Now Wait For Last Year Part 21

The clerk picked up one of the 2155 bills. "What is this?"

He held it to the light. "I never see before. You make it yourself?"

"No," Eric said.

"I can't use," the clerk decided. "Go before I call the police; you make it yourself, I know." He tossed the bill back with the others in a gesture of repugnance. "Funny money. Go away."

Leaving the 2155 bills on the counter but retrieving the five, Eric turned and walked out the door of the hotel, his package of g-Totex blau under his arm.

There were many malformed little alleys in Tijuana, even now after the war; he found a narrow, dark pa.s.sage between brick buildings, littered with debris and the overflow from two immense ashcans that had once been oil drums. In the alley he seated himself on the wooden step by a boarded-up entrance, lit a cigarette, sat smoking and pondering. He could not be seen from the street; the people rus.h.i.+ng by on the sidewalk paid no attention to him and he focused his attention by watching them, in particular the girls. This, too, was as he knew it in the previous decade. A girl during daylight hours on the streets of Tijuana dressed with incomprehensible smartness: high heels, angora sweater, s.h.i.+ny purse, gloves, coat over her shoulders, preceded, as she hurried, by high, sharp-as-tacks b.r.e.a.s.t.s, the smartness carrying even to the detail of her modern bra. What did these girls do for a living? Where had they learned to dress so well, not to mention the problem of financing such a wardrobe? He had wondered this in his own time and he wondered it now.

The answer, he speculated, would be to stop one of these daytime Tijuana girls in flight, ask her where she lived and if she bought her clothes here or across the border. He wondered if these girls had ever been across to the United States, if they had boy friends in Los Angeles, if they were as good in bed as they looked to be. Something, some force not visible, made their lives possible. He hoped that at the same time it did not make them frigid; what a travesty on life, on the potency of natural creatures, that would be.

The trouble with such girls, he thought, is that they get old so fast. What you hear is true; by thirty they're worn out, fat, the bra and the coat and purse and gloves are gone; all that remains is the black, burning eyes peering out from beneath the s.h.a.ggy brows, the original slender creature still imprisoned somewhere within but unable to speak any longer, play or make love or run. The click of heels against the pavement, the rus.h.i.+ng forward into life; that's gone and only a slopping, dragging sound is left behind. The most horrid sound in the world, that of the once-was: once-was: alive in the past, peris.h.i.+ng in the present, a corpse made of dust in the future. Nothing changes in Tijuana and yet nothing lives out its normal span. Time moves too fast here and also not at all. Look at my situation, for instance, he thought. I'm committing suicide ten years in the future, or rather I'll wipe out a life ten years ago. If I do this, what becomes of the Eric Sweetscent now working for Kaiser in Oakland? And the ten years he's spent watching over Kathy-what does that do to her? alive in the past, peris.h.i.+ng in the present, a corpse made of dust in the future. Nothing changes in Tijuana and yet nothing lives out its normal span. Time moves too fast here and also not at all. Look at my situation, for instance, he thought. I'm committing suicide ten years in the future, or rather I'll wipe out a life ten years ago. If I do this, what becomes of the Eric Sweetscent now working for Kaiser in Oakland? And the ten years he's spent watching over Kathy-what does that do to her?

Maybe this is my weak way of hurting her. A further punishment because she's sick.

Underneath my rationality my warped view, he thought. You can't quite manage to punish the sick enough. Is that it? Christ, he thought. No wonder I feel hatred for myself.

Holding the package of g-Totex blau in the palm of his hand, he weighed it, experienced its ma.s.s. Felt the Earth's attraction for it. Yes, he thought, the Earth likes even this. She accepts everything.

Something ran across his shoe.

He saw, skittering away into the safety of the shadows and heaps of debris, a small wheeled cart.

The cart was pursued by another of its kind. They met, in the tangle of newspapers and bottles, and then the debris trembled and bits flew everywhere as the carts fought it out, ramming each other head-on, trying for the cephalic unit mounted in each other's center. Trying to knock out the Lazy Brown Dog.

Still alive? he thought in disbelief. Ten years later? But possibly Bruce Himmel still manufactured them. By now Tijuana must be overrun by them, if that was so. It was hard to know how to take such a sight. He continued to watch the two carts as they battled it out to the end; now one had knocked its antagonist's Lazy Brown Dog loose, seemed to be triumphing. It withdrew and, like a goat, maneuvered to locate itself for the coup de grace.

While it was positioning itself the damaged one, in a last burst of native wit, popped into the sanctuary of a discarded galvanized zinc bucket and was out of the fray. Protected, it became inert, prepared to wait things out, forever if necessary.

Getting to his feet, Eric stooped and grabbed up the stronger cart; its wheels spun futilely and then somehow it managed to twist out of his grasp. It bounced clatteringly to the pavement, backed, maneuvered, and then hurled itself against his foot. Surprised, he retreated. The cart made another menacing move toward him and he retreated again. Satisfied, the cart wheeled in a circle and then rattled off, out of sight.

In the bucket the loser could still be seen. Still waiting.

"I won't hurt you," Eric said to it, crouching down in order to get a better glimpse of it. The damaged thing, however, remained where it was. "Okay," he said and straightened up. "I get the idea." It knew what it wanted. There was no point in molesting it.

Even these things, he decided, are determined to live. Bruce was right. They deserve their opportunity, their minuscule place under the sun and sky. That's all they're asking for and it isn't much. He thought, And I can't even do what they do, make my stand, use my wits to survive in a debris-littered alley in Tijuana; that thing that's taken refuge there in that zinc bucket, without a wife, a career, a conapt or money or the possibility of encountering any of these, still persists. For reasons unknown to me its stake in existence is greater than mine.

The g-Totex blau no longer seemed attractive to him.

Even if I'm going to do this, he thought, why does it have to be now? why does it have to be now? Like everything else it can be put off-ought, in this case, to be put off. And anyhow he did not feel well; he felt dizzy and he shut his eyes, although by doing so he was inviting another attack by the fearsome Lazy Brown Dog cart which Bruce Himmel had made. Like everything else it can be put off-ought, in this case, to be put off. And anyhow he did not feel well; he felt dizzy and he shut his eyes, although by doing so he was inviting another attack by the fearsome Lazy Brown Dog cart which Bruce Himmel had made.

The slight weight in his hand disappeared entirely. He opened his eyes, saw that the paper bag with its black carton inside, the box of g-Totex blau, had disappeared. And the litter heaped here and there in the alley did not appear quite as extensive. From the long shadows cast by the sun he knew that it had become late in the day and this meant that the JJ-180 had worn off and he had gone back in time to-roughly-his own period. But he had taken the piece of capsule at night, in the dark, and this seemed more like five p.m. So, as before, the return was not exact and he wondered just how far off it was in this instance. After all, the 'Starmen were on their way.

In fact, he saw, they had already arrived.

Overhead a vast, dark, ugly ma.s.s hung in the sky, like something that had descended into this world from a lightless land of iron and surprise and frightened, purposeful silence. It was huge enough, he thought, to feed forever; even from the spot where he stood, at the very least a mile from it, he could see that it consisted of a limitless, appet.i.tive self which would begin any time now to gulp down everything in sight. It made no sound. Its engines were off. This s.h.i.+p had come a long way, from the lines deep in intersystem s.p.a.ce. It was a seasoned, informed, world-weary apparition, brought out by strange needs from its normal place of residence.

I wonder how easy it's going to be, Eric wondered. For them simply to drop to the surface and enter key buildings and take everything over. Probably easier than I think, than anyone here on Terra thinks.

He walked from the alley to the street, thinking to himself, I wish I had a gun.

Strange, he thought, that in the center of the greatest abomination of our times, this war, I should find something meaningful. A desire animating me equal to that possessed by the Lazy Brown Dog cart hiding in the zinc pail ten years from now. Maybe I'm its compatriot at last. Able to take my place in the world beside it, do as it does, fight as it fights: whenever it's necessary and then some, for the pleasure of it. For the joy. As was intended from the start, anterior to any time or condition I could comprehend or call my own or enter into.

Traffic had slowed to a near stop along the street. Everyone, in the vehicles and on foot, watched the 'Star s.h.i.+p.

"Taxi!" Walking out into the street he hailed an autonomic cab capable of non-surface flight. "Take me to Tijuana Fur & Dye," he ordered it. "Make it as fast as you can and don't pay any attention to that s.h.i.+p up there, including any instructions it might broadcast."

The cab shuddered, rose slightly from the asphalt, and hung stationary. "We've been forbidden to take off, sir. The Lilistar Army Command for this area sent out orders that-"

"I'm in supreme charge of this situation," Eric told the cab. "I outrank the Lilistar Army Command; they're dirt compared with me. I have to be at Tijuana Fur & Dye immediately-the war effort hangs on my being there."

"Yes sir," the cab said, and soared up into the sky. "And it's an honor, sir; believe me, a rare honor to convey you."

"My presence there," Eric said, "is of incomparable strategic importance." At the factory I'll make my stand, he said to himself. With the people I know. And, when Virgil Ackerman escapes to Wash-35, I'll go along with him; it's beginning to unfold as I witnessed it a year from now.

And, at Tijuana Fur & Dye, he realized, I'll undoubtedly run into Kathy.

To the cab he said suddenly, "If your wife were sick-"

"I have no wife, sir," the cab said. "Automatic Mechanisms never marry; everyone knows that."

"All right," Eric agreed. "If you were me, and your wife were sick, desperately so, with no hope of recovery, would you leave her? Or would you stay with her, even if you had traveled ten years into the future and knew for an absolute certainty that the damage to her brain could never be reversed? And staying with her would mean-"

"I can see what you mean, sir," the cab broke in. "It would mean no other life for you beyond caring for her."

"That's right," Eric said.

"I'd stay with her," the cab decided.

"Why?"

"Because," the cab said, "life is composed of reality configurations so const.i.tuted. To abandon her would be to say, I can't endure reality as such. I have to have uniquely special easier conditions."

"I think I agree," Eric said after a time. "I think I will stay with her."

"G.o.d bless you, sir," the cab said. "I can see that you're a good man."

"Thank you," Eric said.

The cab soared on toward Tijuana Fur & Dye Corporation.

NOVELS BY PHILIP K. d.i.c.k

Clans of the Alphane Moon

Confessions of a c.r.a.p Artist

The Cosmic Puppets

Counter-Clock World

The Crack in s.p.a.ce

Deus Irae (with Roger Zelazny) (with Roger Zelazny)

The Divine Invasion

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Dr. Bloodmoney

Dr. Futurity

Eye in the Sky

Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said

Galactic Pot-Healer

The Game-Players of t.i.tan

The Man in the High Castle

The Man Who j.a.ped

Martian Time-Slip

A Maze of Death

Now Wait for Last Year

Our Friends from Frolix 8

The Penultimate Truth

Radio Free Albemuth

A Scanner Darkly

The Simulacra