The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch Page 17

  But—isn’t 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 ship 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 balloon—Barney stared but did not believe—he 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 ship. All at once he was gone. The nose of the ship clamped shut after him; Eldritch was inside. Safe.

  “Why’d he do that?” Norm Schein said, eaten with curiosity, where he and the other hovelists stood. “What in God’s name went on, there?”

  Barney said nothing; shakily he set the remains of the metal piece down. They were ashlike remnants only, brittle and dry; they crumbled away as they touched the ground.

  “They got into a hassle,” Tod Morris said. “Mayerson and Eldritch; they didn’t hit it off, not one bit.”

  “Anyhow,” Norm said, “we got the Chew-Z. Mayerson, you better stay away from Eldritch in the future; let me handle the transaction. If I had known that because you were an employee of Leo Bulero—”

  “Former,” Barney said reflexively, and resumed his tinkering with the defective autonomic scoop. He had failed in his first try at killing Palmer Eldritch. Would he ever have a chance again?

  Had he really had a chance just now?

  The answer to both, he decided was no.

  Late that afternoon the hovelists of Chicken Pox Prospects gathered to chew. The mood was one of tension and solemnity; scarcely anything was said as the bindles of Chew-Z, one by one, were unwrapped and passed around.

  “Ugh,” Fran Schein said, making a face. “It tastes awful.”

  “Taste, schmaste,” Norm said impatiently. He chewed, then. “Like a decayed mushroom; you sure are right.” Stoically, he swallowed, and continued chewing. “Gak,” he said, and retched.

  “To be doing this without a layout—” Helen Morris said. “Where will we go, just anywhere? I’m scared,” she said all at once. “Will we be together? Are you positive of that, Norm?”

  “Who cares,” Sam Regan said, chewing.

  “Watch me,” Barney Mayerson said.

  They glanced at him with curiosity; something in his tone made them do as he said.

  “I put the Chew-Z in my mouth,” Barney said, and did so. “You see me doing it. Right?” He chewed. “Now I’m chewing it.” His heart labored. God, he thought. Can I go through with this?”

  “Yeah, we see you,” Tod Morris agreed, nodding. “So what? I mean, are you going to blow up or float off like Eldritch or something?” He, too, began on his bindle, then. They were all chewing, all seven of them, Barney realized. He shut his eyes.

  The next he knew, his wife was bending over him.

  “I said,” she said, “do you want a second Manhattan or not? Because if you do I have to request the refrig for more cracked ice.”

  “Emily,” he said.

  “Yes, dear,” she said tartly. “Whenever you say my name like that I know you’re about to launch in on one of your lectures. What is it this time?” She seated herself on the arm of the couch opposite him, smoothing her skirt; it was the striking blue-and-white hand-printed Mexican wraparound that he had gotten her at Christmas. “I’m ready,” she said.

  “No—lecture,” he said. Am I really that way? he asked himself. Always delivering tirades? Groggily, he rose to his feet; he felt dizzy and he steadied himself by holding onto the nearby pole lamp.

  Eying him, Emily said, “You’re blammed.”

  Blammed. He hadn’t heard that term since college; it was long out of style, and naturally Emily still used it. “The word,” he said as distinctly as possible, “is now fnugled. Can you remember that? Fnugled.” He walked unsteadily to the sideboard in the kitchen where the liquor was.

  “Fnugled,” Emily said and sighed. She looked sad; he noticed that and wondered why. “Barney,” she said, then, “don’t drink so much, okay? Call it blammed or fnugled or anything you want, it’s still the same. I guess it’s my fault; you drink so much because I’m so inadequate.” She wiped briefly with her knuckle at her right eye, an annoying, familiar, ticlike motion.

  “It’s not that you’re so inadequate,” he said. “It’s just that I have high standards.” I was taught to expect a lot from others, he said to himself. To expect they’d be as reputable and stable as I am, and not sloppily emotional all the time, not in control of themselves.

  But an artist, he realized. Or rather so-called artist. Bohemian. That’s closer to it. The artistic life without the talent. He began fixing himself a fresh drink, this one bourbon and water, without ice; he poured directly from the bottle of Old Crow, ignoring the shot glass.

  “When you pour that way,” Emily said, “I know you’re angry and we’re in for it. And I just hate it.”

  “So then leave,” he said.

  “Goddam you,” Emily said. “I don’t want to leave! Couldn’t you just—” She gestured with hopeless futility. “Be a little nicer, more charitable or something? Learn to overlook…” Her voice sank, almost inaudibly she said, “My shortcomings.”

  “But,” he said, “they can’t be overlooked. I’d like to. You think I want to live with someone who can’t finish anything they start or accomplish anything socially? For instance when—aw, the hell with it.” What was the use? Emily couldn’t be reformed; she was purely and simply a slob. Her idea of a well-spent day was to wallow and putter and fool with a mess of greasy, excretionlike paints or bury her arms for hours on end in a great crock of wet gray clay. And meanwhile—

  Time was escaping from them. And all the world, including all of Mr. Bulero’s employees, especially his Pre-Fash consultants, grew and augmented themselves, bloomed into maturity. I’ll never be the New York Pre-Fash consultant, he said to himself. I’ll always be stuck here in Detroit where nothing, absolutely nothing new originates.

  If he could snare the position of New York Pre-Fash consultant—my life would mean something, he realized. I’d be happy because I’d be doing a job that made full use of my ability. What the hell else would I need? Nothing else; that’s all I ask.

  “I’m going out,” he said to Emily and set down his glass; going to the closet, he got his coat.

  “Will you be back before I go to bed?” Mournfully, she followed him to the door of the conapt, here in building 11139584—counting outward from downtown New York—where they had lived two years, now.

  “We’ll see,” he said, and opened the door.

  In the hallway stood a figure, a tall gray man with bulging steel teeth, dead pupilless eyes, and a gleaming artificial hand extended from his right sleeve. The man said, “Hello, Mayerson.” He smiled; the steel teeth shone.

  “Palmer Eldritch,” Barney said. He turned to Emily. “You’ve seen his pics in the homeopapes; he’s that incredibly famous big industrialist.” Naturally he had recognized Eldritch, and at once. “Did you want to see me?” he asked hesitantly; it all had a mysterious quality to it, as if it had all somehow happened before but in another way.

  “Let me talk to your husband a moment,” Eldritch said to Emily in a peculiarly gentle voice; he motioned and Barney stepped out into the hall. The door shut behind him; Emily had closed it obediently. Now Eldritch seemed grim; no longer gentle or smiling he said, “Mayerson, you’re using your time badly. You’re doing nothing but repeating the past. What’s the use of my selling you Chew-Z? You’re perverse; I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ll give you ten more minutes and then I’m bringing you back to Chicken Pox Prospects where you belong. So you better figure out very damn fast what you want and if you understand anything finally.”

  “What the hell,” Barney said, “is Chew-Z?”

  The artificial hand lifted;
with enormous force Palmer Eldritch shoved him and he toppled.

  “Hey,” Barney said weakly, trying to fight back, to nullify the pressure of the man’s immense strength. “What—”

  And then he was flat on his back. His head rang, ached; with difficulty he managed to open his eyes and focus on the room around him. He was waking up; he had on, he discovered, his pajamas, but they were unfamiliar: he had never seen them before. Was he in someone else’s conapt, wearing their clothes? Some other man…

  In panic he examined the bed, the covers. Beside him—

  He saw an unfamiliar girl who slept on, breathing lightly through her mouth, her hair a tumble of cottonlike white, shoulders bare and smooth.

  “I’m late,” he said, and his voice came out distorted and husky, almost unrecognizable.

  “No, you’re not,” the girl murmured, eyes still shut. “Relax. We can get in to work from here in—” She yawned and opened her eyes. “Fifteen minutes.” She smiled at him; his discomfort amused her. “You always say that, every morning. Go see about coffee. I’ve got to have coffee.”

  “Sure,” he said, and scrambled out of bed.

  “Mr. Rabbit,” the girl said mockingly. “You’re so scared. Scared about me, about your job—and always running.”

  “My God,” he said. “I’ve turned my back on everything.”

  “What everything?”

  “Emily.” He stared at the girl, Roni Something-or-other, at her bedroom. “Now I’ve got nothing,” he said.

  “Oh fine,” Roni said with embittered sarcasm. “Now maybe I can say some nice things to you, to make you feel good.”

  He said, “And I did it just now. Not years ago. Just before Palmer Eldritch came in.”

  “How could Palmer Eldritch ‘come in’? He’s in a hospital bed out in the Jupiter or Saturn area; the UN took him there after they pried him from the wreck of his ship.” Her tone was scornful, and yet there was a note of curiosity in it.

  “Palmer Eldritch appeared to me just now,” he said, doggedly. He thought, I have to get back to Emily. Sliding, stooping, he grabbed up his clothes, stumbled with them to the bathroom, and slammed the door behind him. Rapidly he shaved, changed, emerged, and said to the girl, who still lay in bed. “I have to go. Don’t be sore at me; I have to do it.”

  A moment later, without having had breakfast, he was descending to the ground-level floor and after that he stood under the antithermal shield, searching up and down for a cab.

  The cab, a fine, shiny new model, whipped him in almost no time to Emily’s conapt building; in a blur he paid it, hurried inside, and in a matter of seconds was ascending. It seemed as if no time had passed, as if time had ceased and everything waited, frozen, for him; he was in a world of fixed objects, the sole moving thing.

  At her door he rang the buzzer.

  The door opened and a man stood there. “Yes?” The man was dark, reasonably good-looking, with heavy eyebrows and carefully combed, somewhat curly hair; he held the morning ’pape in one hand—behind him Barney saw a table of breakfast dishes.

  Barney said, “You’re—Richard Hnatt.”

  “Yes.” Puzzled, he regarded Barney intently. “Do I know you?”

  Emily appeared, wearing a gray turtle-neck sweater and stained jeans. “Good heavens. It’s Barney,” she said to Hnatt. “My former. Come in.” She held the door wide open for him and he entered the apt. She seemed pleased to see him.

  “Glad to meet you,” Hnatt said in a neutral tone, starting to extend his hand and then changing his mind. “Coffee?”

  “Thanks.” Barney seated himself at the breakfast table at an unset place. “Listen,” he said to Emily; he couldn’t wait: it had to be said now even with Hnatt present. “I made a mistake in divorcing you. I’d like to remarry you. Go back on the old basis.”

  Emily, in a way which he remembered, laughed with delight; she was overcome and she went off to get him a cup and saucer, unable to answer. He wondered if she would ever answer; it was easier for her—it appealed to the lazy slob in her—just to laugh. Christ, he thought and stared straight ahead, fixedly.

  Across from him Hnatt seated himself and said, “We’re married. Did you suppose we were just living together?” His face was dark but he seemed in control of himself.

  Barney said, speaking to Emily and not to Hnatt, “Marriages can be broken. Will you remarry me?” He rose and took a few hesitant steps in her direction; at that moment she turned and, calmly, handed him his cup and saucer.

  “Oh no,” she said, still smiling; her eyes poured over with light, that of compassion. She understood how he felt, that this was not an impulse only. But the answer was still no, and, he knew, it would always be; her mind was not even made up—there was, to her, simply no reality to which he was referring. He thought, I cut her down, once, cut her off, lopped her, with thorough knowledge of what I was doing, and this is the result; I am seeing the bread as they say which was cast on the water drifting back to choke me, watersoaked bread that will lodge in my throat, never to be swallowed or disgorged, either one. It’s precisely what I deserve, he said to himself; I made this situation.

  Returning to the kitchen table he numbly seated himself, sat as she filled his cup; he stared at her hands. Once these were my wife’s, he said to himself. And I gave it up. Selfdestruction; I wanted to see myself die. That’s the only possible satisfactory explanation. Or was I that stupid? No; stupidity wouldn’t encompass such an enormity, so complete a willful—

  Emily said, “How are things, Barney?”

  “Oh hell, just plain great.” His voice shook.

  “I hear you’re living with a very pretty little redhead,” Emily said. She seated herself at her own place, and resumed her meal.

  “That’s over,” Barney said. “Forgotten.”

  “Who, then?” Her tone was conversational. Passing the time of day with me as if I were an old pal or perhaps a neighbor from another apt in this building, he thought. Madness! How can she—can she—feel like this? Impossible. It’s an act, burying something deeper.

  Aloud he said, “You’re afraid that if you get mixed up with me again I’ll—toss you out again. Once burned, twice warned. But I won’t; I’ll never do anything like that again.”

  In her placid, conversational voice Emily said, “I’m sorry you feel so bad, Barney. Aren’t you seeing an analyst? Somebody said they saw you carrying a psychiatric suitcase around with you.”

  “Dr. Smile,” he said, remembering. Probably he had left him at Roni Fugate’s apt. “I need help,” he said to Emily. “Isn’t there any way—” He broke off. Can’t the past be altered? he asked himself. Evidently not. Cause and effect work in only one direction, and change is real. So what’s gone is gone and I might as well get out of here. He rose to his feet. “I must be out of my mind,” he said to both her and Richard Hnatt. “I’m sorry; I’m only half awake—this morning I’m disoriented. It started when I woke up.”

  “Drink your coffee, why don’t you?” Hnatt suggested. “How about some bear’s claw to go with it?” The darkness had left his face; he, like Emily, was now tranquil, uninvolved.

  Barney said, “I don’t understand it. Palmer Eldritch said to come here.” Or had he? Something like that; he was certain of it. “This was supposed to work out, I thought,” he said, helplessly.

  Hnatt and Emily glanced at each other.

  “Eldritch is in a hospital somewhere—” Emily began.

  “Something’s gone wrong,” Barney said. “Eldritch must have lost control. I better find him; he can explain it to me.” And he felt panic, mercury-swift, fluid, pervasive panic; it filled him to his fingertips. “Goodbye,” he managed to say, and started toward the door, groping for escape.

  From behind him Richard Hnatt said, “Wait.”

  Barney turned. At the breakfast table Emily sat with a fixed, faint smile on her face, sipping her coffee, and across from her Hnatt sat facing Barney. Hnatt had one artificial hand, with which he held his fo
rk, and when he lifted a bite of egg to his mouth Barney saw huge, jutting stainless steel teeth. And Hnatt was gray, hollowed out, with dead eyes, and much larger than before; he seemed to fill the room with his presence. But it was still Hnatt. I don’t get it, Barney said, and stood at the door, not leaving the apt and not returning; he did as Hnatt suggested: he waited. Isn’t this something like Palmer Eldritch? he asked himself. In pics…he has an artificial limb and steel teeth and Jensen eyes, but this was not Eldritch.

  “It’s only fair to tell you,” Hnatt said matter-of-factly, “that Emily is a lot fonder of you than what she says suggests. I know because she’s told me. Many times.” He glanced at Emily, then. “You’re a duty type. You feel it’s the moral thing to do at this point, to suppress your emotions toward Barney; it’s what you’ve been doing all along anyhow. But forget your duty. You can’t build a marriage on it; there has to be spontaneity there. Even if you feel it’s wrong to—” He made a gesture. “Well, let’s say deny me…still, you should face your feelings honestly and not cover them with a self-sacrificing façade. That’s what you did with Barney here; you let him kick you out because you thought it was your duty not to interfere with his career.” He added, “You’re still behaving that way and it’s still a mistake. Be true to yourself.” And, all at once, he grinned at Barney, grinned—and one dead eye flicked off, as if in a mechanical wink.

  It was Palmer Eldritch now. Completely.

  Emily, however, did not appear to notice; her smile had faded and she looked confused, upset, and increasingly furious. “You make me so damn angry,” she said to her husband. “I said how I feel and I’m not a hypocrite. And I don’t like to be accused of being one.”

  Across from her the seated man said, “You have only one life. If you want to live it with Barney instead of me—”