Martian Time Slip

However, the Israeli field perso

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 a

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. A

"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 ru

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."