Martian Time Slip

An hour or so later he found himself wandering along an unfamiliar street in Burlingame. He did not remember the intervening time and he did not know how he had gotten where he was. His legs ached. Evidently he had walked, mile after mile.

His head was much clearer. I'm schizophrenic, he said to himself. I know it. Everyone knows the Symptoms; it's catatonic excitement with paranoid coloring: the mental health people drill it into us, even into the school kids. I'm another one of those. That was what the personnel manager was probing.

I need medical help.

As Jack removed the power supply of the Angry Janitor and laid it on the floor, the master circuit of the school said, "You are very skillful."

Jack glanced up at the middle-aged female figure and thought to himself, It's obvious why this place unnerves me. It's like my psychotic experience of years ago. _Did I, at that time, look into the future?_

There had been no schools of this kind, then. Or if there had, he had not seen them or known about them.

"Thank you," he said.

What had tormented him ever since the psychotic episode with the personnel manager at Corona Corporation was this: suppose it was not a hallucination? Suppose the so-called personnel manager was as he had seen him, an artificial construct, a machine like these teaching machines?

If that had been the case, _then there was no psychosis_.

Instead of a psychosis, he had thought again and again, it was more on the order of a vision, a glimpse of absolute reality, with the façade stripped away. And it was so crushing, so radical an idea, that it could not be meshed with his ordinary views. And the mental disturbance had come out of that.

Reaching into the exposed wiring of the Angry Janitor, Jack felt expertly with his long fingers until at last he touched what he knew to be there: a broken lead. "I think I've got hold of it," he said to the master circuit of the school. Thank God, he thought, these aren't the old-fashioned printed circuits; were that that the case, he would have to replace the unit. Repair would be impossible.

"My understanding," the master circuit said, "is that much effort went into the designing of the Teachers re problems of repair. We have been fortunate so far; no prolonged interruption of service has taken place. However, I believe that preventive maintenance is indicated wherever possible; therefore I would like you to inspect one additional Teacher which has as yet shown no signs of a breakdown. It is uniquely vital to the total functioning of the school." The master circuit paused politely as Jack struggled to get the long tip of the soldering gun past the layers of wiring. "It is Kindly Dad which I want you to inspect."

Jack said, "Kindly Dad." And he thought acidly, I wonder if there's an Aunt Mom in here somewhere. Aunt Mom's delicious home-baked tall tales for little tots to imbibe. He felt nauseated.

"You are familiar with that Teacher?"

As a matter of fact he was not; David hadn't mentioned it.

From farther down the corridor he could hear the children still discussing life with the Whitlock; their voices reached him as he lay on his back, holding the soldering gun above his head and reaching into the works of the Angry Janitor to keep the tip in place.

"Yes," the Whitlock was saying in its never-ruffled, absolutely placid voice, "the raccoon is an amazing fellow, ol' Jimmy Raccoon is. Many times I've seen him. And he's quite a large fellow, by the way, with powerful, long arms which are really quite agile."

"I saw a raccoon once," a child piped excitedly. "Mr. Whitlock, I saw one, and he was this close to me!"

Jack thought, You saw a raccoon on Mars?

The Whitlock chuckled. "No, Don, I'm afraid not. There aren't any raccoons around here. You'd have to go all the way across over to old mother Earth to see one of those amazing fellows. But the point I'd like to make is this, boys and girls. You know how ol' Jimmy Raccoon takes his food, and carries it oh so stealthily to the water, and washes it? And how we laughed at old' Jimmy when the lump of sugar dissolved and he had nothing at all left to eat? Well, boys and girls, do you know that we've got Jimmy Raccoons right here in this very--"

"I think I'm finished," Jack said, withdrawing the gun. "Do you want to help me put this back together?"

The master circuit said, "Are you in a rush?"

"I don't like that thing talking away in there," Jack said. It made him tense and shaky, so much so that he could hardly do his work.

A door rolled shut, down the corridor from them; the sound of the Whitlock's voice ceased. "Is that better?" the master circuit asked.

"Thanks," Jack said. But his hands were still shaking. The master circuit noted that; he was aware of her precise scrutiny. He wondered what she made of it.