Every private place and every public building except the government TV offices in this time zone would get the transmission. Every other time zone would get it at ten minutes after the day had started. Once the government recovered from the shock, it would be able to locate many of the banks and erase the messages. But some would get through. And even if the messages got to only one day, that day would make sure that the other days got the message. The citizens would see to that; they would leave the printouts for those who followed them. Some would, anyway. It was not possible for the government to go into every house and remove the printouts. It was a task that it would not even attempt.
Duncan’s chief difficulty just now was in compressing the message. He did not have much time to formulate it, and he did not want it to be long. Short and simple but effective, that was what he needed.
Snick’s voice came again. He looked up. The lock mechanism had been cut through, and the round section of the door around it had been knocked through. It lay smoldering on the carpet.
Snick’s beam shot through the hole. If anyone had been standing behind it, he had a large hole in his belly.
CITIZENS OF THE WORLD!
YOUR GOVERNMENT HAS KEPT SECRET FROM YOU A FORMULA FOR SLOWING AGING BY A FACTOR OF SEVEN. IF YOU HAD THIS, YOU COULD LIVE SEVEN TIMES LONGER. THE WORLD COUNCIL AND OTHER HIGH OFFICIALS ARE USING THIS TO PROLONG THEIR OWN LIVES. THEY ARE DENYING YOU THIS FORMULA. HERE IS THE FORMULA.
This was not “deathless” prose or anything near it. He would have liked to have had time to compose a much better message. Given the more-than-pressing situation, he was fortunate to be able to get even this out.
The long and the hard part was making sure that the computer got the formula properly recorded. Immerman gave it from memory, and then, at Duncan’s order, had the computer display it on a screen. He made the few corrections needed, and the data was stored.
CITIZENS OF THE WORLD!
YOUR GOVERNMENT HAS LIED TO YOU FOR A THOUSAND OBYEARS. THE WORLD POPULATION IS NOT EIGHT BILLION. IT IS ONLY TWO BILLION. REPEAT: TWO BILLION. THIS ARTIFICIAL DIVISION OF HUMANKIND INTO SEVEN DAYS IS NOT NECESSARY. DEMAND THE TRUTH. DEMAND THAT YOU BE ALLOWED TO RETURN TO THE NATURAL SYSTEM OF LIFE. IF THE GOVERNMENT RESISTS, REVOLT! DO NOT BE SATISFIED WITH THE LIES OF THE GOVERNMENT. REVOLT!
AUTHORIZED MESSAGE BY DAVID JIMSON ANANDA, AKA GILBERT CHING IMMERMAN. ALSO AUTHORIZED AND TRANSMITTED BY JEFFERSON CERVANTES CAIRD.
When the officials saw Caird’s name, they were going to be even more enraged. That was all right. Let them know that he was not dead.
“Tell it to repeat the instructions and the message,” Duncan told Immerman.
A crackling from the wall screen made him look at it. The foyer door had been pushed open or, more probably, kicked open by someone who had then fled. Snick had fired a warning beam. He doubted that they would try to rush her through that entrance. They would cut through the wall at several places at the same time and try to flank her by coming in through other rooms. They would be cautious; they did not know how many defenders there were. Yet they did not have much time. The city would be astir at ten after midnight. Most of the citizens would go from the stoners to bed, but the first-shift ganks and workers would be out. If the tenants of these super-apartments came out into the hallway, they would notify the ganks. If, that is, they were not shot by the PUPA.
“Tell it to obey no more instructions from you or anybody else from now on,” Duncan said.
Immerman said, “Z AND O-U-T.”
“That’s the cancellation code?”
“Yes.”
He sprayed TM onto Immerman’s face and carried him to the sofa. He said, “Goodbye, Grandfather. You’re in a hell of a mess, and you deserve every molecule of trouble you get. You should have left me alone. But I’m glad you didn’t.”
He ran out into the hallway and to the door of his room. It was still locked, but the code word released it. He sprayed Carebara again, and then called in to the number provided for the nearest organic station. Ignoring the officer’s demands that he identify himself, he said, “There’ve been several murders in Apartment Complex D-7, Level 125. There are murderers trying to get into the apartment! Hurry! They’re trying to kill us!”
The sergeant was very angry. He was supposed to go off duty soon and enter his stoner. Only in the most extreme of emergencies could he pass into the next day.
“Your message is recorded,” he said. “We’ll have officers up there in three minutes. What is your ID? What is the situation?” Then, after looking at a display near him, out of Duncan’s view, “There is no record of this apartment! What are you trying to pull?”
“Apartment 7-D, Level 125,” Duncan said. “It may not be recorded, but it’s here. You won’t have any trouble finding it. Hurry, man! It’s murder!”
He cut off the screen. The sergeant would now be looking at the screen to find the origin of the transmission, but he would fail. The override circuits would block off any channel for source search.
Duncan ran off a screen view of all the rooms. A section was almost completely cut through in the wall of the hospital room, and another had just been butted into the storage room next to the hangar. But the invaders would have to beam out the locks in the doors of these rooms to get into the hallway.
He called Snick. “Meet you outside the room by the hangar room. They’ll be breaking out of that in a minute! They’ll be in the hangar in a few seconds, too!”
She was there before he could arrive because he had been delayed by having to give the code to open the two doors of the dining hall. As he dashed into the hall, he saw her fire through the hole just made in the storage-room door. Screams came through it.
“The ganks’ll be here very soon!” Duncan shouted. “I called them five minutes ago!”
The only reply was some groans.
Snick had gone on to the hangar door. Again, she fired just after the lock mechanism was punched out. Again, screams.
“The ganks are coming!” Duncan yelled. “They’ll be here in a few seconds!”
There was a silence, then a woman said, “Sure, you brought them in.”
A beam through the hole in the door made a crater in the opposite wall.
Duncan got down low and duckwalked past the door. He motioned to Snick to fire through the hole again. Staying to one side, she shot the beam at an angle. He half-rose then and shot through at a different angle. A man groaned.
“I don’t care if the world falls down around all of us!” Duncan roared. “I don’t give a damn! I’m not lying when I say the ganks are coming!”
He retreated down the hall and spoke to a wall screen. Now the taping of his call to the police would be shown in the storage room and hangar. He wished he had thought sooner of this confirmation.
Faintly, he could hear a conversation from the hangar.
Maybe they were going; maybe they were not. If they had any sense, they were running toward the stairway now.
He signaled Snick to kick the door inward. She did so, then sprang back. He went in with his gun crackling, and Snick was close behind him, but there was no one alive there. Two men, one almost cut in half, lay on the floor.
It was now ten minutes to midnight. The screens in the room were giving the final notice. They would be flashing all over the city, and the ganks would be swearing. They could not ignore his call, but they were so conditioned that they would feel very uneasy, if not panicky, because they were breaking day.
He told the one screen that had run the taping of his call to the ganks, the one that was not suffused with orange, to activate the opening of the doors in the ceiling. These slid away from each other, revealing a starry sky and bringing in cool air.
He started up the ladder, saying, “Leave the cannon here.”
They climbed onto the roof. Everywhere, the towers and the bridges were pulsing orange and the sirens were wailing. The doors, acting on his instruction to close after sixty-six seconds, slid back togethe
r.
“We’ll have to go down the stairway,” he said. “It’ll be tough, but if we hang on to the banisters, we might not get knocked down by the water sprays.”
He laughed. “Too bad we couldn’t have slid down on the banisters. Nobody’ll be pursuing us. Not until we get down to the bottom, and maybe not then.”
“What’re we going to do?” she said, as she hurried along beside him. The warning lights and sirens had stopped now.
“I don’t want to do it, but we’ll have to take off for the wilderness again. We’ll hide until things change, until it’s safe for us to come in. There’s going to be a hell of a lot of trouble for a while. I’m betting on the people, what the historians call the aroused masses. If they don’t change things for the better, then you and I are out of luck. But it’s been pretty good for us so far. We’ve had more luck than maybe we deserve.”
“We made it,” she said.
“We’ll see how well we made it. God, I feel good! We’ve done what nobody would think possible, including me!”
He whooped with joy at the stars.
PHILIP JOSÉ FARMER, award-winning master of many classic science fiction novels, is the author of Dayworld and of the bestselling Riverworld series. He lives in Peoria, Illinois.
Philip José Farmer, Dayworld Rebel
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