Jack glanced up, supposing the man was being sarcastic. But evidently not; Arnie was eyeing him and then the partly disassembled machine, obviously concerned with how the repair was progressing. He certainly is dependent on this, Jack decided. Strange, how people cling to their possessions, as if they’re extensions of their bodies, a sort of hypochondria of the machine. You’d think a man like Arnie Kott could scrap this encoder and shell out the money for a new one.
There sounded a knock on the door, and Arnie hurried to open it. “Oh, hi.” His voice came to Jack. “Come on in. Hey, I’m getting my doodad fixed.”
A girl’s voice said, “Arnie, you’ll never get your doodad fixed.”
Arnie laughed nervously. “Hey, meet my new repairman, Jack Bohlen. Bohlen, this is Doreen Anderton, our Union treasurer.”
“Hi,” Jack said. Out of the corner of his eye–he did not stop working–he could see that she had red hair and extremely white skin and large, wonderful eyes. Everybody’s on the payroll, he thought tartly. What a great world. What a great union you’ve got going here for yourself, Arnie.
“Busy, isn’t he?” the girl said.
“Oh, yeah,” Arnie agreed, “these repair guys are bugs on getting the job done right, I mean these outside guys, not our own–ours are a bunch of slobs that sit around playing with themselves at our expense. I’m through with them, Dor. I mean, this guy Bohlen is a whiz; he’s going to have the encoder working any minute now, aren’t you, Jack?”
“Yeah,” Jack said.
The girl said, “Don’t you say hello, Jack?”
Halting his Work he turned his attention on her; he faced her levelly. Her expression was cool and intelligent, with a faintly mocking quality which was peculiarly rewarding and annoying. “Hello,” Jack said.
“I saw your ‘copter on the roof,” the girl said.
“Let him work,” Arnie said peevishly. “Gimme your coat.” He stood behind her, helping her out of her coat. The girl wore a dark wool suit, obviously an import from Earth and therefore expensive to an appalling degree. I’ll bet that set the Union pension fund back plenty, Jack decided.
Observing the girl, he saw in her a vindication of a piece of old wisdom. Nice eyes, hair, and skin produced a pretty woman, but a truly excellent nose created a beautiful woman. This girl had such a nose: strong, straight, dominating her features, forming a basis for her other features. Mediterranean women reach the level of beauty much more easily than, say, Irish or English women, he realized, because genetically speaking the Mediterranean nose, whether Spanish or Hebrew or Turkish or Italian, played a naturally greater part in physiognomic organization. His own wife Silvia had a gay, turned-up Irish nose; she was pretty enough by any standard. But–there was a difference.
He guessed that Doreen was in her early thirties. And yet she possessed a freshness that gave her a stable quality. He had seen such clear coloration in high-school girls approaching nubility, and once in a long while one saw it in fifty-yearold women who had perfect gray hair and wide, lovely eyes. This girl would still be attractive twenty years from now, and probably had always been so; he could not imagine her any other way. Arnie, by investing in her, had perhaps done well with the funds entrusted to him; she would not wear out. Even now he saw maturity in her face, and that among women was rare.
Arnie said to him, “We’re going out and have a drink. If you get that machine fixed in time–”
“It’s fixed now.” He had found the broken belt and had replaced it with one from his tool kit.
“Good deal,” Arnie said, grinning like a happy child. “Then come on along with us.” To the girl he explained, “We’re meeting Milton Glaub, the famous psychiatrist; you probably heard of him. He promised to have a drink with me. I was talking to him on the phone just now, and he sounds like a topnotch sort of guy.” He whacked Jack loudly on the shoulder. “I bet when you landed your ‘copter on the roof you didn’t think you’d be having a drink with one of the solar system’s best-known psychoanalysts, did you?”
I wonder if I should go along, Jack thought. But why not? He said, “O.K., Arnie.”
Arnie said, “Doc Glaub is going to scare up a schizophrenic for me; I need one, I need its professional services.” He laughed, eyes twinkling, finding his own utterance outstandingly funny.
“Do you?” Jack said. “I’m a schizophrenic.”
Arnie stopped laughing. “No kidding. I never would have guessed; what I mean is, you look all right.”
Finishing up the task of putting the encoder back together, Jack said, “I am all right. I’m cured.”
Doreen said, “No one is ever cured of schizophrenia.” Her tone was dispassionate; she was simply stating a fact.
“They can be,” Jack said, “if it’s what is called situational schizophrenia.”
Arnie eyed him with great interest, even suspicion. “You’re pulling my leg. You’re just trying to worm your way into my confidence.”
Jack shrugged, feeling himself flush. He turned his attention back, completely, to his work.
“No offense,” Arnie said. “You really are, no kidding? Listen, Jack, let me ask you; do you have any sort of ability or power to read the future?”
After a long pause, Jack said, “No.”
“You sure?” Arnie said, with suspicion.
“I’m sure.” He wished now that he had turned down flat that invitation to accompany them. The intent questioning made him feel exposed; Arnie was nudging too close, encroaching on him–it was difficult to breathe, and Jack moved around to the far side of the desk, to put more distance between himself and the plumber.
“Whatzamatter?” Arnie asked acutely.
“Nothing.” Jack continued working, not looking at either Arnie or the girl. Both of them were watching him, and his hands shook.
Presently Arnie said, “Jack, let me tell you how I got where I am. One talent got me up here. I can judge people and tell what they’re like down inside, what they really are, not just what they do and say. I don’t believe you; I bet you’re lying to me about your precognition. Isn’t that right? You don’t even have to answer.” Turning to the girl, Arnie said, “Let’s get balling; I want that drink.” He beckoned to Jack to follow.
Laying down his tools, Jack reluctantly did so.
7
On his journey by ‘copter to Lewistown to meet Arnie Kott and have a drink with him, Dr. Milton Glaub asked himself if his good luck were true. I can’t believe it, he thought, a turning point in my life like this.
He was not certain what Arnie wanted; the phone call had been so unexpected and Arnie had talked so fast that Dr. Glaub had wound up perplexed, knowing only that it had to do with parapsychological aspects of the mentally ill. Well, he could tell Arnie practically all there was to know on that topic. And yet Glaub sensed that there was something deeper in the inquiry.
Generally, a concern with schizophrenia was a symptom of the person’s own inner struggle in that area. Now, it was a fact that often the first signs of the insidious growth of the schizophrenic process in a person was an inability to eat in public. Arnie had noisily gabbed on about his desire to meet Glaub–not in his own home or in the doctor’s office–but at a well-known bar and restaurant in Lewistown, the Willows. Was this perhaps a reaction-formation? Mysteriously made tense by public situations, and especially by those involving the nutritive function, Arnie Kott was leaning over backward to regain the normalcy which was beginning to abandon him.
Piloting his ‘copter, Glaub thought about this, but then, by slow and stealthy stages, his thinking returned to the topic of his own problems.
Arnie Kott, a man controlling a multimillion-dollar union fund; a prominent person in the colonial world, although virtually unknown back Home. A feudal baron, virtually. If Kott were to put me on his staff, Glaub speculated, I could pay off all the debts we’ve piled up, those hideous charge-account bills at twenty per cent interest that just seem to loom there always, never getting smaller or going away. And then we could start over, not go into debt, live within our means . . . and a highly expanded means, at that.
Then, too, old Arnie was a Swede or a Dane, something like that and so it wouldn’t be necessary for Glaub to season his skin-color before receiving each patient. Plus the fact that Arnie had a reputation for informality. Milt and Arnie, it would be. Dr. Glaub smiled.
What he had to be sure to do in this initial interview was to ratify Arnie’s concepts, sort of play along and not dash cold water on things, even if, say, old Arnie’s notions were way out of line. A hell of a thing it would be to discourage the man! That wasn’t right.