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Counter-Clock World
Counter-Clock World
Counter-Clock World
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Counter-Clock World

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

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Counter-Clock World is a theological and philosophical adventure in a world set in reverse from the Hugo Award–winning science fiction novelist Philip K. Dick, author of The Man in the High Castle and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?—the basis for the film Blade Runner.

Time has begun moving backward. People greet each other with “goodbye,” blow smoke into cigarettes, and rise from the dead. When one of those rising dead is the famous and powerful prophet Anarch Peak, a number of groups start a mad scramble to find him first—but their motives are not exactly benevolent, because Anarch Peak may just be worth more dead than alive, and these groups will do whatever they must to send him back to the grave.

What would you do if your long-dead relatives started coming back? Who would take care of them? And what if they preferred being dead? In Counter-Clock World, these troubling questions are addressed; though, as always, you may have to figure out the answers yourself.

“Dick is the American writer who in recent years has most influenced non-American poets, novelists, and essayists.”—Roberto Bolaño
LanguageEnglish
PublisherHarperCollins
Release dateApr 17, 2012
ISBN9780547724898
Author

Philip K. Dick

Over a writing career that spanned three decades, Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) published 36 science fiction novels and 121 short stories in which he explored the essence of what makes man human and the dangers of centralized power. Toward the end of his life, his work turned toward deeply personal, metaphysical questions concerning the nature of God. Eleven novels and short stories have been adapted to film, notably Blade Runner (based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?), Total Recall, Minority Report, and A Scanner Darkly. The recipient of critical acclaim and numerous awards throughout his career, Dick was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2005, and in 2007 the Library of America published a selection of his novels in three volumes. His work has been translated into more than 25 languages.

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Rating: 3.3850364284671532 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    An admirable effort. Philip K. Dick did a lot with his characters and plot in making it readable for the viewer. The plot is generally interesting and the characters follow through with it well, supplementing the chapter quotations which provide relevance towards the plot and themes of the book. This is typical Dick and it shows, through and through, of some of what he was capable of.3 stars.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    But this world *doesn't* move backwards - only select aspects of it, those that are most fun to write about, do.

    The sexism and near-pedophilia and religious drama are dominant here, not the ideas or even the *L*iterary stylings. And, get this, the *cop* is a sympathetic and heroic figure. That's weird for our favorite paranoiac, isn't it? (Or maybe not... I'll have to reread Do Androids... soon.)

    Anyway, by the end of this book there was no real impact on the world or on me, so despite the fact that I do feel I understood most of it, I won't pretend I either enjoyed or was impressed by it.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Not the best Dick. Hobart Phase idea was weird and grotesque, as in his best works, but he usually comes up with one or more twists in his plots. Women characters poorly drawn, he is displaying his pulpy roots. Ending seemed unfinished, as if he wasn't getting paid for any more words.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    How much do I love Philip K. Dick? A lot, okay? I love him a lot. For which I mostly blame my father, but not in a bad way. It's just one of those things that are clearly attributable to a single source, like my love of novelty songs, or my compulsion to catalog and create checklists.

    So of course when I heard about the publication of his Exegesis I was excited. (Dick's that is. Not my father's.)

    But then reading about it made me strangely paranoid. It's not that reading about his theology/philosophy was in any way surprising -- I mean, I've read the V.A.L.I.S. trilogy. But reading about it as a theology/philosophy made me suspicious that each Dick novel I read was progressively programming my brain -- rewiring it along his own beliefs. Still, I was delighted to arrive at the bookstore and discover an entire Dick display, centered around The Exegesis. I picked it up and flipped through it, but in the end decided I was just not read for that much crazy, and set it back down.

    Happily, though, it was surrounded by a collection of handsome new editions of his novels by Mariner. I could not resist them, and so I picked up a copy of Counter-Clock World, which I read mostly in transit on my D.C. trip the next week.

    The central concept of the book is The Hobart Phase -- a reversal of time's (or entropy's) arrow, for the most part localized to the Earth. Long buried bodies reassemble themselves and come back to life in their coffins, from where they must be rescued before they run out of air and expire again. People disgorge their food, put it back in the fridge to take to the store later. With interesting ramifications -- disgorging is something to be done in private -- embarrassing, "food!" is an expletive, and "mouthhole!" a perjorative. But the central problem of the plot is religious in nature. What if you were the leader of a major religion, and you knew that the major prophet of your faith was shortly to rise again from the grave?

    Counter-Clock World is an expansion of a short story, and in retrospect that seems obvious. While there were interesting ideas and brilliant moments, in places the plot seemed threadbare, predictions of future fall-out of Dick's contemporary social upheavals not fully thought out, and the ending anti-climactic. Of course, a lot of Dick's stories end with a sucker-punch to the gut, but this one seemed to miss some of the impact.

    For Dick fanatics like me, still plenty diverting and compelling. Probably wouldn't recommend to anyone who hadn't read five of the great ones first.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Definitely not one of his better ones. The attempt to have time run backwards is not in any way convincing, only rarely interesting, and merely serves as a device to explore some religious themes, and that is done poorly. But maybe "explore" is too strong a word. As an example of a strange question arising from this scenario: When does a soul re-enter a body that is reforming, rejuvenating as time is turned back? What sort of answer would be meaningful, outside of the book? None that I can think of. Inside, it has next to no plot significance, and the spiritual issues are only dealt with in the presence of robot lawyers. If you time-reverse the fact that a soul enters the body a few days before it's reformed enough to start breathing, it seems to indicate a stance that the soul lingers around the body for a few days after death. But that idea can't connect to anything else in the book, so it just dangles, like so many other things. Religion gets a bad rap, mysticism and violence seem to go hand in hand. Neo-Platonism is briefly outlined, but nearly just as quickly brushed off as being so much hokum. The big reveal is ambiguous and uneventful. The ending suggests that living in the past eradicates hope and meaning from the present, but you'd have to read it to see if you agree.At only one point did the content cause me to stop and ponder, and that was the relationship between consciousness and time. If time is an illusion, and everything exists in some sort of eternal Now, from some vantage point, then the movement from point to point in your thinking is also an illusion. The feeling you have of time flowing takes place at a moment, and is composed of memories, firings of the brain at that moment. The feeling of flow is an illusion. And your whole life is like that. Maybe I'm not explaining myself well, but this is tricksy stuff. When I first started thinking on this sort of thing, I would occasionally feel a bit of despair. Somewhat like the main character, who frequently feels despair over his seemingly ineffectual attempts to assert himself and affect the flow of events.It is a quick, light read though, and is never boring or hard to understand. The men all seem to be the same character, and the women, though more varied (note: not nuanced), are rarely portrayed in a good light. So, it's a toss up on whether I'd suggest someone read it. It'd be a weird place for someone to begin reading PKD, but maybe that's just the thing to really appreciate his weirdness.2.5 stars on oc
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The whole concept of this story, where everything moves backwards, is really interesting. Cigarettes get longer as you smoke them. People come back to life and return to wombs.The ending is definitely not happy and is still a cliffhanger, but is probably the most satisfying possible finish.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    This book's spine is broken by its own conceit. You get a few chapters into it and realize that the idea is the only thing that received any thought. This rest just seems to hang there, waiting for the cool idea to do something.Unfortunately, it doesn't.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5


    I first read this when I was in my late teens or early twenties -- about the right age to most enjoy Philip K. Dick, in other words -- and, perhaps surprisingly, found it a great disappointment after works like The Man in the High Castle. When I picked it up to read again recently, as part of a project about time-travel stories that I'm toying with, a sense of deep miasmic gloom pervaded every fibre of my socks, etc. But this time round the surprise was in the other direction: I really quite enjoyed it. I still found the writing very clumsy, the characterization virtually nonexistent and likewise the sense of place, the pacing erratic and all of that sort of stuff, but at least I wasn't bored, which I recall was my overwhelming reaction the first time I read the book. I was also startled by how much of it I remembered -- not the important passages (I'd completely forgotten the femme fatale, for example), but odd little incidentals, like the opening line and the closing line. Odd.

    Developed from a 1966 Amazing Stories tale called "Your Appointment Will Be Yesterday", the novel has the conceit that sometime in the near future the world -- but seemingly not other planets -- entered the Hobart Phase, whereby time started running backwards. So people regurgitate in private at mealtimes but have parties ingesting, via a long pipe, a substance called sogum whose precise nature the author is careful not to detail; they say goodbye on meeting and hello on parting; books are not written but erased; people have cute terms of abuse like "horse's mouth" and "mouth-hole" and "You're full of food"; and when they have sex it's often so that the man can, in effect, suck out the last remnant of the baby that, nine months ago, the woman implanted in her womb. In a similar vein, the course of life starts with the individual coalescing in her or his grave, being dug up (if lucky) and succoured until family or friends are found, and thereafter growing younger. Companies that patrol the graveyards to find "deaders", then look after them and sell them to (hopefully good) homes -- the converse of funeral parlours, in other words -- are called vitariums, and two of the principals, Sebastian Hermes and his wife Lotta, run one of these.

    It's while waiting for his team to arrive to dig up Mrs. Tilly M. Benton that Sebastian discovers nearby the grave of an important religious figure, the Anarch Peak, and realizes (a) that Peak is very soon going to revive and (b) that such a figure is sure to be worth a fortune on the market. That market consists of (1) the Udi, the predominantly black religious group based on the Anarch's teachings and now occupants of the Free Negro Municipality (i.e., most of the eastern seaboard of what used to be the US), (2) the Rome Syndicate, which appears to be the offspring of the Roman Catholic Church and the Mafia, and (3) the Udi's foe, the fascistic People's Topical Library, who would like to "disappear" the Anarch before he can come out with any new teachings, in particular any accounts of his time in the afterlife. The financial and political stakes are high, and Sebastian knows full well that his chances of coming out of this alive are not great.

    Soon he's out of his depth -- doubly so because the submissive, neurotic Lotta gets it into her head that she's in love with Officer Joe Tinbane, the cop whose discovery of Mrs. Tilly M. Benton started the plot rolling, and the two go off to have a fling in a seedy motel. Sebastian's ripe for seduction by one of the Library's crack agents, the sultry bombshell Ann Fisher, daughter of the intimidating Chief Librarian, Mavis McGuire. She soon weasels out of him the truth about the Anarch, but by this time Rome and the Udi are also in the game. Can Sebastian save Lotta, his marriage, the Anarch and his own life? Once he's reunited with Lotta -- Joe having been mown down by child (i.e., elderly) assassins sent by the Library -- the two plan to escape to Mars, even though the Hobart Phase is inactive there and Sebastian will have to find another line of work.

    The plot gets pretty woolly in places, as if Dick were making it up on the fly (which I imagine is very likely the case). There's some playful social satire, at least one bit of which reminds us that not much has changed: when Tinbane is killed, the LAPD is quick to blame the murder on "religious fanatics", which is racist code for members of the Udi, most of the Uditi being, as noted, black. As the Udi's current leader, Ray Roberts, explains: "The Uditi are always blamed for crimes of violence; it is common police and media policy." (p162)

    Where the book falls down, I think, is that -- as with other sf attempts to depict backward-running time (e.g., Aldiss's An Age/Cryptozoic! and Amis's Time's Arrow) -- the author isn't up to marshalling all the consequences of reversed time; and this may be because the task is impossible. (My own suspicion is that, if time ran backwards, either the universe would fall apart into chaos immediately or, contrariwise, we wouldn't notice any difference at all; the second possibility is the one that Aldiss proposes.) In Dick's novel people seem able to remember both the future and the past: to take a single example, the Anarch remembers being dead and reviving, but also his teachings and the establishment of the Udi. There are plenty of references to the long past, as it were, such as the teachings of St. Paul and an LP of Beethoven's music, and these might be rationalized as derived from artifacts that the backwards-living folk found littering up the landscape from when time was running in its ordinary direction; yet surely the very act of reading Acts would make you forget it, so people would have to rely on their partial or cloudy memories of the text they will one day read. (Of course, they might have read Acts a dozen times . . .) There's a quote from Lucretius engraved around the Anarch's tomb: Sic igitur magni quoque circum moenia mundi expugnata dabunt labem putresque ruinas ("So, likewise, the walls of the great universe, assailed on all sides, shall suffer decay and fall into mouldering ruin"); but how could someone discover a piece of Lucretius to quote accurately if the act of reading Lucretius meant you forgot the quote?

    And it seems the characters are able to remember the past only when it's convenient for the plot that they should do so. For example, Joe Tinbane is eager to bed Lotta Hermes, and eventually (travelling backwards in time) he does; but, if he can remember other past events, why can't he remember whether or not his seductive efforts prevailed, and indeed what it was like romping with Lotta? If the implication is that the characters are carving out a fresh lifeline for themselves this time round, fair enough; but then the chances of the activities of the present eventually generating St. Paul, Lucretius and Beethoven a few centuries hence are surely essentially zero.

    And there are lots of lesser quibbles along similar lines. In the counter-clock world, people get out of bed in the morning; shouldn't they be getting up in the evening?

    Some parts of the novel demand to be thought about, such as the occasional theological speculations; I especially liked Sebastian's account of the afterlife he experienced while dead: it was there, all right, but absolutely nothing happened in it -- hence the promise in religious books of eternal life after death was strictly true, but . . . Yet there are other areas, notably the sciencefictional ones, where, if you start to think too hard about them, the narrative collapses under the weight of its own inconsistencies.

    As I say, this may be because the task of writing a reversed-time plot is actually an impossible one. In the end, I guess what I'm saying is that Counter-Clock World is an interesting curio, and expecting it to be anything more than that is to expect too much of it.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A strange world even in Dick's standards. A world where everything happens backwards. Well, not everything.... there are some pitfalls in the logic (everybody walks, thinks forward...) but the idea is great. The dead DO resurrect. And if one of the newly living is a great religious leader, prepare mayhem in Dick's style...
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    An intriguing book and one which I wanted to read for a long time before I got my hands on a copy. I enjoyed it quite a lot. Unfortunately, for some reason I decided to sell my copy back to the second-hand bookshop I got it from, but it's a book I would like to have in my permanent library.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A rather strange one, this. Time running backwards is a theme infrequently tackled; in Brian Aldiss' 'Cryptozoic', it's always been running backwards and our evolutionary advantage as hominids arose when we developed the ability to perceive time the wrong way round and foresee the future (i.e. run time in the direction we are familiar with). But in Dick's novel, causality seems reversed but people's experience of it isn't. So the police have resurrection squads to dig up the dead when they spring back to life and find themselves entombed; and the business of eating and digestion has become neatly hedged around with words like 'ingest' and 'disgorge' to describe what it is that people find themselves doing.The problem is, if time ran backwards, we wouldn't notice, being locked into that timeframe ourselves; and to make it noticeable involves making exceptions so that the story can be told. Perhaps this is why very few writers have tried it. Dick's attempt shows up some of the pitfalls of this plot device.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Written about the earth as it goes through the "Hobart Phase," where time reverses itself. People are aging backwards, gettting younger and eventually entering the womb. The dead start to awaken and need rescuing from their graves. A dead religious figure is about to reawaken, and competing groups are fighting violently for control of his person.The mere physicalities of a world where time is reversed is enough to give yourself a headache. Dick incorporates just enough details to remind you that time is running backwards; people greet each other with goodbye, end conversations with hello, and disgorge food onto plates, to be put into the refrigerator, and eventually returned to the store. But conversations flow using forward-flowing speech, cars are driven forward, and enough details are "normal" to make it possible to follow the storyline. This all combines to make the book a fun and intriguing read without hurting your head too much.I love that the most evil organisation in the book is the library. Librarians are eradicating information. Patrons enter the library and never leave again.If you can suspend belief about the impossibilty of such a world even existing, this is a very absorbing novel. Just keep reminding yourself that it is science FICTION, and don't take it too seriously.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    An unusually silly book for Dick exploring themes typical for him - hallougenogenics, black power, (it was written in c.1968) time travel, and more crucially Christianity. He is usually remembered for posing the question "What is human?" (as he put it in 'How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later' ), & people tend to forget the importance of Christianity to his work. Dick was a believer, albeit a highly unorthodox, even heretical one, and his work continually returns to the essential themes of Christianty, no more so than in this book.

Book preview

Counter-Clock World - Philip K. Dick

1

Place there is none; we go backward and forward, and there is no place.

—St. Augustine

AS HE GLIDED by the extremely small, out-of-the-way cemetery in his airborne prowl car, late at night, Officer Joseph Tinbane heard unfortunate and familiar sounds. A voice. At once he sent his prowl car up over the spiked iron poles of the badly maintained cemetery fence, descended on the far side, listened.

The voice said, muffled and faint, My name is Mrs. Tilly M. Benton, and I want to get out. Can anybody hear me?

Officer Tinbane flashed his light. The voice came from beneath the grass. As he had expected: Mrs. Tilly M. Benton was underground.

Snapping on the microphone of his car radio Tinbane said, I’m at Forest Knolls Cemetery—I think it’s called—and I have a 1206, here. Better send an ambulance out with a digging crew; from the sound of her voice it’s urgent.

Chang, the radio said in answer. Our digging crew will be out before morning. Can you sink a temporary emergency shaft to give her adequate air? Until our crew gets there—say nine or ten A.M.

I’ll do the best I can, Tinbane said, and sighed. It meant for him an all-night vigil. And the dim, feeble voice from below begging in its senile way for him to hurry. Begging on and on. Unceasingly.

This part of his job he liked least. The cries of the dead; he hated that sound, and he had heard them, the cries, so much, and so many times. Men and women, mostly old but some not so old, sometimes children. And it always took the digging crew so long to get there.

Again pressing his mike button, Officer Tinbane said, I’m fed up with this. I’d like to be reassigned. I’m serious; this is a formal request.

Distantly, from beneath the ground, the impotent, ancient female voice called, Please, somebody; I want to get out. Can you hear me? I know somebody’s up there; I can hear you talking.

Leaning his head out the open window of his prowl car, Officer Tinbane yelled, We’ll be getting you out any time now, lady. Just try to be patient.

What year is this? the elderly voice called back. How much time has passed? Is it still 1974? I have to know; please tell me, sir.

Tinbane said, It’s 1998.

Oh dear. Dismay. Well, I suppose I must get used to it.

I guess, Tinbane said, you’ll have to. He picked a cigaret butt from the car’s ashtray, lit it and pondered. Then, once again, he pressed his mike button. I’d like permission to contact a private vitarium.

Permission denied, his radio said. Too late at night.

But, he said, one might happen along anyhow. Several of the bigger ones keep their scout-ambulances heading back and forth all through the night. He had one vitarium in particular in mind, a small one, old-fashioned. Decent in its sales methods.

So late at night it’s unlikely—

This man can use the business. Tinbane picked up the vidphone receiver mounted on the car’s dashboard. I want to talk to a Mr. Sebastian Hermes, he told the operator. You find him; I’ll wait. First of all try his place of business, the Flask of Hermes Vitarium; he probably has an all-night relay to his residence. If the poor guy can currently afford it, Tinbane thought. Call me back as soon as you’ve located him. He hung up, then, and sat smoking his cigaret.

The Flask of Hermes Vitarium consisted primarily of Sebastian Hermes himself, with the help of a meager assortment of five employees. No one got hired at the establishment and no one got fired. As far as Sebastian was concerned these people constituted his family. He had no other, being old, heavy set, and not very likable. They, another, earlier vitarium, had dug him up only ten years ago, and he still felt on him, in the dreary part of the night, the coldness of the grave. Perhaps it was that which made him sympathetic to the plight of the old-born.

The firm occupied a small, wooden, rented building which had survived World War Three and even portions of World War Four. However, he was, at this late hour, of course home in bed, asleep in the arms of Lotta, his wife. She had such attractive clinging arms, always bare, always young arms; Lotta was much younger than he: twenty-two years by the non-Hobart Phase method of reckoning, which she went by, not having died and been reborn, as he, so much older, had.

The vidphone beside his bed clanged; he reached, by reflex of his profession, to acknowledge it.

A call from Officer Tinbane, Mr. Hermes, his answering girl said brightly.

Yes, he said, listening in the dark, watching the dull little gray screen.

A controlled young man’s face appeared, familiar to him. Mr. Hermes, I have a live one at a hell of a third rate place called Forest Knolls; she’s crying to be let out. Can you make it here right away, or should I begin to drill an air vent myself? I have the equipment in my car, of course.

Sebastian said, I’ll round up my crew and get there. Give me half an hour. Can she hold out that long? He switched on a bedside light, groped for his pen and paper, trying to recall if he had ever heard of Forest Knolls. The name.

Mrs. Tilly M. Benton, she says.

Okay, he said, and rang off.

Stirring beside him, Lotta said drowsily, A job call?

Yes. He dialed the number of Bob Lindy, his engineer.

Want me to fix you some hot sogum? Lotta asked; she had already gotten out of bed and was stumbling, half-asleep, toward the kitchen.

Fine, he said. Thanks. The screen glowed, and thereon formed the glum and grumpy, thin and rubbery face of his company’s sole technician. Meet me at a place called Forest Knolls, Sebastian said. As soon as you can. Will you have to go by the shop for gear, or—

I’ve got it all with me, Lindy grumbled, irritably. In my own car. Chang. He nodded, broke the connection.

Padding back from the kitchen, Lotta said, The sogum pipe is on. Can I come along? She found her brush and began expertly combing her mane of heavy dark-brown hair; it hung almost to her waist, and its intense color matched that of her eyes. I always like to see them brought up. It’s such a miracle. I think it’s the most marvelous sight I’ve ever watched; it seems to me it fulfills what St. Paul says in the Bible, about ‘Grave, where is thy victory?’ She waited hopefully, then, finished with her hair, searched in the bureau drawers for her blue and white ski sweater which she always wore.

We’ll see, Sebastian said. If I can’t get all the crew we won’t be handling this one at all; we’ll have to leave it to the police, or wait for morning and hope we’re first. He dialed Dr. Sign’s number.

Sign residence, a groggy middle-aged familiar female voice said. Oh, Mr. Hermes. Another job so soon? Can’t it wait until morning?

We’ll lose it if we wait, Sebastian said. I’m sorry to get him out of bed, but we need the business. He gave her the name of the cemetery and the name of the old-born individual.

Here’s your sogum, Lotta said, coming from the kitchen with a ceramic container and ornamented intake tube; she now had her big ski sweater on over her pajamas.

He had only one more call to make, this one to the company’s pastor, Father Jeramy Faine. Placing the call, he sat precariously on the edge of the bed, dialing with one hand, using the other to hold in place the container of sogum. You can come with me, he said to Lotta. Having a woman along might make the old lady—I assume she’s old—more comfortable.

The vidscreen lit; elderly, dwarfish Father Faine blinked owlishly, as if surprised in the act of a nocturnal debauchery. Yes, Sebastian, he said, sounding, as always, fully awake; of Sebastian’s five employees, Father Faine alone seemed perpetually prepared for a call. Do you know which denomination this old-born is?

The cop didn’t say, Sebastian said. As far as he himself was concerned it didn’t much matter; the company’s pastor sufficed for all religions, including Jewish and Udi. Although the Uditi, in particular, did not much share his view. Anyhow, Father Faine was what they got, like it or not.

It’s settled, then? Lotta asked. We’re going?

Yes, he said. We’ve got everyone we need. Bob Lindy to sink the air shaft, put digging tools to work; Dr. Sign to provide prompt—and vital—medical attention; Father Faine to perform the Sacrament of Miraculous Rebirth . . . and then tomorrow during business hours, Cheryl Vale to do the intricate paper work, and the company’s salesman, R. C. Buckley, to take the order and set about finding a buyer.

That part—the selling end of the business—did not much appeal to him; he reflected on this as he dressed in the vast suit which he customarily wore for cold night calls. R. C., however, seemed to get a bang out of it; he had a philosophy which he called placement location, a dignified term for managing to pawn off an old-born individual on somebody. It was R. C.’s line that he placed the old-borns only in specially viable, selected environments of proven background, but in fact he sold wherever he could—as long as the price was sufficient to guarantee him his five percent commission.

Lotta, trailing after him as he got his greatcoat from the closet, said, Did you ever read the part of First Corinthians in the N.E.B. translation? I know it’s getting out of date, but I’ve always liked it.

Better get finished dressing, he said gently.

Okay. She nodded dutifully, trotted off to get workpants and the high soft-leather boots which she cherished so much. I’m in the process of memorizing it, because after all I am your wife and it pertains so directly to the work we—I mean you—do. Listen. That’s how it starts. I mean; I’m quoting. ‘Listen. I will unfold a mystery; we shall not all die, but we shall be changed in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet call.’

A call, Sebastian said meditatively as he waited patiently for her to finish dressing, that came one day in June of the year 1986. Much, he thought, to everyone’s surprise—except of course for Alex Hobart himself, who had predicted it, and after whom the anti-time effect had been named.

I’m ready, Lotta said proudly; she had on her boots, workpants, sweater, and, he knew, her pajamas under it all; he smiled, thinking of that: she had done it to save time, so as not to detain him.

Together, they left their conapt; they ascended by the building’s express elevator to the roof-field and their parked aircar.

Myself, he said to her as he wiped the midnight moisture from the windows of the car, I prefer the old King James translation.

I’ve never read that, she said, childish candor in her voice, as if meaning, But I’ll read it; I promise.

Sebastian said, As I recall, in that translation the passage goes, ‘Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep; we shall be changed—’ and so on. Something like that. But I remember the ‘behold.’ I like that better than ‘listen.’ He started up the motor of the aircar, and they ascended.

Maybe you’re right, Lotta said, always agreeable, always willing to look up to him—he was, after all, so much older than she—as an authority. That perpetually pleased him. And it seemed to please her, too. Seated beside her, he patted her on the knee, feeling affection; she thereupon patted him, too, as always: their love for each other passed back and forth between them, without resistance, without difficulty; it was an effortless two-way flow.

Young, dedicated Officer Tinbane met them inside the dilapidated spiked-iron-pole fence of the cemetery. Evening, sir, he said to Sebastian, and saluted; for Tinbane every act done while wearing his uniform was official, not to mention impersonal. Your engineer got here a couple of minutes ago and he’s sinking a temporary airshaft. It was lucky I passed by. The policeman greeted Lotta, seeing her now. Good evening, Mrs. Hermes. Sorry it’s so cold; you want to sit in the squad car? The heater’s on.

I’m fine, Lotta said; craning her neck, she strove to catch sight of Bob Lindy at work. Is she still talking? she asked Officer Tinbane.

Chattering away, Tinbane said; he led her and Sebastian, by means of his flashlight, toward the zone of illumination where Bob Lindy already toiled. First to me; now to your engineer.

On his hands and knees, Lindy studied the gauges of the tube-boring rig; he did not look up or greet them, although he evidently was aware of their presence. For Lindy, work came first; socializing ran a late last.

She has relatives, she claims, Officer Tinbane said to Sebastian. Here; I wrote down what she’s been saying; their names and addresses. In Pasadena. But she’s senile; she seems confused. He glanced around. Is your doctor coming for sure? I think he’ll be needed; Mrs. Benton said something about Bright’s disease; that’s evidently what she died of. So possibly he’ll need to attach an artificial kidney.

Its landing lights on, an aircar set down. Dr. Sign stepped from it, wearing his plastic, heat-enclosed, modern, stylish suit. So you think you’ve got a live one, he said to Officer Tinbane; he knelt over the grave of Mrs. Tilly Benton, cocked an ear, then called, Mrs. Benton, can you hear me? Are you able to breathe?

The faint, indistinct, wavering voice drifted up to them, as Lindy momentarily ceased his drilling. It’s so stuffy, and it’s dark and I’m really very much afraid; I’d like to be released to go home as soon as I can. Are you going to rescue me?

Cupping his hands to his mouth, Dr. Sign shouted back, We’re drilling now, Mrs. Benton; just hang on and don’t worry; it’ll only be another minute or so. To Lindy he said, Didn’t you bother to yell down to her?

Lindy growled, I have my work. Talking’s up to you guys and Father Faine. He resumed the drilling. It was almost complete, Sebastian noted; he walked a short distance away, listening, sensing the cemetery and the dead beneath the headstones, the corruptible, as Paul had called them, who, one day, like Mrs. Benton, would put on incorruption. And this mortal, he thought, must put on immortality. And then the saying that is written, he thought, will come to pass. Death is swallowed up in victory. Grave, where is thy victory? Oh death, where is thy sting? And so forth. He roamed on, using his flashlight to avoid tripping over headstones; he moved very slowly, and always hearing—but not exactly; not literally, with his ears, but rather inside him—the dim stirrings underground. Others, he thought, who one day soon will be old-born; their flesh and particles are migrating back already, finding their way to their onetime places; he sensed the eternal process, the unending complex activity of the graveyard, and it gave him a thrill of enthusiasm, and of great excitement. Nothing was more profoundly optimistic, more powerful in its momentum of good, than this re-forming of bodies which had, as Paul put it, corrupted away, and now, with the Hobart Phase at work, reversed the corruption.

Paul’s only error, he reflected, had been to anticipate it in his own lifetime.

Those who were presently being old-born had been the last to die: final mortalities before June of 1986. But, according to Alex Hobart, the reversal of time would continue to move backwards, continually sweeping out a greater span; earlier and still earlier deaths would be reversed . . . and, in two thousand years from now, Paul himself would no longer sleep, as he himself had put it.

But by then—long, long before then—Sebastian Hermes and everyone else alive would have dwindled back into waiting wombs, and the mothers who possessed those wombs would have dwindled, too, and so on; assuming, of course, that Hobart was right. That the Phase was not temporary, short in duration, but rather one of the most vast of sidereal processes, occurring every few billion years.

One final aircar now sputtered to a landing; from it strode short little Father Faine, with his religious books in his briefcase. He nodded pleasantly to Officer Tinbane and said, Commendable, your hearing her; I hope now you won’t have to stand around in the cold any longer. He noted the presence of Lindy at work and Dr. Sign waiting with his black medical bag, and of course Sebastian Hermes. We can take over now, he informed Officer Tinbane. Thank you.

Good evening, Father, Tinbane said. Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. Hermes, and you, too, Doctor. He glanced then at sour, taciturn Bob Lindy, and did not include him; turning, he walked off in the direction of his squad car. And was quickly off into the night, to patrol the rest of his beat.

Coming up to Father Faine, Sebastian said, You know something? I—hear another one. Somebody very near to being reborn. A matter of days, possibly even hours. I catch a terrific, strong emanation, he said to himself. What must be a uniquely vital personality very close by.

I’ve got air down to her, Lindy declared; he ceased drilling, shut off the portable, much-depended-on rig, turned now to excavation equipment. Get ready, Sign. He tapped the earphones which he had put on, the better to hear the person below. She’s very ill, this one. Chronic and acute. He snapped the autonomic scoops on, and they at once began to toss dirt from their exhaust.

As the coffin was lifted up by Sebastian, Dr. Sign and Bob Lindy, Father Faine read aloud from his prayer book, in a suitably commanding and clear voice, so as to be audible to the person within the coffin. ‘The Lord rewarded me after my righteous dealing, according to the cleanness of my hands did he recompense me. Because I have kept the ways of the Lord, and have not forsaken my God, as the wicked doth. For I have an eye unto all his laws, and will not cast out his commandments from me. I was also uncorrupt before him, and eschewed mine own wickedness. Therefore the Lord rewarded me after my righteous dealing, and according unto the cleanness of my hands in his eyesight. With the holy thou shalt be holy—’ On and on Father Faine read, as the work progressed. They all knew the psalm by heart, even Bob Lindy; it was their priest’s favorite on these occasions, being sometimes replaced, as for example by Psalm nine, but always returning.

Bob Lindy rapidly unscrewed the lid

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