Martian Time-Slip

15

The black, lopsided projection of sandstone and volcanic glass which was Dirty Knobby poked up huge and gaunt ahead of them in the glow of early morning. They had spent the night on the desert, in a tent, the ‘copter parked close by. Jack Bohlen and Doreen Anderton had exchanged no words with them; at dawn the ‘copter had taken off to circle overhead. Arnie and the boy Manfred Steiner had eaten a good breakfast and then packed up and resumed their trip.

Now the trip, the pilgrimage to the sacred rock of the Bleekmen, was over.

Seeing Dirty Knobby close up like this, Arnie thought, There’s the place that’ll cure us all of whatever ails us. Letting Manfred take the tiller of the jitney, he consulted the map which Heliogabalus had drawn. It showed the path up into the range to the rock. There was, Helio had told him, a hollowed-out chamber on the north side of the rock, where a Bleekrnan priest could generally be found. Unless, Arnie said to himself, he’s off somewhere sleeping off a binge. He knew the Bleekmen priests; they were old winos, for the most part. Even the Bleekmen had contempt for them.

At the base of the first hill, in the shadows, he parked the jitney and shut off its engine. “From here we climb on foot,” he said to Manfred. “We’ll carry as much gear as we can, food and water naturally, and the communications rig, and I guess if we need to cook we can come back for the stove. It’s only supposed to be a few more miles.”

The boy hopped from the jitney. He and Arnie unloaded the gear, and soon they were trudging up a rocky trail, into the F.D.R. range.

Glancing about with apprehension, Manfred huddled and shivered. Perhaps the boy was experiencing AM-WEB once more, Arnie conjectured. The Henry Wallace was only a hundred miles from here. The boy might well have picked up the emanations of the structure to come, close as they were, now. In fact he could almost feel them himself.

Or was it the rock of the Bleekmen which he felt?

He did not like the sight of it. Why make a shrine out of this? he asked himself. Perverse--this arid place. But maybe a long time ago this region had been fertile. Evidence of onetime Bleekmen camps could be made out along the path. Maybe the Martians had originated here; the land certainly had an old, used appearance. As if, he thought, a million gray-black creatures had handled all this throughout the ages. And now what was it? A last remains for a dying race. A relic for those who were not going to be around much longer.

Wheezing from the exertion of climbing with a heavy load, Arnie halted. Manfred toiled up the steep acclivity after him, still casting anxiety-stricken looks around.

“Don’t worry,” Arnie said encouragingly. “There’s nothing here to be scared of.” Was the boy’s talent already blending with that of the rock? And, he wondered, had the rock itself become apprehensive, too? Was it capable of that?

The trail leveled out and became wider. And all was in shadow; cold and damp hung over everything, as if they were treading within a great tomb. The vegetation that grew thin and noxious along the surface of rocks had a dead quality to it, as if something had poisoned it in its act of growing. Ahead lay a dead bird on the path, a rotten corpse that might have been there for weeks; he could not tell. It had a mummified appearance.

I sure don’t enjoy this place, Arnie said to himself.

Halting at the bird, Manfred bent down and said, “Gubbish.”

“Yeah,” Arnie murmured. “Come on, let’s go.”

They arrived all at once at the base of the rock.

Wind rustled the leaves of vegetation, the shrubs which looked as if they had been skinned down to their elements: bare and picked over, like bones stuck upright in the soil. The wind emerged from a crack in Dirty Knobby and it smelled, he thought, as if some sort of animal lived there. Maybe the priest himself; he saw with no real surprise an empty wine bottle lying off to one side, with other bits of debris caught on the sharp foliage nearby.

“Anybody around?” Arnie called.

After a long time an old man, a Bleekman, gray as if wrapped in webs, edged out of the chamber within the rock. The wind seemed to blow him along, so that he crept sideways, pausing against the side of the cavity and then stirring forward once more. His eyes were red-rimmed.

“You old drunk,” Arnie said in a low voice. And then from a piece of paper Helio had given him he greeted the old man in Bleeky.

The priest mumbled a toothless, mechanical response.

“Here.” Arnie held out a carton of cigarettes. The priest, mumbling, sidled forward and took the carton in his claws; he tucked the carton beneath his gray-webbed robes. “You like that, huh?” Arnie said. “I thought you would.”

From the piece of paper he read, in Bleeky, the purpose of his visit and what he wanted the priest to do. He wanted the priest to leave him and Manfred in peace for an hour or so, at the chamber, so that they could summon the spirit of the rock.

Still mumbling, the priest backed away, fussed with the hem of his robes, then turned and shambled off. He disappeared down a side trail without a backward look at Arnie and Manfred.

Arnie turned the paper over and read the instructions that Helio had written out.

(1)Enter chamber.

Taking Manfred by the arm, he led him step by step into the dark cleft of the rock; flashing on his light, he led the boy along until the chamber became large. It still smelled bad, he thought, as if it had been kept closed up for centuries. Like an old box full of decayed rags, a vegetable rather than animal scent.

Now what? Again he consulted Helio’s paper.

(2)Light fire.

An uneven ring of boulders surrounded a blackened pit in which lay fragments of wood and what appeared to be bones. . . . It looked as if the old wino fixed his meals here.

In his pack Arnie had kindling; he got it out now, laying the pack on the floor of the cavern and fumbling stiff-fingered with the straps. “Don’t get lost, kid,” he said to Manfred. I wonder if we’re ever coming out of here again? he asked himself.

Both of them felt better, however, when the fire had been lit. The cavern became warmer, but not dry; the smell of mold persisted and even seemed to become stronger, as if the fire were attracting it, whatever it was.

The next instruction bewildered him; it did not seem to fit in, but nonetheless he complied.

(3)Turn on portable radio to 574 kc.

Arnie got out the little Japanese-made transistor portable and turned it on. At 574 kc. nothing but static issued forth. It seemed, though, to obtain a response from the rock around them; the rock seemed to change and become more alert, as if the noise from the radio had awakened it to their presence. The next instruction was equally annoying.

(4)Take Nembutal (boy not take).

Using the canteen, Arnie swallowed the Nembutal down, wondering if its purpose was to blur his senses and make him credulous. Or was it to stifle his anxiety?

Only one instruction remained.

(5)Throw enclosed packet on fire.

Helio had put into Arnie’s pack a small paper, a waddedup page from the New York Times, with some kind of grass within it. Kneeling by the fire, Arnie carefully unwrapped the packet and dumped the dark, dry strands into the flames. A nauseating smell arose and the flames died down. Smoke billowed out, filling the chamber; he heard Manfred cough. Goddamn, Arnie thought, it’ll kill us yet if we keep on.

The smoke disappeared almost at once. The cavern seemed now dark and empty and much larger than before, as if the rock around them had receded. He felt, all at once, as if he were going to fall; he seemed no longer to be standing precisely upright. Sense of balance gone, he realized. Nothing to use as bearing.

“Manfred,” he said, “now listen. On account of me you don’t have to worry about that AM-WEB anymore, like Helio explained. You got that? O.K. Now regress back around three weeks. Can you do that? Really put your back into it, try hard as you can.”

In the gloom the boy peeped at him, eyes wide with fear.

“Back to before I knew Jack Bohlen,” Arnie said. “Before I met him out on the desert that day those Bleekmen were dying of thirst. You get it?” He walked toward the boy--

He fell flat on his face.

The Nembutal, he thought. Better get back up before I pass out entirely. He struggled up, groping for something to catch on to. Light flared, searing him; he put his hands . . . and then he was in water. Warm water poured over him, over his face; he spluttered, choked, saw around him billowing steam, felt beneath his feet familiar tile.

He was in his steam bath.

Voices of men conversing. Eddy’s voice, saying, “Right, Arnie.” Then the outline of shapes around him, other men taking showers.

Down inside him, near his groin, his duodenal ulcer began to burn and he realized that he was terribly hungry. He stepped from the shower and with weak, unwilling legs padded across the warm, wet tiles, searching for the attendant so that he could get his great terrycloth bath towel.

I been here before, he thought. I’ve done all this, said what I’m going to say; it’s uncanny. What do they call it? French word . . .

Better get some breakfast. His stomach rumbled and the ulcer pain increased.

“Hey, Tom,” he called to the attendant. “Dry me off and get me dressed so I can go eat; my ulcer’s killing me.” He had never felt such pain from it before.

“Right, Arnie,” the attendant said, stepping toward him, holding out the huge soft white towel.

When he had been dressed by the attendant, in his gray flannel trousers and T-shirt, soft leather boots, and nautical cap, Goodmember Arnie Kott left the steam bath and crossed the corridor of the Union Hall to his dining room, where Heliogabalus had his breakfast waiting.

At last he sat before a stack of hotcakes and bacon, genuine Home coffee, a glass of orange juice from New Israel oranges, and the previous week’s New York Times, the Sunday edition.

He trembled with consternation as he reached to pick up the glass of chilled, strained, sweet orange juice; the glass was slippery and smooth to the touch and almost eluded him in mid-trip. . . . He thought, I have to be careful, slow down and take it easy. It’s really so; I’m back here where I was, several weeks ago. Manfred and the rock of the Bleekmen did it together. Wow, he thought, his mind a hubbub of anticipation. This is something! He sipped at the orange juice, enjoying each swallow of it until the glass had been emptied.

I got what I wanted, he said to himself.

Now, I have to be careful, he told himself; there are some things I sure don’t want to change. I want to be sure I don’t foul up my black-market business by doing the natural thing and interfering so that old Norb Steiner doesn’t take his own life. I mean, it’s sad about him, but I don’t intend to get out of the business; so that stays as it is. As it’s going to be, he corrected himself.

Mainly I got two things to do. First, I see that I get a legal deed to land in the F.D.R. range all around the Henry Wallace area, and that deed’ll predate old man Bohlen’s deed by several weeks. So the hell with the old speculator, flying out here from Earth. When he does come, weeks from now, he’ll discover the land’s been bought. Trip all the way here and back for nothing. Maybe he’ll have a heart attack. Arnie chuckled, thinking about that. Too bad.

And then the other thing. Jack Bohlen himself.

I’m going to fix him, he said to himself, a guy I haven’t met yet, that doesn’t know me, although I know him.

What I am to Jack Bohlen now is fate.

“Good morning, Mr. Kott.”

Annoyed at having his meditation interrupted, he glanced up and saw that a girl had entered the room and was standing by his desk expectantly. He did not recognize her. A girl from the secretary pooi, he realized, come to take the morning’s dictation.

“Call me Arnie,” he muttered. “Everybody’s supposed to call me that. How come you didn’t know, you new around here?”

The girl, he thought, was not too good-looking, and he returned to his newspaper. But on the other hand, she had a heavy, full figure. The black silk dress she wore: there isn’t much on under that, he said to himself as he observed her around the side of the newspaper. Not married; he saw no wedding ring on her finger.

“Come over here,” he said. “You scared of me because I’m the famous great Arnie Kott, in charge of this whole place?”

The girl approached in a luxuriant sidling motion that surprised him; she seemed to creep sideways over to the desk. And in an insinuating, hoarse voice, she said, “No, Arnie, I’m not scared of you.” Her blunt stare did not seem to be one of innocence; on the contrary, its implied knowledge jolted him. It seemed to him as if she were conscious of every whim and urge in him, especially those that applied to her.

“You been working here long?” he asked.

“No, Arnie.” She moved closer, now, and rested against the edge of the desk so that one leg--he could hardly believe it--gradually came into contact with his own.

Methodically, her leg undulated against his own in a simple, reflexive, rhythmic way that made him recoil and say weakly, “Hey.”

“What’s the matter, Arnie?” the girl said, and smiled. It was a smile like nothing he had ever seen in his life before, cold and yet full of intimation; utterly without warmth, as if a machine had stamped it there, constructed it by pattern out of lips, teeth, tongue . . . and yet it swamped him with its sensuality. It poured forth a saturated, sopping heat that made him sit rigid in his chair, unable to look away. Mostly it was the tongue, he thought. It vibrated. The end, he noticed, had a pointed quality, as if it was good at cutting; a tongue that could hurt, that enjoyed slitting into something alive, tormenting it, and making it beg for mercy. That was the part it liked most: to hear the pleas. The teeth, too, white and sharp . . . made for rending.

He shivered.

“Do I bother you, Arnie?” the girl murmured. She had, by degrees, slid her body along the desk so that now--he could not understand how it had been accomplished--she rested almost entirely against him. My God, he thought, she’s--it was impossible.

“Listen,” he said, swallowing and finding his throat dry; he could hardly croak out the words. “Get going and let me read my newspaper.” Grabbing up the paper he held it between himself and her. “Go on,” he said gratingly.

The shape ebbed a little. “What’s the matter, Arnie?” her voice purred, like metal wheels rubbing, an automatic sound coming forth from her, like on a recording, he thought.

He said nothing; he gripped his paper and read.

When he next looked up the girl had gone. He was alone.

I don’t remember that, he said to himself, quaking inside, down deep within his stomach. What kind of a creature was that? I don’t get it--what was happening, just then?

He began automatically to read an item in the paper about a ship which had been lost in deep space, a freighter from Japan carrying a cargo of bicycles. He felt amused, even though three hundred people aboard had perished; it was just too goddamn funny, the idea of all those thousands of little light Jap bikes floating as debris, circling the sun forever. . . . Not that they weren’t needed on Mars, with its virtual lack of power sources . . . a man could pedal free of cost for hundreds of miles in the planet’s slight gravity.

Reading further, he came across an item about a reception at the White House for--he squinted. The words seemed to run together; he could hardly read them. Printing error of some kind? What did it say? He held the newspaper closer. . . .

Gubble gubble, it said. The article became meaningless, nothing but the gubble-gubble words one after another. Good grief! He stared at it in disgust, his stomach reacting; his duodenal ulcer hurt worse than ever now. He had become tense and angry, the worst possible combination for an ulcer patient, especially at meal time. Darn those gubble-gubble words, he said to himself. That’s what that kid says! They sure spoil the article in the paper.

Glancing through the paper he saw that almost all the articles devolved into nonsense, became blurred after a line or so. His irritation grew, and he tossed the paper away. What the hell good is it like that, he asked himself.

That’s that schizophrenia talk, he realized. Private language. I don’t like that here at all! It’s O.K. if he wants to talk like that himself, but it doesn’t belong here! He’s got no right to push that stuff into my world. And then Arnie thought, Of course, he did bring me back here, so maybe he thinks that does give him the right. Maybe the boy thinks of this as his world.

That thought did not please Arnie; he wished it had never come to him.

Getting up from his desk he went over to the window and looked down at the street of Lewistown far below. People hurrying along; how fast they went. And the cars, too; why so fast? There was an unpleasant kinetic quality to their movements, a jerkiness, they seemed either to bang into one another or to be about to. Colliding objects like billiard balls, hard and dangerous . . . the buildings, he noticed, seemed to bristle with sharp corners. And yet, when he tried to pinpoint the change--and it was a change, no doubt of that-- he could not. This was the familiar scene he saw every day. And yet--

Were they moving too fast? Was that it? No, it was deeper than that. There was an omnipresent hostility in everything; things did not merely collide--they struck one another, as if doing it deliberately.

And then he saw something else, something which made him gasp. The people on the street below, hurrying back and forth, had almost no faces, just fragments or remnants of faces . . . as if they had never formed.

Aw, this will never do, Arnie said to himself. He felt fear now, deeply and intensely. What’s going on? What are they handing me?

He returned, shaken, to his desk and sat down again. Picking up his cup of coffee, he drank, trying to forget the scene below, trying to resume his routine of the morning.

The coffee had a bitter, acrid, foreign taste to it, and he had to set the cup back down at once. I suppose the kid imagines all the time he’s being poisoned, Arnie thought in desperation. Is that it? I got to find myself eating awful-tasting food because of his delusions? God, he thought; that’s terrible.

Best thing for me, he decided, is to get my task here done as fast as possible and then get back to the present.

Unlocking the bottom drawer of his desk, Arnie got out the little battery-powered encoding dictation machine and set it up for use. Into it he said, “Scott, I got a terribly important item here to transmit to you. I insist you act on this at once. What I want to do is buy into the F.D.R. Mountains because the UN is going to establish a gigantic housing tract area there, specifically around the Henry Wallace Canyon. Now you transfer enough Union funds, in my name of course, to insure that I get title to all that, because in about two weeks speculators from--“

He broke off, for the encoding machine had groaned to a stop. He poked at it, and the reels turned slowly and then once more settled back into silence.

Thought it was fixed, Arnie thought angrily. Didn’t that Jack Bohlen work on it? And then he remembered that this was back in the past before Jack Bohlen had been called in; of course it didn’t work.

I’ve got to dictate it to the secretary-creature, he realized. He started to press the button on his desk that would summon her, but drew back. How can I let that back in here? he asked himself. But there was no alternative. He pressed the button.

The door opened and she came in. “I knew you would want me, Arnie,” she said, hurrying toward him, strutting and urgent.

“Listen,” he said, with authority in his voice. “Don’t get too close to me, I can’t stand it when people get too close.” But even as he spoke he recognized his fears for what they were; it was a basic fear of the schizophrenic that people might get too close to him, might encroach into his space. Nearness fear, it was called; it was due to the schizophrenic’s sensing hostility in everyone around him. That’s what I’m doing, Arnie thought. And yet, even knowing this, he could not endure having the girl come close to him; he got abruptly to his feet and walked away, back once more to the window.

“Anything you say, Arnie,” the girl said, in a tone that was insatiable, and despite what she said she crept toward him until, as before, she was almost touching him. He found himself hearing the noises of her breathing, smelling her, the sour body scent, her breath, which was thick and unpleasant. . . . He felt choked, unable to get enough air into his lungs.

“I’m going to dictate to you now,” he said, walking away from her, keeping distance between the two of them. “This is to Scott Temple, and should go in code so they can’t read it.” They, he thought. Well, that had always been his fear; he couldn’t blame that on the boy. “I got a terribly important item here,” he dictated. “Act on it at once; it means plenty, it’s a real inside tip. The UN’s going to buy a huge hunk of land in the F.D.R. Mountains--“

On and on he dictated, and even as he talked a fear assailed him, an obsessive fear that grew each moment. Suppose she was just writing down those gubble-gubble words? I just got to look, he told himself; I got to walk over close to her and see. But he shrank from it, the closeness.

“Listen, miss,” he said, interrupting himself. “Give me that pad of yours; I want to see what you’re writing.”

“Arnie,” she said in her rough, dragging voice. “you can’t tell anything by looking at it.”

“W-what?” he demanded in fright.

“It’s in shorthand.” She smiled at him, coldly, with what seemed to him palpable malevolence.

“O.K.,” he said, giving up. He went on and completed his dictation, then told her to get it into code and off to Scott at once.

“And what then?” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“You know, Arnie,” she said, and the tone in which she said it made him cringe with dismay and pure physical disgust.

“Nothing after that,” he said. “Just get out; don’t come back.” Following after her, he slammed the door shut behind her.

I guess, he decided, I’ll have to contact Scott direct; I can’t trust her. Seating himself at the desk he picked up the telephone and dialed.

Presently the line was ringing. But it rang in vain; there was no response. Why? he wondered. Has he run out on me? Is he against me? Working with them? I can’t trust him; I can’t trust anybody. And then, all at once, a voice said, “Hello. Scott Temple speaking.” And he realized that only a few seconds and a few rings had actually gone by; all those thoughts of betrayal, of doom, had flitted through his mind in an instant.

“This is Arnie.”

“Hi, Arnie. What’s up? I can tell by your tone something’s cooking. Spill it.”

My sense of time is fouled up, Arnie realized. It seemed to me the phone rang for half an hour, but it wasn’t at all.

“Arnie,” Scott was saying. “Speak up. Arnie, you there?”

It’s the schizophrenic confusion, Arnie realized. It’s basically a breakdown in time-sense. Now I’m getting it because that kid has it.

“Chrissake!” Scott said, outraged.

With difficulty, Arnie broke his chain of thought and said, “Uh, Scott. Listen. I got an inside scoop; we have to act on this right now, you understand?” In detail, he told Scott about the UN and the F.D.R. Mountains. “So you can see,” he wound up, “it’s worth it to us to buy in with all we got, and pronto. You agree?”

“You’re sure of this scoop?” Scott said.

“Yeah, I am! I am!”

“How come? Frankly, Arnie, I like you, but I know you get crazy schemes, you’re always flying off at a tangent. I’d hate to get stuck with that dog’s breakfast F.D.R. land.”

Arnie said, “Take my word for it.”

“I can’t.”

He could not believe his ears. ‘We been working together for years, and it’s always been on a word-of-mouth confidence basis,” he choked. “What’s going on, Scott?”

“That’s what I’m asking you,” Scott said calmly. “How come a man of your business experience could bite on this phony nothing so-called scoop? The scoop is that the F.D.R. range is worthless, and you know it; I know you know it. Everybody knows it. So what are you up to?”

“You don’t trust me?”

“Why should I trust you? Prove you got real inside scoop stuff here, and not just your usual hot air.”

With difficulty, Arnie said, “Hell, man, if I could prove it, you wouldn’t have to trust me; it wouldn’t involve trust. O.K. I’ll go into this alone, and when you find out what you missed, blame yourself, not me.” He slammed down the phone, shaking with rage and despair. What a thing to happen! He couldn’t believe it; Scott Temple, the one person in the world he could do business with over the phone. The rest of them you could throw in the ocean, they were such crooks. . . .

It’s a misunderstanding, he told himself. But based on a deep, fundamental, insidious distrust. A schizophrenic distrust.

A collapse, he realized, of the ability to communicate.

Standing up, he said aloud, “I guess I got to go to Pax Grove myself and see the abstract people. Put in my claim.” And then he remembered. He would have to first stake his claim, actually go to the site, in the F.D.R. Mountains. And everything in him shrieked out in rebellion at that. At that hideous place, where the building would one day appear.

Well, there was no way out. First have a stake made for him in one of the Union shops, then take a ‘copter and head for the Henry Wallace.

It seemed, thinking about it, an agonizingly difficult series of actions to accomplish. How could he do all that? First he would have to find some Union metal worker who could engrave his name for him on the stake; that might take days. Who did he know in the shops here in Lewistown who could do it for him? And if he didn’t know the guy, how could he trust him?

At last, as if swimming against an intolerable current, he managed to lift the receiver from the hook and place the call to the shop.

I’m so tired I can hardly move, he realized. Why? What have I done so far today? His body felt crushed flat with fatigue. If only I could get some rest, he thought to himself. If only I could sleep.

It was late in the afternoon before Arnie Kott was able to procure the metal stake with his name engraved on it from the Union shop and make arrangements for a WWU ‘copter to fly him to the F.D.R. Mountains.

“Hi, Arnie,” the pilot greeted him, a pleasant-faced young man from the Union’s pilot pool.

“Hi, my boy,” Arnie murmured, as the pilot assisted him into the comfortable, special leather seat which had been built for him at the settlement’s fabric and upholstery shop. As the pilot got into the seat ahead of him, Arnie said, “Now let’s hurry because I’m late; I got to get all the way there and then to the abstract office at Pax Grove.”

And I know we won’t make it, he said to himself. There just isn’t enough time.