Clans of the Alphane moon - By Philip K. Dick Page 0,3
sighting incoming traffic; probably the original word had come from Da Vinci Heights… unless of course a Skitz mystic had foreseen it in a vision.
“It’s probably a trick,” Baines said aloud.
Everyone in the room, including the gloomy Dep, gazed at him; the Heeb momentarily even ceased sweeping.
“Those Manses,” Baines explained, “they’ll try anything. This is their way of getting an advantage over the rest of us, paying us back.”
“For what?” Miss Hibbler said.
“You know the Manses hate all of us,” Baines said. “Because they’re crude, barbaric roughnecks, unwashed storm troopers who reach for their gun when they hear the word ‘culture.’ It’s in their metabolism; it’s the old Gothic.” And yet that did not really state it; to be perfectly honest he did not know why the Manses were so intent on hurting everyone else, unless, as his theory went, it was out of sheer delight in inflicting pain. No, he thought, there must be more than that. Malice and envy; they must envy us, know we’re culturally superior. As diverse as Da Vinci Heights is, there’s no order, no esthetic unity to it; it’s a hodgepodge of incomplete so-called “creative” projects, started out but never finished.
Annette said slowly, “Straw is a little unpolished, I admit. Even typically the reckless sort. But why would he report a foreign ship if one hadn’t been sighted? You haven’t given any clear reason.”
“But I know,” Baines said stubbornly, “that the Manses and especially Howard Straw are against us; we should act to protect ourselves from—” He ceased, because the door had opened and Straw strode brusquely into the room.
Red-haired, big and brawny, he was grinning. The appearance of an alien ship on their minute moon did not bother him.
It remained now only for the Skitz to arrive and, as usual, he might be an hour late; he would be wandering in a trance somewhere, lost in his clouded visions of an archetypal reality, of cosmic proto-forces underlying the temporal universe, his perpetual view of the so-called Urwelt.
We might as well make ourselves comfortable, Baines decided. As much so as possible, given Straw’s presence among us. And Miss Hibbler’s; he did not much care for her either. In fact, he did not care for any of them with perhaps the exception of Annette: she of the inordinate, conspicuous bosom. And he was getting nowhere with her. As usual.
But that was not his fault; all the Polys were like that—no one ever knew which way they’d jump. They were contrary on purpose, opposed to the dictates of logic. And yet they were not moths, as were the Skitzes, nor debrained machines like the Heebs. They were abundantly alive; that was what he enjoyed so about Annette—her quality of animation, freshness.
In fact she made him feel rigid and metallic, encased in thick steel like some archaic weapon of a useless, ancient war. She was twenty, he was thirty-five, perhaps that explained it. But he did not believe so. And then he thought, I’ll bet she wants me to feel this way; she’s deliberately trying to make me feel bad.
And, in response, all at once he felt icy, carefully-reasoned Pare hatred for her.
Annette, simulating obliviousness, continued to devour the remnants of her bag of candy.
The Skitz delegate to the biannual get-together at Adolfville, Omar Diamond, gazed over the landscape of the world and saw, beneath it and upon it, the twin dragons, red and white, of death and life; the dragons, locked in battle, made the plain tremble, and, overhead, the sky split and a wizened decaying gray sun cast little if any comfort in a world fast losing its meager store of the vital.
“Halt,” Omar said, raising his hand and addressing the dragons.
A man and wavy-haired girl, walking along the sidewalk of Adolfville’s downtown district toward him, halted. The girl said, “What’s the matter with him? He’s doing something.” Repugnance.
“Just a Skitz,” the man said, amused. “Lost in visions.”
Omar said, “The eternal war has broken out afresh. The powers of life are on the wane. Can no man make the fatal decision, renounce his own life in an act of sacrifice to restore them?”
The man, with a wink at his wife, said, “You know, sometimes you can ask these fellows a question and get an interesting answer. Go ahead, ask him something—make it big and general, like, ‘What is the meaning of existence?’ Not, ‘Where’s the scissors I lost yesterday?’” He urged her forward.
With caution the woman addressed Omar. “Excuse me, but I’ve always wondered—is there