Dayworld (3 page)

Jim Dunski seemed to float in, a fencing rapier in his left hand. He nodded at the two, placed the rapier so that it pointed at the Caird at the table, and sat dawn. The blunt button on the rapier tip melted away, and the sharp point glittered like an evil eye.

Wyatt Repp, a silvery pistol-shaped TV camera-transmitter in his left hand, strode in. Invisible saloon batwing doors seemed to swing noiselessly behind him. His high-heeled cowboy boots made him taller than the others. His sequined Western outfit glittered as evilly as the rapier tip. His white ten-gallon hat bore on its front a red triangle enclosing a bright blue eye. It winked once at Caird and was thereafter fixed lidlessly on him.

Repp sat down and pointed the machine at Caird. His first finger was curled around the trigger.

Charlie Ohm, wearing a dirty white apron, stumbled in with a bottle of whiskey in his left hand and a shot glass in the other. After sitting down, he filled the glass and silently offered it to Caird.

The Caird standing in the fog felt a vibration passing up from the floor through the soles of his feet. It was as if an earthquake shock had touched him, or thunder was shaking the floor.

Then Father Tom Zurvan strode into the room as if the Red Sea was parting before him. His waist-long auburn hair waved wildly like a nest of angry vipers. Painted on his forehead was a big orange
S,
which stood for “Symbol.” Bright blue was daubed on the end of his nose. His lips were painted green, and his moustache was dyed blue. His auburn beard, which fell to his waist, sported many tiny blue butterfly-shaped aluminum Cutouts. His white ankle-length robe was decorated with broad red circles enclosing blue six-pointed stars. His ID disc bore a flattened figure eight lying on its side and slightly open at one end. The symbol for a broken eternity. In his right hand was a long oaken shaft that curled at the upper end.

Father Tom Zurvan stopped, leaned the shepherd’s staff against his shoulder, and formed a flattened oval with the tips of the thumb and first finger of his right hand. He passed the long finger of his left hand three times through the oval.

He said loudly, “May you speak the truth and only the truth.”

Grasping the staff again, he walked to a chair and sat down. He placed the staff on the table so that its curling end was directed toward Caird.

“Father, forgive me!” the Caird sitting at the table said.

Father Tom, smiling, made the sign again. The first time, it had been obscene. Now, it was a blessing. It was also a command to unloose verbally all pent-up wild beasts, to spill your guts.

The last to enter was Will Isharashvili. He wore a green robe slashed with brown and the Smokey Bear hat, the uniform of the Central Park ranger. Isharashvili took a chair and stared at Jeff. All were staring at the Caird at the table. All their faces were his.

A chorus, they said, “Well, what do we do now?”

Caird woke up.

Though the air-conditioner was on, he was sweating, and his heart was beating faster than it should.

“Maybe I made the wrong decision,” he muttered. “Maybe I should have stayed in one day, maybe I should have been only Jeff Caird.”

Presently, the faint noises of street-sweeping machines lulled him back to sleep.

Sitting at the breakfast-room table, Caird could see the picket-fenced backyard through the window. In one corner was a utility shed; in another, the garage; in a third, the garden. A small one-room building of transparent plastic, a studio, was in the center. Thirty feet to its east was a large apple tree. It bore fruit, but bypassers who had not heard of Ozma might have wondered what kind of a tree it was. Ozma had painted every apple with a different design, though viewed together the designs made an esthetically pleasing whole. The paint would not wash off easily, but it was edible, and a bowl full of the fruit was on the table now.

Ozma had agreed with Jeff that he could decorate the kitchen. He had arranged the walls so they glowed with four paintings by T’ang Dynasty artists. He liked the Chinese quality, the quiet and eternal look with the human figures always far off, small but important, not the masters but an integrated part of the mountains, the forests, the cataracts.

Though Ozma had more Chinese ancestry than he, she did not particularly care for them. She was an outré and outrageous Westerner.

She had turned on the recorder in the corner to find out if Wednesday had left any messages. There were none, so it could be assumed that Wednesday had no complaints about the cleanliness or order of the house.

Their breakfast was interrupted by the front doorbell. Ozma, clad in a knee-length robe so thin that she might as well not have worn it, answered the bell. The callers were, as expected, Corporal Hiatt and Private First Class Sangalli. They wore green caps with long black visors, green robes on which were the insignia of the Manhattan State Cleaning Corps and their rank-stripes and good conduct medals, brown sandals, and yellow gloves.

Ozma greeted them, made a face at their boozy breaths, asked them in, and offered them coffee. They refused, and they plunged into the dusting, washing, waxing, and vacuuming. Ozma returned to the table.

“Why can’t they come later, while we’re gone?”

“Because they have a quota, and because that’s the way the bureaucracy set it up.”

Jeff went upstairs, brushed his teeth, and rubbed on the whisker-removing cream. The face in the mirror was dark, the long dark hair in a Psyche knot. The hazel eyes brooded under heavy brows. The nose was long and slightly hooked, and the nostrils flared. The jaw was heavy. The chin was round and cleft and stuck out.

“I look like a cop,” he muttered. “And I am. But not most of the time.”

He also looked like a big dark worrybird. What’s to worry about? Besides being caught? Besides Ariel?

He showered, put underarm deodorant on, went into the bedroom, and donned a blue robe decorated with black trefoil figures. Clubs, the same symbol used on a pack of cards. He was the joker or perhaps the knave of clubs. Or both. He did not know who was responsible for this organic symbol, but it probably had been some bureaucrat who thought he was being subtle. The organics, the cops, had the real power, clubs.

He picked up his over-the-shoulder bag and walked downstairs. A strip by the front door glowed with a message. Ozma wanted him to stop by her studio before he left.

She was inside the transparent one-room building and sitting on a high stool. She put her magnifying glass down on the table when she heard him enter. The grasshopper she had been looking at had been stoned to keep it immobile while she applied paint to it. Its antennae were yellow; its head, pale orange; its body, bright purple with yellow crux ansatas; its legs, jet black. A mauve paint, which had the properties of one-way glass, covered its eyes.

“Jeff, I wanted you to see my latest. How do you like it?”

“The colors don’t clash. Not by modern standards, anyway.”

“Is that all you can say? Don’t you think it’ll make a sensation? Doesn’t it improve on nature? Isn’t it true art?”

“It won’t make a sensation,” he said. “My God, there must be a thousand painted grasshoppers in Manhattan. Everybody’s used to them, and the ecologists are complaining that you’re upsetting the balance of nature. Preying insects and birds won’t eat them because they look poisonous.”

“Art should please or make one think or both,” she said. “Sensation is for inferior artists.”

“Then why’d you ask me if they’d make a sensation?”

“I didn’t mean the sensation of startlement or outrage or just novelty, of course. I meant the sensation of recognition of something esthetic. The feeling that God is in His heaven, but it’s the human on Earth that does God one better. Oh, you know what I mean!”

“Sure,” he said, smiling. He turned her head and kissed her lips. “When are you going to start on cockroaches? They’re so God-ugly. They need beautification.”

“Where would I get one in Manhattan? I’d have to go to Brooklyn for them. Think I should?”

He laughed and said, “I don’t think the authorities would bless you.”

“I could sterilize the roaches before I let them loose again. But, really, are cockroaches ugly? If you adopt another frame of mind, think in a different Category, look at them from the religious point of view, they’re beautiful. Maybe, through my art, people would come to know their true beauty. See them as the living jewels they are.”

“Ephemeral classics,” Caird said. “Short-lived antiques.”

She looked up and smiled. “You think you’re being sarcastic, but you may be telling the truth. I like those phrases. I may use them in my lecture. Anyway, they’re not so ephemeral. I mean, the insects will die, but my name will go on. People are calling them
ozmas.
Didn’t you see the seven o’clock Art Section of the
Times?
The great Sam Fang himself called them
ozmas.
He said ..

“You were sitting there with me when we saw it. I’ll never forget how you giggled and carried on.”

“He’s usually a jerk, but sometimes he’s right. Oh, I was so ecstatic!”

She bent down to apply the near-microscopic end of her brush. The black paint was over the spiracles, the openings in the exoskeleton which passed air to the tracheae, the breathing tubes that went to the insect’s internal organs. A chemist at Columbia University had developed for her the paint that permitted entrance of oxygen to the spiracles.

Caird looked at the stoned praying mantis at one end of the table and said, “Green is quite good enough for it, for God, and for me. Why, as it were, gild the lily?”

Ozma straightened up. Black eyes wide, mouth twisted, she said, “Do you have to spoil it for me? Who gave you a certificate as an art critic, anyway? Can’t you just enjoy my joy and keep your ignorant opinions to yourself?”

“Now, now,” he said hastily, reaching out to touch her shoulder. “You’re the one that says you should always tell the truth, hide nothing, let the emotions be trigger-happy. I
am
happy because you’re happy in your work—”

“Art, not work!”

“Art. And I’m happy that you’re getting so much public recognition. I apologize. What do
I
know?”

“Well, let me tell you something, cop! I’ve learned a lot from my study of insects. Do you know that the highest forms of insects, the bees, wasps, and ants, are female societies? The male is used only for fertilization.”

“Yeah?” he said, grinning. “What’s that supposed to signify?”

“You just watch it, buster! We women may decide that entomology has the key to the future!”

She burst into laughter, squeezed him with one arm, the other hand holding the brush attached to a very thin hose attached to a machine on the table. He kissed her—her anger came and went like heat lightning, nothing permanent or hurtful about it—and went to a strip on the wall. He voice-activated it and asked for their schedule. He probably needed a reminder more than anybody in Tuesday.

He and Ozma were to go to an artists’ party at 7:30 P.M. That meant two hours or more of standing around drinking cocktails and talking with people who were mostly phonies. There were, however, a few he would enjoy talking to.

He had a luncheon engagement with Anthony Horn, the Manhattan organic commissioner-general. He doubted that they would talk much about police business. She was an immer.

There was also a note to see Major Wallenquist about the Yankev Gril case. He frowned. The man was a Monday citizen. What was Gril’s name doing on the MCOD file?

He sighed. Yankev Gril. He did not even know what he looked like, but he would find out today.

3.

After kissing Ozma good-bye, he got a bicycle, one of six, out of the garage. As soon as it had rolled a few feet, its squeaking told him that Monday’s occupants had neglected to lubricate the pedal mechanism. He cursed softly. He would make a recording to chew Monday out, but the omission was no big thing. He’d get an OD mechanic to attend to it. He was not supposed to do that, but what was the use of being a detective-inspector if he did not have his little perks?

No. That would not be right. Anyway, he’d be damned if he’d ride all the way to work on the irritating and attention-getting vehicle. He returned to the garage and got another bike. This one squeaked, too. Swearing, he took out a third, the last of the adult-size, and rode out of the garage. When he saw Ozma bent over with laughter, he shouted, “Straighten up! You look like a cow! And put a robe on!”

Ozma, still laughing, gave him the finger.

“What a relationship we have,” he muttered. He went past the white picket fence along Bleecker Street and turned the corner onto the bike path along the canal. Two men fishing from the walk looked up as he passed them. Caird rode on. As usual, there were many pedestrians illegally on the path. Some of them saw his OD badge, but they moved only to get out of his way and some did not do that.

Time for another sweep, he thought. Not that it would do any good. The pedestrians would have to pay only a small fine. Ah, well. His daughter Ariel, the historian, had told him that Manhattanites had always paid little attention to traffic rules. Even in this law-abiding age, there were so many misdemeanors that the organic officers usually ignored most of them.

The air had cooled off a little during the night but was beginning to warm up. A fifteen-mile-per-hour wind behind him, however, helped his pedaling and cooled him somewhat. The sky was unclouded. It had not rained for twelve days, and the thermometer had surged past 112°F for eight of them. He kept on pumping, zigzagging to avoid walkers. Now and then, he glanced at the canal, ten feet below street level. Rowboats or foot-pumped pontoon craft or small barges pushed by small waterjet tugs moved up and down the canal. The houses along the wide path were mostly two-story dwellings of various architecture with here and there a six-story apartment building or a two-story community general store. In the distance to his right was the enormous building known as the Thirteen-Principles Towers, the only skyscraper on the island. Its center was on the site of the last Empire State Building, torn down five hundred obyears ago.