Mudge crossed the bridge in front of the square building called the Washington Mews (the Mews had long been gone). Ohm followed him to the west side of Fifth. As he did so, he recalled that Panthea Snick now had an apartment in the Mews building. She must be out in this area now, looking for him. Perhaps. The Friday organics might have had time to run Repp’s ID through the data bank and then have passed on the findings to Saturday. If Friday had not done this, Saturday would have.
Which meant one of two actions. One, the Saturday organics would be looking for a daybreaker resembling him, an ordinary, run-of-the-assembly-line breaker. Or, two, they might have tried to match Repp’s ID with similar IDs from all of the days. There would have been some delay before the organics could get permission from the North American Superorganic Council for Saturday. But there had been enough time for that. The hounds could know all and be on his scent.
If the latter had happened, what could he do? What had the immer council planned for him?
Mudge walked north on Fifth under the trees. Ohm followed him for a few paces, then stopped. The building on his left was one of the older ones, built before the ship-shape craze. It housed, on Saturday, anyway, Orthodox Jews who used the building gymnasium as a synagogue, worshiping their god amid the odor of sweat socks and sweat shirts. A man was looking out of a second-story window. Yankev Gril.
The strong handsome face appeared only for a minute. Its expression changed subtly, but Ohm could not read it. Was it a sudden but suppressed recognition of him? Not of Charlie Ohm but of Jim Dunski, who had stood for a while by the table in Washington Square and watched Gril play chess? Or was it just suspicion that Ohm might be an organic looking for him?
Whatever it was, Gril was certainly taking chances by being in that building. It would be one of the first places the organics would search. However, Gril might have moved into it after the search. Or he might just be visiting, perhaps to take part in a religious ceremony.
Bob Tingle, the data banker, had ascertained that there were only approximately half a million Orthodox Jews and two million of the Reformed in all of the seven days. The rest had been absorbed, their identity diffused in the Gentile society. Ohm himself had a Jewish great-grandmother, though she was Jewish by courtesy only. She had not practiced the religion.
The government had no public official policy against Jews. It professed toleration of all religions, but it did push a subtle form of persecution of Jews. It was unlawful for parents to arrange marriages of their children or to use any form of coercion to ensure that the children married within the faith. Since it was also forbidden for any group to claim superiority to any other group for religious reasons, the Jews were not allowed to state in words or in writing that they were “the chosen of God.” That would be antisocial and nonegalitarian. Orthodox males also had to delete from their morning prayer their thanks to God that they were not born as women. That attitude was even more antisocial and nonegalitarian.
All of the sacred or revered writings of the Jews were legally available only in recordings. These had been censored, though not heavily, and interspersed frequently with comments by the officials of the Bureau of Religious Freedom.
For the same reasons, Christians were forbidden to claim that Jesus was the Son of God except in the sense that all Homo sapiens were the children of God. Who, the government said, did not exist. The New Testament was also lightly censored but heavily annotated by the bureau.
24.
The thirteen-story Tower of Evolution looked like a corkscrew. The bright green threadings of its exterior were supposed to suggest the spiraling of life toward higher evolution. Atop the point were the statues of a man and of a woman holding a baby above her head. The baby had its hands raised as if it was trying to grasp something in the sky.
Charlie Ohm followed Mudge into the vast well-lighted lobby and got in line a few people behind him. While waiting, he looked at the outer edge of the circular lobby. Through the plastic walls, he could see the boiling thick-looking liquid and the holograph images of thunder clouds and lightning striking the waters. This was a representation of the primal soup, Earth’s oceans, billions of years ago. Here, the numerous strips said, was where life had begun, conceived in violent intercourse by the lightning and out of carbon compounds floating in the thick “soup.” The first life forms, very basic indeed, had begun in this simple though splendid rape.
Charlie had no idea why Mudge had gotten into the line of sightseers, but he assumed that Mudge knew what he was doing. He moved forward swiftly, though, and was glad of it. Tourists from all over the world jammed the lobby, and the chatter was, if not deafening, annoying.
Charlie finally got to the credit machine standing on a pole at the entrance to an aisle made by posts connected to chains. He inserted the tip of his ID disc-star into the hole, saw the display, ACCEPTED, and passed on into the aisle. He saw Mudge go by the elevator and step onto the stairway to the second floor. Pressed by a man ahead and a woman behind, a close contact Charlie had to endure, he moved slowly up the steps. At the top, he found Mudge waiting for him.
Charlie glanced at the vast and mostly hollow interior rising twelve stories to the top. He had seen this before at least a dozen times, yet he still felt somewhat awed. The exhibits were in tall and wide recesses in the wall in a staggered ascending arrangement. The visitors traveled on winding escalators that went slanting upward around and around the walls past the sea—and landscapes with the figures of fish, birds, insects, animals, and plants appropriate to the particular geological time. Standing on the escalator, their altitude ever increasing, the visitors would travel from Pre-Cambrian time (plants and animals with soft tissues) to the Cambrian (the backboneless ocean creatures of the first stage of the Paleozoic Era). Then, moving upward diagonally, they would go past the Ordovician (the first primitive fishes). They would continue through the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras, oohing and aahing at the life-sized animated dinosaur robots, and they would end up near the top where Homo sapiens of the New Era was the prime exhibit. They would get off into a recess there and take elevators down to the lobby. Along the corkscrew way, they could step off for a while into recesses to one side of the exhibits to view the curiosities.
Mudge did not get onto the escalator. He turned and went into a doorway to a hall. Passing the two men stationed there, Mudge nodded his head at them. This must have been a signal to let Ohm also pass into the hall. It was not more than ten feet long, ending in a wide strip displaying a montage of some of the life forms on the upper levels. Mudge said something before Ohm got near enough to hear him. Ohm started slightly as the strip before him slid up into a slot in the ceiling and a hall-wide strip slid down behind him from a ceiling slot. For a moment, the two were in a box three feet wide.
Mudge stepped through the entrance, which had been hidden by the wall strip, into an elevator cage. He turned and beckoned Ohm to follow him. Ohm got into it. Mudge said, “Up.” The doors closed, and the cage rose swiftly. Evidently, since there was no display of floor numbers, the elevator went to one floor only. When it stopped, Mudge got behind Ohm and gently nudged him out. Charlie did not like it that Mudge, who had been in front of him almost all the way, now was behind him. He could do nothing about it and was not sure that he had any reason to try to do something.
They stepped out, facing south, into a large but low-ceilinged room with unactivated wall strips and a thick expensive-looking green carpet. Mudge told him to move on. Charlie went to the only door, which led west. Here was a curving hallway about ten feet wide with another thick carpet and dead-screen strips. As they walked along it, Charlie Ohm saw doors closed on his right. He doubted that these were tenanted. Whoever lived here had plenty of extra rooms and must, therefore, be a very important person indeed.
At the end of a curving three hundred feet, they stopped before a large door. Mudge inserted an ID tip into the code-hole. A few second later, a voice told them to come in. Mudge stepped behind Ohm again and told him to go
in. Ohm pulled the door open and went in. He was in a large anteroom with plenty of comfortable-looking chairs and davenports. Obviously, he was to go into the next room. He opened the door to that and entered a very large room. Its windows gave him a view of the Hudson River and of the forest covering the part of New Jersey that he could see. There was a lot of furniture, though not too much for this room. On the wall, spaced among the activated strips, were paintings in the ancient Chinese manner. Ohm wondered if these were originals and not copies. The furnishings and the furniture were certainly Chinese. One of the objets d’art that caught his eye was a big bronze Buddha in a niche.
The man sitting in a chair at the end of the room, near a window, was wearing scarlet pajamas and slippers and a Kelly-green morning robe. He was large and dark-skinned and had prominent epicanthic folds. His nose was large and hawkish; his eyebrows, heavy; his chin, massive. He looked familiar, but it was not until Ohm was a few feet from him that Ohm realized why. Decrease the epicanthic folds by half. Change the blue eyes to brown. He would look much like Jeff Caird… Father Tom Zurvan…himself.
Mudge said, “You may stop here.” Meaning, “You must.” Ohm did so, and Mudge said, “I’ll take your bag.”
Reluctantly, Ohm handed it over. He had intended to see just where Mudge put it, but the man arose from the chair and bowed slightly, shaking hands with himself. That was Tuesday’s greeting, which meant that this man could be that day’s citizen. Or it could mean that he was indicating that he knew Ohm’s primal persona. Or it could mean both.
The man smiled and said, “Welcome, grandson.”
Ohm stared, felt his blood rushing from his head, and said, “Grandson?”
“Also my great-great-grandson in your paternal and maternal lines.”
Though shaken, Ohm had recovered quickly. Aware that he had not returned the formal greeting, he did so. And he said, “You have the advantage of me.”
That was not quite true. Only one man in the world could be his great-great-grandfather and still be living. But he had died.
That was what the vital statistics of the World Data Bank recorded. However, who knew better than Ohm that the data bank held many lies?
“Advantage?” the man said. He gestured that Ohm should sit down. Ohm, as was proper, waited until the older man seated himself first. Before taking the chair offered, he glanced around. Mudge was standing by a table ten feet behind him. The shoulderbag was on the table but unopened. Mudge, of course, would know by its weight that it contained a gun.
Ohm also scanned the strips, each of which displayed some of the exhibits in the tower.
Ohm sat down, looked steadily into the man’s eyes, and said, “All right, no advantage. You did take me by surprise, I admit that. I had no idea…we’ve all been told that the founder was killed in a laboratory accident.”
“Blown to bits,” the man said. “It was not difficult to grow skin and organs and bones from my own cells, even hands, which had, of course, my fingerprints, and one eyeball that was not destroyed by the explosion. By design, of course. There were a lot of of courses.”
“Your intimates were wondering why you looked so young,” Ohm said. “You finally had to seem to die, and then you took a new ID.”
Gilbert Ching Immerman nodded and said, “My permanent residence is not in this country. It won’t hurt for you to know that. You may also know that Saturday is not my official citizenship day. I flew here to straighten this mess out.”
Whatever Immerman’s name was now, it was that of a very high official, Ohm thought. Probably he was a world councillor. Only a man of that rank and influence could have a personal apartment—such a large one, too—that he rarely used. And only a very high official could break day when he pleased. Ohm wondered what his coverup story was. Not that that mattered. What did matter was why Immerman was here.
“Grandfather,” Ohm said. He paused. “May I call you Grandfather?”
“I’d like that,” Immerman said. “No one has ever done that. I had to deny myself the pleasure of my grandchildren’s company. But, of course, I also did not have to be involved in the sometimes painful and distressing troubles that come with the joys of grandchildren. Yes, you may call me Grandfather.”
He stopped, smiled.
“But what do I call you?”
Ohm said, “What…? Oh! I see. Today’s Saturday. Call me Charlie, please.”
Immerman shook his head slightly, then made a gesture. Mudge appeared by Ohm’s side and said, “Yes, sir.”
“Would you get us some tea. Our guest may be hungry, also. Would you like some food, Charlie?”
“Some protein cookies would be nice,” Ohm said. “I had a very light breakfast.”
“I would imagine you would,” Immerman said. “The way of life you lead…today, that is. You are amazing, Charlie. Not quite unique in being a daybreaker sanctioned as such by the immer council. But unique in your roles. And in the intensity with which you have adopted these roles…personae, rather. I believe that you actually become a new man each day. Admirable, in some respects. In others, dangerous.”
Here it comes, Ohm thought. Now we’re getting to the reason I’m here. This is not meant to be a family reunion.
“May I walk around a little while we’re waiting for the tea and cookies?” Charlie said. “I didn’t get my accustomed exercise. I’m tight and sluggish. I can think better with the muscles loose and the blood flowing.”
“Be my guest.”
Feeling somewhat self-conscious, Charlie got up and strode up and down the room. He stopped at the entrance, turned, and went as far as a few feet from Immerman before turning again. The old man—old man, he did not look more than five years older than his grandson!—sat with folded hands and watched. He was smiling very faintly. While Charlie paced back and forth, he saw a huge seal-point Siamese cat enter from a doorway. It paused, looked intently with enormous blue eyes at Ohm, then trotted to Immerman and leaped upon his lap. It curled down there while Immerman gently stroked it.
“Ming is my first and only pet,” Immerman said softly. “Ming the Merciless. I doubt you know the reference. He’s almost as old as I am. In obyears, that is. From time to time, I stone him.”
Charlie took his gaze away from the wall strips, though he had seen something in one that had startled him. He said, “Even so, Ming must have been given the elixir for him to live so long. Right?”
“Right,” Immerman said. “Only…it’s not an elixir. It’s a biological form, a genuine life form, though artificial in origin. It cleanses the plaque from the arteries, does many things. It also partially suppresses the inherent aging agent in our cells. I don’t know how it does it, though I’ve been trying to find out for a long time.”
Ohm was not pleased by the confidences. They could imply that his grandfather did not care what his grandson learned. Charlie Ohm was not going to be able to pass on the information. But could a man be so objective, so hard-hearted, that he would rid himself—and the family—of his own flesh and blood? The answer was, of course, that he could. The immer family had survived this long because its leaders had been objective and logical. It might grieve Immerman to dispose of his own grandson, but he would do it if he had to. The family came first; its individuals, a long second place behind.
“I’ve wondered about that,” Charlie said. A little hole in the blackness inside his brain seemed to open. A little light shone briefly through it. Wyatt Repp? Repp seemed to be telling him something. Then he knew, and he spoke it aloud before the knowledge vanished back into the darkness.
“Ming the Merciless,” he said. “He was a character, the chief villain, in an ancient comic book and movie series. Flash Gordon. That was the name of the hero of the series.”
Immerman looked mildly surprised, then smiled. “That originated in the twentieth century A.D. I didn’t know that anybody but a few scholars knew of that. I’ve underestimated you, grandson.”
“I’m not just Charlie Ohm, a bartender, a weedie
, and a drunk.”
“I know that.”
“I think you know everything about me,” Charlie said. “I hope that you know me well enough, understand me well enough, that is, to know that I am not a danger to you…to the immers.”
Immerman smiled as if he were genuinely pleased.
“Then you realize fully why I have summoned you here. Good.”
Maybe not so good for me, Ohm thought.
He had been about to say something, but one face in a wall-strip display seemed to zoom out, to expand, and to crowd his mind. He trembled. That face could not be there. He looked away and then his head was turned as if it were clamped in a machine. Yes. It was.
The screen showed a large recess near the top of the tower, the third from the final. It contained figures from the past, EXTINCT TYPES OF HOMO SAPIENS. The face that had snagged him in his swift survey, caught him as a stump in shallow water caught the bottom of a boat (and threatened to rip out his guts), belonged to a figure in a seventeenth-century group. This, he thought, represented The King and The Queen and their Court. It could be, judging from the dress, the period of the Three Musketeers. The King would be Louis XIII; the Queen, Anne of Austria. The figure with a foxlike face and dressed in the red robes of a cardinal must be Richelieu.
Ohm struggled to quit shaking. He used one of the techniques that had been successful many times. He visualized the king and queen and the court and the face that had alarmed him as just one of many. He shrank the scene, rolled it into a ball, and pitched it out of his mind through the top of his head.
It did not work. He could not keep from looking sideways at the face.
Trying to smile as if he were thinking of something pleasant, he returned to the chair and sat down. The scene was at his back. He could not see it unless he turned his neck far to the right, and he would not do that. Immerman would know that he had seen the face.