The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch Part 13

Yes, she said. Yes Barney. I certainly very much am. Yes!

Later as he tramped back alone, leadenly, in the direction of his own hovel he said to himself, Maybe Im doing Palmer Eldritchs work. Breaking her down, demoralizing her as if she werent already. As if we all werent.

Something blocked his way.

Halting, he located in his coat the side-arm which had been provided him; there were, especially at night, in addition to the fearsome telepathic jackal, vicious domestic organisms that stung and atehe flashed his light warily, expecting some bizarre multi-armed contraption composed perhaps of slime. Instead he saw a parked s.h.i.+p, the small, swift type with slight ma.s.s; its tubes still smoked, so evidently it had just now landed. Must have coasted down, he realized, since he hadnt heard any retro noise.

From the s.h.i.+p a man crept, shook himself, snapped on his own lantern, made out Barney Mayerson, and grunted. Im Allen Faine. Ive been looking all over for you; Leo wants to keep in touch with you through me. Ill be telecasting in code to you at your hovel; heres your code book. Faine held out a slender volume. You know who I am, dont you?

The disc jockey. Weird, this meeting here on the open Martian desert at night between himself and this man from the P. P. Layouts satellite; it seemed unreal. Thanks, he said, accepting the code book. What do I do, write it down as you say it and then sneak off to decode it?

Therell be a private TV receiver in your compartment in the hovel; weve arranged for it on the grounds that being new to Mars you crave Okay, Barney said, nodding.

So you have a girl already, Faine said. Pardon my use of the infrared searchlight, but I dont pardon it.

Youll find that theres little privacy on Mars in matters of that nature. Its like a small town and all the hovelists are starved for news, especially any kind of scandal. I ought to know; its my job to keep in touch and pa.s.s on what I cannaturally theres a lot I cant. Whos the girl?

I dont know, Barney said sardonically. It was dark; I couldnt see. He started on, then, going around the parked s.h.i.+p.

Wait. Youre supposed to know this: a Chew-Z pusher is already operating in the area and we calculate that h.e.l.l be approaching your particular hovel as early as tomorrow morning. So be ready. Make sure you buy the bindle in front of witnesses; they should see the entire transaction and then when you chew it make sure they can clearly identify what youre consuming. Got it? Faine added, And try to draw the pusher out, get him to give as complete a warranty, verbally of course, as you possibly can. Make him sell you on the product; dont ask for it. See?

Barney said, And what do I get for doing this?

Pardon?

Leo never at any time bothered to Ill tell you what, Faine said quietly. Well get you off Mars. Thats your payment.

After a time Barney said, You mean it?

Itll be illegal, of course. Only the UN can legally route you back to Terra and thats not going to happen. What well do is pick you up some night and transfer you to Winnie-the-Pooh Acres.

And there Ill stay.

Until Leos surgeons can give you a new face, finger and footprints, cephalic wave pattern, a new ident.i.ty throughout; then youll emerge, probably at your old job for P. P. Layouts. I understand you were their New York man. Two, two and a half years from now, youll be at that again. So dont give up hope.

Barney said, Maybe I dont want that.

What? Sure you do. Every colonist wants Ill think it over, Barney said, and let you know. But maybe Ill want something else. He was thinking about Anne. To go back to Terra and pick up once again, perhaps even with Roni Fugateat some deep, instinctive stratum it did not have the appeal to him that he would have expected. Marsor the experience of love with Anne Hawthornehad even further altered him, now; he wondered which it was. Both. And anyhow, he thought, I asked to come hereI wasnt really drafted. And I must never let myself forget that .

Allen Faine said, I know some of the circ.u.mstances, Mayerson. What youre doing is atoning. Correct?

Surprised, Barney said, You, too? Religious inclinations seemed to permeate the entire milieu, here.

You may object to the word, Faine said, but its the proper one. Listen, Mayerson; by the time we get you to Winnie-the-Pooh Acres youll have atoned sufficiently. Theres something you dont know yet. Look at this. He held out, reluctantly, a small plastic tube. A container.

Chilled, Barney said, Whats this?

Your illness. Leo believes, on professional advice, that its not enough for you merely to state in court that youve been damaged; theyll insist on thoroughly examining you.

Tell me specifically what it is in this thing.

Its epilepsy, Mayerson. The Q form, the strain whose causes no one is sure of, whether its due to organic injury that cant be detected with the EEG or whether its psychogenic.

And the symptoms?

Faine said, Grand mal. After a pause he said, Sorry.

I see, Barney said. And how long will I have them?

We can administer the antidote after the litigation but not before. A year at the most. So now you can see what I meant when I said that youre going to be in a position to more than atone for not bailing out Leo when he needed it. You can see how this illness, claimed as a side-effect of Chew-Z, will Sure, Barney said. Epilepsy is one of the great scare-words. Like cancer, once. People are irrationally afraid of it because they know it can happen to them, any time, with no warning.

Especially the more recent Q form. h.e.l.l, they dont even have a theory about it. Whats important is that with the Q form no organic alteration of the brain is involved, and that means we can restore you. The tube, there. Its a metabolic toxin similar in action to metrazol; similar, but unlike metrazol it continues to produce the attackswith the characteristically deranged EEG pattern during those intervalsuntil its neutralizedwhich as I say were prepared to do.

Wont a blood-fraction test show the presence of this toxin?

It will show the presence of a toxin, and thats exactly what we want. Because we will sequester the doc.u.ments pertaining to the physical and mental induction exams which you recently took and well be able to prove that when you arrived on Mars there was no Q-type epilepsy and no toxicity. And itll be Leos or rather yourcontention that the toxicity in the blood is a derivative of Chew-Z.

Barney said, Even if I lose the suit It will still greatly damage Chew-Z sales. Most colonists have a nagging feeling anyhow that the translation drugs are in the long run biochemically harmful. Faine added, The toxin in that tube is relatively rare. Leo obtained it through highly specialized channels. It originates on Io, I believe. One certain doctor w.i.l.l.y Denkmal, Barney said.

Faine shrugged. Possibly. In any case there it is in your hand; as soon as youve been exposed to Chew-Z youre to take it. Try to have your first grand mal attack where your fellow hovelists will see you; dont be off somewhere on the desert farming or bossing autonomic dredges. As soon as youve recovered from the attack, get on the vidphone and ask the UN for medical a.s.sistance. Have their disinterested doctors examine you; dont apply for private medication.

It would probably be a good idea, Barney said, if the UN doctors could run an EEG on me during an attack.

Absolutely. So try if possible to get yourself into a UN hospital; in all therere three on Mars. Youll be able to put forward a good argument for this because Faine hesitated. Frankly, with this toxin your attacks will involve severe destructiveness, toward yourself and to others. Technically theyll be of the hysterical, aggressive variety concluding in a more or less complete loss of consciousness. Itll be obvious what it is right from the start, because or so Im toldyoull reveal the typical tonic stage, with great muscular contractions, and then the clonic stage of rhythmic contraction alternating with relaxation. After which of course the coma supervenes.

In other words, Barney said, the cla.s.sic convulsive form.

Does it frighten you?

I dont see where that matters. I owe Leo something; you and I and Leo know that. I still resent the word atonement, but I suppose this is that. He wondered how this artificially induced illness would affect his relations.h.i.+p with Anne. Probably this would terminate the thing. So he was giving up a good deal for Leo Bulero. But then Leo was doing something for him, too; getting him off Mars was no minor consideration.

Were taking it for granted, Faine said, that theyll make an attempt to kill you the moment you retain an attorney. In fact theyll Id like to go back to my hovel, now. He moved off. Okay?

Fine. Go pick up the routine there. But let me give you a word of advice as regards that girl. Dobermans Law remember, he was the first person to marry and then get divorced on Mars?states that in proportion to your emotional attachment to someone on this d.a.m.n place the relations.h.i.+p deteriorates. Id give you two weeks at the most, and not because youll be ill but because thats standard. Martian musical chairs. And the UN encourages it because it means, frankly, if I may say so, more children to populate the colony. Catch?

The UN, Barney said, might not sanction my relations.h.i.+p with her because its on a somewhat different basis than youre describing.

No its not, Faine said calmly. It may seem so to you, but I watch the whole planet, day in, night out. Im just stating a fact; Im not being critical. In fact Im personally sympathetic.

Thanks, Barney said, and walked away, flas.h.i.+ng his light ahead of him in the direction of his hovel; tied about his throat the small bleeper signal which told him when he was nearingand more important when he was not nearinghis hovel began to sound louder: a one-frog pond of comfort close to his ear.

Ill take the toxin, he said to himself. And Ill go into court and sue the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds for Leos sake. Because I owe that to him. But Im not returning to Earth; either I make it here or not at all . With Anne Hawthorne, I hope, but if not, then alone or with someone else; Ill live out Dobermans Law, as Faine predicts. Anyhow itll be here on this miserable planet, this promised land.

Tomorrow morning, he decided, Ill begin clearing away the sand of fifty thousand centuries for my first vegetable garden. Thats the initial step.

TEN.

Next day both Norm Schein and Tod Morris spent the early hours with him, teaching him the knack of operating the bulldozers and dredges and scoops which had fallen into various stages of ruin; most of the equipment, like old tomcats, could be coaxed into one more effort. But the results did not amount to much; they had been discarded for too long.

By noon he was exhausted. So he treated himself to a break, resting in the shade of a mammoth, rusty tractor, eating a cold-rations lunch and drinking tepid tea from a thermos which Fran Schein had been kind enough to bring up to him.

Below, in the hovel, the others did whatever it was they customarily did; he didnt care.

On all sides of him their abandoned, decaying gardens could be seen and he wondered if soon he would forget his, too. Maybe each new colonist had started out this way, in an agony of effort. And then the torpor, the hopelessness, claimed them. And yet, was it so hopeless? Not really.

Its an att.i.tude, he decided. And weall of us who comprised P. P. Layoutscontributed willingly to it. We gave them an out, something painless and easy. And now Palmer Eldritch has arrived to put the finish on the process. We laid the path for him, myself included, and so what now? Is there any way that I can, as Faine put it, atone?

Approaching him, Helen Morris called cheerfully, Hows the farming coming? She dropped down beside him and opened a fat seed catalog with the UN stamp plainly marked throughout. Observe what theyll provide free ; every seed known to thrive here, including turnips. Resting against him, she turned the pages. However, theres a little mouselike burrowing mammal that shows up on the surface late at night; be prepared for that. It eats everything. Youll have to set out a few self-propelling traps.

Okay, Barney said.

Its quite some sight, one of those homeostatic traps taking off across the sand in pursuit of a marsle-mouse. G.o.d, they go fast. Both the mouse and the trap. You can make it more interesting by placing a bet. I usually bet on the trap. I admire them.

I think Id probably bet on the trap, too. Ive got a great respect for traps , he reflected. In other words a situation in which none of the doors lead out. No matter how they happen to be marked.

Helen said, Also the UN will supply two robots free of charge for your use. For a period not to exceed six months. So better plan ahead wisely as to how you want to employ them. The best is to set them to work constructing irrigation ditches. Ours is mostly no good now. Sometimes the ditches have to run two hundred miles, even more. Or you can hatch out a deal No deals, Barney said.

But these are good deals; find someone nearby in one of the other hovels whos started his own irrigation system and then abandoned it: buy it from him and tap it. Is your girl at Flax Back Spit going to come over here and join you? She eyed him.

He did not answer; he watched, in the black Martian sky with its noontime stars, a circling s.h.i.+p. The Chew-Z man? The time, then, had come for him to poison himself so that an economic monopoly could be kept alive, a sprawling, interplan empire from which he now derived nothing.

Amazing, he thought, how strong the self-destructive drive can be .

Helen Morris, straining to see, said, Visitors! Its not a UN s.h.i.+p, either. She started toward the hovel at once. Ill go tell them.

With his left hand he reached into his coat and touched the tube deep in the interior pocket, thinking to himself, Can I actually do this? It didnt seem possible; there was nothing in his makeup historically which would explain it. Maybe, he thought, its from despair at having lost everything. But he didnt think so; it was something else.

As the s.h.i.+p landed on the flat desert not far off he thought, Maybe its to reveal something to Anne about Chew-Z . Even if the demonstration is faked. Because , he thought, if I accept the toxin into my system she wont try Chew-Z . He had a strong intuition of that. And it was enough.

From the s.h.i.+p stepped Palmer Eldritch.

No one could fail to identify him; since his crash on Pluto the homeopapes had printed one pic after another. Of course the pics were ten years out of date, but this was still the man. Gray and bony, well over six feet tall, with swinging arms and a peculiarly rapid gait. And his face. It had a ravaged quality, eaten away; as if, Barney conjectured, the fat-layer had been consumed, as if Eldritch at some time or other had fed off himself, devoured perhaps with gusto the superfluous portions of his own body. He had enormous steel teeth, these having been installed prior to his trip to Prox by Czech dental surgeons; they were welded to his jaws, were permanent: he would die with them. Andhis right arm was artificial. Twenty years ago in a hunting accident on Callisto he had lost the original; this one of course was superior in that it provided a specialized variety of interchangeable hands. At the moment Eldritch made use of the five-finger humanoid manual extremity; except for its metallic s.h.i.+ne it might have been organic.

And he was blind. At least from the standpoint of the natural-born body. But replacements had been made at the prices which Eldritch could and would pay; that had been done just prior to his Prox voyage by Brazilian oculists. They had done a superb job. The replacements, fitted into the bone sockets, had no pupils, nor did any ball move by muscular action. Instead a panoramic vision was supplied by a wide-angle lens, a permanent horizontal slot running from edge to edge. The accident to his original eyes had been no accident; it had occurred in Chicago, a deliberate acid-throwing attack by persons unknown, for equally unknown reasons at least as far as the public was concerned. Eldritch probably knew. He had, however, said nothing, filed no complaint; instead he had gone straight to his team of Brazilian oculists. His horizontally slotted artificial eyes seemed to please him; almost at once he had appeared at the dedication ceremonies of the new St. George opera house in Utah, and had mixed with his near-peers without embarra.s.sment. Even now, a decade later, the operation was rare and it was the first time Barney had ever seen the Jensen wide-angle, luxvid eyes; this, and the artificial arm with its enormously variable manual repertory, impressed him more than he would have expected or was there something else about Eldritch?

Mr. Mayerson, Palmer Eldritch said, and smiled; the steel teeth glinted in the weak, cold Martian sunlight. He extended his hand and automatically Barney did the same.

Your voice, Barney thought. It originates somewhere other thanhe blinked. The entire figure was insubstantial; dimly, through it, the landscape showed. It was a figment of some sort, artificially produced, and the irony came to him: so much of the man was artificial already, and now even the flesh and blood portions were, too. Is this what arrived home from Prox? Barney wondered. If so, Hepburn-Gilbert has been deceived; this is no human being. In no sense whatsoever.

Im still in the s.h.i.+p, Palmer Eldritch said; his voice boomed from a loudspeaker mounted on the s.h.i.+ps hull. A precaution, in as much as youre an employee of Leo Bulero. The figment-hand touched Barneys; he experienced a pervasive coldness slop over to him, obviously a purely psychological aversion-reaction since nothing was there to produce the sensation.

An ex-employee, Barney said.

Behind him, now, the others of the hovel emerged, the Scheins and Morrises and Regans; they approached like wary children as one by one they identified the nebulous man confronting Barney.

Whats going on? Norm Schein said uneasily. This is a simulacrum; I dont like it. Standing beside Barney he said, Were living on the desert, Mayerson; we get mirages all the time, s.h.i.+ps and visitors and unnatural life forms. Thats what this is; this guy isnt really here and neither is that s.h.i.+p parked there.

Tod Morris added, Theyre probably six hundred miles away; its an optical phenomenon. You get used to it.

But you can hear me, Palmer Eldritch pointed out; the speaker boomed and echoed. Im here, all right, to do business with you. Whos your hovel team-captain?

I am, Norm Schein said.

My card. Eldritch held out a small white card and reflexively Norm Schein reached for it. The card fluttered through his fingers and came to rest on the sand. At that Eldritch smiled. It was a cold, hollow smile, an implosion, as if it had drawn back into the man everything nearby, even the thin air itself. Look down at it, Eldritch suggested. Norm Schein bent, and studied the card. Thats right, Eldritch said. Im here to sign a contract with your group. To deliver to you Spare us the speech about your delivering what G.o.d only promises, Norm Schein said. Just tell us the price.

About one-tenth that of the compet.i.tors product. And much more effective; you dont even require a layout. Eldritch seemed to be talking directly to Barney; his gaze, however, could not be plotted because of the structure of the lens apertures. Are you enjoying it here on Mars, Mr. Mayerson?

Its great fun, Barney said.

Eldritch said, Last night when Allen Faine descended from his dull little satellite to meet with you what did you discuss?

Rigidly, Barney said, Business. He thought quickly, but not quite quickly enough; the next question was already blaring from the speaker.

So you do still work for Leo. In fact it was deliberately arranged to send you here to Mars in advance of our first distribution of Chew-Z. Why? Have you some idea of blocking it? There was no propaganda in your luggage, no leaflets or other printed matter beyond ordinary books. A rumor, perhaps. Word of mouth. Chew-Z iswhat, Mr. Mayerson? Dangerous to the habitual user?

I dont know. Im waiting to try some of it. And see.

Were all waiting, Fran Schein said; she carried in her arms a load of truffle skins, clearly for immediate payment. Can you make a delivery right now, or do we have to keep on waiting?

I can deliver your first allocation, Eldritch said.

A port of the s.h.i.+p snapped open. From it popped a small jet-tractor; it sped toward them. A yard away it halted and ejected a carton wrapped in familiar plain brown paper; the carton lay at their feet and then at last Norm Schein bent and picked it up. It was not a phantasm. Cautiously Norm tore the wrappings off.

Chew-Z, Mary Regan said breathlessly. Oh, what a lot! How much, Mr. Eldritch?

In toto, Eldritch said, five skins. The tractor extended a small drawer, then, precisely the size to receive the skins.

After an interval of haggling the hovelists came to an arrangement; the five skins were deposited in the drawerat once it was withdrawn and the tractor swiveled and zipped back to the mother s.h.i.+p. Palmer Eldritch, insubstantial and gray and large, remained. He appeared to be enjoying himself, Barney decided. It did not bother him to know that Leo Bulero had something up his sleeve; Eldritch thrived on this.

The realization depressed him and he walked, alone, to the meager cleared place which was eventually to be his garden. His back to the hovelists and Eldritch, he activated an autonomic unit; it began to wheeze and hum; sand disappeared into it as it sucked noisily, having difficulty. He wondered how long it would continue functioning. And what one did here on Mars to obtain repairs. Perhaps one gave up; maybe there were no repairs.

From behind Barney, Palmer Eldritchs voice came. Now, Mr. Mayerson, you can begin to chew away for the rest of your life.

He turned, involuntarily, because this was not a phantasm; the man had finally come forth. Thats right, he said. And nothing could delight me more. He continued, then, tinkering with the autonomic scoop. Where do you go to get equipment fixed on Mars? he asked Eldritch. Does the UN take care of that?

Eldritch said, How would I know?

A portion of the autonomic scoop broke loose in Barneys hands; he held it, weighed it. The piece, shaped like a tire iron, was heavy and he thought, I could kill him with this. Right here, in this spot. Wouldnt that solve it? No toxin to produce grand mal seizures, no litigation but thered be retaliation from them. Id outlive Eldritch by only a few hours.

Butisnt it still worth it?

He turned. And then it happened so swiftly that he had no valid concept of it, not even an accurate perception. From the parked s.h.i.+p a laser beam reached forth and he felt the intense impact as it touched the metal section in his hands. At the same time Palmer Eldritch danced back, lithely, bounding upward in the slight Martian gravity; like a balloonBarney stared but did not believehe floated off, grinning with his huge steel teeth, waggling his artificial arm, his lank body slowly rotating. Then, as if reeled in by a transparent line, he progressed in a jerky sine-wave motion toward the s.h.i.+p. All at once he was gone. The nose of the s.h.i.+p clamped shut after him; Eldritch was inside. Safe.