"I wanted to go," he said.
"Because of me?" She studied him; he could feel the intensity of her scrutiny. "Because you didn't get me out the first time? Now you've made up for it, haven't you?"
"I tried to," Sebastian said. That had been the idea.
"Do you love me?" Lotta asked.
"Yes." Very much. More than ever before; he realized that as he sat beside her here in the aircar. Just the two of them.
"Are you--resentful? About me visiting Joe Tinbane?"
"About the motel?" he said. "No." It had, after all, been his own fault. And there had been his journey with Ann Fisher. "I'm just sorry Joe got killed," he said.
"I'll never get over it," Lotta said. As if promising. "What did they do to you at the Library?" he asked, and prepared himself.
"Nothing. They had scheduled me to see a psychiatrist they keep; he would have done something to my mind. And that woman, that Miss or Mrs. Fisher--she showed up and talked to me awhile."
"About what?"
"About you." In her characteristic small voice Lotta continued, "She claimed that you and she had been intimate. That you--hopped into bed together. She claimed a lot of things like that." She added, "But of course I didn't listen to her."
"Good for you," he said, and felt the burden of the lies--his lies--weighing upon him. First to his wife and then, shortly, to Ray Roberts; he would have to give them a story, too. Everyone had to be placated... that's the style of life, Sebastian realized, that I've begun to lead. As bad as R.C. Buckley, who does it naturally. But for me, he thought, it isn't natural. And yet-- here I am.
"It wouldn't have bothered me," Lotta said, "even if what she said about you and her turned out to be true. After all, look what I did. .. the motel, I mean. I wouldn't hold it against you; I couldn't."
"Well, it's not true," he said laconically.
"She's very attractive with that absolutely black hair and those blue eyes. A lot more attractive than me."
Sebastian said, "I detest her."
"Because of Joe?"
"That, and other reasons." He did not amplify.
"Where are we going now?" Lotta asked.
"Back to our conapt."
"Are you going to call Udi? And tell them--"
"They'll call me," Sebastian said, stoically resigned.
18
I will pass then beyond this power of my nature also, rising by degrees unto Him Who made me. And I come to the fields and spacious palaces of my memory.
--St. Augustine
At their conapt he phoned the vitarium to make sure it was still in business. Cheryl Vale answered. "Flask of Hermes," she said merrily.
"I'm not coming in today," Sebastian said. "Is everybody else there?"
"Everyone but you," Cheryl said. "Oh, Mr. Hermes--Bob Lindy wants to talk to you; he wants to give you the details on how the Library got the Anarch away from him. Do you have time--"
"I'll talk to him later," Sebastian said. "It can wait. Hello." He hung up, feeling terrible.
"I've been thinking," Lotta said, seated on the couch across from him; her face showed agitation. "If the Library took a vengeful position regarding Joe Tinbane and what he did, then they'll take the same position regarding you."
"I thought of that," Sebastian said.
"And then the Offspring of Might," Lotta said. "I'm afraid --"
"Yes," he said brusquely. All of them, he thought. The Rome party, the Library, Udi--because of what he had done he had managed to line all of them--_all of them_--up against him. Even the L.A. Police Department, he thought; they may think I killed Joe Tinbane because he was ensconced at a motel with my wife; I'd have an alleged motive.
Lotta asked, "Who can you turn to?"
"No one," he answered. It was a dreadful, terrifying feeling. "No one but you," he corrected himself; he did, after all, have Lotta back, now. And that made up for a great deal.
But it was not enough.
"Maybe," Lotta continued, "we should hide, you and I. Go somewhere else. What they did to Joe--it's so vivid in my mind; I can't forget it, seeing it like I did. I remember the pitpat of their feet on the roof, and then one of them, that one particular child, peering in through the window. And Joe had guns and he knew they were coming--but it still did no good. I think we should leave Los Angeles and maybe the Western United States. Maybe even Earth."
"Migrate to Mars?" he said broodingly.
"The Uditi have no power there," Lotta said. "The U.N. is the only authority, and I understand they run the colony-domes very well. Everything's always under control. And they're always soliciting for volunteers. You see their ad on TV every evening."
"You can't return from there," he said. "Once you've emigrated. You're told that before you sign the legal papers. It's a one-way trip."
"I know that. But at least we'd be alive. We wouldn't one night hear noises on the roof or outside the door. I guess you really should have gotten the Anarch out, Sebastian; then at least you'd have Udi to help you. But this way--"
"I tried," he repeated, mechanically. "You heard Ann Fisher; I couldn't make a deal regarding him. I took what I could get--I took you--and got the hell out. Ray Roberts will have to like it; it's the truth." But he knew, inside, that he had never at any point really tried to release the Anarch. He had been thinking only of Lotta. As Roberts had said, it constituted a near biological drive. A drive which Roberts had feared, which had. in the end, as Roberts anticipated, won out. Once he entered the Library all talk about the "transcendental value to history" had evaporated, gone up in the smoke of the LSD grenade.
"I'd really enjoy going to Mars," Lotta said. "We've talked about it, remember? It's supposed to be fascinating... you get a sort of intangible sense of the cosmic, of the awesomeness of it--man on another planet. It has to be experienced, they say. To be understood."
"The only work I can do," Sebastian grated, "is sniffing."
"Finding deaders who're about to return to life?"
"You know that's my only talent." He gestured. "What good would that be on Mars? On Mars the Hobart Phase tests out weak, almost nil." And because of that he had another reason. There, he would resume normal aging, and for him that would soon prove lethaclass="underline" in that direction he lay only a few years from illness and death.
For Lotta, of course, it would be different. She had decades to live in normal time; more in fact than under the Phase.
But what do I care, he thought, if I die again soon? I've gone through it once; it's not all that bad. In some ways I'd welcome it... the great endless rest. The absolute relief from all burdens.
"That's right," Lotta admitted. "There're no deaders on Mars. I forgot."
"I'd have to become a manual laborer or a clerk," he said.
"No, I think your managerial ability would be worth a lot, your talent for organization. They'd undoubtedly give you aptitude tests; I'm positive they do. So they'd know about all your many abilities. See?"
He said, "You have the optimism of youth." And I, he thought, the despair of old age. "Let's wait," he decided, "until I've talked to Ray Roberts. Maybe I can sell him a story he'll believe. I mean," he amended, "maybe I can make him understand the situation I was in. And like you say, maybe their commandos can rescue the Anarch. It really is a task for them, not for me. I'll point that out, too."
"Good luck," Lotta said wistfully.
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?"