"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.
"An accident," he said, squashing her against the floor, breathing into her face.
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.
Why did he have anything to do with this boy? Jack wondered. Doreen was right; he was in over his head, and the unstable, schizophrenic aspects of his own personality were being stirred into life by the presence beside him. And yet he did not know how to get out; somehow it was too late, as if time had collapsed and left him here, for eternity, caught in a symbiosis with this unfortunate, mute creature who did nothing but rake over and inspect his own private world, again and again.
He had imbibed, on some level, Manfred's world-view, and it was obviously bringing about the stealthy disintegration of his own.
Tonight, he thought. I have to keep going until tonight: somehow I must hold out until I can see Arnie Kott. Then I can jettison all this and return to my own space, my own world; I will never have to look at Manfred Steiner again.
Arnie, for Christ's sake, save me, he thought.
"We're here," he said as the 'copter bumped to a halt on the roof field. He switched off the motor.
At once Manfred moved to the door, eager to get out.
So you want to see this place, Jack thought. I wonder why. He got to his feet and went to unlock the door of the 'copter; at once Manfred hopped out onto the roof and scampered toward the descent ramp, almost as if he knew the way by heart.
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.