Counter-Clock World Page 13

  “I’ll take you elsewhere,” Sebastian said to the robot Carl Junior. “Where we can work the sale out.” He seized Ann Fisher by the arm, led her in one swift motion from the store and out onto the sidewalk. The robot Carl Junior silently followed.

  As he locked up the vitarium, Ann said, “You stupid foodhead. You stupid, stupid foodhead.” Her voice rang sharply, as he and Carl Junior started toward the rickety outside stairs which led to the roof and his parked car.

  “We have always pitted ourselves against the Library,” Carl Junior said as they ascended the unpainted wooden stairs. “They want to erad the new teachings of the Anarch; they want to expunge every trace of the transcendental doctrine which he has brought back. Which I presume he has brought back. Is that so, Mr. Hermes? Has his discourse so far indicated a religious experience of magnitude and depth?”

  “Very much so,” Sebastian said. “He’s been dictating and talking from the moment we revived him, to everyone in sight.”

  They reached his parked car; he unlocked the door and the robot got inside.

  “What power does the Library have over your wife?” Carl Junior asked as the car shot up into the night. “As much as that girl alleged?”

  “I don’t know,” Sebastian said. He wondered how well Joe Tinbane could protect Lotta, while she remained with him. Probably fairly well, he decided. Joe Tinbane had gotten her out of the Library in the first place . . . he could therefore be expected, reasonably, to keep her from being hauled back. How persistent, really, would the Library be? After all, this was a side issue, a vendetta on the part of Ann Fisher, not a fundamental aspect of Library policy.

  And it appeared to be the Erad Council which dictated policy, not Ann.

  “A threat,” he said aloud to the robot. “Intimidation. A power-oriented woman always hints at violence unless you do what she says.” He thought about Lotta, and how different she was; how impossible it would be for her to utilize the intimidation of hinted-at force to get what she wanted.

  I’m lucky, he thought, to have a wife like that. Or was lucky. Whichever it turns out to be. With the help of God.

  “If the Library injures your wife,” the robot seated beside him said, “you will probably retaliate. Against that girl personally. Am I wrong or am I right? Choose one.”

  Sebastian said tightly, “You’re right.”

  “That girl must realize that. It will probably deter her.”

  “Probably,” he agreed. A bluff, he thought; that’s what it is; Ann Fisher must know what I’d do to her. “Let’s talk about other topics,” he said to the robot; he was afraid to think further in that direction. “I’m taking you to my conapt,” he said. “The Anarch is not there, but we can work out price and the method of custody-transfer. We have a standard operating procedure; I see no reason why it can’t be applied in this case.”

  “We trust you,” the robot said warmly. “But of course we’ll need to see the Anarch before we pay over the money. To certify that you do in fact have possession of him and that he’s alive. And we’d like to talk briefly with him.”

  “No,” Sebastian said. “You can see him but not talk to him.”

  “Why not?” The robot regarded him curiously.

  “What the Anarch has to say,” Sebastian said, “isn’t a factor in this sale. It never is; the business of a vitarium isn’t conducted on that basis.”

  After a pause the robot said, “So we must take your word for it that the Anarch brought something of value back.”

  “That’s correct,” he agreed.

  “At the price you’re asking—”

  “It makes no nevermind,” Sebastian said. He always had a canny sense about this aspect of his business; he never budged.

  The robot said, “Payment will be made to you in our own currency. In banknotes of the Free Negro Municipality.”

  As Ann Fisher warned me, Sebastian thought with a chill. In this instance she told the truth. And the Rome party—they warned me, too. “In W.U.S. notes,” he said.

  “We deal only in our own specie.” The robot’s voice was flat. Final. “I have no power to negotiate on any other basis. If you insist on W.U.S. notes, then let me off. I’ll have to report to His Mightiness Mr. Roberts that we couldn’t reach an agreement.”

  “Then he goes to the People’s Topical Library,” Sebastian said. And, he thought, I get my wife back.

  “The Anarch would not want that,” Carl Junior said.

  True, Sebastian realized. However, he said, “We’re required to make the decision; we possess the legal right, in these cases.”

  “There has never been a case like this before,” the robot said, “in the history of the world. Except,” he hastily amended, “once. But that happened long ago.”

  “Can’t you help me get my wife back?” Sebastian demanded. “Don’t the Uditi have a corps of commandos for operations like this?”

  “The Offspring exist only for vengeance,” the robot said dispassionately. “And anyhow we are not strong in the W.U.S. Back home it would be different.”

  Lotta, he thought. Did I lose you? To the Library?

  And then, strangely, he found himself contemplating—not his wife but Ann Fisher. The earlier hours, when they had walked the evening streets window-shopping. When they had fiercely besported themselves in bed. I shouldn’t remember that, he realized. That was faked; she had been given a job to do.

  But it had proved good, for a time. Before the power-play manifested itself, and the chic, soft exterior ebbed away to reveal the iron.

  “An attractive girl, that Library agent,” the robot said, acutely.

  “Misleading,” he said gruffly.

  “Isn’t it always? You buy the wrappings. It’s always a surprise. I personally found her typical of Library people, attractive and otherwise. Have you decided to let me off, or will you accept F.N.M. currency?”

  “I’ll accept it,” he said. It didn’t really matter; the ritual of business, which he had maneuvered through for so many years, meant nothing, now. Considering the greater context.

  Maybe I can reach Joe Tinbane by way of the police radio system, he conjectured. Warn him. That would be enough; if Joe Tinbane knew that the Library was seeking him he’d do the rest . . . for himself and Lotta. And isn’t that what matters? Not whether I get her back?

  He lifted the receiver of his car’s vidphone and dialed the number of Joe Tinbane’s precinct station. “I want to get hold of an Officer Tinbane,” he informed the police switchboard operator, when he had her. “He’s off duty, but this constitutes an emergency; his personal safety is involved.”

  “Your name, sir.” The police operator waited.

  Food, Sebastian thought. Joe’ll think I’m trying to track him down to retrieve Lotta; he won’t acknowledge my call. So there’s no way I can get through, at least not via the police. “Tell him,” he said to the operator, “that Library agents are out after him. He’ll understand.” He rang off. And wondered bleakly if the message would be conveyed.

  “Is he your wife’s paramour?” the robot inquired.

  Sebastian, soundlessly, nodded.

  “Your concern for him is most Christian,” the robot acknowledged. “You are to be commended.”

  Sebastian said curtly, “This is the second calculated risk I’ve taken in less than two days.” Digging up the Anarch in advance of his rebirth had been risky enough; now he gambled that the Library wouldn’t reach out and squash Tinbane and Lotta. It made him ill: he did not possess the mental constitution for such ventures, one right after the other. “He’d do the same for me,” he said.

  “Does he have a wife?” the robot asked. “If so, perhaps you could arrange to make her your mistress, while he has Mrs. Hermes.”

  “I’m not interested in anyone else. Only Lotta.”

  “You found that Library girl exciting. Even though she threatened you.” The robot’s tone was all-knowing. “We want the Anarch before you run into her again. I, at remote, have conferr
ed by phone with His Mightiness Ray Roberts; I am instructed to obtain custody tonight. I am to stay with you rather than meeting His Mightiness.”

  Sebastian said, “You think I’m that vulnerable to Ann Fisher?”

  “His Mightiness thinks so.”

  I wouldn’t be surprised, Sebastian thought unhappily, if His Mightiness were right.

  At his conapt he switched on the phone relay; Bob Lindy’s call-back to the vitarium would be switched here. All he had to do was wait. Meanwhile he prepared a quantity of prime sogum from his reserve, extra-special stock, and imbibed it in an effort to raise both his physical energy level and his morale.

  “A weird custom,” the robot said, observing him. “Before the Hobart Phase you would never have performed such an act before the eyes of another.”

  “You’re only a robot,” he said.

  “But a human operator perceives through my sensory apparatus.”

  The vidphone rang. So soon? he thought, glancing at his watch. “Goodbye,” he said tensely into the receiver.

  On the screen the image formed. It was not Bob Lindy; he faced the negotiator for the interested Rome party, Tony Giacometti. “We followed you to your conapt,” Giacometti said. “Hermes, you are deeply in spiritual debt to us; if it hadn’t been for our stake-out, Miss Fisher would have blown up the Anarch with her bomb.”

  “I realize that,” he said.

  “In addition,” Giacometti continued, “you would not have known the contents of the two phone calls she made from your vitarium. So we may have saved your wife’s life and possibly yours.”

  He repeated, “I realize that.” The Rome buyer had him. “What do you want me to do?” he said.

  “We want the Anarch. We know he’s with your technician, Bob Lindy. When Lindy got in touch with you we put a trace on the call; we know where he and the Anarch are. If we wanted to take the Anarch forcibly we could do that, but that’s not the approach we traditionally favor. This purchase must be accomplished on an aboveboard ethical basis; Rome is not the People’s Topical Library nor the Uditi—we do not, under any circumstances, operate as they do. You understand?”

  “Yes.” He nodded.

  Giacometti said, “Morally, therefore, you are obliged to make your sale to us, rather than to Carl Gantrix. May we send our buyer to your conapt to negotiate the transfer? We can be there in ten minutes.”

  “Your method of operation,” he conceded, “is effective.” What else could he do? Giacometti was right. “Send your buyer over,” he said, and hung up.

  The robot Carl Junior had observed the conversation and had heard his end. But, oddly, it did not appear perturbed.

  “Your Anarch,” Sebastian said to it, “would be dead, now. If they hadn’t—”

  “What you’re forgetting,” the robot said patiently, as if explaining to a naive child, “is that the disposition of the Anarch depends on his own preference. That is the binding moral obligation. Your solution will be this: suspend the negotiations until your technician phones in, and then inquire of the Anarch as to whom he wishes to be sold.” It concluded confidently, “We are certain that it will be ourselves.”

  “Giacometti may not agree,” Sebastian said.

  The robot said, “The decision is not his. All right; the Rome people have placed this on an ethical basis; we are delighted. However, our ethical basis is superior to theirs.” It beamed.

  Religion, Sebastian thought wearily. More ins and outs, more angles, than ordinary commerce. The casuistry had already gone beyond him; he gave up. “I’ll let you explain it to Giacometti when his buyer arrives,” he said. And imbibed, to fortify himself, an additional ten ounces of sogum.

  “The Rome party,” the robot said, “has had centuries more experience than we. Their buyer will be clever. I entreat you to avoid various diverse pitfalls which he may dig for you, as the expression goes.”

  “You talk to him,” Sebastian said wearily. “When he gets here. Explain to him what you spelled out to me.”

  “Gladly.”

  “You feel capable of out-arguing him?”

  The robot said, “God is on our side.”

  “Is that what you’re going to tell him?”

  Pondering, the robot decided, “He would cite apostolic succession. Free will, I believe, is the best argument. Civil law regards an old-born individual as the chattel of the vitarium which revives it. This however is not in accord with theological considerations; a human being cannot be owned, old-born or otherwise, since both possess a soul. I will therefore first establish the fact that the old-born Anarch has a soul, which the Rome buyer will admit, and then deduce from that premise that only the Anarch can dispose of himself, which is our position.” Again it pondered. For quite some time. “His Mightiness, Mr. Roberts,” it declared at last, “agrees with this line of reasoning. I am in touch with him. If the Rome buyer can counter it—which is unlikely—then Mr. Roberts himself, rather than I, Carl Gantrix, will operate Carl Junior; it will become Ray Junior. You can now see that we were prepared for this development from the beginning; for this, His Mightiness, Mr. Roberts, has traveled to the West Coast. He will not return to the F.N.M. empty-handed.”

  “I wonder what Ann Fisher is doing,” Sebastian said, brooding.

  “The Library is no longer a factor. The conflict as to who is the proper buyer has been reduced to two principals: ourselves and Rome.”

  “She won’t give up.” For her it would be impossible. He walked to the window of his living room, gazed out on the dark street below. Often, he and Lotta had done this; every object in the conapt reminded him of her, every object and every spot.

  A knock sounded at the living room door.

  “Let him in,” Sebastian said to the robot. He seated himself, picked up a cigaret butt from the ashtray, lit it, and prepared to endure the imminent debate.

  “Goodbye, Mr. Hermes,” Anthony Giacometti said, entering; he had come himself . . . for the same reasons which had prompted Carl Gantrix to bring in his principal. “Goodbye, Gantrix,” he said sourly to the robot.

  “Mr. Hermes,” the robot declared, “has asked me to inform you of the position he takes. He is tired and very worried about his wife—so he would rather not attempt to discuss this matter himself.”

  To Sebastian and not to the robot, Giacometti said, “What does it mean? We came to an agreement on the phone.”

  “Since then,” the robot said, “I have informed him that only the Anarch can promise delivery.”

  “Scott versus Tyler,” Giacometti said. “Two years ago, the Superior Court of Contra Costa County, Judge Winslow presiding. The option of disposal of an old-born belongs to the owner of the reviving vitarium, not to his salesman, not to the old-born himself, not to—”

  “We have here, however,” the robot interrupted, “a spiritual matter. Not a juridical one. The civil law regarding old-borns is two hundred years out of date. Rome—yourselves—recognizes an old-born as possessing a soul; this is proved by the rite of Supreme Unction conferred when an old-born is severely injured or—”

  “The vitarium does not dispose of a soul; it disposes of the soul’s possessor: its body.”

  “Negative,” the robot disagreed. “A deader, before the soul reenters it and reanimates it, cannot be dug up by a vitarium. When it is only a body, a corpse of flesh, the vitarium cannot sell or—”

  “The Anarch,” Giacometti said, “was illegally dug up before returning to life. The Flask of Hermes Vitarium committed a crime. Under civil law, the Flask of Hermes Vitarium does not in fact own the Anarch. Johnson versus Scruggs, the California Supreme Court, last year.”

  “Then who does own the Anarch?” the robot asked, puzzled.

  “You claimed,” Giacometti said, and his eyes kindled, “that this is not a juridical matter but a spiritual one.”

  “Of course it’s juridical! We need to establish legal ownership before either of us can buy.”

  “Then you concede,” Giacometti said quietly, �
�that Scott versus Tyler is the precedent for this transaction.”

  The robot was silent. And then, when it resumed, there was a subtle but real difference in its voice. A deepening into greater power. His Mightiness Mr. Roberts, Sebastian decided, was now operating it; Carl Gantrix had been snared by the argument of the Rome party and hence had been retired. “If the Flask of Hermes Vitarium does not own the old-born Anarch Peak,” it declared, “then according to law the Anarch is ownerless, and holds the same legal status as an old-born who, as occasionally happens, manages to open his own coffin, claw the dirt aside, and exhume himself without external aid. He is then considered the proprietor of himself, and his own opinion as to his disposition is the sole factor obtaining. So we Uditi still maintain that as an ownerless old-born the Anarch alone can legally sell himself, and we are now waiting for his decision.”

  “Are you certain you dug up the Anarch too soon?” Giacometti asked Sebastian, cautiously. “Do you actually stipulate that you acted illegally? It would mean a severe fine. I advise you to deny it. If you so stipulate, we’ll refer this to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.”

  Sebastian said woodenly, “I—deny we dug up the Anarch prematurely. There’s no proof that we did.” He was positive of that; only his own crew had been involved, and they wouldn’t testify.

  “The real issue,” the robot said, “is spiritual; we must determine and agree on the precise moment at which the soul enters the corpse in the ground. Is it the moment when it is dug up? When its voice is first heard from below, asking for aid? When the first heart beat is recorded? When all brain tissue has formed? In the opinion of Udi the soul enters the corpse when there has been total tissue regeneration, which would be just prior to the first heart action.” To Sebastian he said, “Before you dug the Anarch up, sir, did you detect heart action?”