The World Asunder

by Ian Wallace

  We talked only when necessary; but under the circumstances, this became necessary every so often just for its own sake. Since we had settled into precautionary quiet after the rockfall, there had been only a few such occasions, and usually a few meaningless words had done the job. I said, “Think Raoul will get us out in time?” and he said, “I wouldn’t be foolish enough to doubt it.” Or, much later, he said, “Have you read any good books lately?” and I said, “What’s a book?” Like that.

  When I began to notice the air staleness, naturally I began to have a thought or two about death by suffocation; it alarmed me a little, so I tried a semantic correction and considered death by indiscernible seepage of vitality, coupled with the traditional Hebrew notion of blessed eternal sleep (the resurrection idea was too exciting for this survival-situation, and I figured I’d be resurrected if I’d be resurrected, and if not, not). Finding the death-tranquillity idea rather serene and even tranquillizing, I allowed myself to muse on it for a while, until I caught myself drowsing off; that was too tranquil, and I roused myself a little by asking, “Dio—if we die here, how’s that for you?”

  He, after a pause: “I would feel frustrated.”

  I allowed myself a brief blurt-giggle. After a moment, he said solemnly, “Ha.”

  It crossed my mind that maybe we should exchange dying sentiments, we might not have another chance. I composed mine and stated them: “I want you to know that I find you likable and exciting and a very, very good friend.”

  After several seconds, he responded in an odd voice, “No shit?”

  I giggled again, quite content His hand gripped mine hard for the first time in maybe two hours, and he lifted my hand to his lips and kissed the palm of it.

  “Cut it out,” I told him taut, “before I climb you and murder both of us.”

  His response was to kiss the back of my hand with surprising tenderness. I brought his to my lips and kissed the back. We gripped hands hard a moment longer. Then his grip relaxed: “Ease off, pipe down, save breath.”

  Our hands, limply clasping, went down to the cave floor. I closed eyes and made myself relax, and did almost relax •—except that I felt a sneeze coming on. “Have to blow nose,” I whispered, and let go of him, and reached for my shoulder bag....

  He stud terse: “Blow quick and listen—this may be important.”

  I blew, arrested sneeze, put away handkerchief, grabbed his hand. “Talk.”

  “Remember the rope coil in my apartment after Kali stole Esther?”

  “Yes—”

  “Remember that you saw me make the end go up? Remember that Kali promised me his powers if I would unify him?”

  Careless of energy expenditure, I gripped his hand. “Shoot.”

  “Maybe that was an easy promise—or my own intuition. Maybe I have his powers already. Maybe you do, too. Maybe everybody does, latently.”

  My thrill was occult “Not known to be impossible. What?”

  “Let’s try.”

  "Okay. Why not in here? How?”

  “Dunno, maybe just intense concentration will do it Look —what if you concentrated on being with Burk while I concentrated on being with Esther?”

  I warned, “One minute of that kind of concentration would blow an hour of oxygen!”

  He said tight “I’m willing to shoot the moon. Are you?”

  And I was, by God! I said low, “Let’s do.”

  He said, agitated, “If it works, we part here, Lilith. Maybe now it’s each of us on his own.”

  That time comes for everybody, it had come for me when my parents died and had come repeatedly since. I murmured, “Bless you, Dio. I guess we’ll have to let go hands.”

  He said, “Bless you, Lilith.” He let go my hand.

  I let go his. I prayed.

  2002:

  Back in his chair with his fourth beer, Mallory got Lilith back-burnered by indulging in whimsical meditation about the diversified compulsions of sex in its romantic and sentimental secondaries and tertiaries, the flower-petals and more generally the landscapes and natural beauties which aesthetically cloaked the stamens and pistils of primacy.

  And this caused him to remember that what starts as primary romantic or frankly erotic arousal may, with fidelity and devoted mutual steering, become secondary to lifelong mutual friendship and indispensability—a sort of relationship which Mallory respected although he hadn’t found it and didn’t feel any particular need for it although sometimes he desperately wanted it.

  And that made him think of Lilith. He banished her again by reflecting upon the magnificent sublimations through which genius ignores and potently rechannels sexuality into mighty new horizons for art and science and civilization and humanity. Only, this Freudian interpretation could be shortsighted wrong; maybe sexual drive and genial sublimation both emerged from the same primordial fire—which would explain why so many geniuses had kinky sexual hangups: the power that flooded the creativity was overflowing and side-flooding the brain centers of sexual activation. . . .

  Inevitably this line of thought brought him back to Guru Kali. No doubt about it, Kali was a genius, to the degree that his genius drained his or her sexual potency....

  On the other hand, others deliciously embraced the stamen-pistil primacy as a value above all other values I For instance, how about that lieutenant Cassie Wozniak suggesting that she’d appreciate being selected by the commodore on an early Draft Board?

  For diversion, he mused that idea. He had a sometimes self-annoying habit of imagining things in the form of little stories: thus, if he wanted to imagine a seduction, he had first to imagine the buildup with all the two-person give-and-take; and if something wouldn’t work out in his buildup, he could never quite get to the seduction. (Of course, in the context of planning command-action, the habit had proved invaluable.) Luckily, the Draft Board situation was easy; he had nearly no problems with it because it was so comfortably regularized: that was its true beauty when RP needed release but was so intensely concerned with other action that its members couldn’t fool around with the intricacies of woo. And yet it didn’t entirely cut out the intrigue elements of surprise or disconcertment: for each green awaiting, which higher-ranking he or she would draft him or her? For each unchosen chooser, why had the one person he or she really desired tonight decided to go dark tonight? And even when a draft was consummated, the process of consummation was infinitely various and unpredictable. And meanwhile, all were good companions co-working a ship....

  Mallory now went mentally through the routine of announcing a Draft Board to be activated (in this case) immediately; and mentally he drafted Cassie. And now he found himself eagerly stimulated by the concept of Lilith—Cassie—willingly coming to his quarters. He closed his eyes tight, imagining all the corridors she would thread en route to his quarters.

  Caught up in the fantasy, he found himself almost praying: “Let there be total happiness in all this draft. Let everyone who wants someone get that one; let everyone who is got want to be got by that one. Let it be so, it is right”

  He opened his eyes.

  Somebody was here—only, not a she! The man sat on the floor with his back against a wall, he was dressed in midtwentieth-century hiking-style, his eyes were closed, he appeared to be in suspended animation....

  Only, now his eyes were opening. They were beady-black eyes, and the shape of the small man’s face suggested that he might have buck teeth behind those sheathing lips, and his face was coppery-swarthy. Really, the man was astonishingly ugly! Having surveyed the room, those eyes were looking speculatively at Mallory now; and after the eyes had inspected Mallory during perhaps five seconds, the lips moved to pronounce the following careful words in a harsh baritone which struck Mallory as a lethargic version of something potentially electric: “Whoever you are, thanks for getting me out of that cave. I take it you got out Miss Vogel also?”

  2002:

  In his little cabin aboard the Ishtar, lean thirty-fiveish Commander Jean Duva
l, at his diminutive desk-board, which folded down from the wall when needed, completed his radio summation to the person at the other end: “—so at this point, it seems that Mallory is just as mystified as anyone else; and I think you can continue to operate in confidence around him.”

  “Good,” radio-answered immediately a clear light almost-contralto baritone. “How is his mosaic virus progressing?”

  “I don’t know. He won’t mention it. He seems perfect.” “Don’t be downhearted, it will come; the timing is not exact. Do not forget what I keep telling you, Duval: keep in close touch with your inner light, and everything will come out as you and I both wish. Where is he now?”

  “I don’t know that either. But he let drop that he was going to a private sanctuary not very distant from here; Lieutenant Wozniak will be reporting in.”

  Pause; then: “Good again. I feel strongly that my private confrontation arrangements are rushing toward confirmation.”

  “Guru, I don’t quite understand—”

  Here Duval developed an extremely potent sense that someone was staring at the back of his neck; and prudently he inserted, “See you soon, chérie. Out.” Disconnecting, he reflected: either he was alone or he was not alone; in the second instance, whirling would be appropriate; in the first instance, who could know that he had whirled? He whirled in his swivel chair. Lieutenant Cassie Wozniak stood there, distinctively out of uniform in ordinary medium-blue pajamas and bare feet. The pajamas were male-type whirlon and not really ordinary on blonde blue-eyed semi-tall full-breasted medium-waisted full-hipped full-thighed Cassie.

  After half a minute of mutual paralysis, during which the commander decided that either she had heard or she had not heard and he must assume the latter for working purposes, he came to his feet in a combination of courtesy and electrification. And Cassie was just as electrified. He said carefully, “Lieutenant, I see that we are both surprised. May I have your evaluation?”

  She didn’t have much by way of eyebrows, and their blonde made them almost invisible, but they both went up a trifle, and her medium-small mouth went almost into a puzzled pout. “I was reading in bed, Commander, and evidently I dropped off, because here I am dreaming of you.” Her brows came down in a frown: “Only, my man-dreamings aren’t always this consecutive. And why am I standing, since I was in bed?”

  Duval, whose prior draftings of Cassie had been sadistically rewarding, was seeing a rare chance to combine pleasure and inquiry: had she heard part of his conversation with the guru? Had it meant anything to her? After he had primed her, she could be pumped. His voice went soft: “In fact, I wasn’t working very well, I kept thinking of you. I was imagining that I had called you on a Draft Board and you were coming to me.... And here you are. How?”

  No blonde Pole can hide a blush, and Cassie didn’t try: it started in her throat, which was exposed by the unbuttoned top two buttons, and suffused her face. But she held up her big chin and asserted, “I was imagining a Draft Board too— and dammit, I was feeling green—” That was too much even for a liberated woman of 2002; she stopped herself from adding “for you,” and her head went down, but a little smile was tugging at her lips.

  No experienced Frenchman can allow such a situation to grow awkward. “Sit down, ma belle,” said Duval, “while I provide us with cognac.” He was thinking pretty hard as he turned his back on her and knelt to open his miniature liquor cabinet; the consecutive action and tiny tensions of selecting two glasses and uncorking the partly used Bisquit bottle (vintage 1989, an excellent year) assured him that if this was a dream it was magnifique and he should treat it as no dream and assume the probability that she had come to him through the corridors and found his door unlocked ...

  When he stood and turned, holding open bottle in one hand and empty glasses in the other, Cassie sat on the edge of his bunk, leaning back, head far back, eyes closed, pajama shirt off, breasts up, nipples erect. Smitten with an acute case of satyriasis, Duval discarded one glass, tilted some brandy into the other, set down the bottle, and touched the glass to her lips. Obediently she sipped and immediately swallowed—Cassie was no connaisseuse. “Oh, boy!" she breathed, “is that a gas! Hit me again, Commander—you only need one hand for the cognac, do what you like with the other.”

  Between the personal arousal that she was experiencing and the Kali-information that she planned to pick up between bouts of arousal, she was seeing no conflict whatsoever. The same commodore who needed the Kali-information had originated the Draft Board.

  19.

  2002:

  Commodore Mallory was on his feet, and so was Detective-Inspector Horse. Mallory said evenly, although his excitement was high, “Now that we’ve exchanged names and incredulities, I think from what I know of you that you can handle a pumping in of some pretty hard stuff.”

  Horse answered cold, intent, “Skip what you know about me, that’s for later. Make it swift and pertinent, we have a damsel to rescue.”

  Mallory made it crisp: “You are now in the Chateau de Mont Veillac in the year 2002. That’s right, 2002.1 brought you here, but I really don’t know how or from where or from when, and it wasn’t you I wanted to bring here. Got that?”

  Horse: “All right, it’s wild, but in a cockeyed way it fits. You and I together teletemported me here—by accident”

  Mallory: “How’s that again?”

  Horse: “You brought me here from the Mont Veillac cave in 1952; I was trapped in there with Lilith Vogel. Right now—get her out the same way you got me out.”

  Mallory: “Oh, my God.”

  He dropped into his chair, while Dio stared down upon him. Mallory muttered, “I don’t know how, but Christ I’ll try—” He closed eyes and hand-covered them; Dio fiercely let him. Mallory wished with all his heart that Lilith would be here with him. Nothing. Abruptly his hand dropped away from his flared-open eyes: “Horse, I assure you—she isn’t there I”

  “She—isn’t?"

  Mallory, earnestly: “Believe me, I know this: she Isn’t And I don’t know how I know, and I don’t know where or when—”

  Suddenly Dio’s arms went limp and he exhaled a long rasping sigh. He told the ceiling: “Mallory, you know what I think? I think that you and I have been playing around with powers that we don’t understand. And I think they worked, by accident and in the wrong way, which may turn out to be right. So here I am, out of the cave, fifty years out; and apparently she’s out, you telepathed that, but God knows where or when you sent her. I see you have beer: got anything stronger?”

  “Sit down,” weakly invited Mallory, “and 111 bring you some Hennessey.”

  Staying with the Heineken, Mallory watched Horse viciously slug off an ounce of cognac, swallowing it immediately, sitting then with head down and eyes closed while he savored the heat in his belly rather than the flavor in his mouth; he opened eyes, sloshed the cognac, slugged off the other ounce, brooded shut-eyed over that glug; then open-eyed Horse jerk-outthrust the glass, asserting, ‘That was to bring me back to life; may I have another for gracious living?”

  Blinking, Mallory finished his beer and arose to take the Horse glass and refresh it, pouring one for himself also: what the devil, he had restorative tablets. His mental lethargy troubled him, he wondered whether the virus had moved higher than he knew.

  Then they sat contemplating each other. This time, Horse was handling the cognac exactly as Mallory did, seeming used to this membrane-absorption approach. And Horse abruptly broke ice: “Call me Dio and I’ll call you Rourke; I can screw a man by his first name just as easily as I can formally.”

  The Mallory smile broke open; and he decided that his brain wasn’t dead yet, only nonplussed. He said direct, “Dio, the convincing sense of my telepathy was that Lilith is in no trouble. I am sure that we have time to come to an understanding.”

  “That’s good, that’s very good. Tell me, Rourke—was your hair ever red?”

  Rourke froze: “It was.”

  “Flaming red?”
r />   “It was.”

  “I put it to you that a few days ago you backtimed into the year 1952, pulled off an Indian rope-trick, and snatched my wife Esther out of the 1952 world into your own.”

  Rourke started to deny it, but he saw something to say first “Dio, I know about you as a logical man, and I am amazed at your easy acceptance of my claim that I have pulled you into the year 2002.” '

  Dio, flat: “Call it a working assumption. On that assumption, did you or didn’t you?”

  Rourke, flat: “I did not.”

  Silence, while Dio studied his brandy.

  Rourke couldn’t resist it: “But I do know your Esther.” Having bead-eyed him a moment, Dio snapped, “The way you said it says she’s alive fifty years later, so fine: we’ll backburner that and stay with the main line. Provisionally I trust you that you weren’t Esther’s seducer, although I’ll give it to you that you look like one who could have done it; but my intuition says that you are not an enemy. And I think now it’s your turn to lead the discussion until I want to change that.”

  He sat staring fiercely at Rourke—who reflected with awkward amusement that he hadn’t during half a century been so badgered without flattening or fatally undermining the badger. In Dio he felt strength, probably hard-won strength; and a certain amount of balance was indicated by Dio’s handling of the upsetting time-transition and the ambiguity about the situation of Lilith, although how much balance remained to be seen; and the same evidence equally argued perceptiveness, although how much remained to be seen. It was even faintly and remotely possible that—Fisherman’s Cove—no, don’t rush that idea....