Martian Time-Slip (22 page)

Her eyes full of tears, she said, “I feel you sliding away farther and farther into yourself again.”

“No,” he said. “I'm O.K.” But it was not so; he knew it.

“Gubble gubble,” the girl said.

Jack closed his eyes. I can't get away, he thought. It has closed over me completely.

When he opened his eyes he found that Doreen had gotten up from the couch and was going into the kitchen. Voices, hers and Arnie's, drifted to him where he sat.

“Gubble gubble gubble.”

“Gubble.”

Turning toward the boy who sat snipping at his magazines on the rug, Jack said to him, “Can you hear me? Can you understand me?”

Manfred glanced up and smiled.

“Talk to me,” Jack said. “Help me.”

There was no response.

Getting to his feet, Jack made his way to the tape recorder; he began inspecting it, his back to the room. Would I be alive now, he asked himself, if I had listened to Dr. Glaub? If I hadn't come here, had let him represent me? Probably not. Like the earlier attack: it would have happened anyhow. It is a process which must unfold; it must work itself out to its conclusion.

The next he knew he was standing on a black, empty sidewalk. The room, the people around him, were gone; he was alone.

Buildings, gray, upright surfaces on both sides. Was this
AM-WEB?
He looked about frantically. Lights, here and there; he was in a town, and now he recognized it as Lewistown. He began to walk.

“Wait,” a voice, a woman's voice, called.

From the entrance of a building a woman in a fur wrap hurried, her high heels striking the pavement and setting up echoes. Jack stopped.

“It didn't go so bad after all,” she said, catching up with him, out of breath. “Thank God it's over; you were so tense—I felt it all evening. Arnie is dreadfully upset by the news about the co-op; they're so rich and powerful, they make him feel so little.”

Together, they walked in no particular direction, the girl holding on to his arm.

“And he did say,” she said, “that he's going to keep you on as his repairman; I'm positive he means it. He's sore, though, Jack. All the way through him. I know; I can tell.”

He tried to remember, but he could not.

“Say something,” Doreen begged.

After a bit he said, “He—would make a bad enemy.”

“I'm afraid that's so.” She glanced up into his face. “Shall we go to my place? Or do you want to stop somewhere and get a drink?”

“Let's just walk,” Jack Bohlen said.

“Do you still love me?”

“Of course,” he said.

“Are you afraid of Arnie? He may try to get revenge on you, for—he doesn't understand about your father; he thinks that on some level you must have—” She shook her head. “Jack, he will try to get back at you; he does blame you. He's so goddamn primitive.”

“Yes,” Jack said.

“
Say
something,” Doreen said. “You're just like wood, like you're not alive. Was it so terrible? It wasn't, was it? You seemed to pull yourself together.”

With effort he said, “I'm—not afraid of what he'll do.”

“Would you leave your wife for me, Jack? You said you loved me. Maybe we could emigrate back to Earth, or something.”

Together, they wandered on.

13

For Otto Zitte it was as if life had once more opened up; since Norb Steiner's death he moved about Mars as in the old days, making his deliveries, selling, meeting people face to face and gabbing with them.

And, most particularly, he had already encountered several good-looking women, lonely housewives stranded out in the desert in their homes day after day, yearning for companionship…so to speak.

So far he had not been able to call at Mrs. Silvia Bohlen's house. But he knew exactly where it was; he had marked it on his map.

Today he intended to go there.

For the occasion he put on his best suit: a single-breasted gray English sharkskin suit he had not worn for years. The shoes, regrettably, were local, and so was the shirt. But the tie: ah. It had just arrived from New York, the latest in bright, cheerful colors; it divided at the bottom into a wild fork shape. Holding it up before him he admired it. Then he put it on and admired it there, too.

His long dark hair shone. He felt happy and confident. This day begins it all afresh for me, with a woman like Silvia, he said to himself as he put on his wool topcoat, picked up his suitcases, and marched from the storage shed—now made over into truly comfortable living quarters—to the ’copter.

In a great soaring arc he lifted the ’copter into the sky and turned it east. The bleak F.D.R. Mountains fell away behind him; he passed over the desert, saw at last the George Washington Canal by which he oriented himself. Following it, he approached the smaller canal system which branched from it, and soon he was above the junction of the William Butler Yeats and the Herodotus, near which the Bohlens lived.

Both those women, he ruminated, are attractive, that June Henessy and Silvia Bohlen, but of the two of them, Silvia's more to my liking; she has that sleepy, sultry quality that a deeply emotional woman always has. June is too pert and frisky; that kind talks on and on, sort of wiseguy-like. I want a woman who's a good listener.

He recalled the trouble he had gotten into before. Wonder what her husband's like, he wondered. Must inquire. A lot of these men take the pioneer life seriously, especially the ones living far out from town; keep guns in their houses and so forth.

However, that was the risk one ran, and it was worth it.

Just in case trouble did occur, Otto Zitte had a gun of his own, a small pistol, .22 caliber, which he kept in a hidden side-pocket of one of his suitcases. It was there now, and fully loaded.

Nobody messes around with me, he said to himself. If they want trouble—they'll soon find it.

Cheered by that thought, he dipped his ’copter, scouted out the land below—there was no ’copter parked at the Bohlen house—and prepared to land.

It was innate caution which caused him to park the ’copter over a mile from the Bohlen house, at the entrance of a service canal. From there he hiked on foot, willing to endure the weight of the suitcase; there was no alternative. A number of houses stood between him and the Bohlen place, but he did not pause to knock at any door; he went directly along the canal without halting.

When he neared the Bohlen place he slowed, regaining his wind. He eyed the nearby houses carefully…from the one right next door there came the racket of small children. People home, there. So he approached the Bohlen place from the opposite side, walking silently and in a line which kept him entirely hidden from the house where he heard the children's voices.

He arrived, stepped up on the porch, rang the bell.

Someone peeped out at him from behind the red drapes of the living-room window. Otto maintained a formal, correct smile on his face, one that would do in any eventuality.

The front door opened; there stood Silvia Bohlen, with her hair expertly done, lipstick, wearing a jersey sweater and tight pink capri pants, sandals on her feet. Her toenails were painted a bright scarlet; he noticed that from the corner of his eye. Obviously, she had fixed herself up in expectation of his visit. However, she of course assumed a bland, detached pose; she regarded him in aloof silence, holding on to the door knob.

“Mrs. Bohlen,” he said in his most intimate tone of voice. Bowing, he said, “Passage across barren miles of desert wastelands finds its just reward in seeing you once more at last. Would you be interested in seeing our special in kangaroo-tail soup? It is incredible and delightful, a food never before available on Mars at any price. I have come straight here to you with it, seeing that you are qualified in judging fine foods and can discriminate the worthy without consulting the expense.” And all this time, as he reeled off his set speech, he edged himself and his wares toward the open door.

A trifle stiffly and hesitantly, Silvia said, “Uh, come in.” She let the door swing freely open, and he at once passed on inside and laid his suitcases on the floor by the low table in the living room.

A boy's bow and quiver of arrows caught his eye. “Is your young son about?” he inquired.

“No,” Silvia said, moving edgily about the room with her arms folded before her. “He's at the school today.” She tried to smile. “And my father-in-law went into town; he won't be home until very late.”

Well, Otto thought; I see.

“Please be seated,” he urged her. “So that I may display to you properly, don't you agree?” In one motion, he moved a chair, and Silvia perched on the edge of it, her arms still hugged about her, lips pressed together. How tense she is, he observed. It was a good sign because it meant that she was fully aware of the meaning of all that went on, his visit here, the absence of her son, the fact that she had carefully closed the front door; the living-room drapes still shut, he noticed.

Silvia blurted out, “Would you like coffee?” She bolted from her chair and dived into the kitchen. A moment later she reappeared with a tray on which was a pot of coffee, sugar, cream, two china cups.

“Thank you,” he purred. During her absence he had drawn another chair up beside hers.

They drank coffee.

“Are you not frightened to live out here alone so much of the time?” he asked. “In this desolate region?”

She glanced at him sideways. “Golly, I guess I'm used to it.”

“What part of Earth are you from originally?”

“St. Louis.”

“It is much different here. A new, freer life. Where one can cast off the shackles and be oneself; do you agree? The old mores and customs, an antiquated Old World, best forgotten in its own dust. Here—” He glanced about the living room, with its commonplace furnishings; he had seen such chairs, carpeting, bric-a-brac hundreds of times, in similar homes. “Here we see the clash of the extraordinary, the pulse, Mrs. Bohlen, of opportunity which strikes the brave person only once—once—in his lifetime.”

“What else do you have beside kangaroo-tail soup?”

“Well,” he said, frowning inwardly, “quail eggs; very good. Real cow butter. Sour cream. Smoked oysters. Here—you please bring forth ordinary soda crackers and I will supply the butter and caviar, as a treat.” He smiled at her, and was rewarded by a spontaneous, beaming smile in return; her eyes sparkled with anticipation and she hopped impulsively to her feet to go scampering, like a little child, to the kitchen.

Presently they sat together, huddled over the table, scraping the black, oily fish eggs from the tiny jar onto crackers.

“There's nothing like genuine caviar,” Silvia said, sighing. “I only had it once before in my life, at a restaurant in San Francisco.”

“Observe what else I have.” From his suitcase he produced a bottle. “Green Hungarian, from the Buena Vista Winery in California; the oldest winery in that state!”

They sipped wine from long-stemmed glasses. (He had brought the glasses, too.) Silvia lay back against the couch, her eyes half-closed. “Oh, dear. This is like a fantasy. It can't really be happening.”

“But it is.” Otto set his glass down and leaned over her. She breathed slowly, regularly, as if asleep; but she was watching him fixedly. She knew exactly what was going on. And as he bent nearer and nearer she did not stir; she did not try to slide away.

The food and wine, he reckoned as he took hold of her, had set him back—in retail value—almost a hundred UN dollars. It was well worth it, to him, at least.

His old story, repeating itself. Again, it was not union scale. It was much more, Otto thought a little later on, when they had moved from the living room to the bedroom with its window shades pulled down, the room in unstirring gloom, silent and receptive to them, made, as he well knew, for just such happenings as this.

“Nothing like this,” Silvia murmured, “has ever happened before in my entire life.” Her voice was full of contentment and acquiescence, as if emerging from far away. “Am I drunk, is that it? Oh, my Lord.”

For a long time, then, she was silent.

“Am I out of my mind?” she murmured, later on. “I must be insane. I just can't believe it, I know it isn't real. So how can it matter, how can what you do in a dream be wrong?”

After that, she said nothing at all.

She was exactly the kind he liked: the kind that didn't talk a lot.

What is insanity? Jack Bohlen thought. It was, for him, the fact that somewhere he had lost Manfred Steiner and did not remember how or when. He remembered almost nothing of the night before, at Arnie Kott's place; piece by piece, from what Doreen told him, he had managed to patch together an image of what had taken place. Insanity—to have to construct a picture of one's life, by making inquiries of others.

But the lapse in memory was a symptom of a deeper disturbance. It indicated that his psyche had taken an abrupt leap ahead in time. And this had taken place after a period in which he had lived through, several times, on some unconscious level, that very section which was now missing.

He had sat, he realized, in Arnie Kott's living room again and again, experiencing that evening before it arrived; and then, when at last it had taken place in actuality, he had bypassed it. The fundamental disturbance in time-sense, which Dr. Glaub believed was the basis of schizophrenia, was now harassing him.

That evening at Arnie's had taken place, and had existed for him…but out of sequence.

In any case, there was no way that it could be restored. For it now lay in the past. And a disturbance of the sense of past time was not symptomatic of schizophrenia but of compulsive-obsessive neurosis. His problem—as a schizophrenic—lay entirely with the future.

And his future, as he now saw it, consisted mostly of Arnie Kott and Arnie's instinctive drive for revenge.

What chance do we have against Arnie? he asked himself.

Almost none.

Turning from the window of Doreen's living room, he walked slowly into the bedroom and gazed down at her as she lay, still asleep, in the big, rumpled double bed.

While he stood there looking at her, she woke, saw him, smiled up at him. “I was having the strangest dream,” she said. “In the dream I was conducting the Bach B minor Mass, the Kyrie part. It was in four-four time. But when I was right in the middle, someone came along and took away my baton and said it wasn't in four-four time.” She frowned. “But it really is. Why would I be conducting that? I don't even like the Bach B minor Mass. Arnie has a tape of it; he plays it all the time, very late in the evening.”

He thought of the dreams he had been having of late, vague forms that shifted, flitted away; something to do with a tall building of many rooms, hawks or vultures circling endlessly overhead. And some dreadful thing in a cupboard…he had not seen it, had only felt its presence there.

“Dreams usually relate to the future,” Doreen said. “They have to do with the potential in a person. Arnie wants to start a symphony orchestra at Lewistown; he's been talking to Bosley Touvim at New Israel. Maybe I'll be the conductor; maybe that's what my dream means.” She slid from the bed and stood up, naked and slim and smooth.

“Doreen,” he said steadily, “I don't remember last night. What became of Manfred?”

“He stayed with Arnie. Because he has to go back to Camp B-G, now, and Arnie said he'd take him. He goes to New Israel all the time to visit his own boy there, Sam Esterhazy. He's going there today, he told you.” After a pause she said, “Jack…have you ever had amnesia before?”

“No,” he said.

“It's probably due to the shock of quarreling with Arnie; it's awfully hard on a person to tangle with Arnie, I've noticed.”

“Maybe that's it,” he said.

“What about breakfast?” Now she began getting fresh clothes from her dresser drawers, a blouse, underwear. “I'll cook bacon and eggs—delicious canned Danish bacon.” She hesitated and then she said, “More of Arnie's black-market goodies. But they really are good.”

“It's fine with me,” he said.

“After we went to bed last night I lay awake for hours wondering what Arnie will do. To us, I mean. I think it'll be your job, Jack; I think he'll put pressure on Mr. Yee to let you go. You must be prepared for that. We both must be. And of course, he'll just dump me; that's obvious. But I don't mind—I have you.”

“Yes that's so, you do have me,” he said, as by reflex.

“The vengeance of Arnie Kott,” Doreen said, as she washed her face in the bathroom. “But he's so human; it's not so scary. I prefer him to that Manfred; I really couldn't stand that child. Last night was a nightmare—I kept feeling awful cold squishy tendrils drifting around the room and in my mind…intimations of filth and evil that didn't seem to be either in me or outside of me—just nearby. I know where they came from.” After a moment she finished, “It was that child. It was his thoughts.”

Presently she was frying the bacon and heating coffee; he set the table, and then they sat down to eat. The food smelled good, and he felt much better, tasting it and seeing it and smelling it, and being aware of the girl across from him, with her red hair, long and heavy and sleek, tied back with a gay ribbon.

“Is your son at all like Manfred?” she asked.

“Oh, hell, no.”

“Does he take after you or—”

“Silvia,” he said. “He takes after his mother.”

“She's pretty, isn't she?”

“I would say so.”

“You know, Jack, last night when I was lying there awake and thinking…I thought, Maybe Arnie won't turn Manfred over to Camp B-G. What would he do with him, with a creature like that? Arnie's very imaginative. Now this scheme to buy into the F.D.R. land is over…maybe he'll find an entirely new use for Manfred's precognition. It occurred to me—you'll laugh. Maybe he'll be able to contact Manfred through Heliogabalus, that tame Bleekman of his.” She was quiet, then, eating breakfast and staring down at the plate.