Heart to Heart

by Don Pendleton

  I told him I guessed it did not really matter, so long as everyone knew who we were talking about. Then he brought up the question of posterity. Would the greatgrandchildren of Screws All be able to follow the play of history if people were forever exchanging names as roles reversed? Probably not. So instead of exchanging names, it became the vogue to change names. Thus in the above scenario Kisses Ass topples Great One and becomes Great One II. He who was Great One becomes Vanquished.

  I said okay.

  He said, well, names still reflect history, you know, except now they have lost their directness and have no bearing on roles in current life. Family names especially simply reflect a line. A stock broker named Baker should be known as John the Broker, not John the Baker, a cook named Carpenter should be Carl the Cook, not Carl the Carpenter.

  I told the angel it was just too confusing and it was giving me a headache. Let's just forget the whole thing.

  He said, well, if I wished, but I really should not be called Ashton the Ford. He told me I have noble aspirations, and that in an earlier time those attributes could have led to a dukedom and I could have become known as Le Duc d'Malibu.

  Ever notice how current experience can intrude on a dream? I had been thinking earlier, just before the bout with Hai Tsu, that I was a "sunk duck." I told Valory, in the dream, "That could be fun. Then my friends could refer to me as the Sunk Duke."

  He chuckled and made some remark about everything being relative to everything else.

  I said, sure, but titles like that just confused the matter further, and he agreed with me. "Precisely the point I hoped to make," he said.

  It made no point whatever with me at the time, but I just let it pass.

  Valory said, "So you can see the problem we have on this side."

  I said, "Not really."

  So he said, "Then come and let me show you."

  We stepped into the elevator at Pointe House and Valory punched the down button. The cage stayed where it was but we began descending along the shaft. We emerged not on the beach but into a huge hollow beneath Pointe House. You couldn't call this thing a cave; it took up the whole interior of the promontory and maybe even extended beyond—I couldn't see the end of it, just tier after tier and row upon row of greatly sophisticated hi-tech equipment. Looked like a mammoth Mission Control center with consoles and monitors, each monitor displaying a different scene or view, and each console manned by a uniformed figure who seemed very intent on the activities in his monitor.

  I asked, "Are we launching Pointe House?"

  Valory just smiled and we kept moving along a row of

  consoles until I began to get the drift of this thing. It was like they were playing video tapes at those consoles, except I couldn't see any tape, just the array of controls at each console and the "movie" on the monitor.

  But these were not movies.

  Armies were clashing on those screens, men dying and women weeping in some strange overlay of scene upon scene in multiple superimpositions—like seeing an action while at the same time seeing all the fine ramifications of the action in the one view at the one time—occasional zoom-in close-ups of a frightened child or a dying man—but it was not all grim like that. There were other "movies" of happier scenes, triumphant scenes, birthings and birthday parties and graduations, wedding scenes, all that. There were even very boring studies of men and women at work and at play, of lovers and dentists and athletes and all the things that go to make a human world.

  I was beginning to understand.

  I said to Valory, "This is the story of mankind."

  Valory said to me, "Of all the mankinds. Past, present, and future of all the worlds. But not the story...the record."

  I asked, "How do you record the future?"

  He enigmatically explained, "The same as we record the present."

  I said, "But if it hasn't happened yet..."

  He said, "Who says it hasn't happened yet?"

  I said, "Well if it's the future..."

  He laughed and told me, "It is future there. But all is now here."

  I thought about that for a moment, then said, "The past is now?"

  "Sure."

  "Then what is immortality?"

  "Immortality is now."

  "I thought it was forever."

  "That too, Ashton. But forever is also now."

  I was getting my headache again. I asked Valory, "What the hell does this have to do with names and naming?"

  He replied, "To show you that there is no now."

  I said, "Aw come on! You just said..."

  He said, "All is process. The names record the process. See why we have such trouble with names? You are Ashton this time but you were Wolfgang another time and Eric still another, what is in the name Ashton, but an echo and an omen?"

  Then he brought me before the Eight Immortals, and they were the Magi—and before I awoke, they showed me miracles and taught me that death is but another name for life. Each is an echo; each is an omen.

  Chapter Ten: Nomenclature

  You may be asking what is the big deal over names and naming. I was asking myself the same question as I put on fresh clothing from the magic closet and went down to dinner. But I quickly forgot all that the moment I got downstairs, because downstairs presented me with another array of questions.

  Cocktails were being served in a lounge area just off the dining room. It was a large room and beautifully decorated with objets d'art and masterpieces to dignify any museum of fine art. Someone was playing beautifully on a concert grand in a corner of the room and several people were standing around it. Two nearly identical copies of Hai Tsu were moving about in quiet joy, attending to the needs of the moment. One of them greeted me with a Scotch on the rocks. I accepted it with the comment "How'd you know?"—but she just smiled sweetly and went on to dispense to other guests' particular tastes without inquiring first.

  I spotted Francesca in the group at the piano, so wandered on over remembering what she'd said earlier about a bite in her studio as she turned me down for dinner. All these folks were dressed in casual evening attire, no tuxes or ball gowns, but decidedly dressed up just a bit—Francesca quite a bit, in contrast to jeans and smock and bare feet. She wore a white sheath between knees and décolle- tage, high-heel pumps, sparkling earrings and necklace, hair upswept with flowers in it; looked downright edible.

  I told her that, and she responded with a cold gaze and an aloof manner as she inquired, "Does that mean you're hungry or horny?"

  I soberly replied, "Well, definitely not horny. Is this place heaven or hell? What's going on here?"

  She said, still a bit haughty, "Heaven and hell both are mere states of mind, Ashton. I take it that Hai Tsu attended you well."

  I said, "That's one way of putting it. How'd you know about that? Does she bathe and tell?"

  Francesca was thawing. Her eyes sparkled a bit as she replied, "Very little escapes me here."

  I sparkled back as I said, "Not even me."

  She said, "Especially you, love."

  Then she began introducing me to the others, given names only, and I remembered the dream on names and began tying attributes to the names given. On the male side there were John the Ascetic, Hilary the Fanatic, Pierre the Lunatic, and Karl the Magnificent; the females were Rosary the Devout and Catherine the Impudent. I was not introduced to the guy at the piano and could not see him very well behind the music stand although there was no music on it.

  John was a logician, Hilary a priest, Pierre a chemist, Karl an engineer, Rosary a nun, and Catherine a whore— or so she said.

  All seemed a trifle nutty, or perhaps just mysteriously shy. Whatever, they were good company and we were all laughing and talking together as we went in to dinner. A good-looking bunch for sure, all of them; prime of life, intelligent, witty. It turns out that they all live at Pointe House, and apparently have done so for quite some time.

  John the Ascetic posed a trick syllogism over appetizers: "Major premise
, all fire engines are red; minor premise, Russians are reds; therefore... ?"

  Pierre the Lunatic flared his eyes as he declared, "The major premise is flawed. Not all fire engines are red."

  "Used to be," insisted John. "So backdate the conclusion."

  Karl the Magnificent guffawed and decided, "Therefore all firemen are communists."

  "Excellent reasoning," congratulated Hilary the Fanatic.

  "Not all communists are firemen!" squealed Catherine the Impudent, for another conclusion.

  "Bravo!" said Hilary, applauding.

  But John frowned and said, "No, no; that won't do. You must reason from the major to the minor to produce the conclusion."

  Catherine screwed her face up and burst forth with another gleeful try: "All reds are great in bed!"

  "No, no," John protested. "You don't have the right—"

  "I like the way she does it," Hilary protested.

  'Try it on your noble divinities, then," John suggested. "Major, All is God; minor, God is Love; therefore...?"

  "All is love," said Hilary quickly.

  "Oh no, no no—you have to do it Catherine's way," John insisted.

  She said brightly, "God is great in bed?'

  "Jesus Christ!" said the priest.

  "Him, too?" the whore asked, hopeful.

  "I think I am going to throw up," said Rosary the Nun.

  See? This is the cast of characters at Pointe House. The piano player did not come in to dinner, so I presumed that he was one of the shadow people like Hai Tsu and her helpers.

  It was a most revealing dinner. We had escargot and artichokes, then vichyssoise and tough bread, later squab and mint jelly and something I was told was lamb fetus and fresh raw garden vegetables; after that sherbets and spumone and cannoli, then brandy and coffee—altogether a total debauchery of the taste buds and distender of intestinal boundaries. But the revelations came from the diners themselves. It was, as I said, a nutty bunch—but they were having fun, and I tumbled to the fact very quickly that these were brilliant personalities, one and all.

  The piano player came in after dessert. He had brandy and a cigar with us. I learned later that he never ate with the others, but he was the most brilliant of all. He held me spellbound for twenty minutes while discussing the nature of nature with the chemist and the engineer, all the while playing at syllogisms with the logician and naughty repartee with the whore.

  His name was Valentinius...or whatever. His friends just called him Val—and that was good enough for me too.

  But I suspected that he was really St. Germain. And I was beginning to understand Valory's problems with names.

  I doubt that I have ever had such a pleasant evening as that one at Pointe House. The conversations were both stimulating and enthralling and the range of interests was literally unbounded. We talked history and physics and art and politics, metaphysics and magic and human psychology, architecture and plumbing and ecology and geophysics, and on and on with one subject blending into another without pause or jumps—the theory of music drifting naturally into a discussion of I Ching, and that into Confucianism en route to cosmology and Indeterminancy, then back to Renaissance art and monarchy and classical philosophy and on and on.

  The scope of wisdom displayed was always superior and often astonishing. These people were dropping names like Hollywood agents and inside info like congressional aides; like, "No no, Beethoven understood perfectly well that..."

  “Of course the conflict with Robespierre was simply due to...”

  "He couldn't have possibly understood plate tectonics. Good lord, even Newton thought..."

  "Now Brahe, see...that one, see, would have made a fine court astrologer, but..."

  “Of course they were not mad! Was Dali mad when he...?”

  Not sophomoric either—no pedantic posturing or empty displays of learning—these people were dissecting the meat and potatoes of life, and each was a chef with a surgeon's scalpel.

  Later we gathered around the piano and sang while Val accompanied unobtrusively, after which he treated us to a solo concerto played as I had never heard it played before. Still later I watched breathlessly as Catherine danced and Rosary joined Val at the piano with a violin, followed by Karl with a comic Cossack interpretation of the Fire Dance, then Hilary and Francesca teamed up to show us what a waltz is really all about.

  Never had I been so entertained, never so impressed by spontaneous performances, never before drawn so subjectively into an appreciation of artful talent.

  And never so diverted from my own imperatives.

  I suddenly realized that it was midnight and still I had not advanced my own understanding of the situation by one iota. We were saying our good-nights and I was trying to get to Valentinius.

  But I did not find Valentinius and we did not say goodnight or anything else in private. Everyone just drifted away and I found myself suddenly alone with Francesca.

  She showed me a sympathetic smile, took my hand, and said to me, "Come along, my love, and I will show you what you need to know."

  Not tell me; show me.

  I'd been shown quite enough already, thanks. But I allowed the beautiful lady to lead me to her studio. And there I discovered that I had not seen anything yet—nor had I learned anything yet about names and naming, life and death, echoes and omens.

  What's in a name?

  I was about to find out.

  Chapter Eleven: Chronology

  I warned you up front that this is a wild story and that I would not have known how to relate it to you until very recently, to merely lay out the events in chronological order, as I experienced them, would result not in a story but in a mere vignette of apparent fantasy—incomprehensible, unbelievable, unworthy of your serious attention. The chief problem, you see, is context. Any event occurring totally out of context with the circumstances that produce the event is likely to be incomprehensible—and something that is incomprehensible is also generally unbelievable and therefore fantastic.

  Consider for example the birth of a child. It is an incomprehensible and seemingly magical event if totally disconnected from its context. Try to imagine a group of people isolated upon a small island who have been there since early childhood, the result of a shipwreck or air disaster or whatever. Somehow they have survived although they arrived there as babes and with no adult care or guidance. They are male and female and have matured sexually, so have mated instinctively without understanding the full significance of the act. Then one day a small human otherwise much like themselves emerges from one of the females. Magic? You bet it's magic, until the group begins relating effect to cause and comes up with a more rational understanding of the event. Moreover, if a small party had been exploring the other side of the island when that birth occurred—and a runner was dispatched to announce the miracle—that announcement would likely be met with disbelief and ridicule. A small stranger crawled from the tickle-place of Walks-in-Beauty? That's crazy! Who are you trying to kid!

  I've got the same problem here, pal.

  It's a context problem.

  So I really need to talk a bit more about the context before you decide that I'm crazy or else I'm trying to kid you.

  I need to go back to the St. Germain story because that is one of the contextual boundaries. Remember that I quoted the Countess d'Adhemar from her Souvenirs de Marie Antoinette, where she related a dangerous rendezvous with St. Germain during the intrigues of the French Revolution and his promise that she would see him "five times more."

  You should be aware that this was during a period of great political upheaval and ambitious maneuvers, the early days of the First Republic. The young Napoleon was a junior army officer not yet into his stride toward empire, the French nation was at war within and also moving toward conflict with virtually all of Europe, and France was in chaos. The moment was prelude to the Reign of Terror, during which 300,000 Frenchmen were arrested, 17,000 executed, and many died in prison without trial. Robespierre was blamed
for much of the "excess"—but all was excess in those days, and one man alone could not have done all that.

  The New France rose from this tumult with Napoleon Bonaparte at the helm, but only after successive coups and bloody intrigues.

  At the moment of St. Germain's rendezvous with the countess at a Parisian church, the French monarchy had been compromised and the nation was being governed by the National Convention, which was dominated by Robespierre. But four years earlier, Marie Antoinette had received prophetic warning from her "mysterious adviser," a man who had never revealed himself to her in person but who nonetheless had watched over the young queen since her entry into France, giving her counsel in the form of anonymous letters. Thus in 1788 she received a missive which she felt compelled to share with Countess d'Adhemar, and about which she was moved to confide: "... these are strange experiences. Who is this personage who has taken an interest in me for so many years without making himself known, without seeking any reward, and who yet has always told me the truth? He now warns me of the overthrow of everything that exists and, if he gives a gleam of hope, it is so distant that I may not reach it."

  Handing the letter to the countess, the queen added,

  "This time the oracle has used the language which becomes him; the epistle is in verse."

  Countess d'Adhemar faithfully copied the verse into her diary:

  The time is fast approaching when imprudent France,

  Surrounded by misfortune she might have spared herself,

  Will call to mind such hell as Dante painted.

  This day, O Queen! is near, no more can doubt remain,

  A hydra vile and cowardly, with his enormous horns

  Will carry off the altar, throne, and Themis;

  In place of common sense, madness incredible

  Will reign, and all be lawful to the wicked.

  Yea! Falling shall we see sceptre, censer, scales, Towers and escutcheons, even the white flag; Henceforth will all be fraud, murders and violence,