Dayworld

"You went to the toilet just before you were stoned," Nokomis said.

Choi-oi! How did Tingle put up with her?

He was glad that he had not voiced the exclamation. Wednesday did not know it, since its main ethnic flavoring in Manhattan was not Chinese but Amerind and Bengali. Hearing that, she would have pumped her suspicions to the bursting point.

"Yes, and I have to go again," he said.

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 spi

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.