Dayworld Read Free Page A

huge horizontal sewage tunnel blocked at both ends but accessible by rungs down a vertical shaft. A single unshaded light bulb, a device not used for a thousand obyears, lit the room in archaic fashion.
    Though the light blazed harshly, it could not keep at bay the dark mists rolling in from every side. These advanced, then retreated, then advanced.
    He sat in a hard wooden chair by a big round wooden table. He waited for others, the others, to enter. Yet he was also standing in the mists and watching himself seated in the chair.
    Presently, Bob Tingle walked in as slowly as if he were moving through waist-high water. In his left hand was a portable computer on top of which was a rotating microwave dish. Tingle nodded at the Caird in the chair, put the computer on the table, and sat down. The dish stopped turning, its concave face steady on Caird’s convex face.
    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