Counter-Clock World

20

So then when they rise and tend to be, the more quickly they grow that they may be, so much the more they haste not to be.

--St. Augustine

Two hours later he sat in his aircar, parked on the roof of Ann Fisher's apartment building, thinking introspective thoughts about his life and what he had tried to do during it.

Closing his eyes he imagined the Anarch; he tried to revive the truncated dream of a few hours ago. _You must_, the Anarch had said to him. You must do what? he wondered; he tried to induce the dream to continue on past that point. Again he made out the dried, shriveled little face, the dark eyes and wise--both spiritually and earthly wise--mouth. You must die once more, he thought; was that it? Or live? He wondered which. The dream refused to resume and he gave up; he sat upright and opened the car door.

The Anarch, wearing a white cotton robe, stood beside the parked car. Waiting for him to get out.

"My God," Sebastian said.

Smiling, the Anarch said, "I am sorry that my earlier talk with you became interrupted. Now we can continue."

"You--got away from the Library?"

"They still hold me," the Anarch said. "What you see is nothing more or less than an hallucination; the antidote capsule to the LSD gas which you carried in your mouth failed the task of neutralizing the gas completely; I am a remnant of that gas operation." His smile increased. "Do you believe me, Sebastian?"

Sebastian said, "I could have been hit by the gas. A little. --" But the Anarch looked substantial. Sebastian reached out to touch him...

His groping hand passed through the Anarch's body. "You see?" the Anarch said. "I can leave the Library spiritually; I can appear in men's dreams and as drug-induced visions. But physically I am still there _and they can kill me any time they wish_."

"Do they intend to?" he asked hoarsely.

"Yes." The Anarch nodded. "Because I will not give up my views, my specific, certain knowledge; I can't forget what I have learned during death. Any more than you can eradicate the horror of finding yourself buried; some memories remain throughout life."

Sebastian said, "What can I do?"

"Very little," the Anarch said. "The Offspring of Might are correct when they say that you really had no chance of conveying me from the Library; a splinter-bomb had been rigged and I was the booby trap. If you had lifted me to my feet the bomb would have killed us both."

"Are you just saying that," Sebastian said, "to make me feel better?"

"I am telling you the truth," the Anarch said.

"And now wlaat?" Sebastian said. "I'll do anything you want. Anything I can."

"Your meeting with Miss Fisher."

"Yes," he said. "The Offspring are waiting. I'm like you; I'm a booby trap. For her."

The Anarch said, "Let her go."

"Why?'

"She has a right to live." The Anarch seemed tranquil, now; once more he smiled. "I can't be saved," he said. "The Offspring can blow up the entire Library and all it will--"

"But," Sebastian said, "we can get her too."

"They possibly might get her," the Anarch said, "when they blow up the Library. But, it is all the same."

"_They_ can get her," Sebastian said. "But this way _I_ can get her."

The Anarch said, "You don't actually hate Ann Fisher. In fact it's the opposite; you are deeply, violently in love with her. That's why you're so anxious to see her destroyed: Ann Fisher draws off huge quantities of your emotions; the major share, in fact. Killing her won't bring you closer to Lotta; you must meet Ann Fisher here on the roof when she lands and warn her not to go into her apartment. Do you understand?"

"No," Sebastian said.

"You must, in fact, warn her not to go back to the Library; you must tell her about the proposed attack. Tell her to arrange for the Library to be evacuated. The attack will come at six this evening; at least that is the present operating schedule of the Offspring. I think they possibly will do it; as you have thought yourself, killing is their vocation."

Hearing his own thoughts read back to him jarred him; he felt acutely uncomfortable. He said haltingly, "I don't think Ann Fisher is that important one way or another; I think you are important--you and your safety. The Uditi are absolutely right; it's worth blowing the Library to bits if there's any chance--"

"But there isn't," the Anarch said. "No chance at all."

"So your doctrines, your knowledge of the ultimate reality beyond the grave, disappear. Eradicated by the Erads." He felt futile.

"I am appearing to Mr. Roberts in vision-form," the Anarch said peacefully. "I am busily communicating with him. To a certain, limited extent inspiring him. Substantial parts of my new understanding will therefore reach the world, through him. And your secretary, Miss Vale, possesses reams of dictation which she took from me." The Anarch did not seem perturbed; he radiated, in fact, an aura of saintly acceptance.

"Am I really in love with Ann Fisher?" sebastian asked.

The Anarch did not answer.

"Your Mightiness," Sebastian said urgently.

Reaching up, the Anarch pointed into the afternoon sky. And, as he pointed, he wavered; cars beyond him became visible, and then, by degrees, he flickered out.

Above the roof an aircar glided down, seeking a landing.

Here she comes, Sebastian realized. It could be no one else.

As the aircar landed he walked toward it. When he reached it he found Ann Fisher industriously wriggling out of her safety belt. "Goodbye," he said to her.

"Bye," she said, preoccupied. "Goddam this belt; it always gives me trouble." She glanced up at him, then, her blue eyes penetrating. "You look odd. As if you want to say something but can't."

He said, "Can we talk up here?"

"Why up here?" Her eyebrows knitted. "Explain."

"The Anarch," he said, "appeared to me in a vision."

"Oh my mouth he did. Tell me what the Offspring are up to; tell me here, if you want. But start telling!" Her eyes blazed impatiently. "Something's the matter with you; I can tell. Did he really appear to you? That's a superstition; he's back at the Library, locked up with half a dozen Erads. The Uditi have been getting to you; _they_, think he can manifest himself wherever he wants."

Sebastian said, "Let him go."

"He'll undermine the structure of society, a nut like that. A baboon come back from the dead, spoutmg holy writ. You should be around him, the way I've been; you should hear some of the things he says."

"What does he say?"

Ann Fisher said, "I didn't come here to discuss that; you told me you knew what the Udi fanatics are doing."

Seating himself in the car beside her, he said, "I consider the Anarch on a par with Gandhi."

Ann sighed. "Okay. He says there's no death; it's an illusion. Time is an illusion. Every instant that comes into being never passes away. Anyhow--he says--it doesn't really even come into being; it was always there. The universe consists of concentric rings of reality; the greater the ring the more it partakes of absolute reality. These concentric rings finally wind up as God; He's the source of the things, and they're more real as they get nearer to him. It's the principle of emanation, I guess. Evil is simply a lesser reality, a ring farther from Him. It's the lack of absolute reality, not the presence of an evil deity. So there's no dualism, no evil, no satan. Evil is an illusion like decay. And he kept quoting bits of all those old-time medieval philosophers, like St. Augustine and Erigena and Boethius and St. Thomas Aquinas--he says for the first time he understands them. Okay, is that enough?'

"I'll listen to any more you remember."

"Why should I pass on his doctrines? Our whole function is to erad them, not tout them." She got a cigaret butt from the car's ashtray, lit it and began puffing smoke into it rapidly. "Let's see." She shut her eyes. "Eidos is form. Like Plato's category--the absolute reality. It exists; Plato was right. Bidos is imprinted on passive matter; matter isn't evil, it's just inert, like clay. There's an anti-eidos, too; a form-_destroying_ factor. This is what people experience as evil, the decay of form. But the anti-eidos is an eidolon, a delusion; once impressed, the form is eternal--it's just that it undergoes a constant evolution, so that we can't perceive the form. The way, for instance, the child disappears into the man, or, like we have now, the man dwindles away into the child. It looks like the man is gone, but actually the universal, the category, the form--it's still there. The problem is one of perception; our perception is limited because we have only partial views. Like Leibnitz's monadology. See?"

"Yes," he said, nodding.

"Nothing new," Ann said. "Just a rehash of Plotinus and Plato and Kant and Leibnitz and Spinoza."

Sebastian said, 'We weren't necessarily expecting something new. We didn't know what it would be like, when it arrived."

"You died; didn't you experience all that?"

"It's like during life. Each person experiences different--"

"Yes, like Leibnitz's monads." She placed the completed cigaret in its paper package, along with others like it. "Is that enough? At last?" She waited, her body tense with impatience.

"And this doctrine," he said, "you want to erad."

"Well, if the doctrine's true," Ann said, "we _can't_ destroy it. So there's nothing for you to get your mouth in an uproar about."

Sebastian said, "The Offspring of Might will spring a trap on you as soon as you enter your apartment."

Her eyes flickered. "This is why you wanted to meet me?"

"Yes," he said.

"You changed your mind?"

He nodded.

Reaching, Ann squeezed him on the knee. "I appreciate it. All right; I'll duck back to the Library."

"Evacuate the Library," he said. "Totally. Before six tonight."

"They're going to bombard it with some heavy weaponry from the F.N.M.?"

"They have an atomic cannon. Nuclear shells. They know they can't get the Anarch back. They'll settle for leveling the Library."

"Vengeance," Ann said. "That always animates them. Back to the days of Malcolm X's assassination."

Again he nodded.

"Well, what do you personally say about this?" she demanded.

"I've given up," he said, simply.

"They'll be sore as hell at you for stopping me," Ann said. "If they were mad at you before--"

"I know." He had thought of that. While the Anarch was telling him. He had, in fact, been thinking about it ever since.

"Can you get away somewhere? You and Lotta?"

"Maybe Mars," he said.

Once more she squeezed his knee. "I appreciate your telling me. Good luck. Now get out; I'm getting terribly nervous--I want to take off while I still can."

He slid from the car and shut the door. Instantly Ann started up the engine; the car rose swiftly and headed in the direction of mid-afternoon cross-town traffic. Standing there, he watched it go until it had disappeared.

From the elevator entrance two silk-clad Offspring of Might appeared, gun in hand. "What happened?" one demanded. "Why didn't she and you come downstairs?"

I don't know, he started to say. But then, instead, he told them, "I warned her off."

One of the Offspring raised his pistol, started to point it in Sebastian's direction. "Later," the other said rapidly. "Maybe we can catch her; let's go." He raced toward their parked car, and, indecisively, the other forgot about Sebastian and sprinted after him. A moment later they, too, were airborne; he watched them streak off and then he walked to his own car. Inside he sat for a time doing nothing, not even thinking; his mind had become empty.

At last he picked up the car's phone and dialed his own number.

"Goodbye," Lotta said breathlessly, in answer; her eyes dilated when she recognized him. "Is it over?" she asked.

"I tipped her off," he said.

"_Why?_"

Sebastian said, "I'm in love with her. Evidently. What I did would seem to substantiate that."

"Are--the Offspring upset?"

"Yes," he said curtly.

"You really love her? That much?"

"The Anarch told me to do it," he said. "He appeared to me in a vision."

"That's silly." She had, as always, begun to cry; tears rolled unobstructed down her cheeks. "I don't believe you; nobody has visions any more."

"Are you crying because I love Ann Fisher?" he asked. "Or because the Uditi will be after us again?"

"I--don't know." She continued to cry. Helplessly.

Sebastian said, "I'm coming home. I don't mean I don't love you; I love you in a different way. I'm just hung up on her; I shouldn't be but evidently I am. In time I can get rid of it. It's like a neurosis; like obsessive thinking. It's an illness."

"You bastard," Lotta said, choking with grief.

"Okay," he said leadenly. "You're right. Anyhow, the Anarch told me that, told me how I really feel about her. _Can_ I come home? Or should I--"

"Come on home," Lotta said, wiping at her eyes with her knuckle. "We'll decide what to do. Hello." Wanly, she rang off.

He started the engine of his car and ascended into the sky.

When he arrived back at his conapt, Lotta met him on the roof. "I've been thinking," she said, as he emerged from the parked car, "and I realize I have no right to blame you; look what I did with Joe Tinbane." Hesitantly, she reached her arms Out toward him. He hugged her, tightly. "I think you're right when you regard it like an illness," she said, against his shoulder. "We both have to view it that way. And you will get over it. Just like I'm getting over Joe."

Together, they walked to the elevator.

"Since I talked to you," Lotta continued, "I phoned the U.N. people here in L.A. and talked to them about our emigrating to Mars. They said they'd mail us the forms and instructions today."

"Fine," he said.

"It'll be an exciting trip," Lotta said, "if we actually do it. Do you think we will?"

He said, candidly, "I don't know what else we can do."

Downstairs, in their apartment, they faced each other across the small expanse of their living room.

"I'm tired," Sebastian said; he massaged his aching eyes.

"At least now," his wife said, "we don't have to worry about Library agents. Isn't that so? They're probably grateful to you for saving her hide; wouldn't you imagine?"

"The Library won't do us any more harm," he agreed.

"Do you find me insipid?" Lotta asked.

"No," he said. "Not at all."

"That Fisher girl is so--dynamic. So aggressively active."

Sebastian said, "What we've got to do is hide until all our papers are in order and we're aboard a ship heading to Mars. Can you think of any place?" At the moment he could not. He wondered how much time they had. Possibly only minutes. The Offspring could return at each new tick of the clock.

"At the vitarium?" Lotta offered hopefully.

"No chance. They'll look here first, there second."

"A hotel room. Picked at random."

"Maybe," he said, chewing on it.

"Did the Anarch really appear to you in a vision?"

"It seemed so. Maybe--he said it himself--I inhaled too much of the LSD. And what spoke to me consisted of a part of my own mind." He would probably never know. Perhaps it didn't matter.

"I'd like that," Lotta said. "To have a religious vision. But I thought you had visions of people dead. Not living."

"Maybe they had already killed him," Sebastian said. He probably is dead by now, he conjectured. Well, that's that. _Sum tu_, he thought, quoting Ray Roberts. I am you, so when you died I died. And, while I still live, you, too live on. In me. In all of us.

21.

Thou calledst, and shoutedst and burstest my deafness. Thou flashedst, shinest and scatteredst my blindness... Thou did touch me, and I burned for Thy peace.

--St. Augustine

That evening, drably, he and Lotta watched the news on TV.

"All day," the announcer exclaimed, "a crowd of Uditi, the followers of His Mightiness Ray Roberts, has been growing in the vicinity of the People's Topical Library; a restless crowd, surging back and forth in a manner suggesting anger. Los Angeles police, who have kept an eye on the crowd without attempting to interfere with it, expressed fear shortly before five P.M. that an attack on the Library would be soon forthcoming. We talked to a number of persons in the crowd, asking them why they had assembled here and what they proposed to do."

The TV screen showed disjointed scenes of people in motion. Noisy people, mostly men, waving their arms, yelling.

"We talked to Mr. Leopold Haskins and asked him why he had come to parade in front of the Library, and he had this to say."

A burly Negro man, probably in his late thirties, appeared on the TV screen, looking sullen. "Well, I'm here," he said gruffly, "because they got the Anarch in there."

Holding out the portable microphone the TV news announcer said, "They have the Anarch Thomas Peak in the Library, sir?"

"Yeah, they got him in there," Leopold Haskins said. "We heard about ten this morning that not only do they got the Anarch in there but they plan to dispatch him."

"To murder him, sir?" the TV announcer inquired.

"That right; that what we hear."

"And what do you propose to do about it, assuming this to be true?"

"Well, we plan on goin' in there. That what we plan." Leopold Haskins glanced about self-consciously. "They told us that we going to get him out if at all possible, so that why I'm here; I'm here to keep the Library from doin' that terrible thing they plan on doin'."

"Will the police try to stop you, do you think?"

"Uh, no," Leopold Haskins said, taking a deep, shuddering breath. "The L.A. police, they hate the Library bad as we do."

"And why is that, sir?"

"The L.A. police know," Haskins said, "that it was the Library that kilt that policeman yesterday, that Officer Tinbane."

"We were told--"

"I know what you were told," Haskins said excitedly, his voiôe rising to a falsetto, "but it wasn't any 'religious fanatics' like they said. They know who did it and we know who did it."

The camera switched, then, to focus on an ill-at-ease very thin Negro wearing a white shirt and dark trousers. "Sir," the TV announcer said, mike in hand, "can we have your name, please?"

"Jonah L. Sawyer," the thin Negro said in a rasping voice.

"And why are you here today, sir?"

"The reason I'm here," Sawyer said, "is because that Library won't listen to no reason and won't let the Anarch out."

"And you're assembled here to get him out."

"That right, sir; we here to get him out." Sawyer nodded earnestly.

The TV announcer asked, "And how, specifically, do you propose to do that, sir? Do the Uditi have definite plans?"

"Well, we got our elite organization, the Offspring of Might, and they in charge; they the ones that ask us to come here today. I of course not know specifically what they plan to do, but--"

"But you think they can do it."

"Yes, I think they can do it." Sawyer nodded.

"Thank you very much, Mr. Sawyer," the TV announcer holding the mike said. He then metamorphosed into his later self, seated--live--at his desk, with a stack of news bulletins before him. "Shortly before six this evening," he continued, "the crowd around the People's Topical Library, by then several thousand in number, became extremely tense, as if sensing that something was about to happen. And happen it did. From out of nowhere, or so it seemed, a cannon appeared and began poorly aimed, sporadic firing, lobbing shell after shell on the large gray stone building comprising the People's Topical Library. At this, the crowd went wild." The TV screen now showed the crowd going wild, milling and shouting, faces ecstatic. "Earlier in the day I talked with Los Angeles Police Chief Michael Harrington and asked whether or not the Library had requested police assistance. Here is what Chief Harrington had to say."

The screen now showed a thick-necked white, with pocked skin and codfish eyes, wearing a uniform and glancing about slyly as he wet his lips to speak. "The People's Topical Library," he intoned in a loud, assertive voice, as if making a formal speech, "have made no such request. We have made various attempts to contact them, but our understanding is that at approximately four-thirty this afternoon all Library personnel vacated the building, and that it is now empty, pending the disposition of the matter of this disorderly, illegal crowd and their intentions toward the Library." He paused, chewed his cud. "I have also been told--but this has not been confirmed, to my knowledge--that a militant faction of the Udi people has plans to use an atomic warhead cannon against the Library building in an effort to smash it open so that the crowd can then rush in and rescue their former leader, the Anarch Thomas Peak, whom they assume to be there."

"_Is_ the Anarch Peak in there, Chief Harrington?" the TV announcer asked.

"To our knowledge," the L.A. police chief answered, "the Anarch Peak may well be in there. We do not know for sure." His voice faded off, as if he had his mind somewhere else; continually he glanced at something or someone out of the corner of his eye. "No, we have no knowledge of that one way or another."

"If the Anarch were in there," the announcer said, "as the Uditi appear to believe, would they, in your opinion, be justified in attempting forced entry? As they seem bent on? Or do you regard--"

"We regard this crowd," Chief Harrington said, "as constituting an unlawful assembly, and we have already made several arrests. At the present time we are attempting to persuade them to disband."

Again the announcer rematerialized at his desk, handsomely attired and unruffled. "The crowd," he stated, "did not disband as Chief Harrington hoped. And now, from later reports directly at the scene, we understand as we said before that the atomic cannon referred to by Chief Harrington has in fact appeared, and we further understand is at this moment doing considerable damage to the Library building. We will interrupt our regular programs during the evening to keep you informed of the progress of this virtually pitched battle between the proponents of the cult of Udi, as represented by the noisy, milling, and quite angry, crowd, and the--"

Sebastian shut the TV set off.

"It's a good thing," Lotta said thoughtfully. "The Library disappearing. I'm glad it's gone."

"It's not gone. They'll rebuild. The whole staff and all the Erads got out; you heard what the TV said. Don't get your hopes up." He rose from the couch where he had been sitting and began to pace.

"We're probably safe for a little while," Lotta pointed out. "The Offspring are tied up trying to get into the Library; they're probably so busy they've forgotten about us."

"But they'll remember us again," he said. "When they're through with the Library." He thought, I wonder if by some miracle they could possibly reach the Anarch before he's killed. My god, he thought; I wonder... it's theoretically possible, at least.

But he knew, in his heart, that it would not work out that way. The Anarch would never be seen again alive; he knew it, the Anarch had known it, and the Uditi knew it. Ray Roberts and the Uditi knew it most of all.

"Turn the news back on," Lotta requested, restlessly.

He did so.

And saw, on the screen, the face of Mavis McGuire.

"Mrs. McGuire," the TV announcer was saying, "this attack on your Library--have you made any statement to the crowd to the effect that you are _not_ holding their former spiritual leader? Or do you think such a frank announcement would have the desired effect of quieting them?"

Mrs. McGuire said in her severe, frigid voice, "Early today, we called in representatives of the news media and read them a prepared statement. I will read it to you again, if you wish; will somebody--thanks." She received a sheet of paper, glanced over it, and then began to read in her crisp, no-nonsense Library voice. "'Because of the presence of Mr. Ray Roberts in Los Angeles at this time, religious bigotry has been fanned by a considerable--and deliberate--flame of intended violence. That the People's Topical Library is a prime target earmarked for this violence does not surprise us, inasmuch as the Library stands for the maintenance of the physical and spiritual institutions of present-day society--institutions the overthrow of which the so-called Uditi have a vested interest in. As regards the use of police to protect us, we welcome any assistance which Chief Harrington may render, but incidents of this kind date back to the Watts riot in the 1960s and their constant recurrence-"

"Oh God," Lotta said, clapping her hands to her ears and gazing at him with stricken fear. "That voice; that awful voice, babbling away at me--" She shuddered.

"We aLso talked to Miss Ann Fisher," the TV news announcer said, "the daughter of Chief Librarian Mavis McGuire. And she had this to say." The screen now showed Ann, in the living room of her conapt, seated across from the TV camera and announcer; she looked poised and pretty and calm, undisturbed by what was taking place.

"--that it appears to have been planned long ago," Ann said. "I think the idea of razing the Library dates back months, and that this explains the visit of Ray Roberts to the West Coast."

"You think, then," the announcer said, "that the attack on your Library--"

"--is and has been the cardinal target-goal of Udi for this year," Ann continued. "We're on their timetable; it's as simple as that."

"So the attack was not spontaneous."

"Oh no. Certainly not; it has all the earmarks of being meticulously planned, and long in advance. The presence of their cannon demonstrates that."

"Has the Library tried to communicate directly with His Mightiness Ray Roberts? To assure him that you are not in fact holding the Anarch?"

Ann said placidly, "Ray Roberts has managed to make himself totally unavailable at this time."

"So efforts on your part--"

"We've had no luck. Nor will we have any."

"You feel, then, that the Uditi will be successful in destroying the Library?"

Ann shrugged. "The police are making no attempt to stop them. As usual. And _we_ aren't armed."

"Why, Miss Fisher, do you think the police are not attempting to halt the Uditi?"

"The police are afraid. They've been afraid since 1965 when the Watts riots broke out. Howling mobs have controlled Los Angeles--in fact most of the W.U.S.--for decades. I'm surprised this didn't happen to us sooner."

"But you will rebuild? Afterward?"

Ann Fisher said, "We will construct, on the site of the old Library building, a much larger, much more modern structure. Blueprints have already been drawn up; we have an extremely fine firm of architects at work right now. Work will begin next week."

"'Next week'?" the announcer queried. "It sounds as if the Library anticipated this mob violence."

"As I said, I'm surprised it didn't happen long ago."

"Miss Fisher, are you personally afraid of the Udi zealots, the so-called Offspring of Might?"

"Not at all. Well, perhaps a little." She smiled, showing her fine, even teeth.

"Thank you, Miss Fisher." Once more the announcer appeared at his desk, facing his TV audience with an appropriate worried expression on his face. "Mob violence in Los Angeles: an evil which has haunted the city since, as Miss Fisher said, the Watts riots of 1965. A venerable building, a landmark, at this moment being blown to pieces... and still the mystery of the whereabouts of the Anarch Peak--assuming that it is true that he has returned to life--remains unsolved." The announcer pawed among his news dispatches, then once more raised his eyes to confront his viewers. "Is the Anarch in the People's Topical Library?" he inquired rhetorically. "And if he is--"

"I don't want to hear any more," Lotta said; getting up, she reached to shut off the TV set.

"They ought to interview you," Sebastian said. "You could tell the TV viewers something about the Library's venerable method of operation."

Frightened, Lotta said, "I couldn't get in front of a TV camera; I wouldn't be able to say a word."

"I was joking," he said, humanely.

"Why don't _you_ call the 'papes and the TV stations?" Lotta asked. "You _saw_ the Anarch in there; you could vindicate the Uditi."

For a time he toyed with the idea. "Maybe I will," he said. "In the next day or so. This will be in the news for some time." I'll do it, he thought, if I'm still alive. "I could tell them something about the Offspring of Might while I'm at it," he said. "I'm afraid that what I have to say would cancel itself out." Would indict both parties, he realized. So I probably had better stay entirely out of it.

Lotta said earnestly, "Let's leave here; let's not stay in the conapt any longer. I--can't _stand_ it, just sitting and waiting like this."

"You want to go to a motel?" he said brusquely. "That didn't do Joe Tinbane much good."

"Maybe the Offspring of Might aren't as smart as the Library agents."

"They're about equal," he said.

"Do you love me?" Lotta asked timidly. "Still?"

"Yes," he said.

"I thought love conquered everything," Lotta said. "I guess that isn't true." She roamed about the room, then started off for the kitchen.

And screamed.

In an instant he had reached her; he gripped the shovel from the fireplace--it happened to be near at hand--and pushed her blindly behind him, the shovel raised.

Small and withered and old, the Anarch Peak stood at the far end of the kitchen, holding together his dingy cotton robe. Grief seemed to hang about him; it had shrunk him, but not defeated him: he managed to lift his right hand in greeting.

They've killed him, Sebastian thought with a thrill of sick sorrow. I can tell; that's why he isn't speaking.

"You see him?" Lotta whispered.

"Yes." Sebastian nodded, lowered the shovel. Then it hadn't been the LSD; his vision, on the roof of Ann Fisher's building, had been genuine. "Can you talk to us?" he asked the Anarch. "I wish you could."

Presently, in a voice like the dry rasping of an abandoned winter leaf, the Anarch said, "An Offspring of Might has left Ray Roberts, with whom he has been conferring, and now is on his way here. This man they consider their ranking assassin."

There was silence, and then, by degrees, Lotta--as always-- began to cry.

"What can we do, Your Mightiness?" Sebastian asked, helplessly.

"The three Offspring who came here earlier in the day," the Anarch said, "placed a device on you, Mr. Hermes, which informs them continually of your location. No matter where you go, the device will register with them."

Sebastian groped at his coat, his sleeves, seeking the device.

"It consists of an electronically active non-eradicable dye," the Anarch said. "You can't remove it, because it is on your skin."

"We wanted to go to Mars," Lotta managed to say. "You still will," the Anarch said. "I intend to be here when the Offspring of Might arrives. If I can be." To Sebastian the Anarch said, "I am very weak, now. It is difficult... I don't know." His face showed pain, acute and terrible.

"They've killed you," Sebastian said to him.

"They injected me with a toxic agent, organic, to blend with my general deteriorated condition. But it will take several minutes... it is slow-acting."

The bastards, Sebastian thought.

"I am lying on a bed," the Anarch said. "In a dark narrow room. At a branch of the Library; I don't know which one. No one is with me any longer. They injected the toxin and now they have left."

"They didn't want to see," Sebastian said.

The Anarch said, "I feel so very tired. I have never felt so tired, in all my life. When I awoke in my coffin I could not move my body, and that frightened me, but this is worse. But it will end in a few more minutes."

"In view of your own condition," Sebastian said, "it's good of you to care what happens to us."

"You revived me," the Anarch said faintly. "I will never forget that. And we talked together, I and you, I and your staff. I remember that; it pleased me very much. Even your salesman; I remember him, too."

Sebastian said, "Can't we do anything for you?"

"Keep talking to me," the Anarch said. "I don't want to fall asleep. 'It is the lives, the lives, the lives, that die.'" For a moment he said nothing; he appeared to be thinking. And then he said, "'Tissue by tissue to a soul he grows, as leaf by leaf the rose becomes the rose. Tissue from tissue rots; and, as the sun goes from the bubbles when they burst, he goes.'"

"Do you still believe that?" Sebastian asked.

There was no answer. The Anarch, paltry in substance, trembled and drew his cotton robe tighter around him.

"He's dead," Lotta said quaveringly, shocked.

Not yet, Sebastian thought. Another two minutes. _One_ more.

The remnants of the Anarch drifted away. And disappeared.

"Yes, they killed him," Sebastian said. He's gone, he thought. And this time he won't be back; this finishes it. The last time.

Gazing at him, Lotta whispered, "Now he can't help us."

"Maybe it doesn't matter," Sebastian said. The lives die, he thought. They have to, ours included. His. Even the assassin on his way here; eventually he will dwindle away and be gone, too--slowly, over years, or in an instant: all at once.

A knock sounded on the hall door.

Going to the door, shovel in hand, Sebastian opened it.

The black-silk figure with cold eyes standing there tossed something small into the living, room. Sebastian, dropping the shovel, grabbed the Offspring by the neck and dragged him from the hall, into the room.

The room exploded.

The body of the Offspring over him, Sebastian felt himself lifted up, as by a wind; he crashed against the far wall of the room, as in his hands, the assassin writhed. Now smoke filled the room. He--and the assassin--lay against a broken door; shards of wood projected from the assassin's back. The assassin had died.

"Lotta," Sebastian said, pulling himself free from the lolling, inert mass of body; now fire licked up the walls, consuming the drapes, the furniture. The floor itself burned. "Lotta," he said, and groped about for her.

He found her, still in the kitchen. Without picking her up he could see that she was dead. Fragments of the bomb had entered her brain and body. Had killed her more or less immediately.

The fire crackled; the air, consumed by it, became opaque. He lifted his wife up, carried her from the apartment and out into the hall. Already, people filled the hall. Their voices yammered and he felt their hands plucking at him--he shoved them away, still carrying Lotta.

Blood, he discovered, ran in trails down his face. Like tears. He did not wipe it away; instead he made his way toward the elevator. Someone, or several people, got the elevator for him; he found himself inside it.

"Let us get her to the hospital," voices--unfamiliar--said to him, voices accompanying the plucking hands. "And you're badly hurt too; look at your shoulder."

With his left hand--his right seemed paralyzed--he found the control buttons of the elevator; he pressed the top one.

Next, he wandered across the roof of the building, searching for his car. When he found it he placed Lotta inside, in the back, shut the doors, stood for a time and then, reopening a door, got in behind the wheel.

He then reached the sky; the car flew through the evening twilight. Where? he wondered. He did not know; he merely kept driving. He drove on and on as the evening became darker; he felt the evening settle about him and the whole earth. An evening which would last forever.

Flashlight in hand he searched among the trees; he saw grave stones and withered flowers and knew that he had come to a cemetery--which one he did not know. An old one, a little one. Why? he wondered. For Lotta? He looked around, but the car and Lotta had disappeared: he had gone too far from them. It didn't matter. He continued on.

The narrow, yellow beam of light carried him at last to a tall iron fence; he could go no farther. So he turned about and started back, still following the light, as if it were alive.

An open grave. He halted. Mrs. Tilly M. Benton, he thought; she lay here, once. And, not far off, the ornate monument under which the Anarch Peak had once rested. This is Forest Knolls Cemetery, he realized. He wondered why he had come here; he seated himself on the damp grass, felt the cold of night, felt the utter cold deep inside him: much colder than the night itself. Cold, he thought, like the grave.

Flashing the meager beam of his light on the Anarch's monument he read the inscription. Sic igitur magni quoque circum moenia mundi expugnata dabunt labem putresque ruina.s, he read, without comprehension. He wondered what it meant. He could not remember. Did it have any meaning? Perhaps not. He withdrew the yellow beam of light from the monument.

For a time, a long time, he sat listening. He did not think; there was nothing to think about. He did not because there was nothing to do. Eventually, his flashlight gave out; the beam shrank to a spot and then dimmed away and vanished. He laid the tube of metal and glass down, touched his injured shoulder, felt the pain and wondered about that, too. It, like the Latin inscription, did not seem to mean anything.

Silence.

And then, as he sat, he heard voices. He heard them from many graves; he detected the growing into life of those below-- some very close to it, some indistinct and far off. But all moving in that direction. He heard them coming closer; the voices became a babble.

Under me, he thought. One very near by. He could-- almost--make out its words.

"My name is Earl B. Quinn," the voice crackled. "And I'm down here, shut in, and I want to get out."

He did not stir.

"Can anybody up there hear me?" Earl B. Quinn called anxiously. "Please, somebody; hear me. 1 want to get out--I'm suffocating!"

"I can't get you out," he said, then. Finally.

Excitedly, the voice stammered, "C-can't you dig? I know I'm near the top; I can hear you real clearly. Please start digging, or go tell everybody; I have relatives--they'll dig me out. Please!"

He moved over, away from the grave. Away from the insistent noise. Into the babble of all the many others.

Much later the headlights of an aircar beamed down at him. The engine of the car roared as it set down in parking lot of the cemetery. Then footsteps, and the illumination of a large-battery light, a vast sealed headlight beam. The path of illumination swung from side to side; like a visible pendulum, he thought; like part of a clock. He waited, not stirring, but at last the light reached him, touched him.

"I figured I'd find you here," Bob Lindy said.

He said, "Lotta is--"

"I found your car. I know." Lindy crouched down, shone the heavy white beam on him. "And you're seriously hurt; you're covered with blood. Come on--I'll take you to the hospital."

"No," Sebastian said. "No; I don't want to go."

"Why not? Even if she's gone you still have to--"

Sebastian said, "They want to get out. All of them."

"The deaders?" Lindy gripped him around the waist, lifted him to his feet. "Later," he said. "Can you walk at all? You must have been walking; your shoes are covered with mud. And your clothes are torn, but maybe the blast did that."

"Let Earl Quinn out," Sebastian said. "He's the closest; he can't breathe." He pointed to the grave stone. "Under there."

"You're going to die," Lindy said. "Yourself. Unless I can get you to the hospital. Goddam it, walk as well as you can; I'll try to support you. My car's right over here."

"Call the police," Sebastian said, "and have the cop who patrols this area sink an emergency air shaft down. Until we can get back here and start excavation."

"Okay, Sebastian. I'll do that." They had reached the car; Bob Lindy tugged the door open, grunting and perspiring, got him inside.

"They need help," Sebastian said, as the car lifted and Bob Lindy put on the headlights. "It wasn't just one I heard this time; I heard them all." He had never heard anything like it before. Ever. So many at once--all of them together.

"In time," Lindy said. "We'll get Quinn out first; I'll call the police department now." He quickly picked up the receiver of the car's phone.

The car flew on silently, in the direction of the city receiving hospital.