The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

12

With vast trailing arms he extended from the Proxima Centaurus system to Terra itself, and he was not human; this was not a man who had returned. And he had great power. He could overcome death.

But he was not happy. For the simple reason that he was alone. So he at once tried to make up for this; he went to a lot of trouble to draw others along the route he had followed.

One of them was Barney Mayerson.

“Mayerson,” he said, conversationally, “what the hell have you got to lose? Figure it out for yourself; you’re washed up as it stands—no woman you love, a past you regret. You realize you took a decisively wrong course in your life and nobody made you do it. And it can’t be repaired. Even if the future lasts for a million years it can’t restore what you lost by, so to speak, your own hand. You grasp my reasoning?”

No answer.

“And you forget one thing,” he continued, after waiting. “She’s devolved, from that miserable evolution therapy that ex-Nazi-type German doctor runs in those clinics. Sure, she—actually her husband—was smart enough to discontinue the treatments right away, and she can still turn out pots that sell; she didn’t devolve that much. But—you wouldn’t like her. You’d know; she’d be just a little more shallow, a shade sillier. It would not be like the past, even if you got her back; it’d be changed.”

Again he waited. This time there was an answer. “All right!”

“Where would you like to go?” he continued, then. “Mars? I’ll bet. Okay, then back to Terra.”

Barney Mayerson, not himself, said, “No. I left voluntarily; I was through; the end had come.”

“Okay. Not Terra. Let’s see. Hmm.” He pondered. “Prox,” he said. “You’ve never seen the Prox system and the Proxers. I’m a bridge, you know. Between the two systems. They can come here to the Sol system through me any time they want—and I allow them. But I haven’t allowed them. But how they are eager.” He chuckled. “They’re practically lined up. Like the kiddies’ Saturday afternoon movie matinee.”

“Make me into a stone.”

“Why?”

Barney Mayerson said, “So I can’t feel. There’s nothing for me anywhere.”

“You don’t even like being translated into one homogeneous organism with me?”

No answer.

“You can share my ambitions. I’ve got plenty of them, big ones—they make Leo’s look like dirt.” Of course, he thought, Leo will kill me not long from now. At least as time is reckoned outside of translation. “I’ll acquaint you with one. A minor one. Maybe it’ll fire you up.”

“I doubt it,” Barney said.

“I’m going to become a planet.”

Barney laughed.

“You think that’s funny?” He felt furious.

“I think you’re nuts. Whether you’re a man or a thing from intersystem space; you’re still out of your mind.”

“I haven’t explained,” he said with dignity, “precisely what I meant when I said that. What I mean is, I’m going to be everyone on the planet. You know what planet I’m talking about.”

“Terra.”

“Hell no. Mars.”

“Why Mars?”

“It’s—” He groped for the words. “New. Undeveloped. Full of potential. I’m going to be all the colonists as they arrive and begin to live there. I’ll guide their civilization; I’ll be their civilization!”

No answer.

“Come on. Say something.”

Barney said, “How come, if you can be so much, including a whole planet, I can’t be even that plaque on the wall of my office at P. P. Layouts?”

“Um,” he said, disconcerted. “Okay, okay. You can be that plaque; what the hell do I care? Be anything you want—you took the drug; you’re entitled to be translated into whatever pleases you. It’s not real, of course. That’s the truth. I’m letting you in on the innermost secret; it’s an hallucination. What makes it seem real is that certain prophetic aspects get into the experience, exactly as with dreams. I’ve walked into and out of a million of them, these so-called ‘translation’ worlds; I’ve seen them all. And you know what they are? They’re nothing. Like a captive white rat feeding electric impulses again and again to specific areas of his brain—its disgusting.”

“I see,” Barney Mayerson said.

“You want to wind up in one of them, knowing this?”

After a time Barney said, “Sure.”

“Okay! I’ll make you a stone, put you by a seashore; you can lie there and listen to the waves for a couple of million years. That ought to satisfy you.” You dumb jerk, he thought savagely. A stone! Christ!

“Am I softened or something?” Barney asked, then; in his voice were for the first time strong overtones of doubt. “Is this what the Proxers wanted? Is this why you were sent?”

“I wasn’t sent. I showed up here on my own. It beats living out in dead space between hot stars.” He chuckled. “Certainly you’re soft—and you want to be a stone. Listen, Mayerson; being a stone isn’t what you really want. What you want is death.”

“Death?”

“You mean you didn’t know?” He was incredulous. “Aw, come on!”

“No. I didn’t know.”

“It’s very simple, Mayerson; I’ll give you a translation world in which you’re a rotting corpse of a run-over dog in some ditch—think of it: what a goddamn relief it’ll be. You’re going to be me; you are me, and Leo Bulero is going to kill you. That’s the dead dog, Mayerson; that’s the corpse in the ditch.” And I’ll live on, he said to himself. That’s my gift to you, and remember: in German Gift means poison. I’ll let you die in my place a few months from now and that monument on Sigma 14-B will be erected but I’ll go on, in your living body. When you come back from Mars to work at P. P. Layouts again you’ll be me. And so I avoid my fate.

It was so simple.

“Okay, Mayerson,” he concluded, weary of the colloquy. “Up and at ‘em, as they say. Consider yourself dumped off; we’re not a single organism any more. We’ve got distinct, separate destinies again, and that’s the way you wanted it. You’re in a ship of Conner Freeman’s leaving Venus and I’m down in Chicken Pox Prospects; I’ve got a thriving vegetable garden up top, and I get to shack up with Anne Hawthorne any time I want—it’s a good life, as far as I’m concerned. I hope you like yours equally well.” And, at that instant, he emerged.

He stood in the kitchen of his compartment at Chicken Pox Prospects; he was frying himself a panful of local mushrooms… the air smelled of butter and spices and, in the living room, his portable tape recorder played a Haydn symphony. Peaceful, he thought with pleasure. Exactly what I want; a little peace and quiet. After all, I was used to that, out in intersystern space. He yawned, stretched with luxury, and said, “I did it.”

Seated in the living room, reading a homeopape taken from the news-service emanating from one of the UN satellites, Anne Hawthorne glanced up and said, “You did what, Barney?”

“Got just the right amount of seasoning in this,” he said, still exulting. I am Palmer Eldritch and I’m here, not there. I’ll survive Leo’s attack and I know how to enjoy, use, this life, here, as Barney didn’t or wouldn’t.

Let’s see how he prefers it when Leo’s fighter guns his merchant ship into particles. And he sees the last of a life bitterly regretted.

In the glare of the overhead light Barney Mayerson blinked. He realized after a second that he was on a ship; the room appeared ordinary, a combination bedroom and parlor, but he recognized it by the bolted-down condition of the furniture. And the gravity was all wrong; artificially produced, it failed to duplicate Earth’s.

And there was a view out. Limited, no larger in fact than a comb of bees’ wax. But still the thick plastic revealed the emptiness beyond, and he went over to fixedly peer. Sol, blinding, filled a portion of the panorama and he reflexively reached up to click the black filter into use. And, as he did so, he perceived his hand. His artificial, metallic, superbly efficient mechanical hand.

At once he stalked from the cabin and down the corridor until he reached the locked control booth; he rapped on it with his steel knuckles and after an interval the heavy reinforced bulkhead door opened.

“Yes, Mr. Eldritch.” The young blond-haired pilot, nodding with respect.

He said, “Send out a message.”

The pilot produced a pen and poised it over his notepad mounted at the rim of the instrument board. “Who to, sir?”

“To Mr. Leo Bulero.”

“To Leo… Bulero.” The pilot wrote rapidly. “Is this to be relayed to Terra, sir? If so—”

“No. Leo is near us in his own ship. Tell him—” He pondered rapidly.

“You want to talk with him, sir?”

“I don’t want him to kill me,” he answered. “That’s what I’m trying to say. And you with me. And whoever else is on this slow transport, this idiotically huge target.” But it’s hopeless, he realized, Somebody in Felix Blau’s organization, carefully planted on Venus, saw me board this ship; Leo knows I’m here and that’s it.

“You mean business competition is that tough?” the pilot said, taken by surprise; he blanched.

Zoe Eldritch, his daughter in dirndl and fur slippers, appeared. “What is it?”

He said, “Leo’s nearby. He’s got an armed ship, by UN permission; we were lured into a trap. We never should have gone to Venus. Hepburn-Gilbert was in on it.” To the pilot he said, “Just keep trying to reach him. I’m going back to my cabin.” There’s nothing I can do here, he said to himself, and started out.

“Hell,” the pilot said, “you talk to him; it’s you he’s after.” He slid from his seat, leaving it pointedly vacant.

Sighing, Barney Mayerson seated himself and clicked on the ship’s transmitter; he set it to the emergency frequency, lifted the microphone, and said into it, “You bastard, Leo. You’ve got me; you coaxed me out where you could get at me. You and that damn fleet of yours, already set up and operating before I got back from Prox– you had the head start.” He felt more angry than frightened, now. “We’ve got nothing on this ship. Absolutely nothing to protect ourselves with—you’re shooting down an unarmed target. This is a cargo carrier.” He paused, trying to think what else to say. Tell him, he thought, that I’m Barney Mayerson and that Eldritch will never be caught and killed because he’ll translate himself from life to life forever? And that in actuality you’re killing someone you know and love?

Zoe said, “Say something.”

“Leo,” he said into the microphone, “let me go back to Prox. Please.” He waited, listening to the static from the receiver’s speaker. “Okay,” he said, then. “I take it back. I’ll never leave the Sol system and you can never kill me, even with Hepburn-Gilbert’s help, or whoever it is in the UN you’re operating in conjunction with.” To Zoe he said, “How’s that? You like that?” He dropped the microphone with a clatter. “I’m through.”

The first bolt of laser energy nearly cut the ship in half.

Barney Mayerson lay on the floor of the control booth, listening to the racket of the emergency air pumps wheezing into shrill, clacking life. I got what I wanted, he realized. Or at least what Palmer said I wanted. I’m getting death.

Beyond his ship Leo Bulero’s UN-model trim fighter maneuvered for the placing of a second, final bolt. He could see, on the pilot’s view-screen, the flash of its exhausts. It was very close indeed.

Lying there he waited to die.

And then Leo Bulero walked across the central room of his compartment toward him.

Interested, Anne Hawthorne rose from her chair, said, “So you’re Leo Bulero. There’re a number of questions, all pertaining to your product Can-D—”

“I don’t produce Can-D,” Leo said. “I emphatically deny that rumor. None of my commercial enterprises are in any way illegal. Listen, Barney; did you or did you not consume that—” He lowered his voice; bending over Barney Mayerson, he whispered hoarsely. “You know.”

“I’ll step outside,” Anne said, perceptively.

“No,” Leo grunted. He turned to Felix Blau, who nodded. “We realize you’re one of Blau’s people,” Leo said to her. Again he prodded Barney Mayerson, irritably. I don’t think he took it,” he said, half to himself. “I’ll search him.” He began to rummage in Barney’s coat pockets and then in his inside shirt. “Here it is.” He fished out the tube containing the brain-metabolism toxin. Unscrewing the cap he peered in. “Unconsumed,” he said to Blau, with massive disgust. “So naturally Faine heard nothing from him. He backed out.”

Barney said, “I didn’t back out.” I’ve been a long way, he said to himself. Can’t you tell? “Chew-Z,” he said. “Very far.”

“Yeah, you’ve been out about two minutes,” Leo said with contempt. “We got here just as you locked yourself in; some fella—Norm something—let us in with his master key; he’s in charge of this hovel, I guess.”

“But remember,” Anne said, “the subjective experience with Chew-Z is disconnected to our time-rate; to him it may have been hours or even days.” She looked sympathetically in Barney’s direction. “True?”

“I died,” Barney said. He sat up, nauseated. “You killed me.”

There was a remarkable, nonplused silence.

“You mean me?” Felix Blau asked at last.

“No,” Barney said. It didn’t matter. At least not until the next time he took the drug. Once that happened the finish would arrive; Palmer Eldritch would be successful, would achieve survival. And that was the unbearable part; not his own death—which eventually would arrive anyhow—but Palmer Eldritch’s putting on immortality. Grave, he thought; where’s your victory over this—thing?

“I feel insulted,” Felix Blau complained. “I mean, what’s this about someone killing you, Mayerson? Hell, we roused you out of your coma. And it was a long, difficult trip here and for Mr. Bulero—my client—in my opinion a risky one; this is the region where Eldritch operates.” He glanced about apprehensively. “Get him to take that toxic substance,” he said to Leo, “and then let’s get back to Terra before something terrible happens. I can feel it.” He started toward the door of the compartment.

Leo said, “Will you take it, Barney?”

“No,” he said.

“Why not?” Weariness. Even patience.

“My life means too much to me.” I’ve decided to halt in my atoning, he thought. At last.

“What happened to you while you were translated?”

He rose to his feet; he barely made it.

“He’s not going to say,” Felix Blau said, at the doorway.

Leo said, “Barney, it’s all we’ve come up with. I’ll get you off Mars; you know that. And Q-type epilepsy isn’t the end of—”

“You’re wasting your time,” Felix said, and disappeared out into the hail. He gave Barney one final envenomed glance. “What a mistake you made, pinning your hopes on this guy.”

Barney said, “He’s right, Leo.”

“You’ll never get off Mars,” Leo said. “I’ll never wangle a passage back to Terra for you. No matter what happens from here on out.”

“I know it.”

“But you don’t care. You’re going to spend the rest of your life taking that drug.” Leo glared at him, baffled.

“Never again,” Barney said.

“Then what?”

Barney said, “I’ll live here. As a colonist. I’ll work on my garden up top and whatever else they do. Build irrigation systems and like that.” He felt tired and the nausea had not left him. “Sorry,” he said.

“So am I,” Leo said. “And I don’t understand it.” He glanced at Anne Hawthorne, saw no answer there either, shrugged, then walked to the door. There he started to say something more but gave up; with Felix Blau he departed. Barney listened to the sound of them clanking up the steps to the mouth of the hovel and then finally the sound died away and there was silence. He went to the sink and got himself a glass of water.

After a time Anne said, “I understand it.”

“Do you?” The water tasted good; it washed away the last traces of Chew-Z.

“Part of you has become Palmer Eldritch,” she said. “And part of him became you. Neither of you can ever become completely separated again; you’ll always be—”

“You’re out of your mind,” he said, leaning with exhaustion against the sink, steadying himself; his legs were too weak, still.

“Eldritch got what he wanted out of you,” Anne said.

“No,” he said. “Because I came back too soon. I would have had to be there another five or ten minutes. When Leo fires his second shot it’ll be Palmer Eldritch there in that ship, not me.” And that’s why there is no need for me to derange my brain metabolism in a hasty, crackpot scheme concocted out of desperation, he said to himself. The man will be dead soon enough… or rather it will be.

“I see,” Anne said. “And you’re sure this glimpse of the future that you had during translation—”

“It’s valid.” Because he was not dependent on what had been available to him during his experience with the drug.

In addition he had his own precog ability.

“And Palmer Eldritch knows it’s valid, too,” he said. “He’ll do, is doing, everything possible to get out of it. But he won’t. Can’t.” Or at least, he realized, it’s probable that he can’t. But here was the essence of the future: interlaced possibilities. And long ago he had accepted this, learned how to deal with it; he intuitively knew which time-line to choose. By that he had held his job with Leo.

“But because of this Leo won’t pull strings for you,” Anne said. “He really won’t get you back to Earth; he meant it. Don’t you comprehend the seriousness of that? I could tell by the expression on his face; as long as he lives he’ll never—”

“Earth,” Barney said, “I’ve had.” He too had meant what he had said, his anticipations for his own life which lay ahead here on Mars.

If it was good enough for Palmer Eldritch it was good enough for him. Because Eldritch had lived many lives; there had been a vast, reliable wisdom contained within the substance of the man or creature, whatever it was. The fusion of himself with Eldritch during translation had left a mark on him, a brand for perpetuity: it was a form of absolute awareness. He wondered, then, if Eldritch had gotten anything back from him in exchange. Did I have something worth his knowing? he asked himself. Insights?Moods or memories or values?

Good question. The answer, he decided, was no. Our opponent, something admittedly ugly and foreign that entered one of our race like an ailment during the long voyage between Terra and Prox… and yet it knew much more than I did about the meaning of our finite lives, here; it saw in perspective. From its centuries of vacant drifting as it waited for some kind of life form to pass by which it could grab and become… maybe that’s the source of its knowledge: not experience but unending solitary brooding. And in comparison I knew—had done—nothing.

At the door of the compartment Norm and Fran Schein appeared. “Hey, Mayerson; how was it? What’d you think of Chew-Z the second time around?” They entered, expectantly awaiting his answer.

Barney said, “It’ll never sell.”

Disappointed, Norm said, “That wasn’t my reaction; I liked it, and a lot better than Can-D. Except—” He hesitated, frowned, and glanced at his wife with a worried expression. “There was a creepy presence though, where I was; it sort of marred things.” He explained, “Naturally I was back—”

Fran interrupted, “Mr. Mayerson looks tired. You can give him the rest of the details later.”

Eying Barney, Norm Schein said, “You’re a strange bird, Barney. You came out of it the first time and snatched this girl’s bindle, here, this Miss Hawthorne, and ran off and locked yourself in your compartment so you could take it, and now you say—” He shrugged philosophically. “Well, maybe you just got too much in your craw all at once. You weren’t moderate, man. Me, I intend to try it again. Carefully, of course. Not like you.” Reassuring himself he said loudly, “I mean it; I liked the stuff.”

“Except,” Barney said, “for the presence that was there with you.”

“I felt it, too,” Fran said quietly. “I’m not going to try it again. I’m—afraid of it. Whatever it was.” She shivered and moved closer to her husband; automatically, from long habit, he put his arm around her waist.

Barney said, “Don’t be afraid of it. It’s just trying to live, like the rest of us are.”

“But it was so—” Fran began.

“Anything that old,” Barney said, “would have to seem unpleasant to us. We have no conception of age to that dimension. That enormity.”

“You talk like you know what it was,” Norm said.

I know, Barney thought. Because as Anne said, part of it’s here inside me. And it will, until it dies a few months from now, retain its portion of me incorporated within its own structure. So when Leo kills it, he realized, it will be a bad instant for me. I wonder how it will feel. .

“That thing,” he said, speaking to them all, especially to Norm Schein and his wife, “has a name which you’d recognize if I told it to you. Although it would never call itself that. We’re the ones who’ve titled it. From experience, at a distance, over thousands of years. But sooner or later we were bound to be confronted by it. Without the distance. Or the years.”

Anne Hawthorne said, “You mean God.”

It did not seem to him necessary to answer, beyond a slight nod.

“But—evil?” Fran Schein whispered.

“An aspect,” Barney said. “Our experience of it. Nothing more.” Or didn’t I make you see that already? he asked himself. Should I tell you how it tried to help me, in its own way? And yet—how fettered it was, too, by the forces of fate, which seem to transcend all that live, including it as much as ourselves.

“Gee whiz,” Norm said, the corners of his mouth turning down in almost tearful disappointment; he looked, for a moment, like a cheated small boy.