Dayworld

Ohm was not pleased by the confidences. They could imply that his grandfather did not care what his grandson learned. Charlie Ohm was not going to be able to pass on the information. But could a man be so objective, so hard-hearted, that he would rid himself-and the family-of his own flesh and blood? The answer was, of course, that he could. The immer family had survived this long because its leaders had been objective and logical. It might grieve Immerman to dispose of his own grandson, but he would do it if he had to. The family came first; its individuals, a long second place behind.

"I've wondered about that," Charlie said. A little hole in the blackness inside his brain seemed to open. A little light shone briefly through it. Wyatt Repp? Repp seemed to be telling him something. Then he knew, and he spoke it aloud before the knowledge vanished back into the darkness.

"Ming the Merciless," he said. "He was a character, the chief villain, in an ancient comic book and movie series. Flash Gordon. That was the name of the hero of the series."

Immerman looked mildly surprised, then smiled. "That originated in the twentieth century A.D. I didn't know that anybody but a few scholars knew of that. I've underestimated you, grandson."

"I'm not just Charlie Ohm, a bartender, a weedie, and a drunk."

"I know that."

"I think you know everything about me," Charlie said. "I hope that you know me well enough, understand me well enough, that is, to know that I am not a danger to you ... to the immers."

Immerman smiled as if he were genuinely pleased.

"Then you realize fully why I have summoned you here. Good."

Maybe not so good for me, Ohm thought.

He had been about to say something, but one face in a wall-strip display seemed to zoom out, to expand, and to crowd his mind. He trembled. That face could not be there. He looked away and then his head was turned as if it were clamped in a machine. Yes. It was.

The screen showed a large recess near the top of the tower, the third from the final. It contained figures from the past, EXTINCT TYPES OF HOMO SAPIENS. The face that had snagged him in his swift survey, caught him as a stump in shallow water caught the bottom of a boat (and threatened to rip out his guts), belonged to a figure in a seventeenth-century group. This, he thought, represented The King and The Queen and their Court. It could be, judging from the dress, the period of the Three Musketeers. The King would be Louis XIII; the Queen, A

Ohm struggled to quit shaking. He used one of the techniques that had been successful many times. He visualized the king and queen and the court and the face that had alarmed him as just one of many. He shrank the scene, rolled it into a ball, and pitched it out of his mind through the top of his head. It did not work. He could not keep from looking sideways at the face.

Trying to smile as if he were thinking of something pleasant, he returned to the chair and sat down. The scene was at his back. He could not see it unless he turned his neck far to the right, and he would not do that. Immerman would know that he had seen the face.

Chapter 25

"That's interesting," he said in a steady voice. "I mean ... it's puzzling. Why doesn't the age-slowing life form show up on blood tests?"

He did not, at that moment, care about the subject. But he had to make conversation and then steer it to the subject that just thinking about made his heart hammer.

"It hibernates," Immerman said. "A single organism sleeps, as it were, in a blood vessel, attached to the wall. Then, at a programed interval, it fissions, and the resultant millions of cells do their work. Then all die but one until the time comes for fissioning again. The statistical chances of a blood test being taken when the life form is populous are very small. But the form has been detected four times. It's been recorded in medical tapes as a puzzling and seemingly nonpathogenic phenomenon."

Mudge came with the tea and cookies. After Mudge had returned to the table on which was Ohm's bag, Immerman sipped his tea.

"Very good," he said. "Though I suppose you would rather have liquor?"

"Usually I would," Ohm said coolly. "But I am not quite myself just now. The shock ..

Immerman looked at Ohm over the rim of his teacup. "Not yourself. Who are you, then?"

"I'm having no problem with my identity."

"I hope not. There have been reports that you are showing signs of mental instability."

"Those are lies!" Ohm said. "Who reported that? The man who wanted to murder Snick?"

"It doesn't matter. I don't think you are mentally unstable. Not any more than most people. You are to be commended, by the way, on your handling of the Castor business. However..

Immerman sipped his tea. Ohm said, "Yes?" and lifted the cup to his lips. He was pleased that his hand was steady.

Immerman put the cup down and said, "The woman Snick ... has been taken care of."

Ohm hoped that the shudder ru

He forced a smile and said, "Snick. Already?"

"Early this morning. Her disappearance will eventually cause a hullabaloo, of course. But today's organics don't even know she's missing. She's a rather independent agent. She doesn't have to check in with the organics on any schedule. It may be that she'll not be missed until Sunday. She has to report in on her natal day, of course. But ..

"She hasn't been killed, has she?"

Immerman raised his eyebrows. "I was told that you objected to her being killed. I'm glad you have such humane feelings, grandson, but the family's welfare comes first. Always, first. I don't hold with killing unless it's absolutely necessary. So far, it never has been necessary. If Garchar had killed Snick, I would've made sure that he was punished."

"Garchar?"

"The man you ... No, not you. It was Dunski."

"Sure," Ohm said. "I know. Garchar. The man Dunski called 'Gaunt.'"

Immerman said, "If you know that, you must remember being Dunski."

"Just a few important things about him," Ohm said.

Immerman shook his head while he smiled. "You're a unique phenomenon. Someday ..

He sipped tea instead of finishing his thought. Then he looked suddenly at Ohm and said, "You aren't personally interested in the Snick woman, are you?"

"What makes you ask that?"

"Answer the question."

"No, of course I'm not. You're talking to Charlie Ohm now, grandfather. Tingle and Dunski are the only ones who've seen her, as far as I know. I don't know how they feel about her. I doubt they could be physically attracted to her, if that's what you mean. After all, she was dangerous to them."

He was not telling the exact truth. The unremitting pressure these last few days had pierced, though not broken, the walls of segregation of self from self. The memories &f Caird, Tingle, Dunski, and Repp were not his; they were secondhand memories. The most vivid of these were intertwined with the persons and events that most threatened all of them. Yet, he felt a trace, a ghost, of attraction to Snick, which could only be feelings that Tingle and Dunski somehow transmitted to him.

Ohm could not have explained just how he knew that Garchar was the man whom Dunski had called "Gaunt." Or that he would recognize Snick if he saw her.

Immerman said, "It's unfortunate that your Wyatt Repp identity has been exposed. We do have a new one to plug into the data bank and are ready to arrange all that goes with that. But would it be better if all seven of you just seemed to disappear and re-emerged with seven new IDs? I doubt it. Some organic Sherlock Holmes might run a massive and detailed data bank search and comparison. You would be found, would be interrogated with truth mist, and you would tell all because you couldn't help it. And then ..