Philip Dick - Martian Time-Slip

“But it is.” Otto set his glass down and leaned over her. She breathed slowly, regularly, as if asleep; but she was watching him fixedly. She knew exactly what was going on. And as he bent nearer and nearer she did not stir; she did not try to slide away.

The food and wine, he reckoned as he took hold of her, had set him back--in retail value--almost a hundred UN dollars. It was well worth it, to him, at least.

His old story, repeating itself. Again, it was not union scale. It was much more, Otto thought a little later on, when they had moved from the living room to the bedroom with its window shades pulled down, the room in unstirring gloom, silent and receptive to them, made, as he well knew, for just such happenings as this.

“Nothing like this,” Silvia murmured, “has ever happened before in my entire life.” Her voice was full of contentment and acquiescence, as if emerging from far away. “Am I drunk, is that it? Oh, my Lord.”

For a long time, then, she was silent.

“Am I out of my niind?” she murmured, later on. “I must be insane. I just can’t believe it, I know it isn’t real. So how can it matter, how can what you do in a dream be wrong?”

After that, she said nothing at all.

She was exactly the kind he liked: the kind that didn’t talk a lot.

What is insanity? Jack Bohlen thought. It was, for him, the fact that somewhere he had lost Manf red Steiner and did not remember how or when. He remembered almost nothing of the night before, at Arnie Kott’s place; piece by piece, from what Doreen told him, he had managed to patch together an image of what had taken place. Insanity--to have to construct a picture of one’s life, by making inquiries of others.

But the lapse in memory was a symptom of a deeper disturbance. It indicated that his psyche had taken an abrupt leap ahead in time. And this had taken place after a period in which he had lived through, several times, on some unconscious level, that very section which was now missing.

He had sat, he realized, in Arnie Kott’s living room again and again, experiencing that evening before it arrived; and then, when at last it had taken place in actuality, he had bypassed it. The fundamental disturbance in time-sense, which Dr. Glaub believed was the basis of schizophrenia, was now harassing him.

That evening at Arnie’s had taken place, and had existed for him. . . but out of sequence.

In any case, there was no way that it could be restored. For it now lay in the past. And a disturbance of the sense of past time was not symptomatic of schizophrenia but of compulsive-obsessive neurosis. His problem--as a schizophrenic--lay entirely with the future.

And his future, as he now saw it, consisted mostly of Arnie Kott and Arnie’s instinctive drive for revenge.

What chance do we have against Arnie? he asked himself.

Almost none.

Turning from the window of Doreen’s living room, he walked slowly into the bedroom and gazed down at her as she lay, still asleep, in the big, rumpled double bed.

While he stood there looking at her, she woke, saw him, smiled up at him. “I was having the strangest dream,” she said. “In the dream I was conducting the Bach B minor Mass, the Kyrie part. It was in four-four time. But when I was right in the middle, someone came along and took away my baton and said it wasn’t in four-four time.” She frowned. “But it really is. Why would I be conducting that? I don’t even like the Bach B minor Mass. Arnie has a tape of it; he plays it all the time, very late in the evening.”

He thought of the dreams he had been having of late, vague forms that shifted, flitted away; something to do with a tall building of many rooms, hawks or vultures circling endlessly overhead. And some dreadful thing in a cupboard. . . he had not seen it, had only felt its presence there.

“Dreams usually relate to the future,” Doreen said. “They have to do with the potential in a person. Arnie wants to start a symphony orchestra at Lewistown; he’s been talking to Bosley Touvim at New Israel. Maybe I’ll be the conductor; maybe that’s what my dream means.” She slid from the bed and stood up, naked and slim and smooth.

“Doreen,” he said steadily, “I don’t remember last night. What became of Manfred?”

“He stayed with Arnie. Because he has to go back to Camp B-G, now, and Arnie said he’d take him. He goes to New Israel all the time to visit his own boy there, Sam Esterhazy. He’s going there today, he told you.” After a pause she said, “Jack . . . have you ever had amnesia before?”

“No,” he said.

“It’s probably due to the shock of quarreling with Arnie; it’s awfully hard on a person to tangle with Arnie, I’ve noticed.”

“Maybe that’s it,” he said.

“What about breakfast?” Now she began getting fresh clothes from her dresser drawers, a blouse, underwear. “I’ll cook bacon and eggs--delicious canned Danish bacon.” She hesitated and then she said, “More of Arnie’s black-market goodies. But they really are good.”

“It’s fine with me,” he said.

“After we went to bed last night I lay awake for hours wondering what Arnie will do. To us, I mean. I think it’ll be your job, Jack; I think he’ll put pressure on Mr. Yee to let you go. You must be prepared for that. We both must be. And of course, he’ll just dump me; that’s obvious. But I don’t mind--I have you.”

“Yes that’s so, you do have me,” he said, as by reflex.

“The vengeance of Arnie Kott,” Doreen said, as she washed her face in the bathroom. “But he’s so human; it’s not so scary. I prefer him to that Manfred; I really couldn’t stand that child. Last night was a nightmare--I kept feeling awful cold squishy tendrils drifting around the room and in my mind . . . intimations of filth and evil that didn’t seem to be either in me or outside of me--just nearby. I know where they came from.” After a moment she finished, “It was that child. It was his thoughts.”

Presently she was frying the bacon and heating coffee; he set the table, and then they sat down to eat. The food smelled good, and he felt much better, tasting it and seeing it and smelling it, and being aware of the girl across from him, with her red hair, long and heavy and sleek, tied back with a gay ribbon.

“Is your son at all like Manfred?” she asked.

“Oh, hell, no.”

“Does he take after you or--“

“Silvia,” he said. “He takes after his mother.”

“She’s pretty, isn’t she?”

“I would say so.”

“You know, Jack, last night when I was lying there awake and thinking . . . I thought, Maybe Arnie won’t turn Manfred over to Camp B-G. What would he do with him, with a creature like that? Arnie’s very imaginative. Now this scheme to buy into the F.D.R. land is over. . . maybe he’ll find an entirely new use for Manfred’s precognition. It occurred to me--you’ll laugh. Maybe he’ll be able to contact Manfred through Heliogabalus, that tame Bleekman of his.” She was quiet, then, eating breakfast and staring down at the plate.

Jack said, “You could be right.” He felt bad, just to hear her say it. It rang so true; it was so plausible.

“You never talked to Helio,” Doreen said. “He’s the most cynical, bitter person I ever met. He’s even sardonic with Arnie; he hates everybody. I mean, he’s really twisted inside.”

“Did I ask Arnie to take the boy? Or was it his idea?”

“Arnie suggested it. At first you wouldn’t agree. But you had become so--inert and withdrawn. It was late and we all had drunk a lot--do you remember that?”

He nodded.

“Arnie serves that Black Label Jack Daniel’s. I must have drunk a whole fifth of it alone.” She shook her head mournfully. “Nobody else on Mars has the liquor Arnie has; I’ll miss it.”