The World Asunder

by Ian Wallace

  With respect to each of these my Hellenic-Western trends, Kali was my flame when I was coming in with my newness; and each time, never really learning, I rejected him when I found him too hot for my established serenity. And he operated with vicious glee as before. Nature-philosophy he vitiated by focusing on the Heraclitean emphasis on flux while suppressing the Heraclitean modification of eternal constancies. Idea-philosophy he perverted by converting changeless categories into everything and thing-flux into nothing. Mathematics he ruined by erecting the notion that whatever was mathematically proved was eternal verity while all else was illusion. Religion he made so involute-dogmentarian that it was counterattacked by religious relativity and ended by being laughed off. Art he polished off easily by convincing most critics that the artist is the sole judge of whether his art is art, with the result that the rhyming of “art” and “fart” often proved meaningful. As for Representative Democracy, the inflamed ambitions of the elected representatives interworked with the inflamed passions of the people until chaos allowed Kali to erect paranoid tyranny-cruelties like those of Hitler or Stalin or oligarchically unbendable cold-core social structurings like those of Mao and the U.S.S.R. Praesidium, or appetitive and undefeatable one-focus gigantisms like supercorporations. When manfully I tried to stitch it all together with devices like the League of Nations and the United Nations, Kali undermined the League with cowardice until it disintegrated, whereafter he utilized its own rules and principles to neutralize UN by the irresponsibility of its newly enfranchised underdeveloped nations. But as UN miserably and prolonged-ly died, and as therefore unilateral threats by great nuclear powers threatened to destroy Kali’s food, which was Man on Earth, in desperation he joined the successors. ...

  The Kali-control of the Dio-mind ground on, continuing to entail Esther and Rourke and me with Dio as Man; but if previously my image-laden experiencing had been by turns inspiringly noble and diabolically vicious, for some time (as in a decaying dream-series) my images had been merely oppressive pseudo-images of concept-fragments without visual form or color or any emotive coloration, but only drear. Compulsively the semi-images continued and proliferated, as though Kali was making us feed on ourselves as he had fed on himself.

  I was unable to free myself from a long thing about historical male-female relationships in the human species. Brute naked male had totally subjugated brute naked female, and when this had become ritual he was going into lethargy and his clan with him because Kali remorselessly compelled all his energies into eating what females brought him and then feeding on the females; but when Kali comprehended that his parasitized host the male would die with the clan, Kali joined the newcomers. Then flame-souled females instituted monogamous marriage, less for an equal sex-break than to destroy pluralistic manipulation by males and to gain some status as personalities; but once after innumerable generations the new regime was established in a well-balanced way, the females rejected Kali for serenity in the marriage bond, and the ultimate result was tolerable satisfaction entailing occasional bickering in the nineteenth-century double standard with its forms and proprieties of appearance. When again it seemed that males were growing irresponsible enough to imperil Kali along with his host-species, Kali joined the newcomers: flame-souled females introduced feminism and pressed for women’s rights until by our time in 1952 females practically controlled marriage and children and joint property and could work for inferior wages; whereupon females dismissed Kali and settled serenely into it, while males yielded at home and oppressed females at work and in politics. But the home-yielding of males to females was now so seriously oppressing male initiative that males were lethargically settling in to corporation bureaucracy and the committee method and the money-status system and the satisfaction of power-need by self-interested subordinate bootlicking; whereupon an alarmed Kali realized that the whole system might collapse of its own self-satisfaction, leaving him nothing to feed on. So he joined several groups of newcomers; and in 1952 there was arising a whole new generation of flame-souled females who would eventually call themselves Women’s Liberationists; and the new generation of babies, being the first generation in human history to grow up knowing that Man could destroy himself by inadvertently pushing a button, would go through a period of lethargy which would flame-flare in the sixties into open social-sexual-narcotic rebellion-retreat; and numerous intelligent young flame-souled blacks were to notice noisily and with increasingly frequent violence that blacks were still being kicked aside or eased over by the White Establishment now in the year preceding the hundredth anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation....

  I was shocked out of the prolonged nightmare by a Dio-précis, mental and gentle and commanding. Kali, you’re caught in a reverberating circuit. Your problems and our resulting problems all come when you are rejected-out of an otherwise whole personality that fears to keep you in; the rejector for a while wins serenity, but he ought to know by now that eventually you will destroy him.

  The Kali-image, grown noticeably pale, hard-stared at Dio—who continued implacably: And you ought to know by now that each of your capricious victories weakens your food supply, which is Man. And l think you are fearfully aware, Kali, that in two thousand two you are within a button push of achieving every parasites ultimate objective: final destruction of his host, which is suicide for the parasite. But you aren’t ready for suicide, are you, Kali? You like this hot life, creative or rebellious, n’est-ce pas? Unfortunately, there you are arrived at two thousand two, ready to push the button that will terminally destroy Earth AND THEREFORE YOURSELF—because you haven’t yet located another human-level race on any planet of any other star, have you, Kali?

  It seemed to me that the runt-sized Kali was shriveling; I began to feel him as even smaller than Dio—who now drove this at him: These are the large reasons why you have petitioned Rourke and me to unify you. Well, here we stand ready for that— but we dictate the terms. And we can dictate—because we know your small intimate personal reason for this game: you are weary of your master and finally nauseated by your own potent freakishness; you can be bargained into soul-subjection to us in order to win freedom from him. All right. Your move. Is it checkmate?

  The Kali-mind was losing suave; it felt now almost like an anxiety-ridden patient clutching the jacket lapels of his doctor, about to flood him with a commingling of self-justification and appeal. Look, this conversation is mortally dangerous; I am trying to jam the master with mental and electronic static, but he may penetrate....

  Dio: I too am mind-jamming. Get going with it, whatever it is.

  Kali: Look, you see, you and Burk freed me, you can’t comprehend the terror of total freedom; it is wanting everything without any power, without any ground for the uncertain feet. One came to me and corporealized me, and now through that one I have power for any action that I can think of in space or time or soul; and that is almost as terrible....

  Sure of myself, calmly now I interjected: So give him his due, Dio, he has done a great deal with his power: for example, he has turned a hundred million people from secularity to religious inwardness, he has granted a hundred million wishes. Why should you and I complain if the religious inwardness is self-centeredly shallow, or if he amuses himself by weaving bad practical jokes into his wish-granting? The big thing is, he has conquered time, and he is about to consummate his conquest of Earth by destroying Earth. Dio, don’t you agree? Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that threadeth out the com. . ..

  Of course I had precipitated soul-crisis. Kali was quivering, paranoid-fearful—which meant attack-ready or something else, there is never any sure telling. He brought himself under control, though; and modulating his mentation as though he had lowered his voice, Kali delivered the following upsetting response : Dio-Rourke, Lilith, you are making one small mistake: you are thinking of me as The Enemy, but in fact I am only his high lieutenant in this era. And I am weary of this lieutenancy, it is a compulsive-wild servitude, there is no future in it except ultimate cos
mic frustration and soul-killing boredom. I persuaded the master, if I may personify him, that it would be amusing to bring Mallory and Horse back to me, using a complicated game of indirection, and finally to capture both of them for the master's pleasures; but my private purpose was different; and this confession is soul-perilous, because we can’t count on the effectiveness of our mind-jamming. Dio-Rourke, I propose this deal: take me back into you, inter-unify the three of us. I exact no price other than your tolerance of me again within you; I will even sacrifice my conscious identity.

  Dio-Rourke cold-demanded: And my incentive?

  It is double. You will be Kali in addition to being yourselves, you can pose as Kali and direct his forces and resources. And you will have within you the powers of Kali, to deploy at your own will.

  I burst in: But the powers of Kali are evill Kali, still quietly: Not so, Lilith. They are impersonal powers of the cosmos, usable equally for good or for evil: whether they are good or evil depends on the motives of the deployer. Dio-Rourke could not use them for anything but good.

  Dio-Rourke, implacable: Yet I know without question that I will have to pay a price. Kali, what is the price?

  Kali, almost humble: I gain nothing personally from your payment of this price. It is only that as soon as the master learns how he has been euchred, he will be hot on our soul-tail. You can hold him at bay with the powers that I bring you, and you can win; but you can also lose—it will be a question of your continual alert wit, with me unable to help intelligently because I will be forever subconscious within you.

  Delay. Then Dio-Rourke: There must be a catch to this» But I don’t seem to be finding it— Kali, nearly mind-inaudible: I choose to be totally honest. The catch is, Dio and Rourke, that I was in each of you once, I practically ruined both of you, I could ruin you again. Even if I didn’t want to ruin you, I could ruin you again.

  Dio-Rourke: Do you want to ruin me?

  Kali: Oh, God, no.

  Dio-Rourke: Then come back with us.

  I, mind-screaming: No, Dio! No, Rourke! Don’t trust him! NO—

  I'm not sure what I then saw, not sure at all. It might have been Kali leaping upon Dio, arm-and-leg-clutching Dio. There may have been a struggle, I’m not sure.

  Perhaps, at the terminus, Dio momentarily became transparent, then dissolved into Kali—maybe.

  Kali became standing red granite. Beyond, unnoticing technicians continued busying themselves with humming technology.

  I stood numb, contemplating final shipwreck. Only Kali, now: no Dio—and therefore, no Rourke—and consequently, no future whatsoever, unless planetary atomisation could be called a future.

  I hard-closed my eyes and inwardly screamed a prayer: Let it all be a nightmare, return me to nineteen fifty-two, save Earth, save Man.... I waited, prayerful, holding faith. But there was no sense of teletemportative queasiness, no through-the-window sounds of Manhattan traffic....

  Only the soft contralto-baritone of Kali addressing his people in the cavern: “Stay with it, good friends, but do not activate, I have meanwhile-errands elsewhere; await my message, be it a week or a month; I will return.”

  My shoulders went up and down in a slow shrug. Not all prayers are answered: He had let us have Egyptian and Babylonian and Roman and Islamic and Nazi captivities, to name a few; He had watched us through pogroms, including gas chambers; He had His inscrutable ways; blessed be He.

  Kali was watching me when I opened eyes; and his blue eyes were Burk’s, but I resisted their compulsion. The machines and technicians had disappeared: Kali’s backdrop was the predatory-bird mural ultraviolet-flooded from no evident source; in this light, the Kali-hair was purple. At first I thought his eyes were sardonic; then, an instant before the transition, they seemed thoughtful.

  Part Eight

  FRAGMENTATION

  OF EARTH

  27.

  My next memory is Randolph pacing near the door of the ladies’ guest head; Kali must have spirited me to the 1952 yacht—and he wore now the seeming of Dio, which made me hopeful until I revived enough to distrust Dio’s voice called cheerily, “Hey, Esther, what’s holding us up7” She emerged prim, stood to one side while Kali-Dio pumped Randolph’s hand and thanked him effusively and pled a luncheon date, suffered her arm to be clasped by Kali-Dio— who, while clasping mine also led us ashore—and then, once in an otherwise untenanted copse behind the chapel on the chateau lawn at Blois, threw back her head and laughed like a female satyr.

  Unhappily I couldn’t laugh with her. Kali-Dio, watching her, allowed his Kali-appearance to reclaim him. When her laughter had decayed into an occasional chuckle-blurp, he ordered in the Kali-voice, “Open your eyes, Esther. I mean, all the way.”

  She got a laughter-remnant stifled and looked at him. She frowned at him. Up went her eyebrows, and her hands flew to her mouth.

  He waited.

  She, so cold that I could feel it: "He lost, then. I could wish for a different winner. Where is his body?”

  “I’ve sent it indefinitely into the past; it will be rotted out long before past archaeologists could have found it His mind I have kept, along with Rourke’s. I am all of Dio and Rourke that you will ever know in this world. And I want you, Esther. I have given up on Lilith: she is intransigent”

  Her hands hung by her thighs, now, as she stood in the simple dignity of a great lady delivering an honor or a reproof. “I too am intransigent Kali. If Dio and Rourke are

  in you, they are tainted by their new environment; and I prefer to remember their worth.”

  He shrugged, and his smile was twisted. “Nevertheless they are mine, and I am entitled to wear the body of either—”

  Both of us women missed heartbeats as the Kali-image dissolved away into flame-topped Burk Halloran: the strong-whimsical blue-eyed midthirtyish face that Burk and Kali shared, atop the lithe tall flexible body of Burk-Rourke. He clasped our waists, and we rose out of 1952 as though we were twin inert Eurydice-victims being rescued aloft by a Hellish Hermes.

  What immediately followed required astonishingly few hours, but hundreds of pages would be required for a semifull account. I will summarize with merciless crisp, the more mercilessly crisp since I don’t understand much of it

  28.

  In the commodore’s cabin aboard the Ishtar In 2002 space —accompanied by Vanderkilt and Esther and me, all standing ironically beside the commodore’s body and a small bronze wall-plate: rourke mallory, 1915-2002-1952, commodore 1952-2002—Guru Kali in the guise of 1952-young Rourke hit the trivideo-assembled captains with the challenge which had reduced Vanderkilt to subjection: “Inspect me closely; do you know me?” After study, Zeno drawled, “I would have said Kali, but we’re seeing you head to foot; why are you taller than those women?” Chloris blurted, “Zeno, not he’s Rourke, young again! Rourke, but you were dead—tell us what!”

  While Esther strained in anguish and I fought vainly the Kali-spell which kept me from telling the truth, young Kali-Rourke grinned as he surveyed Rourke’s elderly corpse, then dropped the grin and replied soberly, “To shorten it for now, it went like this. When I died, my mind entered Dio Horse, and together we confronted Kali and defeated him, but Dio was lost in the struggle while I was revived in youth—if thirty-seven is youth. It is a great mystery coupled with an enormous loss to all of us, but there it is. But we have a lot to do, and the detailed story must wait. Are all of you ready for any imaginable kind of action?”

  That was when I witnessed something new for this fleet: they were all on their feet, yelling for Rourke; he had risen rejuvenated from the dead, victor over Satan, ready to lead them through another fifty years; the loss of Dio to them was a small price, they’d hardly known Dio. I was sickened, knowing that the seeming of Rourke was Satan, or his high lieutenant, about to lead us all into darkness; but I choked on my unvoiced protests while the Rourke-face stayed grave and the Kali-Rourke double charisma warmly flooded them and Dio was nowhere.

  No mind-emanation could I
catch from Kali: he had opaqued his mind to me and presumably also to Esther. I caught her inward lament: Why does he keep us here? why doesn’t he do away with us? I mind-whispered back: Jews know about crosses, Jesus was a nice Jewish boy. Maybe it is for the look of things; maybe it is Kali's dirty sense of humor; maybe God wants us to see this whatever the pain. Hold tight, Esther. With closed eyes, she mind-replied: f am holding. Why had he left us with our telepathy?

  Gradually my attention returned to the astonishing plan that Kali-Rourke was opening up to the captains. “We have conquered Kali,” he told them, “but the evil which powered and sustained Kali is forever loose in the world, and the REM Device exists with no defense against it The REM Treaty will be signed, but there is no trust. If we in RP now have one duty above all others—and we do—it is to find and construct the Ultimate Anti-REM.

  “Toward this end, I want to fly an old notion of mine and see who salutes it. I’ve repeatedly dismissed this recurring fancy; but recently I’ve been giving it serious thought, and it is beginning to have the look of merit like the ugly old hag to the trapper after months in the wilderness. While you listen to it, backburner the judgment that it is impossible fantasy, and criticize its values and demerits assuming that it might be possible.

  "Captains, this is such an Earth-portentous matter that I require to discuss it before the entire fleet, all members of all crews, and obtain a weighted vote. Please activite two-way intercom among all crew members of every ship.”

  Long since, a seated Kali-Rourke had completed his presentation to the crews; and now he leaned back in his swivel chair, soberly listening to the babel of crew-discussions aboard eighty-nine ships. I was smashing my brain searching for the diabolically concealed catch: the notion, although technologically impossible even in 2002, seemed an enormous-energy possibility having persuasive merit despite its dismaying intercultural and psychosocial dangers; but coming from Kali...