And he was blind. At least from the standpoint of the natural-born body. But replacements had been made – at the prices which Eldritch could and would pay; that had been done just prior to his Prox voyage by Brazilian oculists. They had done a superb job. The replacements, fitted into the bone sockets, had no pupils, nor did any ball move by muscular action. Instead a panoramic vision was supplied by a wide-angle lens, a permanent horizontal slot running from edge to edge. The accident to his original eyes had been no accident; it had occurred in Chicago, a deliberate acid-throwing attack by persons unknown, for equally unknown reasons… at least as far as the public was concerned. Eldritch probably knew. He had, however, said nothing, filed no complaint; instead he had gone straight to his team of Brazilian oculists. His horizontally slotted artificial eyes seemed to please him; almost at once he had appeared at the dedication ceremonies of the new St. George opera house in Utah, and had mixed with his near-peers without embarrassment. Even now, a decade later, the operation was rare and it was the first time Barney had ever seen the Jensen wide-angle, luxvid eyes; this, and the artificial arm with its enormously variable manual repertory, impressed him more than he would have expected… or was there something else about Eldritch?
“Mr. Mayerson,” Palmer Eldritch said, and smiled; the steel teeth glinted in the weak, cold Martian sunlight. He extended his hand and automatically Barney did the same.
Your voice, Barney thought. It originates somewhere other than–he blinked. The entire figure was insubstantial; dimly, through it, the landscape showed. It was a figment of some sort, artificially produced, and the irony came to him: so much of the man was artificial already, and now even the flesh and blood portions were, too. Is this what arrived home from Prox? Barney wondered. If so, Hepburn-Gilbert has been deceived; this is no human being. In no sense whatsoever.
“I’m still in the ship,” Palmer Eldritch said; his voice boomed from a loudspeaker mounted on the ship’s hull. “A precaution, in as much as you’re an employee of Leo Bulero.” The figment-hand touched Barney’s; he experienced a pervasive coldness slop over to him, obviously a purely psychological aversion-reaction since nothing was there to produce the sensation.
“An ex-employee,” Barney said.
Behind him, now, the others of the hovel emerged, the Scheins and Morrises and Regans; they approached like wary children as one by one they identified the nebulous man confronting Barney.
“What’s going on?” Norm Schein said uneasily. “This is a simulacrum; I don’t like it.” Standing beside Barney he said, “We’re living on the desert, Mayerson; we get mirages all the time, ships and visitors and unnatural life forms. That’s what this is; this guy isn’t really here and neither is that ship parked there.”
Tod Morris added, “They’re probably six hundred miles away; it’s an optical phenomenon. You get used to it.”
“But you can hear me,” Palmer Eldritch pointed out; the speaker boomed and echoed. “I’m here, all right, to do business with you. Who’s your hovel team-captain?”
“I am,” Norm Schein said.
“My card.” Eldritch held out a small white card and reflexively Norm Schein reached for it. The card fluttered through his fingers and came to rest on the sand. At that Eldritch smiled. It was a cold, hollow smile, an implosion, as if it had drawn back into the man everything nearby, even the thin air itself. “Look down at it,” Eldritch suggested. Norm Schein bent, and studied the card. “That’s right,” Eldritch said. “I’m here to sign a contract with your group. To deliver to you–”
“Spare us the speech about your delivering what God only promises,” Norm Schein said. “Just tell us the price.”
“About one-tenth that of the competitor’s product. And much more effective; you don’t even require a layout.” Eldritch seemed to be talking directly to Barney; his gaze, however, could not be plotted because of the structure of the lens apertures. “Are you enjoying it here on Mars, Mr. Mayerson?”
“It’s great fun,” Barney said.
Eldritch said, “Last night when Allen Faine descended from his dull little satellite to meet with you… what did you discuss?”
Rigidly, Barney said, “Business.” He thought quickly, but not quite quickly enough; the next question was already blaring from the speaker.
“So you do still work for Leo. In fact it was deliberately arranged to send you here to Mars in advance of our first distribution of Chew-Z. Why? Have you some idea of blocking it? There was no propaganda in your luggage, no leaflets or other printed matter beyond ordinary books. A rumor, perhaps. Word of mouth. Chew-Z is–what, Mr. Mayerson? Dangerous to the habitual user?”
“I don’t know. I’m waiting to try some of it. And see.”
“We’re all waiting,” Fran Schein said; she carried in her arms a load of truffle skins, clearly for immediate payment. “Can you make a delivery right now, or do we have to keep on waiting?”
“I can deliver your first allocation,” Eldritch said.
A port of the ship snapped open. From it popped a small jet-tractor; it sped toward them. A yard away it halted and ejected a carton wrapped in familiar plain brown paper; the carton lay at their feet and then at last Norm Schein bent and picked it up. It was not a phantasm. Cautiously Norm tore the wrappings off.
“Chew-Z,” Mary Regan said breathlessly. “Oh, what a lot! How much, Mr. Eldritch?”
“In toto,” Eldritch said, “five skins.” The tractor extended a small drawer, then, precisely the size to receive the skins.
After an interval of haggling the hovelists came to an arrangement; the five skins were deposited in the drawer–at once it was withdrawn and the tractor swiveled and zipped back to the mother ship. Palmer Eldritch, insubstantial and gray and large, remained. He appeared to be enjoying himself, Barney decided. It did not bother him to know that Leo Bulero had something up his sleeve; Eldritch thrived on this.
The realization depressed him and he walked, alone, to the meager cleared place which was eventually to be his garden. His back to the hovelists and Eldritch, he activated an autonomic unit; it began to wheeze and hum; sand disappeared into it as it sucked noisily, having difficulty. He wondered how long it would continue functioning. And what one did here on Mars to obtain repairs. Perhaps one gave up; maybe there were no repairs.
From behind Barney, Palmer Eldritch’s voice came. “Now, Mr. Mayerson, you can begin to chew away for the rest of your life.”
He turned, involuntarily, because this was not a phantasm; the man had finally come forth. “That’s right,” he said. “And nothing could delight me more.” He continued, then, tinkering with the autonomic scoop. “Where do you go to get equipment fixed on Mars?” he asked Eldritch. “Does the UN take care of that?”
Eldritch said, “How would I know?”
A portion of the autonomic scoop broke loose in Barney’s hands; he held it, weighed it. The piece, shaped like a tire iron, was heavy and he thought, I could kill him with this. Right here, in this spot. Wouldn’t that solve it? No toxin to produce grand mal seizures, no litigation… but there’d be retaliation from them. I’d outlive Eldritch by only a few hours.
But–isn’t it still worth it?
He turned. And then it happened so swiftly that he had no valid concept of it, not even an accurate perception. From the parked ship a laser beam reached forth and he felt the intense impact as it touched the metal section in his hands. At the same time Palmer Eldritch danced back, lithely, bounding upward in the slight Martian gravity; like a balloon–Barney stared but did not believe–he floated off, grinning with his huge steel teeth, waggling his artificial arm, his lank body slowly rotating. Then, as if reeled in by a transparent line, he progressed in a jerky sine-wave motion toward the ship. All at once he was gone. The nose of the ship clamped shut after him; Eldritch was inside. Safe.
“Why’d he do that?” Norm Schein said, eaten with curiosity, where he and the other hovelists stood. “What in God’s name went on, there?”
Barney said nothing; shakily he set the remains of the metal piece down. They were ashlike remnants only, brittle and dry; they crumbled away as they touched the ground.
“They got into a hassle,” Tod Morris said. “Mayerson and Eldritch; they didn’t hit it off, not one bit.”
“Anyhow,” Norm said, “we got the Chew-Z. Mayerson, you better stay away from Eldritch in the future; let me handle the transaction. If I had known that because you were an employee of Leo Bulero–”
“Former,” Barney said reflexively, and resumed his tinkering with the defective autonomic scoop. He had failed in his first try at killing Palmer Eldritch. Would he ever have a chance again?