"How should I know, sir."
"You don't care?"
"No, why should I give a damn what he's thinking?"
"You tell me. Why shouldn't you?"
"Because it's none of my business."
* * * * *
Then there was another time, during some visit or other, when Von
Ulrich pulled another word association test.
"Love."
"It makes the world go round."
"Blackness."
"Sleep."
"Alone."
"Quiet."
It went on for hours. Von Ulrich always seemed to be angrier because
Barton didn't crack up, or because he insisted on turning in a perfect
service record in the basketball.
"Barton, for God's sake, don't you realize how important this watch is?
This valuable information gathered by these recorders. Think what it
would mean if that data fell into the hands of the Asians! What if you
missed an alarm, or fouled up in some way, and one of these recorders
destroyed all the data?"
"Haven't I been alert all the time, sir?"
"Yes! But you've been out here now for three years! Three years. No one
can possibly stand it longer than six months. And the fact that you've
been here for three years only means some absolutely catastrophic
crack-up is being prolonged, built up inside."
"I don't feel a bit different, sir."
"There are subtle ways of cracking up."
"You _want_ me to have some sort of symptom or something?"
"Don't be ridiculous."
* * * * *
It must have been at least another year before Von Ulrich came back to
Barton's basketball, triumphantly equipped with new devices, and waving
a spacegram in Barton's sleepy face. Barton read it, shrugged, and let
it drift to the floor. Von Ulrich tried to control a look almost of
fear.
"As soon as the minimum time allowed, she married again," Von Ulrich
said. "And you pretend it means nothing?"
"She never did mean much of anything, sir. I mean, she was an
interfering kind of woman. She wouldn't let a man live."
"All right, Barton. What about this? She was committing adulterous
acts with this fellow, this Major General Woods. She was having an
affair with him for two years before you volunteered for duty in the
basketball."
"I figured she was playing around."
"You what?"
"It figured."
"You still pretend it meant nothing, that it means nothing now?"
"I don't know what it means. What's it got to do with me now? It was
all right, I guess. I could have gone on with it. But this is better."
He dimly remembered Jean bitching all the time of an evening because
Barton kept forgetting to take his officer's exam, and how she had to
skimp along on an NCO's lousy salary, and so on and so forth. Very much
the nagging kind. She wouldn't let him read either. He would tell her
he was just sort of stupid, and had always been a drifter anyway, and
just sort of fell into marriage and that he never had had any ambition
particularly, and anyway big brass got ulcers and heart conditions. And
then she would drag little Joey, the big-headed little brat into it,
and talk about how little Joey didn't have the right kind of idealized
image to assure him a respectable future, and little Joey would stand
there and nod his oversized head.
"What about little Joey's future?" Jean would say. "You want him to
be just another stupid NCO? And what about his teeth? He's got to
have his teeth straightened. They tease him at school, call him The
Squirrel."
"Yeah, Dad. You want me to be personable and saleable and high on the
success potential scale? What about my teeth protruding?"
And when Barton went into the bathroom and came back out, Jean was
throwing all those books he'd had such a hard time finding into the
incinerator. Barton volunteered the next day for basketball duty.
It didn't even seem long ago to Barton. It was oddly like a dream that
might have been in the past, or the future, or never at all.
Von Ulrich grabbed up the spacegram and walked stiffly erect out of the
basketball.
At some time in the future, Von Ulrich showed up again with even more
complicated tests and questions. Barton wasn't sure, but it seemed
longer than usual that Von Ulrich was away these days. Time didn't mean
much. It didn't have any particular use to Barton now.
"Yes, yes, you have a perfect service record, Barton. Never have missed
turning in an alarm with alacrity. And we're so damned short of men
capable of taking this kind of duty that I can't pull you out of here
until you make an error--or crack up. Just the same you're not fooling
me much longer, and you won't be able to fool yourself either."
Sometime later there was the business about Barton's mother. Von Ulrich
had files on Barton going clear back to pre-natal, and maybe even
before that.
"All right, Barton, you were an only child, and you lived with your
mother for 10 years after your father died. Then you married. What
about the fact that Jean was a replacement for your mother?"
"If she was, it never seemed that way to me."
"You expected your wife to take care of you the way your mother
did. And not demand anything of you. You expected to escape all
responsibility and--Barton, do you consider this basketball to be your
mother?"
"What's that, sir?"
"Deafness can be psychosomatic too, don't forget that. I said--but you
heard me, answer me."
"Doctor Von Ulrich, maybe I'm not normal, but--"
"Then you admit the regression. That this basketball floating in space
is a substitute for your mother's womb. You admit it!"
"Why, sir, I didn't--"
"But you know it's true don't you?"
"I didn't say anything about it. You said it."
"I said it because it's a summation of years of careful diagnosis. Look
at the etiology. A man who never matured, never was able to accept
responsibility as a mature adult. Always just drifting along, into one
job, out of it, into another job, out of that, never establishing roots
anywhere, always floating about. Unable to accept any responsibility
for your marriage, wanting to escape it. Never able to get close, get
involved with others, only wanting to receive, never give. What does
it add up to? A fix, a freeze in the pre-natal stage where you were
floating free and completely irresponsible in your mother's amniotic
fluid. That's why you're here in the basketball."
Von Ulrich's intense eyes seemed to reach out like arms to enfold
Barton, then recoiled as Barton shrugged and said: "So, it's like my
Ma's womb. What difference does it make what you call it as long as I'm
happy in it and do my job?"
Von Ulrich's lips moved soundlessly and then he pointed a finger into
Barton's nose. "It makes a helluva lot of difference what you call it.
You may be doing an efficient job here, but for the wrong reasons. I
wish I could recommend, on the basis of my diagnosis, that you agree to
a month's checkup in the Martian Clinic but--"
Barton interrupted. "I'm glad you can't. I wouldn't like that as much
as this. Maybe your reports won't cut much ice as long as I keep up the
perfect service record."
Von Ulrich's jaws were ridged. "Damn the military system! Damn a system
that says a man has to stay up here till he's dead or crazy or makes a
mistake!"
"But Doc, I like it. I'm happier here, I think. Maybe I wasn't normal
on Earth. Maybe I'm not normal here, or maybe being abnormal on Earth
makes me normal here. I'm happy and I do my work."
Von Ulrich backed away a few steps, then turned and ran out and slammed
the sliding panel. He didn't say goodbye to Barton this time, or that
he would be back. But Barton took no hope from Von Ulrich's lack of
ceremony.
Von Ulrich did come back, several times. Barton was sleeping a great
deal now. He didn't putter with the gimmicks much, not even the clay,
and he'd about read the books out. He slept a lot and yet there was a
funny heavy feeling as though he never did quite sleep or never quite
woke up either. But it was a good feeling because when a man was too
sound asleep he didn't enjoy it because he didn't know anything about
it. This was sort of in-between, and Barton loved it. Sometimes he
would blink his eyes and see Von Ulrich standing there, probably with
some new testing device, or with a notebook open, or with a helmet with
wires to attach to Barton's skull to record something.
Another time he thought some stranger was there and then he realized
that Von Ulrich's face was sagging and wrinkled and that his hair was
thinner and gray.
"Why not have groups of watchers if you're so worried about one being
alone?"
"We tried that, it was worse, Barton. They killed one another."
"Well, sir, my being alone is a good thing then, in that respect."
"Have you ever thought that you would kill yourself?"
"Why no, sir. Why should I?"
"Because you hate yourself. In a society, people can externalize their
self-hate. They can hate society, other people. You can only turn your
hate inward, on yourself."
"But I don't hate anything, sir."
"You do!"
"But, sir, I don't."
"Barton, I said you hate yourself. It's in all the charts, everything.
We all hate ourselves to some extent, why should you be different from
everybody else?"
"Why not, sir?"
Von Ulrich pressed his hand over his eyes, and walked out.
* * * * *
It was like a dream with a shadow drifting in and out and in again, and
it was Von Ulrich, looking so much older this time. "It's been almost
fifteen years, Barton. Fifteen years."
"So? Fifteen years earth time. What does that mean here to me, sir?"
Barton smiled, closed his eyes. "What does time matter in your mother's
womb?"
"You've developed a definite measurable syndrome, Barton. Excessive
lethargy and a sleeping compulsion. Eventually it will destroy your
efficiency as a watcher if it hasn't already."
Von Ulrich set off an alarm and in less than four seconds Barton was
over there sending a report out to the authorities, a report Von Ulrich
immediately canceled as being false.
Von Ulrich seemed to dissolve in a haze of fading light.
"Is that you, Von Ulrich, sir?"
"I'm afraid so, Barton. Back again."
Von Ulrich sat down in the contour chair and filled a pipe.
"Remember, Barton when you took your test for basketball duty? The dead
man's float?"
"I sort of remember it, sir. It was fun."
Von Ulrich flinched. "Fun? I've gone over that report on your test,
Barton. It doesn't make sense. What the hell are you anyway? A damned
freak, a mutation, an alien in disguise?"
The dead man's float had been pleasant for Barton, that was all he
could remember about it. They had taken off all Barton's clothes
so that nothing touched Barton's body but a blacked-out head-mask
through which to get air. He had been put in a tank of water at body
temperature upside down and floated there. There was no sensation.
It had been one of the happiest times of his life. Like floating on
air. Hearing nothing, seeing nothing, feeling nothing except his own
existence. Not even able to tell which was right side up, or right side
down, cross-wise or whatnot. He had been told to keep still, but nobody
had needed to tell him to do that.
"The first two or three hours of that dead man's float is a good test
for basketball duty, Barton. It's a kind of final isolation of the
human organism. Normal human beings can take a couple of hours of it
usually. They like it. Every human being to some extent likes to return
to the womb. But after a couple of hours most human beings start going
to pieces, short-circuiting. The reason is the deprivation of any
outside stimuli. Something has to feed in through some source--some
reception source--the skin, ears, nose, the eyes. These things feeding
in, they orient a person, tells him when he's thinking, feeling, gives
him stimuli for additional thinking. With all these turned off, a
person is simply left with a closed circuit. This begins to go round
and round and distorts and magnifies and ruptures the whole thinking
process. The floater becomes anxious, then very anxious, then he begins
having hallucinations, finally becomes completely disoriented. All this
happens to a normal human being inside, at the most, three or four
hours. No human being should be able to remain sane after four hours of
the dead man's float, Barton. But remember how long you lay there in
that tank?"
"I didn't care how long it was."
"Three days," Von Ulrich said. "The neurophysiologist in charge there
kept checking your reaction and finally he had to take you out of the
tank, not because you were short-circuiting, but because he was. The
impression was that you would have been delighted with the prospect of
doing the dead man's float forever."
"I don't remember it being any special time. It was like a dream, sir,
you know."
"I don't know, but I'm trying to find out." Von Ulrich sighed and
looked through the spaceport at blackness. "Out here I sometimes find
myself wondering what normalcy really is. Things sometimes veer toward
the dangerously relativistic." He sat there in the pure one hundred
percent silence of the basketball while it accumulated. "There's one
thing we've always insisted no human being could tolerate, Barton.
Isolation. Sullivan said that a single minute of complete isolation
would kill a human being. And you've been in a dead man's float for
almost twenty-two years."
"Twenty-two years, sir?"
"Doesn't mean a thing to you does it?"
"Well, sir, it doesn't seem to have had any time in it. I was just
here."
* * * * *
There was another time, like all the other times, except that Von
Ulrich seemed much older, his hair thinner and now all of it gray.
There seemed to be something tired about him, except for the brightness
coming from behind his intense questioning eyes.