"Quantus tremor est futurus," the voices sang. "Quando judex est venturus, cuncta stricte discussurus."
"What'll I pay the hotel with? They won't take our money any more than the phone will."
Cursing, Al yanked out his wallet, examined the bills in it. "These are old but still in circulation." He inspected the coins in his pockets. "These aren't in circulation." He tossed the coins to the carpet of the lounge, ridding himself, as the phone had, in disgust. "Take these bills." He handed the paper currency to Joe. "There's enough there for the hotel room for one night, dinner and a couple of drinks for each of you. I'll send a ship from New York tomorrow to pick you and her up."
"I'll pay you back," .Joe said. "As pro tem director of Runciter Associates, I'll draw a higher salary; I'll be able to pay all my debts off, including the back taxes, penalties and fines which the income-tax people-"
"Without Pat Conley? Without her help?"
"I can throw her out now," Joe said.
Al said, "I wonder."
"This is a new start for me. A new lease on life." I can run the firm, he said to himself. Certainly I won't make the mistake that Runciter made; Hollis, posing as Stanton Mick, won't lure me and my inertials off Earth where we can be gotten at.
"In my opinion," Al said hollowly, "you have a will to fail. No combination of circumstances - including this - is going to change that."
"What I actually have," Joe said, "is a will to succeed. Glen Runciter saw that, which is why he specified in his will that I take over in the event of his death and the failure of the Beloved Brethren Moratorium to revive him into half-life, or any other reputable moratorium as specified by me." Within him his confidence rose; he saw now the manifold possibilities ahead, as clearly as if he had precog abilities. And then he remembered Pat's talent, what she could do to precogs, to any attempt to foresee the future.
"Tuba mirum spargens sonum," the voices sang. "Per sepulchra regionum coget omnes ante thronum."
Reading his expression, Al said, "You're not going to throw her out. Not with what she can do."
"I'll rent a room at the Zurich Rootes Hotel," Joe decided. "As per your outlined proposal." But, he thought, Al's right. It won't work; Pat, or even something worse, will move in and destroy me. I'm doomed, in the classic sense. An image thrust itself into his agitated, fatigued mind: a bird caught in cobwebs. Age hung about the image, and this frightened him; this aspect of it seemed literal and real. And, he thought, prophetic. But he could not make out exactly how. The coins, he thought. Out of circulation, rejected by the phone. Collectors' items. Like ones found in museums. Is that it? Hard to say. He really didn't know.
"Mors stupebit," the voices sang. "Et natura, cum resurget creatura, judicanti responsura." They sang on and on.
If money worries have you in the cellar, go visit the lady at Ubik Savings & Loan. She'll take the frets out of your debts. Suppose, for example, you borrow fifty-nine poscreds on an interest-only loan. Let's see, that adds up to-
Daylight rattled through the elegant hotel room, uncovering stately shapes which, Joe Chip blinkingly saw, were articles of furnishings: great hand-printed drapes of a neo-silkscreen sort that depicted man's ascent from the unicellular organisms of the Cambrian Period to the first heavier-than-air flight at the beginning of the twentieth century. A magnificent pseudo-mahogany dresser, four variegated crypto-chrome-plated reclining chairs... he groggily admired the splendor of the hotel room and then he realized with a tremor of keen isappointment, that Wendy had not come knocking at the door. Or else he had not heard her; he had been sleeping too deeply.
Thus, the new empire of his hegemony had vanished in the moment it had begun.
With numbing gloom - a remnant of yesterday - pervading him, he lurched from the big bed, found his clothes and dressed. It was cold, unusually so; he noticed that and pondered on it. Then he lifted the phone receiver and dialed for room service.
"-pay him back if at all possible," the receiver declared in his ear. "First, of course, it has to be established whether Stanton Mick actually involved himself, or if a mere homosimulacric substitute was in action against us, and if so why, and if not then how -" The voice droned on, speaking to itself and not to Joe. It seemed as unaware of him as if he did not exist. "From all our previous reports," the voice declared, "it would appear that Mick acts generally in a reputable manner and in accord with legal and ethical practices established throughout the System. In view of this-"
Joe hung up the phone and stood dizzily swaying, trying to clear his head. Runciter's voice. Beyond any doubt. He again picked up the phone, listened once more.
