Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said

by Philip K. Dick

“Are you a student?” Kathy asked, still scrutinizing him. “No, you’re not; you don’t have that pulpy pasty color they have, from living subsurface. Well, that leaves only one other possibility.” “That I’m a criminal,” Jason said. “Trying to change my identity before pols and nats get me.” “Are you?” she said, with no sign of uneasiness. It was a simple, flat question. “No.” He did not amplify, not at that moment. Perhaps later. Kathy said, “Do you think a lot of those nats are robots and not real people? They always have those gas masks on so you can’t really tell.” “I’m content just to dislike them,” Jason said. “Without looking into it any further.”

“I have five thousand dollars on me,” Jason said. “Or, rather, less five hundred. I’m a world-famous entertainer; I work a month every year at the Sands in addition to my show. In fact, I appear at a number of first-class clubs, when I can squeeze them into my tight schedule.” “Gee,” Kathy said. “I wish I had heard of you; then I could be impressed.” He laughed. “Did I say something stupid?” Kathy asked timidly. “No,” Jason said. “Kathy, how old are you?” “I’m nineteen. My birthday is in December, so I’m almost twenty. How old did you think I am by looking at me?” “About sixteen,” he said. Her mouth turned down in a childlike pout. “That’s what everybody says,” she said in a low voice. “It’s because I don’t have any bosom. If I had a bosom I’d look twenty-one. How old are you?” She stopped fiddling with her type and eyed him intently. “I’d guess about fifty.” Fury flowed through him. And misery. “You look like your feelings are hurt,” Kathy said. “I’m forty-two,” Jason said tightly.

She turned her attention back to the documents she was forging. “In this business,” she said, absorbed in what she was doing, “I don’t want to get to know people I’m making cards for. But”—she glanced up—“I’d sort of like to know you. You’re strange. I’ve seen a lot of types— hundreds, maybe—but none like you. Do you know what I think?” “You think I’m insane,” Jason said. “Yes.” Kathy nodded. “Clinically, legally, whatever. You’re psychotic; you have a split personality. Mr. No One and Mr. Everyone. How have you survived up until now?” He said nothing. It could not be explained. “Okay,” Kathy said. One by one, expertly and efficiently, she forged the necessary documents.

On a wicker table a copy of Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past. “How far’d you get into it?” he asked her. “To Within a Budding Grove.” Kathy double-locked the door after them and set into operation some kind of electronic gadget; he did not recognize it. “That’s not very far,” Jason said. Taking off her plastic coat, Kathy asked, “How far did you get into it?” She hung her coat in a tiny closet, taking his, too. “I never read it,” Jason said. “But on my program we did a dramatic rendering of a scene . . . I don’t know which. We got a lot of good mail about it, but we never tried it again. Those out things, you have to be careful and not dole out too much. If you do it kills it dead for everybody, all networks, for the rest of the year.”

With curiosity, he turned on the talking toy. “Hi!” it declared. “I’m Cheerful Charley and I’m definitely tuned in on your wavelength.” “Nobody named Cheerful Charley is tuned in on my wavelength,” Jason said. He started to shut it off, but it protested. “Sorry,” Jason told it, “but I’m tuning you out, you creepy little bugger.” “But I love you!” Cheerful Charley complained tinnily.

“You get a lot of bills,” he said, “for a girl living in a one-room schmalch. You buy your clothes—or what else?—at Metter’s? Interesting.” “I—take an odd size.” He said, “And Sax and Crombie shoes.” “In my work—” she began, but he cut her off with a convulsive swipe of his hand. “Don’t give me that,” he grated. “Look in my closet. You won’t see much there. Nothing out of the ordinary, except that what I do have is good. I’d rather have a little amount of something good . . .” Her words trailed off. “You know,” she said vaguely, “than a lot of junk.” Jason said, “You have another apartment.” It registered; her eyes flickered as she looked into herself for an answer. That, for him, constituted plenty. “Let’s go there,” he said. He had seen enough of this cramped little room.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Kathy said, sipping her screwdriver. To himself, but aloud, he said, “You have bumped the door of life open with your big, dense head. And now it can’t be closed.” “What’s that from?” Kathy asked. “From my life.” “But it’s like poetry.” “If you watched my show,” he said, “you’d know I come up with sparklers like that every so often.” Appraising him calmly, Kathy said, “I’m going to look in the TV log and see if you’re listed.” She set down her screwdriver, fished among discarded newspapers piled at the base of the wicker table.

A moment later she returned the cards, smiling her sixteen-year-old hazy smile. Observing her youth, her automatic radiance, he said, “‘I feel as old as yonder elm.’” “From Finnegans Wake,” Kathy said happily. “When the old washerwomen at dusk are merging into trees and rocks.” “You’ve read Finnegans Wake?” he asked, surprised. “I saw the film. Four times. I like Hazeltine; I think he’s the best director alive.” “I had him on my show,” Jason said. “Do you want to know what he’s like in real life?” “No,” Kathy said.

“Then you believe,” he said, pouncing, “that I have met Michael Hazeltine, the finest living film director, as you said yourself. So you do believe that I am a six—” He broke off; that had not been what he intended to say. “‘A six,’” Kathy echoed, her brow furrowing, as if she were trying to remember. “I read about them in Time. Aren’t they all dead now? Didn’t the government have them all rounded up and shot, after that one, their leader—what was his name?—Teagarden; yes, that’s his name. Willard Teagarden. He tried to—how do you say it?—pull off a coup against the federal nats? He tried to get them disbanded as an illegal parimutuel—” “Paramilitary,” Jason said. “You don’t give a damn about what I’m saying.” Sincerely, he said, “I sure do.” He waited. The girl did not continue. “Christ,” he spat out. “Finish what you were saying!” “I think,” Kathy said at last, “that the sevens made the coup not come off.”

A small section of wall creaked meagerly open and a cat, black and white and very young, entered the room. At once Kathy gathered him up, her face shining. “Dinman’s philosophy,” Jason said. “The mandatory cat.” He was familiar with the viewpoint; he had in fact introduced Dinman to the TV audience on one of his fall specials. “No, I just love him,” Kathy said, eyes bright as she carried the cat over to him for his inspection. “But you do believe,” he said, as he patted the cat’s little head, “that owning an animal increases a person’s empathic—” “Screw that,” Kathy said, clutching the cat to her throat as if she were a five-year-old with its first animal. Its school project: the communal guinea pig. “This is Domenico,” she said. “Named after Domenico Scarlatti?” he asked. “No, after Domenico’s Market, down the street; we passed it on our way here. When I’m at the Minor Apartment—this room—I shop there. Is Domenico Scarlatti a musician? I think I’ve heard of him.”

“You’re not dumb,” Jason said. “Just inexperienced.” He calculated, roughly, their age difference. “I’ve lived over twice as long as you,” he pointed out. “And I’ve been in the position, in the last ten years, to rub elbows with some of the most famous people on earth. And—” “And,” Kathy said, “you’re a six.” She had not forgotten his slip. Of course not. He could tell her a million things, and all would be forgotten ten minutes later, except the one real slip. Well, such was the way of the world. He had become used to it in his time; that was part of being his age and not hers.

“It’s a terrific deal for the police,” he said. “They lose one man and get—how many would you say you’ve bugged for them? Scores? Hundreds?” Pondering, she said at last, “Maybe a hundred and fifty.” “It’s evil,” he said. “Is it?” She glanced at him nervously, clutching Domenico to her flat chest. Then, by degrees, she became angry; it showed on her face and in the way she crushed the cat against her rib cage. “The hell it is,” she said fiercely, shaking her head no. “I love Jack and he loves me. He writes to me all the time.” Cruelly, he said, “Forged. By some pol employee.” Tears spilled from her eyes in an amazing quantity; they dimmed her gaze. “You think so? Sometimes I think they are, too. Do you want to look at them? Could you tell?” “They’re probably not forged. It’s cheaper and simpler to keep him alive and let him write his own letters.” He hoped that would make her feel better, and evidently it did; the tears stopped coming. “I hadn’t thought of that,” she said, nodding, but still not smiling; she gazed off into the distance, reflexively still rocking the small black and white cat.

“Listen,” he said to her in a gentle voice. He put his hand on her shoulder, but as before she at once shrank away. “Tell them you want him out right now, and you’re not turning in any more people.” “Would they release him, then, if I said that?” “Try it.” Certainly it wouldn’t do any harm. But—he could imagine Mr. McNulty and how he looked to the girl. She could never confront him; the McNultys of the world did not get confronted by anyone. Except when something went strangely wrong. “Do you know what you are?” Kathy said. “You’re a very good person. Do you understand that?” He shrugged. Like most truths it was a matter of opinion. Perhaps he was. In this situation, anyhow. Not so in others. But Kathy didn’t know about that.

Jason said, “To me you’re just one small girl in one small room in one small building. For me the whole world is mine, and everybody in it.” “Not if you’re in a forced-labor camp.” He had to nod in agreement to that, too. Kathy had an annoying habit of spiking the guns of rhetoric.

“I think I’m drunk.” Kathy examined her screwdriver. “You’re right; it’s too early to drink one of these.” She set the half-empty glass down. “Jack saw. Or anyhow he said he saw. Would he lie? So as not to lose me? Because if I had had to choose between him and Mickey Quinn”—she paused—“but I chose Jack. I always would. But still I had to go to bed with David. With Mickey Quinn, I mean.” I have gotten myself mixed up with a complicated, peculiar, malfunctioning creature, Jason Taverner said to himself. As bad as—worse than—Heather Hart. As bad as I’ve yet encountered in forty-two years. But how do I get away from her without Mr. McNulty hearing all about it? Christ, he thought dismally. Maybe I don’t. Maybe she plays with me until she’s bored, and then she calls in the pols. And that’s it for me.

“I would never turn you in. I love you.” “You’ve known me perhaps five hours. Not even that.” “But I can always tell.” Her tone, her expression, both were firm. And deeply solemn. “You’re not even sure who I am!” Kathy said, “I’m never sure who anybody is.” That, evidently, had to be granted. He tried, therefore, another tack. “Look. You’re an odd combination of the innocent romantic, and a”—he paused; the word “treacherous” had come to mind, but he discarded it swiftly—“and a calculating, subtle manipulator.” You are, he thought, a prostitute of the mind. And it’s your mind that is prostituting itself, before and beyond anyone else’s. Although you yourself would never recognize it. And, if you did, you’d say you were forced into it. Yes; forced into it, but by whom? By Jack? By David? By yourself, he thought. By wanting two men at the same time—and getting to have both. Poor Jack, he thought. You poor goddamn bastard. Shoveling shit at the forced-labor camp in Alaska, waiting for this elaborately convoluted waif to save you. Don’t hold your breath.

The owner and two waiters hustled over, still clutching menus; Jason saw and marked details, oddly; it seemed as if everything, at her screams, had frozen over. Become fixed. Customers raising forks, lowering spoons, chewing . . . everything stopped and there remained only the terrible, ugly noise. And she was saying words. Crude words, as if read off some back fence. Short, destructive words that tore at everyone in the restaurant, including himself. Especially himself. The owner, his mustache twitching, nodded to the two waiters, and they lifted Kathy bodily from her chair; they raised her by her shoulders, held her, then, at the owner’s curt nod, dragged her from the booth, across the restaurant and out onto the street. He paid the bill, hurried after them. At the entrance, however, the owner stopped him. Holding out his hand. “Three hundred dollars,” the owner said. “For what?” he demanded. “For dragging her outside?” The owner said, “For not calling the pols.” Grimly, he paid.

Kneeling by her, he put his hand on her shoulder. This time she did not try to pull away. “I’m sorry,” he said. And he meant it. “For pushing you.” I called your bluff, he said to himself, and it was not a bluff. Okay; you won. I give up. From now on it’s whatever you want. Name it. He thought, Just make it brief, for God’s sake. Let me out of this as quickly as you possibly can. He had an intuition that it would not be soon.

“Stop calling me a twerp fan,” Jason said bitingly; it infuriated him absolutely. It struck him as the ultimate in something or other; maybe a bird down, as the expression went now. Heather said, “What do you want?” “To meet you at Altrocci’s.” “Yes, you’d know about that, too. The one place I can go without being ejaculated on by nerds who want me to sign menus that don’t even belong to them.” She sighed wretchedly. “Well, now that’s over. I won’t meet you at Altrocci’s or anywhere. Keep out of my life or I’ll have my prive-pols deball you and—” “You have one private pol,” Jason interrupted. “He’s sixty-two years old and his name is Fred. Originally he was a sharpshooter with the Orange County Minutemen; used to pick off student jeters at Cal State Fullerton. He was good then, but he’s nothing to worry about now.” “Is that so,” Heather said.

“Graph his signatures,” the senior pol told his companion. “See if they superimpose.” Kathy had been right. “Nope,” the junior pol said, putting away his official camera. “They don’t super. But it looks like this one, the military service chit, had a trans dot on it that’s been scraped off. Very expertly, too, if so. You have to view it through the glass.” He swung the portable magnifying lens and light over, illuminating Jason’s forged cards in stark white detail. “See?” “When you left the service,” the senior pol said to Jason, “did this record have an electronic dot on it? Do you remember?” Both of them scrutinized Jason as they awaited his response. What the hell to say? he asked himself. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t even know what a”—he started to say, “microtransmitter dot,” but quickly corrected himself—soon enough, he hoped—“what an electronic dot looks like.” “It’s a dot, mister,” the junior pol informed him. “Aren’t you listening? Are you on drugs? Look; on his drug-status card there isn’t an entry for the last year.” One of the thungly pols spoke up. “Proves they’re not faked, though, because who would fake a felony onto an ID card? They’d have to be out of their minds.” “Yes,” Jason said.

“Want to go back to my Minor Apartment?” Kathy asked. “That goddamn shabby room.” I have a floating house in Malibu, he thought, with eight bedrooms, six rotating baths and a four-dimensional living room with an infinity ceiling. And, because of something I don’t understand and can’t control, I have to spend my time like this. Visiting run-down marginal places. Crappy eateries, crappier workshops, crappiest one-room lodgings. Am I being paid back for something I did? he asked himself. Something I don’t know about or remember? But nobody pays back, he reflected. I learned that a long time ago: you’re not paid back for the bad you do nor the good you do. It all comes out uneven at the end. Haven’t I learned that by now, if I’ve learned anything?

The lights had been turned on. And, seated on the moldering sofa facing them, a middle-aged man with gray hair and a gray suit. A heavy-set but immaculate man, with perfectly shaved jowls: no nicks, no red spots, no errors. He was perfectly attired and groomed; each hair on his head stood individually in place. Kathy said falteringly, “Mr. McNulty.” Rising to his feet, the heavy-set man extended his right hand toward Jason. Automatically, Jason reached out to shake it. “No,” the heavy-set man said. “I’m not shaking hands with you; I want to see your ID cards, the ones she made for you. Let me have them.” Wordlessly—there was nothing to say—Jason passed him his wallet. “You didn’t do these,” McNulty said, after a short inspection. “Unless you’re getting a hell of a lot better.” Jason said, “I’ve had some of those cards for years.” “Have you,” McNulty murmured. He returned the wallet and cards to Jason. “Who planted the microtrans on him? You?” He addressed Kathy. “Ed?” “Ed,” Kathy said. “What do we have here?” McNulty said, scrutinizing Jason as if measuring him for a coffin. “A man in his forties, well dressed, modern clothing style. Expensive shoes . . . made of actual authentic leather. Isn’t that right, Mr. Taverner?” “They’re cowhide,” Jason said. “Your papers identify you as a musician,” McNulty said. “You play an instrument?” “I sing.” McNulty said, “Sing something for us now.” “Go to hell,” Jason said, and managed to control his breathing; his words came out exactly...

“Jason Tavern,” the uniformed officer said, examining the document. “Of Kememmer, Wyoming. Age: thirty-nine. A diesel engine mechanic.” He glanced at the photo. “Pic taken fifteen years ago.” “Any police record?” McNulty asked. “No trouble of any kind,” the uniformed officer said. “There are no other Jason Taverns on record at Pol-Dat?” McNulty asked. The officer pressed a yellow button, shook his head. “Okay,” McNulty said. “That’s him.” He surveyed Jason. “You don’t look like a diesel engine mechanic.” “I don’t do that anymore,” Jason said. “I’m now in sales. For farm equipment. Do you want my card?” A bluff; he reached toward the upper right-hand pocket of his suit. McNulty shook his head no. So that was that; they had, in their usual bureaucratic fashion, pulled the wrong file on him. And, in their rush, they had let it stand. He thought, Thank God for the weaknesses built into a vast, complicated, convoluted, planetwide apparatus. Too many people; too many machines. This error began with a pol inspec and worked its way to Pol-Dat, their pool of data at Memphis, Tennessee. Even with my fingerprint, footprint, voiceprint and EEG print they probably won’t be able to straighten it out. Not now; not with my form on file. “Shall I book him?” the uniformed officer asked McNulty. “For what?” McNulty said. “For being a diesel mechanic?” He slapped Jason convivially on the back. “You can go home, Mr. Tavern. Back to your child-faced sweetheart. Your little virgin.” Grinning, he...