A maze of death by Philip K. Dick

Author:Philip K. Dick
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science-Fiction
ISBN: 9780679752981
Publisher: Vintage Books
Published: 1994-02-14T10:00:00+00:00

So now he saw it. Seth Morley shaded his eyes against the bright midday sun, peered. Gray and large, it reared up at the limit of his vision. A cube, almost. With odd spires … probably from heat-sources. From the machinery and activity within. A pall of smoke hung over it and he thought, It’s a factory.

“Let’s go,” Thugg said, starting in that direction.

They trudged that way, strung out in an uneven file.

“It’s not getting any closer,” Wade Frazer said presently, with jejune derision.

“Walk faster, then,” Thugg said with a grin.

“It won’t help.” Maggie Walsh halted, gasping. Circles of dark sweat were visible around her armpits. “Always it’s like this. You walk and walk and it recedes and recedes.”

“And you never get really close,” Wade Frazer said. He, too, had stopped walking; he was busy lighting up a battered rosewood pipe … using with it, Seth Morley noted, one of the worst and strongest pipe-mixtures in existence. The smell of it, as the pipe flared into irregular burning, befouled the natural air.

“Then what do we do?” Russell said.

“Maybe you can think of something,” Thugg said. “Maybe if we close our eyes and walk around in a little circle we’ll find ourselves standing next to it.”

“As we stand here,” Seth Morley said, shading his eyes and peering, “it gets closer.” He was positive. He could pick out all the spires, now, and the pall of smoke above it seemed to have lifted. Maybe it’s not a factory after all, he thought. If it will come just a little nearer maybe I can tell. He peered on and on; the others, presently, did the same.

Russell said reflectively, “It’s a phantasm. A projection of some kind. From a transmitter located probably within a square mile of us. A very efficient, modern vidtransmitter … but you can still see a slight waver.”

“What do you suggest, then?” Seth Morley asked him. “If you’re right then there’s no reason to try to get close to it, since it isn’t there.”

“It’s somewhere,” Russell corrected. “But not in that spot. What we’re seeing is a fake. But there is a real Building and it probably is not far off.”

“How can you know that?” Seth Morley said.

Russell said, “I’m familiar with Interplan West’s method of decoy-composition. This illusory transmission is in existence to fool those who know there is a Building. Who expect to find it. And when they see this they think they have. This is not for someone who does not know there is a Building somewhere out here.” He added, “This worked very well in the war between Interplan West and the warrior-cults of Rigel 10. Rigelian missiles zeroed in on illusory industrial complexes over and over again. You see, this kind of projection shows up on radar screens and computerized sweep-scanner probes. It has a kind of semi-material basis; strictly speaking it’s not a mirage.”

“Well, you would know,” Betty Jo Berm said. “You’re an economist; you’d be familiar with what happened to industrial complexes during a war.

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