The poor, contrary to what Jesus had said, were no longer in society. At least, the poor did not have to be poor. But the perverse were still here. One born every hour.

The raid on the minnie district in search of Rootenbeak would take place inside an hour. Caird was not going to be there in person. He left that up to Detective-Inspector Ann Wong Gools, but he would be in constant VA (video-audio) contact.

He asked for and, after a ten-minute wait, got the results of the satellite sweep for both Rootenbeak and Gril. There were three sky-eyes up there taking photographs of the Manhattan and neighboring areas at three different angles. The computers had sent holographs of the culprits to the central base, and there the graphs of the two were compared wjth the faces of Manhattanites in the streets or on housetops. So far, the results were nil. That was not unexpected, since Gril and Rootenbeak had only to wear wide-brimmed hats and keep their faces down to avoid these being photographed. However, all wearing such hats had been tracked by the sky-eyes, and the buildings they entered had been noted. Unfortunately, the Organic Department did not have enough personnel to follow up the leads. Only central Manhattan addresses could be investigated, and that was going to take much time.

It was not difficult to get fake IDs if you knew where to go. Rootenbeak seemed to be the sort who would know. Gril, though, was a scholar and a recluse. What would he know of the underworld? Nothing-unless he had been planning his daybreak for a long time and so was well-prepared.

Caird put Rootenbeak on mental hold and considered Gril.

Find the motive; find the criminal. A fine dictum, except that he was not looking for suspects. He knew who the culprit was.

Monday had opened Gril's bio-data to Tuesday, but Caird could not interrogate Gril's a.s.sociates and intimates. That was up to Monday. About all he could do was to have the data transmitted to all organics' R-T boxes so that they could see them while looking for Gril. The sky-eyes, of course, would also be scanning the streets for anyone resembling Gril. Caird did not think that Gril would be foolish enough to venture forth on the daytime streets. He also might have cut his hair and shaved his beard, though that had little chance of deceiving the skyeyes. The ID Department had probably sent out photos based on what Gril's shaven face would look like.

Gril's file had some interesting personality bio-data, especially the item that he was the last Yiddish speaker on Earth. He was also an authority, in fact, the authority, on an ancient writer named Cerinthus. Two of Gril's studies on him were in the World Data Bank. Caird had asked for a summary of data on Cerinthus, though more from curiosity than hope that it would give him any clue.

Cerinthus was a Christian who had lived circa A.D. 100. Born a Jew, he had converted to Christianity but was generally regarded as a heretic. Saint John was supposed to have written his Gospel to confute Cerinthus' errors. Very little had been known about him until the discovery of a ma.n.u.script in the south of the state of Egypt three hundred obyears ago. He had founded a short-lived sect of Jewish Christians with Gnostic leanings. Though a Christian, the only New Testament book he had accepted was Matthew's Gospel. Cerinthus had maintained that the world was created by angels and that one of these had given the Jews their law. But that law was imperfect. He also held to circ.u.mcision and the Jewish Sabbath.

"Sounds as crazy as the rest of them," Caird had muttered when he had turned the display off.

Another strip glowed with orange letters, and a buzzer sounded loudly. It bore a reminder from Ozma to make out the reproduction permit. Caird turned off the Gril data and went to a desk computer. He had filled in only four lines of the form on the strip before him when another strip began flashing. Rootenbeak had been sighted in the Hudson Park district.

Caird put the application form on hold. He called the woman who had sent the message, Patroller-Corporal Hatshepsut Andrews Ruiz. She was standing before a transmitter strip on the wall of a building but parts of her were obscured. Some minnie had probably thrown mud or something worse on the strip. Behind her on the sidewalk were three organics, privates first cla.s.s. One was holding a small camera and panning it up and down the street. Caird asked for its POV, and the street appeared on the wall strip by the one showing Ruiz. The woman who had turned Rootenbeak in was standing near Ruiz and was holding a large sack of groceries.

Ruiz saluted and said, "The witness, Benson McTavish Pallanguli, 128 . .

"I'll get that from the computer," Caird said. "What happened?"

"The witness had just come from the West Clarkson Street Food Dispensall with a sack of groceries with a bunch of bananas on top."

Caird had started to tell her to skip that, but the reference to the bananas changed his mind.

"The suspect, Dorothy Wu Rootenbeak, who has been positively identified by Pallanguli, walked by her. As he did so, he reached out and tore a banana from the stalk on top of the sack carried by Pallanguli. Rootenbeak thereupon ran down the street-" Ruiz pointed west ". . . until he came to the corner of Greenwich and West Clarkson. The suspect, according to Pallenguli and two other witnesses, thereupon turned left, still running, and proceeded down Greenwich Street. He entered the block building designated as GCL-1."

Caird had a street map displayed on a strip so he could see the exact path taken by the fugitive. By now he also had points of view of two patroller-operated cameras in front of the building into which Rootenbeak had gone. The sergeant in charge, Wanda Confucius Thorpe, was just going through the doorway. He held in his right hand an electrical prod. Three organics, also armed with prods, were following him.

Caird radioed Thorpe and asked him if the building was surrounded. The sergeant, a faint tone of resentment in his voice, replied that he had arranged for this-of course. One of the cameras showed Caird two orange-and-white cars pulling up to the curb outside the door. Caird called the cameramen on the other two sides of the building and got a complete picture of the operation. The building occupied the whole block, but between it and the sidewalks was a yard with an uncut lawn, many dandelions and other weeds, and many palm trees and sycamores. No doubt, the block leader had gotten official reprimands from the state, followed by orders to clean the yard. But the minnie leaders were often as uncouth and rebellious as their flock.

The building was about forty objective years old, constructed when Nautical Design was all the rage in the Bureau of Architecture. Its upper sides curved outward, ending in a flat top. This and one tapering end and the three-story penthouse made it resemble a twentieth-century aircraft carrier. The rooms on the outside wall at the top floor had windows in the floors so that the tenants could look straight down into the yard.

Rootenbeak might be in one now, staring down at the organics.

Caird tingled with excitement. It had been three months since he had been in on a hunt. And now he had two in one day.

He asked the computer to clump all references to bananas in Rootenbeak's file. This was flashed almost immediately on a strip. After reading it, he called Ruiz and asked her to ask Pallanguli if she knew the man who had s.n.a.t.c.hed her bananas. The corporal did so with Caird watching and listening to the two. The dark woman's expression changed a little and then was replaced by indignation.

"No, I never saw the stiff before, and if I ever see him again I'll put a banana in him where the sun don't shine."

Ruiz had plugged in the woman's ID before questioning her. Caird was running it off now after instructing the computer to expand and make orange any references to Rootenbeak. After a few seconds, a paragraph swelled and began flashing. Caird stopped its rollup to read it. Pallanguli had been Rootenbeak's neighbor on the fourth floor of a Dominick Street apartment building three objective years ago.

He sighed with exasperation. Pallanguli must know that that would be in her file, yet she had lied. Was she just stupid or perverse? It made no difference. She must be brought in for questioning. But he would have bet thirty credits that her story was made up. Rootenbeak had asked her for help and gotten it. Moreover, he had gotten two other minnies to give a false story. Instead of turning left and running south and then entering the building, he had turned right and gone ... where? Someplace close to but outside the police net.

That is, unless he was subtle enough to calculate that the person in charge would think of this and so he had, instead, actually entered the building. No. There was too much danger of outsmarting himself.

Caird would have called off the apartment search if he had been one hundred percent sure that he was right. He did ask for more personnel to widen the net and to send organics into nearby block buildings. He was told that he could get no more than ten people.

Caird glanced at the strip with its flashing APPL ON HOLD! No time for that now. The applicationfor permission for Ozma to have a child by him would have to be transmitted later.

Another message appeared on a strip. It was from the commissioner-general's secretary, asking him if he could move the luncheon date up to 11:30 A.M. He replied that he could. The strip displayed: RCVD & TRMD.

His request for satellite data re the search for Rootenbeak came in then. Usually, he got it within ten minutes. Today, for unexplained reasons, the channels were clogged. Caird studied the pictures and then called the Hudson Park substation for more personnel. He wanted ten more foot organics but was told that none would be available for several hours or more.

"Why not?"

"I'm sorry, Inspector," the sergeant said. "But we have a particularly gory murder on Carmine Street. Two victims, a woman and a child."

Caird was shocked. "That makes two murders in Manhattan this subyear, and the second month isn't over yet. My G.o.d, there were only six all last subyear!"

The sergeant nodded solemnly. "It's become an epidemic. Social rot, sir, though the terrible heat is a contributing factor."

After Caird had quit talking to the sergeant, he sat and scowled. The organic force could have been much larger and he would not now be lacking personnel if every organic was not required to get a Doctor of Philosophy degree in criminology. But, no, every candidate had to pa.s.s a psychological test (which was also a subtle ideological test), which eliminated five out of ten. After this, the candidate studied for six subjective years at West Point. Then, if the candidate could survive the rigorous discipline and get a B average in the courses, he or she became an Organic Department foot-patroller, zero cla.s.s.

Ah, well, he could only work with what he could get. By three this afternoon, according to the weather-strip report, he could no longer depend upon the sky-eyes. A heavy overcast would cut off their view.

When eleven o'clock came, Rootenbeak still had not been observed or caught. Caird worked for a few minutes at other duties before leaving the building. A station-pool robot car took him up Womanway Boulevard to Columbus Circle and up Central Park West to West Seventy-seventh Street. The John Reed Community Block Building occupied all of the Number 100 blocks of Seventy-sixth and Seventy-seventh streets, including the enclosed streets. Just north of it was the Museum of Natural History. Caird got out of the car just off the third-level ramp. The car moved slowly away and disappeared down the west ramp. He walked into a huge lobby decorated this year in Mycenaean Mode. Golden Agamemnon masks smiled at him from the walls, ceiling, and floor. In the middle of the lobby was a fountain holding a statue of Ajax defying the G.o.ds. A yellow flourescent jagged lightning bolt of plastic reached halfway down from the ceiling toward the arrogant and doomed Achaean. This piece of statuary had been selected by some bureaucrat who thought that it would subtly put across a moral. If you were stupid enough to resist the government, you were fried.

However, despite one-hundred-percent literacy and free lifelong education if you wanted it, nine-tenths of the viewers had never heard of Ajax, the first human lightning rod, and most of the others did not care about him. The moral was lost, and the art was, Caird thought, tacky.

He went up a pneumatic elevator to the top floor and got off at the entrance to the Zenith Restaurant at 11:26. He told the maitre d' that his reservation had been made by Commissioner Horn. The maitre d' tapped three keys; the screen displayed Caird's face and some lines of bio-data.

"Very well, Inspector Caird. Follow me."

The Zenith was very elegant and select. Six musicians on a podium played softly, and the conversation was in low tones. That is, it was until Anthony Horn rose from her table to greet him. She strode toward him, arms out, her orange-and-purple robe flapping in her wake. "Jeff, darling!"

The other diners looked up or flinched or both as her voice boomed out. Then he was enfolded in silk, perfume, and abundant flesh. Looking down her b.r.e.a.s.t.s was like looking along the curve of twin planets from forty thousand feet up. He did not mind having his face pressed against them, even though it was undignified. For a brief moment, he was happy and secure in the bosom of the Great Mother Herself.

She released him and smiled, showing big white teeth. Then she turned and led him by the hand to the table in the meateaters' section. She was six inches higher than his six feet three, though her high heels accounted for four of the inches. Her shoulders and hips were broad; her waist, very narrow. Her golden hair was piled high in a coiffure shaped like an eighteenth-century tricorn hat, all the fashion just now. Huge golden earrings, each inset with the Chinese ideogram for "horn," dangled from small close-set ears.

They sat down, and she leaned against the table, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s extending like two white wolfhounds eager for release so they could chase the prey. Her big deep-blue eyes connected with his. In a much lower tone, she said, "We have a big bad problem, Jeff."

His eyebrows rose. He said, softly, "The government's found out about us?"

"Not yet. We . .

She stopped what she was going to say because the waiter, a tall, turbaned, bearded Sikh, had appeared. They were busy ordering drinks and looking at the printed menus for a while. The Zenith was too elegant to display the menus on wall strips. When the waiter had left, Horn said, "You know about Doctor Chang Castor?"

He nodded. "He hasn't escaped?"

"Yes, he has."

Caird grunted as if he had been hit in the solar plexus, but just then the waiter brought his wine and Horn's gin, and two minutes later, a folding table and two trays with dishes of food. It did not take long to fill an order. The food was precooked anywhere from last Tuesday to two subyears ago, stoned, and so kept in perfect state. Destoned, it only needed warming and putting on the plate.

They chatted about their families until the waiter left. Caird jerked a thumb at the waiter's back.

"He's an informer?"

"Yes. I used my connections and a code I'm not supposed to have to identify the informers here. The place isn't bugged, though, and there are no directional mikes. Too many bigshots eat here."

She cut into her steak and chewed on a small piece. "I. . . it's not just that you're an organic and we can work through you. It's much more personal ... involved ... for you."

After swallowing the meat, she sipped at her gin. The moderation told Caird that she was deeply shaken. Any other time, she would have half-emptied her tall gla.s.s before the food was served. Obviously, she was afraid of dulling her wits.

Chang Castor was an immer and a brilliant scientist, head of the physics department at the Retsall Advanced Inst.i.tute. He had always been eccentric, but, when he had begun showing signs of mental sickness, the immer organization had acted at once. It had framed him so that he seemed to be much more mentally unstable than he really was at the time. He had been committed to an inst.i.tution that, though owned by the government, was secretly controlled by immers. There, Castor had quickly slid into deep psychotic quicksand in which it seemed that he would stick until he died. Fourteenth-century medical science, for all its advances, was unable to pull him out.

Caird remembered a lunch with Horn at another place when she had told him that Castor believed that he was G.o.d.

"He's an atheist," Caird had said.

"Was. Well, in a sense, he still is. He says that the universe was formed through sheer chance. But its structure is such that it finally and inevitably, after many eons, gave birth to G.o.d. Himself, Castor. Who has now ordained matters so that there is no such thing as chance. Everything that happens from the moment his G.o.dhood was crystallized-which also happened by chance, the last time that chance existed in the universe- everything that happened from that moment is fixed by him. Capital Him, by the way. He insists on being addressed as Your Divinity or 0 Great Jehovah.

"Anyway, he says that there was no G.o.d until he came along. So he divides cosmic time into two eras-B.G., that is, Before G.o.d. And A.G., After G.o.d. He will tell you the precise second when the new chronology began even if you don't ask him."

That conversation had taken place three obyears ago.

Anthony Horn said, softly, "G.o.d hates you."

Caird said, "What?"

"Don't look so confused and guilty. By G.o.d I mean Castor, of course. Castor hates you, and he's out to get you. That's why I had to call you in on this."

"Why? I mean ... why does he hate me? Because I was the one who arrested him?"

"You got it."

The whole operation had been immer-directed and immercontrolled. Horn, a lieutenant-general then, had given him private orders to take Castor into custody. Caird had gone to the neighborhood of the Retsall Inst.i.tute. By chance, or so it seemed, he had been handy when the frame had been put into action. Two other immers had smashed up the laboratory but blamed it on Castor. By then the victim was raving and had attacked the two because of his fury at the put-up job. Caird had taken him to the nearest hospital as organic routine required him to. But, shortly thereafter, the courts having been advised by Dr. Naomi Atlas, also an immer, Castor was transferred to the Tamasuki Experimental Psychicist Hospital on West Forty-ninth Street. Since then, no one had seen him except for Atlas and three first-cla.s.s nurses. Only Atlas was allowed to talk to him.

"It could have been someone else," Horn said. "Anyone who arrested him. It was your bad luck to be the one."

She sipped at her gin, put the gla.s.s down, and said quietly, "In a way, he's a Manichaean. He's split the universe into good and evil, just as he split time. Evil is the tendency of the cosmos to revert to chance in its operations. But chance has to be directed . .

"How in h.e.l.l could chance be directed?"

Horn shrugged. "Don't ask me. Who am I to question G.o.d? You don't expect conventional logic from a crazy, do you? Castor has no trouble reconciling his schizophrenic contradictions. In that, he's far from being alone. What matters is what he thinks. In his divine wisdom and perception, he knows that you are the Secret and Malignant Director of Chance. He refers to you as Satan, The Great Beast, Beelzebub, Angra Mainyu, and a dozen other names. He's said that he will find you, vanquish you, and hurl you howling and with utter ruin and complete combustion into the deepest pit."

"Why wasn't I told about this before?"

"Don't look so indignant. People will notice. Because there was no need for it. You know we try to keep all communication at a minimum. I was the only one to hear about Castor from Atlas, and that was at parties or social functions and not much was said about it then."

Tony was silent for a moment. Then she leaned forward again and spoke even more softly.

"The orders are to stone him and hide the body if it's possible. If not, kill him."

Caird gave a slight start, and he sighed.

"I knew it would come to this someday."

"I hate it," Tony said. "But it's for the common good."

"Of the immers, you mean."

"Everybody's. Castor is hopelessly insane, and he's dangerous to anyone who gets in his way."

"I've never killed anybody," Caird said.

"You can do it. I can do it."

He shook his head. "Our psych tests showed that we could, but they're not one hundred percent accurate. I won't know until I either must do it or can't do it."

"You will. You'll catch him, and you'll do what must be done. Listen, Jeff..

She put one hand on his and stared into his eyes. He stiffened.

"I...,,.

She cleared her throat.

"I got the decision on ... Arid ... from the council today. I'm sorry, really sorry, Jeff. But . .

"She's been rejected!"

She nodded. "They say she's too unstable. The psych projection is that she'd be burdened with too much social conscience. She'd break eventually and confess all to the authorities. Or, if she didn't, she'd have a mental breakdown."

"They don't really know, they don't really know," he murmured.

"They know enough. They can't take the chance."

"There's no use appealing right now," he said harshly. "Not in a case like this. Tell me. Was the decision final or will they reconsider in five years? After all, Arid's only twenty. She could mature."

"You can try again then. The psych projection, however. .

"That's enough," he said. "Are you finished?"

"Please, Jeff. It's not that bad. Arid will be just as happy if she isn't an immer."

"I won't, but I suppose that doesn't matter. They reject Ozma and now Arid."

"You knew that might happen when you became one. Everything was laid out for you."

"Is that all? You're done?"