Martian Time-Slip

3

Norbert Steiner had a certain freedom to come and go as he pleased, because he was self-employed. In a small iron building outside of Bunchewood Park he manufactured health foods, made entirely from domestic plants and minerals, with no preservatives or chemical sprays or nonorganic attractive fertilizers. A firm at Bunchewood Park packaged his products for him in professional-type boxes, cartons, jars, and envelopes, and then Steiner drove about Mars selling them direct to the consumer.

His profit was fair, because after all he had no competition; his was the sole health food business on Mars.

And then, too, he had a sideline. He imported from Earth various gourmet food items such as truffles, goose-liver pate, caviar, kangaroo tail soup, Danish blue cheese, smoked oysters, quail eggs, rum babas, all of which were illegal on Mars, due to the attempt by the UN to force the colonies to become self-sufficient foodswise. The UN food experts claimed that it was unsafe to transport food across space, due to the chance of harmful radiation contaminating it, but Steiner knew better; the actual reason was their fear of the consequences to the colonies in case of war back Home. Food shipments would cease, and unless the colonies were self-sufficient they probably would starve themselves out of existence within a short time.

While he admired their reasoning, Steiner did not wish to acquiesce in fact. A few cans of French truffles imported on the sly would not cause the dairy ranchers to stop trying to produce milk, nor the hog, steer, and sheep ranchers from keeping on with the struggle to make their farms pay. Apple and peach and apricot trees would still be planted and tended, sprayed and watered, even if glass jars of caviar showed up in the various settlements at twenty dollars each.

At this moment, Steiner was inspecting a shipment of tins of halvah, a Turkish pastry, which had arrived the night before aboard the self-guiding ship which shuttled between Manila and the tiny field in the wastelands of the F.D.R. Mountains which Steiner had constructed, using Bleekmen as laborers. Halvah sold well, especially in New Israel, and Steiner, inspecting the tins for signs of damage, estimated that he could get at least five dollars for each one. And then also old Arnie Kott at Lewistown took almost anything sweet that Steiner could lay his hands on, plus cheeses and canned fish of every kind, not to mention the Canadian smoked bacon which showed up in five-pound tins, the same as Dutch hams. In fact, Arnie Kott was his best single customer.

The storage shed, where Steiner now sat, lay within sight of his small, private, illegal landing field. Upright on the field stood the rocket which had come in last night; Steiner’s technician--he himself had no manual ability of any sort--was busy preparing it for its return flight to Manila. The rocket was small, only twenty feet high, but it was Swiss-made and quite stable. Above, the ruddy Martian sun cast elongated shadows from the peaks of the surrounding range, and Steiner had turned on a kerosene heater to warm his storage shed. The technician, seeing Steiner look out through the window of the shed, nodded to indicate that the rocket was ready for its return load, so Steiner put down his tins of halvah temporarily. Taking hold of the hand truck, he began pushing the load of cartons through the doorway of the shed and out onto the rocky ground.

“That looks like over a hundred pounds,” his technician said critically, as Steiner came up pushing the hand truck.

“Very light cartons,” Steiner said. They contained a dried grass which, back in the Philippines, was processed in such a way that the end result very much resembled hashish. It was smoked in a mixture with ordinary Virginia burley tobacco, and got a terrific price in the United States. Steiner had never tried the stuff himself; to him, physical and moral health were one--he believed in his health foods, and neither smoked nor drank.

Together he and Otto loaded the rocket with its cargo, sealed it, and then Otto set the guidance system’s clock. In a few days José Pesquito back Home at Manila would be unloading the cargo, going over the order form included, and assembling Steiner’s needs for the return trip.

“Will you fly me back with you?” Otto asked.

“I’m going first to New Israel,” Steiner said.

“That’s O.K. I’ve got plenty of time.”

On his own, Otto Zitte had once operated a small black-market business; he dealt exclusively in electronic equipment, components of great fragility and small size, which were smuggled in aboard the common carriers operating between Earth and Mars. And at former times he had tried to import such prize black-market items as typewriters, cameras, tape recorders, furs, and whiskey, but there competition had driven him out. Trade in those necessities of life, selling on a mass basis throughout the colonies, had been taken over by the big professional black-market operators who had enormous capital to back them up and their own full-scale transportation system. And, anyhow, Otto’s heart was not in it. He wanted to be a repairman; in fact, he had come to Mars for that purpose, not knowing that two or three firms monopolized the repair business, operating like exclusive guilds, such as the Yee Company, for whom Steiner’s neighbor, Jack Bohlen, worked. Otto had taken the aptitude tests, but he was not good enough. Therefore, after a year or so on Mars, he had turned to working for Steiner and running his small import operation. It was humiliating for him, but at least he was not doing manual labor on one of the colonies’ work gangs, out under the sun reclaiming the desert.

As Otto and Steiner walked back to the storage shed, Steiner said, “I personally can’t stand those Israelis, even though I have to deal with them all the time. They’re unnatural, the way they live, in those barracks, and always out trying to plant orchards, oranges or lemons, you know. They have the advantage over everybody else because back Home they lived almost like we live here, with desert and hardly any resources.”

“True,” Otto said. “But you have to hand it to them; they really hustle. They’re not lazy.”

“And not only that,” Steiner said, “they’re hypocrites regarding food. Look at how many cans of nonkosher meat they buy from me. None of them keep the dietary laws.”

“Well, if you don’t approve of them buying smoked oysters from you, don’t sell to them,” Otto said.

“It’s their business, not mine,” Steiner said.

He had another reason for visiting New Israel, a reason which even Otto did not know about. A son of Steiner’s lived there, in a special camp for what were called “anomalous children.” The term referred to any child who differed from the norm either physically or psychologically to the extent that he could not be educated in the Public School. Steiner’s son was autistic, and for three years the instructor at the camp had been working with him, trying to bring him into communication with the human culture into which he had been born.

To have an autistic child was a special shame, because the psychologists believed that the condition came from a defect in the parents, usually a schizoid temperament. Manfred Steiner, age ten, had never spoken a word. He ran about on tiptoe, avoiding people as if they were things, sharp-pointed and dangerous. Physically, he was a large healthy blond-haired boy, and for the first year or so the Steiners had rejoiced in having him. But now--even the instructor at Camp B-G could offer little hope. And the instructor was always optimistic; it was her job.

“I may be in New Israel all day,” Steiner said, as he and Otto loaded the cans of halvah into the ‘copter. “I have to visit every damn kibbutz in the place, and that takes hours.”

“Why don’t you want me along?” Otto demanded, with hot anger.

Steiner shuffled his feet, hung his head, and said guiltily, “You misunderstand. I’d love to have company, but--“ For an instant he thought of telling Otto the truth. “I’ll take you to the tractor-bus terminal and drop you off--O.K.?” He felt weary. When he got to Camp B-G he would find Manf red just the same, never meeting anyone’s eye, always darting about on the periphery, more like a taut, wary animal than a child. . . . It was hardly worth going, but still he would go.

In his own mind, Steiner blamed it all on his wife; when Manfred was a baby, she had never talked to him or shown him any affection. Having been trained as a chemist, she had an intellectual, matter-of-fact attitude, inappropriate in a mother. She had bathed and fed the baby as if he were a laboratory animal like a white rat. She kept him clean and healthy but she had never sung to him, laughed with him, had not really used language to or with him. So naturally he had become autistic; what else could he do? Steiner, thinking about it, felt grim. So much for marrying a woman with a master’s degree. When he thought of the Bohlen boy next door, yelling and playing--but look at Silvia Bohlen; she was a genuine mother and woman, vital, physically attractive, alive. True, she was domineering and selfish . . . she had a highly developed sense of what was hers. But he admired her for that. She was not sentimental; she was strong. For instance, consider the water question, and her attitude. It was not possible to break her down, even by alleging that his own water tank had leaked out their two weeks’ supply. Thinking about that, Steiner smiled ruefully. Silvia Bohlen hadn’t been taken in, even for a moment.

Otto said, “Drop me off at the bus terminal, then.”

With relief, Steiner said, “Good enough. And you won’t have to endure those Israelis.”

Eyeing him, Otto said, “I told you, Norbert, I don’t mind them.”

Together, they entered the ‘copter, and Steiner seated himself at the controls and started the engine. He said nothing more to Otto.

As he set his ‘copter down at Weizmann Field north of New Israel, Steiner felt guilty that he had talked badly about the Israelis. He had done it only as part of his speech designed to dissuade Otto from coming along with him, but nevertheless it was not right; it went contrary to his authentic feelings. Shame, he realized. That was why he had said it; shame because of his defective son at Camp B-G . . . what a powerful drive it was, it could make a man say anything.

Without the Israelis, his son would be uncared for. No other facilities for anomalous children existed on Mars, although there were dozens of such institutions back Home, as was every other facility one could think of. And the cost of keeping Manfred at the camp was so low as to be a mere formality. As he parked his ‘copter and got out, Steiner felt his guilt grow until he wondered how he could face the Israelis. It seemed to him that, God forbid, they might be able to read his mind, might somehow intuit what he had said about them when he was elsewhere.

However, the Israeli field personnel greeted him pleasantly, and his guilt began to fade; evidently it did not show after all. Lugging his heavy suitcases, he crossed the field to the parking lot where the tractor-bus waited to take passengers into the central business district.

He had already boarded the bus and was making himself comfortable when he remembered that he had not brought any present for his son. Miss Milch, the instructor, had told him always to bring a gift, a durable object by which Manfred could recall his father after he had left. I’ll just have to stop somewhere, Steiner said to himself. Buy a toy, a game perhaps. And then he remembered that one of the parents who visited her child at Camp B-G ran a gift shop in New Israel; Mrs. Esterhazy. He could stop there; Mrs. Esterhazy had seen Manfred and understood about the anomalous children in general. She would know what to give him, and there would be no embarrassing questions such as, How old is the boy?

At the stop nearest the gift shop he got off the bus and walked up the sidewalk, enjoying the sight of small, wellkept stores and offices. New Israel in many ways reminded him of Home; it was a true city, more so than Bunchewood Park itself or Lewistown. Many people could be seen, most of them hurrying as if they had business to conduct, and he drank in the atmosphere of commerce and activity.

He came to the gift shop, with its modern sign and sloping glass windows. Except for the Martian shrub growing in the windowbox, it could have been a store in downtown Berlin. He entered, and found Mrs. Esterhazy standing at the counter, smiling as she recognized him. She was an attractive matronly woman in her early forties, with dark hair, and always well-dressed, always looking fresh and intelligent. As everyone knew, Mrs. Esterhazy was terribly active in civic affairs and politics; she put out a newsletter and belonged to one committee after another.

That she had a child in Camp B-G: that was a secret, known only to a few of the other parents and of course the staff at the camp. It was a young child, only three, suffering from one of the formidable physical defects associated with exposure to gamma rays during its intrauterine existence. He had seen it only once. There were many sobering anomalies at Camp B-G, and he had come to accept them, whatever they looked like. At first it had startled him, the Esterhazy child; it was so small and shriveled, with enormous eyes like a lemur’s. It had peculiar webbed fingers, as if it had been fashioned for an aquatic world. He had the feeling about it that it was astonishingly acute in its perceptions; it had studied him with deep intensity, seeming to reach some depth in him usually inaccessible, perhaps even to himself. . . . It had seemed to reach out somehow and probe his secrets and then it had withdrawn, accepting him on the basis of what it had picked up.

The child, he had surmised, was a Martian, that is, born on Mars, to Mrs. Esterhazy and some man who was not her husband, since she no longer had a husband. That fact he had picked up from her in conversation; she announced it calmly, making no bones about it. She had been divorced for a number of years. Obviously, then, the child at Camp B-G had been born out of wedlock, but Mrs. Esterhazy, like so many modern women, did not consider that a disgrace. Steiner shared her opinion.

Setting down his heavy suitcases, Steiner said, “What a nice little shop you have here, Mrs. Esterhazy.”

“Thank you,” she said, coming around from behind the counter. “What can I do for you, Mr. Steiner? Are you here to sell me yogurt and wheat germ?” Her dark eyes twinkled.

“I need a present for Manfred,” Steiner said.

A soft, compassionate expression appeared on her face. “I see. Well--“ She moved away from him, toward one of the counters. “I saw your son the other day, when I was visiting B-G. Has he shown any interest in music? Often autistic children enjoy music.”

“He’s fond of drawing. He paints pictures all the time.”

She picked up a small wooden flutelike instrument. “This is locally made. And very well made, too.” She held it out to him.

“Yes,” he said. “I’ll take this.”

“Miss Milch is utilizing music as a method of reaching the autistic children at B-G,” Mrs. Esterhazy said as she went to wrap up the wooden flute. “The dance, in particular.” She hesitated, then, “Mr. Steiner, you know that I’m in constant touch with the political scene back Home. I--there’s a rumor that the UN is considering--“ She lowered her voice, her face pale. “I do so hate to inflict suffering on you, Mr. Steiner, but if there is any truth in this, and there certainly seems to be . . .”

“Go ahead.” But he wished now that he had not come in. Yes, Mrs. Esterhazy was in touch with important happenings, and it made him uneasy just to know that, without hearing anything more.

Mrs. Esterhazy said, “There’s supposed to be a measure under debate at the UN right now, having to do with anomalous children.” Her voice shook. “It would require the closing of Camp B-G.”

After a moment he was able to say, “But, why?” He stared at her.

“They’re afraid--well, they don’t want to see what they call ‘defective stock’ appearing on the colonial planets. They want to keep the race pure. Can you understand that? I can, and yet I--well, I can’t agree. Probably because of my own child. No, I just can’t agree. They’re not worried about the anomalous children at Home, because they don’t have the aspirations for themselves that they do for us. You have to understand the idealism and anxiety which they have about us. . . . Do you remember how you felt before you emigrated here with your family? Back Home they see the existence of anomalous children on Mars as a sign that one of Earth’s major problems has been transplanted into the future, because we are the future, to them, and--“

Steiner interrupted her. “You’re certain about this bill?”

“I feel certain.” She faced him, her chin up, her intelligent eyes calm. “We can’t be too careful; it would be dreadful if they closed Camp B-G and--“ She did not finish. In her eyes he read something unspeakable. The anomalous children, his boy and hers, would be killed in some scientific, painless, instantaneous way. Did she mean that?

“Say it,” he said.

Mrs. Esterhazy said, “The children would be put to sleep.”

Revolted, he said, “Killed, you mean.”

“Oh,” she said, “how can you speak it like that, as if YOU didn’t care?” She gazed at him in horror.

“Christ,” he said with violent bitterness. “If there’s any truth in this--“ But he did not believe her. Because, perhaps, he didn’t want to? Because it was too ghastly? No, he thought. Because he did not trust her instincts, her sense of reality; she had picked up some garbled hysterical rumor. Perhaps there was a bill directed toward some tangential aspect of this that might affect Camp B-G and its children in some fashion. But they--the parents of anomalous children--had always lived under that cloud. They had read of the mandatory sterilization of both parents and offspring in cases where it was proved that the gonads had been permanently altered, generally in cases of exposure to gamma radiation in unusual mass quantity.

“Who in the UN are authors of this bill?” he asked.

“There are six members of the In-planet Health and Welfare Committee who are supposed to have written the bill.” She began writing. “Here are their names. Now, Mr. Steiner, what we’d like you to do is to write to these men, and have anybody you know who--“

He barely listened. He paid for his flute, thanked her, accepted the folded piece of paper, and made his way out of the gift shop.

Goddamn, how he wished he hadn’t gone in there! Did she enjoy telling such stories? Wasn’t there trouble enough in the world as it was, without old wives’ tales being peddled by middle-aged females who should not have had anything to do with public affairs in the first place?

But in him a quiet voice said, She may be right. You have to face it. Gripping his heavy suitcases, he walked on, confused and frightened, hardly aware of the small new shops which he passed as he hurried toward Camp B-G and his waiting son.

When he entered the great glass-domed solarium of Camp Ben-Gurion, there stood young, sandy-haired Miss Much in her work smock and sandals, with clay and paint splattered on her, a hectic expression knitting her eyebrows. She tossed her head and pushed her tousled hair back from her face as she came toward him. “Hello, Mr. Steiner. What a day we’ve had. Two new children, and one of them a holy terror.”

“Miss Milch,” he said, “I was talking to Mrs. Esterhazy at her shop just now--“

“She told you about the supposed bill at the UN?” Miss Milch looked tired. “Yes, there is such a bill. Anne gets every sort of inside piece of news, although how she does it I have no idea. Try to keep from showing any agitation around Manfred, if you possibly can; he’s been upset by the new arrivals today.” She started off, to lead Mr. Steiner from the solarium down the corridor to the playroom in which his son would be found, but he hurried after her, halting her.

“What can we do about this bill?” he demanded breathlessly. He set down his suitcases, holding now only the paper bag in which Mrs. Esterhazy had put the wooden flute.

“I don’t know that we can do anything,” Miss Milch said. She went on slowly to the door and opened it. The sound of children’s voices came shrill and loud to their ears. “Naturally, the authorities at New Israel and back Home in Israel itself have made furious protests, and so have several other governments. But so much of this is secret; the bill is secret, and it all has to be done sub rosa, so they won’t start a panic. It’s such a touchy subject. Nobody really knows what public sentiment is, on this, or even if it should be listened to.” Her voice, weary and brittle, dragged, as if she were running down. But then she seemed to perk up. She patted him on the shoulder. “I think the worst they would do, once they closed B-G, is deport the anomalous children back Home; I don’t think they’d ever go so far as to destroy them.”

Steiner said quickly, “To camps back on Earth.”

“Let’s go and find Manfred,” Miss Milch said. “All right? I think he knows this is the day you come; he was standing by the window, but of course he does that a lot.”

Suddenly, to his own surprise, he burst out in a choked voice, “I wonder if maybe they might be right. What use is it to have a child that can’t talk or live among people?”

Miss Milch glanced at him but said nothing.

“He’ll never be able to hold a job,” Steiner said. “He’ll always be a burden on society, like he is now. Isn’t that the truth?”

“Autistic children still baffle us,” Miss Milch said. “By what they are, and how they got that way, and by their tendency to begin to evolve mentally, all at once, for no apparent reason, after years of complete failure to respond.”

“I think I can’t in good conscience oppose this bill,” Steiner said. “Not after thinking it over. Now that the first shock is over. It would be fair. I feel it’s fair.” His voice shook.

“Well,” Miss Milch said, “I’m glad you didn’t say that to Anne Esterhazy, because she’d never let you go; she’d be after you making speeches at you until you came around to her side.” She held open the door to the big playroom. “Manfred is over in the corner.”

Seeing his son from a distance, Steiner thought, You would never know to look at him. The large, well-formed head, the curly hair, the handsome features. . . The boy was bent over, absorbed in some object which he held. A genuinely goodlooking boy, with eyes that shone sometimes mockingly, sometimes with glee and excitement . . . and such terrific coordination. The way he sprinted about, on the tips of his toes, as if dancing to some unheard music, some tune from inside his own mind whose rhythms kept him enthralled.

We are so pedestrian, compared to him, Steiner thought. Leaden. We creep along like snails, while he dances and leaps, as if gravity does not have the same influence on him as it does on us. Could he be made from some new and different kind of atom?

“Hi, Manny,” Mr. Steiner said to his son.

The boy did not raise his head or show any sign of awareness; he continued fooling with the object.

I will write to the framers of the bill, Steiner thought, and tell them I have a child in the camp. And that I agree with them.

His thoughts frightened him.

Murder, of Manfred--he recognized it. My hatred of him coming out, released by this news. I see why they’re debating it in secret; many people have this hate, I bet. Unrecognized inside.

“No flute for you, Manny,” Steiner said. “Why should I give it to you, I wonder? Do you give a damn? No.” The boy did not look up or give any indication of hearing. “Nothing,” Steiner said. “Emptiness.”

While Steiner stood there, tall, slender Dr. Glaub in his white coat, carrying his clipboard, approached. Steiner became suddenly aware of him and started.

“There is a new theory about autism,” Dr. Glaub said. “From Bergholzlei, in Switzerland. I wished to discuss it with you, because it seems to offer us a new avenue with your son, here.”

“I doubt it,” Steiner said.

Dr. Glaub did not seem to hear him, he continued, “It assumes a derangement in the sense of time in the autistic individual, so that the environment around him is so accelerated that he cannot cope with it, in fact, he is unable to perceive it properly, precisely as we would be if we faced a speeded-up television program, so that objects whizzed by so fast as to be invisible, and sound was a gobbledegook-- you know? Just extremely high-pitched mishmash. Now, this new theory would place the autistic child in a closed chamber, where he faced a screen on which filmed sequences were projected slowed down--do you see? Both sound and video slowed, at last so slow that you and I would not be able to perceive motion or comprehend the sounds as human speech.”

Wearily, Steiner said, “Fascinating. There’s always something new, isn’t there, in psychotherapy?”

“Yes,” Dr. Glaub said, nodding. “Especially from the Swiss; they’re ingenious in comprehending the world-views of disturbed persons, of encapsulated individuals cut off from ordinary means of communication, isolated--you know?”

“I know,” Steiner said.

Dr. Glaub, still nodding, had moved on, to stop by another parent, a woman, who was seated with her small girl, both of them examining a cloth picture book.

Hope before the deluge, Steiner thought. Does Dr. Glaub know that any day the authorities back on Earth may close Camp B-G? The good doctor labors on in idiotic innocence . . . happy in his schemes.

Walking after Dr. Glaub, Steiner waited until there was a pause in the conversation and then he said, “Doctor, I’d like to discuss this new theory a little further.”

“Yes, yes,” Dr. Glaub said, excusing himself from the woman and her child; he led Steiner over to one side, where they could talk privately. “This concept of time-rates may open a doorway to minds so fatigued by the impossible task of communicating in a world where everything happens with such rapidity that--“

Steiner interrupted, “Suppose your theory works out. How can you help such an individual function? Did you intend for him to stay in the closed chamber with the slowed-down picture screen the rest of his life? I think, Doctor, that you’re all playing games, here. You’re not facing reality. All of you at Camp B-G; you’re so virtuous. So without guile. But the outside world--it’s not like that. This is a noble, idealistic place, in here, but you’re fooling yourselves. So in my opinion you’re also fooling the patients; excuse me for saying it. This slowed-down closed chamber, it epitomizes you all, here, your attitude.”

Dr. Glaub listened, nodding, with an intent expression on his face. “We have practical equipment promised,” he said, when Steiner had finished. “From Westinghouse, back on Earth. Rapport with others in society is achieved primarily through sound, and Westinghouse has designed for us an audio recorder which picks up the message directed at the psychotic individual--for example, your boy Manfred-- then, having recorded this message on iron-oxide tape, replays it almost instantly for him at lower speed, then erases itself and records the next message and so on, with the result that a permanent contact with the outside world, at his own rate of time, is maintained. And later we hope to have in our hands here a video recorder which will present a constant but slowed-down record to him of the visual portion of reality, synchronized with the audio portion. Admittedly, he will be one step removed from contact with reality, and the problem of touch presents difficulties--but I disagree when you say this is too idealistic to be of use. Look at the widespread chemical therapy that was tried not so long ago. Stimulants speeded up the psychotic’s interior time-sense so that he could comprehend the stimuli pouring in on him, but as soon as the stimulant wore off, the psychotic’s cognition slowed down as his faulty metabolism reestablished itself--you know? Yet we learned a good deal from that; we learned that psychosis has a chemical basis, not a psychological basis. Sixty years of erroneous notions were upset in a single experiment, using sodium amytal--“

“Dreams,” Steiner interrupted. “You will never make contact with my boy.” Turning, he walked away from Dr. Glaub.

From Camp B-G he went by bus to a swanky restaurant, the Red Fox, which always bought a good deal of his wares. After he had finished his business with the owner he sat for a time at the bar, drinking a beer.

The way Dr. Glaub had babbled on--that was the kind of idiocy that had brought them to Mars in the first place. To a planet where a glass of beer cost twice what a shot of Scotch cost, because it had so much more water in it.

The owner of the Red Fox, a small, bald, portly man wearing glasses, seated himself next to Steiner and said, “Why you looking so glum, Norb?”

Steiner said, “They’re going to close down Camp B-G.”

“Good,” the owner of the Red Fox said. “We don’t need those freaks here on Mars; it’s bad advertising.”

“I agree,” Steiner said, “at least to a certain extent.”

“It’s like those babies with seal flippers back in the ‘60s, from them using that German drug. They should have destroyed all of them; there’s plenty of healthy normal children born, why spare those others? If you had a kid with extra arms or no arms, deformed in some way, you wouldn’t want it kept alive, would you?”

“No,” Steiner said. He did not say that his wife’s brother back on Earth was a phocomelus; he had been born without arms and made use of superb artificial ones designed for him by a Canadian firm which specialized in such equipment.

In fact he said nothing to the little portly man; he drank his beer and stared at the bottles behind the bar. He did not like the man at all, and he had never told him about Manfred. He knew the man’s deepseated prejudice. Nor was he unusual. Steiner could summon up no resentment toward him; he merely felt weary, and did not want to discuss it.

“That was the beginning,” the owner said. “Those babies born in the early ‘60s--are there any of them at Camp B-G--I’ve never set foot inside there and I never will.”

Steiner said, “How could they be at B-G? They’re hardly anomalous; anomalous means one of a kind.”

“Oh, yeah,” the man admitted. “I see what you mean. Anyhow, if they’d destroyed them years ago we wouldn’t have such places as B-G, because in my mind there’s a direct link between the monsters born in the ‘60s and all the freaks supposedly born due to radiation ever since; I mean, it’s all due to substandard genes, isn’t it? Now, I think that’s where the Nazis were right. They saw the need of weeding out the inferior genetic strains as long ago as 1930; they saw--“

“My son,” Steiner began, and then stopped. He realized what he had said. The portly man stared at him. “My son is there,” Steiner at last went on, “means as much to me as your son does to you. I know that someday he will emerge into the world once more.”

“Let me buy you a drink, Norbert,” the portly man said, “to show you how sorry I am; I mean, about the way I talked.”

Steiner said, “If they close B-G it will be a calamity too great for us to bear, we who have children in there. I can’t face it.”

“I see what you mean,” the portly man said. “I understand your feeling.”

“You are superior to me if you understand how I feel,” Steiner said, “because I can make no sense out of it.” He set down his empty beer glass and stepped off the stool. “I don’t want another drink,” he said. “Excuse me; I have to leave.” He picked up his heavy suitcases.

“You’ve been coming in here all this time,” the owner said, “and we talked about that camp a lot, and you never told me you had a son in there. That wasn’t right.” He looked angry, now.

“Why wasn’t it right?”

“Hell, if I had known I wouldn’t have said what I said; you’re responsible, Norbert--you could have told me, but you deliberately didn’t. I don’t like that one bit.” His face was red with indignation.

Carrying his suitcases, Steiner left the bar.

“This is not my day,” he said aloud. Argued with everybody; I’ll have to spend the next visit here making apologies . . . if I come back at all. But I have to come back; my business depends on it. And I have to stop at Camp B-G; there is no other way.

Suddenly it came to him that he should kill himself. The idea appeared in his mind full blown, as if it had always been there, always a part of him. Easy to do it, just crash the ‘copter. He thought, I am goddamn tired of being Norbert Steiner; I didn’t ask to be Norbert Steiner or sell blackmarket food or anything else. What is my reason for staying alive? I’m not good with my hands, I can’t fix or make anything; I can’t use my mind, either, I’m just a salesman. I’m tired of my wife’s scorn because I can’t keep our water machinery going--I’m tired of Otto who I had to hire because I’m helpless even in my own business.

In fact, he thought, why wait until I can get back to the ‘copter? Along the street came a huge, rumbling tractor-bus, its sides dull with sand; it had crossed the desert just now, was coming to New Israel from some other settlement. Steiner set down his suitcases and ran out into the street, directly at the tractor-bus.

The bus honked; its airbrakes screeched. Other traffic halted as Steiner ran forward with his head down, his eyes shut. Only at the last moment, with the sound of the air horn so loud in his ears that it became unbearably painful, did he open his eyes; he saw the driver of the bus gaping down at him, saw the steering wheel and the number on the driver’s cap. And then--

In the solarium at Camp Ben-Gurion, Miss Milch heard the sounds of sirens, and she paused in the middle of the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite, which she was playing on the piano for the children to dance to.

“Fire!” one of the little boys said, going to the window. The other children followed.

“No, it’s an ambulance, Miss Much,” another boy said, at the window, “going downtown.”

Miss Much resumed playing, and the children, at the sound of the rhythms coming from the piano, straggled back to their places. They were bears at the zoo, cavorting for peanuts; that was what the music suggested to them, Miss Milch told them to go ahead and act it out.

Off to one side, Manfred stood heedless of the music, his head down, a thoughtful expression on his face. As the sirens wailed up loudly for a moment, Manfred lifted his head. Noticing that, Miss Milch gasped and breathed a prayer. The boy had heard! She thumped away at the Tchaikovsky music even more loudly than before, feeling exultation: she and the doctors had been right, for through sound there had come about a contact with the boy. Now Manfred went slowly to the window to look out; all alone he gazed down at the buildings and streets below, searching for the origin of the noise which had aroused him, attracted his attention.

Things are not so hopeless after all, Miss Milch said to herself. Wait until his father hears; it shows we must never talk of giving up.

She played on, loudly and happily.