philip_k_dick_-_the_man_in_the_high_castle

He will follow.
I must go there, she realized, even if Joe comes after me. She devoured the last moving line, nine
at the top:
He brings increase to no one.
Indeed, someone even strikes him.
He does not keep his heart constantly steady.
Misfortune.
Oh God, she thought; It means the killer, the Gestapo people — it's telling me that Joe or
someone like him, someone else, will get there and kill Abendsen. Quickly, she turned to
Hexagram Forty-three. The judgment:
One must resolutely make the matter known
At the court of the king.
It must be announced truthfully. Danger.
It is necessary to notify one's own city.
It does not further to resort to arms.
It furthers one to undertake something.
So it's no use to go back to the hotel and make sure about him; it's hopeless, because there will be
others sent out. Again the oracle says, even more emphatically: Get up to Cheyenne and warn
Abendsen, however dangerous it is to me. I must bring him the truth.
She shut the volume.
Getting back behind the wheel of the car, she backed out into traffic. In a short time she had
found her way out of downtown Denver and onto the main autobahn going north; she drove as fast
as the car would go, the engine making a strange throbbing noise that shook the wheel and the seat
and made everything in the glove compartment rattle.
Thank God for Doctor Todt and his autobahns, she said to herself as she hurtled along through
the darkness, seeing only her own headlights and the lines marking the lanes.
At ten o'clock that night because of tire trouble she had still not reached Cheyenne, so there was
nothing to do but pull off the road and search for a place to spend the night.
An autobahn exit sign ahead of her read GREELEY FIVE MILES. I'll start out again tomorrow
morning, she told herself as she drove slowly along the main street of Greeley a few minutes later.
She saw several motels with vacancy signs lit, so there was no problem. What I must do, she
decided, is call Abendsen tonight and say I'm coming.
When she had parked she got wearily from the car, relieved to be able to stretch her legs. All day
on the road, from eight in the morning on. An all-night drugstore could be made out not far down
the sidewalk; hands in the pockets of her coat, she walked that way, and soon she was shut up in the
privacy of the phone booth, asking the operator for Cheyenne information. -
Their phone — thank God — was listed. She put in the quarters and the operator rang.
'Hello,' a woman's voice sounded presently, a vigorous, rather pleasant younger-woman's voice;
a woman no doubt about her own age.
'Mrs. Abendsen?' Juliana said. 'May I talk to Mr. Abendsen?'
'Who is this, please?'