He turned and walked down to the hall to the bathroom, which was on his right. After closing the door, he sat down on the closed toilet lid. He noted that Tuesday had forgotten to replace the toilet paper; three lone sheets clung to the spool. That however, was not worth leaving a remonstratory recording for yesterday's yahoos.
He closed his eyes and sank into a noiseless and frictionless world. His image of himself as Caird hung solid, bright, and full-sized before him. Watching it with one eye, as it were, he spun the other eye, also imaginary, so that it turned inward. That saw at first only darkness. Then, quickly, many sagging lines, gray in the black, formed. They seemed to stream from the abyss within his body, flying past the eye into the abyss above. He straightened them out until they were so tight that they hummed with tension. He increased the pressure at each end, though he did not know where their ends were, until it seemed that the lines, now glowing brightly and coldly, would snap. He hurled heat at them. The "heat" was comet-shaped energy complexes, each of which struck a line and was absorbed, though not entirely. Some of the heat slid down or up the lines, like drippings from a candle. It was up to them which way they went. Here, in his mind, there was no gravity.
No gravy, either, he thought. Or maybe he was wrong. The drippings did remind him of hot gravy.
The lines of force were used to suppress himself and bring forth Tingle. Who, when summoned from the floor of his mind like the ghost of Samuel evoked by the Witch of Endor, would change from ghost to guest. Today's guest.
He increased the strain on the lines. They snapped and then darted wriggling and shining in the darkness. They went here and there, colliding, then coalescing, until all had touched and melted together and formed one slim, long, and glowing column. It seemed upright, that is, stretching from the darkness below to the darkness above. Now, he rotated it so that it was at right angles to its previous position, and he spun it so fast that it melted from a column into a blurry disc.
The other eyesaw that the image of Caird had lost much of its brightness and had shrunk. No wonder. The heat hurled at the lines had been sucked from Caird. Now, a line, the boundaries of a trap door, formed around the image's feet. Sometimes, the image to be done away with was shot up like a rocket or rolled into a ball and hurled down an alleyway with phantom bowling pins at the far end. Today the image was to be dropped through a floor.
The second eye watched the spinning and bright white disc as its sharp edge cut a block from the darkness and then began cutting away parts of the blackness. A rough figure was left from the hewing away of the darkness, a figure that became gray as it absorbed some of the light from the disc. Which became darker as the figure gained a finer form.
When Tingle was almost perfected, the first eye gave a mental order, and the image of Caird dropped through the trap door. The lines forming the door vanished.
Now, both eyes focused on Tingle, and, as the disc became black and small, having lost its heat and worn its edge to almost nothing, Tingle floated glowing in the blackness.
Presently, the disc disappeared, and the image of Tingle was shot upward so swiftly that its friction formed a long ghostly comet tail.
His eyes turned outward, and he opened his lids. Bob Tingle had landed, though not without a residue of Caird. Ninety-eight percent of him was Wednesday's tenant; two percent, Tuesday's. Enough of Caird was left to remember the dummy still inflated in the stoner. What would he do if Nokomis saw it? He could not give her an explanation that would satisfy her. And he could not tell her the truth. Why had he ever gotten into this mess?
He rose from the seat and started toward the door. He stopped, grimaced, snapped his fingers, and turned back. If Nokomis did not hear the toilet flushing, she would come galloping down the hall to find out why not. She always noticed the breaking of a pattern, the nonhappening of events that should happen unless something was wrong. He pressed the button, and, as the water roared, he stepped into the hall.
Usually, he was almost all Bob Tingle by now, though Jeff Caird would not have really dropped entirely through the imaginary trap door. Always, Caird was a speck in the eyeball, a tiny itch in the skin of the mind, not noticed by Tingle unless there was a good reason for him to be noticed. As just now, when the dummy had to be deflated. What made him even more present was that Chang Castor was loose in Wednesday-probably -- -- and Tingle could not ignore him.
Tingle looked down the hall. He could not see Nokomis, but she might think of something to fetch from the PP closet.
He called, "I'm going to get dressed! Anything you want from the closet?"
Nokomis said, cheerily, "Nothing, dear! The coffee'll be ready soon!"
Nokomis would now be destoning the lox and bagels for their breakfast. After that, she'd put the bagels in the toaster. He would have to be dressed by then or she would be looking down the hall to see where he was.
He ran to his stoner, opened the door, and bent down. After he had removed the plug from the base of the dummy, he shut the door and ran to the closet marked WEDNESDAY. He said, "Open," and a mechanism, recognizing his voiceprint, released the lock so that he could swing the tall door out. He snatched the nearest robe, slid it over his head, said, "Close," and hurried back down the hall after a glance to assure himself that Nokomis was not looking after him. He opened the stoner again.
"Damn!"
The dummy was deflating too slowly.
He pressed down on it, aware of the louder hissing as the air left it. Nokomis, however, had turned on a strip. The voices should drown the hissing.
When the replica was half-collapsed, he stepped into the cylinder and closed the door. He shoved down on the dummy until it was completely deflated, then rolled it up and put it in the little bottle in the shoulderbag. The gun also went into the bag. Though he knew that Thursday's ID star was in the bag, he could not resist checking to make sure. His fingers touched the tips of the star.
He stepped out backward and closed the door. Breathing more heavily than he liked, he walked toward the kitchen. Just before he got to it, he saw Nokomis come around the corner.
"There you are. The bagels are getting cold."
He followed her to the balcony, where a small round table held coffee, orange juice, and the food. He sat down opposite Nokomis. There was just enough light from the street to make him and his wife seem to be in a gray limbo. The katydids and tree frogs were still singing.
He sipped hot coffee and looked at his Tuesday home. Its windows were bright, but he could see no one in it. Enough of Caird lingered for him to think briefly of Ozma, standing in the cylinder. Ozma, waiting to see him six days from now.
Nokomis, as almost always, looked lovely. Her skin was darker in this dimness than the beautiful copper it showed in sunlight. Her black hair was cut close and spotted with white dye to give it Wednesday's current "skunky" look.
Nokomis had tried to get Tingle to spot his hair and grow a beard, which would be cut to the fashionable square shape. He had refused, though he could not give her, of course, his true reasons for not being in mode.
He thought: the clothes in the hamper. I must not forget to hide them better.
Nokomis, halfway through her second cup of coffee, perked up. She began chattering away about her role in the new ballet, Proteus and Menelaus. It had not opened yet, and its troubles were many. composer is crazy. She thinks atonal music is something new. She won't listen when you tell her it was dead ten generations ago. Roger Shenachi is constipated, and every time he comes down from a grand jetй he farts something awful. I told Fred ..
"Fred?"
"Haven't you been listening? Pay attention. I just hate talking to myself, you know that. Fred Pandi is the big muckamuck; she wrote the story, composed the music, and did the choreography. I told her she should rewrite the whole thing around Roger, call it Gas or something like that, and while she was at it, she should throw out the music and write something that could at least be danced to ..
"I'm sure you're artist enough
to overcome all that," Tingle said. "Anyway, since when does a ballerina, even one of your stature, have any say in-"
"Thank you, but you don't understand. I have a say in it, a big one, because I'm a committee member, as you know very well. At least, I'm supposed to be one, but the composer and the orchestra director are lovers, and they gang up on the rest of us."
"Two doesn't make a gang."
"What do you know about it, Bob?"
"Not much. What's this about a committee? Since when has a committee ever produced great art?"
"Oh, don't you ever listen? I told you all about it last yesterday. Or was it the day before? Never mind, I did tell you."
"Oh, sure, I remember," he said. "Whose idea was that?"
"Some bureaucrat's. I'm sure the other days don't have such problems. It's just ..
Chapter 9
Though it was not fair to let his mind wander, he could not help it. Gril, Rootenbeak, and Castor had risen from the depths like sunken ships filled with gas from decaying corpses. Never before, well, hardly ever before, had he found it hard to shut out the other days. Usually, when he was in Wednesday, he was almost completely Bob Tingle; Wednesday was sufficient unto itself. Now, the pattern and routine had been shattered. There were three daybreakers on the loose, and two could be very dangerous. Well, one could be. Rootenbeak might come across him and recognize him, but it was not likely that he would say anything to the authorities about Bob Tingle looking so much like Jeff Caird. Unless he did so anonymously via TV. Castor that maniac could have been lurking nearby in the shadows and seen him running from the house to this apartment building. Or Castor might be apprehended at any moment and, as Horn had put it, spill the beans.
"Bob!"
Tingle pulled himself from his mental morass.
"Sure, I agree with you. Committees stink. But look at it this way. If you were living in the old days, you wouldn't have a thing to say about the production. This way, you might get some things changed."
"Committees arejust like balloons, always up in the air, subject to the whims of the winds or of the windy, and they come down when they run out of gas. I'm telling you, the whole show's going to crash. Utterly crash! And I'll be ruined, utterly ruined!"
He sipped on the coffee and said, "Tell you what. I am an official at the World Data Bank ..
"I know that. What about it?"
"I'll find out if there's anything in the way of blackmail material that can be used against the committee members, especially against Pandi and Shenachi. You can use it, if I find any, that is, to get those two to knuckle under. Of course, I might have to dig up dirt about everyone on the committee."
She rose from the chair, came around the table, and kissed him. "Oh, Bob, do you think you could?"
"Sure. Only ... doesn't the ethics bother you? It'll be ..
"It's for art's sake!"
"Mostly for your sake, isn't it?"
"I'm not just thinking about me," she said. She went back to the chair and poured more coffee. "It's the whole production. I'm thinking organically. For everybody's good."
"I don't know that I can get enough leverage to pry the composer loose from her atonal music. Even if I could, that means a long delay, a new score written."
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.
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