Martian Time Slip

In fact I can have it both ways, he realized. Mr. Yee can lease me to the Water Workers' Union; I'd be paid by Mr. Yee and he'd be paid by Arnie. Everyone would be happy, and why not? Tinkering with the broken, malfunctioning mind of a child certainly has more to recommend it than tinkering with refrigerators and encoders; if the child is suffering some of the visions that I know--.

He knew of the time-theory which Glaub had trotted out as his own. He had read about it in _Scientific American_; naturally, he read anything on schizophrenia that he could get his hands on. He knew that it had originated with the Swiss, that Glaub hadn't invented it. What an odd theory it is, he thought to himself. And yet, it rings true.

"Let's go back to the Willows," he said. He was very hungry, and it would no doubt be a bang-up meal.

Doreen said, "You're a brave person, Jack Bohlen."

"Why?" he asked.

"Because you're going back to the place that troubled you, to the people that brought on your vision of, as you said, eternity. I wouldn't do that, I'd flee."

"But," he said, "that's the whole point; it's designed to make you flee--the vision's for that purpose, to nullify your relations with other people, to isolate you. If it's successful, your life with human beings is over. That's what they mean when they say the term schizophrenia isn't a diagnosis; it's a prognosis--it doesn't say anything about what you have, only about how you'll wind up." _And I'm not going to wind up like that_, he said to himself. Like Manfred Steiner, mute and in an institution; I intend to keep my job, my wife and son, my friendships--he glanced at the girl holding on to his arm. Yes, and even love affairs, if such there be.

_I intend to keep trying_.

Putting his hands in his pockets as he walked along, he touched something small, cold and hard; lifting it out in surprise, he saw it was a wrinkled little object like a tree root.

"What in the world's that?" Doreen asked him.

It was the water witch which the Bleekmen had given him that morning, out in the desert; he had forgotten all about it.

"A good luck charm," Jack said to the girl.

Shivering, she said, "It's awfully ugly."

"Yes," he agreed, "but it's friendly. And we do have this problem, we schizophrenics; we do pick up other people's unconscious hostility."

"I know. The telepathic factor. Clay had it worse and worse until--" She glanced at him. "The paranoid outcome."

"It's the worst thing about our condition, this awareness of the buried, repressed sadism and aggression in others around us, even strangers. I wish to hell we didn't have it; we even pick it up from people in restaurants--" He thought of Glaub. "In buses, in a theater. Crowds."

Doreen said, "Do you have any idea what Arnie wants to learn from the Steiner boy?"

"Well, this theory about precognition--"

"But what does Arnie want to know about the future? You have no idea, do you? And it would never occur to you to try to find out."

That was so. He had not even been curious.

"You're content," she said slowly, scrutinizing him, "merely to do your technical task of rigging up the essential machinery. That's not right, Jack Bohlen; that's not a good sign at all."

"Oh," he said. He nodded. "It's very schizophrenic, I guess... to be content with a purely technical relationship."

"Will you ask Arnie?"

He felt uncomfortable. "It's his business, not mine. It's an interesting job, and I like Arnie, I prefer him to Mr. Yee. I just--haven't got it in me to pry. That's the way I am."

"I think you're afraid. But I don't see why--you're brave, and yet in some deep way you're terribly, terribly frightened."

"Maybe so," he said, feeling sad.

Together, they walked on back to the Willows.

That night, after everyone had gone, including Doreen Anderton, Arnie Kott sat alone in his living room gloating. What a day it had been.

He had snared a good repairman who had already repaired his invaluable encoder and who was going to build an electronic wing-ding to tap the precog faculties of an autistic child.

He had milked, for nothing, the information he needed from a psychiatrist, and then managed to get rid of the psychiatrist.

So all in all it had been an exceptional day. It left only two problems: his harpsichord was still untuned and--what the hell else? It had slipped his mind. He pondered as he sat before his TV set, watching the fights from America the Beautiful, the U.S.A. colony on Mars.

Then he remembered. Norb Steiner's death. There was no source of goodies any more.

"I'll fix that," Arnie said aloud. He shut off the TV and got his encoder out; seated before it, mike in hand, he delivered a message. It was to Scott Temple, with whom he had worked on countless important business ventures; Temple was a cousin of Ed Rockingham, and a good egg to know-- he had managed, through a charter arrangement with the UN, to gain control of most of the medical supplies entering Mars, and what a top-notch monopoly that amounted to.

The drums of the encoder turned encouragingly.