“What determines our length of time here?” Leo asked.
“Our attitude. Not the quantity taken. We can return whenever we want to. So the amount of the drug need not be–”
“That’s not true. Because I’ve wanted out of here for some time, now.”
“But,” Eldritch said, “you didn’t construct this–establishment, here; I did and it’s mine. I created the glucks, this landscape–” He gestured with his stick. “Every damn thing you see, including your body.”
“My body?” Leo examined himself. It was his regular, familiar body, known to him intimately; it was his, not Eldritch’s.
“I willed you to emerge here exactly as you are in our universe,” Eldritch said. “You see, that’s the point that appealed to Hepburn-Gilbert, who of course is a Buddhist. You can reincarnate in any form you wish, or that’s wished for you, as in this situation.”
“So that’s why the UN bit,” Leo said. It explained a great deal.
“With Chew-Z one can pass from life to life, be a bug, a physics teacher, a hawk, a protozoon, a slime mold, a streetwalker in Paris in 1904, a–”
“Even,” Leo said, “a gluck. Which one of us is the gluck, there?”
“I told you; I made it out of a portion of myself. You could shape something. Go ahead–project a fraction of your essence; it’ll take material form on its own. What you supply is the logos. Remember that?”
“I remember,” Leo said. He concentrated, and presently there formed not far off an unwieldy mass of wires and bars and gridlike extensions.
“What the hell is that?” Eldritch demanded.
“A gluck trap.”
Eldritch put his head back and laughed. “Very good. But please don’t build a Palmer Eldritch trap; I still have things I want to say.” He and Leo watched the gluck suspiciously approach the trap, sniffing. It entered and the trap banged shut. The gluck was caught, and now the trap dispatched it; one quick sizzle, a small plume of smoke, and the gluck had vanished.
In the air before Leo a small section shimmered; out of it emerged a black book, which he accepted, thumbed through, then, satisfied, put down on his lap.
“What’s that?” Eldritch asked.
“A King James Bible. I thought it might help protect me.”
“Not here,” Eldritch said. “This is my domain.” He gestured at the bible and it vanished. “You could have your own, though, and fill it with bibles. As can everyone. As soon as our operations are underway. We’re going to have layouts, of course, but that comes later with our Terran activities. And anyhow that’s a formality, a ritual to ease the transition. Can-D and Chew-Z will be marketed on the same basis, in open competition; we’ll claim nothing for Chew-Z that you don’t claim for your product. We don’t want to scare people away; religion has become a touchy subject. It will only be after a few tries that they realize the two different aspects: the lack of a time lapse and the other, perhaps the more vital. That it isn’t fantasy, that they enter a genuine new universe.”
“Many persons feel that about Can-D,” Leo pointed out. “They hold it as an article of faith that they’re actually on Earth.”
“Fanatics,” Eldritch said with disgust. “Obviously it’s illusion because there is no Perky Pat and no Walt Essex and anyhow the structure of their fantasy environment is limited to the artifacts actually installed in their layout; they can’t operate the automatic dishwasher in the kitchen unless a min of one was installed in advance. And a person who doesn’t participate can watch and see that the two dolls don’t go anywhere; no one is in them. It can be demonstrated–”
“But you’re going to have trouble convincing those people,” Leo said. “They’ll stay loyal to Can-D. There’s no real dissatisfaction with Perky Pat; why should they give up–”
“I’ll tell you,” Eldritch said. “Because however wonderful being Perky Pat and Walt is for a while, eventually they’re forced to return to their hovels. Do you know how that feels, Leo? Try it sometime; wake up in a hovel on Ganymede after you’ve been freed for twenty, thirty minutes. It’s an experience you’ll never forget.”
“Hmm.”
“And there’s something else–and you know what it is, too. When the little period of escape is over and the colonist returns… he’s not fit to resume a normal, daily life. He’s demoralized. But if instead of Can-D he’s chewed–”
He broke off. Leo was not listening; he was involved in constructing another artifact in the air before him.
A short flight of stairs appeared, leading into a luminous hoop. The far end of the flight of stairs could not be seen.
“Where does that go?” Eldritch demanded, an irritated expression on his face.
“New York City,” Leo said. “It’ll take me back to P. P. Layouts.” He rose and walked to the flight of stairs. “I have a feeling, Eldritch, that something’s wrong, some aspect of this Chew-Z product. And we won’t discover what it is until too late.” He began climbing the stairs and then he remembered the girl, Monica; he wondered if she was all right, here in Palmer Eldritch’s world. “What about the child?” He stopped his climb. Below him, but seemingly far off, he could make out Eldritch, still seated with his stick on the grass. “The glucks didn’t get her, did they?”
Eldritch said, “I was the little girl. That’s what I’m trying to explain to you; that’s why I say it means genuine reincarnation, triumph over death.”
Blinking, Leo said, “Then the reason she was familiar–” He ceased, and looked again.
On the grass Eldritch was gone. The child Monica, with her suitcase full of Dr. Smile, sat there instead. So it was evident, now.
He was telling–she, they were telling–the truth.
Slowly, Leo walked back down the stairs and out onto the grass once more.
The child, Monica, said, “I’m glad you’re not leaving, Mr. Bulero. It’s nice to have someone smart and evolved like you to talk to.” She patted the suitcase resting on the grass beside her. “I went back and got him; he was terrified of the glucks. I see you found something that would handle them.” She nodded toward his gluck trap, which now empty, awaited another victim. “Very ingenious of you. I hadn’t thought of it; I just got the hell out of there. A diencephalic panic-reaction.”
To her Leo said hesitantly, “You’re Palmer, are you? I mean, down underneath? Actually?”
“Take the medieval doctrine of substance versus accidents,” the child said pleasantly. “My accidents are those of this child, but my substance, as with the wine and the wafer in transubstantiation–”
“Okay,” Leo said. “You’re Eldritch; I believe you. But I still don’t like this place. Those glucks–”
“Don’t blame them on Chew-Z,” the child said. “Blame them on me; they’re a product of my mind, not of the lichen. Does every new universe constructed have to be nice? I like glucks in mine; they appeal to something in me.
“Suppose I want to construct my own universe,” Leo said. “Maybe there’s something evil in me, too, some aspect of my personality I don’t know about. That would cause me to produce a thing even more ugly than what you’ve brought into being.” At least with the Perky Pat layouts one was limited to what one had provided in advance, as Eldritch himself had pointed out. And–there was a certain safety in this.
“Whatever it was could be abolished,” the child said indifferently. “If you found you didn’t like it. And if you did like it–” She shrugged. “Keep it, then. Why not? Who’s hurt? You’re alone in your–” Instantly she broke off, clapping her hand to her mouth.
“Alone,” Leo said. “You mean each person goes to a different subjective world? It’s not like the layouts, then, because everyone in the group who takes Can-D goes to the layout, the men to Walt, the women into Perky Pat. But that means you’re not here.” Or, he thought, I’m not here. But in that case–
The child watched him intently, trying to gauge his reaction.
“We haven’t taken Chew-Z,” Leo said quietly. “This is all a hypnogogic, absolutely artificially induced pseudoenvironment. We’re not anywhere except where we started from; we’re still at your demesne on Luna. Chew-Z doesn’t create any new universe and you know it. There’s no bona fide reincarnation with it. This is all just one big snow-job.”
The child was silent. But she had not taken her eyes from him; her eyes burned, cold and bright, unwinking.
Leo said, “Come on, Palmer; what does Chew-Z really do?”
“I told you.” The child’s voice was harsh.
“This is not even as real as Perky Pat, as the use of our own drug. And even that is open to the question as regards the validity of the experience, its authenticity versus it as purely hypnogogic or hallucinatory. So obviously there won’t be any discussion about this; it’s patently the latter.”