The World Asunder

by Ian Wallace

  He snapped a grinning face toward me: “Especially when I can use a Police Department vacation and CIA credit for a personal chase like this one!”

  As bemused I gazed at him, he went sober again. “You said your favorite specialty was the sorts of hysterias that can produce dual or multiple personalities. In your opinion —was Halloran’s illness such a hysteria? Was mine?”

  I meditated, then told him: “In my opinion, there is rarely if ever a neurosis or psychosis so simple that it can be flatly classified by any standard category. There were elements of hysterical personality-split in Burk: certainly the phallic impotency was hysterical; it was a subsconscious rejection of a part of himself deeply involved in interpersonal relationships. Maybe your psychoneurosis also had a hysterical underlay, I really don’t know enough about you—”

  “Okay, you’ve gone far enough. Now: what happens to a light when it goes out?”

  “Dio—”

  “Sony: bad analogy. I’ll say it directly. When there is a dual personality, and the—ego resolves to embrace one personality while turning away from the other— What happens to the other?"

  Closing my eyes, I rubbed them. Fingers over eyes, I essayed, “I don’t think you want a Freudian lecture. I think you are trying to get at something.”

  Then I let my eyes come open. He was frowning heavily out the window; and he said: “I think so too, but I don’t know what. I think maybe it has something to do with the fact that you seemed to perceive Halloran as The Adversary in my Kali-illusions—but that doesn’t at all correspond with the Halloran you knew or with the final self-adjustment that you report about him. And I think there is a way for me to use this intuition, but I am a very long distance from knowing what that way may be.”

  12.

  After more than two days from Paris to Bordeaux and then to Sore and on southward, in late afternoon we train-wheezed into the village of Mont Veillac. Apart from pervasive irrational gut-feelings that here we might be nearing trail’s end, we greeted the arrival with charmed and multifaceted anticipation: the mountainous wild of the countryside, the unforeseeable ways of the locals, the antiquity-weird of the cave, the medieval glamor of the vicomte’s tall-blunt rough-stone castle, where we were to be housed—and the hearty hospitality of the stranger-vicomte, who, phoned by Dio from Paris without warning or introduction, had welcomed this American detective-inspector because Major Horse had helped liberate France from the Boches. Dio, who as a detective had made a subtle private study of age as reflected by voice, believed that the vicomte was probably in his vigorous late forties or early fifties; and from the impulsive staccato throaty-hearty manner of the vicomte as he talked with Unseen Stranger Horse, Dio expected (with amusement, knowing how wrong such expectations could prove out) to find that our host was a bluff affable realistic sociable country-fellow who probably kept a good house without putting on any airs at all.

  We were met at the tiny station by a slender, dark young male driver who identified himself as Raoul; being a southerner, he pronounced his own name more like Rrrrrrowlll (reed-vibrating his tongue tip) than like the uvula-quivering Parisian bobcat-threat Grrrah-ool. He was abjectly apologetic; “Monsieur-’dame, the vicomte is desolate, but a sickness came suddenly upon him yesterday, and there is no way he can receive you at Château Mont Veillac. We have provided for you at the hotel here in town, you will have every comfort at the vicomte’s expense, pray phone me instantly any wish that you may have, stay as long as you like, tell me when you wish to enter the cave and I will take you there—”

  The hotel was three-story white frame, cubical, clean, and quiet. We had separate but communicating rooms: Dio, 1 was interested to learn, had been sensitive to the possibility that the vicomte might be a stickler for appearances if not a prude, and on the phone had identified me as his female police aide. Between our rooms was a private bath with an old-fashioned king-and-queen-size bathtub and an overhead pull-chain tank for a commode whose seat was perfectly and (Dio’s phrase) arse-embarrassingly circular; the robinets on tub and washstand were gold-simulating polished brass. Raoul laid open our bags on racks, checked the rooms meticulously, hovered anxiously. Dio reached into his pants pocket; Raoul, demurring with upraised hand and pained expression, assured Dio that a gratuity for Raoul would be unnecessary although “as touching the hotel help, you know how it is, monsieur.” (He never said “m’sieu’ ”; he always said “mong-sioorrrr”.) Having secured from Dio a schedule of 10:00 A.M. for pick-up to visit the cave, Raoul started away, paused, turned, added that we would be guests of the vicomte in the hotel dining room for all meals during our stay and any wines or liquors we might wish, and departed.

  We stared after him. We looked at each other. Dio’s brows were down; I had one eyebrow up.

  Dio bitterly asserted, “It’s happened to me before. The vicomte had second thoughts about letting the American upstart into his chateau.”

  Gently I counter-proposed, “The vicomte is genuinely hospitable and embarrassed, he is really ill, his apology is sumptuous and his man Raoul is a dear.”

  Slowly Dio’s brows eased. “Do you think so?”

  “Dio, there’s a simple difference between our personalities. You distrust people until you know better; I trust them until I know better.”

  “My way has made me a goddam good cop. With your way, how can you be a goddam good psychologist?”

  “My psychologist-way is your way; my human way is my way. I’m not here to psychologize the vicomte, and I don’t think you’re investigating him.” I tried adding a pointed funny: “At least, Raoul is not a Kali.”

  Unsheathing his teeth, Dio checked his watch. “Would the dining room be open already at six-thirty?”

  “The tavern would be open since morning.”

  We went down—there was no elevator, but we had to descend only one stair-flight from our rooms on the first story above the rez-de-chaussée. No specialization here as between tavern and dining room: one room having ten tables offered five on one side with tablecloths and five on the bar-side without; seven people, all French, were wining or beering at three of the bare tables, and all other tables were untenanted. We ventured toward an empty bare table but were intercepted by the single garçon, who demanded, “C’est M’sieu’ Horse?” and at Dio’s assent, delight: “Poor m’sieu’-’dame, une table spéciale, compliments du vicomte—” He ushered us to a most generous white-cloth-covered table in the bay, seated us, handed Dio a handwritten wine list, announced: “All these bottles have been provided for m’sieu’-’dame by the vicomte from his own cellar, nobody else sees this list; but also you should know that for your American pleasure he has provided Old Granddad, Chivas Regal, and Tanqueray, and for mix options, Schweppes tonic or soda and Stock Vermouth both sweet and dry—and the house has lemons, limes, cherries, and olives.”

  Faintly I preempted, “Now before dinner, I think Chivas Regal on the rocks with side water; wines later. Do you mind?”

  The waiter enthused, “Épatant! The wonderful American palate!”

  Dio remained somber and incommunicative through two drinks and dinner, and afterward he led me prowling the Mont Veillac twilight and night; and when finally we bedded down in his room, for the first time he was rough with me, almost frantic in his self-catharsis upon me and into me. Very early into it I knew how it would go, and I shook myself down into total and loose acquiescence: I can be a masochist when I let my soul-body drift into that mood, and it was clear to me that he terribly needed this, and before it had gone far it was equally clear to me that I terribly needed this. And it went far, with me shaken and semi-tortured and semi-outraged, and I flung myself deeply into it and suffered it and suffered it. . . . And when it was done, and he had collapsed into slumber, and I lay quiveringly pulling myself together and slowing my heart-pound into file heart-serenity that I need for sleep, I comprehended that while he had hurt me some he had always stopped himself short of hurting me importantly.

  When in the morning
he sheathed teeth and bumbled out an abject apology, I knew finally that I was in love with him. What sort of thing that might mean with respect to me and Burk Halloran remained to be seen, and my moment-mood was to cross off Burk: hell, what had he done for me since what I’d done for him? No; but the problem area was going to be, Dio and Esther. I resolved that I was not going to be a predatory home-breaker: Dio and I were good companions for now, and that was all of substance no matter what my hormones might be screaming.

  Besides, I was not writing off Burk until I could verify a new dream.

  Dio, I learned, had not shared this dream: it was mine privately, and it could only have symbolized a fearsome new intuition about the nature of Kali and his relationship to Dio and to Burk. I was not a dream-participant, but only the witness of the action....

  Out of a greening park, a broad many-storied high rise erected itself. Successively two figures emerged from the ground-foliage and began to scale the high-rise exterior, working their separate ways upward from story to windowed story. I was granted two brief close-ups: the first climber was Burk, the second Dio; they were mounting well distant from each other, Burk above, inattentive to each other.

  Burk climbed much more rapidly; he reached the top when Dio was only a third of the way up. From this point on, my perspectives grew interconfused, as though I were simultaneously seeing close-ups and distant views from several angles; and now the growing analogy to the Fishermen’s Cove illusion seemed to be reinforcing whatever had been intuited there.

  From roof’s edge now appeared two aerial stairways, one leading skyward and the other groundward, the angle between stairways being sixty degrees. These stairways had no solidity—they were mere abstract linear profiles. Atop the roof, Burk now lost human form, becoming a red circular blob; and the Burk-blob mitoted into two red circular blobs, and one started to bounce up the up stairway while the other began to bounce down the down, always vertically even with each other but increasingly divergent in periodic steps. At each step a linear printout between stairways expressed the growing distance between them: “ two will not be crowned until four"; three will not be crowned until nine"; four crowns two but will not be crowned until sixteen” ... Spread it on down! Spread it on down like that! Spread...

  At the fifteith upward or downward stair—the printout said “fifty will not be crowned until two thousand five hundred”—both red blobs paused, the high one nearly invisible, the low one now down on a level with Dio, who had progressed halfway up the high rise. Now Dio lost human form, becoming a circular black blob; the Dio-blob mitoted; one Dio-blob shot horizontally outward to fuse red with the lower Burk-blob, the other Dio-blob shot sharp-angle-upward to fuse black with the upper Burk-blob

  At the instant of the two fusions, the stairways disappeared; and the lower red blob, now smaller, shot upward while the upper black blob plunged toward it; and just before they collided. I awoke with my mind screaming DON’T! DON’T! DON’T ...

  During most of an hour, with Dio snoring beside me, I was held awake, belaboring and belabored by the aweful sense of intuitive meaning. What it seemed to mean was physically impossible. Wasn’t it?

  Later, I would chill at a related aspect of Dio’s morning apology. “I swear to you, Lilith,” solemnly he told me, “that whatever caused last night’s fiendishness has been excised from me forever.”

  Part Four

  JUNE 2002

  13.

  By the end of the Blois discussions, a lot had come out about Kali and his lieutenants and their recent activities, and for Commodore Mallory a distinct pattern was beginning to emerge linking Kali with the diversified interests of three mutually competitive governments—Russia, China, &id the United States—in process of arriving at mutual accommodations. The prime factor of linkage was now almost certainly the proposed REM Treaty. Consequently it was a devilishly dangerous fishing-expedition that Kali was on, whatever he might be fishing for; and the world-hazard made it all the more urgent that RP’s private fact-finding investigation be pursued delicately.

  All the RP officers physically or trivisually present departed the conclave with specific shadow-assignments either volunteered or handed out and accepted. And the Fleet Condition was declared Amber—which meant, among other things, that transportation discipline was broken: dispatch was more important than boating leisure, semi-emergency had overcome for the moment the superior value of aesthetics. A drawback was that Guru Kali would not fail to notice RP’s Condition Amber, but he couldn’t be sure that he was RP’s quarry; and as a smoke screen, the commodore arranged nineteen worldwide leaks that the World Assembly had RP checking attitudes about the REM Treaty. Drawback: if Kali could actually intercept private thoughts, he would quickly pierce the screen and see the truth. Shrug: if he could do this, he would certainly be beaming his telepathic intercepts at RP anyway. And it wasn’t known that he possessed such power.

  The commodore wasn’t supposed to give himself a specific assignment, nor did his flagship-crew have any assignments other than to coordinate incoming reports and respond to the commodore. Mallory, though, had something foggily in mind for himself—nothing sharp-definite, but something cloudily nucleating.

  He began by touching base again with Esther d'Illyria, this time in person in Paris. Esther’s biography was as intriguing as her svelte high-Jewish personality. She had married and divorced an American army officer, and had subsequently married a rich old bastard, the Vicomte d'Illyria. Her new husband had humored her whim of becoming an international cosmetician; he’d thereafter died on medical schedule at eighty-three, fully testate (as to his will, that is), permitting wealthy Esther to capitalize Cosmétiques d'Illyria unbeatably. She had a worldwide stranglehold on everything from economy stuff at twenty-five dollars an ounce on up indefinitely; her best and most expensive stuff was labeled, not simply “d'Illyria,” but “Esther d'Illyria,” so that she could personally claim an élite (and this élite could claim her). A necessary consequence was her potential of entree into select social groups, and a few of them tested her, and her cool interpersonal deftness won them: the word spread, and there were no more testings, merely more invitations than she could accept, so that securing her presence became a hostess-coup. Among other talents, Esther owned and practiced the graces of sympathetic listening, known total confidentiality, and practical selectiveness as to occasional para-mom's. A few perceptive people suspected that she might sometimes pass a confidence or two to Commodore Rourke Mallory—but because Mallory enjoyed an equal reputation for discretion, nobody really minded, not even a couple of prime ministers. When in fact Esther did pass a confidence on to Mallory, she allowed herself to do so knowing that Mallory was totally confidential even as to his RP colleagues. Mallory might, she knew, use her information to put RP on to things; but never would Mallory divulge her information when it was confidential.

  On the day after adjournment of the Blois conclave, Esther and Rourke perambulated pleasantly in the Parc de Vincennes. (Down Loire to Atlantic, up Atlantic to Seine, and up Seine to Paris is fast on skimmer-drive.) Dark slender Esther (who walnutted her hair) and silver slender Rourke had embraced the new senility-arrest technique coincidentally at about the same time, in 1979, when those in the know and the bucks could be sure that it was reliable; it wasn’t of course perfect, there would be subsequent aging at the slowed rate of one year in ten. As a result, eighty-seven-year-old Rourke Mallory was a physical late-sixtyish, looking and feeling somewhat younger because of (hive and physical conditioning; while seventy-nine-year-old Esther d'Illyria was a physical late-fiftyish, looking and feeling much younger because of drive and physical conditioning and her own cosmetic techniques. Thus both of them were still reasonably vital, but their old sexualitiy and their always-availability was an accustomed thing which was comfortably there if wanted but not intrusive on more valuable things like eating peanuts and trading reminiscences and high political gossip and strolling five miles or so in the pare and tossing peanuts to bears h
ere and swans there and very often just being Silently together as infinitely deep friends.

  Of course they bedded together that night, using assumed names (both of them had all kinds of identification cards for concierges) in a small friendly Vincennes hotel that she knew—it would be three ways better, they agreed, than bedding in her house, although she apologized for failing to entertain Rourke at home. Although Amber and Red Conditions precluded sexual activity among RP members, each RP had dispensation outside RP if he or she could inwardly justify that it was desirable for RP purposes and not merely for pleasure. Being Esther’s friend, Rourke reminded her of this regulation before they registered; and she observed with a contented smile, “To be free with you, my old friend, I will satisfy even your self-justification.”