Counter-Clock World

4

If, therefore, God existed, there would be no evil discoverable; but there is evil in the world. Therefore God does not exist.

--St. Thomas Aquinas

As soon as the roby Carl Gantrix Junior had cleared out of his office, Doug Appleford pressed the intercom button which connected him with his superior, Chief Librarian Mavis McGuire.

"You know what just now happened?" he said. "Someone representing that Udi cult got a robot in here and began planting hostile hardware all over my office. It has left." He added, "Possibly I should have called the city police. Technically, I still could; the scanner I keep in here recorded the incident, so We have the evidence if we want to seek recourse."

Mavis had her usual accosting, bleak expression, the dead-calm quality which generally preceded a tirade. Especially at this time of day--early in the morning--she was most irritable.

Over the years Appleford had learned to live with her, so to speak. As an administrator she was superb. She had energy; she was accurate; she always--and rightly so--assumed final authority; he had never known Mavis to pass the poscred back, when it was handed to her... as in this case. Never in his most distorted dreams had he envisioned trying to supplant her; he knew, rationally and coldly, that he did not possess her ability; he had enough talent to act as her subordinate--and do the job well--but that was all. He respected her and he was afraid of her, a lethal combination in regard to any aspirations he might have had to seek a rung higher in the Library's hierarchy. Mavis McGuire was the boss and he liked it that way; he liked it now, being able to drop this into her lap.

Mavis said, her mouth twisting, "Udi. That abomination. Yes; I realize Ray Roberts is making a pile out here; I expected they'd come sniThng around here. I assume you expelled the hostile hardware."

"Absolutely," Appleford assured her. It still lay on the carpeted floor of his office, where the file had ejected it.

"What specifically," Mavis said in her low, near-whisper voice, "were they after?"

"The burial site of the Anarch Peak."

"Do we have that information?"

Appleford said, "I didn't bother to look it up."

"I'll check with the Council of Erads," Mavis said, "and find out if they want that fact released; I'll check on their policy regarding this. Right now I have other business; you'll excuse me." She then rang off.

Miss Tomsen buzzed him. "A Mrs. Hermes and an Officer Tinbane to see you, sir. They have no appointment."

"Tinbane," he echoed. He had always liked the young police officer. A man as honestly, reputably intent on his tasks as was Appleford: they had something in common. Mrs. Hermes; he did not know her. Possibly it involved someone refusing to turn over a book to the Library; Tinbane had tracked such cupidity down in past times. "Send them in," he decided. Possibly Mrs. Hermes was a Hoarder--someone who refused to give up a book whose time had come.

Officer Tinbane, in uniform, entered, and with him appeared a sweet-looking girl with astonishingly long dark hair. She seemed ill-at-ease and dependent on the police officer.

"Goodbye," Appleford greeted them graciously. "Please sit down." He rose to offer Mrs. Hermes a chair.

"Mrs. Hermes," Tinbane said, "is after information about the Anarch Peak. You have anything not yet eradicated that would help her?"

"Probably," Appleford said. This seems to be the topic of the day, he reflected. But these two people, in contradistinction to Carl Gantrix, appeared to have no connection with Roberts, and this altered his attitude. "Anything in particular?" he asked the girl in a kindly fashion, wanting to reassure her; she was obviously easily intimidated.

The girl said in a soft little voice, "My husband just wanted me to find out all I could."

"My suggestion," Appleford told her, "is that rather than plowing through manuscripts and books you consult an expert in contemporary religious history." A man who, by the way, enjoyed an attractive woman--as Appleford did. He toyed with a ballpoint pen, for dramatic emphasis. "As a matter of fact I personally know more than a little about the late Anarch." He leaned back in his swivel chair, folded his hands, observed the inlaid ceiling of his office.

"Whatever you can tell me would be appreciated," Mrs. Hermes said in her shy way.

Shrugging, with a smile, pleased in fact to be encouraged, Doug Appleford began his oration. Both Mrs. Hermes and Officer Tinbane listened with obedient attention, and this pleased him, too.

At the time of his death the Anarch had been fifty years old. He had led an interesting--and unusual--life. In his college days, as a brilliant student, he had studied at Cambridge; he had in fact become a Rhodes scholar, majoring in classic languages: Hebrew, Sanskrit, Attic Greek and Latin. Then, at twenty-two, he had abruptly abandoned his academic career--and his country; he had migrated to the United States to study jazz with the then great jazz performer, Herbie Mann. After a time he had formed his own jazz combo, he himself playing the flute.

In connection with this he had lived on the West Coast, in San Francisco. At that time, the late 'sixties, the Episcopal Bishop of the Diocese of California, James Pike, had been arranging to have jazz masses performed at Grace Cathedral, and one of the groups he had called on was Thomas Peak's combo. At this point, Peak had turned composer; he had written a lengthy jazz mass and it had been a success. Pike's Peak, the local newspaper columnist Herb Caen had dubbed him, then; that had been in 1968. Bishop Pike himself had been an interesting person, too. A former lawyer, active in the A.C.L.U., one of the most brilliant and radical clerical figures of his time, he had become involved in what had been called "social action," the issues of the day: in particular, Negro rights. He had for instance been at Selma with Dr. Martin Luther King. From all this, Thomas Peak had learned. He, too, had become involved in the issues of the day--on a much smaller scale than Bishop Pike, of course. At Bishop Pike's suggestion he had entered seminary school, had become at last an ordained Episcopal priest--and, like James Pike, his bishop, quite radical for those times, although now the doctrines which he advocated had become more or less accepted. It was a case of being ahead of his time.

Peak had, in fact, been charged in a heresy trial, had been booted out of the Episcopal Church; whereupon he had gone on and founded his own. And, when the Free Negro Municipality had been born, he had headed that way; he had made its capital the place of origin for his cult.

There was not much resemblance between Peak's new cult and the Episcopal Church which he had left. The experience of Udi, the group mind, comprised the central--if not the sole-- sacrament, and it was for this that the congregation gathered. Without the hallucinogenic drug employed, the sacrament could not take place; hence, like the North American Indian cult which it resembled, Peak's church depended on the availability, not to mention the legality, of the drug. So a curious relationship between the cult and cooperative authorities had to exist.

As to the Udi experience, the most enlightened reports, based on first-hand testimony of undercover agents, stated categorically that the group-mind fusion was real, not imaginary.

"And what is more--" Appleford churned on, but at this point he was interrupted. Hesitantly, but with determination, Mrs. Hermes spoke up.

"Do you think it would be to the advantage of Ray Roberts to have the Anarch reborn?"

For a time Appleford pondered that; it was a good question, and it showed him that despite her reticence and shyness Mrs. Hermes had a good deal on the ball.

"Because of the Hobart Phase," he said finally, "the tide of history is with the Anarch and against Ray Roberts. The Anarch died in late middle-age; he will be that when he's reborn, and he will develop progressively into greater and greater vitality and creativity--for thirty years, anyhow. Ray Roberts is only twenty-six. The Hobart Phase is carrying him back to adolescence; when Peak is at his prime, Roberts will be a child, searching for a handy womb. _All Peak has to do is wait_. No," he decided, "it wouldn't be to Roberts' advantage." And that, he said to himself, Carl Gantrix had abundantly demonstrated... by his avid desire to know where the Anarch's body lay.

"My husband," Mrs. Hermes said in her sweet, earnest voice, "is the owner of a vitarium." She glanced at Officer Tinbane, as if asking him whether she should continue.

Tinbane cleared his throat and said, "I gather that the Flask of Hermes Vitarium anticipates Peak's rebirth momentarily or anyhow within a reasonably short time-period. Technically, it would be incumbent on any vitarium that gets him to offer Peak to the Uditi. But, as we can both gather from Mrs. Hermes' question, there is some doubt--and on good grounds--as to whether that would be in the Anarch's best interest."

"If I understand the way the vitaria operate," Appleford said, "they generally list who they have, and the highest bidder gets it. Is that the case, Mrs. Hermes?"

She ducked her head, nodding yes.

"It's really not up to you," Appleford said, "or your husband, to moralize. You're in business; you locate deaders ready to be reborn, and you sell your product for what the market will carry. Once you start poking into the issue of which _morally_ is the best customer--"

"Our salesman, R.C. Buckley, always looks into the morality," Mrs. Hermes said, with sincerity.

"Or so he says," Tinbane said.

"Oh," she assured him, "I'm positive he does; he spends a lot of his time studying the customers' backgrounds; he really does."

There was an appropriate interval of silence.

"You do not," Appleford said to Mrs. Hermes, "want to know where the Anarch's body lies buried? That's not--"

"Oh, we know that," Mrs. Hermes said in her grave, honest little voice; Tinbane started visibly and looked annoyed.

Appleford said to her, "Mrs. Hermes, you probably shouldn't tell anyone you know that."

"Oh," she said, and flushed. "I'm sorry."

Appleford went on, "Someone from the Uditi was in here just prior to you, trying to find that out. If anyone approaches you--" He leaned toward her, speaking slowly, so as to impress it on her. "-- don't tell them. Don't even tell me."

"Or me," Tinbane said.

Mrs. Hermes, looking as if she was about to cry, said chokingly, "I'm sorry; I guess I screwed everything up. I always do."

To Mrs. Hermes, Officer Tinbane said, "Have you told anybody else, Lotta?"

She shook her head, wordlessly, no.

"Okay." Tinbane nodded to Appleford in shared agreement. "Probably no harm done yet. But they'll be trying to find out. They may canvass all the vitariums; you better discuss this with Seb and with your employees. You understand, Lotta?"

Again she nodded, this time yes; her large dark eyes glinted with repressed tears.