Dayworld

by Philip José Farmer

  The watcher was probably wondering why he had not started for home. He might be asking questions of Gaunt now via radio. And where was the other guard? If he was in the bushes or behind a tree, he was well hidden.

  Other than the man in the doorway, the only person visible was a bicyclist who had just turned off West Fourth onto Jones Street. Through the driving rain, Dunski could see a figure in a dark raincoat and wide-brimmed rainhat, bent over, his face hidden, his legs moving hard as he drove the bicycle through the now inch-deep water. Dunski slowed even more. He should have waited a little longer. The two pseudo-SCC-men would take about three minutes to go inside, load Snick into the unfolded cart, get back to the van, and load her in. Unless Gaunt delayed them with more instructions.

  Dunski did not want to arrive too soon. He should get to the van just after the two had stored their hard burden inside it. Before they closed and locked the door.

  “I’m doing it,” he thought. “I’m crazy, but I’m doing it.”

  He stopped and waited. He cursed. It wouldn’t work. The man in the doorway of the building across the street would radio Gaunt, and Gaunt would come out with the two men to find out what was happening. Or he might have them stay inside until he found out why Dunski was loitering there. Or he might send one man out to do that.

  “I’ll improvise,” he muttered.

  The door to the building swung open. One of the men backed out, pulling on the now-unfolded cart. Dunski waited until both were out, the cart between them. He started walking. The man in the doorway of the building across the street had stepped out into driving rain. He hesitated as if he were wondering what he should do. Then he broke into a run on the sidewalk through the yard, and he began shouting.

  At the same time, another man lunged out from a cluster of bushes. He was carrying something dark in his right hand. A gun. By then the other immer had his gun out. Dunski swore again. He did not want to murder while trying to prevent a murder.

  The two SCC-men did not seem to hear the shouts. They had retracted the cart wheels and lifted it between them and were shoving it into the van. Dunski started running toward them. He reached into the shoulderbag, gripped the butt of the gun, and snatched it out. He would hold the two SCC-men with the gun. He would threaten to shoot them if the two guards did not throw down their weapons and walk off. He hoped that his bluff would not be called. Or was it a bluff? Not until the moment of action came would he know.

  By then, the shouting man was near enough so that the SCCs could hear him against the west wind and the quickly descending thunder and lightning. They turned toward him. At the same time, the bicyclist straightened up, and white teeth flashed in a grin or a snarl. His right hand came up from his belt holding a gun. It rose swiftly, steadied, and man-made lightning spat whitely from him to the nearest armed man. The distance was about sixty feet, which meant that the ray had lost much of its deadliness. The charging man, however, fell on his face and slid on the rain-slicked pavement for a few feet. His weapon rang as it struck and bounced away from him. He did not try to get up; he lay quivering on the street.

  The other armed immer shot once and missed, the white beam passing just behind the bicyclist’s back. Laughing so loudly that he could be heard above the crashing of the storm, the bicyclist shot again. The beam half-cut the leg off the immer just above the knee.

  Dunski screamed, “Castor!”

  The two SCCs ran to the front of the van, leaving the back doors open. Gaunt stepped out of the building door, his weapon in his hand. He was shielded from Castor’s view, but he also could not see Castor. Then Castor had sped beyond the van. Dunski, Gaunt, and Castor shot simultaneously. Because Castor had braked his vehicle somewhat, the beams aimed at him crossed and neutralized each other. The slowing down and slight skidding spoiled Castor’s aim. Dunski threw himself to one side, pressing the firing button again as he fell. The beam struck the sidewalk, hissing.

  Castor was crazy, but he was cool. Seeing Dunski fall and thus knowing that he would be out of action for several seconds, he aimed at Gaunt. Their beams struck and canceled each other. Castor did not make the mistake of Gaunt, who had released his button, and then pressed it again. Castor kept the beam on, though that drained the weapon’s powerpak quickly. His beam, unhindered, burned through Gaunt’s belly. Gaunt dropped his gun, clutched his belly and fell backward, his head striking the side of the building.

  By then Dunski had rolled twice and come up on his stomach, elbows on the pavement, both hands clutching the gun. He fired. Lightning, Nature’s, not man’s, smashed into the street near the yard of the building across the street. Another bolt split an oak tree in half.

  Both SCC-men had jumped out of the van with guns. Dunski saw all this just before the flash dazzled him and the explosion of electricity deafened him. For a moment, he thought that he was struck. The weapon play had not scared him because it had taken place so swiftly. The lightning stroke terrified him, boiling out in him all the fear and helplessness that human beings have felt since they were cavemen and the wrath of the gods was loosed in the skies.

  During Dunski’s brief paralysis, Castor scrambled up from the pavement where he had fallen off his bicycle. He got down on his hands and knees again and groped for his gun. The SCC-man nearest him seemed to be stunned. He did not shoot while Castor was a helpless target. The other man ran around the van after crouching for a moment after the bolt had slammed into the street. Castor found the gun and rolled away as the beams from the two men steamed the water near him. Dunski got to his feet and ran toward the van. Castor, rolling, managed to beam steadily toward the SCC-men. It cut through the plastic of the van body at the right rear corner and across the man closest to him. The man cried out and fell.

  The other man also held his firing button, but, a third time, the two beams crossed. Now Castor had stopped rolling, and his beam slid to one side, jerked back and caught his enemy in the eyes. Screaming, the man dropped his weapon, clutched his eyes and staggered off.

  Yelling exultantly, Castor, still on the ground, aimed his weapon at the running Dunski. Dunski shot; his beam struck close to Castor’s shoulder. Castor screamed with fury because the powerpak in his weapon was empty. He bounded upward as if off a trampoline, came down running, and headed for the van. Dunski passed the stumbling blind man between him and the building. He snapped a shot over the man’s shoulder but only cut off the lower corner of the right back door of the van. By then, Castor was hidden behind the van.

  His breath grating, Dunski ran at an angle, knowing that he would have to get into the street before Castor picked up the weapon dropped by the first SCC-man he had shot. He got to the corner of the van just as Castor was rising after reaching out from the protection of the rear wheel to grab the gun. Dunski smashed into him and knocked him backward, though he fell on top of him.

  Castor’s breath went out of him in a big oof. Lightning struck somewhere down the street. Castor grabbed Dunski’s wrist and turned it savagely. The gun fell from Dunski’s hand, but he did not try to regain it. Shouting, he grabbed Castor’s throat. Castor screamed, “Now I have you in my power! God will not be denied!”

  Though he was choking, Castor’s hands closed around Dunski’s throat. Dunski let Castor loose and tore himself away. He got to his feet before Castor did, and he charged, knocking him down again. He picked Castor up by the neck and shook him, then ran him against the side of the van. Castor slumped. Dunski held him up with one hand and slammed the base of the palm of his left hand again and again on Castor’s chin. He kept driving the back of Castor’s head against the van until his arm was too weary to lift.

  Finally, gasping as if all air had suddenly been taken from the face of Earth, he dropped Castor onto the pavement.

  God was dead.

  Dunski shook uncontrollably. He would have liked to lie down on the street and let the rain and lightning do what they would with him. It seemed to be the best bed in the world, the most desirable of all desires and an utter
necessity. But…there was always a but…he could not do what he most wanted to do.

  People were coming from the building near him and from across the street, despite the almost solid rain and the lightning still smashing nearby. Some would have called the organics. He had to get away. Now.

  He staggered around the van, stopped halfway to the driver’s seat, turned, staggered back to his gun, picked it up, started away, turned again, and picked up his shoulderbag, which had dropped off just before he had charged around the corner of the van into Castor. After picking up the gun dropped by the SCC-man, he set its charge to BURN and fried the skin bearing his fingermarks on Castor’s neck. He closed the back doors of the van, got wearily into the front seat, breathing as if a knife were cutting his throat, and drove off.

  No one tried to stop him.

  Though he wanted to turn left onto West Fourth so that the witnesses would tell the organics that he had gone that way, he did not. Sheridan Square was too close in that direction. There were usually some organics there. He drove to the right from Jones Street, passed Cornelia, and went over the bridge above the Kropotkin Canal. He had to get out of the van very quickly, but he also had to hide Snick someplace. If he did one, he could not do the other.

  19.

  Just as he passed the little park on West Fourth east of the canal, he saw headlights behind him. He was too tired to swear. A patrol car? Probably. He could not even get out of the van and run. An eighty-year-old could catch him on foot now. The car swung out to pass him, then slowed to match the pace of his van. A window went down, and the man behind the wheel shouted at him. What he said was drowned in thunder, though the window on Dunski’s right was up and so would have muted the man’s voice. Dunski put that window down and shouted a question at him. The driver was not in uniform, and the car was unmarked. That did not mean the two in the car were not organics. However, if they were, why had they not slapped the orange flasher on top of their car? Perhaps they were immers sent to aid him.

  He stopped the van and waited for the two to come to him. They were organics. But they were also immers, and they had been dispatched to see that he got a ride. Gaunt had been warned by one of the guards across the street that Dunski was not leaving at once as ordered. They were on their way to pick him up when Headquarters had ordered them to Jones Street. Someone had called in about the shooting.

  “I’ll tell you later what happened,” Dunski said. “Just now, get the stoned woman into your trunk. I’ll leave the van here.”

  The man’s partner, a woman, said, “We have orders to take you to our superior.” Dunski turned the motor and lights off and got out. The woman hurried to help unload Snick. Dunski said, “Oh, I forgot!” and he wiped the wheel and the door handle of the van with his handkerchief. Then he crawled into the back seat of the car and lay down. The trunk lid slammed, and the two got into the front seat. “Maybe he should have gone into the trunk, too,” the woman said.

  The man did not reply. The woman spoke into a wristwatch in a voice too low for Dunski to distinguish the words. Not the organic frequency, Dunski thought. The man drove to Womanway, two patrol cars, sirens wailing, passing him toward the west. The car turned left to go north on Womanway, turned right on East Fourteenth Street, and then left onto Second Avenue. Just past Stuyvesant Square, the car stopped before a block building. Dunski had seen this before, a structure resembling the Taj Mahal, though smaller. It housed high government officials and also contained the offices of many residents, stores, an empathorium, a restaurant, and a gymnasium. The situation must be bad indeed. Only if the council had no other way out would he have been brought here.

  The man stayed in the car to listen to the organic channels. The woman conducted him into a large marble corridor lined by the stoned bodies of elegantly clothed officials who had once trod these halls of power. Some of them needed dusting. They stopped at one of the elevator doors, where the woman said, “He’s here,” to a wall strip.

  “He’ll come up alone,” a deep male voice said. “You get back to your post. After the disposal.”

  “Yes, Oom,” the woman said. She did not leave, however, until Dunski had gotten on the elevator and the doors were closing. He rose to a floor in the dome, got out into a luxuriously carpeted and decorated hail, and said to the man waiting there, “Dunski.” The man nodded and escorted him down the hall to a door. Its plaque bore two names, Piet Essex Vermeulen and Mia Owen Baruch. He knew the names, though he had never met their owners. They were his second cousins, once removed, Vermeulen on the paternal side and Baruch on the maternal. Since they were related to him, he had surmised that they were immers. Until now, he had had no proof of that.

  That they were among the loftiest officials was evident by their single occupancy of the apartment. They had antiques and knickknacks and wallpaper, numerous items that did not have to be stored six days out of the week. Their situation was even superior to that of his friend of Tuesday, Commissioner-General Horn, who shared her apartment with one other, a woman of Thursday.

  Vermeulen, a tall thin man, took Dunski’s rain apparel and hung it up. His short and thin wife asked Dunski if he wanted anything to drink or eat. He spoke hoarsely and slowly, “A bourbon and a sandwich, thank you. I’d also like to use your toilet.”

  When he returned to the living room, he sat down on a huge stuffed couch covered with factory-grown fur. His pants and shoes were wetting the sofa and the carpet, but he did not care.

  Mia Baruch brought him the drink and then sat down by him. He swallowed a fourth of it and sighed.

  Vermeulen sat down but said nothing until Dunski had eaten his sandwich. “Now,” he said, hitching forward in his chair, “you report everything. My people gave me some details on radio, and I’ve had reports from other days and from your immediate superior. But I want the whole story, all that’s relevant, that is.”

  Dunski gave it to him, stopped now and then by questions from Vermeulen and Baruch. When Vermeulen was satisfied that he had heard all, he sat back, his fingers church-steepled.

  “It’s a mess, but it can be cleaned up. The organics won’t be looking for Castor now, but there’s all those dead men. The authorities will be wondering what they had to do with him. They’ll research the dead, study their bio-data, review every recorded minute of their lives, seek out and interview people who knew them. They’ll try to connect all of them. I don’t think they’ll solve the mystery. Let’s hope they don’t. We’ve covered our tracks very thoroughly. But you never know what little meaningful item they might find.”

  “What about next Wednesday?” Dunski said. “The organics will be questioning me. As Bob Tingle, I mean. If they get suspicious, they’ll use truth mist. You know what that means.”

  Vermeulen dismissed the possibility with a wave of his hand. “What do they have? The lock that Castor ruined was replaced before the paramedicals got there. Your weapon was taken away. You had an accident, slipped on a piece of soap and struck your head, that’s all. Our people in Wednesday, some very high-placed officials, will take care of all that.”

  He was probably right, Dunski thought. But too many immers had become involved in getting him out of this mess, and too many knew one or more of his identities.

  Vermeulen said, “You’ve covered your tracks well. However, there may be witnesses, people who looked out from the nearby buildings and saw you.”

  “It was raining hard, it was dark, and I was wearing a coat and hood,” Dunski said. “Could I have another drink? Thank you. Some people did come out just as I was getting into the van, but they didn’t get close. And the clouds stopped the sky-eyes from following me.”

  “I know that,” Vermeulen said. “The organics will work on this until close to midnight, then they’ll close shop. They’ll leave messages for Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s authorities. But those will consider the matter closed. Castor, an obvious psychopath, has been killed. End of the trail. Today, though…there’s all those corpses. That’s Thursday’s bus
iness only, but the immers in other days will be notified of this so that they can come up with something to erase all tracks. A false explanation, maybe. That might be best.” His face lit up. “Any explanation, if it seems to fit, will be better than none. They’ll keep an unsolved case in the bank, theoretically always active. Solved, it’ll be in the history section.”

  Dunski fought to keep his eyes open.

  “That’s probably the best plan. Only…”

  “Only what?”

  “What about Snick?”

  Vermeulen shook his head and said, “Garchar went too far.” (Garchar must be the man I called “Gaunt,” Dunski thought.) “I wouldn’t have condoned killing her, though the mutilation would have been blamed on Castor, a very good idea. But I don’t think I could have done it. I can’t fault Garchar. He was in command and had no time to check with us. Still…anyway, that’s past. Snick will stay stoned and will be put in a safe place.”

  Vermeulen church-steepled his fingers again.

  “Today won’t miss her. They’ll think she’s off on her own chase, if they’ll think about her at all. Castor’s kept them pretty busy. And what happens tomorrow? Will Snick appear at organics HQ with her visa and her orders from Sunday? No, she won’t. So, how will Friday know that she’s supposed to appear? It won’t, and the following days won’t know about her, either. Nobody will know that she’s missing until Sunday comes and she doesn’t report to her superiors. Sunday can do nothing about it except to leave inquiries for the following days. When Sunday comes again, it will get the news that Snick disappeared on Thursday. We’ll have plenty of time to get ready for then, and we might not have to do anything at all.”