Philip K. Dick - The Unteleported Man.pdf

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THE AUTHOR WHO INSPIRED THE MOVIE
BLADERUNNER
PHILIP K. DICK
T HE W ORLD F AMOUS C LASSIC , N OW
U NCENSORED F OR T HE F IRST T IME!
THE UNTELEPORTED MAN
W ITH T HE A UTHOR'S P REVIOUSLY
U NPUBLISHED O RIGINAL E NDING
Philip K. Dick's THE UNTELEPORTED MAN was published in 1966 by Ace Books,
in a version from which some 30,000 words were cut for "commercial" reasons. Many
years later Dick reread the material for the first time at the urging of then-Berkley Books
editor Mark Hurst, and agreed to allow Berkley to re-publish the book with the missing
material restored. Four pages of the manuscript had been lost in the meantime, and it was
Dick's intention to recreate those pages for the new edition.
He never lived to do so, dying suddenly and tragically in 1982. Susan Allison, director
of science fiction at The Berkley Publishing Group, the representatives of Dick's estate,
and I, his agent, felt that, missing pages or not, this extraordinary work of science fiction
should no longer be suppressed. It is therefore presented here with the missing material at
long last restored, unavoidably with three gaps in the text to reflect the lost pages.
Russell Galen Scott
Meredith Literary Agency, Inc.
1
Over Rachmael ben Applebaum's head floated a creditor jet-balloon, and from within
its articulation-circuit a flat but handsome, masculine—artificial, however—voice
boomed, magnified so that not only Rachmael but everyone else crowding the ped-
runnels heard it. The amplification was designed this way; you were singled out and
simultaneously exposed; public ridicule, the jeers of the always-present crowds, was
brought into play as a force working at you . . . and, Rachmael reflected, for the creditor,
free.
"Mr. Applebaum!" The hearty, rich but machine-sponsored voice echoed, rolled and
boomed, and a thousand human heads rotated in expectation, glanced up with amused
interest, saw the creditor jet-balloon and spied also its target: Rachmael ben Applebaum
trying to get from the parking lot where he had left his flapple and into the offices of Lies
Incorporated, a distance of only two thousand yards—but enough to make him visible so
as to become the creditor balloon's target.
"Okay," Rachmael grated, and strode on, not breaking gait; he made for the fluoron-
illuminated entrance of the private police agency and did not look up; he pretended—as if
this were possible—to ignore a sight which, in the last three years, he had learned to
know fully.
"Mr. Applebaum," the balloon boomed. "As of this Wednesday, November 8, 2014,
you owe, as inheritor of your late father's assets and debts, the sum of four million
poscreds to Trails of Hoffman Limited, a major backer in your late father's—"
"Okay!" Rachmael said violently, halting, peering up in futile anguish . . . the desire to
puncture, deflate and bring down the balloon was overwhelming—yet what could he do?
By UN ordinance, a creditor could hire such harassment; this was legal.
And the grinning crowd knew it. Saw in this for them a brief but amusing ent-show:
entertainment. However, he did not blame them; it was not their fault because they had
over the years been trained this way. All the info and edu media, controlled by the
"disinterested" UN public affairs bureaus, had tinkered with this facet of modern man's
complex character: his ability to enjoy the suffering of someone else whom he did not
even know.
"I cannot," Rachmael said, "pay. And you know it." Above, the jet-balloon heard; it had
exceeding marvelous aud receptors. But it did not believe him or care if what he said was
true; its job was to hound him, not to seek the truth. Standing on the runnel as it auto-
matically carried him along, Rachmael said, as reasonably as possible, "At present I have
no funds, because continuously up to now, one by one, I've paid off as many of
Applebaum Enterprise's creditors as I can."
Tauntingly, the mechanical voice from above boomed, "At three sigs on the poscred.
Some settling of accounts."
Rachmael said, "Give me time."
"Plans, Mr. Applebaum?" The voice twisted with scorn.
After a pause he said, "Yes." But he did not specify; it depended in part on what he
obtained from the private police agency, Lies Incorporated. If that was anything. But over
the vidphone at least—he did think he had detected a certain sympathetic resonance from
the master proprietor of the police agency, Matson Glazer-Holliday.
Now, in five minutes, in a formal screening-interview with a Lies Incorporated psych-
rep, Rachmael would find out—learn just how far the private police agency, which after
all had to survive the competition, had to stand up to the UN and the lesser titans of the
nine planet system, would go in staking a man who was not merely broke but who
owed—owed for the wreckage of an industrial empire which had collapsed, carrying its
operator and owner, Maury Applebaum, to his—evidently—voluntary death.
Evidently. A good word, and a big one, like any word pertaining to death. As the
runnel, despite the lurking, booming creditor balloon above, carried Rachmael toward the
sanctuary of the shifting-color doorway he thought, maybe they can help me there, too.
Because it had just never quite seemed reasonable to him that his father, and god knew
he was familiar with his father, would laser himself to death due to economic collapse . . .
although admittedly, as subsequent events had proved, that collapse was terminal for
Applebaum Enterprise.
"You must pay," the jet-balloon howled. "Trails of Hoffman insists; your petition of
bankruptcy was turned down by the UN courts—you, Mr. Rachmael ben Applebaum, are
legally liable for the sum of—"
The voice abruptly vanished as Rachmael crossed the threshold of the private inter-
planetary police agency, and the thoroughly soundproof rexeroid door slid shut after him.
"Yes, sir," the robot receptionist, not jeering but friendly, said to him; what a contrast
with the circus outside.
"Miss Holm," Rachmael said, and heard his voice shake. The creditor balloon had
gotten to him; he was trembling and perspiring.
"Syn-cof?" the receptionist asked sympathetically. "Or Martian fnikjuice tea, while you
wait?"
Rachmael, getting out a genuine Tampa, Florida Garcia y Vega cigarillo, murmured,
"I'll just sit, thanks." He lit the cigar, waited. For Miss Freya Holm, whatever or whoever
she was—and looked like.
A soft voice said, almost timidly, "Mr. ben Applebaum? I'm Miss Holm. If you'll come
into my office—" She held the door open, and she was perfection; his Garcia y Vega
cigarillo dwindled, neglected in the ashtray as he rose to his feet. She, no more than
twenty, chitin-black long hair that hung freely down her shoulders, teeth white as the
glossy bond of the expensive UN info mags . . . he stared at her, at the small girl in the
gold-spray bodice and shorts and sandals, with the single camellia over her left ear, stared
and thought, And this is my police protection.
"Sure." Numbly, he passed her, entered her small, contemporarily furnished office; in
one glance he saw artifacts from the extinct cultures of six planets. "But Miss Holm," he
said, then, candidly, "maybe your employers didn't explain; there's pressure here. I've got
one of the most powerful economic syndromes in the Sol system after me. Trails of
Hoffman—"
"THL," Miss Holm said, seating herself at her desk and touching the on of her aud
recorder, "is the owner of Dr. Sepp von Einem's teleportation construct and hence
monopolistically has made obsolete the hyper-see liners and freighters of Applebaum
Enterprise." On her desk before her she had a folio, which she consulted. "You see, Mr.
Rachmael ben Applebaum—" She glanced up. "I wish to keep you in data-reference
distinct from your father, the late Maury Applebaum. So may I call you Rachmael?"
"Y-yes," he said, nettled by her coolness, her small, firm poise—and the folio which lay
before her; long before he had consulted Listening Instructional Educational Services—
or, as the pop mind called it in UN-egged-on derision, Lies Incorporated—the police
agency had gathered, with its many data-monitors, the totality of information pertaining
to him and to the collapse from abrupt technological obsolescence of the once formidable
Applebaum Enterprise. And—
"Your late father," Freya Holm said, "died evidently at his own instigation. Officially
the UN police list it as Selbstmort . . . suicide. We however—" She paused, consulted the
folio. "Hmm."
Rachmael said, "I'm not satisfied, but I'm resigned." After all, he could not bring back
his heavy, red-faced, nearsighted and highly over-taxed father, Selbstmort, in the official
German of the UN, or not. "Miss Holm," he began, but she cut him off, gently.
"Rachmael, the Telpor electronic entity of Dr. Sepp von Einem, researched and paid
for, developed in the several inter-plan labs of Trails of Hoffman, could do nothing else
than bring chaos to the drayage industry; Theodoric Ferry, who is chairman of the board
of THL, must have known this when he financed Dr. von Einem at his Schweinfort labs
where the Telpor breakthrough occurred. And yet THL owned—outside of your
father's—the largest single holding of the now-defunct Applebaum Enterprise. Therefore
Trails of Hoffman Limited deliberately ruined a corporation which it had major
investments in . . . and this has seemed strange to us. And"—she glanced up alertly,
tossed back her mass of black hair—"now they hound you for restitution; correct?"
Rachmael nodded mutely.
Quietly, Miss Holm asked, "How long did it take a passenger liner of your father's
corporation to reach Whale's Mouth with a load of, say, five hundred colonists, plus their
personal effects?"
After a tormented pause he said, "We—never even tried. Years. Even at hyper-see."
The girl, across from him, still waited, wanted to hear him say it. "With our flagship
transport," he said, "eighteen years."
"And with Dr. von Einem's teleportation instrument—"
"Fifteen minutes," he said harshly. And Whale's Mouth, the number IX planet of the
Fomalhaut system, was to date the sole planet discovered either by manned or unmanned
observers which was truly habitable—truly a second Terra. Eighteen years . . . and even
deep-sleep would not help, for such a prolonged period; aging, although slowed down,
although consciousness was dimmed, still occurred. Alpha and Prox; that had been all
right; that had been short enough. But Fomalhaut, at twenty-four light-years—
"We just couldn't compete," he said. "We simply could not carry colonists that far."
"Would you have tried, without von Einem's Telpor breakthrough?"
Rachmael said, "My father—"
"Was thinking about it." She nodded. "But then he died and it was too late and now
you've had to sell virtually all your ships to meet note-payment due-dates. Now, from us,
Rachmael. You wanted . . . ?"
"I still own," he said, "our fastest, newest, biggest ship, the Omphalos; she's never been
sold, no matter how great the pressure THL has put on me, within and outside the UN
courts." He hesitated, then said it. "I want to go to Whale's Mouth. By ship. Not by Dr.
von Einem's Telpor. And by my own ship, by what we meant to be our—" He broke off.
"I want to take her all the way to Fomalhaut, on an eighteen-year voyage—alone. And
when I arrive at Whale's Mouth I'll prove—"
"Yes?" Freya said. "Prove what, Rachmael?"
"That we could have done it. Had von Einem not come along with that thing, that—"
He gestured, with impotent fury.
Freya said, "Telpor is one of the most vital discoveries in human history, Rachmael.
Teleportation, from one star system to another, twenty-four light-years in fifteen minutes.
When you reach Whale's Mouth by the Omphalos, I for instance will be—" She
calculated. "Forty-three years old."
He was silent.
"What," Freya asked in a soft voice, "would you accomplish by your trip?"
He said, honestly, "I—don't know."
Presently Freya said, reading from her folio, "You have, for six months now, been
thoroughly checking out the Omphalos at a concealed—even from us—launch field and
maintenance dock on Luna. She is now considered ready for the inter-system flight.
Trails of Hoffman has tried, through the courts, to attach her to claim her as their legal
property; this you have managed to fight. So far. But now—"
"My lawyers tell me," Rachmael said, "that three days stand between me and THL
seizing the Omphalos ."
"You can't blast off within three days?"
"The deep-sleep equipment. It's a week from being readied." He let out his breath
raggedly. "A subsidiary of THL manufactures vital components. They've been —held up."
Freya nodded. "And your coming here is to request us," she said, "to pick up the
Omphalos, with one of our veteran pilots, disappear with her for a week, until she's ready
for the flight to Fomalhaut. Correct?"
"That's it," he said, and sat waiting. "I'm not good enough to lose her. They'd find me.
But yours—one of your best." He did not look directly at her; it meant too much.
"You can pay our fee of—"
"Nothing. I have absolutely no funds. Later, as I continue to liquidate the assets of the
corporation, possibly I—"
Freya said, "There's a note here, Xeroxed, from my employer, Mr. Glazer-Holliday. He
observes that you're poscredless. His instructions to us—" She read the note, silently.
"However, we're to cooperate with you, despite your financial helplessness." Glancing up
at him she said, "We'll dispatch an experienced pilot who will take the Omphalos off
where THL, where even the UN agents acting for the Secretary General, Herr Horst Bert
old, won't find her. This our man can do—while you manage, if you can, to obtain the
final components of the deep-sleep equipment." She smiled slightly. "But I doubt if you'll
obtain those components, Rachmael; there's an additional memo here to that effect, too.
You're right: Theodoric Ferry sits on its board of directors, too, and this is all legal, this
monopoly which the firm possesses." Her smile was bitter. "UN sanctioned."
He was silent. Obviously it was hopeless; no matter how long the Lies Incorporated
professional and ultra-veteran space-pilot kept the huge liner the Omphalos lost between
planets, the components would be "held up unavoidably," as the invoices, marked back-
order, would read.
"I think," Freya said presently, "that your problem is not the mere obtaining of deep-
sleep components. That can be handled; there are ways . . . we, for instance, can—
although this will cost you a good deal of money eventually—pick them up on the
blackmarket. Your problem, Rachmael—"
"I know," he said. His problem was not how to get to the Fomalhaut system, to its ninth
planet, Whale's Mouth, which was Terra's sole thriving colony-world. In fact his problem
was not the eighteen-year voyage at all.
His problem was—
Why go at all, when Dr. von Einem's Telpor construct, available at a nominal cost at
any of Trails of Hoffman's many retail outlets on Terra, made the trip a mere fifteen-
minute minor journey, and within financial reach of even the most modest, income-wise
speaking, Terran family?
Aloud he said, "Freya, the trip by Telpor to Whale's Mouth—it sounds fine." And forty
million Terran citizens had taken advantage of it. And the aud and vid reports returning—
via the Telpor construct—all told glowingly of a world not overcrowded, of tall grass, of
odd but benign animals, of new and lovely cities built by robot-assists taken across at
UN-expense to Whale's Mouth. "But—"
"But," Freya said, "the peculiar fact is that it's a one-way trip."
Instantly he nodded. "Yes, that's it. No one can come back. "
"That's easily explained. The Sol system is located at the axis of the universe; the
recession of the extra-galactic nebulae demonstrates von Einem's Theorem One that—"
"There must," he said, "out of those forty million people, be a few who want to return.
But the TV and 'pape reports say they're all ecstatically happy. You've seen the endless

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