Dayworld

Saturday-World

VARIETY, Second Month of the Year

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

Chapter 22

"Ohm-mani-padme-hum!"

The deep male voice droned the chant. Charles Arpad Ohm batted at it as if it were a gnat flying around his ear.

"Ohm-mani-padme-hum!"

"Go away!" Charlie said. "I've got a hell of a hangover!"

"Ohm-mani-padme-hum!"

"Shut up!" Charlie said, and he put the pillow over his head. The voice came through the pillow faintly but insistently. It was as if a Tibetan monk was speaking a ritual to awaken the dead, as if he, Charlie Ohm, was buried but not beyond resurrection.

The voice stopped. Charlie, knowing what was coming, cursed. The female voice that succeeded the male was very loud and shrill, the essence of shrew, termagant, and nag. It was his ex-wife's, programed into the alarm strip by Charlie because it was the only voice that could get him out of bed. It made him angry, raised his blood pressure, and brought him up and out of desirable sloth. Not so desirable if he was to get to work on time.

"You lazy slob! Bum! Drunk! Lech! Sickening weedie! Get your goldbricking ass into gear! Malingering mutt! Pig! Parasite! Dirt balls! There's only one thing you can get up in the morning, and I want none of that! See if you can't hoist the rest of you, your alcohol-soaked carcass, the desecrated and ruined temple you call your body, out of your trough-bed! Get up now or I'll pour cold water on you. God knows you need a bath, crud faucet!"

"That does it!" Charlie cried, and he rolled over, lifted the pillow, and tossed it at the alarm strip. His ex-wife's snarling face was displayed on it. She yelled, "That's right! Throw things at me, you unreasonable facsimile of a facsimile! You couldn't hit an elephant's rear!"

Charlie had recorded some of his wife's rantings and had excised various bits and put them together in an unharmonious whole. Some irrational wish to be punished-after all, the divorce had been partly his fault-had made him submit himself in early mornings to her decibelish devilings.

Charlie rolled groaning out of bed, stood up somewhat shakily, and shambled to the bathroom. On the way, he kicked aside a crumpled candy-bar wrapper. He swore at the occupant who had failed to drop it in the disposer. Passing the row of cylinders, he shook his fist at the face in the window of Friday's stoner.

"Slob!"

At least Friday had changed the bedclothes. This time. More than once, Charlie had fallen into a bed smelling of sweat, and, once, of vomit. Despite this, he had not complained to the authorities. That was against the unwritten code of the weedies. But he would leave a nasty message for Robert Chang Selassie.

When he was finished in the bathroom, he went through the door that led into the living room. Beyond the pool table, standing against the eastern wall, was the row of seven cylinders. The only one who inspired a thought in Charlie was Sunday's occupant, Tom Zurvan, who stared through the window. His fierce expression, long hair, and long and thick beard made him look like an Old Testament prophet, a Jeremiah of the fourteenth-century New Era. Charlie blessed him ironically, sure that Zurvan never left anyihing for others to clean up. Charlie also felt sure that Zurvan would not have approved of him.

His ex-wife's voice had stopped, but it would screech out again if he went back to bed or lay down on the sofa or the floor. It was programed to pounce upon him, if necessary, until he had had his first cup of coffee.

He walked down the hall, passing by strips that had been automatically activated. Their voices were a medley and a babel.

" ... learned today that ten thousand more square miles have been reclaimed from the Amazon Basin Desert ..

" ... the bad news is that London, despite enormous efforts, is sinking again at the rate of two inches an obyear ..

" ... answer the Number Seven question, and you will win forty more credits, fully government-authorized. What year, in both pre-New Era and New Era dates, did the Battle of Dallas take place?"

" ... the ancient philosopher, Woody Allen, said that we are all monads without windows. There is some dispute among the historians about the exactness of the reading of the ancient records. Some claim that Allen said nomads, not monads. In which case ..

" ... a vote for Nuchal Kelly Wang is a vote against the continued use of contraceptive chemicals in our drinking water. Stop this obsolete and unwarranted method of birth control! We have room on this great planet for more people! A vote for Wang is a vote for the future! People are crying for children, yet ... "

A reminder strip, one of several, displayed that Charlie was scheduled to take a voter-qualification test next Saturday.

STUDY HARD, YOU DUMMY. REMEMBER THAT YOU FAILED THE TEST LAST TIME.

"What's the difference?" Charlie growled. "Wang is the only one I'd vote for, and he doesn't have a chance."

A news strip in the kitchen greeted him with a view of Pope Sixtus the Eleventh on the porch of his bungalow in Rome. This had been recorded last Saturday during the installation of Ivan Phumiphon Yeti as today's head of the Roman Catholic Church. The camera swept over the fifty or so of the faithful on the small lawn and passed into the house. Ohm paused to watch while getting a stoned four-cup cube of coffee from his PP cabinet. The strip showed the faces of the other six vicars of Christ in their cylinders in a tiny room. They were the faces of old men who looked as if they had suffered much.

"Suffering is good for the character," Ohm said, and he told the strip to switch to another cha

The sky-eye recordings would be magnified and studied by the organics. After which, those responsible for the injuries would be tracked down to their homes and arrested. The leaders of the infuriated mob and the injured would also be arrested.

Charlie shut the strip off, put the cube in a deep dish and the dish in the destoner, and turned a switch. After opening the door, he took the dish out, poured the ground coffee into a filter, and turned on the coffee-maker. While waiting, he went to the curved window and looked out at Womanway. The sky was clear. Another hot day. The street was filled with men and women in brightly colored kilts, floppy shirts with wide thick neck-ruffs, and wide-brimmed hats bearing plastic or real flow- ers. There were many pedestrians, most trying to walk under the shade of the huge oaks or palm trees lining, both sides of the street. Many of the cyclists had big teddy bears in their baskets, and many walkers were carrying teddy bears. The faces of these had been modified to look half-ursine, half like those of beloved relatives, spouses, lovers, or, for the more narcissistic, like their owners.

Charlie shook his head-he had resisted the fad-and poured out a large mugful of coffee. Slouching to the table, he dropped into a chair, spilling some of the liquid on the table. Staring moodily at the coffee, the only decent way to stare early in the morning (almost 10:00 A.M.), he tried to remember the shank of yesterday evening. He had come home quite late, had trouble inserting the disc tip into the hole, had voided much beer, and then had fallen into bed.

Here he was now, unshowered, unshaven, and hung over. His head felt as if it had been cut off and was being used for a bowling ball. Every other beat of blood through his brain was a strike, and the pins flew through in all directions, slamming into the walls of his brain. How had he gotten that headache which no one, not even the sinfullest of si