Counter-Clock World

2

Man is most correctly defined as a certain intellectual notion eternally made in the divine mind.

--Erigena

Sunlight ascended and a penetrating mechanical voice declared, "ALl right, Appleford. Time to get up and show 'em who you are and what you can do. Big man, that Douglas Appleford; everybody acknowledges it--I hear them talking. Big man, big talent, big job. Much admired by the public at large." It paused. "You awake, now?"

Appleford, from his bed, said, "Yes." He sat up, batted the sharp-voiced alarm clock at his bedside into nullification. "Good morning," he said to the silent apartment. "Slept well; I hope you did, too."

A press of problems tumbled about his disordered mind as he got grouchily from the bed, wandered to the closet for clothing adequately dirty. Supposed to nail down Ludwig Eng, he said to himself. The tasks of tomorrow become the worst tasks of today. Reveal to Eng that only one copy of his great-selling book is left in all the world; the time is coming soon for him to act, to do the job oniy he can do. How would Eng feel? After all, sometimes inventors refused to sit down and do their job. Well, he decided, that actually consisted of an Erad Council problem; theirs, not his. He found a stained, rumpled red shirt; removing his pajama top he got into it. The trousers were not so easy; he had to root through the hamper.

And then the packet of whiskers.

My ambition, Appleford mused as he padded to the bathroom with the whisker packet, is to cross the W.U.S. by streetcar. Whee. At the bowl he washed his face, then lathered on foam-glue, opened the packet and with adroit slappings managed to convey the whiskers evenly to his chin, jowls, neck; in a moment he had expertly gotten the whiskers to adhere. I'm fit now, he decided as he reviewed his countenance in the mirror, to take that streetcar ride; at least as soon as I process my share of sogum.

Switching on the automatic sogum pipe--very modern--he accepted a good masculine bundle, sighed contentedly as he glanced over the sports section of the Los Angeles _Times_. Then at last walked to the kitchen and began to lay out soiled dishes. In no time at all he faced a bowl of soup, lamb chops, green peas, Martian blue moss with egg sauce and a cup of hot coffee. These he gathered up, slid the dishes from beneath and around them--of course first checking the windows of the room to be sure no one saw him--and briskly placed the assorted foods in their proper receptacles, which he placed on shelves of the cupboard and in the refrigerator. The time was eight-thirty; he still had fifteen minutes in which to get to work. No need to dwindle himself hurrying; the People's Topical Library Section B would be there when he arrived.

It had taken him years to work up to B. And now, as a reward, he had to deal tête-a-tête with a bewildering variety of surly, boorish inventors who balked at their assigned--and according to the Erads mandatory--final cleaning of the sole remaining typescript copy of whatever work their name had become associated with--linked by a process which neither he nor the assortment of inventors completely understood. The Council presumably understood why a particular given inventor got stuck with a particular assignment and not some other assignment entirely. For instance, Eng and HOW I MADE MY OWN SWABBLE OUT OF CONVENTIONAL HOUSEHOLD OBJECTS IN MY BASEMENT DURING MY SPARE TIME. Appleford reflected as he glanced over the remainder of the 'pape. Think of the responsibility. After Eng finished, no more swabbles in all the world, unless those untrustworthy rogues in the F.N.M. had a couple illicitly tucked away. In fact, even though the ter-cop, the terminal copy, of Eng's book still remained, he already found it difficult to recall what a swabble did and what it looked like. Square? Small? Or round and huge? Hmm. He put down the 'pape and rubbed his forehead while he attempted to recall--tried to conjure up an accurate mental image of the device while it was still theoretically possible to do so. Because as soon as Eng reduced the ter-cop to a heavily inked silk ribbon, half a ream of bond paper, and a folio of fresh carbon paper there existed no chance for him or for anyone else to recall either the book or the mechanism--up to now quite useful--which the book described.

That task, however, would probably occupy Eng the rest of the year. Cleaning of the ter-cop had to progress line by line, word by woid; it could not be handled as were the assembled heaps of printed copies. So easy, up until the terminal typescript copy, and then... well, to make it worth it to Eng, a really huge salary would be paid him, plus--.

By his elbow on the small kitchen table the receiver of the vidphone hopped from its mooring onto the table, and from it came a distant tiny shrill voice. "Goodbye, Doug." A woman's voice.

Lifting the receiver to his ear he said, "Goodbye."

"I love you, Doug," Charise McFadden stated in her breathless, emotion-saturated voice. "Do you love me?"

"Yes, I love you, too," he said. "When have I seen you last? I hope it won't be long. Tell me it won't be long."

"Most probably tonight," Charise said. "After work. There's someone I want you to meet, a virtually unknown inventor who's desperately eager to get official eradication for his thesis on, ahem, the psychogenic origins of death by meteor strike. I said that because you're in Section B--"

"Tell him to eradicate his thesis himself. At his own expense."

"There's no prestige in that." Her face on the vidscreen earnest, Charise pleaded, "It's really a dreadful piece of theorizing, Doug; it's as nutty as the day is long. This oaf, this Lance Arbuthnot--"

"That's his name?" It almost persuaded him. But not quite. In the course of a single day he received many such requests, and every one, without exception, came represented as a socially dangerous piece by a crank inventor with a goofy name. He had held his chair at Section B too long to be easily snared. But still--he had to investigate this; his ethical structure, his responsibility to society, insisted on it. He sighed.

"I hear you groaning," Charise said brightly.

Appleford said, "As long as he's not from the F.N.M."

"Well--he is." She looked--and sounded--guilty. "I think they threw him out, though. That's why he's here in Los Angeles and not there."

Rising to his feet, Douglas Appleford said stiffly, "Hello, Charise. I must leave now for work; I will not and cannot discuss this trivial matter further." And that, as far as he was concerned, ended that.

He hoped.

Arriving home to his conapt at the end of his shift, Officer Joe Tinbane found his wife sitting at the breakfast table. Embarrassed, he averted his gaze until she noticed him and rapidly finished filling her cup with hot, dark coffee.

"Shame," Bethel said reprovingly. "You should have knocked on the kitchen door." With haughty dignity she carefully placed the orange-juice bottle in the refrigerator, carried the now nearly full box of Happy-Oats to its concealment in the cupboard. "I'll be out of your way in a minute. My victual momentum is now just about complete." However, she took her time.

"I'm tired," he said, at last seating himself.

Bethel placed empty bowls, a glass, a cup, and a plate before him. "Guess what the 'pape says this morning," she said as she retired discreetly to the living room so that he, too, could disgorge. "That thug fanatic is coming here, that Raymond Roberts person. On a pug."

"Hmm," he said, enjoying the hot, liquid taste of coffee as he ruminated it up into his weary mouth.

"The Los Angeles chief of police estimates that four _million_ people will turn out to see him; he's performing the sacrament of Divine Unification in Dodger Stadium, and of course it'll all be on TV until we're ready to go clear out of our minds. All day long--that's what the 'pape says; I'm not making it up."

"Four million," Tinbane echoed, thinking, professionally, how many peace officers it would take to handle crowd control when the crowd consisted of that many. Everybody on the force, including Skyway Patrol and special deputies. What a job. He groaned inwardly.

"They use those drugs," Bethel said, "for that unification they practice; there's a long article on it, here. The drug's a derivative from DNT; it's illegal here, but when he goes to perform the sacrament they'll let him--them all--use it that one time. Because the California law states--"

"I know what it states," Tinbane said. "It states that a psychedelic drug can he used in a bona fide religious ceremony." God knew he had had this drummed into him by his superiors.

Bethel said, "I have half a mind to go there. And participate. It's the only time, unless we want to fly to, ugh, the F.N.M. And I frankly don't feel much like doing _that_."

"You do that," he said, happily disgorging cereal, sliced peaches and milk and sugar, in that order.

"Want to come? It'll be exciting. Just think: thousands of people unified into one entity. The Udi, he calls it. Which is everyone and no one. Possessing absolute knowledge because it has no single, limiting viewpoint." She came to the kitchen door, eyes shut. "Well?"

"No thanks," Tinbane said, his mouth embarrassingly full. "And don't watch me; you know how I can't stand to have anyone around when I'm having victual momentum, even if they can't see me. They might hear me--chewing."

He could feel her there; he sensed her resentment.

"You never take me anywhere," Bethel said presently.

"Okay," he agreed, "I never take you anywhere." He added, "And if I did, it wouldn't be there, to hear about religion." We have enough religious nuts in Los Angeles anyhow, he thought. I wonder why Roberts didn't think of making a pilg here a long time ago. I wonder why just now... of all possible times.

Earnestly, Bethel said, "Do you think he's a fake? That there's no such state as Udi?"

He shrugged. "DNT is a potent drug." Maybe it was so. In any case it didn't matter; not to him, anyhow. "Another unexpected rebirth," he said to his wife. "At Forest Knolls, naturally. They're never watching those minor cemeteries; they know we'll handle it--with city equipment." Anyhow, Tilly M. Benton was safely at the L.A. receiving hospital, thanks to Seb Hermes. Within a week she would be disgorging like the rest of them.

"Eerie," Bethel said, still at the doorway to the kitchen.

"How do you know? You never saw it happen."

"You and your damn job," Bethel said. "Don't take it out on me, just because you can't stand it. If it's so awful, quit. Fish or cut bait, as the Romans said."

"I can handle the job; matter of fact, I've already put in for a reassignment." What's hard, he thought, is you. "Let me disgorge in private, will you?" he said angrily. "Go off; read the 'pape."

"Will you be affected?" Bethel asked. "By Ray Roberts coming here to the Coast?"

"Probably not," he said. He did, after all, have a regular beat. Nothing ever seemed to change _that_.

"They won't have you out with your popgun protecting him?"

"Protecting him?" he said. "I'd shoot him."

"Oh dear," Bethel said mockingly. "Such ambition. And then you could go down in history."

"I'll go down in history anyhow," Tinbane said.

"What for? What have you done? And what in the future do you intend to do? Keep on digging up old ladies out at Forest Knolls Cemetery?" Her tone lacerated him. "Or for being married to me?"

"That's right; for being married to you." His tone was equally scathing; he had learned it from her, over the long, dead months of their alleged marriage.

Bethel returned, then, to the living room. Left alone, he continued to disgorge, now left in peace. He appreciated it.

Anyhow, he thought gloomily, Tilly M. Benton of South Pasadena likes me.