By the time she was through, Nokomis looked more suspicious than concerned. Tingle said that all he knew was that he had slipped on a bar of soap.
The attendants brought up a machine and subjected him to various tests. After a while, a doctor came in and read the results. He told Tingle that he had no serious injury and that he could go home as soon as he felt strong enough. However, a few minutes later two organics came to question him. Tingle repeated what he had told Nokomis. They looked grave, and one said that he would see Tingle again next Wednesday.
After they had left, Tingle groaned. When Wednesday rolled around, he would be questioned again. If he did not have an explanation to satisfy the organics, and he probably would not, he would be given the ultimate inquisition. Truth mist would be sprayed at him, and, after he had breathed that, he could not lie. He would tell the organics all that they asked.
And he and the other immers would humpty-dumpty into utter ruin.
“One bad thing after another, each worse than the one before it!” he muttered.
“What, dear?” Nokomis said.
“Nothing important.”
Fortunately, Nokomis had to go to the toilet. While she was gone, he called Paz again, and Paz cursed again.
“Quit it!” Tingle said sharply. “My wife’ll be back in a minute! What happened to me?”
Paz settled down and rapped out an explanation. The agent who had come to repair the doorlock had found him in the shower. He had put the weapon in his own shoulderbag and had then called the hospital. Tingle quickly told Paz about the organics and the inevitable interrogation. Paz said, “That can be avoided, I think. I’ll pass on the message. What a mess!”
He paused, then said, his voice very low and soft, “Bob, I’ve got even more bad news.”
Tingle said, “Wait! I hear my wife!”
He listened for a few seconds, then said, “Tell it quick. She’s stopped in the hall to talk to somebody.”
“I got a recording,” Paz said. “From yesterday. It said I should tell you that Ozma Wang is dead. I don’t know what that means, but…”
“God!” Tingle said. Then, “I think my wife’s about to come in. I’ll talk to you later.”
He cut off the transmission and put his arm down by his side. He felt something quiver inside him, a thing struggling to get loose and ravage him. It was, he knew, grief, but it was deep within him, far away. It had to be Jeff Caird’s grief for the death of his wife.
Nokomis entered the room, stopped, and said, “Were you talking to somebody?”
“No. Why?” he said. The thing that was struggling in him was quieting down now.
“I saw your watch close to your mouth. You must…”
“No, I wasn’t talking to anybody. I just happened to be wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. For God’s sake, Nokomis! If people were classified grammatically, you’d be in the accusative case!”
She stiffened, glared, and said, “You needn’t be so touchy!”
“I’m sorry, dear. It must be the injury to my head.”
On the way home in a taxi, Nokomis said, “The whole thing does look peculiar, doesn’t it? What could we have that anyone else doesn’t have? Is there somebody you haven’t told me about, somebody who hates you and is crazy enough to revenge himself? Or…herself? You never told me about anyone who might hate you that much, but…”
Tingle told her that he needed silence until he felt better. Would she mind not talking? Any noise hurt his head. Nokomis stiffened and moved away from him. He was too upset to worry about offending her. His doubts and anxieties were whirling him around like Dorothy’s house in the tornado. He had to talk to Paz again and find out if measures had been taken to deal with his scheduled interrogation on the coming Wednesday.
After a few minutes, he calmed down, and he tried to talk his wife into going back to work. She refused to leave him until she was sure that he was entirely recovered from his fall. She would not listen to his argument that the hospital examination had showed without a doubt that he was not dangerously injured.
He gave up on her and spent a more or less quiet evening (no evening with her was really quiet) until she said that she was going to bed. Knowing that she would not sleep until he was beside her, he said that he did feel tired. He planned to sneak out into another room and call Paz as soon as she started snoring. However, while waiting for her to do so, he fell asleep.
He woke up with the alarm strip whistling. For a moment, he was confused because of the vividness of a dream. Snick had been calling for help from somewhere in a fog, but he could never find her. Though he had several times seen vague dark figures in the mists that might be her, he could not get close to them.
Helpless, he raged inside himself against himself. A man who was a different persona every day should not be married. Though he had known that well, he had allowed his strong need for the domestic life to overcome his reason. Only the Father Tom Zurvan persona had never married, and he had had to be very disciplined and stern with himself when he had built that role.
Just before they went into their cylinders, Nokomis kissed him good night, though not as passionately as she usually did. She had not fully accepted his excuse for not trying to get coercion data on her colleagues. He stepped into the cylinder, turned around, and waved at her. In the dim light through the window he saw her face petrify. He looked at his watch to check that the power had been applied to her cylinder. A delay circuit that he had installed behind the wall gave him enough time to get out of the cylinder and inflate his dummy.
Two minutes later, he ran out of the apartment building. His dash toward the building across the southwest corner of Washington Square was accompanied by the wailing of sirens and the flashing of orange lights from the public strips.
Thursday-World
VARIETY, Second Month of the Year
D5-W1 (Day-Five, Week-One)
15.
James Swart Dunski, professional fencing instructor, stepped out of his stoner. At the same time, Rupert von Hentzau, his wife, walked from her stoner. They embraced warmly and said, “Good morning.” Rupert was nude, golden-coppery, willowy, kinky-haired, and beautiful. The genes of her American mulatto, Afrikaans, and Samoan ancestors had produced a striking woman, one whose body and face made a magnetic field that clamped on to the attention of males wherever she went. Sometimes, she was an artist’s model; more often, a fencing instructor.
Having greeted one wife, Dunski embraced the other two, Malia Malietoa Smit and Jannie Simeona White. He also embraced the other husbands and three children, none of whom he was sure was his, though he could have established his fatherhood by genetic-blood tests. All chattering except Dunski, who felt Tingle struggling to keep his persona, they trooped from the basement room to the ground-level community room. Any other day, Dunski would have enjoyed the verbal byplay, the ass-slapping and breast-rubbing. This Thursday, he was being invaded by a partial recall of the last two days. It angered him, though he also admitted to himself that the intrusion was necessary. Jim Dunski could not live for Thursday only. He could be hurt badly at any moment by Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s bad events.
One benefit from his present situation was that Rupert was an immer. She, however, was a citizen of this day only. He was desperate to tell her their dangerous situation at once, but he had no acceptable excuse to get her aside. They would have to go through the rituals and conventions all had long ago agreed upon.
First, the sleepy children were put to bed.
Second, they massed in the huge bathroom, brushed their teeth, washed whatever needed washing and urinated, if need be.
Third, they went to the kitchen and drank milk and, if hungry, ate some berries and cereal with milk. By then the joshing, touching, stroking, and rubbing had swelled the penises and nipples and started the natural lubrications.
Fourth, they went into the living room, sat down in chairs arranged in a circle, and spun a milk bottle. This was an antique, which might have
been used by children a thousand or more years ago at parties. Its purpose was rather more serious now, a democratic pure-chance procedure designed to avoid jealousy and favoritism.
Dunski hoped that he would get Rupert first so that he could inform her of what she deeply needed to know. However, the bottle he spun pointed at Malia when it stopped. Sighing, though not noticeably, he went with her into a bedroom and did what he would at another time have thoroughly enjoyed, though not as much as if she had been Rupert. Afterward, Malia said, “Your heart, not to mention other things, didn’t seem to be in it.”
“It’s no reflection on my love for you,” he said. He kissed her dusky cheek. “Every man has his down days and his up days.”
“I’m not complaining, mind you,” Malia said. “I love you, too. But I think, if you don’t mind my saying so, today’s one of your down days.”
“You were faking your orgasms?”
“Never! I don’t fake!”
“Well, I’m sorry. I must be off my feed or my biorhythm or something.”
“I forgive you, although there’s really nothing I have to forgive,” Malia said. “Don’t worry about it.”
They went to the bathroom, Dunski thinking that she should not have complained if she thought it unimportant. They found Jan Markus Wells and Rupert there. While washing, Dunski tried to catch Rupert’s eye so that he could sign to her that he wanted to speak privately to her. She was too occupied in douching to see him.
They returned to the living room, where they had to wait four minutes for the other couple. This time, chance did its best for Dunski. When he spun the bottle, it stopped with its opened end pointing at Rupert. Sighing quietly with relief, he went hand in hand with her to another bedroom. It reeked of sexual scents, and the bedclothes were sweat-soaked. He, Dunski, was accustomed to this, but Tingle, looking over his shoulder, and Caird, looking over Tingle’s shoulder, might have caused his slight revulsion.
Rupert lay down on the bed and stretched out, her hands behind her head, her back arched, her perfectly conical breasts staring nipplewise at the ceiling. He sat down by her, took her hand, and said, “Let’s skip the lovemaking, Rupert. I…we’re in trouble. We have to talk about it.”
She sat up and said, “Deep trouble?”
He nodded and squeezed her hand. After sketching the last two days, he said, “So, you see, we have to figure out what to do today. We’ll have to omit much of what we usually do. But we can’t attract attention.”
She shuddered.
“This Castor…it seems impossible…what a monster!”
“He has to be found and stopped. And I have to find out where Snick is and get the truth out of her.”
“And if she’s a danger to us?”
“I don’t like it, but she’ll have to be stoned and hidden away.”
“Better her than us, right?”
“I suppose so.”
“Won’t that make us no better than she?”
“Damn it,” he said. “I’ll wrestle with the ethics when I have to. First, I have to find her. I’ll have to go to my contact. He’s probably gotten the word by now, though, and he’ll probably call me.”
“How are you going to question Snick? You can’t let her recognize you. If you do, you have to stone her no matter what she’s doing here. She is an organic.”
“She’ll be in deep chemicogenic hypnosis. She won’t remember me when she comes out of it.”
“Poor Ozma,” Rupert said. “She died because she was your wife.”
“I’m sorry I had to tell you about her. I’ve never said anything about the other days unless it was immer business.”
“That’s all right,” she said. She released his hand and hugged her knees. “I’ve always wondered about your other lives. Especially the women.”
“Those women are not mine, not Jim Dunski’s. Dunski isn’t a stranger to those other men, but he knows them as slight acquaintances.”
That was not entirely true. He did not wish, however, to talk about them. The less she knew, the better for her and for him.
Rupert got off the bed and hugged him closely. “I’m scared.”
“So am I. Wary, anyway. Listen. If I tell you at the gym that I have to leave, you’ll know that I got word about Castor or Snick. I won’t be keying-out because I don’t want the Credits Bureau to know that I was even at work. I’ll lose today’s credits, but it can’t be helped. I’ve got overtime credit anyway. That’ll help.”
“Why work at all?”
“Because I want something to do to take my mind off this, keep me from worrying. Also, my superior will expect to contact me there. And I don’t want to miss out on any more practice than I have to. Got to keep in shape, you know.”
Rupert asked him to describe Castor so that she would know him if she saw him. Dunski listed in detail Castor’s physical characteristics and his clothing. Then he said, “He thinks he’s God. And he thinks I’m Satan. In a way, that’s to our advantage. If he was just slightly insane and wanted to destroy us immers, he’d just turn us in to the government. You know what that means.”
She shivered again and said, “Would you take the cyanide?”
“I hope so. I swore an oath. You did, too. We all did.”
“It’s the only thing to do. The only logical and honorable thing, I mean. But…”
There was a knock on the door. Malia called, “You going to stay in there forever?”
Dunski told her that they would be out in a minute. He said to Rupert, “I’m getting fed up with this group marriage thing. I’m just not the type to integrate well with it. I need more privacy, and I resent all the demands made on me.”
Rupert’s eyes widened.
“You really feel that way?”
“Would I say it if I didn’t?”
“No. It was just a rhetorical question. To tell the truth, Jim, I’m pretty irked sometimes. And I do get a little jealous, though I know I shouldn’t.”
“As soon as this business is cleared up, let’s quit. Declare the contract null and void. If we’re lucky, we can do it today. This is just not working out for me and, obviously, not for you. I’m basically a monogamist.”
She smiled and said, “Yes. Only one wife for you. One for each day, that is.”
“When I created the persona of Jim Dunski, I did it with group marriage in mind. Dunski was the type of person who would fit right in with it. But I failed. Or I’m being too much influenced by my other personae. I don’t know what in hell’s wrong, but I just can’t take this anymore.”
“We’ll talk about it later,” she said. “We’d better get going.”
“Meanwhile, no deviation from the routine.”
Which meant that there would be no bottle-spinning the third time because this coupling had been determined by the previous two. Jannie White was Dunski’s next. He went with her into the bedroom and did no better than with Malia. No better was satisfactory but not a cause for ringing bells, blowing whistles, and setting off firecrackers.
“You’d better get more sleep before tonight,” Jannie said. “I usually take a nap before supper.”
Dunski grunted and headed for the bathroom. He went to bed by himself, after telling the others that he had had trouble with insomnia and was going to use the deep-sleep-wave machine. He crawled into the wall niche, attached the electrodes to his head, and lay down on his back. Before turning the device on, he thought about Castor. The man had probably long ago made provisions for daybreaking. That required fake ID star-discs and also the knowledge of how to implant false records in the data bank. The latter could be learned, however; it was not a data banker monopoly.
Castor could hide in the ancient subway system, part of which still existed, and he could steal or rob food. But that would bring the organics in. They would be looking for him anyway, and they might figure out that he was the thief. Then they would search the area in depth. He would not have much chance of escaping the odor sniffers and heat and sound detectors.
>
After trying to think of where Castor could be hiding out, Jim Dunski came to the same conclusion as before. He had no way of finding out. He would find Castor when Castor found him. The madman had attacked him once and would try again.
The alarm woke him. He went through the routine of eating breakfast, always a noisy ritual, of washing, then helping to get the children off to school. He and Rupert walked into the ten o’clock heat and were sweating before they got to the building, which had once housed New York University students. Their pupils were waiting in the air-conditioned gymnasium, their padded sensor-packed uniforms on and holding masks and foils. The two greeted them, and work started. At another time, Dunski would have been eager to instruct, especially one of them, a long-armed lithe youth who had the makings of a champion. Try hard though Dunski did, he could not keep Castor and Snick out of his mind. The youth scored twice on him, the bells clamoring and orange lights flashing on a wall strip as the sensors transmitted the exact point of thrust.
“You’re improving enormously,” Dunski said after he took his mask off. “And I’m off my feed. Not that you wouldn’t have gotten me, anyway.”
He was relieved, instead of tensing up, when he saw a man and a woman enter the gymnasium. Though he had never seen them before, he knew that they were immers. Their smiles were strained, and their eyes fastened upon him as if they were radar beams. He said, “Excuse me,” to the youth and walked in what he hoped was a casual manner to the two. One was a gaunt man with a big nose, light skin, and pale-wheat hair. He looked as if he was about forty-five subyears old. The woman was young and pretty and obviously had many Asiatic Indian ancestors.
The man made no effort to introduce himself. “We’re to take you there at once,” he said. The right hands of the two strangers were fisted, the thumb held under the first two fingers. Dunski closed his hand quickly in the identification sign, held it long enough for them to see it, and opened his hand.