Clans of the Alphane moon - By Philip K. Dick Page 0,5

count the garbage dump which was the living space of the Heebs.

Dino Watters, the Dep, muttered hoarsely, “We’re doomed.”

Everyone glared at him, even Jacob Simion the Heeb. How like a Dep.

“Forgive him,” Omar whispered. And somewhere, in the invisible empery, the spirit of life heard, responded, forgave the half-dying creature who was Dino Watters of the Dep settlement, Cotton Mather Estates.

TWO

With scarcely a glance around the old conapt with its cracked sheet-rock walls, recessed lighting that probably no longer worked, archaic picture window and shabby, out-of-date pre-Korean War tile floors, Chuck Rittersdorf said, “It’ll do.” He got out his checkbook, wincing at the sight of the central wrought-iron fireplace; he had not seen one of these since 1970, since his childhood.

The owner of this deteriorating building, however, frowned in suspicion as she received Chuck’s identification papers. “According to this you’re married, Mr. Rittersdorf, and you have children. You’re not going to bring in a wife and children to this conapt; this was listed in the homeopape ad as ‘for bachelor, employed, nondrinker,’ and—”

Wearily Chuck said, “That’s the point.” The fat, middle-aged landlady in her Venusian whistle-cricket hide dress and wubfur slippers repelled him; already this had become a grim experience. “I’ve separated from my wife. She’s keeping the children. That’s why I need this conapt.”

“But they’ll be visiting.” Her purple tinted eyebrows rose.

Chuck said, “You don’t know my wife.”

“Oh they will; I know these new Federal divorce laws. Not like the old days of state divorces. Been to court, yet? Got your first papers?”

“No,” he admitted. It was just beginning for him. Late last night he had gone to a hotel and the night before that—it had been his final night of struggling to achieve the impossible, to keep on living with Mary.

He gave the landlady the check; she returned his ID form and departed; at once he shut the door, walked to the window of the conapt and gazed out at the street below, the wheels, jet-hoppers, ramps and runnels of footers. Soon he would have to call his attorney, Nat Wilder. Very soon.

The irony of their marital breakup was too much. For his wife’s profession—and she was good at it—was marriage counseling. In fact she had a reputation here in Marin County, California, where she maintained her office, as being the best. God knew how many fracturing human relationships she had healed. And yet, by a masterstroke of injustice, this very talent and skill on her part had helped drive him to this dismal conapt. Because, by being so successful in her own career, Mary could not resist feeling contempt, which had grown over the years, for him.

The fact was—and he had to face it—that in his career he had not been nearly as successful as Mary.

His job, and he personally enjoyed it very much, was the programming of simulacra from the Cheyenne government’s intelligence agency for its unending propaganda programs, its agitation against the ring of Communist states which surrounded the USA. He personally believed deeply in his work, but by no rationalization could it be called either a high-paying calling or a noble one; the programming which he concocted—to say the least—was infantile, spurious and biased. The main appeal was to school children both in the USA and in the neighboring Communist states, and to the great masses of adults of low educational background. He was, in fact, a hack. And Mary had pointed this out many, many times.

Hack or not, he continued in this job, although others had been offered him during the six-year course of his marriage. Perhaps it was because he enjoyed hearing his words uttered by the human-like simulacra; perhaps it was because he felt the overall cause was vital: the US was on the defensive, politically and economically, and had to protect itself. It needed persons to work for the government at admittedly low salaries, and at jobs lacking heroic or splendid qualities. Someone had to program the propaganda simulacra, who were deposited all over the world to do their job as reps of the Counter Intelligence Authority, to agitate, convince, influence. But—

Three years ago the crisis had come. One of Mary’s clients—who had been involved in incredibly complex marital difficulties including three mistresses at once—was a TV producer; Gerald Feld had produced the famous, the one and only Bunny Hentman TV show, and owned a major piece of the popular TV comic. In a little side-dealing Mary had passed onto Feld several of the programming scripts which Chuck had written