Philip Dick - Martian Time-Slip

Jack Bohlen tossed his canteen to the young Bleekman, who at once knelt down, unscrewed the cap, and gave it to the supine elderly couple. The old lady seized it and drank from it.

The change in her came at once. She seemed to swell back into life, to change from the muddy gray color of death before his eyes.

“May we fill our eggshells?” the young Bleekman male asked Jack. Lying upright on the sand were several paka eggs, pale hollow shells which Jack saw were completely empty. The Bleekmen transported water in these shells; their technical ability was so slight that they did not even possess clay pots. And yet, he reflected, their ancestors had constructed the great canal system.

“Sure,” he said. “There’s another ship coming with plenty of water.” He went back to his ‘copter and got his lunch pail; returning with it, he handed it to the Bleekman male. “Food,” he explained. As if they didn’t know. Already the elederly couple were on their feet, tottering up with their hands stretched out.

Behind Jack, the roar of a second ‘copter grew louder. It was landing, a big two-person ‘copter that now coasted up and halted, its blades slowly spinning.

The pilot called down, “Do you need me? If not, I’ll go on.”

“I don’t have much water for them,” Jack said.

“O.K.,” the pilot said, and switched off his blades. He hopped out, lugging a five-gallon can. “They can have this.”

Together, Jack and the pilot stood watching the Bleekman filling their eggshells from the can of water. Their possessions were not many--a quiver of poisoned arrows, an animal hide for each of them; the two women had their pounding blocks, their sole possessions of value: without the blocks they were not fit women, for on them they prepared either meat or grain, whatever food their hunt might bring. And they had a few cigarettes.

“My passenger,” the young pilot said in a low voice in Jack’s ear, “isn’t too keen about the UN being able to compel us to stop like this. But what he doesn’t realize is they’ve got that satellite up there and they can see if you fail to stop. And it’s a hell of a big fine.”

Jack turned and looked up into the parked ‘copter. He saw seated inside it a heavy-set man with a bald head, a well-fed, self-satisifed-looking man who gazed out sourly, paying no attention to the five Bleekmen.

“You have to comply with the law,” the pilot said in a defensive voice. “It’d be me who they’d sock with the fine.”

Walking over to the ship, Jack called up to the big baldheaded man seated within, “Doesn’t it make you feel good to know you saved the lives of five people?”

The bald-headed man looked down at him and said, “Five niggers, you mean. I don’t call that saving five people. Do you?”

“Yeah, I do,” Jack said. “And I intend to continue doing so.”

“Go ahead, call it that,” the bald-headed man said. Flushing, he glanced over at Jack’s ‘copter, read the markings on it. “See where it gets you.”

Coming over beside Jack, the young pilot said hurriedly, “That’s Arnie you’re talking to. Arnie Kott.” He called up, “We can leave now, Arnie.” Climbing up, the pilot disappeared inside the ‘copter, and once more the blades began to turn.

The ‘copter rose into the air, leaving Jack standing alone by the five Bleekmen. They had now finished drinking and were eating from the lunch pail which he had given them. The empty water can lay off to one side. The paka eggshells had been filled and were now stoppered. The Bleekmen did not glance up as the ‘copter left. They paid no attention to Jack, either; they murmured among themselves in their dialect.

“What’s your desination?” Jack asked them.

The young Bleekman named an oasis very far to the south.

“You think you can make it?” Jack asked. He pointed to the old couple. “Can they?”

“Yes, Mister,” the young Bleekman answered. “We can make it now, with the food and water yourself and the other Mister gave us.”

I wonder if they can, Jack said to himself. Naturally they’d say it, even if they knew it wasn’t possible. Racial pride, I guess.

“Mister,” the young Bleekman said, “we have a present for you because you stopped.” He held out something to Jack.

Their possessions were so meager that he could not believe they had anything to spare. He held his hand out, however, and the young Bleekman put something small and cold into it, a dark, wrinkled, dried bit of substance that looked to Jack like a section of tree root.

“It is a water witch,” the Bleekman said. “Mister, it will bring you water, the source of life, any time you need.”

“It didn’t help you, did it?” Jack said.

With a sly smile the young Bleekman said, “Mister, it helped; it brought you.”

“What’ll you do without it?” Jack asked.

“We have another. Mister, we fashion water witches.” The young Bleekman pointed to the old couple. “They are authorities.”

More carefully examining the water witch, Jack saw that it had a face and vague limbs. It was mummified, once a living creature of some sort; he made out its drawn-up legs, its ears . . . he shivered. The face was oddly human, a wizened, suffering face, as if it had been killed while crying out.

“How does it work?” he asked the young Bleekman.

“Formerly, when one wanted water, one pissed on the water witch, and she came to life. Now we do not do that, Mister; we have learned from you Misters that to piss is wrong. So we spit on her instead, and she hears that, too, almost as well. It wakes her, and she opens and looks around, and then she opens her mouth and calls the water to her. As she did with you, Mister, and that other Mister, the big one who sat and did not come down, the Mister with no hair on his head.”

“That Mister is a powerful Mister,” Jack said. “He is monarch of the plumbers’ union settlement, and he owns all of Lewistown.”

“That may be,” the young Bleekman said. “If so, we will not stop at Lewistown, because we could see that the Mister with no hair did not like us. We did not give him a water witch in return for his water, because he did not want to give us water; his heart was not with him in that deed, it came from his hands only.”

Jack said goodbye to the Bleekmen and got back into his ‘copter. A moment later he was ascending; below him, the Bleekmen waved solemnly.

I’ll give the water witch to David, he decided. When I get home at the end of the week. He can piss on it or spit on it, whichever he prefers, to his heart’s content.

Norbert Steiner had a certain freedom to come and go as he pleased, because he was self-employed. In a small iron building outside of Bunchewood Park he manufactured health foods, made entirely from domestic plants and minerals, with no preservatives or chemical sprays or nonorganic attractive fertilizers. A firm at Bunchewood Park packaged his products for him in professional-type boxes, cartons, jars, and envelopes, and then Steiner drove about Mars selling them direct to the consumer.

His profit was fair, because after all he had no competition; his was the sole health food business on Mars.

And then, too, he had a sideline. He imported from Earth various gourmet food items such as truffles, goose-liver pate, caviar, kangaroo tail soup, Danish blue cheese, smoked oysters, quail eggs, rum babas, all of which were illegal on Mars, due to the attempt by the UN to force the colonies to become self-sufficient foodswise. The UN food experts claimed that it was unsafe to transport food across space, due to the chance of harmful radiation contaminating it, but Steiner knew better; the actual reason was their fear of the consequences to the colonies in case of war back Home. Food shipments would cease, and unless the colonies were self-sufficient they probably would starve themselves out of existence within a short time.