Philip Dick - The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

The girl snickered. “It scared you. I knew it wouldn’t see us. They can’t; they’re blind to us, here.”

“They are ?” He knew, then, where he was. Felix Blau wouldn’t find him. Nobody would, even if they looked forever .

Eldritch had given him an intravenous injection of a translating drug, no doubt Chew-Z. This place was a nonexistent world, analogous to the irreal “Earth” to which the translated colonists went when they chewed his own product, Can-D.

And the rat, unlike everything else, was genuine. Unlike themselves; he and this girl—they were not real, either. At least not here. Somewhere their empty, silent bodies lay like sacks, discarded by the cerebral contents for the time being. No doubt their bodies were at Palmer Eldritch’s Lunar demesne.

“You’re Zoe,” he said. “Aren’t you? This is the way you want to be, a little girl-child again, about eight. Right? With long blonde hair.” And even, he realized, with a different name.

Stiffly, the child said, “There is no one named Zoe.”

“No one but you. Your father is Palmer Eldritch, right?”

With great reluctance the child nodded.

“Is this a special place for you?” he asked. “To which you come often?”

“This is my place,” the girl said. “No one comes here without my permission.”

“Why did you let me come here, then?” He knew that she did not like him. Had not from the very start.

“Because,” the child said, “we think perhaps you can stop the Proxers from whatever it is they’re doing.”

“ That again,” he said, simply not believing her. “Your father—”

“My father,” the child said, “is trying to save us. He didn’t want to bring back Chew-Z; they made him. Chew-Z is the agent by which we’re going to be delivered over to them. You see?”

“How?”

“Because they control these areas. Like this, where you go when you’re given Chew-Z.”

“You don’t seem under any sort of alien control; look what you’re telling me.”

“But I will be,” the girl said, nodding soberly. “Soon. Just like my father is now. He was given it on Prox; he’s been taking it for years. It’s too late for him and he knows it.”

“Prove all this to me,” Leo said. “In fact prove any of it, even one part; give me something actual to go on.”

The suitcase, which he still held, now said, “What Monica says is true, Mr. Bulero.”

“How do you know?” he demanded, annoyed with it.

“Because,” the suitcase replied, “I’m under Prox influence, too; that’s why I—”

“You did nothing,” Leo said. He set the suitcase down. “Damn that Chew-Z,” he said, to both of them, the suitcase and the girl. “It’s made everything confused; I don’t know what the hell’s going on. You’re not Zoe—you don’t even know who she is. And you—you’re not Dr. Smile, and you didn’t call Barney, and he wasn’t talking to Roni Fugate; it’s all just a drug-induced hallucination. It’s my own fears about Palmer Eldritch being read back to me, this trash about him being under Prox influence, and you, too. Who ever heard of a suitcase being dominated by minds from an alien star-system?” Highly indignant, he walked away from them.

I know what’s going on, he realized. This is Palmer’s way of gaining domination over my mind; this is a form of what they used to call brainwashing. He’s got me running scared. Carefully measuring his steps, he continued on without looking back.

It was a near-fatal mistake. Something—he caught sight of it out of the corner of his eye—launched itself at his legs; he leaped aside and it passed him, circling back at once as it reoriented itself, and picked him up again as its prey.

“The rats can’t see you,” the girl called, “but the glucks can! You better run!”

Without clearly seeing it—he had seen enough—he ran.

And what he had seen he could not blame on Chew-Z. Because it was not an illusion, not a device of Palmer Eldritch’s to terrorize him. The gluck, whatever it was, did not originate on Terra nor from a Terran mind.

Behind him, leaving the suitcase, the girl ran, too.

“What about me?” Dr. Smile called anxiously.

No one came back for him.

On the vidscreen the image of Felix Blau said, “I’ve processed the material you gave me, Mr. Mayerson. It adds up to a convincing case that your employer Mr. Bulero—who is also a client of mine—is at present on a small artificial satellite orbiting Earth, legally titled Sigma 14-B. I have consulted the records of ownership and it appears to belong to a rocket-fuel manufacturer in St. George, Utah.” He inspected the papers before him. “Robard Lethane Sales. Lethane is their trade-name for their brand of—”

“Okay,” Barney Mayerson said. “I’ll contact them.” How in God’s name had Leo Bulero gotten there?

“There is one further item of possible interest. Robard Lethane Sales incorporated the same day, four years ago, as Chew-Z Manufacturers of Boston. It seems more than a coincidence to me.”

“What about getting Leo off the satellite?”

“You could file a writ of mandamus with the courts demanding—”

“Too much time,” Barney said. He had a deep, ill sense of personal responsibility for what had happened. Evidently Palmer Eldritch had set up the news conference with the ‘pape reporters as a pretext by which to lure Leo to the Lunar demesne—and he, precog Barney Mayerson, the man who could perceive the future, had been taken in, had expertly done his part to get Leo there.

Felix Blau said, “I can supply you with about a hundred men, from various offices of my organization. And you ought to be able to raise fifty more from P. P. Layouts. You could try to invest the satellite.”

“And find him dead.”

“True.” Blau appeared to pout. “Well, you could go to Hepburn-Gilbert and plead for UN assistance. Or try to contact—and this sticks in the craw even worse—contact Palmer or whatever’s taking Palmer’s place, and deal directly with it . See if you can buy Leo back.”

Barney cut the circuit. He at once dialed for an outplan line, saying, “Get me Mr. Palmer Eldritch on Luna. It’s an emergency; I’d like you to hurry it up, miss.”

As he waited for the call to be put through, Roni Fugate said from the far end of the office, “Apparently we’re not going to have time to sell out to Eldritch.”

“It does look that way.” How smoothly it had all been handled; Eldritch had let his adversary do the work. And us, too, he realized, Roni and I; he’ll probably get us the same way. In fact Eldritch could indeed be waiting for our flight to the satellite; that would explain his supplying Leo with Dr. Smile.

“I wonder,” Roni said, fooling with the clasp of her blouse, “if we want to work for a man that clever. If it is a man. It looks more and more to me as if it’s not actually Palmer who came back but one of them; I think we’re going to have to accept that. The next thing we can look forward to is Chew-Z flooding the market. With UN sanction.” Her tone was bitter. “And Leo, who at least is one of us and who just wants to make a few skins, will be dead or driven out—” She stared straight ahead in fury.

“Patriotism,” Barney said.

“Self-preservation. I don’t want to find myself, some morning, chewing away on the stuff, doing whatever you do when you chew it instead of Can-D. Going—not to Perky Pat land; that’s for sure.”

The vidphone operator said, “I have a Miss Zoe Eldritch on the line, sir. Will you speak to her?”

“Okay,” Barney said, resigned.

A smartly dressed woman, sharp-eyed, with heavy hair pulled back in a bun, gazed at him in miniature. “Yes?”