Martian Time Slip

The boy was alone, seated on the floor, resting against the wall, his head down, apparently deep in thought.

Bending down, Jack said, "Why did you run off?"

The boy gave no response. Jack touched him, but still there was no reaction.

"Are you all right?" Jack asked him.

All at once the boy stirred, rose to his feet, and stood facing Jack.

"What is it?" Jack demanded.

There was no answer. But the boy's face was clouded with a blurred, distorted emotion that found no outlet; he gazed at Jack as if not seeing him. Totally absorbed in himself, unable to break out into the outside world.

"What happened?" Jack said. But he knew that he would never find out; no way existed for the creature before him to express itself. There was only silence, the total absence of communication between the two of them, the emptiness that could not be filled.

The boy looked away, then, and settled back down into a heap on the floor.

"You stay here," Jack said to him. "I'll have them go get David for me." Warily, he moved away from the boy, but Manfred did not stir. When he reached a teaching machine, Jack said to it, "I would like to have David Bohlen, please; I'm his father. I'll take him home."

It was the Thomas Edison Teaching Machine, an elderly man who glanced up, startled, and cupped his ear. Jack repeated what he had said.

Nodding, it said, "Gubble gubble."

Jack stared at it. And then he turned to look back at Manfred. The boy still sat slumped down, his back against the wall.

Again the Thomas Edison Teaching Machine opened its mouth and said to Jack, "Gubble gubble." There was nothing more; it became silent.

Is it me? Jack asked himself. Is this the final psychotic breakdown for me? Or--

He could not believe the alternative; it simply was not possible.

Down the hall, another teaching machine was addressing a group of children; its voice came from a distance, echoing and metallic. Jack strained to listen.

"Gubble gubble," it was saying to the children.

He closed his eyes. He knew in a moment of perfect awareness that his own psyche, his own perceptions, had not misinformed him; it was happening, what he heard and saw.

Manfred Steiner's presence had invaded the structure of the Public School, penetrated its deepest being.

12

Still at his desk in his office at Camp B-G, brooding over the behavior of Anne Esterhazy, Dr. Milton Glaub received an emergency call. It was from the master circuit of the UN's Public School.

"Doctor," its flat voice declared, "I am sorry to disturb you but we require assistance. There is a male citizen wandering about our premises in an evident state of mental confusion. We would like you to come and remove him."

"Certain1y," Dr. Glaub murmured. "I'll come straight there."

Soon he was in the air, piloting his 'copter across the desert from New Israel toward the Public School.

When he arrived, the master circuit met him and escorted him at a brisk pace through the building until they reached a closed-off corridor. "We felt we should keep the children away from him," the master circuit explained as she caused the wall to roll back, exposing the corridor.

There, with a dazed expression on his face, stood a man familiar to Dr. Glaub. The doctor had an immediate reaction of satisfaction, in spite of himself. So Jack Bohlen's schizophrenia had caught up with him. Bohlen's eyes were without focus; obviously he was in a state of catatonic stupor, probably alternating with excitement--he looked exhausted. And with him was another person whom Dr. Glaub recognized. Manfred Steiner sat curled up on the floor, bent forward, likewise in an advanced state of withdrawal.

Your association did not cause either of you to prosper, Dr. Glaub observed to himself.

With the help of the master circuit he got both Bohlen and the Steiner boy into his 'copter, and presently he was flying back to New Israel and Camp B-G.

Hunched over, his hands clenched, Bohlen said, "Let me tell you what happened."

"Please do," Dr. Glaub said, feeling--at last--in control.

Jack Bohlen said in an uneven voice, "I went to the school to pick up my son. I took Manfred." He twisted in his seat to look at the Steiner boy, who had not come out of his catalepsy; the boy lay rolled up on the floor of the 'copter, as inert as a carving. "Manfred got away from me. And then--communication between me and the school broke down. All I could hear was--" He broke off.

"Folie a deux," Glaub murmured. Madness of two.

Bohlen said, "Instead of the school, I heard _him_. I heard his words coming from the Teachers." He was silent, then.

"Manfred has a powerful personality," Dr. Glaub said. "It is a drain on one's resources to be around him for long. I think it would be well for you, for your own health, to abandon this project. I think you risk too much."

"I have to see Arnie tonight," Bohlen said in a ragged, harsh whisper.

"What about yourself? What's going to become of you?"

Bohlen said nothing.

"I can treat you," Dr. Glaub said, "at this stage of your difficulty. Later on--I'm not so sure."