Clans of the Alphane moon - By Philip K. Dick Page 0,6

for the CIA’s local branch in San Francisco. Feld had read them with interest because these—and this explained Mary’s selection—contained a good deal of humor. That was Chuck’s talent; he programmed something other than the usual pompous, solemn stuff… it was said to be alive with wit; it sparkled. And—Feld agreed. And had asked Mary to arrange a meeting between him and Chuck.

Now, standing at the window of the small, drab, old conapt, into which he had not moved so much as one article of clothing, gazing down at the street below, Chuck recalled the conversation with Mary which had erupted. It had been an especially vicious one, certainly classic; it had epitomized the breach between the two of them.

To Mary the issue had been clear: here was a job possibility; it had to be poked thoroughly into. Feld would pay well and the job would carry enormous prestige; each week, at the end of the Bunny Hentman show, Chuck’s name, as one of the script writers, would appear on the screen for all the nonCom world to see. Mary would—and here was the key phrase—take pride in his work; it was conspicuously creative. And to Mary creativity was the open sesame to life; working for the CIA, programming propaganda simulacra who gabbled a message for uneducated Africans and Latin Americans and Asians, was not creative; the messages tended always to be the same and anyhow the CIA was in bad repute in the liberal, monied, sophisticated circles which Mary inhabited.

“You’re like a—leaf-raker in a satellite park,” Mary had said, infuriated, “on some kind of civil service deal. It’s easy security; it’s the way out of having to struggle. Here you are thirty-three years old and already you’ve given up trying. Given up wanting to make something of yourself.”

“Listen,” he said futilely. “Are you my mother or just my wife? I mean, is it your job to keep goading me on? Do I have to keep rising? Is it becoming TERPLAN President, is that what you want?” Outside of the prestige and money there was something more involved. Evidently Mary wanted him to be another person. She, the one who knew him best in all the world, was ashamed of him. If he took the job writing for Bunny Hentman he would become different—or so her logic went.

He could not deny the logic. And yet he persisted; he did not quit his job, did not change. Something in him was just too inertial. For better or worse. There was a hysteresis to one’s essence; he did not put by that essence easily.

Outside, on the street, a white Chevrolet deluxe wheel, a shiny new six-door model, dropped to the curb and landed. He watched idly and then he realized with a start of incredulity that—impossible but true—it was his ex-own; here was Mary. She had already found him.

His wife, Dr. Mary Rittersdorf, was about to pay him a visit.

He felt fright, and a sense of increased failure; he had not even been able to pull off this—find a conapt in which to live where Mary couldn’t locate him. In a few more days, Nat Wilder could arrange legal protection, but now, at this point, he was helpless; he had to admit her.

It was easy to see how she had traced him; moderate detection devices were available and cheap. Mary had probably gone to a pry-vye, a robot detection agency, obtained use of a sniffer, presented it his cephalic pattern; it had gone to work, followed him to every place he had been since leaving her. Nowadays, finding someone was an exact science.

So a woman determined to locate you, he reflected, can. There probably was a law governing it; perhaps he could call it Rittersdorf’s Law. In proportion to one’s desire to escape, to hide, detection devices—

A rap sounded on the hollow-core door of the conapt.

As he walked stiff-legged, unwillingly, to the door he thought, She will make a speech which will embody every known reasonable appeal. I, of course, will have no argument, just my feeling that we can’t go on, that her contempt for me indicates a failure between us too profound to admit any future intimacy.

He opened the door. There she stood, dark-haired, wispy, in her expensive (her best) natural-wool coat, without makeup; a calm, competent, educated woman who was his superior in a flock of ways. “Listen, Chuck,” she said, “I won’t stand for this. I’ve arranged for a moving company to pick up all your things and