Philip Jose Farmer - Dayworld

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C. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
Publishers Since 1838
200 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10016
Copyright (c) 1985 by Philip José Farmer All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not
be reproduced in any form without permission. Published simultaneously in Canada by General
Publishing Co. Limited, Toronto
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION I)ATA
Farmer, Philip José.
Dayworld.
I. Title.
PS3556.A72D34 1984 813'.54 84-17978
ISBN 0-399-12967-7
PrInted in the United States of America
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
To my latest grandchild, Thomas José Josephsohn, born March 25, 1983. May he live to be old and be
always as bright, friendly, outgoing, cheerful, curious, and healthy as he is now.
My thanks to Father James D. Shaughnessy of Peoria for his counsel and stimulating ideas
re future popes. Any opinions and conclusions herein about seven simultaneous popes are, however,
my responsibility, not his.
Author's Preface
The basis or springboard for this novel is my short story "TheSliced-Crosswise-Only-On-Tuesday-
World." This took place in
A.D. 2214 (old style) or N.E. 130 (new style): N.E. stands for New
Era, and N.E. 130 indicates the one hundred and thirtieth year
after the official beginning of the "stoner" society. The events of Dayworid occur in A.D. 3414 or
N.E. 1330. Thirteen hundred and thirty years have passed since the start of the New Era, N.E. 1.
Though there are twelve hundred years between the events of the short story and the novel,
only seven and a half generations (arithmetically speaking) have been born. The reason for this
will become apparent during the course of the novel.
In the future, the U.S.A. will have to adopt the metric and twenty-four-hour time systems.
I use the present systems for the convenience of the American reader.
Some contemporary English words have different meanings in the New Era culture. These
changes should be obvious.
Do not be confused because some of the male characters have female names and some females
have male names. Times change; customs die.
The protagonist of Dayworid is an outlaw, a daybreaker. He lives by the horizontal
calendar.
Author's Preface
For an explanation of the horizontal and vertical calendars, refer to the illustration on
the next page.
The calendar is "vertical," not our present-day "horizontal" calendar. Our calendars
present the seven days of the week as if we moved through time horizontally. Sunday precedes
Monday, and Monday precedes Tuesday, and by the time we have reached next Sunday, we have stepped
off onto another horizontal chronological path.
The New Era or "stoner" society uses a "vertical" calendar.
Reason: One-seventh of the world's population lives on only one day of the week. To put it another
way, six-sevenths of the world's population is in a "stoned" or "suspended-animation" state for
six days of each week. Sunday's people live on Sunday only; Monday's, on Monday, and so forth.
At the end of one passage of Earth around the sun, a Sunday citizen has lived only fifty-
two days. If born in, say, N.E. 100, that person has been on Earth two hundred years by N.E. 300.
But that person is not quite twenty-nine years old in physiological development. If that person
has been on Earth for six hundred years, he or she is not quite eighty-six years old in terms of
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aging.
The stoner culture greatly reduces the demand for food and goods, amount of pollution, and
living space required. If the global population is, say, ten billion, then, on each day, only a
little over one billion, four hundred and twenty-eight million, five hundred thousand people are
eating food, drinking, using space, and adding trash, junk, and waste matter for disposal.
The New Era government decreed a new calendar for two reasons. One, it wanted to make a
clean break with the past. Two, it made sure that each day's population would not be cheated out
of its full quota of days per year because of the different days of the months as set by the
Gregorian calendar. The summer solstice, which occurs on or near June 21, arbitrarily
NEW ERA (VERTICAL) CALENDAR
N.E. 1330 (OLD STYLE A.D. 3414)
UNITY, FIRST MONTH
SUNDAY MONDAY TUESDAY WED'SDAY THURSDAY FRIDAY SATURDAY
~TThi~i " "
~1D2~Wl"
__ H
D3-W1 D3-Wi D4.W1 D4-W1 " " " " " " "
VARIETY, SECOND MONTH
SUNDAY MONDAY TUESDAY WED'SDAY THURSDAY FRIDAY SATURDAY
D5-W1 " " " " " " " " "
CAIRD'S TINGLE'S D(]NSKI'S REPP'S OHM'S
DAY DAY DAY DAY DAY
D6-W1 " " " " " " " " " "
ZUR VAN'S 'ISHARASH
DAY VILI'S DAY
D7-Wi " " " " " " " " " "
D1-W2 , " " " ' " " " " " "
FREEDOM, SEVENTH MONTH
SUNDAY MONDAY TUESDAY WED'SDAY THURSDAY FRIDAY SATURDAY
D4-W4 " " " " " " " " " "
D5.W4 " " " " " " " " " "
D6-W4 " " " " " " " " " "
WHOSE
DAY?
CHRISTMAS CHRISTMAS CHRISTMAS CHRISTMAS CHRISTMAS CHRISTMAS CHRISTMAS
D7-W4 " " "" " " '
Di-WI means Day-One of Week-One or the first day
of the first week of the year. D3- W4 stands for
the third day of the fourth "vertical" week, etc.
became the first day of the year, and that day
was designated as Sunday.
The year was divided into thirteen months of four seven-day weeks. The end of the year was
followed by a zero or lost day to ensure that there were three hundred and sixty-five days in the
year. During leap years, an extra zero or lost day was added. Everybody except a minimum number of
firefighters, police, administrators, and so on was kept in the stoned state.
The citizens would, of course, refer to two different types of time. Objective time, that
is, time as measured by the annual circling of the Earth around the sun and Earth's spinning,
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would be termed obyears, obmonths, and obweeks. Subjective time, that is, the actual number of
days, weeks, months, and years a person has lived, would be subdays, subweeks, submonths, and
subyears.
The names of the months are, in order of succession, Unity, Variety, Joy, Hope,
Comradeship, Love, Freedom, Plenty, Peace, Knowledge, Wisdom, Serenity, and Fulfillment. These are
also the Thirteen Principles upon which the New Era society is supposedly based.
Tuesday- World
Organic Commonwealth of Earth
North American Ministering Organ
Manhattan State
Manhattan total population: 2,100,000
Manhattan daily population: 300,000
Greenwich Village District
House on corner of Bleecker Street and Kropotkin Canal (formerly the
Avenue of the Americas)
VARIETY, Second Month of N.E. 1330 D5-W1 (Day-Five, Week-One)
Time Zone 5, 12:15 A.M.
1.
When the hounds bay, the fox and the hare are brothers. Today, Jeff Caird, the fox, would hear the
hounds.
At the moment, he could not hear anything because he was standing in a soundproof
cylinder. If he had been outside it, he still would have heard nothing. Except for himself and a
few organics, firefighters, and technicians, he was the only living person in the city.
A few minutes before entering the cylinder and closing its door, he had slid back a small
panel in the wall. Behind the control panel in the wall recess was a tiny device he had long ago
connected to the power circuits. He had voice-activated the device, thus ensuring that "destoning"
power would not be applied to the cylinder he now occupied.
Though power was absent, the city monitoring computer would receive false data that power
had been turned on in his cylinder.
His cylinder or "stoner" was like those of all other healthy adults. It stood on one end,
had a round window a foot in diameter in the door, and was made of gray paper. The paper, however,
was permanently "stoned," and thus was indestructible and always cool.
Nude, his feet planted on athick disc set in the middle of the
cylinder, he waited. The inflated facsimile of himself had been deflated and was in the
shoulderbag on the cylinder floor.
The figures in the other cylinders in the room were nonliving things whose molecules had
been electromagnetically commanded to slow down. Result: a hardening throughout the body, which
became unbreakable and unburnable, though a diamond could scratch it. Result: a lowering of body
temperature, though it was not so low that it caused moisture to precipitate in the ambient air.
Suddenly, in one cylinder in the room and in hundreds of thousands of others in the silent
city, automatically applied power surged from the discs and through the statuelike bodies. Like a
cue stick slamming into a group of billiard balls, the power struck the lazy molecules of the
body. The balls scattered and kept on moving at the rate determined by Nature. The heart of the
destoned person, unaware that it had been stopped, completed the beat. Exactly fifteen minutes
after midnight, the people of Tuesday's Manhattan were no longer uneatable and unrottable
pumpkins. For the next twenty-three hours and thirty minutes, they could be easily wounded or
killed.
He pushed the door open and stepped into a large basement room. He bent slightly from the
waist, causing the ID badge hung from a chain around his neck to swing out. As he straightened up,
the green disc surrounded by a seven-pointed star settled back against his solar plexus.
The sourceless light had come on when destoning power had been applied. As he did every
Tuesday morning, he saw the shadowless light-green walls, the four-foot-wide TV strips running
from ceiling to floor, the thick brown carpet with a swirling green pattern, the clock strip, and
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twenty-three cylinders and coffin-shaped boxes, the "stoners." Twenty frozen faces were framed by
the round windows. Twelve seniors (adults) in the vertical cylinders. Eight juniors, young
children, lying horizontally in the boxes and facing the ceiling.
A few seconds after he had left his stoner, a woman stepped out of hers. Ozma Fillmore
Wang was short, slender, fullbreasted, and long-legged. Her cheekbones were broad and high on her
heart-shaped face. Her large black eyes had slight epicanthic folds. Her long hair was straight,
black, and glossy. Large white teeth shone when she flashed a wide-lipped smile.
She wore nothing except her ID disc-star, lipstick, eye shadow, and a great green
grasshopper painted on her body. It was standing up on its back legs, and her black-painted
nipples formed the centers of the black staring eyes. Sometimes, when Jeff was making love to his
wife, he had the feeling that he was coupled with an insect.
She came to him, and they kissed. "Good morning, Jeff."
"Good morning, Ozma."
She turned and led him into the next room. He reached out to pat her egg-shaped buttock,
then withdrew his hand. The slightest encouragement would inflame her. She would want to make love
on the carpet in front of the unseeing witnesses in the cylinders. He thought that it was childish
to do this, but she was, in some ways, childish. She preferred to call herself childlike. OK. All
good artists were childlike. To them every second birthed a new world, each more astonishing and
awesome than the previous. However . . . was Ozma a good artist?
What did he care? He loved her for herself, whatever that meant.
The other room contained chairs, sofas, tables, a Ping-Pong table, an exercising machine,
a pool table, TV wall strips, a door to a bathroom, and a door to the utility room. Ozma turned
just outside this door and went up the steps to a hail. On their left was the kitchen. They turned
right, went down a short hall, and turned right to the steps. The upstairs held four bedrooms,
each with a bathroom. Ozma preceded him into the nearest bedroom, which lit up as they entered.
At one end of the large room, by some shuttered windows, was a king-size bed. At another
wall, by a large round window,
was a table with a large mirror. Nearby were shelves holding big plastic boxes containing brushes,
combs, and cosmetics. Each box bore the name of its owner.
Along one wall was a series of doors with name-plaques. Jeff inserted a point of his ID
star into a hole in the door bearing his name and Ozma's. It slid open, and a light came on,
revealing shelves holding their personal-property clothing. From a shelf at eye level, he picked
out a crumpled ball of cloth, turned, placed a section between his thumb and first finger, and
snapped the ball. It unrolled with a crack of electrical sparks from its hem and became a long,
smooth Kelly-green robe. He put it on and tied a belt around his waist. From another shelf he took
two socks and a pair of shoes. After putting these on, he sealed the tops of the shoes with a firm
pressure of fingers.
Ozma straightened up from her inspection of the bedclothes.
"Clean and done according to specifications," she said.
"Monday's always been good about house duties. We're luckier than some I know. I only hope
Monday doesn't move to another house."
She spoke a codeword. A wall sprang into light and life, a three-dimensional view of a
jungle composed of gigantic grass blades. Presently, some blades bent, and a thing with bulging
black insect eyes looked at the two humans. Its antennae quivered. A hind leg raised and rubbed
against a protruding vein. Grasshopper stridulations rang through the room.
"For God's sake," Jeff said. "Tone it down."
"It soothes me to sleep," she said. "Not that I feel like sleeping just now."
"I'd like to wait until we've had a good rest. It's always better then."
"Oh, I don't know," Ozma said. "Why don't we give it a scientific test? Do it before sleep
and after and then compare notes?"
"That's the difference between forty and twenty-five. Believe me, I know."
She laughed and said, "We're not a December-April match, darling."
She lay down on the bed, her arms and legs spread out.
"The Castle Ecstatic is undefended, and its drawbridge is down. Charge on in, Sir Galahad,
with your trusty lance."
"I'm afraid I might fall into the moat," he said, grinning.
"You bastard! Are you trying to make me mad again? Charge on in, faint-hearted knight, or
I'll slam the portcullis down on you!"
"You've been watching reruns of The Knights of the Round Table," he said.
"They turn me on, all those violent men on their big horses and maidens ravished by three-
headed ogres. All those spears thrusting. Come on, Jeff! Play along with me!"
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"I seek the Holy Grail," he said as he eased down. "However, it's more like the Holy
Gruel."
"Can I help it if I overlubricate? You keep this up, and I'll paint you brown and flush
you down the toilet. Don't spoil it for me, Jeff. I have to fantasize."
He thought, Whatever happened to good old unimaginative sex? But he said, "I've just taken
a vow of silence. Think of me as the mad monk of Sherwood Forest."
"Don't stop talking. You know I love it when you talk dirty." Fifteen minutes later, she
said, "Did you apply for a permit?"
"No," he said, breathing hard. "I forgot."
She rolled over to face him. "You said you wanted a child."
"Yes. Only. . . you know I had so much trouble with Arid. I wonder if I really want
another child."
Ozma stroked his cheek gently. "Your daughter's a wonderful woman. What trouble?"
"Lots after her mother died. She got neurotic, too depen
dent. And she's very jealous of you, though she has no reason to be."
"I don't think so," Ozma said. "Anyway ... trouble? What trouble? Have you been holding
out on me?"
"We'll talk about it during breakfast," she said. "Unless you'd like to talk about it now.
You know, I thought for sure that you wanted a child. I had some misgivings myself. I am an
artist, and I should give my all to my art, excluding of course what I gladly give to you. But a
child? I wasn't sure. Then-"
"We've been through that," he said. He mimicked her low husky hint-of-gravel-grinding
voice. "'Every woman is an artist in that she can produce a masterpiece, her child. However, not
all women are good artists. But I am, I am. Painting is not enough.'"
She hit his arm with a tiny fist. "You make me sound so pompous."
"Not at all." He kissed her. "Good night. We'll talk later."
"That's what I said. But .. . you'll apply today?"
"I promise."
Though they could have sent in their application via TV strip, they had a much better
chance of acceptance if he used his connections as an organic (a euphemism for policeperson, who
represented the force of the "organic" government). He would talk face to face with a superior
official of the Reproduction Bureau for whom he had done some favors, and the application would
not go through regular channels. Even so, it would be a subyear before the Bureau's decision came
through. Jeff knew that they would be accepted. Meanwhile, he could change his mind and cancel the
application.
Ozma would be angry if he did, which meant that he was going to have to think of a good
excuse. However, many events could happen before the day of wrath.
Ozma went to sleep quickly. He lay for a while, eyes closed
but seeing Arid's face. The immer council had already rejected his request to initiate Ozma. He
had expected that, but he had thought that Ariel would be accepted. The daughter of immers, she
was very intelligent and adaptable, highly qualifled to become an immer. Except .. . she had shown
some psychic instability in certain matters. For that reason, the immer council might reject her.
He could not deny that the council had to be very cautious. But he was hurt.
Sometimes, he wished that Gilbert Ching Immerman had not discovered the elixir or chemical
compound or whatever it was that slowed down aging. He also wished that, since the elixir had been
discovered many obcenturies ago, Immerman had made the discovery public. But Immerman, after some
agonizing, had decided that the elixir would not be good for humankind as a whole.
As it was, the stoner society eliminated many generations that would have been born if the
stoners had not been invented. It took a person one hundred and forty ~objective years to reach
the physiological age of twenty. Thus, six generations were lost every one hundred and forty
years. Who knew what geniuses and saints, not to mention the common people, were never born? Who
knew how many people who might have led the world in scientific and artistic and political
progress were missing?
Immerman had thought that the present situation was bad enough. But if the existing
slowing-down of living and of birth was increased by seven, then the loss would be even greater.
And this global society, the Organic Commonwealth of Earth, would become even more static and
would change even more sluggishly.
Whether Immerman's decision was ethically right or wrong, he had made it, and its result,
the secret immer family, was living today.
Immerman had not, however, been selfish in keeping the se
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cret for himself, his descendants, and those initiated into the family. The immers would be hidden
rebels against the government. In a slow and subtle revolution, they would infiltrate the upper
and middle echelons of the commonwealth. Once they had enough power, they would not change the
basic structure of the government. They did not want as yet to abandon the stoners. But they did
want to get rid of the constant and close monitoring of the citizens by the government. It was not
just irksome; it was degrading. It also was not necessary, though the government claimed that it
was.
"Only by being watched may you become free" was one of the government's slogans often
displayed on the strip shows.
At the age of eighteen subyears, Caird had been told of the immer society by his parents.
He had been studied by the council, weighed in the balance and found more than satisfactory. He
was asked if he wanted to become an immer. Of course, he did. Who would turn down the opportunity
of a much longer life? And what intelligent youth would not want to work for greater freedom and
for an eventual position of power?
It was not until some subyears later that he realized how anxious his parents must have
been when they revealed the secret of the immers. What if, through some perversity, their son had
refused to join? The immer council could not allow him to live, even though it was unlikely that
he would betray the family. He would have been taken away in the dead of night and stoned, then
hidden where no one would ever find him. And that would have grieved his parents.
When Caird had realized that, he had asked his parents what they would have done if he had
rejected the offer. Would they have turned against the immers?
"But no one has ever refused," his father had said.
Caird had not said anything, but he had wondered if there had been people who had turned
down the offer and no one except those immediately involved had known of it.
At nineteen, Caird had been approached by his uncle, an organic whom Caird suspected might
also be orf the Manhattan immer council. Did his nephew wish to become a daybreaker? Not just the
ordinary type of daybreaker, a common criminal, but one who would be protected and helped by the
immers. He would have a new identity on each day, he could have many professions, and he could
carry messages verbally from one day's council to the next when recorded messages were dangerous.
Entranced, eager, the youthful Caird had said that he certainly would like to be a
daybreaker.
2.
Thinking of this, Caird finally fell asleep. And he was in a chapter of a serial dream, though he
had never been in this cliff-hanger before. He was sitting in a room that he somehow knew was part
of the long-abandoned sewer system buried by the first great earthquake to level Manhattan. This
room was just off the middle of a huge horizontal sewage tunnel blocked at both ends but
accessible by rungs down a vertical shaft. A single unshaded light bulb, a device not used for a
thousand obyears, lit the room in archaic fashion.
Though the light blazed harshly, it could not keep at bay the dark mists rolling in from
every side. These advanced, then retreated, then advanced.
He sat in a hard wooden chair by a big round wooden table. He waited for others, the
others, to enter. Yet he was also standing in the mists and watching himself seated in the chair.
Presently, Bob Tingle walked in as slowly as if he were moving through waist-high water.
In his left hand was a portable computer on top of which was a rotating microwave dish. Tingle
nodded at the Caird in the chair, put the computer on the table, and sat down. The dish stopped
turning, its concave face steady on Caird's convex face.
Jim Dunski seemed to float in, a fencing rapier in his left
hand. He nodded at the two, placed the rapier so that it pointed at the Caird at the table, and
sat dawn. The blunt button on the rapier tip melted away, and the sharp point glittered like an
evil eye.
Wyatt Repp, a silvery pistol-shaped TV camera-transmitter in his left hand, strode in.
Invisible saloon batwing doors seemed to swing noiselessly behind him. His high-heeled cowboy
boots made him taller than the others. His sequined Western outfit glittered as evilly as the
rapier tip. His white ten-gallon hat bore on its front a red triangle enclosing a bright blue eye.
It winked once at Caird and was thereafter fixed lidlessly on him.
Repp sat down and pointed the machine at Caird. His first finger was curled around the
trigger.
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Charlie Ohm, wearing a dirty white apron, stumbled in with a bottle of whiskey in his left
hand and a shot glass in the other. After sitting down, he filled the glass and silently offered
it to Caird.
The Caird standing in the fog felt a vibration passing up from the floor through the soles
of his feet. It was as if an earthquake shock had touched him, or thunder was shaking the floor.
Then Father Tom Zurvan strode into the room as if the Red Sea was parting before him. His
waist-long auburn hair waved wildly like a nest of angry vipers. Painted on his forehead was a big
orange S, which stood for "Symbol." Bright blue was daubed on the end of his nose. His lips were
painted green, and his moustache was dyed blue. His auburn beard, which fell to his waist, sported
many tiny blue butterfly-shaped aluminum Cutouts. His white ankle-length robe was decorated with
broad red circles enclosing blue six-pointed stars. His ID disc bore a flattened figure eight
lying on its side and slightly open at one end. The symbol for a broken eternity. In his right
hand was a long oaken shaft that curled at the upper end.
Father Tom Zurvan stopped, leaned the shepherd's staff against his shoulder, and formed a
flattened oval with the tips of the thumb and first finger of his right hand. He passed the long
finger of his left hand three times through the oval.
He said loudly, "May you speak the truth and only the truth."
Grasping the staff again, he walked to a chair and sat down. He placed the staff on the
table so that its curling end was directed toward Caird.
"Father, forgive me!" the Caird sitting at the table said.
Father Tom, smiling, made the sign again. The first time, it had been obscene. Now, it was
a blessing. It was also a command to unloose verbally all pent-up wild beasts, to spill your guts.
The last to enter was Will Isharashvili. He wore a green robe slashed with brown and the
Smokey Bear hat, the uniform of the Central Park ranger. Isharashvili took a chair and stared at
Jeff. All were staring at the Caird at the table. All their faces were his.
A chorus, they said, "Well, what do we do now?"
Caird woke up.
Though the air-conditioner was on, he was sweating, and his heart was beating faster than
it should.
"Maybe I made the wrong decision," he muttered. "Maybe I should have stayed in one day,
maybe I should have been only Jeff Caird."
Presently, the faint noises of street-sweeping machines lulled him back to sleep.
Sitting at the breakfast-room table, Caird could see the picket-fenced backyard through
the window. In one corner was a utility shed; in another, the garage; in a third, the garden. A
small one-room building of transparent plastic, a studio, was in the center. Thirty feet to its
east was a large apple tree. It bore fruit, but bypassers who had not heard of Ozma might have
wondered what kind of a tree it was. Ozma had painted every
apple with a different design, though viewed together the designs made an esthetically pleasing
whole. The paint would not wash off easily, but it was edible, and a bowl full of the fruit was on
the table now.
Ozma had agreed with Jeff that he could decorate the kitchen. He had arranged the walls so
they glowed with four paintings by T'ang Dynasty artists. He liked the Chinese quality, the quiet
and eternal look with the human figures always far off, small but important, not the masters but
an integrated part of the mountains, the forests, the cataracts.
Though Ozma had more Chinese ancestry than he, she did not particularly care for them. She
was an outré and outrageous Westerner.
She had turned on the recorder in the corner to find out if Wednesday had left any
messages. There were none, so it could be assumed that Wednesday had no complaints about the
cleanliness or order of the house.
Their breakfast was interrupted by the front doorbell. Ozma, clad in a knee-length robe so
thin that she might as well not have worn it, answered the bell. The callers were, as expected,
Corporal Hiatt and Private First Class Sangalli. They wore green caps with long black visors,
green robes on which were the insignia of the Manhattan State Cleaning Corps and their rank-
stripes and good conduct medals, brown sandals, and yellow gloves.
Ozma greeted them, made a face at their boozy breaths, asked them in, and offered them
coffee. They refused, and they plunged into the dusting, washing, waxing, and vacuuming. Ozma
returned to the table.
"Why can't they come later, while we're gone?"
"Because they have a quota, and because that's the way the bureaucracy set it up."
Jeff went upstairs, brushed his teeth, and rubbed on the whisker-removing cream. The face
in the mirror was dark, the long dark hair in a Psyche knot. The hazel eyes brooded under
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heavy brows. The nose was long and slightly hooked, and the nostrils flared. The jaw was heavy.
The chin was round and cleft and stuck out.
"I look like a cop," he muttered. "And I am. But not most of the time."
He also looked like a big dark worrybird. What's to worry about? Besides being caught?
Besides Ariel?
He showered, put underarm deodorant on, went into the bedroom, and donned a blue robe
decorated with black trefoil figures. Clubs, the same symbol used on a pack of cards. He was the
joker or perhaps the knave of clubs. Or both. He did not know who was responsible for this organic
symbol, but it probably had been some bureaucrat who thought he was being subtle. The organics,
the cops, had the real power, clubs.
He picked up his over-the-shoulder bag and walked downstairs. A strip by the front door
glowed with a message. Ozma wanted him to stop by her studio before he left.
She was inside the transparent one-room building and sitting on a high stool. She put her
magnifying glass down on the table when she heard him enter. The grasshopper she had been looking
at had been stoned to keep it immobile while she applied paint to it. Its antennae were yellow;
its head, pale orange; its body, bright purple with yellow crux ansatas; its legs, jet black. A
mauve paint, which had the properties of one-way glass, covered its eyes.
"Jeff, I wanted you to see my latest. How do you like it?"
"The colors don't clash. Not by modern standards, anyway."
"Is that all you can say? Don't you think it'll make a sensation? Doesn't it improve on
nature? Isn't it true art?"
"It won't make a sensation," he said. "My God, there must be a thousand painted
grasshoppers in Manhattan. Everybody's used to them, and the ecologists are complaining that
you're upsetting the balance of nature. Preying insects and birds won't eat them because they look
poisonous."
"Art should please or make one think or both," she said. "Sensation is for inferior
artists."
"Then why'd you ask me if they'd make a sensation?"
"I didn't mean the sensation of startlement or outrage or just novelty, of course. I meant
the sensation of recognition of something esthetic. The feeling that God is in His heaven, but
it's the human on Earth that does God one better. Oh, you know what I mean!"
"Sure," he said, smiling. He turned her head and kissed her lips. "When are you going to
start on cockroaches? They're so God-ugly. They need beautification."
"Where would I get one in Manhattan? I'd have to go to Brooklyn for them. Think I should?"
He laughed and said, "I don't think the authorities would bless you."
"I could sterilize the roaches before I let them loose again. But, really, are cockroaches
ugly? If you adopt another frame of mind, think in a different Category, look at them from the
religious point of view, they're beautiful. Maybe, through my art, people would come to know their
true beauty. See them as the living jewels they are."
"Ephemeral classics," Caird said. "Short-lived antiques."
She looked up and smiled. "You think you're being sarcastic, but you may be telling the
truth. I like those phrases. I may use them in my lecture. Anyway, they're not so ephemeral. I
mean, the insects will die, but my name will go on. People are calling them ozmas. Didn't you see
the seven o'clock Art Section of the Times? The great Sam Fang himself called them ozmas. He said
. .
"You were sitting there with me when we saw it. I'll never forget how you giggled and
carried on."
"He's usually a jerk, but sometimes he's right. Oh, I was so ecstatic!"
She bent down to apply the near-microscopic end of her
brush. The black paint was over the spiracles, the openings in the exoskeleton which passed air to
the tracheae, the breathing tubes that went to the insect's internal organs. A chemist at Columbia
University had developed for her the paint that permitted entrance of oxygen to the spiracles.
Caird looked at the stoned praying mantis at one end of the table and said, "Green is
quite good enough for it, for God, and for me. Why, as it were, gild the lily?"
Ozma straightened up. Black eyes wide, mouth twisted, she said, "Do you have to spoil it
for me? Who gave you a certificate as an art critic, anyway? Can't you just enjoy my joy and keep
your ignorant opinions to yourself?"
"Now, now," he said hastily, reaching out to touch her shoulder. "You're the one that says
you should always tell the truth, hide nothing, let the emotions be trigger-happy. I am happy
because you're happy in your work-"
"Art, not work!"
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"Art. And I'm happy that you're getting so much public recognition. I apologize. What do I
know?"
"Well, let me tell you something, cop! I've learned a lot from my study of insects. Do you
know that the highest forms of insects, the bees, wasps, and ants, are female societies? The male
is used only for fertilization."
"Yeah?" he said, grinning. "What's that supposed to signify?"
"You just watch it, buster! We women may decide that entomology has the key to the
future!"
She burst into laughter, squeezed him with one arm, the other hand holding the brush
attached to a very thin hose attached to a machine on the table. He kissed her-her anger came and
went like heat lightning, nothing permanent or hurtful about it-and went to a strip on the wall.
He voice-activated it and asked for their schedule. He probably needed a reminder more than
anybody in Tuesday.
He and Ozma were to go to an artists' party at 7:30 P.M. That meant two hours or more of
standing atound drinking cocktails and talking with people who were mostly phonies. There were,
however, a few he would enjoy talking to.
He had a luncheon engagement with Anthony Horn, the Manhattan organic commissioner-
general. He doubted that they would talk much about police business. She was an immer.
There was also a note to see Major Wallenquist about the Yankev Gril case. He frowned. The
man was a Monday citizen. What was Gril's name doing on the MCOD file?
He sighed. Yankev Gril. He did not even know what he looked like, but he would find out
today.
3.
After kissing Ozma good-bye, he got a bicycle, one of six, out of the garage. As soon as it had
rolled a few feet, its squeaking told him that Monday's occupants had neglected to lubricate the
pedal mechanism. He cursed softly. He would make a recording to chew Monday out, but the omission
was no big thing. He'd get an OD mechanic to attend to it. He was not supposed to do that, but
what was the use of being a detectiveinspector if he did not have his little perks?
No. That would not be right. Anyway, he'd be damned if he'd ride all the way to work on
the irritating and attentiongetting vehicle. He returned to the garage and got another bike. This
one squeaked, too. Swearing, he took out a third, the last of the adult-size, and rode out of the
garage. When he saw Ozma bent over with laughter, he shouted, "Straighten up! You look like a cow!
And put a robe on!"
Ozma, still laughing, gave him the finger.
"What a relationship we have," he muttered. He went past the white picket fence along
Bleecker Street and turned the corner onto the bike path along the canal. Two men fishing from the
walk looked up as he passed them. Caird rode on. As usual, there were many pedestrians illegally
on the path. Some of them saw his OD badge, but they moved only to get out of his way and some did
not do that.
Time for another sweep, he thought. Not that it would do any good. The pedestrians would
have to pay only a small fine. Ah, well. His daughter Ariel, the historian, had told him that
Manhattanites had always paid little attention to traffic rules. Even in this law-abiding age,
there were so many misdemeanors that the organic officers usually ignored most of them.
The air had cooled off a little during the night but was beginning to warm up. A fifteen-
mile-per-hour wind behind him, however, helped his pedaling and cooled him somewhat. The sky was
unclouded. It had not rained for twelve days, and the thermometer had surged past 112°F for eight
of them. He kept on pumping, zigzagging to avoid walkers. Now and then, he glanced at the canal,
ten feet below street level. Rowboats or foot-pumped pontoon craft or small barges pushed by small
waterjet tugs moved up and down the canal. The houses along the wide path were mostly two-story
dwellings of various architecture with here and there a six-story apartment building or a two-
story community general store. In the distance to his right was the enormous building known as the
Thirteen-Principles Towers, the only skyscraper on the island. Its center was on the site of the
last Empire State Building, torn down five hundred obyears ago.
Jeff Caird had passed twelve canal bridges when he saw a pedestrian sixty feet ahead of
him drop a banana peel on the pavement. Jeff looked around. There was no organic officer in sight.
Maybe it was true that the organics were always around except when you needed them. He would have
to write out this ticket himself. He looked at his wristwatch. Fifteen minutes to report on time.
He was going to be late. But, if he was performing a duty, he would be excused.
He braked to a stop. The litterer, a short thin pale man-the shortness and paleness were
in themselves causes for suspicion_was suddenly aware that a cop was near him. He froze, looked
around, then grinned. He removed his huge brown coolie hat, revealing an uncombed pale brown
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thatch.
"It sort of slipped out of my hand," he whined. "I was going to pick it up."
"Is that why you walked away from it?" Caird said. "You are now approximately twelve feet
past it and the waste barrel by the wall."
Caird pointed at the TV strip on the wall.
NO LITTERING
LITTERING IS UNESTHETIC
UNSOCIAL
UNLAWFUL
REPORT ALL CRIMES TO TC CHANNEL, 245-5500
Caird kicked the bike parking-stand down, opened the bag in the basket over the front
wheel, and removed a Kelly-green box. He raised the attached screen on its top and said, "ID,
please."
Holding the unbitten banana in one hand, the man lifted a chain from around his neck.
Caird took the chain and the metal seven-rayed star-on-a-disc attached to it. He inserted a ray
point into the slot in the box.
The screen displayed:
DOROTHY WU ROOTENBEAK
CZ-49V- * 27~8b*~wAP4 12
Caird glanced at the personal history and pertinent data that rolled on the screen after
the name and ID number, Rootenbeak had four priors, all misdemeanors for slobbishness, though none
for littering. Neither the history nor the present offense justified Caird in having a sky-eye
satellite zero in on Rootenbeak.
The man edged closer so he could see the screen. "Give me a break, officer!"
"Did you give your fellow seniors a break? What if one had slipped on the peel?"
"Yeah, I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking. Look, officer, I've got a lot on my mind. I got a
sick child and a wife that drinks, and I been late a couple of times without a good excuse-so they
said. What do they know? My mind was on my troubles. You got troubles, ain't you? Maybe you don't,
being an organic and all that. But I got them. Everybody got them. Give me a break. I won't do it
again."
Caird spoke into the front section of the box, asking for the file department. A complete
update on Rootenbeak flashed on the screen. This included the fact that Rootenbeak had used the
same excuses to other officers as he had to Caird. Also, Rootenbeak had no children, and his wife
had left him three weeks ago.
"I'm going to be late again if you don't let me go now. I can't afford another credit cut.
I ain't making enough now. We just barely get by."
The state guaranteed that nobody just barely got by. Rootenbeak knew that Caird had
checked out his story, yet he was lying. And he knew that being caught in a lie would cost him at
least another credit.
Caird sighed. What made them do it?
He should know. He was a far bigger criminal than Rootenbeak, who was, actually, a
committer of misdemeanors, not of felonies. But Caird believed, at least he told himself that he
believed, that there was a difference between him and other criminals. A qualitative difference.
Also, if he let Rootenbeak go because of a misplaced sense of empathy, he would put himself in
danger. Moreover, the discarded peel, besides being offensive, was dangerous.
And I'm not hurting anyone.
No, not yet. But if I were caught, many would be hurt.
He took a camera from the bag, held it between two fingers,
sighting with one eye through the tiny magnifying glass in the center, and squeezed. A second
later a photograph slid out. He inserted that into another slot in the R-T box. The screen
displayed that the photograph had been transmitted and was recorded in the files. It also
confirmed that the culprit was indeed Rootenbeak. Caird read the ticket for Rootenbeak into the
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