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 ca

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 ru

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 u

"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 Weizma

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.