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

for me. I'm going.” He began to make his way down the side of the hill. Well, he had asked for it. He was still holding numbly onto Peter's magnifying glass; he tossed it up on the ledge and continued toward the floor of the valley.
    No matter where he was, no matter where he sat or stood or slept or walked, as long as he was in the valley, he was part of one or the other figure. Each made up one side of the valley, one hemisphere. He could move from one to the other, but he was always in one of them. In the center of the valley was a line. On the other side of that line he would merge with the other figure.
    “Where are you going?” Peter shouted.
    “Out.”
    Peter's face darkened ominously. “You can't go out. You can't leave.”
    “Why not?”
    “You'll find out why not.”
    Barton ignored him and continued picking his way down the hill, toward the road and his parked car.

Six
    He headed the Packard up the road, away from Millgate. Cedars and pines grew in massive profusion above and below him. The road was a narrow ribbon gouged through the forest. It was in bad shape. He drove cautiously, taking in the details. The surface of the pavement was cracked, interlaced lines and splits. Weeds jutted up. Weeds and dry grass. Nobody came along here. That much was clear.
    He turned a sharp curve and abruptly slammed on the brakes. The car screeched to a halt, tires sizzling.
    There it was. Spread across the road ahead of him. The sight completely floored him. He had gone along this road three times—once out and twice in—and seen nothing. Now, here it was. It had finally showed up, just as he had made up his mind to leave and forget the whole thing, join Peg and try to continue his vacation as if nothing had happened.
    He would have expected something weird. Something vast and macabre, an ominous wall of some sort, mysterious and cosmic. A supraterrestrial layer barring the road.
    But he was wrong. It was a stalled lumber truck. An ancient truck, with iron wheels and no gear shift. Round headlights, the old-fashioned brass lamps. Its load was spilled all the way across the highway. The wires had broken; the truck had careened at an angle and stopped dead, logs spilling off in all directions.
    Barton climbed wearily out of the car. Everything was silent. Somewhere, far off, a crow squawked dismally. The cedars rustled. He approached the sea of logs, with it archaic island jutting up in the center. Not bad, for a barrier. No car could get through that. Logs were everywhere and they were plenty big. Some were heaped on others. A dangerous, unsteady mass of twisted beams, ready to spill and roll any moment. And the road was steep.
    There was no one in the truck, of course. God knew how long it had been there, or how often. Apparently, it was selective. He lit a cigarette and took off his coat; the day was starting to heat up. How would he go about getting past it? He had got by before, but this time it wasn't going to cooperate.
    Maybe he could go around.
    The high side was out of the question. He'd never be able to scramble up the almost perpendicular bank, and if he lost his grip on the smooth rock, he'd pitch down into the twisted mass of logs. Maybe the low side. Between the road and the slope was a ditch. If he could get across the ditch he could easily scramble among the slanted pines, climb from one to the next, get past the log jam and hop the ditch back to the road.
    One look at the ditch finished that. Barton closed his eyes and hung on tight.
    The ditch wasn't wide; he might be able to vault it. But there was no bottom. He was standing over a bottomless gulf. He stepped back, away from it, and stood breathing quickly and clutching his cigarette. It went down forever. Like looking up at the sky. No limit. A ceaseless drop that finally blurred into a dim, ominous chaos.
    He forgot about the ditch and turned his attention back to the logs. A car didn't stand a chance of getting past, but maybe a man on foot could