Counter-Clock World (6 page)

The door closed; Father Faine departed, back into the building.

Tinbane roared up into the sky, away from the Flask of Hermes Vitarium. For the time being.

Seeing Father Faine reenter the store, Sebastian Hermes noted his troubled, dour expression and said, “He must have some problem.”

“We all do,” Father Faine said vaguely, opaque in his thoughts.

“Let’s get down to business,” Sebastian said, to him and to Bob Lindy at work at his bench. “I’ve been monitoring the bug I put on the Anarch Peak’s grave and I believe I’ve picked up heartbeats. Very faint and irregular, but my intuition tells me there’s something there; we’re very close.”

“Ought to be worth a million poscreds,” Lindy said.

Sebastian said, “Lotta picked up a good deal of info at the Library. She did us a good job.” He had wondered, in fact, how, given her timidity, she had managed. “I know about all there is to know regarding this Anarch Peak. He was a really great man. Nothing like this Ray Roberts; the complete opposite, actually. We’ll be doing the world a service and in particular the population of the Free Negro Municipality.” He exhaled cigaret smoke vigorously, in agitation; the cigaret in his hand grew longer and longer. “The trouble is,” he declared, “she’s got to go back to the Library again; this time I want all she can get on that nut Ray Roberts.”

“Why?” Bob Lindy asked.

Sebastian gestured for complete attention. “Roberts is both a threat and at the same time potentially our greatest buyer.” He turned to the expert, R.C. Buckley. “Aren’t I right?”

R.C. digested the subject in his mind for a time. “Like you say, we’ll know better if Lotta can get us more background on him; a lot of what you read in the ’papes about TV stars and politicians and religious figures just ain’t so. But yes; I think you’re right. The Anarch founded the Udi cult; it’s reasonable that nobody’ll want him as badly as they.” He concluded, “Of course, as you point out they may kill him again right away.”

“Is that our worry?” Lindy said. “What they do with Anarch after they get him isn’t our affair; our responsibility ends when we transfer ownership and collect the fee.”

Cheryl Vale, listening, said, “That’s awful. The Anarch was such a good man.”

“Wait, wait,” Sebastian said. “Wait for what Lotta brings back from the Library. Maybe Roberts isn’t that bad. Maybe we can do perfectly legal, ethical business with him.” His instinct—that they had on their hands a possibly monumental strike—remained undimmed.

Father Faine said, “Lotta isn’t going to enjoy that, having to go back to the Library again. That place has traumatized her.”

“She did it once,” Sebastian said. “And it didn’t kill her.” But underneath he felt guilt; maybe he should go himself. But— the Library baffled him, too. Perhaps, he reflected moodily, that was why he had dispatched his wife to do the research job in the first instance . . . his job, actually. And Lotta would know it; yet still she went.

That quality in her made her appealing. And yet it offered a way by which to take advantage of her, a way he had to guard against and decline. The decision lay with him, not with her. Sometimes he declined successfully and other times, as in the case of the Library, he yielded to his own fears; he spared himself and let her suffer. And for this he periodically hated himself . . . as, to a certain extent, he did now.

“One thing,” Father Faine was saying, “that may not have occurred to you, Sebastian. Allowing for human jealousies, Ray Roberts may resent the rebirth of Anarch Peak, but in his organization there may be those joyfully anticipating Peak’s return.”

“A splinter group,” Sebastian said, mulling.

“Through your police buddy, Officer Tinbane, perhaps you can get in touch with them.” To R.C. Buckley, Father Faine said, “It seems to me that’s your job; that’s what we pay you for.”

“Sure, sure,” R.C. agreed, nodding vigorously; he got out his notebook, made a few jottings. “I’ll look into it.”

Bob Lindy, wearing the earphones of the monitoring device which Sebastian had installed at the Anarch’s grave, said suddenly, “Hey, I think you’re right. I do pick up heartbeats; like you say, irregular and weak, but they’re getting stronger.”

“Let me listen,” R.C. Buckley said, going over to Lindy impatiently. He, too, like Sebastian, scented the quarry. “Yep,” he agreed, after a time; he removed the earphones, offered them to Father Faine.

Sebastian said abruptly, “Let’s go dig him up; let’s not wait.”

“It’s against the law,” Father Faine reminded him, “to do any excavating prior to hearing the actual and perfect very voice.”

“Laws,” R.C. said disgustedly. “Okay, Father, if you want to obey the letter of the law let’s contact Ray Roberts; according to law we have the right to sell to the highest bidder. That’s established business practice, in this business.”

At the store’s vidphone, Cheryl Vale called to Sebastian. “Mr. Hermes, I have a long-distance call for you personally.” She put her hand over the receiver. “I don’t know who it is. All I know is that the call originated in Italy.”

“Italy,” Sebastian said, puzzled. To R.C. Buckley he said, “Take a look in our inventory card-file and see if we own anybody of Italian extraction.” He walked over beside Miss Vale and took the receiver from her. “This is Sebastian Hermes,” he said. “Who am I speaking to?”

To him, as to Cheryl Vale, the face on the small screen was unfamiliar. A Caucasian with long, neatly waved black hair and an intense, thorough gaze. “You don’t know me, Mr. Hermes,” the man said, “and up to now I have never had the pleasure of speaking to you.” He had a mild Italian accent and his speech was formal, measured. “Nice talking to you, sir.”

“Nice talking to you, too,” Sebastian said. “You are Signor—”

“Tony,” the dark-haired Italian said. “Never mind my last name; at the moment it isn’t important. We understand, Mr. Hermes, that you own rights to the late Anarch Peak. Or the
formerly
late Anarch Peak, if that’s the case. Which is it, Mr. Hermes?”

Sebastian hesitated, then said, “Yes, my firm owns the rights to the individual in question. Are you in the market for him?”

“Very much so,” Tony said.

“May I ask whom you represent?”

“An interested principal,” Tony said. “Not connected with Udi. And that’s important. You understand, don’t you, that Ray Roberts is a killer and it is essential to keep the Anarch Peak out of his hands? That there is a law both in the Western United States and in Italy which makes it a felony to transfer ownership of an old-born to anyone you reasonably anticipate might harm him? Are you conscious of this, Mr. Hermes?”

“I’ll let you talk to Mr. Buckley,” Sebastian said, nettled; this part of the enterprise was not his pipe of sogum. “He’s our sales representative; just a moment.” He passed the receiver to R.C., who at once sprang into action.

“R.C. Buckley here,” he intoned. “Uh, yes, Tony; your source of info is accurate; we do have the Anarch Peak in our inventory; he’s currently recovering from rebirth pains at the finest hospital we could locate for him. Naturally I can’t tell you its name; you understand that.” He winked at Sebastian. “May I ask, sir, what your source of information is? We’ve kept this matter somewhat private . . . because of various conflicting interests involved; as an instance Ray Roberts, whom I believe you mentioned.” He paused, waiting.

Sebastian thought,
How could anybody know?
Only the six of us here, our organization, know. Lotta, he thought, then. She knows, too. Could she have told anyone? Well, it had to come to light eventually, if they expected to sell the Anarch. But this soon, before they had actual physical custody—this made it imperative, he realized, to get the Anarch out of the ground with no delay, law or no law. I’ll bet it was Lotta, he thought. Damn her.

Leading Bob Lindy off to the workshop area of the store, he said to him, “Now we’re forced to go ahead. As soon as R.C. is off the phone get on it and round up Dr. Sign; you and he and Father Faine meet me at Forest Knolls Cemetery; I’m taking off right now.” He felt the urgency of it. “I’ll see you there. And make it quick; explain the situation to Sign.” He slapped Lindy on the back, then strode up the stairs to the roof field parking area, where his aircar reposed.

In a moment he was airborne and on his way to the small, nearly abandoned cemetery where the Anarch Peak lay.

6

Only in a perfect flight from nothingness is Being to be
found in all its purity.

—St. Bonaventura

Forest Knolls, Sebastian thought. The cemetery abandoned by everyone, obviously picked with great care by those who had buried the Anarch. They must have believed Alex Hobart and his theorem that time was about to reverse itself; they— those who loved the Anarch—must have anticipated this exact situation.

He wondered how long and how hard Ray Roberts’ crack corps had hunted for the grave. Not long nor hard enough, evidently.

The cemetery, a brief flickering quad of green, sped by below; Sebastian reversed the flight of his aircar, coasted back down, and came to rest in what had once been a gravel parking area of the cemetery but which now had become overgrown, like the graves, with rank and frightening weeds.

Even in daytime it was a forbidding place. Despite the nascent life beneath the ground potentially crying out for aid. Then shall the eyes of the blind be opened, he thought in quotation from some vaguely remembered portion of the Bible. And the tongues of the dead unstopped. A lovely passage; and now so factually, accurately true. Who would have thought? All those centuries, regarded as a pretty and comforting fable by the world’s intellectuals, something to lull people into accepting their fate. The understanding that, as predicted, it would one day be literally true, that it was not a myth—

Making his way past the less impressive gravestones he came at last to the ornate granite monument for Thomas Peak, 1921–1971.

The grave—thank god—remained as he had last seen it. Untouched. No one in sight, no one to witness this illegal act.

Just to be sure, however, he knelt at the grave, clicked on the bullhorn which he used on such occasions, and said into it, “Can you hear me, sir? If so, make a sound.” His voice boomed and echoed; he hoped it would not attract persons passing by the cemetery. Getting out the phones he clamped them to his head, placed the sound-sensitive cup against the earth. Listened.

No response from below. A dismal wind stirred the wild, irregular tufts of grass, the wilderness of this little peripheral cemetery. . . . He moved the listening cup about, here and there over the grave, straining to pick up something, some response. None.

From several yards off, a different grave entirely, he heard a weak voice issuing from beneath the sod. “I can hear you, mister; I’m alive and I’m shut up down here; it’s all dark. Where am I?” Panic in the dim, lonely voice. Sebastian sighed; he had awakened, by use of the bullhorn, some other deader. Well, that would have to be attended to, too; he owed it to the trapped old-born person suffocating in the coffin. He walked over to the active grave, knelt there, placed the listening cup to the ground, although really it was unnecessary.

“Don’t be frightened, sir,” Sebastian said into the bullhorn. “I am up here and aware of your plight. We’ll get you out, soon.”

“But—” the voice quavered, ebbing and fading. “Where am I? What is this place?”

“You have been buried,” Sebastian explained; he was accustomed to this: each job his firm handled called for this odd little interval between the time the deader awakened and the time they had him up and out . . . and yet he had never gotten used to it. “You died,” he explained, “and were buried, and now time has reversed itself, and you’re alive again.”

“Time?” the voice echoed. “Pardon? I—don’t understand; time for what? Can’t I get out of here? I don’t like it here; I want to go back to my bed in my room at La Honda General.”

The last memories. Of hospitalization, which had proved terminal. Sebastian said into the bullhorn, “Listen to me, sir. Very shortly we will have equipment and men here to get you out; try to breathe as little of the air as possible. try not to use it up. Can you relax? Try.”

“My name,” the voice called up quaveringly, “is Harold Newkom, and I’m a war vet; I get preference. I don’t think you ought to treat a war vet like this.”

“Believe me,” Sebastian said, “it’s not my fault.” I had to undergo it, too, he thought somberly; I remember how it felt. Waking up in darkness in the Tiny Place, as it’s called. And some of them, he reflected, bleating without getting any response . . . because the system is all tied up by the goddam bureaucratic laws passed in Sacramento, laws that bind and hamper us, obsolete laws, damn them.

He rose stiffly to his feet—he was not becoming young fast enough—and made his way back to the Anarch’s tomb.

When Bob Lindy and Dr. Sign and Father Faine arrived, he said to them, “We’ve got a live one we have to handle first.” He showed them the grave, and Bob Lindy at once sent his drill driving furiously into the hard-packed soil, bringing down essential air. So that was that; the rest would be routine.

Standing beside him, Dr. Sign said sardonically, “This is lucky. You now have an excuse for being here if the cops come by. You were visiting the cemeteries in your usual rounds and you heard this man . . . correct?” He returned to the grave; now dirt was flying in all directions as Lindy operated the autonomic diggers. Turning again toward Sebastian Hermes he called, over the noise of the diggers, “I think you’re making a big mistake, from a medical standpoint, digging Peak up now while he’s still dead. It’s risky; it interferes with the natural process of reconstitution of the biochemical entity. We’ve been told all about that; if the body comes up too soon he ceases to mend; it’s got to be
down there,
in the dark, cold, away from the light.”

“Like yoghurt,” Bob Lindy said.

Dr. Sign continued, “And in addition it’s bad luck.”

“‘Bad luck,’” Sebastian echoed, amused.

“He’s right,” Bob Lindy said. “There’s supposed to be a release of the forces of death, when you dig up a deader prematurely. The forces get loose in the world when they shouldn’t, and they always come to rest on one person.”

“Who?” Sebastian said. But he knew the superstition; he had heard this all before. The curse fell on the person who had dug the deader up.

“It’ll be on you,” Bob Lindy said; he grimaced and grinned.

“We’ll bury him again,” Sebastian said. The diggers had stopped now; Lindy hung over the shallow pit, groping for the rim of the coffin. “In the basement. Under the Flask of Hermes Vitarium.” He came over; he and Dr. Sign and Father Faine helped Lindy drag up the damp, moldering coffin.

“From a religious standpoint,” Father Faine said to Sebastian, as Lindy expertly unscrewed the lid of the coffin, “it’s a violation of God’s moral law. Rebirth must come in its own time; you, of all of us, ought to know that—since you underwent this yourself.” He opened his prayer book, to begin his recitation over Mr. Harold Newkom. “My text for today,” he declared, “is from
Ecclesiastes.
‘Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days.’” He gave Sebastian a severe look and then continued.

Leaving the others at their various subdivisions of the job, Sebastian Hermes wandered about the graveyard, in his usual fashion, yearning, reaching out, listening . . . but this time as before he found himself drawn toward one grave, to the one place which mattered. Back to the ornate granite monument of the Anarch Thomas Peak; he could not keep away from it.

They’re right, he thought. Doc Sign and Father Faine; it’s a hell of a medical risk and an outright breaking of the law: not just God’s law but the civil code. I know all that, he thought; they don’t have to tell me. My own crew, he thought gloomily, and they’re not backing me up.

Lotta will, he realized. That, he could always count on: her support. She would understand; he couldn’t risk
not
digging the Anarch up. To leave him here was to invite Ray Roberts’ Offspring of Might in for a murder. A good excuse, he thought wryly. I can rationalize it: it’s for the Anarch’s safety.

Just how dangerous, he wondered once more, is Ray Roberts? We still don’t know; we’re still going on ’pape articles.

Returning to his parked aircar he dialed his home phone number.

“Hello,” Lotta’s small-girl voice sounded, intimidated by the phone; then she saw him and smiled. “Another job?” She could see the graveyard behind him. “I hope this is a valuable one.”

Sebastian said, “Listen, honey—I hate to do this to you, but I don’t have the time to do it myself; we’re all tied up here with this job, and after him—” He hesitated. “Then we’ve got another waiting,” he said, not telling her who it would be.

“What would you like?” She listened attentively.

“Another research assignment at the Library.”

“Oh.” She managed—nearly—not to show her dismay. “Yes, I’d be glad to.”

“This time we want to know the story on Ray Roberts.”

“I’ll do it,” Lotta said, “if I can.”

“How do you mean, if you can?”

Lotta said, “I get—an anxiety attack there.”

“I know,” he said, and felt the fullness of his injury to her.

“But I guess I can do it one more time.” She nodded, drably.

“Remember, absolutely remember,” he said, “to stay away from that monster Mavis McGuire.” If you can, he thought.

All at once Lotta brightened. “Joe Tinbane just now did a research of Ray Roberts. Maybe I can get it from him.” Her face showed utter, blissful relief. “I won’t have to go there, then.”

“Agreed,” Sebastian said. Why not? It made sense, the Los Angeles police researching Roberts; after all, the man was about to show up in their jurisdictional area. Tinbane probably had everything there was; to be harsh about it, he had probably done—God forbid, but it was undoubtedly true—he had done a better job at the Library than Lotta could ever do.

As he rang off he thought, I hope to hell she can get hold of Joe Tinbane. But he doubted it; the police were undoubtedly extremely busy right now; Tinbane was probably tied up for the rest of the day.

He had a feeling that Lotta was in for bad luck; very soon and in large measure. And, thinking that, he flinched; he felt it for her.

And felt even more guilty.

Walking back to his crew of employees at the open grave he said, “Let’s try to get this one wrapped up fast. So we can get on to the important one.” He had definitely made up his mind; they would exhume the body of the Anarch, now, on this trip.

He hoped he would not live to regret it. But he had a deep and abiding hunch that he would.

And yet still—to him, at least—it seemed like the best thing to do. He could not shake that conviction.