The Skull - Philip Dick

Materie:	Riassunto
Categoria:	Inglese
Download:	142
Data:	28.05.2007
Numero di pagine:	3
Formato di file:	.doc (Microsoft Word)

Conger and the Speaker were sitting in a room. The speaker proposed Conger to pay the penalty for his illegal trading business by doing a job for the council, instead of other six years in prison. He was a hunter and what he was supposed to do required his peculiar abilities. He had to kill a man who has been dead two centuries. He was the founder of a movement that preached a doctrine of non-violence, non-resistance. No fighting, no paying taxes for guns, no research except for medicine. So as a consequence there had been no more wars. This was terrible for the speaker. In fact for him war had a profound selective value. Without war the mass of useless mankind is permitted to grow. So Conger had to come back to 1961 using a time machine (crystal cage) and kill this man before he spoke his doctrine. The only means of identifications he had was the skull of the founder, which they had stolen from the First Church. There were visible characteristic of the front teeth, especially the incisor. The speaker gave him a slem gun. Then Conger activated the control of the machine and he arrived in a small town, in the American middle west, were the founder was supposed to come from. He looked at himself. He had his beard trimmed and his hair was neat. He was dressed in the clothing of the middle-twentieth century and in his pocket there was money of that time. He stepped outside of the crystal cage and went into a library, where he looked at some papers. He found out that he had to come back four month before because it was in December that the founder was arrested. When he got out of the library a woman began to stare at him, and Conger worried, hurried on and reached the crystal cage. He headed back to November. He arrived at a house and a man let him in. A woman, large and shapeless, came from the kitchen. They looked at his clothes and began suspicious of him, because the government was always warning them about the reds. They were supposed to report anything strange or unusual. After they showed him his room, he went to a store and looked around. A woman looked at him curiously. She was speaking to the clerk and she was worried about that strange man, because he had a beard like the Red, Carl Marx. Conger got out of the store. Lora Hunt and Bill Willet offered him a ride. He said them that he had moved to Cooper Creek from Oregon. Lora noticed his strange way of talking, which he said was due to a speech impediment. The two guys looked at him curiously as the car purred along. Conger for his part was struggling to find a way of asking them question without seeming curious. The next day he was walking along one of the main street of Cooper Creek when he saw Lora in the soda fountain. They began to speak. She told him that Bill doesn’t like him because he thought foreign people ought to stay where they belong. Then bill entered the store. When he saw Lora with Conger he became angry and ordered her to leave. Conger stand up, ready to go, but Bill moved towards him; so he touched his belt, the crystal cage appeared and he vanished away. He was walking down the road at night when he was stopped by a flashing on his face. It was the sheriff Duff, who has been informed about the incident in the fountain that afternoon. Conger said that it was his lighter. There was a leak and the fluid ignited. When he returned to his room he found out that it was the first of December and he froze because the next day would be the day of the founder’s capture. In the twentieth century they still used the old twelve months system so November fed directly into December.
He went to an empty field, where the founder was supposed to appear. He took the slem out from the cage and then he heard a noise. It was Lora, who had come to inform him that the police was coming to arrest him, because they thought he was a Communist. Joe French had taken Lora there with his trunk. He moved forward them. He told Lora that they had to come back to the town. But Conger had to be there. He saw the truck going away. Then he went back into the crystal cage and picked up the skull. He went to the mirror and pressed the skull against his cheek. He bared his teeth and he knew. It was his own skull that he held. He was the founder. He remained still wondering about what to do. Then he went out across the field. The people expected him to throw a bomb or something similar. He told them that the only thing he had was a gun, but he was not going to use it. Looking through the people suddenly he recognised a woman. She was the one that he had seen out of the library when he first arrived. He was not afraid. He knew that he would escape death. He would die, then he would live again for an afternoon and then he would be born a second time in a small trading village on Mars. He raised his hands and said that those who killed would die. But who gave his own life away would live again. Then the police came forward him and arrested him. He smiling awaited a death foreordained.