Dayworld

by Philip José Farmer

  However, despite one-hundred-percent literacy and free lifelong education if you wanted it, nine-tenths of the viewers had never heard of Ajax, the first human lightning rod, and most of the others did not care about him. The moral was lost, and the art was, Caird thought, tacky.

  He went up a pneumatic elevator to the top floor and got off at the entrance to the Zenith Restaurant at 11:26. He told the maître d’ that his reservation had been made by Commissioner Horn. The maître d’ tapped three keys; the screen displayed Caird’s face and some lines of bio-data.

  “Very well, Inspector Caird. Follow me.”

  The Zenith was very elegant and select. Six musicians on a podium played softly, and the conversation was in low tones. That is, it was until Anthony Horn rose from her table to greet him. She strode toward him, arms out, her orange-and-purple robe flapping in her wake. “Jeff, darling!”

  The other diners looked up or flinched or both as her voice boomed out. Then he was enfolded in silk, perfume, and abundant flesh. Looking down her breasts was like looking along the curve of twin planets from forty thousand feet up. He did not mind having his face pressed against them, even though it was undignified. For a brief moment, he was happy and secure in the bosom of the Great Mother Herself.

  She released him and smiled, showing big white teeth. Then she turned and led him by the hand to the table in the meat-eaters’ section. She was six inches higher than his six feet three, though her high heels accounted for four of the inches. Her shoulders and hips were broad; her waist, very narrow. Her golden hair was piled high in a coiffure shaped like an eighteenth-century tricorn hat, all the fashion just now. Huge golden earrings, each inset with the Chinese ideogram for “horn,” dangled from small close-set ears.

  They sat down, and she leaned against the table, her breasts extending like two white wolfhounds eager for release so they could chase the prey. Her big deep-blue eyes connected with his. In a much lower tone, she said, “We have a big bad problem, Jeff.”

  His eyebrows rose. He said, softly, “The government’s found out about us?”

  “Not yet. We…”

  She stopped what she was going to say because the waiter, a tall, turbaned, bearded Sikh, had appeared. They were busy ordering drinks and looking at the printed menus for a while. The Zenith was too elegant to display the menus on wall strips. When the waiter had left, Horn said, “You know about Doctor Chang Castor?”

  He nodded. “He hasn’t escaped?”

  “Yes, he has.”

  Caird grunted as if he had been hit in the solar plexus, but just then the waiter brought his wine and Horn’s gin, and two minutes later, a folding table and two trays with dishes of food. It did not take long to fill an order. The food was precooked anywhere from last Tuesday to two subyears ago, stoned, and so kept in perfect state. Destoned, it only needed warming and putting on the plate.

  They chatted about their families until the waiter left. Caird jerked a thumb at the waiter’s back.

  “He’s an informer?”

  “Yes. I used my connections and a code I’m not supposed to have to identify the informers here. The place isn’t bugged, though, and there are no directional mikes. Too many bigshots eat here.”

  She cut into her steak and chewed on a small piece. “I…it’s not just that you’re an organic and we can work through you. It’s much more personal…involved…for you.”

  After swallowing the meat, she sipped at her gin. The moderation told Caird that she was deeply shaken. Any other time, she would have half-emptied her tall glass before the food was served. Obviously, she was afraid of dulling her wits.

  Chang Castor was an immer and a brilliant scientist, head of the physics department at the Retsall Advanced Institute. He had always been eccentric, but, when he had begun showing signs of mental sickness, the immer organization had acted at once. It had framed him so that he seemed to be much more mentally unstable than he really was at the time. He had been committed to an institution that, though owned by the government, was secretly controlled by immers. There, Castor had quickly slid into deep psychotic quicksand in which it seemed that he would stick until he died. Fourteenth-century medical science, for all its advances, was unable to pull him out.

  Caird remembered a lunch with Horn at another place when she had told him that Castor believed that he was God.

  “He’s an atheist,” Caird had said.

  “Was. Well, in a sense, he still is. He says that the universe was formed through sheer chance. But its structure is such that it finally and inevitably, after many eons, gave birth to God. Himself, Castor. Who has now ordained matters so that there is no such thing as chance. Everything that happens from the moment his Godhood was crystallized—which also happened by chance, the last time that chance existed in the universe—everything that happened from that moment is fixed by him. Capital Him, by the way. He insists on being addressed as Your Divinity or O Great Jehovah.

  “Anyway, he says that there was no God until he came along. So he divides cosmic time into two eras—B.G., that is, Before God. And A.G., After God. He will tell you the precise second when the new chronology began even if you don’t ask him.”

  That conversation had taken place three obyears ago.

  Anthony Horn said, softly, “God hates you.”

  Caird said, “What?”

  “Don’t look so confused and guilty. By God I mean Castor, of course. Castor hates you, and he’s out to get you. That’s why I had to call you in on this.”

  “Why? I mean…why does he hate me? Because I was the one who arrested him?”

  “You got it.”

  The whole operation had been immer-directed and immer-controlled. Horn, a lieutenant-general then, had given him private orders to take Castor into custody. Caird had gone to the neighborhood of the Retsall Institute. By chance, or so it seemed, he had been handy when the frame had been put into action. Two other immers had smashed up the laboratory but blamed it on Castor. By then the victim was raving and had attacked the two because of his fury at the put-up job. Caird had taken him to the nearest hospital as organic routine required him to. But, shortly thereafter, the courts having been advised by Dr. Naomi Atlas, also an immer, Castor was transferred to the Tamasuki Experimental Psychicist Hospital on West Forty-ninth Street. Since then, no one had seen him except for Atlas and three first-class nurses. Only Atlas was allowed to talk to him.

  “It could have been someone else,” Horn said. “Anyone who arrested him. It was your bad luck to be the one.”

  She sipped at her gin, put the glass down, and said quietly, “In a way, he’s a Manichaean. He’s split the universe into good and evil, just as he split time. Evil is the tendency of the cosmos to revert to chance in its operations. But chance has to be directed…”

  “How in hell could chance be directed?”

  Horn shrugged. “Don’t ask me. Who am I to question God? You don’t expect conventional logic from a crazy, do you? Castor has no trouble reconciling his schizophrenic contradictions. In that, he’s far from being alone. What matters is what he thinks. In his divine wisdom and perception, he knows that you are the Secret and Malignant Director of Chance. He refers to you as Satan, The Great Beast, Beelzebub, Angra Mainyu, and a dozen other names. He’s said that he will find you, vanquish you, and hurl you howling and with utter ruin and complete combustion into the deepest pit.”

  “Why wasn’t I told about this before?”

  “Don’t look so indignant. People will notice. Because there was no need for it. You know we try to keep all communication at a minimum. I was the only one to hear about Castor from Atlas, and that was at parties or social functions and not much was said about it then.”

  Tony was silent for a moment. Then she leaned forward again and spoke even more softly.

  “The orders are to stone him and hide the body if it’s possible. If not, kill him.”

  Caird gave a slight start, and he sighed.

  “I knew it would come to this
someday.”

  “I hate it,” Tony said. “But it’s for the common good.”

  “Of the immers, you mean.”

  “Everybody’s. Castor is hopelessly insane, and he’s dangerous to anyone who gets in his way.”

  “I’ve never killed anybody,” Caird said.

  “You can do it. I can do it.”

  He shook his head. “Our psych tests showed that we could, but they’re not one hundred percent accurate. I won’t know until I either must do it or can’t do it.”

  “You will. You’ll catch him, and you’ll do what must be done. Listen, Jeff…”

  She put one hand on his and stared into his eyes. He stiffened.

  “I…”

  She cleared her throat.

  “I got the decision on… Ariel…from the council today. I’m sorry, really sorry, Jeff. But …”

  “She’s been rejected!”

  She nodded. “They say she’s too unstable. The psych projection is that she’d be burdened with too much social conscience. She’d break eventually and confess all to the authorities. Or, if she didn’t, she’d have a mental breakdown.”

  “They don’t really know, they don’t really know,” he murmured.

  “They know enough. They can’t take the chance.”

  “There’s no use appealing right now,” he said harshly. “Not in a case like this. Tell me. Was the decision final or will they reconsider in five years? After all, Ariel’s only twenty. She could mature.”

  “You can try again then. The psych projection, however…”

  “That’s enough,” he said. “Are you finished?”

  “Please, Jeff. It’s not that bad. Ariel will be just as happy if she isn’t an immer.”

  “I won’t, but I suppose that doesn’t matter. They reject Ozma and now Ariel.”

  “You knew that might happen when you became one. Everything was laid out for you.”

  “Is that all? You’re done?”

  “Kill the messenger who brings bad news. Come on, Jeff!”

  He patted her hand. “You’re right, I’m wrong. It’s just that…I feel so bad for her.”

  “And for you.”

  “Yes. May I leave now?”

  “Yes. Oh, Jeff. Don’t cry!”

  He pulled a tissue from his shoulderbag and wiped the tears.

  “I think you want to be alone for a while, Jeff.”

  She rose, and he got up from his chair. She preceded him, since her rank was higher. When she stopped so the data clerk could put the bill into her ID star, he went on, saying softly, “I’ll see you, Tony.”

  “Don’t forget to report,” she called after him.

  He asked through his wrist radio for an organic-car ride back to the station. Told he would have to wait twenty minutes for one, he flagged down a cab. So it would cost him a few credits. After he got in, though, he wished that he had waited. He was losing the battle to hold back more tears; he could have let loose in the unchauffeured vehicle.

  By the time he arrived at the station, he was dry-eyed. He went to his office and reported to Wallenquist, who was curious about his meeting with Horn but did not dare ask too many questions.

  Gril had disappeared as completely as if he had slipped down into the ancient abandoned subway-sewer system. Which he might have done. Ten patrollers and a sergeant were searching for him now in the deepest known area beneath Yeshiva University. So far, they had found only a bashed-in human skull, which did not look fresh, some huge rats, and two almost unreadable lines in twenty-first-century spelling on a wall.

  I HATE GRAFFITI

  I DO TOO AND HIS BROTHER LUIGI IS A REAL PRICK.

  Rootenbeak had escaped like a rabbit into a briar patch.

  His relief, Detective-Inspector Barnewolt, came in at three. Caird brought her up to date, and they talked for a while about the efforts by the young to bring back into fashion the wearing of trousers.

  “I don’t like them,” Barnewolt said. “The kind of pants they’re wearing, they’re too tight, too form-fitting. I tried on some, and they made me feel embarrassed. I don’t know. There’s something immoral about them.”

  Caird laughed, and he said, “Wednesday, I hear, has been wearing pants for some time now, both young and old.”

  Barnewolt shrugged. “Well, you know how those people are.”

  6.

  Caird rode his bicycle home, checked in on Ozma at her studio, found her painting a wasp, and went into the house. After watching a news report—nothing new—he went into the basement and worked out on the exerciser. He showered and put on a white sheer blouse, an orange waistband, a removable white neck-ruff, and an emerald-green kilt. When Ozma came in, he had her paint his legs yellow. His curled-toe ankle-high shoes were crimson. After they ate, he put on some lipstick and selected a wide-brimmed hat with a high conical top sporting a crimson artificial feather.

  Ozma wore a white cap with a long red bill, factory-grown eagle feathers dangling from holders in her earlobes, green eye makeup, green lipstick, rouged cheeks, a loose sheer blouse, a shimmering green hooped skirt that reached to her ankles, sequined red stockings, and Kelly-green high-heeled shoes. Many finger rings and a scarlet umbrella completed her ensemble.

  “Where’s yours?” she said.

  “My what?”

  “Your umbrella.”

  “The weathercaster said it wasn’t going to rain.”

  “You know what I mean,” she said. “Umbrellas are obligatory for evening wear.”

  “I suppose it’ll make you unhappy if I don’t take one.”

  “Not unhappy. I’ll just feel embarrassed.”

  “And you’re the wild unconventional artist,” he said. “Very well.”

  At seven, they left the house, each carrying a big shoulderbag, and they got into a taxi. By the time they arrived, the huge museum lobby was packed with guests, all holding cocktails or stronger drinks, standing in close groups and chattering or wandering from group to group. The phatic lines of communion, as a twentieth-century anthropologist had called them, were functioning well. Everybody was talking and nobody was listening.

  After greeting their hosts, Caird and Wang joined a gaggle of Goalists. Bored by them, Caird went to a pride of Pressurists and Ozma to a soup of Supernaturalists. The latter group was not painters interested in the hereafter but a new school which insisted that its subjects had to be shown realistically not only on the exterior but also on the interior. Thus, one side of the faces of their human subjects would show what the eye saw. The other half was slices of the deeps, as they called it, the skin removed, the skull removed, the brain shown, the inside of the brain shown, and the back-brain a shadowy presence.

  Caird could not see any merit or value in Supernaturalism, but he did not argue with Ozma about it. What did he know of art? Besides, it made her happy, though there were times when he got tired of her talking about it.

  At ten-thirty, the party was just reaching its climax. Ozma had been induced to paint her host. He stood nude in the middle of the lobby while she improvised the designs. Caird, far back in the crowd, wondered if she would somehow make the host look like a grasshopper.

  “There’s a call for you, Inspector,” a waiter said. “The strip near the door as you go into the Absolute Zero Room.”

  Caird thanked him and went through the doorway indicated into a vast dark-blue and very cold room containing many stoned ice-sculptures. The strip just around the corner showed the face and torso of Commissioner-General Anthony Horn.

  “I’m sorry to pull you away from the party, Jeff.”

  “Don’t be. What is it?”

  She swallowed and said, “Naomi Atlas has been murdered.”

  Lightning seemed to leap within his brain. He wanted to say, “Castor did it?” but there was always the possibility that the line was being monitored.

  “Her body, what was left of it, was found fifteen minutes ago in the bushes in the yard outside the apartment section of the building. I want you�
�” She swallowed again, her face spasmed, and she said, “I want you to come up here and take charge. At once. Find out all you can before midnight, and report your findings to me. I’ve put you in charge because you’re the murder expert in Manhattan. Colonel Topenski isn’t too happy about it, but he’ll cooperate or I’ll have his ass. I told him so.”

  “I’m leaving now,” Caird said.

  “A patroller car will be waiting for you at the main entrance. I’ll give you more details on your way up.”

  Caird went into the lobby, forced his way, though apologizing, through the crowd, and said, “Ozma! Hold it a minute.”

  She stopped applying yellow paint to the host’s buttocks and said, “What’s the matter, Jeff?”

  “I’ve been called in on a case. It’s very urgent.”

  He spoke to the host. “My sincere regrets, but duty calls.”

  “Of course. What is this about?”

  “That’s organic business, though you may see it on the news.”

  He walked to Ozma, kissed her cheek, and said, “I’m sorry. You’ll have to go home without me. I may be kept so long I’ll have to use an institute stoner. I’ll be home in the morning.”

  She smiled and said, “A policeman’s wife is not a happy one.”

  In the car, he called Horn. There was a delay of two minutes before her face appeared on the screen on the back of the front seat. He said, “Fill me in.”

  There were no suspects as yet, and neither he nor Horn could mention Castor. She had at the moment no facts to add to what she had told him in the museum. He knew from her tone that she might have more to tell him when they were alone.

  The yard was bright with the big lamps the organics had set up. Caird muscled through the spectators, showed his badge and ID star, and was admitted into the work party area. He saw Horn at the same time she saw him. She gestured for him to come to her under the big sycamore. She rose from the folding chair as he approached and held out her hand to him. She gripped his strongly and said, softly, “She’s over there.”

  Over there was understatement. Atlas was all over, her head under a bush, a leg nearby, and the other leg stuck into a bush, an arm hanging over a branch, and the limbless torso propped up against a tree trunk. Entrails festooned another bush. Blood had stained the grass and soaked into the earth in the area marked off by string.