The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch Read Online

  Contents

Title Page

Epigraph

Chapter 1

Affiliate 2

Chapter 3

Chapter iv

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Affiliate eight

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

About the Author

Other Books Past Philip Thousand. Dick

Copyright Page

I hateful, later on all; yous take to consider nosotros're only fabricated out of grit. That'southward admittedly not much to proceed and we shouldn't forget that. But even considering, I mean it'southward a sort of bad first, nosotros're not doing likewise bad. And then I personally have faith that even in this lousy situation we're faced with nosotros can make it. You become me?

From an interoffice sound-memo circulated to

Pre-Fash level consultants at Perky Pat

Layouts, Inc., dictated by Leo Bulero

immediately on his return from Mars.

ONE

* * *

His head unnaturally aching, Barney Mayerson woke to find himself in an unfamiliar bedroom in an unfamiliar conapt building. Abreast him, the covers upwardly to her blank, smooth shoulders, an unfamiliar daughter slept on, breathing lightly through her mouth, her hair a tumble of cottonlike white.

I'll bet I'chiliad belatedly for piece of work, he said to himself, slid from the bed, and tottered to a standing position with optics close, keeping himself from existence ill. For all he knew he was several hours' drive from his office; perhaps he was not even in the United States. However he was on World; the gravity that made him sway was familiar and normal.

And there in the next room by the sofa a familiar suitcase, that of his psychiatrist Dr. Smile.

Barefoot, he padded into the living room, and seated himself by the suitcase; he opened it, clicked switches, and turned on Dr. Smile. Meters began to register and the mechanism hummed. "Where am I?" Barney asked it. "And how far am I from New York?" That was the main signal. He saw now a clock on the wall of the apt'southward kitchen; the time was 7:30 A.M. Non late at all.

The mechanism which was the portable extension of Dr. Grin, connected by micro-relay to the computer itself in the basement level of Barney'south own conapt edifice in New York, the Renown 33, tinnily declared, "Ah, Mr. Bayerson."

"Mayerson," Barney corrected, smoothing his hair with fingers that shook. "What do you retrieve nigh last night?" Now he saw, with intense physical aversion, half-empty bottles of bourbon and sparkling h2o, lemons, bitters, and ice cube trays on the sideboard in the kitchen. "Who is this daughter?"

Dr. Smile said, "This girl in the bed is Miss Rondinella Fugate. Roni, as she asked you lot to call her."

Information technology sounded vaguely familiar, and oddly, in some manner, tied up with his task. "Heed," he said to the suitcase, but then in the bedroom the girl began to stir; at in one case he shut off Dr. Smile and stood up, feeling apprehensive and awkward in only his underpants.

"Are you lot upwards?" the girl asked sleepily. She thrashed about, and saturday facing him; quite pretty, he decided, with lovely, large eyes. "What time is information technology and did yous put on the java pot?"

He tramped into the kitchen and punched the stove into life; it began to heat water for coffee. Meanwhile he heard the shutting of a door; she had gone into the bathroom. Water ran. Roni was taking a shower.

Once more in the living room he switched Dr. Smile back on. "What'southward she got to do with P. P. Layouts?" he asked.

"Miss Fugate is your new assistant; she arrived yesterday from People's Prc where she worked for P. P. Layouts as their Pre-Fash consultant for that region. However, Miss Fugate, although talented, is highly inexperienced, and Mr. Bulero decided that a brusk menstruum every bit your assistant, I would say 'under yous,' but that might be misconstrued, because—"

"Great," Barney said. He entered the bedroom, found his clothes—they had been deposited, no doubt by him, in a heap on the floor—and began with intendance to dress; he still felt terrible, and it remained an effort not to give up and be violently ill. "That's correct," he said to Dr. Smile every bit he came dorsum to the living room buttoning his shirt. "I remember the memo from Fri almost Miss Fugate. She'due south erratic in her talent. Picked incorrect on that U.Southward. Ceremonious War Picture Window item…if you lot can imagine information technology, she thought it'd be a smash hit in People's China." He laughed.

The bathroom door opened a crack; he caught a glimpse of Roni, pink and rubbery and clean, drying herself. "Did you lot phone call me, dear?"

"No," he said. "I was talking to my doctor."

"Everyone makes errors," Dr. Smiling said, a trifle vacuously.

Barney said, "How'd she and I happen to—" He gestured toward the bedroom. "After and so short a time."

"Chemistry," Dr. Smile said.

"Come up on."

"Well, you lot're both precogs. You lot previewed that you'd somewhen hit information technology off, become erotically involved. Then you both decided—subsequently a few drinks—that why should you look? 'Life is short, art is—' " The suitcase ceased speaking, because Roni Fugate had appeared from the bathroom, naked, to pad past it and Barney back once more into the sleeping room. She had a narrow, erect body, a truly superb carriage, Barney noted, and small-scale, up-jutting breasts with nipples no larger than matched pinkish peas. Or rather matched pink pearls, he corrected himself.

Roni Fugate said, "I meant to ask yous last night—why are y'all consulting a psychiatrist? And my lord, you carry it around everywhere with you; not once did you set up it down—and y'all had information technology turned on right upwardly until—" She raised an eyebrow and glanced at him searchingly.

"At least I did turn it off then," Barney pointed out.

"Do you call up I'g pretty?" Rising on her toes she all at once stretched, reached above her head, then, to his amazement, began to do a brisk series of exercises, hopping and leaping, her breasts bobbing.

"I certainly do," he murmured, taken aback.

"I'd counterbalance a ton," Roni Fugate panted, "if I didn't do these Un Weapons Fly exercises every morning. Become pour the coffee, will you, dear?"

Barney said, "Are you lot really my new banana at P. P. Layouts?"

"Yes, of form; you hateful you don't call back? But I estimate yous're similar a lot of really topnotch precogs: you see the future so well that you have just a hazy recollection of the past. Exactly what practice you recollect about last nighttime?" She paused in her exercises, gasping for breath.

"Oh," he said vaguely, "I guess everything."

"Heed. The just reason why you'd be carrying a psychiatrist around with you is that you must have gotten your typhoon notice. Correct?"

Later on a suspension he nodded. That he remembered. The familiar elongated blue-green envelope had arrived one calendar week ago; next Wednesday he would be taking his mental at the UN military hospital in the Bronx.

"Has it helped? Has he—" She gestured at the suitcase. "—Made y'all sick enough?"

Turning to the portable extension of Dr. Grinning, Barney said, "Have y'all?"

The suitcase answered, "Unfortunately you're notwithstanding quite viable, Mr. Mayerson; you can handle ten Freuds of stress. Sorry. Only nosotros still have several days; nosotros've just begun."

Going into the bedchamber, Roni Fugate picked upwardly her underwear, and began to stride into it. "Just call up," she said reflectively. "If you're drafted, Mr. Mayerson, and you're sent to the colonies…possibly I'll find myself with your job." She smiled, showing superb, even teeth.

It was a gloomy possibility and his precog ability did not aid him: the outcome hung nicely, at perfect balance on the scales of cause-and-outcome to be.

/>   "You can't handle my job," he said. "You couldn't even handle it in People's China and that'southward a relatively simple situation in terms of factoring out pre-elements." But someday she could; without difficulty he foresaw that. She was immature and flood with innate talent: all she required to equal him—and he was the best in the trade—was a few years' feel. Now he became fully awake as awareness of his state of affairs filtered back to him. He stood a skillful chance of being drafted, and even if he was non, Roni Fugate might well snatch his fine, desirable job from him, a job upward to which he had worked by deadening stages over a thirteen-year period.

A peculiar solution to the grimness of the state of affairs, this going to bed with her; he wondered how he had arrived at it.

Bending over the suitcase, he said in a low voice to Dr. Smiling, "I wish you lot'd tell me why the hell with everything so dire I decided to—"

"I tin can answer that," Roni Fugate called from the bedroom; she had now put on a somewhat tight pale dark-green sweater and was buttoning it before the mirror of her vanity table. "You informed me final nighttime, after your fifth bourbon and water. You said—" She paused, eyes sparkling. "Information technology's inelegant. What you said was this. 'If you tin can't lick 'em, bring together 'em.' Only the verb y'all used, I regret to say, wasn't 'join.' "

"Hmm," Barney said, and went into the kitchen to pour himself a cup of coffee. Anyway, he was not far from New York; obviously if Miss Fugate was a fellow employee at P. P. Layouts he was within commute distance of his job. They could ride in together. Mannerly. He wondered if their employer Leo Bulero would approve of this if he knew. Was there an official company policy about employees sleeping together? There was near almost everything else…although how a man who spent all his time at the resort beaches of Antarctica or in High german E Therapy clinics could find fourth dimension to devise dogma on every topic eluded him.

Anytime, he said to himself, I'll live similar Leo Bulero; instead of being stuck in New York City in 180 degree estrus—

Beneath him now a throbbing began; the floor shook. The building's cooling system had come on. Day had begun.

Outside the kitchen window the hot, hostile sun took shape beyond the other conapt buildings visible to him; he shut his eyes confronting information technology. Going to be another scorcher, all right, probably up to the twenty Wagner marker. He did non need to be a precog to foresee this.

In the miserably high-number conapt edifice 492 on the outskirts of Marilyn Monroe, New Jersey, Richard Hnatt ate breakfast indifferently while, with something greater than indifference, he glanced over the morning homeopape's weather-syndrome readings of the previous day.

The key glacier, Ol' Skintop, had retreated 4.62 Grables during the concluding xx-four-hour period. And the temperature, at noon in New York, had exceeded the previous mean solar day's by i.46 Wagners. In addition the humidity, every bit the oceans evaporated, had increased past 16 Selkirks. So things were hotter and wetter; the great procession of nature clanked on, and toward what? Hnatt pushed the 'pape away, and picked up the mail which had been delivered earlier dawn…it had been some fourth dimension since mailmen had crept out in daylight hours.

The first bill which defenseless his eye was the apt'south cooling pro-rated swindle; he owed Conapt 492 exactly ten and a half skins for the concluding month—a rise of iii-fourths of a skin over April. Someday, he said to himself, it'll be so hot that nix volition keep this place from melting; he recalled the day his i-p record collection had fused together in a lump, back around '04, due to a momentary failure of the building's cooling network. Now he endemic fe oxide tapes; they did not melt. And at the aforementioned moment every parakeet and Venusian ming bird in the building had dropped dead. And his neighbor's turtle had been boiled dry out. Of course this had been during the day and everyone—at least the men—had been at work. The wives, withal, had huddled at the everyman subsurface level, thinking (he remembered Emily telling him this) that the fatal moment had at final arrived. And not a century from now but at present. The Caltech predictions had been wrong…just of form they hadn't been; it had just been a broken power-lead from the North.Y. utility people. Robot workmen had quickly shown upwardly and repaired it.

In the living room his married woman sabbatum in her blueish smock, painstakingly painting an unfired ceramic piece with glaze; her tongue protruded and her eyes glowed…the castor moved expertly and he could see already that this was going to be a good i. The sight of Emily at work recalled to him the job that lay before him, today: ane which he did not enjoy.

He said, peevishly, "Maybe nosotros ought to wait before we arroyo him."

Without looking upward, Emily said, "We'll never have a ameliorate display to present to him than we have now."

"What if he says no?"

"We'll go along. What did y'all expect, that we'd give up just because my onetime husband can't foresee—or won't foresee—how successful these new pieces will eventually be in terms of the marketplace?"

Richard Hnatt said, "You know him; I don't. He's non vengeful, is he? He wouldn't carry a grudge?" And anyhow what sort of grudge could Emily's former married man be carrying? No 1 had done him any harm; if anything information technology had gone the other way, or and so he understood from what Emily had related.

It was strange, hearing nigh Barney Mayerson all the time and never having met him, never having direct contact with the man. At present that would stop, because he had an appointment to see Mayerson at nine this morning in the man's office at P. P. Layouts. Mayerson of course would hold the whip hand; he could take one brief glance at the brandish of ceramics and decline advertizing hoc. No, he would say, P. P. Layouts is not interested in a min of this. Believe my precog power, my Pre-Fash marketing talent and skill. And—out would go Richard Hnatt, the collection of pots under his arm, with absolutely no other place to become.

Looking out the window he saw with aversion that already information technology had become likewise hot for human being endurance; the footer runnels were abruptly empty as everyone ducked for encompass. The time was eight-thirty and he now had to go out; ascent, he went to the hall closet to go his pith helmet and his mandatory cooling-unit; past law ane had to be strapped to every commuter's dorsum until nightfall.

"Good day," he said to his married woman, pausing at the front end door.

"Goodbye and lots of luck." She had get even more involved in her elaborate glazing and he realized all at once that this showed how vast her tension was; she could not afford to pause even a moment. He opened the door and stepped out into the hall, feeling the cool wind of the portable unit as information technology chugged from behind him. "Oh," Emily said, as he began to shut the door; now she raised her head, brushing her long brown hair back from her eyes. "Vid me every bit soon as y'all're out of Barney'due south office, every bit before long as you know one manner or another."

"Okay," he said, and shut the door behind him.

Downramp, at the building's bank, he unlocked their safety deposit box and carried information technology to a privacy room; in that location he lifted out the brandish case containing the spread of ceramic ware which he was to evidence Mayerson.

Shortly, he was aboard a thermosealed interbuilding commute machine, on his manner to downtown New York City and P. P. Layouts, the great stake synthetic-cement edifice from which Perky Pat and all the units of her miniature world originated. The doll, he reflected, which had conquered man as human at the same fourth dimension had conquered the planets of the Sol organisation. Perky Pat, the obsession of the colonists. What a commentary on colonial life…what more than did one need to know about those unfortunates who, under the selective service laws of the Un, had been kicked off Earth, required to begin new, alien lives on Mars or Venus or Ganymede or wherever else the UN bureaucrats happened to imagine they could be deposited…and subsequently a mode survive.

And we think we've got information technology bad here, he said to himself.

The individual in the seat next to him, a eye-aged man wearing the gray pith helmet, sleeveless shirt, and shorts of bright crimson popular with the businessman class, remarked, "It's going to be another hot one."

"Yep."

"What you got there in that bang-up large carton? A picnic lunch

for a hovel of Martian colonists?"

"Ceramics," Hnatt said.

"I'll bet yous fire them just by sticking them outdoors at high noon." The businessman chuckled, then picked upward his morning time 'pape, opened it to the forepart page. "Ship from outside the Sol system reported crash-landed on Pluto," he said. "Team beingness sent to find it. You suppose information technology'south things? I can't stand up those things from other star systems."

"It'southward more than likely one of our own ships reporting dorsum," Hnatt said.

"Ever seen a Proxima affair?"

"Only pics."

"Grisly," the man of affairs said. "If they find that wrecked send on Pluto and it is a thing I hope they laser it out of existence; afterward all we do have a police force against them coming into our system."

"Right."

"Can I come across your ceramics? I'k in neckties, myself. The Werner simulated-handwrought living tie in a diverseness of Titanian colors—I have one on, see? The colors are actually a primitive life form that we import and so grow in cultures here on Terra. Just how nosotros induce them to reproduce is our trade secret, you know, like the formula for Coca-Cola."

Hnatt said, "For a similar reason I tin can't show you lot these ceramics, much as I'd like to. They're new. I'thou taking them to a Pre-Fash precog at P. P. Layouts; if he wants to miniaturize them for the Perky Pat layouts then we're in: it'due south just a question of flashing the info to the P. P. disc jockey—what'south his proper name?—circling Mars. And so on."

"Werner handwrought ties are part of the Perky Pat layouts," the man informed him. "Her boyfriend Walt has a closetful of them." He beamed. "When P. P. Layouts decided to min our ties—"

"Information technology was Barney Mayerson you lot talked to?"

"I didn't talk to him; it was our regional sales director. They say Mayerson is difficult. Goes on what seems like impulse and in one case he'south decided information technology's irreversible."

"Is he ever incorrect? Declines items that become fash?"

"Sure. He may be a precog but he's simply human. I'll tell you ane thing that might help. He's very suspicious of women. His matrimony broke up a couple of years ago and he never got over information technology. Run across, his wife became pregnant twice, and the lath of directors of his conapt building, I think it's 33, met and voted to expel him and his wife because they had violated the edifice code. Well, you know 33; you know how difficult it is to get into whatever of the buildings in that low range. And then instead of giving upwards his apt he elected to divorce his wife and let her motion, taking their kid. And then later apparently he decided he made a mistake and he got embittered; he blamed himself, naturally, for making a fault like that. A natural mistake, though; for God's sake, what wouldn't you and I requite to have an apt in 33 or 34? He never remarried; maybe he's a Neo-Christian. But anyhow when you get to try to sell him on your ceramics, exist very conscientious most how you bargain with the feminine angle; don't say 'these will appeal to the ladies' or anything like that. Most retail items are purchased—"

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