"You've got the wrong man to talk to," R.C. said. "Wait until Father Faine gets back; ask him."
"Yeah, but you're here and he's not." And he felt the urgency of the problem; it probed at him, making him move and talk, forcing him to follow--not his own logic--but its logic.
"Everybody," R.C. said, "has hostile impulses, toward everybody, at some time or another. Like sometimes I feel like taking a swing at Seb, or more often Bob Lindy; Lindy really gets my goat. And then even sometimes--" R.C. lowered his voice. "You know, Seb's wife Lotta; she comes in here a lot of times. Not for any reason but just to--you know; sort of hang around and talk. She's sweet, but goddam it, sometimes she drives me nuts. Sometimes she can be a real pest."
Tinbane said, "She's nice."
"Sure she's nice. They don't come any nicer. But isn't that the point you were trying to make? Okay; a nice person like that and I feel like bouncing an ashtray off her head because she's so-" He gesticulated. "Dependent. Hanging on Seb all the time. And he's so goddam much older than her. And with this anti-time, this Hobart Phase, she's getting younger and younger; pretty soon she'll be a teen-ager and then she'll be in grammar school, and about the time he's back to his prime of say around my age she'll be a baby. A baby!" He stared at Officer Tinbane.
"That's a point," Tinbane conceded.
"She was older, of course, when he married her. More mature. You didn't know her then; you weren't on this beat. She was full-grown, fully like a real woman; hell, she was a real woman. But now--" He shrugged. "You can see what that damn Hobart Phase does."
Tinbane said, "Are you sure? I thought you had to be already dead and be reborn to get younger."
"Christ," R.C. said, "don't you understand anti-time at all? Listen; I knew her. She was older. _I_ was older; we all were. I think--you know what I think? You've got a mental block against facing it, because you're young now, too young, in fact; _you, too, can't afford to get any younger_. You can't be a cop if you do."
"You're full of food." He felt terrific anger, swift and terrible. "Maybe anti-time affects you a little if you haven't died, maybe sort of stabilizing you, but it's not like the deaders. Like Seb was. Sure, I admit he's growing younger, but not Lotta. I've known her for--" He calculated mentally. "Almost a year. She's matured."
An aircar landed on the roof above them; down the stairs came Bob Lindy, Sebastian Hermes, and Father Faine. "A good job," Sebastian said, seeing Officer Tinbane. "By Dr. Sign. He's with him--the old-born--at Citizens' Emergency." He sighed. "I'm beat." Seating himself on a cane-bottomed chair he picked a cigaret butt from a nearby ashtray, lit it and began puffing smoke into it. "Well, Joe Tinbane; what's the good word? Any new unkilings?" He laughed; they all did.
Tinbane said, "I wanted to talk to Father Faine about a -- religious matter. Personal." To Father Faine he said, "Can you come out with me to the squad car so we can sit and I can consult you?"
"Yes indeed," Father Faine said; he followed Tinbane back into the front room of the establishment, past Cheryl Vale, who was still talking on the phone, and out where Tinbane had parked the squad car.
For a moment they sat in silence. Then Father Faine said, "Does it have to do with adultery?" Like Seb he, too, was undoubtedly slightly psionic.
"Hell no," Tinbane said. "It has to do with certain thoughts I've had, not like any I ever had before. You see--there's this situation I can profit from. But at someone else's expense. Now, whose good should come first? If theirs, then why? Why not mine? I'm a person, too. I don't get it." He lapsed into brooding stillness again. "Okay, so it does have to do with a woman, but the adultery part isn't the part I'm talking about; it's about hurting her, this girl. I've got a hold over her where I think--I just think; I don't know--I could make her go to bed with me." He wondered if Father Faine's mild telepathic ability would enable him to distinguish the image of Lotta Hermes; he hoped to hell not... but then of course the pastor was pledged to silence. Still, it would be awkward.
"Do you love her?" Father Faine asked.
That stopped him. Cold. "Yes," he said finally. It was true; he did. It had never entered his conscious thoughts, but there it was. So this was the spur goading him; from this came the baffling thought-processes.
"Is she married?"
"No," he said. Just to play it safe.
Father Faine said presently, "But she doesn't love you."
"Oh hell no; she loves her husband." He realized, then, instantly, what he had said, and how easily Father Faine could decipher why he had said she wasn't married; he would know it had to be Lotta. "And he's a good friend of mine," he said. "I don't want to hurt him." But I do really love her, he thought. And that hurts; that's what's making me feel the way I do; when you love someone you want to be with her, you want to have her as your wife or girl friend. It's natural; it's biologic.
Father Faine said, "Be careful that you don't tell me the names. I don't know how much you know about the rite of confession, but it is always obligatory not to mention names."
"I'm not confessing!" He felt indignation. "I'm just asking for your professional opinion." Was he confessing--a sin? In a sense, yes; he was asking for help but he was also requesting absolution. Forgiveness for what he had thought, for what he might do; forgiveness for being what he was in essence; this was his essence talking, this part of him that longed for Lotta Hermes and was willing to navigate any difficult series of maneuverings to acquire her, like a salmon flopping and flapping its way against the tidal currents.
"Man," Father Faine said, "is on the one hand an animal, with animal passions. It's not our fault, not your fault for having illicit yearnings that transgress God's moral law."
"Yes, but I have a higher nature," he said, bitingly. But it doesn't get in the way, he thought; that's not the real conflict. _There really is no part of me rejecting this_.
What I want, he realized, is not advice on what is right, or even absolution. 1 want a blueprint by which this thing can be brought about!
"I can't help you there," Father Faine said. Somewhat sadly. Startled, aware of the near-psionic reading of his mind, he said, "You sure can figure out what a person's thinking." He wished, now, to terminate the discussion; Father Faine, however, was not ready to let him go: he had, he realized, to pay the price of consulting him.
Father Faine said, "You're not afraid of doing wrong; you're afraid of trying to do wrong and failing, and having everyone know. The girl you want, her husband; you're afraid you'll fail and there they'll be, a united front again you, shutting you out." His tone was critical and upbraiding. "You have, you say, a certain hold over this girl; suppose you make the try and she Jumps the wrong way, gets frightened and huddles up to her husband--which isn't so unnatural--and you're a--" He gestured. "I think the phrase is, 'a horse's mouth.'"
Over the radio of the squad car the police announcer babbled briefly to another team in another part of Los Angeles. Tinbane, however, said, "That's for me; I have to get moving." He opened the door of the car, and Father Faine got out. "Thanks a lot, Father," he said, formally and correctly.
The door closed; Father Faine departed, back into the building.
Tinbane roared up into the sky, away from the Flask of Hermes Vitarium. For the time being.
Seeing Father Faine re-enter the store, Sebastian Hermes noted his troubled, dour expression and said, "He must have some problem."
"We all do," Father Faine said vaguely, opaque in his thoughts.
"Let's get down to business," Sebastian said, to him and to Bob Lindy at work at his bench. "I've been monitoring the bug I put on the Anarch Peak's grave and I believe I've picked up heartbeats. Very faint and irregular, but my intuition tells me there's something there; we're very close."