by Ian Wallace
Clutching Randolph’s arm. Esther urgent-appealed, “For God’s sake, get me to a john, it’s the curse—” And when dull-startled he stared down at her: “I’m starting to menstruate?’ He gulped in a non-Harvard accent, “Oh Jesus!” and he whipped her out of the room, ignoring the door marked head: in his mind, a ladies’ john was a necessity.
I turned to Dio.
He was staring at the door marked private. His mind said: “Follow me in, Lilith. Halloran is in there, he won’t see us, but as to Kali, I don’t quite know.” And he stared at the door, I had now a potent pro-sense that doors were forever challenges to Diodoro....
Striding to the door, he opened it and barged through, leaving it open.
I followed him in and closed it and leaned back against it, a little faint and most heartsick, watching what then was happening to Burk Halloran.
26.
The room was little more than a closet, maybe eight feet deep by six wide at the door wall; and this windowless room was a sanctuary illumined only by the two wavering candles on the altar against the far wall. Between the candles, centered on the altar were three brazen symbols candlelight-iridescent: in the middle, a cross; at left, an inverted cross with a circle atop it, like a female symbol—a distorted ankh; at right, and this hardened the lump in my throat, a star of David.
Before these symbols at the altar, bare to the waist with his forehead down on the altar and his arm-outspread hands clutching the ends of the altar, knelt mid-thirtyish Burk Halloran; there was no doubt of his identity even from behind. He was trembling, occasionally shuddering; and the soles of his bare feet were little more than a yard in front of me.
My mind was filled with the Burk-significance of this shrine: it was where he came to wrestle with himself when what he had rejected in himself was coming too powerfully back into him; and we were privileged or damned to be watching him at the climactic instant when what he had rejected was threatening to overwhelm him....
He made no sound, but his shuddering was mighty, and his mind groaned out an ultimate command: “To Hell with you. TO HELL WITH YOU, FREE ME----"
He collapsed, rolling onto his back with his feet a foot away from me, and lay shuddering, and quieted. His face and trance-unclosed eyes confirmed his figure and hair and mind: it was Burk. I started toward him to minister to him, but the Dio-mind restrained me; and I cowered back, watching a hideousness.
Out of the Burk-head issued a vapor; and gradually it took form as a separate human figure, at first transparent, then translucent—and hung there, not solidly corporeal. It was a phantom twin of Burk Halloran; it sat naked beside him almost but not quite on the floor, cross-legged, head bowed, eyes closed. The face was totally Burk’s, pending a view of the eyes; the flaming hair was Burk’s; the torso and legs and feet were Burk-male; but the cross-legged posture revealed a virginal vulva where a phallus ought to have sprouted....
All the little closet-cabin was pervaded with vicious evil. I will not say that I saw a shadow-figure behind the translucent dopplegänger of Burk, but something lurked, something was powering this
was that Dio hovering above the
dopplegänger? Quickly I glanced right: no, Dio stood there, solidly watching; nevertheless, above Burk’s phantom double now hovered a glare-eyed ghost of Dio that was murderously ferocious
and the Dio-ghost fused with the Burk-double
which
instantly became solidly corporeal, only smallened now in stature, much smaller than inert Burk lying beside him The head came up. The eyes came open; they were Burk Halloran blue. And the mind came hideously into my mind and into Dio’s: Good, I exist. Use me, Master. . . .
The Halloran-double vanished; the pervasive miasma of evil dissipated.
Dio’s voice: “Lilith—see to Burk Halloran.”
There Burk lay. I ran to him and knelt concerned beside him. The large finger of my right hand touched his left cheek. He stirred, he smiled sleepily....
Dio said harsh: “He’s alive, thank God, he’ll come around, he’ll be Rourke Mallory and create the fleet, and the Rourke-aspect of me exists as it was when last night it came into me. Okay; very good; we’ve met the first Kali-rendezvous, we’ve seen him bom, we know that he is primarily the bad from Rourke and secondarily the bad from me, and we know for sure who his master is. Lil—Lil, no chance; Burk mustn’t awaken to us, you know that. Stand up, Lil: there’s a lot of work to do. We have to confront mature Kali now at the second rendezvous: the cave at Mont Veillac, in two thousand two. And that takes me off the time-paradox hook: whatever happens, we won’t be annihilating all the reality of RP1”
Without transition, again Dio and I sat with our backs against a cave wall in refrigerating darkness, holding hands lightly, balancing our breathing....
He mentated: “Take it easy, Lil, we’re here again, not still. It’s two thousand two now, not nineteen fifty-two; the tube entrance isn’t blocked, now, but nobody will interrupt us, I can tell. I don’t know what made me imagine that there was to be only a single rendezvous; two were logical —one in nineteen fifty-two aboard the Star, to witness Kali’s birth; another here in the Mont Veillac cave in June two thousand two, because Kali is poised here-now to trigger Earth’s destruction—and he doesn’t want to do it.”
Ducking silliness like “How do you know he’s here?” I mind-queried, “Why doesn’t he want to do it?”
“The dark side of Burk was enslaved to its impulses; once free of Burk, it was vulnerable to heavier evil. The dark side of me was enslaved to its impulses; once free of me, it was vulnerable to heavier evil. His dark side and my dark side fused in nineteen fifty-two, just as surely as Rourke and I freed of darkness have fused in two thousand two. The dark fusion named Kali was instantly mastered for dark purposes by the greatest of darknesses. But latent in Kali is a memory of something more long-range meaningful in Burk and in me; and in this semifinal instant Kali is obliquely crying to Rourke and me for rescue from whatever is compelling him. That’s my analysis, Lilith; do you have any corrections to offer?”
My whole sense of his mentation was that the detective-inspector was at the threshold of solving his enigma, that confirmation would be soul-perilous, that because of the stakes he didn’t care. Fiercely I thought at him: “No corrections, Dio, Rourke; what you have to do is what I have to do.”
Instantly the little cell was flooded with ultraviolet light. On the far wall, the purple-haired violet-eyed predatory bird flared malevolent....
Dio was on his feet, advancing on the bird, I immediately behind him. Dio outstretched his right arm slightly upward, index-finger stiff-extended; and the finger punched the violet eye of the sky-diving predator.
Demonic mind-laughter followed by a chortling mind-voice: Bad guess, Dio-Rourke! Did you really think the bird’s-eye masked a spring which would open the wall? No chance; the wall is solid rock, I’m far on the other side of it.
You’ll have to teleport yourself to me. Can you teleport yourself?
Dio-Rourke’s mind-reply shocked me, but I guess it relieved me too. No more so than Rourke or Dio ever could. Come off it, Kali, we’ve been on to you since before we spaced the fleet: you’ve monitored both of us all the way; when we wanted teleportation or teletemportation, you brought it off for us; when we needed telepathy, you gave it to us just as you are doing now. It’s a fascinating reverse-chess game, Kali: instead of weaving in upon us, you’ve sucked us into weaving our way to you, and you plan to win if we checkmate you. Okay, right now you’re in check, ifs your move: are you going to sit there in check forever—or are you going to teleport us in?
We dissolved through the cave wall....
The background was another cavern cell brilliantly illumined, eye-stuffed with electronic apparatus and white-uniformed technicians, ear-filled with electronic hum. Against a far wall was a world map in polar projection, near whose center Alaska red-light-vibrated.
The foreground was flame-topped Kali, fully man-dressed in casuals
, lounging in a wickerwork armchair with one leg on a wickerwork hamper while the other hung lazily swinging over the far arm. His right side was toward us, his face was turned away from us toward the works within.
We studied the frightening scene, comprehending what it threatened. Dio and I now were in perfect. intercommunication, presumably as the cream of Kali’s jest. Kali ignored us, until Dio’s mind cold-challenged him: Second rendezvous, Kali. Final rendezvous.
Most deliberately the head swiveled around to us, the blue eyes penetrated us. There was no decay in this face: it was young Burk Halloran sublimated into ultimate charisma. The mind came compellingly into our minds: Dio-Rourke, l begged you to unify me, but the unity is on my terms: there is never any other outcome to a compromise with me.
He was smiling now, quite winningly, and his eyes were on me. Dio-Rourke can wait while I captivate you again, Lilith, knowing you more intimately than Burk ever knew you. . . .
Forgive me, Ben, I have to be sexually explicit about this if it is to have any meaning at all. His Burk-eyes began a leisurely inspection of all my body-skin; not merely did his eyes undress me, they husked me at leisure: fastened on my breasts, which grew restless; concentrated on my nipples, which repugnantly erected; inspected my navel, and my groin glowed. By now I was believing, in his case, the ancient idea that when we see, rays of self come out of our eyes and prowl the target: his eye-rays permeated, my under-the-clothes bare skin could feel their crawling-arousing tip-touch. They released my belly, dropped to my feet, sensuously caressed the crevices between my toes and the soles of my feet, liana-twined up ankles and calves and thighs: I was helplessly ready, past fighting. Flametop’s purring mental mock poisoned my mind: Lilith . . . Ishtar . . . My mind was a peony garden in moonlight, but the peonies stank and the moon was ghastly and his eye-rays
penetrated target, charming wellsprings out of target, inhaling and tasting and probing target; orgasm began, and it was going to be obscenely sublime
but I prayed to God
and my
eyes-and-mind comprehended in anomalous totality the male torso and the unseen virginal vulva, which was nonfunctional-dry: it was all mockery; and orgasm subsided before it exploded, leaving me a self-contained jangle of nerve endings. Can counter-cruelty in self-defense be forgiven? I required my eyes to hold focus on his untenanted crotch and my mouth to smile twistedly and my mind to formulate: If you were clearly male or clearly female, or even both clearly, perhaps I would have surrendered. But you are neither, and not both, and therefore nothing that I want to surrender sexually to. And I won’t mother you, because you are powerfully evil.
I felt the eye-rays relax; then Kali gibed, almost petulantly: Are you therefore some kind of sexual traditionalist, to require totally one or totally the other?
But now I was beginning to be firm again. Nothing under the sun had ever owned an anatomy like Kali’s anatomy; and nothing good beyond the sun would so have assaulted me; and therefore, Kali was evil.
Dio’s icy mind said: You lost with her, Kali. Now try me.
With cosmic deliberation, Flametop turned his attention to Dio, captured the eyes of Dio.
Attack-weakened, I was sucked into Dio’s Kali-experiencing, I became Dio, I became Man who was a male/female blend of Rourke and Dio and Esther and me....
In the long process, I kept becoming Flametop and rejecting Flametop and losing Flametop and dying.
I was Australopithecus in jungles perfecting biological tools and venturing passional murder.
I was Pithecanthropus in jungles wit-and-strength-defeat-ing Australopithecus and experimenting with stone tools and ritualizing murder.
I was Heidelberg in forests out maneuvering Pithecanthropus and perfecting stone tools and snatching fire from lightning.
I was Neanderthal in forests and savannahs outwitting Heidelberg and proliferating more elaborate stone tools and stumbling upon the craft of driving wild herds over cliffs for weeks of rich, ripening meat.
I was Cro-Magnon at the feet of blue-frigid ice walls enslaving and running circles around dull-witted Neanderthal while elaborating totemism and ritual art and engraving on bones the beginnings of symbolical sign-communication and records and inventing new residential architecture with sticks and skins.
I was entirely human Man, still flirting with glaciers, in my so-called primitivism which was an early sophistication standing on the shoulders of all who preceded me, possibly a shade brighter than even brilliant Cro-Magnon, possibly the same species as Cro-Magnon with the same intelligence range: moving on into ultrafine band-technologies and missile-hurling weapons, hunting selectively while propitiating the totem-ancestor of the animal I hunted, finding new kinds of food and inventing agriculture, elaborating my languages (growth-inherited from Australopithecus and prehuman forebears) with more and more abstract words, evolving my sign records into pictograms, deriving from my new agriculture the ideas of permanent clan-settlement and interclan warfare and clan*identity-and-pride, and somewhat inconsistently elaborating my concept of individuality; raising my animistic thinking to the abstraction level of spirits and demons and my ritualizations into propitiatory worship and launching upon the courageous-imaginative attempt to control uncontrollable nature that is called magic.
Kali was in each of my evolving identities. He was my flame whenever I was coming in with my newness.
Whenever I had established my newness, my flame burned too hot, and I rejected it Then my rejected flame became Kali: ensnaring Australopithecus in his passions until they fatally weakened him, immersing Heidelberg in his rituals until they fatally weakened him, pushing Neanderthal into more and bigger herd-slaughters until the scarcening of the herds fatally weakened him, enthralling Cro-Magnon and other full humans into their fatally weakening propitiatory complications. . . . Reject Kali, like a lire compulsively burning out all its forest-food, gleefully compelled each final self-destructive process until, at the end of it, with dismay Kali comprehended that he would die with the final destruction. Whereupon he joined the successor ...
I was the Sumerians coming in to enslave more-primitive neolithic peoples in hot river-lush Mesopotamia and raising all previous ideas and achievements to the levels of gods, priestly hierarchies, pictography and then cuneiform writing, city-states, city walls, high architecture in stone and artificial materials like clay bricks culminating in temples, gracious human manners and living styles, canals for irrigation and transportation and flood control; high art for the gods and for its own sake in clay, stone, gold, copper, tin; weapons in copper and bronze; sailing ships; intercity hegemonies under kings. And I was their Hittite, Semitic, and Babylonian successors and improvers or debasers.
Kali was my flame when I was coming into my newness. When I had established my newness, I rejected my too-hot flame. Then Reject Kali drove warlord after warlord forward until the creativity of the cities was war-destroyed and each city was cowering in defensive weakness for easy overrunning by the Kali-powered outside-invader. And this continued until with dismay Kali comprehended that he would die with the final destruction. Whereupon he joined the successor....
I was the Egyptian pharaohs and priest-nobles, particularly in the fourth, twelfth, eighteenth, and nineteenth dynasties, adapting almost all those Sumerian ideas and making them my own and moving far beyond them, substituting prescience for magic, paper for clay, light two-wheeled chariots for heavy four-wheeled carts, pyramid tombs for vault tombs (and then vault tombs again, but richer), people-inviting ground-level temples for aloft-aloof ziggurat-temples, higher education for lore teaching, highways for canals, tight-knit empire under nomarchs for loose intercity hegemonies; and, in place of fatalism and ultimate disaster, light and hope and resurrection under a transcendent God of gods.
In each of these dynasties, Kali was my flame when I was coming into my newness. When I had established my newness, I rejected my too-hot flame and settled down to consolidate my power in serenity. But each time, Kali maneuvered me int
o squatting as a self-satisfied totalitarian nabob while inflaming mob passions against my oppression. Each time, I fell into desuetude, to be toppled by internal insurrection or external invasion. But ultimately Kali comprehended that his manipulation of Egypt and his own vitality were about to die with Egypt. Whereupon he joined the successors....
By then the massiveness of my civilizational maturity had reached high plateau; and in many contemporaneous and subsequent civilizations I proliferated into many diversified trends which played counterpoint with each other. I was the evolution of mythopoeic prescience into philosophy and science: nature-philosophy from Thales through Heraclitus and Democritus; idea-philosophy from Parmenides through Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle; mathematical and logical method from Pythagoras through Plato, Aristotle, Euclid; an accompanying diversification of other sciences and philosophies low and high, semiculminating in the theoretical-empirical structures of Copernicus, Galileo, Brahe, Kepler, Newton, Maxwell, Poincare, Rutherford, Einstein, Russell, Whitehead, Eddington, and numerous contemporaries and successors; religious evolution from earth-mothers and ser-pent-gods-and-goddesses and storm-gods and bull-gods and sun-gods into I AM THAT I AM and then the Loving Heavenly Father and then the Son Personifying the Loving Heavenly Father, with subsequent amalgams of neo-Platonistic theism and Aristotelean deism and theocratic Puritanism and scientific naturalism, and with devoutly religious counter-attitudes of universal pantheism and agnosticism and atheism; the blessed sunlight of one artistic renaissance after another in era after era, with accompanying humanism to earth-leaven religion’s otherworldly austerity; following dynasty after dynasty and bureaucratic regime after regime of rule-by-whim, the enlightened concept of the Reign of Law mothering Representative Democracy....