Philip Dick - The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

“Let’s talk about that lichen you brought back.”

“I obtained that illegally; the Proxers didn’t know I took any of it. They use it themselves, in religious orgies. As our Indians made use of mescal and peyotl. Is that what you wanted to see me about?”

“Sure. You’re getting into my business. I know you’ve already set up a corporation; haven’t you? Nuts to this business about Proxers invading our system; it’s you I’m sore about, what you’re doing. Can’t you find some other field to go into besides min layouts?”

The room blew up in his face. White light descended, blanketing him, and he shut his eyes. Jeez , he thought. Anyhow I don’t believe that about the Proxers; he’s just trying to turn our attention away from what he’s up to. I mean, it’s strategy.

He opened his eyes, and found himself sitting on a grassy bank. Beside him a small girl played with a yo-yo.

“That toy,” Leo Bulero said, “is popular in the Prox system.” His arms and legs, he discovered, were untied; he stood up stiffly and moved his limbs. “What’s your name?” he asked.

The little girl said, “Monica.”

“The Proxers,” Leo said, “the humanoid types anyhow, wear wigs and have false teeth.” He took hold of the bulk of the child’s luminous blonde hair and pulled.

“Ouch,” the girl said. “You’re a bad man.” He let go and she retreated, still playing with her yo-yo and glaring at him defiantly.

“Sorry,” he murmured. Her hair was real; perhaps he was not in the Prox system. Anyhow, wherever he was Palmer Eldritch was trying to tell him something. “Are you planning to invade Earth?” he asked the child. “I mean, you don’t look as if you are.” Could Eldritch have gotten it wrong? he wondered. Misunderstood the Proxers? After all, to his knowledge Palmer hadn’t evolved, didn’t possess the powerful, expanded comprehension which came with E Therapy.

“My yo-yo,” the child said, “is magic. I can do anything I want with it. What’ll I do? You tell me; you look like a kindly man.”

“Take me to your leader,” Leo said. “An old joke; you wouldn’t understand it. Went out a century ago.” He looked around him and saw no signs of habitation, only the grassy plain. Too cool for Earth, he realized. Above, the blue sky. Good air, he thought. Dense. “Do you feel sorry for me,” he asked, “because Palmer Eldritch is horning into my business and if he does I’ll probably be ruined? I’m going to have to make some kind of a deal with him.” It now looks like killing him is out, he said to himself morosely. “But,” he said, “I can’t figure out any deal he’ll take; he seems to hold all the cards. Look for instance how he’s got me here, and I don’t even know where this is.” Not that it matters, he realized. Because where it is it’s a place Eldritch controls.

“Cards,” the child said. “I have a deck of cards, in my suitcase.”

He saw no suitcase. “Where?”

Kneeling, the girl touched the grass here and there. All at once a section slid smoothly back; the girl reached into the cavity and brought out a suitcase. “I keep it hidden,” she explained. “From the sponsors.”

“What’s that mean, that ‘sponsors’?”

“Well, to be here you need a sponsor. All of us have them; I guess they pay for everything, pay until we’re well and then we can go home, if we have homes.” She seated herself by the suitcase, and opened it—or at least tried to. The lock did not respond. “Darn,” she said. “This is the wrong one. This is Dr. Smile.”

“A psychiatrist?” Leo asked, alertly. “From one of those big conapts? Is it working? Turn it on.”

Obligingly the girl turned the psychiatrist on. “Hello, Monica,” the suitcase said tinnily. “Hello to you, too, Mr. Bulero.” It pronounced his name wrong, getting the stress on the final syllable. “What are you doing here, sir? You’re much too old to be here. Tee-hee. Or are you regressed, due to malappropriate so-called E Therpay rggggg click! ” It whirred in agitation. “Therapy in Munich?” it finished.

“I feel fine,” Leo assured it. “Look, Smile; who do you know that I know that could get me out of here? Name someone, anyone. I can’t stay here any more, get it?”

“I know a Mr. Bayerson,” Dr. Smile said. “In fact I’m with him right now, via portable extension, of course, right in his office.”

“There’s nobody I know named Bayerson,” Leo said. “What is this place? Obviously it’s a rest camp of some sort for sick kids or kids with no money or some danm thing. I thought this was maybe in the Prox system but if you’re here obviously it isn’t. Bayerson .” It came to him, then. “Hell, you mean Mayerson . Barney. Back at P. P. Layouts.”

“Yes, that’s so,” Dr. Smile said.

“Contact him,” Leo said. “Tell him to get in touch with Felix Blau right away, that Tri-Planet Police Agency or whatever they call themselves. Have him have Blau do research, find out where exactly I am and then send a ship here. Got it?”

“All right,” Dr. Smile said. “I’ll address Mr. Mayerson right away. He’s conferring with Miss Fugate, his assistant, who is also his mistress and who today is wearing– hmm . They’re talking about you this very minute. But of course I can’t report what they’re saying; seal of the medical profession, you realize. She is wearing—”

“Okay, who cares?” Leo said irritably.

“You’ll excuse me a moment,” the suitcase said. “While I sign off.” It sounded huffy. And then there was silence.

“I have bad news for you,” the child said.

“What is it?”

“I was kidding. That’s not really Dr. Smile; it’s just pretend, to keep us from loneliness. It’s alive but it’s not connected with anything outside itself; it’s what they call being on intrinsic.”

He knew what that meant; the unit was self-contained. But then how could it have known about Barney and Miss Fugate, even down to details about their personal life? Even as to what she had on? The child was not telling the truth, obviously. “Who are you?” he demanded. “Monica what? I want to know your full name.” Something about her was familiar.

“I’m back,” the suitcase announced suddenly. “Well, Mr. Bulero—” Again the faulty pronunciation. “I’ve discussed your dilemma with Mr. Mayerson and he will contact Felix Blau as you requested. Mr. Mayerson thinks he recalls reading in a homeopape once about a UN camp much as you are experiencing, somewhere in the Saturn region, for retarded children. Perhaps—”

“Hell,” Leo said, “this girl isn’t retarded.” If anything she was precocious. It did not make sense. But what did make sense was the realization that Palmer Eldritch wanted something out of him; this was not merely a matter of edifying him: it was a question of intimidation.

On the horizon a shape appeared, immense and gray, bloating as it rushed at terrific speed toward them. It had ugly spiked whiskers.

“That’s a rat,” Monica said calmly.

Leo said, “That big?” No place in the Sol system, on none of the moons or planets, did such an enormous, feral creature exist. “What will it do to us?” he asked, wondering why she wasn’t afraid.

“Oh,” Monica said, “I suppose it’ll kill us.”

“And that doesn’t frighten you?” He heard his own voice rise in a shriek. “I mean, you want to die like that, and right now? Eaten by a rat the size of—” He grabbed the girl with one hand, picked up Dr. Smile the suitcase in the other, and began lumbering away from the rat.

The rat reached them, passed on by, and was gone; its shape dwindled until at last it disappeared.