Tingle said, “I may have to work overtime.”
“I’ll authorize it. No sweat.”
Tingle grinned because Paz’s face was filmed with salty water.
The reason given for overtime would be one more coverup. Lies bred lies, and their growing weight put immense stress on what they were supposed to ease.
Paz’s cough sprang Tingle from his reveries.
“Do you have anything to add?” Paz said.
Tingle rose and said, “No. If that’s all…”
“Yes. If anything important comes along, notify me.”
“Of course.”
Tingle was biting his lip when he left the office. As he walked down the corridor, he felt bladder pressure. Halfway down the corridor, he turned right into a doorway above which was a sign: P & S. The anteroom gave onto a large room with off-white pseudomarble walls, ceiling, and floor. On his left was a long row of urinals above each of which was a strip displaying news programs. On his right was a row of cubicles from which came the muted voices of newscasters and soap opera actors, the flushing of a toilet, and groans.
After looking along the unoccupied row, he chose a urinal in front of Channel 176. John “Big” Fokker Natchipal, its daytime caster, was a man whom Tingle detested. Thus, while he stood there, Tingle could imagine himself urinating on the ever-egregious Natchipal. Four screens away was the channel on which the fantastically beautiful and sexy Constant Tung delivered the news. But he had given up watching her—at least, in toilets—because he usually got an erection and that made it hard (no pun intended) to pee.
However, this time his choice of station did not help him. He could hear her voice faintly, and that was enough to keep him thinking about her. While standing exasperated and frustrated, he became aware that someone was standing a few feet to his left. He turned his head toward her. She was wearing a brown jockey cap on which was a green circle enclosing a red star and a brown robe decorated with small green crux ansatas, looped Egyptian crosses. Her shoulderbag was large, green, and jammed full. Bright green shoes thrust their pointed snouts from under the hem of the robe.
She was short, about five feet eight inches high, slim, and had short black hair gleaming like seal’s fur. Her face was delicate-boned, high-cheeked, and triangular. Her large dark brown eyes—also reminding him of a seal’s—stared at him. Though as beautiful as Tung, she did not have the same effect on him. Her rudeness made him angry.
“Yes?” he said.
Before she could answer, a woman entered, waved at Caird, said, “Good morning, Bob,” and disappeared into a cubicle.
“I’m sorry to disturb you here,” the woman said in a husky but rapid voice, “I didn’t want to wait outside. I don’t like to waste time.”
“Who are you, and what can I do for you?” he said harshly.
Embarrassment and anger had deflated his penis, but he still was unable to urinate. He said, “I give up,” and he zipped his pants. He strode angrily to the washbowl while the woman followed him.
She said, “I’m Detective-Major Panthea Pao Snick. I—”
“I know who you are,” he said, looking at her in the mirror. “My superior, Colonel Paz, told me about you. He said—”
“I know. I came into his office a few seconds after you left it.” He walked to the hot-air blower and punched its button. She followed him, saying, “I’m authorized to give only a minimum explanation about my mission. But I can and will demand full cooperation.”
That meant that the North American Superorganic Council was backing her. Or that she was claiming more authority than she had because she could then get full cooperation. Tingle, as Caird, had done that more than once. However, he did not intend to call her bluff, if it was one. If she was sent by the NASC, she could be investigating rumors or suspicions or, he hoped to God not, facts about the immers. But, whyever she was here, it was not just to pass the time.
Fear groped around in his guts for a handle.
11.
Snick said, “I want to talk to you privately.”
Just as the blower went off, he said, “We can’t use my work-office. I doubt you’re authorized to go in there.”
He started walking toward the exit. Dogging him, she said, “I’m not, though I could be. But that’s too much trouble. I just want a few minutes where no one can hear us.”
He stopped and turned in the hall. Her big brown eyes looked into his as if she were trying to read something in them. They were very beautiful eyes, he thought, unfitted to an organic officer. Or perhaps they were appropriately inappropriate. She could throw a man off guard with them. Who could believe that there was steel behind their softness?
He told her that they could talk in a lounge just down the hall. She walked with him, her legs moving swiftly to keep up with his long and quick stride. He did not slow down. If she was so intent to save time, she could trot for all he cared. His own time was also important.
The lounge was deserted. He seated himself in a big comfortable body-molding chair. Snick took a chair, which deflated a few inches to accommodate her shorter legs. She was facing him across a narrow table.
“Just what do you want from me?” he said. He glanced at his watch.
“Don’t you want my identification?”
He waved his hand. “Colonel Paz told me that you wanted to talk to me.”
He intended to get all the data he could about her when he got to his office, but he wished to give her the impression that he was not curious about her.
She took from her shoulderbag a small green box and put it on the table. She raised the screen, punched a button, and inserted the tip of the star on the ID disc into the box. He read the display, which showed on both sides of the screen, looked at her photo on the screen, and said, “OK. So you’re who you say you are.”
“I’ve been authorized to track down a daybreaker. A citizen of Monday and of Manhattan, Yankev Gad Gril. A doctor of philosophy who teaches at Yeshiva University, an Orthodox Hebrew, a chessmaster, and a specialist in the works of a first-century A.D. Gnostic Christian called Cerinthus.”
For a moment, he thought about denying any knowledge. Her statement had been so far from what he had expected, though he really did not know what to expect, that it had numbed him.
“Gril!” he said. “Oh, now I see why you want to talk to me! I play chess with him. But my contact has been limited, of course. I don’t know what he looks like, and we’ve never spoken to each other. Intertemporal chess competition has very strict rules.”
She nodded. “I know. However, Gril is now in Wednesday, or at least we think he is. He’s a passionate chessplayer, a fanatic…”
“And a great one, too,” Caird said.
“…and he may continue his games with you. I don’t think he’d be stupid enough to do that, but his passion for it may override his good sense. He might believe that he could transmit his next move to you from a public strip and then get away quickly. I said ‘might,’ but, actually, he has a good chance of eluding the organics here. If we don’t get an immediate report, we can’t get a satellite fix on him.”
“You want me to report to you or the organics the moment I get his transmission? If I do?”
“Report to me. It may do no good because Gril can set up a delay in transmission and be long gone by the time you get it. But report anyway. Oh, by the way, you haven’t already gotten one from him, have you?”
A trick question. No doubt, she had had Bob Tingle’s calls checked.
“No, I haven’t,” he said.
Unless he was under surveillance, any calls would not have been recorded in the communications base. If he had received a picture of the chess board with Gril’s next move on it, he would have asked that it be stored until Gril could ask for it. Under normal conditions, Tingle’s next move would then be transmitted to Gril when next Monday came. If Gril had sent his next move to Tingle, it would be stored in Wednesday’s data bank and also at the Manhattan World Data Bank.
Snick would have checked on this. She also would have asked Wednesday’s organic data monitors to notify her the moment that Gril made his move. Why, then, require him to report on Gril?
Was she really after something else? Was Gril just an excuse to cover up another interest, the driving interest, in his activities?
He wished now that he had confined his chessgames with Gril to just one of his roles. As it was, every day, in each persona, he had played a game with Gril. Tomorrow, Snick would follow the Gril line to Jim Dunski. She would know then that Bob Tingle and Jim Dunski were the same. Perhaps she already knew that Jeff Caird and Bob Tingle were the same.
No, that surely could not be. She would have arrested him and by now would be grilling him in the closest interrogation room. Perhaps she really was just looking for Gril.
Why, then, had a Sunday organic been chosen to track down a Monday daybreaker?
Whatever her reasons, she must not see him in Thursday. Actually, she did not have to see him in the flesh. One look at Jim Dunski’s face on a data screen would be enough.
“I’m not being too curious, I hope,” he said. “I wonder why you were sent after Gril. Why is his case so unusual? From what I’ve heard, daybreakers are handled by the organics of each day. I never heard of an organic using a temporal visa to go after one.”
“We have our reasons.”
“Oh, I see. None of my business.”
“My call number is a special one. X-X. Easy to remember. If Grit’s game appears, you will call me at once? No delay?”
“Of course. X-X.” He grinned. “It’ll be easy. A double cross.”
Her face was blank. Either she did not get the reference or she was cool enough to ignore it.
She laughed and said, “Yankev Gril, heh? Do you know what Yankev and Grit mean in Yiddish?”
“No. Should I?”
“Yankev is James, which could be Jimmy. Gril means Cricket. Which means that you’re looking for Jimmy Cricket.”
“I suppose so,” she said. “But I don’t see anything amusing or relevant in it. Am I missing something?”
She looked at her watch, and she rose. He stood up, too.
“Just some fun, something to make life a little easier. Puns are a lubricant.”
“I think they’re stupid,” Snick said. “But they’re not against the law, though if…”
“You had your way, they would be.”
“That’s antisocial thinking. No, I wasn’t going to say that.”
Whatever she was going to say stayed unsaid. She walked swiftly away without a good-bye, but she did turn her head and say, “I may see you again, Maha Tingle.”
“Hope not,” he muttered. But he sighed. Snick was one of the prettiest women he had ever seen, a seal-fairy, but she did not stir admiration and lust in him. She scared him.
He went down the hail, inserted the ID tip into the hole in the door, and entered as it swung back. The first-shift data banker was already gone. The office was dome-shaped, twenty feet in diameter across the floor, and walled with strips from the floor to the center of the ceiling. In the middle was a chair around which was a circular desk. A small control box sat on the desk. He lifted the flap in the desk and went within the “charmed circle.” After putting the flap down, he sat in the chair. It could rotate so that he could see every strip, and it could be tilted back so he could read the upper displays comfortably.
He punched in a code known only to himself. The strips glowed with the data and photographs that had been on when he had quit work last Wednesday. Reluctant to put aside a project he loved, he scanned the strips for a few minutes. This was an unofficial job ordered unofficially by Paz, who had gotten his orders from his superior. Tingle was not supposed to know who Paz’s chief was. But he had found out through an unofficial investigation of which Paz was unaware.
One of Tingle’s characteristics was a dangerous curiosity, sometimes bordering on the reckless. The immer council would have been alarmed if it had known about it. But it had verified the stability of Jeff Caird’s character, and it had not thought of the possibility that Bob Tingle was not the same person as Jeff Caird. Caird, in programing Tingle’s character, had indulged himself. Yet he knew that he could not have developed certain Tingle traits if these had not existed in embryo in Caird, sternly suppressed though not aborted.
The first stage of the project was to get statistics on the number of people “semi-permanently” stoned and put in storage for the last one hundred subyears. These had been dying of incurable physical diseases or had mental diseases not responding to therapy or were habitual criminals who could not be “cured.” When science found the method for restoring these people to health, they would be destoned.
That was the theory. The government had issued figures about the numbers of “abeyants,” as they were called. Paz had asked Tingle to find out if the Wednesday world government was lying. Official statistics said that 46,947,269 people had been put into abeyance as of when Tingle had started the project. Tingle, after four subyears of discreet inquiry via many channels, had found that the real number was 86,927,326. This, of course, was only those who had been semipermanentized (government jargon) in Wednesday. Tingle and Paz assumed that the other dayworlds were doing much the same and that there were approximately 609,000,000 semipermanents.
Paz had then asked Tingle to determine if any successful therapies to treat the abeyants had been developed during the past twenty subyears. This task was easier than the first. Tingle had discovered that enough various “cures” or therapies had been published and put into practice to permit destoning at least 30,000,000 of Wednesday’s abeyants. By extrapolation, 210,000,000 of the entire population.
Not one of Wednesday’s 30,000,000 possibles had been destoned so that the new techniques and therapies could be used on them. Nor had any public proposals been made to do so.
“In the first place,” Tingle had said to Paz, “it would take, at the rate of a million cured per subyear, if that could be done, thirty subyears to restore them. Meanwhile, at least 40,000 are piling up, literally, in storage. The backlog of approximately 87,000,000 will be untouched.
“There’s no need to look for sinister motives in the government’s neglect. It just made a promise that it can’t keep. I’m sure that others have discovered what I did, but their reports have been suppressed.”
“Then all those millions might as well have died,” Paz had said.
“Not necessarily. Maybe…someday…we’ll have the number of medical personnel and the system and the funds necessary to fulfill that promise.”
“Sure,” Paz had said. He had looked down at his belly and pinched the lowest of his three chins. “And someday everybody will eat only the amount they need.”
Tingle had thought that, if all the world’s abeyants were to be cured, their overwhelming numbers would be such a problem that an eighth day would have to be added to the week.
“Why do you want this information?” Tingle had said.
“Perhaps we immers can use that as a weapon someday.”
“Blackmail? Extortion? Threat?”
Paz had replied with a grin.
Now, in the last stage of the project, Tingle was “ghosting” into biographical data records and the conversations of some high officials in both the Manhattan and the world government. A device that had been made, he supposed, in the secret laboratory of the immers enabled him to unscramble the dialogs. At first, he had been pleased with the device. Then he realized that what the immers could do, the government secret scientists could do. Which meant that the immer scramblers could be unscrambled any day now or might be right now.
He had passed the word on up via his superior, and that had resulted in the immers’ changing their scrambler format every few weeks.
Tingle had asked Paz about the motive behind his eavesdropping. Paz had said that Tingle had no need to know. Tingle’s theory, kept to himself, was that the immer council meant to use the information as futu
re protection for itself. Or, perhaps, it was using it now to pressure these officials for its own obscure but doubtless worthy reasons.
During his “ghosting,” Tingle had selected and stored certain data. If he should need protection for himself, he would not be above using it.
Thinking of this, he was touched by a “ghost” of the thought that he, Tingle, would not hesitate to use blackmail if he had to. But Caird, his Tuesday client, would have considered that dishonorable.
Looking at the strips, he was reminded that he was supposed to get coercion data for Nokomis’ use. That could not be done today, which meant that she was going to be angry with him. He sighed. Snick was his number-one priority. If he had time, he could tackle the Castor problem.
He muttered, “Castor should have been put in abeyance as soon as possible. Then we wouldn’t be having this crisis.”
The immer council must have been aware of what needed doing. But the legal procedure for stoning Castor as an incurable required that he be thoroughly questioned. He might not have revealed his immer identity to the authorities, especially if he had insisted that he was God. The immer council, however, could not take that chance. It had had to keep him alive as a possibly curable mental patient.
Tingle sighed again and, whistling softly the tune of “The Criminal Creed,” Ko-Ko’s song in Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado, started work on Project Snick. The strip displays were replaced by the codes needed to break into the Sunday organic files. These were provided by an immer data bank not to be used except in extreme emergencies. Which this was. Tingle, however, had to wield them carefully, since it was possible that a security system other than the one he knew was now being used by the Sunday data bankers.
Sunday’s people were all stoned—except for Snick, of course—but when they awoke on their appointed day, they would know that someone had tried to ghost into the bank. If, that is, Tingle’s requests for data tripped the alarm. If this happened, he would have to cover his own electronic tracks. He might even have to wipe out the immer data bank to keep the organics from tracing it to the source.