Nervous, Leo Bulero accompanied the first guard through an air-filled pressurized and comfortably heated tube to the demesne proper.
Ahead of him, blocking the tube, appeared another uniformed guard from Palmer Eldritch’s staff; he raised his arm and pointed something small and shiny at Leo Bulero.
“Hey,” Leo protested feebly, freezing in his tracks; he spun, ducked his head, and then stumbled a few steps back the way he had come.
The beam—of a variety he knew nothing about—touched him and he pitched forward, trying to break his fall by throwing his arms out.
The next he knew he was once more conscious and swaddled—absurdly—to a chair in a barren room. His head rang and he looked blearily around, but saw only a small table in the center of the room on which an electronic contraption rested.
“Let me out of here,” he said.
At once the electronic contraption said, “Good morning, Mr. Bulero. I am Palmer Eldritch. You wanted to see me, I understand.”
“This is cruel conduct,” Bulero said. “Having me put to sleep and then tying me up like this.”
“Have a cigar.” The electronic contraption sprouted an extension which carried in its grasp a long green cigar; the end of the cigar puffed into flame and then the elongated pseudopodium presented it to Leo Bulero. “I brought ten boxes of these back from Prox, but only one box survived the crash. It’s not tobacco; it’s superior to tobacco. What is it, Leo? What did you want?
Leo Bulero said, “Are you in that thing there, Eldritch? Or are you somewhere else, speaking through it?”
“Be content,” the voice from the metal construct resting on the table said. It continued to extend the lighted cigar, then withdrew it, stubbed it out, and dropped the remains from sight within itself. “Do you care to see color slides of my visit to the Prox system?”
“You’re kidding.”
“No,” Palmer Eldritch said. “They’ll give you some idea of what I was up against there. They’re 3-D time-lapse slides, very good.”
“No thanks.”
Eldritch said, “We found that dart embedded in your tongue; it’s been removed. But you may have something more, or so we suspect.”
“You’re giving me a lot of credit,” Leo said. “More than I ought to get.”
“In four years on Prox I learned a lot. Six years in transit, four in residence. The Proxers are going to invade Earth.”
“You’re putting me on,” Leo said.
Eldritch said, “I can understand your reaction. The UN, in particular Hepburn-Gilbert, reacted the same way. But it’s true—not in the conventional sense, of course, but in a deeper, coarser manner that I don’t quite get, even though I was among them for so long. It may be involved with Earth’s heating up, for all I know. Or there may be worse to come.”
“Let’s talk about that lichen you brought back.”
“I obtained that illegally; the Proxers didn’t know I took any of it. They use it themselves, in religious orgies. As our Indians made use of mescal and peyotl. Is that what you wanted to see me about?”
“Sure. You’re getting into my business. I know you’ve already set up a corporation; haven’t you? Nuts to this business about Proxers invading our system; it’s you I’m sore about, what you’re doing. Can’t you find some other field to go into besides min layouts?”
The room blew up in his face. White light descended, blanketing him, and he shut his eyes. Jeez, he thought. Anyhow I don’t believe that about the Proxers; he’s just trying to turn our attention away from what he’s up to. I mean, it’s strategy.
He opened his eyes, and found himself sitting on a grassy bank. Beside him a small girl played with a yo-yo.
“That toy,” Leo Bulero said, “is popular in the Prox system.” His arms and legs, he discovered, were untied; he stood up stiffly and moved his limbs. “What’s your name?” he asked.
The little girl said, “Monica.”
“The Proxers,” Leo said, “the humanoid types anyhow, wear wigs and have false teeth.” He took hold of the bulk of the child’s luminous blonde hair and pulled.
“Ouch,” the girl said. “You’re a bad man.” He let go and she retreated, still playing with her yo-yo and glaring at him defiantly.
“Sorry,” he murmured. Her hair was real; perhaps he was not in the Prox system. Anyhow, wherever he was Palmer Eldritch was trying to tell him something. “Are you planning to invade Earth?” he asked the child. “I mean, you don’t look as if you are.” Could Eldritch have gotten it wrong? he wondered. Misunderstood the Proxers? After all, to his knowledge Palmer hadn’t evolved, didn’t possess the powerful, expanded comprehension which came with E Therapy.
“My yo-yo,” the child said, “is magic. I can do anything I want with it. What’ll I do? You tell me; you look like a kindly man.”
“Take me to your leader,” Leo said. “An old joke; you wouldn’t understand it. Went out a century ago.” He looked around him and saw no signs of habitation, only the grassy plain. Too cool for Earth, he realized. Above, the blue sky. Good air, he thought. Dense. “Do you feel sorry for me,” he asked, “because Palmer Eldritch is horning into my business and if he does I’ll probably be ruined? I’m going to have to make some kind of a deal with him.” It now looks like killing him is out, he said to himself morosely. “But,” he said, “I can’t figure out any deal he’ll take; he seems to hold all the cards. Look for instance how he’s got me here, and I don’t even know where this is.” Not that it matters, he realized. Because wherever it is it’s a place Eldritch controls.
“Cards,” the child said. “I have a deck of cards, in my suitcase.”
He saw no suitcase. “Where?”
Kneeling, the girl touched the grass here and there. All at once a section slid smoothly back; the girl reached into the cavity and brought out a suitcase. “I keep it hidden,” she explained. “From the sponsors.”
“What’s that mean, that ‘sponsors’?”
“Well, to be here you need a sponsor. All of us have them; I guess they pay for everything, pay until we’re well and then we can go home, if we have homes.” She seated herself by the suitcase, and opened it—or at least tried to. The lock did not respond. “Darn,” she said. “This is the wrong one. This is Dr. Smile.”
“A psychiatrist?” Leo asked, alertly. “From one of those big conapts? Is it working? Turn it on.”
Obligingly the girl turned the psychiatrist on. “Hello, Monica,” the suitcase said tinnily. “Hello to you, too, Mr. Bulero.” It pronounced his name wrong, getting the stress on the final syllable. “What are you doing here, sir? You’re much too old to be here. Tee-hee. Or are you regressed, due to malappropriate so-called E Therapy rggggg click!” It whirred in agitation. “Therapy in Munich?” it finished.
“I feel fine,” Leo assured it. “Look, Smile; who do you know that I know that could get me out of here? Name someone, anyone. I can’t stay here any more, get it?”
“I know a Mr. Bayerson,” Dr. Smile said. “In fact I’m with him right now, via portable extension, of course, right in his office.”
“There’s noboby I know named Bayerson,” Leo said. “What is this place? Obviously it’s a rest camp of some sort for sick kids or kids with no money or some damn thing. I thought this was maybe in the Prox system but if you’re here obviously it isn’t. Bayerson.” It came to him, then. “Hell, you mean Mayerson. Barney. Back at P. P. Layouts.”
“Yes, that’s so,” Dr. Smile said.
“Contact him,” Leo said. “Tell him to get in touch with Felix Blau right away, that Tri-Planet Police Agency or whatever they call themselves. Have him have Blau do research, find out where exactly I am and then send a ship here. Got it?”
“All right,” Dr. Smile said. “I’ll address Mr. Mayerson right away. He’s conferring with Miss Fugate, his assistant, who is also his mistress and who today is wearing—hmm. They’re talking about you this very minute. But of course I can’t report what they’re saying; seal of
the medical profession, you realize. She is wearing—”
“Okay, who cares?” Leo said irritably.
“You’ll excuse me a moment,” the suitcase said. “While I sign off.” It sounded huffy. And then there was silence.
“I have bad news for you,” the child said.
“What is it?”
“I was kidding. That’s not really Dr. Smile; it’s just pretend, to keep us from loneliness. It’s alive but it’s not connected with anything outside itself; it’s what they call being on intrinsic.”
He knew what that meant; the unit was self-contained. But then how could it have known about Barney and Miss Fugate, even down to details about their personal life? Even as to what she had on? The child was not telling the truth, obviously. “Who are you?” he demanded, “Monica what? I want to know your full name.” Something about her was familiar.
“I’m back,” the suitcase announced suddenly. “Well, Mr. Bulero—” Again the faulty pronunciation. “I’ve discussed your dilemma with Mr. Mayerson and he will contact Felix Blau as you requested. Mr. Mayerson thinks he recalls reading in a homeopape once about a UN camp much as you are experiencing, somewhere in the Saturn region, for retarded children. Perhaps—”
“Hell,” Leo said, “this girl isn’t retarded.” If anything she was precocious. It did not make sense. But what did make sense was the realization that Palmer Eldritch wanted something out of him; this was not merely a matter of edifying him: it was a question of intimidation.
On the horizon a shape appeared, immense and gray, bloating as it rushed at terrific speed toward them. It had ugly spiked whiskers.
“That’s a rat,” Monica said calmly.
Leo said, “That big?” No place in the Sol system, on none of the moons or planets, did such an enormous, feral creature exist. “What will it do to us?” he asked, wondering why she wasn’t afraid.
“Oh,” Monica said, “I suppose it’ll kill us.”
“And that doesn’t frighten you?” He heard his own voice rise in a shriek. “I mean, you want to die like that, and right now? Eaten by a rat the size of—” He grabbed the girl with one hand, picked up Dr. Smile the suitcase in the other, and began lumbering away from the rat.
The rat reached them, passed on by, and was gone; its shape dwindled until at last it disappeared.
The girl snickered. “It scared you. I knew it wouldn’t see us. They can’t; they’re blind to us, here.”
“They are?” He knew, then, where he was. Felix Blau wouldn’t find him. Nobody would, even if they looked forever.
Eldritch had given him an intravenous injection of a translating drug, no doubt Chew-Z. This place was a nonexistent world, analogous to the irreal “Earth” to which the translated colonists went when they chewed his own product, Can-D.
And the rat, unlike everything else, was genuine. Unlike themselves; he and this girl—they were not real, either. At least not here. Somewhere their empty, silent bodies lay like sacks, discarded by the cerebral contents for the time being. No doubt their bodies were at Palmer Eldritch’s Lunar demesne.
“You’re Zoe,” he said. “Aren’t you? This is the way you want to be, a little girl-child again, about eight. Right? With long blonde hair.” And even, he realized, with a different name.
Stiffly, the child said, “There is no one named Zoe.”
“No one but you. Your father is Palmer Eldritch, right?”
With great reluctance the child nodded.
“Is this a special place for you?” he asked. “To which you come often?”
“This is my place,” the girl said. “No one comes here without my permission.”
“Why did you let me come here, then?” He knew that she did not like him. Had not from the very start.
“Because,” the child said, “we think perhaps you can stop the Proxers from whatever it is they’re doing.”
“That again,” he said, simply not believing her. “Your father—”
“My father,” the child said, “is trying to save us. He didn’t want to bring back Chew-Z; they made him. Chew-Z is the agent by which we’re going to be delivered over to them. You see?”
“How?”
“Because they control these areas. Like this, where you go when you’re given Chew-Z.”
“You don’t seem under any sort of alien control; look what you’re telling me.”
“But I will be,” the girl said, nodding soberly. “Soon. Just like my father is now. He was given it on Prox; he’s been taking it for years. It’s too late for him and he knows it.”
“Prove all this to me,” Leo said. “In fact prove any of it, even one part; give me something actual to go on.”
The suitcase, which he still held, now said, “What Monica says is true, Mr. Bulero.”
“How do you know?” he demanded, annoyed with it.
“Because,” the suitcase replied, “I’m under Prox influence, too; that’s why I—”
“You did nothing,” Leo said. He set the suitcase down. “Damn that Chew-Z,” he said, to both of them, the suitcase and the girl. “It’s made everything confused; I don’t know what the hell’s going on. You’re not Zoe—you don’t even know who she is. And you—you’re not Dr. Smile, and you didn’t call Barney, and he wasn’t talking to Roni Fugate; it’s all just a drug-induced hallucination. It’s my own fears about Palmer Eldritch being read back to me, this trash about him being under Prox influence, and you, too. Who ever heard of a suitcase being dominated by minds from an alien star-system?” Highly indignant, he walked away from them.
I know what’s going on, he realized. This is Palmer’s way of gaining domination over my mind; this is a form of what they used to call brainwashing. He’s got me running scared. Carefully measuring his steps, he continued on without looking back.
It was a near-fatal mistake. Something—he caught sight of it out of the corner of his eye—launched itself at his legs; he leaped aside and it passed him, circling back at once as it reoriented itself, and picked him up again as its prey.
“The rats can’t see you,” the girl called, “but the glucks can! You better run!”
Without clearly seeing it—he had seen enough—he ran.
And what he had seen he could not blame on Chew-Z. Because it was not an illusion, not a device of Palmer Eldritch’s to terrorize him. The gluck, whatever it was, did not originate on Terra nor from a Terran mind.
Behind him, leaving the suitcase, the girl ran, too.
“What about me?” Dr. Smile called anxiously.
No one came back for him.
On the vidscreen the image of Felix Blau said, “I’ve processed the material you gave me, Mr. Mayerson. It adds up to a convincing case that your employer Mr. Bulero—who is also a client of mine—is at present on a small artificial satellite orbiting Earth, legally titled Sigma 14-B. I have consulted the records of ownership and it appears to belong to a rocket-fuel manufacturer in St. George, Utah.” He inspected the papers before him. “Robard Lethane Sales. Lethane is their trade-name for their brand of—”
“Okay,” Barney Mayerson said. “I’ll contact them.” How in God’s name had Leo Bulero gotten there?
“There is one further item of possible interest. Robard Lethane Sales incorporated the same day, four years ago, as Chew-Z Manufacturers of Boston. It seems more than a coincidence to me.”
“What about getting Leo off the satellite?”
“You could file a write of mandamus with the courts demanding—”
“Too much time,” Barney said. He had a deep, ill sense of personal responsibility for what had happened. Evidently Palmer Eldritch had set up the news conference with the ’pape reporters as a pretext by which to lure Leo to the Lunar demesne—and he, precog Barney Mayerson, the man who could perceive the future, had been taken in, had expertly done his part to get Leo there.
Felix Blau said, “I can supply you with about a hundred men, from various offices of my organization. And you ought to be able to raise
fifty more from P. P. Layouts. You could try to invest the satellite.”
“And find him dead.”
“True.” Blau appeared to pout. “Well, you could go to Hepburn-Gilbert and plead for UN assistance. Or try to contact—and this sticks in the craw even worse—contact Palmer or whatever’s taking Palmer’s place, and deal directly with it. See if you can buy Leo back.”
Barney cut the circuit. He at once dialed for an outplan line, saying, “Get me Mr. Palmer Eldritch on Luna. It’s an emergency; I’d like you to hurry it up, miss.”
As he waited for the call to be put through, Roni Fugate said from the far end of the office, “Apparently we’re not going to have time to sell out to Eldritch.”
“It does look that way.” How smoothly it had all been handled; Eldritch had let his adversary do the work. And us, too, he realized, Roni and I; he’ll probably get us the same way. In fact Eldritch could indeed be waiting for our flight to the satellite; that would explain his supplying Leo with Dr. Smile.
“I wonder,” Roni said, fooling with the clasp of her blouse, “if we want to work for a man that clever. If it is a man. It looks more and more to me as if it’s not actually Palmer who came back but one of them; I think we’re going to have to accept that. The next thing we can look forward to is Chew-Z flooding the market. With UN sanction.” Her tone was bitter. “And Leo, who at least is one of us and who just wants to make a few skins, will be dead or driven out—” She stared straight ahead in fury.
“Patriotism,” Barney said.
“Self-preservation. I don’t want to find myself, some morning, chewing away on the stuff, doing whatever you do when you chew it instead of Can-D. Going—not to Perky Pat land; that’s for sure.”
The vidphone operator said, “I have a Miss Zoe Eldritch on the line, sir. Will you speak to her?”
“Okay,” Barney said, resigned.
A smartly dressed woman, sharp-eyed, with heavy hair pulled back in a bun, gazed at him in miniature. “Yes?”