10

Inside Mr. Kott’s skin were dead bones, shiny and wet. Mr. Kott was a sack of bones, dirty and yet shiny-wet. His head was a skull that took in greens and bit them; inside him the greens became rotten things as something ate them to make them dead.

He could see everything that went on inside Mr. Kott, the teeming gubbish life. Meanwhile, the outside said, “I love Mozart. I’ll put this tape on.” The box read: “Symphony 40 in G mol., K. 550.” Mr. Kott fiddled with the knobs of the amplifier. “Bruno Walter conducting,” Mr. Kott told his guests. “A great rarity from the golden age of recordings.”

A hideous racket of screeches and shrieks issued from the speakers, like the convulsions of corpses. Mr. Kott shut off the tape transport.

“Sorry,” he muttered. It was an old coded message, from Rockingham or Scott Temple or Anne, from someone, anyhow; Mr. Kott, he knew that. He knew that by accident it had found its way into his library of music.

Sipping her drink, Doreen Anderton said, “What a shock. You should spare us, Arnie. Your sense of humor--“

“An accident,” Arnie Kott said angrily. He rummaged for another tape. Aw, the hell with it, he thought. “Listen, Jack,” he said, turning. “I’m sorry to make you come here when I know your dad’s visiting, but I’m running out of time; show me your progress with the Steiner boy, O.K.?” His anticipation and concern made him stutter. He looked at Jack expectantly.

But Jack Bohlen hadn’t heard him; he was saying something to Doreen there on the couch where the two of them sat together.

“We’re out of booze,” Jack said, setting down his empty glass.

“God sake,” Arnie said, “I got to hear how you’ve done, Jack. Can’t you give me anything? Are you two just going to sit there necking and whispering? I don’t feel good.” He went unsteadily into the kitchen, where Heliogabalus sat on a tall stool, like a dunce, reading a magazine. “Fix me a glass of warm water and baking soda,” Arnie said.

“Yes, Mister.” Heliogabalus closed his magazine and stepped down from the stool. “I overheard. Why don’t you send them out? They are no good, no good at all, Mister.” From the cabinet over the sink he took the package of bicarbonate of soda; he spooned out a teaspoonful.

“Who cares about your opinion?” Arnie said.

Doreen entered the kitchen, her face drawn and tired. “Arnie, I think I’ll go home. I really can’t take much of Manfred; he never stops moving around, never sits still. I can’t stand it.” Going up to Arnie she kissed him on the ear. “Goodnight, dear.”

“I read about a kid who thought he was a machine,” Arnie said. “He had to be plugged in, he said, to work. I mean, you have to be able to stand these fruits. Don’t go. Stay for my sake. Manfred’s a lot quieter when a woman’s around. I don’t know why. I have the feeling that Bohlen’s accomplished nothing; I’m going out there and tell him to his face.” A glass of warm water and baking soda was put into his right hand by his tame Bleekman. “Thanks.” He drank it gratefully.

“Jack Bohlen,” Doreen said, “has done a fine job under difficult conditions. I don’t want to hear anything said against him.” She swayed slightly, smiling. “I’m a little drunk.”

“Who isn’t?” Arnie said. He put his arm around her waist and hugged her. “I’m so drunk I’m sick. O.K., that kid gets me, too. Look, I put on that old coded tape; I must be nuts.” Setting down his glass he unbuttoned the top buttons of her blouse. “Look away, Helio. Read your book.” The Bleekman looked away. Holding Doreen against him, Arnie unbuttoned all the buttons of her blouse and began on her skirt. “I know they’re ahead of me, those Earth bastards coming in everywhere you look. My man at the terminal can’t even count them any more; they been coming in all day long. Let’s go to bed.” He kissed her on the collar bone, nuzzled lower and lower until she raised his head with the strength of her hands.

In the living room, his hotshot repairman hired away from Mr. Yee fiddled with the tape recorder, clumsily putting on a fresh reel. He had knocked over his empty glass.

What happens if they get there before me? Arnie Kott asked himself as he clung to Doreen, wheeling slowly about the kitchen with her as Heliogabalus read to himself. What if I can’t buy in at all? Might as well be dead. He bent Doreen backwards, but all the time thinking, There has to be a place for me. I love this planet.

Music blared; Jack Bohlen had gotten the tape going.

Doreen pinched him savagely, and he let go of her; he walked from the kitchen, back into the living room, turned down the volume, and said, “Jack, let’s get down to business.”

“Right,” Jack Bohlen agreed.

Coming from the kitchen after him, buttoning her blouse, Doreen made a wide circuit to avoid Manfred, who was down on his hands and knees; the boy had spread out a length of butcher paper and was pasting bits cut from magazines onto it with library paste. Patches of white showed on the rug where he had slopped.

Going up to the boy, Arnie bent down close to him and said, “Do you know who I am, Manfred?”

There was no answer from the boy, nothing to show he had even heard.

“I’m Arnie Kott,” Arnie said. “Why don’t you laugh or smile sometimes, Manfred? Don’t you like to run around and play?” He felt sorry for the boy, sorry and distressed.

Jack Bohlen said in an unsteady, thick voice, “Obviously he doesn’t, Arnie, but that’s not what concerns us here, anyhow.” His gaze was befuddled; the hand that held the glass shook.

But Arnie continued. “What do you see, Manfred? Let us in on what you see.” He waited, but there was only silence. The boy concentrated on his pasting. He had created a collage on the paper: a jagged strip of green, then a perpendicular rise, gray and dense, forbidding.

“What’s it mean?” Arnie said.

“It’s a place,” Jack said. “A building. I brought it along.” He went off, returning with a manila envelope; from it he brought a large crumpled child’s crayon drawing, which he held up for Arnie to examine. “There,” Jack said. “That’s it. You wanted me to establish communication with him; well, I established it.” He had some trouble with the two long words; his tongue seemed to catch.

Arnie, however, did not care how drunk his repairman was. He was accustomed to having his guests tank up; hard liquor was rare on Mars, and when people came upon it, as they did at Arnie’s place, they generally reacted as Jack Bohlen had. What mattered was the task which Jack had been given. Arnie picked up the picture and studied it.

“This it?” he asked Jack. “What else?”

“Nothing else.”

“What about that chamber that slows things down?”

“Nothing,” Jack said.

“Can the boy read the future?”

“Absolutely,” Jack said. “There’s no doubt of it. That picture is proof right there, unless he heard us talking.” Turning to Doreen he said, in a slow, thick voice, “Did he hear us, do you think? No, you weren’t there. It was my dad. I don’t think he heard. Listen, Arnie. You aren’t supposed to see this, but I guess it’s O.K. It’s too late now. This is a picture nobody is supposed to see; this is the way it’s going to be a century from now, when it’s in ruins.”

“What the hell is it?” Arnie said “I can’t read a kid’s nutty drawing; explain it to me.”

“This is AM-WEB,” Jack said. “A big, big housing tract. Thousands of people living there. Biggest on Mars. Only, it’s crumbling into rubble, according to the picture.”

There was silence. Arnie was baffled.

“Maybe you’re not interested,” Jack said.

“Sure I am,” Arnie said angrily. He appealed to Doreen, who stood off to one side, looking pensive. “Do you understand this?”

“No, dear,” she said.

“Jack,” Arnie said, “I called you here for your report. And all I get is this dim-witted drawing. Where is this big housing tract?”

“In the F.D.R. Mountains,” Jack said.

Arnie felt his pulse slow, then with difficulty labor on. “Oh, yeah, I see,” he said. “I understand.”

Grinning, Jack said, “I thought you would. You’re interested in that. You know, Arnie, you think I’m a schizophrenic, and Doreen thinks so, and my father thinks so . . . but I do care what your motives are. I can get you plenty of information about the UN project in the F.D.R. Mountains. What else do you want to know about it? It’s not a power station and it’s not a park. It’s in conjunction with the coop. It’s a multiple-unit, infinitely large structure with supermarkets and bakeries, dead center in the Henry Wallace.”

“You got all this from this kid?”

“No,” Jack said. “From my dad.”

They looked at each other a long time.

“Your dad is a speculator?” Arnie said.

“Yes,” Jack said.

“He just arrived from Earth the other day?”

“Yes,” Jack said.

“Jesus,” Arnie said to Doreen. “Jesus, it’s this guy’s father. And he’s already bought in.”

“Yes,” Jack said.

“Is there anything left?” Arnie said.

Jack shook his head.

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” Arnie said. “And he’s on my payroll. I never had such bad luck.”

Jack said, “I didn’t know until just now that this was what you wanted to find out, Arnie.”

“Yeah, that’s true,” Arnie said. Speaking to Doreen, he said, “I never told him, so it’s not his fault.” He aimlessly picked up the boy’s drawing. “And this is what it’ll look like.”

“Eventually,” Jack said. “Not at first.”

To Manfred, Arnie said, “You did have the information, but we got it from you too late.”

“Too late,” Jack echoed. He seemed to understand; he looked stricken. “Sorry, Arnie. I really am sorry. You should have told me.”

“I don’t blame you,” Arnie said. “We’re still friends, Bohlen. It’s just a case of bad luck. You’ve been completely honest with me; I can see that. Goddamn, it sure is too bad. He’s already filed his claim, your dad? Well, that’s the way it goes.”

“He represents a group of investors,” Jack said hoarsely.

“Naturally,” Arnie said. “With unlimited capital. What could I do anyhow? I can’t compete. I’m just one guy.” To Manfred he said, “All these people--“ He pointed to the drawing. “Are they going to live there, is that it? Is that right, Manfred? Can you see lots of people living there?” His voice rose, out of control.

“Please, Arnie,” Doreen said. “Calm down; I can see how upset you are, and you shouldn’t be.”

Raising his head, Arnie said to her in a low voice, “I don’t see why this kid never laughs.”

The boy suddenly said, “Gubble, gubble.”

“Yeah,” Arnie said, with bitterness. “That’s right. That’s real good communication, kid. Gubble, gubble.” To Jack he said, “You have a fine communication established; I can see that.”

Jack said nothing. Now he looked grim and uneasy.

“I can see it’s going to take a long time more,” Arnie said, “to bring this kid out so we can talk to him. Right? Too bad we can’t continue. I’m not going any further with it.”

“No reason why you should,” Jack said in a leaden voice.

“Right,” Arnie said. “So that’s it. The end of your job.”

Doreen said, “But you can still use him for--“

“Oh, of course,” Arnie said. “I need a skilled repairman anyhow, for stuff like that encoder; I got a thousand items busting down every goddamn day. I just mean this one particular job, here. Send him back to B-G, this kid. AM-WEB. Yeah, the co-op buildings get funny names like that. The coop coming over to Mars! That’s a big outfit, that co-op. They’ll pay high for their land; they’ve got the loot. Tell your dad from me that he’s a shrewd businessman.”

“Can we shake hands, Arnie?” Jack asked.

“Sure, Jack.” Arnie stuck out his hand and the two of them shook, hard and long, looking each other in the eye. “I expect to see a lot of you, Jack. This isn’t the end between you and me; it’s just the beginning.” He let go of Jack Bohlen’s hand, walked back into the kitchen, and stood by himself, thinking.

Presently Doreen joined him. “That was dreadful news for you, wasn’t it?” she said, putting her arm around him.

“Very bad,” Arnie said. “Worst I had in a long time. But I’ll be O.K.; I’m not scared of the co-op movement. Lewistown and the Water Workers were here first, and they’ll be here a lot longer. If I had gotten this project with the Steiner boy started sooner, it would have worked out differently, and I sure don’t blame Jack for that.” But inside him, in his heart, he thought, You were working against me, Jack. All the time. You were working with your father. From the start, too; from the day I hired you.

He returned to the living room. At the tape transport, Jack stood morose and silent, fooling with the knobs.

“Don’t take it hard,” Arnie said to him.

“Thanks, Arnie,” Jack said. His eyes were dull. “I feel I’ve let you down.”

“Not me,” Arnie assured him. “You haven’t let me down, Jack. Because nobody lets me down.”

On the floor, Manfred Steiner pasted away, ignoring them all.

As he flew his father back to the house, leaving the F.D.R. range behind them, Jack thought, Should I show the boy’s picture to Arnie? Should I take it to Lewistown and hand it over to him? It’s so little . . . it just doesn’t look like what I ought to have produced, by now.

He knew that tonight he would have to see Arnie, in any case.

“Very desolate down there,” his dad said, nodding toward the desert below. “Amazing you people have done so much reclamation work; you should all be proud.” But his attention was actually on his maps. He spoke in a perfunctory manner; it was a formality.

Jack snapped on his radio transmitter and called Arnie, at Lewistown. “Excuse me, dad; I have to talk to my boss.”

The radio made a series of noises, which attracted Manf red momentarily; he ceased poring over his drawing and raised his head.

“I’ll take you along,” Jack said to the boy.

Presently he had Arnie. “Hi, Jack.” Arnie’s voice came boomingly. “I been trying to get hold of you. Can you--“

“I’ll be over to see you tonight,” Jack said.

“Not before? How about this afternoon?”

“Afraid tonight is as soon as I can make it,” Jack said. “There--“ He hesitated. “Nothing to show you until tonight.” If I get near him, he thought, I’ll tell him about the UN--co-op project; he’ll get everything out of me. I’ll wait until after my dad’s claim has been filed, and then it won’t matter.

“Tonight, then,” Arnie agreed. “And I’ll be on pins, Jack. Sitting on pins. I know you’re going to come up with something; I got a lot of confidence in you.”

Jack thanked him, said goodbye, and rang off.

“Your boss sounds like a gentleman,” his dad said, after the connection had been broken. “And he certainly looks up to you. I expect you’re of priceless value to his organization, a man with your ability.”

Jack said nothing. Already he felt guilty.

“Draw me a picture,” he said to Manfred, “of how it’s going to go tonight, between me and Mr. Kott.” He took away the paper on which the boy was drawing and handed him a blank piece. “Will you Manfred? You can see ahead to tonight. You, me, Mr. Kott, at Mr. Kott’s place.”

The boy took a blue crayon and began to draw. As he piloted the ‘copter, Jack watched.

With great care, Manfred drew. At first Jack could not make it out. Then he grasped what the scene showed. Two men. One was hitting the other in the eye.

Manfred laughed, a long, high-pitched, nervous laugh, and suddenly hugged the picture against himself.

Feeling cold, Jack turned his attention back to the controls before him. He felt himself perspire, the damp sweat of anxiety. Is that how it’s going to be? he asked, silently, within himself. A fight between me and Arnie? And you will witness it, perhaps . . . or at least know of it, one day.

“Jack,” Leo was saying, “you’ll take me to the abstract company, won’t you? And let me off there? I want to get my papers filed. Can we go right there, instead of back to the house? I have to admit I’m uneasy. There must be local operators who’re watching all this, and I can’t be too careful.”

Jack said, “I can only repeat: it’s immoral, what you’re doing.”

“Just let me handle it,” his father said. “It’s my way of doing business, Jack. I don’t intend to change.”

“Profiteering,” Jack said.

“I won’t argue it with you,” his father said. “It’s none of your concern. If you don’t feel like assisting me, after I’ve come millions of miles from Earth, I guess I can manage to round up public transportation.” His tone was mild, but he had turned red.

“I’ll take you there,” Jack said.

“I can’t stand to be moralized at,” his father said.

Jack said nothing. He turned the ‘copter south, toward the UN buildings at Pax Grove.

Drawing away with his blue crayon, Manfred made one of the two men in his picture, the one who had been hit in the eye, fall down and become dead. Jack saw that, saw the figure become supine and then still. Is that me? he wondered. Or is it Arnie?

Someday--perhaps soon--I will know.

Inside Mr. Kott’s skin were dead bones, shiny and wet. Mr. Kott was a sack of bones, dirty and yet shiny-wet. His head was a skull that took in greens and bit them; inside him the greens became rotten things as something ate them to make them dead.

Jack Bohlen, too, was a dead sack, teeming with gubbish. The outside that fooled almost everyone, it was painted pretty and smelled good, bent down over Miss Anderton, and he saw that; he saw it wanting her in an awful fashion. It poured its wet, sticky self nearer to her and the dead bug words popped from its mouth.

“I love Mozart,” Mr. Kott was saying. “I’ll put this tape on.” He fiddled with the knobs of the amplifier. “Bruno Walter conducting. A great rarity from the golden age of recordings.”

A hideous racket of screeches and shrieks issued from the speakers, like the convulsions of corpses. He shut off the tape transport.

“Sorry,” Arnie Kott muttered.

Wincing at the sound, Jack Bohlen sniffed the woman’s body beside him, saw shiny perspiration on her upper lip where a faint smear of her lipstick made her mouth look cut. He wanted to bite her lips, he wanted to make blood, there. His thumbs wanted to dig into her armpits and make an upward circle so that he worked her breasts, then he would feel they belonged to him to do with what he wanted. He had made them move already; it was fun.

“What a shock,” she said. “You should spare us, Arnie. Your sense of humor--“

“An accident,” Arnie said. He rummaged for another tape.

Reaching out his hand Jack Bohlen touched the woman’s lap. There was no underwear there beneath her skirt. He rubbed her legs and she drew her legs up and turned toward him so that her knees pressed into him; she sat like an animal, crouching in expectation. I can’t wait to get you and me out of here and where we can be alone, Jack thought. God, how I want to feel you, and not through clothing. He closed his fingers around her bare ankle and she yapped with pain, smiling at him.

“Listen, Jack,” Arnie Kott said, turning toward him. “I’m sorry--“ His words were cut off. Jack did not hear the rest. The woman beside him was telling him something. Hurry, she was saying. I can’t wait either. Her breath came in short, brisk hisses from her mouth, and she gazed at him fixedly, her face close to his, her eyes huge, as if she were impaled. Neither of them heard Arnie. The room, now, was silent.

Had he missed something Arnie had said? Jack reached out and took hold of his glass, but there was nothing in it. “We’re out of booze,” he said, setting it back down on the coffee table.

“God sake,” Arnie said. “I got to hear how you’ve done, Jack. Can’t you give me anything?” Talking still, he moved away, from the living room into the kitchen; his voice dimmed. Beside Jack the woman still stared up at him, her mouth weak, as if he were holding her tightly to him, as if she could hardly breathe. We have to get out of this place and be by ourselves, Jack realized. Then, looking around, he saw that they were alone; Arnie had gone out of the room and could no longer see them. In the kitchen he was conversing with his tame Bleekman. And so he was already alone with her.

“Not here,” Doreen said. But her body fluttered, it did not resist him as he squeezed her about the waist; she did not mind being squashed because she wanted to, too. She could not hold back either. “Yes,” she said. “But hurry.” Her nails dug into his shoulders and she shut her eyes tight, moaning and shuddering. “At the side,” she said. “It unbuttons, my skirt.”

Bending over her he saw her languid, almost rotting beauty fall away. Yellow cracks spread through her teeth, and the teeth split and sank into her gums, which in turn became green and dry like leather, and then she coughed and spat up into his face quantities of dust. The Gubbler had gotten her, he realized, before he had been able to. So he let her go. She settled backward, her breaking bones making little sharp splintering sounds.

Her eyes fused over, opaque, and from behind one eye the lashes became the furry, probing feet of a thick-haired insect stuck back there wanting to get out. Its tiny pin-head red eye peeped past the loose rim of her unseeing eye, and then withdrew; after that the insect squirmed, making the dead eye of the woman bulge, and then, for an instant, the insect peered through the lens of her eye, looked this way and that, saw him but was unable to make out who or what he was; it could not fully make use of the decayed mechanism behind which it lived.

Like overripe puff balls, her boobies wheezed as they deflated into flatness, and from their dry interiors, through the web of cracks spreading across them, a cloud of spores arose and drifted up into his face, the smell of mold and age of the Gubbler, who had come and inhabited the inside long ago and was now working his way out to the surface.

The dead mouth twitched and then from deep inside at the bottom of the pipe which was the throat a voice muttered, “You weren’t fast enough.” And then the head fell off entirely, leaving the white pointed stick-like end of the neck projecting.

Jack released her and she folded up into a little dried-up heap of flat, almost transparent plates, like the discarded skin of a snake, almost without weight; he brushed them away from him with his hand. And at the same time, to his surprise, he heard her voice from the kitchen.

“Arnie, I think I’ll go home. I really can’t take much of Manfred; he never stops moving around, never sits still.” Turning his head he saw her in there, with Arnie, standing very close to him. She kissed him on the ear. “Good night, dear,” she said.

“I read about a kid who thought he was a machine,” Arnie said, and then the kitchen door shut; Jack could neither hear nor see them.

Rubbing his forehead he thought, I really am drunk. What’s wrong with me? My mind, splitting. . . he blinked, tried to gather his faculties. On the rug, not far from the couch, Manfred Steiner cut out a picture from a magazine with blunt scissors, smiling to himself; the paper rustled as he cut it, a sound that distracted Jack and made it even more difficult for him to put in focus his wandering attention.

From beyond the kitchen door he heard heavy breathing and then labored, prolonged grunts. What are they doing? he asked himself. The three of them, she and Arnie and the tame Bleekman, together . . . the grunts became slower and then ceased. There was no sound at all.

I wish I was home, Jack said to himself with desperate, utter confusion. I want to get out of here, but how? He felt weak and terribly sick and he remained on the couch, where he was, unable to break away, to move or think.

A voice in his mind said, Gubble gubble gubble, I am gubble gubble gubble gubble.

Stop, he said to it.

Gubble, gubble, gubble, gubble, it answered.

Dust fell on him from the walls. The room creaked with age and dust, rotting around him. Gubble, gubble, gubble, the room said. The Gubbler is here to gubble gubble you and make you into gubbish.

Getting unsteadily to his feet he managed to walk, step by step, over to Arnie’s amplifier and tape recorder. He picked up a reel of tape and got the box open. After several faulty, feeble efforts he succeeded in putting it on the spindle of the transport.

The door to the kitchen opened a crack, and an eye watched him; he could not tell whose it was.

I have to get out of here, Jack Bohlen said to himself. Or fight it off; I have to break this, throw it away from me or be eaten.

It is eating me up.

He twisted the volume control convulsively so that the music blared up and deafened him, roared through the room, spilling over the walls, the furniture, lashing at the ajar kitchen door, attacking everyone and everything in sight.

The kitchen door fell forward, its hinges breaking; it crashed over and a thing came hurriedly sideways from the kitchen, dislodged into belated activity by the roar of the music. The thing scrabbled up to him and past him, feeling for the volume control knob. The music ebbed.

But he felt better. He felt sane, once more, thank God.

Jack Bohlen dropped his father off at the abstract office and then, with Manfred, flew on to Lewistown, to Doreen Anderton’s apartment.

When she opened the door and saw him she said, “What is it, Jack?” She quickly held the door open and he and Manfred went on inside.

“It’s going to be very bad tonight,” he told her.

“Are you sure?” She seated herself across from him. “Do you have to go at all? Yes, I suppose so. But maybe you’re wrong.”

Jack said, “Manfred has already told me. He’s already seen it.”

“Don’t be scared,” Doreen said softly.

“But I am,” he said.

“_Why_ will it be bad?”

“I don’t know. Manfred couldn’t tell me that.”

“But--“ She gestured. “You’ve made contact with him; that’s wonderful. That’s what Arnie wants.”

“I hope you’ll be there,” Jack said.

“Yes, I’ll be there. But--there’s not much I can do. Is my opinion worth anything? Because I’m positive that Arnie will be pleased; I think you’re having an anxiety attack for no reason.”

“It’s the end,” Jack said, “between me and Arnie--tonight. I know it, and I don’t know why.” He felt sick to his stomach. “It almost seems to me that Manfred does more than know the future; in some way he controls it, he can make it come out the worst possible way because that’s what seems natural to him, that’s how he sees reality. It’s as if by being around him we’re sinking into his reality. It’s starting to seep over us and replace our own way of viewing things, and the kind of events we’re accustomed to see come about now somehow don’t come about. It’s not natural for me to feel this way; I’ve never had this feeling about the future before.”

He was silent, then.

“You’ve been around him too much,” Doreen said. “Tendencies in you that are--“ She hesitated. “Unstable tendencies, Jack. Allied to his; you were supposed to draw him into our world, the shared reality of our society. . . instead, hasn’t he drawn you into his own? I don’t think there’s any precognition; I think it’s been a mistake from the start. It would be better if you got out of it, if you left that boy--“ She glanced toward Manfred, who had gone to the window of her apartment to stare out at the street below. “If you didn’t have anything more to do with him.”

“It’s too late for that,” Jack said.

“You’re not a psychotherapist or a doctor,” Doreen said. “It’s one thing for Milton Glaub to be in close contact day after day with autistic and schizophrenic persons, but you-- you’re a repairman who blundered into this because of a crazy impulse on Arnie’s part; you just happened to be there in the same room with him fixing his encoder and so you wound up with this. You shouldn’t be so passive, Jack. You’re letting your life be shaped by chance, and for God’s sake-- don’t you recognize that passivity for what it is?”

After a pause he said, “I suppose I do.”

“Say it.”

He said, “There’s a tendency for a schizophrenic individual to be passive; I know that.”

“Be decisive; don’t go any further with this. Call Arnie and tell him you’re simply not competent to handle Manfred. He should be back at Camp B-G where Milton Glaub can work with him. They can build that slowed-down chamber there; they were starting to, weren’t they?”

“They’ll never get around to it. They’re talking about importing the equipment from Home; you know what that means.”

“And you’ll never get around to it,” Doreen said, “because, long before you do, you’ll have cracked up mentally. I can look into the future too; you know what I see? I see you having a much more serious collapse than ever before; I see--total psychological collapse for you, Jack, if you keep working on this. Already you’re being mauled by acute schizophrenic anxiety, by _panic_--isn’t that so? Isn’t it?”

He nodded.

“I saw that in my brother,” Doreen said. “Schizophrenic panic, and once you see it break out in a person, you can never forget it. The collapse of their reality around them . . . the collapse of their perceptions of time and space, cause and effect . . . and isn’t that what’s happening to you? You’re talking as if this meeting with Arnie can’t be altered by anything you do--and that’s a deep regression on your part from adult responsibility and maturity; that’s not like you at all.” Breathing deeply, her chest rising and falling painfully, she went on, “I’ll call Arnie and tell him you’re pulling out, and he’ll have to get someone else to finish with Manfred. And I’ll tell him that you’ve made no progress, that it’s pointless for you and for him to continue with this. I’ve seen Arnie get these whims before; he keeps them percolating for a few days or weeks, and then he forgets them. He can forget this.”

Jack said, “He won’t forget this one.”

“Try,” she said.

“No,” he said. “I have to go there tonight and give him my progress report. I said I would; I owe it to him.”

“You’re a damn fool,” Doreen said.

“I know it,” Jack said. “But not for the reason you think. I’m a fool because I took on a job without looking ahead to its consequences. I--“ He broke off. “Maybe it is what you said. I’m not competent to work with Manfred. That’s it, period.”

“But you’re still going ahead. What do you have to show Arnie tonight? Show it to me, right now.”

Getting out a manila envelope, Jack reached into it and drew out the picture of the buildings which Manfred had drawn. For a long time Doreen studied it. And then she handed it back to him.

“That’s an evil and sick drawing,” she said in a voice almost inaudible. “I know what it is. It’s the Tomb World, isn’t it? That’s what he’s drawn. The world after death. And that’s what he sees, and through him, that’s what you’re beginning to see. You want to take that to Arnie? You have lost your grip on reality; do you think Arnie wants to see an abomination like that? Burn it.”

“It’s not that bad,” he said, deeply perturbed by her reaction.

“Yes, it is,” Doreen said. “And it’s a dreadful sign that it doesn’t strike you that way. Did it at first?”

He had to nod yes.

“Then you know I’m right,” she said.

“I have to go on,” he said. “I’ll see you at his place tonight.” Going over to the window, he tapped Manfred on the shoulder. “We have to go, now. We’ll see this lady tonight, and Mr. Kott, too.”

“Goodbye, Jack,” Doreen said, accompanying him to the door. Her large dark eyes were heavy with despair. “There’s nothing I can say to stop you; I can see that. You’ve changed. You’re so less--alive--now than you were just a day or so ago . . . do you know that?”

“No,” he said. “I didn’t realize that.” But he was not surprised to hear it; he could feel it, hanging heavy over his limbs, choking his heart. Leaning toward her, he kissed her on her full, good-tasting lips. “I’ll see you tonight.”

She stood at the doorway, silently watching him and the boy go.

In the time remaining before evening, Jack Bohlen decided to drop by the Public School and pick up his son. There, in that place which he dreaded before any other, he would find out if Doreen were right; he would learn if his morale and ability to distinguish reality from the projections of his own unconscious had been impaired or not. For him, the Public School was the crucial location. And, as he directed his Yee Company ‘copter toward it, he felt deep within himself that he would be capable of handling a second visit there.

He was violently curious, too, to see Manfred’s reaction to the place, and to its simulacra, the teaching machines. For some time now he had had an abiding hunch that Manfred, confronted by the School’s Teachers, would show a significant response, perhaps similar to his own, perhaps totally opposite. In any case the reaction would be there; he was positive of that.

But then he thought resignedly, Isn’t it too late? Isn’t the job over, hasn’t Arnie cancelled it because it doesn’t matter?

Haven’t I already been to his place tonight? What time is it?

He thought in fright, I’ve lost all sense of time.

“We’re going to the Public School,” he murmured to Manfred. “Do you like that idea? See the school where David goes.”

The boy’s eyes gleamed with anticipation. Yes, he seemed to be saying. I’d like that. Let’s go.

“O.K.,” Jack said, only with great difficulty managing to operate the controls of the ‘copter; he felt as if he were at the bottom of a great stagnant sea, struggling merely to breathe, almost unable to move. But why?

He did not know. He went on, as best he could.