Dayworld

by Philip J. Farmer

  Work moved along smoothly if the squabbles and arguments and subtle insults were not considered. These, however, were a part of TV and empathorium-making and to be taken in stride. The first two scenes scheduled for the morning were graphed and regraphed until perfect. Repp had a short but hot dispute with Bakaffa, the government censor, over the use of holographed subtitles. Repp claimed that they distracted the viewer and were not necessary because they had been in so many shows that the audience knew what the archaic words were. Bakaffa insisted that "nigger" and "wop" and "saw-bones" and "accumulation of interest" and "gat" and "rod" and "pansy" and "morphadite" would not be understood by at least half the audience. Whether they did or did not understand these ancient words made no difference. The government required that all such be explained in subtitles.

  Repp lost, but he had the satisfaction of driving Bakaffa close to tears. He was not sadistic. He just wanted to make Bakaffa earn his extra pay as a government informer.

  At ten minutes after one, during the third scene, the main character's left leg suddenly shrank to half its length. The technicians tried to locate the malfunction in the holograph-projector, but they failed because the trouble-shooting equipment had also malfunctioned.

  "OK," Repp said. "It's twenty minutes to lunchtime, anyway. We'll eat now. Maybe the trouble'll be fixed by the time we get back."

  After he had eaten, he strode down the wide corridor of the first floor from the sandwich shop. The sun coming through the story-high windows shone whitely on his Western outfit, and his high heels clickety-clicked loudly. Many recognized him, and some stopped him to get his autograph. He spoke his name and ID number into their recorders, said he was sure glad to meet them, and strode on. There was one embarrassing though not entirely unpleasing incident. A beautiful young woman begged him to take her to his or her apartment and do what he would. He turned her down graciously, but when she got on her knees and put both arms around his legs, he had to call to two organics to pry her loose.

  "No charges," he told them. "Just see that she doesn't impede this pilgrim's progress."

  "I love you, Wyatt!" the woman cried out after him. "Ride me like a pony! Fire me like a six-shooter!"

  Red-faced but grinning as he got on the elevator, Repp muttered, "Jesus Christ!"

  Since he and his wife had agreed to be chaste while they were separated by her Chilean expedition, he had not bedded a woman. He was honest enough to admit to himself that his celibacy had not been based solidly on morality or lack of desire for any but his wife. He needed a rest from sex; he had to recharge his battery, as it were. Though he had a wife on every day but Sunday, more than one on Thursday, and thus each day should have been stimulated afresh, much like a rooster in a barnyard, he was sometimes not up to the freshness and the challenge. His gonads did not use the same system or arithmetic as his mind.

  Feeling good because he was wanted but did not want, he walked into his office and sat down at his desk. Strips displayed messages for him, number-one priority being from his wife, Jane-John. She looked happy because she was coming home next Friday. Stoned, she would be loaded into a plane on Saturday, tomorrow, and delivered to the airport the same day. From there, she would be cargoed via dirigible to the Thirteen-Principles Towers. He was to pick her up next Friday at one in the morning. Or, if he could not make it, she would take a taxi.

  Jane-John Wilford Denpasat was a beautiful dark-skinned woman with depigged blonde hair and depigged blue eyes.

  "I love my work, Wyatt, but it's getting to be a drag because we have to be transported two hundred miles every day from the digs to the nearest stoning station. And I miss you terribly. See you soon, bucko. I can hardly wait."

  Waiting was easy for her despite what she had said. Unconscious people did not fret and fume or get nervous. And, though he would not be stoned every day until next Friday, he would be someone else and so not thinking about her. New Era society did have its disadvantages, but it also had many benefits. Check and balance; tit for tat; give and take; loss and profit.

  Though the strips had not shown a chess move since Tuesday, Repp still felt disappointed that there was none today. He thought of Yankev Gril -Jimmy Cricket-and felt keen regret that their game had had to be dropped. Where was Gril now? Still playing in Washington Square Park? In jail? Stoned and awaiting trial? Or convicted and permanently stoned?

  His other messages concerned business. The most important was a reminder that he was a guest on the ILL Show. He should be in the studio at 7:30, and he would be on at 8:00 sharp.

  No immer had tried to get into contact with him via strip or in person. That omission was, he supposed, good news.

  Chapter 21

  At the end of the workday, Repp taxied home. After working out on a gym set, he showered and then ate a light supper. He arrived at the Thirteen-Principles Towers Building at exactly 7:25 P.M. and was in the studio at 7:30. Here he was made comfortable by the secretary of the host of the ILL Show, Ras Irving Lenin Lundquist. During coffee, he read the strip display that described the guest list and the topics and suggested a few witty remarks he might like to make.

  At 8:40, Repp left the studio. He was satisfied with his performance, though several of Lundquist's remarks had stung him. It was good publicity to be seen on the ILL Show, hosted by the self-styled Gray Monk of the Mind. Lundquist avoided the showy and flamboyant and went for the serious and the intellectual. Instead of dazzling stage scenes and a startling and flashy costume, the studio room was modeled like the host's idea of a medieval monk's cell. Clad in a gray robe, he sat on a chair behind a desk on a platform that was a foot higher than the guests' chairs. Lundquist was thus able to give the impression that he was the inquisitor-general of Spain and that his guests were on trial. During the nasty questions and comments he hurled at Repp, Repp made the studio audience laugh. He asked Lundquist when he was bringing in the rack and the iron maiden. Because the ILL Show audience was composed mostly of the better-educated or those who thought they were, Repp could be assured that it understood the references. That was one of the reasons Repp had exposed himself to the barbs and insults. Another was that he hoped to give as good as or better than he got. Also, it was well known that Lundquist, no matter how he seemed to despise his guests, invited only those he thought had somehow managed to get at least in the neighborhood of his intellectual eminence.

  Lundquist attacked Repp on the premise that his character was insecure and shaky.

  "You seem to be hung up on role-changing and shapeshifting, Ras Repp. I need enumerate only a few of your movies, which reflect this obsession, this compulsion, which, in turn, reflects the basic core of your being. Or perhaps I should say, reflects the lack of stable identity. There are, for instance, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Odyssey, Proteus at Miami, Helen of Troy, and Custer and Crazy Horse: Two Parallels That Met.

  "All these have to do with disguises, hallucinations, or illusions about identity, or changing of shapes and, hence, change of identity or a seeming change. Curiously enough, you are best known as the man who writes the best Westerns. In fact, as the man who resurrected the Western drama, which had been dead for a thousand years. Some say, better dead.

  "Yet those works which have attracted the attention and even the blessing of some art critics have not been Westerns. Except, of course, for your Custer and Crazy Horse. And that is a most curious Western. Custer and Crazy Horse both get the idea that they'll go to a medicine man, get shape-changing powers from the medicine man, adopt each other's shapes, and lead their enemies to their deaths. Of course, neither knows that the other is doing this. Thus, Custer-as-Crazy Horse kills Crazy Horse-as-Custer, and then, unable to change his shape, is killed by whites."

  Lundquist smiled his infamous smile, which had been likened to, among other things, a vagina with teeth.

  "I have it from a reliable source that your current work-inprogress, Dillinger Didn't Die, is based on a remarkably similar idea. In fact, your protagonist, the ancient bank robber,
escapes from the FBI, the organics of the twentieth century, by magically turning into a woman. He does this by getting his moll, I mean, his woman lover, Billie Frechette, an Indian of the Wisconsin Menominee tribe, to take him to the tabu abode of Wabosso, the Great White Hare, the Menominee Trickster. This creature of ancient Indian legend and folk tale gives Dillinger the power to turn into a woman at an appropriate time.

  "And so, when the FBI starts closing in, Dillinger gets Jimmy Lawrence, a petty crook whose days are numbered because of his heart trouble, to pose as him. Then Dillinger becomes Ann Sage, a Chicago madam of a Chicago whorehouse, and has the real Ann Sage kidnaped by friends and taken to Canada. Then, if my informant is correct, Dillinger-as-Ann-Sage goes to the Biograph Theater with Lawrence-as-Dillinger after telling the FBI that they'll be there. The pseudo-Dillinger is shot and killed by the FBI. Dillinger-as-Ann-Sage walks away from the execution."

  Lundquist sneered, and the studio audience laughed loudly.

  "In other words, your protagonist takes the identity of a woman, becomes a woman. I understand that you are planning a sequel, Guns and Gonads ..

  Lundquist sneered again, and the audience laughed even more loudly.

  " ... in which Dillinger has great difficulty with the social, economic, and emotional identity of a woman. Eventually, he adapts, and he even comes to like being a woman. He, she, rather, marries, has children, and then goes back to a life of crime as a female whose gang is composed of her sons and their gunmolls. She has quite a colorful, if violent, career under the name of Ma Barker but is finally killed, her guns blazing in a final but futile gesture of defiance, by the organics.

  "However, my data banker tells me that Ann Sage lived to a ripe old age and certainly did not suffer a rich sea-change of sex or identity. Ma Barker was born in A.D. 1872, whereas Dillinger was born in A.D. 1903. By no stretch of anyone's imagination, except yours, could the two be identical. There is such a thing as carrying artistic license too far, Ras Repp. I suggest that you have carried it off into Cloud-Cuckoo-Land, emphasis on the Cuckoo.

  "Still, these two lived so long ago that historical anachronism is of little importance. In which case, why didn't you drag Robin Hood in? Though I suppose that he would have turned out to be Maid Marian!"

  The audience hooted and roared.

  "Do not all these repetitions ofa theme, your inability to use a different idea, your constant hammering at the problem of identity, betray your insecurity and doubts about your own identity? Doesn't that undoubted mental instability require examination by the government psychicists?"

  The audience was in an uproar. Repp was taken aback by this unexpected disclosure about his drama. While he should have been thinking about his reply, he was wondering which of his colleagues had leaked the information about the movie.

  As the cries and boos trailed away, he decided that he would have to start his own inquisition next Friday. After work hours, of course. Meanwhile, he had better take care of Lundquist.

  He rose from the chair, stuck his thumbs in his big belt, and swaggered across the platform to the "pulpit." Standing, he was able to stare down at Lundquist despite the host's elevated chair. Lundquist was still smiling, but he blinked furiously. He did not like having to look up at his guest.

  "Pilgrim, those are hard words, and I'm glad you smiled when you said them. Now, if these were the old days, I'd punch you in the nose."

  Lundquist and the audience gasped.

  "But these are nonviolent and civilized times. I've contracted not to sue you for anything you say about me. And you can't sue me, either. It's a no-holds-barred, kick-in-the-nuts-or-what-have-you, gouge-eyes-out, half-alligator, half-bear-wrestling-and-ear-chewing show. Verbally, that is.

  "So, I say you're a liar and a word-twister and a fact-bender. Out of sixty movies I've made, only nine have been about shape-changing and role-exchanging. Any fool can see that I'm not hung up or obsessed with the problem of identity. Any fool but you, I reckon. As for your careless and malicious remark about my mental instability, if I did have a screw loose, I would've popped you one. See how calm I am? See this hand? Is it shaking? It's not, but if it did, who'd blame me?

  "What I am, Ras Lundquist, is the Bach of the drama. I play infinite variations on a single theme."

  "Bach is turgid," Lundquist said, sneering.

  All in all, it was a good show. The viewers were delighted with the violence of the dialog and enchanted by the threat of physical violence. According to the monitor, exactly 200,300,181 were watching the show. It would be rerun next Friday so that those who were now sleeping could get a chance to view it.

  Repp walked out jauntily into the corridor, stopped for a while to say his name into the recorders thrust at him by fans, and then swaggered to the elevator. He taxied to his apartment, drank a bourbon, and went to bed. At 11:02, he was awakened by the alarm strip. After setting up his dummy and changing clothes, he put his bag over his shoulder and went down to the basement to get a bike from the vehicle-pool. The air was warmer than it had been the previous evening; another heat wave was heading toward Manhattan. A few light clouds were moving slowly eastward. The streets were almost empty. Several organic cars passed him. The occupants looked at him but went on. On the sidewalks were stacks of one-foot cubes, the compacted and stoned garbage-trash put out by Friday's

  State Cleaning Corps. Saturday's would pick it up. Aside from infrequent data, the only thing passed on from one day to the next was garbage-trash. The cubes had several uses, one of which was as building blocks. It was said, with only some exaggeration, that half of the housing in Manhattan was garbage. "So, what's changed?" was the usual retort.

  At 11:20 P.M., Repp stopped in front of an apartment building on Shinbone Alley. He looked around the brightly illuminated area before going down the ramp leading to the basement. He did not want to be seen entering the building by organics. They might think that he was just a late-coming tenant, but they also stopped every seventh person they saw out this late for a quick checkup.

  No vehicle was in sight, and he could not hear the singing of tires on pavement. He turned and rode down the well-lighted ramp to its end and into the bicycle garage. After putting the bicycle in a rack, he walked toward the elevator door, twice kicking trash on the floor. "Damn weedies!" he muttered. He stopped and took from the bag his Saturday's star-disc. It was not supposed to open the elevator door until after midnight, but he had made alterations to admit him. Though not a professional electronics technician, he had taken enough courses to be one.

  Just as he inserted the tip into the hole, he heard a low voice behind him. He jumped, pulling the tip from the hole, and whirled. "Jesus, you scared me!" he shouted. "Where'd you come from? Why'd you sneak up on me like that?"

  The man gestured with a thumb at the four empty emergency cylinders at the far end of the garage. "Sorry," he said in a low gravelly voice. "I had to get near enough to make sure who you were."

  He wore an orange tricorn hat and light-purple robe decorated with black cloverleaf figures, the uniform of Friday's organic patrollers. For a second, Repp had thought that he was done for. All was lost unless he could get the gun in his bag out in time to use it. The intruder was too big for Repp to tackle with only his hands. And he would have shot the man. He had not had time to think about the consequences of the act. His desperation would have taken over him as if he were a robot.

  What had kept him from going for his weapon was that the man was alone. Organics always traveled by twos. So this one must be an immer.

  "As soon as you get your color back, I'll give you the message," the man said. "By the way, that was a good show you gave tonight. You really told that snobbish bastard."

  Repp's heart was slowing down, and he could breathe almost normally. He said, "If you know me, why'd you come up so quietly?"

  "I told you I had to make sure. You aren't in your Western outfit."

  "What's the message?"

  "This evening, at 10:02 P.M., the or
ganics observed and pursued a wanted daybreaker, Morning Rose Doubleday. I was told that you will know of her. Ras Doubleday fled and took refuge in a house that, unfortunately, was next to the house where a woman named Snick, Panthea Snick, had been hidden after she had been stoned.

  "When the woman, Doubleday, was cornered in this house, she refused to surrender. She committed suicide by detonating a minibomb implanted in her body. The resulting explosion not only killed the organics pursuing her and the family then occupying the house, but also destroyed the buildings on both sides."

  "Why didn't I hear it?" Repp said. "Where did this take place?"

  "That's not relevant," the man said, "but it was on West Thirty-fifth Street. Message continued.

  "During the search of the wrecked buildings, the organics found the stoned body of Snick. They destoned her, and she told her story."

  The man paused and looked at Repp as if he expected him to say something. When Repp shook his head, the man said, "I guess you know what that means. I don't. Message continued. All immers will be or have been notified that Snick is again a grave danger to us. Her description is being passed on. I was told that I didn't have to give it to you.

  "All immers are to keep a lookout for Panthea Snick. If she can be killed without attracting attention, she is to be killed at once and the body disposed of. The council suggests putting it in a G-T compacter.

  "If the situation is such that she can't be killed on the spot, whoever sees her will notify his contacts, and they will go after her. You will pass on this message to all your contacts, and you will describe her. You will do this every day until you are told to stop."

  The man paused again and said, "It was assumed that her mission was the search for and arrest of Morning Rose Doubleday. But since she is still conducting a search, that assumption may not be correct. It is possible that she had a multipurpose mission and that Doubleday was only one mission. Or it may be that she is looking for other members of Doubleday's organization, though the organics have received no such report from Snick. That is, the lower echelons of the organics have received no such report or data. She must have transmitted data to today's higher officials that has resulted in permission to continue her mission, whatever that is. And she will transmit this to tomorrow's officials.