Dayworld (29 page)

“Now children ... children, I say, who will someday be adults in God ...”

“How about adulterers in God!” a man on the fringe of the crowd shouted.

“Bless you, brother, and bless your big mouth and hard heart, too! Saint Francis of Assisi, a true saint, greeted whatever donkey he met on the road as Brother Ass! May I call you Brother Ass? May I address you as a fellow Assisian?”

Zurvan paused, smiled, and looked around until the crowd’s laughter had ceased. He shouted, “Yet the government is not perfect, my children! It could change many things for the betterment of its citizens. But has it changed now for, lo, five generations? Has it not ceased to seek change for the better because it claims that there is no need for change? Did it not cease? I ask you, did it not cease!”

“Yes, Father! It has ceased!”

“Thus! Thus! Thus! Thus, my children! The hound of heaven does not bark up the wrong tree! But, thus, my children, the hound of the government barks up the wrong tree! 0, how it barks! Day and night, from every side, it barks! We hear that it is perfect! The millennium has come, and all is right in this world! The government discourages any talk of change for the better! ‘We are perfect!’ the government says!”

“Is it perfect? Is the government, like God, perfect?”

“No, no, no, Father!”

Zurvan stepped down from the box then. Shouting, continuing to speak, his disciples trooping after him, moaning, crying, and yelling, he walked to a place one hundred and sixty feet away. The other speakers were also moving. Zurvan occupied a spot just vacated, and he mounted the box again. The law had been observed, and the place of meeting had been moved within the legal time to a legal distance away.

“The government permits the practice of religion! Yet . the government allows no believer in God to hold a government office! Is that the truth?”

“That’s the truth, Father!”

“Who says that only those who believe in fact, in reality, in the truth ...
T ... R ... U ... T ... H ...
are fit to hold government office?”

“The government, Father!”

“And who defines fact, reality, and truth?”

“The government, Father!”

“Who defines religion as superstition?”

“The government, Father!”

“Who says there is no need for change, for betterment?”

“The government, Father!”

“Do not we deny that? Do not we know that there is a great, a crying, need for betterment?”

“Yes, Father!”

“Does not the government say that it has a contract with the people, a social contract?”

“It does, Father.”

“Then tell me, children, what good is a contract if, of the two parties who agree to the contract, only one can enforce it?”

“None, Father!”

That was as far as he dared to go today on that subject. He was not yet ready for martyrdom. He now switched to his “cooling-off” stage. He asked for a few questions from non-members of the church, and, as always, he was asked why he daubed his nose, what the S on his forehead stood for, and what the butterfly shapes on his beard symbolized.

Zurvan said that he and his disciples had been reviled and mocked as “bluenoses” because of their high moral standards. So, he had adopted the pejorative literally to show his pride in his belief and his indifference to the revilers and mockers. When he preached, he showed his “bluenose” to all who would see.

As for the butterflies, they represented the last stage of becoming a believer. Just as butterflies, once ugly caterpillars, wrapped themselves in a cocoon and burst forth in the metamorphosis of lovely creatures, just so the souls of himself and his followers had burst forth.

“The big S on my forehead,” he thundered, “does not represent Saint or Sinner! Nor does it stand for Simpleton, as our enemies claim! It stands for Symbol! It is not a symbol, but
the
symbol! The S absorbs all symbols, all symbols of good, that is! Someday, so we hope, do we not, children, this S will be as instantly recognizable, and far more respected and valued, than the cross, hexagram, and crescent I spoke of earlier. Is that not our hope and trust, children?”

“Amen to that, Father!”

Zurvan then began the slow-paced approach to the calling for public confession. As the minutes went by, he sped up his delivery, his gestures, his intensity, his passion. Before five o’clock, when all lecturers and preachers had to stop, he had heard the detailed confessions of twenty, one of them an on-the-spot convert. That this part of the program attracted many more from the park than his preaching did not dim his joy. He knew that nonmembers loved to hear the confessions because of the sometimes sordid, humiliating, and salacious details. Never mind. Sometimes, some who came to be titillated were overcome—imploded with the light of God—and they converted and confessed.

The organics were taking all this in and might use the confessions against the confessors if they found reason to. Martyrdom, however, was the price paid for faith.

At five, Zurvan went home, tired but exuberant and exultant. He was riding high on the saddle of God’s light. After a low-calorie supper, he prayed. Later, he listened in the privacy of his apartment to people who had not had time to finish their confessions. At nine, he held a short service for those who crowded into his apartment. It was against the law for people to stand in the hall and watch the ceremonies on the hall strips. But organics were not usually around at that time, and the other tenants did not object. Some of them liked to watch, too, though not to share in the light.

All of this had taken place on Day-Five, Week-One, last Sunday.

Today, Day-Six, Week-One of Sunday, Father Tom Zurvan had not appeared in Washington Square. His followers, after waiting for fifteen minutes, during which they failed to get him on the strip, had gone to the apartment building on Shinbone Alley. The block chief rightly refused to use his code-key to enter Father Tom’s apartment until the organics had been notified. After another long delay, two organics showed up. These went in with the block chief, the throng of disciples, and some curious tenants.

A search revealed that Father Tom was not at home. His stoner was empty. His staff was leaning against a wall strip on which was a cryptic message:

I HAVE GONE TO A HIGHER PLACE.

28.

Tom Zurvan had not lied.

He was indeed in a higher place, the Tao Towers, in Tony Horn’s sixth-floor apartment at the corner of West Eleventh Street and the Kropotkin Canal. He was not altogether himself nor altogether any of his selves.

Normally, he would have gone through the ritual of becoming Father Tom and then sleeping. The nightmare of Saturday had, however, stopped the flow of customary events as an avalanche would dam up a river. It had goosed his soul and sent it screaming down paths that he did not wish to take. It had shotgunned the cocoon of Zurvan and was letting the voices and faces and even the hands of
those others
through the holes. They were mumbling at him, staring at him, groping him.

This had not started until he had got himself, much less smoothly than usual, through the mental mantra of metamorphosis. (Was that Bob Tingle speaking that thought, the Alley Oop of alliteration? Wyatt Repp who voiced the metaphors of “goosing” and “shotgunned”? Charlie Ohm who suggested they were “groping” him?)

He was aware but did not want to be aware that the winds of the recent past were blowing through him as if he were a shredded sail, as if fragments of the others were coming through him like pepper from a shaker.

“Stop that! Stop that!” he screamed in his mind.

Though, possibly excepting Jeff Caird, he had the strongest personality of all, he could not fight back with all his powers. They had been let, as it were, to other tenants who were moving in with court orders. And he was being shorn, his strength drained out just as Samson’s had drained when his hair was cut by Delilah, the delicious daughter of false-faced Philistines, the buxom barber of Beelzebub.

“Stop that!” he screamed. “This is serious!”

(“Damn right, it’s serious!” Caird said in a faraway voice that, however, was getting nearer. “Tingle, shut up! We’re about to die, and you joke!”)

Aloud, his voice ringing in his apartment, Zurvan said, “By the light of God, I command you to go back into the darkness from which you came!”

(“Bullshit,” Charlie Ohm said.)

(“Smile when you say that,” Wyatt Repp said. “Come on, men. Give him a break. The lynching party is coming. If we don’t hang together, we’ll be hung separately on sour apple trees. He’s the ramrod today. Shut up and let him save our skin. Then we can have the big powwow, see who’s the big mugwump. The only way ...”)

(“Tony Horn’s apartment,” Caird said. “Go there! It’s the only place we’ll be safe! For a while, anyway!”)

“Tony Horn?” Zurvan said aloud.

(“Yes. You remember. Don’t you?”)

(“I remember,” Jim Dunski said. “If I can, you can. Caird was given permission, remember. His ... our ... friend, Commissioner-General Anthony Horn. She said he could use it in case of emergency. And this is it!”)

(“She’s an immer,” Bob Tingle said. “Once an immer, always an immer, no pun intended even if you know German. She’ll betray me ... I mean, us.”)

(“She won’t know anything until Tuesday,” Caird said. “Come on, Zurvan, get going! Hightail it!”)

Only Will Isharashvili had not spoken. Was that because he did not know yet what was going on? Or because, being the last in line, if Tuesday was the beginning, he was the weakest? His voice would not be added until he was awakened tomorrow? If so, he would never speak. He was not going to be awakened. He would die in his sleep.

That roiled Zurvan even more. If he was not Isharashvili tomorrow, who would he be? Could he keep on being himself, Tom Zurvan? He had to. He, at least, would not perish.

“Oh, Lord, forgive me!” he cried. “I am thinking only of myself! I am abandoning my brothers! I am a coward, a Peter denying his Lord before the cock has crowed three times!”

(“Peter! Cock! You big prick!” Charlie Ohm said. “Cut out the holy bullshit, man! Get going! Save our asses!”)

(“I wouldn’t say it that way,” Jeff Caird said, “but the minnie is right. Hide out! Now! Get to Horn’s place! For God’s sake, man, the organics may be at the door now! Or the immers may be there! Get rid of everything that’ll tie you in with us! Go!”)

The voices had stilled, for the moment, anyway. As he stared at the traffic on the street and the canal, he felt a little stronger and more confident. He had no rational cause to be so, but confidence often welled not from long experience so much as from the inborn belief in one’s self.

He had had to struggle hard to do what reason said he must do. Grief and a hard-quelled resistance had shaken him as he bustled about gathering up items to be compacted and stoned for the garbage collectors. The wig, beard, and robes had to go. With them went the dummy of himself. He considered destroying Ohm’s also, but the chances were good that his dummy would not be discovered until next Saturday. He did get into Ohm’s PP closet with the ID star from Ohm’s cylinder, and he dressed in Ohm’s clothes. They would make him stand out because Sunday did not wear the neck-ruff on the blouse nor kilts. That, however, could not be helped.

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.