Dayworld

by Philip José Farmer

  All of this had taken place on Day-Five, Week-One, last Sunday.

  Today, Day-Six, Week-One of Sunday, Father Tom Zurvan had not appeared in Washington Square. His followers, after waiting for fifteen minutes, during which they failed to get him on the strip, had gone to the apartment building on Shinbone Alley. The block chief rightly refused to use his code-key to enter Father Tom’s apartment until the organics had been notified. After another long delay, two organics showed up. These went in with the block chief, the throng of disciples, and some curious tenants.

  A search revealed that Father Tom was not at home. His stoner was empty. His staff was leaning against a wall strip on which was a cryptic message:

  I HAVE GONE TO A HIGHER PLACE.

  28.

  Tom Zurvan had not lied.

  He was indeed in a higher place, the Tao Towers, in Tony Horn’s sixth-floor apartment at the corner of West Eleventh Street and the Kropotkin Canal. He was not altogether himself nor altogether any of his selves.

  Normally, he would have gone through the ritual of becoming Father Tom and then sleeping. The nightmare of Saturday had, however, stopped the flow of customary events as an avalanche would dam up a river. It had goosed his soul and sent it screaming down paths that he did not wish to take. It had shotgunned the cocoon of Zurvan and was letting the voices and faces and even the hands of those others through the holes. They were mumbling at him, staring at him, groping him.

  This had not started until he had got himself, much less smoothly than usual, through the mental mantra of metamorphosis. (Was that Bob Tingle speaking that thought, the Alley Oop of alliteration? Wyatt Repp who voiced the metaphors of “goosing” and “shotgunned”? Charlie Ohm who suggested they were “groping” him?)

  He was aware but did not want to be aware that the winds of the recent past were blowing through him as if he were a shredded sail, as if fragments of the others were coming through him like pepper from a shaker.

  “Stop that! Stop that!” he screamed in his mind.

  Though, possibly excepting Jeff Caird, he had the strongest personality of all, he could not fight back with all his powers. They had been let, as it were, to other tenants who were moving in with court orders. And he was being shorn, his strength drained out just as Samson’s had drained when his hair was cut by Delilah, the delicious daughter of false-faced Philistines, the buxom barber of Beelzebub.

  “Stop that!” he screamed. “This is serious!”

  (“Damn right, it’s serious!” Caird said in a faraway voice that, however, was getting nearer. “Tingle, shut up! We’re about to die, and you joke!”)

  Aloud, his voice ringing in his apartment, Zurvan said, “By the light of God, I command you to go back into the darkness from which you came!”

  (“Bullshit,” Charlie Ohm said.)

  (“Smile when you say that,” Wyatt Repp said. “Come on, men. Give him a break. The lynching party is coming. If we don’t hang together, we’ll be hung separately on sour apple trees. He’s the ramrod today. Shut up and let him save our skin. Then we can have the big powwow, see who’s the big mugwump. The only way…”)

  (“Tony Horn’s apartment,” Caird said. “Go there! It’s the only place we’ll be safe! For a while, anyway!”)

  “Tony Horn?” Zurvan said aloud.

  (“Yes. You remember. Don’t you?”)

  (“I remember,” Jim Dunski said. “If I can, you can. Caird was given permission, remember. His…our…friend, Commissioner-General Anthony Horn. She said he could use it in case of emergency. And this is it!”)

  (“She’s an immer,” Bob Tingle said. “Once an immer, always an immer, no pun intended even if you know German. She’ll betray me… I mean, us.”)

  (“She won’t know anything until Tuesday,” Caird said. “Come on, Zurvan, get going! Hightail it!”)

  Only Will Isharashvili had not spoken. Was that because he did not know yet what was going on? Or because, being the last in line, if Tuesday was the beginning, he was the weakest? His voice would not be added until he was awakened tomorrow? If so, he would never speak. He was not going to be awakened. He would die in his sleep.

  That roiled Zurvan even more. If he was not Isharashvili tomorrow, who would he be? Could he keep on being himself, Tom Zurvan? He had to. He, at least, would not perish.

  “Oh, Lord, forgive me!” he cried. “I am thinking only of myself! I am abandoning my brothers! I am a coward, a Peter denying his Lord before the cock has crowed three times!”

  (“Peter! Cock! You big prick!” Charlie Ohm said. “Cut out the holy bullshit, man! Get going! Save our asses!”)

  (“I wouldn’t say it that way,” Jeff Caird said, “but the minnie is right. Hide out! Now! Get to Horn’s place! For God’s sake, man, the organics may be at the door now! Or the immers may be there! Get rid of everything that’ll tie you in with us! Go!”)

  The voices had stilled, for the moment, anyway. As he stared at the traffic on the street and the canal, he felt a little stronger and more confident. He had no rational cause to be so, but confidence often welled not from long experience so much as from the inborn belief in one’s self.

  He had had to struggle hard to do what reason said he must do. Grief and a hard-quelled resistance had shaken him as he bustled about gathering up items to be compacted and stoned for the garbage collectors. The wig, beard, and robes had to go. With them went the dummy of himself. He considered destroying Ohm’s also, but the chances were good that his dummy would not be discovered until next Saturday. He did get into Ohm’s PP closet with the ID star from Ohm’s cylinder, and he dressed in Ohm’s clothes. They would make him stand out because Sunday did not wear the neck-ruff on the blouse nor kilts. That, however, could not be helped.

  It hurt him to deceive the followers. Part of his grief was caused by this, but it was better that he not shatter their faith. Yes, it was, he told himself again and again. Far better. But he could not help wondering how many leaders of the faithful in the past had been forced to practice such fraud.

  “If I were only I, Father Tom,” he muttered, “I would stay and take the consequences. The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the faith. But I am not the only one involved. And if I were just Father Tom, I wouldn’t be in this horrible mess.”

  Nevertheless, when he had propped his staff against the wall and the message was displayed, he weakened.

  “It isn’t right!” he cried. “I am betraying my people, my self, and my God!”

  (“Theokaka!” Charlie Ohm said.)

  (“You are just one of many,” Jeff Caird said. Then, after a pause, “There may be a solution, a good way out.”)

  “What is it?”

  (“Don’t know just yet.”)

  Turning at the door, Zurvan said, “Farewell, Father Tom!”

  (“This guy is just too much,” Charlie Ohm said. “But really not enough.”)

  (“A fine sense of the dramatic,” Wyatt Repp said. “Or is it of the melodramatic? I’m not sure he knows the difference between pathos and bathos.”)

  (“Were those two of the Three Musketeers?” Bob Tingle said.)

  “Shut up!” Zurvan shouted as he swung the door open, startling two loafers in the hall.

  Who was this strangely dressed crazy man charging out of Father Tom’s apartment?

  Zurvan was also startled. He had not expected anyone to be out this early in the morning. Muttering something unintelligible even to him, he slammed the door behind him. At 3:12 A.M., he strode out of the building and headed for Womanway Boulevard. The sky was still clear. The air was hot but cooler than earlier in the day. A few cyclers and pedestrians were out, which made him feel less conspicuous. He passed several State Cleaning Corps vehicles and one organic car. This slowed down when it got opposite him but did not stop. He had no idea what he would do if he was stopped and questioned.

  Having crossed Womanway, he went west on Bleecker Street. He passed Caird’s house, which seemed to make Caird stronger. At least, his voice w
as louder than the others.

  (“I loved you,” Caird cried.)

  Zurvan did not know whom Caird was calling to, but the sorrow in the voice troubled him. He walked faster, then slowed down. If any more organics came by, they would wonder why he was in a near-run.

  Reaching the street alongside the canal, he went north. He looked over the railing from time to time and stopped when he saw a small jetboat tied to a floating dock. He went down the steps and back along the canal on the narrow path until he came to the boat. It probably belonged to the tenants of a house by the canal, and Sunday had not bestirred himself or herself to get up this early to fish. He got into the boat, untied the line to the dock, started the electrically powered jet, and steered it north up the canal. He passed about a dozen small boats occupied by men and women fishing and several cargo boats. He took the boat to the west side of the canal at West Eleventh Street, got onto the pathway, and shoved the boat out to drift. One more of many crimes.

  The trees along the street would hide him from the sky-eyes. They would not observe which building he went into. Anyway, unless someone inspected the recordings, his disappearance under the trees was of no importance.

  Before entering the building, he thought briefly of Isharashvili. Tomorrow, the ranger’s wife would wonder why he had not left the cylinder. She would open the door, thinking that something had gone wrong with the power. She would touch him, and she would not feel the expected cold hardness; she would touch the soft warm flexible plastic of the dummy.

  Her scream sounded in him.

  Isharashvili’s voice was there, though it, too, was far off, somewhere just past the horizon of his mind.

  After getting into Horn’s apartment, he went through every room. They were more numerous and larger than his and far more luxurious. Since she shared them with only one other tenant, Thursday’s, she did not have to put her many personal possessions, bric-a-brac, jewelry, paintings, figurines, and ashtrays, in the PP closet. The ashtray surprised and disgusted him—Caird, that is—since he had not had the slightest suspicion that she used the illegal drug. Which meant that, if she did, so did Thursday.

  He looked at the faces in the cylinder windows. The face of the Thursday resident of Horn’s apartment was framed in the first cylinder’s oval.

  He moved to the next cylinder and looked into its window. Tony Horn stared back at him with huge unblinking eyes. Good old Tony. She was his good friend and had always been big-hearted and sympathetic. Perhaps he should destone her and tell her about his situation. She could help him as no one else he knew could help.

  (“Are you crazy?” Ohm said. “She’s an immer!”)

  (“That wasn’t Zurvan thinking,” Caird said. “He doesn’t even know her. I was thinking for him. But you’re right, Charlie. She’d turn us in.”)

  While the voices tore at him and faces sprang like jack-in-the-boxes before him and hands tapped on his mind as if it were a window, Zurvan paced back and forth in the living room. When he reached one end, he turned and strode back to the other.

  (“Like a tiger in his cage,” Repp said. “It’s good exercise, but it won’t get us out of the cage.”)

  (“If he leaves the apartment,” Ohm said, “he’ll just be in a bigger cage.”)

  Zurvan ignored the voices as best he could. They were an itch he wanted to scratch, but scratching would only make them itch more.

  “Jacob, he whose name became Israel and whose descendants were as numerous as the grains of sand on the beach,” Zurvan muttered, “Jacob saw a ladder. Its ends rested on Earth, and its other ends ascended into Heaven. Angels went up and down it, doing the bidding of the Lord. I need a ladder, Lord! Let it down so that I may climb up it to the promised abode!”

  (“He’s cracking up!” Ohm said. “He’ll become a raving madman, and we’ll all die with him!”)

  “No!” Zurvan shouted. “I am not mad, and there is no ladder for me! I do not deserve it!”

  If a ladder was lowered for him, he would have to climb on rotten rungs. There were seven rungs, and the last, himself, would surely break.

  Monday-World

  VARIETY, Second Month of the Year

  D6-W1 (Day-Six, Week-One)

  29.

  Monday was not blue. It was gray with heavy low clouds blown in from the east.

  One of the few things permitted to be transmitted from one day to the next was the weather forecast. The meteorology of N.E. 1330 was far superior to that of the early ages, which had been often baffled and fooled by the exceedingly complex forces that made up the weather. Now, over one thousand and five hundred years of research had enabled the forecasters to predict with 99.9 percent accuracy. But Mother Nature, as if determined to show man that he could never have that one-tenth percent in his grasp, sometimes pulled a reverse on him.

  Today was an example of her trickery. The meteorologists had smugly announced that it would be clear and hot. But the wind had shifted, and the cloud continent over the mid-Atlantic was charging westward, its forefront now over eastern New Jersey.

  Tom Zurvan had resumed his pacing. Will Isharashvili, the Central Park ranger, the gentle soul and henpecked husband, had protested feebly against being barred from the day that was rightfully his. Jeff Caird, in growing Will’s persona, had made a mistake. He had gone too far in shaping a nonviolent and passive man. He had, however, given Isharashvili a great stubbornness and courage in refusing to act violently, and it was these that were causing the death of Isharashvili. Though not quite deceased, he was fading away. Rather than use force, as the others were, he would cling to his principles and so slide back on them into the elements from which he had come.

  Not so Jeff Caird and the others. Though Zurvan had slammed and locked the doors on them, he saw them creep out of holes that he had not known existed. When he shoved them back in and cemented the holes, he found them oozing out through the walls in a sort of osmosis.

  (“This isn’t like you, Zurvan,” Jeff Caird said. “You’re supposed to be religious and noble. Highly moral. A true son of God. You should be glad to be a martyr, to sacrifice yourself for others. But you’re not. You’re hard and ruthless, as godless as those you preach against. What happened?”)

  (“He’s a hypocrite, that’s what,” Charles Ohm said.)

  (“Of course, he is,” Wyatt Repp said. “He was never fully what he claimed to be. Here he was, preaching absolute truthfulness and honesty. Confess your sins! Confess! Free yourself of all guilt and shame! Become the round man, the round woman! Be complete! Yet he was concealing from his disciples and from the public that he was an immer. He had a gift that he was denying them, the gift of a much longer life. He was and is a criminal, this righteous man. He belongs to a secret and illegal organization. He is indeed a hypocrite!”)

  “Shut up! Shut up!” Zurvan cried.

  (“Yes. Lie down whimpering and die,” Jim Dunski said. “Make it easy for the hypocrite.”)

  (“Whimper, whimpish whelp, hard-hearted hound of heaven,” Bob Tingle said. “You’re barking up the wrong tree, Preacher Tom. The dog of deity is following a sour scent.”)

  “What do you expect me to do?” Zurvan shouted.

  That quieted them for a while. Anything that he did would not help them. Or him. He could, not resume the habit of the past and be one man one day and another the next. There was no place to go to where they could be themselves again. There was also no place where he could be Father Tom again. He was facing death as surely as they were. If the immers caught him, they would kill him. If the organics caught him, they would, after the trial, send him to an institution for the mentally unbalanced. If the therapy succeeded, he, Zurvan, would dissolve. So would all of them, Jeff Caird included. The man that walked out of the institution might be named Caird, but he would not be the same persona.

  If the therapy failed, he would be stoned and put away until such time as psychic science found a sure cure for him. Inevitably, he would be forgotten. He would gather dust in some vast w
arehouse along with the millions now there and the billions that would be there.

  “Yes, I am a hypocrite,” he muttered. “I have failed. Why? I thought that I was a true son of God, that I believed what I urged others to believe. I did believe! I did! But my Maker made me flawed!”

  He chewed his lip and stroked a beard that was no longer there.

  “Don’t put the blame on Him! He gave you free will! You had the power to heal the flaws! You did not have to blind yourself to them! You blinded yourself! Your Maker didn’t blind you!”

  (Jeff Caird said, quietly though very near, “But you forget that I am your maker.”)

  Zurvan yelled and fell to the floor. He rolled back and forth on the carpet crying, “No! No! No!”

  When he stopped rolling and shouting, he lay for a long while on his back staring at the ceiling.

  (“Hell, why don’t we quit prolonging this agony?” Charlie Ohm said. “Let’s turn ourselves in. They’re going to catch us, anyway. And we’ll be safe from the immers.”)

  (“Too many organics are immers,” Jim Dunski said. “They’ll get to us, find some reason to kill us before we can talk. Anyway, I don’t like to quit.”)

  (“It’s shootout time at the Psychic Corral,” Wyatt Repp said. “May the best man win. Get off the floor and be a man, Zurvan. Fight! If you lose, go down trying to win! Fight! Don’t listen to that loser, the lush!”)

  Zurvan walked to the kitchen as if he were pushing through cotton candy. He drank a tall glass of water, went to the toilet, relieved himself, and put cold water on his face. After drying off, he picked up his shoulderbag and walked to the hallway door.

  (“Hey, where you going?” Ohm said.)

  (“He’s going to turn us in,” Bob Tingle said. “By the time the organics get through with us, no stone will be left unturned. We’ll be turned inside out and then turned to stone. Think about it, man!”)

  (“I didn’t mean it,” Ohm said. “I was only kidding you, pushing you to see if you really were crazy.”)