The Cosmic Puppets by Philip K. Dick Read Free Book Online Page A

superiority, “this is just about the safest place in the world.”
    Barton couldn't make anything out of the boy's words. After a period of silence he observed cautiously, “The haze is pretty thick, today.”
    “The what?”
    “The haze.” Barton indicated the pools of silent blue obscuring the far peaks. “It's from the heat.”
    Peter's face managed to show even more contempt. “That's not haze. That's him!”
    “Oh?” Barton tensed. Maybe he was finally going to learn something—if he played it careful. “Who do you mean?”
    Peter pointed. “Don't you see him? He's sure big. Just about the biggest there is. And old. He's older than everything else put together. Even older than the world.”
    Barton saw nothing. Only haze, mountains, the blue sky. Peter dug in his pocket and got out what looked like a cheap nickel-plated magnifying glass. He handed it to Barton. Barton turned it around foolishly; he started to give it back, but Peter stopped him. “Look through it! At the mountains!”
    Barton looked. And saw it. The glass was a lens-filter of some kind. It cut the haze, made it clear and sharp.
    He had figured it out wrong. He had expected him to be part of the scene. He was the scene. He was the whole far side of the world, the edge of the valley, the mountains, the sky, everything. The whole distant rim of the universe swept up in a massive column, a cosmic tower of being, which gained shape and substance as he focused the filter-lens.
    It was a man, all right. His feet were planted on the floor of the valley; the valley became his feet at the farthest edge. His legs were the mountains—or the mountains were his legs; Barton couldn't tell which. Two columns, spread apart, wide and solid. Firmly planted and balanced. His body was the mass of blue-gray haze, or what he had thought was haze. Where the mountains joined the sky, the immense torso of the man came into being.
    He had his arms out over the valley. Poised above it, above the distant half. His hands were held above it in an opaque curtain, which Barton had mistaken for a layer of dust and haze. The massive figure was bent slightly forward. As if leaning intently over his part, his half of the valley. He was gazing down; his face was obscured. He didn't move. He was utterly motionless.
    Motionless, but he was alive. Not a stone image, a frozen statue. He was alive, but he was outside of time. There was no change, no motion for him. He was eternal. The averted head was the most striking part of him. It seemed to glow, a clearly radiant orb, pulsing with life and brilliance.
    His head was the sun.
    “What's his name?” Barton asked, after a while. Now that he saw the figure, he couldn't lose it. Like one of those games—as soon as the hidden shape becomes visible it's impossible not to see it.
    “I told you I don't know his name,” Peter retorted peevishly. “Maybe she knows. She probably knows both their names. If I knew his name I'd have power over him. I'd sure like to. He's the one I don't like. This one doesn't bother me at all. That's why I have my ledge on this side.”
    “This one?” Barton echoed, puzzled. He twisted his neck and looked straight up, through the tiny circle of glass.
    It made him feel somewhat strange to realize that he was part of this one. As the other figure was the distant side of the valley, this figure was the near side. And Barton was sitting on this side.
    The figure rose around him. He couldn't exactly see it; he could sense it vaguely and no more. It flowed up on all sides of him. From the rocks, the fields, the tumbled heaps of shrubs and vines. This one, also, formed itself from the valley and mountains, the sky and haze. But it didn't glow. He couldn't see its head, its final dimensions. A cold chill moved through him. He had a distinct, sharp intuition. This one didn't culminate in the bright orb of the sun. This one culminated in something else.
    In darkness?
    He got unsteadily to his feet. “That's enough