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THE MISSING PAGES OF THE UNTELEPORTED MAN
PKDS-8 2:
First gap. (missing manuscript page) belongs on page 165 of THE UNTELEPORTED MAN (Berkley edition) and belongs on page 143, line 2 of LIES, INC. (Gollancz edition):
THL agents, "What's that? In the name of God --"
" Is that in there?" the shorter of the two agents asked his companion; he appeared displeased. Reaching out, he suddenly retrieved the book; at once he put it away out of sight. "It was a mistake to let her see it," he told his companion. "She knows too much now."
"She doesn't know a damn thing," his companion said.
Freya said, "Tell me. What is the 'eye-eater'? I have to know." Her breath caught in her throat; raggedly, she managed to breathe, but with difficulty.
"A fungiform," the taller of the THL agents said briefly. "One that resides here." He said nothing further.
"Is Rachmael alive?" She demanded. At least she knew one thing, Rachmael was here at Whale's Mouth, and that she had not, up until this instant realised.
The shorter agent was correct. She had learned too much. At least, too much for their purpose. But for hers -- hardly enough.
"Yeah," the taller agent conceded. "He came looking for you."
"And found it," the other said.
For a time there was silence. The flapple droned on -- heaven only knew where.
"If you don't tell me where you're taking me," Freya said levelly, "I'm going to destruct myself." Her fingers already touched the trigger at her waist; she waited, eyes fixed on the two men with her in the oversize flapple. Several moments passed. "The U.N.," she said, "equipped me with this --"
"Get her," the taller THL agent rasped; instantly he and his companion leaped toward her, clawing.
Second gap (missing ms. page); belongs on p192 of TUM (Berkley Edition); belongs on p168(line 27) and 169 of LIES, INC. (Gollancz edition):
immediate right caustically grimaced -- and squeezed the button that controlled his laser tube.
I made a mistake, Freya realized. The flapple tricked me; it deliberately made me come here -- it's a THL flapple and it knew who I was and what I wanted to do. It was my enemy... and I failed to identify it as such -- in time. Now it was too late, far too late.
The laser beam came on once more, narrow and alit with strength; it scraped past her, created its own escape-hole in the wall behind her.
"I'm very much interested in this Rachmael individual," Ferry informed her. "If you could possibly recall where he might be --"
"I told you," she said in a tight, almost inaudible whisper. "I have no idea."
Again Ferry nodded at his employee, an expression of resignation on his face. The laser beam howled, then, in Freya's direction.
Once more she prayed. And this time not to Theodoric Ferry.
The eye-eater said pleasantly, "Mr. ben Applebaum, reach inside me and you will find a slightly-different edition of Dr. Bloode's Text. A copy of the twentieth edition, which I ingested some time ago... but as far as I can determine, not already dissolved by my gastric juices." The idea seemed to amuse it; the lower portion of its face split apart in a peal of excrutiatingly-penetrating laughter.
"You're serious?" Rachmael said, feeling disorganized. And yet the eye-eater was correct; if it did possess a later edition of the text he most certainly had reason to seek it out -- wherever it lay, even within the body of the offensive eye-eater.
"Look, look," the eye-eater exclaimed; it held in one of its longer
Third gap. (two missing ms. pages); belongs on p199 of TUM (Berkley edition) (this gap is not in LIES, INC, (Gollancz edition) because the section it is in was replaced in the author's revisions):
of Computer Day.
"Start to pass me the deep-sleep components,: he said quietly to Freya. And this time, he said to himself, I'm prepared.
"A menu, sir?" Genet stood before him, holding out the great, wonderfully-printed and engraved menu; he thanked her, spread the menu open so that it covered Freya's purse, began to pretend to read it.
The menu was not a menu. He saw no list of dishes, no wines, no prices. Instead, he realized with horror, he was reading a page from one of the editions of the Dr. Bloode Text; he recognized it instantly.
They had gotten it. It was they who had sent the "busboy." And now it, too, with its load of dishes, had vanished in the general confusion. Defeated, he sat vacantly staring. And then, at last, he poured himself a second drink, lifted the glass as if in toast: a toast to the success, admitted and accepted, of the invisible extensions of THL.
Leadenly, he said, "They're going to stop us anyhow. Dead." Even though I'm in possession of the time-warping construct; even though this is the second time I've sat here and tried to do this.
"Let me see the menu," Freya said, reaching out her hand; he gave it to her and she sat in silence for a time, inspecting it. Then, after returning it, she raised her large dark eyes and confronted him somberly. "Lupov's material. No doubt of it; this is 'wash stuff." She indicated the menu in revulsion, her face twisting. "It's supposed to set up subconscious directives so that we act on cue to external stimuli. But is he with them?" She seemed bewildered, now; the implications of her understanding appeared almost too much for her to handle. "I don't believe it; I was certain and Mat was absolutely certain --"
"Is Lupov a human being?" he shot back at her.
Freya blinked. "Why, of course." Eyes wide with astonishment, she stammered, "What else could he be? What else is there? You mean is he just a sim? No, I don't --"
"I think," he said to her gently, "we can trust Lupov. Human or no." Despite the passage he had read in the seventeenth edition of the Bloode Text, the passage on page two-hundred-and-ten with its overwhelming sentence, "Facing the deformed entity which she had once known as the human 'wash psychiatrist Dr. Lupov..." How clearly he recalled that; nothing in the Sol System or the Fomalhaut System would or could ever erase that line from the grooves of his memory. But --
There were several editions of the Text. And evidently not all were accurate. Like the range of paraworlds, the texts were mutually exclusive; one replaced the other, supplanted and abolished earlier versions, as, in the old days, the Great Soviet Encyclopedia had been altered again and again, with each discarded section tossed into the land of never-was.
Not everything which he read in the Dr. Bloode Text was true. So what he saw on this alleged menu -- that did not have to be true, either.
An important insight; it stunned him, and he sat fingering the edge of the menu sightlessly, reflecting on the meaning of what he had just understood. Simply bacause it was written down -- that in no sense made it binding, on him or anyone else. It could become valid -- if he let it. But the choice; that remained totally with him... and with the other humans involved. For better or worse.