The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (13 page)

“Terrific,” Norm Schein said, radiating enthusiasm. “So what you get is a whole evening’s entertainment, say
sad
version in the style of Jack Wright of like for instance
Vanity Fair
. Wow!”

Sighing, Fran said dreamily, “How it must have resounded in your soul, Barney, to have lived so recently on Terra. You seem to carry the vibrations with you still.”

“Heck, we get it all,” Norm said, “when we’re translated.” Impatiently he reached for the undersize supply of Can-D. “Let’s start.” Taking his own slice he chewed with vigor. “The Great Book I’m going to turn into a full-length
funny
cartoon version in the style of De Chirico will be—” He pondered. “Um,
The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius
.”

“Very witty,” Helen Morris said cuttingly. “I was going to suggest Augustine’s
Confessions
in the style of Lichtenstein—
funny
, of course.”

“I mean it! Imagine: the surrealistic perspective, deserted, ruined buildings with Doric columns lying on their sides, hollow heads—”

“Everybody else better get chewing,” Fran advised, taking her slice, “so we’ll be in synch.”

Barney accepted his. The end of the old, he reflected as he chewed; I’m participating in what, for this particular hovel, is the final night, and in its place comes what? If Leo is right it will be intolerably worse, in fact no comparison. Of course, Leo is scarcely disinterested. But he is evolved. And wise.

Minned objects which in the past I judged favorably, he realized. I’ll in a moment be immersed in a world composed of them, reduced to their dimension. And, unlike the other hovelists, I can compare my experience of this layout with what I so recently left behind.

And fairly soon, he realized soberly, I will be required to do the same with Chew-Z.

“You’re going to discover it’s an odd sensation,” Norm Schein said to him, “to find yourself inhabiting a body with three other fellas; we all have to agree on what we want the body to do, or anyhow a dominant majority has to form, otherwise we’re just plain stuck.”

“That happens,” Tod Morris said. “Half the time, in fact.”

One by one the rest of them began to chew their slices of Can-D; Barney Mayerson was the last and most reluctant. Aw hell, he thought all at once, and strode across the room to a basin; there he spat out the half-chewed Can-D without having swallowed it.

The others, seated at the Perky Pat layout, had already collapsed into a coma and none of them now paid any attention to him. He was, for all intents and purposes, suddenly alone. The hovel for a time was his.

He wandered about, aware of the silence.

I just can’t do it, he realized. Can’t take the damn stuff like the rest of them do. At least not yet.

A bell sounded.

Someone was at the hovel entrance, requesting permission to enter; it was up to him to admit them. So he made his way in ascent, hoping he was doing the proper thing, hoping that it was not one of the UN’s periodic raids; there would not be much he could do to keep them from discovering the other hovelists inert at their layout and, flagrante delicto, Can-D users.

Lantern in hand, at the ground-level entrance, stood a young woman wearing a bulky heat-retention suit and clearly unaccustomed to it; she looked enormously uncomfortable. “Hello, Mr. Mayerson,” she said. “Remember me? I tracked you down because I’m just terribly lonely. May I come in?” It was Anne Hawthorne; surprised, he stared at her. “Or are you busy? I could come back another time.” She half-turned, starting away.

“I can see,” he said, “that Mars has been quite some shock to you.”

“It’s a sin on my part,” Anne said, “but I already hate it; I really do—I know I should adopt a patient attitude of acceptance and all that, but—” She flashed the lantern at the landscape beyond the hovel and in a quavering, despairing voice said, “All I want to do now is find some way to get back to Earth; I don’t want to convert anybody or change anything, I just want to get away from here.” She added morosely, “But I know I can’t. So I thought instead I’d visit you. See?”

Taking her by the hand he led her down the ramp and to the compartment which had been assigned to him as his living quarters.

“Where’re your co-hovelists?” She looked about alertly.

“Out.”

“Outside?” She opened the door to the communal room, and saw the lot of them slumped at the layout. “Oh, out that way. But not you.” She shut the door, frowning, obviously perplexed. “You amaze me. I’d have gladly accepted some Can-D, tonight, the way I feel. Look how well you’re standing up under it, compared with me. I’m so—inadequate.”

Barney said, “Maybe I have more of a purpose here than you.”

“I had plenty of purpose.” She removed her bulky suit and seated herself as he began fixing coffee for the two of them. “The people in my hovel—it’s half a mile to the north of this one—are out, too, the same way. Did you know I was so close? Would you have looked me up?”

“Sure I would have.” He found plastic, insipidly styled cups and saucers, laid them on the foldaway table, and produced the equally foldaway chairs. “Maybe,” he said, “God doesn’t extend as far as Mars. Maybe when we left Terra—”

“Nonsense,” Anne said sharply, rousing herself.

“I thought that would succeed in getting you angry.”

“Of course it does. He’s everywhere. Even here.” She glanced at his partially unpacked possessions, the suitcases and sealed cartons. “You didn’t bring very much, did you? Most of mine’s still on the way, on an autonomic transport.” Strolling over, she stood studying a pile of paperback books.
“De Imitatione Christi,”
she said in amazement. “You’re reading Thomas à Kempis? This is a great and wonderful book.”

“I bought it,” he said, “but never read it.”

“Did you try? I bet you didn’t.” She opened it at random and read to herself, her lips moving. “ ‘Think the least gift that he giveth is great; and the most despisable things take as special gifts and as great tokens of love.’ That would include life here on Mars, wouldn’t it? This despisable life, shut up in these—hovels. Well-named, aren’t they? Why in the name of God—” She turned to him, appealing to him. “Couldn’t it be a
finite
period here, and then we could go home?”

Barney said, “A colony, by definition, has to be permanent. Think of Roanoke Island.”

“Yes.” Anne nodded. “I have been. I wish Mars was one big Roanoke Island, with everyone going home.”

“To be slowly cooked.”

“We can evolve, as the rich do; it could be done on a mass basis.” She put down the à Kempis book abruptly. “But I don’t want that, either; a chitinous shell and the rest. Isn’t there any answer, Mr. Mayerson? You know, Neo-Christians are taught to believe they’re travelers in a foreign land. Wayfaring strangers. Now we really are; Earth is ceasing to become our natural world, and certainly
this
never will be. We’ve got no world left!” She stared at him, her nostrils flaring. “No home at all!”

“Well,” he said uncomfortably, “there’s always Can-D and Chew-Z.”

“Do you have any?”

“No.”

She nodded. “Back to Thomas à Kempis, then.” But she did not pick the book up again; instead she stood head-down, lost in dreary meditation. “I know what’s going to happen, Mr. Mayerson. Barney. I’m not going to convert anyone to Neo-American Christianity; instead they’ll convert me to Can-D and Chew-Z and whatever other vice is current, here, whatever escape presents itself. Sex. They’re terribly promiscuous here on Mars, you know; everyone goes to bed with everyone else. I’ll even try that; in fact I’m ready for it right now—I just can’t stand the way things are…did you get a really
good look
at the surface before nightfall?”

“Yes.” It hadn’t upset him that much, seeing the half-abandoned gardens and fully abandoned equipment, the great heaps of rotting supplies. He knew from edu-tapes that the frontier was always like that, even on Earth; Alaska had been like that until recent times and so, except for the actual resort towns, was Antarctica right now.

Anne Hawthorne said, “Those hovelists in the other room at their layout. Suppose we lifted Perky Pat entirely from the board and smashed it to bits? What would become of them?”

“They’d go on with their fantasy.” It was established, now; the props were no longer necessary as foci. “Why would you want to do that?” It had a decided sadistic quality to it and he was surprised; the girl had not struck him that way at first meeting.

“Iconoclasm,” Anne said. “I want to smash their idols and that’s what Perky Pat and Walt are. I want to because I—” She was silent, then. “I envy them. It’s not religious fervor; it’s just a very mean, cruel streak. I know it. If I can’t join them—”

“You can. You will. So will I. But not right away.” He served her a cup of coffee; she accepted it reflexively, slender now without her heavy outer coat. She was, he saw, almost as tall as he; in heels she would be, if not taller. Her nose was odd. It ended in a near ball, not quite humorously but rather—earthy, he decided. As if it ties her to the soil; it made him think of Anglo-Saxon and Norman peasants tilling their square, small fields.

No wonder she hated it on Mars; historically her people undoubtedly had loved the authentic ground of Terra, the smell and actual texture, and above all the memory it contained, the remnants in transmuted form, of the host of critters who had walked about and then at last dropped dead, in the end perished and turned back—not to dust—but to rich humus. Well, she could start a garden here on Mars; maybe she could make one grow where previous hovelists had pointedly failed. How strange that she was so absolutely depressed. Was this normal for new arrivals? Somehow he himself did not feel it. Perhaps on some deep level he imagined he would find his way back to Terra. In which case it was he who was deranged. Not Anne.

Anne said suddenly, “I have some Can-D, Barney.” She reached into the pockets of her UN-issue canvas work-slacks, groped, and brought a small packet out. “I bought it a little while ago, in my own hovel. Flax Back Spit, as they call it. The hovelist who sold it to me believed that Chew-Z would make it worthless so he gave me a good price. I tried to take it—I practically had it in my mouth. But finally like you I couldn’t. Isn’t a miserable reality better than the most interesting illusion? Or
is
it illusion, Barney? I don’t know anything about philosophy; you explain it to me because all I know is religious faith and that doesn’t equip me to understand this. These translation drugs.” All at once she opened the packet; her fingers squirmed desperately. “I can’t go on, Barney.”

“Wait,” he said, putting his own cup down and starting toward her. But it was too late; she had already taken the Can-D. “None for me?” he asked, a little amused. “You’re missing the whole point; you won’t have anyone to be with, in translation.” Taking her by the arm he led her from the compartment, tugging her hurriedly out into the corridor and across into the large communal room where the others lay; seating her among them, he said, with compassion, “At least this way it’ll be a shared experience and I understand that helps.”

“Thank you,” she said drowsily. Her eyes shut and her body became, by degrees, limp.

Now, he realized, she’s Perky Pat. In a world without trouble.

Bending, he kissed her on the mouth.

“I’m still awake,” she murmured.

“But you won’t remember anyhow,” he said.

“Oh yes I will,” Anne Hawthorne said faintly. And then she departed; he felt her go. He was alone with seven uninhabited physical shells and he at once made his way back to his own quarters where the two cups of hot coffee steamed.

I could fall in love with that girl, he said to himself. Not like Roni Fugate or even like Emily but something new. Better? he wondered. Or is this desperation? Exactly what I saw Anne do just now with the Can-D, gulp it down because there is nothing else, only darkness. It is this or the void. And not for a day or a week but—forever. So I’ve got to fall in love with her.

By himself he sat surrounded by his partly unpacked belongings, drinking coffee and meditating until at last he heard groanings and stirrings in the communal room. His fellow hovelists were returning to consciousness. He put his cup down and walked out to join them.

“Why’d you back out, Mayerson?” Norm Schein said; he rubbed his forehead, scowling. “God, what a headache I’ve got.” He noticed Anne Hawthorne, then; still unconscious, she lay with her back against the wall, her head dropped forward. “Who’s she?”

Fran, rising to her feet unsteadily, said, “She joined us at the end; she’s a pal of Mayerson’s: he met her on the flight. She’s quite nice but she’s a religious nut; you’ll see.” Critically, she eyed Anne. “Not too bad looking. I was really curious to see her; I imagined her as more, well, austere.”

Coming up to Barney, Sam Regan said, “Get her to join you, Mayerson; we’d be glad to vote to admit her, here. We’ve got lots of room and you should have a—shall we say—wife.” He, too, scrutinized Anne. “Yeah,” he said. “Pretty. Nice long black hair; I like that.”

“You do, do you,” Mary Regan said tartly to him.

“Yeah I do; so what?” Sam Regan glared back at his wife.

Barney said, “She’s spoken for.”

They all eyed him curiously.

“That’s odd,” Helen Morris said. “Because when we were together with her just now she didn’t tell us that, and as far as we could make out you and she had only—”

Interrupting, Fran Schein said to Barney, “You don’t want a Neo-Christian nut to live with you. We’ve had experience with that; we ejected a couple of them last year. They can cause terrible trouble here on Mars. Remember,
we shared her mind
…she’s a dedicated member of some high church or other, with all the sacraments and the rituals, all that old outdated junk; she actually believes in it.”

Barney said tightly, “I know.”

In an easy-going way Tod Morris said, “That’s true, Mayerson; honest. We have to live too close together to import any kind of ideological fanaticism from Terra. It’s happened at other hovels; we know what we’re talking about. It has to be live and let live, with no absolutist creeds and dogma; a hovel is just too small.” He lit a cigarette and glanced down at Anne Hawthorne. “Strange that a pretty girl would pick that stuff up. Well, it takes all kinds.” He looked puzzled.