Ubik

"Why should I? No one's there. Wherever you and the others of the group went, I constructed a tangible reality corresponding to their minimal expectations. When you flew here from New York I created hundreds of miles of countryside, town after town - I found that very exhausting. I had to eat a great deal to make up for that. In fact, that's the reason I had to finish off the others so soon after you got here. I needed to replenish myself."

Joe said, "Why 1939? Why not our own contemporary world, 1992?"

"The effort; I can't keep objects from regressing. Doing it all alone, it was too much for me. I created 1992 at first, but then things began to break down. The coins, the cream, the cigarettes - all those phenomena that you noticed. And then Runciter kept breaking through from outside; that made it even harder for me. Actually, it would have been better if he hadn't interfered." Jory grinned slyly. "But I didn't worry about the reversion. I knew you'd figure it was Pat Conley. It would seem like her talent because it's sort of like what her talent does. I thought maybe the rest of you would kill her. I would enjoy that." His grin increased.

"What's the point of keeping this hotel and the street outside going for me now?" Joe said. "Now that I know?"

"But I always do it this way." Jory's eyes widened.

Joe said, "I'm going to kill you." He stepped toward Jory in an uncoordinated half-falling motion. Raising his open hands he plunged against the boy, trying to capture the neck, searching for the bent pipestem windpipe with all his fingers.

Snarling, Jory bit him. The great shovel teeth fastened deep into Joe's right hand. They hung on as, meanwhile, Jory raised his head, lifting Joe's hand with his jaw; Jory stared at him with unwinking eyes, snoring wetly as he tried to close his jaws. The teeth sank deeper and Joe felt the pain of it throughout him. He's eating me, he realized. "You can't," he said aloud; he hit Jory on the snout, punching again and again. "The Ubik keeps you away," he said as he cuffed Jory's jeering eyes. "You can't do it to me."

"Gahm grau," Jory bubbled, working his jaws sideways like a sheep's, grinding Joe's hand until the pain became too much for Joe to stand. He kicked Jory. The teeth released his hand; he crept backward, looking at the blood rising from the punctures made by the troll teeth. Jesus, he said to himself, appalled.

"You can't do to me," Joe said, "what you did to them." Locating the spray can of Ubik, he pointed the nozzle toward the bleeding wound which his hand had become. He pressed the red plastic stud and a weak stream of particles emerged and settled in a film over the chewed, torn flesh. The pain immediately departed. Before his eyes the wound healed.

"And you can't kill me," Jory said. He still grinned.

Joe said, "I'm going downstairs." He walked unsteadily to the door of the room and opened it. Outside lay the dingy hall; he started forward, step by step, treading carefully. The floor, however, seemed substantial. Not a quasi- or irreal world at all.

"Don't go too far," Jory said from behind him. "I can't keep too great an area going. Like, if you were to get into one of those cars and drive for miles... eventually you'd reach a point where it breaks down. And you wouldn't like that any better than I do."

"I don't see what I have to lose." Joe reached the elevator, pressed the down button.

Jory called after him, "I have trouble with elevators. They're complicated. Maybe you should take the stairs."

After waiting a little longer, Joe gave up; as Jory had advised, he descended by the stairs - the same flight up which he had so recently come, step by step, in an agony of effort.

Well, he thought, that's one of the two agencies who're at work; Jory is the one who's destroying us - has destroyed us, except for me. Behind Jory there is nothing; he is the end. Will I meet the other? Probably not soon enough for it to matter, he decided. He looked once more at his hand. Completely well.

Reaching the lobby, he gazed around him, at the people, the great chandelier overhead. Jory, in many respects, had done a good job, despite the reversion to these older forms. Real, he thought, experiencing the floor beneath his feet. I can't get over it.

He thought, Jory must have had experience. He must have done this many times before.

Going to the hotel desk, he said to the clerk, "You have a restaurant that you'd recommend?"

"Down the street," the clerk said, pausing in his task of sorting mail. "To your right. The Matador. You'll find it excellent, sir."

"I'm lonely," Joe said, on impulse. "Does the hotel have any source of supply? Any girls?"

The clerk said in a clipped, disapproving voice, "Not this hotel, sir; this hotel does not pander."

"You keep a good clean family hotel," Joe said.

"We like to think so, sir."