Deus Irae by Philip K. Dick Read Free Book Online Page A

leg off that cow that pulls Tibor’s cart. Or short out his metabattery.” She sounded perfectly, composedly serious.
    “
Why
?”
    “So he can’t bring back the essence. For the mural.”
    “It couldn’t matter less to me if—”
    He broke off. Because someone had come to the door of his meager abode; he heard footsteps, then his dog Tom Swift And His Electric Magic Carpet barking. The bell clingled. Rising, he strode to the door.
    Dr. Abernathy, his superior, the priest of the Charlottesville Combined Christian Church, stood there in his black cassock. “Is this too late to call on you?” Dr. Abernathy said, his round, small, bunlike face gracious in its formal concern not to be a bother.
    “Come in.” Pete held the door wide. “You know Miss Rae, Doctor.”
    “The Lord be with you,” Dr. Abernathy said to her, nodding.
    Immediately, correctly, she answered, “And with thy spirit.” She rose. “Good evening, Doctor.”
    “I heard,” Dr. Abernathy said, “that you are considering entering our church, taking confirmation and then the greater sacraments.”
    “Well,” Lurine said, “I was—you know. Dissatisfied. I mean, who wants to worship the former Chairman of the ERDA?”
    Dr. Abernathy passed into the tiny kitchen, and put the tea kettle on, to boil water for coffee. “You would be welcome,” he said to her.
    “Thank you, Doctor,” Lurine said.
    “But to be confirmed you would need half a year of intensive religious instruction. On many topics: the sacraments, the rituals, the basic tenets of the Church. What we believe and also why. I hold adult-instruction classes two afternoons a week.” He added, with a trace of embarrassment, “I have at present one adult receiving instruction. You could catch up very quickly; you have a bright, fertile mind. Meanwhile, you could attend services … however, you could not come to the rail, could not take Holy Communion; you realize that.”
    “Yes.” She nodded.
    “Have you been baptized?”
    “I—” She hesitated. “Frankly, I don’t know.”
    “We would baptize you with the special service for those who may have been baptized before. With
water
. Anything else—such as rose petals, as they used to do it before the war in Los Angeles—that does not count. By the way—I hear that Tibor is about to set forth on a Pilg. It’s no secret, of course; my hearing of it verifies that. The Eltern of the Servants of Wrath, the rumor-mill says, have provided him with maps and photos and data, so that he can find Lufteufel. All I hope is that his cow holds out.” Returning to the living room, he said to Pete Sands, “How about a little poker? Three does not seem to me enough, but we can play for genuine old copper cents. And no crazy games such as spit-in-the-ocean and baseball, just seven-card stud and straight and draw.”
    “Okay,” Pete said, nodding. “But let’s allow one wild card, dealer’s choice, since there’re only three of us.”
    “Fine,” Dr. Abernathy said, as Pete walked off to get the deck and the box of chips. He drew a comfortable chair up to the table for Lurine Rae and then one for himself and at last one for Pete.
    “And no chattering during the game,” Pete said to Lurine.
    They were dealing a hand of five-card draw, jacks or better to open, when the cow-drawn cart of Tibor McMasters, batterylamp sweeping ahead of it, pulled up at the door and tinkled its hopeful bell.
    Studying his hand, Dr. Abernathy said thoughtfully in a preoccupied and abstracted way, “Um, I—uh—fold. So I’ll go.” He rose, to go to the door: to answer the presence of the well-known inc SOW artist.
      On his cart, Tibor McMasters surveyed the progress of the poker game, and the conversation had that unique equal quality: everyone said as much as everyone else, although each player had his idiosyncratic mumble; and none of it, Tibor realized, meant anything—it was merely a noise, a banter, as their collective attention kept fixed on