Martian Time Slip

Observing the girl, he saw in her a vindication of a piece of old wisdom. Nice eyes, hair, and skin produced a pretty woman, but a truly excellent nose created a beautiful woman. This girl had such a nose: strong, straight, dominating her features, forming a basis for her other features. Mediterranean women reach the level of beauty much more easily than, say, Irish or English women, he realized, because genetically speaking the Mediterranean nose, whether Spanish or Hebrew or Turkish or Italian, played a naturally greater part in physiognomic organization. His own wife Silvia had a gay, turned-up Irish nose; she was pretty enough by any standard. But--there was a difference.

He guessed that Doreen was in her early thirties. And yet she possessed a freshness that gave her a stable quality. He had seen such clear coloration in high-school girls approaching nubility, and once in a long while one saw it in fifty-yearold women who had perfect gray hair and wide, lovely eyes. This girl would still be attractive twenty years from now, and probably had always been so; he could not imagine her any other way. Arnie, by investing in her, had perhaps done well with the funds entrusted to him; she would not wear out. Even now he saw maturity in her face, and that among women was rare.

Arnie said to him, "We're going out and have a drink. If you get that machine fixed in time--"

"It's fixed now." He had found the broken belt and had replaced it with one from his tool kit.

"Good deal," Arnie said, grinning like a happy child. "Then come on along with us." To the girl he explained, "We're meeting Milton Glaub, the famous psychiatrist; you probably heard of him. He promised to have a drink with me. I was talking to him on the phone just now, and he sounds like a topnotch sort of guy." He whacked Jack loudly on the shoulder. "I bet when you landed your 'copter on the roof you didn't think you'd be having a drink with one of the solar system's best-known psychoanalysts, did you?"

I wonder if I should go along, Jack thought. But why not? He said, "O.K., Arnie."

Arnie said, "Doc Glaub is going to scare up a schizophrenic for me; I need one, I need its professional services." He laughed, eyes twinkling, finding his own utterance outstandingly funny.

"Do you?" Jack said. "I'm a schizophrenic."

Arnie stopped laughing. "No kidding. I never would have guessed; what I mean is, you look all right."

Finishing up the task of putting the encoder back together, Jack said, "I am all right. I'm cured."

Doreen said, "No one is ever cured of schizophrenia." Her tone was dispassionate; she was simply stating a fact.

"They can be," Jack said, "if it's what is called situational schizophrenia."

Arnie eyed him with great interest, even suspicion. "You're pulling my leg. You're just trying to worm your way into my confidence."

Jack shrugged, feeling himself flush. He turned his attention back, completely, to his work.

"No offense," Arnie said. "You really are, no kidding? Listen, Jack, let me ask you; do you have any sort of ability or power to read the future?"

After a long pause, Jack said, "No."

"You sure?" Arnie said, with suspicion.

"I'm sure." He wished now that he had turned down flat that invitation to accompany them. The intent questioning made him feel exposed; Arnie was nudging too close, encroaching on him--it was difficult to breathe, and Jack moved around to the far side of the desk, to put more distance between himself and the plumber.

"Whatzamatter?" Arnie asked acutely.

"Nothing." Jack continued working, not looking at either Arnie or the girl. Both of them were watching him, and his hands shook.

Presently Arnie said, "Jack, let me tell you how I got where I am. One talent got me up here. I can judge people and tell what they're like down inside, what they really are, not just what they do and say. I don't believe you; I bet you're lying to me about your precognition. Isn't that right? You don't even have to answer." Turning to the girl, Arnie said, "Let's get balling; I want that drink." He beckoned to Jack to follow.

Laying down his tools, Jack reluctantly did so.

7

On his journey by 'copter to Lewistown to meet Arnie Kott and have a drink with him, Dr. Milton Glaub asked himself if his good luck were true. I can't believe it, he thought, a turning point in my life like this.

He was not certain what Arnie wanted; the phone call had been so unexpected and Arnie had talked so fast that Dr. Glaub had wound up perplexed, knowing only that it had to do with parapsychological aspects of the mentally ill. Well, he could tell Arnie practically all there was to know on that topic. And yet Glaub sensed that there was something deeper in the inquiry.