Ubik

"I'll sue you," the door said as the first screw fell out.

Joe Chip said, "I've never been sued by a door. But I guess I can live through it."

A knock sounded on the door. "Hey, Joe, baby, it's me, G. G. Ashwood. And I've got her right here with me. Open up."

"Put a nickel in the slot for me," Joe said. "The mechanism seems to be jammed on my side."

A coin rattled down into the works of the door; it swung open and there stood G. G. Ashwood with a brilliant look on his face. It pulsed with sly intensity, an erratic, gleaming triumph as he propelled the girl forward and into the apt.

She stood for a moment staring at Joe, obviously no more than seventeen, slim and copper-skinned, with large dark eyes. My god, he thought, she's beautiful. She wore an ersatz canvas workshirt and jeans, heavy boots caked with what appeared to be authentic mud. Her tangle of shiny hair was tied back and knotted with a red bandanna. Her rolled-up sleeves showed tanned, competent arms. At her imitation leather belt she carried a knife, a field-telephone unit and an emergency pack of rations and water. On her bare, dark forearm he made out a tattoo. CAVEAT EMPTOR, it read. He wondered what that meant.

"This is Pat," G. G. Ashwood said, his arm, with ostentatious familiarity, around the girl's waist. "Never mind her last name." Square and puffy, like an overweight brick, wearing his usual mohair poncho, apricot-colored felt hat, argyle ski socks and carpet slippers, he advanced toward Joe Chip, self-satisfaction smirking from every molecule in his body: He had found something of value here, and he meant to make the most of it. "Pat, this is the company's highly skilled, first-line electrical-type tester."

Coolly, the girl said to Joe Chip, "Is it you that's electrical? Or your tests?"

"We trade off," Joe said. He felt, from all around him, the miasma of his uncleaned-up apt; it radiated the specter of debris and clutter, and he knew that Pat had already noticed. "Sit down," he said awkwardly. "Have a cup of actual coffee."

"Such luxury," Pat said, seating herself at the kitchen table; reflexively she gathered the week's heap of 'papes into a neater pile. "How can you afford real coffee, Mr. Chip?"

G. G. Ashwood said, "Joe gets paid a hell of a lot. The firm couldn't operate without him." Reaching out he took a cigarette from the package lying on the table.

"Put it back," Joe Chip said. "I'm almost out and I used up my last green ration stamp on the coffee."

"I paid for the door," G. G. pointed out. He offered the pack to the girl. "Joe puts on an act; pay no attention. Like look how he keeps his place. Shows he's creative; all geniuses live like this. Where's your test equipment, Joe? We're wasting time."

To the girl, Joe said, "You're dressed oddly."

"I maintain the subsurface vidphone lines at the Topeka Kibbutz," Pat said. "Only women can hold jobs involving manual labor at that particular kibbutz. That's why I applied there, instead of the Wichita Falls Kibbutz." Her black eyes blazed pridefully.

Joe said, "That inscription on your arm, that tattoo; is that Hebrew?"

"Latin." Her eyes veiled her amusement. "I've never seen an apt so cluttered with rubbish. Don't you have a mistress?"

"These electrical-expert types have no time for tarradiddle," G. G. Ashwood said irritably. "Listen, Chip, this girl's parents work for Ray Hollis. If they knew she was here they'd give her a frontal lobotomy."

To the girl, Joe Chip said, "They don't know you have a counter talent?"

"No." She shook her head. "I didn't really understand it either until your scout sat down with me in the kibbutz cafeteria and told me. Maybe it's true." She shrugged. "Maybe not. He said you could show me objective proof of it, with your testing battery."

"How would you feel," he asked her, "if the tests show that you have it?"

Reflecting, Pat said, "It seems so - negative. I don't do anything; I don't move objects or turn stones into bread or give birth without impregnation or reverse the illness process in sick people. Or read minds. Or look into the future - not even common talents like that. I just negate somebody else's ability. It seems -" She gestured. "Stultifying."

"As a survival factor for the human race," Joe said, "it's as useful as the psi talents. Especially for us Norms. The anti-psi factor is a natural restoration of ecological balance. One insect learns to fly, so another learns to build a web to trap him. Is that the same as no flight? Clams developed hard shells to protect them; therefore, birds learn to fly the clam up high in the air and drop him on a rock. In a sense, you're a life form preying on the Psis, and the Psis are life forms that prey on the Norms. That makes you a friend of the Norm class. Balance, the full circle, predator and prey. It appears to be an eternal system; and, frankly, I can't see how it could be improved."

"I might be considered a traitor," Pat said.

"Does it bother you?"