The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

8

Extending his hand, Norm Schein said heartily, “Hi there, Mayerson; I’m the official greeter from our hovel. Welcome—ugh—to Mars.”

“I’m Fran Schein,” his wife said, also shaking hands with Barney Mayerson. “We have a very orderly, stable hovel here; I don’t think you’ll find it too dreadful.” She added, half to herself, “Just dreadful enough.” She smiled, but Mayerson did not smile back; he looked grim, tired, and depressed, as most new colonists did on arrival to a life which they knew was difficult and essentially meaningless. “Don’t expect us to sell you on the virtues of this,” she said. “That’s the UN’s job. We’re nothing more than victims like yourself. Except that we’ve been here a while.”

“Don’t make it sound so bad,” Norm said in warning.

“But it is,” Fran said. “Mr. Mayerson is facing it; he isn’t going to accept any pretty story. Right, Mr. Mayerson?”

“I could do with a little illusion at this point,” Barney said as he seated himself on a metal bench within the hovel entrance. The sand-plow which had brought him, meanwhile, unloaded his gear; he watched dully.

“Sorry,” Fran said.

“Okay to smoke?” Barney got out a package of Terran cigarettes; the Scheins stared at them fixedly and he then offered them each a chance at the pack, guiltily.

“You arrived at a difficult time,” Norm Schein explained. “We’re right in the middle of a debate.” He glanced around at the others. “Since you’re now a member of our hovel I don’t see why you shouldn’t be brought into it; after all it concerns you, too.”

Tod Morris said, “Maybe he’ll—you know. Tell.”

“We can swear him to secrecy,” Sam Regan said, and his wife Mary nodded. “Our discussion, Mr. Geyerson—”

“Mayerson,” Barney corrected.

“—Has to do with the drug Can-D, which is the old reliable translating agent we’ve depended on, versus the newer, untried drug Chew-Z; we’re debating whether to drop Can-D once and for all and—”

“Wait until we’re below,” Norm Schein said, and scowled.

Seating himself on the bench beside Barney Mayerson, Tod Morris said, “Can-D is kaput; it’s too hard to get, costs too many skins, and personally I’m tired of Perky Pat—it’s too artificial, too superficial, and matterialistality in—pardon; that’s our word here for—” He groped in difficult explanation. “Well, it’s apartments, cars, sunbathing on the beach, ritzy clothes… we enjoyed it for a while, but it’s not enough in some sort of unmatterialistality way. You see at all, Mayerson?”

Norm Schein said, “Okay, but Mayerson here hasn’t had that; he isn’t jaded. Maybe he’d appreciate going through all that.”

“Like we did,” Fran agreed. “Anyhow, we haven’t voted; we haven’t decided which we’re going to buy and use from now on. I think we ought to let Mr. Mayerson try both. Or have you already tried Can-D, Mr. Mayerson?”

“I did,” Barney said. “But a long time ago. Too long for me to remember clearly.” Leo had given it to him, and offered him more, big amounts, all he wanted. But he had declined; it hadn’t appealed to him.

Norm Schein said, “This is rather an unfortunate welcome to our hovel, I’m afraid, getting you embroiled in our controversy like this. But we’ve run out of Can-D; we either have to restock or switch: this is the critical moment. Of course the Can-D pusher, Impy White, is after us to reorder through her… by the end of tonight we’ll have decided one way or another. And it will affect all of us… for the rest of our lives.”

“So be glad you didn’t arrive tomorrow,” Fran said. “After the vote is taken.” She smiled at him encouragingly, trying to make him feel welcome; they had little to offer him except their mutual bond, the fact of their relatedness one to another, and this was extended now to him.

What a place, Barney Mayerson was thinking to himself. The rest of my life… it seemed impossible, but what they said was true. There was no provision in the UN selective service law for mustering out. And the fact was not an easy one to face; these people were the bodycorporate for him now, and yet—how much worse it could be. Two of their women seemed physically attractive and he could tell—or believed he could—that they were, so to speak, interested; he sensed the subtle interaction of the manifold complexities of the interpersonal relationships which built up in the cramped confines of a single hovel. But—

“The way out,” Mary Regan said quietly to him, seating herself on the side of the bench opposite Tod Morris, “is through one or the other of the translating drugs, Mr. Mayerson. Otherwise, as you can see—” She put her hand on his shoulder; the physical touch was there already. “It would be impossible. We’d simply wind up killing one another in our pain.”

“Yes,” he said. “I see.” But he had not learned that by coming to Mars; he had, like every other Terran, known that early in life, heard of colony life, the struggle against the lure of internecine termination to it all in one swift surrender.

No wonder induction was fought so rabidly, as had been the case with him originally. It was a fight to hold onto life.

“Tonight,” Mary Regan said to him, “we’ll procure one drug or the other; Impy will be stopping by about 7 P.M., Fineburg Crescent time; the answer will have to be in by then.”

“I think we can vote now,” Norm Schein said. “I can see that Mr. Mayerson, even though he’s just arrived, is prepared. Am I right, Mayerson?”

“Yes,” Barney said. The sand-dredge had completed its autonomic task; his possessions sat in a meager heap, and loose sand billowed across them already—if they were not taken below they would succumb to the dust, and soon. Hell, he thought; maybe it’s just as well. Ties to the past…

The other hovelists gathered to assist him, passing his suitcases from hand to hand, to the conveyer belt that serviced the hovel below the surface. Even if he was not interested in preserving his former goods they were; they had a knowledge superior to his.

“You learn to get by from day to day,” Sam Regan said sympathetically to him. “You never think in longer terms. Just until dinner or until time for bed; very finite intervals and tasks and pleasures. Escapes.”

Tossing his cigarette away, Barney reached for the heaviest of his suitcases. “Thanks.” It was profound advice.

“Excuse me,” Sam Regan said with polite dignity and went to pick up the discarded cigarette for himself.

Seated in the hovel-chamber adequate to receive them all, the collective members, including new Barney Mayerson, prepared to solemnly vote. The time: six o’clock, Fineburg Crescent reckoning. The evening meal, shared as was customary, was over; the dishes now lay lathered and rinsed in the proper machine. No one, it appeared to Barney, had anything to do now; the weight of empty time hung over them all.

Examining the collection of votes, Norm Schein announced, “Four for Chew-Z. Three for Can-D. That’s the decision, then. Okay, who wants the job of telling Impy White the bad news?” He peered around at each of them. “She’s going to be sore; we better expect that.”

Barney said, “I’ll tell her.”

Astonished, the three couples who comprised the hovel’s inhabitants in addition to himself stared at him. “But you don’t even know her,” Fran Schein protested.

“I’ll say it’s my fault,” Barney said. “That I tipped the balance here to Chew-Z.” They would let him, he knew; it was an onerous task.

Half an hour later he lounged in the silent darkness at the lip of the hovel’s entrance, smoking and listening to the unfamiliar sounds of the Martian night.

Far off some lunary object streaked the sky, passing between his sight and the stars. A moment later he heard retrojets. Soon, he knew; he waited, arms folded, more or less relaxed, practicing what he intended to say.

Presently a squat female figure dressed in heavy coveralls trudged into view. “Schein? Morris? Well, Regan, then?” She squinted at him, using an infrared lantern. “I don’t know you.” Warily, she halted. “I have a laser pistol.” It manifested itself, pointed at him. “Speak up.”

Barney said, “Let’s move off out of earshot of the hovel.”

With extreme caution Impatience White accompanied him, still pointing the laser pistol menacingly. She accepted his ident-pak, reading it by means of her lantern. “You were with Bulero,” she said, glancing up at him appraisingly. “So?”

“So,” he said, “we’re switching to Chew-Z, we at Chicken Pox Prospects.”

“Why?”

“Just accept it and don’t push any farther here. You can check with Leo at P.P. Or through Conner Freeman on Venus.”

“I will,” Impatience said. “Chew-Z is garbage; it’s habit forming, toxic, and what’s worse leads to lethal, escape-dreams, not of Terra but of—” She gestured with the pistol. “Grotesque, baroque fantasies of an infantile, totally deranged nature. Explain to me why this decision.”

He said nothing; he merely shrugged. It was interesting, however, the ideological devotion on her part; it amused him. In fact, he reflected, its fanaticism was in sharp contrast to the attitude which the girl missionary aboard the Terra—Mars ship had shown. Evidently subject matter had no bearing; he had never realized this before.

“I’ll see you tomorrow night at this same time,” Impatience White decided. “If you’re being truthful, fine. But if you’re not—”

“What if I’m not?” he said slowly, deliberately. “Can you force us to consume your product? After all, it is illegal; we could ask for UN protection.”

“You’re new.” Her scorn was enormous. “The UN in this region is perfectly aware of the Can-D traffic; I pay a regular stipend to them, to avoid interference. As far as Chew-Z goes—” She gestured with her gun. “If the UN is going to protect them, and they’re the coming thing—”

“Then you’ll go over to them,” Barney said.

She did not answer; instead she turned and strode off. Almost at once her short shape vanished into the Martian night; he remained where he was and then he made his way back to the hovel, orienting himself by the looming, opaque shape of a huge, apparently discarded tractortype farm machine parked close by.

“Well?” Norm Schein, to his surprise, said, meeting him at the entrance. “I came up to see how many holes she had lasered in your cranium.”

“She took it philosophically.”

“Impy White?” Norm laughed sharply. “It’s a millionskin business she runs—’philosophically’ my ass. What really happened?”

Barney said, “She’ll be back after she gets instructions from above.” He began to descend into the hovel.

“Yeah, that makes sense; she’s small-fry. Leo Bulero, on Terra—”

“I know.” He saw no reason to conceal his previous career; in any case it was public record; the hovelists would run across the datum eventually. “I was Leo’s Pre-Fash consultant for New York.”

“And you voted to switch to Chew-Z?” Norm was incredulous. “You had a falling-out with Bulero, is that right?”

“I’ll tell you sometime.” He reached the bottom of the ramp and stepped out into the communal chamber where the others waited.

With relief Fran Schein said, “At least she didn’t stew you with that little laser pistol she waves around. You must have outstared her.”

“Are we rid of her?” Tod Morris asked.

“I’ll have that news tomorrow night,” Barney said.

Mary Regan said to him, “We think you’re very brave. You’re going to give this hovel a great deal, Mr. Mayerson. Barney, I mean. To mix a metaphor, a good swift goose to our morale.”

“My, my,” Helen Morris mocked. “Aren’t we getting a little inelegant in our dithering attempt to impress the new citizen?”

Flushing, Mary Regan said, “I wasn’t trying to impress him.”

“Flatter him, then,” Fran Schein said softly.

“You, too,” Mary said with anger. “You were the first to fawn over him when he stepped off that ramp—or anyhow you wanted to; you would have, if we hadn’t all been here. If your husband especially hadn’t been here.”

To change the subject, Norm Schein said, “Too bad we can’t translate ourselves tonight, get out the good old Perky Pat layout one final time. Barney might enjoy it. He could at least see what he’s voted to give up.” Meaningfully, he gazed from one of them to the next, pinning each down. “Now come on… surely one of you has some Can-D you’ve held back, stuffed in a crack in the wall or under the septic tank for a rainy year. Aw, come on; be generous to the new citizen; show him you’re not—”

“Okay,” Helen Morris burst in, flushed with sullen resentment. “I have a little, enough for three-quarters of an hour. But that’s absolutely all, and suppose that Chew-Z isn’t ready for distribution in our area yet?”

“Get your Can-D,” Norm said. As she departed he said, “And don’t worry; Chew-Z is here. Today when I was picking up a sack of salt from that last UN drop I ran into one of their pushers. He gave me his card.” He displayed the card. “All we need do is light a common strontium nitrate flare at 7:30 P.M. and they’ll be down from their satellite—”

“Satellite!” Everyone squawked in amazement. “Then,” Fran said excitedly, “it must be UN-sanctioned. Or do they have a layout and the disc jockeys on the satellite advertise their new mins?”

“I don’t know, yet,” Norm admitted. “I mean, at this point there’s a lot of confusion. Wait’ll the dust settles.”

“Here on Mars,” Sam Regan said hollowly, “it’ll never settle.”

They sat in a circle. Before them the Perky Pat layout, complete and elaborate, beckoned; they all felt its pull, and Norm Schein reflected that this was a sentimental occasion because they would never be doing this again… unless, of course, they did it—made use of the layout—with Chew-Z. How would that work out? he wondered. Interesting…

He had a feeling, unaccountably, that it would not be the same.

And—they might not like the difference.

“You understand,” Sam Regan said to the new member Barney Mayerson, “that we’re going to spend the translated period listening to and watching Pat’s new Great Books animator—you know, the device they’ve just brought out on Terra… you’re surely more familiar with it than we are, Barney, so maybe you ought to explain it to us.”

Barney, dutifully, said, “You insert one of the Great Books, for instance Moby Dick, into the reservoid. Then you set the controls for long or short. Then for funny version, or same-as-book or sad version. Then you set the style-indicator as to which classic Great Artist you want the book animated like. Dali, Bacon, Picasso… the medium-priced Great Books animator is set up to render in cartoon form the styles of a dozen system-famous artists; you specify which ones you want when you originally buy the thing. And there are options you can add later that provide even more.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He wandered about, aware of the silence.

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

A bell sounded.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Out.”

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

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

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

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

“Nonsense,” Anne said sharply, rousing herself.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“To be slowly cooked.”

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

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

“Do you have any?”

“No.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bending, he kissed her on the mouth.

“I’m still awake,” she murmured.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Barney said, “She’s spoken for.”

They all eyed him curiously.

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

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

Barney said tightly, “I know.”

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

“Did she seem to enjoy being translated?” Barney asked Helen Morris.

“Yes, to a certain extent. Of course it upset her… the first time you have to expect that; she didn’t know how to cooperate in handling the body. But she was quite eager to learn. Now obviously she’s got it all to herself so it’s easier on her. This is good practice.”

Bending down, Barney Mayerson picked up the small doll, Perky Pat in her yellow shorts and red-striped cotton t-shirt and sandals. This now was Anne Hawthorne, he realized. In a sense that no one quite understood. And yet he could destroy the doll, crush it, and Anne, in her synthetic fantasy life, would be unaffected.

“I’d like to marry her,” he said aloud, suddenly.

“Who?” Tod asked. “Perky Pat or the new girl?”

“He means Perky Pat,” Norm Schein said, and snickered.

“No he doesn’t,” Helen said severely. “And I think it’s fine; now we can be four couples instead of three couples and one man, one odd man.”

“Is there any way,” Barney said, “to get drunk around here?”

“Sure,” Norm said. “We’ve got liquor—it’s dull ersatz gin, but it’s eighty proof; it’ll do the job.”

“Let me have some,” Barney said, reaching for his wallet.

“It’s free. The UN supply ships drop it in vats.” Norm went to a locked cupboard, produced a key, and opened it.

Sam Regan said, “Tell us, Mayerson, why you feel the need to get drunk. Is it us? The hovel? Mars itself?”

“No.” It was none of those; it had to do with Anne and the disintegration of her identity. Her use of Can-D all at once, a symptom of her inability to believe or to cope, her giving up. It was an omen, in which he, too, was involved; he saw himself in what had happened.

If he could help her perhaps he could help himself. And if not—

He had an intuition that otherwise they were both finished. Mars, for both himself and Anne, would mean death. And probably soon.