The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (21 page)

The door to his compartment opened. He did not look up; he continued to stare down at the table surface, at the ashtray and matches and pack of Camels.

“Mr. Mayerson.”

Barney said, “I know what you’re going to say.”

Entering the compartment, Palmer Eldritch shut the door, seated himself across from Barney, and said, “Correct, my friend. I let you go just before it happened, before Leo fired the second time. It was my carefully considered decision. And I’ve had a long time to dwell on the matter; a little over three centuries. I won’t tell you why.”

“I don’t care why,” Barney said. He continued to stare down.

“Can’t you look at me?” Palmer Eldritch said.

“I’m unclean,” Barney informed him.

“WHO TOLD YOU THAT?”

“An animal out in the desert. And it had never seen me before; it knew it just by coming close to me.” While still five feet away, he thought to himself. Which is fairly far.

“Hmm. Maybe its motive—”

“It had no goddam motive. In fact just the opposite—it was half-dead from hunger and yearning to eat me. So it must be true.”

“To the primitive mind,” Eldritch said, “the unclean and the holy are confused. Merged merely as taboo. The ritual for them, the—”

“Aw hell,” he said bitterly. “It’s true and you know it. I’m alive, I won’t die on that ship, but I’m defiled.”

“By me?”

Barney said, “Make your own guess.”

After a pause Eldritch shrugged and said, “All right. I was cast out from a star system—I won’t identify it because to you it wouldn’t matter—and I took up residence where that wild, get-rich-quick operator from your system encountered me. And some of that has been passed on to you. But not much. You’ll gradually, over the years, recover; it’ll diminish until it’s gone. Your fellow colonists won’t notice because it’s touched them, too; it began as soon as they participated in the chewing of what we sold them.”

“I’d like to know,” Barney said, “what you were trying to do when you introduced Chew-Z to our people.”

“Perpetuate myself,” the creature opposite him said quietly.

He glanced up, then. “A form of reproduction?”

“Yes, the only way I can.”

With overwhelming aversion Barney said, “My God. We would all have become your children.”

“Don’t fret about that now, Mr. Mayerson,” it said, and laughed in a humanlike, jovial way. “Just tend your little garden up top, get your water system going. Frankly I long for death; I’ll be glad when Leo Bulero does what he’s already contemplating…he’s begun to hatch it, now that you’ve refused to take the brain-metabolism toxin. Anyhow, I wish you luck here on Mars; I would have enjoyed it, myself, but things didn’t work out and that’s that.” Eldritch rose to his feet, then.

“You could revert,” Barney said. “Resume the form you were in when Palmer encountered you. You don’t have to be there, inhabiting that body, when Leo opens fire on your ship.”

“Could I?” Its tone was mocking. “Maybe something worse is waiting for me if I fail to show up there. But you wouldn’t know about that; you’re an entity whose lifespan is relatively short, and in a short span there’s a lot less—” It paused, thinking.

“Don’t tell me,” Barney said. “I don’t want to know.”

The next time he looked up, Palmer Eldritch was gone.

He lit another cigarette. What a mess, he thought. This is how we act when finally we do contact at long last another sentient race within the galaxy. And how
it
behaves, badly as us and in some respects much worse. And there’s nothing to redeem the situation. Not now.

And Leo thought that by going out to confront Eldritch with that tube of toxin we had a chance. Ironic.

And here I am, without having even consummated the miserable act for the courts’ benefit, physically, basically, unclean.

Maybe Anne can do something for me, he thought suddenly. Maybe there are methods to restore one to the original condition—dimly remembered, such as it was—before the late and more acute contamination set in. He tried to remember but he knew so little about Neo-Christianity. Anyhow it was worth a try; it suggested there might be hope, and he was going to need that in the years ahead.

After all, the creature residing in deep space which had taken the form of Palmer Eldritch bore some relationship to God; if it was not God, as he himself had decided, then at least it was a portion of God’s Creation. So some of the responsibility lay on Him. And, it seemed to Barney, He was probably mature enough to recognize this.

Getting Him to admit it, though. That might be something else again.

However, it was still worth talking to Anne Hawthorne; she might know of techniques for accomplishing even that.

But he somehow doubted it. Because he held a terrifying insight, simple, easy to think and utter, which perhaps applied to himself and those around him, to this situation.

There was such a thing as salvation. But—

Not for everyone.

On the trip back to Terra from their unsuccessful mission to Mars, Leo Bulero endlessly nitpicked and conferred with his colleague, Felix Blau. It was now obvious to both of them what they would have to do.

“He’s all the time traveling between a master-satellite around Venus and the other planets, plus his demesne on Luna,” Felix pointed out in summation. “And we all recognize how vulnerable a ship in space is; even a small puncture can—” He gestured graphically.

“We’d need the UN’s cooperation,” Leo said gloomily. Because all he and his organization were allowed to possess were side arms. Nothing that could be used by one ship against another.

“I’ve got what may be some interesting data on that,” Felix said, rummaging in his briefcase. “Our people in the UN reach into Hepburn-Gilbert’s office, as you may or may not know. We can’t
compel
him to do anything, but we can at least discuss it.” He produced a document. “Our Secretary-General is worried about the consistent appearance of Palmer Eldritch in every one of the so-called ‘reincarnations’ that users of Chew-Z experience. He’s smart enough to correctly interpret what that implies. So if it keeps happening undoubtedly we can get more cooperation from him, at least on a sub rosa basis; for instance—”

Leo broke in, “Felix, let me ask you something. How long have you had an artificial arm?”

Glancing down, Felix grunted in surprise. And then, staring at Leo Bulero, he said, “So do you, too. And there’s something the matter with your teeth; open your mouth and let’s see.”

Without answering, Leo got to his feet and went into the men’s room of the ship to survey himself in the floor-length mirror.

There was no doubt of it. Even the eyes, too. Resignedly he returned to his seat beside Felix Blau. Neither of them said anything for a while; Felix rattled his documents mechanically—oh God, Leo thought;
literally
mechanically!—and Leo alternated between watching him and dully staring out the window at the blackness and stars of interplan space.

Finally Felix said, “Sort of throws you at first, doesn’t it?”

“It does,” Leo agreed hoarsely. “I mean, hey Felix—what do we do?”

“We accept it,” Felix said. He was gazing with fixed intensity down the aisle at the people in the other seats. Leo looked and saw, too. The same deformity of the jaw. The same brilliant, unfleshly right hand, one holding a homeopape, another a book, a third its fingers restlessly tapping. On and on and on until the termination of the aisle and the beginning of the pilot’s cabin. In there, too, he realized. It’s all of us.

“But I just don’t quite get what it means,” Leo complained helplessly. “Are we in—you know. Translated by that foul drug and this is—” He gestured. “We’re both out of our minds, is that it?”

Felix Blau said, “Have you taken Chew-Z?”

“No. Not since that one intravenous injection on Luna.”

“Neither have I,” Felix said. “Ever. So it’s spread. Without the use of the drug. He’s everywhere, or rather
it’s
everywhere. But this is good; this’ll decidedly cause Hepburn-Gilbert to reconsider the UN’s stand. He’ll have to face exactly what this thing amounts to. I think Palmer Eldritch made a mistake; he went too far.”

“Maybe it couldn’t help it,” Leo said. Maybe the damn organism was like a protoplasm; it had to ingest and grow—instinctively it spread out farther and farther. Until it’s destroyed at the source, Leo thought. And we’re the ones to do it, because I’m personally Homo sapiens evolvens: I’m the human of the future right here sitting in this seat now.
If
we can get the UN’s help.

I’m the Protector, he said to himself, of our race.

He wondered if this blight had reached Terra, yet. A civilization of Palmer Eldritches, gray and hollow and stooped and immensely tall, each with his artificial arm and eccentric teeth and mechanical, slitted eyes. It would not be pleasant. He, the Protector, shrank from the envisioning of it. And suppose it reaches our minds? he asked himself. Not just the anatomy of the thing but the mentality as well…what would happen to our plans to kill the thing?

Say, I bet this still isn’t real, Leo said to himself. I know I’m right and Felix isn’t; I’m still under the influence of that one dose; I never came back out—that’s what’s the matter. Thinking this he felt relief, because there was still a real Terra untouched; it was only himself that was affected. No matter how genuine Felix beside him and the ship and the memory of his visit to Mars to see about Barney Mayerson seemed.

“Hey, Felix,” he said, nudging him. “You’re a figment. Get it? This is a private world of mine. I can’t prove it, naturally, but—”

“Sorry,” Felix said laconically. “You’re wrong.”

“Aw, come on! Eventually I’m going to wake up or whatever it is you finally do when that miserable stuff is out of your system. I’m going to keep drinking a lot of liquids, you know, flush it out of my veins.” He waved. “Stewardess.” He beckoned to her urgently. “Bring us our drinks now. Bourbon and water for me.” He glanced inquiringly at Felix.

“The same,” Felix murmured. “Except I want a little ice. But not too much because that way when it melts the drink is no good.”

The stewardess presently approached, tray extended. “Yours is with ice?” she asked Felix; she was blonde and pretty, with green eyes the texture of good polished stones, and when she bent forward her articulated, spherical breasts were partially exposed. Leo noticed that, liked that; however, the distortion of her jaw ruined the total impression and he felt disappointed, cheated. And now, he saw, the lovely long-lashed eyes had vanished. Been replaced. He looked away, disgruntled and depressed, until she had gone. It was going to be especially hard, he realized, regarding women; he did not for instance anticipate with any pleasure the first sight of Roni Fugate.

“You saw?” Felix said as he drank his drink.

“Yes, and it proves how quickly we’ve got to act,” Leo said. “As soon as we land in New York we look up that wily, no-good nitwit Hepburn-Gilbert.”

“What for?” Felix Blau asked.

Leo stared at him, then pointed at Felix’s artificial, shiny fingers holding his glass.

“I rather like them now,” Felix said meditatively.

That’s what I thought, Leo thought. That’s exactly what I was expecting. But I still have faith I can get at the thing, if not this week then next. If not this month then sometime. I know it; I know myself now and what I can do. It’s all up to me. Which is just fine. I saw enough in the future not to ever give up, even if I’m the only one who doesn’t succumb, who’s still keeping the old way alive, the pre-Palmer Eldritch way. It’s nothing more than faith in powers implanted in me from the start which I can—in the end—draw on and beat him with. So in a sense it isn’t me; it’s something
in
me that even that thing Palmer Eldritch can’t reach and consume because since it’s not me it’s not mine to lose. I feel it growing. Withstanding the external, nonessential alterations, the arm, the eyes, the teeth—it’s not touched by any of these three, the evil, negative trinity of alienation, blurred reality, and despair that Eldritch brought back with him from Proxima. Or rather from the space in between.

He thought, We have lived thousands of years under one old-time plague already that’s partly spoiled and destroyed our holiness, and that from a source higher then Eldritch. And if you can’t completely obliterate our spirit, how can this? Is it maybe going to finish the job? If it thinks so—if Palmer Eldritch believes that’s what he arrived here for—he’s wrong. Because that power in me that was implanted without my knowledge—
it wasn’t even reached by the original ancient blight
. How about that?

My evolved mind tells me all these things, he thought. Those E Therapy sessions weren’t in vain…I may not have lived as long as Eldritch in one sense, but in another sense I have; I’ve lived a hundred thousand years, that of my accelerated evolution, and out of it I’ve become very wise; I got my money’s worth. Nothing could be clearer to me now. And down in the resorts of Antarctica I’ll join the others like myself; we’ll be a guild of Protectors. Saving the rest.

“Hey Blau,” he said, poking with his non-artificial elbow the semi-thing beside him. “I’m your descendant. Eldritch showed up from another space but I came from another time. Got it?”

“Um,” Felix Blau murmured.

“Look at my double-dome, my big forehead; I’m a bubble-head, right? And this rind; it’s not just on top; it’s all over. So in my case the therapy really took. So don’t give up yet. Believe in me.”

“Okay, Leo.”

“Stick around for a while. There’ll be action. I may be looking out at you through a couple of Jensen luxvid artificial-type eyes, but it’s still me inside here. Okay?”

“Okay,” Felix Blau said. “Anything you say, Leo.”

“ ‘Leo’? How come you keep calling me ‘Leo’?”

Sitting rigidly upright in his chair, supporting himself with both hands, Felix Blau regarded him imploringly. “Think, Leo. For chrissakes
think
.”

“Oh yeah.” Sobered, he nodded; he felt chastened. “Sorry. It was just a temporary slip. I know what you’re referring to; I know what you’re afraid of. But it didn’t mean anything.” He added, “I’ll keep thinking, like you say. I won’t forget again.” He nodded solemnly, promising.