"021 - Dick, Philip K - Counter Clock World v1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dick Phillip K)

"So R.C. Buckley," Bob Lindy said, "the hot-shot salesman, is a poet." His reaction was a fusion of contempt and disbelief.
"Lay off," Cheryl Vale said to him sharply.
Again bending over the Anarch, Sebastian said, "Do you know where you are, sir?"
Faintly, the Anarch said, "In a medical ward, I think. I don't seem to be in the hospital." Again his eyes roved, with the curiosity of a child, simple and naive. Wondering. Accepting, without resistance, what he saw. "Are you my friends?"
"Yes," Sebastian said.
Bob Lindy, traditionally, had a down-to-earth fashion of speaking to the old-born; he trotted it forth now. "You were dead," he said to the Anarch. "You died around twenty years ago. While you were dead something happened to time; it reversed itself. So you're back. How do you like it?" He leaned down, speaking louder, as if to a foreigner. "What's your reaction to that?" He waited, but no response came. "Now you're going to have to live your entire life over again, back to childhood and finally to babyhood and then back into a womb." He added, as if by way of consolation, "It's true of the rest of us, whether we died or not." He indicated Sebastian. "This guy here died. Same as you."
"Then Alex Hobart was right," the Anarch said. "I had people who thought so; they expected me back." He smiled, an innocent, enthusiastic smile. "I thought it was grandiose, on their parts. I wonder if they're still alive."
"Sure," Lindy said. "Or about to be alive again. Don't you understand? If you think your coming back signifies something, you're wrong; I mean, it has no religious significance; it's just a natural event, now."
"Even so," the Anarch said, "they will be pleased. Have you been approached by any of them? I'd be glad to give you their names." He shut his eyes again, then, and for a time seemed to have difficulty breathing.
"When you're stronger," Dr. Sign said.
"We should let him get in touch with his people," Father Faine said.
"Of course," Sebastian said, irritated. "It's standard; we always do that; you know." But this was special. And they all knew it, except of course the Anarch himself. He seemed blissfully glad to be alive again, already thinking of those who had been close to him, those whom he had depended on and those who had leaned on him. The joyful reunion, he thought. Not in the next life, but back here. Ironic . . . this is the meeting place of souls, the Flask of Hermes Vitarium of Greater Los Angeles, California.
Father Faine was speaking to the Anarch, now; two brethren of the cloth, deep in their mutual concern.
"The epitaph on your monument," Father Faine was saying. "I know the poem; it's interested me, because I suppose of its complete repudiation of everything in Christianity, the idea of an imperishable soul, an afterlife, redemption. Did you choose it?"
"They chose it for me," the Anarch murmured. "My friends. I tended to agree with Lucretius; I suppose that's why."
"Do you still?" Father Faine asked. "Now that you've experienced death, the afterlife and rebirth?" He listened intently.
The Anarch whispered, "'This bowl of milk, the pitch on yonder jar, are strange and far-bound travelers come from far. This is a snowflake that was once a flame--the flame was once the fragment of a star.'" He nodded, staring up now at the ceiling of the work area. "I still believe that. I always will."
"But this," Father Faine said. "'The seeds that once were we take flight and fly, winnowed to earth, or whirled along the sky, not lost but disunited. Life lives on.'"
The Anarch finished. "'It is the lives, the lives, the lives, that die.'" His voice was almost inaudible, strange and dim and lonely. "I don't know. I'll have to think. . . it's too soon."
"Let him rest," Dr. Sign said.
"Yeah, leave him alone," Bob Lindy agreed. "You're always like this, Father; every time we bring a deader back--you always hope it'll come carrying the answers to your theological questions. And they never do; they're like Seb, they just remember a little."
"This is no ordinary man," Father Faine said. "The Anarch was a great religious force and person." He added, "And will be again."
And valuable, Sebastian said to himself. For just that reason. Let's keep first things first; the theology and the poetry come in second. Compared to what's really at stake.


At home in his conapt, following the end of his work day, Douglas Appleford made a person-to-person vidphone call to Rome, Italy.
"I want to talk to a Signor Anthony Giacometti," he told the operator.
Presently he had Giacometti on the line.
"What luck did you have?" Appleford asked. "With the vitarium."
Giacometti, in his dressing gown, his hair lavish and long, his powerful eyes intense, said, "Listen, are you sure they have him? Really sure? They fritted and fratted around; I think if they actually have him like they say they'd have finalized on a price. After all, they're in business; they want a sale."
"They have him," Appleford said, with absolute assurance; he had assessed the Hermes woman with what he knew to be complete certitude. "They're afraid of the Udi people," he explained. "They're afraid you represent Ray Roberts; that's why they won't say. But just keep your bid in; hang in there and you'll get title to him."
"Okay, Mr. Appleford," Giacometti said sullenly. "I'll take your word for it; you've helped us in the past, we rely on you."
"And you can," he declared. "If I get any more information I'll pass it on to you . . . for the usual fee. She didn't say they'd dug him up, that he was alive; she just said they know where he's buried. That might explain their reluctance--they can't legally sell him until he's been reborn." He added, "I'll give her a call and try to get more from her. She doesn't seem able to conceal anything; she's one of those."
Giacometti, sourly, broke the connection.
As he started away from the vidphone, Appleford heard it ring; he bent, picked up the receiver, expecting to see Giacometti once again, with an afterthought. Instead he found himself facing the reduced but real image of his superior, Mavis McGuire.
"I'm once again involved," Mavis said, her mouth twisting in aversion, "with questions regarding Ray Roberts and the Uditi. A young woman, a Mrs. Lotta Hermes, is here at the Library wanting to know what we have on Roberts; I'm holding her in my office while I get an Erad in. It should be fairly soon, now."
Appleford said, "Did you check with the Council of Erads regarding the burial site of the Anarch Peak?"
"I did. We don't have that information." Mavis regarded him with the glazed, light-splintered eyes of suspicion. "This Mrs. Hermes says she talked to you previously today. About the Anarch."
"Yes," Appleford said. "She came in with an L.A. police officer just after I talked to you. They--the vitarium her husband owns--know where the Anarch is buried, so if you want that information you can with a little effort get it from her."
"I had a feeling she knew," Mavis said. "I've been conversing with her; she skirts the topic of the Anarch each time. Afraid of saying too much, I suppose. Tell me the work status of that apologia pro sua vita of Peak's, that _God In a Box_; is there still a typescript manuscript of it, or did you already turn it over to the Erad Council? I know that it never passed through my hands; I'd remember such fulsome platitudes as he used to cast before the swine."
"I have four printed copies left," Appleford said, calculating and remembering. "So it hasn't reached the typescript stage, yet. And I've been told by one of my staff that several more book-forms of it are somewhere in circulation, probably in private libraries."
"So to some extent it still circulates. It's still theoretically possible for someone to come across it."
"If they were lucky, yes. But four copies is not much, considering that at one time more than fifty thousand hardbound and three hundred thousand softbound copies were in circulation."
Mavis said, "Have you read it?"
"I--glanced through it, briefly. It's powerful, I think. And original. I don't agree with you about 'fulsome platitudes.'"
"When the Anarch is reborn," Mavis said, "he will probably attempt to resume his religious career. If he can avoid assassination. And I have a feeling that he's shrewd; there was a worldly, practical underpinning to his _God in a Box_--he didn't have his head in the clouds. And he will have the benefit of his experience beyond the grave. I think he'll remember it, compared with most old-borns; or anyhow he'll _claim_ he remembers it." Her tone was scathingly cynical. "The Council is not too pleased at the idea of the Anarch resuming his career of religion-mongering; they're quite skeptical. Just as we manage to erad the last copies of _God in a Box_ he shows up again to write some more . . . and we have a feeling that his future work will be worse, more radical, more destructive."
"Yes, I see," Appleford said thoughtfully. "Having been dead he'll be in a position to claim authentic visions of the hereafter; that he talked with God, saw the Day of Judgment--the usual material the old-born bring back . . . but his will have authority; people will listen." He contemplated Ray Roberts, then, in that connection. "I know that you and the Council dislike Roberts," he said. "But if you're worried about the doctrines the Anarch will bring back--"
"Your logic is clear," Mavis McGuire said. She pondered. "All right, then; we'll keep after the Hermes woman until we have the name of the cemetery, and if we can get it we'll turn it over to Roberts. At least--" She hesitated. "I'll recommend that to the Council; the decision will be theirs, of course. And if his body has been taken from the cemetery we'll concentrate on her husband's vitarium."
"It could be done legally," Appleford said; he always took a stand in favor of moderation. "The Anarch can be bought, aboveboard, from the vitarium, by a bid." He did not, of course, mention his connection with Anthony Giacometti; that was not the Library's affair. Tony is going to have to work fast, he said to himself; once the Council of Erads moves in, things will progress rapidly. He wondered if the principal whom Giacometti represented could--or would--outbid the Library. An interesting thought: a showdown between the Erads and the most powerful religious syndicate in Europe.
Mavis McGuire rang off, and Appleford seated himself with the evening 'pape . . . to read, he discovered, about Ray Roberts' pilg; that seemed to be all there was. Elaborate police precautions, all the rest; he felt bored, and he went into the kitchen to imbibe a trifle of sogum.