The phone rang. Doreen, who was closest, answered it. She handed it to Arnie. “For you. A man.”
It was Dr. Glaub again. “Mr. Kott,” Dr. Glaub said in a thin, unnatural voice, “it is essential to my integrity to protect my patients. Two can play at this bullying game. As you know, your out-of-wedlock child Sam Esterhazy is at Camp B-G, where I am in attendance.”
Arnie groaned.
“If you do not treat Jack Bohlen fairly,” Glaub continued, “if you apply your inhumane, cruel, aggressive, domineering tactics on him, I will retaliate by discharging Sam Esterhazy from Camp B-G on the grounds that he is mentally retarded. Is that comprehended?”
“Oh, Christ, anything you say,” Arnie groaned. “I'll talk to you about it tomorrow. Go to bed or something. Take a pill. Just get off me.” He slammed down the phone.
The tape on the tape transport had reached its end; the music had ceased a long time ago. Arnie stalked over to his tape library and snatched up a box at random. That doctor, he said to himself. I'll get him, but not now. No time now. There must be something the matter with him; he must have some wild hair up his bung.
Examining the box he read:
W. A. Mozart, Symphony 40 in G mol., K. 550W. A. Mozart, Symphony 40 in G mol., K. 550
“I love Mozart,” he said to Doreen, Jack Bohlen, and the Steiner boy. “I'll put this on.” He removed the reel of tape from the box and put it on the transport; he fiddled with the knobs of the amplifier until he could hear the hiss of the tape as it passed through the head. “Bruno Walter conducting,” he told his guests. “A great rarity from the golden age of recordings.”
A hideous racket of screeches and shrieks issued from the speakers. Noises like the convulsions of the dead, Arnie thought in horror. He ran to shut off the tape transport.
Seated on the carpet, snipping pictures from the magazines with his scissors and pasting them into new configurations, Manfred Steiner heard the noise and glanced up. He saw Mr. Kott hurry to the tape machine to shut it off. How blurred Mr. Kott became, Manfred noticed. It was hard to see him when he moved so swiftly; it was as if in some way he had managed to disappear from the room and then reappear in another spot. The boy felt frightened.
The noise, too, frightened him. He looked to the couch where Mr. Bohlen sat, to see if he were upset. But Mr. Bohlen remained where he was with Doreen Anderton, interlinked with her in a fashion that made the boy cringe with concern. How could two people stand being so close? It was, to Manfred, as if their separate identities had flowed together, and the idea that such a muddling could be terrified him. He pretended not to see; he saw past them, at the safe, unblended wall.
The voice of Mr. Kott broke over the boy, harsh and jagged tones that he did not understand. Then Doreen Anderton spoke, and then Jack Bohlen; they were all chattering in a chaos, now, and the boy clapped his hands to his ears. All at once, without warning of any kind, Mr. Kott shot across the room and vanished entirely.
Where had he gone? No matter where he looked the boy could not find him. He began to tremble, wondering what was going to happen. And then he saw, to his bewilderment, that Mr. Kott had reappeared in the room where the food was; he was chattering to the dark figure there.
The dark figure, with rhythmic grace, ebbed from his spot on top of the high stool, flowed step by step across the room and got a glass from the cabinet. Awed by the movement of the man, Manfred looked directly at him, and at that moment the dark man looked back, meeting his gaze.
“You must die,” the dark man said to him in a far-off voice. “Then you will be reborn. Do you see, child? There is nothing for you as you are now, because something went wrong and you cannot see or hear or feel. No one can help you. Do you see, child?”
“Yes,” Manfred said.
The dark figure glided to the sink, put some powder and water into the glass, presented it to Mr. Kott, who drank down the contents, chattering all the while. How beautiful the dark figure was. Why can't I be like that? Manfred thought. No one else looked like that.
His glimpse, his contact with the shadow-like man, was cut off. Doreen Anderton had passed between them as she ran into the kitchen and began talking in high-pitched tones. Once more Manfred put his hands to his ears, but he could not shut out the noise.
He looked ahead, to escape. He got away from the sound and the harsh, blurred comings and goings.
Ahead of him a mountain path stretched out. The sky overhead was heavy and red, and then he saw dots: hundreds of gigantic specks that grew and came closer. Things rained down from them, men with unnatural thoughts. The men struck the ground and dashed about in circles. They drew lines, and then great things like slugs landed, one after another, without thoughts of any sort, and began digging.
He saw a hole as large as a world; the earth disappeared and became black, empty, and nothing…. Into the hole the men jumped one by one, until none of them were left. He was alone, with the silent world-hole.
At the rim of the hole he peeped down. At the bottom, in the nothing, a twisted creature unwound as if released. It snaked up, became wide, contained square space, and grew color.
I am in you, Manfred thought. Once again.
A voice said, “He has been here at AM-WEB longer than anyone else. He was here when the rest of us came. He is extremely old.”
“Does he like it?”
“Who knows? He can't walk or feed himself. The records were lost in that fire. Possibly he's two hundred years old. They amputated his limbs and of course most of his internal organs were taken out on entry. Mostly he complains about hay fever.”
No, Manfred thought. I can't stand it; my nose burns. I can't breathe. Is this the start of life, what the dark shadow-figure promised? A new beginning where I will be different and someone can help me?
Please help me, he said. I need someone, anyone. I can't wait here forever; it must be done soon or not at all. If it is not done I will grow and become the world-hole, and the hole will eat up everything.
The hole, beneath AM-WEB, waited to be all those who walked above, or had ever walked above; it waited to be everyone and everything. And only Manfred Steiner held it back.
Setting down his empty glass, Jack Bohlen felt the coming apart of every piece of his body. “We're out of booze,” he managed to say to the girl beside him.
To him, Doreen said in a rapid whisper, “Jack, you must remember, you've got friends. I'm your friend, Dr. Glaub called—he's your friend.” She looked into his face anxiously. “Will you be O.K.?”
“God sake,” Arnie yelled. “I got to hear how you've done, Jack. Can't you give me anything?” With envy he faced the two of them; Doreen drew away from Jack imperceptibly. “Are you two just going to sit there necking and whispering? I don't feel good.” He left them, then, going into the kitchen.
Leaning toward Jack until her lips almost touched his, Doreen whispered, “I love you.”
He tried to smile at her. But his face had become stiff; it would not yield. “Thanks,” he said, wanting her to know how much it meant to him. He kissed her on the mouth. Her lips were warm, soft with love; they gave what they had to him, holding nothing back.
Her eyes full of tears, she said, “I feel you sliding away farther and farther into yourself again.”
“No,” he said. “I'm O.K.” But it was not so; he knew it.
“Gubble gubble,” the girl said.
Jack closed his eyes. I can't get away, he thought. It has closed over me completely.
When he opened his eyes he found that Doreen had gotten up from the couch and was going into the kitchen. Voices, hers and Arnie's, drifted to him where he sat.
“Gubble gubble gubble.”
“Gubble.”
Turning toward the boy who sat snipping at his magazines on the rug, Jack said to him, “Can you hear me? Can you understand me?”
Manfred glanced up and smiled.
“Talk to me,” Jack said. “Help me.”
There was no response.
> Getting to his feet, Jack made his way to the tape recorder; he began inspecting it, his back to the room. Would I be alive now, he asked himself, if I had listened to Dr. Glaub? If I hadn't come here, had let him represent me? Probably not. Like the earlier attack: it would have happened anyhow. It is a process which must unfold; it must work itself out to its conclusion.
The next he knew he was standing on a black, empty sidewalk. The room, the people around him, were gone; he was alone.
Buildings, gray, upright surfaces on both sides. Was this AM-WEB? He looked about frantically. Lights, here and there; he was in a town, and now he recognized it as Lewistown. He began to walk.
“Wait,” a voice, a woman's voice, called.
From the entrance of a building a woman in a fur wrap hurried, her high heels striking the pavement and setting up echoes. Jack stopped.
“It didn't go so bad after all,” she said, catching up with him, out of breath. “Thank God it's over; you were so tense—I felt it all evening. Arnie is dreadfully upset by the news about the co-op; they're so rich and powerful, they make him feel so little.”
Together, they walked in no particular direction, the girl holding on to his arm.
“And he did say,” she said, “that he's going to keep you on as his repairman; I'm positive he means it. He's sore, though, Jack. All the way through him. I know; I can tell.”
He tried to remember, but he could not.
“Say something,” Doreen begged.
After a bit he said, “He—would make a bad enemy.”
“I'm afraid that's so.” She glanced up into his face. “Shall we go to my place? Or do you want to stop somewhere and get a drink?”
“Let's just walk,” Jack Bohlen said.
“Do you still love me?”
“Of course,” he said.
“Are you afraid of Arnie? He may try to get revenge on you, for—he doesn't understand about your father; he thinks that on some level you must have—” She shook her head. “Jack, he will try to get back at you; he does blame you. He's so goddamn primitive.”
“Yes,” Jack said.
“Say something,” Doreen said. “You're just like wood, like you're not alive. Was it so terrible? It wasn't, was it? You seemed to pull yourself together.”
With effort he said, “I'm—not afraid of what he'll do.”
“Would you leave your wife for me, Jack? You said you loved me. Maybe we could emigrate back to Earth, or something.”
Together, they wandered on.
13
For Otto Zitte it was as if life had once more opened up; since Norb Steiner's death he moved about Mars as in the old days, making his deliveries, selling, meeting people face to face and gabbing with them.
And, most particularly, he had already encountered several good-looking women, lonely housewives stranded out in the desert in their homes day after day, yearning for companionship…so to speak.
So far he had not been able to call at Mrs. Silvia Bohlen's house. But he knew exactly where it was; he had marked it on his map.
Today he intended to go there.
For the occasion he put on his best suit: a single-breasted gray English sharkskin suit he had not worn for years. The shoes, regrettably, were local, and so was the shirt. But the tie: ah. It had just arrived from New York, the latest in bright, cheerful colors; it divided at the bottom into a wild fork shape. Holding it up before him he admired it. Then he put it on and admired it there, too.
His long dark hair shone. He felt happy and confident. This day begins it all afresh for me, with a woman like Silvia, he said to himself as he put on his wool topcoat, picked up his suitcases, and marched from the storage shed—now made over into truly comfortable living quarters—to the ’copter.
In a great soaring arc he lifted the ’copter into the sky and turned it east. The bleak F.D.R. Mountains fell away behind him; he passed over the desert, saw at last the George Washington Canal by which he oriented himself. Following it, he approached the smaller canal system which branched from it, and soon he was above the junction of the William Butler Yeats and the Herodotus, near which the Bohlens lived.
Both those women, he ruminated, are attractive, that June Henessy and Silvia Bohlen, but of the two of them, Silvia's more to my liking; she has that sleepy, sultry quality that a deeply emotional woman always has. June is too pert and frisky; that kind talks on and on, sort of wiseguy-like. I want a woman who's a good listener.
He recalled the trouble he had gotten into before. Wonder what her husband's like, he wondered. Must inquire. A lot of these men take the pioneer life seriously, especially the ones living far out from town; keep guns in their houses and so forth.
However, that was the risk one ran, and it was worth it.
Just in case trouble did occur, Otto Zitte had a gun of his own, a small pistol, .22 caliber, which he kept in a hidden side-pocket of one of his suitcases. It was there now, and fully loaded.
Nobody messes around with me, he said to himself. If they want trouble—they'll soon find it.
Cheered by that thought, he dipped his ’copter, scouted out the land below—there was no ’copter parked at the Bohlen house—and prepared to land.
It was innate caution which caused him to park the ’copter over a mile from the Bohlen house, at the entrance of a service canal. From there he hiked on foot, willing to endure the weight of the suitcase; there was no alternative. A number of houses stood between him and the Bohlen place, but he did not pause to knock at any door; he went directly along the canal without halting.
When he neared the Bohlen place he slowed, regaining his wind. He eyed the nearby houses carefully…from the one right next door there came the racket of small children. People home, there. So he approached the Bohlen place from the opposite side, walking silently and in a line which kept him entirely hidden from the house where he heard the children's voices.
He arrived, stepped up on the porch, rang the bell.
Someone peeped out at him from behind the red drapes of the living-room window. Otto maintained a formal, correct smile on his face, one that would do in any eventuality.
The front door opened; there stood Silvia Bohlen, with her hair expertly done, lipstick, wearing a jersey sweater and tight pink capri pants, sandals on her feet. Her toenails were painted a bright scarlet; he noticed that from the corner of his eye. Obviously, she had fixed herself up in expectation of his visit. However, she of course assumed a bland, detached pose; she regarded him in aloof silence, holding on to the door knob.
“Mrs. Bohlen,” he said in his most intimate tone of voice. Bowing, he said, “Passage across barren miles of desert wastelands finds its just reward in seeing you once more at last. Would you be interested in seeing our special in kangaroo-tail soup? It is incredible and delightful, a food never before available on Mars at any price. I have come straight here to you with it, seeing that you are qualified in judging fine foods and can discriminate the worthy without consulting the expense.” And all this time, as he reeled off his set speech, he edged himself and his wares toward the open door.
A trifle stiffly and hesitantly, Silvia said, “Uh, come in.” She let the door swing freely open, and he at once passed on inside and laid his suitcases on the floor by the low table in the living room.
A boy's bow and quiver of arrows caught his eye. “Is your young son about?” he inquired.
“No,” Silvia said, moving edgily about the room with her arms folded before her. “He's at the school today.” She tried to smile. “And my father-in-law went into town; he won't be home until very late.”
Well, Otto thought; I see.
“Please be seated,” he urged her. “So that I may display to you properly, don't you agree?” In one motion, he moved a chair, and Silvia perched on the edge of it, her arms still hugged about her, lips pressed together. How tense she is, he observed. It was a good sign because it meant that she was fully aware of the meaning of all that went on, his visit here, the absence o
f her son, the fact that she had carefully closed the front door; the living-room drapes still shut, he noticed.
Silvia blurted out, “Would you like coffee?” She bolted from her chair and dived into the kitchen. A moment later she reappeared with a tray on which was a pot of coffee, sugar, cream, two china cups.
“Thank you,” he purred. During her absence he had drawn another chair up beside hers.
They drank coffee.
“Are you not frightened to live out here alone so much of the time?” he asked. “In this desolate region?”
She glanced at him sideways. “Golly, I guess I'm used to it.”
“What part of Earth are you from originally?”
“St. Louis.”
“It is much different here. A new, freer life. Where one can cast off the shackles and be oneself; do you agree? The old mores and customs, an antiquated Old World, best forgotten in its own dust. Here—” He glanced about the living room, with its commonplace furnishings; he had seen such chairs, carpeting, bric-a-brac hundreds of times, in similar homes. “Here we see the clash of the extraordinary, the pulse, Mrs. Bohlen, of opportunity which strikes the brave person only once—once—in his lifetime.”
“What else do you have beside kangaroo-tail soup?”
“Well,” he said, frowning inwardly, “quail eggs; very good. Real cow butter. Sour cream. Smoked oysters. Here—you please bring forth ordinary soda crackers and I will supply the butter and caviar, as a treat.” He smiled at her, and was rewarded by a spontaneous, beaming smile in return; her eyes sparkled with anticipation and she hopped impulsively to her feet to go scampering, like a little child, to the kitchen.
Presently they sat together, huddled over the table, scraping the black, oily fish eggs from the tiny jar onto crackers.
“There's nothing like genuine caviar,” Silvia said, sighing. “I only had it once before in my life, at a restaurant in San Francisco.”
“Observe what else I have.” From his suitcase he produced a bottle. “Green Hungarian, from the Buena Vista Winery in California; the oldest winery in that state!”