Ubik

Something must have showed in his face; the girl walked toward him, up to the window of the cab. "Are you all right?" she asked.

Joe said, with effort, "I'm dying, miss." The wound on his hand, the teeth marks, had begun to throb once more. And were again becoming visible. This alone would have been enough to fill him with dread.

"Have the driver take you to the hospital," the girl said.

"Can we have dinner together?" Joe asked her.

"Is that what you want to do?" she said. "When you're - whatever it is. Sick? Are you sick?" She opened the door of the cab then. "Do you want me to go with you to the hospital? Is that it?"

"To the Matador," Joe said. "We'll have braised fillet of Martian mole cricket." He remembered then that that imported delicacy did not exist in this time period. "Market steak," he said. "Beef. Do you like beef?"

Getting into the cab, the girl said to the driver, "He wants to go to the Matador."

"Okay, miss," the driver said. The cab rolled out into traffic once more. At the next intersection the driver made a U-turn; now Joe realized, we are on our way to the restaurant. I wonder if I'll make it there. Fatigue and cold had invaded him completely; he felt his body processes begin to close down, one by one. Organs that had no future; the liver did not need to make red blood cells, the kidneys did not need to excrete wastes, the intestines no longer served any purpose. Only the heart, laboring on, and the increasingly difficult breathing; each time he drew air into his lungs he sensed the concrete block that had situated itself on his chest. My gravestone, he decided. His hand, he saw, was bleeding again; thick, slow blood appeared, drop by drop.

"Care for a Lucky Strike?" the girl asked him, extending her pack toward him. "'They're toasted,' as the slogan goes. The phrase 'L.S.M.F.T.' won't come into existence until-"

Joe said, "My name is Joe Chip."

"Do you want me to tell you my name?"

"Yes," he grated, and shut his eyes; he couldn't speak any further, for a time anyhow. "Do you like Des Moines?" he asked her presently, concealing his hand from her. "Have you lived here a long time?"

"You sound very tired, Mr. Chip," the girl said.

"Oh, hell," he said, gesturing. "It doesn't matter."

"Yes, it does." The girl opened her purse, rummaged briskly within it. "I'm not a deformation of Jory's; I'm not like him-" She indicated the driver. "Or like these little old stores and houses and this dingy street, all these people and their neolithic cars. Here, Mr. Chip." From her purse she brought an envelope, which she passed to him. "This is for you. Open it right away; I don't think either of us should have delayed so long."

With leaden fingers he tore open the envelope.

In it he found a certificate, stately and ornamented. The printing on it, however, swam; he was too weary now to read. "What's it say?" he asked her, laying it down on his lap.

"From the company that manufactures Ubik," the girl said. "It is a guarantee, Mr. Chip, of a free, lifetime supply, free because I know your problem regarding money, your, shall we say, idiosyncrasy. And a list, on the reverse, of all the drugstores which carry it. Two drugstores - and not abandoned ones - in Des Moines are listed. I suggest we go to one first, before we eat dinner. Here, driver." She leaned forward and handed the driver a slip of paper already written out. "Take us to this address. And hurry; they'll be closing soon."

Joe lay back against the seat, panting for breath.

"We'll make it to the drugstore," the girl said, and patted his arm reassuringly.

"Who are you?" Joe asked her.

"My name is Ella. Ella Hyde Runciter. Your employer's wife."

"You're here with us," Joe said. "On this side; you're in cold-pac."

"As you well know. I have been for some time," Ella Runciter said. "Fairly soon I'll be reborn into another womb, I think. At least, Glen says so. I keep dreaming about a smoky red light, and that's bad; that's not a morally proper womb to be born into." She laughed a rich, warm laugh.

"You're the other one," Joe said. "Jory destroying us, you trying to help us. Behind you there's no one, just as there's no one behind Jory. I've reached the last entities involved."

Ella said caustically, "I don't think of myself as an 'entity', I usually think of myself as Ella Runciter."

"But it's true," Joe said.

"Yes." Somberly, she nodded.

"Why are you working against Jory?"

"Because Jory invaded me," Ella said. "He menaced me in the same way he's menaced you. We both know what he does; he told you himself, in your hotel room. Sometimes he becomes very powerful; on occasion, he manages to supplant me when I'm active and trying to talk to Glen. But I seem to be able to cope with him better than most half-lifers, with or without Ubik. Better, for instance, than your group, even acting as a collective."

"Yes," Joe said. It certainly was true. Well proved.