Martian Time-Slip (10 page)

“Yes, that certainly is,” Kindly Dad said.

“At one time,” Jack said, as he watched the machinery moving, “I had what they call situational polymorphous schizophrenia simplex. And, Kindly Dad, it was rough.”

“I just bet it was,” Kindly Dad said.

“Now, I know what you're supposed to be for,” Jack said, “I know your purpose, Kindly Dad. We're a long way from Home. Millions of miles away. Our connection with our civilization back Home is tenuous. And a lot of folks are mighty scared, Kindly Dad, because with each passing year that link gets weaker. So this Public School was set up to present a fixed milieu to the children born here, an Earthlike environment. For instance, this fireplace. We don't have fireplaces here on Mars; we heat by small atomic furnaces. That picture window with all that glass—sandstorms would make it opaque. In fact there's not one thing about you that's derived from our actual world here. Do you know what a Bleekman is, Kindly Dad?”

“Can't say that I do, Little Jackie. What is a Bleekman?”

“It's one of the indigenous races of Mars. You do know you're on Mars, don't you?”

Kindly Dad nodded.

“Schizophrenia,” Jack said, “is one of the most pressing problems human civilization has ever faced. Frankly, Kindly Dad, I emigrated to Mars because of my schizophrenic episode when I was twenty-two and worked for Corona Corporation. I was cracking up. I had to move out of a complex urban environment and into a simpler one, a primitive frontier environment with more freedom. The pressure was too great for me; it was emigrate or go mad. That co-op building; can you imagine a thing going down level after level and up like a skyscraper, with enough people living there for them to have their own supermarket? I went mad standing in line at the bookstore. Everybody else, Kindly Dad, every single person in that bookstore and in that supermarket—all of them lived in the same building I did. It was a society, Kindly Dad, that one building. And today it's small by comparison with some that have been built. What do you say to that?”

“My, my,” Kindly Dad said, shaking his head.

“Now here's what I think,” Jack said. “I think this Public School and you teaching machines are going to rear another generation of schizophrenics, the descendants of people like me who are making a fine adaptation to this new planet. You're going to split the psyches of these children because you're teaching them to expect an environment which doesn't exist for them. It doesn't even exist back on Earth, now; it's obsolete. Ask that Whitlock Teacher if intelligence doesn't have to be practical to be true intelligence. I heard it say so, it has to be a tool for adaptation. Right, Kindly Dad?”

“Yes, Little Jackie, it has to be.”

“What you ought to be teaching,” Jack said, “is, how do we—”

“Yes, Little Jackie,” Kindly Dad interrupted him, “it has to be.” And as it said this, a gear-tooth slipped in the glare of Jack's trouble-light, and a phase of the cycle repeated itself.

“You're stuck,” Jack said. “Kindly Dad, you've got a worn gear-tooth.”

“Yes, Little Jackie,” Kindly Dad said, “it has to be.”

“You're right,” Jack said. “It does have to be. Everything wears out eventually; nothing is permanent. Change is the one constant of life. Right, Kindly Dad?”

“Yes, Little Jackie,” Kindly Dad said, “it has to be.”

Shutting off the teaching machine at its power supply, Jack began to disassemble its main-shaft, preparatory to removing the worn gear.

“So you found it,” the master circuit said, when Jack emerged a half-hour later, wiping his face with his sleeve.

“Yes,” he said. He was exhausted. His wrist watch told him that it was only four o'clock; an hour more of work lay ahead of him.

The master circuit accompanied him to the parking lot. “I am quite pleased with the promptness with which you attended to our needs,” she said. “I will telephone Mr. Yee and thank him.”

He nodded and climbed into his 'copter, too worn out even to say goodbye. Soon he was ascending; the duck egg which was the UN-operated Public School became small and far away below him. Its stifling presence vanished, and he could breathe again.

Flipping on his transmitter he said, “Mr. Yee. This is Jack; I'm done at the school. What next?”

After a pause Mr. Yee's pragmatic voice answered. “Jack, Mr. Arnie Kott at Lewistown called us. He requested that we service an encoding dictation machine in which he places great trust. Since all others of our crew are tied up, I am sending you.”

6

Arnie Kott owned the only harpsichord on Mars. However, it was out of tune, and he could find no one to service it. No matter which way you cut it, there were no harpsichord tuners on Mars.

For a month now he had been training his tame Bleekman to tackle this task; Bleekmen had a fine ear for music, and his particular one seemed to understand what Arnie wanted. Heliogabalus had been provided with a translation into the Bleeky dialect of a manual on keyboard instrument maintenance, and Arnie expected results any day now. But mean-while the harpsichord was virtually unplayable.

Back in Lewistown from his visit to Anne Esterhazy, Arnie Kott felt glum. The death of the black-market goodies man, Norbert Steiner, was a solid blow below the belt, and Arnie knew that he would have to make a move, probably a drastic and unprecedented one, to compensate for it. It was now three o'clock in the afternoon. What had he gotten out of his trip to New Israel? Only a piece of bad news. Anne, as usual, could not be talked into anything; she intended to go right on with her amateurish campaigns and causes, and if she were the laughingstock of Mars it did not matter to her.

“Goddamn you, Heliogabalus,” Arnie said with fury, “you get that goddamn instrument playing right or I'm kicking you out of Lewistown. You can go back to eating beetles and roots in the desert with the rest of your kind.”

Seated on the floor beside the harpsichord, the Bleekman winced, glanced up acutely at Arnie Kott, then lowered his eyes to the manual once more.

“Nothing ever gets fixed around here,” Arnie grumbled.

All Mars, he decided, was a sort of Humpty Dumpty; the original state had been one of perfection, and they and their property had all fallen from that state into rusty bits and useless debris. He felt sometimes as if he presided over an enormous junkyard. And then, once more, he thought about the Yee Company repair 'copter which he had run into in the desert, and the zwepp piloting it. Independent bastards, Arnie said to himself. Ought to be taken down a peg or two. But they knew their worth. Vital to the economy of the planet; it was written on their faces. We bow to no man, etcetera. Arnie paced about the big front room of the Lewistown house which he maintained in addition to his apartment at Union Hall, hands in his pockets, scowling.

Imagine: that guy talked back to me just like that, Arnie reflected. He must be a hell of a good repairman to be so confident.

And Arnie also thought, I'm going to get that guy if it's the last thing I do. Nobody talks to me like that and gets away with it.

But of the two thoughts about the Yee Company uppity repairman, the former slowly began to dominate his mind, because he was a practical man and he knew that things had to be kept running. Codes of conduct had to come second. We're not running a medieval society here, Arnie said to himself. If the guy's really good he can say what he wants to me; all I care about is results.

With that in mind, he telephoned the Yee Company at Bunchewood Park, and soon had Mr. Yee himself on the line.

“Listen,” Arnie said, “I got a sick encoder over here, and if you fellows can get it working maybe I can use you on a permanent contract basis; you follow me?”

There was no doubt of it; Mr. Yee followed him, all right. He saw the entire picture. “Our best man, sir. Right away. And I know we'll give absolute satisfaction, any hour of the day or night.”

“I want one particular man,” Arnie said, and he thereupon described the repairman he had met in the desert.

“Young, dark-haired, slender,” Mr. Yee repeated. “Glasses, and with a nervous manner. That would be Mr. Jack Bohlen. Our finest.”

“Let me tell you,” Arnie said, “that this Bohlen guy talked to me in a way I don't let nobody talk to me, but after I thought it over I realized he was in the right, and when I see him I'm going to tell him that to his face.” However, in actuality Arnie Kott no longer could recall what the issue had been. “That guy Bohlen seems to have a good head on him,” he wound up. “Can he get over here today?”

Without hesitation Mr. Yee promised service by five o'clock.

“I appreciate that,” Arnie said. “And be sure and tell him that Arnie holds no grudges. Sure, I was taken aback at the time; but that's all over. Tell him—” He pondered. “Tell Bohlen he's got absolutely nothing to worry about regarding me.” He rang off, then, and sat back with a feeling of grim, honest accomplishment.

So the day after all wasn't a total waste. And, too, he had gotten an interesting bit of information from Anne, while over at New Israel. He had brought up the topic of the rumored goings-on in the F.D.R. Mountains, and as usual Anne knew a few inside yarns emanating from Home, accounts no doubt garbled in the chain of oral tellings…yet the nugget of veracity was there. The UN back Home was in the process of staging one of its periodic coups. It was going to descend on the F.D.R. Mountains in another couple of weeks and lay claim to them as public domain land belonging to no one—which was palpably true. But why was it that the UN wanted a big hunk of worthless real estate? There, Anne's tale got perplexing. One story noised about back at Geneva was that the UN intended to build an enormous supernational park, a sort of Garden of Eden, to lure emigrants out of Earth. Another had it that the UN engineers were going to make a vast final attack on the problem of beefing up the power sources on Mars; they were going to set up a huge hydrogen atomic energy power plant, unique in both size and scope. The water system would be revitalized. And, with adequate sources of power, heavy industry could at last move over to Mars, taking advantage of free land, light gravity, low taxation.

And then another rumor had it that the UN was going to set up a military base in the F.D.R. Mountains to offset United States and Soviet plans along the same general lines.

Whichever rumor was true, one fact stuck out: certain parcels of land in the F.D.R. range were going to be acutely valuable, pretty soon. The entire range was up for sale right now, in pieces varying from half an acre to a hundred thousand acres, and at a staggeringly low price. Once speculators got wind of the UN's plans, this would change…no doubt the speculators were already beginning to act. To claim land on Mars they had to be on the spot; it could not be done from Home—that was the law. So one could expect the speculators to start coming over any time now, if Anne's rumors were correct. It would be like the first year of colonization, when speculators were active everywhere.

Seating himself at his out-of-tune harpsichord, Arnie opened a book of Scarlatti sonatas and began to bang away at one of his favorites, a cross-hand one on which he had been practicing for months. It was strong, rhythmic, vigorous music, and he pounded the keys with delight, ignoring the distorted sound itself. Heliogabalus moved further off to study his manual; the sound hurt his ears.

“I've got a long-playing record of this,” he said to Heliogabalus as he played. “So goddamm old and valuable that I don't dare play it.”

“What is a long-playing record?” the Bleekman asked.

“You wouldn't understand if I told you. Glenn Gould playing. It's forty years old; my family passed it down to me. It was my mother's. That guy could really hammer these cross-hand sonatas out.” His own playing discouraged him, and he gave up. I could never be any good, he decided, even if this instrument were in peak condition like it was before I had it shipped here from Home.

Seated on the bench but not playing, Arnie ruminated once more on the golden opportunities involved in the F.D.R. Mountains land. I could buy in any time, he thought, with Union funds. But
where?
It's a big range; I can't buy it
all
.

Who knows that range? he asked himself. That Steiner probably did, because as I understand it his base of operations is—or rather was—someplace near there. And there are prospectors coming and going. And Bleekmen live there, too.

“Helio,” he said, “do you know the F.D.R. range?”

“Mister, I do know them,” the Bleekman said. “I shun them. They are cold and empty and have no life.”

“Is it true,” Arnie said, “that you Bleekmen have an oracular rock that you go to when you want to know the future?”

“Yes, Mister. The uncivilized Bleekmen have that. But it is vain superstition. Dirty Knobby, the rock is called.”

“You never consult it, youself.”

“No, Mister.”

“Could you find that rock, if necessary?”

“Yes, Mister.”

“I'll give you a dollar,” Arnie said, “if you take a question to your goddamm Dirty Knobby rock for me.”

“Thank you, Mister, but I cannot do it.”

“Why not, Helio?”

“It would proclaim my ignorance, to consult with such fraudulency.”

“Christ,” Arnie said, disgusted. “Just as a game—can't you do that? For a joke.”

The Bleekman said nothing, but his dark face was tight with resentment. He pretended to resume his reading of the manual.

“You fellows were stupid to give up your native religion,” Arnie said. “You showed how weak you are. I wouldn't have. Tell me how to find Dirty Knobby and I'll ask it myself. I know goddamn well that your religion teaches that you can foretell the future, and what's so peculiar about that? We've got extra-sensory individuals back Home, and some of them have precognition, can read the future. Of course we have to lock them up with the other nuts, because that's a symptom of schizophrenia, if you happen to know what that means.”

“Yes, Mister,” Heliogabalus said. “I know schizophrenia; it is the savage within the man.”

“Sure, it's the reversion to primitive ways of thought, but so what, if you can read the future? In those mental health camps back Home there must be hundreds of precogs—” And then a thought struck Arnie Kott. Maybe there're a couple here on Mars, at Camp B-G.

The hell with Dirty Knobby rock, then, Arnie thought. I'll drop by B-G one day before they close it and get me a precog nut; I'll bail him out of the camp and put him on the payroll, right here in Lewistown.

Going to his telephone, he called the Union steward, Edward L. Goggins. “Eddy,” he said, when he had hold of the steward, “you trot over to our psychiatric clinic and collar those doctors, and you bring back a description of what a precog nut is like, I mean, what symptoms, and if they know one at Camp B-G we could nab.”

“O.K., Arnie. Will do.”

“Who's the best psychiatrist on Mars, Eddy?”

“Gosh, Arnie, I'd have to check into it. The Truckers have a good one, Milton Glaub. Reason I know that is, my wife's brother is a Trucker and got analysis from Glaub last year, plus naturally effective representation.”

“I suppose this Glaub knows B-G pretty good.”

“Oh, yeah, Arnie; he's over there once a week, they all take turns. The Jews pay pretty good, they've got so much dough to spend. They get the dough from Israel back on Earth, you know.”

“Well, get hold of this Glaub and tell him to rustle up a precog schizophrenic for me as soon as possible. Put Glaub on the payroll, but only if you have to; most of those psychiatrists are aching for regular money, they see so little of it. Understand, Eddy?”

“Right, Arnie.” The steward rang off.

“You ever been psychoanalyzed, Helio?” Arnie said to him, feeling cheerful, now.

“No, Mister. Entire psychoanalysis is a vainglorious foolishness.”

“How zat, Helio?”

“Question they never deal with is, what to remold sick person like. There is no what, Mister.”

“I don't get you, Helio.”

“Purpose of life is unknown, and hence way to be is hidden from the eyes of living critters. Who can say if perhaps the schizophrenics are not correct? Mister, they take a brave journey. They turn away from mere things, which one may handle and turn to practical use; they turn inward to
meaning
. There, the black-night-without-bottom lies, the pit. Who can say if they will return? And if so, what will they be like, having glimpsed meaning? I admire them.”

“Kee-rist” Arnie said, with derision, “you half-educated freak—I'll bet if human civilization disappeared from Mars you'd be right back there among those savages in ten seconds flat, worshipping idols and all the rest of it. Why do you pretend you want to be like us? Why are you reading that manual?”

Heliogabalus said, “Human civilization will never leave Mars, Mister; that is why I study this book.”

“Out of that book,” Arnie said, “you better be able to tune up my goddamn harpsichord, or you will be back in the desert, whether human civilization stays on Mars or not.”

“Yes sir,” his tame Bleekman said.

Ever since he had lost his union card and could not then legally perform his job, Otto Zitte's life had been a continual mess. With a card he would be by now a first-class repairman. It was his secret that he had once held such a card and had managed to lose it; even his employer, Norb Steiner, did not know it. For reasons he himself did not understand, Otto preferred others to believe he had simply failed the aptitude tests. Perhaps it was easier to think of himself as a failure; after all, the repair business was almost impossible to get into… and after having gotten into it, to be booted out—

It was his own fault. There he had been, three years ago, a paid-up member of the union in good standing, in other words a bona fide Goodmember. The future was wide open for him; he was young, he had a girl friend and his own 'copter—the latter, leased; the former, although he had not known it at the time, shared—and what could hold him back? What, except possibly his own stupidity.

He had broken a union ruling which was a basic law. In his opinion it was a foolish ruling, but nonetheless… vengeance is mine, sayeth the Extraterrestrial Repairmen's Union, Martian Branch. Wow, how he hated the bastards; his hatred had warped his life and he recognized that—and he did nothing about it: he wanted it to warp him. He wanted to keep on hating them, the vast monolithic structure, wherever it existed.

They had caught him for giving socialized repair.

And the hell of it was that it wasn't actually socialized, because he expected to get back a profit. It was just a new way of charging his customers, and in a sense not so new, anyhow. It was actually the oldest way in the world, a barter system. But his revenue could not be divvied up so that the union got its cut. His trade had been with certain housewives living out in remote tracts, very lonely women whose husbands stayed in the city five days a week, coming home only on weekends. Otto, who was good-looking, slender, with long, combed-back black hair (in his account of himself, anyhow), had made time with one woman after another; and an outraged husband, on finding out, had, instead of shooting Otto to death, gone instead to the Union Hiring Hall and lodged a formal charge: repairs without compensation at scale.