Martian Time Slip

"That affects you a lot, doesn't it?" she said.

Jack said, "No job. Arnie had bought my contract." He looked around. "Where's Leo?"

"Taking his nap. He's been gone most of the day, on business. I'm glad you got home before he goes; he's leaving for Earth tomorrow, he said. Did you know that the UN has started taking the land in the F.D.R. range already? I heard that on the radio, too."

"I didn't know," Jack said, going into the kitchen and seating himself at the table. "How about some iced tea?"

As she fixed the iced tea for him she said, "I guess I shouldn't ask you how serious this job business is."

Jack said, "I can get on with almost any repair outfit. Mr. Yee would take me back, as a matter of fact. I'm sure he didn't want to part with my contract in the first place."

"Then why are you so despondent?" she said, and then she remembered about Arnie.

"It's a mile and a half from where that tractor-bus let me off," he said. "I'm just tired."

"I didn't expect you home." She felt on edge, and it was difficult for her to return to preparing di

"That's fine about the cake," Jack murmured.

Silvia burst out, "I wish you would tell me what's the matter--I've never seen you like this. You're not just tired; it must be that man's death."

Presently, he said, "I was thinking of something Arnie said before he died. I was there with him. Arnie said he wasn't in a real world; he was in the fantasy of a schizophrenic, and that's been preying on my mind. It never occurred to me before how much our world is like Manfred's--I thought they were absolutely distinct. Now I see that it's more a question of degree."

"You don't want to tell me about Mr. Kott's death, do you? The radio just said he was killed in a 'copter accident in the rugged terrain of the F. D. R. Mountains."

"It was no accident. Arnie was murdered by an individual who had it in for him, no doubt because he was mistreated and had a legitimate grudge. The police are looking for him now, naturally. Arnie died thinking it was senseless, psychotic hate that was directed at him, but actually it was probably very rational hate with no psychotic elements in it at all."

With overwhelming guilt, Silvia thought, The kind of hate you'd feel for me if you knew what awful thing I plunged into today. "Jack--" she said clumsily, not sure how to put it, but feeling she had to ask. "Do you think our marriage is finished?"

He stared at her along, long time. "Why do you say that?"

"I just want to hear you say it isn't."

"It isn't," he said, still staring at her; she felt exposed, as if he could read her mind, as if he knew somehow exactly what she had done. "Is there any reason to think it is? Why do you imagine I came home? If we had no marriage, would I have shown up here today after--" He was silent, then. "I'd like my iced tea," he murmured.

"After what?" she asked.

He said, "After Arnie's death."

"Where else would you go?"

"A person can always find two places to choose from. Home, and the rest of the world with all the other people in it."

Silvia said, "What's she like?"

"Who?"

"The girl. You almost said it, just now."

He did not answer for such a long time that she did not think he was going to. And then he said, "She has red hair. I almost stayed with her. But I didn't. Isn't that enough for you to know?"

"There's a choice for me, too," Silvia said.

"I didn't know that," he said woodenly. "I didn't realize." He shrugged. "Well, it's good to realize; it's sobering. You're not speaking about theory, now, are you? You're speaking about concrete reality."

"That's correct," Silvia said.

David came ru

"They're going swell," Jack said.

Silvia said to him, "Jack, I'd like for us to go on. If you want to."

"Sure," he said. "You know that, I'm back here again." He smiled at her so forlornly that it almost broke her heart. "I came a long way, first on that no-good damn tractor-bus, which I hate, and then on foot."

"There won't be any more," Silvia said, "of--other choices, will there, Jack? It really has to be that way."

"No more," he said, nodding emphatically.

She went over to the table, then, and bending, kissed him on the forehead.

"Thanks," he said, taking hold of her by the wrist. "That feels good." She could feel his fatigue; it traveled from him into her.

"You need a good meal," she said. "I've never seen you so--crushed." It occurred to her, then, that he might have had a new bout with his mental illness from the past, his schizophrenia; that would go far in explaining things. But she did not want to press him on the subject; instead, she said, "We'll go to bed early tonight, O.K.?"

He nodded in a vague fashion, sipping his iced tea.

"Are you glad now?" she asked. "That you came back here?" Or have you changed your mind? she wondered.

"I'm glad," he said, and his tone was strong and firm. Obviously he meant it.

"You get to see Grandfather Leo before he goes--" she began.

A scream made her jump, turn to face Jack.

He was on his feet. "Next door. The Steiner house." He pushed past her; they both ran outside.

At the front door of the Steiner house one of the Steiner girls met them. "My brother--"

She and Jack pushed past the child, and into the house. Silvia did not understand what she saw, but Jack seemed to; he took hold of her hand, stopped her from going any farther.

The living room was filled with Bleekmen. And in their midst she saw part of a living creature, an old man only from the chest on up; the rest of him became a tangle of pumps and hoses and dials, machinery that clicked away, unceasingly active. It kept the old man alive; she realized that in an instant. The missing portion of him had been replaced by it. Oh, God, she thought. Who or what was it, sitting there with a smile on its withered face? Now it spoke to them.

"Jack Bohlen," it rasped, and its voice issued from a mechanical speaker, out of the machinery: not from its mouth. "I am here to say goodbye to my mother." It paused, and she heard the machinery speed up, as if it were laboring. "Now I can thank you," the old man said.

Jack, standing by her, holding her hand, said. "For what? I didn't do anything for you."

"Yes, I think so." The thing seated there nodded to the Bleekmen, and they pushed it and its machinery closer to Jack and straightened it so that it faced him directly. "In my opinion..."It lapsed into silence and then it resumed, more loudly, now. "You tried to communicate with me, many years ago. I appreciate that."

"It wasn't long ago," Jack said. "Have you forgotten? You came back to us; it was just today. This is your distant past, when you were a boy."

She said to her husband, "_Who is it?_"

"Manfred."

Putting her hands to her face she covered her eyes; she could not bear to look any longer.

"Did you escape AM-WEB?" Jack asked it.

"Yesss," it hissed, with a gleeful tremor. "I am with my friends." It pointed to the Bleekmen who surrounded it.

"Jack," Silvia said, "take me out of here--please, I can't stand it." She clung to him, and he then led her from the Steiner house, out once more into the evening darkness.

Both Leo and David met them, agitated and frightened. "Say, son," Leo said, "what happened? What was that woman screaming about?"

Jack said, "It's all over. Everything's O.K." To Silvia he said, "She must have run outside. She didn't understand, at first."

Shivering, Silvia said, "I don't understand either and I don't want to; don't try to explain it to me." She returned to the stove, turning down the burners, looking into pots to see what had burned.

"Don't worry," Jack said, patting her.

She tried to smile.

"It probably won't happen again," Jack said. "But even if it does--"

"Thanks," she said. "I thought when I first saw him that it was his father, Norbert Steiner; that's what frightened me so.',

"We'll have to get a flashlight and hunt around for Erna Steiner," Jack said. "We want to be sure she's all right."

"Yes," she said. "You and Leo go and do that while I finish here; I have to stay with the di

The two men, with a flashlight, left the house. David stayed with her, helping her set the table. Where will you be? she wondered as she watched her son. When you're old like that, all hacked away and replaced by machinery... . Will you be like that, too?

We are better off not being able to look ahead, she said to herself. Thank God we can't see.

"I wish I could have gone out," David was complaining. "Why can't you tell me what it was that made Mrs. Steiner yell like that?"

Silvia said, "Maybe someday."

But not now, she said to herself. It is too soon, for any of us.

Di

In the darkness of the Martian night her husband and father-in-law searched for Erna Steiner; their light flashed here and there, and their voices could be heard, businesslike and competent and patient.