Counter Clock World

"I know A

"Yes. The daughter of the Chief Librarian and the pro tem Chairman of the Council." The Offspring nodded. "How intimately do you know her? Be accurate; this could be vital."

"Ignore your wife temporarily," another of the Offspring spoke up. "This takes precedence."

Sebastian said, "I've been to bed with her."

"Oh," Lotta gasped. "Then what she told me was true."

"That makes two of us," Sebastian said.

"I guess it does," Lotta said, forlornly. She buried her face in her hands, rubbed her forehead, then lifted her head and gazed up at him. "Could you tell me why you--"

"You have the balance of your lives to discuss this," the spokesman of the Offspring broke in. "Do you think you could lure A

"I could," he said.

"What would you tell her?" Lotta said. "That you wanted to go to bed with her again?"

"I would say," he said, "that the Offspring of Might had been instructed to kill us. And I wanted to arrange sanctuary for you and me in the Library."

The spokesman pointed to the vidphone in the living room. "Call her," he said.

Sebastian made his way into the living room. "She has an apartment," he said. "Outside the Library; that's where she took me. It'll probably be there, not here."

"Any place," the spokesman said. "So long as it's where we can get our hands on her and attach a probe."

Seated at the vidphone he dialed the Library.

"People's Topical Library," the operator said presently.

He turned the vidphone set around, so that the camera would not pick up the four people in the kitchen of his conapt. "Let me talk to Miss A

"Who is calling, please?"

"Tell her Mr. Hermes." He sat waiting; the screen had now become blank. Then, after a sputter, it relit. On the screen A

"Hello, Sebastian," she said quietly.

He said, "I'm marked to be killed."

"By the Offspring of Might?"

"Yes," he said.

"Well, Sebastian," A

"Listen," he said harshly, breaking in. "I want to meet you."

"I can't help you." Her voice was neutral, pert; his situation did not impinge on her savoir-faire. "After what you did in--"

"We want to arrange sanctuary," Sebastian said. "In the Library. Lotta and I."

"So?" A

Appearing beside Sebastian, Lotta took the receiver from him and said, "My husband's a very effective organizer, Miss Fisher. I know you could make use of his ability. We had pla

"Has the Offspring of Might contacted you?" A

"Yes," Sebastian said, retrieving the vidphone receiver.

"Do you know," A

"They said one thing," Sebastian said cautiously.

"Oh? Teilme what it was."

"I'll tell you," he said, "when we meet you. Either here at our conapt or at your apartment."

A

"No," he said; he reached out, and one of the Offspring quickly handed him a pencil and pad.

She gave him the address and then rang off. Sebastian sat for a moment, then rose stiffly. The three Offspring regarded him wordlessly.

"It's arranged," he said. And it will give me satisfaction, he said to himself. No matter how it works out, whether they get the Anarch or not. "Here." He handed the spokesman the slip of paper on which he had written A

"Probably she has a standard search-beam system across her doorway," the spokesman said, examining the address. "It'll sound you for any weapons. No, just go in there and talk to her. We'll toss a gas grenade through the window, something like that... don't worry about that part; that's up to us." He mused. "Maybe a thermotropic dart. We'd get both of you, but you'd recover; we'd be bringing you both around."

To the spokesman Lotta said, "If my husband helps you this way, will you not kill us?"

"If Hermes makes it possible for us to get back the Anarch," the spokesman of the Offspring said, "we'll commute the death sentence which Ray Roberts passed on him."

Chilled, Sebastian said, "It's that formal, then."

"Yes." The spokesman nodded. "Done in official session of the Elders of Udi. His Mightiness took time off from his spiritual pilg to participate in that decision."

"Do you think," Lotta said to Sebastian, "that you can really get Miss Fisher out of the Library?"

"She'll come," he said. But whether the Offspring can grab her--that's something else, he thought. He had a high regard for A

They won't question her, he realized. Somehow, in some fashion that none of us can envision, she'll kill them. And perhaps me as well. But, he thought, A

He felt immeasurably better. He had steered the assassins of Udi onto A

Onto A

20

So then when they rise and tend to be, the more quickly they grow that they may be, so much the more they haste not to be.

--St. Augustine

Two hours later he sat in his aircar, parked on the roof of A

Closing his eyes he imagined the Anarch; he tried to revive the truncated dream of a few hours ago. _You must_, the Anarch had said to him. You must do what? he wondered; he tried to induce the dream to continue on past that point. Again he made out the dried, shriveled little face, the dark eyes and wise--both spiritually and earthly wise--mouth. You must die once more, he thought; was that it? Or live? He wondered which. The dream refused to resume and he gave up; he sat upright and opened the car door.

The Anarch, wearing a white cotton robe, stood beside the parked car. Waiting for him to get out.

"My God," Sebastian said.

Smiling, the Anarch said, "I am sorry that my earlier talk with you became interrupted. Now we can continue."

"You--got away from the Library?"

"They still hold me," the Anarch said. "What you see is nothing more or less than an hallucination; the antidote capsule to the LSD gas which you carried in your mouth failed the task of neutralizing the gas completely; I am a remnant of that gas operation." His smile increased. "Do you believe me, Sebastian?"

Sebastian said, "I could have been hit by the gas. A little. --" But the Anarch looked substantial. Sebastian reached out to touch him...

His groping hand passed through the Anarch's body. "You see?" the Anarch said. "I can leave the Library spiritually; I can appear in men's dreams and as drug-induced visions. But physically I am still there _and they can kill me any time they wish_."