Martian Time-Slip (5 page)

“I need a present for Manfred,” Steiner said.

A soft, compassionate expression appeared on her face. “I see. Well—” She moved away from him, toward one of the counters. “I saw your son the other day, when I was visiting B-G. Has he shown any interest in music? Often autistic children enjoy music.”

“He's fond of drawing. He paints pictures all the time.”

She picked up a small wooden flutelike instrument. “This is locally made. And very well made, too.” She held it out to him.

“Yes,” he said. “I'll take this.”

“Miss Milch is utilizing music as a method of reaching the autistic children at B-G,” Mrs. Esterhazy said as she went to wrap up the wooden flute. “The dance, in particular.” She hesitated, then, “Mr. Steiner, you know that I'm in constant touch with the political scene back Home. I—there's a rumor that the UN is considering—” She lowered her voice, her face pale. “I do so hate to inflict suffering on you, Mr. Steiner, but if there is any truth in this, and there certainly seems to be…”

“Go ahead.” But he wished now that he had not come in. Yes, Mrs. Esterhazy was in touch with important happenings, and it made him uneasy just to know that, without hearing anything more.

Mrs. Esterhazy said, “There's supposed to be a measure under debate at the UN right now, having to do with anomalous children.” Her voice shook. “It would require the closing of Camp B-G.”

After a moment he was able to say, “But, why?” He stared at her.

“They're afraid—well, they don't want to see what they call ‘defective stock’ appearing on the colonial planets. They want to keep the race pure. Can you understand that? I can, and yet I—well, I can't agree. Probably because of my own child. No, I just can't agree. They're not worried about the anomalous children at Home, because they don't have the aspirations for themselves that they do for us. You have to understand the idealism and anxiety which they have about us…. Do you remember how you felt before you emigrated here with your family? Back Home they see the existence of anomalous children on Mars as a sign that one of Earth's major problems has been transplanted into the future, because we
are
the future, to them, and—”

Steiner interrupted her. “You're certain about this bill?”

“I feel certain.” She faced him, her chin up, her intelligent eyes calm. “We can't be too careful; it would be dreadful if they closed Camp B-G and—” She did not finish. In her eyes he read something unspeakable. The anomalous children, his boy and hers, would be killed in some scientific, painless, instantaneous way, Did she mean that?

“Say it,” he said.

Mrs. Esterhazy said, “The children would be put to sleep.”

Revolted, he said, “Killed, you mean.”

“Oh,” she said, “how can you speak it like that, as if you didn't care?” She gazed at him in horror.

“Christ,” he said with violent bitterness. “If there's any truth in this—” But he did not believe her. Because, perhaps, he didn't want to? Because it was too ghastly? No, he thought. Because he did not trust her instincts, her sense of reality; she had picked up some garbled hysterical rumor. Perhaps there was a bill directed toward some tangential aspect of this that might affect Camp B-G and its children in some fashion. But they—the parents of anomalous children—had always lived under that cloud. They had read of the mandatory sterilization of both parents and offspring in cases where it was proved that the gonads and had been permanently altered, generally in cases of exposure to gamma radiation in unusual mass quantity.

“Who in the UN are authors of this bill?” he asked.

“There are six members of the In-planet Health and Welfare Committee who are supposed to have written the bill.” She began writing. “Here are their names. Now, Mr. Steiner, what we'd like you to do is to write to these men, and have anybody you know who—”

He barely listened. He paid for his flute, thanked her, accepted the folded piece of paper, and made his way out of the gift shop.

Goddamn, how he wished he hadn't gone in there! Did she enjoy telling such stories? Wasn't there trouble enough in the world as it was, without old wives' tales being peddled by middle-aged females who should not have had anything to do with public affairs in the first place?

But in him a quiet voice said, She may be right. You have to face it. Gripping his heavy suitcases, he walked on, confused and frightened, hardly aware of the small new shops which he passed as he hurried toward Camp B-G and his waiting son.

When he entered the great glass-domed solarium of Camp Ben-Gurion, there stood young, sandy-haired Miss Milch in her work smock and sandals, with clay and paint splattered on her, a hectic expression knitting her eyebrows. She tossed her head and pushed her tousled hair back from her face as she came toward him. “Hello, Mr. Steiner. What a day we've had. Two new children, and one of them a holy terror.”

“Miss Milch,” he said, “I was talking to Mrs. Esterhazy at her shop just now—”

“She told you about the supposed bill at the UN?” Miss Milch looked tired. “Yes, there is such a bill. Anne gets every sort of inside piece of news, although how she does it I have no idea. Try to keep from showing any agitation around Manfred, if you possibly can; he's been upset by the new arrivals today.” She started off, to lead Mr. Steiner from the solarium down the corridor to the playroom in which his son would be found, but he hurried after her, halting her.

“What can we do about this bill?” he demanded breathlessly. He set down his suitcases, holding now only the paper bag in which Mrs. Esterhazy had put the wooden flute.

“I don't know that we can do anything,” Miss Milch said. She went on slowly to the door and opened it. The sound of children's voices came shrill and loud to their ears. “Naturally, the authorities at New Israel and back Home in Israel itself have made furious protests, and so have several other governments. But so much of this is secret; the bill is secret, and it all has to be done sub rosa, so they won't start a panic. It's such a touchy subject. Nobody really knows what public sentiment is, on this, or even if it should be listened to.” Her voice, weary and brittle, dragged, as if she were running down. But then she seemed to perk up. She patted him on the shoulder. “I think the worst they would do, once they closed B-G, is deport the anomalous children back Home; I don't think they'd ever go so far as to destroy them.”

Steiner said quickly, “To camps back on Earth.”

“Let's go and find Manfred,” Miss Milch said. “All right? I think he knows this is the day you come; he was standing by the window, but of course he does that a lot.”

Suddenly, to his own surprise, he burst out in a choked voice, “I wonder if maybe they might be right. What use is it to have a child that can't talk or live among people?”

Miss Milch glanced at him but said nothing.

“He'll never be able to hold a job,” Steiner said. “He'll always be a burden on society, like he is now. Isn't that the truth?”

“Autistic children still baffle us,” Miss Milch said. “By what they are, and how they got that way, and by their tendency to begin to evolve mentally, all at once, for no apparent reason, after years of complete failure to respond.”

“I think I can't in good conscience oppose this bill,” Steiner said. “Not after thinking it over. Now that the first shock is over. It would be fair. I feel it's fair.” His voice shook.

“Well,” Miss Milch said, “I'm glad you didn't say that to Anne Esterhazy, because she'd never let you go; she'd be after you making speeches at you until you came around to her side.” She held open the door to the big playroom. “Manfred is over in the corner.”

Seeing his son from a distance, Steiner thought, You would never know to look at him. The large, well-formed head, the curly hair, the handsome features… The boy was bent over, absorbed in some object which he held. A genuinely good-looking boy, with eyes that shone sometimes mockingly, sometimes with glee and excitement… and such terrific coordination. The way he sprinted about, on the tips of his toes, as if dancing to some unheard music, some tune from inside his own mind whose rhythms kept him enthralled.

We are so pedestrian, compared to him, Steiner thought. Leaden. We creep along like snails, while he dances and leaps, as if gravity does not have the same influence on him as it does on us. Could he be made from some new and different kind of atom?

“Hi, Manny,” Mr. Steiner said to his son.

The boy did not raise his head or show any sign of awareness; he continued fooling with the object.

I will write to the framers of the bill, Steiner thought, and tell them I have a child in the camp. And that I agree with them.

His thoughts frightened him.

Murder, of Manfred—he recognized it. My hatred of him coming out, released by this news. I see why they're debating it in secret; many people have this hate, I bet. Unrecognized inside.

“No flute for you, Manny,” Steiner said. “Why should I give it to you, I wonder? Do you give a damn? No.” The boy did not look up or give any indication of hearing. “Nothing,” Steiner said. “Emptiness.”

While Steiner stood there, tall, slender Dr. Glaub in his white coat, carrying his clipboard, approached. Steiner became suddenly aware of him and started.

“There is a new theory about autism,” Dr. Glaub said. “From Bergholzlei, in Switzerland. I wished to discuss it with you, because it seems to offer us a new avenue with your son, here.”

“I doubt it,” Steiner said.

Dr. Glaub did not seem to hear him, he continued, “It assumes a derangement in the sense of time in the autistic individual, so that the environment around him is so accelerated that he cannot cope with it, in fact, he is unable to perceive it properly, precisely as we would be if we faced a speeded-up television program, so that objects whizzed by so fast as to be invisible, and sound was a gobbledegook—you know? Just extremely high-pitched mishmash. Now, this new theory would place the autistic child in a closed chamber, where he faced a screen on which filmed sequences were projected slowed down—do you see? Both sound and video slowed, at last so slow that you and I would not be able to perceive motion or comprehend the sounds as human speech.”

Wearily, Steiner said, “Fascinating. There's always something new, isn't there, in psychotherapy?”

“Yes,” Dr. Glaub said, nodding. “Especially from the Swiss; they're ingenious in comprehending the world-views of disturbed persons, of encapsulated individuals cut off from ordinary means of communication, isolated—you know?”

“I know,” Steiner said.

Dr. Glaub, still nodding, had moved on, to stop by another parent, a woman, who was seated with her small girl, both of them examining a cloth picture book.

Hope before the deluge, Steiner thought. Does Dr. Glaub know that any day the authorities back on Earth may close Camp B-G? The good doctor labors on in idiotic innocence… happy in his schemes.

Walking after Dr. Glaub, Steiner waited until there was a pause in the conversation and then he said, “Doctor, I'd like to discuss this new theory a little further.”

“Yes, yes,” Dr. Glaub said, excusing himself from the woman and her child; he led Steiner over to one side, where they could talk privately. “This concept of time-rates may open a doorway to minds so fatigued by the impossible task of communicating in a world where everything happens with such rapidity that—”

Steiner interrupted, “Suppose your theory works out. How can you help such an individual function? Did you intend for him to stay in the closed chamber with the slowed-down picture screen the rest of his life? I think, Doctor, that you're all playing games, here. You're not facing reality. All of you at Camp B-G; you're so virtuous. So without guile. But the outside world—it's not like that. This is a noble, idealistic place, in here, but you're fooling yourselves. So in my opinion you're also fooling the patients; excuse me for saying it. This slowed-down closed chamber, it epitomizes you all, here, your attitude.”

Dr. Glaub listened, nodding, with an intent expression on his face. “We have practical equipment promised,” he said, when Steiner had finished. “From Westinghouse, back on Earth. Rapport with others in society is achieved primarily through sound, and Westinghouse has designed for us an audio recorder which picks up the message directed at the psychotic individual—for example, your boy Manfred—then, having recorded this message on iron-oxide tape, replays it almost instantly for him at lower speed, then erases itself and records the next message and so on, with the result that a permanent contact with the outside world, at his own rate of time, is maintained. And later we hope to have in our hands here a video recorder which will present a constant but slowed-down record to him of the visual portion of reality, synchronized with the audio portion. Admittedly, he will be one step removed from contact with reality, and the problem of touch presents difficulties—but I disagree when you say this is too idealistic to be of use. Look at the widespread chemical therapy that was tried not so long ago. Stimulants speeded up the psychotic's interior time-sense so that he could comprehend the stimuli pouring in on him, but as soon as the stimulant wore off, the psychotic's cognition slowed down as his faulty metabolism reestablished itself—you know? Yet we learned a good deal from that; we learned that psychosis has a chemical basis, not a psychological basis. Sixty years of erroneous notions were upset in a single experiment, using sodium amytal—”

“Dreams,” Steiner interrupted. “You will never make contact with my boy.” Turning, he walked away from Dr. Glaub.

From Camp B-G he went by bus to a swanky restaurant, the Red Fox, which always bought a good deal of his wares. After he had finished his business with the owner he sat for a time at the bar, drinking a beer.

The way Dr. Glaub had babbled on—that was the kind of idiocy that had brought them to Mars in the first place. To a planet where a glass of beer cost twice what a shot of Scotch cost, because it had so much more water in it.

The owner of the Red Fox, a small, bald, portly man wearing glasses, seated himself next to Steiner and said, “Why you looking so glum, Norb?”