Martian Time-Slip (16 page)

“I see,” Jack said. The abstract company would predate the deposit of a local speculator, giving him seeming priority over Leo. There must be many tricks that can be played in a game like this, Jack said to himself; no wonder Leo works carefully.

“We've investigated the abstract company here, and it appears to be honest. But you never know, when there's so much involved.”

Suddenly Manfred Steiner gave a hoarse grunt.

Both Jack and Leo glanced up, startled. They had both forgotten about him; he was at the rear of the cab of the ’copter, his face pressed to the glass, staring down. He pointed excitedly.

Far below, Jack saw a party of Bleekmen threading its way along a mountain trail. “That's right,” Jack said to the boy, “people down there, probably hunting.” It occurred to him that very possibly Manfred had never seen a Bleekman. I wonder what his reaction would be, Jack mused, if he found himself facing them, all at once. How easy it would be to arrange it; all he had to do, really, was land the ’copter ahead of this particular party.

“What are those?” Leo asked, looking down. “Martians?”

“That's what they are,” Jack said.

“I'll be darned.” Leo laughed. “So those are Martians…they look more like aboriginal Negroes, like the African Bushmen.”

“They're closely related to them,” Jack said.

Manfred had become quite excited; his eyes shone and he ran back and forth from window to window, peering down and muttering.

What would happen if Manfred lived with a family of Bleekmen for a time? Jack wondered. They move slower than we do; their lives are less complex and hectic. Possibly their sense of time is close to his…to the Bleekmen, we Earthmen may very well be hypomanic types, whizzing about at enormous velocity, expending huge amounts of energy over nothing at all.

But it would not bring Manfred into his own society, to put him with the Bleekmen. In fact, he realized, it might draw him so far away from us that there would be no chance of our ever communicating with him.

Thinking that, he decided not to land the ’copter.

“Do those fellas do any work?” Leo asked. “Those Martians?”

“A few have been tamed,” Jack said, “as the phrase goes. But most of them continue to exist as they always have, as hunters and fruit-gatherers. They haven't reached the farming stage yet.”

When they reached the Henry Wallace, Jack set the ’copter down, and he and his father and Manfred stepped out onto the parched, rocky soil. Manfred was given paper and crayons to amuse himself, and then the two men set out to search for a suitable spot at which to drive the stake.

The spot, a low plateau, was found, and the stake was driven, mostly by Jack; his father wandered about, inspecting rock formations and plants, with a clearly irritated and impatient frown. He did not seem to enjoy it here in this uninhabited region—however, he said nothing; he politely took note of a fossil formation which Jack pointed out to him.

They took photographs of the stake and the surrounding area, and then, their business done, they returned to the ’copter. There sat Manfred, on the ground, busily drawing with the crayons. The desolation of the area did not seem to bother him, Jack decided. The boy, wrapped up in his inner world, drew and ignored them; he glanced up now and then, but not at the two men. His eyes were blank.

What's he drawing? Jack wondered, and walked around behind the boy to see.

Manfred, glancing up now and then to peer sightlessly at the landscape around him, had drawn great, flat apartment buildings.

“Look at this, Dad,” Jack said, and he managed to keep his voice calm and steady.

Together, the two of them stood behind the boy, watching him draw, watching the buildings become more and more distinct on the paper.

Well, there's no mistaking it, Jack thought. The boy is drawing the buildings that will be here. He is drawing the landscape which will come, not the landscape visible to our eyes.

“I wonder if he saw the photo I showed you,” Leo said. “That one of the models.”

“Maybe so,” Jack said. It would provide an explanation; the boy had understood their conversation, seen the papers, gotten his inspiration from that. But the photo had shown the buildings from above; it was a different perspective from this. The boy had sketched the buildings as they would appear to an observer on the ground. As they would appear, Jack realized, to someone seated where we are right now.

“I wouldn't be surprised if you've got something in this time theory,” Leo said. He glanced at his wrist watch. “Now, speaking of time, I'd say—”

“Yes,” Jack agreed thoughtfully, “we'll get started back.”

There was something more in the child's drawing which he had noticed. He wondered if his father had seen it. The buildings, the enormous co-op apartments, which the boy was sketching, were developing in an ominous direction before their eyes. As they watched, they saw some final details which made Leo glare; he snorted and glanced at his son.

The buildings were old, sagging with age. Their foundations showed great cracks radiating upward. Windows were broken. And what looked like stiff tall weeds grew in the land around. It was a scene of ruin and despair, and of a ponderous, timeless, inertial heaviness.

“Jack, he's drawing a slum!” Leo exclaimed.

That was it, a decaying slum. Buildings that had stood for years, perhaps even decades, which had passed their prime and dwindled into their twilight, into senility and partial abandonment.

Pointing at a yawning crack which he had just drawn, Manfred said, “Gubbish.” His hand traced the weeds, the broken windows. Again he said, “Gubbish.” He glanced at them, smiling in a frightened way.

“What does that mean, Manfred?” Jack asked.

There was no answer. The boy continued to sketch. And as he sketched, the buildings, before their eyes, grew older and older, more in ruins with each passing moment.

“Let's go,” Leo said hoarsely.

Jack took the boy's paper and crayons and got him on his feet. The three of them re-entered the ’copter.

“Look, Jack,” Leo said. He was intently examining the boy's drawing. “What he's written over the entrance of the building.”

In twisted, wavering letters Manfred had written:

AM-WEB

“Must be the name of the building,” Leo said.

“It is,” Jack said, recognizing the word; it was a contraction of a co-op slogan, “Alle Menschen werden Brüder.” “All men become brothers,” he said under his breath. “It's on co-op stationery.” He remembered it well.

Now, taking his crayons once more, Manfred resumed his work. As the two men watched, the boy began to draw something at the top of the picture. Dark birds, Jack saw. Enormous, dusky, vulture-like birds.

At a broken window of the building, Manfred drew a round face with eyes, nose, a turned-down, despairing mouth. Someone within the building, gazing out silently and hopelessly, as if trapped within.

“Well,” Leo said. “Interesting.” His expression was one of grim outrage. “Now, why would he want to draw that? I don't think that's a very wholesome or positive attitude; why can't he draw it like it's going to be, new and immaculate, with children playing and pets and contented people?”

Jack said, “Maybe he draws what he sees.”

“Well, if he sees that, he's ill,” Leo said. “There are so many bright, wonderful things he could see instead; why would he want to see that?”

“Perhaps he has no choice,” Jack said.
Gubbish,
he thought. I wonder; could
gubbish
mean time? The force that to the boy means decay, deterioration, destruction, and, at last, death? The force at work everywhere, on everything in the universe.

And is that all he sees?

If so, Jack thought, no wonder he's autistic; no wonder he can't communicate with us. A view of the universe that partial—it isn't even a complete view of time. Because time also brings new things into existence; it's also the process of maturation and growth. And evidently Manfred does not perceive time in that aspect.

Is he sick because he sees this? Or does he see this because he is sick? A meaningless question, perhaps, or anyhow one that can't be answered. This is Manfred's view of reality, and according to us, he is desperately ill; he does not perceive the rest of reality, which we do. And it is a dreadful section which he does see: reality in its most repellent aspect.

Jack thought,
And people talk about mental illness as an escape!
He shuddered. It was no escape; it was a narrowing, a contracting of life into, at last, a moldering, dank tomb, a place where nothing came or went; a place of total death.

The poor damned kid, he thought. How can he live from one day to the next, having to face the reality he does?

Somberly, Jack returned to the job of piloting the ’copter. Leo looked out the window, contemplating the desert below. Manfred, with the taut, frightened expression on his face, continued to draw.

They gubbled and gubbled. He put his hands to his ears, but the product crept up through his nose. Then he saw the place. It was where he wore out. They threw him away there, and gubbish lay in heaps up to his waist; gubbish filled the air.

“What is your name?”

“Steiner, Manfred.”

“Age.”

“Eighty-three.”

“Vaccinated against smallpox?”

“Yes.”

“Any venereal diseases?”

“Well, a little clap, that's all.”

“V.D. clinic for this man.”

“Sir, my teeth. They're in the bag, along with my eyes.”

“Your eyes, oh yes. Give this man his teeth and eyes before you take him to the V.D. clinic. How about your ears, Steiner?”

“Got ’em on, sir. Thank you, sir.”

They tied his hands with gauze to the sides of the bed because he tried to pull out the catheter. He lay facing the window, seeing through the dusty, cracked glass.

Outside, a bug on tall legs picked through the heaps. It ate, and then something squashed it and went on, leaving it squashed with its dead teeth sunk into what it had wanted to eat. Finally its dead teeth got up and crawled out of its mouth in different directions.

He lay there for a hundred and twenty-three years and then his artificial liver gave out and he fainted and died. By that time they had removed both his arms and legs up to the pelvis because those parts of him had decayed.

He didn't use them anyhow. And without arms he didn't try to pull the catheter out, and that pleased them.

I been at
AM-WEB
for a long time, he said. Maybe you can get me a transistor radio so I can tune in Friendly Fred's Breakfast Club; I like to hear the tunes, they play a lot of the old-time favorites.

Something outside gives me hay fever. Must be those yellow flowering weeds, why do they let them get so tall?

I once saw a ballgame.

For two days he lay on the floor, in a big puddle, and then the landlady found him and called for the truck to bring him here. He snored all the way, it woke him up. When they tried to give him grapefruit juice he could only work one arm, the other never worked again ever. He wished he could still make those leather belts, they were fun and took lots of time. Sometimes he sold them to people who came by on the weekend.

“Do you know who I am, Manfred?”

“No.”

“I'm Arnie Kott. Why don't you laugh or smile sometimes, Manfred? Don't you like to run around and play?”

As he spoke Mr. Kott gubbled from both his eyes.

“Obviously he doesn't, Arnie, but that's not what concerns us here anyhow.”

“What do you see, Manfred? Let us in on what you see. All those people, are they going to live there, is that it? Is that right, Manfred? Can you see lots of people living there?”

He put his hands over his face, and the gubble stopped.

“I don't see why this kid never laughs.”

Gubble, gubble.

10

Inside Mr. Kott's skin were dead bones, shiny and wet. Mr. Kott was a sack of bones, dirty and yet shiny-wet. His head was a skull that took in greens and bit them; inside him the greens became rotten things as something ate them to make them dead.

He could see everything that went on inside Mr. Kott, the teeming gubbish life. Meanwhile, the outside said, “I love Mozart. I'll put this tape on.” The box read: “Symphony 40 in G mol., K. 550.” Mr. Kott fiddled with the knobs of the amplifier. “Bruno Walter conducting,” Mr. Kott told his guests. “A great rarity from the golden age of recordings.”

A hideous racket of screeches and shrieks issued from the speakers, like the convulsions of corpses. Mr. Kott shut off the tape transport.

“Sorry,” he muttered. It was an old coded message, from Rockingham or Scott Temple or Anne, from someone, anyhow; Mr. Kott, he knew that. He knew that by accident it had found its way into his library of music.

Sipping her drink, Doreen Anderton said, “What a shock. You should spare us, Arnie. Your sense of humor—”

“An accident,” Arnie Kott said angrily. He rummaged for another tape. Aw, the hell with it, he thought. “Listen, Jack,” he said, turning. “I'm sorry to make you come here when I know your dad's visiting, but I'm running out of time; show me your progress with the Steiner boy, O.K.?” His anticipation and concern made him stutter. He looked at Jack expectantly.

But Jack Bohlen hadn't heard him; he was saying something to Doreen there on the couch where the two of them sat together.

“We're out of booze,” Jack said, setting down his empty glass.

“God sake,” Arnie said, “I got to hear how you've done, Jack. Can't you give me anything? Are you two just going to sit there necking and whispering? I don't feel good.” He went unsteadily into the kitchen, where Heliogabalus sat on a tall stool, like a dunce, reading a magazine. “Fix me a glass of warm water and baking soda,” Arnie said.

“Yes, Mister.” Heliogabalus closed his magazine and stepped down from the stool. “I overhead. Why don't you send them out? They are no good, no good at all, Mister.” From the cabinet over the sink he took the package of bicarbonate of soda; he spooned out a teaspoonful.

“Who cares about your opinion?” Arnie said.

Doreen entered the kitchen, her face drawn and tired. “Arnie, I think I'll go home. I really can't take much of Manfred; he never stops moving around, never sits still. I can't stand it.” Going up to Arnie she kissed him on the ear. “Goodnight, dear.”

“I read about a kid who thought he was a machine,” Arnie said. “He had to be plugged in, he said, to work. I mean, you have to be able to stand these fruits. Don't go. Stay for my sake. Manfred's a lot quieter when a woman's around. I don't know why. I have the feeling that Bohlen's accomplished nothing; I'm going out there and tell him to his face.” A glass of warm water and baking soda was put into his right hand by his tame Bleekman. “Thanks.” He drank it gratefully.

“Jack Bohlen,” Doreen said, “has done a fine job under difficult conditions. I don't want to hear anything said against him.” She swayed slightly, smiling. “I'm a little drunk.”

“Who isn't?” Arnie said. He put his arm around her waist and hugged her. “I'm so drunk I'm sick. O.K., that kid gets me, too. Look, I put on that old coded tape; I must be nuts.” Setting down his glass he unbuttoned the top buttons of her blouse. “Look away, Helio. Read your book.” The Bleekman looked away. Holding Doreen against him, Arnie unbuttoned all the buttons of her blouse and began on her skirt. “I know they're ahead of me, those Earth bastards coming in everywhere you look. My man at the terminal can't even count them any more; they been coming in all day long. Let's go to bed.” He kissed her on the collar bone, nuzzled lower and lower until she raised his head with the strength of her hands.

In the living room, his hotshot repairman hired away from Mr. Yee fiddled with the tape recorder, clumsily putting on a fresh reel. He had knocked over his empty glass.

What happens if they get there before me? Arnie Kott asked himself as he clung to Doreen, wheeling slowly about the kitchen with her as Heliogabalus read to himself. What if I can't buy in at all? Might as well be dead. He bent Doreen backwards, but all the time thinking, There has to be a place for me. I love this planet.

Music blared; Jack Bohlen had gotten the tape going.

Doreen pinched him savagely, and he let go of her; he walked from the kitchen, back into the living room, turned down the volume, and said, “Jack, let's get down to business.”

“Right,” Jack Bohlen agreed.

Coming from the kitchen after him, buttoning her blouse, Doreen made a wide circuit to avoid Manfred, who was down on his hands and knees; the boy had spread out a length of butcher paper and was pasting bits cut from magazines onto it with library paste. Patches of white showed on the rug where he had slopped.

Going up to the boy, Arnie bent down close to him and said, “Do you know who I am, Manfred?”

There was no answer from the boy, nothing to show he had even heard.

“I'm Arnie Kott,” Arnie said. “Why don't you laugh or smile sometimes, Manfred? Don't you like to run around and play?” He felt sorry for the boy, sorry and distressed.

Jack Bohlen said in an unsteady, thick voice, “Obviously he doesn't, Arnie, but that's not what concerns us here, anyhow.” His gaze was befuddled; the hand that held the glass shook.

But Arnie continued. “What do you see, Manfred? Let us in on what you see.” He waited, but there was only silence. The boy concentrated on his pasting. He had created a collage on the paper: a jagged strip of green, then a perpendicular rise, gray and dense, forbidding.

“What's it mean?” Arnie said.

“It's a place,” Jack said. “A building. I brought it along.” He went off, returning with a manila envelope; from it he brought a large crumpled child's crayon drawing, which he held up for Arnie to examine. “There,” Jack said. “That's it. You wanted me to establish communication with him; well, I established it.” He had some trouble with the two long words; his tongue seemed to catch.

Arnie, however, did not care how drunk his repairman was. He was accustomed to having his guests tank up; hard liquor was rare on Mars, and when people came upon it, as they did at Arnie's place, they generally reacted as Jack Bohlen had. What mattered was the task which Jack had been given. Arnie picked up the picture and studied it.

“This it?” he asked Jack. “What else?”

“Nothing else.”

“What about that chamber that slows things down?”

“Nothing,” Jack said.

“Can the boy read the future?”

“Absolutely,” Jack said. “There's no doubt of it. That picture is proof right there, unless he heard us talking.” Turning to Doreen he said, in a slow, thick voice, “Did he hear us, do you think? No, you weren't there. It was my dad. I don't think he heard. Listen, Arnie. You aren't supposed to see this, but I guess it's O.K. It's too late now. This is a picture nobody is supposed to see; this is the way it's going to be a century from now, when it's in ruins.”

“What the hell is it?” Arnie said “I can't read a kid's nutty drawing; explain it to me.”

“This is
AM-WEB
,” Jack said. “A big, big housing tract. Thousands of people living there. Biggest on Mars. Only, it's crumbling into rubble, according to the picture.”

There was silence. Arnie was baffled.

“Maybe you're not interested,” Jack said.

“Sure I am,” Arnie said angrily. He appealed to Doreen, who stood off to one side, looking pensive. “Do you understand this?”

“No, dear,” she said.

“Jack,” Arnie said, “I called you here for your report. And all I get is this dim-witted drawing. Where is this big housing tract?”

“In the F.D.R. Mountains,” Jack said.

Arnie felt his pulse slow, then with difficulty labor on. “Oh, yeah, I see,” he said. “I understand.”

Grinning, Jack said, “I thought you would. You're interested in that. You know, Arnie, you think I'm a schizophrenic, and Doreen thinks so, and my father thinks so…but I
do
care what your motives are. I can get you plenty of information about the UN project in the F.D.R. Mountains. What else do you want to know about it? It's not a power station and it's not a park. It's in conjunction with the coop. It's a multiple-unit, infinitely large structure with supermarkets and bakeries, dead center in the Henry Wallace.”

“You got all this from this kid?”

“No,” Jack said. “From my dad.”

They looked at each other a long time.

“Your dad is a speculator?” Arnie said.

“Yes,” Jack said.

“He just arrived from Earth the other day?”

“Yes,” Jack said.

“Jesus,” Arnie said to Doreen. “Jesus, it's this guy's father. And he's already bought in.”

“Yes,” Jack said.

“Is there anything left?” Arnie said.

Jack shook his head.

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” Arnie said. “And he's on my payroll. I never had such bad luck.”

Jack said, “I didn't know until just now that this was what you wanted to find out, Arnie.”

“Yeah, that's true,” Arnie said. Speaking to Doreen, he said, “I never told him, so it's not his fault.” He aimlessly picked up the boy's drawing. “And this is what it'll look like.”

“Eventually,” Jack said. “Not at first.”

To Manfred, Arnie said, “You did have the information, but we got it from you too late.”

“Too late,” Jack echoed. He seemed to understand; he looked stricken. “Sorry, Arnie. I really am sorry. You should have told me.”

“I don't blame you,” Arnie said. “We're still friends, Bohlen. It's just a case of bad luck. You've been completely honest with me; I can see that. Goddamn, it sure is too bad. He's already filed his claim, your dad? Well, that's the way it goes.”

“He represents a group of investors,” Jack said hoarsely.

“Naturally,” Arnie said. “With unlimited capital. What could I do anyhow? I can't compete. I'm just one guy.” To Manfred he said, “All these people—” He pointed to the drawing. “Are they going to live there, is that it? Is that right, Manfred? Can you see lots of people living there?” His voice rose, out of control.

“Please, Arnie,” Doreen said. “Calm down; I can see how upset you are, and you shouldn't be.”

Raising his head, Arnie said to her in a low voice, “I don't see why this kid never laughs.”

The boy suddenly said, “Gubble, gubble.”

“Yeah,” Arnie said, with bitterness. “That's right. That's real good communication, kid. Gubble, gubble.” To Jack he said, “You have a fine communication established; I can see that.”

Jack said nothing. Now he looked grim and uneasy.

“I can see it's going to take a long time more,” Arnie said, “to bring this kid out so we can talk to him. Right? Too bad we can't continue. I'm not going any further with it.”

“No reason why you should,” Jack said in a leaden voice.

“Right,” Arnie said. “So that's it. The end of your job.”

Doreen said, “But you can still use him for—”

“Oh, of course,” Arnie said. “I need a skilled repairman anyhow, for stuff like that encoder; I got a thousand items busting down every goddamn day. I just mean this one particular job, here. Send him back to B-G, this kid.
AM-WEB.
Yeah, the co-op buildings get funny names like that. The co-op coming over to Mars! That's a big outfit, that co-op. They'll pay high for their land; they've got the loot. Tell your dad from me that he's a shrewd businessman.”

“Can we shake hands, Arnie?” Jack asked.

“Sure, Jack.” Arnie stuck out his hand and the two of them shook, hard and long, looking each other in the eye. “I expect to see a lot of you, Jack. This isn't the end between you and me; it's just the beginning.” He let go of Jack Bohlen's hand, walked back into the kitchen, and stood by himself, thinking.

Presently Doreen joined him. “That was dreadful news for you, wasn't it?” she said, putting her arm around him.

“Very bad,” Arnie said. “Worst I had in a long time. But I'll be O.K.; I'm not scared of the co-op movement. Lewistown and the Water Workers were here first, and they'll be here a lot longer. If I had gotten this project with the Steiner boy started sooner, it would have worked out differently, and I sure don't blame Jack for that.” But inside him, in his heart, he thought, You were working against me, Jack. All the time. You were working with your father. From the start, too; from the day I hired you.

He returned to the living room. At the tape transport, Jack stood morose and silent, fooling with the knobs.

“Don't take it hard,” Arnie said to him.

“Thanks, Arnie,” Jack said. His eyes were dull. “I feel I've let you down.”

“Not me,” Arnie assured him. “You haven't let me down, Jack. Because nobody lets me down.”

On the floor, Manfred Steiner pasted away, ignoring them all.

As he flew his father back to the house, leaving the F.D.R. range behind them, Jack thought, Should I show the boy's picture to Arnie? Should I take it to Lewistown and hand it over to him? It's so little…it just doesn't look like what I ought to have produced, by now.

He knew that tonight he would have to see Arnie, in any case.

“Very desolate down there,” his dad said, nodding toward the desert below. “Amazing you people have done so much reclamation work; you should all be proud.” But his attention was actually on his maps. He spoke in a perfunctory manner; it was a formality.

Jack snapped on his radio transmitter and called Arnie, at Lewistown. “Excuse me, dad; I have to talk to my boss.”

The radio made a series of noises, which attracted Manfred momentarily; he ceased poring over his drawing and raised his head.

“I'll take you along,” Jack said to the boy.

Presently he had Arnie. “Hi, Jack.” Arnie's voice came boomingly. “I been trying to get hold of you. Can you—”

“I'll be over to see you tonight,” Jack said.

“Not before? How about this afternoon?”

“Afraid tonight is as soon as I can make it,” Jack said. “There—” He hesitated. “Nothing to show you until tonight If I get near him, he thought, I'll tell him about the UN-co-op project; he'll get everything out of me. I'll wait until after my dad's claim has been filed, and then it won't matter.