Martian Time-Slip (20 page)

Again the Thomas Edison Teaching Machine opened its mouth and said to Jack, “Gubble gubble.” There was nothing more; it became silent.

Is it me? Jack asked himself. Is this the final psychotic breakdown for me? Or—

He could not believe the alternative; it simply was not possible.

Down the hall, another teaching machine was addressing a group of children; its voice came from a distance, echoing and metallic. Jack strained to listen.

“Gubble gubble,” it was saying to the children.

He closed his eyes. He knew in a moment of perfect awareness that his own psyche, his own perceptions, had not misinformed him; it was happening, what he heard and saw.

Manfred Steiner's presence had invaded the structure of the Public School, penetrated its deepest being.

12

Still at his desk in his office at Camp B-G, brooding over the behavior of Anne Esterhazy, Dr. Milton Glaub received an emergency call. It was from the master circuit of the UN's Public School.

“Doctor,” its flat voice declared, “I am sorry to disturb you but we require assistance. There is a male citizen wandering about our premises in an evident state of mental confusion. We would like you to come and remove him.”

“Certainly,” Dr. Glaub murmured. “I'll come straight there.”

Soon he was in the air, piloting his ’copter across the desert from New Israel toward the Public School.

When he arrived, the master circuit met him and escorted him at a brisk pace through the building until they reached a closed-off corridor. “We felt we should keep the children away from him,” the master circuit explained as she caused the wall to roll back, exposing the corridor.

There, with a dazed expression on his face, stood a man familiar to Dr. Glaub. The doctor had an immediate reaction of satisfaction, in spite of himself. So Jack Bohlen's schizophrenia had caught up with him. Bohlen's eyes were without focus; obviously he was in a state of catatonic stupor, probably alternating with excitement—he looked exhausted. And with him was another person whom Dr. Glaub recognized. Manfred Steiner sat curled up on the floor, bent forward, likewise in an advanced state of withdrawal.

Your association did not cause either of you to prosper, Dr. Glaub observed to himself.

With the help of the master circuit he got both Bohlen and the Steiner boy into his ’copter, and presently he was flying back to New Israel and Camp B-G.

Hunched over, his hands clenched, Bohlen said, “Let me tell you what happened.”

“Please do,” Dr. Glaub said, feeling—at last—in control.

Jack Bohlen said in an uneven voice, “I went to the school to pick up my son. I took Manfred.” He twisted in his seat to look at the Steiner boy, who had not come out of his catalepsy; the boy lay rolled up on the floor of the ’copter, as inert as a carving. “Manfred got away from me. And then—communication between me and the school broke down. All I could hear was—” He broke off.

“Folie à deux,” Glaub murmured. Madness of two.

Bohlen said, “Instead of the school, I heard
him.
I heard his words coming from the Teachers.” He was silent, then.

“Manfred has a powerful personality,” Dr. Glaub said. “It is a drain on one's resources to be around him for long. I think it would be well for you, for your own health, to abandon this project. I think you risk too much.”

“I have to see Arnie tonight,” Bohlen said in a ragged, harsh whisper.

“What about yourself? What's going to become of you?”

Bohlen said nothing.

“I can treat you,” Dr. Glaub said, “at this stage of your difficulty. Later on—I'm not so sure.”

“In there, in that damn school,” Bohlen said, “I got completely confused; I didn't know what to do. I kept going on, looking for someone who I could still talk to. Who wasn't like—him.” He gestured toward the boy.

“It is a massive problem for the schizophrenic to relate to the school,” Glaub said. “The schizophrenic, such as yourself, very often deals with people through their unconscious. The teaching machines, of course, have no shadow personalities; what they are is all on the surface. Since the schizophrenic is accustomed constantly to ignore the surface and look beneath—he draws a blank. He is simply unable to understand them.”

Bohlen said, “I couldn't understand anything they said; it was all just that—meaningless talk Manfred uses. That private language.”

“You're fortunate you could come out of it,” Dr. Glaub said.

“I know.”

“So now what will it be for you, Bohlen? Rest and recovery? Or more of this dangerous contact with a child so unstable that—”

“I have no choice,” Jack Bohlen said.

“That's right. You have no choice; you must withdraw.”

Bohlen said, “But I learned something. I learned how great the stakes are for me personally, in all this. Now I know what it would be like to be cut off from the world, isolated, the way Manfred is. I'd do anything to avoid that. I have no intention of giving up now.” With shaking hands he got a cigarette from his pocket and lit up.

“The prognosis for you is not good,” Dr. Glaub said.

Jack Bohlen nodded.

“There's been a remission of your difficulty, due no doubt to your being removed from the environment of the school. Shall I be blunt? There's no telling how long you'll be able to function; perhaps another ten minutes, another hour—possibly until tonight, and then you may well find yourself enduring a worse collapse. The nocturnal hours are especially bad, are they not?”

“Yes,” Bohlen said.

“I can do two things for you. I can take Manfred back to Camp B-G and I can represent you at Arnie's tonight, be there as your official psychiatrist. I do that all the time; it's my business. Give me a retainer and I'll drop you off at your home.”

“Maybe after tonight,” Bohlen said. “Maybe you can represent me later on, if this gets worse. But tonight I'm taking Manfred with me to see Arnie Kott.”

Dr. Glaub shrugged. Impervious to suggestion, he realized. A sign of autism. Jack Bohlen could not be persuaded; he was too cut off already to hear and understand. Language for him had become a hollow ritual, signifying nothing.

“My boy David,” Bohlen said all at once. “I have to go back there to the school and pick him up. And my Yee Company ’copter; it's there, too.” His eyes had become clearer, now, as if he were emerging from his state.

“Don't go back there,” Dr. Glaub urged him.

“Take me back.”

“Then don't go down into the school; stay up on the field. I'll have them send up your son—you can sit in your ’copter until he's up. That would be safe for you, perhaps. I'll deal with the master circuit for you.” Dr. Glaub felt a rush of sympathy for this man, for his dogged instincts to go on in his own manner.

“Thanks,” Bohlen said. “I'd appreciate that.” He shot a smile at the doctor, and Glaub smiled back.

Arnie Kott said plaintively, “Where's Jack Bohlen?” It was six o'clock in the evening, and Arnie sat by himself in his living room, drinking a slightly too sweet Old Fashioned which Helio had fixed.

At this moment his tame Bleekman was in the kitchen preparing a dinner entirely of black-market goodies, all from Arnie's new stock. Reflecting that he now obtained his spread at wholesale prices, Arnie felt good. What an improvement on the old system, where Norbert Steiner made all the profit! Arnie sipped his drink and waited for his guests to arrive. In the corner, music emerged from the speakers, subtle and yet pervasive; it filled the room and lulled Goodmember Kott.

He was still in that trancelike mood when the noise of the telephone startled him awake.

“Arnie, this is Scott.”

“Oh?” Arnie said, not pleased; he preferred to deal through his cunning code system. “Look, I've got a vital business meeting tonight here, and unless you've got something—”

“This is important, all right,” Scott said. “There's somebody else hoeing away at our row.”

Puzzled, Arnie said, “What?” And then he understood what Scott Temple meant. “You mean the goodies?”

“Yes,” Scott said. “And he's all set up. He's got his field, his incoming rockets, his route—he must have taken over Stein—”

“Don't talk any further,” Arnie interrupted. “Come on over here right away.”

“Will do.” The phone clicked as Scott rang off.

How do you like that, Arnie said to himself. Just as I'm getting good and started, some bugger horns in. And I mean, I didn't even want to get into this black-market business in the first place—why didn't this guy tell me he wanted to take over where Steiner left off? But it's too late now; I'm in it, and nobody's going to force me out.

Half an hour later Scott appeared at the door, agitated; he paced about Arnie Kott's living room, eating hors d'oeuvres and talking away at a great rate. “He's a real pro, this guy; must have been in the business before sometime—he's already gone all over Mars, to practically everybody, including isolated houses way out in the goddamn fringes, to those housewives out there who only buy maybe one jar of something; so he's leaving no stone unturned. There won't be any room for us, and we're just barely beginning to get our operation moving. This guy, let's face it, is running rings around us.”

“I see,” Arnie said, rubbing the bald part of his scalp.

“We've got to do something, Arnie.”

“Do you know where his base of operations is?”

“No, but it's probably in the F.D.R. Mountains; that's where Norb Steiner had his field. We'll look there first.” In his memo book, Scott made a note of that.

“Find his field,” Arnie said, “and let me know. And I'll have a Lewistown police ship out there.”

“Then he'll know who's against him.”

“That's correct. I want him to know it's Arnie Kott he's got to contend with and not no ordinary opposition. I'll have the police ship drop a tactical A-bomb or some other minor demolition type of weapon and put an end to his field. So the bugger will see we're genuinely sore at him for his effrontery. And that's what it is, him coming in and competing against me, when I didn't even want to get into this business! It's bad enough without him making it harder.”

In his memo book, Scott made notes of all that:
him making it even harder, etc.

“You get me the location,” Arnie concluded, “and I'll see that he's taken care of. I won't have the police get him, just his equipment; we don't want to find ourselves in trouble with the UN. I'm sure this'll blow over right away. Just one guy, do you think? It's not for instance a big outfit from Home?”

“The story I get is it's definitely one guy.”

“Fine,” Arnie said, and sent Scott off. The door shut after him and once more Arnie Kott was alone in his living room, while his tame Bleekman puttered in the kitchen.

“How's the bouillabaisse coming?” Arnie called in to him.

“Fine, Mister,” Heliogabalus said. “May I inquire who is to come this evening to eat all this?” At the stove he toiled surrounded by several kinds of fish, plus many herbs and spices.

Arnie said, “It'll be Jack Bohlen, Doreen Anderton and some autistic child Jack's working with that Dr. Glaub recommended…Norb Steiner's son.”

“Low types all,” Heliogabalus murmured.

Well, same to you, Arnie thought. “Just fix the food right,” he said with irritation; he shut the kitchen door and returned to the living room. You black bastard, you got me into this, he thought to himself; it was you and your prognosticating stone that gave me the idea. And it better have worked out, because I got everything riding on it. And in addition—

The door chimes sounded over the music from the speakers.

Opening the front door, Arnie found himself facing Doreen; she smiled warmly at him, as she entered the living room on high heels, a fur around her shoulders. “Hi. What smells so good?”

“Some darn fish thing.” Arnie took her wrap; removed, it left her shoulders smooth, tanned and faintly freckled, bare. “No,” he said at once, “this isn't that kind of evening; this is business. You go in and put on a decent blouse.” He steered her to the bedroom. “Next time.”

As he stood in the bedroom doorway watching her change he thought, What a terrific high-type looking woman I got, here. As she carefully laid her strapless gown out on the bed he thought, I gave her that. He recalled the model at the department store appearing wearing it. But Doreen looked a lot better; she had all that flaming red hair that plunged down the back of her neck like a drizzle of fire.

“Arnie,” she said, turning to face him as she buttoned her blouse up, “you go easy on Jack Bohlen tonight.”

“Aw hell,” he protested, “whadya mean? All I want from good old Jack is results; I mean, he's had long enough—time's run out!”

Doreen repeated, “Go easy, Arnie. Or I'll never forgive you.”

Grumbling, he walked away, to the sideboard in the living room, and began fixing her a drink. “What'll you have?. I got a bottle of this ten-year-old Irish whisky; it's O.K.”

“I'll have that, then,” Doreen said, emerging from the bedroom. She seated herself on the couch and smoothed her skirt over her crossed knees.

“You look good in anything,” Arnie said.

“Thank you.”

“Listen, what you're doing with Bohlen has my sanction, of course, as you know. But it's all on the surface, what you're doing; right? Deep inside you're saving yourself for me.”

Quizzically, Doreen said, “What do you refer to by ‘deep inside’?” She eyed him until he laughed. “Watch it,” she said. “Yes, of course I'm yours, Arnie. Everything here in Lewistown is yours, even the bricks and straw. Every time I pour a little water down the kitchen drain I think of you.”

“Why me?”

“Because you're the totem god of wasted water.” She smiled at him. “It's a little joke, that's all; I was thinking about your steam bath with all its run-off.”

“Yeah,” Arnie said. “Remember that time you and I went there late at night, and I unlocked it with my key, and we went in, like a couple of bad kids…sneaked in, turned on the hot water showers until the whole place was nothing but steam. And then we took off our clothes—we really must have been drinking—and we ran all around naked in the steam, hiding from each other….” He grinned. “And I caught you, too, right there where that bench is where the masseuse pounds on you to flatten your ass out. And we sure had fun there on that bench.”

“Very primordial,” Doreen said, recalling.

“I felt like I was nineteen again that night,” Arnie said. “I really am young, for an old guy—I mean, I got a lot left to me, if you know what I mean.” He paced about the room. “When is that Bohlen going to get here, for chrissakes?”

The telephone rang.

“Mister,” Heliogabalus called from the kitchen. “I am unable to attend to that; I must ask you to get it.”

To Doreen, Arnie said, “If it's Bohlen calling to say he can't make it—” He made a dour, throat-cutting motion and picked up the receiver.

“Arnie,” a man's voice came. “Sorry to bother you; this is Dr. Glaub.”