Free Deus Irae by Philip K. Dick Page B

jeopardy.”
    “Yet,” said Tibor, “you may consider no man damned, isn’t that right?”
    “That is true,” said Dr. Abernathy. “Who gave you that Jesuitical bit of knowledge?”
    “Fay Blaine,” said Tibor.
    “Oh,” Dr. Abernathy said.
    “Thank you for your coffee, sir,” said Tibor. “I believe I’d better be going….”
    “May I give you a catechism?—something to read along the way?”
    “Yes, thank you.”
    “You don’t like me or respect me, do you, Tibor?”
    “Let me reserve my opinion, Father.”
    “Reserve it, then, but take this,” said Dr. Abernathy.
    “Thank you,” said Tibor, accepting the pamphlet.
    Dr. Abernathy said, “I will disclose something more to you which you should know. I came across it in a textbook about the religions of the ancient Greeks. Their god Apollo was a god of constancy, and when tested he always was found to be the same. This was a major quality in him; he was what he was … always. In fact, one could define Apollo by this, and the Apollonian personality in humans.” He coughed and went on rapidly, “But Dionysos, the god of unreason, was the god of metamorphosis.”
    “What is ‘metamorphosis’?” Tibor asked.
    “Change. From one form to another. Thus you see, the God of Wrath, also being a god of unreason, like Dionysos, can be expected to hide, to camouflage himself, to conceal,
to be what he is not
; can you imagine worshiping a god who, rather than is, is what he is not?”
    Tibor gazed at him in perplexity. Perplexity, the efforts of two ordinary men, filled the room: perplexity, not understanding.
    “These sayings are hard,” Dr. Abernathy said, at last. He rose to his feet. “I’ll see you again on your return?”
    “Perhaps,” said Tibor, activating his cart.
    “The Christian God—” Dr. Abernathy hesitated, seeing how worn Tibor looked, worn by perplexity. “He is the God of unchange. ‘I am what I am,’ as God puts it to Moses, in the Bible. That is our God.”
    Outside, all magic had fled from the noonday world, the sun had hidden its face behind a brief cloud, and Darlin’ Corey had eaten a bumblebee and was ill.

FIVE
    He returned to the digs the following afternoon. The door grumbled when he inserted his finger, but it recognized the loops and whorls and slid halfway to the right. He sidled through and kicked it, and it closed behind him.
    Adjusting his side-pack, which contained a new supply of herbicides, he paused for a moment to touch the lump which had grown between his left temple and forehead. It throbbed, it drove a shaft of pain through his head, as he knew it would. But he could not keep his hands away from it. The sore-tooth reaction, he decided.
    He gulped another tablet from his new supply, knowing that it would have less than the desired effect.
    Turning, then, he moved down the perpetually lit, perpetually poorly lit tunnel that led to the bunkers. Before he reached the one in which he was currently sleeping, his foot came down atop a small red truck and he was pitched forward to land upon his shoulder. As he fell, he shielded his aching head with an upflung arm. Activated by the push of his foot, the truck blew its horn and raced back up the tunnel.
    After a moment, a short, heavyset figure raced past him, making sobbing noises.
    “Tuck! Tuck!” it cried, pursuing the sound of the horn.
    He raised himself to his knees, then to his feet. Staggering through the doorway, he noted that, as he had suspected, the room was now a shambles. Tomorrow I’ll move into the next one, he decided. It’s easier than cleaning the damned things out.
    He dropped his pack upon the nearest table and collapsed onto the bed, pressing the back of his right wrist to his forehead.
    A shadow across his eyelids told him that he was no longeralone. Without opening his eyes or changing his position, he snarled, “Alice, I told you to keep your toys out of the hall! I gave you a nice box for them! If you don’t start keeping them