The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

by Philip K. Dick

“I’d like to point out,” the gadget said, “that I’ve shown mercy to you, Leo. I could have put an—well, let’s say a period to the sentence that constitutes your rather short life. And at any time. Because of this I expect—I insist—that you consider very seriously doing the same.” “As I said, I’ll think it over,” Leo answered. He felt irritable, as if he had drunk too many cups of coffee, and he wanted to leave as soon as possible; he opened the door of the room, and made his way out into the corridor. As he started to shut the door after him the electronic gadget said, “If you don’t decide to join me, Leo, I’m not going to wait. I’m going to kill you. I must, to save my own self. Do you understand?” “I understand,” Leo said, and shut the door after him. And I have to, too, he thought. Must kill you . . . or couldn’t we both put it in a less direct way, something like they say about animals: put you to sleep.

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.

“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.

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.

“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.

“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.

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

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 materialistality in—pardon; that’s our word here for—” He groped in difficult explanation. “Well, it’s apartment, cars, sunbathing on the beach, ritzy clothes . . . we enjoyed it for a while, but it’s not enough in some sort of unmaterialistality 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.

And the fact was not an easy one to face; these people were the body-corporate 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,” 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.

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.”

“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.

He gave me his card.” He displayed the card. “All we need to 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.”

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. “Um, The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius.