Ubik

"Joe has no sexual understanding. Nina Freede read his mind the other day and he's too poor even to-" He broke off, because the office door had opened; Mrs. Frick teetered her way in carrying G. G.'s bounty check for him to sign. "I know why he wants her along on the Mick operation," Runciter said as he scratched his signature on the check. "So he can keep an eye on her. He's going too; he's going to measure the psi field despite what the client stipulated. We have to know what we're up against. Thank you, Mrs. Frick." He waved her away and held the check out to G. G. Ashwood. "Suppose we don't measure the psi field and it turns out to be too intense for our inertials. Who gets blamed?"

"We do," G. G. said.

"I told them eleven wasn't enough. We're supplying our best; we're doing the best we can. After all, getting Stanton Mick's patronage is a matter of great importance to us. Amazing, that someone as wealthy and powerful as Mick could be so short-sighted, so goddam miserly. Mrs. Frick, is Joe out there? Joe Chip?"

Mrs. Frick said, "Mr. Chip is in the outer office with a number of other people."

"How many other people, Mrs. Frick? Ten or eleven?"

"I'd say about that many, Mr. Runciter. Give or take one or two."

To G. G. Ashwood, Runciter said, "That's the group. I want to see them, all of them, together. Before they leave for Luna." To Mrs. Frick he said, "Send them in." He puffed vigorously on his green-wrapped cigar.

She gyrated out.

"We know," Runciter said to G. G., "that as individuals they perform well. It's all down here on paper." He rattled the documents on his desk. "But how about together? How great a polyencephalic counter-field will they generate together? Ask yourself that, G. G. That is the question to ask."

"I guess time will tell," G. G. Ashwood said.

"I've been in this business a long time," Runciter said. From the outer office people began to file in. "This is my contribution to contemporary civilization."

"That puts it well," G. G. said. "You're a policeman guarding human privacy."

"You know what Ray Hollis says about us?" Runciter said. "He says we're trying to turn the clock back." He eyed the individuals who had begun to fill up his office; they gathered near one another, none of them speaking. They waited for him. What an ill-assorted bunch, he thought pessimistically. A young stringbean of a girl with glasses and straight lemon-yellow hair, wearing a cowboy hat, black lace mantilla and Bermuda shorts; that would be Edie Dorn. A good-looking, older, dark woman with tricky, deranged eyes who wore a silk sari and nylon obi and bobby socks; Francy something, a part-time schizophrenic who imagined that sentient beings from Betelgeuse occasionally landed on the roof of her conapt building. A woolly-haired adolescent boy wrapped in a superior and cynical cloud of pride, this one, in a floral mumu and Spandex bloomers, Runciter had never encountered before. And so it went: five females and - he counted - five males. Someone was missing.

Ahead of Joe Chip the smoldering, brooding girl, Patricia Conley, entered. That made the eleventh; the group had all appeared.

"You made good time, Mrs. Jackson," he said to the mannish, thirtyish, sand-colored lady wearing ersatz vicuna trousers and a gray sweatshirt on which had been printed a now faded full-face portrait of Bertrand Lord Russell. "You had less time than anybody else, inasmuch as I notified you last."

Tippy Jackson smiled a bloodless, sand-colored smile.

"Some of you I know," Runciter said, rising from his chair and indicating with his hands that they should find chairs and make themselves comfortable, smoking if necessary. "You, Miss Dorn; Mr, Chip and I chose you first because of your topnotch activity vis-a-vis S. Dole Melipone, whom you eventually lost through no fault of your own."

"Thank you, Mr. Runciter," Edie Dorn said in a wispy, shy trickle of a voice; she blushed and stared wide-eyed at the far wall. "It's good to be a part of this new undertaking," she added with undernourished conviction.

"Which one of you is Al Hammond?" Runciter asked, consulting his documents.

An excessively tall, stoop-shouldered Negro with a gentle expression on his elongated face made a motion to indicate himself.

"I've never met you before," Runciter said, reading the material from Al Hammond's file. "You rate highest among our anti-precogs. I should, of course, have gotten around to meeting you. How many of the rest of you are anti-precog?" Three additional hands appeared. "The four of you," Runciter said, "will undoubtedly get a great bloop out of meeting and working with G. G. Ashwood's most recent discovery, who aborts precogs on a new basis. Perhaps Miss Conley herself will describe it to us." He nodded toward Pat-

And found himself standing before a shop window on Fifth Avenue, a rare-coin shop; he was studying an uncirculated U.S. gold dollar and wondering if he could afford to add it to his collection.