"So, I say you're a liar and a word-twister and a fact-bender. Out of sixty movies I've made, only nine have been about shape-changing and role-exchanging. Any fool can see that I'm not hung up or obsessed with the problem of ident.i.ty. Any fool but you, I reckon. As for your careless and malicious remark about my mental instability, if I did have a screw loose, I would've popped you one. See how calm I am? See this hand? Is it shaking? It's not, but if it did, who'd blame me?

"What I am, Ras Lundquist, is the Bach of the drama. I play infinite variations on a single theme."

"Bach is turgid," Lundquist said, sneering.

All in all, it was a good show. The viewers were delighted with the violence of the dialog and enchanted by the threat of physical violence. According to the monitor, exactly 200,300,181 were watching the show. It would be rerun next Friday so that those who were now sleeping could get a chance to view it.

Repp walked out jauntily into the corridor, stopped for a while to say his name into the recorders thrust at him by fans, and then swaggered to the elevator. He taxied to his apartment, drank a bourbon, and went to bed. At 11:02, he was awakened by the alarm strip. After setting up his dummy and changing clothes, he put his bag over his shoulder and went down to the bas.e.m.e.nt to get a bike from the vehicle-pool. The air was warmer than it had been the previous evening; another heat wave was heading toward Manhattan. A few light clouds were moving slowly eastward. The streets were almost empty. Several organic cars pa.s.sed him. The occupants looked at him but went on. On the sidewalks were stacks of one-foot cubes, the compacted and stoned garbage-trash put out by Friday's State Cleaning Corps. Sat.u.r.day's would pick it up. Aside from infrequent data, the only thing pa.s.sed on from one day to the next was garbage-trash. The cubes had several uses, one of which was as building blocks. It was said, with only some exaggeration, that half of the housing in Manhattan was garbage. "So, what's changed?" was the usual retort.

At 11:20 P.M., Repp stopped in front of an apartment building on Shinbone Alley. He looked around the brightly illuminated area before going down the ramp leading to the bas.e.m.e.nt. He did not want to be seen entering the building by organics. They might think that he was just a late-coming tenant, but they also stopped every seventh person they saw out this late for a quick checkup.

No vehicle was in sight, and he could not hear the singing of tires on pavement. He turned and rode down the well-lighted ramp to its end and into the bicycle garage. After putting the bicycle in a rack, he walked toward the elevator door, twice kicking trash on the floor. "d.a.m.n weedies!" he muttered. He stopped and took from the bag his Sat.u.r.day's star-disc. It was not supposed to open the elevator door until after midnight, but he had made alterations to admit him. Though not a professional electronics technician, he had taken enough courses to be one.

Just as he inserted the tip into the hole, he heard a low voice behind him. He jumped, pulling the tip from the hole, and whirled. "Jesus, you scared me!" he shouted. "Where'd you come from? Why'd you sneak up on me like that?"

The man gestured with a thumb at the four empty emergency cylinders at the far end of the garage. "Sorry," he said in a low gravelly voice. "I had to get near enough to make sure who you were."

He wore an orange tricorn hat and light-purple robe decorated with black cloverleaf figures, the uniform of Friday's organic patrollers. For a second, Repp had thought that he was done for. All was lost unless he could get the gun in his bag out in time to use it. The intruder was too big for Repp to tackle with only his hands. And he would have shot the man. He had not had time to think about the consequences of the act. His desperation would have taken over him as if he were a robot.

What had kept him from going for his weapon was that the man was alone. Organics always traveled by twos. So this one must be an immer.

"As soon as you get your color back, I'll give you the message," the man said. "By the way, that was a good show you gave tonight. You really told that sn.o.bbish b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

Repp's heart was slowing down, and he could breathe almost normally. He said, "If you know me, why'd you come up so quietly?"

"I told you I had to make sure. You aren't in your Western outfit."

"What's the message?"

"This evening, at 10:02 P.M., the organics observed and pursued a wanted daybreaker, Morning Rose Doubleday. I was told that you will know of her. Ras Doubleday fled and took refuge in a house that, unfortunately, was next to the house where a woman named Snick, Panthea Snick, had been hidden after she had been stoned.

"When the woman, Doubleday, was cornered in this house, she refused to surrender. She committed suicide by detonating a minibomb implanted in her body. The resulting explosion not only killed the organics pursuing her and the family then occupying the house, but also destroyed the buildings on both sides."

"Why didn't I hear it?" Repp said. "Where did this take place?"

"That's not relevant," the man said, "but it was on West Thirty-fifth Street. Message continued.

"During the search of the wrecked buildings, the organics -~1~ .1.

found the stoned body of Snick. They destoned her, and she told her story."

The man paused and looked at Repp as if he expected him to say something. When Repp shook his head, the man said, "I guess you know what that means. I don't. Message continued. All immers will be or have been notified that Snick is again a grave danger to us. Her description is being pa.s.sed on. I was told that I didn't have to give it to you.

"All immers are to keep a lookout for Panthea Snick. If she can be killed without attracting attention, she is to be killed at once and the body disposed of. The council suggests putting it in a G-T compacter.

"If the situation is such that she can't be killed on the spot, whoever sees her will notify his contacts, and they will go after her. You will pa.s.s on this message to all your contacts, and you will describe her. You will do this every day until you are told to stop."

The man paused again and said, "It was a.s.sumed that her mission was the search for and arrest of Morning Rose Doubleday. But since she is still conducting a search, that a.s.sumption may not be correct. It is possible that she had a multipurpose mission and that Doubleday was only one mission. Or it may be that she is looking for other members of Doubleday's organization, though the organics have received no such report from Snick. That is, the lower echelons of the organics have received no such report or data. She must have transmitted data to today's higher officials that has resulted in permission to continue her mission, whatever that is. And she will transmit this to tomorrow's officials.

"If tomorrow's council hears anything that may immediately affect you re Snick, you will be notified as soon as possible."

The man spoke as if he were a receiver-transmitter spewing forth organic officialese.

"One more item before message is finished," the man said.

"We do have a highly placed official in Sat.u.r.day. That official will endeavor to find out exac~tly what Snitk's mission is. Meanwhile, keep a low profile. Snick will be living in this area. She will move into an apartment in Washington Mews Block Building."

"Got you," Repp said. "She's taken an apartment in this area because whoever she's looking for is in this area. At least, she thinks so."

"Good luck," the man said. He looked around at the trash. "How do you stand this?" He turned and walked toward the ramp before Repp could reply.

"Thanks, I'll need it," Repp called softly after him. He turned. The elevator door was still open, waiting for him. He entered the cage and punched the b.u.t.ton for his floor. Though he was rising physically, he was sinking emotionally. Wyatt Repp, he was thinking, had ridden high all day. And now, shortly before midnight, he had tumbled hard. Very hard.

As he reached his floor, his spirits surged upward, though briefly. Snick's face had flashed like a mental meteorite through his dark thoughts. Why should he feel joy? Because she was alive. That was very strange and needed looking into. Especially since he was supposed to kill her if he got the chance.

Sat.u.r.day-World VARIETY, Second Month of the Year D5-W1 (Day-Five, Week-One) "Ohm-mani-padme-hum!"

The deep male voice droned the chant. Charles Arpad Ohm batted at it as if it were a gnat flying around his ear.

"Ohm-mani-padme-hum!"

"Go away!" Charlie said. "I've got a h.e.l.l of a hangover!"

"Ohm-mani-padme-hum!"

"Shut up!" Charlie said, and he put the pillow over his head. The voice came through the pillow faintly but insistently. It was as if a Tibetan monk was speaking a ritual to awaken the dead, as if he, Charlie Ohm, was buried but not beyond resurrection.

The voice stopped. Charlie, knowing what was coming, cursed. The female voice that succeeded the male was very loud and shrill, the essence of shrew, termagant, and nag. It was his ex-wife's, programed into the alarm strip by Charlie because it was the only voice that could get him out of bed. It made him angry, raised his blood pressure, and brought him up and out of desirable sloth. Not so desirable if he was to get to work on time.

"You lazy slob! b.u.m! Drunk! Lech! Sickening weedie! Get your goldbricking a.s.s into gear! Malingering mutt! Pig! Parasite! Dirt b.a.l.l.s! There's only one thing you can get up in the morning, and I want none of that! See if you can't hoist the rest of you, your alcohol-soaked carca.s.s, the desecrated and ruined temple you call your body, out of your trough-bed! Get up now or I'll pour cold water on you. G.o.d knows you need a bath, crud faucet!"

"That does it!" Charlie cried, and he rolled over, lifted the pillow, and tossed it at the alarm strip. His ex-wife's snarling face was displayed on it. She yelled, "That's right! Throw things at me, you unreasonable facsimile of a facsimile! You couldn't hit an elephant's rear!"

Charlie had recorded some of his wife's rantings and had excised various bits and put them together in an unharmonious whole. Some irrational wish to be punished-after all, the divorce had been partly his fault-had made him submit himself in early mornings to her decibelish devilings.

Charlie rolled groaning out of bed, stood up somewhat shakily, and shambled to the bathroom. On the way, he kicked aside a crumpled candy-bar wrapper. He swore at the occupant who had failed to drop it in the disposer. Pa.s.sing the row of cylinders, he shook his fist at the face in the window of Friday's stoner.

"Slob!"

At least Friday had changed the bedclothes. This time. More than once, Charlie had fallen into a bed smelling of sweat, and, once, of vomit. Despite this, he had not complained to the authorities. That was against the unwritten code of the weedies. But he would leave a nasty message for Robert Chang Sela.s.sie.

When he was finished in the bathroom, he went through the door that led into the living room. Beyond the pool table, standing against the eastern wall, was the row of seven cylinders. The only one who inspired a thought in Charlie was Sunday's occupant, Tom Zurvan, who stared through the window. His fierce expression, long hair, and long and thick beard made him look like an Old Testament prophet, a Jeremiah of the fourteenth-century New Era. Charlie blessed him ironically, sure that Zurvan never left anyihing for others to clean up. Charlie also felt sure that Zurvan would not have approved of him.

His ex-wife's voice had stopped, but it would screech out again if he went back to bed or lay down on the sofa or the floor. It was programed to pounce upon him, if necessary, until he had had his first cup of coffee.

He walked down the hall, pa.s.sing by strips that had been automatically activated. Their voices were a medley and a babel.

"...learned today that ten thousand more square miles have been reclaimed from the Amazon Basin Desert . .

"...the bad news is that London, despite enormous efforts, is sinking again at the rate of two inches an obyear . .

"... answer the Number Seven question, and you will win forty more credits, fully government-authorized. What year, in both pre-New Era and New Era dates, did the Battle of Dallas take place?"

". . . the ancient philosopher, Woody Allen, said that we are all monads without windows. There is some dispute among the historians about the exactness of the reading of the ancient records. Some claim that Allen said nomads, not monads. In which case . .

". . . a vote for Nuchal Kelly w.a.n.g is a vote against the continued use of contraceptive chemicals in our drinking water. Stop this obsolete and unwarranted method of birth control! We have room on this great planet for more people! A vote for w.a.n.g is a vote for the future! People are crying for children, yet..."

A reminder strip, one of several, displayed that Charlie was scheduled to take a voter-qualification test next Sat.u.r.day.

STUDY HARD, YOU DUMMY. REMEMBER THAT YOU FAILED THE TEST LAST TIME.

"What's the difference?" Charlie growled. "w.a.n.g is the only one I'd vote for, and he doesn't have a chance."

A news strip in the kitchen greeted him with a view of Pope Sixtus the Eleventh on the porch of his bungalow in Rome. This had been recorded last Sat.u.r.day during the installation of Ivan Phumiphon Yeti as today's head of the Roman Catholic Church. The camera swept over the fifty or so of the faithful on the small lawn and pa.s.sed into the house. Ohm paused to watch while getting a stoned four-cup cube of coffee from his PP cabinet. The strip showed the faces of the other six vicars of Christ in their cylinders in a tiny room. They were the faces of old men who looked as if they had suffered much.

"Suffering is good for the character," Ohm said, and he told the strip to switch to another channel. He was not uncaring; he was stirred by feelings that he could not handle at the moment. But the sight of the Manhattan Manglers being beaten 5-4 by the Rhode Island Roosters did not quiet him. There had been a riot after that soccer match, one that Charlie might have joined if he had been in the stadium. Though the strips had not shown the melee (ten badly injured), Charlie had heard about it via the grapevine.

The sky-eye recordings would be magnified and studied by the organics. After which, those responsible for the injuries would be tracked down to their homes and arrested. The leaders of the infuriated mob and the injured would also be arrested.

Charlie shut the strip off, put the cube in a deep dish and the dish in the destoner, and turned a switch. After opening the door, he took the dish out, poured the ground coffee into a filter, and turned on the coffee-maker. While waiting, he went to the curved window and looked out at Womanway. The sky was clear. Another hot day. The street was filled with men and women in brightly colored kilts, floppy shirts with wide thick neck-ruffs, and wide-brimmed hats bearing plastic or real flow- ers. There were many pedestrians, most trying to walk under the shade of the huge oaks or palm trees lining, both sides of the street. Many of the cyclists had big teddy bears in their baskets, and many walkers were carrying teddy bears. The faces of these had been modified to look half-ursine, half like those of beloved relatives, spouses, lovers, or, for the more narcissistic, like their owners.

Charlie shook his head-he had resisted the fad-and poured out a large mugful of coffee. Slouching to the table, he dropped into a chair, spilling some of the liquid on the table. Staring moodily at the coffee, the only decent way to stare early in the morning (almost 10:00 A.M.), he tried to remember the shank of yesterday evening. He had come home quite late, had trouble inserting the disc tip into the hole, had voided much beer, and then had fallen into bed.

Here he was now, unshowered, unshaven, and hung over. His head felt as if it had been cut off and was being used for a bowling ball. Every other beat of blood through his brain was a strike, and the pins flew through in all directions, slamming into the walls of his brain. How had he gotten that headache which no one, not even the sinfullest of sinners, deserved? Oh yes . . . After tending bar, he had not gone home, which he should have done, but had swilled all evening with his cronies at the tavern.

Never again! The wailing cry of the repentant rose from his lips. Never again! And he sat back, startled at the violence of his vow. He had actually spoken aloud.

He got more coffee. What was that dream that had upset him so much? He could not remember it any more than he could remember the specifics of last night's revel. Wait. Out of the dark fog some dim figures were emerging. He tried to grasp them, only to see them slink back into the fog.

It did not matter. He would drink some more coffee, eat a very light breakfast, and exercise on the gym set in the living room. Then, after shaving and showering, he would take his fencing foil and equipment down to the block gymnasium. After a vigorous hour, he would come back to the apartment, shower again, and then dress for work.

Thinking of dress, what was he doing sitting here naked? He thought that he had not taken his clothes off after he had stumbled into the apartment. He must have, though it was strange that he had not seen them on the floor. Surely, he had just dropped them before falling into bed. Perhaps, some time in the night, he had gone to the bathroom. Coming out, he had picked them up and put them in the PP closet. Even weedies, dirty and unresponsible, antisocial, and s...o...b..sh, were so conditioned that they automatically did certain things that went against their nature.

"I really must cut down on the booze," Charlie muttered. He rose to get more coffee but stopped, cup in hand. The strip on the wall behind him had buzzed loudly. He turned and saw it flashing orange. When he had spoken the words to clear it, he saw the man standing before the apartment door. The strip showed a tall and well-muscled man of about thirty subyears. He wore a mauve hat with yellow roses, a yellow loose blouse with lace cuffs and a green neck-ruff, and a black-and-yellowchecked kilt. His shoulderbag was made of alligator leather, the skin for which was grown in a factory in Brooklyn. The teddy bear held under one arm was mauve. Its face vaguely resembled its owner.

Charlie Ohm said, "What the. . . ?"He suddenly recognized the man with the narrow foxlike face. During the past few subyears, Charlie had served him drinks, which the man nursed as if they were dying birds. Three drinks of bourbon, and the evening was spent for Hetman Janos Ananda Mudge.

*. h.e.l.l is he doing here?"

He told the audio of the entrance-door monitor strip to turn on and said, more loudly than was necessary, "Just a minute!"

He hurried from the kitchen, groaning as each step jarred loose pain in his head. He went down the narrow hall, the light coming on as he entered, and inserted the tip of his disc-star into the hole below the SAt.u.r.dAY plaque. A few seconds later, clad only in a kilt, he walked quickly, wincing, to the front door. He paused. What was Janos Mudge doing here? Had he, Charlie Ohm, insulted Mudge sometime last night and was Mudge here to demand an apology? Or was Mudge an organic and here to arrest him for something that he had done last night? Something antisocial? That last speculation did not seem likely, since the hall monitor strip showed that Mudge was the only one in the hall.

"What do you want?" Charlie said.

The strip showed. . . exasperation? . . . flitting over Mudge's face.

"I want to talk to you, Ohm."

"What about?"

Mudge glanced down both sides of the hall. *That there was no one else there did not mean that he was not being monitored. Some weedie might be watching him on his hall strip.

Mudge reached into a pocket on the side of his kilt and pulled out a thin square black plate. Holding it with two fingers, he spoke into it so softly that Ohm could not hear him. Then he held it up cupped in one hand. The strip showed one word flashing orange against the black.

IMMER.

After three flashes, the word disappeared.

"Oh, Lord!" Charlie said.

Between seeing the calling card and opening the door, Ohm's hangover vanished. It did not explode. It imploded, burst inward. The hangover fragments, like shrapnel, tore holes in the persona of Charlie Ohm, and what had been shut out stormed into the breaches. He had been "remembering" the events of last Sat.u.r.day night, though they had been vague. And the hangover he had been suffering this morning was, in a sense, the hangover of a hangover. The original had been endured and finally gotten rid of on last Sunday, when he had been Father Tom Zurvan. Father Tom, who never drank a'cohol but nevertheless had to suffer from Charlie Ohm's roisterings. Father Tom, who accepted the head pain as part of the bad karma from his previous life.

The hangover had pa.s.sed five days ago. Yet, when he, as Charlie Ohm, had awakened this morning, he had coc.o.o.ned himself. All the events and dangers gone through by the four predecessors had been arrested, as it were, and put in a dungeon. Or stoned and put in the psychic cylinders somewhere within him. He, stoned in more than one sense, stoned Charlie Ohm, had remembered nothing. He had been no one but Ohm, the part-time bartender, the lush, the weedie. The days between last Sat.u.r.day and this had bounced off him as if he were a nonimmer, a phemer. Even the hangover that no longer existed had come back to life. It was last Sat.u.r.day's hand squeezing him to get all the juice of the other clays out.

That sudden revelation had been the first shock. The second was that, if an immer was here, he was bringing very bad news. Nothing else would have made the councillors send a messenger.

Mudge entered, looked around as if he expected to be in a pig sty and then looked surprised that he was not. He said, "Get dressed, and be quick about it. We have to get out of here in five minutes. Sooner if possible."

"The organics. . . they're coming?" Ohm said. He swallowed audibly.

"Yes," Mudge said, "but not for you. Not specifically, that is. It's a sanitary check raid."

Ohm felt relieved. "Oh," he said, "then. . . ?"

"I'm to conduct you to ... someone," Mudge said. "Get going, man!"

The urgency and authority of Mudge's voice spun Ohm around and sent him running for the PP closet. When he came out, he found Mudge standing in front of Zurvan's stoner. The man turned on hearing him and ran his eyes up and down Ohm. "OK." But he turned again and pointed at Zurvan's face. "This is really a dummy?"

"Yes," Ohm said. Then, "How do you know that?"

"I had orders to get rid of it if it didn't look realistic."

"Why? Is the situation that bad?"

"Bad enough, I guess. I don't know the details, of course. Don't want to know."

Mudge glanced at the clock strip. "Good. Two minutes ahead of schedule. You don't have any recordings that should be erased? Or anything you wouldn't want the organics to find?"

"d.a.m.n it, no!" Ohm said. "I may be a weedie, but I'm not sloppy."

Mudge had turned both his kilt and his hat inside out. He was now wearing a brown hat with a long orange feather and a cerise kilt. Mudge was reaching inside his handbag, which he had put into a brown shopping bag. For a second, Ohm thought that Mudge would bring Out a gun. He could feel the blood draining from his head. At the same time, he crouched, ready to spring. But Mudge removed a hat, a wide-brimmed, high-crowned brown hat with an orange feather.

He held it out to Ohm. "This is reversible, too. Put it on."