A Scanner Darkly

“A dream woke me,” Arctor said. “A religious dream. In it there was this huge clap of thunder, and all of a sudden the heavens rolled aside and God appeared and His voice rumbled at me—what the hell did He say?—oh yeah. ‘I am vexed with you, my son,’ He said. He was scowling. I was shaking, in the dream, and looking up, and I said, ‘What’d I do now, Lord?’ And He said, ‘You left the cap off the toothpaste tube again.’ And then I realized it was my exwife.”

Seating himself, Barris placed a hand on each of his leather-covered knees, smoothed himself, shook his head, and confronted Arctor. He seemed in an extremely good mood. “Well,” he said briskly, “I’ve got an initial theoretical view as to who might have systematically damaged with malice your cephscope and may do it again.”

“If you’re going to say it was Luckman—”

“Listen,” Barris said, rocking back and forth in agitation. “W-w-what if I told you I’ve anticipated for weeks a serious malfunction in one of the household appliances, especially an expensive one difficult to repair? My theory called for this to happen! This is a confirmation of my over-all theory!”

Arctor eyed him.

Slowly sinking back down, Barris resumed his calm and bright smiling. “You,” he said, pointing.

“You think I did it,” Arctor said. “Screwed up my own cephscope, with no insurance.” Disgust and rage swelled through him. And it was late at night; he needed his sleep.

“No, no,” Barris said rapidly, looking distressed. “You are looking at the person who did it. Buggered your cephscope. That was my complete intended statement, which I was not allowed to utter.”

“You did it?” Mystified, he stared at Barris, whose eyes were murky with a sort of dim triumph. “Why?”

“I mean, it’s my theory that I did it,” Barris said. “Under posthypnotic suggestion, evidently. With an amnesia block so I wouldn’t remember.” He began to laugh.

“Later,” Arctor said, and snapped off his bedside lamp. “Much later.”

Barris rose, dithering. “Hey, but don’t you see—I’ve got the advanced specialized electronic technical skills, and I have access to it—I live here. What I can’t figure out, though, is my motive.”

“You did it because you’re nuts,” Arctor said.

“Maybe I was hired by secret forces,” Barris muttered in perplexity. “But what would their motives be? Possibly to start suspicion and trouble among us, to cause dissension to break out, causing us to be pitted against one another, all of us, uncertain of whom we can trust, who is our enemy and like that.”

“Then they’ve succeeded,” Arctor said.

“But why would they want to do that?” Barris was saying as he moved toward the door; his hands flapped urgently. “So much trouble—removing that plate on the bottom, getting a passkey to the front door—”

I’ll be glad, Bob Arctor thought, when we get in the holoscanners and have them set up all over this house. He touched his gun, felt reassured, then wondered if he should make certain it was still full of shells. But then, he realized, I’ll wonder if the firing pin is gone or if the powder has been removed from the shells and so forth, on and on, obsessively, like a little boy counting cracks in the sidewalk to reduce his fear. Little Bobby Arctor, coming home from the first grade with his little schoolbooks, frightened at the unknown lying ahead.

Reaching down, he fumbled at the bed frame, along and along until his fingers touched Scotch tape. Pulling it loose, he tore from it, with Barris still in the room and watching, two tabs of Substance D mixed with quaak. Lifting them to his mouth, he tossed them down his throat, without water, and then lay back, sighing.

“Get lost,” he said to Barris.

And slept.

5

It was necessary for Bob Arctor to be out of his house for a period of time in order that it be properly (which meant unerringly) bugged, phone included, even though the phone line was tapped elsewhere. Usually the practice consisted of observing the house involved until everyone was seen to leave it in such a fashion as to suggest they were not going to return soon. The authorities sometimes had to wait for days or even several weeks. Finally, if nothing else worked, a pretext was arranged: the residents were informed that a fumigator or some such shuck personality was going to be coming in for a whole afternoon and everybody had to get lost until, say, six P.M.