The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

5

Set up financially by the contract with the Chew-Z people, Richard Hnatt placed a call to one of Dr. Willy Denkmal’s E Therapy clinics in the Germanies; he picked the central one, in Munich, and began making arrangements for both himself and Emily.

I’m up with the greats, he said to himself as he waited, with Emily, in the swanky gnoff-hide decorated lounge of the clinic; Dr. Denkmal, as was his custom, proposed to interview them initially personally, although of course the therapy itself would be carried out by members of his staff.

“It makes me nervous,” Emily whispered; she held a magazine on her lap but was unable to read. “It’s so—unnatural.”

“Hell,” Hnatt said vigorously, “that’s what it’s not; it’s an acceleration of the natural evolutionary process that’s going on all the time anyway, only usually it’s so slow we don’t perceive it. I mean, look at our ancestors in caves; they were covered with body-hair and they had no chins and a very limited frontal-area brain-wise. And they had huge fused molars in order to chew uncooked seeds.”

“Okay,” Emily said, nodding.

“The farther away we can get from them the better. Anyhow, they evolved to meet the Ice Age; we have to evolve to meet the Fire Age, just the opposite. So we need that chitinous-type skin, that rind and the altered metabolism that lets us sleep in midday and also the improved ventilation and the—”

From the inner office Dr. Denkmal, a small, round style of middle-class German with white hair and an Albert Schweitzer mustache, emerged. With him came another man, and Richard Hnatt saw for the first time close-up the effects of E Therapy. And it was not like seeing pics on the society pages of the homeopape. Not at all.

The man’s head reminded Hnatt of a photograph he had once seen in a textbook; the photo had been labeled hydrocephalic. The same enlargement above the browline; it was clearly domelike and oddly fragile-looking and he saw at once why these well-to-do persons who had evolved were popularly called bubbleheads. Looks about to burst, he thought, impressed. And—the massive rind. Hair had given way to the darker, more uniform pattern of chitinous shell. Bubblehead? More like a coconut.

“Mr. Hnatt,” Dr. Denkmal said to Richard Hnatt, pausing. “And Frau Hnatt, too. I’ll be with you in a moment.” He turned back to the man beside him. “It’s just chance that we were able to squeeze you in today, Mr. Bulero, on such short notice. Anyhow you haven’t lost a bit of ground; in fact you’ve gained.”

However, Mr. Bulero was gazing at Richard Hnatt. “I’ve heard your name before. Oh, yes. Felix Blau mentioned you.” His supremely intelligent eyes became dark and he said, “Did you recently sign a contract with a Boston firm called—” The elongated face, distorted as if by a permanent optically impaired mirror, twisted. “Chew-Z Manufacturers?”

“N-nuts to you,” Hnatt stammered. “Your Pre-Fash consultant turned us down.”

Leo Bulero eyed him, then with a shrug turned back to Dr. Denkmal. “I’ll see you in two weeks.”

“Two! But—” Denkmal gestured protestingly.

“I can’t make it next week; I’ll be off Terra again.” Again Bulero eyed Richard and Emily Hnatt, lingeringly, then strode off.

Watching him go, Dr. Denkmal said, “Very evolved, that man. Both physically and spiritually.” He turned to the Hnatts. “Welcome to Eichenwald Clinic.” He beamed.

“Thank you,” Emily said nervously. “Does—it hurt?”

“Our therapy?” Dr. Denkmal tittered with amusement. “Not in the slightest, although it may shock—in the figurative sense—at first. As you experience a growth of your cortex area. You’ll have many new and exciting concepts occur to you, especially of a religious nature. Oh, if only Luther and Erasmus were alive today; their controversies could be solved so easily now, by means of E Therapy. Both would see the truth, as zum Beiszspiel regard transubstantiation—you know, the Blut und–” He interrupted himself with a cough. “In English, blood and wafer; you know, in the Mass. Is very much like the takers of Can-D; have you noticed that affinity? But come on; we begin.” He slapped Richard Hnatt on the back and led the two of them into his inner office, eying Emily with what seemed to Richard to be a rather unspiritual, covetous look.

They faced a gigantic chamber of scientific gadgets and two Dr. Frankenstein tables, complete with arm and leg brackets. At the sight Emily moaned and shrank back.

“Nothing to fear, Frau Hnatt. Like electra-convulsive shock, causes certain musculature reactions; reflex, you know?” Denkmal giggled. “Now you must, ah, you know: take off your clothes. Each of you in private, of course; then don smocks and auskommen–understand? A nurse will assist you. We have your medical charts from Nord Amerika already; we know your histories. Both quite healthy, virile; good Nord Amerikanische people.” He led Richard Hnatt to a side room, secluded by a curtain; there he left him off and returned to Emily. As he entered the side room Richard heard Dr. Denkmal talking to Emily in a soothing but commanding tone; the combination was a neat bit of business and Hnatt felt both envious and suspicious and then, at last, glum. It was not quite as he had pictured it, not quite big-time enough to suit him.

However, Leo Bulero had emerged from this room so that proved it was authentic big-time; Bulero would never have settled for less.

Heartened, he began to undress.

Somewhere out of sight Emily squeaked.

He redressed and left the side room, boiling with concern. However, he found Denkmal at a desk, reading Emily’s medical chart; she was off, he realized, with a female nurse, so everything was all right.

Criminy, he thought, I certainly am edgy. Once more entering the side room he resumed undressing; his hands, he found, were shaking.

Presently he lay strapped to one of the twin tables, Emily in a similar state beside him. She, too, seemed frightened; she was very pale and quiet.

“Your glands,” Dr. Denkmal explained, jovially rubbing his hands together and wantonly eying Emily, “will be stimulated by this, especially Kresy’s Gland, which controls rate of evolution, nicht Wahr? Yes, you know that; every schoolchild knows that, is taught now what we’ve discovered here. Today what you will notice is no growth of chitinous shell or brain-shield or loss of fingernails and toenails—you didn’t know that, I bet!–but only a slight but very, very important change in the frontal lobe… it will smart; that is a pun, you know? It smarts and you become, ah, smart.” Again he giggled. Richard Hnatt felt miserable; he waited like some hog-tied animal for whatever they had in store for him. What a way to make business contacts, he said ruefully to himself, and shut his eyes.

A male attendant materialized and stood by him, looking blond, Nordic, and without intelligence.

“We play soothing Musik,” Dr. Denkmal said, pressing a button. Multiphonic sound, from every corner of the room, filtered out, an insipid orchestral version of some popular Italian opera, Puccini or Verdi; Hnatt did not know. “Now höre, Herr Hnatt.” Denkmal bent down beside him, suddenly serious. “I want you to understand; every now and then this therapy—what do you say?– blasts back.”

“Backfires,” Hnatt said gratingly. He had been expecting this.

“But mostly we have successes. Here, Herr Hnatt, is what the backfires consist of, I am afraid; instead of evolving the Kresy Gland is very stimulated to—regress. Is that correct in English?”

“Yes,” Hnatt muttered. “Regress how far?”

“Just a trifle. But it could be unpleasant. We would catch it quickly, of course, and cease therapy. And generally that stops the regression. But—not always. Sometimes once the Kresy Gland has been stimulated to—” He gestured. “It keeps on. I should tell you this in case you might have scruples. Right?”

“I’ll take the chance,” Richard Hnatt said. “I guess. Everyone else does, don’t they? Okay, go ahead.” He squirmed, saw Emily, even paler now, almost imperceptibly nodding; her eyes were glassy.

What’ll probably happen, he thought fatalistically, is that one of us will evolve–probably Emily—and the other, me, will devolve back to Sinanthropus. Back to fused molars, tiny brain, bent legs, and cannibalistic tendencies. I’ll have a hell of a time closing sales that way.

Dr. Denkmal clamped a switch shut, whistling along with the opera happily to himself.

The Hnatts’ E Therapy had begun.

He seemed to feel a loss of weight, nothing more, at least not at first. And then his head ached as if rapped by a hammer. With the ache came almost instantly a new and acute comprehension; it was a dreadful risk he and Emily were taking, and it wasn’t fair to her to subject her to this, just to further sales. Obviously she didn’t want this; suppose she evolved back just enough to lose her ceramic talent? And they both would be ruined; his career hung on seeing Emily remain one of the planet’s top ceramists.

“Stop,” he said aloud, but the sound did not seem to emerge; he did not hear it, although his vocal apparatus seemed to function—he felt the words in his throat. And then it came to him. He was evolving; it was functioning. His insight was due to the change in his brain metabolism. Assuming Emily was all right then everything was all right.

He perceived, too, that Dr. Willy Denkmal was a cheap little pseudo-quack, that this whole business preyed off the vanity of mortals striving to become more than they were entitled to be, and in a purely earthly, transitory way. The hell with his sales, his contacts; what did that matter in comparison to the possibility of evolving the human brain to entire new orders of conception? For instance—

Below lay the tomb world, the immutable cause-and-effect world of the demonic. At median extended the layer of the human, but at any instant a man could plunge—descend as if sinking—into the hell-layer beneath. Or: he could ascend to the ethereal world above, which constituted the third of the trinary layers. Always, in his middle level of the human, a man risked the sinking. And yet the possibility of ascent lay before him; any aspect or sequence of reality could become either, at any instant. Hell and heaven, not after death but now! Depression, all mental illness, was the sinking. And the other… how was it achieved?

Through empathy. Grasping another, not from outside but from the inner. For example, had he ever really looked at Emily’s pots as anything more than merchandise for which a market existed? No. What I ought to have seen in them, he realized, is the artistic intention, the spirit she’s revealing intrinsically.

And that contract with Chew-Z Manufacturers, he realized; I signed without consulting her–how unethical can one become? I chained her to a firm which she may not want as a minner of her products… we have no knowledge of the worth of their layouts. They may be shoddy. Substandard. But too late, now; the road to the hell-layer is paved with second-guessing. And they may be involved in the illegal manufacture of a translation drug; that would explain the name Chew-Z… it would correspond with Can-D. But—the fact that they’ve selected that name openly suggests they have nothing illegal in mind.

With a lightning leap of intuition it came to him: someone had found a translation drug which satisfied the UN’s narcotics agency. The agency had already passed on Chew-Z, would allow it on the open market. So, for the first time, a translation drug would be available on thoroughly policed Terra, not in the remote, unpoliced colonies only.

And this meant that Chew-Z’s layouts—unlike Perky Pat—would be marketable on Terra, along with the drug. And as the weather worsened over the years, as the home planet became more of an alien environment, the layouts would sell faster. The market which Leo Bulero controlled was pitifully meager compared to what lay eventually—but not now–before Chew-Z Manufacturers.

So he had signed a good contract after all. And—no wonder Chew-Z had paid him so much. They were a big outfit, with big plans; they had, obviously, unlimited capital backing them.

And where would they obtain unlimited capital? Nowhere on Terra; he intuited that, too. Probably from Palmer Eldritch, who had returned to the Sol system after having joined economically with the Proxers; it was they who were behind Chew-Z. So, for the chance to ruin Leo Bulero, the UN was allowing a non-Sol race to begin operations in the system.

It was a bad, perhaps even terminal, exchange.

The next he knew, Dr. Denkmal was slapping him into wakefulness. “How goes it?” Denkmal demanded, peering at him. “Broad, all-inclusive preoccupations?”

“Y-yes,” he said, and managed to sit up; he was unstrapped.

“Then we have nothing to fear,” Denkmal said, and beamed, his white mustache twitching like antennae. “Now we will consult with Frau Hnatt.” A female attendant was already unstrapping her; Emily sat up groggily and yawned. Dr. Denkrnal looked nervous. “How do you feel, Frau?” he inquired.

“Fine,” Emily murmured. “I had all sorts of pot ideas. One after another.” She glanced timidly at first him and then at Richard. “Does that mean anything?”

“Paper,” Dr. Denkmal said, producing a tablet. “Pen.” He extended them to Emily. “Put down your ideas, Frau.”

Tremblingly, Emily sketched her pot ideas. She seemed to have difficulty controlling the pen, Hnatt noticed. But presumably that would pass.

“Fine,” Dr. Denkmal said, when she had finished. He showed the sketches to Richard Hnatt. “Highly organized cephalic activity. Superior inventiveness, right?”

The pot sketches were certainly good, even brilliant. And yet Hnatt felt there was something wrong. Something about the sketches. But it was not until they had left the clinic, were standing together under the antithermal curtain outside the building, waiting for their jet-express cab to land, that he realized what it was.

The ideas were good—but Emily had done them already. Years ago, when she had designed her first professionally adequate pots: she had shown him sketches of them and then the pots themselves, even before the two of them were married. Didn’t she remember this? Obviously not.

He wondered why she didn’t remember and what it meant; it made him deeply uneasy.

However, he had been continually uneasy since receiving the first E Therapy treatment, first about the state of mankind and the Sol system in general and now about his wife. Maybe it’s merely a sign of what Denkmal calls “highly organized cephalic activity,” he thought to himself. Brain metabolism stimulation.

Or—maybe not.

Arriving on Luna, with his official press card from P. P. Layout’s house journal clutched, Leo Bulero found himself squeezed in with a gaggle of homeopape reporters on their way by surface tractor across the ashy face of the moon to Palmer Eldritch’s demesne.

“Your ident-pape, sir,” an armed guard, but not wearing the colors of the UN, yapped at him as he prepared to exit into the parking area of the demesne. Leo Bulero was thereupon wedged in the doorway of the tractor, while behind him the legitimate homeopape reporters surged and clamored restively, wanting to get out. “Mr. Bulero,” the guard said leisurely, and returned the press card. “Mr. Eldritch is expecting you. Come this way.” He was immediately replaced by another guard, who began checking the i.d. of the reporters one by one.

Nervous, Leo Bulero accompanied the first guard through an air-filled pressurized and comfortably heated tube to the demesne proper.

Ahead of him, blocking the tube, appeared another uniformed guard from Palmer Eldritch’s staff; he raised his arm and pointed something small and shiny at Leo Bulero.

“Hey,” Leo protested feebly, freezing in his tracks; he spun, ducked his head, and then stumbled a few steps back the way he had come.

The beam—of a variety he knew nothing about– touched him and he pitched forward, trying to break his fall by throwing his arms out.

The next he knew he was once more conscious and swaddled—absurdly—to a chair in a barren room. His head rang and he looked blearily around, but saw only a small table in the center of the room on which an electronic contraption rested.

“Let me out of here,” he said.

At once the electronic contraption said, “Good morning, Mr. Bulero. I am Palmer Eldritch. You wanted to see me, I understand.”

“This is cruel conduct,” Bulero said. “Having me put to sleep and then tying me up like this.”

“Have a cigar.” The electronic contraption sprouted an extension which carried in its grasp a long green cigar; the end of the cigar puffed into flame and then the elongated pseudopodium presented it to Leo Bulero. “I brought ten boxes of these back from Prox, but only one box survived the crash. It’s not tobacco; it’s superior to tobacco. What is it, Leo? What did you want?”

Leo Bulero said, “Are you in that thing there, Eldritch? Or are you somewhere else, speaking through it?”

“Be content,” the voice from the metal construct resting on the table said. It continued to extend the lighted cigar, then withdrew it, stubbed it out, and dropped the remains from sight within itself. “Do you care to see color slides of my visit to the Prox system?”

“You’re kidding.”

“No,” Palmer Eldritch said. “They’ll give you some idea of what I was up against there. They’re 3-D time-lapse slides, very good.”

“No thanks.”

Eldritch said, “We found that dart embedded in your tongue; it’s been removed. But you may have something more, or so we suspect.”

“You’re giving me a lot of credit,” Leo said. “More than I ought to get.”

“In four years on Prox I learned a lot. Six years in transit, four in residence. The Proxers are going to invade Earth.”

“You’re putting me on,” Leo said.

Eldritch said, “I can understand your reaction. The UN, in particular Hepburn-Gilbert, reacted the same way. But it’s true—not in the conventional sense, of course, but in a deeper, coarser manner that I don’t quite get, even though I was among them for so long. It may be involved with Earth’s heating up, for all I know. Or there may be worse to come.”

“Let’s talk about that lichen you brought back.”

“I obtained that illegally; the Proxers didn’t know I took any of it. They use it themselves, in religious orgies. As our Indians made use of mescal and peyotl. Is that what you wanted to see me about?”

“Sure. You’re getting into my business. I know you’ve already set up a corporation; haven’t you? Nuts to this business about Proxers invading our system; it’s you I’m sore about, what you’re doing. Can’t you find some other field to go into besides min layouts?”

The room blew up in his face. White light descended, blanketing him, and he shut his eyes. Jeez, he thought. Anyhow I don’t believe that about the Proxers; he’s just trying to turn our attention away from what he’s up to. I mean, it’s strategy.

He opened his eyes, and found himself sitting on a grassy bank. Beside him a small girl played with a yo-yo.

“That toy,” Leo Bulero said, “is popular in the Prox system.” His arms and legs, he discovered, were untied; he stood up stiffly and moved his limbs. “What’s your name?” he asked.

The little girl said, “Monica.”

“The Proxers,” Leo said, “the humanoid types anyhow, wear wigs and have false teeth.” He took hold of the bulk of the child’s luminous blonde hair and pulled.

“Ouch,” the girl said. “You’re a bad man.” He let go and she retreated, still playing with her yo-yo and glaring at him defiantly.

“Sorry,” he murmured. Her hair was real; perhaps he was not in the Prox system. Anyhow, wherever he was Palmer Eldritch was trying to tell him something. “Are you planning to invade Earth?” he asked the child. “I mean, you don’t look as if you are.” Could Eldritch have gotten it wrong? he wondered. Misunderstood the Proxers? After all, to his knowledge Palmer hadn’t evolved, didn’t possess the powerful, expanded comprehension which came with E Therapy.

“My yo-yo,” the child said, “is magic. I can do anything I want with it. What’ll I do? You tell me; you look like a kindly man.”

“Take me to your leader,” Leo said. “An old joke; you wouldn’t understand it. Went out a century ago.” He looked around him and saw no signs of habitation, only the grassy plain. Too cool for Earth, he realized. Above, the blue sky. Good air, he thought. Dense. “Do you feel sorry for me,” he asked, “because Palmer Eldritch is horning into my business and if he does I’ll probably be ruined? I’m going to have to make some kind of a deal with him.” It now looks like killing him is out, he said to himself morosely. “But,” he said, “I can’t figure out any deal he’ll take; he seems to hold all the cards. Look for instance how he’s got me here, and I don’t even know where this is.” Not that it matters, he realized. Because where it is it’s a place Eldritch controls.

“Cards,” the child said. “I have a deck of cards, in my suitcase.”

He saw no suitcase. “Where?”

Kneeling, the girl touched the grass here and there. All at once a section slid smoothly back; the girl reached into the cavity and brought out a suitcase. “I keep it hidden,” she explained. “From the sponsors.”

“What’s that mean, that ‘sponsors’?”

“Well, to be here you need a sponsor. All of us have them; I guess they pay for everything, pay until we’re well and then we can go home, if we have homes.” She seated herself by the suitcase, and opened it—or at least tried to. The lock did not respond. “Darn,” she said. “This is the wrong one. This is Dr. Smile.”

“A psychiatrist?” Leo asked, alertly. “From one of those big conapts? Is it working? Turn it on.”

Obligingly the girl turned the psychiatrist on. “Hello, Monica,” the suitcase said tinnily. “Hello to you, too, Mr. Bulero.” It pronounced his name wrong, getting the stress on the final syllable. “What are you doing here, sir? You’re much too old to be here. Tee-hee. Or are you regressed, due to malappropriate so-called E Therpay rggggg click!” It whirred in agitation. “Therapy in Munich?” it finished.

“I feel fine,” Leo assured it. “Look, Smile; who do you know that I know that could get me out of here? Name someone, anyone. I can’t stay here any more, get it?”

“I know a Mr. Bayerson,” Dr. Smile said. “In fact I’m with him right now, via portable extension, of course, right in his office.”

“There’s nobody I know named Bayerson,” Leo said. “What is this place? Obviously it’s a rest camp of some sort for sick kids or kids with no money or some danm thing. I thought this was maybe in the Prox system but if you’re here obviously it isn’t. Bayerson.” It came to him, then. “Hell, you mean Mayerson. Barney. Back at P. P. Layouts.”

“Yes, that’s so,” Dr. Smile said.

“Contact him,” Leo said. “Tell him to get in touch with Felix Blau right away, that Tri-Planet Police Agency or whatever they call themselves. Have him have Blau do research, find out where exactly I am and then send a ship here. Got it?”

“All right,” Dr. Smile said. “I’ll address Mr. Mayerson right away. He’s conferring with Miss Fugate, his assistant, who is also his mistress and who today is wearing– hmm. They’re talking about you this very minute. But of course I can’t report what they’re saying; seal of the medical profession, you realize. She is wearing—”

“Okay, who cares?” Leo said irritably.

“You’ll excuse me a moment,” the suitcase said. “While I sign off.” It sounded huffy. And then there was silence.

“I have bad news for you,” the child said.

“What is it?”

“I was kidding. That’s not really Dr. Smile; it’s just pretend, to keep us from loneliness. It’s alive but it’s not connected with anything outside itself; it’s what they call being on intrinsic.”

He knew what that meant; the unit was self-contained. But then how could it have known about Barney and Miss Fugate, even down to details about their personal life? Even as to what she had on? The child was not telling the truth, obviously. “Who are you?” he demanded. “Monica what? I want to know your full name.” Something about her was familiar.

“I’m back,” the suitcase announced suddenly. “Well, Mr. Bulero—” Again the faulty pronunciation. “I’ve discussed your dilemma with Mr. Mayerson and he will contact Felix Blau as you requested. Mr. Mayerson thinks he recalls reading in a homeopape once about a UN camp much as you are experiencing, somewhere in the Saturn region, for retarded children. Perhaps—”

“Hell,” Leo said, “this girl isn’t retarded.” If anything she was precocious. It did not make sense. But what did make sense was the realization that Palmer Eldritch wanted something out of him; this was not merely a matter of edifying him: it was a question of intimidation.

On the horizon a shape appeared, immense and gray, bloating as it rushed at terrific speed toward them. It had ugly spiked whiskers.

“That’s a rat,” Monica said calmly.

Leo said, “That big?” No place in the Sol system, on none of the moons or planets, did such an enormous, feral creature exist. “What will it do to us?” he asked, wondering why she wasn’t afraid.

“Oh,” Monica said, “I suppose it’ll kill us.”

“And that doesn’t frighten you?” He heard his own voice rise in a shriek. “I mean, you want to die like that, and right now? Eaten by a rat the size of—” He grabbed the girl with one hand, picked up Dr. Smile the suitcase in the other, and began lumbering away from the rat.

The rat reached them, passed on by, and was gone; its shape dwindled until at last it disappeared.

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?”

“This is Mayerson at P. P. Layouts. What do we have to do to get Leo Bulero back?” He waited. No response. “You do know what I’m talking about, don’t you?” he said.

Presently she said, “Mr. Bulero arrived here at the demesne and was taken sick. He’s resting in our infirmary. When he’s better—”

“May I dispatch an official company physician to examine him?”

“Of course.” Zoe Eldritch did not bat an eye.

“Why didn’t you notify us?”

“It just now occurred. My father was about to call. It seems to be nothing more than a reaction to the change of gravity; actually it’s very common with older persons who arrive here. We haven’t tried to approximate Earth gravity as Mr. Bulero has at his satellite, Winnie-the-Pooh Acres. So you see it’s really quite simple.” She smiled slightly. “You’ll have him back sometime later today at the very latest. Did you suspect something else?”

“I suspect,” Barney said, “that Leo is not on Luna any longer. That he’s on an Earth-satellite called Sigma 14-B which belongs to a St. George firm that you own. Isn’t that the case? And what we’ll find in your infirmary at the demesne will not be Leo Bulero.”

Roni stared at him.

“You’re welcome to see for yourself,” Zoe said stonily. “It is Leo Bulero, at least as far as we know. It’s what arrived here with the homeopape reporters.”

“I’ll come to the demesne,” Barney said. And knew he was making a mistake. His precog ability told him that. And, at the far end of the office, Roni Fugate hopped to her feet and stood rigid; her ability had picked it up, too. Shutting off the vidphone he turned to her and said, “P. P. Layouts employee commits suicide. Correct? Or some such wording. The ‘papes tomorrow morning.”

“The exact wording—” Roni began.

“I don’t care to hear the exact wording.” But it would be by exposure, he knew. Man’s body found on pedestrian ramp at noon; dead from excessive solar radiation. Downtown New York somewhere. At whatever spot the Eldritch organization had dropped him off. Would drop him off.

He could have done without his precog faculty, in this. Since he did not intend to act on its foresight.

What disturbed him the most was the pic on the ‘pape page, a close-up view of his sun-shriveled body.

At the office door he stopped and simply stood.

“You can’t go,” Roni said.

“No.” Not after previewing the pic. Leo, he realized, will have to take care of himself. Returning to his desk he reseated himself.

“The only problem,” Roni said, “is that if he does get back he’s going to be hard to explain the situation to. That you didn’t do anything.”

“I know.” But that was not the only problem; in fact that was barely an issue at all.

Because Leo would probably not be getting back.