Ubik by Philip K. Dick Page A

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 authentic visitation. I can distinguish the difference.”
    “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 perambulated 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, extending 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 riffraff, 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 everyone realizes when Runciter Associates is mentioned. I’m already delighted at your activity, with one small exception that I perceive your tester there dingling with his equipment. 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. “You’re not an employee of Mr. Mick; you’re my employee.”
    “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. Probably 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, examined 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