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Interrupting, Fran Schein said to Barney, “You don’t want a Neo-Christian nut to live with you. We’ve had experience with that; we ejected a couple of them last year. They can cause terrible trouble here on Mars. Remember, we shared her mind… she’s a dedicated member of some high church or other, with all the sacraments and the rituals, all that old outdated junk; she actually believes in it.”
Barney said tightly, “I know.”
In an easy-going way Tod Morris said, “That’s true, Mayerson; honest. We have to live too close together to import any kind of ideological fanaticism from Terra. It’s happened at other hovels; we know what we’re talking about. It has to be live and let live, with no absolutist creeds and dogma; a hovel is just too small.” He lit a cigarette and glanced down at A
“Did she seem to enjoy being translated?” Barney asked Helen Morris.
“Yes, to a certain extent. Of course it upset her… the first time you have to expect that; she didn’t know how to cooperate in handling the body. But she was quite eager to learn. Now obviously she’s got it all to herself so it’s easier on her. This is good practice.”
Bending down, Barney Mayerson picked up the small doll, Perky Pat in her yellow shorts and red-striped cotton t-shirt and sandals. This now was A
“I’d like to marry her,” he said aloud, suddenly.
“Who?” Tod asked. “Perky Pat or the new girl?”
“He means Perky Pat,” Norm Schein said, and snickered.
“No he doesn’t,” Helen said severely. “And I think it’s fine; now we can be four couples instead of three couples and one man, one odd man.”
“Is there any way,” Barney said, “to get drunk around here?”
“Sure,” Norm said. “We’ve got liquor—it’s dull ersatz gin, but it’s eighty proof; it’ll do the job.”
“Let me have some,” Barney said, reaching for his wallet.
“It’s free. The UN supply ships drop it in vats.” Norm went to a locked cupboard, produced a key, and opened it.
Sam Regan said, “Tell us, Mayerson, why you feel the need to get drunk. Is it us? The hovel? Mars itself?”
“No.” It was none of those; it had to do with A
If he could help her perhaps he could help himself. And if not—
He had an intuition that otherwise they were both finished. Mars, for both himself and A
9
After she emerged from the experience of translation A
“I have to get back to Flax Back Spit,” she explained. “Thank you for letting me use your layout,” she said to the hovelists who stood here and there, watching her as she dressed. “I’m sorry, Barney.” She hung her head. “It was unkind to leave you the way I did.”
He accompanied her, on foot, across the flat, nocturnal sands to her own hovel; neither of them spoke as they plodded along, keeping their eyes open, as they had been told to, for a local predator, a jackal-like telepathic Martian life form. However, they saw nothing.
“How was it?” he asked her at last.
“You mean being that little brassy blonde-haired doll with all her damn clothes and her boyfriend and her car and her—” A
“Yeah,” he agreed. There was that about Perky Pat.
“Barney,” she said quietly, “I have to find something else and soon. Can you help me? You seem smart and grown-up and experienced. Being translated is not going to help me… Chew-Z won’t be any better because something in me rebels, won’t take it—see? Yes, you see; I can tell. Hell, you wouldn’t even try it once, so you must understand.” She squeezed his arm, and clung tightly to him in the darkness. “I know something else, Barney. They’re tired of it, too; all they did was bicker while they—we–were inside those dolls. They didn’t enjoy it for a second, even.”
“Gosh,” he said.
Flashing her lantern ahead, A
“No,” he admitted. “But the thing is, you’d regret it afterward. I would, too, because of your reaction.”
“Maybe I’ll pray,” A
“Paul who?”
“In the New Testament. His letters to for instance the Corinthians or the Romans… you know. Paul says our enemy is death; it’s the final enemy we overcome, so I guess it’s the greatest. We’re all blighted, according to Paul, not just our bodies but our souls, too; both have to die and then we can be born again, with new bodies not of flesh but incorruptible. See? You know, when I was Perky Pat, just now… I had the oddest feeling that I was—it’s wrong to say this or believe it, but—”
“But,” Barney finished for her, “it seemed like a taste of that. But you expected it, though; you knew the resemblance—you mentioned it yourself, on the ship.” A lot of people, he reflected, had noticed it, too.
“Yes,” A
“Chew-Z,” Barney said.
“That’s what I was thinking. If it was like that, like what Paul says about the corruptible man putting on incorruption—I couldn’t stop myself, Barney; I’d have to chew Chew-Z. I wouldn’t be able to wait until the end of my life… it might be fifty years living here on Mars—half a century!” She shuddered. “Why wait when I could have it now?”
“The last person I talked to,” Barney said, “who had taken Chew-Z, said it was the worst experience of his life.”
That startled her. “In what way?”
“He fell into the domain of someone or something he considered absolutely evil, someone he was terrified of. And he was lucky—and he knew it—to get away again.”
“Barney,” she said, “why are you on Mars? Don’t say it’s because of the draft; a person as smart as you could have gone to a psychiatrist—”
“I’m on Mars,” he said, “because I made a mistake.” In your terminology, he reflected, it would be called a sin. And in my terminology, too, he decided.
A
He shrugged.
“So now for the rest of your life you’re here,” A
“Pretty soon.” It would not be long before he ran into one of Palmer Eldritch’s pushers; he was certain of that. Putting his hand on her shoulder he said, “But you can get it for yourself just as easily.”