Philip K. Dick - Fair Game.pdf - Philip K.Dick - margozap

FAIR GAME

Philip K. Dick

Professor Anthony Douglas lowered gratefully into his red-leather easy

chair and sighed. A long sigh, accompanied by labored removal of his

shoes and numerous grunts as he kicked them into the corner. He folded

his hands across his ample middle and lay back, eyes closed.

"Tired?" Laura Douglas asked, turning from the kitchen stove a

moment, her dark eyes sympathetic.

"You're darn right." Douglas surveyed the evening paper across from

him on the couch. Was it worth it? No, not really. He felt around in his

coat pocket for his cigarettes and lit up slowly, leisurely. "Yeah, I'm tired,

all right. We're starting a whole new line of research. Whole flock of bright

young men in from Washington today. Briefcases and slide rules."

"Not—"

"Oh, I'm still in charge." Professor Douglas grinned expansively. "Perish

the thought." Pale gray cigarette smoke billowed around him. "It'll be

another few years before they're ahead of me. They'll have to sharpen up

their slide rules just a little bit more. . ."

His wife smiled and continued preparing dinner. Maybe it was the

atmosphere of the little Colorado town. The sturdy, impassive mountain

peaks around them. The thin, chill air. The quiet citizens. In any case, her

husband seemed utterly unbothered by the tensions and doubts that

pressured other members of his profession. A lot of aggressive newcomers

were swelling the ranks of nuclear physics these days. Old-timers were

tottering in their positions, abruptly insecure. Every college, every physics

department and lab was being invaded by the new horde of skilled young

men. Even here at Bryant College, so far off the beaten track.

But if Anthony Douglas worried, he never let it show. He rested happily

in his easy chair, eyes shut, a blissful smile on his face. He was tired—but

at peace. He sighed again, this time more from pleasure than fatigue.

"It's true," he murmured lazily. "I may be old enough to be their father,

but I'm still a few jumps ahead of them. Of course, I know the ropes

better. And—"

"And the wires. The ones worth pulling."

"Those, too. In any case, I think I'll come off from this new line we're

doing just about. . ."

His voice trailed off.

"What's the matter?" Laura asked.

Douglas half rose from his chair. His face had gone suddenly white. He

stared in horror, gripping the arms of his chair, his mouth opening and

closing.

At the window was a great eye. An immense eye that gazed into the

room intently, studying him. The eye filled the whole window.

"Good God!" Douglas cried.

The eye withdrew. Outside there was only the evening gloom, the dark

hills and trees, the street. Douglas sank down slowly in his chair.

"What was it?" Laura demanded sharply. "What did you see? Was

somebody out there?"

Douglas clasped and unclasped his hands. His lips twitched violently.

"I'm telling you the truth, Bill. I saw it myself. It was real. I wouldn't say

so, otherwise. You know that. Don't you believe me?"

"Did anybody else see it?" Professor William Henderson asked, chewing

his pencil thoughtfully. He had cleared a place on the dinner table, pushed

back his plate and silver and laid out his notebook. "Did Laura see it?"

"No. Laura had her back turned."

"What time was it?"

"Half an hour ago. I had just got home. About six-thirty. I had my shoes

off, taking it easy." Douglas wiped his forehead with a shaking hand.

"You say it was unattached? There was nothing else? Just the—eye?"

"Just the eye. One huge eye looking in at me. Taking in everything. As if.

. ."

"As if what?"

"As if it was looking down a microscope."

Silence.

From across the table, Henderson's red-haired wife spoke up. "You

always were a strict empiricist, Doug. You never went in for any nonsense

before. But this. . . It's too bad nobody else saw it."

"Of course nobody else saw it!"

"What do you mean?"

"The damn thing was looking at me. It was me it was studying."

Douglas's voice rose hysterically. "How do you think I feel—scrutinized by

an eye as big as a piano! My God, if I weren't so well integrated, I'd be out

of my mind!"

Henderson and his wife exchanged glances. Bill, dark-haired and

handsome, ten years Douglas's junior. Vivacious Jean Henderson, lecturer

in child psychology, lithe and full-bosomed in her nylon blouse and slacks.

"What do you make of this?" Bill asked her. "This is more along your

line."

"It's your line," Douglas snapped. "Don't try to pass this off as a morbid

projection. I came to you because you're head of the Biology Department."

"You think it's an animal? A giant sloth or something?"

"It must be an animal."

"Maybe it's a joke," Jean suggested. "Or an advertising sign. An oculist's

display. Somebody may have been carrying it past the window."

Douglas took a firm grip on himself. "The eye was alive. It looked at me.

It considered me. Then it withdrew. As if it had moved away from the

lens." He shuddered. "I tell you it was studying me!"

"You only?"

"Me. Nobody else."

"You seem curiously convinced it was looking down from above," Jean

said.

"Yes, down. Down at me. That's right." An odd expression flickered

across Douglas's face. "You have it, Jean. As if it came from up there." He

jerked his hand upward.

"Maybe it was God," Bill said thoughtfully.

Douglas said nothing. His face turned ash white and his teeth

chattered.

"Nonsense," Jean said. "God is a psychological transcendent symbol

expressing unconscious forces."

"Did it look at you accusingly?" asked Bill. "As if you'd done something

wrong?"

"No. With interest. With considerable interest." Douglas raised himself.

"I have to get back. Laura thinks I'm having some kind of fit. I haven't told

her, of course. She's not scientifically disciplined. She wouldn't be able to

handle such a concept."

"It's a little tough even for us," Bill said.

Douglas moved nervously toward the door. "You can't think of any

explanation? Something thought extinct that might still be roaming

around these mountains?"

"None that we know of. If I should hear of any—"

"You said it looked down," Jean said. "Not bending down to peer in at

you. Then it couldn't have been an animal or terrestrial being." She was

deep in thought. "Maybe we're being observed."

"Not you," Douglas said miserably. "Just me."

"By another race," Bill put in. "You think—"

"Maybe it's an eye from Mars."

Douglas opened the front door carefully and peered out. The night was

black. A faint wind moved through the trees and along the highway. His

car was dimly visible, a black square against the hills. "If you think of

anything, call me."

"Take a couple of phenobarbitals before you hit the sack," Jean

suggested. "Calm your nerves."

Douglas was out on the porch. "Good idea. Thanks." He shook his head.

"Maybe I'm out of my mind. Good Lord. Well, I'll see you later."

He walked down the steps, gripping the rail tightly. "Good night!" Bill

called. The door closed and the porch light clicked off.

Douglas went cautiously toward his car. He reached out into the

darkness, feeling for the door handle. One step. Two steps. It was silly. A

grown man—practically middle-aged—in the twentieth century. Three

steps.

He found the door and opened it, sliding quickly inside and locking it

after him. He breathed a silent prayer of thanks as he snapped on the

motor and the headlights. Silly as hell. A giant eye. A stunt of some sort.

He turned the thoughts over in his mind. Students? Jokesters?

Communists? A plot to drive him out of his mind? He was important.

Probably the most important nuclear physicist in the country. And this

new project. . .

He drove the car slowly forward, onto the silent highway. He watched

each bush and tree as the car gained speed.

A Communist plot. Some of the students were in a left-wing club. Some

sort of Marxist study group. Maybe they had rigged up—

In the glare of the headlights something glittered. Something at the

edge of the highway.

Douglas gazed at it, transfixed. Something square, a long block in the

weeds at the side of the highway, where the great dark trees began. It

glittered and shimmered. He slowed down, almost to a stop.

A bar of gold, lying at the edge of the road.

It was incredible. Slowly, Professor Douglas rolled down the window

and peered out. Was it really gold? He laughed nervously. Probably not.

He had often seen gold, of course. This looked like gold. But maybe it was

lead, an ingot of lead with a gilt coating.

But—why?

Philip K. Dick - Fair Game.pdf

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