Martian Time-Slip (27 page)

Jack said, “I don't know.” But it had to do with Manfred; Arnie had said so, just before he died.

“In many ways,” Doreen said, “Arnie was shrewd. If he thought that, there must have been some very good reason.”

“He was shrewd,” Jack pointed out, “but he always believed what he wanted to believe.” And, he realized, did whatever he wanted to. And so, at last, had brought about his own death; engineered it somewhere along the pathway of his life.

“What's going to become of us now?” Doreen said. “Without him? It's hard for me to imagine it without Arnie…do you know what I mean? I think you do. I wish, when we first saw that ’copter land, we had understood what was going to happen; if only we had gotten down there a few minutes earlier—” She broke off. “No use saying that now.”

“No use at all,” Jack said briefly.

“You know what I think is going to happen to us now?” Doreen said. “We're going to drift away from each other, you and I. Maybe not right away, maybe not for months or possibly even years. But sooner or later we will, without him.”

He said nothing; he did not try to argue. Perhaps it was so. He was tired of struggling to see ahead to what lay before them all.

“Do you love me still?” Doreen asked. “After what's happened to us?” She turned toward him to see his face as he answered.

“Yes, naturally I do,” he said.

“So do I,” she said in a low, wan voice. “But I don't think it's enough. You have your wife and your son—that's so much, in the long run. Anyhow, it was worth it; to me, at least. I'll never be sorry. We're not responsible for Arnie's death; we mustn't feel guilty. He brought it on himself, by what he was up to, there at the end. And we'll never know exactly what that was. But I know it was something to hurt us.”

He nodded.

Silently, they continued on back to Lewistown, carrying with them the body of Arnie Kott; carrying Arnie home to his settlement, where he was—and probably always would be—Supreme Goodmember of his Water Workers’ Union, Fourth Planet Branch.

Ascending an ill-marked path in the arid rocks of the F.D.R. Mountains, Manfred Steiner halted as he saw ahead of him a party of six dark, shadowy men. They carried with them paka eggs filled with water, quivers of poisoned arrows, and each woman had her pounding block. All smoked cigarettes as they toiled, single file, along the trail.

Seeing him, they halted.

One of them, a gaunt young male, said politely, “The rains falling from your wonderful presence envigor and restore us, Mister.”

Manfred did not understand the words, but he got their thoughts: cautious and friendly, with no undertones of hate. He sensed inside them no desire to hurt him, and that was pleasant; he forgot his fear of them and turned his attention on the animal skins which each wore. What sort of animal is that? he wondered.

The Bleekmen were curious about him, too. They advanced until they stood around him on all sides.

“There are monster ships,” one of them thought in his direction, “landing in these mountains, with no one aboard. They have excited wonder and speculation, for they appear to be a portent. Already they have begun to assemble themselves on the land to work changes. Are you from them, by any chance?”

“No,” Manfred answered, inside his mind, in a way for them to hear and understand.

The Bleekmen pointed, and he saw, toward the center of the mountain range, a fleet of UN slave rocket vehicles hovering in the air. They had arrived from Earth, he realized. They were here to break ground; the building of the tracts of houses had begun.
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and the other structures like it would soon be appearing on the face of the fourth planet.

“We are leaving the mountains because of that,” one of the older Bleekman males thought to Manfred. “There is no manner by which we can live here, now that this has started. Through our rock, we saw this long ago, but now it is here in actuality.”

Within himself, Manfred said, “Can I go with you?”

Surprised, the Bleekmen withdrew to discuss his request. They did not know what to make of him and what he wanted; they had never run across it in an immigrant before.

“We are going out into the desert,” the young male told him at last. “It is doubtful if we can survive there; we can only try. Are you certain you want that for yourself?”

“Yes,” Manfred said.

“Come along, then,” the Bleekmen decided.

They resumed their trek. They were tired, but they swung almost at once into a good pace. Manfred thought at first that he would be left behind, but the Bleekmen hung back for him and he was able to keep up.

The desert lay ahead, for them and for him. But none of them had any regrets; it was impossible for them to turn back anyhow, because they could not live under the new conditions.

I will not have to live in
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Manfred said to himself as he kept up with the Bleekmen. Through these dark shadows I will escape.

He felt very good, better than he could remember ever having felt before in his life.

One of the Bleekman females shyly offered him a cigarette from those she carried. Thanking her, he accepted it. They continued on.

And as they moved along, Manfred Steiner felt something strange happening inside him. He was changing.

At dusk, as she was fixing dinner for herself and David and her father-in-law, Silvia Bohlen saw a figure on foot, a figure that walked along the edge of the canal. A man, she said to herself; frightened, she went to the front door, opened it, and peered out to see who it was. God, it wasn't that so-called health food salesman, that Otto whatever his name was again—

“It's me, Silvia,” Jack Bohlen said.

Running out of the house and up to his father excitedly, David shouted, “Hey, how come you didn't bring your ’copter? Did you come on the tractor-bus? I bet you did. What happened to your ’copter, Dad? Did it break down and strand you out in the desert?”

“No more ’copter,” Jack said. He looked tired.

“I heard on the radio,” Silvia said.

“About Arnie Kott?” He nodded. “Yeah, it's true.” Entering the house he took off his coat; Silvia hung it in the closet for him.

“That affects you a lot, doesn't it?” she said.

Jack said, “No job. Arnie had bought my contract.” He looked around. “Where's Leo?”

“Taking his nap. He's been gone most of the day, on business. I'm glad you got home before he goes; he's leaving for Earth tomorrow, he said. Did you know that the UN has started taking the land in the F.D.R. range already? I heard that on the radio, too.”

“I didn't know,” Jack said, going into the kitchen and seating himself at the table. “How about some iced tea?”

As she fixed the iced tea for him she said, “I guess I shouldn't ask you how serious this job business is.”

Jack said, “I can get on with almost any repair outfit. Mr. Yee would take me back, as a matter of fact. I'm sure he didn't want to part with my contract in the first place.”

“Then why are you so despondent?” she said, and then she remembered about Arnie.

“It's a mile and a half from where that tractor-bus let me off,” he said. “I'm just tired.”

“I didn't expect you home.” She felt on edge, and it was difficult for her to return to preparing dinner. “We're only having liver and bacon and grated carrots with synthetic butter and a salad. And Leo said he'd like a cake of some sort for dessert; David and I were going to make that later on as a treat for him, because after all he is going, and we may not see him ever again; we have to face that.”

“That's fine about the cake,” Jack murmured.

“Silvia burst out, “I wish you would tell me what's the matter—I've never seen you like this. You're not just tired; it must be that man's death.”

Presently, he said, “I was thinking of something Arnie said before he died. I was there with him. Arnie said he wasn't in a real world; he was in the fantasy of a schizophrenic, and that's been preying on my mind. It never occurred to me before how much our world is like Manfred's—I thought they were absolutely distinct. Now I see that it's more a question of degree.”

“You don't want to tell me about Mr. Kott's death, do you? The radio just said he was killed in a ’copter accident in the rugged terrain of the F.D.R. Mountains.”

“It was no accident. Arnie was murdered by an individual who had it in for him, no doubt because he was mistreated and had a legitimate grudge. The police are looking for him now, naturally. Arnie died thinking it was senseless, psychotic hate that was directed at him, but actually it was probably very rational hate with no psychotic elements in it at all.”

With overwhelming guilt, Silvia thought, The kind of hate you'd feel for me if you knew what awful thing I plunged into today. “Jack—” she said clumsily, not sure how to put it, but feeling she had to ask. “Do you think our marriage is finished?”

He stared at her a long, long time. “Why do you say that?”

“I just want to hear you say it isn't.”

“It isn't,” he said, still staring at her; she felt exposed, as if he could read her mind, as if he knew somehow exactly what she had done. “Is there any reason to think it is? Why do you imagine I came home? If we had no marriage, would I have shown up here today after—” He was silent, then. “I'd like my iced tea,” he murmured.

“After what?” she asked.

He said, “After Arnie's death.”

“Where else would you go?”

“A person can always find two places to choose from. Home, and the rest of the world with all the other people in it.”

Silvia said, “What's she like?”

“Who?”

“The girl. You almost said it, just now.”

He did not answer for such a long time that she did not think he was going to. And then he said, “She has red hair. I almost stayed with her. But I didn't. Isn't that enough for you to know?”

“There's a choice for me, too,” Silvia said.

“I didn't know that,” he said woodenly. “I didn't realize.” He shrugged. “Well, it's good to realize; it's sobering. You're not speaking about theory, now, are you? You're speaking about concrete reality.”

“That's correct,” Silvia said.

David came running into the kitchen. “Grandfather Leo's awake,” he shouted. “I told him you were home, Dad, and he's real glad and he wants to find out how things are going with you.”

“They're going swell,” Jack said.

Silvia said to him, “Jack, I'd like for us to go on. If you want to.”

“Sure,” he said. “You know that, I'm back here again.” He smiled at her so forlornly that it almost broke her heart. “I came a long way, first on that no-good damn tractor-bus, which I hate, and then on foot.”

“There won't be any more,” Silvia said, “of—other choices, will there, Jack? It really has to be that way.”

“No more,” he said, nodding emphatically.

She went over to the table, then, and bending, kissed him on the forehead.

“Thanks,” he said, taking hold of her by the wrist. “That feels good.” She could feel his fatigue; it traveled from him into her.

“You need a good meal,” she said. “I've never seen you so—crushed.” It occurred to her, then, that he might have had a new bout with his mental illness from the past, his schizophrenia; that would go far in explaining things. But she did not want to press him on the subject; instead, she said, “We'll go to bed early tonight, O.K.?”

He nodded in a vague fashion, sipping his iced tea.

“Are you glad now?” she asked. “That you came back here?” Or have you changed your mind? she wondered.

“I'm glad,” he said, and his tone was strong and firm. Obviously he meant it.

“You get to see Grandfather Leo before he goes—” she began.

A scream made her jump, turn to face Jack.

He was on his feet. “Next door. The Steiner house.” He pushed past her; they both ran outside.

At the front door of the Steiner house one of the Steiner girls met them. “My brother—”

She and Jack pushed past the child, and into the house. Silvia did not understand what she saw, but Jack seemed to; he took hold of her hand, stopped her from going any farther.

The living room was filled with Bleekmen. And in their midst she saw part of a living creature, an old man only from the chest on up; the rest of him became a tangle of pumps and hoses and dials, machinery that clicked away, unceasingly active. It kept the old man alive; she realized that in an instant. The missing portion of him had been replaced by it. Oh, God, she thought. Who or what was it, sitting there with a smile on its withered face? Now it spoke to them.

“Jack Bohlen,” it rasped, and its voice issued from a mechanical speaker, out of the machinery: not from its mouth. “I am here to say goodbye to my mother.” It paused, and she heard the machinery speed up, as if it were laboring. “Now I can thank you,” the old man said.

Jack, standing by her, holding her hand, said. “For what? I didn't do anything for you.”

“Yes, I think so.” The thing seated there nodded to the Bleekmen, and they pushed it and its machinery closer to Jack and straightened it so that it faced him directly. “In my opinion…It lapsed into silence and then it resumed, more loudly, now. “You tried to communicate with me, many years ago. I appreciate that.”

“It wasn't long ago,” Jack said. “Have you forgotten? You came back to us; it was just today. This is your distant past, when you were a boy.”

She said to her husband,
“Who is it?”

“Manfred.”

Putting her hands to her face she covered her eyes; she could not bear to look any longer.

“Did you escape
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?” Jack asked it.

“Yesss,” it hissed, with a gleeful tremor. “I am with my friends.” It pointed to the Bleekmen who surrounded it.

“Jack,” Silvia said, “take me out of here—please, I can't stand it.” She clung to him, and he then led her from the Steiner house, out once more into the evening darkness.

Both Leo and David met them, agitated and frightened. “Say, son,” Leo said, “what happened? What was that woman screaming about?”

Jack said, “It's all over. Everything's O.K.” To Silvia he said, “She must have run outside. She didn't understand, at first.”

Shivering, Silvia said, “I don't understand either and I don't want to; don't try to explain it to me.” She returned to the stove, turning down the burners, looking into pots to see what had burned.