Solar Lottery by Philip K. Dick

in the shadows. She emptied a shallow glazed-china dish of petite hard candies over one of the chairs and filled the dish with water. Very rapidly she doused her face, hands and arms, then yanked down an embroidered cloth from the window case and dried herself.
    “Come on, Benteley,” she muttered. “Let’s get out of here.” She started blindly from the room, and Benteley struggled to his feet and after her. Her small bare-breasted shape glided like a phantom between the gloomy objects that made up Verrick’s possessions, huge ponderous statues and glass cases, up short dark-carpeted stairs and around corners where immobile robot servants stood waiting silently for instructions.
    They came out on a deserted floor, draped in shadows and dust-thick darkness. Eleanor waited for him to catch up with her. “I’m going to bed,” she said bluntly. “You can come if you want, or you can go home.”
    “My home’s gone. I have no home.” He followed after her, down a corridor past a series of half-closed doors. Lights showed here and there. He heard voices. He thought he recognized some of them. Men’s voices mixed with sleepy, half-swallowed women’s murmur. Abruptly Eleanor vanished and he was alone.
    He felt his way through a haze of remote movement and wavering shapes. Once he crashed violently against something. A hail of shattered objects cascaded down around him. Stunned, he blundered off away again and stood foolishly.
    “What are you doing here?” a hard voice demanded. It was Herb Moore, someplace close by. His face flickered and rose, illuminated like a spectre’s, without sound or support. “You don’t belong here!” The voice mushroomed until it and the flushed, puffy face filled his vision. “Get the hell out of here! Go where you belong, you third-rate derelict. Class 8–8? Don’t make me laugh. Who said you—”
    Benteley smashed Moore. The face crumpled and spurted liquid and fragments, utterly destroyed. Something slammed into him and he was bowled over. Choked and imprisoned by a rolling, slobbering mass, he fought his way upward, struggling to catch hold of something solid.
    “Pipe down,” Eleanor whispered urgently. “Both of you, for God’s sake! Be quiet.”
    Benteley became inert. Beside him Moore puffed and panted and wiped at his bleeding face. “I’ll kill you, you creep bastard.” Sobbing with pain and rage he bellowed, “You’ll be sorry you hit me!”
    The next thing he knew he was sitting on something low, bending down and fumbling for his shoes. His coat was lying on the floor in front of him. Then his shoes lay lifeless, separated from each other by an expanse of luxurious carpet. There was no sound; the room was utterly silent and cold. A dim light flickered off in a distant corner.
    “Lock the door,” Eleanor’s voice came from nearby. “I think Moore’s gone off his rocker or something. He’s out there in the hall shambling around like a berserker.”
    Benteley found the door and locked its old-fashioned manual bolt. Eleanor was standing in the center of the room, one leg pulled up, foot thrust behind her, carefully unlacing the thongs of her sandals. As Benteley watched in dazed silence, awed and astonished, she kicked off her sandals, unzipped her slacks, and stepped from them. For a moment bare ankles gleamed in the lamplight. Pale, shimmering calves; the sight danced in front of him until, overcome, he closed his eyestight. The slim lines, small-boned, delicate perfectly smooth legs, all the way up to her knees, at which point her undergarment began …
    Then he was stumbling his way down, and she was reaching up for him. Moist arms, quivering breasts and dark red nipples full and solid under him. She gasped and shuddered and locked her arms around him. The roaring in his head boiled up and over; he closed his eyes and peacefully allowed himself to sink down into the torrent.
        Much later he awoke. The room was deathly cold. Nothing stirred. There