The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

7

The door to Barney Mayerson’s inner office, flung open, revealed Leo Bulero, hunched with weariness, travel-stained. “You didn’t try to help me.”

After an interval Barney answered, “That’s correct.” There was no use trying to explain why, not because Leo would fail to understand or believe but because of the reason itself. It was simply not adequate.

Leo said, “You are fired, Mayerson.”

“Okay.” And he thought, Anyhow I’m alive. And if I’d gone after Leo I wouldn’t be, now. He began with numbed fingers gathering up his personal articles from his desk, dropping them into an empty sample case.

“Where’s Miss Fugate?” Leo demanded. “She’ll be taking your place.” He came close to Barney, and scrutinized him. “Why didn’t you come and get me? Name me the goddam reason, Barney.”

“I looked ahead. It would have cost me too much. My life.”

“But you didn’t have to come personally. This is a big company—you could have arranged for a party from here, and stayed behind. Right?”

It was true. And he hadn’t even considered it.

“So,” Leo said, “you must have wanted something fatal to happen to me. No other interpretation is possible. Maybe it was unconscious. Yes?”

“I guess so,” Barney admitted. Because certainly he hadn’t been aware of it. Anyhow Leo was right; why else would he not have taken the responsibility, seen to it that an armed party, as Felix Blau had suggested, emerged from P. P. Layouts and headed for Luna? It was so obvious, now. So simple to see.

“I’ve had a terrible experience,” Leo said, “in Palmer Eldritch’s domain. He’s a damned magician, Barney. He did all kinds of things with me, things you and I never dreamed of. Turned himself for instance into a little girl, showed me the future, only maybe that was unintentional, made a complete universe up anyhow including a horrible animal called a gluck along with an illusional New York City with you and Roni. What a mess.” He shook his head blearily. “Where you going to go?”

“There’s only one place I can go.”

“Where’s that?” Leo eyed him apprehensively.

“Only one other person would have use for my Pre-Fash talent.”

“Then you’re my enemy!”

“I am already. As far as you’re concerned.” And he was willing to accept Leo’s judgment as fair, Leo’s interpretation of his failure to act.

“I’ll get you, too, then,” Leo said. “Along with that nutty magician, that so-called Palmer Elditch.”

“Why so-called?” Barney glanced up quickly, and ceased his packing.

“Because I’m even more convinced he’s not human. I never did lay eyes on him except during the period under the effect of Chew-Z; otherwise he addressed me through an electronic extension.”

“Interesting,” Barney said.

“Yes, isn’t it? And you’re so corrupt you’d go ahead and apply to his outfit for a job. Even though he may be a wig-headed Proxer or something worse, some damn thing that got into his ship while it was coming or going, out in deep space, ate him, and took his place. If you had seen the glucks—”

“Then for chrissakes,” Barney said, “don’t make me do this. Keep me on here.”

“I can’t. Not after what you failed to do loyalty-wise.” Leo glanced away, swallowing rapidly. “I wish I wasn’t so sore in this cold, reasonable way at you, but—” He clenched his fists, futilely. “It was hideous; he virtually did it, broke me. And then I ran onto those two evolved Terrans and that helped. Up until Eldritch appeared in the form of a dog that peed on the monument.” He grimaced starkly. “I have to admit he demonstrated his attitude graphically; there was no mistaking his contempt.” He added, half to himself, “His belief that he’s going to win, that he has nothing to fear even after seeing the plaque.”

“Wish me luck,” Barney said. He held out his hand; they briefly, ritualistically shook and then Barney walked from his office, past his secretary’s desk, out into the central corridor. He felt hollow, stuffed with some unoccupied, tasteless waste-material, like straw. Nothing more.

As he stood waiting for the elevator Roni Fugate hurried up, breathless, her clear face animated with concern. “Barney—he fired you?”

He nodded.

“Oh dear,” she said. “Now what?”

“Now,” he said, “over to the other side. For better or worse.”

“But how can you and I go on living together, with me working here for Leo and you—”

“I don’t have the foggiest notion,” Barney said. The elevator had arrived, self-regulated; he stepped into it. “I’ll see you,” he said, and touched the button; the doors shut, cutting off his view of Roni. I’ll see you in what the Neo-Christians call hell, he thought to himself. Probably not before. Not unless this already is, and it may be, hell right now.

At street level he emerged from P. P. Layouts, and stood under the antithermal protective shield searching for signs of a cab.

As a cab halted and he started toward it a voice called to him urgently from the entrance of the building, “Barney, wait.”

“You’re out of your mind,” he said to her. “Go back on in. Don’t abandon your budding, bright career along with what was left of mine.”

Roni said, “We were about to work together, remember? To as I put it betray Leo; why can’t we go on cooperating now?”

“It’s all changed. By my sick and depraved unwillingness or inability or whatever you care to call it to go to Luna and help Leo.” He felt differently about himself, now, and no longer viewed himself in the same ultrasympathetic light. “God, you don’t want to stay with me,” he said to the girl. “Someday you’d be in difficulty and need my help and I’d do to you exactly what I did to Leo; I’d let you sink without moving my right arm.”

“But your own life was at—”

“It always is,” he pointed out. “When you do anything. That’s the name of the comedy we’re stuck in.” It didn’t excuse him, at least not in his own eyes. He entered the cab, automatically gave his conapt address, and lay back against the seat as the cab rose into the fire-drenched midday sky. Far below, under the antithermal curtain, Roni Fugate stood shielding her eyes, watching him go. No doubt hoping he would change his mind and turn back.

However, he did not.

It takes a certain amount of courage, he thought, to face yourself and say with candor, I’m rotten. I’ve done evil and I will again. It was no accident; it emanated from the true, authentic me.

Presently the cab began to descend; he reached into his pocket for his wallet and then discovered with shock that this was not his conapt building; in panic he tried to figure out where he was. Then it came to him. This was conapt 492. He had given Emily’s address to the cab.

Whisk! Back to the past. Where things made sense. He thought, When I had my career, knew what I wanted from the future, knew even in my heart what I was willing to abandon, turn against, sacrifice—and what for. But now…

Now he had sacrificed his career, in order as it seemed at the time to save his life. So by logic he had at that former time sacrificed Emily to save his life; it was as simple as that. Nothing could be clearer. It was not an idealistic goal, not the old Puritan, Calvin-style high duty to vocation; it was nothing more than the instinct that inhabited and compelled every flatworm that crept. Christ! he thought. I’ve done this: I’ve put myself ahead first of Emily and now of Leo. What kind of human am I? And, as I was honest enough to tell her, next it would be Roni. Inevitably.

Maybe Emily can help me, he said to himself. Maybe that’s why I’m here. She was always smart about things like this; she saw through the self-justifying delusions that I erected to obscure the reality inside. And of course that just made me more eager to get rid of her. In fact that alone was reason enough, given a person like me. But– maybe I’m better able to endure it now.

A few moments later he was at Emily’s door, ringing the bell.

If she thinks I should join Palmer Eldritch’s staff I will, he said to himself. And if not then not. But she and her husband are working for Eldritch; how can they, with morality, tell me not to? So it was decided in advance. And maybe I knew that, too.

The door opened. Wearing a blue smock stained with both wet and died clay, Emily stared at him large-eyed, astonished.

“Hi,” he said. “Leo fired me.” He waited but she said nothing. “Can I come in?” he asked.

“Yes.” She led him into the apt; in the center of the living room her familiar potter’s wheel took up, as always, enormous space. “I was potting. It’s nice to see you, Barney. If you want a cup of coffee you’ll have to—”

“I came here to ask your advice,” he said. “But now I’ve decided it’s unnecessary.” He wandered to the window, set his bulging sample case down, and gazed out.

“Do you mind if I go on working? I had a good idea, or at least it seemed good at the time.” She rubbed her forehead, then massaged her eyes. “Now I don’t know, and I feel so tired. I wonder if it has to do with E Therapy.”

“Evolution therapy? You’re taking that?” He spun at once to scrutinize her; had she changed physically?

It seemed to him—but this was perhaps because he had not seen her for so long—that her features had coarsened.

Age, he thought. But–

“How’s it working?” he asked.

“Well, I’ve just had one session. But you know, my mind feels so muddy. I can’t seem to think properly; all my ideas get scrambled up together.”

“I think you had better knock off on that therapy. Even if it is the rage; even if it is what everybody who is anybody does.”

“Maybe so. But they seem so satisfied. Richard and Dr. Denkmal.” She hung her head, an old familiar response. “They’d know, wouldn’t they?”

“Nobody knows; it’s uncharted. Knock it off. And you always let people walk all over you.” He made his tone commanding; he had used that tone with her countless times during their years together, and generally it had worked. Not always.

And this time, he saw, was one of them; she got that stubborn look in her eyes, the refusal to be normally passive. “I think it’s up to me,” she said with dignity. “And I intend to continue.”

Shrugging, he roamed about the conapt. He had no power over her; nor did he care. But was that true? Did he really not care? An image appeared in his mind, of Emily devolving… and at the same time trying to work on her pots, trying to be creative. It was funny—and dreadfuI.

“Listen,” he said roughly. “If that guy actually loves you—”

“But I told you,” Emily said. “It’s my decision.” She returned to her wheel; a great tall pot was being thrown, and he walked over to get a good look at it. A nice one, he decided. And yet—familiar. Hadn’t she done such a pot already? He said nothing, however; he merely studied it. “What do you suppose you’re going to do?” Emily asked. “Who could you work for?” She seemed sympathetic and it made him remember how, recently, he had blocked the sale of her pots to P. P. Layouts. Easily, she could have held a great animosity toward him, but it was typical of her not to. And of course she knew that it was he who had turned Hnatt down.

He said, “My future may be decided. I got a draft notice.”

“Good grief. You on Mars; I can’t picture it.”

“I can chew Can-D,” he said. “Only—” Instead of having a Perky Pat layout, he thought, maybe I’ll have an Emily layout. And spend time, in fantasy, back with you, back to the life I deliberately, moronically, turned my back on. The only really good period of my life, when I was genuinely happy. But of course I didn’t know it, because I had nothing to compare it to… as I have now. “Is there any chance,” he said, “that you’d like to come?”

She stared at him and he stared back, both of them dumfounded by what he had proposed.

“I mean it,” he said.

“When did you decide that?”

“It doesn’t matter when I decided it,” he said. “All that matters is that that’s how I feel.”

“It also matters how I feel,” Emily said quietly; she then resumed potting. “And I’m perfectly happy married to Richard. We get along just swell.” Her face was placid; beyond doubt she meant every word of it. He was damned, doomed, consigned to the void which he had hollowed out for himself. And he deserved it. They both knew that, without either saying it.

“I guess I’ll go,” he said.

Emily didn’t protest that, either. She merely nodded.

“I hope in the name of God,” he said, “that you’re not devolving. I think you are, personally. I can see it, in your face for instance. Look in the mirror.” With that he departed; the door shut after him. Instantly he regretted what he had said, and yet it might be a good thing… It might help her, he thought. Because I could see it. And I don’t want that; nobody does. Not even that jackass of a husband of hers that she prefers over me… for reasons I’ll never know, except perhaps that marriage to him has the aspect of destiny. She’s fated to live with Richard Hnatt, fated never to be my wife again; you can’t reverse the flow of time.

You can when you chew Can-D, he thought. Or the new product, Chew-Z. All the colonists do. It’s not available on Earth but it is on Mars or Venus or Ganymede, any of the frontier colonies.

If everything else fails, there’s that.

And perhaps it already had failed. Because—

In the last analysis he could not go to Palmer Eldritch. Not after what the man had done—or tried to do—to Leo. He realized this as he stood outdoors waiting for a cab. Beyond him the midday street shimmered and he thought, Maybe I’ll step out there. Would anyone find me before I died? Probably not. It would be as good a way as any…

So there goes my last hope of employment. It would amuse Leo that I’d balk here. He’d be surprised and probably pleased.

Just for the hell of it, he decided, I’ll call Eldritch, ask him, see if he would give me a job.

He found a vidphone booth and put through a call to Eldritch’s demesne on Luna.

“This is Barney Mayerson,” he explained. “Previously top Pre-Fash consultant to Leo Bulero; as a matter of fact I was second in command at P. P. Layouts.”

Eldritch’s personnel manager frowned and said, “Well? What do you want?”

“I’d like to see about a job with you.”

“We’re not hiring any Pre-Fash consultants. Sorry.”

“Would you ask Mr. Eldritch, please?”

“Mr. Eldritch has already expressed himself on the matter.”

Barney hung up. He left the vidphone booth.

He was not really surprised.

If they had said, Come to Luna for an interview, would I have gone? Yes, he realized. I’d have gone but at some point I’d have pulled out. Once I had firmly established that they’d give me the job.

Returning to the vidphone booth he called his UN selective service board. “This is Mr. Barney Mayerson.” He gave them his official code-ident number. “I received my notice the other day. I’d like to waive the formalities and go right in. I’m anxious to emigrate.”

“The physical can’t be bypassed,” the UN bureaucrat informed him. “Nor can the mental. But if you choose you may come by any time, right now if you wish, and take both.”

“Okay,” he said. “I will.”

“And since you are volunteering, Mr. Mayerson, you get to pick—”

“Any planet or moon is fine with me,” he said. He rang off, left the booth, found a cab, and gave it the address of the selective service board near his conapt building.

As the cab hummed above downtown New York another cab rose and zipped ahead of it, wig-wagging its side fins in a rocking motion.

“They are trying to contact us,” the autonomic circuit of his own cab informed him. “Do you wish to respond?”

“No,” Barney said. “Speed up.” And then he changed his mind. “Can you ask them who they are?”

“By radio, perhaps.” The cab was silent a moment and then it stated, “They claim to have a message for you from Palmer Eldritch; he wants to tell you that he will accept you as an employee and for you not to—”

“Let’s have that again,” Barney said.

“Mr. Palmer Eldritch, whom they represent, will employ you as you recently requested. Although they have a general rule—”

“Let me talk to them,” Barney said.

A mike was presented to him.

“Who is this?” Barney said into it.

An unfamiliar man’s voice said, “This is Icholtz. From Chew-Z Manufacturers of Boston. May we land and discuss the matter of your employment with our firm?”

“I’m on my way to the draft board. To give myself up.”

“There’s nothing in writing, is there? You haven’t signed.”

“No.”

“Good. Then it’s not too late.”

Barney said, “But on Mars I can chew Can-D.”

“Why do you want to do that, for godssake?”

“Then I can be back with Emily.”

“Who’s Emily?”

“My previous wife. Who I kicked out because she became pregnant. Now I realize it was the only happy time of my life. In fact I love her more now than I ever did; it’s grown instead of faded.”

“Look,” Icholtz said. “We can supply you with all the Chew-Z you want and it’s superior; you can live forever in an eternal unchanging perfect now with your ex-wife. So there’s no problem.”

“But maybe I don’t want to work for Palmer Eldritch.”

“You applied!”

“I’ve got doubts,” Barney said. “Grave ones, I tell you; don’t call me, I’ll call you. If I don’t go into the service.” He handed the mike back to the cab. “Here. Thanks.”

“It’s patriotic to go into the service,” the cab said.

“Mind your own business,” Barney said.

“I think you’re doing the right thing,” the cab said, anyhow.

“If only I had gone to Sigma 14-B to save Leo,” he said. “Or was it Luna? Wherever he was; I can’t even remember now. It all seems like a disfigured dream. Anyhow if I had I’d still be working for him and everything would be all right.”

“We all make mistakes,” the cab said piously.

“But some of us,” Barney said, “make fatal ones.” First about our loved ones, our wife and children, and then about our employer, he said to himself.

The cab hummed on.

And then, he said to himself, we make one last one. About our whole life, summing it all up. Whether to take a job with Eldritch or go into the service. And whichever we choose we can know this:

It was the wrong alternative.

An hour later he had taken his physical; he had passed and thereupon the mental was administered by something not unlike Dr. Smile.

He passed that, too.

In a daze he took the oath (“I swear to look upon Earth as the mother and leader,” etc.) and then, with a folio of greetings!–type information, was ejected to go back to his conapt and pack. He had twenty-four hours before his ship left for – wherever they were sending him. They had not as yet uttered this. The notification of destination, he conjectured, probably began, “Mene, mene, tekel.” At least it should, considering the possible choices to which it was limited.

I’m in, he said to himself with every sort of reaction: gladness, relief, terror, and then the melancholy that came with an overwhelming sense of defeat. Anyhow, he thought as he rode back to his conapt, this beats stepping out into the midday sun, becoming, as they say, a mad dog or an Englishman.

Or did it?

Anyhow, this was slower. It took longer to die this way, possibly fifty years, and that appealed to him more. But why, he did not know.

However, he reflected, I can always decide to speed it up. On the colony world there are undoubtedly as many opportunities for that as there are here, perhaps even more.

While he was packing his possessions, ensconced for the last time in his beloved, worked-for conapt, the vidphone rang.

“Mr. Bayerson—” A girl, some minor official of some sub-front-office department of the UN’s colonizing apparatus. Smiling.

“Mayerson.”

“Yes. What I called for, you see, is to tell you your destination, and—lucky you, Mr. Mayerson!—it will be the fertile area of Mars known as Fineburg Crescent. I know you’ll enjoy it there. Well, so goodbye, sir, and good luck.” She kept right on smiling, even up until he had cut off the image. It was the smile of someone who was not going.

“Good luck to you, too,” he said.

Fineburg Crescent. He had heard of it; relatively, it actually was fertile. Anyhow the colonists there had gardens: it was not, like some areas, a waste of frozen methane crystals and gas descending in violent, ceaseless storms year in, year out. Believe it or not he could go up to the surface from time to time, step out of his hovel.

In the corner of the living room of his conapt rested the suitcase containing Dr. Smile; he switched it on and said, “Doctor, you’ll have a bit of trouble believing this, but I have no further need of your services. Goodbye and good luck, as the girl who isn’t going said.” He added by way of explanation, “I volunteered.”

“Cdryxxxxx,” Dr. Smile blared, slipping a cog down below in the conapt building’s basement. “But for your type—that’s virtually impossible. What was the reason, Mr. Mayerson?”

“The death wish,” he said, and shut the psychiatrist off; he resumed his packing in silence. God, he thought. And a little while ago Roni and I had such big plans; we were going to sell out Leo on a grand scale, go over to Eldritch with an enormous splash. What happened to all that? I’ll tell you what happened, he said to himself; Leo acted first.

And now Roni has my job. Exactly what she wanted.

The more he thought of it the angrier it made him, in a baffled sort of way. But there was nothing he could do about it, at least not in this world. Maybe when he chewed Can-D or Chew-Z he could inhabit a universe where—

There was a knock at the door.

“Hi,” Leo said. “Can I come in?” He entered the apt, wiping his immense forehead with a folded handkerchief. “Hot day. I looked in the ‘pape and it’s gone up six-tenths of—”

“If you came to offer me my job back,” Barney said, pausing in his packing, “it’s too late because I’ve entered the service. I’m leaving tomorrow for the Fineburg Crescent.” It would be a final irony if Leo wanted to make peace; the ultimate turn of the blind wheels of creation.

“I’m not offering you your job back. And I know you’ve been inducted; I’ve got informants in the selective service and anyhow Dr. Smile notified me. I was paying him—you didn’t know this, of course—to report to me on your progress in declining under stress.”

“What do you want, then?”

Leo said, “I want you to accept a job with Felix Blau. It’s all worked out.”

“The rest of my life,” Barney said quietly, “will be spent at Fineburg Crescent. Don’t you understand?”

“Take it easy. I’m trying to make the best of a bad situation and you’d better, too. Both of us acted too hastily, me in firing you, you in giving yourself up to your Dracula-type selective service board. Barney, I think I know a way to ensnare Palmer Eldritch. I’ve hashed it out with Blau and he likes the idea. You’re to pose as a colonist—” Leo corrected himself. “Or rather go ahead, live your actual colonist-type life, become one of the group. Now, one of these days, probably in the next week, Eldritch is going to start peddling Chew-Z in your area. They may right away approach you; anyhow we hope so. We’re counting on it.”

Barney rose to his feet. “And I’m supposed to jump to and buy.”

“Right.”

“Why?”

“You file a complaint—our legal boys will draw it up for you—with the UN. Declaring that the goddamn miserable unholy crap produced highly toxic side effects in you; never mind what, now. We’ll escalate you into a test case, compel the UN to ban Chew-Z as harmful, dangerous—we’ll keep it off Terra completely. Actually it’s ideal, you quitting your job with P.P. and going into the service; it couldn’t have happened at a better time.”

Barney shook his head.

“What’s that mean?” Leo said.

“I’m out of it.”

“Why?”

Barney shrugged. Actually he did not know. “After the way I let you down—”

“You panicked. You didn’t know what to do; it’s not your job. I should have had Smile contact the head of our company police, John Seltzer. All right, so you made a mistake. It’s over.”

“No,” Barney said. Because, he thought, of what I learned from it about myself; I can’t forget that. Those insights, they only go one way, and that’s straight at your heart. And they’re poison-filled.

“Don’t brood, for chrissakes. I mean, it’s morbid; you still have a whole lifetime ahead, even if it is at Fineburg Crescent; I mean, you’d probably have been drafted anyhow. Right? You agree?” Agitated, Leo paced about the living room. “What a mess. All right, don’t help us out; let Eldritch and those Proxers do whatever it is they’re up to, taking over the Sol system or even worse, the entire universe, starting with us.” He halted, glared at Barney.

“Let me—think it over.”

“Wait’ll you take Chew-Z. You’ll find out. It’s going to contaminate us all, starting inside and working to the surface—it’s utter derangement.” Wheezing with exertion, Leo paused to cough violently. “Too many cigars,” he said, weakly. “Jeez.” He eyed Barney. “The guy’s given me a day, you know that? I’m supposed to capitulate and if not—” He snapped his fingers.

“I can’t be on Mars that soon,” Barney said. “Let alone be set up to buy a bindle of Chew-Z from a pusher.”

“I know that.” Leo’s voice was hard. “But he can’t destroy me that soon; it’ll take him weeks, maybe even months. And by then we’ll have someone in the courts who can show damages. I recognize this doesn’t sound to you like much, but—”

Barney said, “Contact me when I’m on Mars. At my hovel.”

“I’ll do that! I’ll do that!” And then, half to himself, Leo said, “And it’ll give you a reason.”

“Pardon?”

“Nothing, Barney.”

“Explain.”

Leo shrugged. “Hell, I know the spot you’re in. Roni’s got your job; you were right. And I had you traced; I know you went beeline-wise to your ex. You still love her and she won’t come with you, will she? I know you better than you know yourself. I know exactly why you didn’t show up to bail me out when Palmer had me; your whole life has led up to your replacing me and now that’s collapsed, you have to start over with something new. Too bad, but you did it to yourself, by overreaching. See, I don’t plan to step aside, never did. You’re good, but not as an executive, only as a Pre-Fash boy; you’re too petty. Look at how you turned down those pots of Richard Hnatt’s. That was a dead giveaway, Barney. I’m sorry.”

“Okay,” Barney said finally. “Possibly you’re right.”

“Well, so you learned a lot about yourself. And you can start again, Fineburg Crescent-wise.” Leo slapped him on the back. “Become a leader in your hovel; make it creative and productive or whatever hovels do. And you’ll be a spy for Felix Blau; that’s big-time.”

Barney said, “I could have gone over to Eldritch.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t. Who cares what you might have done?”

“You think I did the right thing to volunteer for the service?”

Leo said quietly, “Fella, what the hell else could you do?”

There was no answer to that. And they both knew it.

“When the urge strikes you,” Leo said, “to feel sorry for yourself, remember this. Palmer Eldritch wants to kill me… I’m a lot worse off than you.”

“I guess so.” It rang true, and he had one more intuition to accompany that.

His situation would become the same as Leo’s the moment he initiated litigation against Palmer Eldritch.

He did not look forward to it.

That night he found himself on a UN transport sighted on the planet Mars as its destination. In the seat next to him sat a pretty, frightened, but desperately calm dark-haired girl with features as sharply etched as those of a magazine model. Her name, she told him almost as soon as the ship had attained escape velocity—she was patently eager to break her tension by conversation with anyone, on any topic—was Anne Hawthorne. She could have avoided the draft, she declared a trifle wistfully, but she hadn’t; she believed it to be her patriotic duty to accept the chilling UN greetings! summons.

“How would you have avoided it?” he asked, curious.

“A heart murmur,” Anne said. “And an arrhythmia, paroxysmal tachycardia.”

“How about premature contractions such as auricular, nodal, and ventricular, auricular tachycardia, auricular flutter, auricular fibrillation, not to mention night cramps?” Barney asked, having himself looked—without result—into the topic.

“I could have produced documents from hospitals and doctors and insurance companies testifying for me.” She glanced him over, up and down, then, very interestedly, “It sounds as if you could have gotten out, Mr. Payerson.”

“Mayerson. I volunteered, Miss Hawthorne.” But I couldn’t have gotten out, not for long, he said to himself.

“They’re very religious in the colonies. So I hear, anyhow. What denomination are you, Mr. Mayerson?”

“Um,” he said, stuck.

“I think you’d better find out before we get there. They’ll ask you and expect you to attend services.” She added, “It’s primarily the use of that drug—you know. Can-D. It’s brought about a lot of conversions to the established churches… although many of the colonists find in the drug itself a religious experience that’s adequate for them. I have relatives on Mars; they write me so I know. I’m going to the Fineburg Crescent; where are you going?”

Up the creek, he thought. “The same,” he said, aloud.

“Possibly you and I’ll be in the same hovel,” Anne Hawthorne said, with a thoughtful expression on her precisely cut face. “I belong to the Reformed Branch of the NeoAmerican Church, the New Christian Church of the United States and Canada. Actually our roots are very old: in A.D. 300 our forefathers had bishops that attended a conference in France; we didn’t split off from the other churches as late as everyone thinks. So you can see we have Apostolic Succession.” She smiled at him in a solemn, friendly fashion.

“Honest,” Barney said. “I believe it. Whatever that is.”

“There’s a Neo-American mission church in the Fineburg Crescent and therefore a vicar, a priest; I expect to be able to take Holy Communion at least once a month. And confess twice a year, as we’re supposed to, as I’ve been doing on Terra. Our church has many sacraments… have you taken either of the two Greater Sacraments, Mr. Mayerson?”

“Uh—” he hesitated.

“Christ specified that we observe two sacraments,” Anne Hawthorne explained patiently. “Baptism—by water—and Holy Communion. The latter in memory of Him… it was inaugurated at the Last Supper.”

“Oh. You mean the bread and the wine.”

“You know how the eating of Can-D translates—as they call it—the partaker to another world. It’s secular, however, in that it’s temporary and only a physical world. The bread and the wine—”

“I’m sorry, Miss Hawthorne,” Barney said, “but I’m afraid I can’t believe in that, the body and blood business. It’s too mystical for me.” Too much based on unproved premises, he said to himself. But she was right; sacral religion had, because of Can-D, become common in the colony moons and planets, and he would be encountering it, as Anne said.

“Are you going to try Can-D?” Anne asked.

“Sure.”

Anne said, “You have faith in that. And yet you know that the Earth it takes you to isn’t the real one.”

“I don’t want to argue it,” he said. “It’s experienced as real; that’s all I know.”

“So are dreams.”

“But this is stronger,” he pointed out. “Clearer. And it’s done in—” He had started to say communion. “In company with others who really go along. So it can’t be entirely an illusion. Dreams are private; that’s the reason we identify them as illusion. But Perky Pat—”

“It would be interesting to know what the people who make the Perky Pat layouts think about it all,” Anne said reflectively.

“I can tell you. To them it’s just a business. As probably the manufacture of sacramental wine and wafers is to those who—”

“If you’re going to try Can-D,” Anne said, “and put your faith for a new life into it, can I induce you to try baptism and confirmation into the Neo-American Christian Church? So you could see if your faith deserves to be put into that, too? Or the First Revised Christian Church of Europe which of course also observes the two Greater Sacraments. Once you’ve participated in Holy Communion—”

“I can’t,” he said. I believe in Can-D, he said to himself, and, if necessary, Chew-Z. You can put your faith in something twenty-one centuries old; I’ll stick with something new. And that is that.

Anne said, “To be frank, Mr. Mayerson, I intend to try to convert as many colonists as possible away from Can-D to the traditional Christian practices; that’s the central reason I declined to put together a case that would exempt me from the draft.” She smiled at him, a lovely smile which, in spite of himself, warmed him. “Is that wrong? I’ll tell you frankly: I think the use of Can-D indicates a genuine hunger on the part of these people to find a return to what we in the Neo-American Church—”

“I think,” Barney said gently, “you should let these people alone.” And me, too, he thought. I’ve got enough troubles as it is; don’t add your religious fanaticism and make it worse. But she did not look like his idea of a religious fanatic, nor did she talk like one. He was puzzled. Where had she gotten such strong, steady convictions? He could imagine it existing in the colonies, where the need was so great, but she had acquired it on Earth.

Therefore the existence of Can-D, the experience of group translation, did not fully explain it. Maybe, he thought, it’s been the transition by gradual stages of Earth to the hell-like blasted wasteland which all of them could foresee—hell, experience!–that had done it; the hope of another life, on different terms, had been reawakened.

Myself, he thought, the individual I’ve been, Barney Mayerson of Earth, who worked for P. P. Layouts and lived in the renown conapt building with the unlikely low number 33, is dead. That person is finished, wiped out as if by a sponge.

Whether I like it or not I’ve been born again.

“Being a colonist on Mars,” he said, “isn’t going to be like living on Terra. Maybe when I get there—” He ceased; he had intended to say, Maybe I’ll be more interested in your dogmatic church. But as yet he could not honestly say that, even as a conjecture; he rebelled from an idea that was still foreign to his makeup. And yet—

“Go ahead,” Anne Hawthorne said. “Finish your sentence.”

“Talk to me again,” Barney said, “when I’ve lived down in the bottom of a hovel on an alien world for a while. When I’ve begun my new life, if you can call it a life, as a colonist.” His tone was bitter; it surprised him, the ferocity… it bordered on being anguish, he realized with shame.

Anne said placidly, “All right. I’ll be glad to.”

After that the two of them sat in silence; Barney read a homeopape and, beside him, Anne Hawthorne, the fanatic girl missionary to Mars, read a book. He peered at the title, and saw that it was Eric Lederman’s great text on colonial living, Pilgrim without Progress. God knew where she had gotten a copy; the UN had condemned it, made it incredibly difficult to obtain. And to read a copy of it here on a UN ship—it was a singular act of courage; he was impressed.

Glancing at her he realized that she was really overwhelmingly attractive to him, except that she was just a little too thin, wore no makeup, and had as much of her heavy dark hair as possible covered with a round, white, veil-like cap; she looked, he decided, as if she were dressed for a long journey which would end in church. Anyhow he liked her manner of speaking, her compassionate, modulated voice. Would he run into her again on Mars?

It came to him that he hoped so. In fact—was this improper?–he hoped even to find himself participating with her in the corporate act of taking Can-D.

Yes, he thought, it’s improper because I know what I intend, what the experience of translation with her would signify to me.

He hoped it anyhow.