Martian Time Slip

The chamber in which Kindly Dad sat consisted of one end of a living room with fireplace, couch, coffee table, curtained picture window, and an easy chair in which Kindly Dad himself sat, a newspaper open on his lap. Several children sat attentively on the couch as Jack Bohlen and the master circuit entered; they were listening to the expostulations of the teaching machine and did not seem aware that anyone had come in. The master circuit dismissed the children, and then she started to leave, too.

"I'm not sure what you want me to do," Jack said.

"Put it through its cycle. It seems to me that it repeats portions of the cycle or stays stuck; in any case, too much time is consumed. It should return to its starting stage in about three hours." A door opened for the master circuit, and she was gone; he was alone with Kindly Dad and he was not glad of it.

"Hi, Kindly Dad," he said without enthusiasm. Setting down his tool case he began unscrewing the back plate of the Teacher.

Kindly Dad said in a warm, sympathetic voice, "What's your name, young fellow?"

"My name," Jack said, as he unfastened the plate and laid it down beside him, "is Jack Bohlen, and I'm a kindly dad, too, just like you, Kindly Dad. My boy is ten years old, Kindly Dad. So don't call me young fellow, O.K.?" Again he was trembling hard, and sweating.

"Ohh," Kindly Dad said. "I see!"

"What do you see?" Jack said, and discovered that he was almost shouting. "Look," he said. "Go through your goddamn cycle, O.K.? If it makes it easier for you, go ahead and pretend I'm a little boy." I just want to get this done and get out of here, he said to himself, with as little trouble as possible. He could feel the swelling, complicated emotions inside him. Three hours! he thought dismally.

Kindly Dad said, "Little Jackie, it seems to me you've got a mighty heavy weight on your chest today. Am I right?"

"Today and every day." Jack clicked on his trouble-light and shone it up into the works of the Teacher. The mechanism seemed to be moving along its cycle properly so far.

"Maybe I can help you," Kindly Dad said. "Often it helps if an older, more experienced person can sort of listen in on your troubles, can sort of share them and make them lighter."

"O.K.," Jack agreed, sitting back on his haunches. "I'll play along; I'm stuck here for three hours anyhow. You want me to go all the way back to the beginning? To the episode back on Earth when I worked for Corona Corporation and had the occlusion?"

"Start wherever you like," Kindly Dad said graciously.

"Do you know what schizophrenia is, Kindly Dad?"

"I believe I've got a pretty good idea, Jackie," Kindly Dad said.

"Well, Kindly Dad, it's the most mysterious malady in all medicine, that's what it is. And it shows up in one out of every six people, which is a lot of people."

"Yes, that certainly is," Kindly Dad said.

"At one time," Jack said, as he watched the machinery moving, "I had what they call situational polymorphous schizophrenia simplex. And, Kindly Dad, it was rough."

"I just bet it was," Kindly Dad said.

"Now, I know what you're supposed to be for," Jack said, "I know your purpose, Kindly Dad. We're a long way from Home. Millions of miles away. Our connection with our civilization back Home is tenuous. And a lot of folks are mighty scared, Kindly Dad, because with each passing year that link gets weaker. So this Public School was set up to present a fixed milieu to the children born here, an Earthlike environment. For instance, this fireplace. We don't have fireplaces here on Mars; we heat by small atomic furnaces. That picture window with all that glass--sandstorms would make it opaque. In fact there's not one thing about you that's derived from our actual world here. Do you know what a Bleekman is, Kindly Dad?"

"Can't say that I do, Little Jackie. What is a Bleekman?"

"It's one of the indigenous races of Mars. You do know you're on Mars, don't you?"

Kindly Dad nodded.

"Schizophrenia," Jack said, "is one of the most pressing problems human civilization has ever faced. Frankly, Kindly Dad, I emigrated to Mars because of my schizophrenic episode when I was twenty-two and worked for Corona Corporation. I was cracking up. I had to move out of a complex urban environment and into a simpler one, a primitive frontier environment with more freedom. The pressure was too great for me; it was emigrate or go mad. That co-op building; can you imagine a thing going down level after level and up like a skyscraper, with enough people living there for them to have their own supermarket? I went mad standing in line at the bookstore. Everybody else, Kindly Dad, every single person in that bookstore and in that supermarket--all of them lived in the same building I did. It was a society, Kindly Dad, that one building. And today it's small by comparison with some that have been built. What do you say to that?"

"My, my," Kindly Dad said, shaking his head.