by Ian Wallace
“One other point. The fact that we are on skimmer-drive has already told you that our Ship-Condition is Amber: not the fleet yet, but the Ishtar, and also the Us'ns. Now hear this: in all respects of discipline, we are Amber until further notice; and further notice may well be Red.”
“Shit,” remarked a male voice.
Blonde Lieutenant Wozniak raised her hand: she’d commanded the dory which had ferried Mallory into Fishermen’s Cove last night. “Commodore,” she crisped, “I’m disinterested, being biologically Condition Red for a few days, but on behalf of the others I’d like to suggest dispassionately that in all respects except skimmer-drive, Condition Amber begin at 0800 hours tomorrow.”
Mallory grinned: why not? “Point understood,” he acknowledged; “request granted. Nevertheless, Ms. Wozniak, I take it you won’t be on the Draft Board tonight?”
“Definitely not,” asserted Cassie. “It’s always appealing, but I hurt”
“Hit sick-bay,” Mallory advised. ‘Try dyswomennhoresic, they tell me it’s great for that. All right, humans: Condition Amber starting at 0800 hours tomorrow and continuing until further notice.” Then he frowned down: “As you well know, at my age I don’t join you regularly—but tonight, don’t wait to find out: I want to be alone for thinking.”
Cassie Wozniak told the floor, “1 guess it’s too late for me to say shit But if dyswomennhoresic works, I’ll want to.”
Nobody, except possibly founder Rourke Mallory, knew what if anything RP stood for. “Rendezvous Paris” was a prime contender, since that was where many of them often were; on the other hand, their shore base was at Blois—the chateau had been declared part of the RP nation by the World Assembly, with arm-twisted French consent involving historical guarantees and tourism concessions. “River Pirates” had numerous whimsical adherents, and the ambiguities of Commodore Mallory seemed often to point toward this one. For certain sour outsiders who saw an RP career as a lifelong vacation, the suggestion was “Requiescat in Pace.” But nobody actually knew—except Mallory, if he did.
Here and there some esoterically inclined philosopher or statesman or diplomat would drop a hint that RP was all that was holding the world together for the moment Everything else that meant to bind—treaties, the World Assembly, secret agreements, the works—was mainly restrictive; and every schoolboy and his mother knows that restrictions work just so long, whereafter they intensify the blow-off. RP, however, was glamorously and alluringly concerned with all the world as community-in-variety.
Let a major nation or an insignificant jungle village assert its individuality, and RP would hear about it and sing its praises, would go there for study and absorption, would challenge, would stimulate—and would not fail to endow that nation or village with a new cognitive-connative sense of its dependence on the welfare of everybody else for precisely the preservation and stimulation of its own individuality. Meanwhile everybody everywhere imagined the city-state-yachts which composed RP sailing seas and nosing up rivers; and often and often, into some sea-or river-port sailed an RP ship with trade and with fun and with human glamor, often to depart with a young recruit or two.
RP had arrested the sinking of Venice; RP also published the good works of a thousand obscure literati and musicians and artists who did their own things intensely with insufficient market-eye to be published elsewhere. There was sly deviltry in RP, like Volpone’s art deal between the Louvre and the doge’s palace. As for religion, RP worshipped everywhere, reverently.
The World Assembly supported RP, not with funds (for RP was self-supporting and frankly commercial in many of its dealings), but with endorsement by almost three-quarters of its delegates and guarded tolerance by most others; hence, when RP would ask the Assembly for some concession or privilege or cooperation, usually the yes was swift. But RP normally spared the Assembly the worry of a problem: instead, RP went to national or individual sources and elicited interdealing where none previously had been possible. The World Assembly valued RP as a conspicuous and voluntary ally with no Assembly obligations; and the RP endorsement in the Assembly remained stable despite dark rumors that eventually RP might replace the Assembly as arbiter of world problems.
If I, Lilith Vogel vintage 1952, seem to be exceeding myself in these 2002 reportings, bear with me: they are personally authentic.
Established in this trans-or supra-establishment security, with an intra-social morality which many considered scandalous but which most secretly envied, why now would Commodore Mallory study with grave concern an apprehension which had arisen in him purely out of individual intuition involving an illusion? And why would he direct his precautionary attention toward a religious charlatan named Guru Kali?
This guru’s recorded history as a guru dated back only to 1981; but by 1986, precocious youth Kali had become sufficiently world-visible to engage Mallory’s interested attention. Precisely a decade ago, in 1992, Kali—then still a very young man—had preached to fifteen thousand rapt listeners in Detroit’s New Olympia a sermon which had singled out RP as being conjointly the Antichrist and the Antibuddha. The sermon, internationally reported, had helped RP by focusing new attention upon it; and Mallory, respecting both Christ and Buddha, nevertheless had been forced to admit a rightness in the sermon insofar as both the reported Christ and the reported Buddha had advocated passivity and renunciation of all worldly aspiration. Nevertheless, the sermon had announced a sustained undermining drive against RP by Kali; and while this quasi-Oriental adversary had made no visible inroads into RP prestige, assuredly he had been piling up Brownie points.
With age, Mallory had long since overcome a modest tendency to discount the world value of RP. He knew, subjectively and objectively, that his RP was world-essential. That was no immodesty, as long as he didn’t start imagining that his RP was great. Hence the onslaught by Kali struck him, and with years the impression settled in, as being an onslaught on Mallory’s concept of what the world needed for peace and stimulative growth; and except on one point, personal pique was not in question.
The single point of personal pique was the personal appearance of Guru Kali. Was he East Indian in appearance, as his name and title and discipline implied? He was not! Instead, he looked like a lean-graceful Irishman with sea-blue eyes and flaming red hair and (when occasionally it broke through his prevailing serenity) a grin that was positively impish.
In sum, Kali looked like a young version of Rourke Mallory. When he first saw a color-picture of the guru, Mallory was so totally discombobulated that he barged out of distinguished company to go back to his ship and check out a few early pictures of himself. They checked out. Guru Kali was in physical appearance the young Rourke Mallory—with one exception: Mallory was respectably tall, whereas Kali was slender-short, indeed (as men go) a wiry runt.
Currently, Kali numbered his worldwide flock at a hundred million, its wealth (whose purse strings he controlled) at a billion world dollars, and the longevity of his religion at a hun* dred thousand years—whereafter he would come again with a new revelation for those who would have kept the faith and so would be ready for a further advance. He possessed a personal jetliner which would have roomily accommodated five hundred people commercially, a worldwide fleet of expensive skimmer-cars, and a hundred costly tabernacles worldwide with attached voluptuous manses.
Was Kali a flamboyant ruthless tycoon? Well: tycoon he was; but despite his personal appearance (which Malloy grudgingly had to admit was a bit on the flamboyant side), Kali appeared serenely-intensely devoted to his Gospel of the Inner Light. Of ruthlessness there was no indication whatsoever, except legitimately when he leveled off those whom he considered Enemies of the Inner Light, including and eventually featuring RP. Malloy couldn’t criticize the guru for his jets and wheels, which could be taken as merely replacing the sails and skimmers of RP. And since RP encouraged selfsearching and philosophy and conscience and even temperate religion, tolerating an extremely broad spectrum of sincerity provided that it was sincerity,
Kali earned only Mallory’s applause for directing his followers toward some inward light which encouraged them to be moderately conservative; and if they in return wanted to make the guru rich, why, it is only gracious to accept and use love-gifts as long as they don’t set up unacceptable conflicts of interest.
Nevertheless, Guru Kali had made himself for RP “The Adversary.” And some others who tolerated or endorsed RP had set themselves against the guru. For instance, back in 1987, influential old evangelist Denny McIntosh, who was uncompromising about the orthodox Christ but willing to listen respectfully to a wide spectrum of honest non-Christians, had expressed interest in the work of RP but had flatly branded Kali an instrument of the devil. And in 1997, the Pope had released a more guarded statement which expressed and recommended favorable attention to RP but distrustful watchfulness of Kali; and the Pope or his Vatican prelate-writers had been learned enough to mention that Kali was a name originally associated with a sinister pagan goddess. Every rabbi whom Mallory had ever met liked RP; but when the topic of Kali was broached, each rabbi deftly changed the subject.
During recent years a particularly puzzling aspect of Guru Kali had come to the forefront. There were numerous convincing testimonials about ways in which Kali had mystically helped people to make their impossible dreams come true. Long prior to the Fishermen’s Cove illusion, Mallory had engaged several of his most philosophical captains and commanders and lieutenants in an attempt to analyze these frequently substantiated reports. The tentative conclusion had been, either that Kali had power to project the illusion of wish-satisfaction, or that he possessed other powers not understood by science.
This was the background against which Mallory now meditated his Fishermen’s Cove illusion—in which, for Mallory, the Enemy with his symbolically decaying face was nobody other than Kali (whose actual face was vital-young). And it looked almost unmistakably as though the guru, with established powers of illusion-projection, had used this method precisely to strike at the soul of Mallory, hoping to drive him insane and thus cripple RP; and when the persistent selfcontainment and drive of Mallory in the dream could not be beaten down by the guru, Kali had used his illusion-wiles to drive Mallory off the platform in the hope of killing him.
Crisis for Mallory and therefore crisis for RP was indicated; hence the conclave-call for Blois. And the word from Esther that Kali was lobbying in favor of the REM Treaty which RP considered survival-essential was so totally uncharacteristic of the guru that it did nothing but heighten Mallory’s apprehension.
And it didn’t help one little bit that Kali in the illusion had looked so much like a decaying version of Mallory himself when young.
There was one tiny irony entailed; but as Mallory whimsically inspected this irony, his small smile was twisted. If Kali had used the illusion as a murder attempt on Mallory, the effort had been a waste, even if it had succeeded, unless half a year mattered to Kali.
Now the smile disappeared, and the mouth-twist reflected inward anguish. Probably because of Mallory’s too-complete and too-charismatic leadership, not a soul in RP—not a single soul—was evidently ready to replace him in command.
Softly he beat his desk with his fist a few times, then arose and went for the Black Label. Not one of his captains or commanders, was what he had really meant. Somewhere down in the ranks there had to be...
He sipped it straight, handling it like fine brandy; and going to the stern picture-window of his cabin, he considered the wake created by the skimmer-jets. Six months to find that one guy or chick way down somewhere in the officer or petty officer ranks. No, worse than that: no more than three months—because, once found, the command-successor would have to be readied somewhat before this diabolical and unstoppable mosaic virus would
9.
There wasn’t any ceremony at Blois; merely, Captain Perpignan was at the dock to welcome her commodore. He was the first to arrive, the power of the Ishtar having left the Us’ns a day behind. Perpignan had got the chateau closed off and readied; the red-velour-warm Valois or Medici wing with the low ceilings and the (Francois Premier) spiral staircase were enough for top-officer assemblies and side-committees; all three period-units had been modernized for comfortable quarters and offices, and crew members not involved could either sleep aboard ship or shack out in Blois-town.
Assembly opened at 1400 hours next day, which was Day 4. Twenty-eight bodies, including Chloris and Zeno and Vol-pone and Sarabin, were physically present; Mallory had decided to authorize flying in for the last two; and there were three more captains and six executive officers and a sprinkling of junior officers having special talents. Additionally, all other yachts in the fleet were represented by tri-d electromagnetic cubes: each of these was primarily occupied by the image of the ship’s captain, but invisible behind the captain were always one or two or three chosen officers who could hear and could be heard and might even enter the cube. They were all in a big circle with bodies seated at floor level and cubes overhead. They didn’t worry about protocol: the commodore sprawled in no special location, and also random-localized (but not sprawling) was Captain Colette Perpignan, whom he’d asked to chair the thing.
Perpignan gaveled (still, in 2002!) on her chair arm and stood lean-erect, slapping a hand palm with her gavel head. Uniform was semidress, like Mallory’s at Fishermen’s Cove; but there was no visible way to distinguish a captain from a commodore or a lieutenant—an officer would merely mention his rank at a first meeting, and after that you were supposed to remember. You might, however, sometimes be able to discriminate sex by two aspects of uniform: all men wore long pants and, when appropriate, slouchy visored caps; women could wear the same, but they had option to wear miniskirts if they were by God unshaven bare-legged, and another option for unvisored caps if the hairdo seemed to require this. Perpignan wore primly a miniskirt above long thin bare legs lightly furred; but just now she was bareheaded like everybody.
The chairman (RP shemen had long ago voted down the term “chairperson” on the ground that “man” was a category generic rather than sexual) began with her normal crisp, reminding them that Commodore Mallory had summoned this assembly for reasons on which Mallory had already briefed them in individual telementations and on which he would soon enlarge. (This conclave was oral: mentation had its drawback of psychic strain.) It was all she needed to say, and Mallory made ready to start talking at her signal; but Perpignan, one-sheman battleground between the prim Huguenot and the florid Catholic traditions, thought it worthwhile now to perorate a concise history of the RP fleet-republic and a commentary on its world significance and dedication: an independent multiple-mobile nation whose fractionated territories were comprised of all its floating hulls and which by World Assembly action and international consensus would forever have sanctuary on the high seas, while its hulls were privileged to penetrate the rivers of all other nations except in an unheard-of case of exclusion. . . . Others were fidgeting, and presently Mallory looked hard at the chairman and raised an eyebrow. She had an eye-comer on him, she stopped in mid-word, she coughed once; she stated, wittily enough, “As-sez de gaz; un peu de Mallory,” and sat.
Keeping his seat, Mallory unemotionally and without excision of image-detail or connative experience gave them the whole of the Fishermen’s Cove fantasy, including the on-his-back awakening and the report by Chloris of what he had been physically doing up there (rape and all) as the fantasy unfolded. A couple of times he saw Zeno smile sleepily while Chloris, beside him, frowned down in annoyance. Whereafter Mallory sketched a good deal of his subsequent rumination, omitting however reference to thoughts related to his mosaic virus, which was a secret between him and a coterie of Paris physicians.
“All right,” Mallory ended. “Sorry that took so long, but you had to have everything pertinent or possibly pertinent. This session is being taped; any of you is at liberty to listen to the tape whenever you think it may help you pin down an idea.
“I am convinced that in some way Kali is in
volved in all this monkey business, and that his involvement may be grave for us. I don’t know whether he deliberately threw me into that fantasy or whether I was having some goofy insight Maybe one or more of you was at the time having some experience with a subliminal Kali influence, and your spillover mentated to me and tossed me into the fantasy. Maybe anything.
“I called this emergency convocation because something far transcending reason assures me without question that Kali is involved in some way that is sinister for RP and consequently for the world’s immediate future. He has been whittling at us for years: my dream says that he is ready to strike. And this conviction has an important ramification. Why does he want to hurt us? What is he up to that we obstruct? How big and what sort of big would that something be?
“All right, I’m shutting up now. Any or all of you fire at will. Chairman, please don’t interfere unless at least four people want to speak all at once—any three of tis can settle the order among ourselves.”
He waited. Nothing. Well, perhaps they were concentrating too tightly on Kali as a guru. To widen the scope, he gave them his information from Esther d'Illyria: that quite surprisingly, Kali was currently lobbying hard for the proposed REM Treaty. And he waited again.
Soon the sultry voice of Ladyma Mengrovia filled the room without special amplitude: on trivideo from mid-Pacific, and uniformed, she was cool and all business but involuntarily luscious even so. “I was with Wing Pen the other night,” she began. . . . Zeno murmured, “Ah so.” A few snickers, some on trivideo. Urbane fortyish Mengrovia smiled hard: “You hemen should have his good fortune, and you shemen mine.” Ilya Sarabin scowled: “Ah so.” Mengrovia sobered: “Wing was worried all evening, until I talked him out of it, about the mutual Chinese-American-Russian confrontation with the REM Device. I kept reassuring him that the REM Talks would surely produce a stabilizing treaty; but Wing was in a black mood, his doubts persisted until I—found means to divert him. Sorry, but I can’t connect Kali.” She subsided, brooding.