She shrugged and said, “Who cares? It’s not like the old days. We’re not dependent on money.”
“Yes, and I think it’d be better if you were. However, let’s not talk about that now. I’ll see what I can do. Now…aren’t you lucky to have me? Where’s your gratitude?”
She laughed, and she said, “You haven’t done anything yet.”
“I’ve built up some credit for good intentions.”
“A contractor for the highway of hell. You don’t need any excuse, you know. However, let’s wait until tonight. I’m in a better mood after practice.”
“Not lately,” he said. “You’ve been coming home furious and disgusted.”
“The better to work out anger and frustration then. You aren’t really complaining, are you?”
He stood up. “I never complain about anything unreal. Someday, our moods will mesh, and this apartment will explode.”
“I don’t want to have to look for a new one,” she said. She kissed him again. “What’re you going to do?”
“I have a busy schedule today,” he said, “but I’ll work on the research for Project Blackmail somehow. To make sure that I have enough time, however, I should go to work early.”
“Early?” she said, her eyes widening.
“Yes, I know. It’ll be dangerous. You can work as hard as you wish and put in long hours, and nobody frowns on you. You’re an artist. But I’m a bureaucrat. If I go in early and stay late, and my fellow workers find out, they might check up on me. I can’t have them find out that I’m doing unauthorized work, opening channels irrelevant to my work. I’d be in real trouble then.
“Maybe it’ll be better if I just go to work at the appointed time. I’ll just slough off some of my regular work. My coworkers don’t mind if I’m lazy or inefficient—that makes me a regular guy, one of the old gang—and my superior won’t mind if I don’t get too far behind. I’m allowed an unofficial margin for lagging, you know. Just so I don’t make trouble for my superior by forcing him to call me in for a reprimand.”
They finished breakfast, and Nokomis went to the bathroom. He hoped that she would not take the clothes from the hamper for washing. He did not expect her to do so, since she was quite willing to leave the washing to him. If he remembered correctly, she had done it last Wednesday and would expect him to take his turn today.
Fifteen minutes later, she came back onto the balcony. She was dressed in a white blouse and tight scarlet pants and was holding the strap of her shoulderbag.
“Oh, I thought you’d be in bed, getting ready, anyway.”
He smiled and said, “No, I was planning how to do the blackmailing research.”
“Good. I’m going to the gym now.”
He stood up, and they kissed briefly. “Have a good workout,” he said.
“Oh, I will, I always do. I won’t be able to meet you for lunch. The committee is meeting during lunch hour at a restaurant.”
During her absence, Tingle had activated a strip on the side of the balcony and checked their schedule. He already knew that she could not lunch with him, and she knew that he knew. But she was not one hundred percent sure that his memory would not fail him. She trusted only herself.
“I’ll see you at seven at The Googolplex,” he said.
“I hope the salad is better than the last time.”
“If it isn’t, we’ll look for a better place next time.”
He sat on the balcony until he had seen her bicycle down Bleecker and north along the canal. As soon as she was out of sight, he rose and went to the bathroom. More than once, she had returned a few minutes after going out of the door, saying that she had forgotten something. She did not fool him; she was checking on him to make sure that he was not doing something he should not. There had been a time when he had wondered if she were an organic officer whose public role was that of a ballet dancer. His investigations through data bank channels had convinced him that she was not.
What was she then? An overly suspicious, perhaps a paranoiac woman. Not at all the woman who should be Bob Tingle’s wife. But she had not shown her true nature when he was courting her, and he had been careless in not checking out her personality index before marrying her. Passionate love had blinded him, but that was Bob Tingle’s nature. Tingle was likely to be carried away by emotions that Jeff Caird would never have allowed to flourish in him. Yet Caird was responsible for Tingle’s nature. Caird had deliberately chosen that nature for his Wednesday role because he wanted to feel strongly—as Tingle—what Caird could feel only weakly.
However, Caird must have had some liking for Tingle characteristics, some feeling that he was missing much by being so self-controlled. So Caird, when building, perhaps growing was the better word, when growing the personality of Tingle, had indulged himself, the Caird self. He was paying now for that luxury because his passion for Nokomis had put him in danger. Though she was not a government secret agent, she did watch him closely. If she discovered something suspicious that was not concerned with their personal relationships, she might probe deeper. If she found something that she suspected was criminal, would she turn him in?
He did not think so, but she would be angry because he had not confided in her.
The truth was that he just did not know what would happen if she pried too much. What he did know was that Tingle should not have married her. Tingle should leave her, the sooner the better. But Tingle was still in love with her, though the high passion blazing in him in the beginning had become a middling but pleasant warmth. Moreover, if he did tell her he wanted a divorce, he would have to suffer her hurt and anger. She was very possessive and egotistic; she would have to be the one who did the leaving. However, she was not only a great collector of things and of some people, but also fiercely resented having to give any up. Their personal possessions closet was jammed with bric-a-brac, teddy bears, china dolls, mementoes of birthdays and of world and national and district holidays, ballet trophies, recordings of herself from birth on up to a few weeks ago, a first-place medal for the one-hundred-meter dash for Manhattan eighth-grade girls, a good conduct citation awarded when she was twenty subyears (she had never gotten one after that because of her quarrels with various members of the ballet company), and at least a hundred other items.
Tingle had tried many times to get her to throw them out. They were a pain and vexation because she insisted on getting some of them out almost every night and placing them on a shelf. Then she had to put them back in the closet before stoning time. They also made it hard for him to get to his own few possessions or even to the clothes rack.
One day, Tingle knew, his not-easily-aroused temper would take him over, and he would dump her stuff down the trash chute. And that would mean their farewell. Which, logically, from his viewpoint, should come about before her possessiveness and suspiciousness got him into trouble.
He sighed, got up from the chair, and went to the bathroom. He removed his still-damp Tuesday clothes from the hamper and hung them up to dry. Later, he would roll them up and stuff them into the shoulderbag. It would be easier and more intelligent to drop them into the chute, but he had only one outfit for partywear. To get another, he would have to turn in the old outfit on Tuesday or have a good excuse for losing it. The latter required filling out a report for the Department of Clothing Outlets.
When he got into bed, he expected that sleep would be slippery, but he got hold of it at once and slid into a throng of dreams.
Awakening when the wall-strip alarm belled, he remembered only one of the dreams that had besieged him. Father Tom’s face, his own, of course, recognizable even under the wig and the fake beard, had appeared on a wall strip. The strip showed Father Tom standing on the near side of a broad, dark, and sluggishly moving river. Just beyond Father Tom was a massive stone bridge. Father Tom held in his right hand a heavy iron candelabrum with seven candles. It looked like those used in synagogues, but Tingle could not remember its name. A long bright flame was spurting from the long finge
r of Father Tom’s right hand. Father Tom was frowning as if he could not decide which candle to light.
“This is the moment,” Father Tom said sternly.
Tingle had woken up muttering, “Moment of what?”
He had slept for six hours, though he usually required eight. He put on shorts and went down to the basement, where he exercised in solitude on a machine. Returning to the apartment, he showered again, dressed, and drank a cup of coffee. By then the sun was strong, the city astir, and the temperature was beginning to climb toward the projected afternoon high of 112° Fahrenheit. Tingle, dressed in thin underwear shorts, a white short-sleeved shirt slashed in green and ruffled at the neck, Kelly-green bellbottom slacks, and brown sandals, his bag on his shoulder, stood once more on the balcony. He was looking at the neighborhood for…for what? Doctor Chang Castor?
Which meant that he was not entirely Tingle. Jeff Caird still lived in him. He was reminding Tingle that he was supposed to contact his immer agent in Wednesday. That would have to be done from the data bank, however.
At the moment there was only one person in front of the house at the corner of Bleecker and the Kropotkin Canal. A man on a bicycle pedaling west, his back to Tingle. A big green coolie hat shaded his neck, and he wore a brown shirt and billowy green slacks. Tingle watched the man stop at the corner and turn his head to look behind him.
Tingle said, “God!” He clenched his hands and stepped out farther onto the balcony. The face under the hat had Castor’s long narrow features and rather large nose. And why was he looking so intently at the house?
Tingle shook his head and spoke loudly to himself.
“It’s just your imagination! He wouldn’t be dumb enough to do that!”
Whatever that meant. Danger for Ozma?
The man turned his head, allowing Tingle a glance at his profile. It was like the vulturine face of Castor, but… No, it could not be Castor.
The bicycler disappeared behind the house as he went north on the canal road, appeared again, then vanished behind the next house. A man stepped out of the back door of the corner house and went to the garage. Presently, he came out with a bicycle. Tingle recognized him as John Chandra. Tingle knew well his face and that of his wife, Aditi Rotwa, having seen them through the stoner windows in the basement. He stepped back so that Chandra would not look up and see him.
Even if his neighbor noticed the likeness of his face and that of Jeff Caird’s in the basement stoner, he would think only of what a remarkable coincidence it was. Tingle waited until Chandra had disappeared behind the house before he stepped out again to look for the bicycler. By then, he was gone.
“Just my nerves,” Tingle muttered.
Three minutes later, he was headed east, a part of a flow of cyclists and an occasional electric car. He had just begun to sweat when he saw out of the corner of his eye a banana peel on the sidewalk.
10.
He zigzagged through the crowd, braked by the curb, kicked the stand, picked up the peel, and dropped it into a waste container. When he went back to the bike, he looked around. He did not see Rootenbeak and really did not expect to. There were other slobs besides Rootenbeak in Wednesday—if he was here. Nevertheless, he was shaken, and, as he pedaled away, he rebuked himself for his automatic action. He should not have stopped; he should have gone even faster.
At Thirtieth Street, he went up the ramp and rode until he came to the west side, the dark side, of the Thirteen-Principles Towers. The building, which was covered with solar panels, occupied the area bounded by Seventh, Fourth, Thirtieth, and Thirty-seventh. The main structure soared up to four thousand feet, and the thirteen towers along its perimeter added fourteen hundred feet. Tingle’s office was near the top of the tower on the northwest corner at Seventh and Thirty-seventh.
After riding down the ramp to the parking room on the third subfloor, he took an elevator to the northwest main lobby. From there, he rode in the express to the level at the top of the main building. Then he took an elevator to his level in one of the towers.
While walking down the hall leading to his office, Tingle was distracted by the view through the tall and wide windows on his right. There were six mooring masts on the roof of the main building, three zeppelins socked into three masts, and a fourth glittering orange giant was easing its nose toward a mast. Tingle stopped to watch the thing of beauty and splendor.
There were powerful updrafts alongside this building, but the zeppelins came down past them into the relatively still air over the immense roof where they had no trouble maneuvering. Moreover, they needed no landing crews to pull on ropes dropped from the ship. The pilot had at his control twelve swivable jet engines that could counterbalance any wind-thrusts. Slowly, the ship approached the socket at the top of the mooring mast, and then its nose was locked.
Tingle would have liked to watch the stoned passengers, safe from accidents and tedium, packed in nets, lowered to trucks. A glance at his wristwatch showed him that it was almost time for his prework briefing with his boss. He entered the office anteroom, where the secretary sat at his desk. The secretary looked pained and mournful, as if he had a hangover. Tingle breezed by him, saying, “Good morning, Sally!”
Hearing only a grunt, Tingle called back, “Surly, Sally?”
The secretary said, “Good morning, Maha Tingle. Maha Paz is…”
“I know, I know. Eagerly, perhaps impatiently, waiting for me. Thank you.”
The office was dome-shaped and elegantly furnished, like the man behind the desk. Welcome Vardhamana Paz rose to his full seven feet of stature. His glittering many-colored blouse and trousers strained to hold in a ball-shaped torso and mighty buttocks. Above three chins, sagging dewlaps, was a round head with a massive overhanging forehead. When he bowed and held his hands in a prayerful attitude, he gave the impression of laboring to lift his many rings. There were two on each finger, each ring bearing a massive diamond or emerald. The gold was fake, and the jewels were artificial, and Paz looked unreal to Tingle. That was probably because fat…and misshapen people were so rare.
Tingle, after bowing, his hands held up before him and pressed together, said, “Good morning, chief.”
“Good morning, Bob.”
Paz lowered himself slowly and gently like a balloon losing hot air through a small leak. He told Tingle to take a chair, and he said, “For others it’s a good morning. For you and me…”
“Twinkledigits,” as he was called behind his back, waved his walrus-flipper hand. His face contorted as if he had eaten too many beans.
“I got the news about your troubles…our troubles…through our line.”
Tingle shifted uneasily and looked around the room. He would feel very stupid if he asked Paz if the room had been debugged and a scrambler was operating. Of course, it had been and was. Also, three news strips were on, the volume annoyingly loud.
Tingle moved the chair until his stomach cut into the edge of the desk, and he leaned forward.
“You heard from Tony?” he said.
“No. Someone else.”
“Rootenbeak and Gril are not my concerns, not today. But Castor… I suppose your informant told you how dangerous he is to us?”
His jowls flapping like sheets in a wind, Paz nodded.
“A certain high organic is looking for Castor. But he’s handicapped because he can’t do anything official as yet. If he had gotten official word from Tuesday that Castor was a daybreaker, he could act swiftly. But he’d have to kill Castor to prevent his arrest. We can’t have him talking to the authorities.”
Though Tingle was not supposed to know the name of the man Paz referred to, he did. His data bank researches, unauthorized by both today’s government and the immer council, had revealed it.
“We must find Castor,” Paz said.
“I’ll work like a beaver on it,” Tingle said.
“What’re you smiling about?”
“Nothing. Just a pun.”
“Pun? What pun? This is no time for
levity, Bob.”
“The American beaver belongs to the genus Castor canadensis,” Tingle murmured.
“What?”
“Never mind,” Tingle said, speaking loudly. “Chief, I’ll have to set up fake time on my work-hours report. But my immediate supervisor, Galore Piecework, is too zealous. She almost always checks on my report.”
Paz frowned and said, “Galore Piecework?”
“Gloria Peatsworth. We underlings call her Galore Piecework.”
Paz did not smile.
“I told you, Bob. Levity…”
“…is a grave matter. I know, chief. Please forgive me.”
Paz heave-sighed, and he said, “I’ll take care of Peatsworth. But…”
After a few seconds, Tingle said, “You’ve got even worse news?”
“You’re very perceptive, Bob.”
Paz sighed deeply again, and he said, “My informant told me that there’s a Sunday organic here. A Detective-Major Panthea Pao Snick. She has a temporal visa, Bob. A temporal!”
“And it concerns us, of course. Otherwise, you’d not have mentioned her.”
“I’m afraid so,” Paz said. “From what my informant said—he wasn’t able to get any details that would enlighten me—Snick’s mission is so secret that only the commissioner-general knows what it’s about. And maybe he doesn’t know all. The commissioner’s given orders that Snick’s to get full cooperation. It sounds ominous. We have to find out what she’s up to.”
“She may not be here because of us.”
Paz sighed again.
“I wish I could think so. Unfortunately, she’s already asked about you. In fact, she wants to talk to you.”
It would be impossible to be all-Tingle today. Tuesday would not stay silent. It demanded that Tingle at least be Jeff Caird’s agent. That was all that Tingle was going to allow himself to be. Caird had to be regarded as someone who had temporarily employed Tingle to represent him in Wednesday.
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