The boy suddenly said, “Gubble, gubble.”
“Yeah,” Arnie said, with bitterness. “That’s right. That’s real good communication, kid. Gubble, gubble.” To Jack he said, “You have a fine communication established; I can see that.”
Jack said nothing. Now he looked grim and uneasy.
“I can see it’s going to take a long time more,” Arnie said, “to bring this kid out so we can talk to him. Right? Too bad we can’t continue. I’m not going any further with it.”
“No reason why you should,” Jack said in a leaden voice.
“Right,” Arnie said. “So that’s it. The end of your job.”
Doreen said, “But you can still use him for–”
“Oh, of course,” Arnie said. “I need a skilled repairman anyhow, for stuff like that encoder; I got a thousand items busting down every goddamn day. I just mean this one particular job, here. Send him back to B-G, this kid. AM-WEB. Yeah, the co-op buildings get funny names like that. The coop coming over to Mars! That’s a big outfit, that co-op. They’ll pay high for their land; they’ve got the loot. Tell your dad from me that he’s a shrewd businessman.”
“Can we shake hands, Arnie?” Jack asked.
“Sure, Jack.” Arnie stuck out his hand and the two of them shook, hard and long, looking each other in the eye. “I expect to see a lot of you, Jack. This isn’t the end between you and me; it’s just the beginning.” He let go of Jack Bohlen’s hand, walked back into the kitchen, and stood by himself, thinking.
Presently Doreen joined him. “That was dreadful news for you, wasn’t it?” she said, putting her arm around him.
“Very bad,” Arnie said. “Worst I had in a long time. But I’ll be O.K.; I’m not scared of the co-op movement. Lewistown and the Water Workers were here first, and they’ll be here a lot longer. If I had gotten this project with the Steiner boy started sooner, it would have worked out differently, and I sure don’t blame Jack for that.” But inside him, in his heart, he thought, You were working against me, Jack. All the time. You were working with your father. From the start, too; from the day I hired you.
He returned to the living room. At the tape transport, Jack stood morose and silent, fooling with the knobs.
“Don’t take it hard,” Arnie said to him.
“Thanks, Arnie,” Jack said. His eyes were dull. “I feel I’ve let you down.”
“Not me,” Arnie assured him. “You haven’t let me down, Jack. Because nobody lets me down.”
On the floor, Manfred Steiner pasted away, ignoring them all.
As he flew his father back to the house, leaving the F.D.R. range behind them, Jack thought, Should I show the boy’s picture to Arnie? Should I take it to Lewistown and hand it over to him? It’s so little . . . it just doesn’t look like what I ought to have produced, by now.
He knew that tonight he would have to see Arnie, in any case.
“Very desolate down there,” his dad said, nodding toward the desert below. “Amazing you people have done so much reclamation work; you should all be proud.” But his attention was actually on his maps. He spoke in a perfunctory manner; it was a formality.
Jack snapped on his radio transmitter and called Arnie, at Lewistown. “Excuse me, dad; I have to talk to my boss.”
The radio made a series of noises, which attracted Manf red momentarily; he ceased poring over his drawing and raised his head.
“I’ll take you along,” Jack said to the boy.
Presently he had Arnie. “Hi, Jack.” Arnie’s voice came boomingly. “I been trying to get hold of you. Can you–”
“I’ll be over to see you tonight,” Jack said.
“Not before? How about this afternoon?”
“Afraid tonight is as soon as I can make it,” Jack said. “There–” He hesitated. “Nothing to show you until tonight.” If I get near him, he thought, I’ll tell him about the UN–co-op project; he’ll get everything out of me. I’ll wait until after my dad’s claim has been filed, and then it won’t matter.
“Tonight, then,” Arnie agreed. “And I’ll be on pins, Jack. Sitting on pins. I know you’re going to come up with something; I got a lot of confidence in you.”
Jack thanked him, said goodbye, and rang off.
“Your boss sounds like a gentleman,” his dad said, after the connection had been broken. “And he certainly looks up to you. I expect you’re of priceless value to his organization, a man with your ability.”
Jack said nothing. Already he felt guilty.
“Draw me a picture,” he said to Manfred, “of how it’s going to go tonight, between me and Mr. Kott.” He took away the paper on which the boy was drawing and handed him a blank piece. “Will you Manfred? You can see ahead to tonight. You, me, Mr. Kott, at Mr. Kott’s place.”
The boy took a blue crayon and began to draw. As he piloted the ‘copter, Jack watched.
With great care, Manfred drew. At first Jack could not make it out. Then he grasped what the scene showed. Two men. One was hitting the other in the eye.
Manfred laughed, a long, high-pitched, nervous laugh, and suddenly hugged the picture against himself.
Feeling cold, Jack turned his attention back to the controls before him. He felt himself perspire, the damp sweat of anxiety. Is that how it’s going to be? he asked, silently, within himself. A fight between me and Arnie? And you will witness it, perhaps . . . or at least know of it, one day.
“Jack,” Leo was saying, “you’ll take me to the abstract company, won’t you? And let me off there? I want to get my papers filed. Can we go right there, instead of back to the house? I have to admit I’m uneasy. There must be local operators who’re watching all this, and I can’t be too careful.”
Jack said, “I can only repeat: it’s immoral, what you’re doing.”
“Just let me handle it,” his father said. “It’s my way of doing business, Jack. I don’t intend to change.”
“Profiteering,” Jack said.
“I won’t argue it with you,” his father said. “It’s none of your concern. If you don’t feel like assisting me, after I’ve come millions of miles from Earth, I guess I can manage to round up public transportation.” His tone was mild, but he had turned red.
“I’ll take you there,” Jack said.
“I can’t stand to be moralized at,” his father said.
Jack said nothing. He turned the ‘copter south, toward the UN buildings at Pax Grove.
Drawing away with his blue crayon, Manfred made one of the two men in his picture, the one who had been hit in the eye, fall down and become dead. Jack saw that, saw the figure become supine and then still. Is that me? he wondered. Or is it Arnie?
Someday–perhaps soon–I will know.
Inside Mr. Kott’s skin were dead bones, shiny and wet. Mr. Kott was a sack of bones, dirty and yet shiny-wet. His head was a skull that took in greens and bit them; inside him the greens became rotten things as something ate them to make them dead.
Jack Bohlen, too, was a dead sack, teeming with gubbish. The outside that fooled almost everyone, it was painted pretty and smelled good, bent down over Miss Anderton, and he saw that; he saw it wanting her in an awful fashion. It poured its wet, sticky self nearer to her and the dead bug words popped from its mouth.
“I love Mozart,” Mr. Kott was saying. “I’ll put this tape on.” He fiddled with the knobs of the amplifier. “Bruno Walter conducting. A great rarity from the golden age of recordings.”
A hideous racket of screeches and shrieks issued from the speakers, like the convulsions of corpses. He shut off the tape transport.
“Sorry,” Arnie Kott muttered.
Wincing at the sound, Jack Bohlen sniffed the woman’s body beside him, saw shiny perspiration on her upper lip where a faint smear of her lipstick made her mouth look cut. He wanted to bite her lips, he wanted to make blood, there. His thumbs wanted to dig into her armpits and make an upward circle so that he worked her breasts, then he would feel they belonged to him to do with what he wanted. He had made them move already; it was fun.
“What a shock,” she said. “You should spare us, Arnie. Your sense of humor–”
“An accident,” Arnie said. He rummaged for another tape.
Reaching out his hand Jack Bohlen touched the woman’s lap. There was no underwear there beneath her skirt. He rubbed her legs and she drew her legs up and turned toward him so that her knees pressed into him; she sat like an animal, crouching in expectation. I can’t wait to get you and me out of here and where we can be alone, Jack thought. God, how I want to feel you, and not through clothing. He closed his fingers around her bare ankle and she yapped with pain, smiling at him.