Dayworld

It hurt him to deceive the followers. Part of his grief was caused by this, but it was better that he not shatter their faith. Yes, it was, he told himself again and again. Far better. But he could not help wondering how many leaders of the faithful in the past had been forced to practice such fraud.

"If I were only I, Father Tom," he muttered, "I would stay and take the consequences. The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the faith. But I am not the only one involved. And if I were just Father Tom, I wouldn't be in this horrible mess."

Nevertheless, when he had propped his staff against the wall and the message was displayed, he weakened.

"It isn't right!" he cried. "I am betraying my people, my self, and my God!"

("Theokaka!" Charlie Ohm said.)

("You are just one of many," Jeff Caird said. Then, after a pause, "There may be a solution, a good way out.")

"What is it?"

("Don't know just yet.")

Turning at the door, Zurvan said, "Farewell, Father Tom!"

("This guy is just too much," Charlie Ohm said. "But really not enough.")

("A fine sense of the dramatic," Wyatt Repp said. "Or is it of the melodramatic? I'm not sure he knows the difference between pathos and bathos.")

("Were those two of the Three Musketeers?" Bob Tingle said.)

"Shut up!" Zurvan shouted as he swung the door open, startling two loafers in the hall.

Who was this strangely dressed crazy man charging out of Father Tom's apartment?

Zurvan was also startled. He had not expected anyone to be out this early in the morning. Muttering something unintelligible even to him, he slammed the door behind him. At 3:12 A.M., he strode out of the building and headed for Womanway

Boulevard. The sky was still clear. The air was hot but cooler than earlier in the day. A few cyclers and pedestrians were out, which made him feel less conspicuous. He passed several State Cleaning Corps vehicles and one organic car. This slowed down when it got opposite him but did not stop. He had no idea what he would do if he was stopped and questioned.

Having crossed Womanway, he went west on Bleecker Street. He passed Caird's house, which seemed to make Caird stronger. At least, his voice was louder than the others.

("I loved you," Caird cried.)

Zurvan did not know whom Caird was calling to, but the sorrow in the voice troubled him. He walked faster, then slowed down. If any more organics came by, they would wonder why he was in a near-run.

Reaching the street alongside the canal, he went north. He looked over the railing from time to time and stopped when he saw a small jetboat tied to a floating dock. He went down the steps and back along the canal on the narrow path until he came to the boat. It probably belonged to the tenants of a house by the canal, and Sunday had not bestirred himself or herself to get up this early to fish. He got into the boat, untied the line to the dock, started the electrically powered jet, and steered it north up the canal. He passed about a dozen small boats occupied by men and women fishing and several cargo boats. He took the boat to the west side of the canal at West Eleventh Street, got onto the pathway, and shoved the boat out to drift. One more of many crimes.

The trees along the street would hide him from the sky-eyes. They would not observe which building he went into. Anyway, unless someone inspected the recordings, his disappearance under the trees was of no importance.

Before entering the building, he thought briefly of Isharashvili. Tomorrow, the ranger's wife would wonder why he had not left the cylinder. She would open the door, thinking that something had gone wrong with the power. She would touch him, and she would not feel the expected cold hardness; she would touch the soft warm flexible plastic of the dummy.

Her scream sounded in him.

Isharashvili's voice was there, though it, too, was far off, somewhere just past the horizon of his mind.

After getting into Horn's apartment, he went through every room. They were more numerous and larger than his and far more luxurious. Since she shared them with only one other tenant, Thursday's, she did not have to put her many personal possessions, bric-a-brac, jewelry, paintings, figurines, and ashtrays, in the PP closet. The ashtray surprised and disgusted him-Caird, that is-since he had not had the slightest suspicion that she used the illegal drug. Which meant that, if she did, so did Thursday.

He looked at the faces in the cylinder windows. The face of the Thursday resident of Horn's apartment was framed in the first cylinder's oval.

He moved to the next cylinder and looked into its window. Tony Horn stared back at him with huge unblinking eyes. Good old Tony. She was his good friend and had always been big-hearted and sympathetic. Perhaps he should destone her and tell her about his situation. She could help him as no one else he knew could help.

("Are you crazy?" Ohm said. "She's an immer!")

("That wasn't Zurvan thinking," Caird said. "He doesn't even know her. I was thinking for him. But you're right, Charlie. She'd turn us in.")

While the voices tore at him and faces sprang like jack-inthe-boxes before him and hands tapped on his mind as if it were a window, Zurvan paced back and forth in the living room. When he reached one end, he turned and strode back to the other.

("Like a tiger in his cage," Repp said. "It's good exercise, but it won't get us out of the cage.")

("If he leaves the apartment," Ohm said, "he'll just be in a bigger cage.")

Zurvan ignored the voices as best he could. They were an itch he wanted to scratch, but scratching would only make them itch more.

"Jacob, he whose name became Israel and whose descendants were as numerous as the grains of sand on the beach," Zurvan muttered, "Jacob saw a ladder. Its ends rested on Earth, and its other ends ascended into Heaven. Angels went up and down it, doing the bidding of the Lord. I need a ladder, Lord! Let it down so that I may climb up it to the promised abode!"

("He's cracking up!" Ohm said. "He'll become a raving madman, and we'll all die with him!")

"No!" Zurvan shouted. "I am not mad, and there is no ladder for me! I do not deserve it!"

If a ladder was lowered for him, he would have to climb on rotten rungs. There were seven rungs, and the last, himself, would surely break.

Monday-World

VARIETY, Second Month of the Year

D6-W1 (Day-Six, Week-One)

Chapter 29

Monday was not blue. It was gray with heavy low clouds blown in from the east.

One of the few things permitted to be transmitted from one day to the next was the weather forecast. The meteorology of N.E. 1330 was far superior to that of the early ages, which had been often baffled and fooled by the exceedingly complex forces that made up the weather. Now, over one thousand and five hundred years of research had enabled the forecasters to predict with 99.9 percent accuracy. But Mother Nature, as if determined to show man that he could never have that one-tenth percent in his grasp, sometimes pulled a reverse on him.

Today was an example of her trickery. The meteorologists had smugly a

Tom Zurvan had resumed his pacing. Will Isharashvili, the Central Park ranger, the gentle soul and henpecked husband, had protested feebly against being barred from the day that was rightfully his. Jeff Caird, in growing Will's persona, had made a mistake. He had gone too far in shaping a nonviolent and passive man. He had, however, given Isharashvili a great stub- bor