Free Vintage PKD by Philip K. Dick Page A

“What if somebody else pushed?” He walked up to the Scheins, then, and stood with them. “I’ll push the darn thing. You lead the way, Schein.” He looked toward his own wife, but Jean did not stir. And she did not put down her handful of rocks.
    Timothy Schein plucked at his father’s arm. “Can I come this time, Dad? Please let me come.”
    “Okay,” Norm said, half to himself. Now he drew himself together. “So we’re not wanted here.” He turned to Fran. “Let’s go. Sam’s going to push the wheelbarrow; I think we can make it back there before nightfall. If not, we can sleep out in the open; Timothy’ll help protect us against the do-cats.”
    Fran said, “I guess we have no choice.” Her face was pale.
    “And take this,” Hooker said. He held out the tiny carved baby. Fran Schein accepted it and put it tenderly back in its leather pouch. Norm laid Connie Companion back down in the wheelbarrow, where she had been. They were ready to start back.
    “It’ll happen up here eventually,” Norm said, to the group of people, to the Pinole flukers. “Oakland is just more advanced; that’s all.”
    “Go on,” Hooker Glebe said. “Get started.”
    Nodding, Norm started to pick up the handles of the wheelbarrow, but Sam Regan moved him aside and took them himself. “Let’s go,” he said.
    The three adults, with Timothy Schein going ahead of them with his knife ready—in case a do-cat attacked—started into motion, in the direction of Oakland and the south. No one spoke. There was nothing to say.
    “It’s a shame this had to happen,” Norm said at last, when they had gone almost a mile and there was no further sign of the Pinole flukers behind them.
    “Maybe not,” Sam Regan said. “Maybe it’s for the good.” He did not seem downcast. And after all, he had lost his wife; he had given up more than anyone else, and yet—he had survived.
    “Glad you feel that way,” Norm said somberly.
    They continued on, each with his own thoughts.
    After a while, Timothy said to his father, “All these big flukepits to the south . . . there’s lots more things to do there, isn’t there? I mean, you don’t just sit around playing that game.” He certainly hoped not.
    His father said, “That’s true, I guess.”
    Overhead, a care ship whistled at great velocity and then was gone again almost at once; Timothy watched it go but he was not really interested in it, because there was so much more to look forward to, on the ground and below the ground, ahead of them to the south.
    His father murmured, “Those Oaklanders; their game, their particular doll, it taught them something. Connie had to grow and it forced them all to grow along with her. Our flukers never learned about that, not from Perky Pat. I wonder if they ever will. She’d have to grow up the way Connie did. Connie must have been like Perky Pat, once. A long time ago.”
    Not interested in what his father was saying—who really cared about dolls and games with dolls?—Timothy scampered ahead, peering to see what lay before them, the opportunities and possibilities, for him and for his mother and dad, for Mr. Regan also.
    “I can’t wait,” he yelled back at his father, and Norm Schein managed a faint, fatigued smile in answer.

Chapter One
    from THE THREE STIGMATA OF PALMER ELDRITCH
    His head unnaturally aching, Barney Mayerson woke to find himself in an unfamiliar bedroom in an unfamiliar conapt building. Beside him, the covers up to her bare, smooth shoulders, an unfamiliar girl slept on, breathing lightly through her mouth, her hair a tumble of cottonlike white.
    I’ll bet I’m late for work, he said to himself, slid from the bed, and tottered to a standing position with eyes shut, keeping himself from being sick. For all he knew he was several hours’ drive from his office; perhaps he was not even in the United States. However he
was
on Earth; the gravity that made him sway was familiar and normal.
    And there in the next room by