(“Don’t do it!” Caird said. “There may be a way out!”)
Zurvan closed the door behind him and walked toward the elevator. “I’m not going to turn myself in,” he said. “I’m going for a long walk. I can’t stand being caged in the apartment. I need to think. I need…”
What did he need? A possibility where all was impossible.
(“When the rat in the laboratory can’t find the way out of the labyrinth,” Caird said, “when the rat runs up against an insoluble problem, when the rat is hopelessly confused, it lies down and dies.”)
“I am not a rat!” Zurvan said.
(“No,” Caird said, “you’re not. You’re not even a rat. You’re a fiction! Remember, I am your maker! I, the real, made you, a fiction!”)
(“Then that means the rest of us, too, are fictions,” Repp said. “You made us. But so what? You’re a fiction, too, Caird. The government and the immers made you.”)
(“Fiction can become reality,” Dunski said. “We’re as real as Caird. After all, he made us from parts of him. He grew us as surely as a mother grows the embryo in the womb. And he gave birth to us. Now he wants to kill us. His children!”)
(“For Chrissake!” Ohm said. “We all want to kill each other! God, I need a drink!”)
(“I am your maker,” Caird said over and over again. “The maker of all of you. What I can make, I can unmake. I am your maker and your unmaker.”)
(“Bullshit!” Charlie Ohm cried. “You’re not Aladdin, and we’re not genies you can put back into the bottle!”)
(“You would think of a bottle,” Bob Tingle said. “Lush, loser, lessening Lazarus! Think of yourself as a hangover we all want to get rid of. You’re all hangovers!”)
(“En garde, you son of a bitch!”)
(“Play your hand!”)
(“All fictions. I made you. I now unmake you.”)
(“Ohm-mani-padme-hum!”)
(“Humbug, you alcoholic hummingbird!”)
(“I made you. I am unmaking you. Do you think for one moment that I didn’t foresee this. I made the rituals that admitted you each day into your day. I also made the reverse ritual, the undoing ritual, the no-entrance ritual. I knew that I’d need it some day. And today is the day!”)
(“Liar!”)
(“Fictions calling the fiction-maker a liar? Living lies calling the one who made you truths, though temporary truths, a liar? I am your maker. I made you. I am unmaking you. Can’t you feel everything slipping away? Go back to where you came from!”)
The wind that blew across Waverly Place was not strong enough as yet to blow off a hat. But the winds howling inside Zurvan seemed to lift him up and carry him away into the clouds. The light grew dim; the pedestrians around him were looking at him because he was staggering. When they saw him drop to his knees and lift his hands high, they backed away.
Far in the east, thunder stomped its feet in a war dance and lightning flashed its many lances.
Zurvan sped whirling through the whirling grayness. He tried to grab the dark wetness to keep himself from falling. Up? Or down?
“O Lord,” he bellowed, “I’m lost! Snatch me from this doom! Take me away from this gray world to your glory!”
The people on the sidewalk backed even farther away or hurried off as Zurvan clapped his hands to his eyes and screamed, “The light! The light!”
He fell forward on his arms and lay still for a moment.
“Call an ambulance,” someone said.
He rolled over, staring and blinking, and got unsteadily to his feet. “That won’t be necessary,” he said. “I’m all right. Just a bit dizzy. I’ll go home. It’s near. Just leave me alone.”
Jeff Caird, whispering, “The light! The light!” walked across the bridge over the canal. By the time that he was a block away from Washington Square, he felt steady and strong.
(“He’s gone?” Tingle said.)
(“Like the Indian that folded his tepee and stole away into the night,” Wyatt Repp said.)
(“He almost took me with him,” Charlie Ohm said. “God! The light!”)
(“It was sword-shaped,” Jim Dunski said. “It came down and lifted him on its blade and tossed him up into blazing sky.”)
Their voices were faint. They became a little louder when they discovered that Caird was now in control of the body.
(“Oh, my God,” Ohm said, “we’re sunk!”)
(“Look at it this way,” Repp said. “Zurvan’s bit the dust. Now…it’s Caird’s last stand. We’ll have his scalp before this is over.”)
Zurvan had not been sure that he had not been making up the voices of the others. Caird was equally unsure. It did not matter that they might be imaginary. Nor did it matter that the voices might be those of personae as real as his. What mattered was that he was master. And he knew what he was going to do.
He walked against the increasing wind toward the tall yellow vertical tube on the northwest corner of the park. This was one of the entrances to the underground system of transportation belts and power and water lines. A strip by its side warned that only SCC workers could use it. There were no workers or uniformed organics in sight, and the few people who had lingered in the park were leaving it.
He stopped. Under the branches of an oak tree in the distance sat a lone figure. The man who had been playing chess with Gril was walking away, shaking his head. Apparently, Gril had asked his partner to finish the game. The man, however, would rather forfeit.
Caird stopped by the entrance to the tube.
(“What now?” Ohm said faintly.)
A few leaves blown from the trees whirled by. The wind, cool with the promise of rain, lifted his hair. A bicycler, bent over, feet pumping, sped by.
Gril stood up. His red beard and long red hair were ruffled by the wind. He gathered up the pieces, put them in a case, folded the chessboard, and slid it into the case. Caird began running toward him. He shouted, but the wind carried his words over his shoulder as if they were confetti.
Gril turned and saw Caird running at him. He crouched and looked to both sides as if he wanted to find the best way to flee. Then he drew himself up and waited.
30.
Caird slowed down and smiled to show Gril that he meant no harm. When he got within speaking distance, he said, “I’m not an organic. Not now, anyway. I just wanted to talk to you for a minute, Yankev Gad Gril. No longer than that, I swear it. I have urgent business; I won’t detain you long.”
Gril was regaining his color. He said in a deep rich voice, “You know my name. I don’t know yours.”
“No need to know it,” Caird said. “Let’s sit down for a minute. Too bad you put the board away. We could have finished our game.”
Gril frowned and said, “Our game?”
Caird considered saying, “I make the first move: 1 BL-WC-4. Then you make the second, BL-WC SG.”
That would be enough to tell Gril that this was his Tuesday’s opponent. Last Tuesday’s ex-opponent. But Caird wanted him to know as little as possible about his identity.
(“You don’t know much about it, either,” Ohm said.)
Instead, Jeff Caird said, “I know you’re a daybreaker. No, don’t be alarmed. I’m not going to turn you in…”
He looked around. There were even fewer pedestrians and cyclists. A taxi, two people in the back seat, went by. The rumbling was getting closer. The storm was flashing open its dark overcoat to expose lightning.
Gril’s small green eyes became smaller, and his thin lips squeezed even thinner. He said, “What do you. want?”
“I want to satisfy my overwhelming curiosity. That’s all. I just want an answer to a question.”
(“Are you nuts?” Charlie Ohm said. “What if the organics come while you’re indulging your craziness? For Chrissakes, Caird!”)
“If I can answer it,” Gril said.
Perhaps Ohm was right, and he was crazy. Or perhaps he was indulging the Tuesday organic in him. Whatever the reason, he had to know the man’s mot
ive.
“From what I know of your case,” Caird said, “you had no apparent reason to daybreak. Why did you?”
Gril smiled and said, “If I told you, I don’t think you’d understand.”
(“Any second now,” Repp said, “any second now, the organics will be coming around the corner. Maybe they won’t wonder why you two are sitting under a tree that might get struck by lightning. Maybe they won’t come over and ask you why. And then maybe they won’t ask for your ID. Maybe they won’t already have your description.”)
“Try me,” Caird said.
“How much do you know about Orthodox Judaism?”
“Probably enough. I know your name, remember? I know who you are.”
Gril looked across the table at Caird. He clutched the case so hard that his knuckles whitened. “Then you know how important keeping the Shabbos, the Sabbath, is to us?”
Caird nodded.
“You know that the government does not forbid us to observe the Sabbath? It won’t let us have a synagogue, but it doesn’t play favorites. No religion has a church or temple or mosque or synagogue.”
“The people need the space those would occupy for housing and factories,” Caird said. “Also, religions are a form of malignant superstition, contrary to all…”
Gril held up a big red-haired hand.
“I don’t want to get into an argument about the reasons.”
“I don’t either,” Caird said, looking around. “It was just that…”
“Never mind. As I said, we are permitted to do what God enjoined us to do. We observe the Sabbath. That is on the seventh day of the week, beginning with dusk on Friday and ending with the dusk on Saturday evening.”
“I understand,” Caird said.
“Yes, but you don’t understand how important it is that we do observe the ancient practice, the ancient law. The law. Not the government’s law. Ours. A much more ancient law.”
“But you have your Sabbaths.”
Gril raised a hand from the case and lifted a finger.
“Yes. But we do not go by the ancient and sacred calendar. Instead of traveling horizontally on the calendar, we travel vertically. Last Monday was the Sabbath, not Saturday. That is, it was if we obey the law of the state.”
“I think I know what you’re going to say,” Caird said. “It’s hard—”
“Please. It’s going to rain very soon. Since I’ve been courteous to you, a stranger who came in from nowhere and will probably go nowhere…”
(“Ain’t that the truth!” Charlie Ohm said.)
“…without telling me who you are and why you’re here, I’m not asking too much of you to refrain from interrupting.”
“Right,” Caird said.
(“The organics!” Ohm whispered.)
Caird looked around quickly, but Ohm was just warning him to watch for organics.
“I did not like the idea of observing the Sabbath on the wrong day, on Monday instead of as it should be and has long been decreed…”
(“The man’s as windy as you, Caird,” Ohm said.)
“…but I obeyed the state and the rabbis. After all, they reasoned that, regardless of whether it was Saturday or not, the Sabbath still fell on the seventh day. But I was not happy with this reasoning. Then, one day, while reading the book of a very wise man, though he was sometimes mistaken and prejudiced, I came across a passage that affected me deeply.”
“Cerinthus?”
Gril’s only sign of being startled was a rapid blinking. “How did you know that?”
“Never mind. I’m sorry I interrupted again.”
“Actually, the author was Pseudo-Cerinthus. The scholars had established that some books supposedly by Cerinthus were by another man, name unknown, called, for the sake of convenience, Pseudo-Cerinthus. I, however…”—Gril looked very pleased—“…I was able to prove that Cerinthus and Pseudo-Cerinthus were actually the same person. His style as Pseudo-Cerinthus was different from Cerinthus’ because, when he wrote as Pseudo-Cerinthus, he was possessed by the Shekinah or Doxa…”
“By what?”
“God’s presence or the light that His presence shed. The Targumists used that term…”
“Never mind,” Caird said. “What was this passage that affected you so deeply?”
(“Cerinthus and Pseudo-Cerinthus,” Bob Tingle said. “Another schizophrenic. Do you think we have room for him, too? Come on in, sibling sage, seer, and psychotic.”)
(“I can’t believe that we’re standing out in the open discussing theology and stylistics while the storm and the organics are closing in,” Ohm said.)
“Cerinthus,” Gril said, “believed that the angels created the world. And an angel gave the Jews their law, which was imperfect. He was wrong about that, of course. The Shekinah gave the law to the Jews, and the Shekinah cannot give imperfect laws. Not to His chosen people.
“But Pseudo-Cerinthus, inspired by the Shekinah, wrote that, even if the law had been imperfect in the beginning, it was made perfect by the Jews. Their stubbornness in clinging to their law despite all persecutions and misfortunes and their survival despite everything that should have wiped them from the face of Earth proved that they were obeying the perfect law. After this passage, Pseudo-Cerinthus denounced Cerinthus as being in grave error and, indeed, not too bright. He mentions several letters he sent to Cerinthus explaining the error. These have not been found…”
The first rain fell, large but scattered drops. The wind tried to pry Caird’s hat loose. Thunder stomped. Lightning raced toward them on many glowing legs.
“What you’re saying,” Caird said loudly so he could be heard, “is that you broke day just so you could obey the letter of the law?”
“The letter is the soul of the spirit!” Gril cried.
He paused, and he glared.
“Also, there was another reason. It was strong, though not strong enough to have made me a daybreaker if it had not been coupled with my desire to observe, even if only once, only once, the Shabbos as it should be observed.
“I am a human being. I am the son of a species that has always been one with the rhythm of Nature as decreed by God. Countless generations from the beginning of the species have enjoyed the slow unfolding of the seasons, a phenomenon that they took for granted though it was one of God’s many gifts. But the New Era…the New Era!…they did away with the seasons, man! They’ve ruined them, shrunk them!
“Spring is an explosion of green, come and gone in a few days! Summer…summer is a hot flash! Too many summers, I’ll get only the searing days and none of the cool! Autumn doesn’t slowly change into its beautiful colors! It doesn’t slip into one color after the other like a woman trying out clothes! It’s green one day and a burst of fully realized colors the next and then it’s all dead, dead! And you may miss the snow, God’s blanket, entirely!”
“That’s true,” Caird said. “On the other hand, the racing-by of the seasons can be exhilarating, and think how many more seasons you get to see than if you lived like our ancestors did. There’s always something gained when you give up something and vice versa.”
“No,” Gril said, shaking his head violently, “I want it as God said it should be. I will not…”
Caird did not hear what else he said. He rose swiftly, staring past Gril’s shoulder at the patrol car that had appeared from around the corner of the building on the street by the canal. It would be past the underground access tube at’ the northwest corner of the park long before he could get to it. He was cut off.
Gril turned his head, looked once, and said, “Perhaps they are headed elsewhere.” He sounded calm.
There was another access tube at the northeast corner of the park. He must not run now, though. Wait and see if the car went on.
It was going fast, its headlights spearing the dim light and bouncing off the raindrops. Several feet from the junction of Fifth Avenue and Washington Square North, however, it slowed and then it came to a stop.
Gril had quit tal
king for a moment. Now. seeing the car, he said, “Our destiny is here.” He closed his eyes, and his lips moved.
“Yours, maybe. Not mine,” Caird said.
Gril opened his eyes just as the car doors opened. The clouds also opened up, the rain coming down as if it were ambitious to become Niagara Falls. It bent the leaves above the two and dumped a cascade on them. They were soaked and chilled, though the rain was only partly responsible for the coldness.
Two men and a woman got out of the vehicle. The driver came around the front of the car, revealing the green-and-brown uniform in the headlights. His belt held a holster, from which stuck the butt of a gun.
The woman screamed something and ran toward Gril and Caird. The two organics shouted after her. Caird thought that he heard, “Stop!” Lightning struck immediately thereafter, seeming so close that Caird thought that a nearby tree must have been hit. The flash showed him Ruth Zog Dinsdale, his…no… Isharashvili’s wife. Her face was distorted; her screeching cut through the rumble of thunder.
Her block building was across the canal almost directly opposite the Tao Towers. He had been reckless to walk so boldly down the street in front of the building. Since he knew that she might look out her window and see him, he should have gone to the back street. But the probability of her seeing him had been low, and he had not been himself. Zurvan had been in no shape to think of such details.
He turned and ran south. Flight toward the access tube he had planned to take was too dangerous. He could be intercepted too easily. There was another tube located at the corner of La Guardia Place and Washington Square South.
Gril called, “Good luck, man!” and said something in an unintelligible language. A Yiddish blessing?
“I need it!” Caird said, and he ran.
31.
He zigzagged, trying to keep trees between him and his pursuer. A glance behind during a lightning flash had shown his wife standing still and one organic running after him. Gril was gone. He probably had just walked away. Another glance in the dimness told him that the driver had gone back to the car. Outlined against the streetlight, which had just come on, the car was moving eastward toward Washington Square East. Its driver was following organic procedures. While one man chased the fugitive, the other would drive the car to head the fugitive off.