We Can Build You by Philip K. Dick Read Free Book Online

correspondence. “You’re the Rosen family from Boise, aren’t you? The people who propose to manufacture the simulacra?”
    Scanning the letter, I saw the word
Stanton
pop up again and again; Barrows was answering a letter from Pris having to do with it. But I could not get the hang of Barrows’ thoughts; it was all too diffuse.
    Then all at once I got the drift.
    Barrows had obviously misunderstood Pris. He thought the idea of refighting the Civil War with electronic simulacra, manufactured at our factory in Boise, was a civic enterprise, a do-gooding patriotic effort along the lines of improving the schools and reclaiming the deserts, not a business proposition at all. That’s what she gets, I said to myself. Yes, I was right; Barrows was thanking her for her idea, for thinking of him in connection with it … but, he said, he received requests of this sort daily, and already had his hands full with worthy efforts. For instance a good deal of his time was spent in fighting condemnation of a war-time housing tract somewhere in Oregon … the letter became so vague, at that point, that I lost the thread completely.
    “Can I keep this?” I asked Miss Nild.
    “Please do. And if you’d like to comment, I’m sure Mr. Barrows would be interested in anything you have to say.”
    I said, “How long have you worked for Mr. Barrows?”
    “Eight years, Mr. Rosen.” She sounded happy about it.
    “Is he a billionaire, like the papers say?”
    “I suppose so, Mr. Rosen.” Her brown eyes twinkled, enlarged by her glasses.
    “Does he treat his employees good?”
    She smiled without answering.
    “What’s this housing project, this Green Peach Hat, that Barrows is talking about in the letter?”
    “That’s a term for Gracious Prospect Heights, one of the greatest multiple-unit housing developments in the Pacific Northwest. Mr. Barrows always calls it that, although originally it was a term of derision. The people who want to tear it down invented the term and Mr. Barrows took it over—the term, I mean—to protect the people who live there, so they won’t feel spat upon. They appreciate that. They got up a petition thanking him for his help in blocking condemnation proceedings; there were almost two thousand signatures.”
    “Then the people who live there don’t want it torn down?”
    “Oh no. They’re fiercely loyal to it. A group of do-gooders have taken it upon themselves to meddle, housewives and some society people who want to increase their own property values. They want to see the land used for a country club or something on that order. Their group is called the Northwest Citizens’ Committee for Better Housing. A Mrs. Devorac heads it.”
    I recalled having read about her in the Oregon papers; she was quite up in the fashionable circles, always involved in causes. Her picture appeared on the first page of section two regularly.
    “Why does Mr. Barrows want to save this housing tract?” I asked.
    “He is incensed at the idea of American citizens deprived of their rights. Most of them are poorer people. They’d have no place to go. Mr. Barrows understands how they feel because he lived in rooming houses for years … you know that his family had no more money than anyone else? That he made his money on his own, through his own hard work and efforts?”
    “Yes,” I said. She seemed to be waiting for me to go on, so I said, “It’s nice he still is able to identify with the working class, even though he’s now a billionaire.”
    “Since most of Mr. Barrows’ money was made in real estate, he has an acute awareness of the problems people face in their struggle to obtain decent housing. To society ladies such as Silvia Devorac, Green Peach Hat is merely an unsightly conglomeration of old buildings; none of them have gone inside—it would never occur to them to do so.”
    “You know,” I said, “hearing this about Mr. Barrows goes a long way to make me feel that our civilization isn’t