“It’s too late for that,” Jack said.
“You’re not a psychotherapist or a doctor,” Doreen said. “It’s one thing for Milton Glaub to be in close contact day after day with autistic and schizophrenic persons, but you– you’re a repairman who blundered into this because of a crazy impulse on Arnie’s part; you just happened to be there in the same room with him fixing his encoder and so you wound up with this. You shouldn’t be so passive, Jack. You’re letting your life be shaped by chance, and for God’s sake– don’t you recognize that passivity for what it is?”
After a pause he said, “I suppose I do.”
“Say it.”
He said, “There’s a tendency for a schizophrenic individual to be passive; I know that.”
“Be decisive; don’t go any further with this. Call Arnie and tell him you’re simply not competent to handle Manfred. He should be back at Camp B-G where Milton Glaub can work with him. They can build that slowed-down chamber there; they were starting to, weren’t they?”
“They’ll never get around to it. They’re talking about importing the equipment from Home; you know what that means.”
“And you’ll never get around to it,” Doreen said, “because, long before you do, you’ll have cracked up mentally. I can look into the future too; you know what I see? I see you having a much more serious collapse than ever before; I see–total psychological collapse for you, Jack, if you keep working on this. Already you’re being mauled by acute schizophrenic anxiety, by _panic_–isn’t that so? Isn’t it?”
He nodded.
“I saw that in my brother,” Doreen said. “Schizophrenic panic, and once you see it break out in a person, you can never forget it. The collapse of their reality around them . . . the collapse of their perceptions of time and space, cause and effect . . . and isn’t that what’s happening to you? You’re talking as if this meeting with Arnie can’t be altered by anything you do–and that’s a deep regression on your part from adult responsibility and maturity; that’s not like you at all.” Breathing deeply, her chest rising and falling painfully, she went on, “I’ll call Arnie and tell him you’re pulling out, and he’ll have to get someone else to finish with Manfred. And I’ll tell him that you’ve made no progress, that it’s pointless for you and for him to continue with this. I’ve seen Arnie get these whims before; he keeps them percolating for a few days or weeks, and then he forgets them. He can forget this.”
Jack said, “He won’t forget this one.”
“Try,” she said.
“No,” he said. “I have to go there tonight and give him my progress report. I said I would; I owe it to him.”
“You’re a damn fool,” Doreen said.
“I know it,” Jack said. “But not for the reason you think. I’m a fool because I took on a job without looking ahead to its consequences. I–” He broke off. “Maybe it is what you said. I’m not competent to work with Manfred. That’s it, period.”
“But you’re still going ahead. What do you have to show Arnie tonight? Show it to me, right now.”
Getting out a manila envelope, Jack reached into it and drew out the picture of the buildings which Manfred had drawn. For a long time Doreen studied it. And then she handed it back to him.
“That’s an evil and sick drawing,” she said in a voice almost inaudible. “I know what it is. It’s the Tomb World, isn’t it? That’s what he’s drawn. The world after death. And that’s what he sees, and through him, that’s what you’re beginning to see. You want to take that to Arnie? You have lost your grip on reality; do you think Arnie wants to see an abomination like that? Burn it.”
“It’s not that bad,” he said, deeply perturbed by her reaction.
“Yes, it is,” Doreen said. “And it’s a dreadful sign that it doesn’t strike you that way. Did it at first?”
He had to nod yes.
“Then you know I’m right,” she said.
“I have to go on,” he said. “I’ll see you at his place tonight.” Going over to the window, he tapped Manfred on the shoulder. “We have to go, now. We’ll see this lady tonight, and Mr. Kott, too.”
“Goodbye, Jack,” Doreen said, accompanying him to the door. Her large dark eyes were heavy with despair. “There’s nothing I can say to stop you; I can see that. You’ve changed. You’re so less–alive–now than you were just a day or so ago . . . do you know that?”
“No,” he said. “I didn’t realize that.” But he was not surprised to hear it; he could feel it, hanging heavy over his limbs, choking his heart. Leaning toward her, he kissed her on her full, good-tasting lips. “I’ll see you tonight.”
She stood at the doorway, silently watching him and the boy go.
In the time remaining before evening, Jack Bohlen decided to drop by the Public School and pick up his son. There, in that place which he dreaded before any other, he would find out if Doreen were right; he would learn if his morale and ability to distinguish reality from the projections of his own unconscious had been impaired or not. For him, the Public School was the crucial location. And, as he directed his Yee Company ‘copter toward it, he felt deep within himself that he would be capable of handling a second visit there.
He was violently curious, too, to see Manfred’s reaction to the place, and to its simulacra, the teaching machines. For some time now he had had an abiding hunch that Manfred, confronted by the School’s Teachers, would show a significant response, perhaps similar to his own, perhaps totally opposite. In any case the reaction would be there; he was positive of that.
But then he thought resignedly, Isn’t it too late? Isn’t the job over, hasn’t Arnie cancelled it because it doesn’t matter?
Haven’t I already been to his place tonight? What time is it?
He thought in fright, I’ve lost all sense of time.
“We’re going to the Public School,” he murmured to Manfred. “Do you like that idea? See the school where David goes.”
The boy’s eyes gleamed with anticipation. Yes, he seemed to be saying. I’d like that. Let’s go.
“O.K.,” Jack said, only with great difficulty managing to operate the controls of the ‘copter; he felt as if he were at the bottom of a great stagnant sea, struggling merely to breathe, almost unable to move. But why?
He did not know. He went on, as best he could.
11
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 a filthy fashion. It poured its wet, sticky self nearer and nearer to her, and the dead bug words popped from its mouth and fell on her. The dead bug words scampered off into the folds of her clothing, and some squeezed into her skin and entered her body.
“I love Mozart,” Mr. Kott said. “I’ll put this tape on.”
Her clothing itched her, it was full of hair and dust and the droppings of the bug words. She scratched at it and the clothing tore in strips. Digging her teeth into the strips, she chewed them away.
Fiddling with the knobs of the amplifier, Mr. Kott said, “Bruno Walter conducting. A great rarity from the golden age of recordings.”
A hideous racket of screeches and shrieks issued from somewhere in the room, and after a time she realized that it was her; she was convulsed from within, all the corpsethings in her were heaving and crawling, struggling out into the light of the room. God, how could she stop them? They emerged from her pores and scuttled off, dropping from strands of gummy web to the floor, to disappear into the cracks between the boards.
“Sorry,” Arnie Kott muttered.
“What a shock,” she said. “You should spare us, Arnie.” Getting up from the couch she pushed away the dark, badsmelling object that clung to her. “Your sense of humor–” she said.
He turned and saw her as she stripped herself of the last of her clothing. He had put down the reel of tape, and now he came toward her, reaching out.
“Do it,” she said, and then they were both on the floor, together; he used his feet to remove his own clothing, hooking his toes into the fabric and tearing until it was away. Arms locked around each other, they rolled into the darkness beneath the stove and lay there, sweating and thumping, gulping in the dust and the heat and the damp of their own bodies. “Do it more,” she said, digging her knees into his sides to hurt him.