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?"
"Damn 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."
Ohm took his hat off and tossed it on the floor. Mudge raised his eyebrows and looked sternly at Ohm.
"I'll put it away later," Ohm said. "You said we don't have much time. Besides, if the organics come in, they have to find some untidiness. They might get suspicious if they don't."
They started toward the door. Ohm, a step behind Mudge, said, "Can't you tell me anything about this?"
"Yes." Mudge opened the door and went into the hail. When Ohm had joined him, Mudge said, softly, "I was to tell you this only if you asked. The Repp dummy has been discovered. It was found at ten to midnight yesterday. Friday, I suppose."
"My God! It's all over!"
Mudge said, "Keep your voice down. And act natural, whatever that is. No more questions."
"Was Snick behind this?"
"I said ... no more questions."
They started down the hall as a door three apartments away from his opened and a loud drunken couple, a man and a woman, staggered out. Mudge steered away from them as if he might get dirty if he got too near. "Hey, Charlie," the man said. "We'll see you at The Isobar."
"Maybe," Ohm said. "I got urgent personal business to attend to. I don't know if I'll make it to work on time."
"We'll drink to your happiness and success," the woman said.
"Do that."
When they got into the elevator cage, Charlie said, "I know you don't want me to ask questions. But am J going to get to work? If I don't, what excuse do I use?"
"That'il be taken care of, I suppose."
"Well, maybe it won't be important by then."
Mudge stared at him and said, "You'd better get hold of yourself, fellow. Jesus, you don't act like an immer."
Just before the elevator stopped, Mudge, unable to control his curiosity and ignoring his own command, said, "Why in hell would an immer live here?"
"No questions, remember."
How could he tell him that he had built, no, grown, a persona for each day? And that each was based on certain character elements that had coexisted, though not harmoniously, when he had been only Jeff Caird? He had been a conservative and a liberal, a puritan and a flesh-potter, a nonreligionist and a longer for faith, an authoritarian and a rebel, a priss and a slob. Out of the many conflicting elements of character, he had grown seven different ones. He had been able to do many things that would have been denied him if he had lived on only one day. He had contained many in one body, and each man had been given a chance to be what he wanted to be. Charlie Ohm, though, might have been, surely was, the case of going too far.
Just as they stepped out into the underground garage, he flashed the dream that he had tried to recall. He had seen all seven of him in Central Park, riding horses in a fog. They came in from the dimness from different directions and reined in their horses so that the hindquarters formed a seven-pointed star. Or a bouquet of horseflesh.
Jeff Caird had said, "What're we doing on this bridal path?"
Father Tom Zurvan had said, "Getting married, of course."
Charlie Ohm had laughed hollowly and said, "We act more like we've been divorced. First the divorce, then the marriage. Sure!"
Jim Dunski had pulled a sword from somewhere, held it aloft, and had shouted, "All for one and one for all!"
"The seven musketeers!" Bob Tingle had yelled.
"May the best man win!" Will Isharashvili had said.
"And the devil take the hindmost!" Charlie Ohm had chortled.
They had fallen silent because they heard the clip-clop of a horse's hooves approaching in the fog. They waited for they knew not what, and presently the figure of a giant man on a giant horselike figure loomed in the fog. Then the dream had ended.
Ohm did not have time to try to plumb its meaning. He was hustled by Mudge out of the building onto the sidewalk. They walked swiftly down the sidewalk past a yardful of screaming children at play and some adults. Ohm had no doubt that some of the infants had no IDs and that they had not been registered in the data bank. Mudge glanced at his wristwatch and muttered, "One minute to go." Ohm, looking around, could see no sign of the organics. But when they got to Womanway Boulevard, he saw thirty men and women, all in civilian clothing, standing by several cars. That they were unmarked meant that they were organic. When would the organics learn that everybody knew that?
There would be other raiders collected at other points near the building.
I need a drink, he thought.
But that's the last thing you need just now, someone said.
Nevertheless, as they walked north on Womanway and passed the big dark window of The Isobar, he felt as if some gyroscope inside him was leaning toward the entrance. Leaning also toward the path of least resistance and of hard-to-change habit.
He was sweating, though that was easily accounted for by the heat. That did not account for all the dryness of his mouth. What were today's organics doing about the discovery of Repp's dummy? The first shift would have read the recording left by Friday's last shift. The organics would have taken action on such a serious matter. What action? He was not going to know until he reached his unknown destination.
He felt the weight of the gun in his handbag. Though he had fallen so completely into today's persona, he had automatically transferred the weapon to Ohm's bag. Its presence reassured him, though not much. If Mudge had something bad in mind for him, he would have taken the gun from the bag. But then Mudge did not know much about him, and whoever had sent Mudge would not have told him to disarm Ohm. That would have warned Ohm that the councillors did not want him just to talk to.