Martian Time-Slip Page 10

  “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, yourself.”

  “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 goddamn 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 tnow 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.

  Well, it certainly was not scale; he admitted that.

  And so now this job with Norb Steiner, which meant that he had practically to live in the wastelands of the F.D.R. Mountains, alienated from society for weeks on end, growing more and more lonely, more embittered all the time. It had been his need for intimate personal contact that had gotten him into trouble in the first place, and now look at him. As he sat in the storage shed waiting for the next rocket to show up, he looked back on his life and reflected that even the Bleekmen wouldn’t be willing or able to live as he lived, cut off from everyone like this. If only his own black-market operations had succeeded! He, like Norb Steiner, had been able to swing around the planet daily, visiting one person after another. Was it his fault that the items he chose to import were hot enough to interest the big boys? His judgment had been too good; his line had sold too well.

  He hated the big racketeers, too, same as he hated the big unions. He hated bigness per se; bigness had destroyed the American system of free enterprise, the small businessman had been ruined--in fact, he himself had been perhaps the last authentic small businessman in the solar system. That was his real crime: he had tried to live the American way of life, instead of just talking about
it.

  “Screw them,” he said to himself, seated on a crate, surrounded by boxes and cartons and packages and the workings of several dismantled rocketships which he had been revamping. Outside the shed window . . . silent, desolate rock hills, with only a few shrubs, dried up and dying, as far as the eye could see.

  And where was Norb Steiner right now? No doubt ensconced in some bar or restaurant or some woman’s cheery living room, prattling his line, handing over tins of smoked salmon and getting in return--

  “Screw them all,” Otto mumbled, getting up to pace back and forth. “If that’s what they want, let ‘em have it. Bunch of animals.”

  Those Israeli girls . . . that’s where Steiner was, with a kibbutzful of them, those hot, black-eyed, heavy-lipped, bigbreasted, sexy ones who got tanned working out in the fields in shorts and cotton shirts clinging to them, no bras, just those big solid breasts--you could actually see their nipples, because the damp fabric stuck to them.

  That’s why he wouldn’t let me go with him, Otto decided.

  The only women he ever saw out here in the F.D.R. range were those stunted, black, dried-out Bleekman women, not even human, at least not to him. He wasn’t taken in by those anthropologists saying that the Bleekmen were from the same stock as homo sapiens, that probably both planets were colonized a million years ago from one interplanetary race. Those toads, human? Sleep with one of those? Christ, better to chop it off, first.

  As a matter of fact, here came a party of Bleekmen right now, stepping gingerly with bare feet down the irregular rock surface of a northern hill. On their way here, Otto observed. As usual.

  He opened the door of the shed, waiting until they had reached him. Four bucks, two of them elderly, one elderly woman, several skinny kids, carrying their bows, their pounding blocks, their paka eggshells.

  Halting, they regarded him silently, and then one of the bucks said, “Rains are falling from me onto your valuable person.”

  “Likewise,” Otto said, leaning against the shed and feeling dull, weighed down with hopelessness. “What do you want?”

  The Bleekman buck held out a small bit of paper, and Otto, taking it, saw that it was a label from a can of turtle soup. The Bleekmen had eaten the soup, retaining the label for this purpose; they could not tell him what they wanted because they did not know what it was called.

  “O.K. ,” he said. “How many?” He held up fingers. At five they nodded. Five cans. “Whatcha got?” Otto demanded, not stirring.

  One of the young Bleekman women stepped forward and pointed to that part of herself which had been so much in Otto’s thoughts for so long.

  “Oh Christ,” Otto said in despair. “No, go on. Beat it. Not any more; I don’t want any more.” He turned his back on them, made his way into the storage shed and slammed the door so hard that the shed walls trembled; he threw himself down on a packing crate, his head in his hands. “I’m going crazy,” he said to himself, his jaw stiff, his tongue swelling up so that he could hardly talk. His chest ached; And then, to his amazement, he began to cry. Jesus, he thought in fright, I really am going crazy; I’m breaking down. Why? Tears rolled down his cheeks. He hadn’t cried in years. What’s this all about? he wondered. His mind had no concept in it; it was only his body bawling away, and he was a spectator to it.

  But it brought him relief. With his handkerchief he wiped his eyes, his face, and cursed as he saw that his hands were clawlike with rigidity, the fingers writhing.

  Outside the window of the shed the Bleekmen remained, perhaps seeing him; he could not tell. Their faces showed no expression, but he felt sure they must have seen, and probably were as perplexed as he. It sure is a mystery, he thought. I agree with you.

  The Bleekmen gathered together in a huddle and conferred, and then one of them detached himself from the group and approached the shed. Otto heard a rap on the door. Going over to it and opening it, he found the young Bleekman standing there holding out something.

  “This, then,” the young Bleekman said.

  Otto took it, but for the life of him he could not make out what it was. It had glass and metal to it, and calibrations. And then he realized that it was an instrument used in surveying. On its side was stamped: UN PROPERTY.

  “I don’t want it,” he said irritably, turning it over and over. The Bleekmen must have stolen it, he realized. He handed it back; the young buck accepted it stoically and returned to his group. Otto shut the door.

  This time they went off; he watched them through the window as they trailed away up the side of the hill. Steal you blind, he said to himself. Anyhow, what was a UN survey company doing in the F.D.R. range?

  To cheer himself up he rummaged around until he found a can of smoked frogs’ legs; opening it, he sat eating morosely, not getting from the dainty anything at all, and yet methodically finishing the can.

  Into the microphone Jack Bohlen said, “Don’t send me, Mr. Yee--I already ran into Kott today and offended him.” Weariness settled over him. Naturally I ran into Kott, for the first time in my life, and naturally I insulted him, he thought to himself. And just as naturally, because that’s how my life works, it’s the same day that Arnie Kott decides to call up Yee Company and ask for service. It’s typical of the little game I play with the powerful, inanimate forces of life.

  “Mr. Kott mentioned meeting you on the desert,” Mr. Yee said. “In fact, his decision to call us was based on that meeting.”

  “The hell you say.” He was dumbfounded.

  “I do not know what the issue was, Jack, but no harm has been done. Direct your ship to Lewistown. If you run over beyond five o’clock you will be paid time and a half. And Mr. Kott, who is known as a generous man, is so anxious to have his encoder working that he promises to see that you receive a bountiful meal.”

  “All right,” Jack said. It was too much for him to dope out. After all, he knew nothing of what went on in Arnie Kott’s mind.

  Not long thereafter, he was lowering his ‘copter to the roof parking lot of the Water Workers’ Union Hall at Lewistown.

  A slavey sauntered out and regarded him suspiciously.

  “Yee Company repairman,” Jack said. “Call put in by Arnie Kott.”

  “O.K., buddy,” the slavey said, and led him to the elevator.

  He found Arnie Kott in a well-furnished, Earth-type living room; the big, bald-headed man was on the telephone, and he nodded his head at Jack’s appearance. The nod indicated the desk, on which a portable encoding dictation machine sat. Jack walked over to it, removed the lid, turned it on. Meanwhile, Arnie Kott continued his phone conversation.

  “Sure I know it’s a tricky talent. Sure, there’s a good reason why nobody’s been able to make use of it--but what am I supposed to do, give up and pretend it don’t exist just because people have been too damn dumb for fifty thousand years to take it seriously? I still want to try it.” A long pause. “O.K., Doctor. Thanks.” Arnie hung up. To Jack he said, “You ever been to Camp B-G?”

  “No,” Jack said. He was busy opening up the encoder.

  Arnie strolled over and stood beside him. As he worked, Jack could feel the astute gaze fixed on him; it made him nervous, but there was nothing he could do except try to ignore the man and go on. A little like the master circuit, he thought to himself. And then he wondered, as he often did, if he was going to have another one of his spells; true, it had been a long time, but here was a powerful figure looming close to him, scrutinizing him, and it did feel somewhat like that old interview with Corona’s personnel manager.

  “That was Glaub on the phone,” Arnie Kott said. “The psychiatrist. You ever heard of him?”

  “No,” Jack said.

  “What do you do, live your life entirely with your head stuck in the back of machines?”

  Jack looked up, met the man’s gaze. “I’ve got a wife and son. That’s my life. What I’m doing right now is a means of keeping my family going.” He spoke calmly. Arnie did not seem to take offense; he even smiled.


  “Something to drink?” Arnie asked.

  “Coffee, if you have it.”

  “I’ve got authentic Home coffee,” Arnie said. “Black?”

  “Black.”

  “Yeah, you look like a black coffee man. You think you can fix that machine right here and now, or are you going to have to take it with you?”

  “I can fix it here.”

  Arnie beamed. “That’s swell! I really depend on that machine.”

  “Where’s the coffee?”

  Turning, Arnie went off dutifully; he rustled about in another room and then returned with a ceramic coffee mug, which he set down on the desk near Jack. “Listen, Bohlen. I have a person coming here any minute now. A girl. It won’t interfere with your work, will it?”

  Jack glanced up, supposing the man was being sarcastic. But evidently not; Arnie was eyeing him and then the partly disassembled machine, obviously concerned with how the repair was progressing. He certainly is dependent on this, Jack decided. Strange, how people cling to their possessions, as if they’re extensions of their bodies, a sort of hypochondria of the machine. You’d think a man like Arnie Kott could scrap this encoder and shell out the money for a new one.

  There sounded a knock on the door, and Arnie hurried to open it. “Oh, hi.” His voice came to Jack. “Come on in. Hey, I’m getting my doodad fixed.”

  A girl’s voice said, “Arnie, you’ll never get your doodad fixed.”

  Arnie laughed nervously. “Hey, meet my new repairman, Jack Bohlen. Bohlen, this is Doreen Anderton, our Union treasurer.”

  “Hi,” Jack said. Out of the corner of his eye--he did not stop working--he could see that she had red hair and extremely white skin and large, wonderful eyes. Everybody’s on the payroll, he thought tartly. What a great world. What a great union you’ve got going here for yourself, Arnie.

  “Busy, isn’t he?” the girl said.

  “Oh, yeah,” Arnie agreed, “these repair guys are bugs on getting the job done right, I mean these outside guys, not our own--ours are a bunch of slobs that sit around playing with themselves at our expense. I’m through with them, Dor. I mean, this guy Bohlen is a whiz; he’s going to have the encoder working any minute now, aren’t you, Jack?”