Counter-Clock World Read Online Free Page B

why Roberts didn’t think of making a pilg here a long time ago. I wonder why just now . . . of all possible times.
    Earnestly, Bethel said, “Do you think he’s a fake? That there’s no such state as Udi?”
    He shrugged. “DNT is a potent drug.” Maybe it was so. In any case it didn’t matter; not to him, anyhow. “Another unexpected rebirth,” he said to his wife. “At Forest Knolls, naturally. They’re never watching those minor cemeteries; they know we’ll handle it—with city equipment.” Anyhow, Tilly M. Benton was safely at the L.A. receiving hospital, thanks to Seb Hermes. Within a week she would be disgorging like the rest of them.
    “Eerie,” Bethel said, still at the doorway to the kitchen.
    “How do you know? You never saw it happen.”
    “You and your damn job,” Bethel said. “Don’t take it out on me, just because you can’t stand it. If it’s so awful, quit. Fish or cut bait, as the Romans said.”
    “I can handle the job; matter of fact, I’ve already put in for a reassignment.” What’s hard, he thought, is you. “Let me disgorge in private, will you?” he said angrily. “Go off; read the ’pape.”
    “Will you be affected?” Bethel asked. “By Ray Roberts coming here to the Coast?”
    “Probably not,” he said. He did, after all, have a regular beat. Nothing ever seemed to change
that.
    “They won’t have you out with your popgun protecting him?”
    “Protecting him?” he said. “I’d shoot him.”
    “Oh dear,” Bethel said mockingly. “Such ambition. And then you could go down in history.”
    “I’ll go down in history anyhow,” Tinbane said.
    “What for? What have you done? And what in the future do you intend to do? Keep on digging up old ladies out at Forest Knolls Cemetery?” Her tone lacerated him. “Or for being married to me?”
    “That’s right; for being married to you.” His tone was equally scathing; he had learned it from her, over the long, dead months of their alleged marriage.
    Bethel returned, then, to the living room. Left alone, he continued to disgorge, now left in peace. He appreciated it.
    Anyhow, he thought gloomily, Tilly M. Benton of South Pasadena likes me.

3
    Eternity is a kind of measure. But to be measured
belongs not to God. Therefore it does not belong to
Him to be eternal.
    —St. Thomas Aquinas
    It had always been difficult for Officer Joe Tinbane to determine precisely what official rank George Gore held in the Los Angeles Police Department; he wore an ordinary citizen’s cape, natty turned-up Italian shoes, and a bright, fashionable shirt which looked even a bit gaudy. Gore was a relatively slender man, tall, in his mid-forties, Tinbane guessed. He came directly to the point, as the two of them sat facing each other in Gore’s office.
    “Since Ray Roberts is arriving in town, we’ve been asked by the Governor to provide a personal bodyguard . . . which we planned to do anyway. Four or possibly five men; we’re in agreement on that, too. You asked to be reassigned, so you’re one.” Gore shuffled some documents on his desk; Tinbane saw that they pertained to him. “Okay?” Gore said.
    “If you say so,” Tinbane said, feeling sullen—and surprised. “You don’t mean for crowd control; you mean all the time. Around the clock.” In proximity, he realized. By personal they meant personal.
    Gore said, “You’ll eat with him—excuse the expression; sorry—and sleep with him in the same room; all that. He has no bodyguard, normally. But we have a lot of people out here holding deep grudges toward the Uditi. Not that they don’t in the F.N.M., but that’s not our problem.” He added, “Roberts hasn’t asked for this, but we’re not about to consult him. Whether he likes it or not he’s going to get twenty-four-hour protection while he’s in our jurisdiction.” Gore’s tone was bureaucratic and stony.
    “I gather we won’t be relieved.”
    “You’ll stagger your wake-sleep cycle, the four of you.