Philip Dick - The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

If so it was not the time to receive the toxin. Instinct offered him that point of observation.

Nevertheless he unscrewed the lid of the tube.

A tiny, frail voice, emanating from the opened tube, piped, “You’re being watched, Mayerson. And if you’re up to some kind of tactic we’ll be required to step in. You will be severely restricted. Sorry.”

He put the lid back on the tube, and screwed it tight with shaking fingers. And the tube had been—empty!

“What is it?” Anne said, appearing; she had been in the kitchen of his compartment; she wore an apron which she had discovered somewhere. “What’s that?” she asked, seeing the tube in his hand.

“Escape,” he grated. “From this.”

“From exactly what?” Her normal appearance had reasserted itself; nothing now was amiss. “You look positively sick, Barney; you really do. Is it an after-effect of the Chew-Z?”

“A hangover.” Is Palmer Eldritch actually inside this? he wondered, examining the closed tube; he revolved it in the palm of his hand. “Is there any way to contact the Faines’ satellite?”

“Oh, I imagine so. You probably just put in a vidcall or whatever their means of—”

“Go ask Norm Schein to make the contact for me,” he said.

Obligingly, Anne departed; the compartment door shut after her.

At once he dug the code book which Faine had presented him from its hiding place beneath the kitchen stove. This would have to be encoded.

The pages of the code book were blank.

Then it won’t go in code, he said to himself, and that’s that. I’ll have to do the best I can and let it go, however unsatisfactory.

The door swung open; Anne appeared and said, “Mr. Schein is placing the call for you. They request particular tunes all the time, he says.”

He followed her down the corridor and into a cramped little room where Norm sat at a transmitter; as Barney entered he turned his head and said, “I’ve got Charlotte—will that do?”

“Allen,” Barney said.

“Okay.” Presently Norm said, “Now I’ve got Ol’ Eggplant Al. Here.” He handed the microphone to Barney. On the tiny screen Allen Faine’s face, jovial and professional, appeared. “A new citizen to talk to you,” Norm explained, reclutching the microphone briefly. “Barney Mayerson, meet half of the team that keeps us alive and sane here on Mars.” To himself he muttered, “God, have I got a headache. Excuse me.” He vacated the chair at the transmitter and disappeared totteringly down the hall.

“Mr. Faine,” Barney said carefully, “I was speaking with Mr. Palmer Elditch earlier today. He mentioned the conversation that you and I had. He was aware of it so as far as I can see there’s no—”

Coldly, Allen Faine said, “What conversation?”

For an interval Barney was silent. “Evidently they had an infrared camera going,” he continued at last. “Probably in a satellite that was making its pass. However, the contents of our conversation, it would appear, is still not—”

“You’re a nut,” Faine said. “I don’t know you; I never had any conversation with you. Well, man, have you a request or not?” His face was impassive, oblique with detachment, and it did not seem simulated.

“You don’t know who I am?” Barney said, unbelievingly.

Faine cut the connection at his end and the tiny vidscreen fused over, now showing only emptiness, the void. Barney shut off the transmitter. He felt nothing. Apathy. He walked past Anne and out into the corridor; there he halted, got out his package— was it the last? –of Terran cigarettes, and lit up, thinking, What Eldritch did to Leo on Luna or Sigma 14-B or wherever he’s done to me, too. And eventually he’ll snare us all. Just like this. Isolated. The communal world is gone. At least for me; he began with me.

And, he thought, I’m supposed to fight back with an empty tube that once may or may not have contained a rare, expensive, brain-disorganizing toxin—but which now contains only Palmer Eldritch, and not even all of him. Just his voice.

The match burned his fingers. He ignored it.

Referring to his bundle of notes Felix Blau stated, “Fifteen hours ago a UN-approved Chew-Z-owned ship landed on Mars and distributed its initial bindles to the hovels in the Fineburg Crescent.”

Leo Bulero leaned toward the screen, folded his hands, and said, “Including Chicken Pox Prospects?”

Briefly, Felix nodded.

“By now,” Leo said, “he should have consumed the dose of that brain-rotting filth and we should have heard from him via the satellite system.”

“I fully realize that.”

“William C. Clarke is still standing by?” Clarke was P. P. Layout’s top legal man on Mars.

“Yes,” Felix said, “but Mayerson hasn’t contacted him either; he hasn’t contacted anybody .” He shoved his documents aside. “That is all, absolutely all, I have at this point.”

“Maybe he died,” Leo said. He felt morose; the whole thing depressed him. “Maybe he had such a severe convulsion that—”

“But then we’d have heard, because one of the three UN hospitals on Mars would have been notified.”

“Where is Palmer Eldritch?”

“No one in my organization knows,” Felix said. “He left Luna and disappeared. We simply lost him.”

“I’d give my right arm,” Leo said, “to know what’s going on down in that hovel, that Chicken Pox Prospects where Barney is.”

“Go to Mars yourself.”

“Oh no,” Leo said at once. “I’m not leaving P. P. Layouts, not after what happened to me on Luna. Can’t you get a man in there from your organization who can report directly to us?”

“We have that girl, that Anne Hawthorne. But she hasn’t checked in either. Maybe I’ll go to Mars. If you’re not.”

“I’m not,” Leo repeated.

Felix Blau said, “It’ll cost you.”

“Sure,” Leo said. “And I’ll pay. But at least we’ll have some sort of chance; I mean, as it stands we’ve got nothing.” And we ’ re finished , he said to himself. “Just bill me,” he said.

“But do you have any idea what it would cost you if I died, if they got me there on Mars? My organization would—”

“Please,” Leo said. “I don’t want to talk about that; what is Mars, a graveyard that Eldritch is digging? Eldritch probably ate Barney Mayerson. Okay, you go; you show up at Chicken Pox Prospects.” He rang off.

Behind him Roni Fugate, his acting New York Pre-Fash consultant, sat intently listening. Taking it all in, Leo said to himself.

“Did you get a good earful?” he demanded roughly.

Roni said, “You’re doing the same thing to him that he did to you.”

“Who? What?”

“Barney was afraid to follow you when you disappeared on Luna. Now you’re afraid—”

“It’s just not wise. All right ,” he said. “ I ’ m too goddam scared of Palmer to set foot outside this building ; of course I’m not going to Mars and what you say is absolutely true.”

“But no one,” Roni said softly, “is going to fire you. The way you did Barney.”

“I’m firing myself. Inside. It hurts.”

“But not enough to make you go to Mars.”

“All right! ” Savagely he snapped the vidset back on again and dialed Felix Blau. “Blau, I take it all back. I’m going myself. Although it’s insane.”

“Frankly,” Felix Blau said, “in my opinion you’re doing exactly what Palmer Eldritch wants. All questions of bravery versus—”

“Eldritch’s power works through that drug,” Leo said. “As long as he can’t administer any to me I’m fine. I’ll take a few company guards along to watch that I’m not slipped an injection like last time. Hey, Blau. You still come along; okay?” He swung to face Roni. “Is that all right?”