Ubik by Philip K. Dick Page B

claim to be,” Tippy said, “you can tell that by reading my mind.”
    “I can’t read anybody’s mind,” the telepath said. “My talent is gone. I’ll let you talk to my brother Bill. Here, Bill; talk to this lady. Do you like this lady?”
    Bill, looking more or less like his brother the telepath, said, “I like her fine because I’m a precog and she doesn’t postscript me.” He shuffled his feet and grinned, revealing great, pale teeth, as blunt as shovels. “ ‘I, that am curtailed of this fair proportion, cheated of feature by dissembling nature—’ ” He paused, wrinkling his forehead. “How does it go, Matt?” he asked his brother.
    “ ‘—deformed, unfinished, sent before my time into this breathing world, scarce half made up,’ ” Matt the squirrel-like telepath said, scratching meditatively at his pelt.
    “Oh, yeah.” Bill the precog nodded. “I remember. ‘And that so lamely and unfashionable that dogs bark at me as I halt by them.’ From
Richard the Third
,” he explained to Tippy. Both brothers grinned. Even their incisors were blunt. As if they lived on a diet of uncooked seeds.
    Tippy said, “What does that mean?”
    “It means,” both Matt and Bill said in unison, “that we’re going to get you.”
    The vidphone rang, waking Tippy up.
    Stumbling groggily to it, confounded by floating colored bubbles, blinking, she lifted the receiver and said, “Hello.” God, it’s late, she thought, seeing the clock. I’m turning into a vegetable. Glen Runciter’s face emerged on the screen. “Hello, Mr. Runciter,” she said, standing out of sight of the phone’s scanner. “Has a job turned up for me?”
    “Ah, Mrs. Jackson,” Runciter said, “I’m glad I caught you. A group is forming under Joe Chip’s and my direction; eleven in all, a major work assignment for those we choose. We’ve been examining everyone’s history. Joe thinks yours looks good, and I tend to agree. How long will it take you to get down here?” His tone seemed adequately optimistic, but on the little screen his face looked hard-pressed and careworn.
    Tippy said, “For this one will I be living—”
    “Yes, you’ll have to pack.” Chidingly he said, “We’re supposed to be packed and ready to go at all times; that’s a rule I don’t ever want broken, especially in a case like this where there’s a time factor.”
    “I
am
packed. I’ll be at the New York office in fifteen minutes. All I have to do is leave a note for my husband, who’s at work.”
    “Well, okay,” Runciter said, looking preoccupied; he was probably already reading the next name on his list. “Goodbye, Mrs. Jackson.” He rang off.
    That was a strange dream, she thought as she hastily unbuttoned her pajamas and hurried back into the bedroom for her clothes. What did Bill and Matt say that poetry was from?
Richard the Third
, she remembered, seeing in her mind once more their flat, big teeth, their unformed, knoblike, identical heads with tufts of reddish hair growing from them like patches of weeds. I don’t think I’ve ever read
Richard the Third
, she realized. Or, if I did, it must have been years ago, when I was a child.
    How can you dream lines of poetry you don’t know? she asked herself. Maybe an actual nondream telepath was getting at me while I slept. Or a telepath and a precog working together, the way I saw them in my dream. It might be a good idea to ask our research department whether Hollis does, by any remote chance, employ a brother team named Matt and Bill.
    Puzzled and uneasy, she began as quickly as possible to dress.
    Lighting a green all-Havana Cuesta-Rey palma-supreme, Glen Runciter leaned back in his noble chair, pressed a button of his intercom and said, “Make out a bounty check, Mrs. Frick. Payable to G. G. Ashwood, for one-hundred poscreds.”
    “Yes, Mr. Runciter.”
    He watched G. G. Ashwood, who paced with manic restlessness about the big office with its genuine hardwood floor against which