A fresh-looking newspaper lying at the far end of the overstuffed sofa attracted his attention. He picked it up and read the date: Tuesday, September 12, 1939. He scanned the headlines.
FRENCH CLAIM SIEGFRIED LINE DENTED REPORT GAINS IN AREA NEAR SAARBRUCKEN-
Major battle said to be shaping up along Western Front.
Interesting, he said to himself. World War Two had just begun. And the French thought they were winning it. He read another headline.
POLISH REPORT CLAIMS GERMAN FORCES HALTED SAY INVADERS THROW NEW FORCES INTO BATTLE WITHOUT NEW GAINS
The newspaper had cost three cents. That interested him too. What could you get now for three cents? he asked himself. He tossed the newspaper back down, and marveled once again at its freshness. A day or so old, he guessed. No more than that. So I now have a time fix; I know precisely how far back the regression has carried.
Wandering about the conapt, searching out the various changes, he found himself facing a chest of dresser drawers in the bedroom. On the top rested several framed, glass-covered photographs.
All were of Runciter. But not the Runciter he knew. These were of a baby, a small boy, then a young man. Runciter as he once had been, but still recognizable.
Getting out his wallet, he found only snapshots of Runciter, none of his family, none of friends. Runciter everywhere! He returned the wallet to his pocket, then realized with a jolt that it had been made of natural cowhide, not plastic. Well, that fitted. In the old days there had been organic leather available. So what? he said to himself. Bringing the wallet out once more, he somberly scrutinized it; he rubbed the cowhide and experienced a new tactile sensation, a pleasant one. Infinitely superior to plastic, he decided.
Back in the living room again, he poked about, searching for the familiar mail slot, the recessed wall cavity which should have contained today's mail. It had vanished; it no longer existed. He pondered, trying to envision oldtime mail practices. On the floor outside the conapt door? No. In a box of some kind; he recalled the term mailbox. Okay, it would be in the mailbox, but where had mailboxes been located? At the main entrance of the building? That - dimly - seemed right. He would have to leave his conapt. The mail would be found on the ground floor, twenty stories below.
"Five cents, please," his front door said when he tried to open it. One thing, anyhow, hadn't changed. The toll door had an innate stubbornness to it; probably it would hold out after everything else. After everything except it had long since reverted, perhaps in the whole city... if not the whole world.
He paid the door a nickel, hurried down the hall to the moving ramp which he had used only minutes ago. The ramp, however, had now reverted to a flight of inert concrete stairs. Twenty flights down, he reflected. Step by step. Impossible; no one could walk down that many stairs. The elevator. He started toward it, then remembered what had happened to Al. Suppose this time I see what he saw, he said to himself. An old iron cage hanging from a wire cable, operated by a senile borderline moron wearing an official elevator-operator's cap. Not a vision of 1939 but a vision of 1909, a regression much greater than anything I've run into so far.
Better not to risk it. Better to take the stairs.
Resigned, he began to descend.
He had gotten almost halfway down when something ominous flicked alive in his brain. There was no way by which he could get back up - either to his conapt or to the roof field where the taxi waited. Once on the ground floor he would be confined there, maybe forever. Unless the spray can of Ubik was potent enough to restore the elevator or the moving ramp. Surface travel, he said to himself. What the hell will that consist of by the time I get down there? Train? Covered wagon?
Clattering down two steps at a time, he morosely continued his descent. Too late now to change his mind.
When he reached ground level he found himself confronted by a large lobby, including a marble-topped table, very long, on which two ceramic vases of flowers - evidently iris - rested. Four wide steps led down to the curtained front door; he grasped the faceted glass knob of the door and swung it open.
More steps. And, on the right, a row of locked brass mail-boxes, each with a name, each requiring a key. He had been right; this was as far as the mail was brought. He located his own box, finding a strip of paper at the bottom of it reading
JOSEPH CHIP 2075, plus a button which, when pressed, evidently rang upstairs in his conapt.
