“Lay the new deal out for me,” I say.
“We take the Sun instead.”
I gape at the creature for a second time. It seems perfectly serious.
“It’s a good deal. You get to keep the Moon now and we come back later to take the Sun. I can’t offer fairer than that.”
“How much later?”
Reaching for its pad, it taps and the screen comes up with a number that, were it on a cheque, would make Wall Street dizzy with delight. If we’re talking years that’s a long long time from now. “The way to think of this,” it says, “is the future sold you out. So have to protect yourself, and the easiest way to do that is take up my offer. In fact, sign now and I’ll throw in a bonus.” It grins. “Jupiter.”
My face probably says it all.
“Largest of the gas giants? 500,000,000 odd miles away, two and a half times the mass of all the other planets in your system put together? Third brightest object in your sky?” For a split second the dog-head looks like a sulky child who’s done the wrong homework.
“What about Jupiter?”
“Just for you, just because I like you… when we do come to take the Sun, we’ll shift the Earth into a new orbit around Jupiter before we do anything else. Well, we’ll turn Jupiter into a little sun for you first, or there’d be no point moving you, would there?”
This is the point I help myself to a whisky, and listen to three minutes of small talk as it pretends to give me time to think about its offer while talking enough to ensure that isn’t possible. All the same, inside myself I know I like this deal. As some time, in the impossibly far future, we’ll give up the Sun. In return, we ‘d keep the Moon now; and, as a bonus prize, they’ll relocate the planet for us and throw in a new sun to keep us warm before they take the old one. But I don’t want it to know I’m keen.
“Yeah, right,” I say. “Like any of that’s even possible.”
It glances round my office◦– and for a second I see myself through its cold gaze. It’s like the Dutch settlers offering the Algonquin beads for the island that will become Manhattan. If I refuse how do I know the dog head won’t give me a stripy blanket as a present anyway. And we’ll only discover it’s a trick and the blanket is infected with smallpox when everyone begins to die.
The dog head turns its cold gaze on me.
“Of course it’s possible. The gas giant you call Jupiter is mostly hydrogen anyway. Like the sun,” it adds helpfully. “Obviously, it’s far too small to achieve stellar ignition for itself and even increasing its density won’t really help. So, we’re going to have to cheat a little.” It tips its head to one side. It could be thinking, but I suspect it’s just trying to impress me. “The planet core is tiny, of course. So that’s no real help. Our best bet is to seed the centre with tiny black holes. We’ll have to tune those carefully. Make them self-replenishing. You know the kind of thing.”
“I’ll give the White House your message.”
“Mr. Carelli, you misunderstand me.” It produces its pad again, and places it on my desk, not with a bang but forcefully enough to make the point that chitchat is at an end. “I don’t need to negotiate with local leaders. I’m already negotiating with you. Your world owes us. Decide now if we get repaid or the debt is rescheduled.”
Mostly debt collectors kick your door off its hinges on their way in, and kick your balls on the way out. This one scares me more, for all my door and privates are intact. I think about our world without a moon and that reworked map. And I think about those bastards in the far future. People I didn’t know and who might not even be people by then. They sold us out. It’s not as if we owe them anything. All the same, I want to say I got us the best deal I could.
It watches in distaste as I take a cigar from my box, bite off the end and spit it at the gash bin, reaching for my desk lighter and taking my time as I put a flame to the end. I blow smoke at the ceiling and watch it swirl as the fan folds it into the air. ‘This sun you’re going to make. It’s going to work? You guarantee that. It’s in the contract?’
It turns the pad towards me. The contract is ten lines. Simple. A real moneylender’s special. What was owed. The new deal. What will be owed. The fact the contract is entered into voluntarily with no threats applied. There is nothing about the new sun actually working, and I make the creature add this before taking the leadless pencil it offers me and signing where it points:
Tito Cravelli
Larkin Street, San Francisco
1951
DOCUMENT 2
To Deputy Director
From Chief: DOI
Top Secret
POTUS asks us to confirm the Cravelli issue has been dealt with. For my own satisfaction, please confirm an EZ 21 was instigated and not an EZ 19 or below. I will let you have my decision on the other matter after I’ve heard from the bureau.
DOCUMENT 3
For the eyes of the Chief; DOI only
From Deputy Director
Top Secret
I can confirm◦– and have confirmed with the Oval Office◦– that there is no evidence Tito Cavelli existed. No records of any kind are available. No copies or originals of the following:
Birth Certificate
Social Security card or number
Driver’s license
Passport
Library card
Medical Insurance card
Medical records
Dental records
School records
Exams taken or certificates issued
Army Service record
Military ID
PI license
Mortgage forms
Rent book for any building
Death certificate
Can I ask if a decision has been reached on the PKD issue?
DOCUMENT 4
From Chief; DOI
To Deputy Director
Top Secret
The FBI’s new dept. of psychological affairs has asked us NOT to instigate an EZ 21 or EZ 19 on PKD. The White House has authorised JEH to use him as a test case and I include a copy of their proposed reply (plus their most recent communication to me). As of now, PKD becomes their problem. I understand they will be watching the man for life.
Document 5
From Head; Dept. of Psychological Affairs
To Chief: DOI
Top Secret
We note from your bureau’s records that the subject is of nervous disposition, dislikes authority, recently dropped out of the University of California, Berkeley, and currently works in a record store, that he recently married, and has aspirations to be a novelist.
This is, we feel, both an ideal bedrock and fertile ground on which to sow our ideas. In the first instance, we will be writing as follows.
Please note, we suggest our agent claims to work for your Deputy Director, since this will supply a plausible link between your holding letter and this reply [attached].
Document 6
To Philip K. Dick
From Joan Reiss
Dear Mr. Dick,
I’ve been passed your letter by my section head. He asks me to extend the dept’s apologies for the tardiness of this reply to your letter about Mr. Tito Cavelli, your “missing friend”. He further asks me to tell you there is no record of a Mr. Cavelli in any government file. The apartment you say Mr. Cravelli owned has been lived in by a Polish refugee for the last five years. There was no Cavelli Detective Agency at the address you gave. More to the point, the Bureau of Investigative Services in Sacramento had no record of issuing a Mr. Cavelli with a PI license. As you might know, the office block in which you say this office existed was recently demolished but we are certain of our facts.