Solar Lottery by Philip K. Dick Page A

was no sound, no life. He struggled stiffly up, bewildered, his mind broken in vague fragments. Through the open window gray early-morning light filtered, and a cold ominous wind whipped icily around him. He backed away, halted, tried to collect himself.
    Figures lay sprawled out, mixed with disordered clothing and covers, in heaps here and there. He stumbled between outstretched limbs, half-covered arms, stark-white legs that shocked and horrified him. He distinguished Eleanor, lying against the wall, on her side, one arm thrust out, thin fingers curled, legs drawn up under her, breathing restlessly between half-parted lips. He wandered on—and stopped dead.
    The gray light filtered over another face and figure, his old friend Al Davis, peaceful and content in the arms of his soundly sleeping wife. The two of them were pressed tight together, both oblivious to everything else.
    A little further on were more persons, some of them snoring dully, one stirring into fitful wakefulness. Another groaned and groped feebly for some covering. His foot crushed a glass; splinters and a pool of dark liquid leaked out. Another face ahead was familiar. Who was it? A man, dark-haired, good features …
    It was his own face!
    He stumbled against a door and found himself in a yellow-lithall. Terror seized him and he began running blindly. Silently, his bare feet carried him down vast carpeted corridors, endless and deserted, past stone-gray windows, up noiseless flights of steps that never seemed to end. He blundered wildly around a corner and found himself caught in an alcove, a full-length mirror rising up ahead of him, blocking his way.
    A wavering figure hovered within the mirror. An empty, lifeless insect-thing caught momentarily, suspended in the yellowed, watery depths. He gazed mutely at it, at the waxen hair, the vapid mouth and lips, the colorless eyes. Arms limp and boneless at its sides; a spineless, bleached thing that blinked vacantly back at him, without sound or motion.
    He screamed—and the image winked out. He plunged on along the gray-lit corridors, feet barely skimming the dust-thick carpets. He felt nothing under him. He was rising, carried upward by his great terror, a screaming, streaking thing that hurtled toward the high-domed roof above.
    Arms out, he shot soundlessly, through walls and panels, in and out of empty rooms, down deserted passages, a blinded, terrorized thing that flashed and wheeled desperately, beat against lead-sealed windows in desperate, futile efforts to escape.
    With a violent crash he struck stunningly against a brick fireplace, Broken, cracked, he fluttered helplessly down to the soft dust-heavy carpet. For a moment he lay bewildered, and then he was stumbling on, hurrying frantically, mindlessly, hurrying anywhere, hands in front of his face, eyes closed, mouth open.
    There were sounds ahead. A glowing yellow light filtered through a half-opened doorway. In a room a handful of men were sitting around a table spilled over with tapes and reports. An atronic bulb burned in the center, a warm, unwavering miniature sun that pulled him hypnotically. Surrounded with coffee cups were writers, the men murmuring and poringover their work. There was one huge heavy-set man with massive, sloping shoulders.
    “Verrick!” he shouted at the man. His voice came out thin and tiny, a feeble, fluttering insect-voice. “Verrick, help me!”
    Reese Verrick glanced up angrily. “What do you want? I’m busy. This has to be done before we can begin moving.”
    “Verrick!” he screamed, pulsing with terror and mindless panic. “
Who am I?”
    “You’re Keith Pellig,” Verrick answered irritably, wiping his forehead with one immense paw and pushing his tapes away. “You’re the assassin picked by the Convention. You have to be ready to go to work in less than two hours. You have a job to do.”

SEVEN
    Eleanor Stevens appeared from the gray-shadowed hall. “Verrick, this isn’t Keith Pellig. Get Moore