Dayworld

Never again! The wailing cry of the repentant rose from his lips. Never again! And he sat back, startled at the violence of his vow. He had actually spoken aloud.

He got more coffee. What was that dream that had upset him so much? He could not remember it any more than he could remember the specifics of last night's revel. Wait. Out of the dark fog some dim figures were emerging. He tried to grasp them, only to see them slink back into the fog.

It did not matter. He would drink some more coffee, eat a very light breakfast, and exercise on the gym set in the living room. Then, after shaving and showering, he would take his fencing foil and equipment down to the block gymnasium. After a vigorous hour, he would come back to the apartment, shower again, and then dress for work.

Thinking of dress, what was he doing sitting here naked? He thought that he had not taken his clothes off after he had stumbled into the apartment. He must have, though it was strange that he had not seen them on the floor. Surely, he had just dropped them before falling into bed. Perhaps, some time in the night, he had gone to the bathroom. Coming out, he had picked them up and put them in the PP closet. Even weedies, dirty and unresponsible, antisocial, and slobbish, were so conditioned that they automatically did certain things that went against their nature.

"I really must cut down on the booze," Charlie muttered. He rose to get more coffee but stopped, cup in hand. The strip on the wall behind him had buzzed loudly. He turned and saw it flashing orange. When he had spoken the words to clear it, he saw the man standing before the apartment door. The strip showed a tall and well-muscled man of about thirty subyears. He wore a mauve hat with yellow roses, a yellow loose blouse with lace cuffs and a green neck-ruff, and a black-and-yellow-checked kilt. His shoulderbag was made of alligator leather, the skin for which was grown in a factory in Brooklyn. The teddy bear held under one arm was mauve. Its face vaguely resembled its owner.

Charlie Ohm said, "What the ... ?"He suddenly recognized the man with the narrow foxlike face. During the past few subyears, Charlie had served him drinks, which the man nursed as if they were dying birds. Three drinks of bourbon, and the evening was spent for Hetman Janos Ananda Mudge.

• . hell is he doing here?"

He told the audio of the entrance-door monitor strip to turn on and said, more loudly than was necessary, "Just a minute!"

He hurried from the kitchen, groaning as each step jarred loose pain in his head. He went down the narrow hall, the light coming on as he entered, and inserted the tip of his disc-star into the hole below the SATURDAY plaque. A few seconds later, clad only in a kilt, he walked quickly, wincing, to the front door. He paused. What was Janos Mudge doing here? Had he, Charlie Ohm, insulted Mudge sometime last night and was Mudge here to demand an apology? Or was Mudge an organic and here to arrest him for something that he had done last night? Something antisocial? That last speculation did not seem likely, since the hall monitor strip showed that Mudge was the only one in the hall.

"What do you want?" Charlie said.

The strip showed ... exasperation? ... flitting over Mudge's face.

"I want to talk to you, Ohm."

"What about?"

Mudge glanced down both sides of the hall. •That there was no one else there did not mean that he was not being monitored. Some weedie might be watching him on his hall strip.

Mudge reached into a pocket on the side of his kilt and pulled out a thin square black plate. Holding it with two fingers, he spoke into it so softly that Ohm could not hear him. Then he held it up cupped in one hand. The strip showed one word flashing orange against the black.

IMMER.

After three flashes, the word disappeared.

"Oh, Lord!" Charlie said.

Chapter 23

Between seeing the calling card and opening the door, Ohm's hangover vanished. It did not explode. It imploded, burst inward. The hangover fragments, like shrapnel, tore holes in the persona of Charlie Ohm, and what had been shut out stormed into the breaches. He had been "remembering" the events of last Saturday night, though they had been vague. And the hangover he had been suffering this morning was, in a sense, the hangover of a hangover. The original had been endured and finally gotten rid of on last Sunday, when he had been Father Tom Zurvan. Father Tom, who never drank a'cohol but nevertheless had to suffer from Charlie Ohm's roisterings. Father Tom, who accepted the head pain as part of the bad karma from his previous life.

The hangover had passed five days ago. Yet, when he, as Charlie Ohm, had awakened this morning, he had cocooned himself. All the events and dangers gone through by the four predecessors had been arrested, as it were, and put in a dungeon. Or stoned and put in the psychic cylinders somewhere within him. He, stoned in more than one sense, stoned Charlie Ohm, had remembered nothing. He had been no one but Ohm, the part-time bartender, the lush, the weedie. The days between last Saturday and this had bounced off him as if he were a nonimmer, a phemer. Even the hangover that no longer existed had come back to life. It was last Saturday's hand squeezing him to get all the juice of the other clays out.

That sudden revelation had been the first shock. The second was that, if an immer was here, he was bringing very bad news. Nothing else would have made the councillors send a messenger.

Mudge entered, looked around as if he expected to be in a pig sty and then looked surprised that he was not. He said, "Get dressed, and be quick about it. We have to get out of here in five minutes. Sooner if possible."

"The organics ... they're coming?" Ohm said. He swallowed audibly.

"Yes," Mudge said, "but not for you. Not specifically, that is. It's a sanitary check raid."

Ohm felt relieved. "Oh," he said, "then ... ?"

"I'm to conduct you to ... someone," Mudge said. "Get going, man!"

The urgency and authority of Mudge's voice spun Ohm around and sent him ru

"Yes," Ohm said. Then, "How do you know that?"

"I had orders to get rid of it if it didn't look realistic."

"Why? Is the situation that bad?"

"Bad enough, I guess. I don't know the details, of course. Don't want to know."

Mudge glanced at the clock strip. "Good. Two minutes ahead of schedule. You don't have any recordings that should be erased? Or anything you wouldn't want the organics to find?"

"Damn it, no!" Ohm said. "I may be a weedie, but I'm not sloppy."

Mudge had turned both his kilt and his hat inside out. He was now wearing a brown hat with a long orange feather and a cerise kilt. Mudge was reaching inside his handbag, which he had put into a brown shopping bag. For a second, Ohm thought that Mudge would bring Out a gun. He could feel the blood draining from his head. At the same time, he crouched, ready to spring. But Mudge removed a hat, a wide-brimmed, high-crowned brown hat with an orange feather.

He held it out to Ohm. "This is reversible, too. Put it on."

Ohm took his hat off and tossed it on the floor. Mudge raised his eyebrows and looked sternly at Ohm.

"I'll put it away later," Ohm said. "You said we don't have much time. Besides, if the organics come in, they have to find some untidiness. They might get suspicious if they don't."

They started toward the door. Ohm, a step behind Mudge, said, "Can't you tell me anything about this?"

"Yes." Mudge opened the door and went into the hail. When Ohm had joined him, Mudge said, softly, "I was to tell you this only if you asked. The Repp dummy has been discovered. It was found at ten to midnight yesterday. Friday, I suppose."