“You know it is.” The girl looked nettled.
“Listen,” Leo said. “I can get you some.” He would, of course, chew it with her; in concert the users’ minds fused, became a new unity—or at least that was the experience. A few sessions of Can-D chewing in togetherness and he would know all there was to know about Pia Jurgens; there was something about her—beyond the obvious physical, anatomical enormity—that fascinated him; he yearned to be closer to her. “We won’t use a layout.” By an irony he, the creator and manufacturer of the Perky Pat microworld, preferred to use Can-D in a vacuum; what did a Terran have to gain from a layout, inasmuch as it was a mill of the conditions obtaining in the average Terran city? For settlers on a howling, gale-swept moon, huddled at the bottom of a hovel against frozen methane crystals and things, it was something else again; Perky Pat and her layout were an entree back to the world they had been born to. But he, Leo Bulero, he was damn tired of the world he had been born to and still dwelt on. And even Winnie-the-Pooh Acres, with all its quaint and not-so-quaint diversions did not fill the void. However—
“That Can-D,” he said to Miss Jurgens, “is great stuff, and no wonder it’s banned. It’s like religion; Can-D is the religion of the colonists.” He chuckled. “One plug of it, wouzzled for fifteen minutes, and—” He made a sweeping gesture. “No more hovel. No more frozen methane. It provides a reason for living. Isn’t that worth the risk and expense?”
But what is there of equal value for us? he asked himself, and felt melancholy. He had, by manufacturing the Perky Pat layouts and raising and distributing the lichen-base for the final packaged product Can-D, made life bearable for over one million unwilling expatriates from Terra. But what the hell did he get back? My life, he thought, is dedicated to others, and I’m beginning to kick; it’s not enough. There was his satellite, where Scotty waited; there existed as always the tangled details of his two large business operations, the one legal, the other not… but wasn’t there more in life than this?
He did not know. Nor did anyone else, because like Barney Mayerson they were all engaged in their various imitations of him. Barney with his Miss Rondinella Fugate, small-time replica of Leo Bulero and Miss Jurgens. Wherever he looked it was the same; probably even Ned Lark, the Narcotics Bureau chief, lived this sort of life—probably so did Hepburn-Gilbert, who probably kept a pale, tall Swedish starlet with breasts the size of bowling balls– and equally firm. Even Palmer Eldritch. No, he realized suddenly. Not Palmer Eldritch; he’s found something else. For ten years he’s been in the Prox system or at least coming and going. What did he find? Something worth the effort, worth the terminal crash on Pluto?
“You saw the homeopapes?” he asked Miss Jurgens. “About the ship on Pluto? There’s a man in a billion, that Eldritch. No one else like him.”
“I read,” Miss Jurgens said, “that he was practically a nut.”
“Sure. Ten years out of his life, all that agony, and for what?”
“You can be sure he got a good return for the ten years,” Miss Jurgens said. “He’s crazy but smart; he looks out for himself, like everyone else does. He’s not that nuts.”
“I’d like to meet him,” Leo Bulero said. “Talk to him, even if only just a minute.” He resolved, then, to do that, go to the hospital where Palmer Eldritch lay, force or buy his way into the man’s room, learn what he had found.
“I used to think,” Miss Jurgens said, “that when the ships first left our system for another star—remember that?—we’d hear that—” She hesitated. “It’s so silly, but I was only a kid then, when Arnoidson made his first trip to Prox and back; I was a kid when he got back, I mean. I actually thought maybe by going that far he’d—” She ducked her head, not meeting Leo Bulero’s gaze. “He’d find God.”
Leo thought, I thought so, too. And I was an adult, then. In my mid-thirties. As I’ve mentioned to Barney on numerous occasions.
And, he thought, I still believe that, even now. About the ten-year flight of Palmer Eldritch.
After lunch, back in his office at P. P. Layouts, he met Rondinella Fugate for the first time; she was waiting for him when he arrived.
Not bad-looking, he thought as he shut the office door. Nice figure, and what glorious, luminous eyes. She seemed nervous; she crossed her legs, smoothed her skirt, watched him furtively as he seated himself at his desk facing her. Very young, Leo realized. A child who would speak up and contradict her superior when she thought he was wrong. Touching…
“Do you know why you’re here in my office?” he inquired.
“I guess you’re angry because I contradicted Mr. Mayerson. But I really experienced the futurity in the life-line of those ceramics. So what else could I do?” She half-rose imploringly, then reseated herself.
Leo said, “I believe you. But Mr. Mayerson is sensitive. If you’re living with him you know he has a portable psychiatrist that he lugs wherever he goes.” Opening his desk drawer he got out his box of Cuesta Reys, the very finest; he offered the box to Miss Fugate, who gratefully accepted one of the slender dark cigars. He, too, took a cigar; he lit hers and then his, and leaned back in his chair. “You know who Palmer Eldritch is?”
“Yes.”
“Can you use your precog powers for something other than Pre-Fash foresight? In another month or so the homeopapes will be routinely mentioning Eldritch’s location. I’d like you to look ahead to those ‘papes and then tell me where the man is at this moment. I know you can do it.” You had better be able to, he said to himself, if you want to keep your job here. He waited, smoking his cigar, watching the girl and thinking to himself, with a trace of envy, that if she was as good in bed as she looked—
Miss Fugate said in a soft, halting voice, “I get only the most vague impression, Mr. Bulero.”
“Well, let’s hear it anyhow.” He reached for a pen.
It took her several minutes, and, as she reiterated, her impression was not distinct. Nonetheless he presently had on his note pad the words: James Riddle Veterans’ Hospital, Base III, Ganymede. A UN establishment, of course. But he had anticipated that. It was not decisive; he still might be able to find a way in.
“And he’s not there under that name,” Miss Fugate said, pale and enervated from the effort of foreseeing; she relit her cigar, which had gone out; sitting straighter in her chair, she once more crossed her supple legs. “The homeopapes will say that Eldritch was listed in the hospital records as a Mr.—” She paused, squeezed her eyes shut, and sighed. “Oh hell,” she said. “I can’t make it out. One syllable. Frent. Brent. No, I think it’s Trent. Yes, it’s Eldon Trent.” She smiled in relief; her large eyes sparkled with naïve, childlike pleasure. “They really have gone to a lot of trouble to keep him hidden. And they’re interrogating him, the ‘papes will say. So obviously he’s conscious.” She frowned then, all at once. “Wait. I’m looking at a headline; I’m in my own conapt, by myself. It’s early morning and I’m reading the front page. Oh dear.”
“What’s it say?” Leo demanded, bending rigidly forward; he could catch the girl’s dismay.
Miss Fugate whispered, “The headlines say that Palmer Eldritch is dead.” She blinked, looked around her with amazement, then slowly focused on him; she regarded him with a confused mixture of fear and uncertainty, almost palpably edging back; she retreated from him, huddled against her chair, her fingers interlocked. “And you’re accused of having done it, Mr. Bulero. Honest; that’s what the headline says.”
“You mean I’m going to murder him?”
She nodded. “But—it’s not a certainty; I only pick it up in some of the futures… do you understand? I mean, we precogs see—” She gestured.
“I know.” He was familiar with precogs; Barney Mayerson had, after all, worked for P. P. Layouts thirteen years, and some of the others even longer. “It could happen,” he said gratingly. Why would I do a thing like that? he asked himself. No way to tell now. Perhaps after he reached Eldritch, talked to him… as evidently he would.