Dayworld

"Nothing important."

Fortunately, Nokomis had to go to the toilet. While she was gone, he called Paz again, and Paz cursed again.

"Quit it!" Tingle said sharply. "My wife'll be back in a minute! What happened to me?"

Paz settled down and rapped out an explanation. The agent who had come to repair the doorlock had found him in the shower. He had put the weapon in his own shoulderbag and had then called the hospital. Tingle quickly told Paz about the organics and the inevitable interrogation. Paz said, "That can be avoided, I think. I'll pass on the message. What a mess!"

He paused, then said, his voice very low and soft, "Bob, I've got even more bad news."

Tingle said, "Wait! I hear my wife!"

He listened for a few seconds, then said, "Tell it quick. She's stopped in the hall to talk to somebody."

"I got a recording," Paz said. "From yesterday. It said I should tell you that Ozma Wang is dead. I don't know what that means, but ..

"God!" Tingle said. Then, "I think my wife's about to come in. I'll talk to you later."

He cut off the transmission and put his arm down by his side. He felt something quiver inside him, a thing struggling to get loose and ravage him. It was, he knew, grief, but it was deep within him, far away. It had to be Jeff Caird's grief for the death of his wife.

Nokomis entered the room, stopped, and said, "Were you talking to somebody?"

"No. Why?" he said. The thing that was struggling in him was quieting down now.

"I saw your watch close to your mouth. You must ..

"No, I wasn't talking to anybody. I just happened to be wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. For God's sake, Nokomis! If people were classified grammatically, you'd be in the accusative case!"

She stiffened, glared, and said, "You needn't be so touchy!"

"I'm sorry, dear. It must be the injury to my head."

On the way home in a taxi, Nokomis said, "The whole thing does look peculiar, doesn't it? What could we have that anyone else doesn't have? Is there somebody you haven't told me about, somebody who hates you and is crazy enough to revenge himself? Or ... herself? You never told me about anyone who might hate you that much, but ..

Tingle told her that he needed silence until he felt better. Would she mind not talking? Any noise hurt his head. Nokomis stiffened and moved away from him. He was too upset to worry about offending her. His doubts and anxieties were whirling him around like Dorothy's house in the tornado. He had to talk to Paz again and find out if measures had been taken to deal with his scheduled interrogation on the coming Wednesday.

After a few minutes, he calmed down, and he tried to talk his wife into going back to work. She refused to leave him until she was sure that he was entirely recovered from his fall. She would not listen to his argument that the hospital examination had showed without a doubt that he was not dangerously injured.

He gave up on her and spent a more or less quiet evening (no evening with her was really quiet) until she said that she was going to bed. Knowing that she would not sleep until he was beside her, he said that he did feel tired. He pla

He woke up with the alarm strip whistling. For a moment, he was confused because of the vividness of a dream. Snick had been calling for help from somewhere in a fog, but he could never find her. Though he had several times seen vague dark figures in the mists that might be her, he could not get close to them.

Helpless, he raged inside himself against himself. A man who was a different persona every day should not be married. Though he had known that well, he had allowed his strong need for the domestic life to overcome his reason. Only the Father Tom Zurvan persona had never married, and he had had to be very disciplined and stern with himself when he had built that role.

Just before they went into their cylinders, Nokomis kissed him good night, though not as passionately as she usually did. She had not fully accepted his excuse for not trying to get coercion data on her colleagues. He stepped into the cylinder, turned around, and waved at her. In the dim light through the window he saw her face petrify. He looked at his watch to check that the power had been applied to her cylinder. A delay circuit that he had installed behind the wall gave him enough time to get out of the cylinder and inflate his dummy.

Two minutes later, he ran out of the apartment building. His dash toward the building across the southwest corner of Washington Square was accompanied by the wailing of sirens and the flashing of orange lights from the public strips.

Thursday-World

VARIETY, Second Month of the Year

D5-W1 (Day-Five, Week-One)

Chapter 15

James Swart Dunski, professional fencing instructor, stepped out of his stoner. At the same time, Rupert von Hentzau, his wife, walked from her stoner. They embraced warmly and said, "Good morning." Rupert was nude, golden-coppery, willowy, kinky-haired, and beautiful. The genes of her American mulatto, Afrikaans, and Samoan ancestors had produced a striking woman, one whose body and face made a magnetic field that clamped on to the attention of males wherever she went. Sometimes, she was an artist's model; more often, a fencing instructor.

Having greeted one wife, Dunski embraced the other two, Malia Maljetoa Smit and Ja

One benefit from his present situation was that Rupert was an immer. She, however, was a citizen of this day only. He was desperate to tell her their dangerous situation at once, but he had no acceptable excuse to get her aside. They would have to go through the rituals and conventions all had long ago agreed upon.

First, the sleepy children were put to bed.

Second, they massed in the huge bathroom, brushed their teeth, washed whatever needed washing and urinated, if need be.

Third, they went to the kitchen and drank milk and, if hungry, ate some berries and cereal with milk. By then the joshing, touching, stroking, and rubbing had swelled the penises and nipples and started the natural lubrications.

Fourth, they went into the living room, sat down in chairs arranged in a circle, and spun a milk bottle. This was an antique, which might have been used by children a thousand or more years ago at parties. Its purpose was rather more serious now, a democratic pure-chance procedure designed to avoid jealousy and favoritism.

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."