The Minority Report and Other Classic Stories by Philip K. Dick Read Free Book Online Page B

and stood waiting for Courtland to instruct. Jack Hurley, in aloha sports shirt, slacks, and crepe-soled shoes, clodded resentfully over to Courtland and waved his cigar in his face. “Here we are; I don’t know what you told Pesbroke, but you certainly pulled him along.” Glancing around the apartment, he asked, “Can I assume we’re going to get the pitch now? There’s not much these people can do unless they understand what they’re after.”
    In the bedroom doorway stood Courtland’s two sons, eyes half-shut with sleep. Fay nervously swept them up and herded them back into the bedroom. Around the living room the various men and women took up uncertain positions, their faces registering outrage, uneasy curiosity, and bored indifference. Anderson, the designing engineer, acted aloof and blase. MacDowell, the stoop-shouldered, pot-bellied lathe operator, glared with proletarian resentment at the expensive furnishings of the apartment, and then sank into embarrassed apathy as he perceived his own work boots and grease-saturated pants. The recording specialist was trailing wire from his microphones to the tape recorder set up in the kitchen. A slim young woman, the legal stenographer, was trying to make herself comfortable in a chair in the corner. On the couch, Parkinson, the plant emergency electrician, was glancing idly through a copy of Fortune.
    “Where’s the camera equipment?” Courtland demanded.
    “Coming,” Hurley answered. “Are you trying to catch somebody trying out the old Spanish Treasure bunco?”
    “I wouldn’t need an engineer and an electrician for that,” Courtland said dryly. Tensely, he paced around the living room. “Probably he won’t even show up; he’s probably back in his own time, by now, or wandering around God knows where.”
    “Who?” Hurley shouted, puffing gray cigar smoke in growing agitation. “What’s going on?”
    “A man knocked on my door,” Courtland told him briefly. “He talked about some machinery, equipment I never heard of. Something called a swibble.”
    Around the room blank looks passed back and forth.
    “Let’s guess what a swibble is,” Courtland continued grimly. “Anderson, you start. What would a swibble be?”
    Anderson grinned. “A fish hook that chases down fish.”
    Parkinson volunteered a guess. “An English car with only one wheel.”
    Grudgingly, Hurley came next. “Something dumb. A machine for house-breaking pets.”
    “A new plastic bra,” the legal stenographer suggested.
    “I don’t know,” MacDowell muttered resentfully. “I never heard of anything like that.”
    “All right,” Courtland agreed, again examining his watch. He was getting close to hysteria; an hour had passed and there was no sign of the repairman. “We don’t know; we can’t even guess. But someday, nine years from now, a man named Wright is going to invent a swibble, and it’s going to become big business. People are going to make them; people are going to buy them and pay for them; repairmen are going to come around and service them.”
    The door opened and Pesbroke entered the apartment, overcoat over his arm, crushed Stetson hat clamped over his head. “Has he showed up again?” His ancient, alert eyes darted around the room. “You people look ready to go.”
    “No sign of him,” Courtland said drearily. “Damn it—I sent him off; I didn’t grasp it until he was gone.” He showed Pesbroke the crumpled carbon.
    “I see,” Pesbroke said, handing it back. “And if he comes back you’re going to tape what he says, and photograph everything he has in the way of equipment.” He indicated Anderson and MacDowell. “What about the rest of them? What’s the need of them?”
    “I want people here who can ask the right questions,” Courtland explained. “We won’t get answers any other way. The man, if he shows up at all, will stay only a finite time. During that time, we’ve got to find out–” He broke off as his wife came up beside