The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch Read online

  Too bad I couldn’t wangle Scotty off onto Barney Mayerson, he said to himself. Solve two problems at once; make Barney more psychologically secure, free myself for—

  Nuts! he thought. Barney needs to be insecure, otherwise he’s as good as on Mars; that’s why he’s hired that talking suitcase. I don’t understand the modern world at all, obviously. I’m living back in the twentieth century when psychoanalysts made people less prone to stress.

  “Don’t you ever talk, Mr. Bulero?” Miss Jurgens asked.

  “No.” He thought, Could I dabble successfully in Barney’s pattern of behavior? Help him to—what’s the word—become less viable?

  But it was not as easy as it sounded; he instinctively appreciated that, expanded frontal lobe-wise. You can’t make healthy people sick just by giving an order.

  Or can you?

  Excusing himself, he hunted up the robot waiter and asked that a vidphone be brought to his table.

  A few moments later he was in touch with Miss Gleason back at the office. “Listen, I want to see Miss Rondinella Fugate, from Mr. Mayerson’s staff, as soon as I get back. And Mr. Mayerson is not to know. Understand?”

  “Yes sir,” Miss Gleason said, making a note.

  “I heard,” Pia Jurgens said, when he had hung up. “You know, I could tell Mr. Mayerson; I see him nearly every day in the—”

  Leo laughed. The idea of Pia Jurgens throwing away the burgeoning future opening for her vis-à-vis himself amused him. “Listen,” he said, patting her hand, “don’t worry; it’s not within the spectrum of human nature. Finish your Ganymedean wap-frog croquette and let’s get back to the office.”

  “What I meant,” Miss Jurgens said stiffly, “is that it seems a little odd to me that you’d be so open in front of someone else, someone you don’t hardly know.” She eyed him, and her bosom, already overextended and enticing, became even more so; it expanded with indignation.

  “Obviously the answer is to know you better,” Leo said, greedily. “Have you ever chewed Can-D?” he asked her, rhetorically. “You should. Despite the fact that it’s habitforming. It’s a real experience.” He of course kept a supply, grade AA, on hand at Winnie-ther-Pooh Acres; when guests assembled it often was brought out to add color to what otherwise might have passed as dull. “The reason I ask is that you look like the sort of woman who has active imagination, and the reaction you get to Can-D depends—varies with—your imaginative-type creative powers.”

  “I’d enjoy trying it sometime,” Miss Jurgens said. She glanced about, lowered her voice, and leaned toward him. “But it’s illegal.”

  “It is?” He stared at her.

  “You know it is.” The girl looked nettled.

  “Listen,” Leo said. “I can get you some.” He would, of course, chew it with her; in concert the users’ minds fused, became a new unity—or at least that was the experience. A few sessions of Can-D chewing in togetherness and he would know all there was to know about Pia Jurgens; there was something about her—beyond the obvious physical, anatomical enormity—that fascinated him; he yearned to be closer to her. “We won’t use a layout.” By an irony he, the creator and manufacturer of the Perky Pat micro-world, preferred to use Can-D in a vacuum; what did a Terran have to gain from a layout, inasmuch as it was a min of the conditions obtaining in the average Terran city? For settlers on a howling, gale-swept moon, huddled at the bottom of a hovel against frozen methane crystals and things, it was something else again; Perky Pat and her layout were an entree back to the world they had been born to. But he, Leo Bulero, he was damn tired of the world he had been born to and still dwelt on. And even Winnie-ther-Pooh Acres, with all its quaint and not-so-quaint diversions did not fill the void. However—

  “That Can-D,” he said to Miss Jurgens, “is great stuff, and no wonder it’s banned. It’s like religion; Can-D is the religion of the colonists.” He chuckled. “One plug of it, wouzzled for fifteen minutes, and—” He made a sweeping gesture. “No more hovel. No more frozen methane. It provides a reason for living. Isn’t that worth the risk and expense?”

  But what is there of equal value for us? he asked himself, and felt melancholy. He had, by manufacturing the Perky Pat layouts and raising and distributing the lichen-base for the final packaged product Can-D, made life bearable for over one million unwilling expatriates from Terra. But what the hell did he get back? My life, he thought, is dedicated to others, and I’m beginning to kick; it’s not enough. There was his satellite, where Scotty waited; there existed as always the tangled details of his two large business operations, the one legal, the other not…but wasn’t there more in life than this?

  He did not know. Nor did anyone else, because like Barney Mayerson they were all engaged in their various imitations of him. Barney with his Miss Rondinella Fugate, small-time replica of Leo Bulero and Miss Jurgens. Wherever he looked it was the same; probably even Ned Lark, the Narcotics Bureau chief, lived this sort of life—probably so did Hepburn-Gilbert, who probably kept a pale, tall Swedish starlet with breasts the size of bowling balls—and equally firm. Even Palmer Eldritch. No, he realized suddenly. Not Palmer Eldritch; he’s found something else. For ten years he’s been in the Prox system or at least coming and going. What did he find? Something worth the effort, worth the terminal crash on Pluto?

  “You saw the homeopapes?” he asked Miss Jurgens. “About the ship on Pluto? There’s a man in a billion, that Eldritch. No one else like him.”

  “I read,” Miss Jurgens said, “that he was practically a nut.”

  “Sure. Ten years out of his life, all that agony, and for what?”

  “You can be sure he got a good return for the ten years,” Miss Jurgens said. “He’s crazy but smart; he looks out for himself, like everyone else does. He’s not that nuts.”

  “I’d like to meet him,” Leo Bulero said. “Talk to him, even if only just a minute.” He resolved, then, to do that, go to the hospital where Palmer Eldritch lay, force or buy his way into the man’s room, learn what he had found.

  “I used to think,” Miss Jurgens said, “that when the ships first left our system for another star—remember that?—we’d hear that—” She hesitated. “It’s so silly, but I was only a kid then, when Arnoldson made his first trip to Prox and back; I was a kid when he got back, I mean. I actually thought maybe by going that far he’d—” She ducked her head, not meeting Leo Bulero’s gaze. “He’d find God.”

  Leo thought, I thought so, too. And I was an adult, then. In my mid-thirties. As I’ve mentioned to Barney on numerous occasions.

  And, he thought, I still believe that, even now. About the ten-year-flight of Palmer Eldritch.

  After lunch, back in his office at P. P. Layouts, he met Rondinella Fugate for the first time; she was waiting for him when he arrived.

  Not bad-looking, he thought as he shut the office door. Nice figure, and what glorious, luminous eyes. She seemed nervous; she crossed her legs, smoothed her skirt, watched him furtively as he seated himself at his desk facing her. Very young, Leo realized. A child who would speak up and contradict her superior when she thought he was wrong. Touching…

  “Do you know why you’re here in my office?” he inquired.

  “I guess you’re angry because I contradicted Mr. Mayerson. But I really experienced the futurity in the life-line of those ceramics. So what else could I do?” She half-rose imploringly, then reseated herself.

  Leo said, “I believe you. But Mr. Mayerson is sensitive. If you’re living with him, you know he has a portable psychiatrist that he lugs wherever he goes.” Opening his desk drawer he got out his box of Cuesta Reys, the very finest; he offered the box to Miss Fugate, who gratefully accepted one of the slender dark cigars. He, too, took a cigar; he lit hers and then his, and leaned back in his chair. “You know who Palmer Eldritch is?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you use your precog powers for something other than Pre-Fash foresight? In another month or so the homeopapes will be routinely mentioning Eldr
itch’s location. I’d like you to look ahead to those ’papes and then tell me where the man is at this moment. I know you can do it.” You had better be able to, he said to himself, if you want to keep your job here. He waited, smoking his cigar, watching the girl and thinking to himself, with a trace of envy, that if she was as good in bed as she looked—

  Miss Fugate said in a soft, halting voice, “I get only the most vague impression, Mr. Bulero.”

  “Well, let’s hear it anyhow.” He reached for a pen.

  It took her several minutes, and, as she reiterated, her impression was not distinct. Nonetheless he presently had on his note pad the words: James Riddle Veterans’ Hospital, Base III, Ganymede. A UN establishment, of course. But he had anticipated that. It was not decisive; he still might be able to find a way in.

  “And he’s not there under that name,” Miss Fugate said, pale and enervated from the effort of foreseeing; she relit her cigar, which had gone out; sitting straighter in her chair, she once more crossed her supple legs. “The homeopapes will say that Eldritch was listed in the hospital records as a Mr.—” She paused, squeezed her eyes shut, and sighed. “Oh hell,” she said. “I can’t make it out. One syllable. Frent. Brent. No, I think it’s Trent. Yes, it’s Eldon Trent.” She smiled in relief; her large eyes sparkled with naïve, childlike pleasure. “They really have gone to a lot of trouble to keep him hidden. And they’re interrogating him, the ’papes will say. So obviously he’s conscious.” She frowned then, all at once. “Wait. I’m looking at a headline; I’m in my own conapt, by myself. It’s early morning and I’m reading the front page. Oh dear.”

  “What’s it say?” Leo demanded, bending rigidly forward; he could catch the girl’s dismay.

  Miss Fugate whispered, “The headlines say that Palmer Eldritch is dead.” She blinked, looked around her with amazement, then slowly focused on him; she regarded him with a confused mixture of fear and uncertainty, almost palpably edging back; she retreated from him, huddled against her chair, her fingers interlocked. “And you’re accused of having done it, Mr. Bulero. Honest; that’s what the headline says.”

  “You mean I’m going to murder him?”

  She nodded. “But—it’s not a certainty; I only pick it up in some of the futures…do you understand? I mean, we precogs see—” She gestured.

  “I know.” He was familiar with precogs; Barney Mayerson had, after all, worked for P. P. Layouts thirteen years, and some of the others even longer. “It could happen,” he said gratingly. Why would I do a thing like that? he asked himself. No way to tell now. Perhaps after he reached Eldritch, talked to him…as evidently he would.

  Miss Fugate said, “I don’t think you ought to try to contact Mr. Eldritch in view of this possible future; don’t you agree, Mr. Bulero? I mean, the risk is there—it hangs very large. About—I’d guess—in the neighborhood of forty.”

  “What’s ‘forty’?”

  “Percent. Almost half the possibilities.” Now, more composed, she smoked her cigar and faced him; her eyes, dark and intense, flickered as she regarded him, undoubtedly speculating with vast curiosity why he would do such a thing.

  Rising, he walked to the door of the office. “Thank you, Miss Fugate; I appreciate your assistance in this matter.” He waited, indicating clearly his expectations that she would leave.

  However, Miss Fugate remained seated. He was encountering the same peculiar streak of firmness that had upset Barney Mayerson. “Mr. Bulero,” she said quietly, “I think I’d really have to go to the UN police about this. We precogs—”

  He reshut the office door. “You precogs,” he said, “are too preoccupied with other people’s lives.” But she had him. He wondered what she would manage to do with her knowledge.

  “Mr. Mayerson may be drafted,” Miss Fugate said. “You knew that, of course. Are you going to try to influence them to let him off?”

  Candidly, he said, “I had some intentions in the direction of helping him beat it, yes.”

  “Mr. Bulero,” she said in a small, steady voice, “I’ll make a deal with you. Let them draft him. And then I’ll be your New York Pre-Fash consultant.” She waited; Leo Bulero said nothing. “What do you say?” she asked. Obviously she was unaccustomed to such negotiations. However, she intended to make it stick if possible; after all, he reflected, everyone, even the smartest operator, had to begin somewhere. Perhaps he was seeing the initial phase of what would be a brilliant career.

  And then he remembered something. Remembered why she had been transferred from the Peking office to come here to New York as Barney Mayerson’s assistant. Her predictions had proved erratic. Some of them—too many of them, in fact—had proved erroneous.

  Perhaps her preview of the headline relating his indictment as the alleged murderer of Palmer Eldritch—assuming that she was being truthful, that she had really experienced it—was only another of her errors. The faulty precognition which had brought her here.

  Aloud he said, “Let me think it over. Give me a couple of days.”

  “Until tomorrow morning,” Miss Fugate said firmly.

  Leo laughed. “I see why Barney was so riled up.” And Barney probably sensed with his own precog faculty, at least nebulously, that Miss Fugate was going to make a decisive strike at him, jeopardizing his whole position. “Listen.” He walked over to her. “You’re Mayerson’s mistress. How’d you like to give that up? I can offer you the use of an entire satellite.” Assuming, of course, that he could pry Scotty out of there.

  “No thank you,” Miss Fugate said.

  “Why?” He was amazed. “Your career—”

  “I like Mr. Mayerson,” she said. “And I don’t particularly care for bub—” She caught herself. “Men who’ve evolved in those clinics.”

  Again he opened the office door. “I’ll let you know by tomorrow morning.” As he watched her pass through the doorway and out into the receptionist’s office he thought, That’ll give me time to reach Ganymede and Palmer Eldritch; I’ll know more, then. Know if your foresight seems spurious or not.

  Shutting the door behind the girl, he turned at once to his desk, and clicked the vidphone button connecting him with the outside. To the New York City operator he said, “Get me the James Riddle Veterans’ Hospital at Base III on Ganymede; I want to speak to a Mr. Eldon Trent, a patient there. Person to person.” He gave his name and number, then rang off, jiggled the hook, and dialed Kennedy Spaceport.

  He booked passage for the express ship leaving New York for Ganymede that evening, then paced about his office, waiting for the call-back from James Riddle Veterans’ Hospital.

  Bubblehead, he thought. She’d call even her employer that.

  Ten minutes later the call came.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Bulero,” the operator apologized. “Mr. Trent is not receiving calls, by doctors’ orders.”

  So Rondinella Fugate was right; an Eldon Trent did exist at James Riddle and in all probability he was Palmer Eldritch. It was certainly worth making the trip; the odds looked good.

  —Looked good, he thought wryly, that I’ll encounter Eldritch, have some kind of altercation with him, God knows what, and eventually bring about his death. A man that at this point in time I don’t even know. And I’ll find myself arraigned; I won’t get away with it. What a prospect.

  But his curiosity was aroused. In all his manifold operations he had never found the need of killing anyone under any circumstances. Whatever it was that would occur between him and Palmer Eldritch had to be unique; definitely a trip to Ganymede was indicated.

  It would be difficult to turn back now. Because he had the acute intuition that this would turn out to be what he hoped. And Rondinella Fugate had only said that he would be accused of the murder; there was no datum as to a successful conviction.

  Convicting a man of his stature of a capital crime, even through the UN authorities, would take some doing.

  He was willing to let them try.

  THREE

  * * *

&
nbsp; In a bar hard by P. P. Layouts, Richard Hnatt sat sipping a Tequila Sour, his display case on the table before him. He knew goddamn well there was nothing wrong with Emily’s pots; her work was saleable. The problem had to do with her ex-husband and his position of power.

  And Barney Mayerson had exercised that power.

  I have to call Emily and tell her, Hnatt said to himself. He started to his feet.

  A man blocked his way, a peculiar round specimen mounted on spindly legs.

  “Who are you?” Hnatt said.

  The man bobbed toylike in front of him, meanwhile digging into his pocket as if scratching at a familiar microorganism that possessed parasitic proclivities that had survived the test of time. However, what he produced at last was a business card. “We’re interested in your ceramic ware, Mr. Hatt. Natt. However you say it.”

  “Icholtz,” Hnatt said, reading the card; it gave only the name, no further info, not even a vidnumber. “But what I have with me are just samples. I’ll give you the names of retail outlets stocking our line. But these—”

  “Are for minning,” the toylike man, Mr. Icholtz, said, nodding. “And that’s what we want. We intend to min your ceramics, Mr. Hnatt; we believe that Mayerson is wrong—they will become fash, and very soon.”

  Hnatt stared at him. “You want to min, and you’re not from P. P. Layouts?” But no one else minned. Everyone knew P. P. Layouts had a monopoly.

  Seating himself at the table beside the display case, Mr. Icholtz brought out his wallet and began counting out skins. “Very little publicity will be attached to this at first. But eventually—” He offered Hnatt the stack of brown, wrinkled, truffle-skins which served as tender in the Sol system: the only molecule, a unique protein amino acid, which could not be duplicated by the Printers, the Biltong life forms employed in place of automated assembly lines by many of Terra’s industries.