"What does it matter to you?" Mudge said. "You were getting away free, and the family was safe."
His rapier whispered as it was pulled from the scabbard.
"Come quietly with us, Ohm. There's no one else here, and you can't fight us. If you do, I'll have an excuse to kill you here and now."
"Is she dead?"
Mudge smiled and said, "You'll never know."
"The hell I won't!" Charlie yelled. He sprang forward, reached across his stomach with his left hand, and snatched the blade from the scabbard of the courtier dummy. "En garde, you son of a bitch!"
Mudge's smile became even broader. "You stupid weedie, it's two against one. You may be a pretty good fencer, Bela said you were, but you're a drunk and even a world champion couldn't stand against two good fencers. I'm not bad, and Bela he's an Olympic silver medalist. Put the sword down, Ohm, and take your medicine like a man."
Mudge looked as if he were enjoying the coming attraction of combat to the death. The other man also seemed to be relishing it. So much for seven generations of government conditioning against the impulses and use of violence.
It would take five seconds, maybe more, for Bela to rзach him. By that time, his intended victim should be even further away. Yelling, his voice seemingly reinforced by the shouts of the others in him-especially Jim Dunski and Jeff Caird-he pushed over the figure from which he had taken the sword. It fell toward Mudge, causing him to step back. Then Ohm had leaped over the figure and was on Mudge. Moving swiftly in the position required, he thrust for Mudge's face. This was a target forbidden in fencing, but he hoped that Mudge, not being used to such an attack, would not react in time. Mudge, however, parried and then thrust for his enemy's upper sword arm. Ohm riposted and leaped back out of the seventeenth-century exhibit area. Mudge advanced. With his right arm, Ohm toppled another figure, The Stockbroker, at Mudge.
He ran toward the railing and vaulted over it with his right arm to the escalator. Bela Wang Horvath and Janos Ananda Mudge stood side by side for a moment. Horvath said something to his partner, who nodded, turned, and ran toward the corner of the recess. Horvath ran toward the opposite corner. They were going to cut him off and move in on him from his front and back.
He went over the railing back into the recess and ran toward Mudge past the figures of The Mail Carrier, The Bald Man, and The Diplomat. Mudge stopped, whirled, and assumed a defensive position.
Mudge was grinning. Ohm grinned back at him. From the moment he had yelled, he had lost all doubts and fears. He seemed to have the strength of seven, a hallucination, no doubt, but his adrenaline was pumping through him. And he wanted to kill. Not just anybody. Mudge.
Their blades clashed and rang again and again. Though the rapier was heavier and stiffer than the foil, it felt to Ohm as light as balsa and as supple as a feather. Cold fury and the combined self-survival drive of seven men powered him. Mudge was an excellent fencer. But he had several disadvantages, one being that it was difficult for a right-handed fencer to duel with a left-handed fencer. The lines of target were changed, making it hard to aim at them. The sinister-handed fencer was also in the same reversed position, but he was more used to it.
After a brief engagement, Ohm leaped back, transferred the rapier to his right hand to confuse Mudge, attacked, was beaten back, was nicked in the shoulder, and transferred the rapier to his left hand. Mudge attacked. Ohm parried with a slight movement of the bell guard, deflecting Mudge's point. At the same time, Ohm directed his point so that Mudge, who kept moving forward, received the point in his right forearm. It slid under the ulna, or outer bone, and came out beyond it.
Ohm stepped back, yanking the sword from the wound. Mudge's hand opened. His rapier dropped. Ohm moved forward. Mudge staggered back into the figure of The Senator. It toppled over, and Mudge fell backward over it. He started to get up, but Ohm stepped up to him and ran his sword through Mudge's other forearm.
Hearing the sounds of boots behind him, Ohm whirled. He brought the tip of the sword up and then down into a defensive position, ready to meet Horvath's attack. He had turned so swiftly and whipped his rapier around so fast that it acted like a whip. A drop of blood was flicked from its end into Horvath's right eye, disorienting him for a split-second. That was enough for Ohm, who seemed to see everything as if it were in a slow-motion film. He noted every meaningful detail; he was prepared by years of training to take advantage of every weakness or off-balance of his opponent. His rapier beat Horvath's aside just far enough and long enough for him to send his blade through the man's thigh.
Horvath jumped back, Ohm's blade withdrawing from the flesh, followed by a gush of blood. Ohm attacked but could not for a moment get past Horvath's desperate but effective parries. Coolly, knowing that Horvath was weakening with every pump of blood, Ohm pressed him. Horvath, as was inevitable, bumped into a figure. The Soldier fell over, causing Horvath to fall onto the floor on his back. The Soldier knocked over The Oil Driller, which toppled The Insurance Salesperson, which knocked over The Mafia Gangster, which felled The Publisher, which toppled The Loan Shark, which knocked over The Marxist. The last in the domino series to crash to the floor was The Capitalist.
The wound in the thigh and the injury to his elbow in the fall seemed to put Horvath out of the combat. Ohm had thought that Mudge would be helpless, too, but the clomping of boots and a deep sobbing told him that that was not so. Howling, Ohm whirled just in time to meet Mudge's attack. It was weak, however, and especially ineffective because Mudge was using his left hand to hold the rapier. He was brave-Ohm had to give him credit for that-but he was also stupid. He did not have a chance. Ohm's point drove through Mudge's left shoulder, sticking out behind it for at least three inches.
Mudge crumpled. Ohm whirled again. But Horvath was not making another incredible attack. He was crawling, groaning, trailing much blood, toward the elevator. Charlie watched him until he collapsed, face down, on the floor. His arms and legs moved, responding only partly to his will to get up and go.
Ohm turned and walked, breathing hard but feeling exultant, to Mudge. The man sat on the floor, holding his shoulders with his hands and glaring at Ohm.
"You were lucky, you bastard!"
"Don't whine," Ohm said, grinning. "Now ... I want the star that opens the door to Immerman's apartment."
"I don't have it!"
"Just how were you planning to get back into the place?" Ohm said. "Come on. Hand it over, or I'll kill you and search your clothes."
"You'll never get away with this," Mudge said. "You can't outrun us, and you know that."
"So what am I supposed to do? Go along meekly to the execution? Hand it over! Now!"
Mudge let loose of his shoulder, which pumped blood, felt in the pocket of his splendid coat, and held out a disc-star attached to a long chain. Ohm took it and said, "This had better be the right one."
He had to act swiftly but was unable to do so because the two men could not carry Snick for him. He rejected the idea of transporting her himself at the same time that he went with the men. Though wounded badly-Horvath was becoming gray- they could still be dangerous. He would have to leave Snick here while he took care of the men.
As it was, he had to drag the now near-unconscious Horvath into the elevator cage and then support Mudge into it. When the two were lying on the floor, Ohm took the cage up to the top level. The star admitted him into the end of the apartment opposite that which he had entered that morning. Fortunately, the stoner room was close to this end. There were only two cyl inders, which forced him to prop Horvath, the closest to dying, into one first. He turned the power on at the switchboard behind a panel, reluctantly revealed by Mudge. Then he shoved Mudge into the other one. The man had enough blood and spirit left to spit in his face before Ohm could close the door. A few seconds later, Ohm dragged Mudge's stiff and heavy form out. He returned to the elevator and, in three minutes, had Snick into the apartment. After he had put her into a cylinder, he turned the power on. He opened the
cylinder door and dragged her out onto the floor. After laying her down, he felt for her pulse. It was fluttering weakly, but it was there.
He stripped her and looked for wounds. Though he could find none, he knew that that did not mean that she might not be dying. She could have been injected with a slow poison as insurance that, if she were found, she would die shortly after being destoned. Or she might have been given an overdose of an anesthetic. Whatever had been done to her, she should go to a hospital immediately. He could not get her to one without putting himself in danger, and he did not want to call in. He had to have plenty of time to get away from the Tower.
He put her back into the cylinder and stoned her. After looking through the apartment, he found a compacter and jammed her clothes into that. Then he dragged her to the elevator and went down with her to the level that exhibited ancient sea creatures. One of these was a gigantic carnivorous whale which was frozen in the act of shooting out of the sea. Its enormous and open toothed mouth was a few feet below the level of the fence by the spiraling escalator.
Puffing, Ohm hauled her to the railing and balanced her stiff body on it, her head pointing-inward toward the now quiet sea.
"In a way, Snick," he said, "you've been my Jonah."
He laughed hysterically, the echoes bouncing back from the far walls of the Tower. When he had managed to get control of himself, he said, gasping, "I'm doing this because you're a human being and because Ijust won't murder. To hell with the greater good!"
He tilted her and then shoved. She slid over the railing and fell into the mouth of the whale and into its belly.
"They'll find you someday," he said, sobbing. "By then by then ..
No matter what happened to him by then, he would not regret having saved her. He would pay whatever price was required.
Sunday-World
VARIETY, Second Month of the Year
D6-W1 (Day-Six, Week-One)
Chapter 27
Thomas Tu Zurvan, "Father Tom," priest unlicensed by the government, licensed by God, awoke. He did not curse, though most men would have done so. He, who never drank liquor, had a hell of a hangover. (How else describe a hangover than as a "hell"?) Saturday's sinner had escaped punishment by passing on his headache to Sunday's saint. Father Tom did not mind. He gloried in the pain perhaps too much. His shoulders were big enough to bear the bad karma of others, and so was his head.
Nevertheless, when he got up and passed the cylinder from which Saturday stared, Father Tom omitted the sign of blessing that he made to the other five occupants.
What Father Tom did not know was that Charlie Ohm did not elude the consequences of his guzzling. Ohm always awoke with a hangover because he thought he should have one. By the time that he realized that someone else had taken it over for him, he was rid of his hangover or had submerged it with the hair of the dog that bit him. Thus, in this strictly economic, budget-keeping universe there was one extra hangover not down in the books.
After his sojourn to the bathroom, Zurvan ate a light breakfast. Then, naked, he got down on his knees by the bed and prayed aloud for every creature in the cosmos. Rising, he set swiftly to the things that needed doing, the changing of the bedclothes, the picking up of items left by Saturday's slob (bless him!), and the washing and putting away of things that needed such. After that, he went to his personal possessions closet, removed the items he used in his battle against evil, and arranged them as required. That two of them were a wig and a long thick beard did not cause him to wonder why. At this time of day, he accepted everything as always having been ordained, no reason to ask for reasons. He had forgotten that he had deflated the dummy that looked so much like him. He was, by the time he awoke, one man only. That is, except for the rare times when he had to pass on a message to the immer council. That period of knowing that he was not quite Father Tom quickly evaporated. In the evening, ah, that was different. Then voices and visions and thoughts that he did not know while the sun shone strongly crept in like shadows.
He dressed and went into the bathroom to paint and dye. Ten minutes later, he was striding toward the door to the hall, a long oaken shaft that curled at the upper end in his right hand. It was seldom that he remembered that he was born lefthanded but had grown right-handedness into the Zurvan persona.
His wig was auburn and wild and fell to the back of his waist. The end of his nose was painted blue; his lips, green. The waist-long beard was decorated with many small butterfly-shaped cutouts of various dazzling designs. Broad red circles enclosing blue six-pointed stars decorated his white anklelength robe. His ID disc-star bore a flattened figure eight lying on its side and slightly open at the end.
A big orange S was painted on his forehead.
His feet were, as every prophet's and holy man's should be, bare.
He carried no shoulderbag, an omission that made Manhattanites stare at him.
The door opened and gushed a light that very few other than he ever saw.
"God's good morning!" he shouted at the five adults in the hail. "Bless you, brothers and sisters! May your selves strive to overcome your selves! May you respect your mortal bodies and your immortal souls and each day take one more step upward to genuine humanhood and to Godhood!"
Holding the staff with three fingers, he made a flattened oval of the thumb and first finger. With the other hand, he passed his long finger three times through the oval. The oval was for eternity and immortality, hence, for God. The finger sliding three times through the oval represented the act of spiritual intercourse of humankind with The Eternal. The thumb and the two fingers stood for God, the human body, and the human soul. They also symbolized God, all creatures, and Mother Nature, God's consort. Thrice symbolic, they also stood for love, empathy, and knowledge of self and the universe.
Some of the loungers said, "God bless you, too, Father Tom!" Others grinned broadly or also made the sign of blessing, though not in the sense he intended.
He strode by them, his nose wrinkling, in spite of himself, at the odor of tobacco smoke, booze, and unwashed bodies. "Let them discover, God, what they are doing to themselves. Show these children the light so that they may follow it if they would!"
"Give it to them, Father!" a man shouted. "Scorch them with hellfire and brimstone!" He laughed uproariously.
Father Tom stopped, turned, and said, "I don't preach hellfire, my son. I preach love, peace, and harmony."
The man got to his knees and stretched out his arms in mock-repentance. "Forgive me, Father! I know not what I do!"
"A prophet is not without honor save in his own block building," Zurvan said. "I don't have the power to forgive you. You forgive yourself, and then God will forgive you."
He stepped out into Shinbone Alley under a cloudless sky and a steadily warming sun. The light of day was not as bright as that which came from everywhere in the world, from the distant stars invisible even to radio astronomers, from the trees and the grass, from the rocks in the garden, and from the center of the Earth. Brightest of all, though, was that which shone from the center of Father Tom Zurvan.
Thus the day passed with Father Tom standing on the street corners and preaching to whomever would listen or standing outside the doors of block buildings or private residences and shouting that he had The Word and the tenants should come out and listen to It. At 1:00 P.M., he went to the door of a restaurant and rapped on the window until a waiter came. He gave his order for a light lunch and passed his ID disc-star to the waiter. Presently, the waiter came with the star, which he had used to register the purchase, and he handed the platter of food and glass of water to the priest.
The organics watched him closely, ready to arrest him if he went into a restaurant with bare feet. Father Tom, grinning, usually went to them and asked if they cared to share his meal. They always refused. To accept would have made them open to a charge of bribe-taking. The priest could also have been arrested for offering a bribe, but the organics had orders just to observe and record. The only act so far th
at had upset them during the past subyear was his conversion of an organic who had been shadowing him. That had been entirely unexpected, had been done without coercion by Zurvan, and was not illegal. However, the convert had been discharged from the force on grounds of religiousness and adherence to superstition.
At 3:00 P.M., Father Tom was standing on a box in Washington Square. Around him were two hundred members of the Cosmic Church of Confession, about a hundred of the curious, and a hundred who had nothing better to do. There were other soapboxers scattered through the park, but they did not draw such large crowds.
Here Father Tom began preaching. His voice blared out deeply and richly. His timing and phraseology were suited to his message and appreciated by most of the hearers, even those who rejected The Word. Father Tom, having studied the great black preachers of the past who had also been on fire with The Word, knew how to deliver it.
"Bless you, citizens of Sunday. Whether or not you are here to hear a voice of God-not the voice, a voice-bless you. May your virtues swell and your weaknesses shrink. Bless you, my children, sons and daughters of God all!"
"Amen, Father!"
"You're telling the truth, Father!"
"God bless you and us, Father!"
"The hound of heaven is baying at your heels, Father!"
"Yes, brothers and sisters!" Zurvan cried. "The hound of heaven is barking! Ba-a-arking, I say!"
"Yeah, Father, barking!"
"It has been sent out by the great hunter to bring you in, my children!"
"Bring us in! Yeah, bring us in! You speak the truth, Father!"
Eyes wide and seeming to flash, his shepherd's staff held high, Father Tom thundered, "Barking, I say!"
"Barking, Father! We hear him!"
"But!"
Father Tom paused and glared at the crowd. "But ... is the hound of heaven barking up the wrong tree?"
"What tree, Father?"
"The wrong tree, I say! Is the hound barking up the wrong tree?"
"Never!" a woman screamed out. "Never!"
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