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 ski

"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 a

(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 unca

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 fla