“What’s the point of keeping this hotel and the street outside going for me now?” Joe said. “Now that I know?”

“But I always do it this way.” Jory’s eyes widened.

Joe said, “I’m going to kill you.” He stepped toward Jory in an uncoordinated half-falling motion. Raising his open hands he plunged against the boy, trying to capture the neck, searching for the bent pipestem windpipe with all his fingers.

Snarling, Jory bit him. The great shovel teeth fastened deep into Joe’s right hand. They hung on as, meanwhile, Jory raised his head, lifting Joe’s hand with his jaw; Jory stared at him with unwinking eyes, snoring wetly as he tried to close his jaws. The teeth sank deeper and Joe felt the pain of it throughout him. He’s eating me, he realized. “You can’t,” he said aloud; he hit Jory on the snout, punching again and again. “The Ubik keeps you away,” he said as he cuffed Jory’s jeering eyes. “You can’t do it to me.”

“Gahm grau,” Jory bubbled, working his jaws sideways like a sheep’s, grinding Joe’s hand until the pain became too much for Joe to stand. He kicked Jory. The teeth released his hand; he crept backward, looking at the blood rising from the punctures made by the troll teeth. Jesus, he said to himself, appalled.

“You can’t do to me,” Joe said, “what you did to them.” Locating the spray can of Ubik, he pointed the nozzle toward the bleeding wound which his hand had become. He pressed the red plastic stud and a weak stream of particles emerged and settled in a film over the chewed, torn flesh. The pain immediately departed. Before his eyes the wound healed.

“And you can’t kill me,” Jory said. He still grinned.

Joe said, “I’m going downstairs.” He walked unsteadily to the door of the room and opened it. Outside lay the dingy hall; he started forward, step by step, treading carefully. The floor, however, seemed substantial. Not a quasi- or unreal world at all.

“Don’t go too far,” Jory said from behind him. “I can’t keep too great an area going. Like, if you were to get into one of those cars and drive for miles… eventually you’d reach a point where it breaks down. And you wouldn’t like that any better than I do.”

“I don’t see what I have to lose.” Joe reached the elevator, pressed the down button.

Jory called after him, “I have trouble with elevators. They’re complicated. Maybe you should take the stairs.”

After waiting a little longer, Joe gave up; as Jory had advised, he descended by the stairs—the same flight up which he had so recently come, step by step, in an agony of effort.

Well, he thought, that’s one of the two agencies who’re at work; Jory is the one who’s destroying us—has destroyed us, except for me. Behind Jory there is nothing; he is the end. Will I meet the other? Probably not soon enough for it to matter, he decided. He looked once more at his hand. Completely well.

Reaching the lobby, he gazed around him, at the people, the great chandelier overhead. Jory, in many respects, had done a good job, despite the reversion to these older forms. Real, he thought, experiencing the floor beneath his feet. I can’t get over it.

He thought, Jory must have had experience. He must have done this many times before.

Going to the hotel desk, he said to the clerk, “You have a restaurant that you’d recommend?”

“Down the street,” the clerk said, pausing in his task of sorting mail. “To your right. The Matador. You’ll find it excellent, sir.”

“I’m lonely,” Joe said, on impulse. “Does the hotel have any source of supply? Any girls?”

The clerk said in a clipped, disapproving voice, “Not this hotel, sir; this hotel does not pander.”

“You keep a good clean family hotel,” Joe said.

“We like to think so, sir.”

“I was just testing you,” Joe said. “I wanted to be sure what kind of hotel I was staying in.” He left the counter, recrossed the lobby, made his way down the wide marble stairs, through the revolving door and onto the pavement outside.

The diversity of cars impressed him. Many years represented, many makes and many models. The fact that they mostly came in black could not be laid at Jory’s door; this detail was authentic.

But how did Jory know it?

That’s peculiar, he thought; Jory’s knowledge of the minutiae of 1939, a period in which none of us lived—except Glen Runciter.

Then all at once he realized why. Jory had told the truth; he had constructed—not this world—but the world, or rather its phantasmagoric counterpart, of their own time. Decomposition back to these forms was not of his doing; they happened despite his efforts. These are natural atavisms, Joe realized, happening mechanically as Jory’s strength wanes. As the boy says, it’s an enormous effort. This is perhaps the first time he has created a world this diverse, for so many people at once. It isn’t usual for so many half-lifers to be interwired.

We have put an abnormal strain on Jory, he said to himself. And we paid for it.

A square old Dodge taxi sputtered past; Joe waved at it, and the cab floundered noisily to the curb. Let’s test out what Jory said, he said to himself, as to the early boundary of this quasi world now. To the driver he said, “Take me for a ride through town; go anywhere you want. I’d like to see as many streets and buildings and people as possible, and then, when you’ve driven through all of Des Moines, I want you to drive me to the next town and we’ll see that.”

“I don’t go between towns, mister,” the driver said, holding the door open for Joe. “But I’ll be glad to drive you around Des Moines. It’s a nice city, sir. You’re from out of state, aren’t you?”

“New York,” Joe said, getting inside the cab.

The cab rolled back out into traffic. “How do they feel about the war back in New York?” the driver asked presently. “Do you think we’ll be getting into it? Roosevelt wants to get us—”

“I don’t care to discuss politics or the war,” Joe said harshly.

They drove for a time in silence.

Watching the buildings, people and cars go by, Joe asked himself again how Jory could maintain it all. So many details, he marveled. I should be coming to the edge of it soon; it has to be just about now.

“Driver,” he said, “are there any houses of prostitution here in Des Moines?’

“No,” the driver said.

Maybe Jory can’t manage that, Joe reflected. Because of his youth. Or maybe he disapproves. He felt, all at once, tired. Where am I going? he asked himself. And what for? To prove to myself that what Jory told me is true? I already know it’s true; I saw the doctor wink out. I saw Jory emerge from inside Don Denny; that should have been enough. All I’m doing this way is putting more of a load on Jory, which will increase his appetite. I’d better give up, he decided. This is pointless.

And, as Jory had said, the Ubik would be wearing off anyhow. This driving around Des Moines is not the way I want to spend my last minutes or hours of life. There must be something else.

Along the sidewalk a girl moved in a slow, easy gait; she seemed to be window-shopping. A pretty girl, with gay, blond pigtails, wearing an unbuttoned sweater over her blouse, a bright red skirt and high-heeled little shoes. “Slow the cab,” he instructed the driver. “There, by that girl with the pigtails.”

“She won’t talk to you,” the driver said. “She’ll call a cop.”