The World Asunder

by Ian Wallace

  Having counter-kissed her naked belly in the night, he had responded, “I will die, but RP never can; it is too beautiful.”

  “Then,” she had told the invisible ceiling, touching his hair with her fingers, “worry not, my friend; your successor will come.”

  Now, with a new kind of foreboding, she noticed for the first time what he had then muttered, “It better be soon—” His next light comment had come so immediately that she had missed the dark note, or missed its possibly grave import. Was Rourke maybe concealing something about his own health? What was still incurable? Not cancer any longer, but....

  Mosaic virus? You don’t know it’s there until your doctor tells you; it does not sap your vitality until nearly the end, which is swift; there is no pain; it is almost like a merciful god telling you that your time has come and easing you out. And it is just as implacable....

  She bit her lower lip. If that had been the fatal import of his muttered response, how enormously like Rourke to blow it away immediately with a light quip! “Who knows? it might even be Kali.”

  1952:

  Led by Raoul, who carried a portable floodlamp (no lighting had been installed in the cave), Dio and I penetrated the prehistoric sanctuary at Mont Veillac, he prowling intently, I highly aroused by a meld of fascination with remote past and cavern-weird and a sharing of his sentiment that this would be it.

  Awed, we looked while Raoul crisp-lectured: he was felicitously phlegmatic about it; he would make some necessary five-or ten-word statement and then shut up until a question or the next thing.

  We took more than an hour to review synoptically the paintings in the main cavern; Raoul was patient, I felt that he was pleased at our leisurely inspection. Then he suggested, “There are a few minor cells that you will want to experience—”

  Turning to me, Dio growled low, “Nothing yet, Lil; so far, a blank draw. Let’s follow him for the whole view, and then come back here for a few hours.”

  When, after about five smaller deeper chambers of inspiring nonproductivity, Raoul directed his lamp into the just-above-floor-level opening of the little crawl-space, Dio looked at me with his teeth sheathed. Terrified, I managed to utter, “What the hell! I’m dressed for it—” Raoul nodded and went in first; Dio gave me the honor at Raoul’s heels (sepulchrally the lamp beam focused ahead back-illumined the tube); hearing Dio scraping along behind me, I hissed at him, “Don’t take advantage, you legitimate bastard!” and was heartened by his counter-hiss: “Just imagine if I did: Raoul popping out of the tube like a blown cork.” It was hard to giggle without butt-butting the tube roof; I repressed it and crept on....

  We three then stood stupidly in the end cell, gazing at the prey-bird descending on the terrified people.

  “Oh, say, now!” low ejaculated Dio in French. “This is the best of all; this I shall have to study for a while—”

  Raoul responded, “Then, monsieur-madame, perhaps I should go get the cheese and wine; I left them in the main room.”

  “Do that,” Dio murmured; “do that.” A moment later I heard the tube-scraping of Raoul; but I didn’t turn to look— Dio’s preoccupation with the fresco was too engrossing.

  “Look here, Lil!” he exclaimed after some minutes; he was using Raul’s floodlamp, Raoul had departed with a little flashlight. “I’m not yet ready to say what this means, but—”

  His voice was buried in the cell-filling tube-roar.

  Panic-paralyzed, of course I didn’t think to time-out the reverberations. Maybe a couple of minutes were enough to complete the rockfall and seal us in; but even after the catastrophic part was done, I kept hearing scattered rock shards pinging on rock.

  At some time during the noise, I must have faced around toward the tube-end. When I came into self-collection, the first thing I saw was Dio’s bottom: he was on his knees using his lamp to peer into the tube. He cursed and funneled himself into it. Then his lamp went out. Abruptly I was done, and terrified by solitude and darkness, and beginning for the first time in my life to experience oppressive claustrophobia....

  Dio backed into view carrying blessed light, emerged, stood, turned. Keeping lips well over teeth: “It’s plugged, Lilith, maybe ten feet inward or outward, no telling how thick the plug is. I couldn’t see any light through it when I turned out my lamp; if Raoul is using his flashlight in or near the cave, it isn’t visible through the plug. I couldn’t budge it with hard pushing, I couldn’t get my fingers into any helpful crannies. Any useful conclusions, Doctor?”

  At that I giggled, and he rewarded me by unsheathing teeth. And the giggle helped me, too; as it died, I swore that I was not going to be a silly ass, that I was going to concentrate on thinking....

  I made a wry funny: “Great spot for smooching.”

  He sobered: “The greatest, except for the aspect of accelerated air-use. What do you say we smell around our cell a little?”

  Having lamp-surveyed the cell to eliminate rock-or hole-hazards, he killed the beam to save the battery and to sharpen the one sense we needed right now: our smellers, to detect any fresh-air intake. He took the waist-up high road, I the low on hands and knees, moving with deliberation in opposite directions around the walls so we would contact on meeting, sniffing every cranny. When we did meet, he said “Nothing,” and I echoed “Nothing.” Pause—and then I giggled again: “Logic, Dio, logic! Did you think we’d gone all around?” He said, very low, “Oh, shit.” I exploded laughter, which died quickly; it was like laughing inside a kettle drum, there might be danger of stimulating a new rockfall. He said, “Okay, we’ve met, that means we’ve done half of it; let’s go.” We switched sectors—I high now, he low—and up-and-down dog-sniffed until we met again. Long silence; then: “Nothing.” “Nothing.” He demanded, “How are you at standing on a man’s shoulders and smelling very high?” To control that, we turned on the lamp long enough to start at the tube, and I got balanced on his shoulders with him gripping my thighs and me bent because the ceiling averaged only nine feet high, and he killed the light, and we went all around once more with me doing all the sniffing, until he touch-found the tube again. Still nothing.

  I dismounted. Long silence.

  He: “We may be getting a minim of fresh air through the rock-block in the tube. But it will come in only at the rate we suck it in. And the faster we suck, the faster we’ll build up carbon dioxide. So breathe very easy, sister, very easy— and not much talk.”

  I: “Agreed, but we will have to say some necessary things.”

  He, talking most low: “Right, but minimal words; leave color to be inferred.”

  I: “Okay. Raoul has probably gone for help."

  He: “Unless he was trapped in the fall.”

  I, resolutely: “Assume otherwise. How long?”

  He: “Two hours to get help. Don’t know how long to dig through.”

  I, teeth clenched: “Okay. How long breathable air?”

  He: “Don’t know. With care, a few hours.”

  Very long silence; I was carefully composing myself into practically a state of torpor to minimize my oxygen requirement, he was probably doing the same. I did exercise myself enough to reach out and grope for his hand; he responded, and we held hands almost all the rest of our time in there.

  I: “It is necessary for you to finish telling me what you saw on the wall.”

  The lamp went on, Hooding the prey-bird fresco. Silently he let me survey it for several seconds. Then: “I’m sure that bird was originally redheaded and blue-eyed. Ultraviolet would show it. Flaming power devouring people. Kali. He brought us here. And he got us here.”

  The lamp stayed on. I studied. My gaze drifted to the right, and I contemplated the man watching from the downward escarpment.

  My grip on Dio’s hand tightened. "Man to the right Original color of hair and eyes?”

  “Wait, let me analyze. I think—red hair, blue eyes.”

  “That’s Burk Halloran.”

  Silence. Then: “Oh? That duck-faced car
icature?”

  “If you see those colors, I see Burk.”

  The lamp went out

  2002:

  In a decent little hotel at Sore, Lieutenant Cassie Wozniak lay on her back with her bountiful bosom heaving. She wanted Mallory; she wanted Mallory, and her desire would not let her sleep. She fought with the desire, insistently reminding herself that he was an old man; the image of his age kept flickering into vague insignificance, distorted by her acute tactile imagery of his skill and her exciting psychic imagery of his charisma and her warming emotive imagery of his human sympathy. Distraught, she resorted to religious tradition in the context of Freudian materialism: Cassie, you kook, this father-desire, this is moral incest, it is childish, forget it, hit sleep, dream it off. . . . The recognition only fired her higher, and she turned over and buried her face in the pillow and slowly beat feet against the mattress....

  She became aware that her right hand had slipped into her nightgown to stroke her left breast, and that the nipple was hardening. That did it: she whirled to her back again, and stretched her arms out taut, and gave herself over to a vivid serial imagining in the hope that the very consecutiveness of it would put her to sleep before anticlimax.

  Forget the commodore, she ordered herself. Concentrate on that young hard Commander Duval; he’s only in his late thirties, that’s young, he tears me apart, this l need....

  She set herself to imagining that she was back aboard ship and a Draft Board had been ordered for tonight, to be activated just about now. Cassie had registered green (available), which meant that hopefully she would be drafted, necessarily by some officer who ranked her. The commodore —scratch that! The next officer in seniority to make a selection would be Captain Vanderkilt, who being a heterosexual woman would not be selecting Cassie. And the next to draft would be Commander Duval. Of course, he might pass or choose somebody else; and the other five male officers above Cassie might likewise pass or choose somebody else or might have been chosen by women above them; in which case it would be unchosen Cassie’s turn to make a draft from among the males below her rank (two ensigns, and several petty officers, and sailors). Now which one would she choose? No, wait, this was a happy fantasy, she must not imagine any miserable contingency. Not that the lower-ranking males were miserable; for instance, she could easily think of . . . Hold! keep the fantasy under control! She had been drafted by Duvall Well: by the rules of RP, to which Cassie had happily subscribed on recruitment, she would have no choice, having registered green. And so she would arise and thread the ship’s corridors and pass through her drafter’s door and stand before her beloved for tonight, saying the ritual: “Here I am, yours to do with as you wish as long as we do not injure each other. I love you tonight, Commodore—”

  No! No! Correction: “I love you tonight, Commander—” Oh, fudge! This is a means for sleep?

  18.

  2002:

  Resolutely, in his Mount Veillac suite, Mallory suppressed the material which he wanted to inspect: the possibility that Lilith Vogel had been here (whatever may have happened to her in the cave) precisely fifty years ago tonight allowing for the probable error of time-flutter. That had been mere yesterday; and by any measure, it had been four years later than his last prior knowledge of her. That she had been with another guy, probably as his, permanent or transient mistress, shook Mallory not at all: either a guy and a chick are for each other, or they are not. If they are, but far apart without hope of seeing each other, doesn’t the love of each hope for the other’s happiness? And if they are not, what’s the difference? Lilith would have been nearly thirty, either that or marriage would be a natural necessity; and apparently she had been discriminating, Horse having been a detective-inspector and all.....

  Lilith, if alive, would be into her late seventies now. About the same age as Esther; maybe even looking and feeling as relatively young as Esther, if Lilith also had found access to Senility Arrest. Heights about the same; and if Mallory had any ability to extrapolate from an aging woman’s present appearance to her earlier appearance, figures about the same (only Esther would never show Mallory an earlier picture of herself). Psyches, though, very largely different ...

  Diodoro Horse! That had to have been Esther’s first husband; he had been a detective-inspector, the identity was unmistakable. And from her scattered references to his mind and his heart—hey, would he have been a fleet captain! But with another woman already—and that woman may have been Lilith Vogel! The dating would have been almost immediately after Esther’s departure with someone impossibly named Kali who looked impossibly like the guru; but if Guru Kali had been mature fifty years ago, he’d have been in his fifties before Senility Arrest became a possibility —yet a generation after the Esther-snatching Kali had been a mere youth!

  Anyhow—Horse and Vogel! Esther still carried the torch a little for Horse; and Mallory supposed that he, way down deep, still smoldered for Lilith. The coincidence was wild— if, with the guru just possibly involved, it was coincidence. What it did prove was, that Horse may indeed have been on Esther’s trail immediately, even if he did have a woman along; and he had been prevented from pursuing it all the way to Villejuif only by the cave disaster. In a melancholy way, Esther would be glad to know this.

  But why with Lilith? He was working to recall Esther’s account of her departure with this Kali-apparition: Esther had been on her apartment balcony, and down below to the left Horse had been staring up, and down below to the right some woman had been staring up....

  He stood, weird-chilled. If the apparition-man had indeed been Guru Kali, and if the woman below had been Lilith Vogel, and if both Horse and Vogel had seen Kali—who was a runt-twin of Rourke-when-young ... Eh, wait: maybe Lilith had been that psychologist who was meeting Horse to take him guest-lecturing; then if she had thought that she was seeing Esther rope-raped by Burk Halloran—hey, now, would Lilith have joined the Horse-pursuit of Esther in a private Halloran-pursuit of her own?

  Bah! chase that away! More pertinent concerns were facing him.

  The apparent powers of Kali! To change the past—to be selective in telepathic interception at a distance—to project illusions at a very great distance—to win allegiance among the greatest of the great—and what else?

  And if Mallory truly had those same powers latent within himself, he could use diem to beat the guru at his own game, whatever that game might be. If, that is, Mallory could evoke those powers. Perhaps that had been the meaning of the Blue Flame. If so, it was Kali who had led Mallory to the flame; did this mean that for some reason Kali wanted Mallory to find and use the powers?

  Unify me. ... A plea addressed, not only to the little dark challenger, but also to Mallory aloft...

  There weren’t any clear logical roads for determining what those powers might be. Eliminate all the powers that one could deploy anyway, and the special ones would be some other powers.

  He grinned, recalling the report by Chloris: special powers the guru might have, but whether he was in fact male or female, seemingly he lacked a quite ordinary power of either sex. Was that a price which the guru had paid for his powers? Must Mallory pay a similar price in order to realize the guru’s powers? His grin went diabolical: at his age and with his memories, what the hell!

  Well: the powers. Dissolving his grin, Mallory beetle-browed an interesting question: how would he test the powers if he should have them? What subjects were immediately available other than Antoine and Raoul? Fantasy-projection? The vicomte was too frail for such tampering, and Raoul was too vicomte-indispensable for such tampering. Telepathic reception? This the guru seemed to bring off only when the thoughts emanated from somebody engaged in high-energy mentation focused on some inner light, and the telepathic blank which Mallory now drew told him that either Mallory was unreceptive or neither Antoine nor Raoul was thinking energetically at the moment. And he already had their allegiance, won through years quite normally—the very best kind. And as for past-changing, that one Mallory proposed
to leave cautiously alone until he had some sense of how to go about doing it—and doing it without crossing wires and shorting something dangerously.

  All right: he couldn’t actively start with any of these powers tonight, although two or three of them he might Addle with tomorrow aboard the Ishtar; but a direction had been suggested, and that was something of a breakthrough.

  Breakthrough . . . O-ho! Assume that Lilith Vogel had been down there beneath Esther’s balcony, that she had seen what Horse had seen—Kali, alias early Halloran, skinning up a sky-hung rope with Esther and vanishing into nothing. Well: if both Vogel and Horse had seen it, then maybe it had somehow happened! And then: if Kali could also cross time into the past—and if his real method of stealing Esther, beneath the illusion, had been teleportation ...

  Two more powers—teleportation and time-travel?

  Oh, b’Jesus! Those powers too? And they’re maybe mind? Then theoretically I could go back now to be again with young Lilith-Ishtar in the peony garden only, I would be old. Wouldn’t I.

  1952:

  We’d been mostly silent in the refrigerating cave-darkness during most of two hours, sitting relaxed with our backs against a cave wall, holding hands limply now because tight hand-gripping requires energy and therefore accelerates breathing, concentrating on balancing our breathing at the minimum threshold of depth and frequency required to stay minimally oxygenated without depriving ourselves to the point where compensatory deep breathing would be stimulated. Although I felt that I was about to freeze, I knew that fifty-two degrees is way above that point; I was wearing sensible underwear and wool hose and sturdy tan denim pants and shirt, my collar and long sleeves were buttoned, probably my body temp was still in the early nineties; I should be grateful for Cave-chill, it was lowering my metabolism. To my smeller, the air seemed now to have a staleness; but I refused to think about carbon dioxide for fear that my stupid autonomies might get apprehensive and heighten my breathing. Several times it crossed my mind that if Dio and I would cling together we could warm and hearten each other; this notion too I flatly dismissed, at least for a while, suspecting that even in this extremity we couldn’t embrace without speeding our metabolisms.