Martian Time-Slip

by Philip K. Dick

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.

Bending over her he saw her languid, almost rotting beauty fall away. Yellow cracks spread through her teeth, and the teeth split and sank into her gums, which in turn became green and dry like leather, and then she coughed and spat up into his face quantities of dust. The Gubbler had gotten her, he realized, before he had been able to. So he let her go. She settled backward, her breaking bones making little sharp splintering sounds. Her eyes fused over, opaque, and from behind one eye the lashes became the furry, probing feet of a thick-haired insect stuck back there wanting to get out. Its tiny pin-head red eye peeped past the loose rim of her unseeing eye, and then withdrew; after that the insect squirmed, making the dead eye of the woman bulge, and then, for an instant, the insect peered through the lens of her eye, looked this way and that, saw him but was unable to make out who or what he was; it could not fully make use of the decayed mechanism behind which it lived. Like overripe puffballs, her boobies wheezed as they deflated into flatness, and from their dry interiors, through the web of cracks spreading across them, a cloud of spores arose and drifted up into his face, the smell of mold and age of the Gubbler, who had come and inhabited the inside long ago and was now working his way out to the surface. The dead mouth twitched and then from deep inside at the bottom of the pipe which was the throat a voice muttered, “You weren’t fast enough.” And then the head f...

When she opened the door and saw him she said, “What is it, Jack?” She quickly held the door open and he and Manfred went on inside. “It’s going to be very bad tonight,” he told her. “Are you sure?” She seated herself across from him. “Do you have to go at all? Yes, I suppose so. But maybe you’re wrong.” Jack said, “Manfred has already told me. He’s already seen it.” “Don’t be scared,” Doreen said softly. “But I am,” he said. “Why will it be bad?” “I don’t know. Manfred couldn’t tell me that.” “But—” She gestured. “You’ve made contact with him; that’s wonderful. That’s what Arnie wants.” “I hope you’ll be there,” Jack said. “Yes, I’ll be there. But—there’s not much I can do. Is my opinion worth anything? Because I’m positive that Arnie will be pleased; I think you’re having an anxiety attack for no reason.” “It’s the end,” Jack said, “between me and Arnie—tonight. I know it, and I don’t know why.” He felt sick to his stomach. “It almost seems to me that Manfred does more than know the future; in some way he controls it, he can make it come out the worst possible way because that’s what seems natural to him, that’s how he sees reality. It’s as if by being around him we’re sinking into his reality. It’s starting to seep over us and replace our own way of viewing things, and the kind of events we’re accustomed to see come about now somehow don’t come about. It’s not natural for me to feel this way; I’ve never had this feeling about the future before.” He was silent, then.

“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.

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.

Eyes appeared beyond the edge of the stove; something peeped in at them as they lay together in the darkness—something watched. It had put away its paste and scissors and magazines, dropped all that to watch this and gloat and savor each thump they made. “Go away,” she gasped at it. But it did not go away. “More,” she said, then, and it laughed at her. It laughed and laughed, as she and the weight squashing her kept on. They could not stop. Gubble me more, she said. Gubble gubble gubble me, put your gubbish into me, into my gubbish, you Gubbler. Gubble gubble, I like gubble! Don’t stop. Gubble, gubble gubble gubble, gubble! As Jack Bohlen lowered the Yee Company ’copter toward the landing field of the Public School directly below, he glanced at Manfred and wondered what the boy was thinking. Wrapped up in his thoughts, Manfred Steiner stared sightlessly out, his features twisted into a grimace that repelled Jack and made him instantly look away.

As Jack stepped from the ship the boy disappeared from sight. On his own he had hurried down the ramp and plunged into the school. Doreen Anderton and Arnie Kott, Jack said to himself. The two people who mean the most to me, the friends with whom my contacts, my intimacy with life itself, is the strongest. And yet it’s right there that the boy has managed to infiltrate; he has unfastened me from my relationships where they are the strongest. What’s left? he asked himself. Once I have been isolated there, the rest—my son, my wife, my father, Mr. Yee—all follow almost automatically, without a fight. I can see what lies ahead for me if I continue to lose, step by step, to this completely psychotic boy. Now I can see what psychosis is: the utter alienation of perception from the objects of the outside world, especially the objects which matter: the warmhearted people there. And what takes their place? A dreadful preoccupation with—the endless ebb and flow of one’s own self. The changes emanating from within which affect only the inside world. It is a splitting apart of the two worlds, inner and outer, so that neither registers on the other. Both still exist, but each goes its own way. It is the stopping of time. The end of experience, of anything new. Once the person becomes psychotic, nothing ever happens to him again.

“If you’re limited to your husband for emotional experience,” June Henessy said, “you have no basis of judgment; you’re more or less stuck with what he has to offer, but if you’ve gone to bed with other men you can tell better what your husband’s deficiencies are, and it’s much more possible for you to be objective about him. And what needs to be changed in him, you can insist that he change. And for your own part, you can see where you’ve been ineffective and with these other men you can learn how to improve yourself, so that you give your husband more satisfaction. I fail to see who loses by that.” Put that way, it certainly sounded like a good healthy idea for all concerned. Even the husband benefited. While she sat sipping her coffee and meditating about that, Silvia looked out the window and saw to her surprise a ’copter landing. “Who’s that?” she asked June. “Heaven’s sake, I don’t know,” June said, glancing out.