"--that it appears to have been planned long ago," Ann said. "I think the idea of razing the Library dates back months, and that this explains the visit of Ray Roberts to the West Coast."
"You think, then," the announcer said, "that the attack on your Library--"
"--is and has been the cardinal target-goal of Udi for this year," Ann continued. "We're on their timetable; it's as simple as that."
"So the attack was not spontaneous."
"Oh no. Certainly not; it has all the earmarks of being meticulously planned, and long in advance. The presence of their cannon demonstrates that."
"Has the Library tried to communicate directly with His Mightiness Ray Roberts? To assure him that you are not in fact holding the Anarch?"
Ann said placidly, "Ray Roberts has managed to make himself totally unavailable at this time."
"So efforts on your part--"
"We've had no luck. Nor will we have any."
"You feel, then, that the Uditi will be successful in destroying the Library?"
Ann shrugged. "The police are making no attempt to stop them. As usual. And _we_ aren't armed."
"Why, Miss Fisher, do you think the police are not attempting to halt the Uditi?"
"The police are afraid. They've been afraid since 1965 when the Watts riots broke out. Howling mobs have controlled Los Angeles--in fact most of the W.U.S.--for decades. I'm surprised this didn't happen to us sooner."
"But you will rebuild? Afterward?"
Ann Fisher said, "We will construct, on the site of the old Library building, a much larger, much more modern structure. Blueprints have already been drawn up; we have an extremely fine firm of architects at work right now. Work will begin next week."
"'Next week'?" the announcer queried. "It sounds as if the Library anticipated this mob violence."
"As I said, I'm surprised it didn't happen long ago."
"Miss Fisher, are you personally afraid of the Udi zealots, the so-called Offspring of Might?"
"Not at all. Well, perhaps a little." She smiled, showing her fine, even teeth.
"Thank you, Miss Fisher." Once more the announcer appeared at his desk, facing his TV audience with an appropriate worried expression on his face. "Mob violence in Los Angeles: an evil which has haunted the city since, as Miss Fisher said, the Watts riots of 1965. A venerable building, a landmark, at this moment being blown to pieces... and still the mystery of the whereabouts of the Anarch Peak--assuming that it is true that he has returned to life--remains unsolved." The announcer pawed among his news dispatches, then once more raised his eyes to confront his viewers. "Is the Anarch in the People's Topical Library?" he inquired rhetorically. "And if he is--"
"I don't want to hear any more," Lotta said; getting up, she reached to shut off the TV set.
"They ought to interview you," Sebastian said. "You could tell the TV viewers something about the Library's venerable method of operation."
Frightened, Lotta said, "I couldn't get in front of a TV camera; I wouldn't be able to say a word."
"I was joking," he said, humanely.
"Why don't _you_ call the 'papes and the TV stations?" Lotta asked. "You _saw_ the Anarch in there; you could vindicate the Uditi."
For a time he toyed with the idea. "Maybe I will," he said. "In the next day or so. This will be in the news for some time." I'll do it, he thought, if I'm still alive. "I could tell them something about the Offspring of Might while I'm at it," he said. "I'm afraid that what I have to say would cancel itself out." Would indict both parties, he realized. So I probably had better stay entirely out of it.
Lotta said earnestly, "Let's leave here; let's not stay in the conapt any longer. I--can't _stand_ it, just sitting and waiting like this."
"You want to go to a motel?" he said brusquely. "That didn't do Joe Tinbane much good."
"Maybe the Offspring of Might aren't as smart as the Library agents."
"They're about equal," he said.
"Do you love me?" Lotta asked timidly. "Still?"
"Yes," he said.
"I thought love conquered everything," Lotta said. "I guess that isn't true." She roamed about the room, then started off for the kitchen.
And screamed.
In an instant he had reached her; he gripped the shovel from the fireplace--it happened to be near at hand--and pushed her blindly behind him, the shovel raised.
Small and withered and old, the Anarch Peak stood at the far end of the kitchen, holding together his dingy cotton robe. Grief seemed to hang about him; it had shrunk him, but not defeated him: he managed to lift his right hand in greeting.
They've killed him, Sebastian thought with a thrill of sick sorrow. I can tell; that's why he isn't speaking.
"You see him?" Lotta whispered.
"Yes." Sebastian nodded, lowered the shovel. Then it hadn't been the LSD; his vision, on the roof of Ann Fisher's building, had been genuine. "Can you talk to us?" he asked the Anarch. "I wish you could."
Presently, in a voice like the dry rasping of an abandoned winter leaf, the Anarch said, "An Offspring of Might has left Ray Roberts, with whom he has been conferring, and now is on his way here. This man they consider their ranking assassin."
There was silence, and then, by degrees, Lotta--as always-- began to cry.
"What can we do, Your Mightiness?" Sebastian asked, helplessly.
"The three Offspring who came here earlier in the day," the Anarch said, "placed a device on you, Mr. Hermes, which informs them continually of your location. No matter where you go, the device will register with them."
Sebastian groped at his coat, his sleeves, seeking the device.
"It consists of an electronically active non-eradicable dye," the Anarch said. "You can't remove it, because it is on your skin."
"We wanted to go to Mars," Lotta managed to say. "You still will," the Anarch said. "I intend to be here when the Offspring of Might arrives. If I can be." To Sebastian the Anarch said, "I am very weak, now. It is difficult... I don't know." His face showed pain, acute and terrible.
"They've killed you," Sebastian said to him.
"They injected me with a toxic agent, organic, to blend with my general deteriorated condition. But it will take several minutes... it is slow-acting."
The bastards, Sebastian thought.
"I am lying on a bed," the Anarch said. "In a dark narrow room. At a branch of the Library; I don't know which one. No one is with me any longer. They injected the toxin and now they have left."
"They didn't want to see," Sebastian said.
The Anarch said, "I feel so very tired. I have never felt so tired, in all my life. When I awoke in my coffin I could not move my body, and that frightened me, but this is worse. But it will end in a few more minutes."
"In view of your own condition," Sebastian said, "it's good of you to care what happens to us."
"You revived me," the Anarch said faintly. "I will never forget that. And we talked together, I and you, I and your staff. I remember that; it pleased me very much. Even your salesman; I remember him, too."
Sebastian said, "Can't we do anything for you?"
"Keep talking to me," the Anarch said. "I don't want to fall asleep. 'It is the lives, the lives, the lives, that die.'" For a moment he said nothing; he appeared to be thinking. And then he said, "'Tissue by tissue to a soul he grows, as leaf by leaf the rose becomes the rose. Tissue from tissue rots; and, as the sun goes from the bubbles when they burst, he goes.'"
"Do you still believe that?" Sebastian asked.
There was no answer. The Anarch, paltry in substance, trembled and drew his cotton robe tighter around him.
"He's dead," Lotta said quaveringly, shocked.
Not yet, Sebastian thought. Another two minutes. _One_ more.
The remnants of the Anarch drifted away. And disappeared.
"Yes, they killed him," Sebastian said. He's gone, he thought. And this time he won't be back; this finishes it. The last time.