The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

9

After she emerged from the experience of translation Anne Hawthorne was taciturn and moody. It was not a good sign; he guessed that she, too, now had a premonition similar to his. However, she said nothing about it; she merely went at once to get her bulky outer suit from his compartment.

“I have to get back to Flax Back Spit,” she explained. “Thank you for letting me use your layout,” she said to the hovelists who stood here and there, watching her as she dressed. “I’m sorry, Barney.” She hung her head. “It was unkind to leave you the way I did.”

He accompanied her, on foot, across the flat, nocturnal sands to her own hovel; neither of them spoke as they plodded along, keeping their eyes open, as they had been told to, for a local predator, a jackal-like telepathic Martian life form. However, they saw nothing.

“How was it?” he asked her at last.

“You mean being that little brassy blonde-haired doll with all her damn clothes and her boyfriend and her car and her—” Anne, beside him, shuddered. “Awful. Well, that’s not it. Just—pointless. I found nothing there. It was like going back to my teens.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. There was that about Perky Pat.

“Barney,” she said quietly, “I have to find something else and soon. Can you help me? You seem smart and grown-up and experienced. Being translated is not going to help me… Chew-Z won’t be any better because something in me rebels, won’t take it—see? Yes, you see; I can tell. Hell, you wouldn’t even try it once, so you must understand.” She squeezed his arm, and clung tightly to him in the darkness. “I know something else, Barney. They’re tired of it, too; all they did was bicker while they—we–were inside those dolls. They didn’t enjoy it for a second, even.”

“Gosh,” he said.

Flashing her lantern ahead, Anne said, “It’s a shame; I wish they did. I feel sorrier for them than I do for—” She ceased, walked on for a time in silence, and then abruptly said, “I’ve changed, Barney. I feel it in myself. I want to sit down here—wherever we are. You and I alone in the dark. And then you know what… I don’t have to say, do I?”

“No,” he admitted. “But the thing is, you’d regret it afterward. I would, too, because of your reaction.”

“Maybe I’ll pray,” Anne said. “Praying is hard to do; you have to know how. You don’t pray for yourself; you pray what we call an intercessive prayer: for others. And what you pray to isn’t the God Who’s in the heavens out there somewhere… it’s to the Holy Spirit within; that’s different, that’s the Paraclete. Did you ever read Paul?”

“Paul who?”

“In the New Testament. His letters to for instance the Corinthians or the Romans… you know. Paul says our enemy is death; it’s the final enemy we overcome, so I guess it’s the greatest. We’re all blighted, according to Paul, not just our bodies but our souls, too; both have to die and then we can be born again, with new bodies not of flesh but incorruptible. See? You know, when I was Perky Pat, just now… I had the oddest feeling that I was—it’s wrong to say this or believe it, but—”

“But,” Barney finished for her, “it seemed like a taste of that. But you expected it, though; you knew the resemblance—you mentioned it yourself, on the ship.” A lot of people, he reflected, had noticed it, too.

“Yes,” Anne admitted. “But what I didn’t realize is—” In the darkness she turned toward him; he could just barely make her out. “Being translated is the only hint we can have of it this side of death. So it’s a temptation. If it wasn’t for that dreadful doll, that Perky Pat—”

“Chew-Z,” Barney said.

“That’s what I was thinking. If it was like that, like what Paul says about the corruptible man putting on incorruption—I couldn’t stop myself, Barney; I’d have to chew Chew-Z. I wouldn’t be able to wait until the end of my life… it might be fifty years living here on Mars—half a century!” She shuddered. “Why wait when I could have it now?”

“The last person I talked to,” Barney said, “who had taken Chew-Z, said it was the worst experience of his life.”

That startled her. “In what way?”

“He fell into the domain of someone or something he considered absolutely evil, someone he was terrified of. And he was lucky—and he knew it—to get away again.”

“Barney,” she said, “why are you on Mars? Don’t say it’s because of the draft; a person as smart as you could have gone to a psychiatrist—”

“I’m on Mars,” he said, “because I made a mistake.” In your terminology, he reflected, it would be called a sin. And in my terminology, too, he decided.

Anne said, “You hurt someone, didn’t you?”

He shrugged.

“So now for the rest of your life you’re here,” Anne said. “Barney, can you get me a supply of Chew-Z?”

“Pretty soon.” It would not be long before he ran into one of Palmer Eldritch’s pushers; he was certain of that. Putting his hand on her shoulder he said, “But you can get it for yourself just as easily.”

She leaned against him as they walked, and he hugged her; she did not resist—in fact she sighed with relief. “Barney, I have something to show you. A leaflet that one of the people in my hovel gave me; she said a whole bundle had been dropped the other day. It’s from the Chew-Z people.” Reaching into her bulky coat she rummaged about, then; in the glare of the lantern he saw the folded paper. “Read it. You’ll understand why I feel as I do about Chew-Z… why it’s such a spiritual problem for me.”

Holding the paper to the light he read the top line; it blazed out in huge black letters.

“See?” Anne said.

“I see.” He did not even bother to read the rest; folding the paper back up he returned it to her, feeling heavyhearted. “Quite a slogan.”

“A true one.”

“Not the big lie,” Barney said, “but instead the big truth.” Which, he wondered, is worse? Hard to tell. Ideally, Palmer Eldritch would drop dead for the blasphemia shouted by the pamphlet, but evidently that was not going to occur. An evil visitor oozing over us from the Prox system, he said to himself, offering us what we’ve prayed for over a period of two thousand years. And why is this so palpably bad? Hard to say, but nevertheless it is. Because maybe it’ll mean bondage to Eldritch, such as Leo experienced; Eldritch will be with us constantly from now on, infiltrating our lives. And He who has protected us in the past simply sits passive.

Each time we’re translated, he thought, we’ll see—not God—but Palmer Eldritch.

Aloud he said, “If Chew-Z fails you—”

“Don’t say that.”

“If Palmer Eldritch fails you, then maybe—” He stopped. Because ahead of them lay the hovel Flax Back Spit; its entrance light glowed dimly in the Martian gloom. “You’re home.” He did not like to let her go; his hand on her shoulder, he clung to her, thinking back to what he had said to his fellow hovelists about her. “Come back with me,” he said. “To Chicken Pox Prospects. We’ll get formally, legally married.”

She stared at him and then—incredibly–she began to laugh.

“Does that mean no?” he asked, woodenly.

“What,” Anne said, “is ‘Chicken Pox Prospects’? Oh, I see; that’s the code name of your hovel. I’m sorry, Barney; I didn’t mean to laugh. But the answer of course is no.” She moved away from him, and opened the outer door of the hovel’s entrance-chamber. And then she set down her lantern and stepped toward him, arms held out. “Make love to me,” she said.

“Not here. Too close to the entrance.” He was afraid.

“Wherever you want. Take me there.” She put her arms around his neck. “Now,” she said. “Don’t wait.”

He didn’t.

Picking her up in his arms, he carried her away from the entrance.

“Golly,” she said, when he laid her down in the darkness; she gasped, presently, perhaps from the sudden cold that spilled over them, penetrating their heavy suits which no longer served, which in fact were a hindrance to true warmth.

One of the laws of thermal dynamics, he thought. The exchange of heat; molecules passing between us, hers and mine mingling in—entropy? Not yet, he thought.

“Oh my,” she said, in the darkness.

“I hurt you?”

“No. I’m sorry. Please.”

The cold numbed his back, his ears; it radiated down from the sky. He ignored it as best he could, but he thought of a blanket, a thick wool layer—strange, to be preoccupied with that at such a time. He dreamed of its softness, the scratch of its fibers against his skin, its heaviness. Instead of the brittle, frigid, thin air which made him pant in huge gulps, as if finished.

“Are—you dying?” she asked.

“Just can’t breathe. This air.”

“Poor, poor—good lord. I’ve forgotten your name.”

“Hell of a thing.”

“Barney!”

He clutched her.

“No! Don’t stop!” She arched her back. Her teeth chattered.

“I wasn’t going to,” he said.

“Oooaugh!”

He laughed.

“Don’t please laugh at me.”

“Not meant unkindly.”

A long silence, then. Then, “Oof.” She leaped, galvanized as if lost to the shock of a formal experiment. His pale, dignified, unclothed possession: become a tall and very thin greenless nervous system of a frog; probed to life by outside means. Victim of a current not her own but not protested, in any way. Lucid and real, accepting. Ready this long time.

“You all right?”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes Barney. I certainly very much am. Yes!”

Later as he tramped back alone, leadenly, in the direction of his own hovel he said to himself, Maybe I’m doing Palmer Eldritch’s work. Breaking her down, demoralizing her… as if she weren’t already. As if we all weren’t.

Something blocked his way.

Halting, he located in his coat the side-arm which had been provided him; there were, especially at night, in addition to the fearsome telepathic jackal, vicious domestic organisms that stung and ate—he flashed his light warily, expecting some bizarre multi-armed contraption composed perhaps of slime. Instead he saw a parked ship, the small, swift type with slight mass; its tubes still smoked, so evidently it had just now landed. Must have coasted down, he realized, since he hadn’t heard any retro noise.

From the ship a man crept, shook himself, snapped on his own lantern, made out Barney Mayerson, and grunted. “I’m Allen Faine. I’ve been looking all over for you; Leo wants to keep in touch with you through me. I’ll be telecasting in code to you at your hovel; here’s your code book.” Faine held out a slender volume. “You know who I am, don’t you?”

“The disc jockey.” Weird, this meeting here on the open Martian desert at night between himself and this man from the P. P. Layouts satellite; it seemed unreal. “Thanks,” he said, accepting the code book. “What do I do, write it down as you say it and then sneak off to decode it?”

“There’ll be a private TV receiver in your compartment in the hovel; we’ve arranged for it on the grounds that being new to Mars you crave—”

“Okay,” Barney said, nodding.

“So you have a girl already,” Faine said. “Pardon my use of the infrared searchlight, but—”

“I don’t pardon it.”

“You’ll find that there’s little privacy on Mars in matters of that nature. It’s like a small town and all the hovelists are starved for news, especially any kind of scandal. I ought to know; it’s my job to keep in touch and pass on what I can—naturally there’s a lot I can’t. Who’s the girl?”

“I don’t know,” Barney said sardonically. “It was dark; I couldn’t see.” He started on, then, going around the parked ship.

“Wait. You’re supposed to know this: a Chew-Z pusher is already operating in the area and we calculate that he’ll be approaching your particular hovel as early as tomorrow morning. So be ready. Make sure you buy the bindle in front of witnesses; they should see the entire transaction and then when you chew it make sure they can clearly identify what you’re consuming. Got it?” Faine added, “And try to draw the pusher out, get him to give as complete a warranty, verbally of course, as you possibly can. Make him sell you on the product; don’t ask for it. See?”

Barney said, “And what do I get for doing this?”

“Pardon?”

“Leo never at any time bothered to—”

“I’ll tell you what,” Faine said quietly. “We’ll get you off Mars. That’s your payment.”

After a time Barney said, “You mean it?”

“It’ll be illegal, of course. Only the UN can legally route you back to Terra and that’s not going to happen. What we’ll do is pick you up some night and transfer you to Winnie-the-Pooh Acres.”

“And there I’ll stay.”

“Until Leo’s surgeons can give you a new face, finger and footprints, cephalic wave pattern, a new identity throughout; then you’ll emerge, probably at your old job for P. P. Layouts. I understand you were their New York man. Two, two and a half years from now, you’ll be at that again. So don’t give up hope.”

Barney said, “Maybe I don’t want that.”

“What? Sure you do. Every colonist wants—”

“I’ll think it over,” Barney said, “and let you know. But maybe I’ll want something else.” He was thinking about Anne. To go back to Terra and pick up once again, perhaps even with Roni Fugate—at some deep, instinctive stratum it did not have the appeal to him that he would have expected. Mars—or the experience of love with Anne Hawthorne—had even further altered him, now; he wondered which it was. Both. And anyhow, he thought, I asked to come here—I wasn’t really drafted. And I must never let myself forget that.

Allen Faine said, “I know some of the circumstances, Mayerson. What you’re doing is atoning. Correct?”

Surprised, Barney said, “You, too?” Religious inclinations seemed to permeate the entire milieu, here.

“You may object to the word,” Faine said, “but it’s the proper one. Listen, Mayerson; by the time we get you to Winnie-the-Pooh Acres you’ll have atoned sufficiently. There’s something you don’t know yet. Look at this.” He held out, reluctantly, a small plastic tube. A container.

Chilled, Barney said, “What’s this?”

“Your illness. Leo believes, on professional advice, that it’s not enough for you merely to state in court that you’ve been damaged; they’ll insist on thoroughly examining you.

“Tell me specifically what it is in this thing.”

“It’s epilepsy, Mayerson. The Q form, the strain whose causes no one is sure of, whether it’s due to organic injury that can’t be detected with the EEG or whether it’s psychogenic.”

“And the symptoms?”

Faine said, “Grand mal.” After a pause he said, “Sorry.”

“I see,” Barney said. “And how long will I have them?”

“We can administer the antidote after the litigation but not before. A year at the most. So now you can see what I meant when I said that you’re going to be in a position to more than atone for not bailing out Leo when he needed it. You can see how this illness, claimed as a side-effect of Chew-Z, will—”

“Sure,” Barney said. “Epilepsy is one of the great scare-words. Like cancer, once. People are irrationally afraid of it because they know it can happen to them, any time, with no warning.”

“Especially the more recent Q form. Hell, they don’t even have a theory about it. What’s important is that with the Q form no organic alteration of the brain is involved, and that means we can restore you. The tube, there. It’s a metabolic toxin similar in action to metrazol; similar, but unlike metrazol it continues to produce the attacks—with the characteristically deranged EEG pattern during those intervals—until it’s neutralized—which as I say we’re prepared to do.”

“Won’t a blood-fraction test show the presence of this toxin?”

“It will show the presence of a toxin, and that’s exactly what we want. Because we will sequester the documents pertaining to the physical and mental induction exams which you recently took… and we’ll be able to prove that when you arrived on Mars there was no Q-type epilepsy and no toxicity. And it’ll be Leo’s—or rather your–contention that the toxicity in the blood is a derivative of Chew-Z.”

Barney said, “Even if I lose the suit—”

“It will still greatly damage Chew-Z sales. Most colonists have a nagging feeling anyhow that the translation drugs are in the long run biochemically harmful.” Faine added, “The toxin in that tube is relatively rare. Leo obtained it through highly specialized channels. It originates on Io, I believe. One certain doctor—”

“Willy Denkmal,” Barney said.

Faine shrugged. “Possibly. In any case there it is in your hand; as soon as you’ve been exposed to Chew-Z you’re to take it. Try to have your first grand mal attack where your fellow hovelists will see you; don’t be off somewhere on the desert farming or bossing autonomic dredges. As soon as you’ve recovered from the attack, get on the vidphone and ask the UN for medical assistance. Have their disinterested doctors examine you; don’t apply for private medication.”

“It would probably be a good idea,” Barney said, “if the UN doctors could run an EEG on me during an attack.”

“Absolutely. So try if possible to get yourself into a UN hospital; in all there’re three on Mars. You’ll be able to put forward a good argument for this because—” Faine hesitated. “Frankly, with this toxin your attacks will involve severe destructiveness, toward yourself and to others. Technically they’ll be of the hysterical, aggressive variety concluding in a more or less complete loss of consciousness. It’ll be obvious what it is right from the start, because—or so I’m told–you’ll reveal the typical tonic stage, with great muscular contractions, and then the clonic stage of rhythmic contraction alternating with relaxation. After which of course the coma supervenes.”

“In other words,” Barney said, “the classic convulsive form.”

“Does it frighten you?”

“I don’t see where that matters. I owe Leo something; you and I and Leo know that. I still resent the word ‘atonement,’ but I suppose this is that.” He wondered how this artificially induced illness would affect his relationship with Anne. Probably this would terminate the thing. So he was giving up a good deal for Leo Bulero. But then Leo was doing something for him, too; getting him off Mars was no minor consideration.

“We’re taking it for granted,” Faine said, “that they’ll make an attempt to kill you the moment you retain an attorney. In fact they’ll—”

“I’d like to go back to my hovel, now.” He moved off. “Okay?”

“Fine. Go pick up the routine there. But let me give you a word of advice as regards that girl. Doberman’s Law—remember, he was the first person to marry and then get divorced on Mars?–states that in proportion to your emotional attachment to someone on this damn place the relationship deteriorates. I’d give you two weeks at the most, and not because you’ll be ill but because that’s standard. Martian musical chairs. And the UN encourages it because it means, frankly, if I may say so, more children to populate the colony. Catch?”

“The UN,” Barney said, “might not sanction my relationship with her because it’s on a somewhat different basis than you’re describing.”

“No it’s not,” Faine said calmly. “It may seem so to you, but I watch the whole planet, day in, night out. I’m just stating a fact; I’m not being critical. In fact I’m personally sympathetic.”

“Thanks,” Barney said, and walked away, flashing his light ahead of him in the direction of his hovel; tied about his throat the small bleeper signal which told him when he was nearing—and more important when he was not nearing—his hovel began to sound louder: a one-frog pond of comfort close to his ear.

I’ll take the toxin, he said to himself. And I’ll go into court and sue the bastards for Leo’s sake. Because I owe that to him. But I’m not returning to Earth; either I make it here or not at all. With Anne Hawthorne, I hope, but if not, then alone or with someone else; I’ll live out Doberman’s Law, as Faine predicts. Anyhow it’ll be here on this miserable planet, this “promised land.”

Tomorrow morning, he decided, I’ll begin clearing away the sand of fifty thousand centuries for my first vegetable garden. That’s the initial step.