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FAIR GAME
Philip K. Dick
Professor Anthony Douglas lowered gratefully into his red-leather easy
chair and sighed. A long sigh, accompanied by labored removal of his
shoes and numerous grunts as he kicked them into the corner. He folded
his hands across his ample middle and lay back, eyes closed.
"Tired?" Laura Douglas asked, turning from the kitchen stove a
moment, her dark eyes sympathetic.
"You're darn right." Douglas surveyed the evening paper across from
him on the couch. Was it worth it? No, not really. He felt around in his
coat pocket for his cigarettes and lit up slowly, leisurely. "Yeah, I'm tired,
all right. We're starting a whole new line of research. Whole flock of bright
young men in from Washington today. Briefcases and slide rules."
"Not—"
"Oh, I'm still in charge." Professor Douglas grinned expansively. "Perish
the thought." Pale gray cigarette smoke billowed around him. "It'll be
another few years before they're ahead of me. They'll have to sharpen up
their slide rules just a little bit more. . ."
His wife smiled and continued preparing dinner. Maybe it was the
atmosphere of the little Colorado town. The sturdy, impassive mountain
peaks around them. The thin, chill air. The quiet citizens. In any case, her
husband seemed utterly unbothered by the tensions and doubts that
pressured other members of his profession. A lot of aggressive newcomers
were swelling the ranks of nuclear physics these days. Old-timers were
tottering in their positions, abruptly insecure. Every college, every physics
department and lab was being invaded by the new horde of skilled young
men. Even here at Bryant College, so far off the beaten track.
But if Anthony Douglas worried, he never let it show. He rested happily
in his easy chair, eyes shut, a blissful smile on his face. He was tired—but
at peace. He sighed again, this time more from pleasure than fatigue.
"It's true," he murmured lazily. "I may be old enough to be their father,
but I'm still a few jumps ahead of them. Of course, I know the ropes
better. And—"
"And the wires. The ones worth pulling."
"Those, too. In any case, I think I'll come off from this new line we're
doing just about. . ."
His voice trailed off.
"What's the matter?" Laura asked.
Douglas half rose from his chair. His face had gone suddenly white. He
stared in horror, gripping the arms of his chair, his mouth opening and
closing.
At the window was a great eye. An immense eye that gazed into the
room intently, studying him. The eye filled the whole window.
"Good God!" Douglas cried.
The eye withdrew. Outside there was only the evening gloom, the dark
hills and trees, the street. Douglas sank down slowly in his chair.
"What was it?" Laura demanded sharply. "What did you see? Was
somebody out there?"
Douglas clasped and unclasped his hands. His lips twitched violently.
"I'm telling you the truth, Bill. I saw it myself. It was real. I wouldn't say
so, otherwise. You know that. Don't you believe me?"
"Did anybody else see it?" Professor William Henderson asked, chewing
his pencil thoughtfully. He had cleared a place on the dinner table, pushed
back his plate and silver and laid out his notebook. "Did Laura see it?"
"No. Laura had her back turned."
"What time was it?"
"Half an hour ago. I had just got home. About six-thirty. I had my shoes
off, taking it easy." Douglas wiped his forehead with a shaking hand.
"You say it was unattached? There was nothing else? Just the—eye?"
"Just the eye. One huge eye looking in at me. Taking in everything. As if.
. ."
"As if what?"
"As if it was looking down a microscope."
Silence.
From across the table, Henderson's red-haired wife spoke up. "You
always were a strict empiricist, Doug. You never went in for any nonsense
before. But this. . . It's too bad nobody else saw it."
"Of course nobody else saw it!"
"What do you mean?"
"The damn thing was looking at
me.
It was
me
it was studying."
Douglas's voice rose hysterically. "How do you think I feel—scrutinized by
an eye as big as a piano! My God, if I weren't so well integrated, I'd be out
of my mind!"
Henderson and his wife exchanged glances. Bill, dark-haired and
handsome, ten years Douglas's junior. Vivacious Jean Henderson, lecturer
in child psychology, lithe and full-bosomed in her nylon blouse and slacks.
"What do you make of this?" Bill asked her. "This is more along your
line."
"It's
your
line," Douglas snapped. "Don't try to pass this off as a morbid
projection. I came to you because you're head of the Biology Department."
"You think it's an animal? A giant sloth or something?"
"It must be an animal."
"Maybe it's a joke," Jean suggested. "Or an advertising sign. An oculist's
display. Somebody may have been carrying it past the window."
Douglas took a firm grip on himself. "The eye was alive. It looked at me.
It considered me. Then it withdrew. As if it had moved away from the
lens." He shuddered. "I tell you it was
studying
me!"
"You only?"
"Me. Nobody else."
"You seem curiously convinced it was looking down from above," Jean
said.
"Yes, down. Down at me. That's right." An odd expression flickered
across Douglas's face. "You have it, Jean. As if it came from up there." He
jerked his hand upward.
"Maybe it was God," Bill said thoughtfully.
Douglas said nothing. His face turned ash white and his teeth
chattered.
"Nonsense," Jean said. "God is a psychological transcendent symbol
expressing unconscious forces."
"Did it look at you accusingly?" asked Bill. "As if you'd done something
wrong?"
"No. With interest. With considerable interest." Douglas raised himself.
"I have to get back. Laura thinks I'm having some kind of fit. I haven't told
her, of course. She's not scientifically disciplined. She wouldn't be able to
handle such a concept."
"It's a little tough even for us," Bill said.
Douglas moved nervously toward the door. "You can't think of any
explanation? Something thought extinct that might still be roaming
around these mountains?"
"None that we know of. If I should hear of any—"
"You said it looked down," Jean said. "Not bending down to peer in at
you. Then it couldn't have been an animal or terrestrial being." She was
deep in thought. "Maybe we're being observed."
"Not you," Douglas said miserably. "Just me."
"By another race," Bill put in. "You think—"
"Maybe it's an eye from Mars."
Douglas opened the front door carefully and peered out. The night was
black. A faint wind moved through the trees and along the highway. His
car was dimly visible, a black square against the hills. "If you think of
anything, call me."
"Take a couple of phenobarbitals before you hit the sack," Jean
suggested. "Calm your nerves."
Douglas was out on the porch. "Good idea. Thanks." He shook his head.
"Maybe I'm out of my mind. Good Lord. Well, I'll see you later."
He walked down the steps, gripping the rail tightly. "Good night!" Bill
called. The door closed and the porch light clicked off.
Douglas went cautiously toward his car. He reached out into the
darkness, feeling for the door handle. One step. Two steps. It was silly. A
grown man—practically middle-aged—in the twentieth century. Three
steps.
He found the door and opened it, sliding quickly inside and locking it
after him. He breathed a silent prayer of thanks as he snapped on the
motor and the headlights. Silly as hell. A giant eye. A stunt of some sort.
He turned the thoughts over in his mind. Students? Jokesters?
Communists? A plot to drive him out of his mind? He was important.
Probably the most important nuclear physicist in the country. And this
new project. . .
He drove the car slowly forward, onto the silent highway. He watched
each bush and tree as the car gained speed.
A Communist plot. Some of the students were in a left-wing club. Some
sort of Marxist study group. Maybe they had rigged up—
In the glare of the headlights something glittered. Something at the
edge of the highway.
Douglas gazed at it, transfixed. Something square, a long block in the
weeds at the side of the highway, where the great dark trees began. It
glittered and shimmered. He slowed down, almost to a stop.
A bar of gold, lying at the edge of the road.
It was incredible. Slowly, Professor Douglas rolled down the window
and peered out. Was it really gold? He laughed nervously. Probably not.
He had often seen gold, of course. This
looked
like gold. But maybe it was
lead, an ingot of lead with a gilt coating.
But—why?
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