We Can Build You - By Philip K. Dick Page 0,2

they had been sopping up the Ancient Age bourbon while I was out on the road driving the long hard haul.

“You want to break up the partnership?” I said. And I was willing to, at that moment, because of Maury’s drunken blur at my father and brother and the entire Rosen Electronic Organ Factory at Boise with its seventeen full-time employees.

“I say the news from Vallejo and environs spells the death of our principal product,” Maury said. “Even with its six-hundred-thousand possible tone combinations, some never heard by human ears. You’re a bug like the rest of your family for those outer-space voodoo noises your electronic dung-heap makes. And you have the nerve to call it a musical instrument. None of you Rosens have an ear. I wouldn’t have a Rosen electronic sixteen-hundred-dollar organ in my home if you gave it to me at cost; I’d rather have a set of vibes.”

“All right,” I yelled, “you’re a purist. And it isn’t six-hundred-thousand; it’s seven-hundred-thousand.”

“Those souped-up circuits bloop out one noise and one only,” Maury said, “however much it’s modified—it’s just basically a whistle.”

“One can compose on it,” I pointed out.

“Compose? It’s more like creating remedies for diseases that don’t exist, using that thing. I say either burn down the part of your family’s factory that makes those things or damn it, Louis, convert. Convert to something new and useful that mankind can lean on during its painful ascent upward. Do you hear?” He swayed back and forth, jabbing his long finger at me. “We’re in the sky, now. To the stars. Man’s no longer hidebound. Do you hear?”

“I hear,” I said. “But I recall that you and Bob Bundy were supposed to be the ones who were hatching up the new and useful solution to our problems. And that was months ago and nothing’s come of it.”

“We’ve got something,” Maury said. “And when you see it you’ll agree it’s oriented toward the future in no uncertain terms.”

“Show it to me.”

“Okay, we’ll take a drive over to the factory. Your dad and your brother Chester should be in on it; it’s only fair, since it’ll be them who produce it.”

Standing with his drink, Bundy grinned at me in his sneaky, indirect fashion. All this inter-personal communication probably made him nervous.

“You guys are going to bring ruin down on us,” I told him. “I’ve got a feeling.”

“We face ruin anyhow,” Maury said, “if we stick with your Rosen WOLFGANG MONTEVERDI electronic organ, or whatever the decal is this month your brother Chester’s pasting on it.”

I had no answer. Gloomily, I fixed myself a drink.

2

The Mark VII Saloon Model Jaguar is an ancient huge white car, a collector’s item, with fog lights, a grill like the Rolls, and naturally hand-rubbed walnut, leather seats, and many interior lights. Maury kept his priceless old 1954 Mark VII in mint condition and tuned perfectly, but we were able to go no faster than ninety miles an hour on the freeway which connects Ontario with Boise.

The languid pace made me restless. “Listen Maury,” I said, “I wish you would begin explaining. Bring the future to me right now, like you can in words.”

Behind the wheel, Maury smoked away at his Corina Sport cigar, leaned back and said, “What’s on the mind of America, these days?”

“Sexuality,” I said.

“No.”

“Dominating the inner planets of the solar system before Russia can, then.”

“No.”

“Okay, you tell me.”

“The Civil War of 1861.”

“Aw chrissakes,” I said.

“It’s the truth, buddy. This nation is obsessed with the War Between the States. I’ll tell you why. It was the only and first national epic in which we Americans participated; that’s why.” He blew Corina Sport cigar smoke at me. “It matured we Americans.”

“It’s not on my mind,” I said.

“I could stop at a busy intersection of any big downtown city in the U.S. and collar ten citizens, and six of those ten, if asked what was on their mind, would say, The U.S. Civil War of 1861.’ And I’ve been working on the implications—the practical side—ever since I figured that out, around six months ago. It has grave meaning for MASA ASSOCIATES, if we want it to, I mean; if we’re alert. You know they had that Centennial a decade or so back; recall?”

“Yes,” I said. “In 1961.”

“And it was a flop. A few souls got out and refought a few battles, but it was nothing. Look in the back seat.”

I switched on the interior lights of the car and twisting around I saw on the back seat