The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

by Philip K. Dick

Mulling, here and now a bizarre recollection came to him. An organization, emanating from the United Arab Republic; trained assassins for hire. Fat chance they would have against Palmer Eldritch . . . a man like that, once he had made his mind up— And yet Rondinella Fugate’s precognition remained; in the future he would be arraigned for the murder of Palmer Eldritch. Evidently he would find a way despite the obstacles. He had with him a weapon so small, so intangible, that even the most thorough search couldn’t disclose it. Some time ago a surgeon at Washington, D.C., had sewn it into his tongue: a self-guiding, high-velocity poison dart, modeled on Soviet Russian lines . . . but vastly improved, in that once it had reached its victim it obliterated itself, leaving no remains. The poison, too, was original; it did not curtail heart or respiratory action; in fact it was not a poison but a filterable virus which multiplied in the victim’s blood stream, causing death within forty-eight hours. It was carcinomatous, an importation from one of Uranus’s moons, and still generally unknown; it had cost him a great deal. All he needed to do was stand within arm’s length of his intended victim and manually squeeze the base of his tongue, protruding the same simultaneously in the victim’s direction. So if he could see Eldritch—