“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 Therpay 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 nobody 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 danm 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–”