Counter-Clock World

8

Matter itself (apart from the forms it receives) is likewise invisible and even indefinable.

--Erigena

In the work area of the Flask of Hermes Vitarium, Dr. Sign listened intently with a stethoscope placed on the unimpressive dark chest of the body of the Anarch Thomas Peak.

"Anything?" Sebastian asked. He felt extremely tense.

"Not so far. But at this stage it frequently comes and goes; this is critical, this period. All the components have migrated back into place and resumed the capacity to function, but the--" Sign gestured. "Wait. Maybe I've got it." He glanced at the instruments which mechanically registered pulse, respiration and cephalic activity; all traced and blipped unwavering lines.

"A body's a body," Bob Lindy said dispassionately; he showed by his expression the dim view he took of all this. "A deader is dead, whether he's the Anarch or not, and whether he's five minutes or five centuries away from rebirth."

Reading from a slip of paper, Sebastian said aloud, "Sic igitur magni quoque circum moenia mundi. Expugnata dabunt labem putresque ruinas.' Those last are the key words:'putresque ruinas.'"

"What's that from?" Dr. Sign asked.

"The monument. I copied it off. The epitaph for him." He gestured at the body.

"My Latin isn't much good outside medical terminology," Dr. Sign said, "but I can pick up on the terms putrify and ruin. But he doesn't look it, does he?" He, Lindy and Sebastian viewed the body for a short time in silence. Small as it was it looked complete, ready for life. What's keeping it, Sebastian wondered, from resuming life?

Father Faine said, "No single thing abides; but all things flow. Fragment to fragment clings--the things thus grow until we know and name them. By degrees they melt, and are no more the things we know.'"

"What's that?" Sebastian asked him; he had yet to hear rhymed couplets from the Bible.

"A translation of the first quatrain of the Anarch's epitaph. It's a poem of Titus Lucretius Carus--Lucretius who wrote _De Rerum Natura_. Didn't you recognize it, Seb?"

"No," he admitted.

"Maybe," Lindy said caustically, "if you recite it backward, he'll return to life; maybe that's how you're supposed to handle this." He turned his hostility directly on Sebastian. "I don't like trying to bring a corpse back to life; it's completely different from hearing a live person who's trapped underground in the box, and hauling him up."

"A difference," Sebastian said, "only in time. A matter of days or hours, maybe minutes. You just don't like to think about it."

Lindy said brutally, "Do you spend much of your time, Seb, remembering the days when you were a corpse? Do you think about that?"

"There's nothing to think about," he answered. "I had no awareness after death; I went from the hospital to the coffin and I woke up in the coffin." He added, "I remember that; I think about that." After all he still had claustrophobia because of that. Many old-borners did; it constituted their shared pyschological ailment.

"I guess," Cheryl Vale, watching from a distance, said, "this disproves God and the Afterlife. What you said, Seb; about not having any awareness after you died."

"No more so," Sebastian said, "than the absence of preuterine memories disproves Buddhism."

"Sure," R.C. Buckley put in. "Just because the old-borners can't remember doesn't mean nothing happened; like a lot of times in the morning I know I've dreamed like hell all night but I can't remember a damn thing about them, not anything at all."

"Sometimes," Sebastian said, "I have dreams."

"About what?" Bob Lindy asked.

"A sort of forest."

"And that's all?" Lindy demanded.

"One other." He hesitated, then said it. "A pulsating black presence, beating like a huge heart. Enormous and loud, going thump, thump, rising and falling, in and out. And very angry. Burning out everything in me it disapproves of... and that seemed to be most of me."

"Dies Irae," Father Faine said. "The Day of Wrath." He did not seem surprised. Sebastian had talked with him about it before.

Sebastian said, "And a sense on my part of it being so alive. It was absolutely living. By comparison--we're a spark of life in a lump that isn't alive, that the spark makes move around and talk and act. But this was totally aware; not out of eyes or ears, just aware."

"Paranoia," Dr. Sign murmured. "The sense of being watched."

"What was it angry at you about?" Cheryl asked.

He pondered, then said, "I wasn't small enough."

"'Small enough,'" Bob Lindy echoed in disgust. "Feood."

"It was right," Sebastian said. "I was in reality much smaller than I realized. Or admitted; I liked to think I was larger, with large ambitions." Like seizing the Anarch's corpse, he thought wryly. And trying to cash in big; that was an example, a perfect one. He hadn't learned.

"Why," Cheryl persisted, "did it want you to be small?"

"Because it was true. A fact. I had to face the fact."

"Why?" Lindy demanded.

"That's what happens on the Day of Judgment," R.C. Buckley said philosophically. "That's the day you have to face all the reality you've been avoiding. I mean, we all lie to ourselves; we tell our own selves more lies than we ever do other people."

"Yes," Sebastian said; that expressed it. "It's hard to explain," he said. It would be interesting, if they could bring back the Anarch Peak, to talk to him about it; he might know a good deal. "He--God---can't help you until you understand that everything you do depends on Him."

"Religious victuals," Lindy said contemptuously.

"But think about it," Sebastian said. "Literally. I raise my hand." He raised his hand. "I think I do it, can do it. But it's done by a complex biochemical, physiological apparatus that I mherited, that I entered; I didn't construct it. A blood clot on one side of the brain, a clot no bigger than a pencil eraser, and I couldn't lift my hand again or move my leg or anything on that side for the rest of my life."

"So you grovel," Bob Lindy said, "before His majesty?"

Sebastian said, "He can help you if you face it. It's just so damn hard to face. Because when you do you--cease to exist, almost. You shrink down almost to nothing." But not quite; something real remained.

"'God is angry with the wicked every day,'" Father Faine quoted.

"I wasn't wicked," Sebastian said. "Just ignorant. It was necessary for me to be confronted, finally, with the truth. That way--" He hesitated. "I could go back to Him," he said finally. "Where I belonged. And understand that nine-tenths of everything I did in my life was really Him doing it; I was a bystander while He acted through me."

"You did all that good?" Lindy demanded.

"Everything. Good _and_ bad."

"A heresy," Father Faine said.

"So?" Sebastian said. "It was true. Remember, Father; _I've been there_. I'm not spouting my beliefs, my faith; I'm saying what is."

Dr. Sign said, "I am getting a cardiac fibrillation now. An arrhythmia. Auricular fibrillation; probably what finally killed him. He's successfully passed back to that stage. Normal cardiac rhythm will probably supervene, if we're lucky; if the process continues normally."

Still continuing the theological discussion, Cheryl Vale said, "I still don't see why God would want us to feel insignificant. Doesn't He _like_ us?"

"Be quiet," Dr. Sign said swiftly.

"We have to be little," Sebastian said, "so there can be so many of us. So billions upon billions of separate creatures can live; if one of us were big, the same size as God, then how many would there be? I see it as the only way by which every potential soul can--"

"He's alive," Dr. Sign said. And sagged visibly. "It worked out; it didn't kill him." He glanced at Sebastian, smiled slightly. "Your gamble paid off; we've got a live one, and the live one is the Anarch Thomas Peak."

"So now what?" Lindy said.

"So now," R.C. Buckley said, exulting, "we're rich. We've got an item in our catalog that'll bring prices we've never even heard of before." He grinned excitedly, his salesman's eyes darting and busy. "Okay," he said. "Here I go. That lead from Italy; that's just one, but they're bidding; that's what counts. And they'll keep bidding, up and up."

"Wow," Cheryl Vale said. "We ought to have a token pipeful of sogum together. To celebrate." This, she could understand; the theological discussion had baffled her, but not this. Like R.C., she had a good, common-sense, seasoned reasonability.

"Get out the sogum," Sebastian said. "It's sogum time."

"So now you've got him," Lindy said. "All you have to do is decide who to peddle him to." He grimaced mirthlessly.

"Maybe," Sebastian said, "we'll let him decide." It was an approach they had not discussed; the Anarch, while still a corpse, had seemed just that: an object, a commodity. But he was, now, appearing among them as a human being, although still technically the property of the vitarium... a commercial entity. "He was--is-a shrewd man," he pointed out. "He probably can tell us more about Ray Roberts than the Library can." And Lotta had not returned; this he noted, and sensed that something had gone wrong. He wondered what... and how seriously... and kept the thought alive, in the back of his mind. Despite the more pressing problem of the Anarch.

"Are we going to turn him over to a hospital?" R.C. asked.

"No," Sebastian decided. It was too risky; Dr. Sign, here on the premises, would have to provide the medical care.

Dr. Sign said, "Evidently he's going to become conscious. He seems to be passing through the rebirth process unusually rapidly; that indicates his death was originally rapid."

Bending over the Anarch, Sebastian studied him, studied the tiny, dark, wrinkled face. It was certainly a living face, now; the change struck him as enormous. To see what had been inert organic matter become active... this is the real miracle, he said to himself; the greatest of them all. Resurrection.

The eyes opened. The Anarch gazed up at Sebastian, his chest rising and falling regularly; his expression was tranquil, and Sebastian decided that in this state the man had died. Worthy of his calling, he reflected; the Anarch had died like Socrates: hating no one, fearing nothing. He found himself impressed. But always he and his crew at the Flask of Hermes Vitarium missed this moment: this took place before the digging up, the recovery; this took place in the dismal vacuity of the tomb.

"Maybe he'll say something profound," Lindy offered.

The pupils of the eyes moved; the inert man now living again was seeing each of them here in the room. The eyes roved but the expression in them and on the other features stayed constant. As if, Sebastian thought, we have resurrected a watching-machine. I wonder what he remembers, he asked himself. More than I? I hope so, and it would be reasonable. He, because of his calling, would be more alert.

The dry, cracked, darkened mouth stirred. The Anarch said in a rustling, wind-like whisper, "I saw God. Do you doubt it?"

There was a moment of silence and then, shockingly, R.C. Buckley said, "Do you dare to doubt it?"

The Anarch said, "I saw the Almighty Man."

"His hand," Buckley said, "was resting on a mountain." He paused, strained to remember; the others in the room watched him. The Anarch watched him, listening for him to go on. "And he looked upon the world," Buckley said finally. "And all about it."

"I saw him plainer than you see me now," the Anarch whispered. "You mustn't doubt it."

"What's that?" Bob Lindy said.

"An old Irish poem," Buckley said. "I'm Irish. It's by James Stephens, I think. As I remember."

The Anarch said, in a stronger voice, "He was not satisfied; his look was all dissatisfied." He shut his eyes then, rested; Dr. Sign listened to his heart, checked the registering gauges of body functions. "He lifted up his hand," the Anarch said, dimly. As if once more fading back into death. "I'm in the way, I said. And I will never move from where I stand."

"He said," Buckley said, "dear child, I feared that you were dead. And stayed his hand."

"Yes," the Anarch said, and nodded; his expression was peaceful. "I don't want to forget. He stayed his hand. Because of me."

Lindy said, "Were you something special?"

"No," the Anarch said. "I was something small."

"Small,'" Sebastian echoed, nodding. How well he remembered that. Terribly, completely small, the most meager iota in the universe of things. Now he, too, remembered this: the dissatisfied look; the raising of the hand... and then the staying of the hand, because he had said something. The Anarch's words, and Buckley's, had brought it back, the rest of his recollection. That terrifying, angry, lifted hand.

"He said," the Anarch said, "that he feared I was dead."

"Well, you were," Lindy said practically. "That's why you were there; right?" He glanced at Sebastian, clearly not impressed. "What about you, R.C.," he said to Buckley. "You were along? How come you know so much?"

"A poem!" Buckley said hotly. "I remember it from my childhood. For chrissake; forget it." He looked ill at ease. "It made a big impression on me when I was a kid. I don't remember it all, but what he said--" He gestured at the Anarch. "Brought most of it back."

Sebastian said to the Anarch, "That's how it was; I remember now." And more; he remembered more, a great deal. It would take him a long time to sift it and digest it. To Dr. Sign he said, "Can you provide him adequate medical attention? Can we keep him out of a hospital?"

"We can try," Dr. Sign said noncommittally. He continued taking readings, testing the pulse; he seemed particularly concerned about the pulse. "Adrenalin," he said, and dived into his medical bag; in a moment he was preparing an injection.

"So R.C. Buckley," Bob Lindy said, "the hot-shot salesman, is a poet." His reaction was a fusion of contempt and disbelief.

"Lay off," Cheryl Vale said to him sharply.

Again bending over the Anarch, Sebastian said, "Do you know where you are, sir?"

Faintly, the Anarch said, "In a medical ward, I think. I don't seem to be in the hospital." Again his eyes roved, with the curiosity of a child, simple and naive. Wondering. Accepting, without resistance, what he saw. "Are you my friends?"

"Yes," Sebastian said.

Bob Lindy, traditionally, had a down-to-earth fashion of speaking to the old-born; he trotted it forth now. "You were dead," he said to the Anarch. "You died around twenty years ago. While you were dead something happened to time; it reversed itself. So you're back. How do you like it?" He leaned down, speaking louder, as if to a foreigner. "What's your reaction to that?" He waited, but no response came. "Now you're going to have to live your entire life over again, back to childhood and finally to babyhood and then back into a womb." He added, as if by way of consolation, "It's true of the rest of us, whether we died or not." He indicated Sebastian. "This guy here died. Same as you."

"Then Alex Hobart was right," the Anarch said. "I had people who thought so; they expected me back." He smiled, an innocent, enthusiastic smile. "I thought it was grandiose, on their parts. I wonder if they're still alive."

"Sure," Lindy said. "Or about to be alive again. Don't you understand? If you think your coming back signifies something, you're wrong; I mean, it has no religious significance; it's just a natural event, now."

"Even so," the Anarch said, "they will be pleased. Have you been approached by any of them? I'd be glad to give you their names." He shut his eyes again, then, and for a time seemed to have difficulty breathing.

"When you're stronger," Dr. Sign said.

"We should let him get in touch with his people," Father Faine said.

"Of course," Sebastian said, irritated. "It's standard; we always do that; you know." But this was special. And they all knew it, except of course the Anarch himself. He seemed blissfully glad to be alive again, already thinking of those who had been close to him, those whom he had depended on and those who had leaned on him. The joyful reunion, he thought. Not in the next life, but back here. Ironic... this is the meeting place of souls, the Flask of Hermes Vitarium of Greater Los Angeles, California.

Father Faine was speaking to the Anarch, now; two brethren of the cloth, deep in their mutual concern.

"The epitaph on your monument," Father Faine was saying. "I know the poem; it's interested me, because I suppose of its complete repudiation of everything in Christianity, the idea of an imperishable soul, an afterlife, redemption. Did you choose it?"

"They chose it for me," the Anarch murmured. "My friends. I tended to agree with Lucretius; I suppose that's why."

"Do you still?" Father Faine asked. "Now that you've experienced death, the afterlife and rebirth?" He listened intently.

The Anarch whispered, "'This bowl of milk, the pitch on yonder jar, are strange and far-bound travelers come from far. This is a snowflake that was once a flame--the flame was once the fragment of a star.'" He nodded, staring up now at the ceiling of the work area. "I still believe that. I always will."

"But this," Father Faine said. "'The seeds that once were we take flight and fly, winnowed to earth, or whirled along the sky, not lost but disunited. Life lives on.'"

The Anarch finished. "'It is the lives, the lives, the lives, that die.'" His voice was almost inaudible, strange and dim and lonely. "I don't know. I'll have to think... it's too soon."

"Let him rest," Dr. Sign said.

"Yeah, leave him alone," Bob Lindy agreed. "You're always like this, Father; every time we bring a deader back--you always hope it'll come carrying the answers to your theological questions. And they never do; they're like Seb, they just remember a little."

"This is no ordinary man," Father Faine said. "The Anarch was a great religious force and person." He added, "And will be again."

And valuable, Sebastian said to himself. For just that reason. Let's keep first things first; the theology and the poetry come in second. Compared to what's really at stake.

At home in his conapt, following the end of his work day, Douglas Appleford made a person-to-person vidphone call to Rome, Italy.

"I want to talk to a Signor Anthony Giacometti," he told the operator.

Presently he had Giacometti on the line.

"What luck did you have?" Appleford asked. "With the vitarium."

Giacometti, in his dressing gown, his hair lavish and long, his powerful eyes intense, said, "Listen, are you sure they have him? Really sure? They fritted and fratted around; I think if they actually have him like they say they'd have finalized on a price. After all, they're in business; they want a sale."

"They have him," Appleford said, with absolute assurance; he had assessed the Hermes woman with what he knew to be complete certitude. "They're afraid of the Udi people," he explained. "They're afraid you represent Ray Roberts; that's why they won't say. But just keep your bid in; hang in there and you'll get title to him."

"Okay, Mr. Appleford," Giacometti said sullenly. "I'll take your word for it; you've helped us in the past, we rely on you."

"And you can," he declared. "If I get any more information I'll pass it on to you... for the usual fee. She didn't say they'd dug him up, that he was alive; she just said they know where he's buried. That might explain their reluctance--they can't legally sell him until he's been reborn." He added, "I'll give her a call and try to get more from her. She doesn't seem able to conceal anything; she's one of those."

Giacometti, sourly, broke the connection.

As he started away from the vidphone, Appleford heard it ring; he bent, picked up the receiver, expecting to see Giacometti once again, with an afterthought. Instead he found himself facing the reduced but real image of his superior, Mavis McGuire.

"I'm once again involved," Mavis said, her mouth twisting in aversion, "with questions regarding Ray Roberts and the Uditi. A young woman, a Mrs. Lotta Hermes, is here at the Library wanting to know what we have on Roberts; I'm holding her in my office while I get an Erad in. It should be fairly soon, now."

Appleford said, "Did you check with the Council of Erads regarding the burial site of the Anarch Peak?"

"I did. We don't have that information." Mavis regarded him with the glazed, light-splintered eyes of suspicion. "This Mrs. Hermes says she talked to you previously today. About the Anarch."

"Yes," Appleford said. "She came in with an L.A. police officer just after I talked to you. They--the vitarium her husband owns--know where the Anarch is buried, so if you want that information you can with a little effort get it from her."

"I had a feeling she knew," Mavis said. "I've been conversing with her; she skirts the topic of the Anarch each time. Afraid of saying too much, I suppose. Tell me the work status of that apologia pro sua vita of Peak's, that _God In a Box_; is there still a typescript manuscript of it, or did you already turn it over to the Erad Council? I know that it never passed through my hands; I'd remember such fulsome platitudes as he used to cast before the swine."

"I have four printed copies left," Appleford said, calculating and remembering. "So it hasn't reached the typescript stage, yet. And I've been told by one of my staff that several more book-forms of it are somewhere in circulation, probably in private libraries."

"So to some extent it still circulates. It's still theoretically possible for someone to come across it."

"If they were lucky, yes. But four copies is not much, considering that at one time more than fifty thousand hardbound and three hundred thousand softbound copies were in circulation."

Mavis said, "Have you read it?"

"I--glanced through it, briefly. It's powerful, I think. And original. I don't agree with you about 'fulsome platitudes.'"

"When the Anarch is reborn," Mavis said, "he will probably attempt to resume his religious career. If he can avoid assassination. And I have a feeling that he's shrewd; there was a worldly, practical underpinning to his _God in a Box_--he didn't have his head in the clouds. And he will have the benefit of his experience beyond the grave. I think he'll remember it, compared with most old-borns; or anyhow he'll _claim_ he remembers it." Her tone was scathingly cynical. "The Council is not too pleased at the idea of the Anarch resuming his career of religion-mongering; they're quite skeptical. Just as we manage to erad the last copies of _God in a Box_ he shows up again to write some more... and we have a feeling that his future work will be worse, more radical, more destructive."

"Yes, I see," Appleford said thoughtfully. "Having been dead he'll be in a position to claim authentic visions of the hereafter; that he talked with God, saw the Day of Judgment--the usual material the old-born bring back... but his will have authority; people will listen." He contemplated Ray Roberts, then, in that connection. "I know that you and the Council dislike Roberts," he said. "But if you're worried about the doctrines the Anarch will bring back--"

"Your logic is clear," Mavis McGuire said. She pondered. "All right, then; we'll keep after the Hermes woman until we have the name of the cemetery, and if we can get it we'll turn it over to Roberts. At least--" She hesitated. "I'll recommend that to the Council; the decision will be theirs, of course. And if his body has been taken from the cemetery we'll concentrate on her husband's vitarium."

"It could be done legally," Appleford said; he always took a stand in favor of moderation. "The Anarch can be bought, aboveboard, from the vitarium, by a bid." He did not, of course, mention his connection with Anthony Giacometti; that was not the Library's affair. Tony is going to have to work fast, he said to himself; once the Council of Erads moves in, things will progress rapidly. He wondered if the principal whom Giacometti represented could--or would--outbid the Library. An interesting thought: a showdown between the Erads and the most powerful religious syndicate in Europe.

Mavis McGuire rang off, and Appleford seated himself with the evening 'pape... to read, he discovered, about Ray Roberts' pilg; that seemed to be all there was. Elaborate police precautions, all the rest; he felt bored, and he went into the kitchen to imbibe a trifle of sogum.

While he busied himself the vidphone rang again. He gave up on the sogum, plodded back to answer the ring.

It proved to be Mavis McGuire again. "An Erad is now with Mrs. Hermes," Mavis said. "They'll question her; it's taken care of. It's their theory that the vitarium probably took a calculated risk and dug up the Anarch, to avoid any chance of losing him; he's too valuable commercially to lose. So it's their assumption that we don't have to locate the cemetery; all we need to do is approach the vitariurm. The Council is sending someone to the vitarium now; they want to move in before it closes up shop for tonight." She added, "It's my daughter they're sending."

"Ann?" Appleford said, surprised. "Why not an Erad?"

Mavis said, "Annie works well with men, and this will be with a Mr. Sebastian Hermes, an old-born, now in his mid-forties. We feel that that kind of approach will be more successful than an out-and-out raid; it's conceivable that they brought the Anarch's body from the cemetery to the vitarium, revived it, and then moved it to another location, a private nursing home that we'd never track down."

"I see," Appleford said, impressed. Ann McGuire impressed him, too; he had seen her at work before. Especially with men, as her mother said; she was generally effective whenever the matter of sex became involved.

It had always been his hope, his masochistic plea, that Mavis and the Council would dispatch Ann to do a hatchet job on _him_.

In this situation, with Sebastian Hermes married, Ann would be especially efficient; her specialty was entering a man-woman relationship as a third party, eventually driving out the wife--or mistress; whatever--and reducing the number of players to two: herself and the man.

Lots of luck, Mr. Hermes, he thought wryly. And then he thought of timid little Mrs. Hermes subjected to the explorations of an Erad, and that made him uncomfortable.

After the interrogation, Lotta Hermes would be different. He wondered which way: for the good or for the worse. The interrogation would either make her or destroy her; it could go in either direction.

He hoped for the former; he had liked the girl.

But his hands were tied.