Dayworld

"By what?"

"God's presence or the light that His presence shed. The Targumists used that term ..

"Never mind," Caird said. "What was this passage that affected you so deeply?"

("Cerinthus and Pseudo-Cerinthus," Bob Tingle said. "Another schizophrenic. Do you think we have room for him, too? Come on in, sibling sage, seer, and psychotic.")

("I can't believe that we're standing out in the open discussing theology and stylistics while the storm and the organics are closing in," Ohm said.)

"Cerinthus," Gril said, "believed that the angels created the world. And an angel gave the Jews their law, which was imperfect. He was wrong about that, of course. The Shekiriah gave the law to the Jews, and the Shekinah ca

"But Pseudo-Cerinthus, inspired by the Shekinah, wrote that, even if the law had been imperfect in the begi

The first rain fell, large but scattered drops. The wind tried to pry Caird's hat loose. Thunder stomped. Lightning raced toward them on many glowing legs.

"What you're saying," Caird said loudly so he could be heard, "is that you broke day just so you could obey the letter of the law?"

"The letter is the soul of the spirit!" Gril cried.

He paused, and he glared.

"Also, there was another reason. It was strong, though not strong enough to have made me a daybreaker if it had not been coupled with my desire to observe, even if only once, only once, the Shabbos as it should be observed.

"I am a human being. I am the son of a species that has always been one with the rhythm of Nature as decreed by God. Countless generations from the begi

"Spring is an explosion of green, come and gone in a few days! Summer ... summer is a hot flash! Too many summers, I'll get only the searing days and none of the cool! Autumn doesn't slowly change into its beautiful colors! It doesn't slip into one color after the other like a woman trying out clothes! It's green one day and a burst of fully realized colors the next and then it's all dead, dead! And you may miss the snow, God's blanket, entirely!"

"That's true," Caird said. "On the other hand, the racing-by of the seasons can be exhilarating, and think how many more seasons you get to see than if you lived like our ancestors did. There's always something gained when you give up something and vice versa."

"No," Gril said, shaking his head violently, "I want it as God said it should be. I will not ..

Caird did not hear what else he said. He rose swiftly, staring past Gril's shoulder at the patrol car that had appeared from around the corner of the building on the street by the canal. It would be past the underground access tube at' the northwest corner of the park long before he could get to it. He was cut off.

Gril turned his head, looked once, and said, "Perhaps they are headed elsewhere." He sounded calm.

There was another access tube at the northeast corner of the park. He must not run now, though. Wait and see if the car went on.

It was going fast, its headlights spearing the dim light and bouncing off the raindrops. Several feet from the junction of Fifth Avenue and Washington Square North, however, it slowed and then it came to a stop.

Gril had quit talking for a moment. Now. seeing the car, he said, "Our destiny is here." He closed his eyes, and his lips moved.

"Yours, maybe. Not mine," Caird said.

Gril opened his eyes just as the car doors opened. The clouds also opened up, the rain coming down as if it were ambitious to become Niagara Falls. It bent the leaves above the two and dumped a cascade on them. They were soaked and chilled, though the rain was only partly responsible for the coldness.

Two men and a woman got out of the vehicle. The driver came around the front of the car, revealing the green-and-brown uniform in the headlights. His belt held a holster, from which stuck the butt of a gun.

The woman screamed something and ran toward Gril and Caird. The two organics shouted after her. Caird thought that he heard, "Stop!" Lightning struck immediately thereafter, seeming so close that Caird thought that a nearby tree must have been hit. The flash showed him Ruth Zog Dinsdale, his no ... Isharashvili's wife. Her face was distorted; her screeching cut through the rumble of thunder.

Her block building was across the canal almost directly opposite the Tao Towers. He had been reckless to walk so boldly down the street in front of the building. Since he knew that she might look out her window and see him, he should have gone to the back street. But the probability of her seeing him had been low, and he had not been himself. Zurvan had been in no shape to think of such details.

He turned and ran south. Flight toward the access tube he had pla

Gril called, "Good luck, man!" and said something in an unintelligible language. A Yiddish blessing?

"I need it!" Caird said, and he ran.

Chapter 31

He zigzagged, trying to keep trees between him and his pursuer. A glance behind during a lightning flash had shown his wife standing stilland one organic ru

Caird thought that he could get to the tube before the car did. He also had a good head start on the other organic. But he could not outrun the beam from a gun. By the time that he reached the tube, however, he had not been shot at. Or, if he had been, he was not aware of it.

The car was sixty feet away when Caird got to the tube. The man on foot was about a hundred feet back. Caird went around the tube to the side by the street, Washington Square South. The entrance was oblong; the interior, half-lit by the streetlights. He put his hand on a plaque on the back wall six inches above his head. This was a globe with superimposed letters, MSUTS (Manhattan State Underground Transporta tion System). He pressed the M and then the T The seemingly immovable plaque responded to his hand on its lower edge, swinging up to the left. He reached within the exposed recess and felt the two buttons there. Monday's code was left button, one short press, right button, one long press, one short press. He was fortunate that Isharashvili, as a Central Park ranger, knew the code and that enough of the ranger was still in him to remember that.

Having released the locking mechanism on the personhole cover, he bent down, lifted the handle inset in its middle, and pulled. The cover came up, but only because he was heavy enough to register as an adult on the security sensor plate around it.

Light had come on in the tube and from the hole as he had raised the lid. Below the hole was an irradiated plastic ladder inside a plastic framework. He let himself down, stopped, reached up, and pulled the cover down with the handle on its underside. It came down easily, restrained by a hydraulic mechanism from falling. Just before the lid closed, Caird saw the organic's feet. A hoarse voice said, "Stop in the name of the law!"