Dayworld - Dayworld Part 19

Who was this strangely dressed crazy man charging out of Father Tom's apartment?

Zurvan was also startled. He had not expected anyone to be out this early in the morning. Muttering something unintelligible even to him, he slammed the door behind him. At 3:12 A.M., he strode out of the building and headed for Womanway Boulevard. The sky was still clear. The air was hot but cooler than earlier in the day. A few cyclers and pedestrians were out, which made him feel less conspicuous. He pa.s.sed several State Cleaning Corps vehicles and one organic car. This slowed down when it got opposite him but did not stop. He had no idea what he would do if he was stopped and questioned.

Having crossed Womanway, he went west on Bleecker Street. He pa.s.sed Caird's house, which seemed to make Caird stronger. At least, his voice was louder than the others.

("I loved you," Caird cried.) Zurvan did not know whom Caird was calling to, but the sorrow in the voice troubled him. He walked faster, then slowed down. If any more organics came by, they would wonder why he was in a near-run.

Reaching the street alongside the ca.n.a.l, he went north. He looked over the railing from time to time and stopped when he saw a small jetboat tied to a floating dock. He went down the steps and back along the ca.n.a.l on the narrow path until he came to the boat. It probably belonged to the tenants of a house by the ca.n.a.l, and Sunday had not bestirred himself or herself to get up this early to fish. He got into the boat, untied the line to the dock, started the electrically powered jet, and steered it north up the ca.n.a.l. He pa.s.sed about a dozen small boats occupied by men and women fis.h.i.+ng and several cargo boats. He took the boat to the west side of the ca.n.a.l at West Eleventh Street, got onto the pathway, and shoved the boat out to drift. One more of many crimes.

The trees along the street would hide him from the sky-eyes. They would not observe which building he went into. Anyway, unless someone inspected the recordings, his disappearance under the trees was of no importance.

Before entering the building, he thought briefly of Isharashvili. Tomorrow, the ranger's wife would wonder why he had not left the cylinder. She would open the door, thinking that something had gone wrong with the power. She would touch him, and she would not feel the expected cold hardness; she would touch the soft warm flexible plastic of the dummy.

Her scream sounded in him.

Isharashvili's voice was there, though it, too, was far off, somewhere just past the horizon of his mind.

After getting into Horn's apartment, he went through every room. They were more numerous and larger than his and far more luxurious. Since she shared them with only one other tenant, Thursday's, she did not have to put her many personal possessions, bric-a-brac, jewelry, paintings, figurines, and ashtrays, in the PP closet. The ashtray surprised and disgusted him-Caird, that is-since he had not had the slightest suspicion that she used the illegal drug. Which meant that, if she did, so did Thursday.

He looked at the faces in the cylinder windows. The face of the Thursday resident of Horn's apartment was framed in the first cylinder's oval.

He moved to the next cylinder and looked into its window. Tony Horn stared back at him with huge unblinking eyes. Good old Tony. She was his good friend and had always been big-hearted and sympathetic. Perhaps he should destone her and tell her about his situation. She could help him as no one else he knew could help.

("Are you crazy?" Ohm said. "She's an immer!") ("That wasn't Zurvan thinking," Caird said. "He doesn't even know her. I was thinking for him. But you're right, Charlie. She'd turn us in.") While the voices tore at him and faces sprang like jack-inthe-boxes before him and hands tapped on his mind as if it were a window, Zurvan paced back and forth in the living room. When he reached one end, he turned and strode back to the other.

("Like a tiger in his cage," Repp said. "It's good exercise, but it won't get us out of the cage.") ("If he leaves the apartment," Ohm said, "he'll just be in a bigger cage.") Zurvan ignored the voices as best he could. They were an itch he wanted to scratch, but scratching would only make them itch more.

"Jacob, he whose name became Israel and whose descendants were as numerous as the grains of sand on the beach," Zurvan muttered, "Jacob saw a ladder. Its ends rested on Earth, and its other ends ascended into Heaven. Angels went up and down it, doing the bidding of the Lord. I need a ladder, Lord! Let it down so that I may climb up it to the promised abode!"

("He's cracking up!" Ohm said. "He'll become a raving madman, and we'll all die with him!") "No!" Zurvan shouted. "I am not mad, and there is no ladder for me! I do not deserve it!"

If a ladder was lowered for him, he would have to climb on rotten rungs. There were seven rungs, and the last, himself, would surely break.

Monday-World VARIETY, Second Month of the Year D6-W1 (Day-Six, Week-One) Monday was not blue. It was gray with heavy low clouds blown in from the east.

One of the few things permitted to be transmitted from one day to the next was the weather forecast. The meteorology of N.E. 1330 was far superior to that of the early ages, which had been often baffled and fooled by the exceedingly complex forces that made up the weather. Now, over one thousand and five hundred years of research had enabled the forecasters to predict with 99.9 percent accuracy. But Mother Nature, as if determined to show man that he could never have that onetenth percent in his grasp, sometimes pulled a reverse on him.

Today was an example of her trickery. The meteorologists had smugly announced that it would be clear and hot. But the wind had s.h.i.+fted, and the cloud continent over the mid-Atlantic was charging westward, its forefront now over eastern New Jersey.

Tom Zurvan had resumed his pacing. Will Isharashvili, the Central Park ranger, the gentle soul and henpecked husband, had protested feebly against being barred from the day that was rightfully his. Jeff Caird, in growing Will's persona, had made a mistake. He had gone too far in shaping a nonviolent and pa.s.sive man. He had, however, given Isharashvili a great stub- bornness and courage in refusing to act violently, and it was these that were causing the death of Isharashvili. Though not quite deceased, he was fading away. Rather than use force, as the others were, he would cling to his principles and so slide back on them into the elements from which he had come.

Not so Jeff Caird and the others. Though Zurvan had slammed and locked the doors on them, he saw them creep out of holes that he had not known existed. When he shoved them back in and cemented the holes, he found them oozing out through the walls in a sort of osmosis.

("This isn't like you, Zurvan," Jeff Caird said. "You're supposed to be religious and n.o.ble. Highly moral. A true son of G.o.d. You should be glad to be a martyr, to sacrifice yourself for others. But you're not. You're hard and ruthless, as G.o.dless as those you preach against. What happened?") ("He's a hypocrite, that's what," Charles Ohm said.) ("Of course, he is," Wyatt Repp said. "He was never fully what he claimed to be. Here he was, preaching absolute truthfulness and honesty. Confess your sins! Confess! Free yourself of all guilt and shame! Become the round man, the round woman! Be complete! Yet he was concealing from his disciples and from the public that he was an immer. He had a gift that he was denying them, the gift of a much longer life. He was and is a criminal, this righteous man. He belongs to a secret and illegal organization. He is indeed a hypocrite!") "Shut up! Shut up!" Zurvan cried.

("Yes. Lie down whimpering and die," Jim Dunski said. "Make it easy for the hypocrite.") ("Whimper, whimpish whelp, hard-hearted hound of heaven," Bob Tingle said. "You're barking up the wrong tree, Preacher Tom. The dog of deity is following a sour scent.") "What do you expect me to do?" Zurvan shouted.

That quieted them for a while. Anything that he did would not help them. Or him. He could, not resume the habit of the past and be one man one day and another the next. There was no place to go to where they could be themselves again. There was also no place where he could be Father Tom again. He was facing death as surely as they were. If the immers caught him, they would kill him. If the organics caught him, they would, after the trial, send him to an inst.i.tution for the mentally unbalanced. If the therapy succeeded, he, Zurvan, would dissolve. So would all of them, Jeff Caird included. The man that walked out of the inst.i.tution might be named Caird, but he would not be the same persona.

If the therapy failed, he would be stoned and put away until such time as psychic science found a sure cure for him. Inevitably, he would be forgotten. He would gather dust in some vast warehouse along with the millions now there and the billions that would be there.

"Yes, I am a hypocrite," he muttered. "I have failed. Why? I thought that I was a true son of G.o.d, that I believed what I urged others to believe. I did believe! I did! But my Maker made me flawed!"

He chewed his lip and stroked a beard that was no longer there.

"Don't put the blame on Him! He gave you free will! You had the power to heal the flaws! You did not have to blind yourself to them! You blinded yourself! Your Maker didn't blind you!"

(Jeff Caird said, quietly though very near, "But you forget that I am your maker.") Zurvan yelled and fell to the floor. He rolled back and forth on the carpet crying, "No! No! No!"

When he stopped rolling and shouting, he lay for a long while on his back staring at the ceiling.

("h.e.l.l, why don't we quit prolonging this agony?" Charlie Ohm said. "Let's turn ourselves in. They're going to catch us, anyway. And we'll be safe from the immers.") ("Too many organics are immers," Jim Dunski said. "They'll get to us, find some reason to kill us before we can talk. Anyway, I don't like to quit.") ("It's shootout time at the Psychic Corral," Wyatt Repp said. "May the best man win. Get off the floor and be a man, Zurvan. Fight! If you lose, go down trying to win! Fight! Don't listen to that loser, the lus.h.!.+") Zurvan walked to the kitchen as if he were pus.h.i.+ng through cotton candy. He drank a tall gla.s.s of water, went to the toilet, relieved himself, and put cold water on his face. After drying off, he picked up his shoulderbag and walked to the hallway door.

("Hey, where you going?" Ohm said.) ("He's going to turn us in," Bob Tingle said. "By the time the organics get through with us, no stone will be left unturned. We'll be turned inside out and then turned to stone. Think about it, man!") ("I didn't mean it," Ohm said. "I was only kidding you, pus.h.i.+ng you to see if you really were crazy.") ("Don't do it!" Caird said. "There may be a way out!") Zurvan closed the door behind him and walked toward the elevator. "I'm not going to turn myself in," he said. "I'm going for a long walk. I can't stand being caged in the apartment. I need to think. I need . .

What did he need? A possibility where all was impossible.

("When the rat in the laboratory can't find the way out of the labyrinth," Caird said, "when the rat runs up against an insoluble problem, when the rat is hopelessly confused, it lies down and dies.") "I am not a rat!" Zurvan said.

("No," Caird said, "you're not. You're not even a rat. You're a fiction! Remember, I am your maker! I, the real, made you, a fiction! ") ("Then that means the rest of us, too, are fictions," Repp said. "You made us. But so what?, You're a fiction, too, Caird. The government and the immers made you.") ("Fiction can become reality," Dunski said. "We're as real as Caird. After all, he made us from parts of him. He grew us as surely as a mother grows the embryo in the womb. And he gave birth to us. Now he wants to kill us. His children!") ("For Chrissake!" Ohm said. "We all want to kill each other! G.o.d, I need a drink!") ("I am your maker," Caird said over and over again. "The maker of all of you. What I can make, I can unmake. I am your maker and your unmaker.") ("Bulls.h.i.+t!" Charlie Ohm cried. "You're not Aladdin, and we're not genies you can put back into the bottle!") ("You would think of a bottle," Bob Tingle said. "Lush, loser, lessening Lazarus! Think of yourself as a hangover we all want to get rid of. You're all hangovers!") ("En garde, you son of a b.i.t.c.h!") ("Play your hand!") ("All fictions. I made you. I now unmake you.") ("Ohm-mani-padme-hum! ") ("Humbug, you alcoholic hummingbird! ") ("I made you. I am unmaking you. Do you think for one moment that I didn't foresee this. I made the rituals that admitted you each day into your day. I also made the reverse ritual, the undoing ritual, the no-entrance ritual. I knew that I'd need it some day. And today is the day!") ("Liar! ") ("Fictions calling the fiction-maker a liar? Living lies calling the one who made you truths, though temporary truths, a liar? I am your maker. I made you. I am unmaking you. Can't you feel everything slipping away? Go back to where you came from!") The wind that blew across Waverly Place was not strong enough as yet to blow off a hat. But the winds howling inside Zurvan seemed to lift him up and carry him away into the clouds. The light grew dim; the pedestrians around him were looking at him because he was staggering. When they saw him drop to his knees and lift his hands high, they backed away.

Far in the east, thunder stomped its feet in a war dance and lightning flashed its many lances.

Zurvan sped whirling through the whirling grayness. He tried to grab the dark wetness to keep himself from falling. Up? Or down?

"0 Lord," he bellowed, "I'm lost! s.n.a.t.c.h me from this doom! Take me away from this gray world to your glory!"

The people on the sidewalk backed even farther away or hurried off as Zurvan clapped his hands to his eyes and screamed, "The light! The light!"

He fell forward on his arms and lay still for a moment.

"Call an ambulance," someone said.

He rolled over, staring and blinking, and got unsteadily to his feet. "That won't be necessary," he said. "I'm all right. Just a bit dizzy. I'll go home. It's near. Just leave me alone."

Jeff Caird, whispering, "The light! The light!" walked across the bridge over the ca.n.a.l. By the time that he was a block away from Was.h.i.+ngton Square, he felt steady and strong.

("He's gone?" Tingle said.) ("Like the Indian that folded his tepee and stole away into the night," Wyatt Repp said.) ("He almost took me with him," Charlie Ohm said. "G.o.d! The light!") ("It was sword-shaped," Jim Dunski said. "It came down and lifted him on its blade and tossed him up into blazing sky.") Their voices were faint. They became a little louder when they discovered that Caird was now in control of the body.

("Oh, my G.o.d," Ohm said, "we're sunk!") ("Look at it this way," Repp said. "Zurvan's bit the dust.

Now ... it's Caird's last stand. We'll have his scalp before this is over.") Zurvan had not been sure that he had not been making up the voices of the others. Caird was equally unsure. It did not matter that they might be imaginary. Nor did it matter that the voices might be those of personae as real as his. What mattered was that he was master. And he knew what he was going todo.

He walked against the increasing wind toward the tall yellow vertical tube on the northwest corner of the park. This was one of the entrances to the underground system of transportation belts and power and water lines. A strip by its side warned that only SCC workers could use it. There were no workers or uniformed organics in sight, and the few people who had lingered in the park were leaving it.

He stopped. Under the branches of an oak tree in the distance sat a lone figure. The man who had been playing chess with Gril was walking away, shaking his head. Apparently, Gril had asked his partner to finish the game. The man, however, would rather forfeit.

Caird stopped by the entrance to the tube.

("What now?" Ohm said faintly.) A few leaves blown from the trees whirled by. The wind, cool with the promise of rain, lifted his hair. A bicycler, bent over, feet pumping, sped by.

Gril stood up. His red beard and long red hair were ruffled by the wind. He gathered up the pieces, put them in a case, folded the chessboard, and slid it into the case. Caird began running toward him. He shouted, but the wind carried his words over his shoulder as if they were confetti.

Gril turned and saw Caird running at him. He crouched and looked to both sides as if he wanted to find the best way to flee. Then he drew himself up and waited.

Caird slowed down and smiled to show Gril that he meant no harm. When he got within speaking distance, he said, "I'm not an organic. Not now, anyway. Ijust wanted to talk to you for a minute, Yankev Gad Gril. No longer than that, I swear it. I have urgent business; I won't detain you long."

Gril was regaining his color. He said in a deep rich voice, "You know my name. I don't know yours."

"No need to know it," Caird said. "Let's sit down for a minute. Too bad you put the board away. We could have finished our game."

Gril frowned and said, "Our game?"

Caird considered saying, "I make the first move: 1 BL-WC-4. Then you make the second, BL-WC SG."

That would be enough to tell Gril that this was his Tuesday's opponent. Last Tuesday's ex-opponent. But Caird wanted him to know as little as possible about his ident.i.ty.

("You don't know much about it, either," Ohm said.) Instead, Jeff Caird said, "I know you're a daybreaker. No, don't be alarmed. I'm not going to turn you in . .

He looked around. There were even fewer pedestrians and cyclists. A taxi, two people in the back seat, went by. The rumbling was getting closer. The storm was flas.h.i.+ng open its dark overcoat to expose lightning.

Gril's small green eyes became smaller, and his thin lips squeezed even thinner. He said, "What do you. want?"

"I want to satisfy my overwh~lming curiosity. That's all. I just want an answer to a question."

("Are you nuts?" Charlie Ohm said. "What if the organics come while you're indulging your craziness? For Chrissakes, Caird! ") "If I can answer it," Gril said.

Perhaps Ohm was right, and he was crazy. Or perhaps he was indulging the Tuesday organic in him. Whatever the reason, he had to know the man's motive.

"From what I know of your case," Caird said, "you had no apparent reason to daybreak. Why did you?"

Gril smiled and said, "If I told you, I don't think you'd understand."

("Any second now," Repp said, "any second now, the organics will be coming around the corner. Maybe they won't wonder why you two are sitting under a tree that might get struck by lightning. Maybe they won't come over and ask you why. And then maybe they won't ask for your ID. Maybe they won't already have your description.") "Try me," Caird said.

"How much do you know about Orthodox Judaism?"

"Probably enough. I know your name, remember? I know who you are."

Gril looked across the table at Caird. He clutched the case so hard that his knuckles whitened. "Then you know how important keeping the Shabbos, the Sabbath, is to us?"

Caird nodded.

"You know that the government does not forbid us to observe the Sabbath? It won't let us have a synagogue, but it doesn't play favorites. No religion has a church or temple or mosque or synagogue."

"The people need the s.p.a.ce those would occupy for housing and factories," Caird said. "Also, religions are a form of malignant superst.i.tion, contrary to all . .

Gril held up a big red-haired hand.

"I don't want to get into an argument about the reasons."

"I don't either," Caird said, looking around. "It was just that . .

"Never mind. As I said, we are permitted to do what G.o.d enjoined us to do. We observe the Sabbath. That is on the seventh day of the week, beginning with dusk on Friday and ending with the dusk on Sat.u.r.day evening."

"I understand," Caird said.

"Yes, but you don't understand how important it is that we do observe the ancient practice, the ancient law. The law. Not the government's law. Ours. A much more ancient law."

"But you have your Sabbaths."

Gril raised a hand from the case and lifted a finger.

"Yes. But we do not go by the ancient and sacred calendar. Instead of traveling horizontally on the calendar, we travel vertically. Last Monday was the Sabbath, not Sat.u.r.day. That is, it was if we obey the law of the state."

"I think I know what you're going to say," Caird said. "It's hard-"

"Please. It's going to rain very soon. Since I've been courteous to you, a stranger who came in from nowhere and will probably go nowhere. .

("Ain't that the truth!" Charlie Ohm said.) "... without telling me who you are and why you're here, I'm not asking too much of you to refrain from interrupting."

"Right," Caird said.

("The organics!" Ohm whispered.) Caird looked around quickly, but Ohm was just warning him to watch for organics.

"I did not like the idea of observing the Sabbath on the wrong day, on Monday instead of as it should be and has long been decreed . . ."

("The man's as windy as you, Caird," Ohm said.) ". . . but I obeyed the state and the rabbis. After all, they reasoned that, regardless of whether it was Sat.u.r.day or not, the Sabbath still fell on the seventh day. But I was not happy with this reasoning. Then, one day, while reading the book of a very wise man, though he was sometimes mistaken and prejudiced, I came across a pa.s.sage that affected me deeply."

"Cerinthus?"

Gril's only sign of being startled was a rapid blinking. "How did you know that?"

"Never mind. I'm sorry I interrupted again."

"Actually, the author was Pseudo-Cerinthus. The scholars had established that some books supposedly by Cerinthus were by another man, name unknown, called, for the sake of convenience, Pseudo-Cerinthus. I, however . . ."-Gril looked very pleased-"... I was able to prove that Cerinthus and PseudoCerinthus were actually the same person. His style as PseudoCerinthus was different from Cerinthus' because, when he wrote as Pseudo-Cerinthus, he was possessed by the Shekinah or Doxa ..

"By what?"

"G.o.d's presence or the light that His presence shed. The Targumists used that term . .

"Never mind," Caird said. "What was this pa.s.sage that affected you so deeply?"

("Cerinthus and Pseudo-Cerinthus," Bob Tingle said. "Another schizophrenic. Do you think we have room for him, too? Come on in, sibling sage, seer, and psychotic.") ("I can't believe that we're standing out in the open discussing theology and stylistics while the storm and the organics are closing in," Ohm said.) "Cerinthus," Gril said, "believed that the angels created the world. And an angel gave the Jews their law, which was imperfect. He was wrong about that, of course. The Shekiriah gave the law to the Jews, and the Shekinah cannot give imperfect laws. Not to His chosen people.

"But Pseudo-Cerinthus, inspired by the Shekinah, wrote that, even if the law had been imperfect in the beginning, it was made perfect by the Jews. Their stubbornness in clinging to their law despite all persecutions and misfortunes and their survival despite everything that should have wiped them from the face of Earth proved that they were obeying the perfect law. After this pa.s.sage, Pseudo-Cerinthus denounced Cerinthus as being in grave error and, indeed, not too bright. He mentions several letters he sent to Cerinthus explaining the error. These have not been found . .

The first rain fell, large but scattered drops. The wind tried to pry Caird's hat loose. Thunder stomped. Lightning raced toward them on many glowing legs.