Sebastian said, "I could have been hit by the gas. A little. --" But the Anarch looked substantial. Sebastian reached out to touch him...
His groping hand passed through the Anarch's body. "You see?" the Anarch said. "I can leave the Library spiritually; I can appear in men's dreams and as drug-induced visions. But physically I am still there _and they can kill me any time they wish_."
"Do they intend to?" he asked hoarsely.
"Yes." The Anarch nodded. "Because I will not give up my views, my specific, certain knowledge; I can't forget what I have learned during death. Any more than you can eradicate the horror of finding yourself buried; some memories remain throughout life."
Sebastian said, "What can I do?"
"Very little," the Anarch said. "The Offspring of Might are correct when they say that you really had no chance of conveying me from the Library; a splinter-bomb had been rigged and I was the booby trap. If you had lifted me to my feet the bomb would have killed us both."
"Are you just saying that," Sebastian said, "to make me feel better?"
"I am telling you the truth," the Anarch said.
"And now wlaat?" Sebastian said. "I'll do anything you want. Anything I can."
"Your meeting with Miss Fisher."
"Yes," he said. "The Offspring are waiting. I'm like you; I'm a booby trap. For her."
The Anarch said, "Let her go."
"Why?'
"She has a right to live." The Anarch seemed tranquil, now; once more he smiled. "I can't be saved," he said. "The Offspring can blow up the entire Library and all it will--"
"But," Sebastian said, "we can get her too."
"They possibly might get her," the Anarch said, "when they blow up the Library. But, it is all the same."
"_They_ can get her," Sebastian said. "But this way _I_ can get her."
The Anarch said, "You don't actually hate Ann Fisher. In fact it's the opposite; you are deeply, violently in love with her. That's why you're so anxious to see her destroyed: Ann Fisher draws off huge quantities of your emotions; the major share, in fact. Killing her won't bring you closer to Lotta; you must meet Ann Fisher here on the roof when she lands and warn her not to go into her apartment. Do you understand?"
"No," Sebastian said.
"You must, in fact, warn her not to go back to the Library; you must tell her about the proposed attack. Tell her to arrange for the Library to be evacuated. The attack will come at six this evening; at least that is the present operating schedule of the Offspring. I think they possibly will do it; as you have thought yourself, killing is their vocation."
Hearing his own thoughts read back to him jarred him; he felt acutely uncomfortable. He said haltingly, "I don't think Ann Fisher is that important one way or another; I think you are important--you and your safety. The Uditi are absolutely right; it's worth blowing the Library to bits if there's any chance--"
"But there isn't," the Anarch said. "No chance at all."
"So your doctrines, your knowledge of the ultimate reality beyond the grave, disappear. Eradicated by the Erads." He felt futile.
"I am appearing to Mr. Roberts in vision-form," the Anarch said peacefully. "I am busily communicating with him. To a certain, limited extent inspiring him. Substantial parts of my new understanding will therefore reach the world, through him. And your secretary, Miss Vale, possesses reams of dictation which she took from me." The Anarch did not seem perturbed; he radiated, in fact, an aura of saintly acceptance.
"Am I really in love with Ann Fisher?" sebastian asked.
The Anarch did not answer.
"Your Mightiness," Sebastian said urgently.
Reaching up, the Anarch pointed into the afternoon sky. And, as he pointed, he wavered; cars beyond him became visible, and then, by degrees, he flickered out.
Above the roof an aircar glided down, seeking a landing.
Here she comes, Sebastian realized. It could be no one else.
As the aircar landed he walked toward it. When he reached it he found Ann Fisher industriously wriggling out of her safety belt. "Goodbye," he said to her.
"Bye," she said, preoccupied. "Goddam this belt; it always gives me trouble." She glanced up at him, then, her blue eyes penetrating. "You look odd. As if you want to say something but can't."
He said, "Can we talk up here?"
"Why up here?" Her eyebrows knitted. "Explain."
"The Anarch," he said, "appeared to me in a vision."
"Oh my mouth he did. Tell me what the Offspring are up to; tell me here, if you want. But start telling!" Her eyes blazed impatiently. "Something's the matter with you; I can tell. Did he really appear to you? That's a superstition; he's back at the Library, locked up with half a dozen Erads. The Uditi have been getting to you; _they_, think he can manifest himself wherever he wants."
Sebastian said, "Let him go."
"He'll undermine the structure of society, a nut like that. A baboon come back from the dead, spoutmg holy writ. You should be around him, the way I've been; you should hear some of the things he says."
"What does he say?"
Ann Fisher said, "I didn't come here to discuss that; you told me you knew what the Udi fanatics are doing."
Seating himself in the car beside her, he said, "I consider the Anarch on a par with Gandhi."
Ann sighed. "Okay. He says there's no death; it's an illusion. Time is an illusion. Every instant that comes into being never passes away. Anyhow--he says--it doesn't really even come into being; it was always there. The universe consists of concentric rings of reality; the greater the ring the more it partakes of absolute reality. These concentric rings finally wind up as God; He's the source of the things, and they're more real as they get nearer to him. It's the principle of emanation, I guess. Evil is simply a lesser reality, a ring farther from Him. It's the lack of absolute reality, not the presence of an evil deity. So there's no dualism, no evil, no satan. Evil is an illusion like decay. And he kept quoting bits of all those old-time medieval philosophers, like St. Augustine and Erigena and Boethius and St. Thomas Aquinas--he says for the first time he understands them. Okay, is that enough?'
"I'll listen to any more you remember."
"Why should I pass on his doctrines? Our whole function is to erad them, not tout them." She got a cigaret butt from the car's ashtray, lit it and began puffing smoke into it rapidly. "Let's see." She shut her eyes. "Eidos is form. Like Plato's category--the absolute reality. It exists; Plato was right. Bidos is imprinted on passive matter; matter isn't evil, it's just inert, like clay. There's an anti-eidos, too; a form-_destroying_ factor. This is what people experience as evil, the decay of form. But the anti-eidos is an eidolon, a delusion; once impressed, the form is eternal--it's just that it undergoes a constant evolution, so that we can't perceive the form. The way, for instance, the child disappears into the man, or, like we have now, the man dwindles away into the child. It looks like the man is gone, but actually the universal, the category, the form--it's still there. The problem is one of perception; our perception is limited because we have only partial views. Like Leibnitz's monadology. See?"
"Yes," he said, nodding.
"Nothing new," Ann said. "Just a rehash of Plotinus and Plato and Kant and Leibnitz and Spinoza."
Sebastian said, 'We weren't necessarily expecting something new. We didn't know what it would be like, when it arrived."
"You died; didn't you experience all that?"
"It's like during life. Each person experiences different--"
"Yes, like Leibnitz's monads." She placed the completed cigaret in its paper package, along with others like it. "Is that enough? At last?" She waited, her body tense with impatience.
"And this doctrine," he said, "you want to erad."
"Well, if the doctrine's true," Ann said, "we _can't_ destroy it. So there's nothing for you to get your mouth in an uproar about."