by Ian Wallace
There was more byplay, and another drink around, among these three good companions on total vacation at one of their favorite rendezvous among the most favored port-places the world over. On duty, Mallory was their chief; accepted, fine; but here nobody gave a damn, and this was often true on duty also when the Fleet Condition was Green. In the sharply personal sense of psychic interknitting, Zeno and Chloris were husband and wife with straying privileges, which was entirely within the sexually liberal context of the fleet, while Rourke was their profound friend with visiting privileges. Except, of course, when the Fleet Condition was Amber or Red....
Eight o’clock dinner followed, in the historically famous restaurant overlooking the cove: for the men, prime New York sirloins, medium rare but charred and sizzling, with Burgundy; for Chloris, a delectable two-pound broiled rainbow trout with sauterne (the trout was boned, she was fed up with headed and tailed fish at sea).
The wines during dinner were ample; and afterward, the men brooded over Armagnac while Chloris toyed with cr&me de menthe. Back in the room, Zeno eliminated himself by collapsing on his bed, smiling, not snoring, but dead: he was a hard drinker, but duty had been tough and he was pooped. Chloris went to the biffy; and when she emerged, Rourke replaced her. Exiting, he found her sitting on the edge of Zeno’s bed, one protective hand on a Zeno-shoulder, the other offering Rourke a drink. As the commodore sipped (it was brandyish), she expressed a yielding to RP-established seniority rights: “What do you want about bed partnerships, Rourke?”
The commodore spread hands: “You choose, tonight I can go either companionate or lone. But if you choose me, you’ll have to come upstairs.”
She studied inert Zeno: “I do have an itch, and he’s dead.” She looked up at the platform and wrinkled her nose: “But I do hate the idea of that swinging thing up there.”
“It won’t sway much if we don’t get carried away.”
‘T know, but—”
“I know, you won’t even put the Us’ns on skimmer-drive without getting drunk first So get drunk and join me; I’ve decided that I want that affirmatively.”
“Have to be sober to get up there, and I have a buzz already.”
“Pop a restorative and come on up and drink with me.”
“To stay up there, I’d need three drinks—and two would put me out. Rourke, what good would I be?”
“Well,” Mallory decided, turning to the companionway, “I would like your company, but you decide, I won’t hurt.”
She bit: “Dammit I won’t sleep alone down here with the body of Zeno! Just give me time to get the two of us undressed and into our nighties—”
Mallory nodded and mounted the companionway to the floating penthouse. Ten minutes later the platform began to tremble slightly; Chloris already?
Only, the room went black-dark; and Mallory reexperienced seriatim every sequential aspect, in full physical and emotional color, of the Dio-illusion here at Fishermen’s Cove five decades earlier—with certain major differences: The illusion-woman whom Mallory almost raped was named Lilith.
Climbing the mountain, he saw no figure ahead of him; instead, he was the tall redhead. But he did sense a climber behind him.
It was Mallory who fissioned, and felt himself gloriously lightened and strengthened by this fissioning, having inhaled the Blue Flame. But thereafter, Mallory was only the one who soared; the one who fell was another.
And aloft, Mallory looked down and saw a small redhead defending the flame and a small dark man challenging; and the redhead was pleading, “Unify me!” But the dark man grappled with Flametop, and was thrown from the rock-finger, and plunged toward a deep-below cave-mouth known to Mallory, out of which flowed hundreds of diversified sail-craft
7.
The sinking of Venice beneath the ocean had been arrested by massive undersea injections of a heavy-liquid silica compound which quickly hardened into sandstone strata. The process, which had required a dozen years, had begun in 1982: it had been devised and was executed by RP engineers and financed by the Italian government and by worldwide contributions, and it was one of the major visible and invisible achievements which had won from the World Assembly the status of nation for RP.
Captain Giuseppe Volpone was no engineer, but a member of a breed not uncommon in RP: a blend of trader and unofficial diplomat who played it in both capacities dose to the line and largely through influential personal relationships. Prowling the doge’s palace after hours with multimillionaire Deano Polo and his diamond-cool blonde-Nordic mistress Berta Soren, Volpone had satisfactorily completed his trade of a ceiling fresco by Rubens out of the Louvre for a ceiling fresco by Botticelli out of this palace. It was a complex matter: the transfer-artists would have to do it all in a single night with hyper-electronic equipment, and all the literature would have to be instantly changed. The ethics were borderline, and nowhere would official circles know anything about it before the fait was accompli; but experts and true amateurs would quickly detect the switch, and the affair would become a cause célebre with the perpetrators a mystery, but after a while those outraged would be outlaughed by those amused and intrigued; and when inevitably the names of Volpone and Polo would emerge, the stocks of both and the stock of RP would rise, tourist attention to Venice and the doge’s palace would be stimulated (this had dropped off during the prolonged sinking and accompanying social desuetude), and both Rubens and Botticelli would be more widely appreciated because of the scrutiny which these transposed works would draw. The idea had been Volpone’s, but Mallory had grinned and given it the nod.
Deal completed, the talk de-or re-generated to artistic chitchat as the threesome moved from room to room. Polo was complacent, Berta between them kept privately and alternately squeezing the arms of both men, Volpone kept privately squeezing her arm....
There was a tiny sound-sense in the auditory center of Volpone’s left cerebral cortex. Mentally he signaled readiness and shifted to inward listening. At the end of it he responded, involuntarily aloud, “Three or four days, right.” His companions stared, and Polo blurted, “I beg your pardon?” Volpone shrugged: “I thought you were discussing the time involved to prepare a wall for a fresco—” Berta inserted, precisely sultry, “It all on the wall and the weather depends.”
That night, Joe Volpone’s twenty-meter sloop weighed anchor, engine-purred out of the Grand Canal into the Adriatic Sea, cut engine, spread full sail ahead of favoring winds, and made southerly course to round the boot of Italy. To Commodore Mallory Volpone cerebrally reported his course and position, adding, “Blois in three or four days confirmed.”
Captain Ilya Sarabin was able to receive his surprise call in privacy: he was taking a turn at the helm of his own twenty-four-meter yawl, and his officers, knowing his preferences, were leaving him with it and wouldn’t be troubling him unnecessarily. Even alone, Sarabin blurted no replies aloud; he took time to consider the remarkable information, and then he let remote Commodore Mallory taste Sarabin’s own semithought-interfolding before he mentated a formed reply: “There have been some possibly pertinent hints at the Kremlin. Want them now?”
“Watch it,” Mallory cautioned; “what I told you will suggest that even mindcasts can be less than private here. Where are you?”
“Lazing down the Don, maybe one day above the mouth.” “Volpone can meet us at Blois in three or four days. What’s your capability?”
“On sails, Marseilles in three or four. Want me to break discipline and go skimmer-drive, or fly in?”
“Stay green for three days, then check with me and well see about the flying. Meanwhile, formulate.”
“Acknowledged.”
“Out.”
“Out”
Dr. Wing Pen—whose weirdly intricate mental counterpoint among several disciplines of science, including electrodynamics and cybernetic theory, had made him an indispensable attendant on one in three meetings of the Chinese cabinet —started awake out of a nightmare to discover that his Eurasian bed-partner
Captain Ladyrna Mengrovia was sitting erect in bed, staring at the almost night-invisible far wall of Pen’s bedroom. It never took Pen more than three seconds to come awake, a process that he brought off by selecting some visual feature and analyzing it; the feature he instantly chose was Ladyma’s. left breast, a succulent semi-elevated long gourd; the analysis was, that as gourds went, the nipple was displaced. ... He was awake; and he whispered, “Was your nightmare as bad as mine?”
Ladyma Mengrovia jumped, quivered, quieted, and turned fondly to Pen, who lay on his right side looking up at her, apart from Pen’s more practical values, Ladyma was a pushover for his round-eyed weak-chinned baby-face and his round shoulders and hollow chest and small, clever inexhaustible phallus. Eye-flooding Pen with amour, Ladyrna mentated to distant Commodore Mallory, “Your story comprehended, I may have a contribution, but the time to Blois would be six weeks by sail or ten days on skimmer-drive; give orders.” Meanwhile she was telling Pen aloud, “My nightmare was that you ravished me and I couldn’t feel a thing.”
While Pen, fingering the misplaced nipple (winch obediently erected), advised her, “I dreamed that you were a gigantic roc, and with your beak you ravished me, and I could feel everything,” Mallory snapped, “Figure a quick way to get out of there. Stay on sail, but make for a nearby location that has little or no radio coverage. Call me from there in three days.”
By now she was on top of Dr. Wing Pen (who worked hard, long hours and had to relax quick and had learned to trust Captain Mengrovia). With her open mouth on Pen’s open mouth and her hips elevated to postpone her delicious downward engulfing of his titillating tininess, Mengrovia mentated, “In view of your news, Commodore, it will take me another few hours to bring off the indirect Wing-pumping that will intersperse direct Pen-pumpings. After that, I’ll have to roundup my crew, and we should be embarking on the evening tide. Out, for Chrissakes, out—”
Mme. le capitaine Colette Perpignan elbow-leaned, head down, eyes closed, at the head of the ward-room table while her seven officers, male and female, assorted nationalities, young and not so young, watched her respectfully, and the galley crew delayed service. Perpignan was not, however, praying over food; she was listening in her brain to Commodore Mallory, and her officers knew it. (Only captains and select subordinate officers were fitted with the device.) When the commodore had finished, she mentated, “Pardon while I communicate some of this to my officers—ça va?” He responded, “Cava—but only some of it.” He mind-listened while in her crisp fiftyish contralto she told the ward-room group only that the commodore was calling an emergency session at Blois. Several of them nodded: they knew it was not a time to ask questions, and they knew also that Captain Perpignan would later tell each of them what each needed to know and would entertain private questions or comments then.
Perpignan now informed Mallory, “They accept, pending more information. As you hoped, I can control Blois, being now at Havre. How soon?”
“Three or four days, indefinitely. We can count so far on only yourself and Volpone physically present, along with Metropoulos and Doxidoras and me; but set up tri-d visuals at Blois—this is a full conclave and I am contacting all the others.”
Her brows flattened; she said aloud, “That important!” Volpone was noted for impulsively responding aloud, and noted equally for his quick wit in covering; contrariwise, Perpignan never responded aloud impulsively, but in this case she wanted her officers to hear, and of course they heard and went on alert Mallory had no serious complaint with either captain.
RP had no voting delegate to the World Assembly, nor did it have an accredited ambassador to the court or government of any other nation; the former uniqueness was part of the agreement whereby RP had been declared an independent floating nation, the latter was a unilateral RP decision. The peculiar world role which RP played excluded the former; the entrée which RP had built and was consistently building obviated the latter.
However, practically all delegates to the World Assembly and practically all national diplomats of any stature knew Esther d'Illyria, and those who were competently attentive to the RP lines (there was never any one clearly distinguishable RP line) had a strong sense that she espoused them, and those who were properly attentive to pertinent private intrigue knew that Esther d’Illyria and Commodore Rourke Mallory were close friends although both had other dose friends. Just a few were almost dead certain that Esther was an RP; but this never stopped them, indeed it often stimulated them, with respect to serious consideration of the positions she espoused or with respect to confidential information when she hinted interest.
Esther was one who was touched by the Mallory mentation-round: she carried the cerebral device. In her case, prior knowledge of her history caused Mallory to avoid reference to his Fishermen’s Cove fantasy. After greeting-exchange, he said merely, “I’m calling an emergency conclave at Blois, and I think the point of reference may be Guru Kali. What can you tell me that could be pertinent?”
Esther, promptly: “He is lobbying for the REM Treaty.” Silence for a bit, while she awaited his double-take. Then Mallory: “I heard you say that he is lobbying for the REM Treaty.”
“That’s right, just as you are doing. Problem?”
Pause; then: “Nothing that I understand yet, so keep on doing what you’re doing. Meanwhile, where is the treaty?” “United States: President for it, forty-seven senators for it, forty-one against it, fourteen uncommitted. Russia: Chairman for it, Praesidium divided with count indeterminate. China: inscrutable. United Kingdom: Prime Minister for it, Parliament seething. France: President for it, Assembly seething. I can keep going—how long do you have for this?” Mallory considered. He and Chloris and Zeno had tentatively agreed that his fantasy had been a threat or even a murder-attempt by Guru Kali; and the news from Esther that Kali was for the REM Treaty was—not upsetting, but confusing.
The REM Device—meaning Remote Earth Mobility—had been developed almost simultaneously by scientists in the United States and Russia, and China had rapidly followed; and each of these nations had fed it to some of its friends and satellites in the course of political dealing. This device made H-bombs a toy by comparison; and its general knowledge had blurred out all efforts at nuclear disarmament Any nation possessing it could activate the REM Device to explode off the earth, from inside the earth, any small or large area of the earth’s surface-and-crust which the activator might designate. The maximum area now known to be blastable was seven million square kilometers—e.g., all of the continental United States, or all of western Russia along with the western part of Siberia—and there was no possibility of a Distant Early Warning System.
Any use of the device, however—apart from humanitarian and economic considerations—would wreak seismic, oceanic, and atmospheric havoc on the planet. Some scientists were calculating that the imbalances might rupture the globe or wobble it out of orbit.
Consequently the international pressures were multiplying to forge a REM Treaty quarantining use of the device. Such a treaty, entailing adequate inspectional safeguards, had been drafted and was in process of international debate; but the conservative and isolationist counterpressures against its adoption were formidable.
RP, quite naturally, wanted the treaty and was working for it. RP was trying to do even more, but so far its scientists had been unable to find a way of neutralizing REM. And Guru Kali had been potently preaching against RP as the enemy of all morals and religions.
Yet the guru was working for a REM Treaty?
Esther had waited patiently. She was alone tonight Mallory said, “Good girl. Keep at it. Love you.”
Esther said, and he felt her smile, “Love you. Out.”
8.
Mallory aboard the Ishtar and Chloris and Zeno aboard the Us’ns were unsurprised to find two-thirds of their crews still aboard: Draft Boards had been activated, naturally, so that afloat for most of them was as good as ashore in this godforsaken Jersey area distinguished only by the archaic Fisherme
n’s Cove. Activating their watch-people, they got back full crews within two hours, and weighed anchors immediately. Both yachts went on skimmer-drive, by special authority of the commodore, who wanted to be at Blois real quick and wanted Chloris and Zeno with him.
The unusual action made an officers’ call imperative, and Mallory called them right after lunch. A few had to be duty-absent, but most were there—including American black Captain Clarice Vanderkilt and her French white executive officer Commander Jean Duval. As the flagship, the Ishtar was naturally the biggest yacht in the fleet: forty-one meters in length, nine in beam, and carrying a crew of ten officers, twelve petty officers, and twenty-seven others—all neatly balanced racially; ethnically, and sexually. The flagship had to set the RP pattern. (Religious balance had been ignored, it was whatever it happened to be: three balance-factors are more than enough for any purpose that is practical.)
To his officers, Mallory crisped the gist of his reific dream. He then told them candidly: “This could be a big pfoof, in which case I’ll report to the fleet psychiatrists and you can elect a temporary commodore. But I have an excessively strong feeling that Guru Kali is involved, that it is not a pfoof, that trouble is threatening all of us and maybe more than all of us. Beyond that I haven’t the foggiest, and hence the conclave at Blois. Some of you will be there, of course, and I want to encourage you now to be talkative with anything pertinent; but I also want to approach Blois with any advance prepping I can get, and I now welcome random brainstorming.”
When that elicited nothing except a few lambencies from even the best of them (and they were all good), Mallory told them: “Okay, don’t feel bad, I can’t do any better yet. Back-burner it, and fait me individually if a thought-bubble blubs up in your subconscious mud. Be as ready as you can for Blois; churn up all your background about anything.