“I saw a raccoon once,” a child piped excitedly. “Mr. Whitlock, I saw one, and he was this close to me!”
Jack thought, You saw a raccoon on Mars?
The Whitlock chuckled. “No, Don, I’m afraid not. There aren’t any raccoons around here. You’d have to go all the way across over to old mother Earth to see one of those amazing fellows. But the point I’d like to make is this, boys and girls. You know how ol’ Jimmy Raccoon takes his food, and carries it oh so stealthily to the water, and washes it? And how we laughed at old’ Jimmy when the lump of sugar dissolved and he had nothing at all left to eat? Well, boys and girls, do you know that we’ve got Jimmy Raccoons right here in this very–”
“I think I’m finished,” Jack said, withdrawing the gun. “Do you want to help me put this back together?”
The master circuit said, “Are you in a rush?”
“I don’t like that thing talking away in there,” Jack said. It made him tense and shaky, so much so that he could hardly do his work.
A door rolled shut, down the corridor from them; the sound of the Whitlock’s voice ceased. “Is that better?” the master circuit asked.
“Thanks,” Jack said. But his hands were still shaking. The master circuit noted that; he was aware of her precise scrutiny. He wondered what she made of it.
The chamber in which Kindly Dad sat consisted of one end of a living room with fireplace, couch, coffee table, curtained picture window, and an easy chair in which Kindly Dad himself sat, a newspaper open on his lap. Several children sat attentively on the couch as Jack Bohlen and the master circuit entered; they were listening to the expostulations of the teaching machine and did not seem aware that anyone had come in. The master circuit dismissed the children, and then she started to leave, too.
“I’m not sure what you want me to do,” Jack said.
“Put it through its cycle. It seems to me that it repeats portions of the cycle or stays stuck; in any case, too much time is consumed. It should return to its starting stage in about three hours.” A door opened for the master circuit, and she was gone; he was alone with Kindly Dad and he was not glad of it.
“Hi, Kindly Dad,” he said without enthusiasm. Setting down his tool case he began unscrewing the back plate of the Teacher.
Kindly Dad said in a warm, sympathetic voice, “What’s your name, young fellow?”
“My name,” Jack said, as he unfastened the plate and laid it down beside him, “is Jack Bohlen, and I’m a kindly dad, too, just like you, Kindly Dad. My boy is ten years old, Kindly Dad. So don’t call me young fellow, O.K.?” Again he was trembling hard, and sweating.
“Ohh,” Kindly Dad said. “I see!”
“What do you see?” Jack said, and discovered that he was almost shouting. “Look,” he said. “Go through your goddamn cycle, O.K.? If it makes it easier for you, go ahead and pretend I’m a little boy.” I just want to get this done and get out of here, he said to himself, with as little trouble as possible. He could feel the swelling, complicated emotions inside him. Three hours! he thought dismally.
Kindly Dad said, “Little Jackie, it seems to me you’ve got a mighty heavy weight on your chest today. Am I right?”
“Today and every day.” Jack clicked on his trouble-light and shone it up into the works of the Teacher. The mechanism seemed to be moving along its cycle properly so far.
“Maybe I can help you,” Kindly Dad said. “Often it helps if an older, more experienced person can sort of listen in on your troubles, can sort of share them and make them lighter.”
“O.K.,” Jack agreed, sitting back on his haunches. “I’ll play along; I’m stuck here for three hours anyhow. You want me to go all the way back to the beginning? To the episode back on Earth when I worked for Corona Corporation and had the occlusion?”
“Start wherever you like,” Kindly Dad said graciously.
“Do you know what schizophrenia is, Kindly Dad?”
“I believe I’ve got a pretty good idea, Jackie,” Kindly Dad said.
“Well, Kindly Dad, it’s the most mysterious malady in all medicine, that’s what it is. And it shows up in one out of every six people, which is a lot of people.”
“Yes, that certainly is,” Kindly Dad said.
“At one time,” Jack said, as he watched the machinery moving, “I had what they call situational polymorphous schizophrenia simplex. And, Kindly Dad, it was rough.”
“I just bet it was,” Kindly Dad said.
“Now, I know what you’re supposed to be for,” Jack said, “I know your purpose, Kindly Dad. We’re a long way from Home. Millions of miles away. Our connection with our civilization back Home is tenuous. And a lot of folks are mighty scared, Kindly Dad, because with each passing year that link gets weaker. So this Public School was set up to present a fixed milieu to the children born here, an Earthlike environment. For instance, this fireplace. We don’t have fireplaces here on Mars; we heat by small atomic furnaces. That picture window with all that glass–sandstorms would make it opaque. In fact there’s not one thing about you that’s derived from our actual world here. Do you know what a Bleekman is, Kindly Dad?”
“Can’t say that I do, Little Jackie. What is a Bleekman?”
“It’s one of the indigenous races of Mars. You do know you’re on Mars, don’t you?”
Kindly Dad nodded.
“Schizophrenia,” Jack said, “is one of the most pressing problems human civilization has ever faced. Frankly, Kindly Dad, I emigrated to Mars because of my schizophrenic episode when I was twenty-two and worked for Corona Corporation. I was cracking up. I had to move out of a complex urban environment and into a simpler one, a primitive frontier environment with more freedom. The pressure was too great for me; it was emigrate or go mad. That co-op building; can you imagine a thing going down level after level and up like a skyscraper, with enough people living there for them to have their own supermarket? I went mad standing in line at the bookstore. Everybody else, Kindly Dad, every single person in that bookstore and in that supermarket–all of them lived in the same building I did. It was a society, Kindly Dad, that one building. And today it’s small by comparison with some that have been built. What do you say to that?”
“My, my,” Kindly Dad said, shaking his head.
“Now here’s what I think,” Jack said. “I think this Public School and you teaching machines are going to rear another generation of schizophrenics, the descendants of people like me who are making a fine adaptation to this new planet. You’re going to split the psyches of these children because you’re teaching them to expect an environment which doesn’t exist for them. It doesn’t even exist back on Earth, now; it’s obsolete. Ask that Whitlock Teacher if intelligence doesn’t have to be practical to be true intelligence. I heard it say so, it has to be a tool for adaptation. Right, Kindly Dad?”
“Yes, Little Jackie, it has to be.”
“What you ought to be teaching,” Jack said, “is, how do we–”
“Yes, Little Jackie,” Kindly Dad interrupted him, “it has to be.” And as it said this, a gear-tooth slipped in the glare of Jack’s trouble-light, and a phase of the cycle repeated itself.
“You’re stuck,” Jack said. “Kindly Dad, you’ve got a worn gear-tooth.”
“Yes, Little Jackie,” Kindly Dad said, “it has to be.”
“You’re right,” Jack said. “It does have to be. Everything wears out eventually; nothing is permanent. Change is the one constant of life. Right, Kindly Dad?”
“Yes, Little Jackie,” Kindly Dad said, “it has to be.”
Shutting off the teaching machine at its power supply, Jack began to disassemble its main-shaft, preparatory to removing the worn gear.
“So you found it,” the master circuit said, when Jack emerged a half-hour later, wiping his face with his sleeve.
“Yes,” he said. He was exhausted. His wrist watch told him that it was only four o’clock; an hour more of work lay ahead of him.
The master circuit accompanied him to the parking lot. “I am quite pleased with the promptness with which you attended to our needs,” she said. “I will telephone Mr. Yee and thank him.”
He nodded and climbed into his ‘copter, too worn out even to say goodbye. Soon he was ascending; the duck egg which was the UN-operated Public School became small and far away below him. Its stifling presence vanished, and he could breathe again.
Flipping on his transmitter he said, “Mr. Yee. This is Jack; I’m done at the school. What next?”