The World Asunder

by Ian Wallace

  Rourke leaned forward, softly challenging. “You have just been referring to a rope-trick fantasy involving a man who looked like me. Is it maybe crossing your mind that I may have some identity other than Commodore Rourke Mallory?”

  "It is. You concealed it, but you were gravely and personally concerned when I told you that Lilith Vogel was in cave-trouble, and your relief when you were assured of her inscrutable safety was visible. And you handled her name Lilith with an ease that was familiar and almost affectionate. All this, despite the fact that she was lost in a cave fifty years ago and apparently you haven’t seen her since. You look to me like a much-older version of the guy in my rope-trick fantasy, only taller—and you tell me you once had red hair—while the guy in my rope-trick fantasy, which Lilith shared, looked to her like a red-haired guy she’d known. To be that guy, you’d have to be well into your eighties. You strike me as being merely a vigorous middle-sixty—voice and all; I’m an expert on judging age by voice—but I would anticipate that age-retarding medications would have been discovered during the late twentieth century. On the working assumption that this is really the year two thousand two, I am assuming for working purposes that you were once named Burk Halloran.”

  Rourke studied Dio. Dio bead-eyed Rourke. Rourke whistled low.

  “Two things,” Rourke said.

  “Go ahead.”

  “One: you are right—but I legally changed the name so long ago that I’d almost forgotten it. To avoid confusing the issue for other people, except maybe Lilith, please call me only Rourke Mallory; it’s my name, I like it better anyhow, I never much liked any of my Halloran kin.”

  Dio was repressing a smile. “Okay. Second thing?”

  “Here you are in two thousand two. What if you’re stuck here?”

  The teeth were sheathed, the eyes were glittering beads. Dio’s voice had a new low timbre: “If I should stay here, would I find any kind of challenge other than getting adjusted?”

  Rourke leaned back, many ways stimulated: his brain was still in liquid-smooth high gear, he’d regained advantage over a new and enormously potent temporary-adversary, and the faint remote little possibility was beginning to . . . Scratch that! Stay with immediacy!

  “We have parsecs to go before we sleep,” he reflected aloud, sloshing cognac. “Shall I continue to lead, Dio?”

  “I think so, yes—for a bit.”

  “This is delicate. I raise the question whether you, no older than forty, can handle the presence of your Esther, who presumably was in her late twenties when you last saw her but who now, a week later for you, looks fifty and is actually in her late seventies.”

  Dio frowned down and held breath during seconds; laboriously and noisily then he filled his lungs with air, held it a second or two, exhaled with his mouth wide open. After which he slumped.

  Concerned, Rourke watched and waited.

  Dio demanded, “Can you find out what she thinks?”

  Holding up a hand, Rourke bowed his head and went Into concentration: telepathy wasn’t needed here, he and Esther could mentate directly with their brain devices. Presently his mouth took on a droll shape, and it was Dio’s turn to lean forward. Rourke looked up: “Lilith is with her. Boy did I mess up that teletemportation!”

  “We cooperated,” grinning Dio confessed. “In the cave, she concentrated on going to you, I on going to Esther; I won’t question your own desires, but—we got mixed up, didn’t we? Tell me—are the girls friendly?”

  Wryly, Rourke: “Both of us have been disassembled.”

  Dio’s teeth gleamed. “Imagine all four of us together! Battle royal! How much cognac have you got?”

  “If I can bring them here,” Rourke declared, “I can also bring up a couple of bottles from the Mont Veillac cellar.” Then he went serious: “I mean, Dio—if we can bring them here. Good lord, horizons, horizons—”

  When we women arrived, however, there was no heat at all. The men were courteously standing. Negligéed Esther, as the senior woman, raised a hand to silence them while she specified: “We must all four be good old friends and otherwise impersonal while we get all this unraveled—agreed?” Beside her, I nodded vigorously, still cave-dressed. Smiling at me, Rourke spread hands-and-arms; gaping at Esther, Dio spread hands; promptly we women found chairs and sat uneasy while Dio dropped into his chair and Rourke busied himself with cognacs around. Some double reunion! And I guessed it was probably the best kind, for starters....

  Seating himself, Rourke suggested, “I think we should first take sixty seconds to gaze at each other.” It was a wise idea: when Rourke broke the gazing-seance, he and I for our part, and Dio and Esther for theirs, had somehow tacitly satisfied each other that no personal injury was felt and that still there was some sort of love between us and them although what form that love should take remained to be settled eventually.

  “Good,” then said Rourke, taking control. “We love, we are friends, we work it out later. Now. Lilith—Doctor Vogel, now?” I nodded. “Fine, just fine,” he said, meaning it “Well: I take it that Esther has briefed you on our situation now in two thousand two?” I nodded. “And I have briefed Dio,” he added, “so we will assume this common knowledge.”

  He turned to Dio: “Inspector, correct me if you disagree. All of us share some kind of colossal problem involving this Kali, and the four of us together have a better chance of solving the problem than any one of us alone—but we can’t solve the problem until we can formulate it, and in order to formulate the problem each of us has to know everything pertinent that all the others know. Your comment, Inspector?”

  Dio, somber: “Agreed, Commodore; but that pooling of information is going to require many hours of talking.”

  “Not necessarily,” responded Rourke, rising and exiting into his bedroom. His voice emerged from there: “Esther and I have inbuilt brain-devices for transmitting direct mentation; and I always carry a couple of portable devices in my knapsack. I call them headphones—you simply clip them over your temples.” He emerged with the compact contraptions, handing one to me and one to Dio; clipping mine on immediately, I told Dio, “Some advanced adaptation of electroencephalography”; he nodded and instantly donned his....

  Rourke’s mind came into mine, and (I assumed) equally into those of Dio and of Esther; and it was the old Burk Halloran mind that I had known, vital, kind, concerned; I seemed to be getting also a background of his connation, and in it there was no hint of the old yawing conflict. His mind said: “Dio, I give you the honor: start remembering chronologically and synoptically all your experiences with respect to Kali, raw and without interpretation, and see if you can bring it all off in about two minutes.”

  Dio’s brilliance flooded me: he did it, my God, in less than two minutes—all of it; I swear there was nothing missing, except (bless him) the very personal things between him and me, which really were unrelated to Kali.

  “Burk—no, Rourke, I must sell myself on this new name, better for him because he had chosen it and had known himself as Rourke during five decades—physically nodded and turned to me. “Lilith, tell us mentally how much of this you confirm of your own experience, and whether you have anything to correct or add.”

  I tried to be mentally as concise as Dio; in general, I confirmed most of it and commented that I had nothing to add.

  Tension was building, we felt it as connately mutual; but Rourke merely nodded again and cued Esther. She, taut, mentally crisped out her pertinent history, even the parts that Rourke already knew, including Villejuif and all. But I kept feeling a screening off in her mentation; and eventually I was sure that she was repressing something about her original Kali-feeling....

  Physical and cognitive silence, then—but an interfused blending of (connative) disturbance.

  Dio, snatching off his headset, barked, “That’s a great technique for fast review—but now let’s get human-talking while we probe!”

  “Agreed,” said Rourke instantly, while I removed my headset with a goo
d deal of emotive relief. “Now please listen. Inspector Horse has described a series of fantasies which were shared by Dr. Vogel; the first of these fantasies was shared also by Mme. d'Illyria, and the second by a random driver-mechanic. This multiple sharing makes them projected fantasies and ties them convincingly to Kali. I will now toss the bombshell. Just one of the Horse-fantasies was reexperienced by me only a week ago; and it was the Blue Flame fantasy, at Fisherman’s Cove for me as well as for Horse. By hindsight, Dio, I was the guy in front of you, and you were the guy behind me. Now, I have been assuming that this fantasy was mine alone for me alone; but now I am beginning to wonder whether it was directed at me at all. Dr. Vogel, you’re the psychologist here—”

  I demurred: “Holy Moses, Commodore—in two thousand two? I’m vintage nineteen fifty-two—”

  He grinned: “Quiet, you have a discipline that is partly scientific and partly occult; in fifty years there hasn’t been that much advance. Just tell me this: do you think that a sleeping mind could intercept experiences or thoughts of other minds?”

  I was appreciating him: even back then, his probing had been unconventional. “I have thought of this possibility. But I can’t theorize it.”

  “Here is the basis of a theory. Suppose that every thought chain of every human, having a physical basis in the brain, is somehow perpetuated in space as a sort of trace-filament Suppose that—by chance, maybe—another sleeping person, as the earth whirls, is physically taken through the locus of these filaments; they pass through his brain, and his mind distortedly recreates the thought chain in his dream. Well?”

  "Rourke, you’re beyond the scope of nineteen fifty-two psychology. Go on.”

  ‘This recreation would involve a time lapse between the original thought chain and the interceptive dreaming: fifty seconds, or fifty years, or anything, depending when by chance the filaments of old thought would hit the new-sleeping brain. So my dream recreated the Horse-dream—just by chance—”

  Dio injected: “Not just by chance! One, this recreation of yours happened at Fishermen’s Cove, the same place and indeed the same room and platform where I originally dreamed it. Two, this twice-dreamed dream was central in two contorted series of events, fifty years apart, which have converged simultaneously on Mont Veillac and have culminated in our absurd togetherness. Three, you know Kali, you are concerned about him somehow; you have that to tell us about—”

  “As an extension of your two,” Rourke mused, “whither the illusion-series brought you was here to Mont Veillac. And as a logically untraceable outcome of my own Fishermen’s Cove illusion, I was impelled to visit that cave on about the anniversary date of your visit; it has long been a sanctuary of mine, and in fact my idea for my RP Fleet was spawned there in nineteen fifty-one—”

  Dio, low: “Is that maybe the phantom fleet of diversified sail-craft which came bubbling out of the cave-mouth in two of my fantasies?”

  Rourke: “Precisely, I am sure. But continuing: the place where the rockfall trapped you—I know from the vicomte and his man Raoul that this is so—was a deep cell-room; you’ll be time-amused to learn that rescuers got in there the same afternoon, but you and Lilith had vanished. And in that same cell-room today I was aroused by a new meaning that I perceived in a fresco—”

  Dio, low: “A flame-crested blue-eyed bird driving down from the sky upon people. A symbol of sheer power. Watched by a nearby red-haired blue-eyed Cro-Magnon who could have been you, Rourke Mallory.”

  Rourke, wry: “For me, it took ultraviolet light to reveal the colors. For you, Inspector, apparently stray pigment-traces were enough.”

  Abruptly Rourke raised a hand. “In this roundup of my happily inept teleportation, I’ve had a feeling that a precinct was missing, and I’ve just remembered what. Without asking for details, please put on your headsets; I want to try contacting the other precinct—”

  I felt him mentally calling for some Lieutenant Cassie Wozniak.

  I felt her response: “Mmf?” The sense was that he had caught her male-involved. My somehow-sense of her was voluptuous nude blonde.

  Rourke: “Untangle yourself for a moment, Lieutenant; this is the commodore.”

  “Mallory?”

  “Right. Just for a couple of minutes—”

  “Oh.” Then a sense of verbal hissing to someone: “It’s Mallory.” Then sweet: “Commodore, I can’t begin to tell you how much I miss you—”

  “Drop the stuff, Cassie. This mentation is privately person-to-person, your partner couldn’t pick it up even if he had the device. Tell me where you are, and with whom.”

  “Aboard the Ishtar. With Duval. And boy, do I have a lot to tell you—”

  ‘Tell me first how you got there. Tell me what went on in your mind just before you got there.”

  What he got back was a blend of mystification and erotic richness. But she interrupted herself: “Look, Commodore, I have a lot to tell you—”

  “Okay, ten.”

  Her mentation went low, as though her voice had gone low. “Duval is in regular contact with Kali. Kali has arranged for you to be infected with mosaic virus. As soon as you die, Kali will arrange for Duval to take command of the fleet. Is this worth knowing, Commodore?”

  I went cold: I knew about mosiac virus in tobacco, but this human version involving this man....

  And I felt Rourke’s responsive chill, backed up by the responsive chills of Dio and of Esther. But with a build of admiration I grasped that Rourke had already known about the virus, but had kept it quiet and hadn’t known about the Kali connection. He now mentated with tranquility: “The virus is top secret, Cassie; don’t tell anybody, and if you can find a way, be sure that Duval won’t. Is that why you wanted me to draft you?” That I didn’t get: draft?

  “No, it was something else. How come I’m with Duval, do you know?”

  “We’ll talk soon, Cassie, and I’ll tell you. What was the something else?”

  “It starts with I’ve been cheating on RP.”

  “Cassie!”

  “Well, you know how it is, a handsome young Russian diplomat and all; and the ^upshot was, an upshot. Well, after about the third upshot and his fourth vodka—his fourth, I had only two because I was technically on duty—he got all rheumy-eyed and confessional, and I felt tender about him so I saw no reason why my ear shouldn’t be sympathetic. Well, m boil it down to essentials, Commodore, no point in going through the maudlin totality. What he let on to me was, that he had conceived a soul-worship of Guru Kali because the guru had helped him find the soul of his deceased young wife and to learn that she forgave him everything and gave him a green light for anything. And so he had promised the guru any favor that the guru might desire. And the guru asked... Commodore?”

  “If you tell me that the guru asked him for bodily favors, you will make liars out of Chloris and Zeno.”

  “No, Commodore, nothing like that. The guru asked this young diplomat to—wait, let me get this straight, it’s not my bag—to get him the—the series-progression—is that right?' yes—the series-progression of—of—” She halted in midthought, mentally pawing air.

  Rourke waited, knowing better than to puncture her search-and-retrieval.

  Haltingly she said, “The series-progression of extabule contabulary. Yes. Extabule contabulary, that’s what he said.”

  Long meditation by Rourke. I was lost, and so was Esther; but the laboring lips and eyebrows and fingers of Dio told me that whatever it meant was only just out of his reach... .

  Cassie anxiously interjected, “It seemed maybe important to me because it was so zany. Commodore, does it help any?”

  Rourke had grown extremely somber. ‘The taste if it tells me that it means something important; and I am coupling this with what you’ve told me about Duval. In return, I'll explain roughly how you got to be with Duval in the first place. I tried to teleport you to me, and I missed.”

  “OOoo—”

  “Gratitudes, Cassie. Out”

  My hea
dset stayed on, and so did Dio’s. Esther and I were alertly watching the men; we’re both egalitarians, but series-progressions aren’t our field. Both men were slumped, appearing torpid although we knew they weren’t.

  Without looking up, Dio said, “Series-progression of extabule contabulary. Ten to one it’s some mathematical thing. Rourke, what’s going on that might lead Kali to pump a diplomat about some mathematical series?”

  “REM,” promptly responded Rourke; and mentating, swiftly he made us acquainted with this futuristically continent-lethal weapon, the associated REM Talks, the worldwide influence and top-level entries of Guru Kali, the strange apparent powers of Kali, and the peculiar REM-associated behavior of the guru.

  “All right,” Dio acknowledged aloud. ‘Then, bypassing a lot of other Kali-concerns, the series-progression which interests Kali, for which he was reaching through a sub rosa diplomatic channel, must be REM-related. And that may relate the progression either to thermal activity in Earth’s mantle or to electromagnetic or nuclear stimulation or control of same. Extabule contabulary. Extabule—”

  “Ex tabula?” I ventured.

  “Out of the tables—or notebooks,” Rourke translated, “Possibly. Then maybe Contabulary could be the name of a mathematician whose notes contain the series-progression. Contabulary. Substitute i for y, and it sounds vaguely Italian—”

  Esther advised, “Wake up Joe Volpone and hit him with it.” Rourke began mentating. When a sleepy male mind responded, the intertransmission went Italian; it was highly verbal thinking, which I couldn’t follow. After disconnect, Rourke turned to us, and his face had hardened.

  “Contabularius,” he told us, “was a late-nineteenth-century mathematician at Florence. Ex tabula Contabulari, ‘from the notes of Contabularius,’ is a term conventionally applied by mathmematicians to his classical series-progression quantifying the relationships among four variables related to the molten magma of Earth: electromagnetic input, increase of thermal energy, unitary expansion, and time.”