Counter-Clock World (14 page)

They greeted him cheerfully. “Valé, amicus,” they chorused. “What did you think of His Mightiness’ speech tonight?”

“Excellent,” Sebastian said. He tried to remember it; only one phrase came to mind. “I liked that about the Roman sentry’s ear,” he said. “That gripped me.”

“We have some spirit-sogum,” the taller of the two Uditi men informed him. “Want to join us? Even if you’re not part of the brotherhood, you can celebrate with us.”

He could not turn such an offer down. “Fine,” he said. It had been years since he had imbibed any spirit-sogum; roughly, it resembled the old-time alcoholic mixtures sold at liquor stores and in bars—this took him back years, to before the Hobart Phase.

Presently they had all squeezed into a parked aircar and were passing the flask with its long pipe back and forth. The atmosphere became increasingly genial.

“What are you doing out so late?” the Udi girl asked him. “Hunting for a woman?”

“Yes,” Sebastian said. The spirit-sogum had relaxed his tongue; he felt himself among friends. And probably he was.

“Well, if that’s what you want, we can go—”

“No,” Sebastian said, interrupting her. “It’s not what you think. I’m looking for my wife. And I know where she is, only I can’t get her out.”

“We’ll get her out,” the shorter of the Uditi men said happily. “Where is she?”

“At the People’s Topical Library,” Sebastian said.

“Feood,” all three Uditi said in enthusiastic unison, “let’s go.” One of them, at the wheel, started the motor of the car.

“It’s closed right now,” Sebastian pointed out.

That—temporarily—dimmed their enthusiasm. The three of them conferred and at last their spokesman presented their joint idea for his inspection. “The Library has an all-night slot, for books past their erad date. One of those no-questions-asked slots. Couldn’t you squeeze in through there?”

“Too small,” Sebastian said.

That, too, dampened their ever-renewing enthusiasm. “You gotta wait until tomorrow,” the girl informed him. “Unless you want to call the police. But feood; I understand they have a hands-off policy as regards the Library. A sort of live and let live.”

“Except,” Sebastian said, “the Library killed a Los Angeles patrolman earlier tonight.” But he couldn’t prove it had been the Library; he had already heard the TV blame it on “religious fanatics.”

“Maybe you could get Ray Roberts to include your wife in one of his prayers,” the Udi girl said at last. Hopefully.

“I still think,” the taller of the two men said, “the four of us ought to go somewhere and have an orgy.”

He thanked them, got out of the car, and wandered on.

The car, however, followed after him. When it came abreast with him, one of the Uditi rolled down the window, leaned out and yelled to him, “If you want to bust in, we’ll give you a hand. We’re not scared of the People’s Topical Library.”

“You’re goddam right we’re not,” the Udi girl chimed in warmly.

“No,” Sebastian decided. He had to do this alone; the three Uditi, good-intentioned as they were, couldn’t really help him.

“Go on home, fella,” their spokesman now implored him. “You can’t do nothing tonight; give it another try tomorrow.”

They were right; he nodded. “Okay,” he said. He felt overwhelming fatigue, now, as soon as he recognized that fact: as soon as his mind gave up, his body readily followed suit. He waved hello—or rather salvé—to the three of them, and roamed on toward a lighted intersection ahead, searching for a cab.

He had never felt as dejected before in all his life.

15

God’s knowledge also surpassing all motions of time,
remaineth in the simplicity of His presence.

—Boethius

When he returned to his conapt, half an hour later, he found it mercifully deserted; Giacometti and the robot Carl Junior had at last departed. Full-length cigarets filled every ashtray; he wandered about, stuffing them into packages, then gave up in numb despair and got into bed. At least the air in the room smelled clean and fresh; the desmoking of so many cigarets had accomplished that.

The next he knew, someone was rapping on the door. He rose from the bed groggily, found himself fully dressed, stumbled to the door. No one there; it had taken him too long. But there, at the door, a brilliant blue, carefully wrapped package. The spurious thesis of Lance Arbuthnot.

Jesus, he said to himself in pain; his head ached and he felt ill in every part of his body. Nine o’clock, the clock told him, from its place on the kitchen wall. Morning. The Library was already open.

Shakily, he seated himself in the living room, unwrapped the parcel. Hundreds of typescript pages, with painstaking pen annotations; an utterly convincing job . . . it impressed him, this handiwork of the Uditi. Wherever he dipped into it he found it making a sort of sense; it had its own outré logic— such anyhow as was required by the situation. Clearly it would pass Library inspection.

Without having ingested any sogum or put on his morning pat of whiskers, he phoned the Library and asked for Douglas Appleford.

The features of a pompous, dim little functionary formed. “This is Mr. Appleford.” He eyed Sebastian.

“My name,” Sebastian said, “is Lance Arbuthnot. Miss McFadden talked to you about me.”

“Oh yes.” Appleford nodded distastefully. “I’ve been expecting you to call. The meteor-deaths man.”

Holding the typescript manuscript up before the screen Sebastian said, “May I bring my thesis over sometime this morning?”

“I could squeeze you in—briefly—around ten o’clock.”

“I’ll see you then,” Sebastian said, and rang off. I now possess access up through all the sections with the exception of the top-floor A Section, he realized. The Uditi are experienced operators . . . it made a difference, having them on his side.

The vidphone rang; he answered it and found himself confronted by His Mightiness Ray Roberts. “Goodbye, Mr. Hermes,” Roberts said sententiously. “In view of the importance of your activity vis-à-vis the Library, I believe I should consult directly with you. To be certain there is no misunderstanding. You received the manuscript of Arbuthnot’s thesis.”

“Yes,” Sebastian said. “And it looks good.”

“You will be in the Library, as far as they are concerned, only a matter of minutes; Douglas Appleford will receive the manuscript, thank you, and file it away. Ten minutes in all, perhaps. That will not be enough, of course; what you must do is become lost in the confusing maze of offices and reading rooms and stacks for a good part of the day. To do that you will need a pretext.”

“I can tell them—” Sebastian began, but His Mightiness interrupted him.

“Listen, Mr. Hermes. Your excuse has been carefully prepared far, far in advance. This is a long-term plan. While you are sitting in Mr. Appleford’s office, with the manuscript still in your possession, you will glance through it and inadvertently notice page 173. You will thereon see an error of major magnitude, and you will ask Appleford for use of a restricted-area reading room in which you can make pen-and-ink alterations. After you have corrected the copy, you will tell him, it will be turned over to him; you compute the time required for the changes to lie between fifteen and forty-five minutes.”

“I see,” Sebastian said.

“The restricted-area reading rooms are not patrolled,” Ray Roberts said, “because there is nothing in them except long hardwood tables. So no one will see you leave the reading room. If they do intercept you, say you got lost trying to find your way back to Mr. Appleford’s office. It is essential, now, for us to speculate on the probable location of the Anarch. Our analysis of the Library puts his location, tentatively, on the top floor, or in any case the top two floors. So it will be on those higher floors that you will search . . . and those, of course, will be the most difficult to gain entrée to. An armband with a special dye, which gives back correct responses to a minified radar scope, is worn by Library employees on those floors. It is a luminous, spectacular blue—the utility being that a Library guard, at long distance, can tell at a glance who is wearing one and who is not. The paper which the manuscript came wrapped in: it is made from this specially treated blue material. You will cut yourself an armband from the wrapper, following the dotted lines which we made on it; you will carry it in your pocket and after you have left Appleford you will put it around your left arm.”

“Left,” Sebastian echoed. He felt weak and dizzy; he needed sogum and a cold shower and a change of clothes.

“Now, if you will look in your disgorged victuals refrigerator,” Ray Roberts said, “you will find the survival kit which the robot Carl Junior and Mr. Giacometti prepared jointly. It will be essential to you.” He paused. “One more matter, Mr. Hermes. You love your wife and she is precious to you . . . but in terms of history, she does not count—
as does the Anarch.
Try to recognize the distinction, the finiteness of your personal needs, the almost infinite value of Anarch Peak. It will be instinctive for you to seek out your wife . . . so you will have to gain conscious control of this almost biological drive. You understand?”

“I want,” Sebastian said between his rigid teeth, “to find Lotta.”

“Possibly you will. But that is not your primary purpose in the Library; it is not for finding
her
that we have so equipped you. In my opinion—” Ray Roberts leaned toward the vidscreen so that his eyes swam up and enlarged hypnotically; Sebastian sat silently and passively, like a chicken, listening. “They will release your wife unharmed once we have the Anarch back. They are not genuinely interested in her.”

“Oh yes they are,” Sebastian said. “Vengeance toward me, because of what happened between me and Ann Fisher.” He did not follow—or believe in—Ray Roberts’ logic on this point; he sensed it as façade. “You’ve never met her. Spite and hate and holding a grudge play a major rôle in her—”

“I have met her several times,” Ray Roberts said. “As a matter of fact the Council of Erads had her stationed in Kansas City as a sort of emissary sine portfolio to our federal government. She periodically holds power in the council halls of the Library and then abruptly loses it by overreaching herself. She may have done this as regards police officer Tinbane; we have dropped it in the ear of the Los Angeles Police Department that Library agents killed Tinbane, not ‘religious fanatics.’” His face contorted in a rhythm of distilled wrath. “The Uditi are always blamed for crimes of violence; it is common police and media policy.”

Sebastian said, “Do you think Lotta also will be found on the top two floors?”

“Most likely.” His Mightiness surveyed Sebastian. “I can see that despite my exhortation you will spend the majority of your brief time searching for her.” He gestured philosophically; it was an empathic reaction, one of understanding, not condemnation. “Well, Hermes; go inspect your survival kit and then get off to the Library for your appointment. It was nice talking to you. I assume we will talk again, perhaps later today. Hello.”

“Hello, sir,” Sebastian said, and hung up the phone.

Eagerly, at the refrigerator filled with various favorite victuals ready to go to the supermarket, he inspected the small white carton which Giacometti and the robot had left him. To his disappointment it contained only three items. LSD, in vapor-under-pressure form, to be set off by grenade. An oral antidote to the LSD—probably a phenothiazine—to be carried in a plastic capsule in his mouth, during his hunt at the Library: those made up two of the three. And the third. He studied it for several minutes, at first not recognizing what he held. An intravenous injection device, containing a small amount of pale, saplike liquid; it came with a removable wrapper of instructions, so he removed the wrapper to read the brochure.

For a limited period an injection of the solution would free him of the Hobart Phase.

He would, he realized, be stationary in time; for all intents and purposes moving neither forward nor backward. It would, paradoxically, be for a finite period: by common time, no more than six minutes. But, from his standpoint, it would be experienced as hours.

This last item, he discovered, came from Rome; in the past, he recalled, it had been used, with limited success, for prolonged spiritual meditation. Now it had been officially banned and could not be obtained. But still, here it was.

The Rome principal overlooked nothing of a practical nature, in conjunction with its perpetual spiritual quest.

A combination of the items, the LSD imposed on the Library guards, and the injection for himself—he would be in motion and they would not; it was as simple as that. And, in accordance with Giacometti’s wishes, no one would be injured.

For a subjective period of one to three hours he would probably be free to go anywhere, do anything, on the upper floors of the Library. It struck him as an extremely well-thought-out survival kit, simple as it was.

He took a quick shower, changed to properly soiled clothes, patted dabs of whiskers in place, imbibed sogum, divested himself of various victuals in the ritual dishes, and then, with the manuscript under his arm, left his empty, lonely conapt and made his way out onto the street where he had, the night before, parked his car. His heart hung in his throat, strangling him with fear. My one chance, my
last
chance, he realized. To get Lotta out. And with her, if possible, the Anarch. If this fails then she’s really gone. Slipped away. Forever.

A moment later, in his car, he soared up into the bright morning sky.

16

These thoughts I revolved in my miserable heart, overchargedwith most gnawing cares, lest I should die ere I
had found the truth.

—St. Augustine

“A Mr. Arbuthnot to see you, sir,” Doug Appleford’s secretary said, over the intercom to his office.

He groaned. Well, here it was finally; the burden wished on him by perpetually enthusiastic Charise McFadden. “Send him in,” Appleford said, and tipped his chair back, folded his hands, and waited.

A large, imposing, nattily dressed older man appeared at the doorway of the office. “I’m Lance Arbuthnot,” he mumbled; his eyes roamed in unease, like those of a trapped animal.

“Let’s see it,” Appleford said, with no preamble.

“Of course.” Shakily, Arbuthnot seated himself in the chair before Doug Appleford’s desk, handed him a bulky, dog-eared manuscript. “The labor of a lifetime,” he muttered.

“So you maintain,” Doug Appleford said briskly, “that if a person is killed by a meteor it’s because he hated his grand-mother. Some theory. Anyhow you’re realistic enough to want it eraded.” He leafed cursorily through the manuscript, reading a line here and there, at random. Dull phrases, jargon, strained and inverted cliché sentences, claims of a fantastic nature . . . it had a familiar quality. The Library saw ten such trashy manuscripts of that sort a day. It constituted routine business for Section B.

“May I have it back a moment?” Arbuthnot asked hoarsely. “For one last look. Before I consign it to your office permanently.”

Appleford dropped the bulky manuscript on his desk. Lance Arbuthnot picked it up, studied it, then turned pages. After a pause he stopped turning pages, read one particular page, his lips moving.

“What’s the matter?” Appleford demanded.

“I—seem to have garbled an important passage on page 173,” Lance Arbuthnot muttered. “It’ll have to be set straight before you erad it.”

Pressing the button of his intercom, Appleford said to his secretary, Miss Tomsen, “Please show Mr. Arbuthnot to a reading room up on one of the restricted floors, where he can work without being interrupted.” To Arbuthnot he said, “How soon will you get it back to me?”

“Fifteen, twenty minutes. Anyhow, under an hour.” Arbuthnot rose, clutching his precious grubby manuscript. “You will accept it for eradication?”

“You’re darn right. You go fix it up and I’ll see you later.” He, too, rose; Arbuthnot hesitated, then bumbled his way once more out of Appleford’s office, into the outer waiting room.

And Appleford turned to other business; he forgot the crackpot inventor Lance Arbuthnot almost at once.

Alone in the reading room, Sebastian Hermes with trembling fingers got out his armband and fastened it on his sleeve. He dug into his coat pocket, got out his survival kit, and placed the capsule of LSD-antidote in his mouth, being careful not to bite down on it. The grenade he held in his left hand, clumsily, thinking, This isn’t me. I don’t know how to do this. Joe Tinbane could have. He was trained for this.

Virtually unable to make his hand and arm work, he injected himself with the small quantity of pale, saplike fluid. Well, he had begun; he was in it. And would be, for what—to him—would seem hours.

Opening the door of the reading room he glanced down the hall. No one. He began to walk; he saw a sign reading STAIRS and headed for it.

There was no problem in climbing the stairs; still he saw no one. But when he opened the door at what he guessed to be the next to top floor, he found himself facing a cold-eyed uniformed Library guard.

The guard, in slow-motion, began to move toward him.

With no difficulty he eluded the guard; he ducked past him and hurried down the corridor.

Ann Fisher, from a side door, appeared with an armload of papers, moving in hazy slow-motion, like the guard. She saw him, turned gradually over a matter of what seemed to him minutes; her jaw, by retarded degrees, dropped until at last, at agonizing last, she registered amazement.

“What—are—you—doing—” she began to say. But he could not wait for the enormously prolonged sentence to be completed; he knew everything had gone wrong—he never should have run into her, and certainly not so soon—and he slipped by her and on down the corridor, realizing futilely that despite the time-difference between them he had stood still long enough for her to identify him. I should always have been in motion, he realized. Constant, accelerated motion. But too late now.

An alarm bell would ring; it would take her minutes, by his time-scale. But it would come. Inevitably.

Ahead, two uniformed guards, armed, stood rigidly before a doorway. He darted toward them, moving as swiftly as possible. The guards seemed to sense him feebly; their heads rotated, as if mechanical—but by then he had slid past them and turned the knob of the door.

The alarm bell rang. Din-din-din, with measurable intervals between each impact. Like a tape recorder, he thought, at the wrong speed. With the slower speed. He opened the office door.

Four Erads—he recognized them by their neo-togas— lounged about the office. On a chair in the center sat the Anarch Peak.

“I don’t want you,” Sebastian said, deciding instantly. “I want my wife; where’s Lotta?” None of them understood him; to them it was a blur of noise. He ducked back out of the room, leaving the dry, wizened little figure of the Anarch; in the hall once more he passed two armed sentries, who by now had turned to follow him inside . . . he wiggled between them, tugged free as their arms came gradually up, and hurried toward the next office.

Nothing but an empty desk. File cabinets.

He tried a third office. Someone—unfamiliar—talking on the phone; he hurried on.

In the fourth room he found stored supplies. Dead and inertly cold.

The next floor, he said to himself; ahead he saw the sign STAIRS once more, and ran that way.

On the top floor he encountered a number of men and women in the corridor, and all, like him, wore the luminous blue armband. He darted among them, opened a door at random.

Behind him he heard someone, invisible to him, cock a weapon; he twisted around and saw the barrel of a rifle rise.

Clumsily, he threw the LSD hand grenade. And at the same time bit into the antidote capsule.

The barrel ceased rising. The gun, lugubriously, fell from the guard’s hands; the guard settled to a heap on the floor, his hands up, warding off something assailing him. Hallucinations.

The LSD, like smoke, billowed up and spread throughout the corridor. He waded through it, past slow-motion figures, tried door after door. More Library officials at work; he saw, several times, the insignia of the Erad Council . . . he saw the hierarchy of the Library disintegrating because of his presence and what he had brought with him. But not Lotta.

He cornered at last, alone in her office, one frail, elderly, female Erad who regarded him wide-eyed. “Where,” he said, slowing his speech to her time-phasing, “is—Mrs.—Hermes. On—what—floor.” He moved toward her, menacingly.

However, the LSD had by now reached her; she had begun to fall into a groveling heap, an expression of awe on her face. Bending over her he grabbed her by the shoulder, repeated his question.

“On—the—basement—level,” the reply, with agonizing slowness, came at last. And then the elderly Erad dissolved into a private world of colors; he left her to it and hurried on, once more out into the hall.

The hall resounded with people and noises. But everyone had devolved into a personal realm; there remained no interpersonal action, no coordinated effort. So he had no trouble making his way to the elevator; no one paid any attention to him.

He pressed the button, and after a fantastically long period, the elevator arrived.

Fully armed and ready Library guards filled the elevator. They wore gas masks; they eyed him as he—to them—flitted away, and one of them after a moment managed to fire his side arm.

The shot missed. But at least they had been able, at last, to shoot in his general direction. And the LSD gas would not affect these men.

I can’t get Lotta, he realized. I can’t get on the elevator, not when it’s full. Ray Roberts
was right;
I should have lugged the Anarch out of here and forgotten about Lotta. The dead shall live, he thought ironically, the living die. And music shall untune the sky. I am untuned, he said to himself. They have me. I didn’t get anyone out, as Joe Tinbane did. Even temporarily. It might have worked out differently if I hadn’t run across Ann Fisher, he thought.

He had a strange impression of timelessness, now, from the drug with which he had injected himself. A sense, almost, of immortality. But not of strength, not of majestic power; he felt weak, tired, and hopeless. So Ann Fisher gets all she wanted, he thought. Her prophecies are coming true, one by one; I am the last part, and I, like Joe Tinbane and the Anarch and Lotta, have come about.

I messed it up, he realized. In only a few minutes. If Joe Tinbane had been here it would be different; I know it would be.

He could not stop thinking that; his awareness of his own inferiority overwhelmed him. He versus Joe. His defects; Joe’s prowess. And yet they got him, he reflected hopelessly. Joe is dead!

And I will be, he thought. Presently.

Maybe we could have done it working together, Joe and I, he reflected. The two of us in unison trying to get Lotta out; we both love her. And one by one, alone, we die. It just didn’t work out. If he had gotten my warning, if he had called me from the motel, if—

I’m old and I’m impotent, he thought. I should have been left in my grave; they dug up nothing. An emptiness: only the deadness; the chill, the mold of the tomb still clings to me and infects whatever I try. I feel myself dying again, he thought. Or rather, I never stopped being dead.

He thought: If they kill me it doesn’t matter because it doesn’t change me. But Lotta is different, just as Tinbane was different.

Maybe, he thought, even if I can’t get out of here, can’t save anyone, including myself—maybe I can still kill Ann Fisher. That would be worth something. For Joe Tinbane’s sake.