Free Counter-Clock World by Philip K. Dick Page B

it more true every day.” She made assorted scratches on the pad of paper with her pen. “What a thing to look forward to: childhood. Being a baby again, being helpless, waited-on. Every day I try to be more grown up; I fight all the time against it, the way ladies used to fight being old, getting middle-aged, fat, with wrinkles. Well, I don’t have to worry about that. But see, Sebastian will be an adult still when I’m a child, and that’s good; he can be my father and protect me. But you’re the same age as I; we’d just be children together, and what’s in that?”
    “Not much,” he agreed. “But listen to me. I’ll make a deal with you. I’ll give you the info on Ray Roberts and I won’t tell Gore about the Anarch Peak’s body being in your vitarium’s possession. Sebastian won’t know that you told me.”
    “Told both of you,” Lotta amended. “That librarian, too.”
    He continued, “My deal. Do you want to hear it?”
    “Yes.” She listened obediently.
    Plunging into it, he said hoarsely, “Could you spread any of your love in my direction?”
    She laughed. With malice-free delight. And that
really
mystified him; now he hadn’t the foggiest idea of where he stood or what—if anything—he had achieved. He felt depressed; somehow, despite her girlishness, her inexperience, she was controlling the conversation.
    “What does
that
mean?” she asked.
    It means, he thought, going to bed with me. But he said, “We could meet like this from time to time. See each other; you know. Go out, maybe during the day. I can get my shift changed.”
    “You mean while Sebastian is down at the store.”
    “Yes.” He nodded.
    To his incredulity, she began to cry; tears ran down her cheeks and she made no effort to stifle them; she cried like a child.
    “What’s the matter?” he demanded, reflexively getting out a handkerchief and dabbing at her eyes.
    Lotta said chokingly, “I was right; I do have to go back to the Library. Food.” She stood up, gathered her pen and paper and purse, moved away from the table. “You don’t know,” she said, more calmly, “what you’ve done to me. Between you and Seb; both of you. Making me go back there for a second time today. I know what’s going to happen; I know this time I’ll meet that Mrs. McGuire; I would have before if you hadn’t helped me to find Mr. Appleford.”
    “You can find him again. You know where his office is; go there, where we were before, where I took you.”
    “No.” She shook her head drearily. “It won’t work out that way; he’ll be out to sogum or finished for the day.”
    He watched her depart, unable to think of anything to say, feeling totally futile. He thought, She’s right; I am sending her off to face that. Something and someone she can’t face. Between us, between Sebastian Hermes and me, we did it; he could have gone; I could have given her the info. But he didn’t go and I wouldn’t tell her without something in return. God, he thought; and hated himself. What have I done?
    And I say I love her, he thought. And so does Sebastian; he “loves” her, too.
    He stood watching until she was out of sight, and then he went quickly to the payphone on the far side of the sogum palace; he looked up the Library’s number and dialed it.
    “People’s Topical Library.”
    “Let me talk to Doug Appleford.”
    “I’m sorry,” the switchboard girl said, “Mr. Appleford has left for the day. Shall I connect you with Mrs. McGuire?”
    He hung up.
    Glancing up from the manuscript she had been reading, Mrs. Mavis McGuire saw a frightened-looking young woman with long dark hair standing in front of her desk. Irritated by the interruption, she said, “Yes? What do you want?”
    “I’d like what info you have on Mr. Ray Roberts.” The girl’s face was waxen, without color, and she spoke mechanically.
    “‘The info we have on Mr. Ray Roberts,’” Mrs. McGuire said mockingly. “I see. And it’s now—” She glanced at