Within the hour Ray Roberts' call came.
"I see you're back," Roberts said, inspecting him tautly--and critically. He seemed extremely tense, very keyed-up and expectant. "How did you make out?"
"Not well," Sebastian said, with caution; he had to play this right all the way through, with not the slightest misstep.
"The Anarch," Roberts said, "is still being detained in the Library."
"I reached him," Sebastian said, "but I couldn't--"
"What about your wife?"
With frozen, tomb-like care, he said, "I did get her. By accident. They--the Library authorities--decided to release her. I didn't ask for it; the idea, as I say, was theirs."
"A détente," Roberts said. "You received Lotta in exchange for vacating the Library premises; it turned out in a friendly manner."
"No," he said.
"That's what it sounds like." Roberts continued to scrutinize him, expressionlessly; no affect showed on the dark, alert face. "They bought you off. And--" His voice rose into sharpness. "They wouldn't have done that unless you stood a good chance of getting the Anarch out."
"Ann Fisher decided it," Sebastian countered. "I started to kill her; she bought her way out. I took her with me; I even--"
"Did it occur to you," Roberts continued, "that this is the reason why they again took your wife into the Library? To act as a hostage? In order to neutralize you?"
"I had a choice," Sebastian said doggedly, "between--"
"They fathomed your psychological makeup," Roberts said witheringly. "They have psychiatrists; they knew the deal you'd buy. Ann Fisher isn't afraid of death. That was an act; she didn't 'buy her way out.' She got you out, away from the Anarch. If Ann Fisher had been truly afraid of you she wouldn't have been loitering anywhere in sight."
Grudgingly, Sebastian said, "Maybe--you're right."
"You managed to see the Anarch? He's definitely alive?"
"Yes," Sebastian said. He felt himself collecting perspiration from the atmosphere; it collected under his arms, down his back. He felt his pores trying to--and failing to--absorb it all. Too much had gathered.
"And the Erads were working him over?"
"There--were Erads with him. Yes."
"You've changed human history, you know," Roberts said. "Or rather _you've failed to change it_. You had your chance and now it's gone. You could have been remembered forever as the vitarium owner who revived and then saved the Anarch; you would never have been forgotten by Udi or by the rest of the planet. _And an entirely new basis for religious belief would have been established_. Certitude would have replaced mere faith, and a totally new body of scriptures would have emerged." No trace of anger had entered Ray Roberts' voice; he spoke calmly, merely reciting known facts. Facts which Sebastian could not deny.
"Tell him," Lotta said urgently from behind him, "that you'll try again." She put her hand on his shoulder, rubbed encouragingly.
Sebastian said, "I'll go back to the Library. Once more."
"We sent you," Roberts said, "as a compromise with Giacometti; he asked us to avoid violence. Now our arrangement regarding you has died; we are free to send in our zealots. But--" He paused. "They will probably find a corpse. The Library will identify the Offspring as being present in the area--immediately, as soon as the first one enters the building. As Giacometti pointed out to me last night. Still, there is nothing else we can do. With them no negotiations are possible; nothing we have or can promise will induce the Library to release the Anarch. It does not resemble the situation with Mrs. Hermes."
"Well," Sebastian said, "it's been nice talking to you. I'm glad to learn the situation; thanks for--"
The screen faded. Ray Roberts had rung off. With no salutation.
Sebastian sat holding the receiver for a time and then, by degrees, placed it back on the hook. He felt fifty years older... and a hundred years more tired.
"You know," he said presently to Lotta, "when you wake up in your coffin you first feel a weird fatigue. Your mind is empty; your body does nothing. Then you have thoughts, things you want to say, acts you want to perform. You want to yell and to struggle, to get out. But still your body doesn't respond; you can't speak and you can't move. It goes on for--" He estimated. "About forty-eight hours."
"Is it very awful?"
"It's the worst experience I've ever had. Much worse than dying." He thought, And I feel like that now.
"Can I bring you something?" Lotta asked perceptively. "Some warm sogum?"
"No," he said. "Thanks." He got to his feet, walked slowly across the living room to the window overlooking the street. He's right, he said to himself. I have failed to change human history; I made my personal life more important--at the expense of every other living human being, and especially the Uditi. I've destroyed the whole newly forming basis for world theology; _Ray Roberts is right!_
"Can I do anything for you?" Lotta asked softly.
"I'll be okay," he said, gazing down at the street below, the people and sardine-like surface vehicles. "The thing about lying there in your coffin like that," he said, "the part that makes it so bad, is that your mind is alive but your body isn't, and you feel the duality. When you're really dead you don't feel that; you're not related to your body at all. But that--" He gestured convulsively. "A living mind tied to a corpse. Lodged inside it. And it doesn't seem as if the body will ever become animated; you seem to wait forever."
"But you know," Lotta said, "that it can never happen to you again. It's over with."
Sebastian said, "But I remember it. The experience is still part of me." He tapped his forehead, knocking it fiercely. "It's always in here." This is what I think of, he said to himself, when I'm really terribly frightened; this swims up to confront me. A symptom of my terror.
"I'll make the arrangements," Lotta said, somehow reading his mind, somehow managing to understand him. "For our emigration to Mars. You go in the bedroom and lie down and rest and I'll start making calls."
"You know you hate to use the vidphone," he said. "You dread it. The vidphone is your bête noire."
"I can do it this time." She guided him toward the bedroom, her hands gentle.
19
But in these things is no place of repose; they abide not, they flee; and who can follow them with the senses of the flesh?
--St. Augustine
In his sleep Sebastian Hermes dreamed of the grave; he dreamed he once more lay within his tight plastic casket, in the Tiny Place, in the darkness. He called over and over again, "My name is Sebastian Hermes and I want to get out! Is there anyone up there who can hear me?" In his dream hs listened. And, far off, for the second time in his life, he felt the weight of footsteps, of someone moving toward his grave. "Let me out!" he squeaked, over and over again; and, against the confining plastic, he struggled like a damp insect. Hopelessly.
Now someone dug; he felt the impact of the spade. "Get air down to me!" he tried to yell, but since there was no longer any air he could not breathe; he was suffocating. "Hurry!" he called, but his call became soundless in the absence of air; he lay compressed, crushed, by an enormous vacuum; the pressure grew until, silently, his ribs broke. He felt that, too, his bones one by one snapping.
"If you get me out of here," he tried to say, wanted to say, "I'll go back into the Library and find the Anarch. Okay?" He listened; the excavation continued: dulled thumps, methodically. "I promise," he said. "Is it a deal?"
The blade of the spade rasped across his coffin's lid.
I admit it, he thought. I could have gotten him out, but I chose to save my wife instead. _They_ didn't stop me; I stopped myself. But I won't do that again; I promise. He listened; now, with a screwdriver, they had begun removing the lid, the last barrier between him and the light, the air. It'll be different next time, he promised. Okay?