Free The wrong end of time by John Brunner Page A

appalling, incredible thing happened. He continued, " 'Those who are full of desires for self-gratification, regarding paradise as their highest goal, and are engaged in many intricate scriptural rites just to secure pleasure and power as the result of their deeds for their future incarnations-' "
     
And Sheklov went on with it. He couldn't help it. He couldn't help it. Cold terror raged through him at every funeral-bell syllable that he muttered, but he heard his own voice, out of control, inexorably finishing the quotation.
     
"'Whose discrimination is stolen away by the love of power and pleasure and who are thus deeply attached therein, for such people it is impossible to obtain either firm conviction or God-consciousness."'
     
Sweat crawled on his palms. The last time he had heard that truth, it had been in another language, in Banaras, and Donald Holtzer had never been to India.
     
That was his cover blown to bits.
     
     
.x.
     
Later, he got extremely drunk. His cover as Holtzer. was proof against that-it had been tried to the limit during training sessions-and anyway the same thing was happening to a lot of other people. starting with Prexy, who fell down at about eleven-thirty and had to be discreetly removed. Then there was a curious blurred interlude involving two women who claimed the right to go to bed with Turpin because their husbands were necking with each other. He didn't follow the logic of that, but it came to blows, and one of them departed with a swollen eye that would call for her best cosmetic skills tomorrow.
     
Yet everyone was shaking Turpin's hand, or kissing his wife, or both, with enormous warmth, and saying, "Marvelous party, Dick You must come to our place very soon!"
     
What's the standard o1 a "good party"? The fact that no one was taken to the hospital?
     
Danty and Lora had disappeared early. Something about a night-ride? He wasn't sure, but he hoped . . .
     
Do I? He struggled to think through the alcoholic haze, and concluded that he hoped yes. If they were drunk enough to crash into a bridge on the superway, that would rescue him from his terror. In this country for a matter of hours, and already betrayed by his own stupidity! He felt as though he had exposed himself on the street, knowing there was a policeman within shouting distance.
     
Ultimately, a little before the last guests left at one o'clock, he found his way to the room he'd been allotted -normally Peter's-and screamed at a group of three men and two women using the bed. They went away, spitting at him, and he collapsed.
     
     
And then he had to fight his hangover.
     
     
The maid Estelle came silently to him at nine with a remedy of some sort, a pill fizzing in a glass of water. Apparently it was the routine after-party treatment in the
     
Turpin household. Five minutes later he felt a little better. He sat up in bed, sipping the coffee that she had also brought, and used the remote-control to turn down the TV. She had switched it on, without asking him, as she went out. He'd already noticed that these extraordinary people didn't seem to feel that a room was habitable unless either bland music or a TV image were included in the decor.
     
He postponed consideration of his self-revelation to Danty, because, on the one hand, the subject was too complex to analyze while he was hung over, and on the other, although he felt the sky had fallen on him he had not yet been hauled away to a cell.
     
Of course, by his standards this room could have done duty for one; it was larger by a bare meter in each direction than the bed . . . though there were closets built into the wall.
     
He shook his head incredulously. Two hundred thousand dollars That was what his briefing said Turpin had had to pay for this-this rabbit-hutch And his was only in the medium range. The most expensive apartments here had two extra rooms and a party-hall that didn't have to be shared, and set the buyer back twice as much. But you didn't aspire