Read Martian Time-Slip for Free Online

“See where it gets you.”
    Coming over beside Jack, the young pilot said hurriedly, “That's Arnie you're talking to. Arnie Kott.” He called up, “We can leave now, Arnie.” Climbing up, the pilot disappeared inside the 'copter, and once more the blades began to turn.
    The 'copter rose into the air, leaving Jack standing alone by the five Bleekmen. They had now finished drinking and were eating from the lunch pail which he had given them. The empty water can lay off to one side. The paka eggshells had been filled and were now stoppered. The Bleekmen did not glance up as the 'copter left. They paid no attention to Jack, either; they murmured among themselves in their dialect.
    “What's your desination?” Jack asked them.
    The young Bleekman named an oasis very far to the south.
    “You think you can make it?” Jack asked. He pointed to the old couple. “Can they?”
    “Yes, Mister,” the young Bleekman answered. “We can make it now, with the food and water yourself and the other Mister gave us.”
    I wonder if they can, Jack said to himself. Naturally they'd say it, even if they knew it was't possible. Racial pride, I guess.
    “Mister,” the young Bleekman said, “we have a present for you because you stopped.” He held out something to Jack.
    Their possessions were so meager that he could not believe they had anything to spare. He held his hand out, however, and the young Bleekman put something small and cold into it, a dark, wrinkled, dried bit of substance that looked to Jack like a section of tree root.
    “It is a water witch,” the Bleekman said. “Mister, it will bring you water, the source of life, any time you need.”
    “It didn't help you, did it?” Jack said.
    With a sly smile the young Bleekman said, “Mister, it helped; it brought you.”
    “What'll you do without it?” Jack asked.
    “We have another. Mister, we fashion water witches.” The young Bleekman pointed to the old couple. “They are authorities.”
    More carefully examining the water witch, Jack saw that it had a face and vague limbs. It was mummified, once a living creature of some sort; he made out its drawn-up legs, its ear…he shivered. The face was oddly human, a wizened, suffering face, as if it had been killed while crying out.

    “How does it work?” he asked the young Bleekman.
    “Formerly, when one wanted water, one pissed on the water witch, and she came to life. Now we do not do that, Mister; we have learned from you Misters that to piss is wrong. So we spit on her instead, and she hears that, too, almost as well. It wakes her, and she opens and looks around, and then she opens her mouth and calls the water to her. As she did with you, Mister, and that other Mister, the big one who sat and did not come down, the Mister with no hair on his head.”
    “That Mister is a powerful Mister,” Jack said. “He is monarch of the plumbers' union settlement, and he owns all of Lewistown.”
    “That may be,” the young Bleekman said. “If so, we will not stop at Lewistown, because we could see that the Mister with no hair did not like us. We did not give him a water witch in return for his water, because he did not want to give us water; his heart was not with him in that deed, it came from his hands only.”
    Jack said goodbye to the Bleekmen and got back into his 'copter. A moment later he was ascending; below him, the Bleekmen waved solemnly.
    I'll give the water witch to David, he decided. When I get home at the end of the week. He can piss on it or spit on it, whichever he prefers, to his heart's content.

3
    Norbert Steiner had a certain freedom to come and go as he pleased, because he was self-employed. In a small iron building outside of Bunchewood Park he manufactured health foods, made entirely from domestic plants and minerals, with no preservatives or chemical sprays or nonorganic attractive fertilizers. A firm at Bunchewood Park packaged his products for him in professional-type boxes, cartons, jars,