The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

2

In his office at ten that morning Leo Bulero, chairman of the board of directors of P. P. Layouts, received a vidcall—which he had been expecting—from Tri-Planetary Law Enforcement, a private police agency. He had retained it within minutes of learning of the crash on Pluto by the intersystem ship returning from Prox.

He listened idly, because despite the momentousness of the news he had other matters on his mind.

It was idiotic, in view of the fact that P. P. Layouts paid an enormous yearly tribute to the UN for immunity, but idiotic or not a UN Narcotics Control Bureau warship had seized an entire load of Can-D near the north polar cap of Mars, almost a million skins’ worth, on its way from the heavily guarded plantations on Venus. Obviously the squeeze money was not reaching the right people within the complicated UN hierarchy.

But there was nothing he could do about it. The UN was a windowless monad over which he had no influence.

He could without difficulty perceive the intentions of the Narcotics Control Bureau. It wanted P. P. Layouts to initiate litigation aimed at regaining the shipload. Because this would establish that the illegal drug Can-D, chewed by so many colonists, was grown, processed, and distributed by a hidden subsidiary of P. P. Layouts. So, valuable as the shipload was, better to let it go than to make a stab at claiming it.

“The homeopape conjectures were correct,” Felix Blau, boss of the police agency, was saying on the vidscreen. “It is Palmer Eldritch and he appears to be alive although badly injured. We understand that a UN ship of the line is bringing him back to a base hospital, location of course undisclosed.”

“Hmm,” Leo Bulero said, nodding.

“However, as to what Eldritch found in the Prox system—”

“You’ll never find that out,” Leo said. “Eldritch won’t say and it’ll end there.”

“One fact has been reported,” Blau said, “of interest. Aboard his ship Eldritch had—still has—a carefully maintained culture of a lichen very much resembling the Titanian lichen from which Can-D is derived. I thought in view of—” Blau broke off tactfully.

“Is there any way those lichen cultures can be destroyed?” It was an instinctive impulse.

“Unfortunately Eldritch employees have already reached the remains of the ship. They undoubtedly would resist efforts in that direction.” Blau looked sympathetic. “We could of course try… not a forceful solution but perhaps we could buy our way in.”

“Try,” Leo said, although he agreed; it was undoubtedly a waste of time and effort. “Isn’t there that law, that major UN ordinance, against importing life forms from other systems?” It would certainly be handy if the UN military could be induced to bomb the remains of Elditch’s ship. On his note pad he scratched a memo to himself: call lawyers, lodge complaint with UN over import of alien lichens. “I’ll talk to you later,” he said to Blau and rang off. Maybe I’ll complain directly, he decided. Pressing the tab on his intercom he said to his secretary, “Get me UN, top, in New York. Ask for Secretary Hepburn-Gilbert personally.”

Presently he found himself connected with the crafty Indian politician who last year had become UN Secretary. “Ah, Mr. Bulero.” Hepburn-Gilbert smiled slyly. “You wish to complain as to the seizure of that shipment of Can-D which—”

“I know nothing about any shipment of Can-D,” Leo said. “This has to do with another matter completely. Do you people realize what Palmer Eldritch is up to? He’s brought non-Sol lichens into our system; it could be the beginning of another plague like we had in ‘98.”

“We realize this. However, the Eldritch people are claiming it to be a Sol lichen which Mr. Eldritch took with him on his Prox trip and is now bringing back… it was a source of protein to him, they claim.” The Indian’s white teeth shone in gleeful superiority; the meager pretext amused him.

“You believe that?”

“Of course not.” Hepburn-Gilbert’s smile increased. “What interests you in this matter, Mr. Bulero? You have an, ah, special concern for lichens?”

“I’m a public-spirited citizen of the Sol system. And I insist that you act.”

“We are acting,” Hepburn-Gilbert said. “We have made inquiries… we have assigned our Mr. Lark—you know him—to this detail. You see?”

The conversation droned to a frustrating conclusion and Leo Bulero at last hung up, feeling irked at politicians; they managed to take forceful steps when it came to him but in connection with Palmer Eldritch… ah, Mr. Bulero, he mimicked to himself. That, sir, is something else again.

Yes, he knew Lark. Ned Lark was chief of the UN Narcotics Bureau and the man responsible for the seizure of this last shipment of Can-D; it had been a ploy on the part of the UN Secretary, bringing Lark into this hassle with Eldritch. What the UN was angling for here was a quid pro quo; they would drag their feet, not act against Eldritch unless and until Leo Bulero made some move to curtail his Can-D shipments; he sensed this, but could not of course prove it. After all, Hepburn-Gilbert, that dark-skinned sneaky little unevolved politician, hadn’t exactly said that.

That’s what you find yourself involved in when you talk to the UN, Leo reflected. Afro-Asian politics. A swamp. It’s run, staffed, directed by foreigners. He glared at the blank vidscreen.

While he was wondering what to do his secretary Miss Gleason clicked on the intercom at her end and said, “Mr. Bulero, Mr. Mayerson is in the outer office; he’d like a few moments with you.”

“Send him in.” He was glad for a respite.

A moment later his expert in the field of tomorrow’s fashions came in, scowling. Silently, Barney Mayerson seated himself facing Leo.

“What’s eating you, Mayerson?” Leo demanded. “Speak up; that’s what I’m here for, so you can cry on my shoulder. Tell me what it is and I’ll hold your hand.” Re made his tone withering.

“My assistant. Miss Fugate.”

“Yes, I hear you’re sleeping with her.”

“That’s not the issue.”

“Oh, I see,” Leo said. “That’s just a minor aside.”

“I just meant I’m here about another aspect of Miss Fugate’s behavior. We had a basic disagreement a little while ago; a salesman—”

Leo said, “You turned something down and she disagreed.”

“Yes.”

“You precogs.” Remarkable. Maybe there were alternate futures. “So you want me to order her in the future always to back you up?”

Barney Mayerson said, “She’s my assistant; that means she’s supposed to do as I direct.”

“Well… isn’t sleeping with you a pretty fair move in that direction?” Leo laughed. “However, she should back you up while salesmen are present, then if she has any qualms she should air them privately later on.”

“I don’t even go for that.” Barney scowled even more.

Acutely, Leo said, “You know because I take that E Therapy I’ve got a huge frontal lobe; I’m practically a precog myself, I’m so advanced. Was it a pot salesman? Ceramics?”

With massive reluctance Barney nodded.

“They’re your ex-wife’s pots,” Leo said. Her ceramics were selling well; he had seen ads in the homeopapes for them, as retailed by one of New Orleans’ most exclusive art-object shops, and here on the East Coast and in San Francisco. “Will they go over, Barney?” He studied his precog. “Was Miss Fugate right?”

“They’ll never go over; that’s God’s truth.” Barney’s tone, however, was leaden. The wrong tone, Leo decided, for what he was saying; it was too lacking in vitality. “That’s what I foresee,” Barney said doggedly.

“Okay.” Leo nodded. “I’ll accept what you’re saying. But if her pots become a sensation and we don’t have mins of them available for the colonists’ layouts—” He pondered. “You might find your bed-partner also occupying your chair,” he said.

Rising, Barney said, “You’ll instruct Miss Fugate, then, as to the position she should take?” He colored. “I’ll rephrase that,” he murmured, as Leo began to guffaw.

“Okay, Barney. I’ll lower the fnard on her. She’s young; she’ll survive. And you’re aging; you need to keep your dignity, not have anyone disagree with you.” He, too, rose; walking up to Barney, he slapped him on the back. “But listen. Stop eating your heart out; forget that ex-wife of yours. Okay?”

“I’ve forgotten her.”

“There are always more women,” Leo said, thinking of Scotty Sinclair, his mistress at the moment; Scotty right now, frail and blonde but huge in the balcony, hung out at his satellite villa five hundred miles at apogee, waiting for him to knock off work for the week. “There’s an infinite supply; they’re not like early U. S. postage stamps or the truffle skins we use as money.” It occurred to him, then, that he could smooth matters by making available to Barney one of his discarded—but still serviceable—former mistresses. “I tell you what,” he began, but Barney at once cut him off with a savage swipe of his hand. “No?” Leo asked.

“No. Anyhow I’m wound up tight with Roni Fugate. One at a time is enough for any normal man.” Barney eyed his employer severely.

“I agree. Lord, I only can see one at a time, myself; what do you think, I’ve got a harem up there at Winnie-the-Pooh Acres?” He bristled.

“The last time I was up there,” Barney said, “which was at that birthday party for you back in January—”

“Oh well. Parties. That’s something else; you don’t count what goes on during parties.” He accompanied Barney to the door of the office. “You know, Mayerson, I heard a rumor about you, one I didn’t like. Someone saw you lugging one of those suitcase-type extensions of a conapt psychiatric computer around with you… did you get a draft notice?”

There was silence. Then, at last, Barney nodded.

“And you weren’t going to say anything to us,” Leo said. “We were to find out when? The day you board ship for Mars?”

“I’m going to beat it.”

“Sure you are. Everyone does; that’s the way the UN’s managed to populate four planets, six moons—”

“I’m going to fail my mental,” Barney said. “My precog ability tells me I am; it’s helping me. I can’t endure enough Freuds of stress to satisfy them—look at me.” He held up his hands; they perceptibly trembled. “Look at my reaction to Miss Fugate’s harmless remark. Look at my reaction to Hnatt bringing in Emily’s pots. Look at—”

“Okay,” Leo said, but he still was worried. Generally the draft notices gave only a ninety-day period before induction, and Miss Fugate would hardly be ready to assume Barney’s chair that soon. Of course he could transfer Mac Ronston from Paris—but even Ronston, after fifteen years, was not of the same caliber as Barney Mayerson; he had the experience, but talent could not be stored up: it had to be there as God-given.

The UN is really getting to me, Leo thought. He wondered if Barney’s draft notice, coming at this particular moment, was only a coincidence or if this was another probe of his weak points. If it is, he decided, it’s a bad one. And there’s no pressure I can put on the UN to exempt him.

And simply because I supply those colonists with their Can-D, he said to himself. I mean, somebody has to; they’ve got to have it. Otherwise what good are the Perky Pat layouts to them?

And in addition it was one of the most profitable trading operations in the Sol system. Many truffle skins were involved.

The UN knew that, too.

At twelve-thirty New York time Leo Bulero had lunch with a new girl who had joined the secretary pool. Pia Jurgens, seated across from him in a secluded chamber of the Purple Fox, ate with precision, her small, neat jaw working in an orderly manner. She was a redhead and he liked redheads; they were either outrageously ugly or almost supernaturally attractive. Miss Jurgens was the latter. Now, if he could find a pretext by which to transfer her to Winnie-the-Pooh Acres… assuming that Scotty didn’t object, however. And such did not at the present seem very likely; Scotty had a will of her own, which was always dangerous in a woman.

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 Jurgeris 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 habit forming. It’s a real experience.” He of course kept a supply, grade AA, on hand at Winnie-the-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 microworld, preferred to use Can-D in a vacuum; what did a Terran have to gain from a layout, inasmuch as it was a mill 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-the-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 Arnoidson 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 Eldritch’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, ffickered 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.