Martian Time Slip

The 'copter began to rise from the ground, laboring under the weight of the three people.

During the flight back to Lewistown, Arnie Kott died.

Jack Bohlen had Doreen take the controls, and he sat beside the dead man, thinking to himself that Arnie had died still believing he was lost in the dark currents of the Steiner boy's mind. Maybe it's for the best, Jack thought. Maybe it made it easier for him, at the last.

The realization that Arnie Kott was dead filled him, to his incredulity, with grief. It doesn't seem right, he said to himself as he sat by the dead man. It's too harsh; Arnie didn't deserve it, for what he did--the things he did were bad but not that bad.

"What was it he was saying to you?" Doreen asked. She seemed to be quite calm, to have taken Arnie's death in her stride; she piloted the 'copter with matter-of-fact skill.

Jack said, "He imagined this wasn't real. That he was blundering about in a schizophrenic fantasy."

"Poor Arnie," she said.

"Do you know who that man was who shot him?"

"Some enemy he must have made along the way somewhere."

They were both silent for a while.

"We should look for Manfred," Doreen said.

"Yes," Jack said. But I know where the boy is right now, he said to himself. He's found some wild Bleekmen there in the mountains, and he's with them; it's obvious and certain, and it would have happened sooner or later in any case. He was not worried--he did not care--about Manfred. Perhaps, for the first time in his life, the boy was in a situation to which he might make an adjustment; he might, with the wild Bleekmen, discern a style of living which was genuinely his and not a pallid, tormented reflection of the lives of those around him, beings who were innately different from him and whom he could never resemble, no matter how hard he tried.

Doreen said, "Could Arnie have been right?"

For a moment he did not understand her. And then, when he had made out her meaning, he shook his head. "No."

"Why was he so sure of it, then?"

Jack said, "I don't know." But it had to do with Manfred; Arnie had said so, just before he died.

"In many ways," Doreen said, "Arnie was shrewd. If he thought that, there must have been some very good reason."

"He was shrewd," Jack pointed out, "but he always believed what he wanted to believe." And, he realized, did whatever he wanted to. And so, at last, had brought about his own death; engineered it somewhere along the pathway of his life.

"What's going to become of us now?" Doreen said. "Without him? It's hard for me to imagine it without Arnie... do you know what I mean? I think you do. I wish, when we first saw that 'copter land, we had understood what was going to happen; if only we had gotten down there a few minutes earlier--" She broke off. "No use saying that now."

"No use at all," Jack said briefly.

"You know what I think is going to happen to us now?" Doreen said. "We're going to drift away from each other, you and I. Maybe not right away, maybe not for months or possibly even years. But sooner or later we will, without him."

He said nothing; he did not try to argue. Perhaps it was so. He was tired of struggling to see ahead to what lay before them all.

"Do you love me still?" Doreen asked. "After what's happened to us?" She turned toward him to see his face as he answered.

"Yes, naturally I do," he said.

"So do I," she said in a low, wan voice. "But I don't think it's enough. You have your wife and your son--that's so much, in the long run. Anyhow, it was worth it; to me, at least. I'll never be sorry. We're not responsible for Arnie's death; we mustn't feel guilty. He brought it on himself, by what he was up to, there at the end. And we'll never know exactly what that was. But I know it was something to hurt us."

He nodded.

Silently, they continued on back to Lewistown, carrying with them the body of Arnie Kott; carrying Arnie home to his settlement, where he was--and probably always would be--Supreme Goodmember of his Water Workers' Union, Fourth Planet Branch.

Ascending an ill-marked path in the arid rocks of the F.D.R. Mountains, Manfred Steiner halted as he saw ahead of him a party of six dark, shadowy men. They carried with them paka eggs filled with water, quivers of poisoned arrows, and each woman had her pounding block. All smoked cigarettes as they toiled, single file, along the trail.

Seeing him, they halted.

One of them, a gaunt young male, said politely, "The rains falling from your wonderful presence envigor and restore us, Mister."

Manfred did not understand the words, but he got their thoughts: cautious and friendly, with no undertones of hate. He sensed inside them no desire to hurt him, and that was pleasant; he forgot his fear of them and turned his attention on the animal skins which each wore. What sort of animal is that? he wondered.

The Bleekmen were curious about him, too. They advanced until they stood around him on all sides.