It was a bad, perhaps even terminal, exchange.
The next he knew, Dr. Denkmal was slapping him into wakefulness. “How goes it?” Denkmal demanded, peering at him. “Broad, all-inclusive preoccupations?”
“Y-yes,” he said, and managed to sit up; he was unstrapped.
“Then we have nothing to fear,” Denkmal said, and beamed, his white mustache twitching like antennae. “Now we will consult with Frau Hnatt.” A female attendant was already unstrapping her; Emily sat up groggily and yawned. Dr. Denkrnal looked nervous. “How do you feel, Frau?” he inquired.
“Fine,” Emily murmured. “I had all sorts of pot ideas. One after another.” She glanced timidly at first him and then at Richard. “Does that mean anything?”
“Paper,” Dr. Denkmal said, producing a tablet. “Pen.” He extended them to Emily. “Put down your ideas, Frau.”
Tremblingly, Emily sketched her pot ideas. She seemed to have difficulty controlling the pen, Hnatt noticed. But presumably that would pass.
“Fine,” Dr. Denkmal said, when she had finished. He showed the sketches to Richard Hnatt. “Highly organized cephalic activity. Superior inventiveness, right?”
The pot sketches were certainly good, even brilliant. And yet Hnatt felt there was something wrong. Something about the sketches. But it was not until they had left the clinic, were standing together under the antithermal curtain outside the building, waiting for their jet-express cab to land, that he realized what it was.
The ideas were good–but Emily had done them already. Years ago, when she had designed her first professionally adequate pots: she had shown him sketches of them and then the pots themselves, even before the two of them were married. Didn’t she remember this? Obviously not.
He wondered why she didn’t remember and what it meant; it made him deeply uneasy.
However, he had been continually uneasy since receiving the first E Therapy treatment, first about the state of mankind and the Sol system in general and now about his wife. Maybe it’s merely a sign of what Denkmal calls “highly organized cephalic activity,” he thought to himself. Brain metabolism stimulation.
Or–maybe not.
Arriving on Luna, with his official press card from P. P. Layout’s house journal clutched, Leo Bulero found himself squeezed in with a gaggle of homeopape reporters on their way by surface tractor across the ashy face of the moon to Palmer Eldritch’s demesne.
“Your ident-pape, sir,” an armed guard, but not wearing the colors of the UN, yapped at him as he prepared to exit into the parking area of the demesne. Leo Bulero was thereupon wedged in the doorway of the tractor, while behind him the legitimate homeopape reporters surged and clamored restively, wanting to get out. “Mr. Bulero,” the guard said leisurely, and returned the press card. “Mr. Eldritch is expecting you. Come this way.” He was immediately replaced by another guard, who began checking the i.d. of the reporters one by one.
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 where 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.”