The boy looked away, then, and settled back down into a heap on the floor.
“You stay here,” Jack said to him. “I’ll have them go get David for me.” Warily, he moved away from the boy, but Manfred did not stir. When he reached a teaching machine, Jack said to it, “I would like to have David Bohlen, please; I’m his father. I’ll take him home.”
It was the Thomas Edison Teaching Machine, an elderly man who glanced up, startled, and cupped his ear. Jack repeated what he had said.
Nodding, it said, “Gubble gubble.”
Jack stared at it. And then he turned to look back at Manfred. The boy still sat slumped down, his back against the wall.
Again the Thomas Edison Teaching Machine opened its mouth and said to Jack, “Gubble gubble.” There was nothing more; it became silent.
Is it me? Jack asked himself. Is this the final psychotic breakdown for me? Or–
He could not believe the alternative; it simply was not possible.
Down the hall, another teaching machine was addressing a group of children; its voice came from a distance, echoing and metallic. Jack strained to listen.
“Gubble gubble,” it was saying to the children.
He closed his eyes. He knew in a moment of perfect awareness that his own psyche, his own perceptions, had not misinformed him; it was happening, what he heard and saw.
Manfred Steiner’s presence had invaded the structure of the Public School, penetrated its deepest being.
12
Still at his desk in his office at Camp B-G, brooding over the behavior of Anne Esterhazy, Dr. Milton Glaub received an emergency call. It was from the master circuit of the UN’s Public School.
“Doctor,” its flat voice declared, “I am sorry to disturb you but we require assistance. There is a male citizen wandering about our premises in an evident state of mental confusion. We would like you to come and remove him.”
“Certain1y,” Dr. Glaub murmured. “I’ll come straight there.”
Soon he was in the air, piloting his ‘copter across the desert from New Israel toward the Public School.
When he arrived, the master circuit met him and escorted him at a brisk pace through the building until they reached a closed-off corridor. “We felt we should keep the children away from him,” the master circuit explained as she caused the wall to roll back, exposing the corridor.
There, with a dazed expression on his face, stood a man familiar to Dr. Glaub. The doctor had an immediate reaction of satisfaction, in spite of himself. So Jack Bohlen’s schizophrenia had caught up with him. Bohlen’s eyes were without focus; obviously he was in a state of catatonic stupor, probably alternating with excitement–he looked exhausted. And with him was another person whom Dr. Glaub recognized. Manfred Steiner sat curled up on the floor, bent forward, likewise in an advanced state of withdrawal.
Your association did not cause either of you to prosper, Dr. Glaub observed to himself.
With the help of the master circuit he got both Bohlen and the Steiner boy into his ‘copter, and presently he was flying back to New Israel and Camp B-G.
Hunched over, his hands clenched, Bohlen said, “Let me tell you what happened.”
“Please do,” Dr. Glaub said, feeling–at last–in control.
Jack Bohlen said in an uneven voice, “I went to the school to pick up my son. I took Manfred.” He twisted in his seat to look at the Steiner boy, who had not come out of his catalepsy; the boy lay rolled up on the floor of the ‘copter, as inert as a carving. “Manfred got away from me. And then–communication between me and the school broke down. All I could hear was–” He broke off.
“Folie a deux,” Glaub murmured. Madness of two.
Bohlen said, “Instead of the school, I heard _him_. I heard his words coming from the Teachers.” He was silent, then.
“Manfred has a powerful personality,” Dr. Glaub said. “It is a drain on one’s resources to be around him for long. I think it would be well for you, for your own health, to abandon this project. I think you risk too much.”
“I have to see Arnie tonight,” Bohlen said in a ragged, harsh whisper.
“What about yourself? What’s going to become of you?”
Bohlen said nothing.
“I can treat you,” Dr. Glaub said, “at this stage of your difficulty. Later on–I’m not so sure.”
“In there, in that damn school,” Bohlen said, “I got completely confused; I didn’t know what to do. I kept going on, looking for someone who I could still talk to. Who wasn’t like–him.” He gestured toward the boy.
“It is a massive problem for the schizophrenic to relate to the school,” Glaub said. “The schizophrenic, such as yourself, very often deals with people through their unconscious. The teaching machines, of course, have no shadow personalities; what they are is all on the surface. Since the schizophrenic is accustomed constantly to ignore the surface and look beneath–he draws a blank. He is simply unable to understand them.”
Bohlen said, “I couldn’t understand anything they said; it was all just that–meaningless talk Manfred uses. That private language.”
“You’re fortunate you could come out of it,” Dr. Glaub said.
“I know.”
“So now what will it be for you, Bohlen? Rest and recovery? Or more of this dangerous contact with a child so unstable that–”
“I have no choice,” Jack Bohlen said.
“That’s right. You have no choice; you must withdraw.”
Bohlen said, “But I learned something. I learned how great the stakes are for me personally, in all this. Now I know what it would be like to be cut off from the world, isolated, the way Manfred is. I’d do anything to avoid that. I have no intention of giving up now.” With shaking hands he got a cigarette from his pocket and lit up.
“The prognosis for you is not good,” Dr. Glaub said.
Jack Bohlen nodded.
“There’s been a remission of your difficulty, due no doubt to your being removed from the environment of the school. Shall I be blunt? There’s no telling how long you’ll be able to function; perhaps another ten minutes, another hour– possibly until tonight, and then you may well find yourself enduring a worse collapse. The nocturnal hours are especially bad, are they not?”
“Yes,” Bohlen said.
“I can do two things for you. I can take Manfred back to Camp B-G and I can represent you at Arnie’s tonight, be there as your official psychiatrist. I do that all the time; it’s my business. Give me a retainer and I’ll drop you off at your home.”
“Maybe after tonight,” Bohlen said. “Maybe you can represent me later on, if this gets worse. But tonight I’m taking Manfred with me to see Arnie Kott.”
Dr. Glaub shrugged. Impervious to suggestion, he realized. A sign of autism. Jack Bohlen could not be persuaded; he was too cut off already to hear and understand. Language for him had become a hollow ritual, signifying nothing.
“My boy David,” Bohlen said all at once. “I have to go back there to the school and pick him up. And my Yee Company ‘copter; it’s there, too.” His eyes had become clearer, now, as if he were emerging from his state.
“Don’t go back there,” Dr. Glaub urged him.
“Take me back.”
“Then don’t go down into the school; stay up on the field. I’ll have them send up your son–you can sit in your ‘copter until he’s up. That would be safe for you, perhaps. I’ll deal with the master circuit for you.” Dr. Glaub felt a rush of sympathy for this man, for his dogged instincts to go on in his own manner.
“Thanks,” Bohlen said. “I’d appreciate that.” He shot a smile at the doctor, and Glaub smiled back.
Arnie Kott said plaintively, “Where’s Jack Bohlen?” It was six o’clock in the evening, and Arnie sat by himself in his living room, drinking a slightly too sweet Old Fashioned which Helio had fixed.
At this moment his tame Bleekman was in the kitchen preparing a dinner entirely of black-market goodies, all from Arnie’s new stock. Reflecting that he now obtained his spread at wholesale prices, Arnie felt good. What an improvement on the old system, where Norbert Steiner made all the profit! Arnie sipped his drink and waited for his guests to arrive. In the corner, music emerged from the speakers, subtle and yet pervasive; it filled the room and lulled Goodmember Kott.
He was still in that trancelike mood when the noise of the telephone startled him awake.
“Arnie, this is Scott.”
“Oh?” Arnie said, not pleased; he preferred to deal through his cunning code system. “Look, I’ve got a vital business meeting tonight here, and unless you’ve got something–”
“This is important, all right,” Scott said. “There’s somebody else hoeing away at our row.”
Puzzled, Arnie said, “What?” And then he understood what Scott Temple meant. “You mean the goodies?”