“You can offer him something of priceless value. . . . Mister, you can banish the specter of AM-WEB from his life forever. Promise him that you will send him back to Earth. Then no matter what becomes of him, he will never see the interior of that abominable building. If you do that for him, he will turn all his mental powers in your behalf.”
“It sounds fine to me,” Arnie said.
“And you will not fail the boy.”
“Oh, heck, no,” Arnie promised. “I’ll make all the arrangements with the UN right away--it’s complicated, but I got lawyers who can handle stuff like that without even half trying.”
“Good,” Helio said, nodding. “It would be foul to let the boy down. If you could for a moment experience his terrible anxiety about his future life in that place--“
“Yeah, it sounds awful,” Arnie agreed.
“What a shame it would be,” Helio said, eyeing him, “if you yourself did ever have to endure that.”
“Where is Manfred right now?”
“He is walking about the streets of Lewistown,” Helio said. “Taking in the sights.”
“Cripes, is it safe?”
“I think so,” Helio said. “He is much excited by the people and stores and activity; it is all new to him.”
“You sure have helped that kid,” Arnie said.
The door chimes sounded, and Helio went to answer. When Arnie looked up, there stood Jack Bohlen and Doreen Anderton, both of them with fixed, high-strung expressions.
“Oh, hi,” Arnie said, preoccupied. “Come on in; I was about to call you, Jack. Listen, I got a job for you.”
Jack Bohlen said, “Why did you buy my contract from Mr. Yee?”
“Because I need you,” Arnie said. “I’ll tell you why right now. I’m going on a pilgrimage with Manfred and I want somebody to circle around overhead so we don’t get lost and die of thirst. We got to walk across the desert to the F.D.R. Mountains; isn’t that right, Helio?”
“Yes, Mister,” Helio said.
“I want to get started right away,” Arnie explained. “I figure it’s about a five-day hike. We’ll take a portable communications rig with us so we can notify you when we need something like food or water. At night you can land the ‘copter and pitch a tent for us to sleep in. Make sure you get medical supplies on board in case either Manfred or I get bit by a desert animal; I hear there’s Martian snakes and rats running around wild out there.” He examined his watch. “It’s three now; I’d like to get started by four and get in maybe five hours tonight.”
“What’s the purpose of this--pilgrimage?” Doreen asked presently.
“I got business out there to attend to,” Arnie said. “Out among those desert Bleekmen. Private business. Are you coming along in the ‘copter? If so you better put on something different, maybe boots and heavy pants, because it’s always possible you fellas might get forced down. That’s a long time, five days, to keep circling. Make sure in particular about the water.”
Doreen and Jack looked at each other.
“I’m serious,” Arnie said. “So let’s not stop to mess around. O.K?”
“As far as I can tell,” Jack said to Doreen, “I have no choice. I have to do what he tells me.”
“That’s the truth, buddy,” Arnie agreed. “So start rounding up the equipment we’ll need. Portable stove to cook on, portable light, portable bathroom, food and soap and towels, a gun of some sort. You know what we’ll need; you’ve been living on the edge of the desert.”
Jack nodded slowly.
“What is this business?” Doreen said. “And why do you have to walk? If you have to go there, why can’t you fly as you usually do?”
“I just have to walk,” Arnie said with irritation. “That’s the way it is; it wasn’t my idea.” To Helio he said, “I can fly back, can’t I?”
“Yes, Mister,” Helio said. “You may return any way you prefer.”
“It’s a good thing I’m in top-notch physical shape,” Arnie said, “or this would be out of the question. I hope Manfred can make it.”
“He is quite strong, Mister,” Helio said.
“You’re taking the boy,” Jack murmured.
“That’s right,” Arnie said. “Any objections?”
Jack Bohlen did not answer, but he looked more grim than ever. Suddenly he burst out, “You can’t make the boy walk for five days across the desert--it’ll kill him.”
“Why can’t you go in some surface vehicle?” Doreen asked. “One of those little tractor-jitneys that the UN post office people use to deliver the mail. It would still take a long time; it would still be a pilgrimage.”
“What about that?” Arnie said to Helio.
After some reflection, the Bleekman said, “I suppose that little cart of which you speak would do.”
“Fine,” Arnie said, deciding then and there. “I’ll phone a couple of guys I know and pick up one of those P0 jitneys. That’s a good idea you gave me, Doreen; I appreciate it. Of course, you two still have to be there overhead to make sure we don’t break down.”
Both Jack and Doreen nodded.
“Maybe when I get there, where I’m going,” Arnie said, “you’ll maybe find out what I’m up to.” In fact you darn well are going to, he said to himself; there’s no doubt about that.
“This is all very strange,” Doreen said; she stood close to Jack Bohlen, holding on to his arm.
“Don’t blame me,” Arnie said. “Blame Helio.” He grinned.
“That is true,” Helio said. “It was my idea.”
But their expressions remained.
“Talked to your dad yet today?” Arnie asked Jack.
“Yes. Briefly, on the phone.”
“His claim filed now, all recorded? No hitches?”
Jack said, “He says it was processed properly. He’s preparing to return to Earth.”
“Efficient operation,” Arnie said. “I admire that. Shows up here on Mars, stakes out his claim, goes to the abstract office and records it, then flies back. Not bad.”
“What are you up to, Arnie?” Jack said in a quiet voice.
Arnie shrugged. “I got this holy pilgrimage to make, along with Manfred. That’s all.” He was, however, still grinning; he could not help it. He could not stop, and he did not bother to try.
Use of the UN post office jitney cut the proposed pilgrimage from Lewistown to Dirty Knobby from five days to a mere eight hours; or so Arnie calculated. Nothing to do now but go, he said to himself as he paced about his living room.
Outside the building, at the curb, Helio sat in the parked jitney with Manfred. Through the window Arnie could see them, far below. He got his gun from his desk drawer, strapped it on inside his coat, locked up the desk, and hurried out into the hall.
A moment later he emerged on the sidewalk and made for the jitney.
“Here we go,” he said to Manfred. Helio stepped from the jitney, and Arnie seated himself behind the tiller. He revved up the tiny turbine engine; it made a noise like a bumblebee in a bottle. “Sounds good,” he said heartily. “So long, Helio. If this goes off O.K., there’s a reward for you-- remember that.”
“I expect no reward,” Helio said. “I am only doing my duty by you, Mister; I would do it for anyone.”
Releasing the parking brake, Arnie pulled out into downtown Lewistown late-afternoon traffic. They were on their way. Overhead, Jack Bohlen and Doreen were no doubt cruising in the ‘copter; Arnie did not bother to search for sign of them, taking it for granted that they were there. He waved goodbye to Helio, and then a huge tractor-bus filled in all the space behind the jitney; Helio was cut off from view.
“How about this, Manfred?” Arnie said, as he guided the jitney toward the perimeter of Lewistown and the desert beyond. “Isn’t this something? It makes almost fifty miles an hour, and that isn’t hay.”
The boy did not respond, but his body trembled with excitement.
“This is the nuts,” Arnie declared, in answer to his own query.
&
nbsp; They had almost left Lewistown when Arnie became aware of a car which had pulled up beside them and was proceeding at the same speed as theirs. He saw, within the car, two figures, a man and a woman; at first he thought it was Jack and Doreen, and then he discovered that the woman was his ex-wife Anne Esterhazy and the man was Dr. Milton Glaub.
What the hell do they want? Arnie wondered. Can’t they see I’m busy, I can’t be bothered, whatever it is?
“Kott,” Dr. Glaub yelled, “pull over to the curb so we can talk to you! This is vital!”
“The hell,” Arnie said, increasing the speed of the jitney. He felt with his left hand for his gun. “I got nothing to say, and what are you two doing in cahoots?” He didn’t like the look of it one bit. Just like them to gang up, he said to himself. I should have expected it. Snapping on the portable communications rig, he put in a call to his steward, Eddy Goggins at Union Hall. “This is Arnie. My gyrocompass point is 8.45702, right at the edge of town. Get over here quick--I got a party that has to be took care of. Make it fast, they’re gaining on me.” They had, in fact, never fallen behind; it was easy for them to match the speed of the little jitney, and even to exceed it.
“Will do, Arnie,” Eddy Goggins said. “I’ll send some of the boys on the double; don’t worry.”
Now the car edged ahead and drew toward the curb. Arnie reluctantly slowed the jitney to a stop. The car placed itself in a position to block escape, and then Glaub jumped from it and scuttled up crablike to the jitney, waving his arms.
“This ends your career of bullying and domineering,” he shouted at Arnie.
Kee-rist, Arnie thought. At a time like this. “What do you want?” he said. “Make it snappy; I got business.”
“Leave Jack Bohlen alone,” Dr. Glaub panted. “I represent him, and he needs rest and quiet. You’ll have to deal with me.”
From the car Anne Esterhazy emerged; she approached the jitney and confronted Arnie. “As I understand the situation--“ she began.
“You understand nothin’,” Arnie said, with venom. “Let me by, or I’ll take care of both of you.”
Overhead, a ‘copter with the Water Workers’ Union marking on it appeared and began to descend; it was Jack and Doreen, Arnie guessed. And behind it came a second ‘copter at tremendous speed; that no doubt was Eddy and the Goodmembers. Both ‘copters prepared to land close by.
Anne Esterhazy said, “Arnie, I know that something bad is going to happen to you if you don’t stop what you’re doing.”
“To me?” he said, amused and incredulous.
“I feel it. Please, Arnie. Whatever it is you’re up to--think twice. There’s so much good in the world; must you have your revenge?”
“Go back to New Israel and tend your goddamn store.” He fast-idled the motor of the jitney.
“That boy,” Anne said. “That’s Manfred Steiner, isn’t it? Let Milton take him back to Camp B-G; it’s better for evPryone, better for him and for you.”
One of the ‘copters had landed. From it hopped three or four WWU men; they came running up the street, and Dr. Glaub, seeing them, plucked dolefully at Anne’s sleeve.
“I see them.” She remained unruffled. “Please, Arnie. You and I have worked together so often, on so many worthwhile things . . . for my sake, for Sam’s sake--if you go ahead with this, I know you and I will never be together again in any way whatever. Can’t you feel that? Is this so important as all that, to lose so much?”
Arnie said nothing.
Puffing, Eddy Goggins appeared beside the jitney. The union men fanned out toward Anne Esterhazy and Dr. Glaub. Now the other ‘copter had landed, and from it stepped Jack Bohlen.
“Ask him,” Arnie said. “He’s coming of his own free will; he’s a grown man, he knows what he’s doing. Ask him if he isn’t voluntarily coming along on this pilgrimage.”
As Glaub and Anne Esterhazy turned toward Jack, Arnie Kott backed up the jitney; he shifted into forward and shot around the side of the parked car. A scuffle broke out, as Glaub tried to get back into the car; two Goodmembers grabbed him and they wrestled. Arnie steered the jitney straight ahead, and the car and the people fell behind.
“Here we go,” he said to Manfred.
Ahead, the street became a vague level strip passing from the city out onto the desert, in the direction of the hills far beyond. The jitney bumped along at near top speed, and Arnie smiled. Beside him the boy’s face shone with excitement.
Nobody can stop me, Arnie said to himself.
The sounds of the squabble faded from his ears; he heard now only the buzz of the tiny turbine of the jitney. He settled back.
Dirty Knobby, get ready, he said to himself. And then he thought of Jack Bohlen’s magic charm, the water witch which Helio said the man had on him, and Arnie frowned. But the frown was momentary. He did not slow down.
Beside him Manfred crowed excitedly, “Gubble gubble!”
“What’s that mean, gubble gubble?” Arnie asked.
There was no answer, as the two of them bounced along in the UN post office jitney toward the F.D.R. Mountains directly ahead.
Maybe I’ll find out what it means when we get there, Arnie said to himself. I’d like to know. For some reason the sounds which the boy made, the unintelligible words, made him nervous, more so than anything else. He wished suddenly that Helio was along.
“Gubble gubble!” Manfred cried as they sped along.
15
The black, lopsided projection of sandstone and volcanic glass which was Dirty Knobby poked up huge and gaunt ahead of them in the glow of early morning. They had spent the night on the desert, in a tent, the ‘copter parked close by. Jack Bohlen and Doreen Anderton had exchanged no words with them; at dawn the ‘copter had taken off to circle overhead. Arnie and the boy Manfred Steiner had eaten a good breakfast and then packed up and resumed their trip.
Now the trip, the pilgrimage to the sacred rock of the Bleekmen, was over.
Seeing Dirty Knobby close up like this, Arnie thought, There’s the place that’ll cure us all of whatever ails us. Letting Manfred take the tiller of the jitney, he consulted the map which Heliogabalus had drawn. It showed the path up into the range to the rock. There was, Helio had told him, a hollowed-out chamber on the north side of the rock, where a Bleekrnan priest could generally be found. Unless, Arnie said to himself, he’s off somewhere sleeping off a binge. He knew the Bleekmen priests; they were old winos, for the most part. Even the Bleekmen had contempt for them.
At the base of the first hill, in the shadows, he parked the jitney and shut off its engine. “From here we climb on foot,” he said to Manfred. “We’ll carry as much gear as we can, food and water naturally, and the communications rig, and I guess if we need to cook we can come back for the stove. It’s only supposed to be a few more miles.”
The boy hopped from the jitney. He and Arnie unloaded the gear, and soon they were trudging up a rocky trail, into the F.D.R. range.
Glancing about with apprehension, Manfred huddled and shivered. Perhaps the boy was experiencing AM-WEB once more, Arnie conjectured. The Henry Wallace was only a hundred miles from here. The boy might well have picked up the emanations of the structure to come, close as they were, now. In fact he could almost feel them himself.
Or was it the rock of the Bleekmen which he felt?
He did not like the sight of it. Why make a shrine out of this? he asked himself. Perverse--this arid place. But maybe a long time ago this region had been fertile. Evidence of onetime Bleekmen camps could be made out along the path. Maybe the Martians had originated here; the land certainly had an old, used appearance. As if, he thought, a million gray-black creatures had handled all this throughout the ages. And now what was it? A last remains for a dying race. A relic for those who were not going to be around much longer.
Wheezing from the exertion of climbing with a heavy load, Arnie halted. Manfred toiled up the steep acclivity after him, still casting anxiety-stricken looks around.
“
Don’t worry,” Arnie said encouragingly. “There’s nothing here to be scared of.” Was the boy’s talent already blending with that of the rock? And, he wondered, had the rock itself become apprehensive, too? Was it capable of that?
The trail leveled out and became wider. And all was in shadow; cold and damp hung over everything, as if they were treading within a great tomb. The vegetation that grew thin and noxious along the surface of rocks had a dead quality to it, as if something had poisoned it in its act of growing. Ahead lay a dead bird on the path, a rotten corpse that might have been there for weeks; he could not tell. It had a mummified appearance.
I sure don’t enjoy this place, Arnie said to himself.
Halting at the bird, Manfred bent down and said, “Gubbish.”
“Yeah,” Arnie murmured. “Come on, let’s go.”
They arrived all at once at the base of the rock.
Wind rustled the leaves of vegetation, the shrubs which looked as if they had been skinned down to their elements: bare and picked over, like bones stuck upright in the soil. The wind emerged from a crack in Dirty Knobby and it smelled, he thought, as if some sort of animal lived there. Maybe the priest himself; he saw with no real surprise an empty wine bottle lying off to one side, with other bits of debris caught on the sharp foliage nearby.
“Anybody around?” Arnie called.
After a long time an old man, a Bleekman, gray as if wrapped in webs, edged out of the chamber within the rock. The wind seemed to blow him along, so that he crept sideways, pausing against the side of the cavity and then stirring forward once more. His eyes were red-rimmed.
“You old drunk,” Arnie said in a low voice. And then from a piece of paper Helio had given him he greeted the old man in Bleeky.
The priest mumbled a toothless, mechanical response.
“Here.” Arnie held out a carton of cigarettes. The priest, mumbling, sidled forward and took the carton in his claws; he tucked the carton beneath his gray-webbed robes. “You like that, huh?” Arnie said. “I thought you would.”
From the piece of paper he read, in Bleeky, the purpose of his visit and what he wanted the priest to do. He wanted the priest to leave him and Manfred in peace for an hour or so, at the chamber, so that they could summon the spirit of the rock.
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