The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick Page A

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.