Martian Time-Slip (7 page)

She nodded.

“Now, I mean,
we've
got a kid there at Camp B-G, but it doesn't get us down,” Arnie went on. “It's not the end of the world, right? We go on. Where do you want to eat? How's that place across the street, that Red Fox? Any good? I'd like some fried prawns, but hell, it's been almost a year since I saw them. This transportation problem has got to be licked or nobody is emigrating.”

“Not the Red Fox,” Anne said. “I loathe the man who runs it. Let's try that place on the corner; it's new, I haven't ever eaten in there. I hear it's supposed to be good.”

As they sat at a table in the restaurant, waiting for their food to come, Arnie went on and developed his point. “One thing, when you hear about a suicide, you can be sure the guy knows this: he knows he's not a useful member of society. That's the real truth he's facing about himself, that's what does it, knowing you're not important to anybody. If there's one thing I'm sure of it's that. It's nature's way—the expendable are removed, by their own hand, too. So I don't lose any sleep when I hear of a suicide, and you'd be surprised how many so-called natural deaths here on Mars are actually suicides; I mean, this is a harsh environment. This place weeds out the fit from the unfit.”

Anne Esterhazy nodded but did not seem cheered up.

“Now this guy—” Arnie continued.

“Steiner,” Anne said.

“Steiner!” He stared at her. “Norbert Steiner, the black-market operator?” His voice rose.

“He sold health foods.”

“That's the guy!” He was flabbergasted. “Oh, no, not Steiner.” Good grief, he got all his goodies from Steiner; he was utterly dependent on the man.

The waiter appeared with their food.

“This is awful,” Arnie said, “I mean, really awful. What am I going to do?” Every party he threw, every time he had a cozy two-person dinner arranged for himself and some girl, for instance Marty or especially of late Doreen…It was just too goddamn much in one day, this and his encoder, both together.

“Don't you think,” Anne said, “it might have something to do with him being German? There's been so much sorrow in Germans since that drug plague, those children born with flippers. I've talked to some who've said openly they thought it was God's punishment on them for what was done during the Nazi period. And these weren't religious men, these were businessmen, one here on Mars, the other at Home.”

“That damn stupid Steiner,” Arnie said. “That cabbage head.”

“Eat your food, Arnie.” She began to unfold her napkin. “The soup looks good.”

“I can't eat,” he said. “I don't want this slop.” He pushed his soup bowl away.

“You're still just like a big baby,” Anne said. “Still having your tantrums.” Her voice was soft and compassionate.

“Hell,” he said, “sometimes I feel like I've got the weight of the entire planet on me, and you call me a baby!” He glared at her in baffled outrage.

“I didn't know that Norbert Steiner was involved in the black market,” Anne said.

“Naturally you wouldn't, you and your lady-committees. What do you know about the world around you? That's why I'm here—I read that last ad you had in the
Times
and it stank. You have to stop giving out that crap like you do; it repels intelligent people—it's just for other cranks like yourself.”

“Please,” Anne said. “Eat your food. Calm down.”

“I'm going to assign a man from my Hall to look over your material before you distribute it. A professional.”

“Are you?” she said mildly.

“We've got a real problem—we're not getting the skilled people to come over from Earth any more, the people we need. We're rotting—everybody knows that. We're falling apart.”

Smiling, Anne said, “Somebody will take Mr. Steiner's place; there must be other black-market operators.”

Arnie said, “You're deliberately misunderstanding me so as to make me look greedy and small, whereas actually I'm one of the most responsible members of the entire colonization attempt here on Mars, and that's why our marriage broke down, because of your belittling me out of jealousy and competitiveness. I don't know why I came over here today—it's impossible for you to work things out on a rational basis, you have to inflict personalities into everything.”

“Did you know there's a bill before the UN to shut Camp B-G?” Anne said calmly.

“No,” Arnie said.

“Does it distress you to think of B-G being closed?”

“Hell, we'll give Sam private individual care.”

“What about the other children there?”

“You changed the subject,” Arnie said. “Listen, Anne, you have to knuckle down to what you call masculine domination and let my people edit what you write. Honest to God, it does more harm than good—I hate to say this to your face but it's the truth. You're a worse friend than you would be an enemy, the way you go about things. You're a dabbler! Like most women. You're—irresponsible.” He wheezed with wrath. Her face showed no reaction; what he said had no effect on her.

“Can you bring any pressure to bear to help keep B-G open?” she asked. “Maybe we can make a deal. I want to see it kept open.”

“A
cause,
” Arnie said ferociously.

“Yes.”

“You want my blunt answer?”

She nodded, facing him coolly.

“I've been sorry ever since those Jews opened that camp.”

Anne said, “Bless you, honest blunt Arnie Kott, mankind's friend.”

“It tells the entire world we've got nuts here on Mars, that if you travel across space to get here you're apt to damage your sexual organs and give birth to a monster that would make those German flipper-people look like your next-door neighbor.”

“You and the gentleman who runs the Red Fox.”

“I'm just being hard-headedly realistic. We're in a struggle for our life; we've got to keep people emigrating here or we're dead on the vine, Anne. You know that. If we didn't have Camp B-G we could advertise that away from Earth's H-bomb-testing, contaminated atmosphere there are no abnormal births. I hoped to see that, but B-G spoils it.”

“Not B-G. The births themselves.”

“No one would be able to check up and show our abnormal births,” Arnie said, “without B-G.”

“You'd say it, knowing it's not true, if you could get away with it, telling them back Home that they're safer here—”

“Sure.” He nodded.

“That's—immoral.”

“No. Listen. You're the immoral one, you and those other ladies. By keeping Camp B-G open you're—”

“Let's not argue, we'll never agree. Let's eat, and then you go on back to Lewistown. I can't take any more.”

They ate their meal in silence.

Dr. Milton Glaub, member of the psychiatric pool at Camp B-G, on loan from the Interplan Truckers' Union settlement, sat by himself in his own office once more, back from B-G, his stint there over for today. In his hands he held a bill for roof repairs done on his home the month before. He had put off the work—it involved the use of the scraper which kept the sand from piling up—but finally the settlement building inspector had mailed him a thirty-day condemnation notice. So he had contacted the Roofing Maintenance workers, knowing that he could not pay, but seeing no alternative. He was broke. This had been the worst month so far.

If only Jean, his wife, could spend less. But the solution did not lie there, anyhow; the solution was to acquire more patients. The ITU paid him a monthly salary, but for every patient he received an additional fifty-dollar bonus: incentive, it was called. In actuality it meant the difference between debt and solvency. Nobody with a wife and children could possibly live on the salary offered to psychiatrists, and the ITU, as everyone knew, was especially parsimonious.

And yet, Dr. Glaub continued to live in the ITU settlement; it was an orderly community, in some respects much like Earth. New Israel, like the other national settlements, had a charged, explosive quality.

As a matter of fact, Dr. Glaub had once lived in another national colony, the United Arab Republic one, a particularly opulent region in which much vegetation, imported from Home, had been induced to grow. But, to him, the settlers' constant animosity toward neighboring colonies had been first irritating and then appalling. Men, at their daily jobs, brooded over wrongs committed. The most charming individuals blew up when certain topics were mentioned. And at night the hostility took practical shape; the national colonies lived for the night. Then, the research labs, which were scenes of scientific experimentation and development during the day, were thrown open to the public, and infernal machines were turned out—it was all done with much excitement and glee, and of course national pride.

The hell with them, Dr. Glaub thought. Their lives were wasted; they had simply carried over the old quarrels from Earth—and the purpose of colonization had been forgotten. For instance, in the UN newspaper that morning he had read about a fracas in the streets of the electrical workers' settlement; the newspaper account implied that the nearby Italian colony was responsible, since several of the aggressors had been wearing the long waxed mustaches popular in the Italian colony….

A knock at his office door broke his line of thought. “Yes,” he said, putting the roofing bill away in a desk drawer.

“Are you ready for Goodmember Purdy?” his wife asked, opening the door in the professional manner that he had taught her.

“Send Goodmember Purdy in,” Dr. Glaub said. “Wait a couple of minutes, though, so I can read over his case history.”

“Did you eat lunch?” Jean asked.

“Of course. Everybody eats lunch.”

“You look wan,” she said.

That's bad, Dr. Glaub thought. He went from his office into the bathroom, where he carefully darkened his face with the caramel-colored powder currently in fashion. It did improve his looks, although not his state of mind. The theory behind the powder was that the ruling circles in the ITU were of Spanish and Puerto Rican ancestry, and they were apt to feel intimidated if a hired person had skin lighter than their own. Of course the ads did not put it like that; the ads merely pointed out to hired men in the settlement that “the Martian climate tends to allow natural skin tone to fade to unsightly white.”

It was now time to see his patient.

“Good afternoon, Goodmember Purdy.”

“Afternoon, Doc.”

“I see from your file that you're a baker.”

“Yeah, that's right.”

A pause. “What did you wish to consult with me about?”

Goodmember Purdy, staring at the floor and fooling with his cap, said, “I never been to a psychiatrist before.”

“No, I can see here that you haven't.”

“There's this party my brother-in-law's giving…I'm not much on going to parties.”

“Are you compelled to attend?” Dr. Glaub had quietly set the clock on his desk; it ticked away the goodmember's half-hour.

“They're sort of throwing it for me. They, uh, want me to take on my nephew as an apprentice so he'll be in the union eventually.” Purdy droned on. “…And I been lying awake at night trying to figure out how to get out of it—I mean, these are my relatives, and I can't hardly come out and tell them no. But I just can't go, I don't feel good enough to. So that's why I'm here.”

“I see,” Dr. Glaub said. “Well, you'd better give me the particulars on this party, when and where it is, the names of the persons involved, so I can do a right bang-up job while I'm there.”

With relief, Purdy dug into his coat pocket and brought out a neatly typed document. “I sure appreciate your going in my place, Doc. You psychiatrists really take a load off a man's back; I'm not joking when I say I been losing sleep over this.” He gazed with grateful awe at the man before him, skilled in the social graces, capable of treading the narrow, hazardous path of complex interpersonal relations which had defeated so many union members over the years.

“Don't worry any further about it,” Dr. Glaub said. For after all, he thought, what's little schizophrenia? That is, you know, what you're suffering from. I'll take the social pressure from you, and you can continue in your chronic maladaptive state, at least for another few months. Until the next overpowering social demand is made on your limited capabilities….

As Goodmember Purdy left the office, Dr. Glaub reflected that this certainly was a practical form of psychotherapy which had evolved here on Mars. Instead of curing the patient of his phobias, one became in the manner of a lawyer the actual advocate in the man's place at—

Jean called into the office, “Milt, there's a call for you from New Israel. It's Bosley Touvim.”

Oh, God, Dr. Glaub thought. Touvim was the President of New Israel; something was wrong. Hurriedly he picked up the phone on his desk. “Dr. Glaub here.”

“Doctor,” sounded the dark, stern, powerful voice, “this is Touvim. We have a death here, a patient of yours, I understand. Will you kindly fly back here and attend to this? Allow me to give you a few token details…Norbert Steiner, a West German—”

“He's not my patient, sir,” Dr. Glaub interrupted. “However, his son is—a little autistic child at Camp B-G. What do you mean, Steiner is dead? For heaven's sake, I was just talking to him this morning—are you sure it's the same Steiner? If it is, I do have a file on him, on the entire family, because of the nature of the boy's illness. In child autism we feel that the family situation must be understood before therapy can begin. Yes, I'll be right over.”

Touvim said, “This is evidently a suicide.”

“I can't believe it,” Dr. Glaub said.

“For the past half-hour I have been discussing this with the staff at Camp B-G; they tell me you had a long conversation with Steiner shortly before he left the camp. At the inquest our police will want to know what indications if any Steiner gave of a depressed or morbidly introspective mood, what he said that might have given you the opportunity to dissuade him or, barring that, compel him to undergo therapy. I take it the man said nothing that would alert you to his intentions.”

“Absolutely nothing,” Dr. Glaub said.

“Then if I were you I wouldn't worry,” Touvim said. “Merely be prepared to give the clinical background of the man…discuss possible motives which might have led him to take his life. You understand.”