Philip Dick - The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

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 itself; 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.