Counter-Clock World

19

But in these things is no place of repose; they abide not, they flee; and who can follow them with the senses of the flesh?

--St. Augustine

In his sleep Sebastian Hermes dreamed of the grave; he dreamed he once more lay within his tight plastic casket, in the Tiny Place, in the darkness. He called over and over again, "My name is Sebastian Hermes and I want to get out! Is there anyone up there who can hear me?" In his dream hs listened. And, far off, for the second time in his life, he felt the weight of footsteps, of someone moving toward his grave. "Let me out!" he squeaked, over and over again; and, against the confining plastic, he struggled like a damp insect. Hopelessly.

Now someone dug; he felt the impact of the spade. "Get air down to me!" he tried to yell, but since there was no longer any air he could not breathe; he was suffocating. "Hurry!" he called, but his call became soundless in the absence of air; he lay compressed, crushed, by an enormous vacuum; the pressure grew until, silently, his ribs broke. He felt that, too, his bones one by one snapping.

"If you get me out of here," he tried to say, wanted to say, "I'll go back into the Library and find the Anarch. Okay?" He listened; the excavation continued: dulled thumps, methodically. "I promise," he said. "Is it a deal?"

The blade of the spade rasped across his coffin's lid.

I admit it, he thought. I could have gotten him out, but I chose to save my wife instead. _They_ didn't stop me; I stopped myself. But I won't do that again; I promise. He listened; now, with a screwdriver, they had begun removing the lid, the last barrier between him and the light, the air. It'll be different next time, he promised. Okay?

The lid, noisily, was dragged aside. Light spilled in.and he looked up, saw into a face which peered down at him.

A wizened, dark, little old face. The Anarch's.

"I heard you calling," the Anarch said. "So I dropped what I had been doing and came to give aid. What can I do for you? Do you want to know the year? It is 4 B.C."

"Why?" Sebastian asked. "What does that signify?" He felt that it portended something vast; he felt awe.

The Anarch said, "You are the savior of mankind. Through you it will be redeemed. You are the most important person ever born."

"What do I have to do," Sebastian said, "to redeem mankind?"

"You must die again," the Anarch answered, but now the dream became wraith-like and hazy and he began to wake up; he sensed himself here in bed in his conapt, beside Lotta; he sensed that he had dreamed and so the dream ebbed away from him--leaving a peculiar residue.

Some message, he thought as he turned over, sat up, pushed the covers away from him and rose unsteadily to his feet to stand by the bed, deep in thought. Trying to remember as much of the dream as possible.

I must what? he asked himself. What did the Anarch want to say to me? Die? The dream told him nothing, only that he felt trapped and impotent, that he felt guilt, boundlessly so, for leaving the Anarch in the Library; all things he consciously knew. Big deal, he thought gloomily.

He stumbled into the kitchen--and found three men, wearing black silk clothes, seated at the table. Three Offspring of Might. The three men looked tired and fretful. Before them, on the table, lay a heap of creased handwritten notes.

"This is the man," one of them said, indicating Sebastian, "who left the Anarch in the Library. When he could have gotten him out."

The three Offspring of Might regarded Sebastian with mixed emotions visible on their weary faces.

To Sebastian the spokesman of the Offspring explained, "We're going to make our move against the Library tonight. Nothing subtle; we're going to drag a cannon up and lire nuclear shells at it until it falls apart. We may not get the Anarch but at least we'll have taken care of _them_." His tone indicated contempt and irate hostility.

"You don't think you could get in and get out?" Sebastian asked. It appalled him, the clumsy quality of their plans. The nihilism. Not saving the Anarch but destroying the Library; they had missed the entire point.

"There's a miniscule chance," the spokesman of the Offspring conceded. "That's why we stopped off to talk to you; we want to know exactly where you found the Anarch and how they're guarding him... how many men and with what weapons. Of course, it all will be changed by the time we arrive-it's probably all changed now--but there may be something we can make use of." He eyed Sebastian, waiting.

Lotta, sleepy-eyed, appeared in the kitchen doorway behind him. "Are they here to kill us?" she asked, slipping her arm through his.

"Apparently not," Sebastian told her; he patted her arm, trying to soothe her. "All I remember is armed Library guards," he said to the Offspring. "I don't remember which office I found him in, except that it was on the next to top floor. It seemed to be an ordinary office, like all the others; they probably selected it at random."

"Have you dreamed about the Anarch since?" the spokesman of the Offspring asked, surprisingly. "We're told that in his previous life the Anarch occasionally communicated with his followers through their dreams."

"Yes," Sebastian said guardedly. "I did dream about him; he told me something, about myself. That I had to do something. The year, he said, was 4 B.C. and I would be the savior of mankind. By doing this thing."

"Not very helpful," the spokesman of the Offspring commented.

"But in a sense true," another of the Offspring spoke up. "If he _had_ brought the Anarch out he _would_ have been the savior of mankind. That's what the Anarch wanted him to do; we don't need to hear the dream to know that." He jotted notes, scowling.

"You missed your chance, Mr. Hermes," the first Offspring said. "The biggest chance of your life."

"I know," Sebastian said woodenly.

"Maybe we should kill him," the third Offspring said. "Kill both of them. Now, instead of after the thrust on the Library."

Sebastian felt his pulse cease; he felt his body shrink into death. As it had been in the Tiny Place. But he said nothing; he merely hugged Lotta against him.

"Not as long as he may be helpful," their spokesman said flatly. Again he surveyed Sebastian. "Did you come across any weapons more formidable than laser beams and automatic rifles?" he inquired.

"No." Sebastian stiffly shook his head.

"There seemed to be no force-field, nothing modern, protecting the highly sensitive top levels of the structure."

"All hand weapons," Sebastian said.

"By what system are the Library guards alerted? Radio?"

"Yes." Again he nodded.

"They didn't try to stop you with nerve gas?"

Sebastian said, "I was the only one who used gas. Supplied to me by His Mightiness and the Rome party."

"Yes, we know what you were supplied with." The spokesman of the Offspring toyed with his pencil, licking the corner of his mouth and concentrating. "They had gas masks?"

"Some of them."

"Then they have gas--one kind or another--available. In case of an out-and-out invasion. And when our first shell hits the building we may see something larger than hand weapons emerge from within there." He once more contemplated Sebastian. "I don't believe it. I mean, I believe you--but I know they're better defended. They really didn't try to stop you; if it had been a team instead of one man, you'd have gotten the Anarch out." He turned to consult his two companions. "The Library is still an enigma," he told them. "Twice, within fortyeight hours, a man has gone in there and hauled Lotta Hermes out. Yet, there sits the Anarch, as if available; as if a fastmoving _putsch_ could be carried off. In my opinion the Anarch is already dead and what Hermes saw consists of nothing more than a simulacrum-robot, prepared in advance."

One of his companions said, "But Hermes' dream. It implies that His Mightiness is still alive. Somewhere. Maybe not in the Library, though."

Lotta detached herself from Sebastian and seated herself at the kitchen table across from the three Offspring of Might. "Haven't the Uditi ever been able to--" She gestured, not knowing the word. "Gotten one of you in--you know. On the staff. A spy."

"They use quasi-telepathic probes in screening applicants," the spokesman said. "We tried several times. They gunned the individual down each time; we got back a corpse."

"You couldn't say you were the inventor of a book," Sebastian said.

"_That_ you used up," the spokesman said cuttingly. "A gambit we prepared months ago. Because of the interference of the Rome party, you got hold of that. That didn't please us... the Offspring. Hermes, it may have perplexed Ray Roberts that you failed, but it doesn't perplex us. We have an enormous regard for the resources, the ingenuity of the Library; we will, on orders from Roberts, kill you to avenge the Anarch... but in our own separate opinion, you didn't have the foggiest ghost of a chance."

Sebastian said huskily, "But I didn't even try."

"That makes no nevermind. Not if what you saw consisted of a simrobot. Or they had more sophisticated weapons, ready to be lugged out as soon as you showed success. How readily did they agree to the détente? You getting out alive with your wife but without the Anarch?"

"They made the offer," Sebastian said.

"It's a trap," the spokesman of the Offspring said. "To lure us into a kamikaze raid; _all_ the Offspring: our entire corps. The Anarch probably has been taken miles from here, to one of the branch Libraries up the Coast toward Oregon. Any one of the more than eighty branches in the W.U.S." He brooded. "Or he could be in one of the private residences of an Erad. Or in a hotel. Do you know anyone high up in the Library hierarchy, Hermes? An Erad? A librarian? I mean personally."

"I know Ann Fisher," he said.

"Yes. The daughter of the Chief Librarian and the pro tem Chairman of the Council." The Offspring nodded. "How intimately do you know her? Be accurate; this could be vital."

"Ignore your wife temporarily," another of the Offspring spoke up. "This takes precedence."

Sebastian said, "I've been to bed with her."

"Oh," Lotta gasped. "Then what she told me was true."

"That makes two of us," Sebastian said.

"I guess it does," Lotta said, forlornly. She buried her face in her hands, rubbed her forehead, then lifted her head and gazed up at him. "Could you tell me why you--"

"You have the balance of your lives to discuss this," the spokesman of the Offspring broke in. "Do you think you could lure Ann Fisher out of the Library?" he asked Sebastian. "On a pretext? So we could put our own telepathic probe on her?"

"I could," he said.

"What would you tell her?" Lotta said. "That you wanted to go to bed with her again?"

"I would say," he said, "that the Offspring of Might had been instructed to kill us. And I wanted to arrange sanctuary for you and me in the Library."

The spokesman pointed to the vidphone in the living room. "Call her," he said.

Sebastian made his way into the living room. "She has an apartment," he said. "Outside the Library; that's where she took me. It'll probably be there, not here."

"Any place," the spokesman said. "So long as it's where we can get our hands on her and attach a probe."

Seated at the vidphone he dialed the Library.

"People's Topical Library," the operator said presently.

He turned the vidphone set around, so that the camera would not pick up the four people in the kitchen of his conapt. "Let me talk to Miss Ann Fisher," he said.

"Who is calling, please?"

"Tell her Mr. Hermes." He sat waiting; the screen had now become blank. Then, after a sputter, it relit. On the screen Ann Fisher's attractive face formed.

"Hello, Sebastian," she said quietly.

He said, "I'm marked to be killed."

"By the Offspring of Might?"

"Yes," he said.

"Well, Sebastian," Ann said, in her clear voice, "I really do think you brought it on yourself. You couldn't resolve your loyalty; you came to the Library, you forced your way in, but instead of trying to bring the Anarch out--and you had equipment supplied by Udi; we recognized it--instead of doing that--"

"Listen," he said harshly, breaking in. "I want to meet you."

"I can't help you." Her voice was neutral, pert; his situation did not impinge on her savoir-faire. "After what you did in--"

"We want to arrange sanctuary," Sebastian said. "In the Library. Lotta and I."

"So?" Ann raised her thin eyebrows. "Well, I can ask the Council; I know it's been done on rare occasions. But don't get your hopes up. I doubt if the answer would be yes, in your case."

Appearing beside Sebastian, Lotta took the receiver from him and said, "My husband's a very effective organizer, Miss Fisher. I know you could make use of his ability. We had planned to go to the U.N. and try to make it to Mars, but the Offspring of Might are too near; we'll be killed before we can get our medical examinations and passports."

"Has the Offspring of Might contacted you?" Ann asked; she seemed more interested, now.

"Yes," Sebastian said, retrieving the vidphone receiver.

"Do you know," Ann said in a cold, hard voice, "if they have any plans regarding the Anarch?"

"They said one thing," Sebastian said cautiously.

"Oh? Teilme what it was."

"I'll tell you," he said, "when we meet you. Either here at our conapt or at your apartment."

Ann Fisher hesitated, calculated, then decided. "I'll meet you in two hours. At my place. You remember the address?"

"No," he said; he reached out, and one of the Offspring quickly handed him a pencil and pad.

She gave him the address and then rang off. Sebastian sat for a moment, then rose stiffly. The three Offspring regarded him wordlessly.

"It's arranged," he said. And it will give me satisfaction, he said to himself. No matter how it works out, whether they get the Anarch or not. "Here." He handed the spokesman the slip of paper on which he had written Ann Fisher's address. "What do I have to do? Am I supposed to go in there armed?"

"Probably she has a standard search-beam system across her doorway," the spokesman said, examining the address. "It'll sound you for any weapons. No, just go in there and talk to her. We'll toss a gas grenade through the window, something like that... don't worry about that part; that's up to us." He mused. "Maybe a thermotropic dart. We'd get both of you, but you'd recover; we'd be bringing you both around."

To the spokesman Lotta said, "If my husband helps you this way, will you not kill us?"

"If Hermes makes it possible for us to get back the Anarch," the spokesman of the Offspring said, "we'll commute the death sentence which Ray Roberts passed on him."

Chilled, Sebastian said, "It's that formal, then."

"Yes." The spokesman nodded. "Done in official session of the Elders of Udi. His Mightiness took time off from his spiritual pilg to participate in that decision."

"Do you think," Lotta said to Sebastian, "that you can really get Miss Fisher out of the Library?"

"She'll come," he said. But whether the Offspring can grab her--that's something else, he thought. He had a high regard for Ann Fisher's alertness; she probably would be prepared for something just like this. After all, Ann knew how he felt about her.

They won't question her, he realized. Somehow, in some fashion that none of us can envision, she'll kill them. And perhaps me as well. But, he thought, Ann Fisher may die, too. That consoled him; out of all this, that one grim possibility appealed to him. I could never kill her myself, he thought. That's beyond me; I'm not constituted to perform an act like that. But the Offspring: as with Joe Tinbane, killing is their vocation.

He felt immeasurably better. He had steered the assassins of Udi onto Ann Fisher: a great accomplishment.

Onto Ann and away from himself and Lotta!