The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch Page 5

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

  Still looking mournful, Fran also chewed.

  He was Walt. He owned a Jaguar XXB sports ship with a flat-out velocity of fifteen thousand miles an hour. His shirts came from Italy and his shoes were made in England. As he opened his eyes he looked for the little G.E. clock TV set by his bed; it would be on automatically, tuned to the morning show of the great newsclown Jim Briskin. In his flaming red wig Briskin was already forming on the screen. Walt sat up, touched a button which swung his bed, altered to support him in a sitting position, and lay back to watch for a moment the program in progress.

  “I’m standing here at the corner of Van Ness and Market in downtown San Francisco,” Briskin said pleasantly, “and we’re just about to view the opening of the exciting new subsurface conapt building Sir Francis Drake, the first to be entirely underground. With us, to dedicate the building, standing right by me is that enchanting female of ballad and—”

  Walt shut off the TV, rose, and walked barefoot to the window; he drew the shades, saw out then onto the warm, sparkling early-morning San Francisco street, the hills and white houses. This was Saturday morning and he did not have to go to his job down in Palo Alto at Ampex Corporation; instead—and this rang nicely in his mind—he had a date with his girl, Pat Christensen, who had a modern little apt over on Potrero Hill.

  It was always Saturday.

  In the bathroom he splashed his face with water, then squirted on shave cream, and began to shave. And, while he shaved, staring into the mirror at his familiar features, he saw a note tacked up, in his own hand.

  THIS IS AN ILLUSION. YOU ARE SAM REGAN, A СOLONIST ON MARS. MAKE USE OF YOUR TIME OF TRANSLATION, BUDDY BOY. CALL UP PAT PRONTO!

  And the note was signed Sam Regan.

  An illusion, he thought, pausing in his shaving. In what way? He tried to think back; Sam Regan and Mars, a dreary colonists’ hovel… yes, he could dimly make the image out, but it seemed remote and vitiated and not convincing. Shrugging, he resumed shaving, puzzled, now, and a little depressed. All right, suppose the note was correct; maybe he did remember that other world, that gloomy quasi-life of involuntary expatriation in an unnatural environment. So what? Why did he have to wreck this? Reaching, he yanked down the note, crumpled it and dropped it into the bathroom disposal chute.

  As soon as he had finished shaving he vidphoned Pat.

  “Listen,” she said at once, cool and crisp; on the screen her blonde hair shimmered: she had been drying it. “I don’t want to see you, Walt. Please. Because I know what you have in mind and I’m just not interested; do you understand?” Her blue-gray eyes were cold.

  “Hmm,” he said, shaken, trying to think of an answer. “But it’s a terrific day—we ought to get outdoors. Visit Golden Gate Park, maybe.”

  “It’s going to be too hot to go outdoors.”

  “No,” he disagreed, nettled. “That’s later. Hey, we could walk along the beach, splash around in the waves. Okay?”

  She wavered, visibly. “But that conversation we had just before—”

  “There was no conversation. I haven’t seen you in a week, not since last Saturday.” He made his tone as firm and full of conviction as possible. “I’ll drop by your place in half an hour and pick you up. Wear your swimsuit, you know, the yellow one. The Spanish one that has a halter.”

  “Oh,” she said disdainfully, “that’s completely out of fash now. I have a new one from Sweden; you haven’t seen it. I’ll wear that, if it’s permitted. The girl at A & F wasn’t sure.”

  “It’s a deal,” he said, and rang off.

  A half hour later in his Jaguar he landed on the elevated field of her conapt building.

  Pat wore a sweater and slacks; the swimsuit, she explained, was on underneath. Carrying a picnic basket, she followed him up the ramp to his parked ship. Eager and pretty, she hurried ahead of him, pattering along in her sandals. It was all working out as he had hoped; this was going to be a swell day after all, after his initial trepidations had evaporated… as thank God they had.

  “Wait until you see this swimsuit,” she said as she slid into the parked ship, the basket on her lap. “It’s really daring; it hardly exists: actually you sort of have to have faith to believe in it.” As he got in beside her she leaned against him. “I’ve been thinking over that conversation we had—let me finish.” She put her fingers against his lips, silencing him. “I know it took place, Walt. But in a way you’re right; in fact basically you have the proper attitude. We should try to obtain as much from this as possible. Our time is short enough as it is… at least so it seems to me.” She smiled wanly. “So drive as fast as you can; I want to get to the ocean.”

  Almost at once they were setting down in the parking lot at the edge of the beach.

  “It’s going to be hotter,” Pat said soberly. “Every day. Isn’t it? Until finally it’s unbearable.” She tugged off her sweater, then, shifting about on the seat of the ship, managed to struggle out of her slacks. “But we won’t live that long… it’ll be another fifty years before no one can go outside at noon. Like they say, become mad dogs and Englishmen; we’re not that yet.” She opened the door and stepped out in her swimsuit. And she had been correct; it took faith in things unseen to make the suit out at all. It was perfectly satisfactory, to both of them.

  Together, he and she plodded along the wet, hardpacked sand, examining jelly fish, shells, and pebbles, the debris tossed up by the waves.

  “What year is this?” Pat asked him suddenly, halting. The wind blew her untied hair back; it lifted in a mass of cloudlike yellow, clear and bright and utterly clean, each strand separate.

  He said, “Well, I guess it’s—” And then he could not recall; it eluded him. “Damn,” he said crossly.

  “Well, it doesn’t matter.” Linking arms with him she trudged on. “Look, there’s that little secluded spot ahead, past those rocks.” She increased her tempo of motion; her body rippled as her strong, taut muscles strained against the wind and the sand and the old, familiar gravity of a world lost long ago. “Am I what’s-her-name—Fran?” she asked suddenly. She stepped past the rocks; foam and water rolled over her feet, her ankles; laughing, she leaped, shivered from the sudden chill. “Or am I Patricia Christensen?” With both hands she smoothed her hair. “This is blonde, so I must be Pat. Perky Pat.” She disappeared beyond the rocks; he quickly followed, scrambling after her. “I used to be Fran,” she said over her shoulder, “but that doesn’t matter now. I could have been anyone before, Fran or Helen or Mary, and it wouldn’t matter now. Right?”

  “No,” he disagreed, catching up with her. Panting, he said, “It’s important that you’re Fran. In essence.”

  “‘In essence.” She threw herself down on the sand, lay resting on her elbow, drawing by means of a sharp black rock in savage swipes which left deeply gouged lines; almost at once she tossed the rock away, and sat around to face the ocean. “But the accidents… they’re Pat.” She put her hands beneath her breasts, then, languidly lifting them, a puzzled expression on her face. “These,” she said, “are Pat’s. Not mine. Mine are smaller; I remember.”

  He seated himself beside her, saying nothing.

  “We’re here,” she said presently, “to do what we can’t do back at the hovel. Back where we’ve left our corruptible bodies. As long as we keep our layouts in repair this—” She gestured at the ocean, then once more touched herself, unbelievingly. “It can’t decay, can it? We’ve put on immortality.” All at once she lay back, flat against the sand, and shut her eyes, one arm over her face. “And since we’re here, and we can do things denied us at the hovel, then your theory is we ought to do those things. We ought to take advantage of the opportunity.”

  He leaned over her, bent and kissed her on the mouth.

  Inside his mind a voice thought, “But I can do this any time.” And, in the limbs of his body, an alien mastery asserted it
self; he sat back, away from the girl. “After all,” Norm Schein thought, “I’m married to her.” He laughed, then.

  “Who said you could use my layout?” Sam Regan thought angrily. “Get out of my compartment. And I bet it’s my Can-D, too.”

  “You offered it to us,” the co-inhabitant of his mindbody answered. “So I decided to take you up on it.”

  “I’m here, too,” Tod Morris thought. “And if you want my opinion—”

  “Nobody asked you for yours,” Norm Schein thought angrily. “In fact nobody asked you to come along; why don’t you go back up and mess with that rundown no-good garden of yours, where you ought to be?”

  Tod Morris thought calmly, “I’m with Sam. I don’t get a chance to do this, except here.” The power of his will combined with Sam’s; once more Walt bent over the reclining girl; once again he kissed her on the mouth, and this time heavily, with increased agitation.

  Without opening her eyes Pat said in a low voice, “I’m here, too. This is Helen.” She added, “And also Mary. But we’re not using your supply of Can-D, Sam; we brought some we had already.” She put her arms around him as the three inhabitants of Perky Pat joined in unison in one endeavor. Taken by surprise, Sam Regan broke contact with Tod Morris; he joined the effort of Norm Schein, and Walt sat back away from Perky Pat.

  The waves of the ocean lapped at the two of them as they silently reclined together on the beach, two figures comprising the essences of six persons. Two in six, Sam Regan thought. The mystery repeated; how is it accomplished? The old question again. But all I care about, he thought, is whether they’re using up my Can-D. And I bet they are; I don’t care what they say: I don’t believe them.

  Rising to her feet Perky Pat said, “Well, I can see I might just as well go for a swim; nothing’s doing here.” She padded into the water, splashed away from them as they sat in their body, watching her go.

  “We missed our chance,” Tod Morris thought wryly.

  “My fault,” Sam admitted. By joining, he and Tod managed to stand; they walked a few steps after the girl and then, ankle-deep in the water, halted.

  Already Sam Regan could feel the power of the drug wearing off; he felt weak and afraid and bitterly sickened at the realization. So goddamn soon, he said to himself. All over; back to the hovel, to the pit in which we twist and cringe like worms in a paper bag, huddled away from the daylight. Pale and white and awful. He shuddered.

  –Shuddered, and saw, once more, his compartment with its tinny bed, washstand, desk, kitchen stove… and, in slumped, inert heaps, the empty husks of Tod and Helen Morris, Fran and Norm Schein, his own wife Mary; their eyes stared emptily and he looked away, appalled.

  On the floor between them was his layout; he looked down and saw the dolls, Walt and Pat, placed at the edge of the ocean, near the parked Jaguar. Sure enough, Perky Pat had on the near-invisible Swedish swimsuit, and next to them reposed a tiny picnic basket.

  And, by the layout, a plain brown wrapper that had contained Can-D; the five of them had chewed it out of existence, and even now as he looked—against his will– he saw a thin trickle of shiny brown syrup emerge from each of their slack, will-less mouths.

  Across from him Fran Schein stirred, opened her eyes, moaned; she focused on him, then wearily sighed.

  “They got to us,” he said.

  “We took too long.” She rose unsteadily, stumbled, and almost fell; at once he was up, too, catching hold of her. “You were right; we should have done it right away if we intended to. But—” She let him hold her, briefly. “I like the preliminaries. Walking along the beach, showing you the swimsuit that is no swimsuit.” She smiled a little.

  Sam said, “They’ll be out for a few more minutes, I bet.”

  Wide-eyed, Fran said, “Yes, you’re right.” She skipped away from him, to the door; tugging it open, she disappeared out into the hall. “In our compartment,” she called back. “Hurry!”

  Pleased, he followed. It was too amusing; he was convulsed with laughter. Ahead of him the girl scampered up the ramp to her level of the hovel; he gained on her, caught hold of her as they reached her compartment. Together they tumbled in, rolled giggling and struggling across the hard metal floor to bump against the far wall.

  We won after all, he thought as he deftly unhooked her bra, began to unbutton her shirt, unzipped her skirt, and removed her laceless slipperlike shoes in one swift operation; he was busy everywhere and Fran sighed, this time not wearily.

  “I better lock the door.” He rose, hurried to the door and shut it, fastening it securely. Fran, meanwhile, struggled out of her undone clothes.

  “Come back,” she urged. “Don’t just watch.” She piled them in a hasty heap, shoes on top like two paperweights.

  He descended back to her side and her swift, clever fingers began on him; dark eyes alit she worked away, to his delight.

  And right here in their dreary abode on Mars. And yet—they had still managed it in the old way, the sole way: through the drug brought in by the furtive pushers. Can-D had made this possible; they continued to require it. In no way were they free.

  As Fran’s knees clasped his bare sides he thought, And in no way do we want to be. In fact just the opposite. As his hand traveled down her flat, quaking stomach he thought, We could even use a little more.

  4

  At the reception desk at James Riddle Veterans’ Hospital at Base III on Ganymede, Leo Bulero tipped his expensive hand-fashioned wubfur derby to the girl in her starched white uniform and said, “I’m here to see a patient, a Mr. Eldon Trent.”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” the girl began, but he cut her off.

  “Tell him Leo Bulero is here. Got it? Leo Bulero.” And he saw past her hand, to the register; he saw the number of Eldritch’s room. As the girl turned to the switchboard he strode in the direction of that number. The hell with waiting, he said to himself; I came millions of miles and I expect to see the man or the thing, whichever it is.

  An armed UN soldier with a rifle halted him at the door, a very young man with clear, cold eyes like a girl’s; eyes that emphatically said no, even to him.

  “Okay,” Leo grumbled. “I get the picture. But if he knew who it was out here he’d say let me in.”

  Beside him, at his ear, startling him, a sharp female voice said, “How did you find out my father was here, Mr. Bulero?”

  He turned and saw a rather heavy-set woman in her mid-thirties; she regarded him intently and he thought, This is Zoe Eldritch. I ought to know; she’s on the society pages of the homeopapes enough.

  A UN official approached. “Miss Eldritch, if you’d like we can evict Mr. Bulero from this building; it’s up to you.” He smiled pleasantly at Leo and all at once Leo identified him. This was the chief of the UN’s legal division, Ned Lark’s superior, Frank Santina. Dark-eyed, alert, somatically vibrant, Santina looked quickly from Leo to Zoe Eldritch, waiting for a response.

  “No,” Zoe Eldritch said at last. “At least not right now. Not until I find out how he found out dad is here; he can’t know. Can you, Mr. Bulero?”

  Santina murmured, “Through one of his Pre-Fash precogs, probably. Isn’t that so, Bulero?”

  Presently Leo, reluctantly, nodded.

  “You see, Miss Eldritch,” Santina explained, “a man like Bulero can hire anything he wants, any form of talent. So we expected him.” He indicated the two uniformed, armed guards at Palmer Eldritch’s door. “That’s why we require both of them, at all times. As I tried to explain.”

  “Isn’t there any way I can do business with Eldritch?” Leo demanded. “That’s what I came here for; I’ve got nothing illegal in mind. I think all of you are nuts, or else you’re trying to hide something; maybe you’ve got guilty consciences.” He eyed them, but saw nothing. “Is it really Palmer Eldritch in there?” he asked. “I bet it isn’t.” Again he got no response; neither of them rose to the jibe. “I’m tired,” he said. “It was a long-type trip here. The hell with it; I’m going to go get som
ething to eat and then I’m going to find a hotel room and sleep for ten hours and forget this.” Turning, he stalked off.

  Neither Santina nor Miss Eldritch tried to stop him. Disappointed, he continued on, feeling oppressive disgust.

  Obviously he would have to reach Palmer Eldritch through some median agency. Perhaps, he reflected, Felix Blau and his private police could gain entry here. It was worth a try.

  But once he became this depressed, nothing seemed to matter. Why not do as he had said, eat and then get some needed rest, forget about reaching Eldritch for the time being? The hell with all of them, he said to himself as he left the hospital building and marched out onto the sidewalk to search for a cab. That daughter, he thought. Tough-looking, like a lesbian, with her hair cut short and no makeup. Ugh.

  He found a cab and rode airborne for a time while he pondered.

  Using the cab’s vidsystem he contacted Felix back on Earth.

  “I’m glad you called,” Felix Blau said, as soon as he made out who it was. “There’s an organization that’s come into existence in Boston under strange circumstances; it seems to have sprung up overnight completely intact, including—”

  “What’s it doing?”

  “They’re preparing to market something; the machinery is there, including three ad satellites, similar to your own, one on Mars, one on Io, one on Titan. The rumor we hear is that they’re preparing to approach the market with a commodity directly competing with your own Perky Pat layouts. It’ll be called Connie Companion Doll.” He smiled briefly. “Isn’t that cute?”

  Leo said, “What about—you know. The additive.”

  “No information on that. Assuming there is one, it would be beyond the legal scope of merchandising operations, presumably. Is a min layout any use minus the– ‘additive’?”

  “No.”

  “Then that would seem to answer that.”

  Leo said, “I called you to find out if you can get me in to see Palmer Eldritch. I’ve located him here at Base III on Ganymede.”