Counter-Clock World

15

God's knowledge also surpassing all motions of time, rernaineth 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 topfloor 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 mterrupted 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-andink 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 role 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 m 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 wellthought-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.