Martian Time-Slip Page 7

  “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 a 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 chron
ic 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.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Touvim,” Dr. Glaub said weakly. “I suppose it is possible he was depressed about his son, but I outlined a new therapy to him; we have very high hopes for it. However, he did seem cynical and shut in, he did not respond as I would have expected. But suicide!”

  What if I lose the B-G assignment? Doctor Glaub was asking himself. I just can’t. Working there once a week added enough to his income so that he could imagine--although not attain--financial security. The B-G check at least made the goal plausible.

  Didn’t it occur to that idiot Steiner what effect his death might have on others? Yes, it must have; he did it to get vengeance on us. Paying us back--but for what? For trying to heal his child?

  This is a very serious matter, he realized. A suicide, so close on the heels of a doctor-patient interview. Thank God Mr. Touvim warned me. Even so, the newspapers will pick it up, and all those who want to see Camp B-G closed will benefit from this.

  Having repaired the refrigeration equipment at McAuliff’s dairy ranch, Jack Bohlen returned to his ‘copter, put his tool box behind the seat, and contacted his employer, Mr. Yee.

  “The school,” Mr. Yee said. “You must go there, Jack; I still have no one else to take that assignment.”

  “O.K., Mr. Yee.” He started up the motor of the ‘copter, feeling resigned to it.

  “A message from your wife, Jack.”

  “Oh?” He was surprised; his employer frowned on wives of his employees phoning in, and Silvia knew that. Maybe something had happened to David. “Can you tell me what she said?” he asked.

  Mr. Yee said, “Mrs. Bohlen asked our switchboard girl to inform you that a neighbor of yours, a Mr. Steiner, has taken his own life. Mrs. Bohlen is caring for the Steiner children, she wants you to know. She also asked if it was possible for you to come home tonight, but I told her that although we regretted it we could not spare you. You must stay available on call until the end of the week, Jack.”

  Steiner dead, Jack said to himself. The poor ineffectual sap. Well, maybe he’s better off.

  “Thank you, Mr. Yee,” he said into the microphone.

  As the ‘copter lifted from the sparse grass of the pasture, Jack thought, This is going to affect all of us, and deeply. It was a strong and acute feeling, an intuition. I don’t believe I ever exchanged more than a dozen words with Steiner at any one time, and yet--there is something enormous about the dead. Death itself has such authority. A transformation as awesome as life itself, and so much harder for us to understand.

  He turned the ‘copter in the direction of the UN headquarters on Mars, on his way to the great self-winding entity of their lives, the unique artificial organism which was their Public School, a place he feared more than any other in his experience away from Home.

  5

  Why was it that the Public School unnerved him? Scrutinizing it from above, he saw the duck-egg-shaped building, white against the dark, blurred surface of the planet, apparently dropped there in haste; it did not fit into its surroundings.

  As he parked in the paved lot at the entrance he discovered that the tips of his fingers had whitened and lost feeling, a sign, familiar to him, that he was under tension. And yet this place did not bother David, who was picked up and flown here three days a week, along with other children of his achievement group. Evidently it was some factor in his own personal make-up; perhaps, because his knowledge of machines was so great, he could not accept the illusion of the school, could not play the game. For him, the artifacts of the school were neither inert nor alive; they were in some way both.

  Soon he sat in a waiting room, his tool box beside him.

  From a magazine rack he took a copy of Motor World, and heard, with his trained ears, a switch click. The school had noted his presence. It noted which magazine he selected, how long he sat reading, and what he next took. It measured him.

  A door opened, and a middle-aged woman wearing a tweed suit, smiling at him, said, “You must be Mr. Yee’s repairman.”

  “Yes,” he said, standing.

  “So glad to see you.” She beckoned him to follow her. “There’s been so much fuss about this one Teacher, but it is at the output stage.” Striding down a corridor, she held a door open for him as he caught up. “The Angry Janitor,” she said, pointing.

  He recognized it from his son’s description.

  “It broke down suddenly,” the woman was saying in his ear. “See? Right in the middle of its cycle--it had gone down the street and shouted and then it was just about to wave its fist.”

  “Doesn’t the master circuit know--“

  “I am the master circuit,” the middle-aged woman said, smiling at him cheerfully, her steel-rimmed glasses bright with the sparkle in her eyes.

  “Of course,” he said, chagrined.

  “We think it might be this,” the woman--or rather this peripatetic extension of the school--said, holding out a folded paper.

  Unwadding it, he found a diagrammed congeries of selfregulating feedback valves.

  “This is an authority figure, isn’t it?” he said. “Teaches the child to respect property. Very righteous type, as the Teachers go.”

  “Yes,” the woman said.

  Manually, he reset the Angry Janitor and restarted it. After clicking for a few moments, it turned red in the face, raised its arm and shouted, “You boys keep out of here, you understand?” Watching the whiskery jowls tremble with indignation, the mouth open and shut, Jack Bohlen could imagine the powerful effect it would have on a child. His own reaction was one of dislike. However, this construct was the essence of the successful teaching machine; it did a good job, in conjunction with two dozen other constructs placed, like booths in an amusement park, here and there along the corridors which made up the school. He could see the next teaching machine, just around the
corner; several children stood respectfully in front of it as it delivered its harangue.

  “. . . And then I thought,” it was telling them in an affable, informal voice, “my gosh--what is it we folks can learn from an experience like that? Do any of you know? You, Sally.”

  A small girl’s voice: “Um, well, maybe we can learn that there is some good in everybody, no matter how bad they act.”

  “What do you say, Victor?” the teaching machine bumbled on. “Let’s hear from Victor Plank.”

  A boy stammered, “I’d say about what Sally said, that most people are really good underneath if you take the trouble to really look. Is that right, Mr. Whitlock?”

  So Jack was overhearing the Whitlock Teaching Machine. His son had spoken of it many times; it was a favorite of his. As he got out his tools, Jack listened to it. The Whitlock was an elderly, white-haired gentleman, with a regional accent, perhaps that of Kansas. . . . He was kindly, and he let others express themselves; he was a permissive variety of teaching machine, with none of the gruffness and authoritarian manner of the Angry Janitor; he was, in fact, as near as Jack could tell, a combination of Socrates and Dwight D. Eisenhower.

  “Sheep are funny,” the Whitlock said. “Now, you look at how they behave when you throw some grub over the fence to them, such as corn stalks. Why, they’ll spot that from a mile away.” The Whitlock chuckled. “They’re smart when it comes to what concerns them. And maybe that helps us see what true smartness is; it isn’t having read a lot of books, or knowing long words . . . it’s being able to spot what’s to our advantage. It’s got to be useful to be real smartness.”

  Kneeling down, Jack began unscrewing the back from the Angry Janitor. The master circuit of the school stood watching.

  This machine, he knew, went through its song-and-dance in response to a reel of instruction tape, but its performance was open to modification at each stage, depending on the behavior of its audience. It was not a closed system; it compared the children’s answers with its own tape, then matched, classified, and at last responded. There was no room for a unique answer because the Teaching Machine could recognize only a limited number of categories. And yet, it gave a convincing illusion of being alive and viable; it was a triumph of engineering.