appeared 
54 PHILIP K. DICK
as it had always: too loud a carpet, too many unrelated art objects, on the 
walls original pictures of no artistic merit whatever. Glen Runciter had not 
changed; shaggy and gray, his face wrinkled broodingly, he returned Joe's stare 
- he too seemed perplexed. Over by the window G. G. Ashwood, wearing his 
customary natty birch-bark pantaloons, hemp-rope belt, peekaboo see-through top 
and train-engineer's tall hat, shrugged indifferently. He, obviously, saw 
nothing wrong, 
"Nothing is different," Pat said. 
"Everything is different," Joe said to her. "You must have gone back into time 
and put us on a different track; I can't prove it and I can't specify the nature 
of the changes -" 
"No domestic quarreling on my time," Runciter said frowningly. 
Joe, taken aback, said, " 'Domestic quarreling'?" He saw, then, on Pat's finger 
the ring: wrought-silver and jade; he remembered helping her pick it out. Two 
days, he thought, before we got married. That was over a year ago, despite how 
bad off I was financially. That, of course, is changed now; Pat, with her salary 
and her money-minding propensity, fixed that. For all time. 
"Anyhow, to continue," Runciter said. "We must each of us ask ourselves why 
Stanton Mick took his business to a prudence organization other than ours. 
Logically, we should have gotten the contract; we're the finest in the business 
and we're located in New York, where Mick generally prefers to deal. Do you have 
any theory, Mrs. Chip?" He looked hope-fully in Pat's direction. 
Pat said, "Do you really want to know, Mr. Runciter?" 
"Yes." He nodded vigorously. "I'd very much like to know." 
"I did it," Pat said. 
"How?" 
"With my talent." 
Runciter said, "What talent? You don't have a talent; you're Joe Chip's wife." 
UBIK 55
At the window G. G. Ashwood said, "You came in here to meet Joe and me for 
lunch." 
"She has a talent," Joe said. He tried to remember, but already it had become 
foggy; the memory dimmed even as he tried to resurrect it. A different time 
track, he thought. The past. Other than that, he could not make it out; there 
the memory ended. My wife, he thought, is unique; she can do something no one 
else on Earth can do. In that case, why isn't she working for Runciter 
Associates? Something is wrong. 
"Have you measured it?" Runciter asked him. "I mean, that's your job. You sound 
as if you have; you sound sure of yourself." 
"I'm not sure of myself," Joe said. But I am sure about my wife, he said to 
himself. "I'll get my test gear," he said. "And we'll see what sort of a field 
she creates." 
"Oh, come on, Joe," Runciter said angrily. "If your wife has a talent or an 
anti-talent you would have measured it at least a year ago; you wouldn't be 
discovering it now." He pressed a button on his desk intercom. "Personnel? Do we 
have a file on Mrs. Chip? Patricia Chip?" 
After a pause the intercom said, "No file on Mrs. Chip. Under her maiden name, 
perhaps?" 
"Conley," Joe said. "Patricia Conley." 
Again a pause. "On a Miss Patricia Conley we have two items: an initial scout 
report by Mr. Ashwood, and then test findings by Mr. Chip." From the slot of the 
intercom repros of the two documents slowly dribbled forth and dropped to the 
surface of the desk. 
Examining Joe Chip's findings, Runciter said, scowling, "Joe, you better look at 
this; come here." He jabbed a finger at the page, and Joe, coming over beside 
him, saw the twin underlined crosses; he and Runciter glanced at each other, 
then at Pat. 
"I know what it reads," Pat said levelly. " 'Unbelievable power. Anti-psi field 
unique in scope.' " She concentrated, trying visibly to remember the exact 
wording. " 'Can prob-ably - ' " 
56 PHILIP K. DICK
"We did get the Mick contract," Runciter said to Joe Chip. "I had a group of 
eleven inertials in here and then I suggested to her -" 
Joe said, "That she show the group what she could do. So she did. She did 
exactly that. And my evaluation was right." With his fingertip he traced the 
symbols of danger at the bottom of the sheet. "My own wife," he said. 
"I'm not your wife," Pat said. "I changed that, too. Do you want it back the way 
it was? With no changes, not even in details? That won't show your inertials 
much. On the other hand, they're unaware anyhow... unless some of them have 
retained a vestigial memory as Joe has. By now, though, it should have phased 
out." 
Runciter said bitingly, "I'd like the Mick contract back; that much, at least." 
"When I scout them," G. G. Ashwood said, "I scout them." He had become gray. 
"Yes, you really bring in the talent," Runciter said. 
The intercom buzzed and the quaking, elderly voice of Mrs. Frick rasped, "A 
group of our inertials are waiting to see you, Mr. Runciter; they say you sent 
for them in con-nection with a new joint work project. Are you free to see 
them?" 
"Send them in," Runciter said. 
Pat said, "I'll keep this ring." She displayed the silver and jade wedding ring 
which, in another time track, she and Joe had picked out; this much of the 
alternate world she had elected to retain. He wondered what - if any - legal 
basis she had kept in addition. None, he hoped; wisely, however, he said 
nothing. Better not even to ask. 
The office door opened and, in pairs, the inertials entered; they stood 
uncertainly for a moment and then began seating themselves facing Runciter's 
desk. Runciter eyed them, then pawed among the rat's nest of documents on his 
desk; ob-viously, he was trying to determine whether Pat had changed in any way 
the composition of the group. 
"Edie Dorn," Runciter said. "Yes, you're here." He 
UBIK 57
glanced at her, then at the man beside her. "Hammond. Okay, Hammond. Tippy 
Jackson." He peered inquiringly. 
"I made it as quick as I could," Mrs. Jackson said. "You didn't give me much 
time, Mr. Runciter." 
"Jon Ild," Runciter said. 
The adolescent boy with the tousled, woolly hair grunted in response. His 
arrogance, Joe noted, seemed to have re-ceded; the boy now seemed introverted 
and even a little shaken. It would be interesting, Joe thought, to find out what 
he remembers - what all of them, individually and collec-tively, remember. 
"Francesca Spanish," Runciter said. 
The luminous, gypsy-like dark woman, radiating a peculiar jangled tautness, 
spoke up. "During the last few minutes, Mr. Runciter, while we waited in your 
outer office, myste-rious voices appeared to me and told me things." 
"You're Francesca Spanish?" Runciter asked her, pa-tiently; he looked more than 
usually tired. 
"I am; I have always been; I will always be." Miss Spanish's voice rang with 
conviction. "May I tell you what the voices revealed to me?" 
"Possibly later," Runciter said, passing on to the next personnel document. 
"It must be said," Miss Spanish declared vibrantly. 
"All right," Runciter said. "We'll take a break for a couple of minutes." He 
opened a drawer of his desk, got out one of his amphetamine tablets, took it 
without water. "Let's hear what the voices revealed to you, Miss Spanish." He 
glanced toward Joe, shrugging. 
"Someone," Miss Spanish said, "just now moved us, all of us, into another world. 
We inhabited it, lived in it, as citizens of it, and then a vast, 
all-encompassing spiritual agency restored us to this, our rightful universe." 
"That would be Pat," Joe Chip said. "Pat Conley. Who just joined the firm 
today." 
"Tito Apostos," Runciter said. "You're here?" He craned his neck, peering about 
the room at the seated people. 
58 PHILIP K. DICK
A bald-headed man, wagging a goatish beard, pointed to himself. He wore 
old-fashioned, hip-hugging gold lame trou-sers, yet somehow created a stylish 
effect. Perhaps the egg-sized buttons of his kelp-green mitty blouse helped; in 
any case he exuded a grand dignity, a loftiness surpassing the average. Joe felt 
impressed. 
"Don Denny," Runciter said. 
"Right here, sir," a confident baritone like that of a Sia-mese cat declared; it 
arose from within a slender, earnest-looking individual who sat bolt-upright in 
his chair, his hands on his knees. He wore a polyester dirndl, his long hair in 
a snood, cowboy chaps with simulated silver stars. And san-dals. 
"You're an anti-animator," Runciter said, reading the ap-propriate sheet. "The 
only one we use." To Joe he said, "I wonder if we'll need him; maybe we should 
substitute an-other anti-telepath - the more of those the better." 
Joe said, "We have to cover everything. Since we don't know what we're getting 
into." 
"I guess so." Runciter nodded. "Okay, Sammy Mundo." 
A weak-nosed young man, dressed in a maxiskirt, with an undersized, melon-like 
head, stuck his hand up in a spas-modic, wobbling, ticlike gesture; as if, Joe 
thought, the ane-mic body had done it by itself. He knew this particular person. 
Mundo looked years younger than his chronological age; both mental and physical 
growth processes had ceased for him long ago. Technically, Mundo had the 
intelligence of a raccoon; he could walk, eat, bathe himself, even - after a 
fashion - talk. His anti-telepathic ability, however, was considerable. Once, 
alone, he had blanked out S. Dole Me-lipone; the firm's house magazine had 
rambled on about it for months afterward. 
"Oh, yes," Runciter said. "Now we come to Wendy Wright." 
As always, when the opportunity arose, Joe took a long, astute look at the girl 
whom, if he could have managed it, 
UBIK 59
he would have had as his mistress, or, even better, his wife. It did not seem 
possible that Wendy Wright had been born out of blood and internal organs like 
other people. In prox-imity to her he felt himself to be a squat, oily, 
sweating, uneducated nurt whose stomach rattled and whose breath wheezed. Near 
her he became aware of the physical mech-anisms which kept him alive; within him 
machinery, pipes and valves and gas-compressors and fan belts had to chug away 
at a losing task, a labor ultimately doomed. Seeing her face, he discovered that 
his own consisted of a garish rnask; noticing her body made him feel like a 
low-class windup toy. All her colors possessed a subtle quality, indirectly lit. 
Her eyes, those green and tumbled stones, looked impassively at everything; he 
had never seen fear in them, or aversion, or contempt. What she saw she 
accepted. Generally she seemed calm. But more than that she struck him as being 
durable, untroubled and cool, not subject to wear, or to fatigue, or to physical 
illness and decline. Probably she was twenty-five or -six, but he could not 
imagine her looking younger, and certainly she would never look older. She had 
too much control over herself and outside reality for that. 
"I'm here," Wendy said, with soft tranquility. 
Runciter nodded. "Okay; that leaves Fred Zafsky." He fixed his gaze on a flabby, 
big-footed, middle-aged, unnat-ural-looking individual with pasted-down hair, 
muddy skin plus a peculiar protruding Adam's apple - clad, for this oc-casion, 
in a shift dress the color of a baboon's ass. "That must be you." 
"Right you are," Zafsky agreed, and sniggered. "How about that?" 
"Christ," Runciter said, shaking his head. "Well, we have to include one 
anti-parakineticist, to be safe. And you're it." He tossed down his documents 
and looked about for his green cigar. To Joe he said, "That's the group, plus 
you and me. Any last-minute changes you want to make?" 
"I'm satisfied," Joe said. 
60 PHILIP K. DICK
"You suppose this bunch of inertials is the best combi-nation we can come up 
with?" Runciter eyed him intently. 
"Yes," Joe said. 
"And it's good enough to take on Hollis' Psis?" 
"Yes," Joe said. 
But he knew otherwise. 
It was not something he could put his finger on. It certainly was not rational. 
Potentially, the counter-field capacity of the eleven inertials had to be 
considered enormous. And yet - 
"Mr. Chip, can I have a second of your time?" Mr. Apos-tos, bald-headed and 
bearded, his gold lamb trousers glit-tering, plucked at Joe Chip's arm. "Could I 
discuss an experience I had late last night? In a hypnagogic state I seem to 
have contacted one, or possibly two, of Mr. Hollis' peo-ple - a telepath 
evidently operating in conjunction with one of their precogs. Do you think I 
should tell Mr. Runciter? Is it important?" 
Hesitating, Joe Chip looked toward Runciter. Seated in his worthy, beloved 
chair, trying to relight his all-Havana cigar, Runciter appeared terribly tired; 
the wattles of his face sagged. "No," Joe said. "Let it go." 
"Ladies and gentlemen," Runciter said, raising his voice above the general 
noise. "We're leaving now for Luna, you eleven inertials, Joe Chip and myself 
and our client's rep, Zoe Wirt; fourteen of us in all. We'll use our own ship." 
He got out his round, gold, anachronistic pocket watch and stud-ied it. 
"Three-thirty. Pratfall II will take off from the main roof-field at four." He 
snapped his watch shut and returned it to the pocket of his silk sash. "Well, 
Joe," he said, "we're in this for better or worse. I wish we had a resident 
precog who could take a look ahead for us." Both his face and the tone of his 
voice drooped with worry and the cares, the irreversible burden, of 
responsibility and age. 
6 
We wanted to give you a shave like no other you ever had. We said, It's about 
time a man's face got a little loving. We said, With Ubik's self-winding Swiss 
chromium never-ending blade, the days of scrape-scrape are over. So try Ubik. 
And be loved. Warning: use only as directed. And with caution. 
"Welcome to Luna," Zoe Wirt said cheerfully, her jolly eyes enlarged by her 
red-framed, triangular glasses. "Via myself, Mr. Howard says hello to each and 
every one of you, and most especially to Mr. Glen Runciter for making his 
orga-nization - and you people, in particular - available to us. This subsurface 
hotel suite, decorated by Mi. Howard's art-istically talented sister Lada, lies 
just three-hundred linear yards from the industrial and research facilities 
which Mr. Howard believes to have been infiltrated. Your joint pres-ence in this 
room, therefore, should already be inhibiting the psionic capabilities of 
Hollis' agents, a thought pleasing to all of us." She paused, looked over them 
all. "Are there any questions?" 
Tinkering with his test gear, Joe Chip ignored her; despite their client's 
stipulation, he intended to measure the sur-rounding psionic field. During the 
hour-long trip from Earth he and Glen Runciter had decided on this. 
"I have a question," Fred Zafsky said, raising his hand. He giggled. "Where is 
the bathroom?" 
"You will each be given a miniature map," Zoe Wirt said, "on which this is 
indicated." She nodded to a drab female 
62 PHILIP K. DICK
assistant, who began passing out brightly colored, glossy paper maps. "This 
suite," she continued, "is complete with a kitchen all the appliances of which 
are free, rather than coin-operated. Obviously, outright blatant expense has 
been incurred in the constructing of this living unit, which is ample enough for 
twenty persons, possessing, as it does, its own self-regulating air, heat, 
water, and unusually varied food supply, plus closed-circuit TV and 
high-fidelity polyphonic phonograph sound-system - the two latter facilities, 
how-ever, unlike the kitchen, being coin-operated. To aid you in utilizing these 
recreation facilities, a change-making machine has been placed in the game 
room." 
"My map," Al Hammond said, "shows only nine bed-rooms." 
"Each bedroom," Miss Wirt said, "contains two bunk-type beds; hence eighteen 
accommodations in all. In addition, five of the beds are double, assisting those 
of you who wish to sleep with each other during your stay here." 
"I have a rule," Runciter said irritably, "about my em-ployees sleeping with one 
another." 
"For or against?" Zoe Wirt inquired. 
"Against." Runciter crumpled up his map and dropped it to the metal, heated 
floor. "I'm not accustomed to being told -" 
"But you will not be staying here, Mr. Runciter," Miss Wirt pointed out. "Aren't 
you returning to Earth as soon as your employees begin to function?" She smiled 
her profes-sional smile at him. 
Runciter said to Joe Chip, "You getting any readings as to the psi field?" 
"First," Joe said, "I have to obtain a reading on the counter-field our 
inertials are generating." 
"You should have done that on the trip," Runciter said. 
"Are you attempting to take measurements?" Miss Wirt inquired alertly. "Mr. 
Howard expressly eontraindicated that, as I explained." 
UBIK 63
"We're taking a reading anyway," Runciter said. 
"Mr. Howard -" 
"This isn't Stanton Mick's business," Runciter told her. 
To her drab assistant, Miss Wirt said, "Would you ask Mr, Mick to come down 
here, please?" The assistant scooted off in the direction of the syndrome of 
elevators. "Mr. Mick will tell you himself," Miss Wirt said to Runciter. 
"Meanwhile, please do nothing; I ask you kindly to wait until he arrives." 
"I have a reading now," Joe said to Runciter. "On our own field. It's very 
high." Probably because of Pat, he de-cided. "Much higher than I would have 
expected," he said. Why are they so anxious for us not to take readings? he 
wondered. It's not a time factor now; our inertials are here and operating. 
"Are there closets," Tippy Jackson asked, "where we can put away our clothes? 
I'd like to unpack." 
"Each bedroom," Miss Wirt said, "has a large closet, coin-operated. And to start 
you all off -" She produced a large plastic bag. "Here is a complimentary supply 
of coins." She handed the rolls of dimes, nickels and quarters to Jon Ild. 
"Would you distribute these equally? A gesture of goodwill by Mr. Mick." 
Edie Dorn asked, "Is there a nurse or doctor in this set-tlement? Sometimes I 
develop psychosomatic skin rashes when I'm hard at work; a cortisone-base 
ointment usually helps me, but in the hurry I forgot to bring some along." 
"The industrial, research installations adjoining these liv-ing quarters," Miss 
Wirt said, "keep several doctors on standby, and in addition there is a small 
medical ward with beds for the ill." 
"Coin-operated?" Sammy Mundo inquired. 
"All our medical care," Miss Wirt said, "is free. But the burden of proof that 
he is genuinely ill rests on the shoul-ders of the alleged patient." She added, 
"All medication-dispensing machines, however, are coin-operated. I might say, in 
regard to this, that you will find in the game room of 
64 PHILIP K. DICK
this suite a tranquilizer-dispensing machine. And, if you wish, we can probably 
have one of the stimulant-dispensing machines moved in from the adjoining 
installations." 
"What about hallucinogens?" Francesca Spanish inquired. "When I'm at work I 
function better if I can get an ergot-base psychedelic drug; it causes me to 
actually see who I'm up against, and I find that helps." 
Miss Wirt said, "Our Mr. Mick disapproves of all the ergot-base hallucinogenic 
agents; he feels they're liver-toxic. If you have brought any with you, you're 
free to use them. But we will not dispense any, although I understand we have 
them." 
"Since when," Don Denny said to Francesca Spanish, "did you begin to need 
psychedelic drugs in order to hallucinate? Your whole life's a waking 
hallucination." 
Unfazed, Francesca said, "Two nights ago I received a particularly impressive 
visitation." 
"I'm not surprised," Don Denny said. 
"A throng of precogs and telepaths descended from a lad-der spun of finest 
natural hemp to the balcony outside my window. They dissolved a passageway 
through the wall and manifested themselves around my bed, waking me up with 
their chatter. They quoted poetry and languid prose from oldtime books, which 
delighted me; they seemed so -" She groped for the word. "Sparkling. One of 
them, who called himself Bill - 
"Wait a minute," Tito Apostos said. "I had a dream like that, too." He turned to 
Joe. "Remember, I told you just before we left Earth?" His hands convulsed 
excitedly. "Didn't I?" 
"I dreamed that too," Tippy Jackson said. "Bill and Matt. They said they were 
going to get me." 
His face twisting with abrupt darkness, Runciter said to Joe, "You should have 
told me." 
"At the time," Joe said, "you -" He gave up. "You looked tired. You had other 
things on your mind." 
Francesca said sharply, "It wasn't a dream; it was an au-thentic visitation. I 
can distinguish the difference." 
U BIK 65
"Sure you can, Francy," Don Denny said. He winked at Joe. 
"I had a dream," Jon Ild said. "But it was about hovercars. I was memorizing 
their license-plate numbers. I memorized sixty-five, and I still remember them. 
Want to hear them?" 
"I'm sorry, Glen," Joe Chip said to Runciter. "I thought only Apostos 
experienced it; I didn't know about the others. I -" The sound of elevator doors 
sliding aside made him pause; he and the others turned to look. 
Potbellied, squat and thick-legged, Stanton Mick peram-bulated toward them. He 
wore fuchsia pedal-pushers, pink yakfur slippers, a snakeskin sleeveless blouse, 
and a ribbon in his waist-length dyed white hair. His nose, Joe thought; it 
looks like the rubber bulb of a New Delhi taxi horn, soft and squeezable. And 
loud. The loudest noise, he thought, that I have ever seen. 
"Hello, all you top anti-psis," Stanton Mick said, extend-ing his arms in 
fulsome greeting. "The exterminators are here - by that, I mean yourselves." His 
voice had a squeaky, penetrating castrato quality to it, an unpleasant noise 
that one might expect to hear, Joe Chip thought, from a hive of metal bees. "The 
plague, in the form of various psionic riff-raff, descended upon the harmless, 
friendly, peaceful world of Stanton Mick. What a day that was for us in 
Mickville - as we call our attractive and appetizing Lunar settlement here. You 
have, of course, already started work, as I knew you would. That's because 
you're tops in your field, as every-one realizes when Runciter Associates is 
mentioned. I'm already delighted at your activity, with one small excep-tion 
that I perceive your tester there dingling with his equip-ment. Tester, would 
you look my way while I'm speaking to you?" 
Joe shut off his polygraphs and gauges, killed the power supply.
"Do I have your attention now?" Stanton Mick asked him. "Yes," Joe said. 
"Leave your equipment on," Runciter ordered him. 
66 PHILIP K. DICK
"You're not an employee of Mr. Mick; you're my em-ployee." 
"It doesn't matter," Joe said to him. "I've already gotten a reading on the psi 
field being generated in this vicinity." He had done his job. Stanton Mick had 
been too slow in arriving. 
"How great is their field?" Runciter asked him. 
Joe said, "There is no field." 
"Our inertials are nullifying it? Our counter-field is greater?" 
"No," Joe said. "As I said: There is no psi field of any sort within range of my 
equipment. I pick up our own field, so as far as I can determine my instruments 
are functioning; I consider that an accurate feedback. We're producing 2000 blr 
units, fluctuating upward to 2100 every few minutes. Prob-ably it will gradually 
increase; by the time our inertials have been functioning together, say, twelve 
hours, it may reach as high as -" 
"I don't understand," Runciter said. All the inertials now were gathering around 
Joe Chip; Don Denny picked up one of the tapes which had been excreted by the 
polygraph, ex-amined the unwavering line, then handed the tape to Tippy Jackson. 
One by one the other inertials examined it silently, then looked toward 
Runciter. To Stanton Mick, Runciter said, "Where did you get the idea that Psis 
had infiltrated your operations here on Luna? And why didn't you want us to run 
our normal tests? Did you know we would get this result?" 
"Obviously, he knew," Joe Chip said. He felt sure of it. 
Rapid, agitated activity crossed Runciter's face; he started to speak to Stanton 
Mick, then changed his mind and said to Joe in a low voice, "Let's get back to 
Earth; let's get our inertials right out of here now." 
Aloud, to the others, he said, "Collect your possessions; we're flying back to 
New York. I want all of you in the ship within the next fifteen minutes; any of 
you who aren't in will be Jeft behind. Joe, get all that junk of yours together 
in one 
UBIK 67
heap; I'll help you lug it to the ship, if I have to - anyhow, I want it out of 
here and you with it." He turned in Mick's direction once again, his face puffy 
with anger; he started to speak - 
Squeakirig in his metal-insect voice, Stanton Mick floated to the ceiling of the 
room, his arms protruding distendedly and rigidly. "Mr. Runciter, don't let your 
thalamus override your cerebral cortex. This matter calls for discretion, not 
haste; calm your people down and let's huddle together in an effort to mutually 
understand." His rotund, colorful body bobbed about, twisting in a slow, 
transversal rotation so that now his feet, rather than his head, extended in 
Runciter's direction. 
"I've heard of this," Runciter said to Joe. "It's a self-destruct humanoid bomb. 
Help me get everybody out of here. They just now put it on auto; that's why it 
floated upward." 
The bomb exploded. 
Smoke, billowing in ill-smelling masses which clung to the ruptured walls and 
floor, sank and obscured the prone, twitching figure at Joe Chip's feet. 
In Joe's ear Don Denny was yelling, "They killed Runciter, Mr. Chip. That's Mr. 
Runciter." In his excitement he stam-mered. 
"Who else?" Joe said thickly, trying to breathe; the acrid smoke constricted his 
chest. His head rang from the con-cussion of the bomb, and, feeling an oozing 
warmth on his neck, he found that a flying shard had lacerated him. 
Wendy Wright, indistinct although close by, said, "I think everyone else is hurt 
but alive." 
Bending down beside Runciter, Edie Dorn said, "Could we get an animator from Ray 
Hollis?" Her face looked crushed in and pale. 
"No," Joe said; he, too, bent down. "You're wrong," he said to Don Denny. "He's 
not dead." 
But on the twisted floor Runciter lay dying. In two minutes, three minutes, Don 
Denny would be correct. 
68 PHILIP K. DICK
"Listen, everybody," Joe said aloud. "Since Mr. Runciter is injured, I'm now in 
charge - temporarily, anyhow, until we can get back to Terra." 
"Assuming," Al Hammond said, "we get back at all." With a folded handkerchief he 
patted a deep cut over his right eye. 
"How many of you have hand weapons?" Joe asked. The inertials continued to mill 
without answering. "I know it's against Society rules," Joe said. "But I know 
some of you carry them. Forget the illegality; forget everything you've ever 
learned pertaining to inertials on the job carrying guns." 
After a pause Tippy Jackson said, "Mine is with my things. In the other room." 
"Mine is here with me," Tito Apostos said; he already held, in his right hand, 
an old-fashioned lead-slug pistol. 
"If you have guns," Joe said, "and they're in the other room where you left your 
things, go get them." 
Six inertials started toward the door. 
To Al Hammond and Wendy Wright, who remained, Joe said, "We've got to get 
Runciter into cold-pac." 
"There're cold-pac facilities on the ship," AI Hammond said. 
"Then we'll lug him there," Joe said. "Hammond, take one end and I'll lift up 
the other. Apostos, you go ahead of us and shoot any of Hollis' employees who 
try to stop us." 
Jon Ild, returning from the next room with a laser tube, said, "You think Hollis 
is in here with Mr. Mick?" 
"With him," Joe said, "or by himself. We may never have been dealing with Mick; 
it may have been Hollis from the start." Amazing, he thought, that the explosion 
of the hu-manoid bomb didn't kill the rest of us. He wondered about Zoe Wirt. 
Evidently, she had gotten out before the blast; he saw no sign of her. I wonder 
what her reaction was, he thought, when she found out she wasn't working for 
Stanton Mick, that her employer - her real employer - had hired us, brought us 
here, to assassinate us. They'll probably have to 
UBIK 69
kiil her too. Just to be on the safe side. She certainly won't be of any more 
use; in fact, she'll be a witness to what happened. 
Now armed, the other inertials returned; they waited for 3oe to tell them what 
to do. Considering their situation, the eleven inertials seemed reasonably 
self-possessed. 
"If we can get Runciter into cold-pac soon enough," Joe explained, as he and Al 
Hammond carried their apparently dying employer toward the elevators, "he can 
still run the firm. The way his wife does." He stabbed the elevator button with 
his elbow. "There's really very little chance," he said, "that the elevator will 
come. They probably cut off all power at the same moment as the blast." 
The elevator, however, did appear. With haste he and Al Hammond carried Runciter 
aboard it. 
"Three of you who have guns," Joe said, "come along with us. The rest of you -" 
"The hell with that," Sammy Mundo said. "We don't want to be stuck down here 
waiting for the elevator to come back. It may never come back." He started 
forward, his face con-stricted with panic. 
Joe said harshly, "Runciter goes first." He touched a but-ton and the doors 
shut, enclosing him, Al Hammond, Tito Apostos, Wendy Wright, Don Denny - and 
Glen Runciter. "It has to be done this way," he said to them as the elevator 
ascended. "And anyhow, if Hollis' people are waiting they'll get us first. 
Except that they probably don't expect us to be armed." 
"There is that law," Don Denny put in. 
"See if he's dead yet," Joe said to Tito Apostos. 
Bending, Apostos examined the inert body. "Still some shallow respiration," he 
said presently. "So we still have a chance." 
"Yes, a chance," Joe said. He remained numb, as he had been both physically and 
psychologically since the blast; he felt cold and torpid and his eardrums 
appeared to be dam-aged. Once we're back in our own ship, he reflected, after 
70 PHILIP K. DICK
we get Runciter into the cold-pac, we can send out an assist call, back to New 
York, to everyone at the firm. In fact, to all the prudence organizations. If we 
can't take off they can come to get us. 
But in reality it wouldn't work that way. Because by the time someone from the 
Society got to Luna, everyone trap-ped sub-surface, in the elevator shaft and 
aboard the ship, would be dead. So there really was no chance. 
Tito Apostos said, "You could have let more of them into the elevator. We could 
have squeezed the rest of the women in." He glared at Joe accusingly, his hands 
shaking with agitation. 
"We'll be more exposed to assassination than they will," Joe said. "Hollis will 
expect any survivors of the blast to make use of the elevator, as we're doing. 
That's probably why they left the power on. They know we have to get back to our 
ship." 
Wendy Wright said, "You already told us that, Joe." 
"I'm trying to rationalize what I'm doing," he said. "Leav-ing the rest of them 
down there." 
"What about that new girl's talent?" Wendy said. "That sullen, dark girl with 
the disdainful attitude; Pat something. You could have had her go back into the 
past, before Run-citer's injury; she could have changed all this. Did you forget 
about her ability?" 
"Yes," Joe said tightly. He had, in the aimless, smoky 
confusion. 
"Let's go back down," Tito Apostos said. "Like you say, 
Hollis' people will be waiting for us at ground level; like you 
said, we're in more danger by -" 
"We're at the surface," Don Denny said. "The elevator's 
stopped." Wan and stiff, he licked his lips apprehensively as 
the doors automatically slid aside. 
They faced a moving sidewalk that led upward to a con- 
course, at the end of which, beyond air-membrane doors, 
the base of their upright ship could be distinguished. Exactly 
as they had left it. And no one stood between them and it. 
UBIK 71
Peculiar, Joe Chip thought. Were they sure the exploding humanoid bomb would get 
us all? Something in the way they planned it must have gone wrong, first in the 
blast itself, then in their leaving the power on - and now this empty corridor. 
"I think," Don Denny said, as Al Hammond and Joe carried Runciter from the 
elevator and onto the moving side-walk, "the fact that the bomb floated to the 
ceiling fouled them up. It seemed to be a fragmentation type, and most of the 
flak hit the walls above our heads. I think it never oc-curred to them that any 
of us might survive; that would be why they left the power on." 
"Well, thank god it floated up then," Wendy Wright said. "Good lord, it's 
chilly. The bomb must have put this place's heating system out of action." She 
trembled visibly. 
The moving sidewalk carried them forward with shattering slowness; it seemed to 
Joe that five or more minutes passed before the sidewalk evicted them at the 
two-stage air-mem-brane doors. The crawl forward, in some ways, seemed to him 
the worst part of everything which had happened, as if Hollis had arranged this 
purposely. 
"Wait!" a voice called from behind them; footsteps sounded, and Tito Apostos 
turned, his gun raised, then low-ered. 
"The rest of them," Don Denny said to Joe, who could not turn around; he and Al 
Hammond had begun maneu-vering Runciter's body through the intricate system of 
the air-membrane doors. "They're all there; it's okay." With his gun he waved 
them toward him. "Come on!" 
The connecting plastic tunnel still linked their ship with the concourse; Joe 
heard the characteristic dull clunk under his feet and wondered, Are they 
letting us go? Or, he thought, Are they waiting for us in the ship? It's as if, 
he thought, some malicious force is playing with us, letting us scamper and 
twitter like debrained mice. We amuse it. Our efforts entertain it. And when we 
get just so far its fist will close around us and drop our squeezed remains, 
like Runciter's, onto the slow-moving Hoor. 
72 PHILIP K. DICK
"Denny," he said. "You go into the ship first. See if they're waiting for us." 
"And if they are?" Denny said. 
"Then you come back," Joe said bitingly, "and tell us and we give up. And then 
they kill the rest of us." 
Wendy Wright said, "Ask Pat whatever her name is to use her ability." Her voice 
was low but insistent. "Please, Joe." 
"Let's try to get into the ship," Tito Apostos said. "I don't like that girl; I 
don't trust her talent." 
"You don't understand her or it," Joe said. He watched skinny, small Don Denny 
scamper up the tunnel, fiddle with the switching arrangement which controlled 
the entrance poit of the ship, then disappear inside. "He'll never come back," 
he said, panting; the weight of Glen Runciter seemed to have grown; he could 
hardly hold onto him. "Let's set Runciter down here," he said to Al Hammond. 
Together, the two of them lowered Runciter to the floor of the tunnel. "For an 
old man he's heavy," Joe said, standing erect again. To Wendy he said, "I'll 
talk to Pat." The others had caught up now; all of them crowded agitatedly into 
the connecting tun-nel. "What a fiasco," he gasped. "Instead of what we hoped to 
be our big enterprise. You never know. Hollis really got us this time." He 
motioned Pat up beside him. Her face was smudged and her synthetic sleeveless 
blouse had been ripped; the elastic band which - fashionably - compressed her 
breasts could be seen: It had elegant embossed pale-pink fleurs-de-lis imprinted 
on it, and for no logical reason the perception of this unrelated, meaningless 
sense-datum reg-istered in his mind. "Listen," he said to her, putting his hand 
on her shoulder and looking into her eyes; she calmly re-turned his gaze. "Can 
you go back? To a time before the bomb was detonated? And restore Glen 
Runciter?" 
"It's too late now," Pat said. 
"Why?" 
"That's it. Too much time has passed. I would have had to do it right away." 
U BIK 73
"Why didn't you?" Wendy Wright asked her, with hostil-ity. 
Swinging her gaze, Pat eyed her. "Did you think of it? If you did, you didn't 
say. Nobody said." 
"You don't feel any responsibility, then," Wendy said. "For Runciter's death. 
When your talent could have obviated it." 
Pat laughed. 
Returning from the ship, Don Denny said, "It's empty." 
"Okay," Joe said, motioning to Al Hammond. "Let's get him into the ship and into 
cold-pac." He and Al once more picked up the dense, hard-to-manage body; they 
continued on into the ship; the inertials scrambled and shoved around him, eager 
for sanctuary - he experienced the pure physical emanation of their fear, the 
field surrounding them - and himself too. The possibility that they might 
actually leave Luna alive made them more rather than less desperate; their 
stunned resignation had now completely gone. 
"Where's the key?" Jon Ild shrilled in Joe's ear as he and Al Hammond stumbled 
groggily toward the cold-pac cham-ber. He plucked at Joe's arm. "The key, Mr. 
Chip." 
Al Hammond explained, "The ignition key. For the ship. Runciter must have it on 
him; get it before we drop him into the cold-pac, because after that we won't be 
able to touch him." 
Digging in Runciter's various pockets, Joe found a leather key case; he passed 
it to Jon Ild. "Now we can put him into cold-pac?" he said with savage anger. 
"Come on, Hammond; for chrissakes, help me get him into the 'pac." But we didn't 
move swiftly enough, he said to himself. It's all over. We failed. Well, he 
thought wearily, so it goes. 
The initial rockets came on with a roar; the ship shuddered as, at the control 
console, four of the inertials haltingly col-laborated in the task of programing 
the computerized com-mand-receptors. 
Why did they let us go? Joe asked himself as he and Al 
.7 4 PHILIP K. DICK
Hammond stood Runciter's lifeless - or apparently lifeless - body upright in the 
floor-to-ceiling cold-pac chamber; au-tomatic clamps closed about Runciter's 
thighs and shoulders, supporting him, while the cold, glistening with its own 
sim-ulated life, sparkled and shone, dazzling Joe Chip and Al Hammond. "I don't 
understand it," he said. 
"They fouled up," Hammond said. "They didn't have any back-up planned behind the 
bomb. Like the bomb plotters who tried to kill Hitler; when they saw the 
explosion go off in the bunker all of them assumed -" 
"Before the cold kills us," Joe said, "let's get out of this chamber." He 
prodded Hammond ahead of him; once out-side, the two of them together twisted 
the locking wheel into place. "God, what a feeling," he said. "To think that a 
force like that preserves life. Of a sort." 
Francy Spanish, her long braids scorched, halted him as he started toward the 
fore section of the ship. "Is there a communication circuit in the cold-pac?" 
she asked. "Can we consult with Mr. Runciter now?" 
"No consultation," Joe said, shaking his head. "No ear-phone, no microphone. No 
protophasons. No half-life. Not until we get back to Earth and transfer him to a 
moratorium." 
"Then, how can we tell if we froze him soon enough?" Don Denny asked. 
"We can't," Joe said. 
"His brain may have deteriorated," Sammy Mundo said, grinning. He giggled. 
"That's right," Joe said. "We may never hear the voice or the thoughts of Glen 
Runciter again. We may have to run Runciter Associates without him. We may have 
to depend on what's left of Ella; we may have to move our offices to the Beloved 
Brethren Moratorium at Zurich and operate out of there." He seated himself in an 
aisle seat where he could watch the four inertials haggling over the correct way 
to direct the ship. Somnambulantly, engulfed by the dull, dreary ache of shock, 
he got out a bent cigarette and lit it. 
UBIK 75
The cigarette, dry and stale, broke apart as he tried to hold it between his 
fingers. Strange, he thought. 
"The bomb blast," Al Hammond said, noticing. "The heat." 
"Did it age us?" Wendy asked, from behind Hammond; she stepped past him and 
seated herself beside Joe. "I feel old. I am old; your package of cigarettes is 
old; we're all old, as of today, because of what has happened. This was a day 
for us like no other." 
With dramatic energy the ship rose from the surface of Luna, carrying with it, 
absurdly, the plastic connective tun-nel. 
7 
Perk up pouting household surfaces with new miracle Ubik, the 
easy-to-apply, extra-shiny, non-stick plastic coating. Entirely harmless if used 
as directed. Saves endless scrubbing, glides you right out of the kitchen! 
"Our best move," Joe Chip said, "seems to be this. We'll land at Zurich." He 
picked up the microwave audiophone provided by Runciter's expensive, 
well-appointed ship and dialed the regional code for Switzerland. "By putting 
him in the same moratorium as Ella we can consult both of them simultaneously; 
they can be linked up electronically to func-tion in unison." 
"Protophasonically," Don Denny corrected. 
Joe said, "Do any of you know the name of the manager of the Beloved Brethren 
Moratorium?" 
"Herbert something," Tippy Jackson said. "A German name." 
Wendy Wright, pondering, said, "Herbert Schoenheit von Vogelsang. I remember it 
because Mr. Runciter once told me it means 'Herbert, the beauty of the song of 
birds.' I wish I had been named that. I remember thinking that at the time." 
"You could marry him," Tito Apostos said. 
"I'm going to marry Joe Chip," Wendy said in a somber, introspective voice, with 
childlike gravity. 
"Oh?" Pat Conley said. Her light-saturated black eyes ignited "Are you really?" 
UBIK 77
"Can you change that too?" Wendy said. "With your tal-ent?" 
Pat said, "I'm living with Joe. I'm his mistress. Under our arrangement I pay 
his bills. I paid his front door, this morn-ing, to let him out. Without me he'd 
still be in his conapt." 
"And our trip to Luna," Al Hammond said, "would not have taken place." He eyed 
Pat, a complex expression on his face. 
"Perhaps not today," Tippy Jackson pointed out, "but eventually. What difference 
does it make? Anyhow, I think that's fine for Joe to have a mistress who pays 
his front door." She nudged Joe on the shoulder, her face beaming with what 
struck Joe as salacious approval. A sort of vicarious enjoying of his private, 
personal activities; in Mrs. Jackson a voyeur dwelt beneath her extroverted 
surface. 
"Give me the ship's over-all phone book," he said. "I'll notify the moratorium 
to expect us." He studied his wrist watch. Ten more minutes of flight. 
"Here's the phone book, Mr. Chip," Jon Ild said, after a search; he handed him 
the heavy square box with its key-board and microscanner. 
Joe typed out SWITZ, then ZUR, then BLVD BRETH MORA. "Like Hebrew," Pat said 
from behind him. "Se-mantic condensations." The microscanner whisked back and 
forth, selecting and discarding; at last its mechanism popped up a punch card, 
which Joe fed into the phone's receptor slot. 
The phone said tinnily, "This is a recording." It expelled the punch card 
vigorously. "The number which you have given me is obsolete. If you need 
assistance, place a red card in -" 
"What's the date on that phone book?" Joe asked Ild, who was returning it to its 
handy storage shelf. 
Ild examined the information stamped on the rear of the box. "1990. Two years 
old." 
"That can't be," Edie Dorn said. "This ship didn't'exist two years ago. 
Everything on it and in it is new." 
78 PHILIP K. DICK
Tito Apostos said, "Maybe Runciter cut a few corners." 
"Not at all," Edie said. "He lavished care, money and engineering skill on 
Pratfall II. Everybody who ever worked for him knows that; this ship is his 
pride and joy." 
"Was his pride and joy," Francy Spanish corrected. 
"I'm not ready to admit that," Joe said. He fed a red card into the phone's 
receptor slot. "Give me the current number of the Beloved Brethren Moratorium in 
Zurich, Switzer-land," he said. To Francy Spanish he said, "This ship is still 
his pride and joy because he still exists." 
A card, punched into significance by the phone, leaped out; he transferred it to 
its receptor slot. This time the phone's computerized workings responded without 
irrita-tion; on the screen a sallow, conniving face formed, that of the unctuous 
busybody who ran the Beloved Brethren Mor-atorium. Joe remembered him with 
dislike. 
"I am Herr Herbert Schoenheit von Vogelsang. Have you come to me in your grief, 
sir? May I take your name and address, were it to happen that we got cut off?" 
The mor-atorium owner poised himself. 
Joe said, "There's been an accident." 
"What we deem an 'accident,' " von Vogelsang said, "is ever yet a display of 
god's handiwork. In a sense, all life could be called an 'accident.' And yet in 
fact -" 
"I don't want to engage in a theological discussion," Joe said. "Not at this 
time." 
"This is the time, out of all times, when the consolations of theology are most 
soothing. Is the deceased a relative?" 
"Our employer," Joe said. "Glen Runciter of Runciter Associates, New York. You 
have his wife Ella there. We'll be landing in eight or nine minutes; can you 
have one of your transport cold-pac vans waiting?" 
"He is in cold-pac now?" 
"No," Joe said. "He's warming himself on the beach at Tampa, Florida." 
"I assume your amusing response indicates yes." 
"Have a van at tke Zurich spaceport," Joe said, and rang 
Removing the plastic disk from its place, its firm adhesion to his ear, Glen 
Runciter said into the microphone, "I'll talk to you again later." He now set 
down all the communications apparatus, rose stiffly from the chair and 
momentarily stood facing the misty, immobile, icebound shape of Joe Chip 
rest-ing within its transparent plastic casket. Upright and silent, as it would 
be for the rest of eternity. UBIK 79
off. Look who we've got to deal through, he reffected, from now on. "We'll get 
Ray Hollis," he said to the inertials grouped around him. 
"Get him instead of Mr. Vogelsang?" Sammy Mundo asked. 
"Get him in the manner of getting him dead," Joe said. "For bringing this 
about." Glen Runciter, he thought, frozen upright in a transparent plastic 
casket ornamented with plas-tic rosebuds. Wakened into half-life activity one 
hour a month. Deteriorating, weakening, growing dim... Christ, he thought 
savagely. Of all the people in the world. A man that vital. And vitalic. 
"Anyhow," Wendy said, "he'll be closer to Ella." 
"In a way," Joe said, "I hope we got him into the cold-pac too -" He broke off, 
not wanting to say it. "I don't like moratoriums," he said. "Or moratorium 
owners. I don't like Herbert Schoenheit von Vogelsang. Why does Runciter pre-fer 
Swiss moratoriums? What's the matter with a moratorium in New York?" 
"It is a Swiss invention," Edie Dorn said. "And according to impartial surveys, 
the average length of half-life of a given individual in a Swiss moratorium is 
two full hours greater than an individual in one of ours. The Swiss seem to have 
a special knack." 
"The U.N. ought to abolish half-life," Joe said. "As in-terfering with the 
natural process of the cycle of birth and death." 
Mockingly, Al Hammond said, "If god approved of half-life, each of us would be 
born in a casket filled with dry ice." 
At the control console, Don Denny said, "We're now under the jurisdiction of the 
Zurich microwave transmitter. It'll do the rest." He walked away from the 
console, looking glum. 
"Cheer up," Edie Dorn said to him. "To be brutally harsh about it, consider how 
lucky all of us are; we might be dead now. Either by the bomb or by being 
lasered down after the blast. It'll make you feel better, once we land; we'll be 
so much safer on Earth." 
80 PHILIP K. DICK
Joe said, "The fact that we had to go to Luna should have tipped us off." Should 
have tipped Runciter off, he realized. "Because of that loophole in the law 
dealing with civil au-thority on Luna. Runciter always said, 'Be suspicious of 
any job order requiring us to leave Earth.' If he were alive he'd be saying it 
now. 'Especially don't bite if it's Luna where they want us. Too many prudence 
organizations have bitten on that.' " If he does revive at the moratorium, he 
thought, that'll be the first thing he says. "I always was suspicious of Luna," 
he'll say. But not quite suspicious enough. The job was too much of a plum; he 
couldn't resist it. And so, with that bait, they got him. As he always knew they 
would. 
The ship's retrojets, triggered off by the Zurich microwave transmitter, rumbled 
on; the ship shuddered. 
"Joe," Tito Apostos said, "you're going to have to tell Ella about Runciter. You 
realize that?" 
"I've been thinking about it," Joe said, "since we took off and started back." 
The ship, slowing radically, prepared by means of its var-ious homeostatic 
servo-assist systems to land. 
"And in addition," Joe said, "I have to notify the Society as to what's 
happened. They'll rake us over the coals; they'll point out right away that we 
walked into it like sheep." 
Sammy Mundo said, "But the Society is our friend." 
"Nobody," Al Hammond said, "after a fiasco like this, is our friend." 
A solar-battery-powered chopper marked BELOVED BRETHREN MORATORIUM waited at the 
edge of the Zurich field. Beside it stood a beetle-like individual wearing a 
Continental outfit: tweed toga, loafers, crimson sash and a purple 
airplane-propeller beanie. The proprietor of the moratorium minced toward Joe 
Chip, his gloved hand ex-tended, as Joe stepped from the ship's ramp onto the 
flat ground of Earth. 
"Not exactly a trip replete with joy, I would judge by your 
UBIK 81
appearance," von Vogelsang said as they brief1y shook hands. "May my workmen go 
aboard your attractive ship and begin -" 
"Yes," Joe said. "Go aboard and get him." Hands in his pockets, he meandered 
toward the field's coffee shop, feeling bleakly glum. All standard operating 
procedure from now on, he realized. We got back to Earth; Hollis didn't get us - 
we're lucky. The Lunar operation, the whole awful, ugly, rat-trap experience, is 
over. And a new phase begins. One which we have no direct power over. 
"Five cents, please," the door of the coffee shop said, remaining shut before 
him. 
He waited until a couple passed by him on their way out; neatly he squeezed by 
the door, made it to a vacant stool and seated himself. Hunched over, his hands 
locked together before him on the counter, he read the menu. "Coffee," he said. 
"Cream or sugar?" the speaker of the shop's ruling monad turret asked. 
"Both." 
The little window opened; a cup of coffee, two tiny paper-wrapped sacks of sugar 
and a test-tube-like container of cream slid forward and came to rest before him 
on the counter. 
"One international poscred, please," the speaker said. 
Joe said, "Charge this to the account of Glen Runciter of Runciter Associates, 
New York." 
"Insert the proper credit card," the speaker said. 
"They haven't let me carry around a credit card in five years," Joe said. "I'm 
still paying off what I charged back in -" 
"One poscred, please," the speaker said. It began to tick ominously. "Or in ten 
seconds I will notify the police." 
He passed the poscred over. The ticking stopped. 
"We can do without your kind," the speaker said. 
"One of these days," Joe said wrathfully, "people like me will rise up and 
overthrow you, and the end of tyranny by 
82 PHILIP K. DICK
the homeostatic machine will have arrived. The day of human values and 
compassion and simple warmth will return, and when that happens someone like 
myself who has gone through an ordeal and who genuinely needs hot coffee to pick 
him up and keep him functioning when he has to func-tion will get the hot coffee 
whether he happens to have a poscred readily available or not." He lifted the 
miniature pitcher of cream, then set it down. "And furthermore, your cream or 
milk or whatever it is, is sour." 
The speaker remained silent. 
"Aren't you going to do anything?" Joe said. "You had plenty to say when you 
wanted a poscred." 
The pay door of the coffee shop opened and Al Hammond came in; he walked over to 
Joe and seated himself beside him. "The moratorium has Runciter in their 
chopper. They're ready to take off and they want to know if you intend to ride 
with them." 
Joe said, "Look at this cream." He held up the pitcher; in it the fluid 
plastered the sides in dense clots. "This is what you get for a poscred in one 
of the most modern, techno-logically advanced cities on Earth. I'm not leaving 
here until this place makes an adjustment, either returning my poscred or giving 
me a replacement pitcher of fresh cream so I can drink my coffee." 
Putting his hand on Joe's shoulder, Al Hammond studied him. "What's the matter, 
Joe?" 
"First my cigarette," Joe said. "Then the two-year-old obsolete phone book in 
the ship. And now they're serving me week-old sour cream. I don't get it, Al." 
"Drink the coffee black," Al said. "And get over to the chopper so they can take 
Runciter to the moratorium. The rest of us will wait in the ship until you come 
back. And then we'll head for the nearest Society office and make a full report 
to them." 
Joe picked up the coffee cup, and found the coffee cold, inert and ancient; a 
scummy mold covered the surface. He set the cup back down in revulsion. What's 
going on? he 
UBIK 83
thought. What's happening to me? His revuision became, all at once, a weird, 
nebulous panic. 
"Come on, Joe," Al said, his hand closing firmly around Joe's shoulder. "Forget 
the coffee; it isn't important. What matters is getting Runciter to -" 
"You know who gave me that poscred?" 3oe said. "Pat Conley. And right away I did 
what I always do with money; I frittered it away on nothing. On last year's cup 
of coffee." He got down from the stool, urged off it by Al Hammond's hand. "How 
about coming with me to the moratorium? I need back-up help, especially when I 
go to confer with Ella. What should we do, blame it on Runciter? Say it was his 
decision for us all to go to Luna? That's the truth. Or maybe we should tell her 
something else, tell her his ship crashed or he died of natural causes." 
"But Runciter will eventually be linked up to her," Al said. "And he'll tell her 
the truth. So you have to tell her the truth." 
They left the coffee shop and made their way to the chop-per belonging to the 
Beloved Brethren Moratorium. "Maybe I'll let Runciter tell her," Joe said as 
they boarded. "Why not? It was his decision for us to go to Luna; let him tell 
her himself. And he's used to talking to her." 
"Ready, gentlemen?" von Vogelsang inquired, seated at the controls of the 
chopper. "Shall we wind our doleful steps in the direction of Mr. Runciter's 
final home?" 
Joe groaned and stared out through the window of the chopper, fixing his 
attention on the buildings that made up the installations of Zurich Field. 
"Yeah, take off," Al.said. 
As the chopper left the ground the moratorium owner pressed a button on his 
control panel. Throughout the cabin of the chopper, from a dozen sources, the 
sound of Bee-thoven's Missa Solernnis rolied forth sonorously, the many voices 
saying, "Agnus dei, qui tollis peccata mundi," over and over again, accompanied 
by an electronically augmented symphony orchestra. 
84 PHILIP K. DICK
"Did you know that Toscanini used to sing along with the singers when be 
conducted an opera?" Joe said. "That in his recording of Traviata you can hear 
him during the aria 'Sempre Libera'?" 
"I didn't know that," Al said. He watched the sleek, sturdy conapts of Zurich 
move by below, a dignified and stately procession which Joe also found himself 
watching. 
"Libera me, Domine," Joe said. 
"What's that mean?" 
Joe said, "It means, 'God have mercy on me.' Don't you know that? Doesn't 
everybody know that?" 
"What made you think of it?" Al said. 
"The music, the goddam music." To von Vogelsang he said, "Turn the music off. 
Runciter can't hear it. I'm the only one who can hear it, and I don't feel like 
hearing it." To Al he said, "You don't want to hear it, do you?" 
Al said, "Calm down, Joe." 
"We're carrying our dead employer to a place called the Beloved Brethren 
Moratorium," Joe said, "and he says, 'Calm down.' You know, Runciter didn't have 
to go with us to Luna; he could have dispatched us and stayed in New York. So 
now the most life-loving, full-living man I ever met has been -" 
"Your dark-skinned companion's advice is good," the moratorium owner chimed in. 
"What advice?" Joe said. 
"To calm yourself." Von Vogelsang opened the glove com-partment of the chopper's 
control panel; he handed Joe a merry multicolored box. "Chew one of these, Mr. 
Chip." 
"Tranquilizing gum," Joe said, accepting the box; reflex-ively he opened it. 
"Peach-flavored tranquilizing gum." To Al he said, "Do I have to take this?" 
"You should," Al said. 
Joe said, "Runciter would never have taken a tranquilizer under circumstances of 
this sort. Glen Runciter never took a tranquilizer in his life. You know what I 
realize now, Al? He gave his life to save ours. In an indirect way." 
UBIK 85
"Very indirect," Al said. "Here we are," he said; the chopper had begun to 
descend toward a target painted on a flat roof field below. "You think you can 
compose yourself?" he asked Joe. 
"I can compose myself," Joe said, "when I hear Runciter's voice again. When I 
know some form of life, half-life, is still there." 
The moratorium owner said cheerily, "I wouldn't worry on that score, Mr. Chip. 
We generally obtain an adequate protophasonic flow. At first. It is later, when 
the half-life period has expended itself, that the heartache arises. But, with 
sensible planning, that can be forestalled for many years." He shut off the 
motor of the chopper, touched a stud which caused the cabin door to slide back. 
"Welcome to the Beloved Brethren Moratorium," he said; he ushered the two of 
them out onto the roof field. "My personal secretary, Miss Beason, will escort 
you to a consultation lounge; if you will wait there, being subliminally 
influenced into peace of soul by the colors and textures surrounding you, I will 
have Mr. Runciter brought in as soon as my technicians establish con-tact with 
him." 
"I want to be present at the whole process," Joe said. "I want to see your 
technicians bring him back." 
To Al, the moratorium owner said, "Maybe, as his friend, you can make him 
understand." 
"We have to wait in the lounge, Joe," Al said. 
Joe looked at him fiercely. "Uncle Tom," he said. 
"All the moratoriums work this way," Al said. "Come on with me to the lounge." 
"How long will it take?" Joe asked the moratorium owner. 
"We'll know one way or another within the first fifteen minutes. If we haven't 
gotten a measurable signal by then -" 
"You're only going to try for fifteen minutes?" Joe said. To Al he said, 
"They're only going to try for fifteen minutes to bring back a man greater than 
all of us put together." He felt like crying. Aloud. "Come on," he said to Al. 
"Let's -" 
"You come on," Al repeated. "To the lounge." 
86 PHILIP K. DICK
Joe followed him into the lounge. 
"Cigarette?" Al said, seating himself on a synthetic buf-falo-hide couch; he 
held his pack up to Joe. 
"They're stale," Joe said. He didn't need to take one, to touch one, to know 
that. 
"Yeah, so they are." Al put the pack away. "How did you know?" He waited. "You 
get discouraged easier than anyone I ever ran into. We're lucky to be alive; it 
could be us, all of us, in that cold-pac there. And Runciter sitting out here in 
this lounge with these nutty colors." He looked at his watch. 
Joe said, "All the cigarettes in the world are stale." He examined his own 
watch. "Ten after." He pondered, having many disjointed and unconnected brooding 
thoughts; they swam through him like silvery fish. Fears, and mild dislikes, and 
apprehensions. And all the silvery fish recirculating to begin once more as 
fear. "If Runciter were alive," he said, "sitting out here in this lounge, 
everything would be okay. I know it but I don't know why." He wondered what was, 
at this moment, going on between the moratorium's tech-nicians and the remains 
of Glen Runciter. "Do you remem-ber dentists?" he asked Al. 
"I don't remember, but I know what they were." 
"People's teeth used to decay." 
"I realize that," Al said. 
"My father told me what it used to feel like, waiting in a dentist's office. 
Every time the nurse opened the door you thought, It's happening. The thing I've 
been afraid of all my life." 
"And that's what you feel now?" Al asked. 
"I feel, Christ, why doesn't that halfwit sap who runs this place come in here 
and say he's alive, Runciter's alive. Or else he's not. One way or another. Yes 
or no." 
"It's almost always yes. StatisticaUy, as Vogelsang said -" 
"In this case it'll be no." 
"You have no way of knowing that." 
UBIK 87
Joe said, "I wonder if Ray Hollis has an outlet here in Zurich." 
"Of course he has. But by the time you get a precog in here we'll already know 
anyhow." 
"I'll phone up a precog," Joe said. "I'll get one on the line right now." He 
started to his feet, wondering where he could find a vidphone. "Give me a 
quarter." 
Al shook his head. 
"In a manner of speaking," Joe said, "you're my em-ployee; you have to do what I 
say or I'll fire you. As soon as Runciter died I took over management of the 
firm. I've been in charge since the bomb went off; it was my decision to bring 
him here, and it's my decision to rent the use of a precog for a couple of 
minutes. Let's have the quarter." He held out his hand. 
"Runciter Associates," Al said, "being run by a man who can't keep fifty cents 
on him. Here's a quarter." He got it from his pocket, tossed it to Joe. "When 
you make out my paycheck add it on." 
Joe left the lounge and wandered down a corridor, rubbing his forehead blearily. 
This is an unnatural place, he thought. Halfway between the world and death. I 
am head of Runciter Associates now, he realized, except for Ella, who isn't 
alive and can only speak if I visit this place and have her revived. I know the 
specifications in Glen Runciter's will, which now have automatically gone into 
effect; I'm supposed to take over until Ella, or Ella and he if he can be 
revived, decide on someone to replace him. They have to agree; both wills make 
that mandatory. Maybe, he thought, they'll decide I can do it on a permanent 
basis. 
That'll never come about, he realized. Not for someone who can't manage his own 
personal fiscal responsibilities. That's something else Hollis' precog would 
know, he real-ized. I can find out from them whether or not I'll be upgraded to 
director of the firm. That would be worth knowing, along with everything else. 
And I have to hire the precog anyhow. 
88 PHILIP K. DICK
"Which way to a public vidphone?" he asked a uniformed employee of the 
moratorium. The employee pointed. "Thanks," he said, and wandered on, coming at 
last to the pay vidphone. He lifted the receiver, listened for the dial tone, 
and then dropped in the quarter which Al had given him. 
The phone said, "I am sorry, sir, but I can't accept obsolete money." The 
quarter clattered out of the bottom of the phone and landed at his feet. 
Expelled in disgust. 
"What do you mean?" he said, stooping awkwardly to retrieve the coin. "Since 
when is a North American Confed-eration quarter obsolete?" 
"I am sorry, sir," the phone said, "the coin which you put into me was not a 
North American Confederation quarter but a recalled issue of the United States 
of America's Phil-adelphia mint. It is of merely numismatical interest now." 
Joe examined the quarter and saw, on its tarnished surface, the bas-relief 
profile of George Washington. And the date. The coin was forty years old. And, 
as the phone had said, long ago recalled. 
"Having difficulties, sir?" a moratorium employee asked, walking over 
pleasantly. "I saw the phone expel your coin. May I examine it?" He held out his 
hand and Joe gave him the U.S. quarter. "I will trade you a current Swiss 
ten-franc token for this. Which the phone will accept." 
"Fine," Joe said. He made the trade, dropped the ten-franc piece into the phone 
and dialed Hollis' international toll-free number. 
"Hollis Talents," a polished female voice said in his ear and, on the screen, a 
girl's face, modified by artificial beauty aids of an advanced nature, 
manifested itself. "Oh, Mr. Chip," the girl said, recognizing him. "Mr. Hollis 
left word with us that you'd call. We've been expecting you all after-noon." 
Precogs, Joe thought. 
"Mr. Hollis," the girl said, "instructed us to put your call through to him; he 
wants to handle your needs personally. 
U BIK 89
Would you hold on a moment while I put you through? So just a moment, Mr. Chip; 
the next voice that you hear will be Mr. Hollis', God willing." Her face 
vanished; he con-fronted a blank gray screen. 
A grim blue face with recessive eyes swam into focus, a mysterious countenance 
floating without neck or body. The eyes reminded him of flawed jewels; they 
shone but the fac-eting had gone wrong; the eyes scattered light in irregular 
directions. "Hello, Mr. Chip." 
So this is what he looks like, Joe thought. Photographs haven't caught this, the 
imperfect planes and surfaces, as if the whole brittle edifice had once been 
dropped, had broken, had then been reglued - but not quite as before. "The 
So-ciety," Joe said, "will receive a full report on your murder of Glen 
Runciter. They own a lot of legal talent; you'll be in court the rest of your 
life." He waited for the face to react, but it did not. "We know you did it," he 
said, and felt the futility of it, the pointlessness of what he was doing. 
"As to the purpose of your call," Hollis said in a slithering voice which 
reminded Joe of snakes crawling over one an-other, "Mr. Runciter will not -" 
Shaking, Joe hung up the receiver. 
He walked back up the corridor along which he had come; he reached the lounge 
once more where Al Hammond sat morosely picking apart a dry-as-dust former 
cigarette. There was a moment of silence and then Al raised his head. 
"It's no," Joe said. 
"Vogelsang came around looking for you," Al said. "He acted very strange, and it 
was obvious what's been going on back there. Six will get you eight he's afraid 
to tell you outright; he'll probably go through a long routine but it'll boil 
down like you say, it'll boil down to no. So what now?" He waited. 
"Now we get Hollis," Joe said. 
"We won't get Hollis." 
"The Society -" He broke off. The owner of the moratorium had sidled into the 
lounge, looking nervous and hag- 
90 PHILIP K. DICK
gard but attempting at the same time to emit an aura of detached, austere 
prowess. 
"We did what we could. At such low temperatures the flow of current is virtually 
unimpeded; there's no perceptible resistance at minus 150g. The signal should 
have bounced out clear and strong, but all we got from the amplifier was a 
sixty-cycle hum. Remember, however, that we did not supervise the original 
cold-pac installation. Bear that in mind." 
Al said, "We have it in mind." He rose stiffly to his feet and stood facing Joe. 
"I guess that's it." 
"I'll talk to Ella," Joe said. 
"Now?" Al said. "You better wait until you know what you're going to say. Tell 
her tomorrow. Go home and get some sleep." 
"To go home," Joe said, "is to go home to Pat Conley. I'm in no shape to cope 
with her either." 
"Take a hotel room here in Zurich," Al said. "Disappear. I'll go back to the 
ship, tell the others, and report to the Society. You can delegate it to me in 
writing." To von Vo-gelsang he said, "Bring us a pen and a sheet of paper." 
"You know who I feel like talking to?" Joe said, as the moratorium owner 
scuttled off in search of pen and paper. "Wendy Wright. She'll know what to do, 
I value her opinion. Why is that? I wonder. I barely know her." He noticed then 
that subtle background music hung over the lounge. It had been there all this 
time. The same as on the chopper. "Dies irae, dies illa," the voices sang 
darkly. "Solvet saeclum in favilla, teste David cum Sybilla." The Verdi Requiem, 
he realized. Von Vogelsang, probably personally with his own two hands, switched 
it on at nine A.M, every morning when he arrived for work. 
"Once you get your hotel room," Al said, "I could prob-ably talk Wendy Wright 
i.nto showing up there." 
"That would be immoral," Joe said. 
"What?" Al stared at him. "At a time like this? When the 
UBIK 91
whole organization is about to sink into oblivion unless you can pull yourself 
together? Anything that'll make you func-tion is desirable, in fact necessary, 
Go back to the phone, call a hotel, come back here and tell me the name of the 
hotel and the -" 
"All our money is worthless," Joe said. "I can't operate the phone, not unless I 
can find a coin collector who'll trade me another Swiss ten-franc piece of 
current issue." 
"3eez," Al said; he let out his breath in a groaning sigh and shook his head. 
"Is it rny fault?" Joe said. "Did I make that quarter you gave me obsolete?" He 
felt anger. 
"In some weird way," Al said, "yes, it is your fault. But I don't know how. 
Maybe one day I'll figure it out. Okay, we'll both go back to Pratfall II. You 
can pick Wendy Wright up there and take her to the hotel with you." 
"Quantus tremor est futurus," the voices sang. "Quando judex est venturus, 
cuncta stricte discussurus." 
"What'll I pay the hotel with? They won't take our money any more than the phone 
will." 
Cursing, Al yanked out his wallet, examined the bills in it. "These are old but 
still in circulation." He inspectcd the coins in his pockets. "These aren't in 
circulation." He tossed the coins to the carpet of the lounge, ridding himself, 
as the phone had, in disgust. "Take these bills." He handed the paper currency 
to Joe. "There's enough there for the hotel room for one night, dinncr and a 
couple of drinks for each of you. I'll send a ship from New York tomorrow to 
pick you and her up." 
"I'll pay you back," .Joe said. "As pro tem director of Runciter Associates, 
I'll draw a higher salary; 1'll be able to pay all my debts off, including the 
back taxes, penalties and fines which the income-tax people -" 
"Without Pat Conley? Without her help?" 
"I can throw her out now," Joe said. 
Al said, "I wonder." 
92 PHILIP K. DICK
"This is a new start for me. A new lease on life." I can run the firm, he said 
to himself. Certainly I won't make the mistake that Runciter made; Hollis, 
posing as Stanton Mick, won't lure me and my inertials off Earth where we can be 
gotten at. 
"In my opinion," Al said hollowly, "you have a will to fail. No combination of 
circumstances - including this - is going to change that." 
"What I actually have," Joe said, "is a will to succeed. Glen Runciter saw that, 
which is why he specified in his will that I take over in the event of his death 
and the failure of the Beloved Brethren Moratorium to revive him into half-life, 
or any other reputable moratorium as specified by me." Within him his confidence 
rose; he saw now the manifold possibilities ahead, as clearly as if he had 
precog abilities. And then he remembered Pat's talent, what she could do to 
precogs, to any attempt to foresee the future. 
"Tuba mirum spargens sonum," the voices sang. "Per se-pulchra regionum coget 
omnes ante thronum." 
Reading his expression, Al said, "You're not going to throw her out. Not with 
what she can do." 
"I'll rent a room at the Zurich Rootes Hotel," Joe decided. "As per your 
outlined proposal." But, he thought, Al's right. It won't work; Pat, or even 
something worse, will move in and destroy me. I'm doomed, in the classic sense. 
An image thrust itself into his agitated, fatigued mind: a bird caught in 
cobwebs. Age hung about the image, and this frightened him; this aspect of it 
seemed literal and real. And, he thought, prophetic. But he could not make out 
exactly how. The coins, he thought. Out of circulation, rejected by the phone. 
Col-lectors' items. Like ones found in museums. Is that it? Hard to say. He 
really didn't know. 
"Mors stupebit," the voices sang. "Et natura, cum resurget creatura, judicanti 
responsura." They sang on and on. 
8 
If money worries have you in the cellar, go visit the lady at Ubik Savings & 
Loan. She'll take the frets out of your debts. Suppose, for example, you borrow 
fifty-nine poscreds on an interest-only loan. Let's see, that adds up to - 
Daylight rattled through the elegant hotel room, uncovering 
stately shapes which, Joe Chip blinkingly saw, were articles 
of furnishings: great hand-printed drapes of a neo-silkscreen 
sort that depicted man's ascent from the unicellular orga- 
nisms of the Cambrian Period to the first heavier-than-air 
flight at the beginning of the twentieth century. A magnificent 
pseudo-mahogany dresser, four variegated crypto-chrome- 
plated reclining chairs... he groggily admired the splendor 
of the hotel room and then he realized with a tremor of keen 
isappointment, that Wendy had not come knocking at the 
oor. Or else he had not heard her; he had been sleeping 
too deeply. 
Thus, the new empire of his hegemony had vanished in 
the moment it had begun. 
With numbing gloom - a remnant of yesterday - pervad- 
ing him, he lurched from the big bed, found his clothes and 
ressed. It was cold, unusually so; he noticed that and pon- 
ered on it. Then he lifted the phone receiver and dialed for 
room service. 
"- pay him back if at all possible," the receiver declared 
in his ear. "First, of course, it has to be established whether 
94 P H IL IP K. D IC K
Stanton Mick actually involved himself, or if a mere hom- 
osimulacric substitute was in action against us, and if so why, 
and if not then how -" The voice droned on, speaking to 
itself and not to Joe. It seemed as unaware of him as if he 
id not exist. "From all our previous reports," the voice 
eclared, "it would appear that Mick acts generally in a 
reputable manner and in accord with legal and ethical prac- 
tices established throughout the System. In view of this -" 
Joe hung up the phone and stood dizzily swaying, trying 
to clear his head. Runciter's voice. Beyond any doubt. He 
again picked up the phone, listened once more. 
"- lawsuit by Mick, who can afford and is accustomed to 
litigation of that nature. Our own legal staff certainly should 
be consulted before we make a formal report to the Society. 
It would be libel if made public and grounds for a suit claim- 
ing false arrest if -" 
"Runciter!" Joe said. He said it loudly. 
"- unable to verify probably for at least -" 
Joe hung up. 
I don't understand this, he said to himself. 
Going into the bathroom, he splashed icy water on his 
face, combed his hair with a sanitary, free hotel comb, then, 
after meditating for a time, shaved with the sanitary, free 
hotel throwaway razor. He slapped sanitary, free hotel af- 
tershave onto his chin, neck and jowls, unwrapped the san- 
itary, free hotel glass and drank from it. Did the moratorium 
finally manage to revive him? he wondered. And wired him 
up to my phone? Runciter, as soon as he came around, would 
want to talk to me, probably before anyone else. But if so, 
why can't he hear me back? Why does it consist of one-way 
transmission only? Is it only a technical defect which will 
clear up? 
Returning to the phone, he picked up the receiver once 
more with the idea of calling the Beloved Brethren Mora- 
torium. 
"- not the ideal person to manage the firm, in view of his 
confused personal difficulties, particularly -" 
UBIK 95
I can't call, Joe realized. He hung up the receiver. I can't even get room 
service. 
In a corner of the large room a chime sounded and a tinkling mechanical voice 
called, "I'm your free homeopape machine, a service supplied exclusively by all 
the fine Rootes hotels throughout Earth and the colonies. Simply dial the 
classification of news that you wish, and in a matter of sec-onds I'll speedily 
provide you with a fresh, up-to-the-minute homeopape tailored to your individual 
requirements; and, let me repeat, at no cost to you!" 
"Okay," Joe said, and crossed the room to the machine. Maybe by now, he 
reflected, news of Runciter's murder has gotten out. The news media cover all 
admissions to mora-toriums routinely. He pressed the button marked high-type 
interplan info. At once the machine began to clank out a printed sheet, which he 
gathered up as fast as it emerged. 
No mention of Runciter. Too soon? Or had the Society managed to suppress it? Or 
Al, he thought; maybe Al slipped a few poscreds to the owner of the moratorium. 
But - he 'himself had all of Al's money. Al couldn't buy off anybody to do 
anything. 
A knock sounded on the hotel room door. 
Putting down the homeopape, Joe made his way cautiously to the door, thinking, 
It's probably Pat Conley; she's trapped me here. On the other hand, it might be 
someone from New York, here to pick me up and take me back there. 
Theo-retically, he conjectured, it could even be Wendy. But that did not seem 
likely. Not now, not this late. 
It could also be an assassin dispatched by Hollis. He could be killing us off 
one by one. 
Joe opened the door. 
Quivering with unease, wringing his pulpy hands together, Herbert Schoenheit von 
Vogelsang stood in the doorway mumbling. "I just don't understand it, Mr. Chip. 
We worked all night in relays. We just are not getting a single spark. And yet 
we ran an electroencephalograph and the 'gram 
shows faint but unmistakable cerebral activity. So the after- 
96 PHILIP K. DICK
life is there, but we still can't seem to tap it. We've got probes at every part 
of the cortex now. I don't know what else we can do, sir." 
"Is there measurable brain metabolism?" Joe asked. 
"Yes, sir. We called in an outside expert from another moratorium, and he 
detected it, using his own equipment. It's a normal amount too. Just what you'd 
expect immediately after death." 
"How did you know where to find me?" Joe asked. 
"We called Mr. Hammond in New York. Then I tried to call you, here at your 
hotel, but your phone has been busy all morning. That's why I found it necessary 
to come here in person." 
"It's broken," Joe said. "The phone. I can't call out either." 
The moratorium owner said, "Mr. Hammond tried to con-tact you too, with no 
success. He asked me to give you a message from him, something he wants you to 
do here in Zurich before you start back to New York." 
"He wants to remind me," Joe said, "to consult Ella." 
"To tell her about her husband's unfortunate, untimely death." 
"Can I borrow a couple of poscreds from you?" Joe said. "So I can eat 
breakfast?" 
"Mr. Hammond warned me that you would try to borrow money from me. He informed 
me that he already provided you with sufficient funds to pay for your hotel 
room, plus a round of drinks, as well as -" 
"Al based his estimate on the assumption that I would rent a more modest room 
than this. However, nothing smaller than this was available, which Al did not 
foresee. You can add it onto the statement which you will be presenting to 
Runciter Associates at the end of the month. I am, as Al probably told you, now 
acting director of the firm. You're dealing with a positive-thinking, powerful 
man here, who has worked his way step by step to the top. I could, as you must 
well realize, reconsider our basic policy decision as to wllich 
U BIK 97
moratorium we wish to patronize; we might, for example, prefer one nearer New 
York." 
Grumpily, von Vogelsang reached within his tweed toga and brought out an ersatz 
alligator-skin wallet, which he dug into. 
"It's a harsh world we're living in," Joe said, accepting the money. "The rule 
is 'Dog eat dog.' " 
"Mr. Hammond gave me further information to pass on to you. The ship from your 
New York office will arrive in Zurich two hours from now. Approximately." 
"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 mor-atorium 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 de-sign, 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 
98 PHILIP K. DICK
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 un-dulated 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 prob-ably 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. 
UBIK 99
"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 fioor 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. 
100 PHILIP K. DICK
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 rec-ognized 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 commoa 
UBIK 101
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 sum-mon 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 ex-plosion 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. 
No wonder Hollis allowed us to leave. And yet - 
That explained Wendy's death and it explained the dried-out cigarettes. But not 
the phone book, not the coins, not the corruptiori of the cream and coffee. 
Nor did it explain Runciter's voice, the yammering mon-ologue on the hotel 
room's vidphone. Which ceased when von Vogelsang lifted the receiver. When 
someone else tried to hear it, he realized. 
I've got to get back to New York, he said to himself. All of us who were there 
on Luna - all of us who were present when the bomb blast went off. We have to 
work this out together; in fact, it's probably the only way it can be worked 
out. Before the rest of us die, one by one, the way Wendy did. Or in a worse 
way, if that's possible. 
"Have the hotel management send a polyethylene bag up here," he said to the 
moratorium owner. "I'll put her in it and take her with me to New York." 
102 PHILIP K. DICK
"Isn't this a matter for the police? A horrible murder like this; they should be 
informed." 
Joe said, "Just get me the bag." 
"All right. It's your employee." The moratorium owner started off down the hall. 

"Was once," Joe said. "Not any more." It would have to be her first, he said to 
himself. But maybe, in a sense, that's better. Wendy, he thought, I'm taking you 
with me, taking you home. 
But not as he had planned. 
To the other inertials seated around the massive genuine oak conference table Al 
Hammond said, breaking abruptly into the joint silence, "Joe should be back 
anytime now." He looked at his wrist watch to make certain. It appeared to have 
stopped. 
"Meanwhile," Pat Conley said, "I suggest we watch the late afternoon news on TV 
to see if Hollis has leaked out the news of Runciter's death." 
"It wasn't in the 'pape today," Edie Dorn said. 
"The TV news is much more recent," Pat said. She handed Al a fifty-cent piece 
with which to start up the TV set mounted behind curtains at the far end of the 
conference room, an impressive 3-D color polyphonic mechanism which had been a 
source of pride to Runciter. 
"Want me to put it in the slot for you, Mr. Hammond?" Sammy Mundo asked eagerly. 

"Okay," Al said; broodingly, he tossed the coin to Mundo, who caught it and 
trotted toward the set. 
Restlessly, Walter W. Wayles, Runciter's attorney, shifted about in his chair, 
fiddled with his fine-veined, aristocratic hands at the clasp lock of his 
briefcase and said, "You people should not have left Mr. Chip in Zurich. We can 
do nothing until he arrives here, and it's extremely vital that all matters 
pertaining to Mr. Runciter's will be expedited." 
"You've read the will," Al said. "And so has Joe Chip. 
UBIK 103
We know who Runciter wanted to take over management of the firm." 
"But from a legal standpoint -" Wayles began. 
"It won't take much longer," Al said brusquely. With his pen he scratched random 
lines along the borders of the list he had made; preoccupied, he embroidered the 
list, then read it once again. 
STALE CIGARETI'ES 
OUT-OF-DATE PHONE BOOK 
OBSOLETE MONEY 
PUTREFIED FOOD 
AD ON MATCHFOLDER 
"I'm going to pass this list around the table once more," he said aloud. "And 
see if this time anyone can spot a connective link between these five 
occurrences... or whatever you want to call them. These five things that are -" 
He gestured. 
"Are wrong," Jon Ild said. 
Pat Conley said, "It's easy to see the connective between the first four. But 
not the matchfolder. That doesn't fit in." 
"Let me see the matchfolder again," Al said, reaching out his hand. Pat gave him 
the matchfolder and, once again, he read the ad. 
AMAZING OPPORTUN11Y FOR ADVANCEMENT TO ALL WHO CAN QUALIFY! 
Mr. Glen Runciter of the Beloved Brethren Moratorium of Zurich, Switzerland, 
doubled his income within a week of receiving our free shoe kit with detailed 
information as to how you also can sell our authentic simulated-leather loafers 
to friends, relativcs, business associates, Mr. Runciter, al-though helplessly 
frozen in cold-pac, earned four hundred 
Al stopped reading; he pondered, meanwhile picking at a lower tooth with his 
thumbnail. Yes, he thought; this is dif- 
104 PHILIP K. DICK
ferent, this ad. The others consist of obsolescence and decay. But not this. 
"I wonder," he said aloud, "what would happen if we answered this matchfolder 
ad. It gives a box number in Des Moines, Iowa." 
"We'd get a free shoe kit," Pat Conley said. "With detailed information as to 
how we too can -" 
"Maybe," Al interrupted, "we'd find ourselves in contact with Glen Runciter." 
Everyone at the table, including Walter W. Wayles, stared at him. "I mean it," 
he said. "Here." He handed the matchfolder to Tippy Jackson. "Write them'stant 
mail." 
"And say what?" Tippy Jackson asked. 
"Just fill out the coupon," Al said. To Edie Dorn he said, "Are you absolutely 
sure you've had that matchfolder in your purse since late last week? Or could 
you have picked it up somewhere today?" 
Edie Dorn said, "I put several matchfolders into my purse on Wednesday. As I 
told you, this morning on my way here I happened to notice this one as I was 
lighting a cigarette. It definitely has been in my purse from before we went to 
Luna. From several days before." 
"With that ad on it?" Jon Ild asked her. 
"I never noticed what the matchfolders said before; I only noticed this today. I 
can't say anything about it before. Who can?" 
"Nobody can," Don Denny said. "What do you think, Al? A gag by Runciter? Did he 
have them printed up before his death? Or Hollis, maybe? As a sort of grotesque 
joke - knowing that he was going to kill Runciter? That by the time we noticed 
the matchfolder Runciter would be in cold-pac, in Zurich, like the matchfolder 
says?" 
Tito Apostos said, "How would Hollis know we'd take Runciter to Zurich? And not 
to New York?" 
"Because Ella's there," Don Denny answered. 
At the TV set Sammy Mundo stood silently inspecting the 
UBIK 105
fifty-cent piece which Al had given him. His underdeveloped, pale forehead had 
wrinkled up into a perplexed frown. 
"What's the matter, Sam?" Al said. He felt himself tense up inwardly; he foresaw 
another happening. 
"Isn't Walt Disney's head supposed to be on the fifty-cent piece?" Sammy said. 
"Either Disney's," Al said, "or if it's an older one, then Fidel Castro's. Let's 
see it." 
"Another obsolete coin," Pat Conley said, as Sammy car-ried the fifty-cent piece 
to Al. 
"No," Al said, examining the coin. "It's last year's; per-fectly good datewise. 
Perfectly acceptable. Any machine in the world would take it. The TV set would 
take it." 
"Then, what's the matter?" Edie Dorn asked timidly. 
"Exactly what Sam said," Al answered. "It has the wrong head on it." He got up, 
carried the coin over to Edie, depos-ited it in her moist open hand. "Who does 
it look like to you?" 
After a pause Edie said, "I - don't know." 
"Sure, you know," Al said. 
"Okay," Edie said sharply, goaded into replying against her will. She pushed the 
coin back at him, ridding herself of it with a shiver of aversion. 
"It's Runciter," Al said to all of them seated around the big table. 
After a pause Tippy Jackson said, "Add that to your list." Her voice was barely 
audible. 
"I see two processes at work," Pat said presently, as Al reseated himself and 
began to make the addendum on his piece of paper. "One, a process of 
deterioration; that seems obvious. We agree on that." 
Raising his head, Al said to her, "What's the other?" 
"I'm not quite sure." Pat hesitated. "Something to do with Runciter. I think we 
should look at all our other coins. And paper money too. Let me think a little 
longer." 
One by one, the people at the table got out their wallets, purses, rummaged in 
their pockets. 
106 PHILIP K. DICK
"I have a five-poscred note," Jon Ild said, "with a beautiful steel-engraving 
portrait of Mr. Runciter. The rest -" He took a long look at what he held. 
"They're normal; they're okay. Do you want to see the five-poscred note, Mr. 
Ham-mond?" 
Al said, "I've got two of them. Already. Who else?" He looked around the table. 
Six hands had gone up. "Eight of us," he said, "have what I guess we should call 
Runciter money, now, to some extent. Probably by the end of the day all the 
money will be Runciter money. Or give it two days. Anyhow, Runciter money will 
work; it'll start machines and appliances and we can pay our debts with it." 
"Maybe not," Don Denny said. "Why do you think so? This, what you call Runciter 
money -" He tapped a bill he held. "Is there any reason why the banks should 
honor it? It's not legitimate issue; the Government didn't put it out. It's 
funny money; it's not real." 
"Okay," Al said reasonably. "Maybe it's not real; maybe the banks will refuse 
it. But that's not the real question." 
"The real question," Pat Conley said, "is, What does this second process consist 
of, these manifestations of Runciter?" 
"That's what they are." Don Denny nodded. " 'Manifestations of Runciter' - 
that's the second process, along with the decay. Some coins get obsolete; others 
show up with Runciter's portrait or bust on them. You know what I think? I think 
these processes are going in opposite directions. One is a going-away, so to 
speak. A going-out-of-existence. That's process one. The second process is a 
coming-into-existence. But of something that's never existed before." 
"Wish fulfillment," Edie Dorn said faintly. 
"Pardon?" Al said. 
"Maybe these are things Runciter wished for," Edie said. "To have his portrait 
on legal tender, on all our money, including metal coins. It's grandiose." 
Tito Apostos said, "But matchfolders?" 
"I guess not," Edie agreed. "That's not very grandiose." 
"The firm already advertises on matchfolders," Don 
UBIK 107
Denny said. "And on TV, and in the 'papes and mags. And with junk mail. Our PR 
department handles all that. Gen-erally, Runciter didn't give a damn about that 
end of the business, and he certainly didn't give a damn about match-folders. If 
this were some sort of materialization of his psyche you'd expect his face to 
appear on TV, not on money or matchfolders." 
"Maybe it is on TV," Al said. 
"That's right," Pat Conley said. "We haven't tried it. None of us have had time 
to watch TV." 
"Sammy," Al said, handing him back the fifty-cent piece, "go turn the TV set 
on." 
"I don't know if I want to look," Edie said, as Sammy Mundo dropped the coin 
into the slot and stood off to one side, jiggling the tuning knobs. 
The door of the room opened. Joe Chip stood there, and Al saw his face. 
"Shut the TV set off," Al said and got to his feet. Everyone in the room watched 
as he walked toward Joe. "What hap-pened, Joe?" he said. He waited. Joe said 
nothing. "What's the matter?" 
"I chartered a ship to bring me back here," Joe said husk-ily. 
"You and Wendy?" 
Joe said, "Write out a check for the ship. It's on the roof. I don't have enough 
money for it." 
To Walter W. Wayles, Al said, "Are you able to disburse funds?" 
"For something like that I can. I'll go settle with the ship." Taking his 
briefcase with him, Wayles left the room. Joe remained in the doorway, again 
silent. He looked a hundred years older than when Al had last seen him. 
"In my office." Joe turned away from the table; he blinked, hesitated. "I - 
don't think you should see. The man from the moratorium was with me when I found 
her. He said he couldn't do anything; it had been too long. Years." 
" 'Years'?" Al said, chilled. 
108 PHILIP K. DICK
Joe said, "We'll go down to my office." He led Al out of the conference room, 
into the hall, to the elevator. "On the trip back here the ship fed me 
tranquilizers. That's part of the bill. Actually, I feel a lot better. In a 
sense, I don't feel anything. It must be the tranquilizers. I guess when they 
wear off I'll feel it again." 
The elevator came. Together they descended, neither of them saying anything 
until they reached the third floor, where Joe had his office. 
"I don't advise you to look." Joe unlocked his office, led Al inside. "It's up 
to you. If I got over it, you probably will." He switched on the overhead 
lighting. 
After a pause Al said, "Lord god." 
"Don't open it," Joe said. 
"I'm not going to open it. This morning or last night?" 
"Evidently, it happened early, before she even reached my room. We - that 
moratorium owner and I - found bits of cloth in the corridor. Leading to my 
door. But she must have been all right, or nearly all right, when she crossed 
the lobby; anyhow, nobody noticed anything. And in a big hotel like that they 
keep somebody watching. And the fact that she managed to reach my room -" 
"Yeah, that indicates she must have been at least able to walk. That seems 
probable, anyhow." 
Joe said, "I'm thinking about the rest of us." 
"In what way?" 
"The same thing. Happening to us." 
"How could it?" 
"How could it happen to her? Because of the blast. We're going to die like that 
one after another. One by one. Until none of us are left. Until each of us is 
ten pounds of skin and hair in a plastic bag, with a few dried-up bones thrown 
in." 
"All right," Al said. "There's some force at work pro- 
ducing rapid decay. It's been at work since - or started 
with - the blast there on Luna. We already knew that. We 
also know, or think we know, that another force, a coatra- 
UBIK 109
force, is at work, moving things in an opposite direction. Something connected 
with Runciter. Our money is beginning to have his picture on it. A matchfolder 
-" 
"He was on my vidphone," Joe said. "At the hotel." 
"On it? How?" 
"I don't know; he just was. Not on the screen, not the video part. Only his 
voice." 
"What'd he say?" 
"Nothing in particular." 
Al studied him. "Could he hear you?" he asked finally. 
"No. I tried to get through. It was one-way entirely; I was listening in, and 
that was all." 
"So that's why I couldn't get through to you." 
"That's why." Joe nodded. 
"We were trying the TV when you showed up. You realize there's nothing in the 
'papes about his death. What a mess." He did not like the way Joe Chip looked. 
Old, small and tired, he reflected. Is this how it begins? We've got to 
establish contact with Runciter, he said to himself. Being able to hear him 
isn't enough; evidently, he's trying to reach us, but - 
If we're going to live through this we'll have to reach him. 
Joe said, "Picking him up on TV isn't going to do us any good. It'll just be 
like the phone all over again. Unless he can tell us how to communicate back. 
Maybe he can tell us; maybe he knows. Maybe he understands what's happened." 
"He would have to understand what's happened to him-self. Which is something we 
don't know." In some sense, Al thought, he must be alive, even though the 
moratorium failed to rouse him. Obviously, the moratorium owner did his best 
with a client of this much importance. "Did von Vogelsang hear him on the 
phone?" he asked Joe. 
"He tried to hear him. But all he got was silence and then static, apparently 
from a long way off. I heard it too. Nothing. The sound of absolute nothing. A 
very strange sound." 
"I don't like that," Al said. He was not sure why. "I'd feel better about it if 
von Vogelsang had heard it too. At least that way we could be sure it was there, 
that it wasn't 
110 PHILIP K. DICK
an hallucination on your part." Or, for that matter, he thought, on all our 
parts. As in the case of the matchfolder. 
But some of the happenings had definitely not been hal-lucinations; machines had 
rejected antiquated coins - objec-tive machines geared to react only to physical 
properties. No psychological elements came into play there. Machines could not 
imagine. 
"I'm leaving this building for a while," Al said. "Think of a city or a town at 
random, one that none of us have anything to do with, one where none of us ever 
go or have ever gone." 
"Baltimore," Joe said. 
"Okay, I'm going to Baltimore. I'm going to see if a store picked at random will 
accept Runciter currency." 
"Buy me some new cigarettes," Joe said. 
"Okay. I'll do that too; I'll see if cigarettes in a random store in Baltimore 
have been affected. I'll check other prod-ucts as well; I'll make random 
samplings. Do you want to come with me, or do you want to go upstairs and tell 
them about Wendy?" 
Joe said, "I'll go with you." 
"Maybe we should never tell them about her." 
"I think we should," Joe said. "Since it's going to happen again. It may happen 
before we get back. It may be hap-pening now." 
"Then we better get our trip to Baltimore over as quickly as possible," Al said. 
He started out of the office. Joe Chip followed. 
9 
My hair is so dry, so unmanageable. What's a girl to do? Simply rub in creamy 
Ubik hair condi-tioner. In just five days you'll dis-cover new body in your 
hair, new glossiness. And Ubik hairspray, used as directed, is absolutely safe. 
They selected the Lucky People Supermarket on the periph-ery of Baltimore. 
At the counter Al said to the autonomic, computerized checker, "Give me a pack 
of Pall Malls." 
"Wings are cheaper," Joe said. 
Irritated, Al said, "They don't make Wings any more. They haven't for years." 
"They make them," Joe said, "but they don't advertise. It's an honest cigarette 
that claims nothing." To the checker he said, "Change that from Pall Malls to 
Wings." 
The pack of cigarettes slid from the chute and onto the counter. "Ninety-five 
cents," the checker said. 
"Here's a ten-poscred bill." Al fed the bill to the checker, whose circuits at 
once whirred as it scrutinized the bill. "Your change, sir," the checker said; 
it deposited a neat heap of coins and bills before Al. "Please move along now." 
So Runciter money is acceptable, Al said to himself as he and Joe got out of the 
way of the next customer, a heavy-set old lady wearing a blueberry-colored cloth 
coat and car-rying a Mexican rope shopping bag. Cautiously, he opened the pack 
of cigarettes. 
112 PHILIP K. DICK
The cigarettes crumbled between his fingers. 
"It would have proved something," Al said, "if this had been a pack of Pall 
Malls. I'm getting back in line." He started to do so - and then discovered that 
the heavy-set old lady in the dark coat was arguing violently with the autonomic 
checker. 
"It was dead," she asserted shrilly, "by the time I got it home. Here; you can 
have it back." She set a pot on the counter; it contained, Al saw, a lifeless 
plant, perhaps an azalea - in its moribund state it showed few features. 
"I can't give you a refund," the checker answered. "No warranty goes with the 
plant life which we sell. 'Buyer be-ware' is our rule. Please move along now." 
"And the Saturday Evening Post," the old lady said, "that I picked up from your 
newsstand, it was over a year old. What's the matter with you? And the Martian 
grubworm TV dinner -" 
"Next customer," the checker said; it ignored her. 
Al got out of line. He roamed about the premises until he came to the cartons of 
cigarettes, every conceivable brand, stacked to heights of eight feet or more. 
"Pick a carton," he said to Joe. 
"Dominoes," Joe said. "They're the same price as Wings." 
"Christ, don't pick an offbrand; pick something like Win-stons or Kools." He 
himself yanked out a carton. "It's empty." He shook it. "I can tell by the 
weight." Something, however, inside the carton bounced about, something 
weightless and small; he tore the carton open and looked within it. 
A scrawled note. In handwriting familiar to him, and to Joe. He lifted it out 
and together they both read it. 
Essential I get in touch with you. Situation serious and cer-tainly will get 
more so as time goes on. There are several possible explanations, which I'll 
discuss with you. Anyhow, don't give up. I'm sorry about Wendy Wright; in that 
con-nection we did all we could. 
UBIK 113
Al said, "So he knows about Wendy. Well, maybe that means it won't happen again, 
to the rest of us." 
"A random carton of cigarettes," Joe said, "at a random store in a city picked 
at random. And we find a note directed at us from Glen Runciter. What do the 
other cartons have in them? The same note?" He lifted down a carton of L&Ms, 
shook it, then opened it. Ten packs of cigarettes plus ten more below them; 
absolutely normal. Or is it? Al asked himself. He lifted out one of the packs. 
"You can see they're okay," Joe said; he pulled out a carton from the middle of 
the stacks. "This one is full too." He did not open it; instead, he reached for 
another. And then another. All had packs of cigarettes in them. 
And all crumbled into fragments between Al's fingers. 
"I wonder how he knew we'd come here," Al said. "And how he knew we'd try that 
one particular carton." It made no sense. And yet, here, too, the pair of 
opposing forces were at work. Decay versus Runciter, Al said to himself. 
Throughout the world. Perhaps throughout the universe. Maybe the sun will go 
out, Al conjectured, and Glen Runciter will place a substitute sun in its place. 
If he can. 
Yes, he thought; that's the question. How much can Run-citer do? 
Put another way - how far can the process of decay go? 
"Let's try something else," Al said; he walked along the aisle, past cans, 
packages and boxes, coming at last to the appliance center of the store. There, 
on impulse, he picked up an expensive German-made tape recorder. "This looks all 
right," he said to Joe, who had followed him. He picked up a second one, still 
in its container. "Let's buy this and take it back to New York with us." 
"Don't you want to open it?" Joe said. "And try it out before you buy it?" 
"I think I already know what we'll find," Al said. "And it's something we can't 
test out here." He carried the tape recorder toward the checkstand. 
114 PHILIP K. DICK • • • 
Back in New York, at Runciter Associates, they turned the tape recorder over to 
the firm's shop. 
Fifteen minutes later the shop foreman, having taken apart the mechanism, made 
his report. "All the moving parts in thq tape-transport stage are worn. The 
rubber drive-tire has flat spots on it; pieces of rubber are all over the 
insides. The brakes for high-speed wind and rewind are virtually gone. It needs 
cleaning and lubricating throughout; it's seen plenty of use - in fact, I would 
say it needs a complete overhaul, including new belts." 
Al said, "Several years of use?" 
"Possibly. How long you had it?" 
"I bought it today," Al said. 
"That isn't possible," the shop foreman said. "Or if you did they sold you -" 
"I know what they sold me," Al said. "I knew when I got it, before I opened the 
carton." To Joe he said, "A brand-new tape recorder, completely worn out. Bought 
with funny money that the store is willing to accept. Worthless money, worthless 
article purchased; it has a sort of logic to it." 
"This is not my day," the shop foreman said. "This morn-ing when I got up my 
parrot was dead." 
"Dead of what?" Joe asked. 
"I don't know, just dead. Stiff as a board." The shop foreman waggled a bony 
finger at Al. "I'll tell you something you don't know about your tape recorder. 
It isn't just worn out; it's forty years obsolete. They don't use rubber 
drive-tires any more, or belt-run transports. You'll never get parts for it 
unless somebody handmakes them. And it wouldn't be worth it; the damn thing is 
antiquated. Junk it. Forget about it." 
"You're right," Al said. "I didn't know." He accompanied 
Joe out of the shop and into the corridor. "Now we're talking 
about something other than decay; this is a different matter. 
UBIK 115
And we're going to have trouble finding edible food, any-where, of any kind. How 
much of the food sold in super-markets would be good after that many years?" 
"The canned goods," Joe said. "And I saw a lot of canned goods at that 
supermarket in Baltimore." 
"And now we know why," Al said. "Forty years ago su-permarkets sold a far 
greater proportion of their commodities in cans, rather than frozen. That may 
turn out to be our sole source; you're right." He cogitated. "But in one day 
it's jumped from two years to forty years; by this time tomorrow it may be a 
hundred years. And no food is edible a hundred years after it's packaged, cans 
or otherwise." 
"Chinese eggs," Joe said. "Thousand-year-old eggs that they bury in the ground." 

"And it's not just us," Al said. "That old woman in Bal-timore; it's affecting 
what she bought too: her azalea." Is the whole world going to starve because of 
a bomb blast on Luna? he asked himself. Why is everyone involved instead of just 
us? 
Joe said, "Here comes -" 
"Be quiet a second," Al said. "I have to think something out, Maybe Baltimore is 
only there when one of us goes there. And the Lucky People Supermarket; as soon 
as we left, it passed out of existence. It could still be that only we who were 
on Luna are really experiencing this." 
"A philosophical problem of no importance or meaning," Joe said. "And incapable 
of being proved one way or the other." 
Al said caustically, "It would be important to that old lady in the 
blueberry-colored cloth coat. And to all the rest of them." 
"Here's the shop foreman," Joe said. 
"I've just been looking at the instruction manual," the shop foreman said, "that 
came with your tape recorder." He held the booklet out to Al, a complicated 
expression on his face. "Take a look." All at once he grabbed it back. "I'll 
116 PHILIP K. DICK
save you the trouble of reading; look here on the last page, 
where it tells who made the damn thing and where to send 
it for factory repairs." 
" 'Made by Runciter of Zurich,' " Al read aloud. "And a 
maintenance station in the North American Confederation - 
in Des Moines. The same as on the matchfolder." He passed 
the booklet to Joe and said, "We're going to Des Moines. 
This booklet is the first manifestation that links the two lo- 
cations." I wonder why Des Moines, he said to himself. "Can 
you recall," he said to Joe, "any connection that Runciter 
ever had, during his lifetime, with Des Moines?" 
Joe said, "Runciter was born there. He spent his first fif- 
teen years there. Every once in a while he used to mention 
it." 
"So now, after his death, he's gone back there. In some 
manner or other." Runciter is in Zurich, he thought, and 
also in Des Moines. In Zurich he has measurable brain me- 
tabolism; his physical, half-life body is suspended in cold- 
pac in the Beloved Brethren Moratorium, and yet he can't 
be reached. In Des Moines he has no physical existence and 
yet, evidently, there contact can be established - in fact, by 
such extensions as this instruction booklet, has been estab- 
lished, at least in one direction, from him to us. And mean- 
while, he thought, our world declines, turns back onto itself, 
bringing to the surface past phases of reality. By the end of 
the week we may wake up and find ancient clanging streetcars 
moving down Fifth Avenue. Trolley Dodgers, he thought, 
and wondered what that meant. An abandoned verbal term, 
rising from the past; a hazy, distant emanation, in his mind, 
canceling out current reality. Even this indistinct perception, 
still only subjective, made him uneasy; it had already become 
too real, an entity which he had never known about before 
this moment. "Trolley Dodgers," he said aloud. A hundred 
years ago at least. Obsessively, the term remained lodged 
within awareness; he could not forget it. 
"How come you know that?" the shop foreman asked. 
UBIK 117
"Nobody knows that any more; that's the old name for the Brooklyn Dodgers." He 
eyed Al suspiciously. 
Joe said, "We better go upstairs. And make sure they're all right. Before we 
take off for Des Moines." 
"If we don't get to Des Moines soon," Al said, "it may turn out to be an all-day 
trip or even a two-day trip." As methods of transportation devolve, he thought. 
From rocket propulsion to jet, from jet to piston-driven aircraft, then surface 
travel as the coal-fed steam train, horse-drawn cart - but it couldn't regress 
that far, he said to himself. And yet we've already got on our hands a 
forty-year-old tape re-corder, run by rubber drive-tire and belts. Maybe it 
could really be. 
He and Joe walked rapidly to the elevator; Joe pressed the button and they 
waited, both of them on edge, saying nothing; both withdrew into their own 
thoughts. 
The elevator arrived clatteringly; the racket awoke Al from his introspection. 
Reflexively he pushed aside the iron-grill safety door. 
And found himself facing an open cage with polished brass fittings, suspended 
from a cable. A dull-eyed uniformed op-erator sat on a stool, working the 
handle; he gazed at them with indifference. It was not indifference, however, 
that Al felt. "Don't get in," he said to Joe, holding him back. "Look at it and 
think; try to remember the elevator we rode in earlier today, the 
hydraulic-powered, closed, self-operated, absolutely silent -" 
He ceased talking. Because the elderly clanking contrap-tion had dimmed, and, in 
its place, the familiar elevator resumed its existence. And yet he sensed the 
presence of the other, older elevator; it lurked at the periphery of his vision, 
as if ready to ebb forward as soon as he and Joe turned their attention away. It 
wants to come back, he realized. It intends to come back. We can delay it 
temporarily: a few hours, probably, at the most. The momentum of the retrograde 
force is increasing; archaic forms are moving toward domi- 
118 PHILIP K. DICK
nation more rapidly than we thought. It's now a question of a hundred years at 
one swing. The elevator we just now saw must have been a century old. 
And yet, he thought, we seem able to exert some control over it. We did force 
the actual contemporary elevator back into being. If all of us stay together, if 
we function as an entity of - not two - but twelve minds - 
"What did you see?" Joe was saying to him. "That made you tell me not to get in 
the elevator?" 
Al said, "Didn't you see the old elevator? Open cage, brass, from around 1910? 
With the operator sitting on his stool?" 
"No," Joe said. 
"Did you see anything?" 
"This." Joe gestured. "The normal elevator I see every day when I come to work. 
I saw what I always see, what I see now." He entered the elevator, turned and 
stood facing Al. 
Then our perceptions are beginning to differ, Al realized. He wondered what that 
meant. 
It seemed ominous; he did not like it at all. In its dire, obscure way it seemed 
to him potentially the most deadly change since Runciter's death. They were no 
longer regress-ing at the same rate, and he had an acute, intuitive intimation 
that Wendy Wright had experienced exactly this before her death. 
He wondered how much time he himself had left. 
Now he became aware of an insidious, seeping, cooling-off which at some earlier 
and unremembered time had begun to explore him - investigating him as well as 
the world around him. It reminded him of their final minutes on Luna. The chill 
debased the surfaces of objects; it warped, ex-panded, showed itself as bulblike 
swellings that sighed au-dibly and popped. Into the manifold open wounds the 
cold drifted, all the way down into the heart of things, the core which made 
them live. What he saw now seemed to be a 
UBIK 119
desert of ice from which stark boulders jutted. A wind spewed across the plain 
which reality had become; the wind congealed into deeper ice, and the boulders 
disappeared for the most part. And darkness presented itself off at the edges of 
his vision; he caught only a meager glimpse of it. 
But, he thought, this is projection on my part. It isn't the universe which is 
being entombed by layers of wind, cold, darkness and ice; all this is going on 
within me, and yet I seem to see it outside. Strange, he thought. Is the whole 
world inside me? Engulfed by my body? When did that hap-pen? It must be a 
manifestation of dying, he said to himself. The uncertainty which I feel, the 
slowing down into en-tropy - that's the process, and the ice which I see is the 
result of the success of the process. When I blink out, he thought, the whole 
universe will disappear. But what about the various lights which I should see, 
the entrances to new wombs? Where in particular is the red smoky light of 
fornicating couples? And the dull dark light signifying animal greed? All I can 
make out, he thought, is encroaching darkness and utter loss of heat, a plain 
which is cooling off, abandoned by its sun. 
This can't be normal death, he said to himself. This is unnatural; the regular 
momentum of dissolution has been replaced by another factor imposed upon it, a 
pressure ar-bitrary and forced. 
Maybe I can understand it, he thought, if I can just lie down and rest, if I can 
get enough energy to think. 
"What's the matter?" Joe asked, as, together, they as-cended in the elevator. 
"Nothing," Al said curtly. They may make it, he thought, but I'm not going to. 
He and Joe continued on up in empty silence. 
As he entered the conference room Joe realized that Al was no longer with him. 
Turning, he looked back down the cor- 
120 PHILIP K. DICK
ridor; he made out Al standing alone, not coming any farther. "What's the 
matter?" he asked again. Al did not move. "Are you all right?" Joe asked, 
walking back toward him. 
"I feel tired," Al said. 
"You don't look good," Joe said, feeling deeply uneasy. 
Al said, "I'm going to the men's room. You go ahead and join the others; make 
sure they're okay. I'll be along pretty soon." He started vaguely away; he 
seemed, now, confused. "I'll be okay," he said. He moved along the corridor 
halt-ingly, as if having difficulty seeing his way. 
"I'll go with you," Joe said. "To make sure you get there." 
"Maybe if I splash some warm water on my face," Al said; he found the toll-free 
door to the men's room, and, with Joe's help, opened it and disappeared inside. 
Joe remained in the corridor. Something's the matter with him, he said to 
himself. Seeing the old elevator made a change in him. He wondered why. 
Al reappeared. 
"What is it?" Joe said, seeing the expression on his face. 
"Take a look at this," Al said; he led Joe into the men's room and pointed at 
the far wall. "Graffiti," he said. "You know, words scrawled. Like you find all 
the time in the men's room. Read it." 
In crayon, or purple ballpoint pen ink, the words read: 
JUMP IN THE URINAL AND STAND ON YOUR HEAD. I'M THE ONE THAT'S AL1VE. YOU'RE ALL 
DEAD. 
"Is it Runciter's writing?" Al asked. "Do you recognize it?" 
"Yes," Joe said, nodding. "It's Runciter's writing." 
"So now we know the truth," Al said. 
"Is it the truth?" 
Al said, "Sure. Obviously." 
"What a hell of a way to learn it. From the wall of a men's room." He felt 
bitter resentment rather than anything else. 
UBIK 121
"That's how graffiti is; harsh and direct. We might have watched the TV and 
listened to the vidphone and read the 'papes for months - forever, maybe - 
without finding out. Without being told straight to the point like this." 
Joe said, "But we're not dead. Except for Wendy." 
"We're in half-life. Probably still on Pratfall II; we're prob-ably on our way 
back to Earth from Luna, after the explosion that killed us - killed us, not 
Runciter. And he's trying to pick up the flow of protophasons from us. So far 
he's failed; we're not getting across from our world to his. But he's managed to 
reach us. We're picking him up everywhere, even places we choose at random. His 
presence is invading us on every side, him and only him because he's the sole 
person trying to -" 
"He and only he," Joe interrupted. "Instead of 'him'; you said 'him.' " 
"I'm sick," Al said. He started water running in the basin, began splashing it 
onto his face. It was not hot water, how-ever, Joe saw; in the water fragments 
of ice crackled and splintered. "You go back to the conference room. I'll be 
along when I feel better, assuming I ever do feel better." 
"I think I ought to stay here with you," Joe said. 
"No, goddam it - get out of here!" His face gray and filled with panic, Al 
shoved him toward the door of the men's room; he propelled Joe out into the 
corridor. "Go on, make sure they're all right!" Al retreated back into the men's 
room, clutching at his own eyes; bent over, he disappeared from view as the door 
swung shut. 
Joe hesitated. "Okay," he said, "I'll be in the conference room with them." He 
waited, listening; heard nothing. "Al?" he said. Christ, he thought. This is 
terrible. Something is really the matter with him. "I want to see with my own 
eyes," he said, pushing against the door, "that you're all right." 
In a low, calm voice Al said, "It's too late, Joe. Don't look." The men's room 
had become dark; Al evidently had managed to turn the light off. "You can't do 
anything to 
122 PHILIP K. DICK
help me," he said in a weak but steady voice. "We shouldn't have separated from 
the others; that's why it happened to Wendy. You can stay alive at least for a 
while if you go find them and stick with them. Tell them that; make sure all of 
them understand. Do you understand?" 
Joe reached for the light switch. 
A blow, feeble and weightless, cuffed his hand in the dark-ness; terrified, he 
withdrew his hand, shocked by the im-potence of Al's punch. It told him 
everything. He no longer needed to see. 
"I'll go join the others," he said. "Yes, I understand. Does it feel very bad?" 
Silence, and then a listless voice whispered, "No, it doesn't feel very bad. I 
just -" The voice faded out. Once more only silence. 
"Maybe I'll see you again sometime," Joe said. He knew it was the wrong thing to 
say - it horrified him to hear himself prattle out such an inanity. But it was 
the best he could do. "Let me put it another way," he said, but he knew Al could 
no longer hear him. "I hope you feel better," he said. "I'll check back after I 
tell them about the writing on the wall in there. I'll tell them not to come in 
here and look at it because it might -" He tried to think it out, to say it 
right. "They might bother you," he finished. 
No response. 
"Well, so long," Joe said, and left the darkness of the men's room. He walked 
unsteadily down the corridor, back to the conference room; halting a moment he 
took a deep, irregular breath and then pushed open the conference-room door. 
The TV set mounted in the far wall blared out a detergent commercial; on the 
great color 3-D screen a housewife crit-ically examined a synthetic otter-pelt 
towel and in a penetrating, shrill voice declared it unfit to occupy a place in 
her bathroom. The screen then displayed her bathroom - and picked up graffiti on 
her bathroom wall too. The same familiar scrawl, this time reading; 
UBIK 123
LEAN OVER THE BOWL AND THEN TAKE A DIVE. ALL OF YOU ARE DEAD. I AM ALIVE.

Only one person in the big conference room watched, however. Joe stood alone in 
an otherwise empty room. The others, the entire group of them, had gone. 
He wondered where they were. And if he would live long enough to find them. It 
did not seem likely. 
l0 
Has perspiration odor taken you out of the swim? Ten-day Ubik deodorant spray or 
Ubik roll-on ends worry of offending, brings you back where the happening is. 
Safe when used as directed in a conscientious program of body hygiene. 
The television announcer said, "And now back to Jim Hunter and the news." 
On the screen the sunny, hairless face of the newscaster appeared. "Glen 
Runciter came back today to the place of his birth, but it was not the kind of 
return which gladdened anyone's heart. Yesterday tragedy struck at Runciter 
As-sociates, probably the best-known of Earth's many prudence organizations. In 
a terrorist blast at an undisclosed subsurface installation on Luna, Glen 
Runciter was mortally wounded and died before his remains could be transferred 
to cold-pac. Brought to the Beloved Brethren Moratorium in Zurich, every effort 
was made to revive Runciter to half-life, but in vain. In acknowledgment of 
defeat these efforts have now ceased, and the body of Glen Runciter has been 
returned here to Des Moines, where it will lie in state at the Simple Shepherd 
Mortuary." 
The screen showed an old-fashioned white wooden build-ing, with various persons 
roaming about outside. 
I wonder who authorized the transfer to Des Moines, Joe Chip said to himself. 
"It was the sad but inexorably dictated decision by the wife 
UBIK 125 
of Glen Runciter," the newscaster's voice continued, "which brought about this 
final chapter which we are now viewing. Mrs. Ella Runciter, herself in cold-pac, 
whom it had been hoped her husband would join - revived to face this calamity. 
Mrs. Runciter learned this morning of the fate which had overtaken her husband, 
and gave the decision to abandon efforts to awaken belated half-life in the man 
whom she had expected to merge with, a hope disappointed by reality." A still 
photo of Ella, taken during her lifetime, appeared briefly on the TV screen. "In 
solemn ritual," the newscaster con-tinued, "grieving employees of Runciter 
Associates assembled in the chapel of the Simple Shepherd Mortuary, preparing 
themselves as best they could, under the circumstances, to pay last respects." 
The screen now showed the roof field of the mortuary; a parked upended ship 
opened its hatch and men and women emerged. A microphone, extended by newsmen, 
halted them. 
"Tell me, sir," a newsmanish voice said, "in addition to working for Glen 
Runciter, did you and these other em-ployees also know him personally? Know him 
not as a boss but as a man?" 
Blinking like a light-blinded owl, Don Denny said into the extended microphone, 
"We all knew Glen Runciter as a man. As a good individual and citizen whom we 
could trust. I know I speak for the others when I say this." 
"Are all of Mr. Runciter's employees, or perhaps I should say former employees, 
here, Mr. Denny?" 
"Many of us are here," Don Denny said. "Mr. Len Nig-gelman, Prudence Society 
chairman, approached us in New York and informed us that he had heard of Glen 
Runciter's death. He informed us that the body of the deceased was being brought 
here to Des Moines, and he said we ought to come here, and we agreed, so he 
brought us in his ship. This is his ship." Denny indicated the ship out of which 
he and the others had stepped. "We appreciated him notifying us of the change of 
location from the moratorium in Zurich to 
126 PHILIP K. DICK
the mortuary here. Several of us are not here, however, because they weren't at 
the firm's New York offices; I refer in particular to inertials Al Hammond and 
Wendy Wright and the firm's field tester, Mr. Chip. The whereabouts of the three 
of them is unknown to us, but perhaps along with -" 
"Yes," the news announcer with the microphone said. "Perhaps they will see this 
telecast, which is being beamed by satellite over all of Earth, and will come 
here to Des Moines for this tragic occasion, as I am sure - and as you 
undoubtedly are sure - Mr. Runciter and also Mrs. Runciter would want them to. 
And now back to Jim Hunter at news-room central." 
Jim Hunter, reappearing on the screen, said, "Ray Hollis, whose psionically 
talented personnel are the object of inertial nullification and hence the target 
of the prudence organi-zations, said today in a statement released by his office 
that he regretted the accidental death of Glen Runciter and would if possible 
attend the funeral services in Des Moines, It may be, however, that Len 
Niggelman, representing the Prudence Society (as we told you earlier), will ask 
that he be barred in view of the implication on the part of some 
prudence-organization spokesmen that Hollis originally reacted to news of 
Runciter's death with ill-disguised relief." Newscaster Hunter paused, picked up 
a sheet of paper and said, "Turning now to other news -" 
With his foot Joe Chip tripped the pedal which controlled the TV set; the screen 
faded and the sound ebbed into si-lence. 
This doesn't fit in with the graffiti on the bathroom walls, Joe reflected. 
Maybe Runciter is dead, after all. The TV people think so. Ray Hollis thinks so. 
So does Len Niggel-man. They all consider him dead, and all we have that says 
otherwise is the two rhymed couplets, which could have been scrawled by anyone - 
despite what Al thought. 
The TV screen relit. Much to his surprise; he had not repressed the pedal 
switch. And in addition, it changed chan-nels: Images flitted past, of one thing 
and then another, until 
UBIK 127
at last the mysterious agency was satisfied. The final image remained. 
The face of Glen Runciter. 
"Tired of lazy tastebuds?" Runciter said in his familiar gravelly voice. "Has 
boiled cabbage taken over your world of food? That same old, stale, flat, 
Monday-morning odor no matter how many dimes you put into your stove? Ubik 
changes all that; Ubik wakes up food flavor, puts hearty taste back where it 
belongs, and restores fine food smell." On the screen a brightly colored spray 
can replaced Glen Runciter. "One invisible puff-puff whisk of economically 
priced Ubik banishes compulsive obsessive fears that the entire world is turning 
into clotted milk, worn-out tape recorders and ob-solete iron-cage elevators, 
plus other, further, as-yet-unglimpsed manifestations of decay. You see, world 
dete-rioration of this regressive type is a normal experience of many 
half-lifers, especially in the early stages when ties to the real reality are 
still very strong. A sort of lingering uni-verse is retained as a residual 
charge, experienced as a pseudo environment but highly unstable and unsupported 
by any ergic substructure. This is particularly true when several memory systems 
are fused, as in the case of you people. But with today's new, 
more-powerful-than-ever Ubik, all this is changed!" 
Dazed, Joe seated himself, his eyes fixed on the screen; a cartoon fairy zipped 
airily in spirals, squirting Ubik here and there. 
A hard-eyed housewife with big teeth and horse's chin replaced the cartoon 
fairy; in a brassy voice she bellowed, "I came over to Ubik after trying weak, 
out-of-date reality supports. My pots and pans were turning into heaps of rust. 
The floors of my conapt were sagging. My husband Charley put his foot right 
through the bcdroom door. But now I use economical new powerful today's Ubik, 
and with miraculous results. Look at this refrigerator." On the screen appeared 
an antique turret-top G.E. refrigerator. "Why, it's devolved back eighty years." 

128 PHILIP K. DICK
"Sixty-two years," Joe corrected reflexively. 
"But now look at it," the housewife continued, squirting the old turret top with 
her spray can of Ubik. Sparkles of magic light lit up in a nimbus surrounding 
the old turret top and, in a flash, a modern six-door pay refrigerator replaced 
it in splendid glory. 
"Yes," Runciter's dark voice resumed, "by making use of the most advanced 
techniques of present-day science, the reversion of matter to earlier forms can 
be reversed, and at a price any conapt owner can afford. Ubik is sold by leading 
home-art stores throughout Earth. Do not take internally. Keep away from open 
flame. Do not deviate from printed procedural approaches as expressed on label. 
So look for it, Joe. Don't just sit there; go out and buy a can of Ubik and 
spray it all around you night and day." 
Standing up, Joe said loudly, "You know I'm here. Does that mean you can hear 
and see me?" 
"Of course, I can't hear you and see you. This commercial message is on 
videotape; I recorded it two weeks ago, spe-cifically, twelve days before my 
death. I knew the bomb blast was coming; I made use of precog talents." 
"Then you are really dead." 
"Of course, I'm dead. Didn't you watch the telecast from Des Moines just now? I 
know you did, because my precog saw that too." 
"What about the graffiti on the men's-room wall?" 
Runciter, from the audio system of the TV set, boomed, "Another deterioration 
phenomenon. Go buy a can of Ubik and it'll stop happening to you; all those 
things will cease." 
"Al thinks we're dead," Joe said. 
"Al is deteriorating." Runciter laughed, a deep, re-echoing pulsation that made 
the conference room vibrate. "Look, Joe, I recorded this goddam TV commercial to 
assist you, to guide you - you in particular because we've always been friends. 
And I knew you'd be very confused, which is exactly what you are right now, 
totally confused. Which isn't very surprising, considering your usual condition. 
Anyhow, 
UBIK 129
try to hang on; maybe once you get to Des Moines and see my body lying in state 
you'll calm down." 
"What's this 'Ubik'?" Joe asked. 
"I think, though, it's too late to help Al." 
Joe said, "What is Ubik made of? How does it work?" 
"As a matter of fact, Al probably induced the writing on the men's-room wall. 
You wouldn't have seen it except for him." 
"You really are on videotape, aren't you?" Joe said. "You can't hear me. It's 
true." 
Runciter said, "And in addition, Al -" 
"Rats," Joe said in weary disgust. It was no use. He gave up. 
The horse-jawed housewife returned to the TV screen, winding up the commercial; 
her voice softer now, she trilled, "If the home-art store that you patronize 
doesn't yet carry Ubik, return to your conapt, Mr. Chip, and you'll find a free 
sample has arrived by mail, a free introductory sample, Mr. Chip, that will keep 
you going until you can buy a regular-size can." She then faded out. The TV set 
became opaque and silent. The process that had turned it on had turned it back 
off. 
So I'm supposed to blame Al, Joe thought. The idea did not appeal to him; he 
sensed the peculiarity of the logic, its perhaps deliberate misdirectedness. Al 
the fall-guy; Al made into the patsy, everything explained in terms of Al. 
Senseless, he said to himself. And - had Runciter been able to hear him? Had 
Runciter only pretended to be on videotape? For a time, during the commercial, 
Runciter had seemed to re-spond to his questions; only at the end had Runciter's 
words become malappropriate. He felt all at once like an ineffectual moth, 
fluttering at the windowpane of reality, dimly seeing it from outside. 
A new thought struck him, an eerie idea. Suppose Runciter had made the videotape 
recording under the assumption, based on inaccurate precog information, that the 
bomb blast would kill him and leave the rest of them alive. The tape 
130 P H ILIP K. D IC K
had been made honestly but mistakenly; Runciter had not died: They had died, as 
the graffiti on the men's-room wall had said, and Runciter still lived. Before 
the bomb blast he had given instructions for the taped commercial to be played 
at this time, and the network had so done, Runciter having failed to countermand 
his original order. That would explain the disparity between what Runciter had 
said on the tape and what he had written on the bathroom walls; it would in fact 
explain both. Which, as far as he could make out, no other explanation would. 
Unless Runciter was playing a sardonic game with them, trifling with them, first 
leading them in one direction, then the other. An unnatural and gigantic force, 
haunting their lives. Emanating either within the living world or the half-life 
world; or, he thought suddenly, perhaps both. In any case, controlling what they 
experienced, or at least a major part of it. Perhaps not the decay, he decided. 
Not that. But why not? Maybe, he thought, that, too. But Runciter wouldn't admit 
it. Runciter and Ubik. Ubiquity, he realized all at once; that's the derivation 
of the made-up word, the name of Runciter's alleged spray-can product. Which 
prob-ably did not even exist. It was probably a further hoax, to bewilder them 
that much more. 
And, in addition, if Runciter were alive, then not one but two Runciters 
existed: the genuine one in the real world who was striving to reach them, and 
the phantasmagoric Runciter who had become a corpse in this half-life world, the 
body lying in state in Des Moines, Iowa. And, to carry the logic of this out to 
its full extent, other persons here, such as Ray Hollis and Len Niggelman, were 
also phantasmagoria - while their authentic counterparts remained in the world 
of the living. 
Very confusing, Joe Chip said to himself. He did not like it at all. Granted it 
had a satisfying symmetrical quality, but on the other hand, it struck him as 
untidy. 
I'll zip over to my conapt, he decided, pick up the free sample of Ubik, then 
head for Des Moines. After all, that's 
UBIK 131
what the TV commercial urged me to do. I'll be safer carrying a can of Ubik with 
me, as the ad pointed out in its own jingly, clever way. 
One has to pay attention to such admonitions, he realized, if one expects to 
stay alive - or half-alive. 
Whichever it is. 
The taxi let him off on the roof field of his conapt building; he descended by 
moving ramp and arrived at his own door. With a coin that someone had given him 
- Al or Pat, he could not knowingly remember - he opened the door and entered. 
The living room smelled faintly of burned grease, an odor he had not come across 
since childhood. Going into the kitchen he discovered the reason. His stove had 
reverted. Back to an ancient Buck natural-gas model with clogged burners and 
encrusted oven door which did not close entirely. He gazed at the old, much-used 
stove dully - then discovered that the other kitchen appliances had undergone 
similar me-tamorphoses. The homeopape machine had vanished en-tirely. The 
toaster had dissolved sometime during the day and reformed itself as a rubbishy, 
quaint, nonautomatic model. Not even pop-up, he discovered as he poked bleakly 
at it. The refrigerator that greeted him was an enormous belt-driven model, a 
relic that had floated into being from god knew what distant past; it was even 
more obsolete than the turret-top G.E. shown in the TV commercial. The 
coffee-pot had undergone the least change; as a matter of fact, in one respect 
it had improved - it lacked the coin slot, oper-ating obviously toll-free. This 
aspect was true of all the ap-pliances, he realized. All that remained, anyhow. 
Like the homeopape machine, the garbage-disposal unit had entirely vanished, He 
tried to remember what other appliances he had owned, but already memory had 
become vague; he gave up and returned to the living room. 
The TV set had receded back a long way; he found himself 
132 PHILIP K. DICK
confronted by a dark, wood-cabinet, Atwater-Kent tuned radio-frequency oldtime 
AM radio, complete with antenna and ground wires. God in heaven, he said to 
himself, ap-palled. 
But why hadn't the TV set reverted instead to formless metals and plastics? 
Those, after all, were its constituents; it had been constructed out of them, 
not out of an earlier radio. Perhaps this weirdly verified a discarded ancient 
phi-'losophy, that of Plato's ideal objects, the universals which, in each 
class, were real. The form TV set had been a template imposed as a successor to 
other templates, like the procession of frames in a movie sequence. Prior forms, 
he reflected, must carry on an invisible, residual life in every object. The 
past is latent, is submerged, but still there, capable of rising to the surface 
once the later imprinting unfortunately - and against ordinary experience - 
vanished. The man contains - not the boy - but earlier men, he thought. History 
began a long time ago. 
The dehydrated remnants of Wendy. The procession of forms that normally takes 
place - that procession ceased. And the last form wore off, with nothing 
subsequent: no newer form, no next stage of what we see as growth, to take its 
place. This must be what we experience as old age; from this absence comes 
degeneration and senility. Only in this instance it happened abruptly - in a 
matter of hours. 
But this old theory - didn't Plato think that something survived the decline, 
something inner not able to decay? The ancient dualism: body separated from 
soul. The body ending as Wendy did, and the soul - out of its nest the bird, 
flown elsewhere. Maybe so, he thought. To be reborn again, as the Tibetan Book 
of the Dead says. It really is true. Christ, I hope so. Because in that case we 
all can meet again. In, as in Winnie-the-Pooh, another part of the forest, where 
a boy and his bear will always be playing... a category, he thought, 
imperishable. Like all of us. We will all wind up with Pooh, in a clearer, more 
durable new place. 
For curiosity's sake he turned on the prehistoric radio set; 
UBIK 133
the yellow celluloid dial glowed, the set gave off a loud sixty-cycle hum, and 
then, amid static and squeals, a station came on. 
"Time for Pepper Young's Family," the announcer said, and organ music gurgled. 
"Brought to you by mild Camay, the soap of beautiful women. Yesterday Pepper 
discovered that the labor of months had come to an unexpected end, due to the -" 
Joe shut the radio off at that point. A pre-World War Two soap opera, he said to 
himself, marveling. Well, it followed the logic of the form reversions taking 
place in this, the dying half-world - or whatever it was. 
Looking around the living room he discovered a baroque-legged, glass-topped 
coffee table on which a copy of Liberty magazine rested. Also pre-World War Two; 
the magazine featured a serial entitled "Lightning in the Night," a futuristic 
fantasy supposing an atomic war. He turned the pages numb-ly, then studied the 
room as a whole, seeking to identify other changes. 
The tough, neutral-colored floor had become wide, soft-wood boards; in the 
center of the room a faded Turkish rug lay, impregnated with years of dust. 
One single picture remained on the wall, a glass-covered framed print in 
monochrome showing a dying Indian on horseback. He had never seen it before. It 
stirred no mem-ories. And he did not care for it one bit. 
The vidphone had been replaced by a black, hook-style, upright telephone. 
Pre-dial. He lifted the receiver from the hook and heard a female voice saying, 
"Number, please." At that he hung up. 
The thermostatically controlled heating system had evi-dently departed. At one 
end of the living room he perceived a gas heater, complete with large tin flue 
running up the wall almost to the ceiling. 
Going into the bedroom, he looked in the closet, rum-maged, then assembled an 
outfit: black Oxfords, wool socks, knickers, blue cotton shirt, camel's-hair 
sports coat and golf cap. For more formal wear he laid out on the bed a pin- 
134 PHILIP K. DICK
striped, blue-black, double-breasted suit, suspenders, wide floral necktie and 
white shirt with celluloid collar. Jeez, he said to himself in dismay as, in the 
closet, he came across a golf bag with assorted clubs. What a relic. 
Once more he returned to the living room. This time he noticed the spot where 
his polyphonic audio components had formerly been assembled. The multiplex FM 
tuner, the high-hysteresis turntable and weightless tracking arm - speakers, 
horns, multitrack amplifier, all had vanished. In their place a tall, tan wooden 
structure greeted him; he made out the crank handle and did not need to lift the 
lid to know what his sound system now consisted of. Bamboo needles, a pack of 
them on the bookcase beside the Victrola. And a ten-inch 78-speed black-label 
Victor record of Ray Noble's orchestra playing "Turkish Delight." So much for 
his tape and LP collection. 
And by tomorrow he would probably find himself equipped with a cylinder 
phonograph, screw-driven. And, to play on it, a shouted recitation of the Lord's 
Prayer. 
A fresh-looking newspaper lying at the far end of the ov-erstuffed sofa 
attracted his attention. He picked it up and read the date: Tuesday, September 
12, 1939. He scanned the headlines. 
FRENCH CLAIM SIEGFRIED LINE DENTED REPORT GAJNS IN AREA NEAR SAARBRUCKEN - 
Major battle said to be shaping up along Western Front 
Interesting, he said to himself. World War Two had just begun. And the French 
thought they were winning it. He read another headline. 
POLISH REPORT CLAIMS GERMAN FORCES HALTED SAY INVADERS THROW NEW FORCES INTO 
BA1TLE WITHOUT NEW GAINS 
UBIK 135
The newspaper had cost three cents. That interested him too. What could you get 
now for three cents? he asked him-self. He tossed the newspaper back down, and 
marveled once again at its freshness. A day or so old, he guessed. No more than 
that. So I now have a time fix; I know precisely how far back the regression has 
carried. 
Wandering about the conapt, searching out the various changes, he found himself 
facing a chest of dresser drawers in the bedroom. On the top rested several 
framed, glass-covered photographs. 
All were of Runciter. But not the Runciter he knew. These were of a baby, a 
small boy, then a young man. Runciter as he once had been, but still 
recognizable. 
Getting out his wallet, he found only snapshots of Run-citer, none of his 
family, none of friends. Runciter every-where! He returned the wallet to his 
pocket, then realized with a jolt that it had been made of natural cowhide, not 
plastic. Well, that fitted. In the old days there had been organic leather 
available. So what? he said to himself. Bring-ing the wallet out once more, he 
somberly scrutinized it; he rubbed the cowhide and experienced a new tactile 
sensation, a pleasant one. Infinitely superior to plastic, he decided. 
Back in the living room again, he poked about, searching for the familiar mail 
slot, the recessed wall cavity which should have contained today's mail. It had 
vanished; it no longer existed. He pondered, trying to envision oldtime mail 
practices. On the floor outside the conapt door? No. In a box of some kind; he 
recalled the term mailbox. Okay, it would be in the mailbox, but where had 
mailboxes been located? At the main entrance of the building? That - dimly - 
seemed right. He would have to leave his conapt. The mail would be found on the 
ground floor, twenty stories below. 
"Five cents, please," his front door said when he tried to open it. One thing, 
anyhow, hadn't changed. The toll door had an innate stubbornness to it; probably 
it would hold out after everything ehe. After everything except it had long 
136 PHILIP K. DICK
since reverted, perhaps in the whole city... if not the whole world. 
He paid the door a nickel, hurried down the hall to the moving ramp which he had 
used only minutes ago. The ramp, however, had now reverted to a Aight of inert 
concrete stairs. Twenty flights down, he reflected. Step by step. Impossible; no 
one could walk down that many stairs. The elevator. He started toward it, then 
remembered what had happened to Al. Suppose this time I see what he saw, he said 
to himself. An old iron cage hanging from a wire cable, operated by a senile 
borderline moron wearing an official elevator-opera-tor's cap. Not a vision of 
1939 but a vision of 1909, a regres-sion much greater than anything I've run 
into so far. 
Better not to risk it. Better to take the stairs. 
Resigned, he began to descend. 
He had gotten almost halfway down when something om-inous flicked alive in his 
brain. There was no way by which he could get back up - either to his conapt or 
to the roof field where the taxi waited. Once on the ground floor he would be 
confined there, maybe forever. Unless the spray can of Ubik was potent enough to 
restore the elevator or the moving ramp. Surface travel, he said to himself. 
What the hell will that consist of by the time I get down there? Train? Covered 
wagon? 
Clattering down two steps at a time, he morosely continued his descent. Too late 
now to change his mind. 
When he reached ground level he found himself con-fronted by a large lobby, 
including a marble-topped table, very long, on which two ceramic vases of 
flowers - evidently iris - rested. Four wide steps led down to the curtained 
front door; he grasped the faceted glass knob of the door and swung it open. 
More steps. And, on the right, a row of locked brass mail-boxes, each with a 
name, each requiring a key. He had been right; this was as far as the mail was 
brought. He located his own box, finding a strip of paper at the bottom of it 
reading 
UBIK 137
JOSEPH CHIP 2075, plus a button which, when pressed, evidently rang upstairs in 
his conapt. 
The key. He had no key. Or did he? Fishing in his pockets, he discovered a ring 
on which several diversely shaped metal keys dangled; perplexed, he studied 
them, wondering what they were for. The lock on the mailbox seemed unusually 
small; obviously, it took a similar-size key. Selecting the most meager key on 
the ring, he inserted it in the lock of the mailbox, turned it. The brass door 
of the box fell open. He peered inside. 
Within the box lay two letters and a square package wrapped in brown paper, 
sealed with brown tape. Purple three-cent stamps with a portrait of George 
Washington; he paused to admire these unusual memorabilia from the past and 
then, ignoring the letters, tore open the square package, finding it rewardingly 
heavy. But, he realized suddenly, It's the wrong shape for a spray can; it's not 
tall enough. Fear touched him. What if it was not a free sample of Ubik? It had 
to be; it just had to be. Otherwise - Al all over again. Mors certa et hora 
certa, he said to himself as he dropped the brown-paper wrappings and examined 
the pasteboard container within. 
UBIK LIVER AND KIDNEY BALM 
Inside the container he found a blue glass jar with a large lid. The label read: 
DIRECTIONS FOR USE. This unique analgesic formula, developed over a period of 
forty years by Dr. Edward Sonderbar, is guaranteed to end forever annoying 
getting up at night. You will sleep peacefully for the first time, and with 
superlative comfort. Merely dissolve a teaspoonful of UBIK LIVER AND KIDNEY BALM 
in a glass of warm water and drink immediately one-half hour before retiring. If 
pain or irritation persists, increase dosage to one tablespoonful. Do not give 
to children. Contains processed oleander leaves, saltpeter, oil of peppermint, 
N-Acetyl-p-aminophenol, zinc 
138 PHILIP K. DICK
oxide, charcoal, cobalt chloride, caffeine, extract of digitalis, steroids in 
trace amounts, sodium citrate, ascorbic acid, ar-tificial coloring and 
flavoring. UBIK LIVER AND KIDNEY BALM is potent and effective if handled as per 
instructions. In-flammable. Use rubber gloves. Do not allow to get in eyes. Do 
not splash on skin. Do not inhale over long periods of time. Warning: prolonged 
or excessive use may result in habituation. 
This is insane, Joe said to himself. He read the list of ingredients once more, 
feeling growing, baffled anger. And a mounting helpless sensation that took root 
and spread through every part of him. I'm finished, he said to himself. This 
stuff isn't what Runciter advertised on TV; this is some arcane mixture of 
old-time patent medicines, skin salves, pain killers, poisons, inert nothings - 
plus, of all things, cor-tisone. Which didn't exist before World War Two. 
Ob-viously, the Ubik which he described to me in the taped TV commercial, this 
sample of it anyhow, has reverted. An irony that is just plain too much: The 
substance created to reverse the regressive change process has itself regressed. 
I should have known as soon as I saw the old purple three-cent stamps. 
He looked up and down the street. And saw, parked at the curb, a classic, 
museum-piece surface car. A LaSalle. 
Can I get to Des Moines in a 1939 LaSalle automobile? he asked himself. 
Eventually, if it remains stable, perhaps a week from now. But by then it won't 
matter. And, anyhow, the car won't remain stable. Nothing - except maybe my 
front door - will. 
However, he walked over to the LaSalle to examine it at close range. Maybe it's 
mine, he said to himself; maybe one of my keys fits its ignition, Isn't that how 
surface cars op-erated? On the other hand, how am I going to drive it? I don't 
know how to pilot an oldtime automobile, especially one with - what did they 
call it? - manual transmission. He opened the door and slid onto the seat behind 
the driver's steering wheel; there he sat, plucking aimlessly at his lower lip 
and trying to think the situation through, 
UBIK 139
Maybe I ought to drink down a tablespoon of Ubik liver and kidney balm, he said 
to himself grimly. With those in-gredients it ought to kill me fairly 
thoroughly. But it did not strike him as the kind of death he could welcome. The 
cobalt chloride would do it, very slowly and agonizingly, unless the digitalis 
managed it first. And there were, of course, the oleander leaves. They could 
hardly be overlooked. The whole combination would melt his bones into jelly. 
Inch by inch. 
Wait a minute, he thought. Air transportation existed in 1939. If I could get to 
the New York Airport - possibly in this car - I could charter a flight. Rent a 
Ford trimotor plane complete with pilot. That would get me to Des Moines. 
He tried his various keys and at last found one which switched on the car's 
ignition. The starter motor cranked away, and then the engine caught; with a 
healthy rumble the engine continued to turn over, and the sound of it pleased 
him. Like the genuine cowhide wallet, this particular regres-sion struck him as 
an improvement; being completely silent, the transportation of his own time 
lacked this palpable touch of sturdy realism. 
Now the clutch, he said to himself. Over on the left. With his foot he located 
it. Clutch down to the floor, then shift the lever into gear. He tried it - and 
obtained a horrid clashing noise, metal whirring against metal. Evidently, he 
had managed to let up on the clutch. He tried it again. This time he 
successfully got it into gear. 
Lurching, the car moved forward; it bucked and shuddered but it moved. It limped 
erratically up the street, and he felt within him a certain measured renewal of 
optimism. And now let's see if we can find the goddam airfield, he said to 
himself. Before it's too late, before we're back to the days of the Gnome rotary 
engine with its revolving outside cyl-inders and its castor-oil lubricant. Good 
for fifty miles of hedge-hopping flight at seventy-five miles per hour. 
140 PHILIP K. DICK
An hour later he arrived at the airfield, parked and surveyed the hangars, the 
windsock, the old biplanes with their huge wooden props. What a sight, he 
reflected. An indistinct page out of history. Re-created remnants of another 
millennium, lacking any connection with the familiar, real world. A phan-tasm 
that had drifted into sight only momentarily; this, too, would be gone soon: it 
would no more survive than had contemporary artifacts. The process of devolution 
would sweep this away like it had everything else. 
He got shakily from the LaSalle - feeling acutely carsick - and trudged toward 
the main buildings of the airfield. 
"What can I charter with this?" he asked, laying all his money out on the 
counter before the first official-looking person he caught sight of. "I want to 
get to Des Moines as quickly as possible. I want to take off right away." 
The field official, bald-headed, with a waxed mustache and small, round, 
gold-rimmed eyeglasses, inspected the bills si-lently. "Hey, Sam," he called 
with a turn of his apple-like round head. "Come here and look at this money." 
A second individual, wearing a striped shirt with billowing sleeves, shiny 
seersucker trousers and canvas shoes, stumped over. "Fake money," he said after 
he had taken his look. "Play money. Not George Washington and not Alexander 
Hamilton." Both officials scrutinized Joe. 
Joe said, "I have a '39 LaSalle parked in the parking lot. I'll trade it for a 
one-way flight to Des Moines on any plane that'll get me there. Does that 
interest you?" 
Presently the official with the little gold-rimmed glasses said meditatively, 
"Maybe Oggie Brent would be inter-ested." 
"Brent?" the official in the seersucker pants said, raising his eyebrows. "You 
mean that Jenny of his? That plane's over twenty years old. It wouldn't get to 
Philadelphia." 
"How about McGee?" 
"Sure, but he's in Newark." 
"Then, maybe Sandy Jespersen. That Curtiss-Wright of his would make it to Iowa. 
Sooner or later." To Joe the 
UBIK 141
official said, "Go out by hangar three and look for a red and white Curtiss 
biplane. You'll see a little short guy, sort of fat, fiddling around with it. If 
he don't take you up on it nobody here will, unless you want to wait till 
tomorrow for Ike McGee to come back here in his Fokker trimotor." 
"Thanks," Joe said, and left the building; he strode rapidly toward hangar 
three, already seeing what looked like a red and white Curtiss-Wright biplane. 
At least I won't be making the trip in a World War JN training plane, he said to 
himself. And then he. thought, How did I know that "Jenny" is a nickname for a 
JN trainer? Good god, he thought. Elements of this period appear to be 
developing corresponding coor-dinates in my mind. No wonder I was able to drive 
the LaSalle; I'm beginning to phase mentally with this time-con-tinuum in 
earnest! 
A short fat man with red hair puttered with an oily rag at the wheels of his 
biplane; he glanced up as Joe approached. 
"Are you Mr. Jespersen?" Joe asked. 
"That's right." The man surveyed him, obviously mystified by Joe's clothes, 
which had not reverted. "What can I do for you?" Joe told him. 
"You want to trade a LaSalle, a new LaSalle, for a one-way trip to Des Moines?" 
1espersen cogitated, his brows knitting. "Might as well be both ways; I got to 
Ay back here anyway. Okay, I'll take a look at it. But I'm not promising 
anything; I haven't made up my mind." 
Together they made their way to the parking lot. 
"I don't see any '39 LaSalle," Jespersen said suspiciously. 
The man was right. The LaSalle had disappeared. In its place Joe saw a 
fabric-top Ford coupe, a tinny and small car, very old, 1929, he guessed. A 
black 1929 Model-A Ford. Nearly worthless; he could tell that from Jespersen's 
expres-sion. 
Obviously, it was now hopeless. He would never get to Des Moines. And, as 
Runciter had pointed out in his TV commercial, this meant death - the same death 
that had ov-ertaken Wendy and Al. 
142 PHILIP K. DICK
It would be only a matter of time. 
Better, he thought, to die another way. Ubik, he thought. He opened the door of 
his Ford and got in. 
There, on the seat beside him, rested the bottle which he had received in the 
mail. He picked it up - 
And discovered something which did not really surprise him. The bottle, like the 
car, had again regressed. Seamless and flat, with scratch marks on it, the kind 
of bottle made in a wooden mold. Very old indeed; the cap appeared to be 
handmade, a soft tin screw-type dating from the late nine-teenth century. The 
label, too, had changed; holding the bottle up, he read the words printed on it. 

ELIXIR OF UBIQUE. GUARANTEED TO RESTORE LOST MAN-LINESS AND TO BANISH VAPORS OF 
ALL KNOWN KINDS AS WELL AS TO RELIEVE REPRODUCTIVE COMPLAINTS IN BOTH MEN AND 
WOMEN. A BENEFICENT AID TO MANKIND WHEN SEDULOUSLY EMPLOYED AS INDICATED. 
And, in smaller type, a further inscription; he had to squint in order to read 
the smudged, minute script. 
Don't do it, Joe. There's another way. 
Keep trying. You'll find it. Lots of luck. 
Runciter, he realized. Still playing his sadistic cat-and-mouse games with us. 
Goading us into keeping going a little longer. Delaying the end as long as 
possible. God knows why. Maybe, he thought, Runciter enjoys our torment. But 
that isn't like him; that's not the Glen Runciter I knew. 
However, Joe put the Elixir of Ubique bottle down, abandoning the idea of making 
use of it. 
And wondered what Runciter's elusive, hinted at other way might be. 
ll 
Taken as directed, Ubik provides uninterrupted sleep without morn-ing-after 
grogginess. You awaken fresh, ready to tackle all those little annoying problems 
facing you. Do not exceed recommended dosage. 
"Hey, that bottle you have," Jespersen said; he peered into the car, an unusual 
note in his voice. "Can I look at it?" 
Joe Chip wordlessly passed the aviator the flat bottle of Elixir of Ubique. 
"My grandmother used to talk about this," Jespersen said, holding the bottle up 
to the light. "Where'd you get it? They haven't made this since around the time 
of the Civil War." 
"I inherited it," Joe said. 
"You must have. Yeah, you don't see these handmade fiasks any more. The company 
never put out very many of these in the first place. This medicine was invented 
in San Francisco around 1850. Never sold in stores; the customers had to order 
it made up. It came in three strengths. This what you have here, this is the 
strongest of the three." He eyed Joe. "Do you know what's in this?" 
"Sure," Joe said. "Oil of peppermint, zinc oxide, sodium citrate, charcoal -" 
"Let it go," Jespersen interrupted. Frowning, he appeared to be busily turning 
something over in his mind. Then, at last, his expression changed. He had come 
to a decision. "I'll fly you to Des Moines in exchange for this flask of Elixir 
of 
144 PHILIP K. DICK
Ubique. Let's get started; I want to do as much of the flying as possible in 
daylight." He strode away from the '29 Ford, taking the bottle with him. 
Ten minutes later the Curtiss-Wright biplane had been gassed, the prop manually 
spun, and, with Joe Chip and Jespersen aboard, it began weaving an erratic, 
sloppy path down the runway, bouncing into the air and then collapsing back 
again. Joe gritted his teeth and hung on. 
"We're carrying so much weight," Jespersen said without emotion; he did not seem 
alarmed. The plane at last wobbled up into the air, leaving the runway 
permanently behind; nois-ily it droned over the rooftops of buildings, on its 
way west. 
Joe yelled, "How long will it take to get there?" 
"Depends on how much tailwind we get. Hard to say. Probably around noon tomorrow 
if our luck holds out." 
"Will you tell me now," Joe yelled, "what's in the bottle?" 
"Gold flakes suspended in a base composed mostly of min-eral oil," the pilot 
yelled back. 
"How much gold? Very much?" 
Jespersen turned his head and grinned without answering. He did not have to say; 
it was obvious. 
The old Curtiss-Wright biplane blurpled on, in the general direction of Iowa. 
At three in the afternoon the following day they reached the airfield at Des 
Moines. Having landed the plane, the pilot sauntered off for parts unknown, 
carrying his flask of gold flakes with him. With aching, cramped stiffness, Joe 
climbed from the plane, stood for a time rubbing his numb legs, and then 
unsteadily headed toward the airport office, as little of it as there was. 
"Can I use your phone?" he asked an elderly rustic official who sat hunched over 
a weather map, absorbed in what he was doing. 
"If you got a nickel." The official, with a jerk of his cowlick head, indicated 
tAe public phone. 
UBIK 145
Joe sorted through his money, casting out all the coins which had Runciter's 
profile on them; at last he found an authentic buffalo nickel of the period and 
laid it before the elderly official. 
"Ump," the official grunted without looking up. 
Locating the local phone book, Joe extracted from it the number of the Simple 
Shepherd Mortuary. He gave the num-ber to the operator, and presently his party 
responded. 
"Simple Shepherd Mortuary. Mr. Bliss speaking." 
"I'm here to attend the services for Glen Runciter," Joe said. "Am I too late?" 
He prayed silently that he was not. 
"Services for Mr. Runciter are in progress right now," Mr. Bliss said. "Where 
are you, sir? Would you like us to send a vehicle to fetch you?" He seemed 
fussily disapproving. 
"I'm at the airport," Joe said. 
"You should have arrived earlier," Mr. Bliss chided. "I doubt very much if 
you'll be able to attend any of the service. However, Mr. Runciter will be lying 
in state for the balance of today and tomorrow morning. Watch for our car, Mr.-" 

"Chip," Joe said. 
"Yes, you have been expected. Several of the bereaved have asked that we 
maintain a vigil for you as well as for Mr. Hammond and a" - he paused - "a Miss 
Wright. Are they with you?" 
"No," Joe said. He hung up, then seated himself on a curved, polished wooden 
bench where he could watch cars approaching the airport. Anyhow, he said to 
himself, I'm here in time to join the rest of the group. They haven't left town 
yet, and that's what matters. 
The elderly official called, "Mister, come over here a sec." 
Getting up, Joe crossed the waiting room. "What's wrong?" 
"This nickel you gave me." The official had been scruti-nizing it all this time. 

"It's a buffalo nickel," Joe said. "Isn't that the right coin for this period?" 
146 PHILIP K. DICK
"This nickel is dated 1940." The elderly official eyed him unblinkingly. 
With a groan Joe got out his remaining coins, again sorted among them; at last 
he found a 1938 nickel and tossed it down before the official. "Keep them both," 
he said, and once more seated himself on the polished, curved bench. 
"We get counterfeit money every now and then," the of-ficial said. 
Joe said nothing; he turned his attention to the semi-high-boy Audiola radio 
playing by itself off in a corner of the waiting room. The announcer was 
plugging a toothpaste called Ipana. I wonder how long I'm going to have to wait 
here, Joe asked himself. It made him nervous, now that he had come so close 
physically to the inertials. I'd hate to make it this far, he thought, within a 
few miles, and then - He stopped his thoughts at that point and simply sat. 
Half an hour later a 1930 Willys-Knight 87 put-putted onto the airfield's 
parking lot; a hempen home-spun individual wearing a conspicuously black suit 
emerged and shaded his eyes with the flat of his hand in order to see into the 
waiting room. 
Joe approached him. "Are you Mr. Bliss?" he asked. 
"Certainly, I am." Bliss briefly shook hands with him, meanwhile emitting a 
strong smell of Sen-sen, then got back at once into the Willys-Knight and 
restarted the motor. "Come along, Mr. Chip. Please hurry. We may still be able 
to attend a part of the service. Father Abernathy generally speaks quite a while 
on such important occasions as this." 
Joe got into the front seat beside Mr. Bliss. A moment later they clanked onto 
the road leading to downtown Des Moines, rushing along at speeds sometimes 
reaching forty miles an hour. 
"You're an employee of Mr. Runciter?" Bliss asked. 
"Right," Joe said. 
"Unusual line of business that Mr. Runciter was in. I'm not quite sure I 
understand it." Bliss honked at a red setter which had ventured onto the asphalt 
pavement; the dog re-
UBIK 147
treated, giving the Willys-Knight its pompous right of way. "What does 'psionic' 
mean? Several of Mr. Runciter's em-ployees have used the term." 
"Parapsychological powers," Joe said. "Mental force op-erating directly, without 
any intervening physical agency." 
"Mystical powers, you mean? Like knowing the future? The reason I ask that is 
that several of you people have talked about the future as if it already exists. 
Not to me; they didn't say anything about it except to each other, but I 
overheard - you know how it is. Are you people mediums, is that it?" 
"In a manner of speaking." 
"What do you foresee about the war in Europe?" 
Joe said, "Germany and Japan will lose. The United States will get into it on 
December 7th, 1941." He lapsed into silence then, not feeling inclined to 
discuss it; he had his own prob-lems to occupy his attention. 
"I'm a Shriner, myself," Bliss said. 
What is the rest of the group experiencing? Joe wondered. This reality? The 
United States of 1939? Or, when I rejoin them, will my regression be reversed, 
placing me at a later period? A good question. Because, collectively, they would 
have to find their way back fifty-three years, to the reasonable and proper 
form-constituents of contemporary, unregressed time. If the group as a whole had 
experienced the same amount of regression as he had, then his joining them would 
not help him or them - except in one regard: He might be spared the ordeal of 
undergoing further world decay. On the other hand, this reality of 1939 seemed 
fairly stable; in the last twenty-four hours it had managed to remain virtually 
constant. But, he reflected, that might be due to my drawing nearer to the 
group. 
On the other hand, the 1939 jar of Ubik liver and kidney balm had revertcd back 
an additional eighty-odd years: from spray can to jar to wooden-mold bottle 
within a few houis. Like the 1908 cage elevator which Al alone had seen - 
But that wasn't so. The short, fat pilot, Sandy Jespersen, had also seen the 
wooden-mold bottle, the Elixir of Ubique, 
148 PHILIP K. DICK
as it had become finally. This was not a private vision; it had, in fact, gotten 
him here to Des Moines. And the pilot had seen the reversion of the LaSalle as 
well. Something entirely different had overtaken Al, it would seem. At least, he 
hoped so. Prayed so. 
Suppose, he reflected, we can't reverse our regression; suppose we remain here 
the balance of our lives. Is that so bad? We can get used to nine-tube 
screen-grid highboy Philco radios, although they won't really be necessary, 
inasmuch as the superheterodyne circuit has already been invented - al-though I 
haven't as yet run across one. We can learn to drive American Austin motorcars 
selling for $445 - a sum that had popped into his mind seemingly at random but 
which, he intuited, was correct. Once we get jobs and earn money of this period, 
he said to himself, we won't be traveling aboard antique Curtiss-Wright 
biplanes; after all, four years ago, in 1935, transpacific service by 
four-engine China clippers was inaugurated. The Ford trimotor is an 
eleven-year-old plane by now; to these people it's a relic, and the biplane I 
came here on is - even to them - a museum piece. That LaSalle I had, before it 
reverted, was a considerable piece of machin-ery; I felt real satisfaction 
driving it. 
"What about Russia?" Mr. Bliss was asking. "In the war, I mean. Do we wipe out 
those Reds? Can you see that far ahead?" 
Joe said, "Russia will fight on the same side as the U.S.A." And all the other 
objects and entities and artifacts of this world, he mulled. Medicine will be a 
major drawback; let's see - just about now they should be using the sulfa drugs. 
It's going to be serious for us when we become ill. And - dental work isn't 
going to be much fun either; they're still working with hot drills and 
novocaine. Fluoride toothpastes haven't even come into being; that's another 
twenty years in the future. 
"On our side?" Bliss sputtered. "The Communists? That's impossible; they've got 
that pact with the Nazis." 
UBIK 149
"Germany will violate that pact," Joe said. "Hitler will attack the Soviet Union 
in June 1941." 
"And wipe it out, I hope." 
Startled out of his preoccupations, Joe turned to look closely at Mr. Bliss 
driving his nine-year-old Willys-Knight. 
Bliss said, "Those Communists are the real menace, not the Germans. Take the 
treatment of the Jews. You know who makes a lot out of that? Jews in this 
country, a lot of them not citizens but refugees living on public welfare. I 
think the Nazis certainly have been a little extreme in some of the things 
they've done to the Jews, but basically there's been the Jewish question for a 
long time, and something, although maybe not so vile as those concentration 
camps, had to be done about it. We have a similar problem here in the United 
States, both with Jews and with the niggers. Eventually we're going to have to 
do something about both." 
"I never actually heard the term 'nigger' used," Joe said, and found himself 
appraising this era a little differently, all at once. I forgot about this, he 
realized. 
"Lindbergh is the one who's right about Germany," Bliss said. "Have you ever 
listened to him speak? I don't mean what the newspapers write it up like, but 
actually -" He slowed the car to a stop for a semaphore-style stop signal. "Take 
Senator Borah and Senator Nye. If it wasn't for them, Roosevelt would be selling 
munitions to England and getting us into a war that's not our war. Roosevelt is 
so darn interested in repealing the arms embargo clause of the neutrality bill; 
he wants us to get into the war. The American people aren't going to support 
him. The American people aren't interested in fighting England's war or anybody 
else's war." The signal clanged and a green semaphore swung out. Bliss shifted 
into low gear and the Willys-Knight bumbled forward, melding with downtown Des 
Moines' midday traffic. 
"You're not going to enjoy the next five years," Joe said. 
"Why not? The whole state of Iowa is behind me in what I believe. You know what 
I think about you employees of 
150 PHILIP K. DICK
Mr. Runciter? From what you've said and from what those others said, what I 
overheard, I think you're professional agitators." Bliss glanced at Joe with 
uncowed bravado. 
Joe said nothing; he watched the oldtime brick and wood and concrete buildings 
go by, the quaint cars - most of which appeared to be black - and wondered if he 
was the only one of the group who had been confronted by this particular aspect 
of the world of 1939. In New York, he told himself, it'll be different; this is 
the Bible Belt, the isolationist Middle West. We won't be living here; we'll be 
on either the East Coast or the West. 
But instinctively he sensed that a major problem for all of them had exposed 
itself just now. We know too much, he realized, to live comfortably in this time 
segment. If we had regressed twenty years, or thirty years, we could probably 
make the psychological transition; it might not be interesting to once more live 
through the Gemini spacewalks and the creaking first Apollo flights, but at 
least it would be possible. But at this point in time - 
They're still listening to ten-inch 78 records of "Two Black Crows." And Joe 
Penner. And "Meit and Marge." The Depression is still going on. In our time we 
maintain colonies on Mars, on Luna; we're perfecting workable interstellar 
flight - these people have not been able to cope with the Dust Bowl of Oklahoma. 

This is a world that lives in terms of William Jennings Bryan's oratory; the 
Scopes "Monkey Trial" is a vivid reality here. He thought, There is no way we 
can adapt to their viewpoint, their moral, political, sociological environment. 
To them we're professional agitators, more alien than the Nazis, probably even 
more of a menace than the Communist Party. We're the most dangerous agitators 
that this time segment has yet had to deal with. Bliss is absolutely right. 
"Where are you people from?" Bliss was asking. "Not from any part of the United 
States; am I correct?" 
Joe said, "You're correct. We're from the North American Confederation." From 
his pocket he brought forth a Runciter
UBIK 151
quarter, which he handed to Bliss. "Be my guest," he said. 
Glancing at the coin, Bliss gulped and quavered, "the pro-file on this coin - 
this is the deceased! This is Mr. Runciter!" He took another look and blanched. 
"And the date. 1990." 
"Don't spend it all in one place," Joe said. 
When the Willys-Knight reached the Simple Shepherd Mor-tuary the service had 
already ended. On the wide, white, wooden steps of the two-story frame building 
a group of people stood, and Joe recognized all of them. There at last they 
were: Edie Dorn, Tippy Jackson, Jon Ild, Francy Spanish, Tito Apostos, Don 
Denny, Sammy Mundo, Fred Zafsky and - Pat. My wife, he said to himself, 
impressed once again by the sight of her, the dramatic dark hair, the intense 
col-oring of her eyes and skin, all the powerful contrasts radiating from her. 
"No," he said aloud as he stepped from the parked car. "She's not my wife; she 
wiped that out." But, he remembered, she kept the ring. The unique 
wrought-silver and jade wedding ring which she and I picked out... that's all 
that remains. But what a shock to see her again. To regain, for an instant, the 
ghostly shroud of a marriage that has been abolished. That had in fact never 
existed - except for this ring. And, whenever she felt like it, she could 
obliterate the ring too. 
"Hi, Joe Chip," she said in her cool, almost mocking voice; her intense eyes 
fixed on him, appraising him. 
"Hello," he said awkwardly. The others greeted him too, but that did not seem so 
important; Pat had snared his attention. 
"No Al Hammond?" Don Denny asked. 
Joe said, "Al's dead. Wendy Wright is dead." 
"We know about Wendy," Pat said. Calmly. 
"No, we didn't know," Don Denny said. "We assumed but we weren't sure. I wasn't 
sure." To Joe he said, "What happened to them? What killed them?" 
152 PHILIP K. DICK
"They wore out," Joe said. 
"Why?" Tito Apostos said hoarsely, crowding into the circle of people 
surrounding Joe. 
Pat Conley said, "The last thing you said to us, Joe Chip, back in New York, 
before you went off with Hammond -" 
"I know what I said," Joe said. 
Pat continued, "You said something about years. 'It had been too long,' you 
said. What does that mean? Something about time." 
"Mr. Chip," Edie Dorn said agitatedly, "since we came here to this place, this 
town has radically changed. None of us understand it. Do you see what we see?" 
With her hand she indicated the mortuary building, then the street and the other 
buildings. 
"I'm not sure," Joe said, "what it is you see." 
"Come on, Chip," Tito Apostos said with anger. "Don't mess around; simply tell 
us, for chrissakes, what this place looks like to you. That vehicle." He 
gestured toward the Willys-Knight. "You arrived in that. Tell us what it is; 
tell us what you arrived in." They all waited, all of them intently watching 
Joe. 
"Mr. Chip," Sammy Mundo stammered, "that's a real old automobile, that's what it 
is; right?" He giggled. "How old is it exactly?" 
After a pause Joe said, "Sixty-two years old." 
"That would make it 1930," Tippy Jackson said to Don Denny. "Which is pretty 
close to what we figured." 
"We figured 1939," Don Denny said to Joe in a level voice. A moderate, detached, 
mature, baritone voice. Without undue emotionality. Even under these 
circumstances. 
Joe said, "It's fairly easy to establish that. I took a look at a newspaper at 
my conapt back in New York. September 12th. So today is September 13th, 1939. 
The French think they've breached the Siegfried Line." 
"Which, in itself," Jon Ild said, "is a million laughs." 
"I hoped," Joe said, "that you as a group were experiencing a later reality. 
Well, so it goes." 
UBlK 153
"If it's 1939 it's 1939," Fred Zafsky said in a squeaky, highpitched voice. 
"Naturally, we all experience it; what else can we do?" He flapped his long arms 
energetically, appealing to the others for their agreement. 
"Flurk off, Zafsky," Tito Apostos said with annoyance. 
To Pat, Joe Chip said, "What do you say about this?" 
She shrugged. 
"Don't shrug," he said. "Answer." 
"We've gone back in time," Pat said. 
"Not really," Joe said. 
"Then what have we done?" Pat said. "Gone forward in time, is that it?" 
Joe said, "We haven't gone anywhere. We're where we've always been. But for some 
reason - for one of several possible reasons - reality has receded; it's lost 
its underlying support and it's ebbed back to previous forms. Forms it took 
fifty-three years ago. It may regress further. I'm more interested, at this 
point, in knowing if Runciter has manifested himself to you." 
"Runciter," Don Denny said, this tirne with undue emotionality, "is lying inside 
this building in his casket, dead as a herring. That's the only manifestation 
we've had of him, and that's the only one we're going to get." 
"Does the word 'Ubik' mean anything to you, Mr. Chip?" Francesca Spanish said. 
It took him a moment to absorb what she had said. "Jesus Christ," he said then. 
"Can't you distinguish manifestations of -" 
"Francy has dreams," Tippy Jackson said. "She's always had them. Tell him your 
Ubik dream, Francy." To Joe she said, "Francy will now tell you her Ubik dream, 
as she calls it. She had it last night." 
"I call it that because that's what it is," Francesca Spanish said fiercely; she 
clasped her hands together in a spasm of excited agitation. "Listen, Mr. Chip, 
it wasn't like any dream I've ever had before. A great hand came down from the 
sky, like the arm and hand of God. Enormous, the size of a 
154 PHILIP K. DICK
mountain. And I knew at the time how important it was; the hand was closed, made 
into a rocklike fist, and I knew it contained something of value so great that 
my life and the lives of everyone else on Earth depended on it. And I waited for 
the fist to open, and it did open. And I saw what it contained." 
"An aerosol spray can," Don Denny said dryly. 
"On the spray can," Francesca Spanish continued, "there was one word, great 
golden letters, glittering; golden fire spelling out UBIK. Nothing else. Just 
that strange word. And then the hand closed up again around the spray can and 
the hand and arm disappeared, drawn back up into a sort of gray overcast. Today 
before the funeral services I looked in a dictionary and I called the public 
library, but no one knew that word or even what language it is and it isn't in 
the dictionary. It isn't English, the librarian told me. There's a Latin word 
very close to it: ubique. It means -" 
"Everywhere," Joe said. 
Francesca Spanish nodded. "That's what it means. But no Ubik, and that's how it 
was spelled in the dream." 
"They're the same word," Joe said. "Just different spellings." 
"How do you know that?" Pat Conley said archly. 
"Runciter appeared to me yesterday," Joe said. "In a taped TV commercial that he 
made before his death." He did not elaborate; it seemed too complex to explain, 
at least at this particular time. 
"You miserable fool," Pat Conley said to him. 
"Why?" he asked. 
"Is that your idea of a manifestation of a dead man? You might as well consider 
letters he wrote before his death 'man-ifestations.' Or interoffice memos that 
he transcribed over the years. Or even -" 
Joe said, "I'm going inside and take a last look at Run-citer." He departed from 
the group, leaving them standing there, and made his way up the wide board steps 
and into the dark, cool interior of the mortuary. 
UBIK 155
Emptiness. He saw no one, only a large chamber with pewlike rows of seats and, 
at the far end, a casket surrounded by flowers. Off in a.small sideroom an 
old-fashioned reed pump organ and a few wooden folding chairs. The mortuary 
smelled of dust and flowers, a sweet, stale mixture that re-pelled him. Think of 
all the Iowans, he thought, who've embraced eternity in this listless room. 
Varnished floors, handkerchiefs, heavy dark wool suits... everything but pennies 
placed over the dead eyes. And the organ playing symmetric little hymns. 
He reached the casket, hesitated, then looked down. 
A singed, dehydrated heap of bones lay at one end of the casket, culminating in 
a paper-like skull that leered up at him, the eyes recessed like dried grapes. 
Tatters of cloth with bristle-like woven spines had collected near the tiny 
body, as if blown there by wind. As if the body, breathing, had cluttered itself 
with them by its wheezing, meager pro-cesses - inhalation and exhalation which 
had now ceased. Nothing stirred. The mysterious change, which had also de-graded 
Wendy Wright and Al, had reached its end, evidently a long time ago. Years ago, 
he thought, remembering Wendy. 
Had the others in the group seen this? Or had it happened since the services? 
Joe reached out, took hold of the oak lid of the casket and shut it; the thump 
of wood against wood echoed throughout the empty mortuary, but no one heard it. 
No one appeared. 
Blinded by tears of fright, he made his way back out of the dust-stricken, 
silent room. Back into the weak sunlight of late afternoon. 
"What's the matter?" Don Denny asked him as he rejoined the group. 
Joe said, "Nothing." 
"You look scared out of your goony wits," Pat Conley said acutely. 
"Nothing!" He stared at her with deep, infuriated hostili*ty. 
156 PHILIP K. DICK
Tippy Jackson said to him, "While you were in there did you by any chance happen 
to see Edie Dorn?" 
"She's missing," Jon Ild said by way of explanation. 
"But she was just out here," Joe protested. 
"All day she's been saying she felt terribly cold and tired," Don Denny said. 
"It may be that she went back to the hotel; she said something about it earlier, 
that she wanted to lie down and take a nap right after the services, She's 
probably all right." 
Joe said, "She's probably dead." To all of them he said, "I thought you 
understood. If any one of us gets separated from the group he won't survive; 
what happened to Wendy and Al and Runciter -" He broke off. 
"Runciter was killed in the blast," Don Denny said. 
"We were all killed in the blast," Joe said. "I know that because Runciter told 
me; he wrote it on the wall of the men's room back at our New York offices. And 
I saw it again on -" 
"What you're saying is insane," Pat Conley said sharply, interrupting him. "Is 
Runciter dead or isn't he? Are we dead or aren't we? First you say one thing, 
then you say another. Can't you be consistent?" 
"Try to be consistent," Jon Ild put in. The others, their faces pinched and 
creased with worry, nodded in mute agree-ment. 
Joe said, "I can tell you what the graffiti said, I can tell you about the 
worn-out tape recorder, the instructions that came with it; I can tell you about 
Runciter's TV commercial, the note in the carton of cigarettes in Baltimore - I 
can tell you about the label on the flask of Elixir of Ubique. But I can't make 
it all add up. In any case, we have to get to your hotel to try to reach Edie 
Dorn before she withers away and irreversibly expires. Where can we get a taxi?" 

"The mortuary has provided us with a car to use while we're here," Don Denny 
said. "That Pierce-Arrow sitting over there." He pointed. 
They hurried toward it. 
UBIK 157
"We're not all of us going to be able to fit in," Tippy Jackson said as Don 
Denny tugged the solid iron door open and got inside. 
"Ask Bliss if we can take the Willys-Knight," Joe said; he started up the engine 
of the Pierce-Arrow and, as soon as everyone possible had gotten into the car, 
drove out onto the busy main street of Des Moines. The Willys-Knight fol-lowed 
close behind, its horn honking dolefully to tell Joe it was there. 
l2 
Pop tasty Ubik into your toaster, made only from fresh fruit and healthful 
all-vegetable shortening. Ubik makes breakfast a feast, puts zing into your 
thing! Safe when handled as directed. 
One by one, Joe Chip said to himself as he piloted the big car through traffic, 
we're succumbing. Something is wrong with my theory. Edie, by being with the 
group, should have been immune. And I - 
It should have been me, he thought. Sometime during my slow flight from New 
York. 
"What we'll have to do," he said to Don Denny, "is make sure that anyone who 
feels tired - that seems to be the first warning - tells the rest of us. And 
isn't allowed to wander away." 
Twisting around to face those in the back seat, Don said, "Do you all hear that? 
As soon as any of you feels tired, even a little bit, report it to either Mr. 
Chip or my-self." He turned back toward Joe. "And then what?" he asked. 
"And then what, Joe?" Pat Conley echoed. "What do we do then? Tell us how we do 
it, Joe. We're listening." 
Joe said to her, "It seems strange to me that your talent isn't coming into 
play. This situation appears to me to be made for it. Why can't you go back 
fifteen minutes and 
U BIK 159
compel Edie Dorn not to wander off? Do what you did when I first introduced you 
to Runciter." 
"G. G. Ashwood introduced me to Mr. Runciter," Pat said. 
"So you're not going to do anything," Joe said. 
Sammy Mundo giggled and said, "They had a fight last night while we were eating 
dinner, Miss Conley and Miss Dorn. Miss Conley doesn't like her; that's why she 
won't help." 
"I liked Edie," Pat said. 
"Do you have any reason for not making use of your talent?" Don Denny asked her. 
"Joe's right; it's very strange and difficult to understand - at least for me - 
why exactly you don't try to help." 
After a pause Pat said, "My talent doesn't work any more. It hasn't since the 
bomb blast on Luna." 
"Why didn't you say so?" Joe said. 
Pat said, "I didn't feel like saying so, goddam it. Why should I volunteer 
information like that, that I can't do any-thing? I keep trying and it keeps not 
working; nothing hap-pens. And it's never been that way before. I've had the 
talent virtually my entire life." 
"When did -" Joe began. 
"With Runciter," Pat said. "On Luna, right away. Before you asked me." 
"So you knew that long ago," Joe said. 
"I tried again in New York, after you showed up from Zurich and it was obvious 
that something awful had hap-pened to Wendy. And I've been trying now; I started 
as soon as you said Edie was probably dead. Maybe it's because we're back in 
this archaic time period; maybe psionic talents don't work in 1939. But that 
wouldn't explain Luna. Unless we had already traveled back here and we didn't 
realize it." She lapsed into brooding, introverted silence; dully, she gazed out 
at the streets of Des Moines, a bitter expression on her potent, wild face. 
160 PHILIP K. DICK
It fits in, Joe said to himself, Of course, her time-traveling talent no longer 
functions. This is not really 1939, and we are outside of time entirely; this 
proves that Al was right. The graffiti was right. This is half-life, as the 
couplets told us. 
He did not, however, say this to the others with him in the car. Why tell them 
it's hopeless? he said to himself. They're going to find it out soon enough. The 
smarter ones, such as Denny, probably understand it already. Based on what I've 
said and what they themselves have gone through. 
"This really bothers you," Don Denny said to him, "that her talent no longer 
works." 
"Sure." He nodded. "I hoped it might change the situa-tion." 
"There's more," Denny said with acute intuition. "I can tell by your" - he 
gestured - "tone of voice, maybe. Any-how, I know. This means something. It's 
important. It tells you something." 
"Do I keep going straight here?" Joe said, slowing the Pierce-Arrow at an 
intersection. 
"Turn right," Tippy Jackson said. 
Pat said, "You'll see a brick building with a neon sign going up and down. The 
Meremont Hotel, it's called. A terrible place. One bathroom for every two rooms, 
and a tub instead of a shower. And the food. Incredible. And the only drink they 
sell is something called Nehi." 
"I liked the food," Don Denny said. "Genuine cowmeat, rather than protein 
synthetics. Authentic salmon -" 
"Is your money good?" Joe asked. And then he heard a high-pitched whine, echoing 
up and down the street behind him. "What's that mean?" he asked Denny. 
"I don't know," Denny said nervously. 
Sammy Mundo said, "It's a police siren. You didn't give a signal before you 
turncd." 
"How could I?" Joe said. "There's no lever on the steering column." 
"You should have made a hand signal," Sammy said. The 
UBIK 161
siren had become very close now; Joe, turning his head, saw a motorcycle pulling 
up abreast with him. He slowed the car, uncertain as to what he should do. "Stop 
at the curb," Sammy advised him. 
Joe stopped the car at the curb. 
Stepping from his motorcycle, the cop strolled up to Joe, a young, rat-faced man 
with hard, large eyes; he studied Joe and then said, "Let me see your license, 
mister." 
"I don't have one," Joe said. "Make out the ticket and let us go." He could see 
the hotel now. To Don Denny he said, "You better get over there, you and 
everyone else." The Willys-Knight continued on toward it. Don Denny, Pat, Sammy 
Mundo and Tippy Jackson abandoned the car; they trotted after the Willys-Knight, 
which had begun to slow to a stop across from the hotel, leaving Joe to face the 
cop alone. 
The cop said to Joe, "Do you have any identification?" 
Joe handed him his wallet. With a purple indelible pencil the cop wrote out a 
ticket, tore it from his pad and passed it to Joe. "Failure to signal, No 
operator's license. The ci-tation tells where and when to appear." The cop 
slapped his ticket book shut, handed Joe his wallet, then sauntered back to his 
motorcycle. He revved up his motor and then zoomed out into traffic without 
looking back. 
For some obscure reason Joe glanced over the citation before putting it away in 
his pocket. And read it once again - slowly. In purple indelible pencil the 
familiar scrawled hand-writing said: 
You are in much greater danger than I thought. What Pat Conley said is 
There the message ceased. In the middle of a sentence. He wondered how it would 
have continued. Was there any-thing more on the citation? He turned it over, 
found nothing, returned again to the front side. No further handwriting, but, 
162 PHILIP K. DICK
in squirrel agate type at the bottom of the slip of paper, the following 
inscription: 
Try Archer's Drugstore for reliable household remedies and medicinal 
preparations of tried and tested value. Economically priced. 
Not much to go on, Joe reflected. But still - not what should have appeared at 
the bottom of a Des Moines traffic citation; it was, clearly, another 
manifestation, as was the purple handwriting above it. 
Getting out of the Pierce-Arrow, he entered the nearest store, a magazine, candy 
and tobacco-supply shop. "May I use your phone book?" he asked the broad-beamed, 
middle-aged proprietor. 
"In the rear," the proprietor said amiably, with a jerk of his heavy thumb. 
Joe found the phone book and, in the dim recesses of the dark little store, 
looked up Archer's Drugstore. He could not find it listed. 
Closing the phone book, he approached the proprietor, who at the moment was 
engaged in selling a roll of Necco wafers to a boy. "Do you know where I can 
find Archer's Drugstore?" Joe asked him. 
"Nowhere," the proprietor said. "At least, not any more." 
"Why not?" 
"It's been closed for years." 
Joe said, "Tell me where it was. Anyhow. Draw me a map." 
"You don't need a map; I can tell you where it was." The big man leaned forward, 
pointing out the door of his shop. "You see that barber pole there? Go over 
there and then look north. That's north." He indicated the direction. "You'll 
see an old building with gables. Yellow in color. There's a couple of apartments 
over it still being used, but the store premises downstairs, they're abandoned. 
You'll be 
UBIK 163
able to make out the sign, though: Archer's Drugs. So you'll know when you've 
found it. What happened is that Ed Archer came down with throat cancer and -" 
"Thanks," Joe said, and started out of the store, back into the pale 
midafternoon sunlight; he walked rapidly across the street to the barber pole, 
and, from that position, looked due north. 
He could see the tall, peeling yellow building at the pe-riphery of his range of 
vision. But something about it struck him as strange. A shimmer, an 
unsteadiness, as if the building faded forward into stability and then retreated 
into insub-stantial uncertainty. An oscillation, each phase lasting a few 
seconds and then blurring off into its opposite, a fairly regular variability as 
if an organic pulsation underlay the structure. As if, he thought, it's alive. 
Maybe, he thought, I've come to the end. He began to walk toward the abandoned 
drugstore, not taking his eyes from it; he watched it pulse, he watched it 
change between its two states, and then, as he got closer and closer to it, he 
discerned the nature of its alternate conditions. At the am-plitude of greater 
stability it became a retail home-art outlet of his own time period, homeostatic 
in operation, a self-service enterprise selling ten-thousand commodities for the 
modern conapt; he had patronized such highly functional computer-controlled 
pseudo merchants throughout his adult life. 
And, at the amplitude of insubstantiality, it resolved itself into a tiny, 
anachronistic drugstore with rococo ornamen-tation. In its meager window 
displays he saw hernia belts, rows of corrective eyeglasses, a mortar and 
pestle, jars of assorted tablets, a hand-printed sign reading LEECHES, huge 
glass-stoppered bottles that contained a Pandora's heritage of patent medicines 
and placebos... and, painted on a fiat wood board running across the top of the 
windows, the words ARCHER'S DRUGSTORE. No sign whatever of an empty, aban-doned, 
closed-up store; its 1939 stage had somehow been excluded. He thought, So in 
entering it I either revert further 
164 PHILIP K. DICK
or I find myself back roughly in my own time. And - it's the further reversion, 
the pre-1939 phase, that I evidently need. 
Presently he stood before it, experiencing physically the tidal tug of the 
amplitudes; he felt himself drawn back, then ahead, then back again. Pedestrians 
clumped by, taking no notice; obviously, none of them saw what he saw: They 
perceived neither Archer's Drugstore nor the 1992 home-art outlet. That 
mystified him most of all. 
As the structure swung directly into its ancient phase he stepped forward, 
crossed the threshold. And entered Archer's Drugstore. 
To the right a long marble-topped counter. Boxes on the shelves, dingy in color; 
the whole store had a black quality to it, not merely in regard to the absence 
of light but rather a protective coloration, as if it had been constructed to 
blend, to merge with shadows, to be at all times opaque. It had a heavy, dense 
quality; it pulled him down, weighing on him like something installed 
permanently on his back. And it had ceased to oscillate. At least for him, now 
that he had entered it. He wondered if he had made the right choice; now, too 
late, he considered the alternative, what it might have meant. A return - 
possibly - to his own time. Out of this devolved world of constantly declining 
time-binding capacity - out, perhaps, forever. Well, he thought, so it goes. He 
wandered about the drugstore, observing the brass and the wood, evidently 
walnut... he came at last to the prescription window at the rear. 
A wispy young man, wearing a gray, many-buttoned suit with vest, appeared and 
silently confronted him. For a long time Joe and the man looked at each other, 
neither speaking. The only sound came from a wall clock with Latin numerals on 
its round face; its pendulum ticked back and forth inex-orably. After the 
fashion of clocks, Everywhere, 
Joe said, "I'd like a jar of Ubik." 
"The salve?" the druggist said. His lips did not seem properly synchronized with 
his words; first Joe saw the man's 
U BIK 165
mouth open, the lips move, and then, after a measurable interval, he heard the 
words. 
"Is it a salve?" Joe said. "I thought it was for internal use." 
The druggist did not respond for an interval. As if a gulf separated the two of 
them, an epoch of time. Then at last his mouth again opened, his lips again 
moved. And, presently, Joe heard words. "Ubik has undergone many alterations as 
the manufacturer has improved it. You may be familiar with the old Ubik, rather 
than the new." The druggist turned to one side, and his movement had a 
stop-action quality; he flowed in a slow, measured, dancelike step, an 
esthetically pleasing rhythm but emotionally jolting. "We have had a great deal 
of difficulty obtaining Ubik of late," he said as he flowed back; in his right 
hand he held a flat leaded tin which he placed before Joe on the prescription 
counter. "This comes in the form of a powder to which you add coal tar. The coal 
tar comes separate; I can supply that to you at very little cost. The Ubik 
powder, however, is dear. Forty dollars." 
"What's in it?" Joe asked. The price chilled him. 
"That is the manufacturer's secret." 
Joe picked up the sealed tin and held it to the light. "Is it all right if I 
read the label?" 
"Of course." 
In the dim light entering from the street he at last managed to make out the 
printing on the label of the tin. It continued the handwritten message on the 
traffic citation, picking up at the exact point at which Runciter's writing had 
abruptly stopped. 
absolutely untrue. She did not - repeat, 
not - try to use her talent following the 
bomb blast. She did not try to restore 
Wendy Wright or Al Hammond or Edie Dorn. 
She's lying to you, Joe, and that makes 
me rethink the whole situation. I'll 
let you know as soon as I come to a 
166 PHILIP K. DICK conclusion. Meanwhile be very careful. By the way: Ubik 
powder is of universal healing value if directions for use are rigorously and 
conscientiously followed.
"Can I make you out a check?" Joe asked the druggist. "I don't have forty 
dollars with me and I need the Ubik badly. It's literally a matter hanging 
between life and death." He reached into his jacket pocket for his checkbook. 
"You're not from Des Moines, are you?" the druggist said. "I can tell by your 
accent. No, I'd have to know you to take a check that large. We've had a whole 
rash of bad checks the last few weeks, all by people from out of town." 
"Credit card, then?" 
The druggist said, "What is a 'credit card'?" 
Laying down the tin of Ubik, Joe turned and walked wordlessly out of the 
drugstore onto the sidewalk. He crossed the street, starting in the direction of 
the hotel, then paused to look back at the drugstore. 
He saw only a dilapidated yellow building, curtains in its upstairs windows, the 
ground floor boarded up and deserted; through the spaces between the boards he 
saw gaping dark-ness, the cavity of a broken window. Without life. 
And that is that, he realized. The opportunity to buy a tin of Ubik powder is 
gone. Even if I were to find forty dollars lying on the pavement. But, he 
thought, I did get the rest of Runciter's warning. For what it's worth. It may 
not even be true. It may be only a deformed and misguided opinion by a dying 
brain. Or by a totally dead brain - as in the case of the TV commercial. Christ, 
he said to himself dismally. Suppose it is true? 
Persons here and there on the sidewalk stared up ab-sorbedly at the sky. 
Noticing them, Joe looked up too. Shield-ing his eyes against the slanting 
shafts of sun, he distinguished a dot exuding white trails of smoke: a 
high-flying monoplane industriously skywriting. As he and the other pedestrians 
UBIK 16l
watched, the already dissipating streamers spelled out a message. 
KEEP THE OLD SWIZER UP, JOE! 
Easy to say, Joe said to himself. Easy enough to write out in the form of words. 

Hunched over with uneasy gloom - and the first faint in-timations of returning 
terror - he shuffed off in the direction of the Meremont Hotel. 
Don Denny met him in the high-ceilinged, provincial, crimson-carpeted lobby. "We 
found her," he said. "It's all over - for her, anyhow. And it wasn't pretty, not 
pretty at all. Now Fred Zafsky is gone. I thought he was in the other car, and 
they thought he went along with us. Apparently, he didn't get into either car; 
he must be back at the mortuary." 
"It's happening faster now," Joe said. He wondered how much difference Ubik - 
dangled toward them again and again in countless different ways but always out 
of reach - would have made. I guess we'll never know, he decided. "Can we get a 
drink here?" he asked Don Denny. "What about money? Mine's worthless." 
"The mortuary is paying for everything. Runciter's instructions to them." 
"The hotel tab too?" It struck him as odd. How had that been managed? "I want 
you to look at this citation," he said to Don Denny. "While no one else is with 
us." He passed the slip of paper over to him. "I have the rest of the message; 
that's where I've been: getting it." 
Denny read the citation, then reread it. Then, slowly, handed it back to Joe. 
"Runciter thinks Pat Conley is lying," he said. 
"Yes," Joe said. 
"You realize what that would mean?" His voice rose 
168 PHILIP K. DICK
sharply. "It means she could have nullified all this. Every-thing that's 
happened to us, starting with Runciter's death." 
Joe said, "It could mean more than that." 
Eying him, Denny said, "You're right. Yes, you're absolutely right." He looked 
startled and, then, acutely re-sponsive. Awareness glittered in his face. Of an 
unhappy, stricken kind. 
"I don't particularly feel like thinking about it," Joe said. "I don't like 
anything about it. It's worse. A lot worse than what I thought before, what Al 
Hammond believed, for ex-ample. Which was bad enough." 
"But this could be it," Denny said. 
"Throughout all that's been happening," Joe said, "I've kept trying to 
understand why. I was sure if I knew why -" But Al never thought of this, he 
said to himself. Both of us let it drop out of our minds. For a good reason. 
Denny said, "Don't say anything to the rest of them. This may not be true; and 
even if it is, knowing it isn't going to help them." 
"Knowing what?" Pat Conley said from behind them. "What isn't going to help 
them?" She came around in front of them now, her black, color-saturated eyes 
wise and calm. Serenely calm. "It's a shame about Edie Dorn," she said. "And 
Fred Zafsky; I guess he's gone too. That doesn't really leave very many of us, 
does it? I wonder who'll be next." She seemed undisturbed, totally in control of 
herself. "Tippy is lying'down in her room. She didri't say she felt tired, but I 
think we must assume she is. Don't you agree?" 
After a pause Don Denny said, "Yes, I agree." 
"How did you make out with your citation, Joe?" Pat said. She held out her hand. 
"Can I take a look at it?" 
Joe passed it to her. The moment, he thought, has come; everything is now; 
rolled up into the present. Into one in-stant. 
"How did the policeman know my name?" Pat asked, after she had glanced over it; 
she raised her eyes, looked intently 
UBIK 169
at Joe and then at Don Denny. "Why is there something here about me?" 
She doesn't recognize the writing, Joe said to himself. Because she's not 
familiar with it. As the rest of us are. "Runciter," he said. "You're doing it, 
aren't you, Pat?" he said. "It's you, your talent. We're here because of you." 
"And you're killing us off," Don Denny said to her. "One by one. But why?" To 
Joe he said, "What reason could she have? She doesn't even know us, not really." 

"Is this why you came to Runciter Associates?" Joe asked her. He tried - but 
failed - to keep his voice steady; in his ears it wavered and he felt abrupt 
contempt for himself. "G. G. Ashwood scouted you and brought you in. Was he 
working for Hollis, is that it? Is that what really happened to us - not the 
bomb blast but you?" 
Pat smiled. 
And the lobby of the hotel blew up in Joe Chip's face. 
l3 
Lift your arms and be all at once curvier! New extra-gentle Ubik bra and 
longline Ubik special bra mean, Lift your arms and be all at once curvier! 
Supplies firm, relaxing support to bosom all day long when fitted as directed. 
Darkness hummed about him, clinging to him like coagu-lated, damp, warm wool. 
The terror he had felt as intimation fused with the darkness became whole and 
real. I wasn't careful, he realized. I didn't do what Runciter told me to do; I 
let her see the citation. 
"What's the matter, Joe?" Don Denny's voice, edged with great worry. "What's 
wrong?" 
"I'm okay." He could see a little now; the darkness had grown horizontal lines 
of gray, as if it had begun to decom-pose. "I just feel tired," he said, and 
realized how really tired his body had become. He could not remember such 
fatigue. Never before in his life. 
Don Denny said, "Let me help you to a chair." Joe felt his hand clamped over his 
shoulder; he felt Denny guiding him, and this made him afraid, this need to be 
led. He pulled away. 
"I'm okay," he repeated. The shape of Denny had started to form near him; he 
concentrated on it, then once again distinguished the turn-of-the-century lobby 
with its ornate crystal chandelier and its complicated yellow light. "Let me 
U BIK 171
sit down," he said and, groping, found a cane-bottomed chair. 
To Pat, Don Denny said harshly, "What did you do to him?" 
"She didn't do anything to me," Joe said, trying to make his voice firm. But it 
dipped shrilly, with unnatural overtones. As if it's speeded up, he thought. 
High-pitched. Not my own. 
"That's right," Pat said. "I didn't do anything to him or to anybody else." 
Joe said, "I want to go upstairs and lie down." 
"I'll get you a room," Don Denny said nervously; he hov-ered near Joe, appearing 
and then disappearing as the lights of the lobby ebbed. The light waned into 
dull red, then grew stronger, then waned once more. "You stay there in that 
chair, Joe; I'll be right back." Denny hurried off in the di-rection of the 
desk. Pat remained. 
"Anything I can do for you?" Pat asked pleasantly. 
"No," he said. It took vast effort, saying the word aloud; it clung to the 
internal cavern lodged in his heart, a hollow-ness which grew with each second. 
"A cigarette, maybe," he said, and saying the full sentence exhausted him; he 
felt his heart labor. The difficult beating increased his burden; it was a 
further weight pressing down on him, a huge hand squeezing. "Do you have one?" 
he said, and managed to look up at her through the smoky red light. The fitful, 
flick-ering glow of an unrobust reality. 
"Sorry," Pat said. "No got." 
Joe said, "What's - the matter with me?" 
"Cardiac arrest, maybe," Pat said. 
"Do you think there's a hotel doctor?" he managed to say. 
"I doubt it." 
"You won't see? You won't look?" 
Pat said, "I think it's merely psychosomatic. You're not really sick. You'll 
recover." 
Returning, Don Denny said, "I've got a room for you, Joe. On the second floor, 
Room 203." He paused, and Joe 
172 PHILIP K. DICK
felt his scrutiny, the concern of his gaze. "Joe, you look awful. Frail. Like 
you're about to blow away. My god, Joe, do you know what you look like? You look 
like Edie Dorn looked when we found her." 
"Oh, nothing like that," Pat said. "Edie Dorn is dead. Joe isn't dead. Are you, 
Joe?" 
Joe said, "I want to go upstairs. I want to lie down." Somehow he got to his 
feet; his heart thudded, seemed to hesitate, to not beat for a moment, and then 
it resumed, slamming like an upright iron ingot crashing against cement; each 
pulse of it made his whole body shudder. "Where's the elevator?" he said. 
"I'll lead you over to it," Denny said; again his hand clamped over Joe's 
shoulder. "You're like a feather," Denny said. "What's happening to you, Joe? 
Can you say? Do you know? Try to tell me." 
"He doesn't know," Pat said. 
"I think he should have a doctor," Denny said. "Right away." 
"No," Joe said. Lying down will help me, he said to him-self; he felt an oceanic 
pull, an enormous tide tugging at him: It urged him to lie down. It compelled 
him toward one thing alone, to stretch out, on his back, alone, upstairs in his 
hotel room. Where no one could see him. I have to get away, he said to himself. 
I've got to be by myself. Why? he wondered. He did not know; it had invaded him 
as an instinct, non-rational, impossible to understand or explain. 
"I'll go get a doctor," Denny said. "Pat, you stay here with him. Don't let him 
out of your sight. I'll be back as soon as I can." He started off; Joe dimly saw 
his retreating form. Denny appeared to shrink, to dwindle. And then he was 
entirely gone. Patricia Conley remained, but that did not make him feel less 
alone. His isolation, in spite of her physical presence, had become absolute. 
"Well, Joe," she said. "What do you want? What can I do for you? Just name it." 
"The elevator," he said. 
UBIK 173
"You want me to lead you over to the elevator? I'll be glad to." She started 
off, and, as best he could, he followed. It seemed to him that she walked 
unusually fast; she did not wait and she did not look back - he found it almost 
impos-sible to keep her in sight. Is it my imagination, he asked himself, that 
she's moving so rapidly? It must be me; I'm slowed down, compressed by gravity. 
His world had assumed the attribute of pure mass. He perceived himself in one 
mode only: that of an object subjected to the pressure of weight. One quality, 
one attribute. And one experience. Inertia. 
"Not so fast," he said. He could not see her now; she had lithely trotted beyond 
his range of vision. Standing there, not able to move any farther, he panted; he 
felt his face drip and his eyes sting from the salty moisture. "Wait," he said. 
Pat reappeared. He distinguished her face as she bent to peer at him. Her 
perfect and tranquil expression. The dis-interestedness of her attention, its 
scientific detachment. "Want me to wipe your face?" she asked; she brought out a 
handkerchief, small and dainty and lace-edged. She smiled, the same smile as 
before. 
"Just get me into the elevator." He compelled his body to move forward. One 
step. Two. Now he could make out the elevator, with several persons waiting for 
it. The old-fashioned dial above the sliding doors with its clock hand. The 
hand, the baroque needle, wavered between three and four; it retired to the 
left, reaching the three, then wavered between three and two. 
"It'll be here in a sec," Pat said. She got her cigarettes and lighter from her 
purse, lit up, exhaled trails of gray smoke from her nostrils. "It's a very 
ancient kind of elevator," she said to him, her arms folded sedately. "You know 
what I think? I think it's one of those old open iron cages. Do they scare you?" 

The needle had passed two now; it hovered above one, then plunged down firmly. 
The doors slid aside. 
Joe saw the grill of the cage, the latticework. He saw the uniformed attendant, 
seated on a stool, his hand on the ro- 
174 PHILIP K. DICK
tating control. "Going up," the attendant said. "Move to the back, please." 
"I'm not going to get into it," Joe said. 
"Why not?" Pat said. "Do you think the cable will break? Is that what frightens 
you? I can see you're frightened." 
"This is what Al saw," he said. 
"Well, Joe," Pat said, "the only other way up to your room is the stairs. And 
you aren't going to be able to climb stairs, not in your condition." 
"I'll go up by the stairs." He started away, seeking to locate the stairs. I 
can't see! he said to himself. I can't find them! The weight on him crushed his 
lungs, making it difficult and painful to breathe; he had to halt, concentrating 
on getting air into him - that alone. Maybe it is a heart attack, he thought. I 
can't go up the stairs if it is. But the longing within him had grown even 
greater, the overpowering need to be alone. Locked in an empty room, entirely 
unwitnessed, silent and supine. Stretched out, not needing to speak, not needing 
to move. Not required to cope with anyone or any problem. And no one will even 
know where I am, he told himself. That seemed, unaccountably, very important; he 
wanted to be unknown and invisible, to live unseen. Pat especially, he thought; 
not her; she can't be near me. 
"There we are," Pat said. She guided him, turning him slightly to the left. 
"Right in front of you. Just take hold of the railing and go bump-de-bump 
upstairs to bed. See?" She ascended skillfully, dancing and twinkling, poising 
herself, then scrambling weightlessly to the next step. "Can you make it?" 
Joe said, "I - don't want you. To come with me." 
"Oh, dear." She clucked-clucked with mock dolefulness; her black eyes shone. 
"Are you afraid I'll take advantage of your condition? Do something to you, 
something harmful?" 
"No." He shook his head. "I - just want. To be. Alone." Gripping the rail, he 
managed to pull himself up onto the first step. Halting there, he gazed up, 
trying to make out the 
UBIK 175
top of the flight. Trying to determine how far away it was, how many steps he 
had left. 
"Mr. Denny asked me to stay with you. I can read to you or get you things. I can 
wait on you." 
He climbed another step. "Alone," he gasped. 
Pat said, "May I watch you climb? I'd like to see how long it takes you. 
Assuming you make it at all." 
"I'll make it." He placed his foot on the next step, gripped the railing and 
hoisted himself up. His swollen heart choked off his throat; he shut his eyes 
and wheezed in strangled air. 
"I wonder," Pat said, "if this is what Wendy did. She was the first; right?" 
Joe gasped, "I was. In love with. Her." 
"Oh, I know. G. G. Ashwood told me. He read your mind. G.G. and I got to be very 
good friends; we spent a lot of time together. You might say we had an affair. 
Yes, you could say that." 
"Our theory," Joe said, "was right." He took a deeper breath. "One," he 
succeeded in saying; he ascended another step and then, with tremendous effort, 
another. "That you and G.G. Worked it out with Ray Hollis. To infiltrate." 
"Quite right," Pat agreed. 
"Our best inertials. And Runciter. Wipe us all out." He made his way up one more 
step. "We're not in half-life. We're not -" 
"Oh, you can die," Pat said. "You're not dead; not you, in particular, I mean. 
But you are dying off one by one. But why talk about it? Why bring it up again? 
You said it all a little while ago, and frankly, you bore me, going over it 
again and again. You're really a very dull, pedantic person, Joe. Almost as dull 
as Wendy Wright. You two would have made a good pair." 
"That's why Wendy died first," he said. "Not because she had separated. From the 
group. But because -" He cringed as the pain in his heart throbbed up violently; 
he had tried for another step, but this time he had missed. He stumbled, 
176 PHILIP K. DICK
then found himself seated, huddled like - yes, he thought. Wendy in the closet: 
huddled like this. Reaching out his hand, he took hold of the sleeve of his 
coat. He tugged. 
The fabric tore. Dried and starved, the material parted like cheap gray paper; 
it had no strength... like something fashioned by wasps. So there was no doubt 
about it. He would soon be leaving a trail behind him, bits of crumbled cloth. A 
trail of debris leading to a hotel room and yearned-for isolation. His last 
labored actions governed by a tropism. An orientation urging him toward death, 
decay and non-being. A dismal alchemy controlled him: culminating in the grave. 
He ascended another step. 
I'm gding to make it, he realized. The force goading me on is feasting on my 
body; that's why Wendy and Al and Edie - and undoubtedly Zafsky by now - 
deteriorated phys-ically as they died, leaving only a discarded husklike 
weight-less shell, containing nothing, no essence, no juices, no substantial 
density. The force thrust itself against the weight of many gravities, and this 
is the cost, this using up of the waning body. But the body, as a source supply, 
will be enough to get me up there; a biological necessity is at work, and 
probably at this point not even Pat, who set it into motion, can abort it. He 
wondered how she felt now as she watched him climb. Did she admire him? Did she 
feel con-tempt? He raised his head, searched for her; he made her out, her vital 
face with its several hues. Only interest there. No malevolence. A neutral 
expression. He did not feel sur-prise. Pat had made no move to hinder him and no 
move to help him. It seemed right, even to him. 
"Feel any better?" Pat asked. 
"No," he said. And, getting halfway up, lunged onto the next step. 
"You look different. Not so upset." 
Joe said, "Because I can make it. I know that." 
"It's not much further," Pat agreed. 
"Farther," he corrected. 
UBIK 177
"You're incredible. So trivial, so small. Even in your own death spasms you -" 
She corrected herself, catlike and clever. "Or what probably seem subjectively 
to you as death spasms. I shouldn't have used that term, 'death spasms.' It 
might depress you. Try to be optimistic. Okay?" 
"Just tell me," he said. "How many steps. Left." 
"Six." She slid away from him, gliding upward noiselessly, effortlessly. "No; 
sorry. Ten. Or is it nine? I think it's nine." 
Again he climbed a step, Then the next. And the next. He did not talk; he did 
not even try to see. Going by the hardness of the surface against which he 
rested, he crept snail-like from step to step, feeling a kind of skill develop 
in him, an ability to tell exactly how to exert himself, how to use his nearly 
bankrupt power. 
"Almost there," Pat said cheerily from above him. "What do you have to say, Joe? 
Any comments on your great climb? The greatest climb in the history of man. No, 
that's not true. Wendy and Al and Edie and Fred Zafsky did it before you. But 
this is the only one I've actually watched." 
Joe said, "Why me?" 
"I want to watch you, Joe, because of your low-class little scheme back in 
Zurich. Of having Wendy Wright spend the night with you in your hotel room. Now, 
tonight, this will be different. You'll be alone." 
"That night, too," Joe said, "I was. Alone." Another step. He coughed 
convulsively, and out of him, in drops hurled from his streaked face, his 
remaining capacity expelled itself uselessly. 
"She was there; not in your bed but in the room some-where. You slept through 
it, though." Pat laughed. 
"I'm trying," Joe said. "Not to cough." He made it up two more steps and knew 
that he had almost reached the top. How long had he been on the stairs? he 
wondered. No way for him to tell. 
He discovered then, with a shock, that he had become cold as well as exhausted. 
When had this happened? he asked himself. Sometime in the past; it had 
infiltrated so gradually 
178 PHILIP K. DICK
that before now he had not noticed it. Oh, god, he said to himself and shivered 
frantically. His bones seemed almost to quake. Worse than on Luna, far worse. 
Worse, too, than the chill which had hung over his hotel room in Zurich. Those 
had been harbingers. 
Metabolism, he reflected, is a burning process, an active furnace. When it 
ceases to function, life is over. They must be wrong about hell, he said to 
himself. Hell is cold; every-thing there is cold. The body means weight and 
heat; now weight is a force which I am succumbing to, and heat, my heat, is 
slipping away. And, unless I become reborn, it will never return. This is the 
destiny of the universe, So at least I won't be alone. 
But he felt alone. It's overtaking me too soon, he realized. The proper time 
hasn't come; something has hurried this up - some conniving thing has 
accelerated it, out of malice and curiosity: a polymorphic, perverse agency 
which likes to watch. An infantile, retarded entity which enjoys what's 
hap-pening. It has crushed me like a bent-legged insect, he said to himself. A 
simple bug which does nothing but hug the earth. Which can never fly or escape. 
Can only descend step by step into what is deranged and foul. Into the world of 
the tomb which a perverse entity surrounded by its own filth inhabits. The thing 
we call Pat. 
"Do you have your key?" Pat asked. "To your room? Think how awful you'd feel to 
get up to the second floor and find you had lost your key and couldn't get into 
your room." 
"I have it." He groped in his pockets. 
His coat ripped away, tattered and in shreds; it fell from him and, from its top 
pocket, the key slid. It fell two steps down, below him. Beyond reach. 
Pat said briskly, "I'll get it for you." Darting by him she scooped up the key, 
held it to the light to examine it, then laid it at the top of the flight of 
stairs, on the railing. "Right up here," she said, "where you can reach it when 
you're through climbing. Your reward. The room, I think, is to the left, about 
four doors down the hall. You'll have to move 
UBIK 179
slowly, but it'll be a lot easier once you're off the stairs. Once you don't 
have to climb." 
"I can see," he said. "The key. And the top. I can see the top of the stairs." 
With both arms grasping the bannister he dragged himself upward, ascended three 
steps in one ago-nizing expenditure of himself. He felt it deplete him; the 
weight on him grew, the cold grew, and the substantiality of himself waned. But 
- 
He had reached the top. 
"Goodby, Joe," Pat said. She hovered over him, kneeling slightly so that he 
could see her face. "You don't want Don Denny bursting in, do you? A doctor 
won't be able to help you. So I'll tell him that I got the hotel people to call 
a cab and that you're on your way across town to a hospital. That way you won't 
be bothered. You can be entirely by yourself. Do you agree?" 
"Yes," he said. 
"Here's the key." She pushed the cold metal thing into his hand, closed his 
fingers about it. "Keep your chin up, as they say here in '39. Don't take any 
wooden nickels. They say that too." She slipped away then, onto her feet; for an 
instant she stood there, scrutinizing him, and then she darted off dowri the 
hall to the elevator. He saw her press the button, wait; he saw the doors slide 
open, and then Pat disappeared. 
Gripping the key he rose lurchingly to a crouched position; he balanced himself 
against the far wall of the corridor, then turned to the left and began to walk 
step by step, still sup-porting himself by means of the wall. Darkness, he 
thought. It isn't lit. He squeezed his eyes shut, opened them, blinked. Sweat 
from his face still blinded him, still stung; he could not tell if the corridor 
were genuinely dark or whether his power of sight was fading out. 
By the time he rcached the first door he had been reduced to crawling; he tilted 
his head up, sought for the number on the door. No, not this one. He crept on. 
When he found the proper door he had to stand erect, propped up, to insert the 
key in the lock. The effort finished 
180 PHILIP K. DICK
him. The key still in his hand, he fell; his head struck the door and he flopped 
back onto the dust-choked carpet, smell-ing the odor of age and wear and frigid 
death. I can't get in the room, he realized. I can't stand up any more. 
But he had to. Out here he could be seen. 
Gripping the knob with both hands he tugged himself onto his feet one more time. 
He rested his weight entirely against the door as he tremblingly poked the key 
in the direction of the knob and the lock; this way, once he had turned the key, 
the door would fall open and he would be inside. And then, he thought, if I can 
close the door after me and if I can get to the bed, it'll be over. 
The lock grated. The metal unit hauled itself back. The door opened and he 
pitched forward, arms extended. The fioor rose toward him and he made out shapes 
in the carpet, swirls and designs and floral entities in red and gold, but worn 
into roughness and lusterlessness; the colors had diinmed, and as he struck the 
floor, feeling little if any pain, he thought, This is very old, this room. When 
this place was first built they probably did use an open iron cage for an 
elevator. So I saw the actual elevator, he said to himself, the authentic, 
original one. 
He lay for a time, and then, as if called, summoned into motion, stirred. He 
lifted himself up onto his knees, placed his hands flat before him... my hands, 
he thought; good god. Parchment hands, yellow and knobby, like the ass of a 
cooked, dry turkey. Bristly skin, not like human skin; pin-feathers, as if I've 
devolved back millions of years to some-thing that fiies and coasts, using its 
skin as a sail. 
Opening his eyes, he searched for the bed; he strove to identify it. The fat far 
window, admitting gray light through its web of curtains. A vanity table, ugly, 
with lank legs. Then the bed, with brass knobs capping its railed sidcs, bent 
and irregular, as if years of use had twisted the railings, warped the varnished 
wooden headboards. I want to get on it even so, he said to himself; he reached 
toward it, slid and dragged himself farther into the room. 
UBIK 181 
And saw then a figure seated in an overstuffed chair, facing him. A spectator 
who had made no sound but who now stood up and came rapidly toward him. 
Glen Runciter. 
"I couldn't help you climb the stairs," Runciter said, his heavy face stern, 
"She would have seen me. Matter of fact, I was afraid she'd come all the way 
into the room with you, and then we'd be in trouble because she -" He broke off, 
bent and hoisted Joe up to his feet as if Joe had no weight left in him, no 
remaining material constituents. "We'll talk about that later. Here." He carried 
Joe under his arm, across the room - not to the bed but to the overstuffed chair 
in which he himself had been sitting. "Can you hold on a few seconds longer?" 
Runciter asked. "I want to shut and lock the door. In case she changes her 
mind." 
"Yes," Joe said. 
Runciter strode in three big steps to the door, slammed it and bolted it, came 
at once back to Joe. Opening a drawer of the vanity table, he hastily brought 
out a spray can with bright stripes, balloons and lettering glorifying its shiny 
sur-faces. "Ubik," Runciter said, he shook the can mightily, then stood before 
Joe, aiming it at him. "Don't thank me for this," he said, and sprayed 
prolongedly left and right; the air flickered and shimmered, as if bright 
particles of light had been released, as if the sun's energy sparkled here in 
this worn-out elderly hotel room. "Feel better? It should work on you right 
away; you should already be getting a reaction." He eyed Joe with anxiety. 
l4 
It takes more than a bag to seal in food pavor; it takes Ubik plastic wrap - 
actually four layers in one. Keeps freshness in, air and mois-ture out. Watch 
this simulated test. 
"Do you have a cigarette?" Joe said. His voice shook, but not from weariness. 
Nor from cold. Both had gone. I'm tense, be said to himself. But I'm not dying. 
That process has been stopped by the Ubik spray. 
As Runciter said it would, he remembered, in his taped TV commercial. If I could 
find it I would be all right; Runciter promised that. But, he thought somberly, 
it took a long time. And I almost didn't get to it. 
"No filter tips," Runciter said. "They don't have filtration devices on their 
cigarettes in this backward, no-good time period." He held a pack of Camels 
toward Joe. "I'll light it for you." He struck a match and extended it. 
"It's fresh," Joe said. 
"Oh hell, yes. Christ, I just now bought it downstairs at the tobacco counter. 
We're a long way into this. Well past the stage of clotted milk and stale 
cigarettes." He grinned starkly, his eyes determined and bleak, refiecting no 
light. "In it," he said, "not out of it. There's a difference." He lit a 
cigarette for himself too; leaning back, he smoked in silence, his expression 
still grim. And, Joe decided, tired. But not the kind of tiredness that he 
himself had undergone, 
UBIK 183
Joe said, "Can you help the rest of the group?" 
"I have exactly one can of this Ubik. Most of it I had to 
use on you." He gestured with resentment; his fingers con- 
vulsed in a tremor of unresigned anger. "My ability to alter 
things here is limited. I've done what I could." His head 
jerked as he raised his eyes to glare at Joe. "I got through 
to you - all of you - every chance I could, every way I could. 
I did everything that I had the capacity to bring about. Damn 
little. Almost nothing." He lapsed then into smoldering, 
brooding silence. 
"The graffiti on the bathroom walls," Joe said. "You wrote 
that we were dead and you were alive." 
"I am alive," Runciter rasped. 
"Are we dead, the rest of us?" 
After a long pause, Runciter said, "Yes." 
"But in the taped TV commercial -" 
"That was for the purpose of getting you to fight. To find 
Ubik. It made you look and you kept on looking too. I kept 
trying to get it to you, but you know what went wrong; she 
kept drawing everyone into the past - she worked on us all 
with that talent of hers. Over and over again she regressed 
it and made it worthless." Runciter added, "Except for the 
fragmentary notes I managed to slip to you in conjunction 
with the stuff." Urgently, he pointed his heavy, determined 
finger at Joe, gesturing with vigor. "Look what I've been up 
against. The same thing that got all of you, that's killed you 
off one by one. Frankly, it's amazing to me that I was able 
to do as much as I could." 
Joe said, "When did you figure out what was taking place? 
Did you always know? From the start?" 
" 'The start,' " Runciter echoed bitingly. "What's that 
mean? It started months or maybe even years ago; god knows 
how long Hollis and Mick and Pat Conley and S. Dolc Meli- 
pone and G. G. Ashwood have been hatching it up, working 
it over and reworking it like dough. Here's what happened. 
We got lured to Luna. We let Pat Conley come with us, a 
woman we didn't know, a talent we didn't understand - 
184 PHILIP K. DICK
which possibly even Hollis doesn't understand. An ability anyhow connected with 
time reversion; not, strictly speaking, the ability to travel through time... 
for instance, she can't go into the future. In a certain sense, she can't go 
into the past either; what she does, as near as I can comprehend, it, is start a 
counter-process that uncovers the prior stages in-herent in configurations of 
matter. But you know that; you and Al figured it out." He ground his teeth with 
wrath. "Al Hammond - what a loss. But I couldn't do anything; I couldn't break 
through then as I've done now." 
"Why were you able to now?" Joe asked. 
Runciter said, "Because this is as far back as she is able to carry us. Normal 
forward flow has alieady resumed; we're again flowing from past into present 
into future. She evi-dently stretched her ability to its limit. 1939; that's the 
limit. What she's done now is shut off her talent. Why not? She's accomplished 
what Ray Hollis sent her to us to do." 
"How many people have been affected?" 
"Just the group of us who were on Luna there in that subsurface room. Not even 
Zoe Wirt. Pat can circumscribe the range of the field she creates. As far as the 
rest of the world is concerned, the bunch of us took off for Luna and got blown 
up in an accidental explosion; we were put into cold-pac by solicitous Stanton 
Mick, but no contact could be established - they didn't get us soon enough." 
Joe said, "Why wouldn't the bomb blast be enough?" 
Lifting an eyebrow, Runciter regarded him. 
"Why use Pat Conley at all?" Joe said. He sensed, even in his weary, shaken 
state, something wrong. "There's no reason for all this reversion machinery, 
this sinking us into a retrograde time momentum back here to 1939. It serves no 
purpose." 
"That's an inte'resting point," Runciter said; he nodded slowly, a frown on his 
rugged, stony face. "I'll have to think about it. Give me a little while." He 
walked to the window, stood gazing out at the stores across the street. 
UBIK 185
"It strikes me," Joe said, "that what we appear to be faced with is a malignant 
rather than a purposeful force. Not so much someone trying to kill us or nullify 
us, someone trying to eliminate us from functioning as a prudence organization, 
but -" He pondered; he almost had it. "An irresponsible entity that's enjoying 
what it's doing to us. The way it's killing us off one by one. It doesn't have 
to prolong all this. That doesn't sound to me like Ray Hollis; he deals in cold, 
practical murder. And from what I know about Stanton Mick -" 
"Pat herself," Runciter interrupted brusquely; he turned away from the window. 
"She's psychologically a sadistic per-son. Like tearing wings off flies. Playing 
with us." He watched for Joe's reaction. 
Joe said, "It sounds to me more like a child." 
"But look at Pat Conley; she's spiteful and jealous. She got Wendy first because 
of emotional animosity. She fol-lowed you all the way up the stairs just now, 
enjoying it; gloating over it, in fact." 
"How do you know that?" Joe said. You were waiting here in this room, he said to 
himself; you couldn't have seen it. And - how had Runciter known he would corne 
to this particular room? 
Letting out his breath in a ragged, noisy rush, Runciter said, "I haven't told 
you all of it. As a matter of fact..." He ceased speaking, chewed his lower lip 
savagely, then abruptly resumed, "What I've said hasn't been strictly true. I 
don't hold the same relationship to this regressed world that the rest of you 
do; you're absolutely right: I know too much. It's because I enter it from 
outside, Joe." 
"Manifestations," Joe said. 
"Yes. Thrust down into this world, here and there. At strategic points and 
times. Like the traffic citation. Like Archer's -" 
"You didn't tape that TV commercial," Joe said. "That was live." 
186 PHILIP K. DICK
Runciter, with reluctance, nodded. 
"Why the difference," Joe said, "between your situation and ours?" 
"You want me to say?" 
"Yes." He prepared himself, already knowing what he would hear. 
"I'm not dead, Joe. The graffiti told the truth. You're all in cold-pac and I'm 
-" Runciter spoke with difficulty, not looking directly at Joe. "I'm sitting in 
a consultation lounge at the Beloved Brethren Moratorium. All of you are 
inter-wired, on my instructions; kept together as a group. I'm out here trying 
to reach you. That's where I am when I say I'm outside; that's why the 
manifestations, as you call them. For one week now I've been trying to get you 
all functioning in half-life, but - it isn't working. You're fading out one by 
one." 
After a pause Joe said, "What about Pat Conley?" 
"Yeah, she's with you; in half-life, interwired to the rest of the group." 
"Are the regressions due to her talent? Or to the normal decay of half-life?" 
Tensely, he waited for Runciter's answer; everything, as he saw it, hung on this 
one question. 
Runciter snorted, grimaced, then said hoarsely, "The nor-mal decay. Ella 
experienced it. Everyone who enters half-life experiences it." 
"You're lying to me," Joe said. And felt a knife shear through him. 
Staring at him, Runciter said, "Joe, my god, I saved your life; I broke through 
to you enough just now to bring you back into full half-life functioning - 
you'll probably go on indefinitely now. If I hadn't been waiting here in this 
hotel room when y'ou came crawling through that door, why, hell - hey, look, 
goddam it; you'd be lying on that rundown bed dead as a doornail by now if it 
wasn't for me. I'm Glen Runciter; I'm your boss and I'm the one fighting to save 
all your lives - I'm the only one out here in the real world plug-ging for you." 
He continued to stare at Joe with heated 
UBIK 187
indignation and surprise. A bewildered, injured surprise,. as if he could not 
fathom what was happening. "That girl," Runciter said, "that Pat Conley, she 
would have killed you like she killed -" He broke off. 
Joe said, "Like she killed Wendy and Al, Edie Dorn, Fred Zafsky, and maybe by 
now Tito Apostos." 
In a low but controlled voice Runciter said, "This situation is very complex, 
Joe. It doesn't admit to simple answers." 
"You don't know the answers," Joe said. "That's the prob-lem. You made up 
answers; you had to invent them ta explain your presence here. All your 
presences here, your so-called manifestations." 
"I don't call them that; you and Al worked out that name. Don't blame me for 
what you two -" 
"You don't know any more than I do," Joe said, "about what's happening to us and 
who's attacking us. Glen, you can't say who we're up against because you don't 
know." 
Runciter said, "I know I'm alive; I know I'm sitting out here in this 
consultation lounge at the moratorium." 
"Your body in the coffin," Joe said. "Here at the Simple Shepherd Mortuary. Did 
you look at it?" 
"No," Runciter said, "but that isn't really -" 
"It had withered," Joe said. "Lost bulk like Wendy's and Al's and Edie's - and, 
in a little while, mine. Exactly the same for you; no better, no worse." 
"In your case I got Ubik -" Again Runciter broke off; a difficult-to-decipher 
expression appeared on his face: a com-bination perhaps of insight, fear and - 
but Joe couldn't tell. "I got you the Ubik," he finished. 
"What is Ubik?" Joe said. 
There was no answer from Runciter. 
"You don't know that either," Joe said. "You don't know what it is or why it 
works. You don't even know where it comes from," 
After a long, agonized pause, Runciter said, "You're right, Joe. Absolutely 
right." Tremulously, he lit another cigarette. "But I wanted to save your life; 
that part's true. Hell, I'd 
188 PHILIP K. DICK
like to save all your lives." The cigarette slipped from his fingers; it dropped 
to the floor, rolled away. With labored effort, Runciter bent over to grope for 
it. On his face showed extreme and clear-cut unhappiness. Almost a despair. 
"We're in this," Joe said, "and you're sitting out there, out in the lounge, and 
you can't do it; you can't put a stop to the thing we're involved in." 
"That's right." Runciter nodded. 
"This is cold-pac," Joe said, "but there's something more. Something not natural 
to people in half-life. There are two forces at work, as Al figured out; one 
helping us and one destroying us. You're working with the force or entity or 
person that's trying to help us. You got the Ubik from them." 
"Yes." 
Joe said, "So none of us know even yet who it is that's destroying us - and who 
it is that's protecting us; you outside don't know, and we in here don't know. 
Maybe it's Pat." 
"I think it is," Runciter said. "I think there's your enemy." 
Joe said, "Almost. But I don't think so." I don't think, he said to himself, 
that we've met our enemy face to face, or our friend either. 
He thought, But I think we will. Before long we will know who they both are. 
"Are you sure," he asked Runciter, "absolutely sure, that you're beyond doubt 
the only one who survived the blast? Think before you answer." 
"Like I said, Zoe Wirt -" 
"Of us," Joe said. "She's not here in this time segment with us. Pat Conley, for 
example." 
"Pat Conley's chest was crushed. She died of shock and a collapsed lung, with 
multiple internal injuries, including a damaged liver and a leg broken in three 
places. Physically speaking, she's about four feet away from you; her body, I 
mean." 
"And it's the same for all the rest? They're all here in cold-pac at the Beloved 
Brethren Moratorium?" 
Runciter said, "With one exception. Sammy Mundo. He 
UBIK 189
suffered massive brain damage and lapsed into a coma out of which they say he'll 
never emerge. The cortical -" 
"Then he's alive. He's not in cold-pac. He's not here." 
"I wouldn't call it 'alive.' They've run encephalograms on him; no cortical 
activity at all. A vegetable, nothing more. No personality, no motion, no 
consciousness - there's noth-ing happening in Mundo's brain, nothing in the 
slightest." 
Joe said, "So, therefore, you naturally didn't think to men-tion it." 
"I mentioned it now." 
"When I asked you." He reflected. "How far is he from us? In Zurich?" 
"We set down here in Zurich, yes. He's at the Carl Jung Hospital. About a 
quarter mile from this moratorium." 
"Rent a telepath," Joe said. "Or use G. G. Ashwood. Have him scanned." A boy, he 
said to himself. Disorganized and immature. A cruel, unformed, peculiar 
personality. This may be it, he said to himself. It would fit in with what we're 
experiencing, the capricious contradictory happenings. The pulling off of our 
wings and then the putting back. The tem-porary restorations, as in just now 
with me here in this hotel room, after my climb up the stairs. 
Runciter sighed. "We did that. In brain-injury cases like this it's a regular 
practice to try to reach the person tele-pathically. No results; nothing. No 
frontal-lobe cerebration of any sort. Sorry, Joe." He wagged his massive head in 
a sympathetic, tic-like motion; obviously, he shared Joe's dis-appointment. 
190 PHILIP K. DICK
"Did you ring for me, sir?" Herbert Schoenheit von Vogel-sang scuttled into the 
consultation lounge, cringing like a medieval toady. "Shall I put Mr. Chip back 
with the others? You're done, sir?" 
Runciter said, "I'm done." 
"Did your -" 
"Yes, I got through all right. We could hear each other fine this time." He lit 
a cigarette; it had been hours since he had had one, had found a free moment. By 
now the arduous, prolonged task of reaching Joe Chip had depleted him. "Do you 
have an amphetamine dispenser nearby?" he asked the moratorium owner. 
"In the hall outside the consultation lounge." The eager-to-please creature 
pointed. 
Leaving the lounge, Runciter made his way to the am-phetamine dispenser; he 
inserted a coin, pushed the choice lever, and, into the drop slot, a small 
familiar object slid with a tinkling sound. 
The pill made him feel better. But then he thought about his appointment with 
Len Niggelman two hours from now and wondered if he could really make it. 
There's been too much going on, he decided. I'm not ready to make my formal 
report to the Society; I'll have to vid Niggelman and ask for a postponement. 
Using a pay phone, he called Niggelman back in the North American Confederation. 
"Len," he said, "I can't do any more today. I've spent the last twelve hours 
trying to get through to my people in cold-pac, and I'm exhausted. Would 
tomorrow be okay?" 
Niggelman said, "The sooner you file your official, formal statement with us, 
the sooner we can begin action against Hollis. My legal department says it's 
open and shut; they're champing at the bit." 
"They think they can make a civil charge stick?" 
"Civil and criminal. They've been talking to the New York district attorney. But 
until you make a formal, notarized report to us -" 
UBIK 191
"Tomorrow," Runciter promised. "After I get some sleep. This has damn near 
finished ine off." This loss of all my best people, he said to himself. 
Especially Joe Chip. My orga-nization is depleted and we won't be able to resume 
com-mercial operations for months, maybe years. God, he thought, where am I 
going to get inertials to replace those I've lost? And where am I going to find 
a tester like Joe? 
Niggelman said, "Sure, Glen. Get a good night's sleep and then meet me in my 
office tomorrow, say at ten o'clock our time." 
"Thanks," Runciter said. He rang off, then threw himself heavily down on a 
pink-plastic couch across the corridor from the phone. I can't find a tester 
like Joe, he said to himself. The fact of the matter is that Runciter Associates 
is finished. 
The moratorium owner came in, then, putting in another of his untimely 
appearances. "Can I get you anything, Mr. Runciter? A cup of coffee? Another 
amphetamine, perhaps a twelve-hour spansule? In my office I have some 
twenty-four-hour spansules; one of those would get you back up into action for 
hours, if not all night." 
"All night," Runciter said, "I intend to sleep." 
"Then how about a -" 
"Flap away," Runciter grated. The moratorium owner scuttled off, leaving him 
alone. Why did I have to pick this place? Runciter asked himself. I guess 
because Ella's here. It is, after all, the best; that's why she's here, and, 
hence, why they're all here. Think of them, he reflected, so many who were so 
recently on this side of the casket. What a catastrophe. 
Ella, he said to himself, remembering. I'd better talk to her again for a 
moment, to let her know how things are going. That's, after all, what I told her 
I'd do. 
Getting to his feet, he started off in search of the mora-torium owner. 
Am I going to get that damn Jory this time? he asked himself. Or will I be able 
to keep Ella in focus long enough to tell her what Joe said? It's become so hard 
to hang onto 
192 PHILIP K. DICK
her now, with Jory growing and expanding and feeding on her and maybe on others 
over there in half-life. The mora-torium should do something about him; Jory's a 
hazard to everyone here. Why do they let him go on? he asked himself. 
He thought, Maybe because they can't stop him. 
Maybe there's never been anyone in half-life like Jory before. 
15
Could it be that I have bad breath, Tom? Well, Ed, if you're worried about that, 
try today's new Ubik, with powerful germicidal foaming action, guaranteed safe 
when taken as directed. 
The door of the ancient hotel room swung open. Don Denny, accompanied by a 
middle-aged, responsible-looking man with neatly trimmed gray hair, entered. 
Denny, his face strained with apprehension, said, "How are you, Joe? Why aren't 
you lying down? For chrissake, get onto the bed." 
"Please lie down, Mr. Chip," the doctor said as he set his medical bag on the 
vanity table and opened it up. "Is there pain along with the enervation and the 
difficult respiration?" He approached the bed with an old-fashioned stethoscope 
and cumbersome blood-pressure-reading equipment. "Do you have any history of 
cardiac involvement, Mr. Chip? Or your mother or father? Unbutton your shirt, 
please." He drew up a wooden chair beside the bed, seated himself expectantly on 
it. 
Joe said, "I'm okay now." 
"Let him listen to your heart," Denny said tersely. 
"Okay." Joe stretched out on the bed and unbuttoned his shirt. "Runciter managed 
to get through to me," he said to Denny. "We're in cold-pac; he's on the other 
side trying to reach us. Someone else is trying to injure us. Pat didn't do it, 
or, anyhow, she didn't do it alone. Neither she nor Runciter 
194 PHILIP K. DICK
knows what's going on. When you opened the door did you see Runciter?" 
"No.," Denny said. 
"He was sitting across the room from me," Joe said. "Two, three minutes ago. 
'Sorry, Joe,' he said; that was the last thing he said to me and then he cut 
contact, stopped communicating, just canceled himself out. Look on the vanity 
table and see if he left the spray can of Ubik." 
Denny searched, then held up the brightly illuminated can. "Here it is. But it 
seems empty." Denny shook it. 
"Almost empty," Joe said. "Spray what's left on yourself. Go ahead." He gestured 
emphatically. 
"Don't talk, Mr. Chip," the doctor said, listening to his stethoscope. He then 
rolled up Joe's sleeve and began winding inflatable rubber fabric around his arm 
in preparation for the blood-pressure test. 
"How's my heart?" Joe asked. 
"Appears normal," the doctor said. "Although slightly fast." 
"See?" Joe said to Don Denny. "I've recovered." 
Denny said, "The others are dying, Joe." 
Half sitting up, Joe said, "All of them?" 
"Everyone that's left." He held the can but did not use it. 
"Pat, too?" Joe asked. 
"When I got out of the elevator on the second floor here I found her. It had 
just begun to hit her. She seemed terribly surprised; apparently, she couldn't 
believe it." He set the can down again. "I guess she thought she was doing it. 
With her talent." 
Joe said, "That's right; that's what she thought. Why won't you use the Ubik?" 
"Hell, Joe, we're going to die. You know it, and I know it." He removed his 
horn-rimmed glasses and rubbed his eyes. "After I saw Pat's condition I went 
into the other rooms, and that's when I saw the rest of them. Of us. That's why 
we took so long getting here; I had Dr. Taylor examine 
them. I couldn't believe they'd dwindle away so fast. The 
UBIK 195
acceleration has been so goddam great. In just the last hour -" 
"Use the Ubik," Joe said. "Or I'll use it on you." 
Don Denny again picked up the can, again shook it, pointed the nozzle toward 
himself. "All right," he said. "If that's what you want. There really isn't any 
reason not to. This is the end, isn't it? I mean, they're all dead; only you and 
I are left, and the Ubik is going to wear off you in a few hours. And you won't 
be able to get any more. Which will leave me." His decision made, Denny 
depressed the button of the spray can; the shimmering, palpitating vapor, filled 
with particles of metallic light that danced nimbly, formed at once around him. 
Don Denny disappeared, concealed by the nimbus of radiant, ergic excitement. 
Pausing in his task of reading Joe's blood pressure, Dr. Taylor twisted his head 
to see. Both he and Joe watched as the vapor now condensed; puddles of it 
glistened on the carpet, and down the wall behind Denny it drizzled in bright 
streaks. 
The cloud concealing Denny evaporated. 
The person standing there, in the center of the vaporizing stain of Ubik that 
had saturated the worn and dingy carpet, was not Don Denny. 
An adolescent boy, mawkishly slender, with irregular black-button eyes beneath 
tangled brows. He wore an anachronistic costume: white drip-dry shirt, jeans and 
laceless leather slippers. Clothes from the middle of the century. On his 
elongated face Joe saw a smile, but it was a misshapen smile, a thwarted crease 
that became now almost a jeering leer. No two features matched: His ears had too 
many convolutions in them to fit with his chitinous eyes. His straight hair 
contradicted the interwoven, curly bristles of his brows. And his nose, Joe 
thought, too thin, too sharp, far too long. Even his chin failed to harmonize 
with the balance of his face; it had a deep chisel mark in it, a cleft obviously 
penetrating far up into the bone... Joe thought, as if at that point the 
manufacturer of this creature struck it a blow aimed 
196 PHILIP K. DICK
at obliterating it. But the physical material, the base substance, had been too 
dense; the boy had not fractured and split apart. He existed in defiance of even 
the force that had constructed him; he jeered at everything else and it, too. 
"Who are you?" Joe said. 
The boy's fingers writhed, a twitch protecting him evidently from a stammer. 
"Sometimes I call myself Matt, and sometimes Bill," he said. "But mostly I'm 
Jory. That's my real name - Jory." Gray, shabby teeth showed as he spoke. And a 
grubby tongue. 
After an interval Joe said, "Where's Denny? He never came into this room, did 
he?" Dead, he thought, with the others. 
"I ate Denny a long time ago," the boy Jory said. "Right at the beginning, 
before they came here from New York. First I ate Wendy Wright. Denny came 
second." 
Joe said, "How do you mean 'ate'?" Literally? he wondered, his flesh undulating 
with aversion; the gross physical motion rolled through him, engulfing him, as 
if his body wanted to shrink away. However, he managed more or less to conceal 
it. 
"I did what I do," Jory said. "It's hard to explain, but I've been doing it a 
long time to lots of half-life people. I eat their life, what remains of it. 
There's very little in each person, so I need a lot of them. I used to wait 
until they had been in half-life awhile, but now I have to have them 
immediately. If I'm going to be able to live myself. If you come close to me and 
listen - I'll hold my mouth open - you can hear their voices. Not all of them, 
but anyhow the last ones I ate. The ones you know." With his fingernail he 
picked at an upper incisor, his head tilted on one side as he regarded Joe, 
evidently waiting to hear his reaction. "Don't you have anything to say?" he 
said. 
"It was you who started me dying, down there in the lobby." 
"Me and not Pat. J ate her out in the hall by the elevator, 
U BIK 197
and then I ate the others. I thought you were dead." He rotated the can of Ubik, 
which he still held. "I can't figure this out. What's in it, and where does 
Runciter get it?" He scowled. "But Runciter can't be doing it; you're right. 
He's on the outside. This originates from within our environment. It has to, 
because nothing can come in from outside except words." 
Joe said, "So there's nothing you can do to me. You can't eat me because of the 
Ubik." 
"I can't eat you for a while. But the Ubik will wear off." 
"You don't know that; you don't even know what it is or where it comes from." I 
wonder if I can kill you, he thought. The boy Jory seemed delicate. This is the 
thing that got Wendy, he said to himself. I'm seeing it face to face, as I knew 
I eventually would. Wendy, Al, the real Don Denny - all the rest of them. It 
even ate Runciter's corpse as it lay in the casket at the mortuary; there must 
have been a flicker of residual protophasic activity in or near it, or 
something, anyhow, which attracted him. 
The doctor said, "Mr. Chip, I didn't have a chance to finish taking your blood 
pressure. Please lie back down." 
Joe stared at him, then said, "Didn't he see you change, Jory? Hasn't he heard 
what you've been saying?" 
"Dr. Taylor is a product of my mind," Jory said. "Like every other fixture in 
this pseudo world." 
"I don't believe it," Joe said. To the doctor he said, "You heard what he's been 
saying, didn't you?" 
With a hollow whistling pop the doctor disappeared. 
"See?" Jory said, pleased. 
"What are you going to do when I'm killed off?" Joe asked the boy. "Will you 
keep on maintaining this 1939 world, this pseudo world, as you call it?" 
"Of course not. There'd be no reason to." 
"Then it's all for me, just for me. This entire world." 
Jory said, "It's not very large. One hotel in Des Moines. And a street outside 
the window with a few people and cars. And maybe a couple of other buildings 
thrown in: stores 
198 PHILIP K. DICK
across the street for you to look at when you happen to see out." 
"So you're not maintaining any New York or Zurich or -" 
"Why should I? No one's there. Wherever you and the others of the group went, I 
constructed a tangible reality corresponding to their minimal expectations. When 
you flew here from New York I created hundreds of miles of countryside, town 
after town - I found that very exhausting. I had to eat a great deal to make up 
for that. In fact, that's the reason I had to finish off the others so soon 
after you got here. I needed to replenish myself." 
Joe said, "Why 1939? Why not our own contemporary world, 1992?" 
"The effort; I can't keep objects from regressing. Doing it all alone, it was 
too much for me. I created 1992 at first, but then things began to break down. 
The coins, the cream, the cigarettes - all those phenomena that you noticed. And 
then Runciter kept breaking through from outside; that made it even harder for 
me. Actually, it would have been better if he hadn't interfered." Jory grinned 
slyly. "But I didn't worry about the reversion. I knew you'd figure it was Pat 
Conley. It would seem like her talent because it's sort of like what her talent 
does. I thought maybe the rest of you would kill her. I would enjoy that." His 
grin increased. 
"What's the point of keeping this hotel and the street outside going for me 
now?" Joe said. "Now that I know?" 
"But I always do it this way." Jory's eyes widened. 
Joe said, "I'm going to kill you." He stepped toward Jory in an uncoordinated 
half-falling motion. Raising his open hands he plunged against the boy, trying 
to capture the neck, searching for the bent-pipestem windpipe with all his 
fingers. 
Snarling, Jory bit him. The great shovel teeth fastened deep into Joe's right 
hand. They hung on as, meanwhile, Jory raised his head, lifting Joe's hand with 
his jaw; Jory stared at him with unwinking eyes, snoring wetly as he tried to 
close his jaws. The teeth sank deeper and Joe felt the pain 
UBIK 199
of it throughout him. He's eating me, he realized. "You can't," he said aloud; 
he hit Jory on the snout, punching again and again. "The Ubik keeps you away," 
he said as he cuffed Jory's jeering eyes. "You can't do it to me." 
"Gahm grau," Jory bubbled, working his jaws sideways like a sheep's. Grinding 
Joe's hand until the pain became too much for Joe to stand. He kicked Jory. The 
teeth released his hand; he crept backward, looking at the blood rising from the 
punctures made by the troll teeth. Jesus, he said to himself, appalled. 
"You can't do to me," Joe said, "what you did to them." Locating the spray can 
of Ubik, he pointed the nozzle toward the bleeding wound which his hand had 
become. He pressed the red plastic stud and a weak stream of particles emerged 
and settled in a film over the chewed, torn flesh. The pain immediately 
departed. Before his eyes the wound healed. 
"And you can't kill me," Jory said. He still grinned. 
Joe said, "I'm going downstairs." He walked unsteadily to the door of the room 
and opened it. Outside lay the dingy hall; he started forward, step by step, 
treading carefully. The floor, however, seemed substantial. Not a quasi- or 
irreal world at all. 
"Don't go too far," Jory said from behind him. "I can't keep too great an area 
going. Like, if you were to get into one of those cars and drive for miles... 
eventually you'd reach a point where it breaks down. And you wouldn't like that 
any better than I do." 
"I don't see what I have to lose." Joe reached the elevator, pressed the down 
button. 
Jory called after him, "I have trouble with elevators. They're complicated. 
Maybe you should take the stairs." 
After waiting a little longer, Joe gave up; as Jory had advised, he descended by 
the stairs - the same flight up which he had so recently come, step by step, in 
an agony of effort. 
Well, he thought, that's one of the two agencies who're at work; Jory is the one 
who's destroying us - has destroyed us, except for me. Behind Jory there is 
nothing; he is the 
200 PHILIP K. DICK
end. Will I meet the other? Probably not soon enough for it to matter, he 
decided. He looked once more at his hand. Completely well. 
Reaching the lobby, he gazed around him, at the people, the great chandelier 
overhead. Jory, in many respects, had done a good job, despite the reversion to 
these older forms. Real, he thought, experiencing the floor beneath his feet. I 
can't get over it. 
He thought, Jory must have had experience. He must have done this many times 
before. 
Going to the hotel desk, he said to the clerk, "You have a restaurant that you'd 
recommend?" 
"Down the street," the clerk said, pausing in his task of sorting mail. "To your 
right. The Matador. You'll find it excellent, sir." 
"I'm lonely," Joe said, on impulse. "Does the hotel have any source of supply? 
Any girls?" 
The clerk said in a clipped, disapproving voice, "Not this hotel, sir; this 
hotel does not pander." 
"You keep a good clean family hotel," Joe said. 
"We like to think so, sir." 
"I was just testing you," Joe said. "I wanted to be sure what kind of hotel I 
was staying in." He left the counter, recrossed the lobby, made his way down the 
wide marble stairs, through the revolving door and onto the pavement outside. 
16
Wake up to a hearty, lip-smacking bowlful of nutritious, nourishing Ubik toasted 
flakes, the adult cereal that's more crunchy, more tasty, more ummmish. Ubik 
breakfast cereal, the whole-bowl taste treat! Do not exceed recommended portion 
at any one meal. 
The diversity of cars impressed him. Many years represented, many makes and many 
models. The fact that they mostly came in black could not be laid at Jory's 
door; this detail was authentic. 
But how did Jory know it? 
That's peculiar, he thought; Jory's knowledge of the mi-nutiae of 1939, a period 
in which none of us lived - except Glen Runciter. 
Then all at once he realized why. Jory had told the truth; he had constructed - 
not this world - but the world, or rather its phantasmagoric counterpart, of 
their own time. Decomposition back to these forms was not of his doing; they 
happened despite his efforts. These are natural atavisms, Joe realized, 
happening mechanically as Jory's strength wanes. As the boy says, it's an 
enormous effort. This is perhaps the first time he has created a world this 
diverse, for so many people at once. It isn't usual for so many half-lifers to 
be interwired. 
We have put an abnormal strain on Jory, he said to himself. And we paid for it. 
A square old Dodge taxi sputtered past; Joe waved at it, 
202 P HIL I P K. D I C K
and the cab floundered noisily to the curb. Let's test out what Jory said, he 
said to himself, as to the early boundary of this quasi world now. To the driver 
he said, "Take me for a ride through town; go anywhere you want. I'd like to see 
as many streets and buildings and people as possible, and then, when you've 
driven through all of Des Moines, I want you to drive me to the next town and 
we'll see that." 
"I don't go between towns, mister," the driver said, holding the door open for 
Joe. "But I'll be glad to drive you around Des Moines. It's a nice city, sir. 
You're from out of state, aren't you?" 
"New York," Joe said, getting inside the cab. 
The cab rolled back out into traffic. "How do they feel about the war back in 
New York?" the driver asked presently. "Do you think we'll be getting into it? 
Roosevelt wants to get us -" 
"I don't care to discuss politics or the war," Joe said harshly. 
They drove for a time in silence. 
Watching the buildings, people and cars go by, Joe asked himself again how Jory 
could maintain it all. So many details, he marveled. I should be coming to the 
edge of it soon; it has to be just about now. 
"Driver," he said, "are there any houses of prostitution here in Des Moines?'
"No," the driver said. 
Maybe Jory can't manage that, Joe reflected. Because of his youth. Or maybe he 
disapproves. He felt, all at once, tired. Where am I going? he asked himself. 
And what for? To prove to myself that what Jory told me is true? I already know 
it's true; I saw the doctor wink out. I saw Jory emerge from inside Don Denny; 
that should have been enough. All I'm doing this way is putting more of a load 
on Jory, which will increase his appetite. I'd better give up, he decided. This 
is pointless. 
And, as Jory had said, the Ubik would be wearing off anyhow. This driving around 
Des Moines is not the way I 
UBIK 203
want to spend my last minutes or hours of life. There must be something else. 
Along the sidewalk a girl moved in a slow, easy gait; she seemed to be 
window-shopping. A pretty girl, with gay, blond pigtails, wearing an unbuttoned 
sweater over her blouse, a bright red skirt and high-heeled little shoes. "Slow 
the cab," he instructed the driver. "There, by that girl with the pigtails." 
"She won't talk to you," the driver said. "She'll call a cop. 
Joe said, "I don't care." It hardly mattered at this point. 
Slowing, the old Dodge bumbled its way to the curb; its tires protested as they 
rubbed against the curb. The girl glanced up. 
"Hi, miss," Joe said. 
She regarded him with curiosity; her warm, intelligent, blue eyes widened a 
little, but they showed no aversion or alarm. Rather, she seemed slightly amused 
at him. But in a friendly way. "Yes?" she said. 
"I'm going to die," Joe said. 
"Oh, dear," the girl said, with concern. "Are you -" 
"He's not sick," the driver put in. "He's been asking after girls; he just wants 
to pick you up." 
The girl laughed. Without hostility. And she did not depart. 
"It's almost dinnertime," Joe said to her. "Let me take you to a restaurant, the 
Matador; I understand that's nice." His tiredness now had increased; he felt the 
weight of it on him, and then he realized, with muted, weary horror, that it 
consisted of the same fatigue which had attacked him in the hotel lobby, after 
he had shown the police citation to Pat. And the cold. Stealthily, the physical 
experience of the cold-pac surrounding him had come back. The Ubik is beginning 
to wear off, he realized. I don't have much longer. 
Something must have showed in his face; the girl walked toward him, up to the 
window of the cab. "Are you all right?" she asked. 
204 PHILIP K. DICK
Joe said, with effort, "I'm dying, miss." The wound on his hand, the teeth 
marks, had begun to throb once more. And were again becoming visible. This alone 
would have been enough to fill him with dread. 
"Have the driver take you to the hospital," the girl said. 
"Can we have dinner together?" Joe asked her. 
"Is that what you want to do?" she said. "When you're - whatever it is. Sick? 
Are you sick?" She opened the door of the cab then. "Do you want me to go with 
you to the hospital? Is that it?" 
"To the Matador," Joe said. "We'll have braised fillet of Martian mole cricket." 
He remembered then that that imported delicacy did not exist in this time 
period. "Market steak," he said. "Beef. Do you like beef?" 
Getting into the cab, the girl said to the driver, "He wants to go to the 
Matador." 
"Okay, miss," the driver said. The cab rolled out into traffic once more. At the 
next intersection the driver made a U-turn; now Joe realized, we are on our way 
to the restaurant. I wonder if I'll make it there. Fatigue and cold had invaded 
him completely; he felt his body processes begin to close down, one by one. 
Organs that had no future; the liver did not need to make red blood cells, the 
kidneys did not need to excrete wastes, the intestines no longer served any 
purpose. Only the heart, laboring on, and the increasingly difficult breathing; 
each time he drew air into his lungs he sensed the concrete block that had 
situated itself on his chest. My gravestone, he decided. His hand, he saw, was 
bleeding again; thick, slow blood appeared, drop by drop. 
"Care for a Lucky Strike?" the girl asked him, extending her pack toward him. " 
'They're toasted,' as the slogan goes. The phrase 'L.S.M.F.T.' won't come into 
existence until -" 
Joe said, "My name is Joe Chip." 
"Do you want me to tell you my name?" 
"Yes," he grated, and shut his eyes; he couldn't speak any further, for a time 
anyhow. "Do you like Des Moines?" he 
UBIK 205
asked her presently, concealing his hand from her. "Have you lived here a long 
time?" 
"You sound very tired, Mr. Chip," the girl said. 
"Oh, hell," he said, gesturing. "It doesn't matter." 
"Yes, it does." The girl opened her purse, rummaged briskly within it. "I'm not 
a deformation of Jory's; I'm not like him -" She indicated the driver. "Or like 
these little old stores and houses and this dingy street, all these people and 
their neolithic cars. Here, Mr. Chip." From her purse she brought an envelope, 
which she passed to him. "This is for you. Open it right away; I don't think 
either of us should have delayed so long." 
With leaden fingers he tore open the envelope. 
In it he found a certificate, stately and ornamented. The printing on it, 
however, swam; he was too weary now to read. "What's it say?" he asked her, 
laying it down on his lap. 
"From the company that manufactures Ubik," the girl said. "It is a guarantee, 
Mr. Chip, of a free, lifetime supply, free because I know your problem regarding 
money, your, shall we say, idiosyncrasy. And a list, on the reverse, of all the 
drugstores which carry it. Two drugstores - and not abandoned ones - in Des 
Moines are listed. I suggest we go to one first, before we eat dinner. Here, 
driver." She leaned forward and handed the driver a slip of paper already 
written out. "Take us to this address. And hurry; they'll be closing soon." 
Joe lay back against the seat, panting for breath. 
"We'll make it to the drugstore," the girl said, and patted his arm 
reassuringly. 
"Who are you?" Joe asked her. 
"My name is Ella. Ella Hyde Runciter. Your employer's wife." 
"You're here with us," Joe said. "On this side; you're in cold-pac." 
"As you well know. I have been for some time," Ella Runciter said. "Fairly soon 
I'll be reborn into another womb, 
206 PHILIP K. DICK
I think. At least, Glen says so. I keep dreaming about a smoky red light, and 
that's bad; that's not a morally proper womb to be born into." She laughed a 
rich, warm laugh. 
"Y'ou're the other one," Joe said. "Jory destroying us, you trying to help us. 
Behind you there's no one, just as there's no one behind Jory. I've reached the 
last entities involved." 
Ella said caustically, "I don't think of myself as an 'entity', I usually think 
of myself as Ella Runciter." 
"But it's true," Joe said. 
"Yes." Somberly, she nodded. 
"Why are you working against Jory?" 
"Because Jory invaded me," Ella said. "He menaced me in the same way he's 
menaced you. We both know what he does; he told you himself, in your hotel room. 
Sometimes he becomes very powerful; on occasion, he manages to supplant me when 
I'm active and trying to talk to Glen. But I seem to be able to cope with him 
better than most half-lifers, with or without Ubik. Better, for instance, than 
your group, even acting as a collective." 
"Yes," Joe said. It certainly was true. Well proved. 
"When I'm reborn," Ella said, "Glen won't be able to consult with me any more. I 
have a very selfish, practical reason for assisting you, Mr. Chip; I want you to 
replace me. I want to have someone whom Glen can ask for advice and assistance, 
whom he can lean on. You will be ideal; you'll be doing in half-life what you 
did in full-life. So, in a sense, I'm not motivated by noble sentiments; I saved 
you from Jory for a good common-sense reason." She added, "And god knows I 
detest Jory." 
"After you're reborn," Joe said, "I won't succumb?'
"You have your lifetime supply of Ubik. As it says on the certificate I gave 
you." 
Joe said, "Maybe I can defeat Jory." 
"Destroy him, you mean?" Ella pondered. "He's not invulnerable. Maybe in time 
you can learn ways to nullify him. I think that's really the best you can hope 
to do; I doubt if you can truly destroy him - in other words consume him - 
UBIK 207
as he does to half-lifers placed near him at the moratorium." 
"Hell," Joe said. "I'll tell Glen Runciter the situation and have him move Jory 
out of the moratorium entirely." 
"Glen has no authority to do that." 
"Won't Schoenheit von Vogelsang -" 
Ella said, "Herbert is paid a great deal of money annually, by Jory's family, to 
keep him with the others and to think up plausible reasons for doing so. And - 
there are Jorys in every moratorium. This battle goes on wherever you have 
half-lifers; it's a verity, a rule, of our kind of existence." She lapsed into 
silence then; for the first time he saw on her face an expression of anger. A 
ruffled, taut look that disturbed her tranquility. "It has to be fought on our 
side of the glass," Ella said. "By those of us in half-life, those that Jory 
preys on. You'll have to take charge, Mr. Chip, after I'm reborn. Do you think 
you can do that? It'll be hard. Jory will be sapping your strength always, 
putting a burden on you that you'll feel as -" She hesitated. "The approach of 
death. Which it will be. Because in half-life we diminish constantly anyhow. 
Jory only speeds it up. The weariness and cooling-off come anyhow. But not so 
soon." 
To himself Joe thought, I can remember what he did to Wendy. That'll keep me 
going. That alone. 
"Here's the drugstore, miss," the driver said. The square, upright old Dodge 
wheezed to the curb and parked. 
"I won't go in with you," Ella Runciter said to Joe as he opened the door and 
crept shakily out. "Goodby. Thanks for your loyalty to Glen. Thanks for what 
you're going to be doing for him." She leaned toward him, kissed him on the 
cheek; her lips seemed to him ripe with life. And some of it was conveyed to 
him; he felt slightly stronger. "Good luck with Jory." She settled back, 
composed herself sedately, her purse on her lap. 
Joe shut the cab door, stood, then made his way haltingly into the drugstore. 
Behind him the cab thub-thubbed off; he heard but did not see it go. 
Within the solemn, lamplit interior of the drugstore a bald 
208 PHILIP K. DICK
pharmacist wearing a formal dark vest, bow tie and sharply pressed sharkskin 
trousers, approached him. "Afraid we're closing, sir. I was just coming to lock 
the door." 
"But I'm in," Joe said. "And I want to be waited on." He showed the pharmacist 
the certificate which Ella had given him; squinting through his round, rimless 
glasses, the pharmacist labored over the gothic printing. "Are you going to wait 
on me?" Joe asked. 
"Ubik," the pharmacist said. "I believe I'm out of that. Let me check and see." 
He started off. 
"Jory," Joe said. 
Turning his head the pharmacist said, "Sir?" 
"You're Jory," Joe said. I can tell now, he said to himself. I'm learning to 
know him when I encounter him. "You invented this drugstore," he said, "and 
everything in it except for the spray cans of Ubik. You have no authority over 
Ubik; that comes from Ella." He forced himself into motion; step by step he 
edged his way behind the counter to the shelves of medical supplies. Peering in 
the gloom over one shelf after the other, he tried to locate the Ubik. The 
lighting of the store had dimmed; the antique fixtures were fading. 
"I've regressed all the Ubik in this store," the pharmacist said in a youthful, 
high-pitched Jory voice. "Back to the liver and kidney balm. It's no good now." 
"I'll go to the other drugstore that has it," Joe said. He leaned against a 
counter, painfully drawing in slow, irregular gulps of air. 
Jory, from within the balding pharmacist, said, "It'll be closed." 
"Tomorrow," Joe said. "I can hold out until tomorrow morning." 
"You can't," Jory said. "And, anyhow, the Ubik at that drugstore will be 
regressed too." 
"Another town," Joe said. 
"Wherever you go, it'll be regressed. Back to the salve or back to the powder or 
back to the elixir or back to the balm. You'll never see a spray can of it, Joe 
Chip." Jory, in the 
UBIK 209 
form of the bald-headed pharmacist, smiled, showing celluloid-like dentures. 
"I can -" He broke off, gathering his meager vitality to him. Trying, by his own 
strength, to warm his stiffening, cold-numbed body. "Bring it up to the 
present," he said. "To 1992." 
"Can you, Mr. Chip?" The pharmacist handed Joe a square pasteboard container. 
"Here you are. Open it and you'll see -" 
Joe said, "I know what I'll see." He concentrated on the blue jar of liver and 
kidney balm. Evolve forward, he said to it, flooding it with his need; he poured 
whatever energy he had left onto the container. It did not change. This is the 
regular world, he said to it. "Spray can," he said aloud. He shut his eyes, 
resting. 
"It's not a spray can, Mr. Chip," the pharmacist said. Going here and there in 
the drugstore he shut off lights; at the cash register he punched a key and the 
drawer rattled open. Expertly, the pharmacist transferred the bills and change 
from the drawer into a metal box with a lock on it. 
"You are a spray can," Joe said to the pasteboard container which he held in his 
hand. "This is 1992," he said, and tried to exert everything; he put the 
entirety of himself into the effort. 
The last light blinked out, turned off by the pseudo pharmacist. A dull gleam 
shone into the drugstore from the street-lamp outside; by it, Joe could make out 
the shape of the object in his hand, its boxlike lines. Opening the door, the 
pharmacist said, "Come on, Mr. Chip. Time to go home. She was wrong, wasn't she? 
And you won't see her again, because she's so far on the road to being reborn; 
she's not thinking about you any more, or me or Runciter. What Ella sees now are 
various lights: red and dingy, then maybe bright orange -" 
"What I hold here," Joe said, "is a spray can." 
"No," the pharmacist said. "I'm sorry, Mr. Chip. I really am. But it's not." 
210 PHILIP K. DICK
Joe set the pasteboard container down on a nearby counter. He turned, with 
dignity, and began the long, slow journey across the drugstore to the front door 
which the pharmacist held open for him. Neither of them spoke until Joe, at 
last, passed through the doorway and out onto the nocturnal sidewalk. 
Behind him the pharmacist emerged too; he bent and locked the door after the two 
of them. 
"I think I'll complain to the manufacturer," Joe said. "About the -" He ceased 
talking. Something constricted his throat; he could not breathe and he could not 
speak. Then, temporarily, the blockage abated. "Your regressed drugstore," he 
finished. 
"Goodnight," the pharmacist said. He remained for a moment, eying Joe in the 
evening gloom. Then, shrugging, he started off. 
To his left, Joe made out the dark shape of a bench where people waited for a 
streetcar. He managed to reach it, to seat himself. The other persons, two or 
three, whichever it was, squeezed away from him, either out of aversion or to 
give him room; he could not tell which, and he didn't care. All he felt was the 
support of the bench beneath him, the release of some of his vast inertial 
weight. A few more minutes, he said to himself. If I remember right. Christ, 
what a thing to have to go through, he said to himself. For the second time. 
Anyhow, we tried, he thought as he watched the yellow fliekering lights and neon 
signs, the flow of cars going in both directions directly before his eyes. He 
thought to himself, Runciter kicked and struggled; Ella has been scratching and 
biting and gouging for a long time. And, he thought, I damn near evolved the jar 
of Ubik liver and kidney balm back to the present. I almost succeeded. There was 
something in knowing that, an awareness of his own great strength. His final 
transcendental attempt. 
The streetcar, a clanging metal enormity, came to a grating 
UBIK 211
halt before the bench. The several people beside Joe rose and hurried out to 
board it by its rear platform. 
"Hey, mister!" the conductor yelled to Joe. "Are you coming or aren't you?" 
Joe said nothing. The conductor waited, then jerked his signal cord. Noisily, 
the streetcar started up; it continued on, and then at last disappeared beyond 
his range of vision. Lots of luck, Joe said to himself as he heard the racket of 
the streetcar's wheels die away. And so long. 
He leaned back, closed his eyes. 
"Excuse me." Bending over him in the darkness a girl in a synthetic 
ostrich-leather coat; he looked up at her, jarred into awareness. "Mr. Chip?" 
she said. Pretty and slender, dressed in hat, gloves, suit and high heels. She 
held something in her hand; he saw the outline of a package. "Of New York? Of 
Runciter Associates? I don't want to give this to the wrong person." 
"I'm Joe Chip," he said. For a moment he thought the girl might be Ella 
Runciter. But he had never seen her before. "Who sent you?" he said. 
"Dr. Sonderbar," the girl said. "The younger Dr. Sonderbar, son of Dr. Sonderbar 
the founder." 
"Who's that?" The name meant nothing to him, and then he remembered where he had 
seen it. "The Liver and Kidney man," he said. "Processed oleander leaves, oil of 
pepper-mint, charcoal, cobalt chloride, zinc oxide -" Weariness overcame him; he 
stopped talking. 
The girl said, "By making use of the most advanced techniques of modern-day 
science, the reversion of matter to earlier forms can be reversed, and at a 
price any conapt owner can afford. Ubik is sold by leading home-art stores 
throughout Earth. So look for it at the place you shop, Mr. Chip." 
Fully. conscious now, he said, "Look for it where?" He struggled to his feet, 
stood inexpertly swaying. "You're from 1992; what you said came from Runciter's 
TV commercial." 
PHILIP K. DICK 
An evening wind rustled at him and he felt it tug at him, drawing him away with 
it; he seemed to be like some ragged bundle of webs and cloth, barely holding 
together. 
"Yes, Mr. Chip." The girl handed him a package. "You brought me from the future, 
by what you did there inside the drugstore a few moments ago. You summoned me 
directly from the factory. Mr. Chip, I could spray it on you, if you're too weak 
to. Shall I? I'm an official factory representative and technical consultant; I 
know how to apply it." She took the package swiftly back from his trembling 
hands; tearing it open, she immediately sprayed him with Ubik. In the dusk he 
saw the spray can glint. He saw the happy, colored lettering. 
"Thanks," he said after a time. After he felt better. And warmer. 
The girl said, "You didn't need as much this time as you did in the hotel room; 
you must be stronger than before. Here, take the can of it; you might need it 
before morning." 
"Can I get more?" Joe said. "When this runs out?" 
"Evidently so. If you got me here once. I would assume you can get me here 
again. The same way." She moved away from him, merging with the shadows created 
by the dense walls of closed-up nearby stores. 
"What is Ubik?" Joe said, wanting her to stay. 
"A spray can of Ubik," the girl answered, "is a portable negative ionizer, with 
a self-contained, high-voltage, low-amp unit powered by a peak-gain helium 
battery of 25kv. The negative ions are given a counter-clockwise spin by a 
radically biased acceleration chamber, which creates a centripetal tendency to 
them so that they cohere rather than dissipate. A negative ion field diminishes 
the velocity of anti-protophasons normally present in the atmosphere; as soon as 
their veloeity falls they cease to be anti-protophasons and, under the principle 
of parity, no longer can unite with protophasons radiated from persons frozen in 
cold-pac; that is, those in half-life. The end result is that the proportion of 
protophasons not canceled by anti-protophasoas increases,
which means - for a specific time, anyhow - an increment in the net put-forth 
field of protophasonic activity... which the affected half-lifer experiences as 
greater vitality plus a lowering of the experience of low cold-pac temperatures. 
So you can see why regressed forms of Ubik failed to -" 
Joe said reflexively, "To say 'negative ions' is redundant. All ions are 
negative." 
Again the girl moved away. "Maybe I'll see you again," she said gently. "It was 
rewarding to bring you the spray can; maybe next time -" 
"Maybe we can have dinner together," Joe said. 
"I'll look forward to it." She ebbed farther and farther away. 
"Who invented Ubik?" Joe asked. 
"A number of responsible half-lifers whom Jory threatened. But principally by 
Ella Runciter. It took her and them working together a long, long time. And 
there still isn't very much of it available, as yet." Ebbing from him in her 
trim, covert way, she continued to retreat and then, by degrees, was gone. 
"At the Matador," Joe called after her. "I understand Jory did a good job 
materializing it. Or regressing it just right, whatever it is he does." He 
listened, but the girl did not answer. 
Carefully carrying the spray can of Ubik, Joe Chip walked out to greet the 
evening traffic, searching for a cab. 
Under a streetlight he held up the spray can of Ubik, read the printing on the 
label. 
I THINK HER NAME IS MYRA LANEY, LOOK ON REVERSE SIDE OF CONTAINER FOR ADDRESS 
AND PHONE NUMBER. 
"Thanks," Joe said to the spray can. We are served by organic ghosts, he 
thought, who, speaking and writing, pass through this our new environment. 
Watching, wise, physical ghosts from the full-life world, elements of which have 
become 
214 PHILIP K. DICK
for us invading but agreeable splinters of a substance that pulsates like a 
former heart. And of all of them, he thought, thanks to Glen Runciter. In 
particular. The writer of instructions, labels and notes. Valuable notes. 
He raised his arm to slow to a grumpy halt a passing 1936 Graham cab. 
17
I am Ubik. Before the universe was, I am. I made the suns. I made the worlds. I 
created the lives and the places they inhabit; I move them here, I put them 
there. They go as I say, they do as I tell them. I am the word and my name is 
never spoken, the name which no one knows. I am called Ubik, but that is not my 
name. I am. I shall always be. 
Glen Runciter could not find the moratorium owner. 
"Are you sure you don't know where he is?" Runciter asked Miss Beason, the 
moratorium owner's secretary. "It's essential that I talk to Ella again." 
"I'll have her brought out," Miss Beason said. "You may use office 4-B; please 
wait there, Mr. Runciter; I will have your wife for you in a very short time. 
Try to make yourself comfortable." 
Locating office 4-B, Runciter paced about restlessly. At last a moratorium 
attendant appeared, wheeling in Ella's casket on a handtruck. "Sorry to keep you 
waiting," the attendant said; he began at once to set up the electronic 
communing mechanism, humming happily as he worked. 
In short order the task was completed. The attendant checked the circuit one 
last time, nodded in satisfaction, then started to leave the office. 
"This is for you," Runciter said, and handed him several fifty-cent pieces which 
he had scrounged from his various pockets. "I appreciate the rapidity with which 
you accomplished the job." 
216 PHILIP K. DICK 
"Thank you, Mr. Runciter," the attendant said. He glanced at the coins, then 
frowned. "What kind of money is this?" he said. 
Runciter took a good long look at the fifty-cent pieces. He saw at once what the 
attendant meant; very definitely, the coins were not as they should be. Whose 
profile is this? he asked himself. Who's this on all three coins? Not the right 
person at all. And yet he's familiar. I know him. 
And then he recognized the profile. I wonder what this means, he asked himself. 
Strangest thing I've ever seen. Most things in life eventually can be explained. 
But - Joe Chip on a fifty-cent piece? 
It was the first Joe Chip money he had ever seen. 
He had an intuition, chillingly, that if he searched his pockets, and his 
billfold, he would find more. 
This was just the beginning. 
ABOUT THE AUTHOR 
Philip K. Dick was born in Chicago in 1928 and lived most of his life in 
California. He briefly attended the University of California, but dropped out 
before completing any classes. In 1952 he began writing professionally and 
proceeded to write thirty-six novels and five short story collections. He won 
the Hugo Award for best novel in 1962 for The Man in the High Castle and the 
John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel of the year in 1974 for Flow My 
Tears the Policeman Said. Philip K. Dick died of heart failure following a 
stroke on March 2, 1982, in Santa Ana, California,