Authors: Philip K. Dick
Time Out of Joint (23 page)
"Luck," his father said. "Now, I know fellows that can walk along and spot money on the pavement any day of the week. I never can. I bet I never found a dime in the gutter all my life."
"I can do that," Ragle Gumm chanted. "I can figure it out; I know how."
Later, his father relaxing on the couch in the living room, relating tales about World War Two, his part in the Pacific phase. His mother washing dishes in the kitchen. The tranquillity of the house ...
"What are you going to do with your dollar?" his father asked.
"Invest it," Ragle Gumm said. "So I’ll have more."
"Big businessman, eh?" his father said. "Don’t forget about corporation taxes."
"I’ll have plenty left over," he said confidently, leaning back the way his father did, hands behind his head, elbows stuck out.
He savored this happiest of all moments of life.
"But why so inaccurate?" he asked Mrs. Keitelbein. "The Tucker car. It was a terrific car, but—"
Mrs. Keitelbein said, "You did ride in one, once."
"Yes," he said. "Or at least I think so. When I was a kid." And, at that point remembering, he could feel the presence of the car. "In Los Angeles," he said. "A friend of my dad’s owned one of the prototypes."
"You see, that would explain it," she said.
"But it never was put into production. It never got beyond the hand-built stage."
"But you needed it," Mrs. Keitelbein said. "It was for you."
Ragle Gumm said, "Uncle Tom’s Cabin." It had seemed perfectly natural to him, at the time, when Vic had shown them all the brochure from the Book-of-the-Month Club. "That thing was written a century before my time. That’s a really ancient book."
Picking up the magazine article, Mrs. Keitelbein held it out to him. "A childhood verity," she said. "Try to remember."
There, in the article, a line about the book. He had owned a copy, read the book over and over again. Battered yellow and black covers, charcoal-like illustrations as lurid as the book itself. Again he felt the weight of the thing in his hands, the dusty, rough pressure of the fabric and paper. Himself, off in the quiet and shadows of the yard, nose down, eyes fixed on the text. Keeping it with him in his room, rereading it because it was a stable element; it did not change. It gave him a sense of certainty. A sense that he could count on it to be there, exactly as it had always been. Even the crayon markings on the first page that he had made, his scrawled initials.
"Everything in terms of your requirements," Mrs. Keitelbein said. "What you needed, for your security and comfort. Why should it be accurate? If Uncle Tom’s Cabin was a necessity of your childhood, it was included."
Like a daydream, he thought. Keeping in the good. Excluding the undesirable.
"If radios infringed, then there were no radios," Mrs. Keitelbein said. "Or at least there weren’t supposed to be."
But such a natural thing, he realized. They overlooked a radio every now and then. They kept forgetting that in the illusion the radio did not exist; they kept slipping up in just such trifles. Typical difficulty in maintaining daydreams ... they failed to be consistent. Sitting at the table playing poker with us, Bill Black saw the crystal set and did not remember. It was too commonplace. It did not register; he had his mind on more important matters.
In her patient way, Mrs. Keitelbein went on, "So you recognize that they built for you—and placed you in—a safe, controlled environment in which you could do your job without doubt or distractions. Or the realization that you were on the wrong side."
Vic said savagely, "The wrong side?—the side that was attacked!"
"In a civil war," Ragle said, "every side is wrong. It’s hopeless to try to untangle it. Everyone is a victim."
In his lucid periods, before they had taken him from his office and established him in Old Town, he had evolved a plan. He had carefully assembled his notes and papers, packed his possessions, and prepared to leave. In a roundabout manner he had managed to make contact with a group of California lunatics at one of the concentration camps in the Midwest; doses of reorientation training had not yet affected them on their loyalties, and from them he had gotten instructions. He was to meet with a free, undetected lunatic in St. Louis, at a particular time, on a particular day. But he had never arrived there. The day before, they had picked up his contact, gotten the information from him. And that was that.
In the concentration camps, the captured lunatics underwent a systematic brainwashing, but of course it was never called that. This was education along new lines, a freeing of the individual from prejudices, malformed convictions, from neurotic obsessions and fixed ideas. It helped him mature. It was knowledge. He came forth a better man.
When Old Town had been built, the people who entered it and became part of its life underwent the technique used in the camps. They volunteered. All but Ragle Gumm. And on him the camp technique fastened the last elements of his withdrawal into the past.
They made it work, he realized. I withdrew and they followed right along after me. They kept me in sight.
Vic said, "You better think this out. It’s a big thing, to go over to the other side."
"He already has made up his mind," Mrs. Keitelbein said. "He did that three years ago."
"I’m not going with you," Vic said.
"I know that," Ragle said.
"Are you going to walk out on Margo, your own sister?"
"Yes," he said.
"You’re going to walk out on everybody."
"Yes," he said.
"So they can bomb us and kill us all."
"No," he said. Because after he had volunteered, left his private business and gone to work at Denver, he had learned something that the top officials of the government knew that had never been made public. It was a well-guarded secret. The lunatics, the colonists on Luna, had agreed to come to terms in the first weeks of war. They insisted only that a sizable effort be maintained toward further colonization, and that lunatics not be subjected to punitive action after hostilities had ceased. Without Ragle Gumm the government at Denver would yield on those points. The threat of missile attacks would be enough. Public feeling against the Lunar colonists did not go that far; three years of fighting and suffering for both sides had made a difference.
Vic said, "You’re a traitor." He stared at his brother-in-law. Except, Ragle thought, I’m not his brother-in-law. We’re not related. I did not know him before Old Town.
Yes, he thought. I did know him. When I lived in Boyd, Oregon. He operated a grocery store, there. I used to buy my fresh fruit and vegetables from him. He was always puttering about the potato bins in his white apron, smiling at the customers, worrying about spoilage. That was the extent to which we knew each other.
Nor have I got a sister.
But, he thought, I will consider them my family, because in the two years and a half at Old Town they have been a genuine family, along with Sammy. And June and Bill Black are my neighbors. I am walking out on them, family and relatives, neighbors and friends. That is what civil war means. In a sense it’s the most idealistic kind of war. The most heroic. It means the most sacrifices, the fewest practical advantages.
I’m doing it because I know it is right. It comes first, my duty. Everyone else, Bill Black and Victor Nielson and Margo and Lowery and Mrs. Keitelbein and Mrs. Kesselman—they all have done their duty; they have been loyal to what they believe in. I intend to do the same.
Sticking out his hand he said to Vic, "Good-bye."
Vic, his face wooden, ignored him.
"Are you going back to Old Town?" Ragle said.
Vic nodded.
"Maybe I’ll see you all again," Ragle said. "After the war." He did not believe that it would last much longer. "I wonder if they’ll keep up Old Town," he said. "Without me in the center."
Turning, Vic walked off, away from him, to the door of the drugstore. "Any way to get out of here?" he said loudly, his back to the two of them.
"You’ll be let out," Mrs. Keitelbein said. "We’ll drop you off on the highway and you can arrange for a ride back to Old Town."
Vic remained by the door.
It’s a shame, Ragle Gumm thought. But it has been that way for some time, now. This is nothing new.
"Would you kill me?" he said to Vic. "If you could?"
"No," Vic said. "There’s always the chance you’ll switch back again, to this side."
To Mrs. Keitelbein, Ragle said, "Let’s go."
"Your second trip," she said. "You’ll be leaving Earth again."
"That’s right," Ragle said. Another lunatic joining the group already there.
Beyond the windows of the drugstore a shape tilted on its end, to launching position. Vapors boiled up from its bottom. The loading platform coasted over to it and locked in place. Halfway up the side of the ship a door opened. A man stuck his head out, blinked, strained to see in the night darkness. Then he lit a colored light.
The man with the colored light resembled Walter Keitelbein to a striking degree. As a matter of fact, he was Walter Keitelbein.
PHILIP K. DICK
TIME OUT OF JOINT
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 numerous novels and short-story collections. He won the Hugo Award for the 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 on March 2, 1982, in Santa Ana, California, of heart failure following a stroke.
ALSO BY PHILIP K. DICK
CLANS OF THE ALPHANE MOON
When CIA agent Chuck Rittersdorf and his psychiatrist wife, Mary, file for divorce, they have no idea that in a few weeks they’ll be shooting it out on Alpha III M2, the distant moon ruled by various psychotics liberated from a mental ward. Nor do they suspect that Chuck’s new employer, the famous TV comedian Bunny Hentman, will also be there aiming his own laser gun.
0-375-71928-8
THE SIMULACRA
In The Simulacra, the government is a fraud and the President is an android. Ian Duncan is desperately in love with the first lady, whom he has never met. Richard Kongrosian is convinced his body odor is lethal. And the fascistic Bertold Goltz is trying to overthrow the government. In classic fashion, Philip K. Dick shows there is always another layer of conspiracy beneath the one we see.
0-375-71926-1
ALSO AVAILABLE:
Confessions of a Crap Artist, 0-679-74114-3
The Divine Invasion, 0-679-73445-7
Dr. Bloodmoney, 0-375-71929-6
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, 0-679-74066-X
Galactic Pot-Healer, 0-679-75297-8
The Game-Players of Titan, 0-679-74065-1
The Man in the High Castle, 0-679-74067-8
Martian Time-Slip, 0-679-76167-5
A Maze of Death, 0-679-75298-6
Now Wait for Last Year, 0-679-74220-4
Radio Free Albemuth, 0-679-78137-4
A Scanner Darkly, 0-679-73665-4
The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick, 0-679-74787-7
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, 0-679-73666-2
The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, 0-679-73444-9
Ubik, 0-679-73664-6
Valis, 0-679-73446-5
We Can Build You, 0-679-75296-X
The World Jones Made, 0-679-74219-0
Available at your local bookstore, or call toll-free to order:
1-800-793-2665 (credit cards only).
NOVELS BY PHILIP K. DICK
Clans of the Alphane Moon
Confessions of a Crap Artist
The Cosmic Puppets
Counter-Clock World
The Crack in Space
Deus Irae (with Roger Zelazny)
The Divine Invasion
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Dr. Bloodmoney
Dr. Futurity
Eye in the Sky
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
Galactic Pot-Healer
The Game-Players of Titan
The Man in the High Castle
The Man Who Japed
Martian Time-Slip
A Maze of Death
Now Wait for Last Year
Our Friends From Frolix 8
The Penultimate Truth
Radio Free Albemuth
A Scanner Darkly
The Simulacra
Solar Lottery
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
Time Out of Joint
The Transmigration of Timothy Archer
Ubik
The Unteleported Man
VALIS
Vulcan’s Hammer
We Can Build You
The World Jones Made
The Zap Gun
FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, MAY 2002
Copyright © 1959 by Philip K. Dick, copyright renewed 1987 by Laura Coelho, Christopher Dick, and Isa Dick
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Time Out of Joint was originally published in paperback in the United States by J.B. Lippincott, New York, in 1959.
Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of
Random House, Inc.
The Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the
Library of Congress.
eISBN: 978-0-307-42975-9
v3.0