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“I can’t be on Mars that soon,” Barney said. “Let alone be set up to buy a bindle of Chew-Z from a pusher.”
“I know that.” Leo’s voice was hard. “But he can’t destroy me that soon; it’ll take him weeks, maybe even months. And by then we’ll have someone in the courts who can show damages. I recognize this doesn’t sound to you like much, but—”
Barney said, “Contact me when I’m on Mars. At my hovel.”
“I’ll do that! I’ll do that!” And then, half to himself, Leo said, “And it’ll give you a reason.”
“Pardon?”
“Nothing, Barney.”
“Explain.”
Leo shrugged. “Hell, I know the spot you’re in. Roni’s got your job; you were right. And I had you traced; I know you went beeline-wise to your ex. You still love her and she won’t come with you, will she? I know you better than you know yourself. I know exactly why you didn’t show up to bail me out when Palmer had me; your whole life has led up to your replacing me and now that’s collapsed, you have to start over with something new. Too bad, but you did it to yourself, by overreaching. See, I don’t plan to step aside, never did. You’re good, but not as an executive, only as a Pre-Fash boy; you’re too petty. Look at how you turned down those pots of Richard Hnatt’s. That was a dead giveaway, Barney. I’m sorry.”
“Okay,” Barney said finally. “Possibly you’re right.”
“Well, so you learned a lot about yourself. And you can start again, Fineburg Crescent-wise.” Leo slapped him on the back. “Become a leader in your hovel; make it creative and productive or whatever hovels do. And you’ll be a spy for Felix Blau; that’s big-time.”
Barney said, “I could have gone over to Eldritch.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t. Who cares what you might have done?”
“You think I did the right thing to volunteer for the service?”
Leo said quietly, “Fella, what the hell else could you do?”
There was no answer to that. And they both knew it.
“When the urge strikes you,” Leo said, “to feel sorry for yourself, remember this. Palmer Eldritch wants to kill me… I’m a lot worse off than you.”
“I guess so.” It rang true, and he had one more intuition to accompany that.
His situation would become the same as Leo’s the moment he initiated litigation against Palmer Eldritch.
He did not look forward to it.
That night he found himself on a UN transport sighted on the planet Mars as its destination. In the seat next to him sat a pretty, frightened, but desperately calm dark-haired girl with features as sharply etched as those of a magazine model. Her name, she told him almost as soon as the ship had attained escape velocity—she was patently eager to break her tension by conversation with anyone, on any topic—was A
“How would you have avoided it?” he asked, curious.
“A heart murmur,” A
“How about premature contractions such as auricular, nodal, and ventricular, auricular tachycardia, auricular flutter, auricular fibrillation, not to mention night cramps?” Barney asked, having himself looked—without result—into the topic.
“I could have produced documents from hospitals and doctors and insurance companies testifying for me.” She glanced him over, up and down, then, very interestedly, “It sounds as if you could have gotten out, Mr. Payerson.”
“Mayerson. I volunteered, Miss Hawthorne.” But I couldn’t have gotten out, not for long, he said to himself.
“They’re very religious in the colonies. So I hear, anyhow. What denomination are you, Mr. Mayerson?”
“Um,” he said, stuck.
“I think you’d better find out before we get there. They’ll ask you and expect you to attend services.” She added, “It’s primarily the use of that drug—you know. Can-D. It’s brought about a lot of conversions to the established churches… although many of the colonists find in the drug itself a religious experience that’s adequate for them. I have relatives on Mars; they write me so I know. I’m going to the Fineburg Crescent; where are you going?”
Up the creek, he thought. “The same,” he said, aloud.
“Possibly you and I’ll be in the same hovel,” A
“Honest,” Barney said. “I believe it. Whatever that is.”
“There’s a Neo-American mission church in the Fineburg Crescent and therefore a vicar, a priest; I expect to be able to take Holy Communion at least once a month. And confess twice a year, as we’re supposed to, as I’ve been doing on Terra. Our church has many sacraments… have you taken either of the two Greater Sacraments, Mr. Mayerson?”
“Uh—” he hesitated.
“Christ specified that we observe two sacraments,” A
“Oh. You mean the bread and the wine.”
“You know how the eating of Can-D translates—as they call it—the partaker to another world. It’s secular, however, in that it’s temporary and only a physical world. The bread and the wine—”
“I’m sorry, Miss Hawthorne,” Barney said, “but I’m afraid I can’t believe in that, the body and blood business. It’s too mystical for me.” Too much based on unproved premises, he said to himself. But she was right; sacral religion had, because of Can-D, become common in the colony moons and planets, and he would be encountering it, as A
“Are you going to try Can-D?” A
“Sure.”
A
“I don’t want to argue it,” he said. “It’s experienced as real; that’s all I know.”
“So are dreams.”
“But this is stronger,” he pointed out. “Clearer. And it’s done in—” He had started to say communion. “In company with others who really go along. So it can’t be entirely an illusion. Dreams are private; that’s the reason we identify them as illusion. But Perky Pat—”
“It would be interesting to know what the people who make the Perky Pat layouts think about it all,” A
“I can tell you. To them it’s just a business. As probably the manufacture of sacramental wine and wafers is to those who—”
“If you’re going to try Can-D,” A
“I can’t,” he said. I believe in Can-D, he said to himself, and, if necessary, Chew-Z. You can put your faith in something twenty-one centuries old; I’ll stick with something new. And that is that.
A