Counter-Clock World Read online

  “When you’re stronger,” Dr. Sign said.

  “We should let him get in touch with his people,” Father Faine said.

  “Of course,” Sebastian said, irritated. “It’s standard; we always do that; you know.” But this was special. And they all knew it, except of course the Anarch himself. He seemed blissfully glad to be alive again, already thinking of those who had been close to him, those whom he had depended on and those who had leaned on him. The joyful reunion, he thought. Not in the next life, but back here. Ironic . . . this is the meeting place of souls, the Flask of Hermes Vitarium of Greater Los Angeles, California.

  Father Faine was speaking to the Anarch, now; two brethren of the cloth, deep in their mutual concern.

  “The epitaph on your monument,” Father Faine was saying. “I know the poem; it’s interested me, because I suppose of its complete repudiation of everything in Christianity, the idea of an imperishable soul, an afterlife, redemption. Did you choose it?”

  “They chose it for me,” the Anarch murmured. “My friends. I tended to agree with Lucretius; I suppose that’s why.”

  “Do you still?” Father Faine asked. “Now that you’ve experienced death, the afterlife, and rebirth?” He listened intently.

  The Anarch whispered, “‘This bowl of milk, the pitch on yonder jar, are strange and far-bound travelers come from far. This is a snowflake that was once a flame—the flame was once the fragment of a star.’” He nodded, staring up now at the ceiling of the work area. “I still believe that. I always will.”

  “But this,” Father Faine said. “‘The seeds that once were we take flight and fly, winnowed to earth, or whirled along the sky, not lost but disunited. Life lives on.’”

  The Anarch finished. “‘It is the lives, the lives, the lives, that die.’” His voice was almost inaudible, strange and dim and lonely. “I don’t know. I’ll have to think . . . it’s too soon.”

  “Let him rest,” Dr. Sign said.

  “Yeah, leave him alone,” Bob Lindy agreed. “You’re always like this, Father; every time we bring a deader back— you always hope it’ll come carrying the answers to your theological questions. And they never do; they’re like Seb, they just remember a little.”

  “This is no ordinary man,” Father Faine said. “The Anarch was a great religious force and person.” He added, “And will be again.”

  And valuable, Sebastian said to himself. For just that reason. Let’s keep first things first; the theology and the poetry come in second. Compared to what’s really at stake.

  At home in his conapt, following the end of his work day, Douglas Appleford made a person-to-person vidphone call to Rome, Italy.

  “I want to talk to a Signor Anthony Giacometti,” he told the operator.

  Presently he had Giacometti on the line.

  “What luck did you have?” Appleford asked. “With the vitarium.”

  Giacometti, in his dressing gown, his hair lavish and long, his powerful eyes intense, said, “Listen, are you sure they have him? Really sure? They fritted and fratted around; I think if they actually have him like they say they’d have finalized on a price. After all, they’re in business; they want a sale.”

  “They have him,” Appleford said, with absolute assurance; he had assessed the Hermes woman with what he knew to be complete certitude. “They’re afraid of the Udi people,” he explained. “They’re afraid you represent Ray Roberts; that’s why they won’t say. But just keep your bid in; hang in there and you’ll get title to him.”

  “Okay, Mr. Appleford,” Giacometti said sullenly. “I’ll take your word for it; you’ve helped us in the past, we rely on you.”

  “And you can,” he declared. “If I get any more information I’ll pass it on to you . . . for the usual fee. She didn’t say they’d dug him up, that he was alive; she just said they know where he’s buried. That might explain their reluctance—they can’t legally sell him until he’s been reborn.” He added, “I’ll give her a call and try to get more from her. She doesn’t seem able to conceal anything; she’s one of those.”

  Giacometti, sourly, broke the connection.

  As he started away from the vidphone, Appleford heard it ring; he bent, picked up the receiver, expecting to see Giacometti once again, with an afterthought. Instead he found himself facing the reduced but real image of his superior, Mavis McGuire.

  “I’m once again involved,” Mavis said, her mouth twisting in aversion, “with questions regarding Ray Roberts and the Uditi. A young woman, a Mrs. Lotta Hermes, is here at the Library wanting to know what we have on Roberts; I’m holding her in my office while I get an Erad in. It should be fairly soon, now.”

  Appleford said, “Did you check with the Council of Erads regarding the burial site of the Anarch Peak?”

  “I did. We don’t have that information.” Mavis regarded him with the glazed, light-splintered eyes of suspicion. “This Mrs. Hermes says she talked to you previously today. About the Anarch.”

  “Yes,” Appleford said. “She came in with an L.A. police officer just after I talked to you. They—the vitarium her husband owns—know where the Anarch is buried, so if you want that information you can with a little effort get it from her.”

  “I had a feeling she knew,” Mavis said. “I’ve been conversing with her; she skirts the topic of the Anarch each time. Afraid of saying too much, I suppose. Tell me the work status of that apologia pro sua vita of Peak’s, that God In a Box; is there still a typescript manuscript of it, or did you already turn it over to the Erad Council? I know that it never passed through my hands; I’d remember such fulsome platitudes as he used to cast before the swine.”

  “I have four printed copies left,” Appleford said, calculating and remembering. “So it hasn’t reached the typescript stage, yet. And I’ve been told by one of my staff that several more book-forms of it are somewhere in circulation, probably in private libraries.”

  “So to some extent it still circulates. It’s still theoretically possible for someone to come across it.”

  “If they were lucky, yes. But four copies is not much, considering that at one time more than fifty thousand hardbound and three hundred thousand softbound copies were in circulation.”

  Mavis said, “Have you read it?”

  “I—glanced through it, briefly. It’s powerful, I think. And original. I don’t agree with you about ‘fulsome platitudes.’”

  “When the Anarch is reborn,” Mavis said, “he will probably attempt to resume his religious career. If he can avoid assassination. And I have a feeling that he’s shrewd; there was a worldly, practical underpinning to his God In a Box— he didn’t have his head in the clouds. And he will have the benefit of his experience beyond the grave. I think he’ll remember it, compared with most old-borns; or anyhow he’ll claim he remembers it.” Her tone was scathingly cynical. “The Council is not too pleased at the idea of the Anarch resuming his career of religion-mongering; they’re quite skeptical. Just as we manage to erad the last copies of God In a Box he shows up again to write some more . . . and we have a feeling that his future work will be worse, more radical, more destructive.”

  “Yes, I see,” Appleford said thoughtfully. “Having been dead he’ll be in a position to claim authentic visions of the hereafter; that he talked with God, saw the Day of Judgment—the usual material the old-born bring back . . . but his will have authority; people will listen.” He contemplated Ray Roberts, then, in that connection. “I know that you and the Council dislike Roberts,” he said. “But if you’re worried about the doctrines the Anarch will bring back—”

  “Your logic is clear,” Mavis McGuire said. She pondered. “All right, then; we’ll keep after the Hermes woman until we have the name of the cemetery, and if we can get it we’ll turn it over to Roberts. At least—” She hesitated. “I’ll recommend that to the Council; the decision will be theirs, of course. And if his body has been taken from the cemetery we’ll concentrate on her husband’s vitarium.”

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nbsp; “It could be done legally,” Appleford said; he always took a stand in favor of moderation. “The Anarch can be bought, aboveboard, from the vitarium, by the bid.” He did not, of course, mention his connection with Anthony Giacometti; that was not the Library’s affair. Tony is going to have to work fast, he said to himself; once the Council of Erads moves in, things will progress rapidly. He wondered if the principal whom Giacometti represented could—or would— outbid the Library. An interesting thought: a showdown between the Erads and the most powerful religious syndicate in Europe.

  Mavis McGuire rang off, and Appleford seated himself with the evening ’pape . . . to read, he discovered, about Ray Roberts’ pilg; that seemed to be all there was. Elaborate police precautions, all the rest; he felt bored, and he went into the kitchen to imbibe a trifle of sogum.

  While he busied himself the vidphone rang again. He gave up on the sogum, plodded back to answer the ring.

  It proved to be Mavis McGuire again. “An Erad is now with Mrs. Hermes,” Mavis said. “They’ll question her; it’s taken care of. It’s their theory that the vitarium probably took a calculated risk and dug up the Anarch, to avoid any chance of losing him; he’s too valuable commercially to lose. So it’s their assumption that we don’t have to locate the cemetery; all we need to do is approach the vitarium. The Council is sending someone to the vitarium now; they want to move in before it closes up shop for tonight.” She added, “It’s my daughter they’re sending.”

  “Ann?” Appleford said, surprised. “Why not an Erad?”

  Mavis said, “Annie works well with men, and this will be with a Mr. Sebastian Hermes, an old-born, now in his mid-forties. We feel that this kind of approach will be more successful than an out-and-out raid; it’s conceivable that they brought the Anarch’s body from the cemetery to the vitarium, revived it, and then moved it to another location, a private nursing home that we’d never track down.”

  “I see,” Appleford said, impressed. Ann McGuire impressed him, too; he had seen her at work before. Especially with men, as her mother said; she was generally effective whenever the matter of sex became involved.

  It had always been his hope, his masochistic plea, that Mavis and the Council would dispatch Ann to do a hatchet job on him.

  In this situation, with Sebastian Hermes married, Ann would be especially efficient; her specialty was entering a man-woman relationship as a third party, eventually driving out the wife—or mistress; whatever—and reducing the number of players to two: herself and the man.

  Lots of luck, Mr. Hermes, he thought wryly. And then he thought of timid little Mrs. Hermes subjected to the explorations of an Erad, and that made him uncomfortable.

  After the interrogation, Lotta Hermes would be different. He wondered which way: for the good or for the worse. The interrogation would either make her or destroy her; it could go in either direction.

  He hoped for the former; he had liked the girl.

  But his hands were tied.

  9

  God does not know things because they are: they are because He knows them, and His knowledge of them is their essence.

  —Erigena

  Officer Joe Tinbane ruminated, I certainly made a horse’s mouth of myself. I’ve ruined my friendship with the Hermeses, and because of me she had to go back to the Library. It’s my moral burden, whatever happens to her; it’s on my conscience, until birth.

  A lot of times, he reflected, when a person has a phobia about a particular place or situation, there’s a valid reason. It’s a form of precognition. If Lotta’s that afraid of going there, then she probably has reason to be. Those Erads, he said to himself. Mysterious; who and what are they? The Los Angeles Police Department doesn’t know; I don’t know.

  He was home, now, with Bethel. And, as usual, she was giving him a hard time.

  “You’re not taking any interest in your sogum,” Bethel said fiercely.

  “I’m going off,” he announced, “and disgorge. Where I can be alone and think.”

  “Oh? I interfere with your thoughts? Who are they about?”

  He said, stung by her tone, “Okay; if you want to know, I’ll tell you.”

  “Another woman.”

  “Right.” He nodded. “One whom I could love.”

  “You once said you could never love anyone in the way you loved me; that every other relationship—”

  “That was then.” Too many years had passed; talk could not revive a moribund marriage. Why should I be married— stay married—to someone who doesn’t basically respect me or like me? he asked himself. The dreary years, passing . . . the accusations. Rising to his feet, he detached himself from his sogum pipe. “I may have killed her,” he said. “I take responsibility.” I have to get her out of the Library, he said to himself.

  “You’re off to visit her now,” Bethel said. “Without even trying to conceal this—illicit relationship from me, your wife. I took our marriage vows seriously, but you’ve never tried; if we can’t work things out it’s because you haven’t tried or been responsible. And now you’re openly, blatantly, running off to her. Go ahead.”

  “Hello,” he said; the conapt door shut after him and he was out in the hall, hurrying toward his parked, unmarked prowl car. Should I go this way? he wondered. Out of uniform? No. He ran back to the door of their conapt—and found it locked.

  “Don’t try to come back,” Bethel said. “I’m getting a divorce.” Even through the heavy servofome door her voice was clear. “As far as I’m concerned you don’t live here.”

  “I want,” he grated, “my uniform.”

  There was no response. The door stayed shut.

  In his prowl car on the roof parking lot he kept a spare doorkey; once more he raced toward the ascent runnel. She can’t come between me and my uniform, he declared to himself. That’s illegal. Reaching his car he fumbled in the glove compartment. Aw, the hell with it; he got in behind the wheel, started up the engine. As long as I have my gun, he said to himself; he tugged it from his shoulder holster, checked to be sure all twelve chambers were loaded—except the one against which the half-cocked firing pin potentially rested—and then zoomed off into the early evening Los Angeles sky.

  Five minutes later he landed on the deserted—or rather almost deserted—roof parking lot of the People’s Topical Library. Expertly, he flashed his light into each of the parked aircars. All belonged to Erads, except one registered to Mavis McGuire. So he knew who he could expect to find in the Library besides Lotta Hermes: a gang of at least three Erads and the Chief Librarian.

  He quickly reached the roof entrance of the Library, and found it locked. Well, he thought, naturally; it’s after hours. But I know she’s in there, he thought, even if her car isn’t parked up here; she probably came by taxi. Probably she was afraid to drive.

  From the trunk of his prowl car he got a lock-analyzer, carried it by its worn leather strap—it had seen a good deal of service—to the Library door. Set in motion, the analyzer probed the lock, listened, then developed a proper tumbler-lift pattern; the door swung open, unlocked, with no damage done to it, no proof that it had been forced.

  He returned the lock-analyzer to the car’s trunk; then, pausing, inspected the mass of gear which he habitually carted about; what else might help him? Riot gas? Its use could be reported to his superiors in the department; he’d be in trouble. Cephalic-wave detection apparatus, he decided; it’ll tell me how many people are in the vicinity and it’ll plot their paths; I’ll know who’s converging on me and from where. So he took the cephalic-wave detector, snapped it on and set it for minimum range; at once the sweep of its scope-screen displayed five distinct dots, five human brains at work within yards from him, probably on the top floor of the Library. He then set the detector for maximum range, and now made out seven dots; so in all, he had six Library officials to cope with, plus Lotta Hermes, whom he assumed to be one of the dots.

  He assumed she was still alive, as well as still in the Library.

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bsp; However, before he entered the Library by its now unlocked roof door, he seated himself in the front of his prowl car, picked up the vidphone receiver, and dialed the number of the Flask of Hermes Vitarium; he had that number clear in his mind, now.

  “Flask of Hermes Vitarium,” R.C. Buckley said, appearing in cameo on the vidphone screen.

  “I’d like to talk to Lotta,” Tinbane said.

  “Let me check.” Buckley disappeared briefly, then returned. “Seb says she hasn’t come back from the Library. He sent her there to do some research for him—just a second; here’s Seb.”

  Now the somber, intelligent features of Sebastian Hermes appeared on the screen. “No, she hasn’t come back, and I’m really worried. I’m beginning to regret that I sent her; maybe I ought to call the Library and ask about her.”

  “You’d be wasting your time,” Tinbane said. “I’m at the Library now, parked on the roof. I know she’s in there. The Library is locked up, but that’s no problem; I have my prowl car and gear with me; in fact I’ve already retired the lock. I’m just wondering if I ought to give them a chance to voluntarily release her.”

  “Release her,” Seb echoed, and blanched. “It sounds like you think they’re holding her.”

  “I know,” he said, “that at closing time they didn’t throw her out.” He had an absolute intuition about that; his near-psionic faculty in that direction had made him the good police officer that he was. “She’s still in there, and being held; she wouldn’t stay unless they detained her.”

  “I’ll vidphone them,” Sebastian said hollowly.

  “And say what?”

  “And say I want my wife back!”

  “Okay,” Tinbane said, “you do that.” He gave Sebastian the extension number of his prowl car’s phone. “And then you call me back and tell me what they said.” He continued fixedly to watch the screen of the cephalic-wave detector; it continued to indicate seven brains in the vicinity, moving about slightly; the location of the dots on the screen underwent continual minute relocations. They’ll tell you that she was there, he said to himself, and that she left. She never got there at all; maybe they’ll say that. And they know nothing. Noli me tangere, he thought; that’s what the Library says about itself. Warning: don’t meddle with me. Touch me not. The bastards, he said to himself.