Read Online Paycheck (2003) by Philip K. Dick - Free Book Online

returning to his newspaper.
    ‘But I’m worried.’ Mary put her coffee cup down, frowning. They were eating dinner. It was late. The two children had been sent up to bed. Mary touched her mouth with her napkin. ‘Tom, I’m worried. I wish you’d listen to me.’
    Tom Fields blinked. ‘Worried? What about?’
    ‘About her. About Nanny.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘I - I don’t know.’
    ‘You mean we’re going to have to repair her again? We just got through fixing her. What is it this time? If those kids didn’t get her to—’
    ‘It’s not that.’
    ‘What, then?’
    For a long time his wife did not answer. Abruptly she got up from the table and walked across the room to the stairs. She peered up, staring into the darkness. Tom watched her, puzzled.
    ‘What’s the matter?’
    ‘I want to be sure she can’t hear us.’
    ‘She? Nanny?’
    Mary came toward him. ‘Tom, I woke up last night again. Because of the sounds. I heard them again, the same sounds, the sounds I heard before. And you told me it didn’t mean anything!’
    Tom gestured. ‘It doesn’t. What does it mean?’
    ‘I don’t know. That’s what worries me. But after we’re all asleep she comes downstairs. She leaves their room. She slips down the stairs as quietly as she can, as soon as she’s sure we’re all asleep.’
    ‘But why?’
    ‘I don’t know! Last night I heard her going down, slithering down the stairs, quiet as a mouse. I heard her moving around down here. And then—’
    ‘Then what?’
    ‘Tom, then I heard her go out the back door. Out, outside the house. She went into the back yard. That was all I heard for a while.’
    Tom rubbed his jaw. ‘Go on.’
    ‘I listened. I sat up in bed. You were asleep, of course. Sound asleep. No use trying to wake you. I got up and went to the window. I lifted the shade and looked out. She was out there, out in the back yard.’
    ‘What was she doing?’
    ‘I don’t know.’ Mary Fields’s face was lined with worry. ‘I don’t know! What in the world
would
a Nanny be doing outside at night, in the back yard?’
    It was dark. Terribly dark. But the infrared filter clicked into place, and the darkness vanished. The metal shape moved forward, easing through the kitchen, its treads halfretracted for greatest quiet. It came to the back door and halted, listening.
    There was no sound. The house was still. They were all asleep upstairs. Sound asleep.
    The Nanny pushed, and the back door opened. It moved out onto the porch, letting the door close gently behind it. The night air was thin and cold. And full of smells, all the strange, tingling smells of the night, when spring has begun to change into summer, when the ground is still moist and the hot July sun has not had a chance to kill all the little growing things.
    The Nanny went down the steps, onto the cement path. Then it moved cautiously onto the lawn, the wet blades of grass slapping its sides. After a time it stopped, rising up on its back treads. Its front part jutted up into the air. Its eye stalks stretched, rigid and taut, waving very slightly. Then it settled back down and continued its motion forward.
    It was just going around the peach tree, coming back toward the house, when the noise came.
    It stopped instantly, alert. Its side doors fell away and its grapples ran out their full lengths, lithe and wary. On the other side of the board fence, beyond the row of shasta daisies, something had stirred. The Nanny peered, clicking filters rapidly. Only a few faint stars winked in the sky overhead. But it saw, and that was enough.
    On the other side of the fence a second Nanny was moving, making its way softly through the flowers, coming toward the fence. It was trying to make as little noise as possible. Both Nannies stopped, suddenly unmoving, regarding each other - the green Nanny waiting in its own yard, the blue prowler that had been coming toward the fence.
    The blue prowler was a larger Nanny, built to manage two young boys: Its