Free The Crack In Space by Philip K Dick Page A

as well.
    But anyhow, he said to himself, I’ll be elected.
    Dorothy Gill said quietly to him, ‘Jim, I think you’re in.’
    ‘I know he is,’ Phil Danville agreed, grinning with pure delight. ‘How about it, Dotty? It’s not like it was a little while ago. How’d you get hold of that info about TD, Jim? It must have cost you  . . .’
    ‘It did,’ Jim Briskin said shortly. ‘It cost me too much. But I’d pay it two times over.’
    ‘Now for the drink,’ Phil said. ‘There’s a bar around the corner; I noticed it when we were coming in here. Let’s go.’ He started for the door and Jim Briskin followed, hands deep in his overcoat pockets.
    The sidewalk, he discovered, was crowded with people, a mob which waved at him, cheered him; he waved back, noticing that many of them were Whites as well as Cols. A good sign, he reflected as his party moved step by step through the dense mass of people, uniformed Chicago city police clearing a path for them to the bar which Phil Danville had picked out.
    From the crowd a red-headed girl, very small, wearing dazzling wubfur lounging pajamas, the kind fashionable with the girls on the Golden Door Moments of Bliss satellite, came hurrying, gliding and ducking toward him breathlessly. ‘Mr Briskin  . . .’
    He paused unwillingly, wondering who she was and what she wanted. One of Thisbe Olt’s girls, evidently. ‘Yes,’ he said, and smiled at her.
    ‘Mr Briskin,’ the little red-haired girl gasped, ‘there’s a rume going around the satellite—George Walt’s doing something with Verne Engel, the man from CLEAN.’ She caught hold of him anxiously by the arm, stopping him. ‘They’re going to assassinate you or something. Please be careful.’ Her face was stark with alarm.
    ‘What’s your name?’ Jim asked.
    ‘Sparky Rivers. I—work there, Mr Briskin.’
    ‘Thanks, Sparky,’ he said. ‘I’ll remember you. Maybe sometime I can give you a cabinet post.’ He continued to smile at her, but she did not smile back. ‘I’m just joking,’ he said. ‘Don’t be downcast.’
    ‘I think they’re going to kill you,’ Sparky said.
    ‘Maybe so.’ He shrugged. It was certainly possible. He leaned forward, briefly, and kissed her on the forehead. ‘Take care of yourself, too,’ he said, and then walked on with Phil Danville and Dorothy Gill.
    After a time Phil said, ‘What are you going to do, Jim?’
    ‘Nothing. What can I do? Wait, I guess. Get my drink.’
    ‘You’ll have to protect yourself,’ Dorothy Gill said. ‘If anything happens to you—what’ll we do then? The rest of us.’
    Jim Briskin said, ‘Emigration will still exist, even without me. You can still wake the sleepers. As it says in Bach’s Cantata 140, "Wachet auf". Sleepers, awake. That’ll have to be your watchword, from now on.’
    ‘Here’s the bar,’ Phil Danville said. Ahead of them, a Chicago policeman held the door open for them, and they entered one at a time.
    ‘It was darn nice of that girl to warn me,’ Jim Briskin said.
    A man’s voice, close to him, said, ‘Mr Briskin? I’m Lurton Sands, Jr. Perhaps you’ve been reading about me in the homeopapes, lately.’
    ‘Oh, yes,’ Jim said, surprised to see him; he held out his hand in greeting. ‘I’m glad to meet you, Dr Sands. I want to  . . .’
    ‘May I talk, please?’ Sands said. ‘I have something to say to you. Because of you, my life and the humanitarian work of two decades is wrecked. Don’t answer; I’m not going to get into an argument with you. I’m simply telling you, so you’ll understand why.’ Sands reached into his coat pocket. Now he held a laser pistol, pointed directly at Jim Briskin’s chest. ‘I don’t quite understand what it is about my dedication to the sick that offended you and made you turn against me, but everybody else has, so why not you? After all, Mr Briskin, what better life-task could you set yourself than wrecking mine?’ He squeezed the trigger of the pistol. The