As it was, the stoner society eliminated many generations that would have been born if the stoners had not been invented. It took a person one hundred and forty objective years to reach the physiological age of twenty. Thus, six generations were lost every one hundred and forty years. Who knew what geniuses and saints, not to mention the common people, were never born? Who knew how many people who might have led the world in scientific and artistic and political progress were missing?

Immerman had thought that the present situation was bad enough. But if the existing slowing-down of living and of birth was increased by seven, then the loss would be even greater. And this global society, the Organic Commonwealth of Earth, would become even more static and would change even more sluggishly.

Whether Immerman's decision was ethically right or wrong, he had made it, and its result, the secret immer family, was living today.

Immerman had not, however, been selfish in keeping the se cret for himself, his descendants, and those initiated into the family. The immers would be hidden rebels against the government. In a slow and subtle revolution, they would infiltrate the upper and middle echelons of the commonwealth. Once they had enough power, they would not change the basic structure of the government. They did not want as yet to abandon the stoners. But they did want to get rid of the constant and close monitoring of the citizens by the government. It was not just irksome; it was degrading. It also was not necessary, though the government claimed that it was.

"Only by being watched may you become free" was one of the government's slogans often displayed on the strip shows.

At the age of eighteen subyears, Caird had been told of the immer society by his parents. He had been studied by the council, weighed in the balance and found more than satisfactory. He was asked if he wanted to become an immer. Of course, he did. Who would turn down the opportunity of a much longer life? And what intelligent youth would not want to work for greater freedom and for an eventual position of power?

It was not until some subyears later that he realized how anxious his parents must have been when they revealed the secret of the immers. What if, through some perversity, their son had refused to join? The immer council could not allow him to live, even though it was unlikely that he would betray the family. He would have been taken away in the dead of night and stoned, then hidden where no one would ever find him. And that would have grieved his parents.

When Caird had realized that, he had asked his parents what they would have done if he had rejected the offer. Would they have turned against the immers?

"But no one has ever refused," his father had said.

Caird had not said anything, but he had wondered if there had been people who had turned down the offer and no one except those immediately involved had known of it.

At nineteen, Caird had been approached by his uncle, an organic whom Caird suspected might also be orf the Manhattan immer council. Did his nephew wish to become a daybreaker? Not just the ordinary type of daybreaker, a common criminal, but one who would be protected and helped by the immers. He would have a new identity on each day, he could have many professions, and he could carry messages verbally from one day's council to the next when recorded messages were dangerous.

Entranced, eager, the youthful Caird had said that he certainly would like to be a daybreaker.

Chapter 2

Thinking of this, Caird finally fell asleep. And he was in a chapter of a serial dream, though he had never been in this cliff-hanger before. He was sitting in a room that he somehow knew was part of the long-abandoned sewer system buried by the first great earthquake to level Manhattan. This room was just off the middle of a huge horizontal sewage tunnel blocked at both ends but accessible by rungs down a vertical shaft. A single unshaded light bulb, a device not used for a thousand obyears, lit the room in archaic fashion.

Though the light blazed harshly, it could not keep at bay the dark mists rolling in from every side. These advanced, then retreated, then advanced.

He sat in a hard wooden chair by a big round wooden table. He waited for others, the others, to enter. Yet he was also standing in the mists and watching himself seated in the chair.

Presently, Bob Tingle walked in as slowly as if he were moving through waist-high water. In his left hand was a portable computer on top of which was a rotating microwave dish. Tingle nodded at the Caird in the chair, put the computer on the table, and sat down. The dish stopped turning, its concave face steady on Caird's convex face.

Jim Dunski seemed to float in, a fencing rapier in his left hand. He nodded at the two, placed the rapier so that it pointed at the Caird at the table, and sat dawn. The blunt button on the rapier tip melted away, and the sharp point glittered like an evil eye.

Wyatt Repp, a silvery pistol-shaped TV camera-transmitter in his left hand, strode in. Invisible saloon batwing doors seemed to swing noiselessly behind him. His high-heeled cowboy boots made him taller than the others. His sequined Western outfit glittered as evilly as the rapier tip. His white ten-gallon hat bore on its front a red triangle enclosing a bright blue eye. It winked once at Caird and was thereafter fixed lidlessly on him.

Repp sat down and pointed the machine at Caird. His first finger was curled around the trigger.

Charlie Ohm, wearing a dirty white apron, stumbled in with a bottle of whiskey in his left hand and a shot glass in the other. After sitting down, he filled the glass and silently offered it to Caird.

The Caird standing in the fog felt a vibration passing up from the floor through the soles of his feet. It was as if an earthquake shock had touched him, or thunder was shaking the floor.

Then Father Tom Zurvan strode into the room as if the Red Sea was parting before him. His waist-long auburn hair waved wildly like a nest of angry vipers. Painted on his forehead was a big orange S, which stood for "Symbol." Bright blue was daubed on the end of his nose. His lips were painted green, and his moustache was dyed blue. His auburn beard, which fell to his waist, sported many tiny blue butterfly-shaped aluminum Cutouts. His white ankle-length robe was decorated with broad red circles enclosing blue six-pointed stars. His ID disc bore a flattened figure eight lying on its side and slightly open at one end. The symbol for a broken eternity. In his right hand was a long oaken shaft that curled at the upper end.

Father Tom Zurvan stopped, leaned the shepherd's staff against his shoulder, and formed a flattened oval with the tips of the thumb and first finger of his right hand. He passed the long finger of his left hand three times through the oval.

He said loudly, "May you speak the truth and only the truth."

Grasping the staff again, he walked to a chair and sat down. He placed the staff on the table so that its curling end was directed toward Caird.

"Father, forgive me!" the Caird sitting at the table said.

Father Tom, smiling, made the sign again. The first time, it had been obscene. Now, it was a blessing. It was also a command to unloose verbally all pent-up wild beasts, to spill your guts.

The last to enter was Will Isharashvili. He wore a green robe slashed with brown and the Smokey Bear hat, the uniform of the Central Park ranger. Isharashvili took a chair and stared at Jeff. All were staring at the Caird at the table. All their faces were his.

A chorus, they said, "Well, what do we do now?"

Caird woke up.

Though the air-conditioner was on, he was sweating, and his heart was beating faster than it should.