The Zap Gun by Philip K. Dick

Author:Philip K. Dick
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3, pdf
Tags: Science-Fiction
ISBN: 9780375719363
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2009-10-13T10:00:00+00:00

SIXTEEN

She blinked. The dead cigar and the can of beer trembled.

Lars said, “They have me right now as much as they’ve had you.”

“Didn’t you volunteer to come here to Fairfax?”

“Oh, sure!” He nodded. “In fact I personally talked Marshal Paponovich into the idea. Nobody made me come here; nobody put a pistol to my head. But somebody brought a pistol out of a desk drawer and let me view it, and let me know.”

“An FBI man?” Her eyes were enormous, like those of a little child hearing the exploits of the fabulous.

“No, not an FBI man, technically. A friend of the FBI, in this friendly, cooperative world in which we live. It’s not important; we don’t have to depress ourselves into talking about this. Except that you ought to know that they could have gotten to me any time. And when it mattered they let me know it.”

“So,” Lilo said thoughtfully, “you haven’t been that different. I heard you were a prima donna.”

Lars said, “I am, I’m difficult. I’m undependable. But they can still get out of me what they want. What else matters?”

“I guess nothing else,” she said, dutifully.

“What drugs do you take?”

“Formophane.”

“It sounds like a new make of one-way mirror.” He had never heard of it. “Or a plastic milk carton that opens itself and pours itself on your cereal without spilling a drop.”

Lilo said, between gulps, awkward and adolescent, at her can of beer, “Formophane is rare. You don’t have it in the West. It’s made by a firm in East Germany that descends from some ancient pre-Nazi pharmaceutical cartel. In fact it’s made—” She paused. Obviously she was considering whether it was wise to finish. “They make it expressly for me,” she said, at last.

There, it was done, she had told him. “The Pavlov Institute at New Moscow made a six-month analysis of my brain-metabolism to see what could be done to—improve it. They came up with this chemical formula and it was Xeroxed and passed on to A. G. Chemie. And A. G. Chemie produces sixty half-grain tablets of Formophane for me a month.”

“And it does what?”

Lilo said, carefully, “I don’t know.”

He felt fear. For her. For what they had done—and could do again any time they wanted. “Don’t you notice any effects?” he asked. “Deeper involvement in the trance-state? Longer? Fewer after-effects? You must notice something. Improvement in your sketches—it must be they give it to you to improve your sketches.”

Lilo said, “Or to keep me from dying.”

The fear inside him became acute. “Why dying? Explain.” He kept his voice low, free of affect; it appeared as casual. “Even considering the quasi-epileptoid nature of—”

“I am a very sick person,” Lilo said. “Mentally. I have what they call ‘depressions.’ They’re not depressions and they know it; that’s why I spent—always will spend—a lot of time at the Pavlov Institute. It’s hard to keep me going, Lars. That’s the simple fact. It’s a day by day proposition, and Formophane helps. I take it. I’m glad to get it—I don’t like the ‘depressions’ or whatever they are.

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