Ubik by Philip K. Dick Read Free Book Online Page A

door. “I’ll find out how many people we have about the place who’re available for use in this connection.” Shutting his office door behind him, he looked into each of the adjoining offices until he spied Nina Freede; she sat alone in a minor sideroom, smoking a cigarette and concentrating. “Find out who she represents,” he said to her. “And then find out how high they’ll go.” We’ve got thirty-eight idle inertials, he reflected. Maybe we can dump all of them or most of them into this. I may finally have found where Hollis’ smart-assed talents have sneaked off to. The whole goddam bunch of them.
    He returned to his own office, reseated himself behind his desk.
    “If telepaths have gotten into your operation,” he said to Miss Wirt, his hands folded before him, “then you have to face up to and accept the realization that the operation per se is no longer secret. Independent of any specific technical info they’ve picked up. So why not tell me what the project is?”
    Hesitating, Miss Wirt said, “I don’t know what the project is.”
    “Or where it is?”
    “No.” She shook her head.
    Runciter said, “Do you know who your employer is?”
    “I work for a subsidiary firm which he financially controls; I know who my immediate employer is—that’s a Mr. Shepard Howard—but I’ve never been told whom Mr. Howard represents.”
    “If we supply you with the inertials you need, will we know where they are being sent?”
    “Probably not.”
    “Suppose we never get them back?”
    “Why wouldn’t you get them back? After they’ve decontaminated our operation.”
    “Hollis’ men,” Runciter said, “have been known to kill inertials sent out to negate them. It’s my responsibility to see that my people are protected; I can’t do that if I don’t know where they are.”
    The concealed microspeaker in his left ear buzzed and he heard the faint, measured voice of Nina Freede, audible to him alone. “Miss Wirt represents Stanton Mick. She is his confidential assistant. There is no one named Shepard Howard. The project under discussion exists primarily on Luna; it has to do with Techprise, Mick’s research facilities, the controlling stock of which Miss Wirt keeps in her name. She does not know any technical details; no scientific evaluations or memos or progress reports are ever made available to her by Mr. Mick, and she resents this enormously. From Mick’s staff, however, she has picked up a general idea of the nature of the project. Assuming that her secondhand knowledge is accurate, the Lunar project involves a radical, new, low-cost interstellar drive system, approaching the velocity of light, which could be leased to every moderately affluent political or ethnological group. Mick’s idea seems to be that the drive system will make colonization feasible on a mass basic understructure. And hence no longer a monopoly of specific governments.”
    Nina Freede clicked off, and Runciter leaned back in his leather and walnut swivel chair to ponder.
    “What are you thinking?” Miss Wirt asked brightly.
    “I’m wondering,” Runciter said, “if you can afford our services. Since I have no test data to go on, I can only estimate how many inertials you’ll need…but it may run as high as forty.” He said this knowing that Stanton Mick could afford—or could figure out how to get someone else to underwrite—an unlimited number of inertials.
    “ ‘Forty,’ ” Miss Wirt echoed. “Hmm. That is quite a few.”
    “The more we make use of, the sooner we can get the job done. Since you’re in a hurry, we’ll move them all in at one time. If you are authorized to sign a work contract in the name of your employer”—he pointed a steady, unyielding finger at her; she did not blink—“and you can come up with a retainer now, we could probably accomplish this within seventy-two hours.” He eyed her then, waiting.
    The microspeaker in his ear rasped, “As owner of Techprise she is fully