Martian Time-Slip (26 page)

“Listen,” he said, swallowing and finding his throat dry; he could hardly croak out the words. “Get going and let me read my newspaper.” Grabbing up the paper he held it between himself and her. “Go on,” he said gratingly.

The shape ebbed a little. “What's the matter, Arnie?” her voice purred, like metal wheels rubbing, an automatic sound coming forth from her, like on a recording, he thought.

He said nothing; he gripped his paper and read.

When he next looked up the girl had gone. He was alone.

I don't remember that,
he said to himself, quaking inside, down deep within his stomach. What kind of a creature was that? I don't get it—what was happening, just then?

He began automatically to read an item in the paper about a ship which had been lost in deep space, a freighter from Japan carrying a cargo of bicycles. He felt amused, even though three hundred people aboard had perished; it was just too goddamn funny, the idea of all those thousands of little light Jap bikes floating as debris, circling the sun forever…. Not that they weren't needed on Mars, with its virtual lack of power sources…a man could pedal free of cost for hundreds of miles in the planet's slight gravity.

Reading further, he came across an item about a reception at the White House for—he squinted. The words seemed to run together; he could hardly read them. Printing error of some kind? What did it say? He held the newspaper closer….

Gubble gubble, it said. The article became meaningless, nothing but the gubble-gubble words one after another. Good grief! He stared at it in disgust, his stomach reacting; his duodenal ulcer hurt worse than ever now. He had become tense and angry, the worst possible combination for an ulcer patient, especially at meal time. Darn those gubble-gubble words, he said to himself. That's what that kid says! They sure spoil the article in the paper.

Glancing through the paper he saw that almost all the articles devolved into nonsense, became blurred after a line or so. His irritation grew, and he tossed the paper away. What the hell good is it like that, he asked himself.

That's that schizophrenia talk, he realized. Private language. I don't like that here at all! It's O.K. if he wants to talk like that himself, but it doesn't belong here! He's got no right to push that stuff into my world. And then Arnie thought, Of course, he did bring me back here, so maybe he thinks that does give him the right. Maybe the boy thinks of this as his world.

That thought did not please Arnie; he wished it had never come to him.

Getting up from his desk he went over to the window and looked down at the street of Lewistown far below. People hurrying along; how fast they went. And the cars, too; why so fast? There was an unpleasant kinetic quality to their movements, a jerkiness, they seemed either to bang into one another or to be about to. Colliding objects like billiard balls, hard and dangerous…the buildings, he noticed, seemed to bristle with sharp corners. And yet, when he tried to pinpoint the change—and it was a change, no doubt of that—he could not. This was the familiar scene he saw every day. And yet—

Were they moving too fast? Was that it? No, it was deeper than that. There was an omnipresent
hostility
in everything; things did not merely collide—they struck one another, as if doing it deliberately.

And then he saw something else, something which made him gasp. The people on the street below, hurrying back and forth, had almost no faces, just fragments or remnants of faces…as if they had never formed.

Aw, this will never do, Arnie said to himself. He felt fear now, deeply and intensely. What's going on? What are they handing me?

He returned, shaken, to his desk and sat down again. Picking up his cup of coffee, he drank, trying to forget the scene below, trying to resume his routine of the morning.

The coffee had a bitter, acrid, foreign taste to it, and he had to set the cup back down at once. I suppose the kid imagines all the time he's being poisoned, Arnie thought in desperation. Is that it? I got to find myself eating awful-tasting food because of his delusions? God, he thought; that's terrible.

Best thing for me, he decided, is to get my task here done as fast as possible and then get back to the present.

Unlocking the bottom drawer of his desk, Arnie got out the little battery-powered encoding dictation machine and set it up for use. Into it he said, “Scott, I got a terribly important item here to transmit to you. I insist you act on this at once. What I want to do is buy into the F.D.R. Mountains because the UN is going to establish a gigantic housing tract area there, specifically around the Henry Wallace Canyon. Now you transfer enough Union funds, in my name of course, to insure that I get title to all that, because in about two weeks speculators from—”

He broke off, for the encoding machine had groaned to a stop. He poked at it, and the reels turned slowly and then once more settled back into silence.

Thought it was fixed, Arnie thought angrily. Didn't that Jack Bohlen work on it? And then he remembered that this was back in the past before Jack Bohlen had been called in; of course it didn't work.

I've got to dictate it to the secretary-creature, he realized. He started to press the button on his desk that would summon her, but drew back. How can I let that back in here? he asked himself. But there was no alternative. He pressed the button.

The door opened and she came in. “I knew you would want me, Arnie,” she said, hurrying toward him, strutting and urgent.

“Listen,” he said, with authority in his voice. “Don't get too close to me, I can't stand it when people get too close.” But even as he spoke he recognized his fears for what they were; it was a basic fear of the schizophrenic that people might get too close to him, might encroach into his space. Nearness fear, it was called; it was due to the schizophrenic's sensing hostility in everyone around him. That's what I'm doing, Arnie thought. And yet, even knowing this, he could not endure having the girl come close to him; he got abruptly to his feet and walked away, back once more to the window.

“Anything you say, Arnie,” the girl said, in a tone that was insatiable, and despite what she said she crept toward him until, as before, she was almost touching him. He found himself hearing the noises of her breathing, smelling her, the sour body scent, her breath, which was thick and unpleasant…. He felt choked, unable to get enough air into his lungs.

“I'm going to dictate to you now,” he said, walking away from her, keeping distance between the two of them. “This is to Scott Temple, and should go in code so they can't read it.” They, he thought. Well, that had always been his fear; he couldn't blame that on the boy. “I got a terribly important item here,” he dictated. “Act on it at once; it means plenty, it's a real inside tip. The UN's going to buy a huge hunk of land in the F.D.R. Mountains—”

On and on he dictated, and even as he talked a fear assailed him, an obsessive fear that grew each moment. Suppose she was just writing down those gubble-gubble words? I just got to look, he told himself; I got to walk over close to her and see. But he shrank from it, the closeness.

“Listen, miss,” he said, interrupting himself. “Give me that pad of yours; I want to see what you're writing.”

“Arnie,” she said in her rough, dragging voice. “you can't tell anything by looking at it.”

“W-what?” he demanded in fright.

“It's in shorthand.” She smiled at him, coldly, with what seemed to him palpable malevolence.

“C.K.,” he said, giving up. He went on and completed his dictation, then told her to get it into code and off to Scott at once.

“And what then?” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“You know, Arnie,” she said, and the tone in which she said it made him cringe with dismay and pure physical disgust.

“Nothing after that,” he said. “Just get out; don't come back.” Following after her, he slammed the door shut behind her.

I guess, he decided, I'll have to contact Scott direct; I can't trust her. Seating himself at the desk he picked up the telephone and dialed.

Presently the line was ringing. But it rang in vain; there was no response. Why? he wondered. Has he run out on me? Is he against me? Working with them? I can't trust him; I can't trust anybody. And then, all at once, a voice said, “Hello. Scott Temple speaking.” And he realized that only a few seconds and a few rings had actually gone by; all those thoughts of betrayal, of doom, had flitted through his mind in an instant.

“This is Arnie.”

“Hi, Arnie. What's up? I can tell by your tone something's cooking. Spill it.”

My sense of time is fouled up, Arnie realized. It seemed to me the phone rang for half an hour, but it wasn't at all.

“Arnie,” Scott was saying. “Speak up. Arnie, you there?”

It's the schizophrenic confusion, Arnie realized. It's basically a breakdown in time-sense. Now I'm getting it because that kid has it.

“Chrissake!” Scott said, outraged.

With difficulty, Arnie broke his chain of thought and said, “Uh, Scott. Listen. I got an inside scoop; we have to act on this right now, you understand?” In detail, he told Scott about the UN and the F.D.R. Mountains. “So you can see,” he wound up, “it's worth it to us to buy in with all we got, and pronto. You agree?”

“You're sure of this scoop?” Scott said.

“Yeah, I am! I am!”

“How come? Frankly, Arnie, I like you, but I know you get crazy schemes, you're always flying off at a tangent. I'd hate to get stuck with that dog's breakfast F.D.R. land.”

Arnie said, “Take my word for it.”

“I can't.”

He could not believe his ears. “We been working together for years, and it's always been on a word-of-mouth confidence basis,” he choked. “What's going on, Scott?”

“That's what I'm asking you,” Scott said calmly. “How come a man of your business experience could bite on this phony nothing so-called scoop? The scoop is that the F.D.R. range is worthless, and you know it; I know you know it. Everybody knows it. So what are you up to?”

“You don't
trust
me?”

“Why should I
trust
you?
Prove
you got real inside scoop stuff here, and not just your usual hot air.”

With difficulty, Arnie said, “Hell, man, if I could prove it, you wouldn't have to trust me; it wouldn't involve trust. O.K. I'll go into this alone, and when you find out what you missed, blame yourself, not me.” He slammed down the phone, shaking with rage and despair. What a thing to happen! He couldn't believe it; Scott Temple, the one person in the world he could do business with over the phone. The rest of them you could throw in the ocean, they were such crooks….

It's a misunderstanding, he told himself. But based on a deep, fundamental, insidious distrust. A schizophrenic distrust.

A collapse, he realized, of the ability to communicate.

Standing up, he said aloud, “I guess I got to go to Pax Grove myself and see the abstract people. Put in my claim.” And then he remembered. He would have to first stake his claim, actually go to the site, in the F.D.R. Mountains. And everything in him shrieked out in rebellion at that. At that hideous place, where the building would one day appear.

Well, there was no way out. First have a stake made for him in one of the Union shops, then take a ’copter and head for the Henry Wallace.

It seemed, thinking about it, an agonizingly difficult series of actions to accomplish. How could he do all that? First he would have to find some Union metal worker who could engrave his name for him on the stake; that might take days. Who did he know in the shops here in Lewistown who could do it for him? And if he didn't know the guy, how could he trust him?

At last, as if swimming against an intolerable current, he managed to lift the receiver from the hook and place the call to the shop.

I'm so tired I can hardly move, he realized. Why? What have I done so far today? His body felt crushed flat with fatigue.
If only I could get some rest,
he thought to himself.
If only I could sleep.

It was late in the afternoon before Arnie Kott was able to procure the metal stake with his name engraved on it from the Union shop and make arrangements for a WWU ’copter to fly him to the F.D.R. Mountains.

“Hi, Arnie,” the pilot greeted him, a pleasant-faced young man from the Union's pilot pool.

“Hi, my boy,” Arnie murmured, as the pilot assisted him into the comfortable, special leather seat which had been built for him at the settlement's fabric and upholstery shop. As the pilot got into the seat ahead of him, Arnie said, “Now let's hurry because I'm late; I got to get all the way there and then to the abstract office at Pax Grove.”

And I know we won't make it, he said to himself. There just
isn't enough time.

16

The Water Workers’ Union ’copter with Goodmember Arnie Kott in it had hardly gotten into the air when the loudspeaker came on.

“Emergency announcement. There is a small party of Bleekmen out on the open desert at gyrocompass point 4.65003 dying from exposure and lack of water. Ships north of Lewistown are instructed to direct their flights to that point with all possible speed and give assistance. United Nations law requires all commercial and private ships to respond.”

The announcement was repeated in the crisp voice of the UN announcer, speaking from the UN transmitter on the artificial satellite somewhere overhead.

Feeling the ’copter alter course, Arnie said, “Aw, come on, my boy.” It was the last straw. They would never get to the F.D.R. range, let alone to Pax Grove and the abstract office.

“I have to respond, Sir,” the pilot said. “It's the law.”

Now they were above the desert, moving at good speed toward the intersect which the UN announcer had given. Niggers, Arnie thought. We have to drop everything we're doing to bail them out, the damn fools—and the worst part of it is that now I will meet Jack Bohlen. It can't be avoided. I forgot about it: now it is too late.

Patting his coat pocket he found the gun still there. That made him a little more cheerful; he kept his hand on it as the ’copter lowered for its landing. Hope we can beat him here, he thought. But to his dismay he saw that the Yee Company ’copter had landed ahead of him, and Jack Bohlen was already busy giving water to the five Bleekmen. Damn it, he thought.

“Do you need me?” Arnie's pilot called down from his seat. “If not I'll go on.”

In answer Jack Bohlen called back, “I don't have much water for them.” He mopped his face with his handkerchief, sweating in the hot sun.

“O.K.,” the pilot said, and switched off his blades.

To his pilot, Arnie said, “Tell him to step over here.”

Hopping out with a five-gallon water can, the pilot strode over to Jack, and after a moment Jack ceased attending to the Bleekmen and walked toward Arnie Kott.

“You wanted me?” Jack said, standing there looking up at Arnie.

“Yes,” Arnie said. “I'm going to kill you.” He brought out his pistol and aimed it at Jack Bohlen.

The Bleekmen had been filling their paka eggshells with water; now they stopped. A young male, dark and skinny, almost naked under the ruddy Martian sun, reached backward, behind him, to his quiver of poisoned arrows; he drew an arrow forward, fitting it onto his bow, and in a single motion he fired the arrow. Arnie Kott saw nothing; he felt a sharp pain, and looked down to see the arrow protruding from his chest, slightly below the breast bone.

They read minds, Arnie thought. Intentions. He tried to pull the arrow out, but it would not budge. And then he realized that he was already dying. It was poisoned, and he felt it entering his limbs, stopping his circulation, rising upward to invest his brain and mind.

Jack Bohlen, standing below him, said, “Why would you want to kill me? You don't even know who I am.”

“Sure I do,” Arnie managed to grunt. “You're going to fix my encoder, and take Doreen away from me, and your father will steal all I've got, all that matters to me, the F.D.R. range and what's coming.” He shut his eyes and rested.

“You must be crazy,” Jack Bohlen said.

“Naw,” Arnie said. “I know the future.”

“Let me get you to a doctor,” Jack Bohlen said, leaping up into the ’copter, pushing aside the dazed young pilot to inspect the protruding arrow. “They can give you an antidote if they get you in time.” He clicked on the motor; the blades of the ’copter began to turn slowly and then more quickly.

“Take me to the Henry Wallace,” Arnie muttered. “So I can drive my claim stake.”

Jack Bohlen eyed him. “You're Arnie Kott, aren't you?” Getting the pilot out of the way, he seated himself at the controls, and at once the ’copter began to rise into the air. “I'll take you to Lewistown; it's closest and they know you there.”

Saying nothing, Arnie lay back, his eyes still shut. It had all gone wrong. He had not staked his claim and he had not done anything to Jack Bohlen. And now it was over.

Those Bleekmen, Arnie thought as he felt Bohlen lifting him from the ’copter. This was Lewistown; he saw, through pain-darkened eyes, buildings and people. It's those Bleekmen's fault, from the start; if it wasn't for them I never would have met Jack Bohlen. I blame them for the whole thing.

Why wasn't he dead yet? He wondered as Bohlen carried him across the hospital's roof field to the emergency descent ramp. A lot of time had passed; the poison surely had gone all through him. And yet he still felt, thought, understood…perhaps I can't die back here in the past, he said to himself; maybe I got to linger on, unable to die and unable to return to my own time.

How did that young Bleekman catch on so fast? They don't ordinarily use their arrows on Earth people; it's a capital crime. It means the end of them.

Maybe, he thought, they were expecting me. They conspired to save Bohlen because he gave them food and water. Arnie thought, I bet they're the ones who gave him the water witch. Of course.
And when they gave it to him they knew. They knew about all this, even back then, at the very beginning.

I'm helpless in this terrible damn schizophrenic past of Manfred Steiner's. Let me back to my own world, my own time; I just want to get out of here, I don't want to stake my claim or harm anybody. I just want to be back at Dirty Knobby, in the cavern with that goddamn boy. Like I was. Please, Arnie thought. Manfred!

They—someone—was wheeling him up a dark hall on a cart of some kind. Voices. Door opening, gleaming metal: surgical instruments. He saw masked faces, felt them lay him on a table…help me, Manfred, he shouted down deep inside himself. They're going to kill me! You have to take me back. Do it now or forget it, because—

A mask of emptiness and total darkness appeared above him and was lowered. No, Arnie cried out. It's not over; it can't be the end of me. Manfred, for God's sake, before this goes further and it's too late, too late.

I must see the bright normal reality once more, where there is not this schizophrenic killing and alienation and bestial lust and death.

Help me get away from death, back where I belong once more

Help, Manfred

Help me

A voice said, “Get up, Mister, your time has expired.”

He opened his eyes.

“More cigarettes, Mister.” The dirty, ancient Bleekman priest, in his gray, cobweb-like robes, bent over him, pawing at him, whining his litany again and again against his ear. “If you want to stay, Mister, you have to pay me.” He scratched at Arnie's coat, searching.

Sitting up, Arnie looked for Manfred. The boy was gone.

“Get away from me,” Arnie said, rising to his feet; he put his hands to his chest and felt nothing, no arrow there.

He went unsteadily to the mouth of the cavern and squeezed out through the crack, into the cold midmorning sunlight of Mars.

“Manfred!” he yelled. No sign of the boy. Well, he thought, anyhow, I am back in the real world. That's what matters.

And he had lost his desire to get Jack Bohlen. He had lost his desire, too, to buy into the land development of these mountains. And he can have Doreen Anderton, for all I care, Arnie said to himself as he started toward the trail up which they had previously come. But I'll keep my word to Manfred; I'll mail him to Earth first chance I get, and maybe the change'll cure him, or maybe they have better psychiatrists back Home by now. Anyhow, he won't wind up at that
AM-WEB.

As he made his way down the trail, still searching for Manfred, he saw a ’copter flying low overhead and circling. Maybe they saw where the boy went, he said to himself. Both of them, Jack and Doreen, must have been watching all this time. Halting, he waved his arms at the ’copter, indicating that he wanted it to land.

The ’copter dropped cautiously until it rested up the trail from him, in the wide place before the entrance to Dirty Knobby. The door slid aside, and a man stepped out.

“I'm looking for that kid,” Arnie began. And then he saw that it was not Jack Bohlen. It was a man he had never seen before. Good-looking, dark-haired, with wild, emotional eyes, a man who came toward him on a dead run, at the same time waving something that glinted in the sunlight.

“You're Arnie Kott,” the man called to him in a shrill voice.

“Yeah, so what?” Arnie said.

“You destroyed my field,” the man shrieked at him, and, raising the gun, fired.

The first bullet missed Arnie. Who are you and why are you shooting at me? Arnie Kott wondered, as he groped in his coat for his own gun. He found it, brought it out, fired back at the running man. Then it came to him who this was; this was the feeble little black-market operator who had been trying to horn in. The one we gave that lesson to, Arnie said to himself.

The running man dodged, fell, rolled over, and fired from where he lay. Arnie's shot had missed him, too. The shot whistled so close to Arnie this time that for a moment he thought he was hit; he put his hand instinctively to his chest. No, he realized, you didn't get me, you bastard. Raising his pistol, Arnie aimed and prepared to fire once more at the figure.

The world blew up around him. The sun fell from the sky; it dropped into darkness, and with it went Arnie Kott.

After a long time the prone figure stirred. The wild-eyed man crept to his feet cautiously, stood studying Arnie, and then started toward him. As he walked he held his pistol with both hands and aimed it.

A buzzing from above made him peer up. A shadow had swept over him and now a second ’copter bumped to a landing between him and Arnie. The ’copter cut the two men off from one another and Arnie Kott could no longer see the miserable little black-market operator. Out of the ’copter leaped Jack Bohlen. He ran over to Arnie and bent down.

“Get that guy,” Arnie whispered.

“Can't,” Jack said, and pointed. The black-market operator had taken off; his ’copter rose above Dirty Knobby, floundered, then lurched forward, cleared the peak, and was gone. “Forget about him. You're badly shot—think about yourself.”

Arnie whispered, “Don't worry about it, Jack. Listen to me.” He caught hold of Jack's shirt and dragged him down so that Jack's ear was close by. “I'll tell you a secret,” Arnie said. “Something I've discovered. This is another of those schizophrenic worlds. All this goddamn schizophrenic hate and lust and death, it already happened to me once and it couldn't kill me. First time, it was one of those poisoned arrows in the chest; now this. I'm not worried.” He shut his eyes, struggling to keep himself conscious. “Just dig up that kid, he's around somewhere. Ask him and he'll tell you.”

“You're wrong, Arnie,” Jack said, bending down beside him.

“Wrong how?” He could barely see Bohlen, now; the scene had sunk into twilight, and Jack's shape was dim and wraith-like.

You can't fool me, Arnie thought. I know I'm still in Manfred's mind; pretty soon I'll wake up and I won't be shot, I'll be O.K. again, and I'll find my way back to my own world where things like this don't happen. Isn't that right? He tried to speak but was unable to.

Appearing beside Jack, Doreen Anderton said, “He's going to die, isn't he?”

Jack said nothing. He was trying to get Arnie Kott over his shoulder so that he could lug him to the ’copter.

Just another of those gubble-gubble worlds, Arnie said to himself as he felt Jack lift him. It sure taught me a lesson, too. I won't do a nutty thing like this again. He tried to explain that, as Jack carried him to the ’copter. You just did this, he wanted to say. Took me to the hospital at Lewistown to get the arrow out. Don't you remember?

“There's no chance,” Jack said to Doreen as he set Arnie inside the ’copter, “of saving him.” He panted for breath as he seated himself at the controls.

Sure there is, Arnie thought with indignation. What's the matter with you, aren't you trying? Better try, goddamn you. He made an attempt to speak, to tell Jack that, but he could not; he could say nothing.

The ’copter began to rise from the ground, laboring under the weight of the three people.

During the flight back to Lewistown, Arnie Kott died.

Jack Bohlen had Doreen take the controls, and he sat beside the dead man, thinking to himself that Arnie had died still believing he was lost in the dark currents of the Steiner boy's mind. Maybe it's for the best, Jack thought. Maybe it made it easier for him, at the last.

The realization that Arnie Kott was dead filled him, to his incredulity, with grief. It doesn't seem right, he said to himself as he sat by the dead man. It's too harsh; Arnie didn't deserve it, for what he did—the things he did were bad but not that bad.

“What was it he was saying to you?” Doreen asked. She seemed to be quite calm, to have taken Arnie's death in her stride; she piloted the ’copter with matter-of-fact skill.

Jack said, “He imagined this wasn't real. That he was blundering about in a schizophrenic fantasy.”

“Poor Arnie,” she said.

“Do you know who that man was who shot him?”

“Some enemy he must have made along the way somewhere.”

They were both silent for a while.

“We should look for Manfred,” Doreen said.

“Yes,” Jack said. But I know where the boy is right now, he said to himself. He's found some wild Bleekmen there in the mountains, and he's with them; it's obvious and certain, and it would have happened sooner or later in any case. He was not worried—he did not care—about Manfred. Perhaps, for the first time in his life, the boy was in a situation to which he might make an adjustment; he might, with the wild Bleekmen, discern a style of living which was genuinely his and not a pallid, tormented reflection of the lives of those around him beings who were innately different from him and whom he could never resemble, no matter how hard he tried.

Doreen said, “Could Arnie have been right?”

For a moment he did not understand her. And then, when he had made out her meaning, he shook his head. “No.”

“Why was he so sure of it, then?”