The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch Page 4

  “I’ll have to check with my wife,” Hnatt said.

  “Aren’t you the representative of your firm?”

  “Y-yes.” He accepted the pile of skins.

  “The contract.” Icholtz produced a document, spread it flat on the table; he extended a pen. “It gives us an exclusive.”

  As he bent to sign, Richard Hnatt saw the name of Icholtz’ firm on the contract. Chew-Z Manufacturers of Boston. He had never heard of them. Chew-Z…it reminded him of another product, exactly which he could not recall. It was only after he had signed and Icholtz was tearing loose his copy that he remembered.

  The illegal hallucinogenic drug Can-D, used in the colonies in conjunction with the Perky Pat layouts.

  He had an intuition compounded by deep unease. But it was too late to back out. Icholtz was gathering up the display case; the contents belonged to Chew-Z Manufacturers of Boston, U.S.A., Terra, now.

  “How—can I get in touch with you?” Hnatt asked, as Icholtz started away from the table.

  “You won’t be getting in touch with us. If we want you we’ll call you.” Icholtz smiled briefly.

  How in hell was he going to tell Emily? Hnatt counted the skins, read the contract, realized by degrees exactly how much Icholtz had paid him; it was enough to provide him and Emily with a five-day vacation in Antarctica, at one of the great, cool resort cities frequented by the rich of Terra, where no doubt Leo Bulero and others like him spent the summer…and these days summer lasted all year round.

  Or—he pondered. It could do even more; it could get himself and his wife into the most exclusive establishment on the planet—assuming he and Emily wanted it. They could fly to the Germanies and enter one of Dr. Willy Denkmal’s E Therapy clinics. Wowie, he thought.

  He shut himself up in the bar’s vidphone booth and called Emily. “Pack your bag. We’re going to Munich. To—” He picked the name of a clinic at random; he had seen this one advertised in exclusive Paris magazines. “To Eichenwald,” he told her. “Dr. Denkmal is—”

  “Barney took them,” Emily said.

  “No. But there’s someone else in the field of minning, now, besides P. P. Layouts.” He felt elated. “So Barney turned us down; so what? We did better with this new outfit; they must have plenty. I’ll see you in half an hour; I’ll arrange for accommodations on TWA’s express flight. Think of it: E Therapy for both of us.”

  In a low voice Emily said, “I’m not sure I want to evolve, when it comes right down to it.”

  Staggered, he said, “Sure you do. I mean, it could save our lives, and if not ours then our kids’—our potential kids that we might be having, someday. And even if we’re only there a short time and only evolve a little, look at the doors it’ll open to us; we’ll be personae gratae everywhere. Do you personally know anyone who’s had E Therapy? You read about so-and-so in the homeopapes all the time, society people…but—”

  “I don’t want that hair all over me,” Emily said. “And I don’t want to have my head expand. No. I won’t go to Eichenwald Clinic.” She sounded completely decided; her face was placid.

  He said, “Then I’ll go alone.” It would still be of economic value; after all, it was he who dealt with buyers. And he could stay at the clinic twice as long, evolve twice as much…assuming that the treatments took. Some people did not respond, but that was hardly Dr. Denkmal’s fault; the capacity for evolution was not bestowed on everyone alike. About himself he felt certitude; he’d evolve remarkably, catch up with the big shots, even pass some of them, in terms of the familiar horny rind which Emily out of mistaken prejudice had called “hair.”

  “What am I supposed to do while you’re gone? Just make pots?”

  “Right,” he said. Because orders would be arriving thick and fast; otherwise Chew-Z Manufacturers of Boston would have no interest in the min. Obviously they employed their own Pre-Fash precogs as P. P. Layouts did. But then he remembered; Icholtz had said very little publicity at first. That meant, he realized, that the new firm had no network of disc jockeys circling the colony moons and planets; unlike P. P. Layouts, they had no Allen and Charlotte Faine to flash the news to.

  But it took time to set up disc jockey satellites. This was natural.

  And yet it made him uneasy. He thought all at once in panic, Could they be an illegal firm? Maybe Chew-Z, like Can-D, is banned; maybe I’ve got us into something dangerous.

  “Chew-Z,” he said aloud to Emily. “Ever heard of it?”

  “No.”

  He got the contract out and once more examined it. What a mess, he thought. How’d I get into it? If only that damn Mayerson had said yes on the pots…

  At ten in the morning a terrific horn, familiar to him, hooted Sam Regan out of his sleep, and he cursed the UN ship upstairs; he knew the racket was deliberate. The ship, circling above the hovel Chicken Pox Prospects, wanted to be certain that colonists—and not merely indigenous animals—got the parcels that were to be dropped.

  We’ll get them, Sam Regan muttered to himself as he zipped his insulated overalls, put his feet into high boots, and then grumpily sauntered as slowly as possible toward the ramp.

  “He’s early today,” Tod Morris complained. “And I’ll bet it’s all staples, sugar and food-basics like lard—nothing interesting such as, say, candy.”

  Putting his shoulders against the lid at the top of the ramp, Norman Schein pushed; bright cold sunlight spilled down on them and they blinked.

  The UN ship sparkled overhead, set against the black sky as if hanging from an uneasy thread. Good pilot, this drop, Tod decided. Knows the Fineburg Crescent area. He waved at the UN ship and once more the huge horn burst out its din, making him clap his hands to his ears.

  A projectile slid from the under part of the ship, extended stabilizers, and spiraled toward the ground.

  “Sheoot,” Sam Regan said with disgust. “It is staples; they don’t have the parachute.” He turned away, not interested.

  How miserable the upstairs looked today, he thought as he surveyed the landscape of Mars. Dreary. Why did we come here? Had to, were forced to.

  Already the UN projectile had landed; its hull cracked open, torn by the impact, and the three colonists could see cannisters. It looked to be five hundred pounds of salt. Sam Regan felt even more despondent.

  “Hey,” Schein said, walking toward the projectile and peering. “I believe I see something we can use.”

  “Looks like radios in those boxes,” Tod said. “Transistor radios.” Thoughtfully he followed after Schein. “Maybe we can use them for something new in our layouts.”

  “Mine’s already got a radio,” Schein said.

  “Well, build an electronic self-directing lawn mower with the parts,” Tod said. “You don’t have that, do you?” He knew the Scheins’ Perky Pat layout fairly well; the two couples, he and his wife with Schein and his, had fused together a good deal, being compatible.

  Sam Regan said, “Dibs on the radios, because I can use them.” His layout lacked the automatic garage-door opener that both Schein and Tod had; he was considerably behind them. Of course all those items could be purchased. But he was out of skins. He had used his complete supply in the service of a need which he considered more pressing. He had, from a pusher, bought a fairly large quantity of Can-D; it was buried, hidden out of sight, in the earth under his sleep-compartment at the bottom level of their collective hovel.

  He himself was a believer; he affirmed the miracle of translation—the near-sacred moment in which the miniature artifacts of the layout no longer merely represented Earth but became Earth. And he and the others, joined together in the fusion of doll-inhabitation by means of the Can-D, were transported outside of time and local space. Many of the colonists were as yet unbelievers; to them the layouts were merely symbols of a world which none of them could any longer experience. But, one by one, the unbelievers came around.

  Even now, so early in the morning, he yearned to go back down below, chew a slice of Can-D from his hoard
, and join with his fellows in the most solemn moment of which they were capable.

  To Tod and Norm Schein he said, “Either of you care to seek transit?” That was the technical term they used for participation. “I’m going back below,” he said. “We can use my Can-D; I’ll share it with you.”

  An inducement like that could not be ignored; both Tod and Norm looked tempted. “So early?” Norm Schein said. “We just got out of bed. But I guess there’s nothing to do anyhow.” He kicked glumly at a huge semi-autonomic sand dredge; it had remained parked near the entrance of the hovel for days now. No one had the energy to come up to the surface and resume the clearing operations inaugurated earlier in the month. “It seems wrong, though,” he muttered. “We ought to be up here working in our gardens.”

  “And that’s some garden you’ve got,” Sam Regan said, with a grin. “What is that stuff you’ve got growing there? Got a name for it?”

  Norm Schein, hands in the pockets of his coveralls, walked over the sandy, loose soil with its sparse vegetation to his once carefully maintained vegetable garden; he paused to look up and down the rows, hopeful that more of the specially prepared seeds had sprouted. None had.

  “Swiss chard,” Tod said encouragingly. “Right? Mutated as it is, I can still recognize the leaves.”

  Breaking off a leaf Norm chewed it, then spat it out; the leaf was bitter and coated with sand.

  Now Helen Morris emerged from the hovel, shivering in the cold Martian sunlight. “We have a question,” she said to the three men. “I say that psychoanalysts back on Earth were charging fifty dollars an hour and Fran says it was for only forty-five minutes.” She explained, “We want to add an analyst to our layout and we want to get it right, because it’s an authentic item, made on Earth and shipped here, if you remember that Bulero ship that came by last week—”

  “We remember,” Norm Schein said sourly. The prices that the Bulero salesman had wanted. And all the time in their satellite Allen and Charlotte Faine talked up the different items so, whetting everyone’s appetite.

  “Ask the Faines,” Helen’s husband Tod said. “Radio them the next time the satellite passes over.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “In another hour. They have all the data on authentic items; in fact that particular datum should have been included with the item itself, right in the carton.” It perturbed him because it had of course been his skins—his and Helen’s together—that had gone to pay for the tiny figure of the human-type psychoanalyst, including the couch, desk, carpet, and bookcase of incredibly well-minned impressive books.

  “You went to the analyst when you were still on Earth,” Helen said to Norm Schein. “What was the charge?”

  “Well, I mostly went to group therapy,” Norm said. “At the Berkeley State Mental Hygiene Clinic, and they charged according to your ability to pay. And of course Perky Pat and her boyfriend go to a private analyst.” He walked down the length of the garden solemnly deeded to him, between the rows of jagged leaves, all of which were to some extent shredded and devoured by microscopic native pests. If he could find one healthy plant, one untouched—it would be enough to restore his spirits. Insecticides from Earth simply had not done the job, here; the native pests thrived. They had been waiting ten thousand years, biding their time, for someone to appear and make an attempt to raise crops.

  Tod said, “You better do some watering.”

  “Yeah,” Norm Schein agreed. He meandered gloomily in the direction of Chicken Pox Prospects’ hydro-pumping system; it was attached to their now partially sand-filled irrigation network which served all the gardens of their hovel. Before watering came sand-removal, he realized. If they didn’t get the big Class-A dredge started up soon they wouldn’t be able to water even if they wanted to. But he did not particularly want to.

  And yet he could not, like Sam Regan, simply turn his back on the scene up there, return below to fiddle with his layout, build or insert new items, make improvements…or, as Sam proposed, actually get out a quantity of the carefully hidden Can-D and begin the communication. We have responsibilities, he realized.

  To Helen he said, “Ask my wife to come up here.” She could direct him as he operated the dredge; Fran had a good eye.

  “I’ll get her,” Sam Regan agreed, starting back down below. “No one wants to come along?”

  No one followed him; Tod and Helen Morris had gone over to inspect their own garden, now, and Norm Schein was busy pulling the protective wrapper from the dredge, preparatory to starting it up.

  Back below, Sam Regan hunted up Fran Schein; he found her crouched at the Perky Pat layout which the Morrises and the Scheins maintained together, intent on what she was doing.

  Without looking up, Fran said, “We’ve got Perky Pat all the way downtown in her new Ford hardtop convert and parked and a dime in the meter and she’s shopped and now she’s in the analyst’s office reading Fortune. But what does she pay?” She glanced up, smoothed back her long dark hair, and smiled at him. Beyond a doubt Fran was the handsomest and most dramatic person in their collective hovel; he observed this now, and not for anything like the first time.

  He said, “How can you fuss with that layout and not chew—” He glanced around; the two of them appeared to be alone. Bending down he said softly to her, “Come on and we’ll chew some first-rate Can-D. Like you and I did before. Okay?” His heart labored as he waited for her to answer; recollections of the last time the two of them had been translated in unison made him feel weak.

  “Helen Morris will be—”

  “No, they’re cranking up the dredge, above. They won’t be back down for an hour.” He took hold of Fran by the hand, led her to her feet. “What arrives in a plain brown wrapper,” he said as he steered her from the compartment out into the corridor, “should be used, not just buried. It gets old and stale. Loses its potency.” And we pay a lot for that potency, he thought morbidly. Too much to let it go to waste. Although some—not in this hovel—claimed that the power to insure translation did not come from the Can-D but from the accuracy of the layout. To him this was a nonsensical view, and yet it had its adherents.

  As they hurriedly entered Sam Regan’s compartment Fran said, “I’ll chew in unison with you, Sam, but let’s not do anything while we’re there on Terra that—you know. We wouldn’t do here. I mean, just because we’re Pat and Walt and not ourselves that doesn’t give us license.” She gave him a warning frown, reproving him for his former conduct and for leading her to that yet unasked.

  “Then you admit we really go to Earth.” They had argued this point—and it was cardinal—many times in the past. Fran tended to take the position that the translation was one of appearance only, of what the colonists called accidents—the mere outward manifestations of the places and objects involved, not the essences.

  “I believe,” Fran said slowly, as she disengaged her fingers from his and stood by the hall door of the compartment, “that whether it’s a play of imagination, of drug-induced hallucination, or an actual translation from Mars to Earth-as-it-was by an agency we know nothing of—” Again she eyed him sternly. “I think we should abstain. In order not to contaminate the experience of communication.” As she watched him carefully remove the metal bed from the wall and reach, with an elongated hook, into the cavity revealed, she said, “It should be a purifying experience. We lose our fleshly bodies, our corporeality, as they say. And put on imperishable bodies instead, for a time anyhow. Or forever, if you believe as some do that it’s outside of time and space, that it’s eternal. Don’t you agree, Sam?” She sighed. “I know you don’t.”

  “Spirituality,” he said with disgust as he fished up the packet of Can-D from its cavity beneath the compartment. “A denial of reality, and what do you get instead? Nothing.”

  “I admit,” Fran said as she came closer to watch him open the packet, “that I can’t prove you get anything better back, due to abstention. But I do know this. What you and other sensualists among us don’t realize is that when we che
w Can-D and leave our bodies we die. And by dying we lose the weight of—” She hesitated.

  “Say it,” Sam said as he opened the packet; with a knife he cut a strip from the mass of brown, tough, plant-like fibers.

  Fran said, “Sin.”

  Sam Regan howled with laughter. “Okay—at least you’re orthodox.” Because most colonists would agree with Fran. “But,” he said, redepositing the packet back in its safe place, “that’s not why I chew it; I don’t want to lose anything…I want to gain something.” He shut the door of the compartment, then swiftly got out his own Perky Pat layout, spread it on the floor, and put each object in place, working at eager speed. “Something to which we’re not normally entitled,” he added, as if Fran didn’t know.

  Her husband—or his wife or both of them or everyone in the entire hovel—could show up while he and Fran were in the state of translation. And their two bodies would be seated at proper distance one from the other; no wrong-doing could be observed, however prurient the observers were. Legally this had been ruled on; no cohabitation could be proved, and legal experts among the ruling UN authorities on Mars and the other colonies had tried—and failed. While translated one could commit incest, murder, anything, and it remained from a juridical standpoint a mere fantasy, an impotent wish only.

  This highly interesting fact had long inured him to the use of Can-D; for him life on Mars had few blessings.

  “I think,” Fran said, “you’re tempting me to do wrong.” As she seated herself she looked sad; her eyes, large and dark, fixed futilely on a spot at the center of the layout, near Perky Pat’s enormous wardrobe. Absently, Fran began to fool with a mink sable coat, not speaking.

  He handed her half of a strip of Can-D, then popped his own portion into his mouth and chewed greedily.