Martian Time Slip

Leo looked around. He saw a flat desert with meager mountains in the far distance. He saw a deep ditch of sluggish brown water, and, beside the ditch, a mosslike vegetation, green. That was all, except for Jack's house and the Steiner house a little farther on. He saw the garden, but he had seen that last night.

"Well?" Jack said.

Being obliging, Leo said, "Very impressive, Jack. You've got a nice place here; a nice little modern place. A little more planting, landscaping, and I'd say it was perfect."

Grinning at him crookedly, Jack said, "This is the dream of a million years, to stand here and see this."

"I know that, son, and I'm exceptionally proud of what you've accomplished, you and that fine woman." Leo nodded solemnly. "Now can we get started? Maybe you could go over to that other house where that boy is and get him, or did David go over? Maybe David's getting him; I don't see him around."

"David's at school. He was picked up while you were sleeping."

Leo said, "I don't mind going over and getting that boy, Manfred or whatever his name is, if it's O.K. with you."

"Go ahead," Jack said. "I'll come along."

They walked past a small ditch of water, crossed an open field of sand and sparse fernlike plants, and arrived at the other house. Leo heard from within the sound of small girls' voices. Without hesitation he ascended the steps to the porch and rang the bell.

The door opened and there stood a big, blond-haired woman with tired, pain-filled eyes. "Good morning," Leo said, "I'm Jack Bohlen's dad; I guess you're the lady of the house. Say, we'll take your boy with us on a trip and bring him back safe and sound."

The big blonde woman looked past him to Jack, who had come up on the porch; she said nothing, but turned and went off back into the interior of her house. When she returned she had a small boy with her. So this is the skizo little fellow, Leo thought. Nice-looking, you'd never know in a million years.

"We're going on a ride, young man," Leo said to him. "How does that sound?" Then, remembering what Jack had said about the boy's time-sense, he repeated what he had said very slowly, dragging each word out.

The boy darted past him and shot down the steps and off toward the canal; he moved in a blur of speed and disappeared from sight behind the Bohlen house.

"Mrs. Steiner," Jack said, "I want you to meet my father."

The big blonde woman put out her hand vaguely; she did not seem to be all there herself, Leo observed. However, he shook hands with her. "Glad to meet you," he said politely. "Sorry to hear about the loss of your husband; it's a terrible thing, something striking like that, without any warning. I knew a fella back in Detroit, good friend of mine, did the same thing one weekend; went out of the shop and said goodbye and that was the last anybody saw of him."

Mrs. Steiner said, "How do you do, Mr. Bohlen."

"We'll go round up Manfred," Jack said to her. "We should be home late this afternoon."

As Leo and his son walked back, the woman remained where she was on the porch, looking after them.

"Pretty odd herself," Leo murmured. Jack said nothing.

They located the boy, standing off by himself in David's overflow garden, and presently the three of them were in the Yee Company 'copter, flying above the desert in the direction of the line of mountains to the north. Leo unfolded a great map which he had brought with him and began to make marks on it.

"I guess we can talk freely," he said to Jack, nodding his head toward the boy. "He won't--" He hesitated. "You know."

"If he understands us," Jack said drily, "it'll be--"

"O.K., O.K.," Leo said, "I just wanted to be sure." He carefully refrained from marking the place on the map that he had heard would be the UN site. But he did mark their route, using the gyrocompass reading visible on the dashboard of the 'copter. "What rumors have you heard, son?" he asked. "About UN interest in the F.D.R. range?"

Jack said, "Something about a park or a power station."

"Want to know exactly what it is?"

"Sure."

Leo reached into his inside coat pocket and brought out an envelope. From it he took a photograph, which he handed to Jack. "Does this remind you of anything?"

Glancing at it, Jack saw that it was a picture of a long, thin building. He stared at it a long time.

"The UN," Leo said, "is going to build these. Multipleunit dwellings. Whole tracks of them, mile after mile, with shopping centers, complete--supermarkets, hardware stores, drugstores, laundries, ice cream parlors. All built by slave equipment, those construction automatons that feed themselves their own instructions."

Presently, Jack said, "It looks like the co-op apartment house I lived in years ago when I had my breakdown."