Ubik

"I couldn't help you climb the stairs," Runciter said, his heavy face stern, "She would have seen me. Matter of fact, I was afraid she'd come all the way into the room with you, and then we'd be in trouble because she-" He broke off, bent and hoisted Joe up to his feet as if Joe had no weight left in him, no remaining material constituents. "We'll talk about that later. Here." He carried Joe under his arm, across the room - not to the bed but to the overstuffed chair in which he himself had been sitting. "Can you hold on a few seconds longer?" Runciter asked. "I want to shut and lock the door. In case she changes her mind."

"Yes," Joe said.

Runciter strode in three big steps to the door, slammed it and bolted it, came at once back to Joe. Opening a drawer of the vanity table, he hastily brought out a spray can with bright stripes, balloons and lettering glorifying its shiny surfaces. "Ubik," Runciter said, he shook the can mightily, then stood before Joe, aiming it at him. "Don't thank me for this," he said, and sprayed prolongedly left and right; the air flickered and shimmered, as if bright particles of light had been released, as if the sun's energy sparkled here in this worn-out elderly hotel room. "Feel better? It should work on you right away; you should already be getting a reaction." He eyed Joe with anxiety.

CHAPTER 14.

It takes more than a bag to seal in food pavor; it takes Ubik plastic wrap - actually four layers in one. Keeps freshness in, air and moisture out. Watch this simulated test.

"Do you have a cigarette?" Joe said. His voice shook, but not from weariness. Nor from cold. Both had gone. I'm tense, be said to himself. But I'm not dying. That process has been stopped by the Ubik spray.

As Runciter said it would, he remembered, in his taped TV commercial. If I could find it I would be all right; Runciter promised that. But, he thought somberly, it took a long time. And I almost didn't get to it.

"No filter tips," Runciter said. "They don't have filtration devices on their cigarettes in this backward, no-good time period." He held a pack of Camels toward Joe. "I'll light it for you." He struck a match and extended it.

"It's fresh," Joe said.

"Oh hell, yes. Christ, I just now bought it downstairs at the tobacco counter. We're a long way into this. Well past the stage of clotted milk and stale cigarettes." He grinned starkly, his eyes determined and bleak, reflecting no light. "In it," he said, "not out of it. There's a difference." He lit a cigarette for himself too; leaning back, he smoked in silence, his expression still grim. And, Joe decided, tired. But not the kind of tiredness that he himself had undergone, Joe said, "Can you help the rest of the group?"

"I have exactly one can of this Ubik. Most of it I had to use on you." He gestured with resentment; his fingers convulsed in a tremor of unresigned anger. "My ability to alter things here is limited. I've done what I could." His head jerked as he raised his eyes to glare at Joe. "I got through to you - all of you - every chance I could, every way I could. I did everything that I had the capacity to bring about. Damn little. Almost nothing." He lapsed then into smoldering, brooding silence.

"The graffiti on the bathroom walls," Joe said. "You wrote that we were dead and you were alive."

"I am alive," Runciter rasped.

"Are we dead, the rest of us?"

After a long pause, Runciter said, "Yes."

"But in the taped TV commercial-"

"That was for the purpose of getting you to fight. To find Ubik. It made you look and you kept on looking too. I kept trying to get it to you, but you know what went wrong; she kept drawing everyone into the past - she worked on us all with that talent of hers. Over and over again she regressed it and made it worthless." Runciter added, "Except for the fragmentary notes I managed to slip to you in conjunction with the stuff." Urgently, he pointed his heavy, determined finger at Joe, gesturing with vigor. "Look what I've been up against. The same thing that got all of you, that's killed you off one by one. Frankly, it's amazing to me that I was able to do as much as I could."

Joe said, "When did you figure out what was taking place? Did you always know? From the start?"