Multi-threaded console apps

What's the best way to do something like an IRC client where there's messages coming from the network you'll want to display without interrupting the user's input.

I'm using a toy language (MzScheme), so I don't have easy access to some curses library or ptys or anything like that...

Any ideas, or should I just give up and write a curses wrapper?  Can GNU Readline do anything like this?

you could have two threads per irc connection: one for reading
the input and one for reading the output

mzscheme is a decent scheme interpreter, i wouldn't give up on
it just yet (it has a great helpdesk, mred might be relevant).
you could easily build a very extensible IRC client with
it. i'm dreaming of something like this right now:

ENTERPRISE SCHEME IRC CLIENT

/join #prog
/(eval-command (lookup "join") (list "#prog"))

hello
/(privmsg "#prog" "hello")
/(raw "PRIVMSG #prog :hello")

/(add-handler 'on-privmsg (lambda (source target msg) ...)

/(map (lambda (x)
        (if (not (eq? x (me)))
          (kick "#thread" x "GTFO")
          '()))
      (inhabitants "#thread"))

i admit it would be more [i]l33t[i] to run
it through a terminal, but this would involve a lot more work.
you can do this later, i'd start off with a small gui in mred
(especially if you don't have any experience with scheme).