Counter-Clock World by Philip K. Dick

her wristwatch. “Five-thirty. Half an hour before closing. And you want me to gather all the sources together for you. Just hand them to you, all assembled and in order. So all you have to do is sit down and read them over.”
    “Yes,” the girl said faintly, her lips barely moving.
    “Miss,” Mrs. McGuire said, “do you know who I am and what my job is? I’m Chief Librarian of the Library; I have a staff of almost one hundred employees, any one of whom could help you—
if
you had come here earlier in the day.”
    The girl whispered, “They said to ask you. The people at the main desk. I asked for Mr. Appleford but he’s gone. He helped me before.”
    “Are you from the City of Los Angeles? From any civic body?”
    “No. I’m from the Flask of Hermes Vitarium.”
    Mrs. McGuire said harshly, “Is Mr. Roberts dead?”
    “I—don’t think so. Maybe I better go.” The girl turned away from the desk, hunching her shoulders together, drawing herself together like a sick, crippled bird. “I’m sorry . . .” Her voice trailed off.
    “Just a minute.” Mavis McGuire beckoned her back. “Turn around and face me.
Somebody
sent you; your vitarium sent you. Legally, you have the right to use the Library as a reference source. You have a perfect right to search for info here. Come into the inner office; follow me.” She stood up, briskly led the way through two outer offices, to her most private quarters. At her own desk she pressed one of the many buttons on her intercom system and said, “I’d appreciate it if one of the Erads who’s free could come down here for a few minutes. Thank you.” She turned, then, to confront the girl. I am not letting this person out of here, Mavis McGuire said to herself, until I find out why she’s been sent by her vitarium to get info on Ray Roberts.
    And if I can’t get the information from her, the Erad can.

8
    Matter itself (apart from the forms it receives) is likewiseinvisible and even indefinable.
    —Erigena
    In the work area of the Flask of Hermes Vitarium, Dr. Sign listened intently with a stethoscope placed on the unimpressive dark chest of the body of the Anarch Thomas Peak.
    “Anything?” Sebastian asked. He felt extremely tense.
    “Not so far. But at this stage it frequently comes and goes; this is critical, this period. All the components have migrated back into place and resumed the capacity to function, but the—” Sign gestured. “Wait. Maybe I’ve got it.” He glanced at the instruments which mechanically registered pulse, respiration, and cephalic activity; all traced and blipped unwavering lines.
    “A body’s a body,” Bob Lindy said dispassionately; he showed by his expression the dim view he took of all this. “A deader is dead, whether he’s the Anarch or not, and whether he’s five minutes or five centuries away from rebirth.”
    Reading from a slip of paper, Sebastian said aloud, “‘Sic igitur magni quoque circum moenia mundi. Expugnata dabunt labem putresque ruinas.’ Those last are the key words: ‘putresque ruinas.’”
    “What’s that from?” Dr. Sign asked.
    “The monument. I copied it off. The epitaph for him.” He gestured at the body.
    “My Latin isn’t much good outside medical terminology,” Dr. Sign said, “but I can pick up on the terms
putrify
and
ruin
. But he doesn’t look it, does he?” He, Lindy and Sebastian viewed the body for a short time in silence. Small as it was it looked complete, ready for life. What’s keeping it, Sebastian wondered, from resuming life?
    Father Faine said, “‘No single thing abides; but all things flow. Fragment to fragment clings—the things thus grow until we know and name them. By degrees they melt, and are no more the things we know.’”
    “What’s that?” Sebastian asked him; he had yet to hear rhymed couplets from the Bible.
    “A translation of the first quatrain of the Anarch’s epitaph. It’s a poem of Titus Lucretius Carus—Lucretius who wrote
De Rerum