Martian Time-Slip (12 page)

“Do you?” Jack said. “I'm a schizophrenic.”

Arnie stopped laughing. “No kidding. I never would have guessed; what I mean is, you look all right.”

Finishing up the task of putting the encoder back together, Jack said, “I am all right. I'm cured.”

Doreen said, “No one is ever cured of schizophrenia.” Her tone was dispassionate; she was simply stating a fact.

“They can be,” Jack said, “if it's what is called situational schizophrenia.”

Arnie eyed him with great interest, even suspicion. “You're pulling my leg. You're just trying to worm your way into my confidence.”

Jack shrugged, feeling himself flush. He turned his attention back, completely, to his work.

“No offense,” Arnie said. “You really are, no kidding? Listen, Jack, let me ask you; do you have any sort of ability or power to read the future?”

After a long pause, Jack said, “No.”

“You sure?” Arnie said, with suspicion.

“I'm sure.” He wished now that he had turned down flat that invitation to accompany them. The intent questioning made him feel exposed; Arnie was nudging too close, encroaching on him—it was difficult to breathe, and Jack moved around to the far side of the desk, to put more distance between himself and the plumber.

“Whatzamatter?” Arnie asked acutely.

“Nothing.” Jack continued working, not looking at either Arnie or the girl. Both of them were watching him, and his hands shook.

Presently Arnie said, “Jack, let me tell you how I got where I am. One talent got me up here. I can judge people and tell what they're like down inside, what they really are, not just what they do and say. I don't believe you; I bet you're lying to me about your precognition. Isn't that right? You don't even have to answer.” Turning to the girl, Arnie said, “Let's get balling; I want that drink.” He beckoned to Jack to follow.

Laying down his tools, Jack reluctantly did so.

7

On his journey by ’copter to Lewistown to meet Arnie Kott and have a drink with him, Dr. Milton Glaub asked himself if his good luck were true. I can't believe it, he thought, a turning point in my life like this.

He was not certain what Arnie wanted; the phone call had been so unexpected and Arnie had talked so fast that Dr. Glaub had wound up perplexed, knowing only that it had to do with parapsychological aspects of the mentally ill. Well, he could tell Arnie practically all there was to know on that topic. And yet Glaub sensed that there was something deeper in the inquiry.

Generally, a concern with schizophrenia was a symptom of the person's own inner struggle in that area. Now, it was a fact that often the first signs of the insidious growth of the schizophrenic process in a person was an inability to eat in public. Arnie had noisily gabbed on about his desire to meet Glaub—not in his own home or in the doctor's office—but at a well-known bar and restaurant in Lewistown, the Willows. Was this perhaps a reaction-formation? Mysteriously made tense by public situations, and especially by those involving the nutritive function, Arnie Kott was leaning over backward to regain the normalcy which was beginning to abandon him.

Piloting his ’copter, Glaub thought about this, but then, by slow and stealthy stages, his thinking returned to the topic of his own problems.

Arnie Kott, a man controlling a multimillion-dollar union fund; a prominent person in the colonial world, although virtually unknown back Home. A feudal baron, virtually. If Kott were to put me on his staff, Glaub speculated, I could pay off all the debts we've piled up, those hideous charge-account bills at twenty per cent interest that just seem to loom there always, never getting smaller or going away. And then we could start over, not go into debt, live within our means…and a highly expanded means, at that.

Then, too, old Arnie was a Swede or a Dane, something like that and so it wouldn't be necessary for Glaub to season his skin-color before receiving each patient. Plus the fact that Arnie had a reputation for informality. Milt and Arnie, it would be. Dr. Glaub smiled.

What he had to be sure to do in this initial interview was to ratify Arnie's concepts, sort of play along and not dash cold water on things, even if, say, old Arnie's notions were way out of line. A hell of a thing it would be to discourage the man! That wasn't right.

I see your point, Arnie, Dr. Glaub said to himself, practicing away as he piloted his ’copter closer and closer to Lewistown. Yes, there is a good deal to be said for that world-view.

He had handled so many types of social situations for his patients, appearing in public for them, representing those timid, shut-in schizoid personalities who shrank from interpersonal exposure, that this would undoubtedly be a snap. And—if the schizophrenic process in Arnie were beginning to bring up its heavy artillery—Arnie might need to lean on him for his very survival.

Hot dog, Dr. Glaub said to himself, and increased the velocity of the ’copter to its maximum.

Around the Willows ran a moat of cold blue water. Fountains sprayed water into the air, and bougainvillaea, purple and amber and rusty-red, grew to great heights, encircling the single-story glass structure. As he descended the black wrought-iron staircase from the parking lot, Dr. Glaub perceived his party within: Arnie Kott seated with a stunning redhead and nondescript male companion wearing repairman's overalls and canvas shirt.

True classless society, here, Dr. Glaub reflected.

A rainbow-style bridge assisted him in his crossing of the moat. Doors opened before him; he entered the lounge, passed by the bar, halted to sniff in the sight of the jazz combo composing meditatively, and then hailed Arnie. “Hi, Arnie!”

“Hi, Doc.” Arnie rose to introduce him. “Dor, this is Doc Glaub. Doreen Anderton. This is my repairman, Jack Bohlen, a real fireballer. Jack, this is the foremost living psychiatrist, Milt Glaub.”

They all nodded and shook hands.

“Hardly foremost,” Glaub murmured, as they sat down. “It's still the Swiss at Berghölzlei, the existential psychiatrists, who dominate the field.” But he was deeply gratified, untrue as Arnie's announcement had been. He could feel his face flushing with pleasure. “Sorry it took me so long to get here—I had to dash over to New Israel. Bos—Bosley Touvim—needed my advice on a medical matter which he considered pressing.”

“Quite a guy, that Bos,” Arnie said. He had lit a cigar, a genuine Earth-rolled Optimo Admiral. “A real go-getter. But let's get down to business. Wait, I'll get you a drink.” He looked inquiringly at Glaub, while waving the cocktail waitress over.

“Scotch, if you have it,” Glaub said.

“Cutty Sark, sir,” the waitress said.

“Oh, fine. No ice, please.”

“O.K.,” Arnie said impatiently. “Now look, Doc. You got the name of a really advanced schizo for me, or not?” He scrutinized Glaub.

“Uh,” said Glaub, and then he recalled his visit to New Israel not more than a short while ago. “Manfred Steiner,” he said.

“Any relation to Norbert Steiner?”

“As a matter of fact, his boy. At Camp B-G—I imagine there's no breach of confidence in telling you. Totally autistic, from birth. Mother, the cold, intellectual schizoid personality, doing it by the rulebook. Father—”

“Father dead,” Arnie said shortly.

“Right. Very regrettable. Nice chap, but depressive. It was suicide, you know. Typical impulse during his low-swing. A wonder he didn't do it years ago.”

Arnie said, “You told me on the phone you've got a theory about the schizophrenic being out of phase in time.”

“Yes, it's a derangement in the interior time-sense.” Dr. Glaub had all three of them listening, and he warmed to his topic; it was his favorite. “We have yet to get total experimental verification, but that will come.” And then, without hesitation or shame, he passed off the Berghölzlei theory as his own.

Evidently much impressed, Arnie said, “Very interesting.” To the repairman, Jack Bohlen, he said, “Could such slow-motion chambers be built?”

“No doubt,” Jack murmured.

“And sensors,” Glaub said. “To get the patient out of the chamber and into the real world. Sight, hearing—”

“It could be done,” Bohlen said.

“How about this,” Arnie said impatiently and enthusiastically. “Could the schizophrenic be running so fast, compared to us, in time, that he's actually in what to us is the future? Would that account for his precognition?” His light-colored eyes glittered excitedly.

Glaub shrugged in a manner indicating agreement.

Turning to Bohlen, Arnie stuttered, “Hey, Jack, that's it! Goddamn it, I ought to be a psychiatrist. Slow him down, hell. Speed him up, I say. Let him live out of phase in time, if he wants to. But let's get him to share his perceptions with us—right, Bohlen?”

Glaub said, “Now, there is the rub. In autism, especially, the faculty of interpersonal communication is drastically impaired.”

“I see,” Arnie said, but he was not daunted. “Hell, I know enough about that to see a way out. Didn't that early guy, Carl Jung—didn't he manage to decode the schizophrenic's language years ago?”

“Yes,” Glaub said, “decades ago Jung cracked the private language of the schizophrenic. But in child autism, as with Manfred, there is no language at all, at least no spoken language. Possibly totally personal private thoughts…but no words.”

“Shit,” Arnie said.

The girl glanced at him admonishingly.

“This is a serious matter,” Arnie said to her. “We've got to get these unfortunates, these autistic kids, to talk to us and tell us what they know; isn't that right, Doc?”

“Yes,” Glaub said.

“That kid's an orphan now,” Arnie said, “that Manfred.”

“Well, he has the mother, still,” Glaub said.

Waving his hand excitedly, Arnie said, “But they don't care enough about the kid to have him at home; they junked him in that camp. Hell, I'll spring him and bring him here. And, Jack, you get on this and engineer a machine to make contact with him—you see the picture?”

After a moment Bohlen said, “I don't know what to say.” He laughed briefly.

“Sure you know what to say—hell, it ought to be easy for you, you're a schizophrenic yourself, like you said.”

Glaub, interested, said to Bohlen, “Is that the case?” He had already noted, automatically, the repairman's skeletal tension as he sat sipping his drink, and the rigid musculature, not to mention the asthenic build. “But you appear to have made enormous strides toward recovery.”

Raising his head, Bohlen met his glance, saying, “I'm totally recovered. For many years, now.” His face was affect-laden.

No one makes a total recovery, Glaub thought. But he did not say it; instead he said, “Perhaps Arnie is right. You could empathize with the autistic, whereas that is our basic problem; the autistic can't take our roles, see the world as we do, and we can't take his role either. So a gulf separates us.”

“Bridge that gulf, Jack!” Arnie cried. He whacked Bohlen on the back. “That's your job; I'm putting you on the payroll.”

Envy filled Dr. Glaub. He glared down at his drink, hiding his reaction. The girl, however, saw it and smiled at him. He did not smile back.

Contemplating Dr. Glaub sitting opposite him, Jack Bohlen felt the gradual diffusion of his perception which he so dreaded, the change in his awareness which had attacked him this way years ago in the personnel manager's office at Corona Corporation, and which always seemed still with him, just on the edge.

He saw the psychiatrist under the aspect of absolute reality: a thing composed of cold wires and switches, not a human at all, not made of flesh. The fleshy trappings melted and became transparent, and Jack Bohlen saw the mechanical device beyond. Yet he did not let his terrible state of awareness show; he continued to nurse his drink; he went on listening to the conversation and nodding occasionally. Neither Dr. Glaub nor Arnie Kott noticed.

But the girl did. She leaned over and said softly in Jack's ear, “Aren't you feeling well?”

He shook his head. No, he was saying, I'm not feeling well.

“Let's get away from them,” the girl whispered. “I can't stand it either.” Aloud, to Arnie, she said, “Jack and I are going to leave you two alone. Come on.” She tapped Jack on the arm and rose to her feet; he felt her light, strong fingers, and he, too, rose.

Arnie said, “Don't be gone long,” and resumed his earnest conversation with Dr. Glaub.

“Thanks,” Jack said, as they walked up the aisle, between tables.

Doreen said, “Did you see how jealous he was, when Arnie said he was putting you on the payroll?”

“No. Glaub?” But he was not surprised. “I get this way,” he said to the girl, by way of apology. “Something to do with my eyes; it may be astigmatism. Due to tension.”

The girl said, “Do you want to sit at the bar? Or go outside?”

“Outside,” Jack said.

Presently they stood on the rainbow bridge, over the water. In the water fish slid about, luminous and vague, half-real beings, as rare on Mars as any form of matter conceivable. They were a miracle in this world, and Jack and the girl, gazing down, both felt it. And both knew they felt this same thought without having to speak it aloud.

“It's nice out here,” Doreen said finally.

“Yeah.” He did not want to talk.

“Everybody,” Doreen said, “has at one time or another known a schizophrenic…if they're not one themselves. It was my brother, back Home, my younger brother.”

“I'll be O.K.,” Jack said. “I'm O.K. now.”

“But you're not,” Doreen said.

“No,” he admitted, “but what the hell can I do? You said it yourself. Once a schizophrenic, always a schizophrenic.” He was silent, then, concentrating on the gliding, pale fish.

“Arnie thinks a lot of you,” the girl said. “When he says his talent is judging the value of people he's telling the truth. He can see already that that Glaub is desperately eager to sell himself and get on the staff, here in Lewistown. I guess psychiatry doesn't pay anymore, as it did once; too many in the business. There are twenty of them here in this settlement already, and none do a genuinely good traffic. Didn't your—condition cause you trouble when you applied for permission to emigrate?”

He said, “I don't want to talk about it. Please.”

“Let's walk,” the girl said.

They walked along the street, past the shops, most of which had closed for the day.

“What was it you saw,” the girl said, “when you looked at Dr. Glaub, there at the table?”

Jack said, “Nothing.”

“You'd rather not say about that, either.”

“That's right.”

“Do you think if you tell me things will get worse?”

“It's not things; it's me.”

“Maybe it is the things,” Doreen said. “Maybe there is something in your vision, however distorted and garbled it's become. I don't know. I used to try like hell to comprehend what it was Clay—my brother—saw and heard. He couldn't say. I know that his world was absolutely different from the rest of ours in the family. He killed himself, like Steiner did.” She had paused at a newsstand, to look over the item, on page one, about Norbert Steiner. “The existential psychiatrists often say to let them go ahead and take their lives; it's the only way, for some of them…the vision becomes too awful to bear.”

Jack said nothing.

“Is it awful?” Doreen asked.

“No. Just—disconcerting.” He struggled to explain. “There's no way you can work it in with what you're supposed to see and know; it makes it impossible to go on, in the accustomed way.”

“Don't you very often try to pretend, and sort of—go along with it, by acting? Like an actor?” When he did not answer, she said, “You tried to do that in there, just now.”

“I'd love to fool everybody,” he conceded. “I'd give anything if I could go on acting it out, playing a role. But that's a real split—there's no split up until then; they're wrong when they say it's a split in the mind. If I wanted to keep going entire, without a split, I'd have to lean over and say to Dr. Glaub—” He broke off.

“Tell me,” the girl said.

“Well,” he said, taking a deep breath, “I'd say, Doc, I can see you under the aspect of eternity and you're dead. That's the substance of the sick, morbid vision. I don't want it; I didn't ask for it.”