Dunski hoped that he would get Rupert first so that he could inform her of what she deeply needed to know. However, the bottle he spun pointed at Malia when it stopped. Sighing, though not noticeably, he went with her into a bedroom and did what he would at another time have thoroughly enjoyed, though not as much as if she had been Rupert. Afterward, Malia said, "Your heart, not to mention other things, didn't seem to be in it."
"It's no reflection on my love for you," he said. He kissed her dusky cheek. "Every man has his down days and his up days."
"I'm not complaining, mind you," Malia said. "I love you, too. But I think, if you don't mind my saying so, today's one of your down days."
"You were faking your orgasms?"
"Never! I don't fake!"
"Well, I'm sorry. I must be off my feed or my biorhythm or something."
"I forgive you, although there's really nothing I have to forgive," Malia said. "Don't worry about it."
They went to the bathroom, Dunski thinking that she should not have complained if she thought it unimportant. They found Jan Markus Wells and Rupert there. While washing, Dunski tried to catch Rupert's eye so that he could sign to her that he wanted to speak privately to her. She was too occupied in douching to see him.
They returned to the living room, where they had to wait four minutes for the other couple. This time, chance did its best for Dunski. When he spun the bottle, it stopped with its opened end pointing at Rupert. Sighing quietly with relief, he went hand in hand with her to another bedroom. It reeked of sexual scents, and the bedclothes were sweat-soaked. He, Dunski, was accustomed to this, but Tingle, looking over his shoulder, and Caird, looking over Tingle's shoulder, might have caused his slight revulsion.
Rupert lay down on the bed and stretched out, her hands behind her head, her back arched, her perfectly conical breasts staring nipplewise at the ceiling. He sat down by her, took her hand, and said, "Let's skip the lovemaking, Rupert. I ... we're in trouble. We have to talk about it."
She sat up and said, "Deep trouble?"
He nodded and squeezed her hand. After sketching the last two days, he said, "So, you see, we have to figure out what to do today. We'll have to omit much of what we usually do. But we can't attract attention."
She shuddered
"This Castor ... it seems impossible ... what a monster!"
"He has to be found and stopped. And I have to find out where Snick is and get the truth out of her."
"And if she's a danger to us?"
"I don't like it, but she'll have to be stoned and hidden away."
"Better her than us, right?"
"I suppose so."
"Won't that make us no better than she?"
"Damn it," he said. "I'll wrestle with the ethics when I have to. First, I have to find her. I'll have to go to my contact. He's probably gotten the word by now, though, and he'll probably call me."
"How are you going to question Snick? You can't let her recognize you. If you do, you have to stone her no matter what she's doing here. She is an organic."
"She'll be in deep chemicogenic hypnosis. She won't remember me when she comes out of it."
"Poor Ozma," Rupert said. "She died because she was your wife."
"I'm sorry I had to tell you about her. I've never said anything about the other days unless it was immer business."
"That's all right," she said. She released his hand and hugged her knees. "I've always wondered about your other lives. Especially the women."
"Those women are not mine, not Jim Dunski's. Dunski isn't a stranger to those other men, but he knows them as slight acquaintances."
That was not entirely true. He did not wish, however, to talk about them. The less she knew, the better for her and for him.
Rupert got off the bed and hugged him closely. "I'm scared."
"So am I. Wary, anyway. Listen. If I tell you at the gym that I have to leave, you'll know that I got word about Castor or Snick. I won't be keying-out because I don't want the Credits Bureau to know that I was even at work. I'll lose today's credits, but it can't be helped. I've got overtime credit anyway. That'll help."
"Why work at all?"
"Because I want something to do to take my mind off this, keep me from worrying. Also, my superior will expect to contact me there. And I don't want to miss out on any more practice than I have to. Got to keep in shape, you know."
Rupert asked him to describe Castor so that she would know him if she saw him. Dunski listed in detail Castor's physical characteristics and his clothing. Then he said, "He thinks he's God. And he thinks I'm Satan. In a way, that's to our advantage. If he was just slightly insane and wanted to destroy us immers, he'd just turn us in to the government. You know what that means."
She shivered again and said, "Would you take the cyanide?"
"I hope so. I swore an oath. You did, too. We all did."
"It's the only thing to do. The only logical and honorable thing, I mean. But ..
There was a knock on the door. Malia called, "You going to stay in there forever?"
Dunski told her that they would be out in a minute. He said to Rupert, "I'm getting fed up with this group marriage thing. I'm just not the type to integrate well with it. I need more privacy, and I resent all the demands made on me."
Rupert's eyes widened.
"You really feel that way?"
"Would I say it if I didn't?"
"No. It was just a rhetorical question. To tell the truth, Jim, I'm pretty irked sometimes. And I do get a little jealous, though I know I shouldn't."
"As soon as this business is cleared up, let's quit. Declare the contract null and void. If we're lucky, we can do it today. This is just not working out for me and, obviously, not for you. I'm basically a monogamist."
She smiled and said, "Yes. Only one wife for you. One for each day, that is."
"When I created the persona of Jim Dunski, I did it with group marriage in mind. Dunski was the type of person who would fit right in with it. But I failed. Or I'm being too much influenced by my other personae. I don't know what in hell's wrong, but I just can't take this anymore."
"We'll talk about it later," she said. "We'd better get going."
"Meanwhile, no deviation from the routine."
Which meant that there would be no bottle-spinning the third time because this coupling had been determined by the previous two. Jannie White was Dunski's next. He went with her into the bedroom and did no better than with Malia. No better was satisfactory but not a cause for ringing bells, blowing whistles, and setting off firecrackers.
"You'd better get more sleep before tonight," Jannie said. "I usually take a nap before supper."
Dunski grunted and headed for the bathroom. He went to bed by himself, after telling the others that he had had trouble with insomnia and was going to use the deep-sleep-wave machine. He crawled into the wall niche, attached the electrodes to his head, and lay down on his back. Before turning the device on, he thought about Castor. The man had probably long ago made provisions for daybreaking. That required fake ID star-discs and also the knowledge of how to implant false records in the data bank. The latter could be learned, however; it was not a data banker monopoly.
Castor could hide in the ancient subway system, part of which still existed, and he could steal or rob food. But that would bring the organics in. They would be looking for him anyway, and they might figure out that he was the thief. Then they would search the area in depth. He would not have much chance of escaping the odor sniffers and heat and sound detectors.
After trying to think of where Castor could be hiding out, Jim Dunski came to the same conclusion as before. He had no way of finding out. He would find Castor when Castor found him. The madman had attacked him once and would try again.
The alarm woke him. He went through the routine of eating breakfast, always a noisy ritual, of washing, then helping to get the children off to school. He and Rupert walked into the ten o'clock heat and were sweating before they got to the bu
ilding, which had once housed New York University students. Their pupils were waiting in the air-conditioned gymnasium, their padded sensor-packed uniforms on and holding masks and foils. The two greeted them, and work started. At another time, Dunski would have been eager to instruct, especially one of them, a long-armed lithe youth who had the makings of a champion. Try hard though Dunski did, he could not keep Castor and Snick out of his mind. The youth scored twice on him, the bells clamoring and orange lights flashing on a wall strip as the sensors transmitted the exact point of thrust.
"You're improving enormously," Dunski said after he took his mask off. "And I'm off my feed. Not that you.wouldn't have gotten me, anyway."
He was relieved, instead of tensing up, when he saw a man and a woman enter the gymnasium. Though he had never seen them before, he knew that they were immers. Their smiles were strained, and their eyes fastened upon him as if they were radar beams. He said, "Excuse me," to the youth and walked in what he hoped was a casual manner to the two. One was a gaunt man with a big nose, light skin, and pale-wheat hair. He looked as if he was about forty-five subyears old. The woman was young and pretty and obviously had many Asiatic Indian ancestors.
The man made no effort to introduce himself. "We're to take you there at once," he said. The right hands of the two strangers were fisted, the thumb held under the first two fingers. Dunski closed his hand quickly in the identification sign, held it long enough for them to see it, and opened his hand.
"Be with you just as soon as I change," he said. He walked toward the locker room, and they followed him. When they were in front of the locker that held Thursday's clothes, he voice-activated the strip on the inside of the door. Channel 52 blared current hit number four of the juvenile "pizza" music, "I'm Alone on a Bicycle Built for Two." The man grimaced and said, "Is that necessary?"
"To cover up our voices, yes," Dunski said. While he was removing his fencing clothes, he said, "Has she been destoned yet?"
"I don't know. Let's wait and see."
"Silence is the word, then?"
The two nodded. Two minutes later, they left the building. Dunski felt dirty and self-conscious because he had not showered, but he knew that he could not waste the time for that. Nevertheless, he thought that under the circumstances, the couple could have been more polite. They did not have to walk so far away from him. He shrugged and muttered, "Ah, well."
Though the air was even hotter, dark clouds were massing in the west. The meteorologist on the public news strip on a street-corner post foretold a drop in the temperature and a heavy rain by seven that evening. Dunski thought briefly of the melting Arctic icecap and the rising waters along the seawalls surrounding Manhattan Island. Thousands were working on them now in the searing sun, adding another foot to the height so that Manhattan would be safe from inundation for another ten obyears.
The three walked west on Bleecker Street, turned north at the house where-he tried not to think of it-Ozma Wang had been murdered and mutilated, and walked along the side of the canal. At the man's whispered direction, Dunski turned left and crossed the West Fourth Street bridge. He turned left again at Jones Street and stopped midway in front of the block building. The man stepped ahead of him, punched a button by the wide green door, and waited. Whoever was inside, seeing them on the slanting strip above the door, was satisfied that they had business there. The door swung open, and a blonde woman with blue eyes and very dark skin waved them in. She looked as if she was about thirty subyears old. Dunski thought that she had had an optic pigmentation removal, all the rage then and not only in Thursday. The government was trying to make Homo sapiens one brown species, but the people, as usual, had found ways to bypass official policy. "Pigchange," as it was called on this day, was not illegal if the government was notified of it.
They went silently down a hall and stopped halfway before a door bearing a plaque with the names of the seven days' occupants. Thursday's were Karl Marx Martin, M.D., Ph.D., and Wilson Tupi Bunbiossom, Ph.D. The blonde inserted an ID tip into the hole and pushed the door open. They entered an apartment like most, a hall running the width of the building with rooms on either side and the kitchen at the end. While they were going down the hall, the blonde said, "This isn't my place. Martin and Bunblossom are on vacation in L.A. They have nothing to do with us. They don't know we're using their apartment."
"Then you'll have to get Snick out of here before midnight," Dunski said.
"Of course."
The apartment looked drab and unused because the decorative wall strips had not been switched on. They passed the stoner room, where Dunski counted nineteen cylinders. Fourteen adults and five children. The faces were those of statues; the eyes did not know that they were staring at criminals.
The blonde opened the door to the personal possessions closet, pushed aside a rack of clothes and said, "Bring her out."
The gaunt man and the dark woman pulled out Snick, huddled in a near fetal position. Dunski bent over to look at her.
The bruise where Castor had struck her was a dark red. Her eyes were closed, which, for some reason, made him feel relieved. Their hands around her head, they dragged her to an empty stoner and shoved her inside. The gaunt man closed the cylinder door; the dark woman went to the wall and opened a panel. "Not yet," the gaunt man said.
Chapter 16
The gaunt man bent down to reach into his shoulderbag, which he had put on the floor. He straightened up with a gun in his hand. Holding it out to Dunski, he said, "Do you want it back?"
Dunski took it and said, "Thanks. As long as Castor is alive, I want it."
The man nodded and said, "We're still looking for him. Now, we've been told about your situation, but I'd like to hear it from you. We don't have all the details; we have to evaluate the situation."
"It's more than a situation, it's a predicament."
"How about talking over coffee?" the blonde said. "Or isn't this going to take that long?"
"Coffee'd be fine," Dunski said.
They went to the kitchen and all sat down except for the blonde. She inserted her ID tip into the cabinet door marked PP-TH. She swung the door open and said, "I had the ID made when I found out Martin and Bunblossom were going on vacation. I'm a good friend ..
The gaunt man coughed, and he said, "That's enough. The less Oom Dunski knows about us, the better."
"Sorry, Oom Gar-"
The blonde clipped off the rest of his name and looked embarrassed.
"You talk too much, Tante," the gaunt man said.
"I'll watch it," the blonde said. She was silent as she removed two cubes of stoned coffee, put them in the wall, closed the door, pushed a button, opened the door, and removed the coffee in its paper containers. The gaunt man said, "I'll tell you what we know, and then you fill in. We got our data from ... a verbal source. The data lines weren't used, of course, except to transmit to our superior."
While Dunski was talking, the blonde poured coffee for them and silently indicated the cream and sugar containers. By the time that he had drunk two cups, Dunski had given them all that they should know.
There was a long silence after he quit talking. The gaunt man stroked his chin, then said, "We'll have to find out what this Snick knows. Afterwards, we decide."
"Decide what?" Dunski said.
"Whether we kill her before we stone her again or just hide her someplace. If we don't kill her, there's always the chance that she might be found. If she is, then she can talk."
Dunski grunted as if he had been hit in the ribs, and he said, "I know it may be necessary, but ..
"You knew when you took the immer oath that you might have to kill someday," the gaunt man said. His dark brown eyes looked steadily into Dunski's. "You aren't thinking of arguing about this, are you?"
"No, of course not. I don't take the good but dodge the bad. Whatever's in the package, I accept. But killing ... it should be done only if absolutely necessary."
"I know that," the gaunt man said. He tipped his cup,
swallowed the last of his coffee, set the cup down, and stood up. He nodded at the blonde. "Tante, you get Snick ready."
The blonde told the dark woman to follow her. The gaunt man put the shoulderbag on the table and began removing the interrogation tools. Dunski looked away from them and out through the sheers over the tall and wide window. There were only a few pedestrians and cyclists on the street, none loitering. All were intent on their own affairs or seemed to be. If there were any organics among them, they did not look toward the window. Innocents, Dunski thought, minding their own business, unknowing that something bad was about to take place a few feet from them. Bad. Not evil. The immers were not trying to overthrow the government. They just wanted to live within its forms-more or less-without being disturbed, and they hoped to change it just enough so that all would have true freedom. What harm was there in that?
The gaunt man put some of his tools back into the bag and took the rest into the living room. "We'll put her there," he said, indicating a sofa. "All of you ... get out of her sight." He tied a handkerchief over his face and stood by the cylinder with a gas-spraying can in his hand. The blonde woman, at a nod from him, turned the power on. A second later, the power having gone off automatically, she closed the panel.
The gaunt man had the door open and had shot the gas into the cylinder and closed the door again before the blonde had turned away from the panel. Dunski glimpsed Snick's wide open eyes, her agonized face, and her attempt to rise from her womb-crouch. He saw her face at the window and the palms of her hands. Both face and hands slid away. The gaunt man lowered the handkerchief to his neck and counted thirty seconds by his watch before he opened the door. Snick fell as it swung out, her head striking the floor, her legs doubled beneath her, buttocks in the air.
Dunski helped the dark woman carry Snick's limp body to the sofa. "Gaunt," as Dunski thought of him, passed a circular device, held in his fingertips, over her upturned face and body. After telling Dunski and "Dark" to turn her over, he moved the device over her back. As it passed over her left thigh, it shrilled. Gaunt said "Ah!" and brought the device back to the area that had triggered it. He took a pen from his robe pocket and outlined a two-inch square area in red. Having put the round device in the pocket, he removed a thin cylinder with a bulb at its end. Holding this bulb close to Snick's skin inside the square, he moved it slowly until it shrilled most loudly.
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