The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch Page 15

  Coming up to Barney, Sam Regan said, “Get her to join you, Mayerson; we’d be glad to vote to admit her, here. We’ve got lots of room and you should have a—shall we say—wife.” He, too, scrutinized Anne. “Yeah,” he said. “Pretty. Nice long black hair; I like that.”

  “You do, do you,” Mary Regan said tartly to him.

  “Yeah I do; so what?” Sam Regan glared back at his wife.

  Barney said, “She’s spoken for.”

  They all eyed him curiously.

  “That’s odd,” Helen Morris said. “Because when we were together with her just now she didn’t tell us that, and as far as we could make out you and she had only—”

  Interrupting, Fran Schein said to Barney, “You don’t want a Neo-Christian nut to live with you. We’ve had experience with that; we ejected a couple of them last year. They can cause terrible trouble here on Mars. Remember, we shared her mind…she’s a dedicated member of some high church or other, with all the sacraments and the rituals, all that old outdated junk; she actually believes in it.”

  Barney said tightly, “I know.”

  In an easy-going way Tod Morris said, “That’s true, Mayerson; honest. We have to live too close together to import any kind of ideological fanaticism from Terra. It’s happened at other hovels; we know what we’re talking about. It has to be live and let live, with no absolutist creeds and dogma; a hovel is just too small.” He lit a cigarette and glanced down at Anne Hawthorne. “Strange that a pretty girl would pick that stuff up. Well, it takes all kinds.” He looked puzzled.

  “Did she seem to enjoy being translated?” Barney asked Helen Morris.

  “Yes, to a certain extent. Of course it upset her…the first time you have to expect that; she didn’t know how to cooperate in handling the body. But she was quite eager to learn. Now obviously she’s got it all to herself so it’s easier on her. This is good practice.”

  Bending down, Barney Mayerson picked up the small doll, Perky Pat in her yellow shorts and red-striped cotton t-shirt and sandals. This now was Anne Hawthorne, he realized. In a sense that no one quite understood. And yet he could destroy the doll, crush it, and Anne, in her synthetic fantasy life, would be unaffected.

  “I’d like to marry her,” he said aloud, suddenly.

  “Who?” Tod asked. “Perky Pat or the new girl?”

  “He means Perky Pat,” Norm Schein said, and snickered.

  “No he doesn’t,” Helen said severely. “And I think it’s fine; now we can be four couples instead of three couples and one man, one odd man.”

  “Is there any way,” Barney said, “to get drunk around here?”

  “Sure,” Norm said. “We’ve got liquor—it’s dull ersatz gin, but it’s eighty proof; it’ll do the job.”

  “Let me have some,” Barney said, reaching for his wallet.

  “It’s free. The UN supply ships drop it in vats.” Norm went to a locked cupboard, produced a key, and opened it.

  Sam Regan said, “Tell us, Mayerson, why you feel the need to get drunk. Is it us? The hovel? Mars itself?”

  “No.” It was none of those; it had to do with Anne and the disintegration of her identity. Her use of Can-D all at once, a symptom of her inability to believe or to cope, her giving up. It was an omen, in which he, too, was involved; he saw himself in what had happened.

  If he could help her perhaps he could help himself. And if not—

  He had an intuition that otherwise they were both finished. Mars, for both himself and Anne, would mean death. And probably soon.

  NINE

  * * *

  After she emerged from the experience of translation Anne Hawthorne was taciturn and moody. It was not a good sign; he guessed that she, too, now had a premonition similar to his. However, she said nothing about it; she merely went at once to get her bulky outer suit from his compartment.

  “I have to get back to Flax Back Spit,” she explained. “Thank you for letting me use your layout,” she said to the hovelists who stood here and there, watching her as she dressed. “I’m sorry, Barney.” She hung her head. “It was unkind to leave you the way I did.”

  He accompanied her, on foot, across the flat, nocturnal sands to her own hovel; neither of them spoke as they plodded along, keeping their eyes open, as they had been told to, for a local predator, a jackal-like telepathic Martian life form. However, they saw nothing.

  “How was it?” he asked her at last.

  “You mean being that little brassy blonde-haired doll with all her damn clothes and her boyfriend and her car and her—” Anne, beside him, shuddered. “Awful. Well, that’s not it. Just—pointless. I found nothing there. It was like going back to my teens.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed. There was that about Perky Pat.

  “Barney,” she said quietly, “I have to find something else and soon. Can you help me? You seem smart and grown-up and experienced. Being translated is not going to help me…Chew-Z won’t be any better because something in me rebels, won’t take it—see? Yes, you see; I can tell. Hell, you wouldn’t even try it once, so you must understand.” She squeezed his arm, and clung tightly to him in the darkness. “I know something else, Barney. They’re tired of it, too; all they did was bicker while they—we—were inside those dolls. They didn’t enjoy it for a second, even.”

  “Gosh,” he said.

  Flashing her lantern ahead, Anne said, “It’s a shame; I wish they did. I feel sorrier for them than I do for—” She ceased, walked on for a time in silence, and then abruptly said, “I’ve changed, Barney. I feel it in myself. I want to sit down here—wherever we are. You and I alone in the dark. And then you know what…I don’t have to say, do I?”

  “No,” he admitted. “But the thing is, you’d regret it afterward. I would, too, because of your reaction.”

  “Maybe I’ll pray,” Anne said. “Praying is hard to do; you have to know how. You don’t pray for yourself; you pray what we call an intercessive prayer: for others. And what you pray to isn’t the God Who’s in the heavens out there somewhere…it’s to the Holy Spirit within; that’s different, that’s the Paraclete. Did you ever real Paul?”

  “Paul who?”

  “In the New Testament. His letters to for instance the Corinthians or the Romans…you know. Paul says our enemy is death; it’s the final enemy we overcome, so I guess it’s the greatest. We’re all blighted, according to Paul, not just our bodies but our souls, too; both have to die and then we can be born again, with new bodies not of flesh but incorruptible. See? You know, when I was Perky Pat, just now…I had the oddest feeling that I was—it’s wrong to say this or believe it, but—”

  “But,” Barney finished for her, “it seemed like a taste of that. But you expected it, though; you knew the resemblance—you mentioned it yourself, on the ship.” A lot of people, he reflected, had noticed it, too.

  “Yes,” Anne admitted. “But what I didn’t realize is—” In the darkness she turned toward him; he could just barely make her out. “Being translated is the only hint we can have of it this side of death. So it’s a temptation. If it wasn’t for that dreadful doll, that Perky Pat—”

  “Chew-Z,” Barney said.

  “That’s what I was thinking. If it was like that, like what Paul says about the corruptible man putting on incorruption—I couldn’t stop myself, Barney; I’d have to chew Chew-Z. I wouldn’t be able to wait until the end of my life…it might be fifty years living here on Mars—half a century!” She shuddered. “Why wait when I could have it now?”

  “The last person I talked to,” Barney said, “who had taken Chew-Z, said it was the worst experience of his life.”

  That startled her. “In what way?”

  “He fell into the domain of someone or something he considered absolutely evil, someone he was terrified of. And he was lucky—and he knew it—to get away again.”

  “Barney,” she said, “why are you on Mars? Don’t say it’s because of the draft; a person as smart as you could have gone to a psychiatri
st—”

  “I’m on Mars,” he said, “because I made a mistake.” In your terminology, he reflected, it would be called a sin. And in my terminology, too, he decided.

  Anne said, “You hurt someone, didn’t you?”

  He shrugged.

  “So now for the rest of your life you’re here,” Anne said. “Barney, can you get me a supply of Chew-Z?”

  “Pretty soon.” It would not be long before he ran into one of Palmer Eldritch’s pushers; he was certain of that. Putting his hand on her shoulder he said, “But you can get it for yourself just as easily.”

  She leaned against him as they walked, and he hugged her; she did not resist—in fact she sighed with relief. “Barney, I have something to show you. A leaflet that one of the people in my hovel gave me; she said a whole bundle had been dropped the other day. It’s from the Chew-Z people.” Reaching into her bulky coat she rummaged about, then; in the glare of the lantern he saw the folded paper. “Read it. You’ll understand why I feel as I do about Chew-Z…why it’s such a spiritual problem for me.”

  Holding the paper to the light he read the top line; it blazed out in huge black letters.

  GOD PROMISES ETERNAL LIFE. WE CAN DELIVER IT.

  “See?” Anne said.

  “I see.” He did not even bother to read the rest; folding the paper back up he returned it to her, feeling heavy-hearted. “Quite a slogan.”

  “A true one.”

  “Not the big lie,” Barney said, “but instead the big truth.” Which, he wondered, is worse? Hard to tell. Ideally, Palmer Eldritch would drop dead for the blasphemia shouted by the pamphlet, but evidently that was not going to occur. An evil visitor oozing over us from the Prox system, he said to himself, offering us what we’ve prayed for over a period of two thousand years. And why is this so palpably bad? Hard to say, but nevertheless it is. Because maybe it’ll mean bondage to Eldritch, such as Leo experienced; Eldritch will be with us constantly from now on, infiltrating our lives. And He who has protected us in the past simply sits passive.

  Each time we’re translated, he thought, we’ll see—not God—but Palmer Eldritch.

  Aloud he said, “If Chew-Z fails you—”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “If Palmer Eldritch fails you, then maybe—” He stopped. Because ahead of them lay the hovel Flax Back Spit; its entrance light glowed dimly in the Martian gloom. “You’re home.” He did not like to let her go; his hand on her shoulder, he clung to her, thinking back to what he had said to his fellow hovelists about her. “Come back with me,” he said. “To Chicken Pox Prospects. We’ll get formally, legally married.”

  She stared at him and then—incredibly—she began to laugh.

  “Does that mean no?” he asked, woodenly.

  “What,” Anne said, “is ‘Chicken Pox Prospects’? Oh, I see; that’s the code name of your hovel. I’m sorry, Barney; I didn’t mean to laugh. But the answer of course is no.” She moved away from him, and opened the outer door of the hovel’s entrance-chamber. And then she set down her lantern and stepped toward him, arms held out. “Make love to me,” she said.

  “Not here. Too close to the entrance.” He was afraid.

  “Wherever you want. Take me there.” She put her arms around his neck. “Now,” she said. “Don’t wait.”

  He didn’t.

  Picking her up in his arms, he carried her away from the entrance.

  “Golly,” she said, when he laid her down in the darkness; she gasped, presently, perhaps from the sudden cold that spilled over them, penetrating their heavy suits which no longer served, which in fact were a hindrance to true warmth.

  One of the laws of thermal dynamics, he thought. The exchange of heat; molecules passing between us, hers and mine mingling in—entropy? Not yet, he thought.

  “Oh my,” she said, in the darkness.

  “I hurt you?”

  “No. I’m sorry. Please.”

  The cold numbed his back, his ears; it radiated down from the sky. He ignored it as best he could, but he thought of a blanket, a thick wool layer—strange, to be preoccupied with that at such a time. He dreamed of its softness, the scratch of its fibers against his skin, its heaviness. Instead of the brittle, frigid, thin air which made him pant in huge gulps, as if finished.

  “Are—you dying?” she asked.

  “Just can’t breathe. This air.”

  “Poor, poor—good lord. I’ve forgotten your name.”

  “Hell of a thing.”

  “Barney!”

  He clutched her.

  “No! Don’t stop!” She arched her back. Her teeth chattered.

  “I wasn’t going to,” he said.

  “Oooaugh!”

  He laughed.

  “Don’t please laugh at me.”

  “Not meant unkindly.”

  A long silence, then. Then, “Oof.” She leaped, galvanized as if lost to the shock of a formal experiment. His pale, dignified, unclothed possession: become a tall and very thin greenless nervous system of a frog; probed to life by outside means. Victim of a current not her own but not protested, in any way. Lucid and real, accepting. Ready this long time.

  “You all right?”

  “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 I’m doing Palmer Eldritch’s work. Breaking her down, demoralizing her…as if she weren’t already. As if we all weren’t.

  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 ate—he flashed his light warily, expecting some bizarre multi-armed contraption composed perhaps of slime. Instead he saw a parked ship, the small, swift type with slight mass; its tubes still smoked, so evidently it had just now landed. Must have coasted down, he realized, since he hadn’t heard any retro noise.

  From the ship a man crept, shook himself, snapped on his own lantern, made out Barney Mayerson, and grunted. “I’m Allen Faine. I’ve been looking all over for you; Leo wants to keep in touch with you through me. I’ll be telecasting in code to you at your hovel; here’s your code book.” Faine held out a slender volume. “You know who I am, don’t 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?”

  “There’ll be a private TV receiver in your compartment in the hovel; we’ve 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 don’t pardon it.”

  “You’ll find that there’s little privacy on Mars in matters of that nature. It’s like a small town and all the hovelists are starved for news, especially any kind of scandal. I ought to know; it’s my job to keep in touch and pass on what I can—naturally there’s a lot I can’t. Who’s the girl?”

  “I don’t know,” Barney said sardonically. “It was dark; I couldn’t see.” He started on, then, going around the parked ship.

  “Wait. You’re supposed to know this: a Chew-Z pusher is already operating in the area and we calculate that he’ll 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 you’re 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; don’t ask for it. See?”

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

  “Pardon?”

  “Leo never at any time bothered to—”

  “I’ll tell you what,” Faine said quietly. “We’ll get you off Mars. That’s your payment.”

  After a time Barney said, “You mean it?”

  “It’ll be illegal, of course. Only the UN can legally route you back to Terra and that’s not going to happen. What we’ll do is pick you up some night and transfer you to Winnie-ther-Pooh Acres.”

  “And there I’ll stay.”

  “Until Leo’s surgeons can give you a new face, finger- and footprints, cephalic wave pattern, a new identity throughout; then you’ll 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, you’ll be at that again. So don’t give up hope.”

  Barney said, “Maybe I don’t want that.”

  “What? Sure you do. Every colonist wants—”

  “I’ll think it over,” Barney said, “and let you know. But maybe I’ll want something else.” He was thinking about Anne. To go back to Terra and pick up once again, perhaps even with Roni Fugate—at some deep, instinctive stratum it did not have the appeal to him that he would have expected. Mars—or the experience of love with Anne Hawthorne—had even further altered him, now; he wondered which it was. Both. And anyhow, he thought, I asked to come here—I wasn’t really drafted. And I must never let myself forget that.

  Allen Faine said, “I know some of the circumstances, Mayerson. What you’re 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 it’s the proper one. Listen, Mayerson; by the time we get you to Winnie-ther-Pooh Acres you’ll have atoned sufficiently. There’s something you don’t know yet. Look at this.” He held out, reluctantly, a small plastic tube. A container.