The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch Page 13

  He did not look forward to it.

  That night he found himself on a UN transport sighted on the planet Mars as its destination. In the seat next to him sat a pretty, frightened but desperately calm dark-haired girl with features as sharply etched as those of a magazine model. Her name, she told him almost as soon as the ship had attained escape velocity—she was patently eager to break her tension by conversation with anyone, on any topic—was Anne Hawthorne. She could have avoided the draft, she declared a trifle wistfully, but she hadn’t; she believed it to be her patriotic duty to accept the chilling UN greetings! summons.

  “How would you have avoided it?” he asked, curious.

  “A heart murmur,” Anne said. “And an arrhythmia, paroxysmal tachycardia.”

  “How about premature contractions such as auricular, nodal, and ventricular, auricular tachycardia, auricular flutter, auricular fibrillation, not to mention night cramps?” Barney asked, having himself looked—without result—into the topic.

  “I could have produced documents from hospitals and doctors and insurance companies testifying for me.” She glanced him over, up and down, then, very interestedly, “It sounds as if you could have gotten out, Mr. Payerson.”

  “Mayerson. I volunteered, Miss Hawthorne.” But I couldn’t have gotten out, not for long, he said to himself.

  “They’re very religious in the colonies. So I hear, anyhow. What denomination are you, Mr. Mayerson?”

  “Um,” he said, stuck.

  “I think you’d better find out before we get there. They’ll ask you and expect you to attend services.” She added, “It’s primarily the use of that drug—you know. Can-D. It’s brought about a lot of conversions to the established churches…although many of the colonists find in the drug itself a religious experience that’s adequate for them. I have relatives on Mars; they write me so I know. I’m going to the Fineburg Crescent; where are you going?”

  Up the creek, he thought. “The same,” he said, aloud.

  “Possibly you and I’ll be in the same hovel,” Anne Hawthorne said, with a thoughtful expression on her precisely cut face. “I belong to the Reformed Branch of the Neo-American Church, the New Christian Church of the United States and Canada. Actually our roots are very old: in A.D. 300 our forefathers had bishops that attended a conference in France; we didn’t split off from the other churches as late as everyone thinks. So you can see we have Apostolic Succession.” She smiled at him in a solemn, friendly fashion.

  “Honest,” Barney said. “I believe it. Whatever that is.”

  “There’s a Neo-American mission church in the Fineburg Crescent and therefore a vicar, a priest; I expect to be able to take Holy Communion at least once a month. And confess twice a year, as we’re supposed to, as I’ve been doing on Terra. Our church has many sacraments…have you taken either of the two Greater Sacraments, Mr. Mayerson?”

  “Uh—” he hesitated.

  “Christ specified that we observe two sacraments,” Anne Hawthorne explained patiently. “Baptism—by water—and Holy Communion. The latter in memory of Him…it was inaugurated at the Last Supper.”

  “Oh. You mean the bread and the wine.”

  “You know how the eating of Can-D translates—as they call it—the partaker to another world. It’s secular, however, in that it’s temporary and only a physical world. The bread and the wine—”

  “I’m sorry, Miss Hawthorne,” Barney said, “but I’m afraid I can’t believe in that, the body and blood business. It’s too mystical for me.” Too much based upon unproved premises, he said to himself. But she was right; sacral religion had, because of Can-D, become common in the colony moons and planets, and he would be encountering it, as Anne said.

  “Are you going to try Can-D?” Anne asked.

  “Sure.”

  Anne said, “You have faith in that. And yet you know that the Earth it takes you to isn’t the real one.”

  “I don’t want to argue it,” he said. “It’s experienced as real; that’s all I know.”

  “So are dreams.”

  “But this is stronger,” he pointed out. “Clearer. And it’s done in—” He had started to say communion. “In company with others who really go along. So it can’t be entirely an illusion. Dreams are private; that’s the reason we identify them as illusion. But Perky Pat—”

  “It would be interesting to know what the people who make the Perky Pat layouts think about it all,” Anne said reflectively.

  “I can tell you. To them it’s just a business. As probably the manufacture of sacramental wine and wafers is to those who—”

  “If you’re going to try Can-D,” Anne said, “and put your faith for a new life into it, can I induce you to try baptism and confirmation into the Neo-American Christian Church? So you could see if your faith deserves to be put into that, too? Or the First Revised Christian Church of Europe which of course also observes the two Greater Sacraments. Once you’ve participated in Holy Communion—”

  “I can’t,” he said. I believe in Can-D, he said to himself, and, if necessary, Chew-Z. You can put your faith in something twenty-one centuries old; I’ll stick with something new. And that is that.

  Anne said, “To be frank, Mr. Mayerson, I intend to try to convert as many colonists as possible away from Can-D to the traditional Christian practices; that’s the central reason I declined to put together a case that would exempt me from the draft.” She smiled at him, a lovely smile which, in spite of himself, warmed him. “Is that wrong? I’ll tell you frankly: I think the use of Can-D indicates a genuine hunger on the part of these people to find a return to what we in the Neo-American Church—”

  “I think,” Barney said, gently, “you should let these people alone.” And me, too, he thought. I’ve got enough troubles as it is; don’t add your religious fanaticism and make it worse. But she did not look like his idea of a religious fanatic, nor did she talk like one. He was puzzled. Where had she gotten such strong, steady convictions? He could imagine it existing in the colonies, where the need was so great, but she had acquired it on Earth.

  Therefore the existence of Can-D, the experience of group translation, did not fully explain it. Maybe, he thought, it’s been the transition by gradual stages of Earth to the hell-like blasted wasteland which all of them could foresee—hell, experience!—that had done it; the hope of another life, on different terms, had been reawakened.

  Myself, he thought, the individual I’ve been, Barney Mayerson of Earth, who worked for P. P. Layouts and lived in the renown conapt building with the unlikely low number 33, is dead. That person is finished, wiped out as if by a sponge.

  Whether I like it or not I’ve been born again.

  “Being a colonist on Mars,” he said, “isn’t going to be like living on Terra. Maybe when I get there—” He ceased; he had intended to say, Maybe I’ll be more interested in your dogmatic church. But as yet he could not honestly say that, even as a conjecture; he rebelled from an idea that was still foreign to his makeup. And yet—

  “Go ahead,” Anne Hawthorne said. “Finish your sentence.”

  “Talk to me again,” Barney said, “when I’ve lived down in the bottom of a hovel on an alien world for a while. When I’ve begun my new life, if you can call it a life, as a colonist.” His tone was bitter; it surprised him, the ferocity…it bordered on being anguish, he realized with shame.

  Anne said placidly, “All right. I’ll be glad to.”

  After that the two of them sat in silence; Barney read a homeopape and, beside him, Anne Hawthorne, the fanatic girl missionary to Mars, read a book. He peered at the title, and saw that it was Eric Lederman’s great text on colonial living, Pilgrim without Progress. God knew where she had gotten a copy; the UN had condemned it, made it incredibly difficult to obtain. And to read a copy of it here on a UN ship—it was a singular act of courage; he was impressed.

  Glancing at her he realized that she was really overwhelmingly attractive to him, except that she was just a little
too thin, wore no makeup, and had as much of her heavy dark hair as possible covered with a round, white, veil-like cap; she looked, he decided, as if she were dressed for a long journey which would end in church. Anyhow he liked her manner of speaking, her compassionate, modulated voice. Would he run into her again on Mars?

  It came to him that he hoped so. In fact—was this improper?—he hoped even to find himself participating with her in the corporate act of taking Can-D.

  Yes, he thought, it’s improper because I know what I intend, what the experience of translation with her would signify to me.

  He hoped it anyhow.

  EIGHT

  * * *

  Extending his hand, Norm Schein said heartily, “Hi there, Mayerson; I’m the official greeter from our hovel. Welcome—ugh—to Mars.”

  “I’m Fran Schein,” his wife said, also shaking hands with Barney Mayerson. “We have a very orderly, stable hovel here; I don’t think you’ll find it too dreadful.” She added, half to herself, “Just dreadful enough.” She smiled, but Mayerson did not smile back; he looked grim, tired, and depressed, as most new colonists did on arrival to a life which they knew was difficult and essentially meaningless. “Don’t expect us to sell you on the virtues of this,” she said. “That’s the UN’s job. We’re nothing more than victims like yourself. Except that we’ve been here a while.”

  “Don’t make it sound so bad,” Norm said in warning.

  “But it is,” Fran said. “Mr. Mayerson is facing it; he isn’t going to accept any pretty story. Right, Mr. Mayerson?”

  “I could do with a little illusion at this point,” Barney said as he seated himself on a metal bench within the hovel entrance. The sand-plow which had brought him, meanwhile, unloaded his gear; he watched dully.

  “Sorry,” Fran said.

  “Okay to smoke?” Barney got out a package of Terran cigarettes; the Scheins stared at them fixedly and he then offered them each a chance at the pack, guiltily.

  “You arrived at a difficult time,” Norm Schein explained. “We’re right in the middle of a debate.” He glanced around at the others. “Since you’re now a member of our hovel I don’t see why you shouldn’t be brought into it; after all it concerns you, too.”

  Tod Morris said, “Maybe he’ll—you know. Tell.”

  “We can swear him to secrecy,” Sam Regan said, and his wife Mary nodded. “Our discussion, Mr. Geyerson—”

  “Mayerson,” Barney corrected.

  “—Has to do with the drug Can-D, which is the old reliable translating agent we’ve depended on, versus the newer, untried drug Chew-Z; we’re debating whether to drop Can-D once and for all and—”

  “Wait until we’re below,” Norm Schein said, and scowled.

  Seating himself on the bench beside Barney Mayerson, Tod Morris said, “Can-D is kaput; it’s too hard to get, costs too many skins, and personally I’m tired of Perky Pat—it’s too artificial, too superficial, and materialistality in—pardon; that’s our word here for—” He groped in difficult explanation. “Well, it’s apartment, cars, sunbathing on the beach, ritzy clothes…we enjoyed it for a while, but it’s not enough in some sort of unmaterialistality way. You see at all, Mayerson?”

  Norm Schein said, “Okay, but Mayerson here hasn’t had that; he isn’t jaded. Maybe he’d appreciate going through all that.”

  “Like we did,” Fran agreed. “Anyhow, we haven’t voted; we haven’t decided which we’re going to buy and use from now on. I think we ought to let Mr. Mayerson try both. Or have you already tried Can-D, Mr. Mayerson?”

  “I did,” Barney said. “But a long time ago. Too long for me to remember clearly.” Leo had given it to him, and offered him more, big amounts, all he wanted. But he had declined; it hadn’t appealed to him.

  Norm Schein said, “This is rather an unfortunate welcome to our hovel, I’m afraid, getting you embroiled in our controversy like this. But we’ve run out of Can-D; we either have to restock or switch: this is the critical moment. Of course the Can-D pusher, Impy White, is after us to reorder through her…by the end of tonight we’ll have decided one way or another. And it will affect all of us…for the rest of our lives.”

  “So be glad you didn’t arrive tomorrow,” Fran said. “After the vote is taken.” She smiled at him encouragingly, trying to make him feel welcome; they had little to offer him except their mutual bond, the fact of their relatedness one to another, and this was extended now to him.

  What a place, Barney Mayerson was thinking to himself. The rest of my life…it seemed impossible, but what they said was true. There was no provision in the UN selective service law for mustering out. And the fact was not an easy one to face; these people were the body-corporate for him now, and yet—how much worse it could be. Two of their women seemed physically attractive and he could tell—or believed he could—that they were, so to speak, interested; he sensed the subtle interaction of the manifold complexities of the interpersonal relationships which built up in the cramped confines of a single hovel. But—

  “The way out,” Mary Regan said quietly to him, seating herself on the side of the bench opposite Tod Morris, “is through one or the other of the translating drugs, Mr. Mayerson. Otherwise, as you can see—” She put her hand on his shoulder; the physical touch was there already. “It would be impossible. We’d simply wind up killing one another in our pain.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I see.” But he had not learned that by coming to Mars; he had, like every other Terran, known that early in life, heard of colony life, the struggle against the lure of internecine termination to it all in one swift surrender.

  No wonder induction was fought so rabidly, as had been the case with him originally. It was a fight to hold onto life.

  “Tonight,” Mary Regan said to him, “we’ll procure one drug or the other; Impy will be stopping by about 7 P.M., Fineburg Crescent time; the answer will have to be in by then.”

  “I think we can vote now,” Norm Schein said. “I can see that Mr. Mayerson, even though he’s just arrived, is prepared. Am I right, Mayerson?”

  “Yes,” Barney said. The sand-dredge had completed its autonomic task; his possessions sat in a meager heap, and loose sand billowed across them already—if they were not taken below they would succumb to the dust, and soon. Hell, he thought; maybe it’s just as well. Ties to the past…

  The other hovelists gathered to assist him, passing his suitcases from hand to hand, to the conveyer belt that serviced the hovel below the surface. Even if he was not interested in preserving his former goods they were; they had a knowledge superior to his.

  “You learn to get by from day to day,” Sam Regan said sympathetically to him. “You never think in longer terms. Just until dinner or until time for bed; very finite intervals and tasks and pleasures. Escapes.”

  Tossing his cigarette away, Barney reached for the heaviest of his suitcases. “Thanks.” It was profound advice.

  “Excuse me,” Sam Regan said with polite dignity and went to pick up the discarded cigarette for himself.

  Seated in the hovel-chamber adequate to receive them all, the collective members, including new Barney Mayerson, prepared to solemnly vote. The time: six o’clock, Fineburg Crescent reckoning. The evening meal, shared as was customary, was over; the dishes now lay lathered and rinsed in the proper machine. No one, it appeared to Barney, had anything to do now; the weight of empty time hung over them all.

  Examining the collection of votes, Norm Schein announced, “Four for Chew-Z. Three for Can-D. That’s the decision, then. Okay, who wants the job of telling Impy White the bad news?” He peered around at each of them. “She’s going to be sore; we better expect that.”

  Barney said, “I’ll tell her.”

  Astonished, the three couples who comprised the hovel’s inhabitants in addition to himself stared at him. “But you don’t even know her,” Fran Schein protested.

  “I’ll say it’s my fault,” Barney said. “That I tipped the balance here to Chew-Z.” Th
ey would let him, he knew; it was an onerous task.

  Half an hour later he lounged in the silent darkness at the lip of the hovel’s entrance, smoking and listening to the unfamiliar sounds of the Martian night.

  Far off some lunary object streaked the sky, passing between his sight and the stars. A moment later he heard retrojets. Soon, he knew; he waited, arms folded, more or less relaxed, practicing what he intended to say.

  Presently a squat female figure dressed in heavy coveralls trudged into view. “Schein? Morris? Well, Regan, then?” She squinted at him, using an infrared lantern. “I don’t know you.” Warily, she halted. “I have a laser pistol.” It manifested itself, pointed at him. “Speak up.”

  Barney said, “Let’s move off out of earshot of the hovel.”

  With extreme caution Impatience White accompanied him, still pointing the laser pistol menacingly. She accepted his ident-pak, reading it by means of her lantern. “You were with Bulero,” she said, glancing up at him appraisingly. “So?”

  “So,” he said, “we’re switching to Chew-Z, we at Chicken Pox Prospects.”

  “Why?”

  “Just accept it and don’t push any farther here. You can check with Leo at P. P. Or through Conner Freeman on Venus.”

  “I will,” Impatience said. “Chew-Z is garbage; it’s habitforming, toxic, and what’s worse leads to lethal, escape-dreams, not of Terra but of—” She gestured with the pistol. “Grotesque, baroque fantasies of an infantile, totally deranged nature. Explain to me why this decision.”

  He said nothing; he merely shrugged. It was interesting, however, the ideological devotion on her part; it amused him. In fact, he reflected, its fanaticism was in sharp contrast to the attitude which the girl missionary aboard the Terra-Mars ship had shown. Evidently subject matter had no bearing; he had never realized this before.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow night at this same time,” Impatience White decided. “If you’re being truthful, fine. But if you’re not—”

  “What if I’m not?” he said slowly, deliberately. “Can you force us to consume your product? After all, it is illegal; we could ask for UN protection.”