A Scanner Darkly

“No shit,” Fred said dismally, realizing that the “aboveand-beyond” funds were of course those provided him for his narking. Every week small-denomination bills were dispensed to him by a machine masquerading as a Dr. Pepper source at a Mexican bar and restaurant in Placentia. This was in essence payoffs on information he gave that resulted in convictions. Sometimes this sum became exceptionally great, as when a major heroin seizure occurred.

Hank read on reflectively, “And according to this informant, Arctor comes and goes mysteriously, especially around sunset. After he arrives home he eats, then on what may be pretexts takes off again. Sometimes very fast. But he’s never gone for long.” He glanced up—the scramble suit glanced up—at Fred. “Have you observed any of this? Can you verify? Does it amount to anything?”

“Most likely his chick, Donna,” Fred said.

“Well, ‘most likely.’ You’re supposed to know.”

“It’s Donna. He’s over there banging her night and day.” He felt acutely uncomfortable. “But I’ll check into it and let you know. Who’s this informant? Might be a burn toward Arctor.”

“Hell, we don’t know. On the phone. No print—he used some sort of rinky-dink electronic grid.” Hank chuckled; it sounded odd, coming out metallically as it did. “But it worked. Enough.”

“Christ,” Fred protested, “it’s that burned-out acid head Jim Barris doing a schizy grudge number on Arctor’s head! Barris took endless electronic-repair courses in the Service, plus heavy-machinery maintenance. I wouldn’t give him the time of day as an informant.”

Hank said, “We don’t know it’s Barris, and anyhow there may be more to Barris than ‘burned-out acid head.’ We’ve got several people looking into it. Nothing I feel would be of use to you, at least so far.”

“Anyhow, it’s one of Arctor’s friends,” Fred said.

“Yes, it’s undoubtedly a vengeance burn trip. These dopers—phoning in on each other every time they get sore. As a matter of fact, he did seem to know Arctor from a close standpoint.”

“Nice guy,” Fred said bitterly.

“Well, that’s how we find out,” Hank said. “What’s the difference between that and what you’re doing?”

“I’m not doing it for a grudge,” Fred said.

“Why are you doing it, actually?”

Fred, after an interval said, “Damned if I know.”

“You’re off Weeks. I think for the time being I’ll assign you primarily to observe Bob Arctor. Does he have a middle name? He uses the initial—”

Fred made a strangled, robotlike noise. “Why Arctor?”

“Covertly funded, covertly engaged, making enemies by his activities. What’s Arctor’s middle name?” Hank’s pen poised patiently. He waited to hear.

“Postlethwaite.”

“How do you spell that?”

“I don’t know, I don’t fucking know,” Fred said.

“Postlethwaite,” Hank said, writing a few letters. “What nationality is that?”

“Welsh,” Fred said curtly. He could barely hear; his ears had blurred out, and one by one his other senses as well.

“Are those the people who sing about the men of Harlech? What is ‘Harlech’? A town somewhere?”

“Harlech is where the heroic defense against the Yorkists in 1468—” Fred broke off. Shit, he thought. This is terrible.

“Wait, I want to get this down,” Hank was saying, writing away with his pen.

Fred said, “Does this mean you’ll be bugging Arctor’s house and car?”

“Yes, with the new holographic system; it’s better, and we currently have a number of them unrequisitioned. You’ll want storage and printout on everything, I would assume.” Hank noted that too.

“I’ll take what I can get,” Fred said. He felt totally spaced from all this; he wished the debriefing session would end and he thought: If only I could drop a couple tabs—

Across from him the other formless blur wrote and wrote, filling in all the inventory ident numbers for all the technological gadgetry that would, if approval came through, soon be available to him, by which to set up a constant monitoring system of the latest design, on his own house, on himself.

***

For over an hour Barris had been attempting to perfect a silencer made from ordinary household materials costing no more than eleven cents. He had almost done so, with aluminum foil and a piece of foam rubber.

In the night darkness of Bob Arctor’s back yard, among the heaps of weeds and rubbish, he was preparing to fire his pistol with the homemade silencer on it.

“The neighbors will hear,” Charles Freck said uneasily. He could see lit windows all over, many people probably watching TV or rolling joints.

Luckman, lounging out of sight but able to watch, said, “They only call in murders in this neighborhood.”

“Why do you need a silencer?” Charles Freck asked Barris. “I mean, they’re illegal.”

Barris said moodily, “In this day and age, with the kind of degenerate society we live in and the depravity of the individual, every person of worth needs a gun at all times. To protect himself.” He half shut his eyes, and fired his pistol with its homemade silencer. An enormous report sounded, temporarily deafening the three of them. Dogs in far-off yards barked.