The Book of Philip K Dick (1973) Read Online Free PDF Page B

dropped his ship down. An open field lay to his right; a robot farmer was plowing with a metal hook welded to its waist, a section torn off some discarded machine. It stopped dragging the hook and gazed up in amazement, as Sung-wu landed the ship awkwardly and bumped to a halt.
    “Clearness be with you,” the robot rasped obediently, as Sung-wu climbed out.
    Sung-wu gathered up his bundle of reports and papers and stuffed them in a briefcase. He snapped the ship’s lock and hurried off toward the ruins of the city. The robot went back to dragging the rusty metal hook through the hard ground, its pitted body bent double with the strain, working slowly, silently, uncomplaining.
    The little boy piped, “Whither, Bard?” as Sung-wu pushed wearily through the tangled debris and slag. He was a little black-faced Bantu, in red rags sewed and patched together. He ran alongside Sung-wu like a puppy, leaping and bounding and grinning white-teethed.
    Sung-wu became immediately crafty; his intrigue with the black-haired girl had taught him elemental dodges and evasions. “My ship broke down,” he answered cautiously; it was certainly common enough. “It was the last ship still in operation at our field.”
    The boy skipped and laughed and broke off bits of green weeds that grew along the trail. “I know somebody who can fix it,” he cried carelessly.
    Sung-wu’s pulse-rate changed. “Oh?” he murmured, as if uninterested. “There are those around here who practice the questionable art of repairing.”
    The boy nodded solemnly.
    “Technos?” Sung-wu pursued. “Are there many of them here, around these old rums?”
    More black-faced boys, and some little dark-eyed Bantu girls, came scampering through the slag and ruins. “What’s the matter with your ship?” one hollered at Sung-wu. “Won’t it run?”
    They all ran and shouted around him, as he advanced slowly—an unusually wild bunch, completely undisciplined. They rolled and fought and tumbled and chased each other around madly.
    “How many of you,” Sung-wu demanded, “have taken your first instruction?”
    There was a sudden uneasy silence. The children looked at each other guiltily; none of them answered.
    “Good Elron!” Sung-wu exclaimed in horror. “Are you all untaught?”
    Heads hung guiltily.
    “How do you expect to phase yourselves with the cosmic will? How can you expect to know the divine plan? This is really too much!”
    He pointed a plump finger at one of the boys. “Are you constantly preparing yourself for the life to come? Are you constantly purging and purifying yourself? Do you deny yourself meat, sex, entertainment, financial gain, education, leisure?”
    But it was obvious; their unrestrained laughter and play proved they were still jangled, far from clear— And clearness is the only road by which a person can gain understanding of the eternal plan, the cosmic wheel which turns endlessly, for all living things.
    “Butterflies!” Sung-wu snorted with disgust. “You are no better than the beasts and birds of the field, who take no heed of the morrow. You play and game for today, thinking tomorrow won’t come. Like insects—”
    But the thought of insects reminded him of the shiny-winged blue-rumped fly, creeping over a rotting lizard carcass, and Sung-wu’s stomach did a flip-flop; he forced it back in place and strode on, toward the line of villages emerging ahead.
    Farmers were working the barren fields on all sides. A thin layer of soil over slag; a few limp wheat stalks waved, thin and emaciated. The ground was terrible, the worst he had seen. He could feel the metal under his feet; it was almost to the surface. Bent men and women watered their sickly crops with tin cans, old metal containers picked from the ruins. An ox was pulling a crude cart.
    In another field, women were weeding by hand; all moved slowly, stupidly, victims of hookworm, from the soil. They were all barefoot. The children hadn’t picked it up yet, but they